by Karen Harper
November 17, 1558
From the depths of despair came deliverance for me, Elizabeth and England.
On the vast stage of national events, tragedy: King Philip squandered English funds and men in a foreign war and lost it, too, when Calais, the last English property on the Continent, fell to the French. How proud the previous monarchs of England had been to yet possess that European stronghold, a legacy of the powerful Plantagenet past. It was said that Queen Mary declared that if she died and they cut her open, they would find the word Calais incised upon her heart.
Philip returned to her for a brief time and another pregnancy was proclaimed, but people just shook their heads and grumbled. With Mary—some called her Bloody Mary now—seeing would be believing.
Elizabeth’s entire household chaffed under the continued control of Thomas Pope and his wife, Beatrice, as we had under other watch-dogs all these years of waiting for events to fall our way. It gave me a new understanding of the term “lady-in-waiting.” But in the autumn of 1558, great gifts from God began to rain upon us.
The first was in this way: Elizabeth and I, with several of her ladies—trailed, of course, by the ubiquitous Popes—took a brisk, late November walk on the grounds before Hatfield House. Our daily exercise helped us to manage the tensions and the tedium of our days.
Her Grace, like her sister, was somewhat nearsighted, though not as bad, so pointing, I told her, “I see a messenger coming this way fast.”
“Dare we hope to hear another royal heir is a figment of disease and desperation?” she whispered.
We had heard that Mary was ailing sore, so I had hopes that someday the messenger would come to say she was on her deathbed and my girl should prepare herself to be queen. Mary had finally reinstated Elizabeth in the line of succession—though in line after, of course, any children she might bear Philip, who was by then King of Spain as well as England.
I shaded my eyes. Leaves were falling and blowing, but something about the rider’s form and style on that big horse struck me, a definite command of the great beast and of himself and—
“John!” I cried. The steed’s sharp hoofs threw gravel behind them like a cloud. “It’s John!”
Elizabeth gasped, but, lifting my skirts, I was off, running. Yes, John. I was not dreaming. John had come home to me!
He called my name, once, twice, but I was too out of breath to answer. He looked so fine, his face sun-colored, his cloak flapping behind him like the wings of a great bird. Sturdy, broader-chested than I recalled. He slowed slightly, called out, “My love!” and, with one arm, leaned down to snatch me up into the saddle before him.
My bottom bumped across his shin and knees, but I just held to him as we bounced along, managing a kiss that went from nose to chin until he reined in. I did not even heed the others when the Pope, as we called him behind his back, protested, “You were not announced, sirrah!”
“Welcome back! Do you have news, my lord Ashley?” Elizabeth’s clarion voice rang out, also ignoring the sputtering Pope as she grasped John’s booted ankle.
“That I have returned to serve Your Grace and be a husband to my wife again!” John helped me slide to the ground, then dismounted and knelt at Elizabeth’s feet. “I returned in secret a few days ago and have been living at Cecil’s house in Wimbledon,” he told her, “but I could wait no longer to see you, Your Grace—or the stubborn woman who has long served you.”
She extended her hand to John, and he kissed it. My hands gripped hard together, joy rampaged through me. She tried to raise John, but he stayed down.
“I have more news,” he said. “Her Majesty, your sister, is gravely ill, God rest her soul—despite it all.”
“I’ll not have such talk, Lord Ashley!” the Pope interrupted again. “ ’Tis treason to talk such of the queen’s dying. Now, everyone back inside and you, sirrah, with me.”
“He is my servant and friend,” Elizabeth said, rounding on the Pope, “and he stays with me and Mistress Ashley. We will know our queen has left us only when she sends to me the coronation ring—she told me thus when I last saw her.”
That sobered Thomas Pope and me. Why had my girl not told me that? But if John was right, that Mary was truly, finally, going to depart this earth, then Elizabeth Tudor would no longer be my girl but England’s queen.
