The Queen's Governess

by Karen Harper

  I ripped at a tendril, then a vine, pulling webs of yellowing ivy from the slick brick wall. Yes, here, the outline of the door with its recessed iron ring. When I first came to court, Queen Anne herself had told me there were secret passages here, built by Cardinal Wolsey himself, Thomas Cromwell’s first wily master. But if it was bolted from inside, this effort was doomed.

  I had a devil of a time trying to keep the lamp from sputtering out in the rain and yanking at the bolt with both hands until the door creaked and pulled outward. Amazingly, perhaps because it was unused and unknown—and quite overgrown now—it was unlocked, so I didn’t have to use my penknife to lift the latch. That was a good sign, was it not? I swear that day I had a strength in my arms and back and legs that could have outdone John’s might. Warm, slightly fetid air rushed at me as I pulled it open enough to squeeze in. After

  I had saved the wan light of the cresset lamp from the rain, a gust made it flicker, almost blew it out.

  I pulled the creaking door shut behind me and looked about. The meager flame hardly lifted the blackness, as deep and dark as in my dream. What if, I thought, Elizabeth had told her Robert about this passage when they were courting? What if he or she had secured the door at the top of the stairs where it was hidden behind the arras in her bedchamber?

  My face was wet from rain and sweat; each cobweb that laced itself to my skin seemed to stick. No matter. I had work to do, a battle to fight. If I could only get to her, surely I could stay. That damned Dudley, Lord Protector or not, could not stop my tending her.

  I missed a stair and grabbed for the handrail, nearly tumbling backward. Amy Dudley had fallen down the stairs and died. No doubt Robert had resented her as he did me. But enough to have his wife killed?

  I tried to recall how many flights I had raced up that day nearly twenty years ago to find the giggling, naughty Tudor children. I was out of breath so much more today than then. A splinter jabbed my hand from the crude rail. King Henry must have used this only in his youth, for his massive size and girth would have hindered him later. And Cromwell—did my old master Cromwell, who I damned but thanked for so much, ever use these stairs on his covert missions?

  And then the strangest thing. A chill shivered down my spine and the hair at the back of my neck stood on end. The air turned icy cold. For one moment, I fancied I saw a woman ahead of me on the stairs, beckoning me on and up: a raven-haired woman with a crimson necklace on her slender neck. Anne! But I blinked and it was gone. An apparition or vestige of my dream?

  I climbed yet another twisting flight and paused at the dim outline of a door I thought must be the one with entry to the royal bedchamber. Like the dim interior of this staircase shaft, it was laced over with spiderwebs and draperies of dust. I pressed my ear to it. Muffled voices. Someone intoning a prayer. I fumbled at the latch on this side of the door. Yes, I recalled it had a latch and not an iron ring.

  I shoved, I heaved myself against it, banging my shoulder, then realized I must pull it inward, toward me. It moved easier than the downstairs door. The arras over it sucked slightly inward. Would someone see me and stop me? Let them try.

  The hearth fire in the room burned low, the first thing I saw, but its brightness hurt my eyes. Several people—at least two doctors and Mary Sidney—bent over the queen’s bed. A minister read from the Psalms, “Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death, I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me . . .” Dear Lord, I thought, those were the very words Anne Boleyn repeated as she walked toward her death on the scaffold.

  I was sorry I did not see Cecil in the room, but neither did I see Robert or anyone else who would try to stop me. As Robert had said, the Privy Council must be waiting outside.

  I put down my lamp on the queen’s writing table and approached the canopied, elevated bed where Elizabeth and I had talked so often until she fell asleep and I went away to my rest. Mary Sidney saw me first and blinked as if she’d seen a ghost. I prayed she would not summon her brother, that he had not ordered her to keep me from the queen.

  “I was told you would not come back,” she said. Obviously exhausted with work and worry, she was dripping sweat, and her skin looked gray. “I am so tired, Kat . . .”

  I nodded and squeezed her shoulder, then took a step around her and beheld the queen unconscious. Yes, Elizabeth had the start of several pustules on her white face. I was shocked and horrified, but I could tell she breathed.

