The Queen's Governess

by Karen Harper

  But the last blow was that Northumberland produced a royal edict, signed and sealed by King Edward, naming the duke’s own daughter-in-law Jane Grey, who had royal blood, as queen and his son, Robin’s brother Guildford, King of England.

  Mary, too, sent for Elizabeth to rally to her righteous cause, for many Englishmen rose in arms to defend her right to the throne. It was greatly the Protestants against the Catholics again, a short civil war, but Elizabeth managed not to be embroiled for the nine precarious days Jane Grey was queen.

  But when the false king and queen were captured and imprisoned in the Tower—with Northumberland and two others of his sons, one being Elizabeth’s friend Robin—she had no choice but to go to London for her sister’s coronation, for the snub of a refusal would have been too much. At least, in the English people’s rising to make Mary queen, Elizabeth was also temporarily swept back into the line of succession.

  “I cannot go into the Tower, Kat, not even just to the palace there to await my sister’s parade through London and her coronation, I don’t care what royal tradition decrees,” Elizabeth declared as we made our final stop for sustenance in an inn before entering London. “I thought I could manage going to the place my mother was as good as murdered, but now I know I cannot. I will enter London, but not go to join Mary at the palace in the Tower grounds as she commanded.”

  “But royal tradition matters, and you know it. Your mother went there in triumph before her crowning, so the place holds good memories too. Besides, everyone’s been cheering you,” I pressed on, taking her elbow and leaning close as we stood in the emptied-out common room of the inn. “Do you think I want to put one foot in that place again? But I will if it returns you to Mary’s goodwill and brings you back permanently in the line of succession after all these difficult years.”

  Pressing my other hand between hers, she bit her lower lip and nodded. “But my cousin Jane is still imprisoned there, and Robin too. Perhaps they will even hear our merrymaking in the palace, poor souls.”

  “You know, Your Grace,” I said, deciding not to coddle her as I longed to, “I believe Elizabeth Tudor can do whatever she must for the good of England and for the possibility to someday claim England’s throne.”

  She looked at me hard, rather than staring out through the October sunshine at the crowds of people waiting for her reappearance. “She’ll try to turn me to Catholicism, but I’ll not bend on that,” she told me.

  “My lord John and I are with you on that and all else.”

  “My people,” she said with a decisive nod, and I knew not whether she was acknowledging that John and I were her people or the crowds outside. She kissed my cheek, squared her shoulders, lifted her chin and went out, waving and nodding to a roar of recognition.

  “God save you, Princess!” “Bess Tudor, English through and through!” I heard among huzzahs and cheers and clapping.

  And so we went in triumph to meet Queen Mary at the palace in the Tower and await her coronation with high hopes for a good and kindly reign. At least we got a short one.

  CHAPTER THE FIFTEENTH

  WHITEHALL PALACE

  October 1, 1553

  So,” the new queen, looking resplendent in her jewel-encrusted gown, asked her younger sister, “what did you think of it all today? Wasn’t it magnificent? At last, God’s will be done.”

  After the five-hour coronation at the abbey and the long banquet at Westminster Palace, we had just returned by barge to Whitehall. At the abbey, I had been one of many attendants following the new queen’s sister, but here Elizabeth had asked only John and me to remain with her. We stood behind her in the chamber of state, where Queen Mary’s retainers, priests and advisers still swarmed about her like the queen bee in one of my father’s hives.

  “A beautiful and impressive two days,” Elizabeth answered Mary. “Those who helped to preserve Your Majesty’s rightful throne are truly blessed.”

  “And for that we must give thanks,” she said, with a little clap of her hands. “Will you come to Mass with me, here, now in my own chapel?”

  “Sister, as you have long asked to be allowed to follow the dictates of your conscience, will you not now allow the same for me?”

  “But mine is the true faith, and everyone shall know it. I realize you have been long misled, but I cannot abide such a long face on this glorious day.” She patted Elizabeth’s flushed check—more a little slap than a pat, I thought.