That day I recall she had her way, keeping John with us. Even the Pope, who had been the bane of our existence for nigh on three years, backed off and bowed to her wishes. People—all but me—had begun to treat her differently of late. Hope for a new beginning was in the air, blowing the past away, just as the wind blew these leaves. We started back inside, the three of us walking together: John with one arm around my waist, the other holding his horse’s reins; Elizabeth with her arm linked in mine and already peppering John with questions about his learning at the university.
But then, again, I heard more horses coming and turned back to look up the lane again. “Riders,” I said. “A great cloud of them.”
“John,” Elizabeth said, “give me a boost up on your horse. I want to be over there, under that biggest oak, should this be my time.”
My insides cartwheeled at the thought. That many riders, come clear to Hatfield, could only mean one thing. Were all our years of fearing, of waiting, over?
I thought she might ride out to meet them, but she did as she had said. She rode across the lawn to dismount under the massive oak where she and I had talked of many things, where I had given her her mother’s ring. John and I hurried to stand behind her—the others came too, but at first I looked not at anyone but Elizabeth of England.
Bareheaded, her fur-trimmed cloak blowing in the brisk breeze, her cheeks burnished by the wind and excitement, she stood waiting for the men to dismount. Eleven of them, I quickly counted. And Cecil! Cecil was not only among them but seemed to lead them. I saw others of Queen Mary’s Privy Council I recognized, some who had favored Elizabeth and some who had not. And tall and proud, intentionally slow in dismounting, sinfully handsome—dear Lord in heaven, it was Robin Dudley. We had heard that he had been released from the Tower and sent to France to fight for King Philip, who had told Mary she should pardon him, but we’d had no news of his whereabouts or well-being.
Our friend William Cecil nearly vaulted off his horse and went immediately to one knee, with Robin—all the men—uncovering their heads and going down too. John and I knelt behind her with the Popes on their knees farther back. Her red-gold hair glinting in a shaft of sudden sun, Elizabeth stood awaiting their words and her destiny.
“Your Grace—Your Majesty,” Cecil said, out of breath. He extended to her in his palm the onyx coronation ring that left the monarch’s hand only upon death. For one moment, Elizabeth stared wide-eyed at it, not moving, mayhap not daring to believe.
“Your royal sister—I regret,” Cecil said, looking up and biting back a smile that lit only his eyes, “has sadly departed this life, and left to you the Tudor throne and the realm of England, Scotland and Ireland.”
Blinking back tears, Elizabeth took the ring. Shaking, she thrust it on the fourth finger of her right hand. It was too big, but I knew this huge task that lay before her would never be too big for my girl—my queen.
“This,” she said in her lovely, clear voice, “is the Lord’s work, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”
I knew full well she was quoting the Bible, but I thought about that word our. It was the plural royal prerogative, but I believe, after all she and I and John had been through together, that our meant us, too.
Within several hours, while place seekers clear from London and English folk from nearby shires flocked to the gates of Hatfield to glimpse or petition their new queen, Elizabeth met with the members of her newly named, yet incomplete Council in the great hall at Hatfield. It was, I heard her announce to the lords in attendance, “a place I find most dear, for it was here my royal parents used to entertain in their happy days.” I saw she wore not only the coronation ring on her right hand, but her mothe
r’s ring next to it.
First, Elizabeth declared three days of mourning for her sister, who they said had died of a stomach tumor and quartan fever after another false pregnancy. Secondly, she dismissed several Council members she knew would yet be true only to the former queen and her causes. Thirdly, the new queen named Sir William Cecil her principal secretary and chief counselor and bid him always give her honest advice, no matter the cost. I wrote her wise words down, of which I was so proud:
“This judgment I have of you, Cecil. That you will not be corrupted with any manner of gifts, and that you will be faithful to the state; and that without respect of my private will, you will give me that counsel which you think best; and if you shall know anything necessary to be declared to me of secrecy, you shall show it to myself only; and assure yourself I will not fail to keep taciturnity therein.”
I took those words to heart for myself, that without respect of her private will, I would give her privy counsel I thought best. How was I to know that, though she had declared me her earthly mother, she might no longer heed me?
For she immediately ignored my first advice and named Robert Dudley, her Robin, Master of the Horse, a command that would keep him ever close to her. The annual salary for that post was fifteen hundred pounds annum with various benefits, unfortunately, I thought, including a suite of rooms at court. He would have servants of his own and could wear the coveted green and white Tudor livery. I heard murmurings that he was tainted by being the son of a traitor, but I had to admit he was a fine, handsome horseman, like my John.
I only hoped he would soon bring his rural wife Amy to court, because, without asking John or me to escort them, Elizabeth and Robin went riding alone in Hatfield park before we all headed for London. Oh, well, I tried to tell myself, they have much in common and have both been deprived. It must, after all, remain only friendship. Surely, she has learned her lesson about married men in all she suffered—and I too—over Tom Seymour.
Meanwhile, John and I were overwhelmed by the bounty of what the new twenty-five-year-old queen showered on us that day and shortly thereafter. I was named Mistress of the Robes and First Lady of the Bedchamber. Yes, once a servant, then a gentlewoman, Katherine Champernowne Ashley from the fringe of the bleak Devon moors was now declared a lady by my dear Elizabeth’s command. I was to supervise the maids of honor, all from noble families.
I was also to oversee Her Majesty’s—it took me months to use that term for her—wardrobe, which, despite the fact she wore her plain garb for now, soon vastly expanded so that we took over a huge building in Blackfriars in London to store the pieces of her many gorgeous, many-hued garments. I soon enough devised a logical system for their storage: sleeves and bodices hung by color and cost; farthingales and petticoats by fabrics and width, collars and cloaks and shoes—a daunting task, so I soon took on many helpers, but I am jumping ahead of my story.
Before we left Hatfield for London, Elizabeth named John the Master and Treasurer of Her Majesty’s Jewels and Plate, ironically a lucrative appointment Thomas Cromwell had once held. It was a lifetime sinecure of much tradition and dignity with a salary of fifty pounds per annum and fourteen double dishes per day in the court bouche allotments—a lavish amount that allowed us to feed a retinue of servants and staff of our own. Free lodging at court included a lovely suite of apartments near the royal suite. The only thing that sat wrong with me was that we also had quarters (and John an office) in the Tower, but that was so he could visit to assess and protect gifts to the Crown as well as the royal jewels. And, of course, serving Elizabeth would entail my facing the Tower again—only under far finer circumstances than several times before. The moment we arrived in London, John began to prepare the coronation regalia, though that day was two months away.
He was also named Prime Gentleman of the Privy Chamber, while I was titled Chief Gentlewoman, so we had control of the domestic staff at whatever palace we visited with the queen. We had large stipends with those positions, too, and, better yet, lands that she had wanted to give me years ago now came into my possession: a house and acres in Dorset, properties at Abbotsbury and Milton, a manor at Osmington and the tenement of Chaldon, the rents of which would help to support us for the rest of our lives. From rags to riches, indeed, for both Elizabeth and me. I was a wealthy woman now and immediately sent two guards with a letter and pouch of coins for my father and his family in Devon.
And so, in slow procession, with both John and Robin Dudley riding behind her, the new queen’s courtiers and household journeyed to London to await her rule and to plan for Mary’s burial and Elizabeth’s coronation, both in Westminster Abbey.
Even on the rural road, people went wild as she passed. I sometimes smiled with relief and joy, sometimes cried. How the good Lord had protected and blessed us. Free from fear at last! Surely, only good times were to come to poor, ravaged England in this new age of Elizabeth.
THE TOWER OF LONDON
January 14, 1559
Two months later, again London cheered their new queen as our cavalcade rode to the Tower, by tradition the place from which Elizabeth’s coronation parade would set out toward Westminster the next day. John’s eyes met mine as we rode in through the same Tower entry we had exited after our imprisonment there, the day we had first met Cecil. I thought of that earlier time I had been there with Queen Anne, a quarter of a century ago, before her parade and crowning. I prayed Elizabeth would feel no fear, but how foolish of me. She was all smiles, waving at her people from the pure white steed Robert Dudley had selected for her to ride.
But when the doors had closed London out and we all dismounted, I saw her pause and look around at the Tower green, where the scaffold had stood, at the palace that had been refurbished for her mother’s coronation and had been both Anne’s and Elizabeth’s prison. But she went in and I hastened after her, with a quick kiss from John, while he stayed behind with Robert to see the horses were all led away and bedded down properly.
It was the fourteenth day of January, 1559. After our arrival in London two months ago, we had lodged first in huge Somerset House while Whitehall Palace was being prepared for her—Mary’s old furniture carted away, the rooms aired, the garderobes cleaned, and the many peepholes found under arrases closed up. Elizabeth had told the workers, however, to leave the secret backstairs entrances her father had built at Whitehall and Hampton Court.
Then for Christmas, we had moved into a much renovated Whitehall. She was looking forward, she’d said, to visiting her many palaces and homes. Yet John and I missed Hatfield and Enfield Chase, for their coziness and comfort. May the Lord God forgive us, but of all the bounty of lands Her Grace had showered on us, how John and I wished she had given us Enfield above all else.
When we were settled in the Tower that winter afternoon, as daylight waned, Elizabeth said to me, “I want to pray in St. Peter in Chains Church here, and I’ve sent for John and Robin to go with us.”
“Yes, Your Grace,” I said and went to fetch cloaks for both of us. She evidently intended to take no one else, so I told her ladies— Robin’s sister, Mary Sidney, had been newly appointed among them, and Elizabeth greatly favored her—that they would not be needed. They sighed with relief and went back to their chatting and roasting chestnuts, clustered by the fire, which hissed from time to time from snow spitting down the chimney.
I assessed Robert Dudley, her Robin, anew as he waited with John by the palace door to the central green of the Tower. [By the way, when we’d lodged two months earlier in the Tower for one night, Elizabeth had summoned Sir John Bedingfield, the constable who had been her gaoler there. She praised him for doing a good job to keep her close-confined while she was a prisoner and then promptly dismissed him.]
Robert Dudley was almost exactly Elizabeth’s age, and I’d heard some call him “The Gypsy” behind his back for his darker complexion than most Englishmen. Later, scandalmongers said the name was appropriate because he cast a spell on her. Always fashionably, almost fant
astically attired, he was well featured with a neatly clipped reddish brown beard and mustache and heavy-lidded eyes, which made, I supposed, most ladies feel the impact of his charms. But his dark brown eyes were only on Elizabeth. As soon as she was crowned, I intended to remind her that being queen did not protect one’s reputation when gadding about with married men—if I did not, John said he would.
Robert Dudley could not only ride and joust well, he was witty and learned, skilled at tennis and archery and dancing—how Elizabeth loved dancing with him—all of which flaunted his well-turned, muscular legs. Oh, yes, at age fifty-two, I could still realize what she felt for him. My John and I yet reveled in each other’s arms and charms, and I could well recall those good old and bad old days when a man’s physical wiles could quite turn my head. And like John—and Tom Seymour too, curse him—Robert reeked of masculinity and magnetism.
But Elizabeth was queen and had worked for years to rebuild her reputation after the Seymour debacle that almost ruined us both, so I assumed she would soon come to her senses. But already her courtiers—and Cecil, who did not trust Robert—lifted their brows as their maiden queen smiled at and tarried with the traitor’s son whose wife was kept in the country.
But now, as the four of us headed for the church, it was a heady experience to see how the royal yeomen guards scrambled to open doors ahead of Elizabeth, doors we used to have to open for ourselves—or which were locked to hold us in. She was in a hurry now, perhaps so she would not change her mind to visit the site where her mother’s abused body lay. I had to stretch my strides to keep up with her.
Outside, the crisp river breeze bucked against us, as if to hold us back. I fell in directly behind the queen, with John and Robert bringing up the rear. We blinked at the snow, and the winter wind curled into our clothes. Puffs of our breath blew behind us. No one spoke as we approached the small, squat building, the church of St. Peter in Chains—so perfect a name, I thought, for a prison church.