  “I’m here now, Mary, so rest,” I said and climbed the mounting stool to edge my hips onto the bed.

  “No, madam, she must be untouched, but only bathed and bled,” one of the doctors said. I saw he held a lancet and bleeding bowl at the ready.

  “I am Katherine Ashley, her First Lady of the Bedchamber, and I have been with her for years. I have not seen you at court before.”

  “They sent for special physicians when her own said she was beyond help. Lord Cecil has gone to fetch yet others, but you must unhand her.”

  “I will touch her, and you will not bleed her,” I insisted, pushing his hand back. “What has she been given to bring her fever down?”

  “Boiled root of alkanet and wine, mixed with sweet butter and drunk with hot beer to drive forth the pox.”

  “Well, it isn’t working, is it, for she’s popping out with them.”

  “But that is the crisis, my lady, the saving or the losing of her.”

  “Elizabeth, it’s Kat. Your Kat is here, and you are going to be all right. John and I came the minute we heard you were ill.”

  “Here?” she whispered, but squeezed her eyelids tighter instead of opening them.

  “Yes, yes, my dearest. I’m here.”

  Using the warm, milky-looking water they had been bathing her with, I sponged her forehead and throat. “Mother,” she whispered, “I’m so happy you are here.”

  We fought to keep the queen alive that night. I kept willing Elizabeth to be strong, to pull through. I murmured to her, reminding her of happy times, though she never responded.

  Later, I know not what hour of those endless hours, Cecil appeared, with John at his elbow and a fuming Robert Dudley stalking in behind them. I nodded to John and Cecil but ignored them after that. Cecil had hauled in a little German man named Dr. Burcote, who took over, despite the mutterings of the English physicians.

  “Ve wrap her in dis scarlet cloth and build up de flames and put her right before da fire,” Dr. Burcote said. “She sveat out the red pox into dis scarlet cloth, a new cure, vorks vell. Ve need help lift her now,” he said, and Cecil and John appeared again to help us. Where Robert had gone I did not know or care.

  We put her on cushions at the edge of the hearth. As heat blasted out from it, we all began to sweat. Still, dripping wet—if I had caught the fever, I still would not leave her—I sat next to her for hours, praying, holding her hand, talking to her. Twice more she called me Mother, once dazedly looking directly up into my face.

  But indeed, in a way, I was her mother. Her real mother both in life and in death had told me to help her, to care for her, and so, risking my life, I did.

  Her fever broke just at dawn, and we lifted her back into bed. “Oh, Kat,” she murmured, squinting at me, “you’re back.”

  Behind me, I could hear sighs of relief as John and Cecil said something, perhaps ordering Robert, who had returned, to leave the room and wait outside with the rest of the Council.

  “I am so thirsty,” Elizabeth said.

  “Ja, you survived the pox,” Dr. Burcote told her. “You vill not be too bad scarred, I think.”

  “Scarred—scarred by too much, my Kat,” she whispered as Dr. Burcote gave me a goblet of spiced wine to offer her. She drank greedily, and I thought she would sleep, but she asked, “Where is Mary? She tended me too.”

  For one crazed moment, I thought she was hallucinating again that not only her mother had tended her but her dead sister, Queen Mary. Then I realized she was asking about Robert Dudley’s sister, her loyal and lovely friend,
Mary Sidney. “Resting,” I told her, “as you must now.”

  She gripped my hand weakly, nodded and slept.

  Six days later, Elizabeth was sitting up in bed and feeding herself. I had not told her that her Robin, the man she had named Lord Protector of the realm, had tried to keep me from seeing her in her distress. He would probably convince her he was just worried for my safety. Perhaps I would not tat-tale to her because it was one way to keep the wretch in line over the coming years. Besides, he was grieved, as were we all, that Mary Sidney had caught the pox while nursing the queen. Mary had not died either, but the queen’s savior, the strange little Dr. Burcote whom Cecil had found, had pronounced that Mary, unlike her royal mistress, would be severely scarred for the rest of her life.