  I, with John behind me, stood in a corner, hemmed in by the press of people. The chamber was crowded with furniture too. Mary had been queen since her brother’s death in July, and this was the first day of October. In those three months she had much changed the look of palace rooms, for they were full of ornate old, heavy furniture. She must have rescued pieces from her mother’s time from some storehouse; I prayed she would not also resurrect the painful past.

  Yesterday, behind my princess in the parade from the Tower into the city, I had seen a subtle sign of the queen’s desire to denigrate Elizabeth. I had ridden on a beautiful horse John had arranged for me. Just ahead of me, Elizabeth had been in a chariot, but not alone. She’d had to share it with the befuddled, elderly Anne of Cleves, who evidently thought the cheers for Mary’s heir were all for her and waved broadly, her hand often flailing before Elizabeth’s face. Had that been happenstance or by design? I wondered. If it was not arranged by Mary, I knew her advisers wanted to defame the great hope of the English Protestants, the Princess Elizabeth.

  Still, both Elizabeth and I had reveled in her welcome. And I was grateful to Queen Mary for one thing: she had ordered her sister to get out of her stark, dark garb and don a lovely gown of white and silver tissue cloth, at least for these two festive days.

  Now I felt exhausted and, truth be told, a heaviness not only caused by the grueling ceremony and rituals. We dreaded the future for Elizabeth but for England too. The advisers Mary heeded were the Catholic hierarchy of the land, streaming back from foreign exile or emerging from hiding. Stephen Gardiner, Bishop of Winchester, and the Spanish Ambassador, Simon Renard, had Mary’s ear as two of her chief advisers. She had packed her Council with those who were of her faith.

  Sir William Cecil had hastily resigned from public life and retired to his country house in Stamford, but not before warning us that, if Mary, in honor of her mother’s heritage, took a Spanish husband, as was rumored, England could become a colony of our greatest rival and enemy. But above all, I dreaded an argument between the royal sisters, and I could scent one coming at this very moment.

  “Your Majesty,” Elizabeth replied, “I will ever be your most loyal sister and subject, but I beg this one indulgence from you, that I may follow my own conscience in the way I worship. Of course, I will pray for you and your kingdom, but—”

  “We will discuss this no more today. You will come to see the error of your ways, will she not, Kat Ashley?” she asked, turning toward me with her back to her sister.

  “I am certain Her Grace will be ever loyal and grateful to you.”

  Squinting, the queen took several steps closer to me. The nearsightedness that gave her a perpetual frown had incised deep lines on the forehead of the thirty-seven-year-old woman. The result—that and the mannish voice—could be quite unsettling when she turned her attention to one. I curtsied, but she took my hands and drew me up. Despite the heat of her words, her touch was icy cold.

  “You too, my friend?” she challenged. “You prevaricate and dance about the issue too? Ah, two clever women are more dangerous than one. I should have known you would both be stubborn. But for the debt I owe you, we will not argue either,” she said, and loosed her grip on me.

  The powerful scent of the incense from the Catholic coronation service still seemed to waft out from her—that and the rank scent of raw power after all the years she’d been shunted off and denied affection.

  “I shall not forget,” she said, her voice quiet now. People tried in vain to lean close to hear her words, but they dared not jo
stle her as she had backed us into a corner. “You protected and advised me when I was sore ill and battered and friendless at Hatfield all those years ago. Then you helped me up to the battlements to call out to my father—and he doffed his hat and addressed me, do you remember?”

  “I do, indeed, Your Majesty. And may I say your asking the Duchess of Somerset to plead for me to be reunited with my mistress makes me ever grateful to you.”

  “Then see that you and your lord attend Mass each day and work to soften my sister’s heart—her mother’s heart, I fear,” she said with sudden vehemence. “And this,” she added, turning to John, “is Master Ashley?”

  “Yes, Your Grace,” I told her. “May I present to you my lord John, a loyal servant to Her Grace and to his new queen.”

  He bowed low to her, his bum, I recall, bumping into the wall and nearly shooting him forward at her. Ordinarily, I would have laughed, but this suddenly seemed to me deadly serious business.

