Cranky Ladies of History

by Tehani Wessely

  For a time it seemed there was nothing the king would not do for his beloved Anne Boleyn, but like her predecessor, she failed to give him a son. Scandal coalesced around her like smoke and she was imprisoned in the Tower of London for treason. The last gesture of her husband's love was to send for a skilled French swordsman—a quicker, cleaner end than the clumsy axe.

  I was not quite three years old. No one ever told me outright what had happened. I pieced together the tale for myself from baleful sermons and incautious whispers. Sorceress. Traitor. Harlot. I understood that I’d had a mother, and that I had her no more.

  Mary, seventeen years my elder, remembered vividly the loss of her own mother. The grievances they had endured together gave her strength, a will to rival the king’s and a temperament exactly calculated to rouse his ire. It took all the privations and humiliations he could devise to make her accept her new place as the king’s bastard.

  I, on the other hand, was a pretty pet of a child with a Tudor’s red hair to prove my birthright and a knack for making the king laugh. I saw little of my father, but heard much. When I did see him, it was generally within the giddy whirl of court, where he was at his most glorious. I remember the roar of his laugh, his beringed hands swinging me up high.

  Then he married for the third time, and my brother was born.

  I was four. The rejoicing in my own household told me that a son was a great thing, better than a daughter. If it meant that I was called by a different title—if it also meant, when summoned to court for the christening, my father had little time for me—I was expected to accept my new place without complaint.

  I was not wholly forgotten. My part in the ceremony was to carry the christening robe, a garment so heavy with gems and embroidery that I was in turn carried in order to keep up with the parade. I was curious about this baby, and jealous too, though this I hid as best I could beneath high spirits. Even then, I knew better than to speak my mind.

  Perhaps I was not careful enough, or perhaps she felt something of the same, because as we left the chapel in stately procession Mary came to my side and stooped to take my hand.

  “Smile, Elizabeth,” she said softly, her breath warm on my ear.

  “Why?” I demanded, but I whispered too.

  “We are being watched,” Mary said, and straightened, my hand clasped firmly in hers. It was true.

  We were always watched.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  My letter has done me no good. Even Sussex is stern today, and all my ploys are for naught.

  Winter has ended since I came to Whitehall, but there is no sign of that in the ashy clouds and steely river, or in the rain streaming ceaselessly between them. I am escorted through the gardens and down the river steps to a waiting barge with all courteous speed, as though the weather is the worst I am to face today. At least I am allowed my retinue: three of the Queen’s ladies and three of my own, and two gentlemen besides. We shelter in the cabin, each landmark we pass diminishing my time left as a free woman. As we reach the water gate beneath St. Thomas’s Tower, my heart squeezes so tight that I fear I will faint. This is where the traitors go.

  “Let me enter by another gate,” I plead. “Any gate but this.”

  I might as well have asked the rain to stop falling. The barge judders beneath me, echoing my protests, and for a moment I think we will run aground beneath the bridge, but no—we are through. The Tower looms above us, greyer than the clouds, greyer than iron. How many names have fed that stony maw? Katherine Howard, my fifth stepmother, young and lovely still in my mind’s eye. Thomas Seymour and the brother he loathed, their hatred of each other overcome at last by the impartiality of the axe. Little Jane Grey, who held the title of queen for nine days and none of the power. Mary wept for her, but that did not stay her hand.

  My mother came this way, and never came back again.

  The boatmen tip their oars and begin to tie moorings. I am seized by terror; the barge has become a final refuge and I will not shift from it. My lord captors, the first to disembark, are forced to turn back for me.

  “You have no choice,” Winchester says baldly. He looks at me and hesitates. I do not know what he sees in my face, but the next moment he has unclasped his cloak and is holding it out. I feel scalded by his pity. Knocking aside the cloak, I hold my chin high and climb the landing steps. The yeoman warders of the Tower are lined up to receive me. These men will remember me for the rest of their lives, no matter what comes to pass.