  “Kat, I either want a mirror or you to tell me exactly how many marks are on my face,” Elizabeth said, her voice and testy tone back to normal. “I’ve counted those on my arms and legs. You and Mary, Cecil and John—my little family—are the only ones I can trust to tell me the truth, even when I don’t want to hear it. Well?”

  No one had told her about Mary’s tragedy yet. No setbacks, Dr. Burcote had insisted. But I reckoned there would be many of those over the years, and, with Elizabeth as queen, many great leaps ahead for England, too. If she asked me about Mary, I would tell her the truth.

  “I see one high on your forehead,” I said, leaning close to her and squinting, “no, two—not very large scabs. One on your left cheek and one on your chin—that one a bit deep—but all of which, I warrant, we shall be able to cover with creams so that nothing looks amiss.”

  “Thank you,” she said, and snagged my wrist. “Kat, tell me true about something else the doctors won’t. Mary Sidney—is she ill?”

  “Yes, Your Grace. She will live, but the pox will leave her much worse off than you look.”

  “Ah, beautiful Mary, and tending me,” she said, and tears tracked down her cheeks. “Serving me—danger and destruction for her and how many others over the years? However she looks, I will never desert her, just as you have never deserted me. But there is something else before I go to comfort her. Something you must do for me.”

  “Of course, Your Maj—”

  “Besides not being hesitant to call me your lovey or your girl again, I mean.” She took her double-portrait ring from her finger easily for, as slender as she was, the disease had wasted her form even more. She touched the tiny spring, and we both peered down at the painted pictures of the queen as a toddler and the bold, brave Anne Boleyn.

  “You knew both of us, served both of us, loved both of us through good times and bad,” she whispered, her eyes still running tears. “She left me this ring, but she left it to you too.”

  “Only as a keepsake for you. I wore it for years, remember?”

  “You wore it for her and me, and I want you to do that now.”

  She extended it to me and, when I didn’t move, she pulled my hand closer and tried to put it on me.

  “Your Grace—my lovey, my girl—”

  “You cannot gainsay the queen, Kat.”

  I had at least a brace of arguments, but I was so deeply touched. This brilliant and beautiful and brazen Tudor, by far the best of them all, had always touched me deeply, so any of my trials from her fearsome family were well worth the price.

  “I shall wear it as a sign of—of all my times with the Tudors,” I promised as she put it on the finger next to my wedding ring, from the only other person I had loved so well in this life.

  “Now then, I’ve much to do,” she said, throwing the covers off her legs and swiping at her wet cheeks. “Please fetch my robe, for I must go to comfort Mary. That’s where Dr. Burcote’s been, I warrant. I must be certain he is well rewarded for his good work—my dear Cecil too.”

  She looked wan, weak and bedraggled, but as my girl stood on her own two feet and I wrapped a robe around her and combed the crown of her red-gold hair, she had never looked more a queen.

  AUTHOR’S NOTE

  Readers are always interested to hear what happened to characters after the story itself ends, so a few odds and ends about that. Two years after she survived the pox that almost killed her, Elizabeth elevated Robert Dudley to the peerage as Earl of Leicester, rather than giving him the more coveted title Earl of Warwick. She also gave him Kenilworth Palace, which he enlarged and where he entertained her in later years. Robert was never far from the throne. When he died in 1588, I believe he was still the only man Elizabeth Tudor had deeply loved; she kept all his letters, which were found when she died. Robert remarried but had no children. His stepson became the Earl of Essex, also dear to the aging queen, but a man who, like Robert, caused her much heartache.

  I note also that Elizabeth was always loyal to Mary Sidney, visiting her in her chosen retirement away from court. Although Mary usually remained a recluse because of her severe facial scarring from the pox, the queen kept a suite of rooms available for her and visited her privately when she agreed to visit the court.