  “A loving, strong marriage,” she said. “Ah, I envy you. That is what I too seek and I will have. But as for my younger sister, see that you both keep her safe,” she said as others kept crowding close in an attempt to overhear her words. Her last warning came out almost as a hiss: “Safe from those who would use her against me. See to it!”

  “Yes, Your Majesty,” John and I said, almost in unison.

  She hit her balled fist in her palm and almost mouthed the words. “Especially when my people hear I will wed the Spanish prince Philip, from my mother’s beloved country, I want no rabble around my sister, using her, for I am certain she would not of her own accord gainsay my will.”

  “No, she would not!” I declared, louder than I had meant to in the hush. John squeezed my elbow in warning, or else he was trying to steady himself, for the rumored Spanish liaison was what most Protestant Englishmen feared above all else.

  But this Protestant Englishwoman, Katherine Champernowne Ashley, feared one thing more: that over the years to come Catherine of Aragon’s daughter would take out her long-festering hatred of Anne Boleyn on my princess.

  In the next four months, while Elizabeth and her household awaited news of the Spanish marriage, troubles tumbled upon us. Northumberland had been beheaded months ago, but in February, Elizabeth’s young cousin Jane Grey and her husband, Guildford Dudley, were also executed. Jane was beheaded on the site where Anne Boleyn had lost her head. It brought back that dreadful day to me again, and I awakened to night terrors, comforted by John, and even by Elizabeth when I was with her one night when she felt ill, though I told her naught of my dream.

  “Thank the Lord, the queen hasn’t had Robin executed,” she told me more than once. “He is not with his wife, but I pray he is somehow encouraged and comforted by his life being spared. He was only obeying his father when he tried to take Mary prisoner during the Jane Grey rebellion. He never would have done that on his own.”

  It bothered me that she seemed pleased he wasn’t with his wife, but worse was soon to come our way. Just as Mary had predicted, and as John and I had feared, a new rebellion was raised by a man who proclaimed Elizabeth as rightful queen. As she had done before when dangers lurked, Elizabeth took to her bed, though she truly was ailing from some malady that made her retain water and bloated her thin body and narrow face.

  Sadly, part of this upheaval arose in the west country again, Devon, my home shire, and Cornwall. But the major unrest was in the southern shire of Kent, from which a popular rebel led the revolt and the ragtag army that marched on London. Unfortunately, he was the son of the man who had loved Anne Boleyn from her youth to her death, and Mary knew it. His father was now dead, but Thomas Wyatt the younger was that man, and we were all to suffer greatly and unjustly for what came to be called the Wyatt Rebellion.

  ASHRIDGE HOUSE, HERTFORDSHIRE

  February 10, 1554

  In the depths of our bed, I lay warm, but for once not feeling secure, in my husband’s arms. It was nearly dawn, and light intruded through the crack in our bed curtains. We were not at Hatfield or even at Enfield, which John and I so dearly loved, but at Ashridge, one of Elizabeth’s houses we visited from time to time. She preferred this one lately, for it was farther away from her sister.

  We had heard that Wyatt’s march on London had almost succeeded, for Queen Mary had no standing army and her advisers did not think the rabble army could come to much. But just as boldly as Mary had fought for her throne from those supporting Jane Grey, the queen had paraded through London with her guards to address citizens at the Guildhall. “Pluck up your courage!” Cecil’s letter had told us she had cried. “Stand fast, fear not!” She had also, Cecil said, boldly lied to the people that she would make no foreign marriage when it was already agreed upon. At any rate, London had rallied for her, Wyatt has been arrested and taken to the Tower on February 3. We dreaded what the man might say, even under torture, about Elizabeth’s inspiring or abetting his treason.

  “Awake, my love?” John murmured, his lips caressing my naked shoulder. He stretched and yawned, so he had hardly been lying there, worrying. But I could not help it, for fear curled around me tight as his arms.

  “I’ve been awake for a while. That way I won’t have that vile nightmare again. It’s as if Queen Anne keeps coming back from the grave to warn me.”

  “About Queen Mary’s hatred of Elizabeth?”

  “In a way. She always begs me to tend to her girl and keep her safe. But I am so afraid I cannot protect her in these tenuous times.”

  “Tougher to come, I fear,” he whispered and pulled me even closer to his muscular, hairy chest. We cuddled, spoon fashioned, he called it. “I’m afraid the queen’s going to give in to her advisers and start persecuting those she deems heretics, damn those popish Spanish lackeys pouring poison in her ears.”

  “Heretics,” I whispered. “By Mary’s definition, that includes us, just because we do not bow to her popish Catholicism. Some of the books we have hidden in your rooms near the stables in the city and ones I left at Somerset House—”

  “Yes, we’d best pull those out and hide them away from our property and the princess’s chambers next time we’re there. Maybe your nightmares have been triggered by word that, if the queen goes through with this Spanish marriage to Prince Philip, she’ll annul the marriage of Elizabeth’s parents. That would make her a bastard again, and no bastard can ascend the throne if something happens to Mary. But is she too old to bear children?”

  “Like me, you mean?”

  “No, my love. You are too tender on that subject. I meant I’m afraid this Wyatt mess might even goad Mary to move faster to disinherit Elizabeth.”

  “What a fool to raise troops and march on London in Elizabeth’s name! He’s hurting her, not helping her! I must get up and see how she’s feeling this morning. That bloating worries me and I wonder if she has somehow caught the green sickness again. She’s weak and so pale.”

  “Hm, the so-called virgin’s illness for our precious virgin. More like, her head and heart are making her ill. What I wouldn’t give to spirit you and me off to sunny Italy, our princess too. Ah,” he said, his voice growing more resonant, as it always did when he espoused what I called his “Italian dreams,” “we would study there and have our talks and walks and rides in the sun. Mayhap I’d have time to write more of my book on riding. I must convince people that the best way to tame a horse is through patience and gentleness. We’d go to Padua, I think, with its fine old university.”

  “You are such a dreamer.”

  He squeezed me so hard my breath oofed out. “Better to have dreams than nightmares, my Kat.”

  But that very morning—I remember the date well, February 10, 1554—not a nightmare of my mind but a real one clamped us all in its iron jaws.

  That night, I first knew something was wrong when I heard running footsteps in the hall, for that sound never boded well. Could Elizabeth be poorly again and had she sent for help? But no, she would have also sent for me. Then voices—shouts—an
d a pounding on a distant door.

  “Get a gown or robe on,” John told me, jumping up and yanking on breeches and a shirt. “Damn the Tyrwhitts if they let envoys in at this hour without telling me first.” His feet thrust in his leather mules, he ran out into the hall, banging the door closed behind him.

  In the weak light of dawn, I tugged on the gown and sleeves I’d discarded like a wonton last night to fall into John’s arms. I did not even try to lace the gown or shove my feet in shoes, but in the cold winter ran down the hall barefoot. Without my petticoats, my hems dragged and almost tripped me. I gasped to see outside Her Grace’s door John in a shoving, shouting match with one man, and two other men in royal livery. Despite their raised voices, I heard someone scrape out a sword. Lady Tyrwhitt, who must have let them in, looked like a ghost in a white night rail and cap.

  Then came Elizabeth’s voice from inside her room: “Stand off! I command you to leave my presence!”

  Dear Lord in heaven, had these men breached her door?

  “What means this affront to Her Majesty’s sister?” I demanded, striding toward them just as John dared to yank the man with the naked sword back out into the hall.

  A burly oaf I did not know thrust out both hands to stop the melee and bellowed, “The queen summons the princess to London to answer for her part in the rebel Wyatt’s plot! Since Her Grace did not want an excuse of illness, she has sent a physician here, Dr. Huckson!” He jerked his thumb in the direction of a stout man who had gone into Elizabeth’s chamber, then asked me, “You be Mrs. Ashley?”