  “Here stands as true a subject as ever landed at these stairs,” I say loudly, demanding I be heard. I will not disappear in silence. “Before God I speak it, having no other friend but He alone!”

  “If that were so, my lady,” Winchester remarks, drily, “it would be the better for you.”

  It is true, those who called themselves my ‘friends’ have brought me to this. The men who would have raised me onto the throne of England have stretched my throat beneath the axe. Their leader is in the hands of Mary’s most loyal men, being compelled by any means to confession, and I would be a fool indeed if I didn’t know the word they want most to drag from his lips is my name. So far, it would seem Thomas Wyatt has not obliged them, but in the eyes of a man like Winchester I am already guilty.

  It is good, then, that my words are not for him.

  “Oh Lord! I never thought to have come here as a prisoner,” I cry aloud, clasping my hands tight before me, as if in devotion. “I pray you all bear me witness that I come in as no traitor but as true a woman to the Queen’s Majesty as any now living.”

  A ripple of movement passes through the ranks of the yeomen. One man steps forward, then another, another. As they kneel before me, the first cries out, “God preserve your Grace!” and it is all I can do not to weep. I will not enter the Tower. There is a great stone by the gate, slick with the day’s rain; I sink upon it, heedless of the cold and damp, and refuse to move one step further. My retinue gather in a doubtful huddle while Winchester and Sussex mutter in conference. They are loathe to compel me by force whilst loyal men watch on.

  Their consultation is brought to an end when the Lieutenant of the Tower himself comes forward to stand at my side. I know Sir John Brydges to be a devout Catholic, and as such he has no reason to be kind to me, but his voice is gentle.

  “You had best come in, madam. It is unwholesome here.”

  “Better sit here,” I retort, staring fixedly at the ground, “than in a worse place, for God alone knows where you will bring me.”

  A sob breaks the quiet, but the tears are not mine, nor even those of my devoted ladies—it is one of my gentlemen who weeps. I surge to my feet in such a fury I almost slap him. My people are supposed to give me strength. What right has he to tears?

  I have often been told my temper will be the death of me, and perhaps today I make it true, because it is not trust in my innocence or belief in God’s will that at last pushes my foot across the threshold of the Tower. It is anger, and pride. I will not be wept over as though I am already dead!

  The sky is replaced by stone.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  My brother was named Edward. My stepmother died of a fever less than a week after his birth and he was sent away from the dirt and disease of London to join Mary and I in the country, under the care of my nurse Lady Bryan. This was another change I was expected to take with good grace, but I had not the poise for that. Why could he not be given a nurse of his own? Why must he have mine?

  “Because he is the king’s son, Elizabeth,” Mary told me patiently. “Don’t cry so, there’s no use in it. Come out into the gardens. Shall we see if the rose trees have budded yet?”

  I did not reward my sister’s kindness that day, dragging my feet through the dirt and beheading flowers with a stick. It was one thing to understand a son’s importance, another to experience being put aside.

  We three had our separate households, but often moved about from one royal house to another and in conseque
nce spent a good deal of time together. Mary liked to play with Edward, though she thought him already over-indulged, and I think I made a good show of liking him too. It became easier as the months passed and my sense of grievance diminished, for he was quick to learn and could be a marvellous playmate. Lady Bryan had tended Mary before me and knew the king’s changeable temper as well as anyone; she meted out her love with care, never wholly rejecting me or my sister, but cautious not to display an excess of favour. Her new charge came first in everything.

  I was instead placed under the eye of a governess. Katherine Champernowne had a manner vastly different to that of Lady Bryan. Though in possession of far greater learning than any other woman I knew, she had a wicked sense of fun and unlike my other ladies, was disposed to answer my questions instead of scolding my curiosity. Best of all, she liked me, and was not afraid to show it. How could I not love her?