  As for William Cecil, Elizabeth always trusted him implicitly. She gave him increasingly powerful duties such as Lord Treasurer and elevated him to become Baron Burleigh. In his final illness, the queen visited him and fed him with her own hand. Although his heir Thomas by his first wife turned out to be a wastrel, his and Mildred’s son, Robert, Earl of Salisbury, took over for Cecil as Elizabeth’s chief secretary after Cecil’s death in 1598. The Cecils traded Elizabeth’s successor, King James I, some property to attain old Hatfield House, which they left standing, although they built a new manor there. It’s a great place to visit. Until several years ago, they had propped up an old oak and claimed that it was under that tree Elizabeth learned that she was queen.

  Should anyone wonder what happened to Tom Seymour and Katherine Parr’s daughter, Mary, who had lost both her parents by age seven months, as in other Tudor records, there is some controversy. Some researchers claim she died shortly after her second birthday and was buried on the grounds of the Duchess of Suffolk, who had taken the child into her family. Others claim Mary survived and was taken to France with the Duchess of Suffolk to escape religious persecution under Queen Mary. Then again, controversy begins as to whether, after her return to England, she died of consumption at an early age or lived to wed Sir Edward Bushel, who served King James I.

  Kat Ashley died in 1565; it was recorded that her passing was “deeply mourned by the queen.” John Ashley lived a good deal longer, dying in 1596 at a ripe old age. His book, The Art of Riding, was published and remained popular for several hundred years. As far as I can tell, even if John Ashley was not the first “horse whisperer,” he was the first one to write in English about training horses with gentleness and patience. Unfortunately, his book is now out of print, or at least I could not locate a copy of it.

  Also, a note on names: The Elizabethans are notorious for being inconsistent spellers. Spelling, including their own names, was not standardized, and one person might write his or her name various ways. This includes the greatest writer of the age, William Shakespeare /Shaxpere/Shagspear/Shakspere. While researching this novel, I also found the infinite variety of how to spell less famous names.

  At various times I saw the maiden name of the main character in this book spelled Champernoun, Champernown, Champernon, and Champernowne. Although Katherine/Catherine spelled her own last name different ways, I have used the most common spelling of it, Champernowne, in Devon, the area of her birth.

  The “correct” spelling of Katherine Champernowne’s married name is even harder to pin down. The big argument is between Ashley and Astley. In Mary M. Luke’s excellent book, A Crown for Elizabeth , she notes that “in correspondence of the period, Katherine Ashley is often referred to as Mrs. Astley.” She goes on to explain that the owner of the Katherine Ashley portrait, Lady Marguerite Hastings, of Norfolk, England, claims that Astley was Katherine’s actual last name. As Lady Hastings’s husband was an Astley, she may have that on good family authority—or, as with
some genealogies, it may be wishful thinking.

  However, the Ashley pronunciation, and therefore spelling, seems most common among people, including Elizabeth Tudor, who obviously knew Katherine and her husband well. Queen Elizabeth (and no woman was better educated in the kingdom) spelled Katherine’s married name with the sh rather than st sound. This includes a very important letter of 1549 in which the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth’s spelling of the name of her beloved friend and governess was Kateryn Ashiley—but the sh sound and spelling are still there. So I will let the queen decide my sh or st dilemma and use Ashley.

  Besides the variant spelling of words and names, there are other major challenges in Tudor era research. One is simply that, whatever excellent sources are consulted, “facts” sometimes do not agree. If I can find three sources and two agree, I go with that. Other times, contradictions allow me to use what seems most logical. A small example: one reference claims that Queen Jane Seymour labored for three days to deliver her son, Edward; another reference states two days. As she died shortly after the birth, I chose the three days, although that may not be valid. Another example: one source claims that John Ashley studied in Padua, Italy, during Mary’s entire reign. Another says that by June 1555 Elizabeth “had the Ashleys back.” And so it goes.

  As for “correct” dates, again research can be confusing. For example, their new year began on Lady Day, March 25, even though January 1 was called New Year’s Day. This can throw things off, depending on who is recording what. Once again, I used dates I found in the majority of my references.

  Another problem I faced while researching Katherine Champernowne Ashley is Kat’s pedigree. In the Tudor world, where families and birth order and titles mattered a great deal, her family heritage is a contested mystery. The two main schools of thought both have drawbacks. Let me first outline these confusing, conflicting claims as simply as possible: