The King's Daughter

by Christie Dickason

  ‘And all the while, she’s in league with her brother, who wants to bury me alive.’ He pointed at me. ‘"I will not marry him!,” she says. “I would marry him instead.” Letting the world know that she would not marry the Dauphin, who is now a king. Nor the Prince of Savoy. Nor any Catholic prince. “Oh, who could marry a melancholy trout?” she asks.’

  One of my ladies, I thought wearily. Or one of Henry’s gentlemen. Or a servant, or secretary, or a groom riding unnoticed at our side. One of the invisible people had blabbed.

  Even so, my father must know that his accusation was unfair. The bride’s dislike of the groom had never before determined a marriage of policy.

  ‘Weel, one of you do something to put this right!’

  ‘What does your majesty desire us to…’ began Sir Thomas Lake.

  ‘God’s Body! Must I decide everything?’ The king lunged to his feet and stormed out.

  I met Henry in the great open court, freshly arrived from St James’s.

  ‘Is the news true, then?’ he asked. ‘Are the betrothals now confirmed?’

  ‘We can both rejoice at our escape,’ I said, still shaky with contained rage. ‘But not within hearing of the king.’

  ‘I heard him as I crossed the park,’ said Henry with satisfaction. ‘Eating his heart out at full bellow. So much for his Middle Way! The Papist enemy is lining up shoulder-to-shoulder against us. England’s future role as a Protestant champion on the Continent grows more and more clear…’

  Henry startled me by stopping and taking my hands. Both of his were cold. ‘Promise me again that you will marry the Elector Palatine!’

  ‘I promise,’ I said, puzzled by his feverish intensity. Impossible, uneasy thoughts stirred at the back of my mind like the old dreams of my father’s demons. I pushed them away again. When my father appointed Robert Carr to the Privy Council, I should have read the sign. Cecil had always opposed Carr’s advancement. I should have believed Cecil when he had told me in the boat that he had lost his power.

  Just a few weeks later, in May, the impossible happened. Cecil died. After father and son had advised and guided the reigns of two successive monarchs, England no longer had a Cecil.

  The death of the Chief Secretary set off an unseemly scramble. Unlike his father, Lord Burleigh, who had trained him, Cecil had not groomed a successor. He was more than ‘shrewdly missed'. The governing of England seemed fallen into chaos. I did not need Henry or Tallie to tell me how the kites and wolves fell upon his titles and functions, tearing off gobbets of power here, and sources of income there.

  Bacon became Lord-Treasurer. My father did not name a new Chief Secretary. All dispatches for him were received by Sir Thomas Lake, who passed them to Carr who passed them on as he pleased to the king, who may or may not have read them before he sent them back to his favourite to stamp with the royal seal.

  Cecil’s death also released a terrible flood of scurrilous popular attacks on him, quoted openly, encouraged by Carr.

  ‘Here lies Robert Cicil

  Composed of back and Pisle’

  And,

  ‘Here lies little Crookback

  Who justly was reckon’d

  Richard the Third and Judas the Second.’

  Sir Francis Bacon published his essay, On Deformity.

  I could not judge whether or not Cecil had ever takenbribes, or other men’s wives, or done any of the dreadful things of which he was accused. But it seemed to me that much of the venom was the sort that is loosed upon those who have climbed high by those who remain below.

  Now that Cecil was gone, I waited for one of his enemies to try to stop the Palatine marriage, which he had supported. It’s possible that, in the confusion after Cecil’s death, it was simply forgotten until it was too late.

  56

  OCTOBER 1612

  Trumpets! The future was closing on me. There was a rustling and scraping of silks against fine wool, of sequins against jewelled embroidery and gold fringes. Bodices creaked like trees in a wind. Boot soles scraped. Voices surged and fell like water running over stones.

  We waited on the royal dais in the Banqueting House, under the canopy, gazing down the long space between the two rows of carved wooden columns. The galleries on either side of the hall were packed.

  Summoned to appear the moment he arrived in England, the Palsgrave, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, was arriving in person to present his case. This was the husband I had chosen. A real one. Not made up. Real. I dug the nails of my right hand into my left palm to feel the pain. The more I tried to grip onto the moment, the more it slipped away. I seemed to have a fever, to float uneasily outside my body.

  Why does Henry look so pale? And why does he laugh so loudly? I know that forced cheer of his, when he’s distracted by private thoughts.

  What if the Elector doesn’t find me ‘handsome enough'? Will he refuse me in front of the court and my parents? I’m certain I will read his distaste in his eyes. What if he can’t imagine getting stiff with me?

  What if I hate him as much as I fear?

  Why did Henry suddenly reach for his chair and sit down, just now? I would expect him to be pacing and turning on the ball of his foot, as if imagining a sword fight. To be sending me encouraging looks.

  Why was Baby Charles sent to meet my new suitor at the water stairs? Was Henry feeling too ill? Or did my father want to keep this German in his place?

  Tracked by the sound of trumpets, my likely future, still out of sight, was climbing from a boat, mounting the water stairs, entering the gate, striding across paving stones. It entered the Banqueting House and paused, looking uncertain.

  Deafened by the internal roar of my own body in my ears, I flicked a quick look at the new arrival. The husband Henry wanted for me. The husband Cecil had advised.

  Disappointment made me feel sick, as if I had eaten bad meat. Was this what Henry wanted for me? Was this his ‘brother-in-arms'? The newcomer was as strange as the rough German tongue his representatives spoke among themselves. This was not another Frederick Ulrich hesitating just inside the door, but he wasn’t another Henry neither. If anything, he was more like Baby Charles than Henry, but darker than either of my brothers, with long black curls and an almost swarthy skin. His plain, salt-stained clothing stood out against the waiting splendour of the court. His linen collar had rucked up at the back. His guttery boots needed polish.

  He was small, my own height, perhaps a little less. His curls, and round, rosy cheeks made him look no more than twelve years old, at the most. Was it possible that he wasfifteen? He had the large, dark, anxious eyes of a half-grown spaniel. Like a spaniel, he seemed wound-up and quivering with uncertainty.

  I tried to imagine the reality of breeding with this boy.

  Why didn’t he look at me? You’d think his eyes would seek me out before all else.

  I saw heads lean together behind him. Smiles, a snigger. Something had happened on the way here. The story, whatever it was, spread from bent head to bent head, behind hands. He heard them and blushed as dark as my old leather boots. He straightened his back but did not look around.

  He walked towards us through the stares, braving a shower of eye-beams like thrown lances. He waded forward through the massed curiosity as if breasting his way through deep water.

  I felt reluctant admiration for this disappointing stranger. His bearing reminded me that, young as he was, he was already a ruler in his own right. Baby Charles would have turned and fled in tears, then hidden under his bed and refused to come out.

  I was still deaf from the pounding of my blood. A freezing terror gripped me unexpectedly. I saw Frederick bow deeply to my father. Their mouths moved in an exchange of civilities. I couldn’t hear them through the roaring in my ears.

  My father seemed friendly enough but was being the roughcast version of himself, not the oily international peace-maker. I’m reserving judgement, his manner said.

  Or that’s what I would have read, in Frederick’s place.


  I looked at the new arrival’s stained travel clothes and saw the subtle malice in the king’s pretended eagerness that had summoned this visitor to come at once, before he had time to change into finer, cleaner clothing.

  In his salt-stained clothing, Frederick now turned to my glaring mother and bowed so low that two of his dark curls brushed the floor.

  The queen pulled her lips tight across her teeth and extended one hand absently, as if brushing away a fly. She left her hand lying in the air, looked up at one of the tall leaded windows, frowning with interest at the red, green, and blue glass geometry. Frederick had barely taken her hand before she withdrew it, rubbing her fingertips together as if to brush them clean of dirt.

  The poor little German spaniel could not have turned one degree darker without keeling over with an apoplexy.

  The English courtiers near the door smirked again. Some of the prince’s German retinue frowned. Two of them exchanged glances. Henry flushed almost as dark as the new arrival.

  Ignoring the smirks and whispers, Frederick bowed to the queen again and began a prepared speech to her majesty while she pretended that he wasn’t there and half of his audience grinned at his discomfort. My father sat back, mouth moving as if he sucked on a sugar lump, with that assessing look of his that can lead to the gift of a jewel or title or house or else to sudden rage.

  With dignity, my poor suitor laboured through to the end of his pious, formalised, favour-seeking oration and turned to Henry. By now, I had settled enough to hear that he was speaking French. With smiles and geniality, my brother tried to make amends for our mother’s snub, but Frederick seemed uncertain whether or not to trust this apparent friendliness.

  My anger rose at the smirking courtiers, at my mother.

  Frederick came at last to me, the cause of this distasteful scene, the reason for his humiliation. I could not bear to think of what would be said in Heidelberg about the manners of the English court.

  We looked at each other in a kind of terror. I felt a ridiculous impulse to burst into tears. Too much anticipation. Fury at my mother, at both of my parents for making this boysuffer such humiliation. I was trembling with rage, quite certain that it was nothing else.

  Frederick came so close that I could see a line of sweat on his downy upper lip, and a faint smudge of fine silky hair.

  He began to bow, to take up my hem and kiss it, as the custom required. With a quick glance at Henry, I curtsied until I almost sat on my heels and snatched up the hand reaching for my hem. In my agitation, I almost fell as I stood up again, but Frederick steadied me. Before I could change my mind, I pulled him closer, leaned across the ledge of my farthingale and kissed him on the lips.

  I felt many things at that instant. Satisfaction mingled with indignation, both of which gave me a fervour I had not intended. We collided in mutual surprise and awkwardness. I heard someone in the crowd murmur, ‘Brava!’ I noted the unexpected warmth and softness of his full mouth.

  I don’t know which of us was more startled.

  So that’s what it’s like, I found myself thinking.

  I let go of his hand abruptly. Just because I was willing to rescue him from humiliation, he must not presume that I thereby accepted him as a husband-to-be.

  Don’t look at me like that! I thought. I can’t bear it. What I saw in those large dark eyes was hope. Too much like what I was feeling.

  Not to be trusted.

  He kept staring at me, the churning stew of thoughts going on behind his eyes clear for anyone to read, nothing hidden.

  Don’t take that kiss so much in earnest, I warned him silently, though I didn’t mind the approval I saw. Don’t divine too much in it. I winked, the merest flicker of the eyelid, invisible unless you stood directly in front of me.

  Frederick blinked. Then he grinned, a blazing flash of delight, gone before I was sure I’d seen it.

  ‘Princesse…’ He dipped his head to acknowledge mygesture. His face was solemn again but his pupils stayed wide and dark.

  They were as unlike my father’s dangerous, hooded, pinpoint eyes as you can imagine, I thought. I felt us both now quivering with suppressed… not quite laughter. More like the bubbling of possibility.

  I nodded my permission to proceed.

  He struck an oratorical pose, one forefinger pointing upwards, his other hand clamped over his heart. He drew breath to begin his prepared speech to me. Then, with impeccable comic timing, he seemed to recall something he had forgotten. He rearranged himself to begin again.

  This time, he made a double flourish with both hands and bowed so deeply that I thought he would stand on his head and kick his feet into the air like a clown.

  I saw eyebrows raised behind him.

  When he straightened again, although his face was stern, I imagined a glint of laughter in his eyes. I cocked my head like a listening dog.

  The courtly but diffident manner with which he had approached the queen now changed. His voice deepened. The fulsome words required by the occasion grew round and full, inflated until they seemed to fill his mouth and stretch his lips as they ballooned outward into the air.

  He looked at me to be certain that I understood what he was doing. I gave him a tiny smile and equally tiny nod.

  Yes.

  ‘O, Reine des étoiles et des océans…’ he declaimed. Oh, queen of the heavens and the seas… ‘Déesse de mon coeur…’ Goddess of my heart… He rolled out the words with such glorious mock pomposity that I forgot myself and grinned.

  He expressed to me his overwhelmed humbleness, the infinite honour, et cetera, et cetera, filling the air around us with shiny, bulbous overblown words. He watched me as they floated upwards like a cloud of soap bubbles. I could almosthear them bursting high above all those rich robes and smirks. ‘Pop!’ ‘Pop!’ ‘Pop!'.

  ‘Princesse sanspareille…’ Peerless princess… Up they floated, trembling, shining, absurd. Pop! Pop! ‘Unique objet de mon espérance…’ Sole object of my hopes… Pop!

  I was afraid to look at the king. He would know exactly what Frederick was doing.

  With theatrical fervour, Frederick pressed both hands to his heart. He seemed fearless now, not caring what anyone thought but me.

  Don’t jump to conclusions this time, I warned myself. Don’t believe just because you want. Perhaps he really is a fool and not just acting one.

  I put on a glare like the queen and held out my hand, frowning as if thinking distant thoughts.

  He took my hand and kissed it formally, but gave it a tiny squeeze. His hand was now very warm.

  I had not mistaken his intent. He understood. He wanted to amuse me. I felt a stab of elation so sharp that it was painful. Who would have thought it could be so intensely delightful to be in collusion?

  ‘… la joie sublime,’ he concluded. He held the pause, waiting like a player for a flourish of unheard trumpets. Sublime joy, indeed.

  When we left the Banqueting House, Frederick took my hand again, neither formally nor shyly but as if grabbing for safety, as if I were a lucky charm or an amulet. I should perhaps have objected to his familiarity before negotiations for our marriage had been advanced, let alone concluded, but I felt a rush of warmth at being able to give this feeling of safety.

  ‘How did you dare risk angering both the king and the queen?’ I asked.

  ‘Because only your opinion matters,’ he said. Then he blushed.

  ‘I wish that were true.’

  Then he was dragged away with Henry to wash and change his clothes in his own lodgings at St James’s, though I felt that he would have preferred to go with me wherever I went, like a duckling following its mother.

  From a high window, I watched him crossing the park with Henry. I felt startled but light. For some reason, I remembered my slight puzzlement at feeling the light blow on my head, alone in the forest long ago, before I saw that what had struck me was the golden leaf.

  We both had to wait on the rhythms of state.

  ‘Anatomise him, Tall
ie! I beg you,’ I said. ‘He must have faults.’

  ‘If he’s a man, he will.’

  Knowing now how she had been raised, I forgave her.

  I did not speak to him again until the following afternoon. Then, although his visit to my lodgings was formal and we were always surrounded by other people so that we could not speak freely, we laughed a great deal at not very much.

  After supper, we met again, this time without the hindrance or buttressing of ceremony. Attended only by Tallie and Lady Anne in my small presence chamber, while my ladies gamed and flirted in the outer room, I waited for him to slip and reveal his true vile nature, like Brunswick. In truth, I was already almost past unfavourable judgement. If Tallie saw faults, I no longer wanted to hear them. I was sliding out of my own control.

  His eyelashes were longer and darker than my own, I noted in the midst of my confusion. He gave off a fresh smell, like mountain air. In the firelight, his dark skin looked smooth and elegant beside my fair, freckled Scottish hide – not so dark as Tallie’s but enough to make him a different creature from myself. He laughed happily when my dogs leapt up onto bench beside us and licked his ears and pawed at his legs.

  Trey dropped onto his forepaws and stuck his rear haunchesin the air, offering to play. Frederick fell to his knees and slapped his hands on the floor to accept the offer.

  I stopped laughing. He looked up. Suddenly we grew shy and still.

  Trey barked to remind our visitor to pay attention to the game. Frederick smiled and slapped the floor again.

  Apart from a slight shadow in his eyes, he now seemed perfect in every detail. I wanted to touch him. I felt sure that he wanted to touch me.

  ‘You should rejoin your ladies,’ Tallie murmured in my ear. ‘They are all about to burst with curiosity.’

  For the rest of the evening, we made somewhat tedious conversation as if marking time with no purpose but to know that we exchanged words and could listen to each other’s voices.

  A little before bedtime, he kissed me. It was only a forfeit in a game my ladies insisted on playing. But when he leaned over me and put his soft mouth against mine, I wanted him to go on and on kissing me. I could have leaned forever on the warmth of his mouth. I felt my life suffused by a warm, steady light. Happiness had not ended with my childhood, after all. If his kiss felt so good, I knew that I could tolerate the rest. A sudden warmth between my legs suggested that I might even enjoy it.