  My father placed no obstacles in the way of my education. Kat taught me to read and write, to dance and ride and sew, among other courtly accomplishments. By the time I was five, we had begun a study of Greek and Latin. When news of the king’s fourth marriage reached us a year later, I wrote a pretty letter to the woman who shared my mother’s Christian name, hoping to win her approval. It was important, I had come to understand, to have a voice at court.

  That voice would not come from Anne of Cleves, for the king took against her from the first. It is true that she was not lovely of face, and could have used a strong dousing in scent, but she was and remains the most even-tempered woman I have ever met. She had patience enough to manage us, fractured and fractious as we were. She mothered us all, even our father, when he would let her.

  She was queen for only seven months. Her choices were to resist divorce and risk his rage, or submit with all speed and hope for beneficence. Anne chose the latter path and was well rewarded with property and an assured income, her reputation intact. She asked for only one favour: that she might have me to stay with her sometimes.

  Oh, Anne. It would have been the better for us had he let you stay.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  I am taken to the Bell Tower and an apartment of four rooms. Chief of these is a large chamber with a good fireplace and three windows. It would be quite comfortable, were the windows not so narrow and the walls not so thick. As it is, one can sit anywhere and not forget that this is a prison.

  My women are much depressed in spirits, conversing in whispers. Kat is worst of all. During the first days of our incarceration, she stuttered every time footsteps passed the door, and that set the mood for us all. I keep my patience as best I can. It is not her fault she is afraid.

  I never know when my inquisitors will arrive. Sometimes they come very early and stay for hours; other days pass with no sign of them. Today they come at midday, and Stephen Gardiner is among them.

  Of all the councillors, he is the one I fear most. When the door opens and I see his face, my heart drops like an anchor, but I do not permit my hands to quiver. I am not a hounded beast, whatever he might think. I am the daughter of King Henry VIII, and well may he remember it!

  The questioning commences at once. “You may recall, madam, the request you made of Her Majesty to leave court and take up residence at the estate of Ashridge,” Gardiner begins, walking back and forth before the windows, so that his silhouette is cast across the floor at my feet. Even if I do not look at him, I must look at his shadow. “Why, pray, did you make such a request? Was life in the presence of your good queen irksome to you?”

  “Certainly not,” I reply, in tones of quiet outrage. It is the hardest thing to keep my voice low when I am angry, but it serves me well, for all men like better a soft voice from a woman. “I am unused to staying such lengths of time in London, and became unwell.”

  “Illness has indeed plagued you of late, madam. Was it not illness that repeatedly prevented you from attending Mass at the palace?”

  “Ill health is not treasonous, I believe.”

  “Did not similar complaints trouble my lady of Cleves?”

  “Her ladyship is not young,” I observe. “To be cautious of her health is only prudent.”

  “Prudence!” Gardiner exclaims. “Oh yes, that is truly a woman’s virtue.”

  I do not answer him. Winchester is also in attendance today, with the Earl of Arundel, but both say little and remain seated.

  “You declare, madam, that you knew nothing of Wyatt’s plans,” Gardiner muses aloud, resuming his pacing. “And so you expect me to believe that, wholly ignorant of Wyatt’s doings, you arranged to leave your establishment at Ashridge?”

  My fingers tighten in my lap of their own accord. “I do.”

  “Why chose you the fortress in Berkshire?”

  I stare at him, my tongue frozen. I know not how to answer. I am not a fool, sir! Anyone with ears knew trouble was abroad. That is the truth he is so diligently digging to uncover, but it will not help my case.

  “It is passing strange, would you not say, that Wyatt writes to you of forces massed at Donnington, and that is precisely where you most wish to go!”

  “Donnington!” The words burst from my mouth like a flock of panicked birds. “What is Donnington to me! How should I know where it is?”

  I am shaking, with rage and with fear, for Gardiner’s eyes have come alight. I have thrown him a fool’s lie and cannot snatch it back.

  “I know not what Wyatt wrote,” I tell him, my tone as cool as I can contrive, “for I never received any such letter. Why should I not go to any house of my own, have I the mind to do so?”

  “Then you do know where Donnington is, my lady?”

  “I understand it to be my estate.” I take a careful breath, measuring my words. “Having never been there, that I can recollect, I have little else to say.”

  “You would stake your word that you had no consultation with Wyatt or his fellow traitor James Crofts? What would you say, my lady, were Crofts to stand before you himself?”

  “I have nothing to say to him, nor to any other prisoner of the Tower. If they have done evil, and offended the Queen’s Majesty, let them answer accordingly. I beseech you, my lords, not to join my name with these offenders.”

  “Your Grace speaks truly.” Arundel astonishes me by dropping to one knee in formal apology. “We are sorry indeed to have so troubled you in vain.”

  I gather dignity about me as a cloak. Arundel has never raised his voice in my favour at court; that he chooses to show such unwarranted kindness now is a sign I do not know how to interpret. Perhaps he, like Sussex before him, recalls my birthright and is tempering his actions accordingly. If that’s so, he must believe I will leave the Tower alive.

  “My lords, you question me very closely,” I say aloud, eyes demurely downcast, “but assured as I am that this is God’s will, He will forgive you all.”

  When in doubt, devout modesty is a woman’s armour.

  Still the questioning goes on, day after day. Sometimes their inquisition follows me into my dreams, but in my mind’s eye the questions come not from the lips of the councillors. A parade of the dead mount the scaffold before me, their familiar faces twisted into grief or rage. Last of all is a woman cloaked and veiled. She comes very close, and whispers softly in my ear: daughter.

  ◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊

  I had not long to wait before I met the lady who had so easily supplanted Anne’s place. Her name was Katherine Howard.

  I was seven years of age when, in the space of two weeks, my father cast off one wife and took another. Mary, never disposed to think well of the king’s excesses, was disgusted by his choice. “She has not a thought in her head!” she muttered to me, well out of his hearing. “The godless little whore may have charmed her way into his Majesty’s approval, but I see her for what she really is. Another Boleyn—”

  She fell quickly silent, with a wary glance at me. I was already aware that the young queen was my mother’s cousin, but I knew little of her and was no
t yet sure what the connection would mean for me.

  Katherine soon made her feelings known. On the day she was announced as queen, there was a grand feast at Hampton Court and she asked that I be placed opposite herself at the table. What a scene it was! The banquet hall was bright with candles, alive with the playing of the king’s musicians and the chatter of the court. At the heart of the spectacle was the king’s dais, and his new queen.

  Where Anne had been tall and thick of figure, Katherine was little and dainty; where the former was peaceable and placid, the latter brimmed with vivacity. Though the king was swollen and gout-stricken, his age showing in unsightly blotches and creases, Katherine attended to him as if to a young lover, responding with giddy peals of laughter to everything he said. She glittered with jewels and mischief, and the king could not have his fill of looking at her.

  “You’ll be well-off now, my lady,” Kat whispered to me that night, in the chamber we shared. “She asked after you so particularly—‘for she is of my own blood and lineage’, that is what she said. His Majesty cannot do enough to please her and if she likes to have you near, you will be much at court, methinks.”

  I had never been granted such a place of honour before. That I owed it to my Boleyn blood was a baffling contradiction in the natural order of things

  Those were golden months. My new stepmother was always seeking revelry and just as Kat had predicted, invited me to join the fun. When the royal party went to Chelsea, she made sure I was among them. After a few days in the house by the river, we continued on to Essex to see my brother. There were feasts and rides, dancing and games. After so long away from court the round of gaiety was dizzying, and having Edward near was an unexpected comfort. Though very prone to pomposity for so small a boy, he was quick and full of funny thoughts.

  Katherine did not understand half of what we talked of, but she liked to have us sit by her sometimes in the gardens, playing with her little pet dogs and entertaining her with our ‘pretty nonsense’. That pleased our father too, for he joined us once or twice. If we were happy amusements for the young queen, she was the same in her turn for the king.