by Lucy Worsley
She could just imagine her mother’s blazing wrath in the same situation. Mary thought that her mother often went over the top – but Mary hadn’t felt goaded like this before.
But, before she could speak, the gentleman gave another polite cough, and came forth into the room. She saw now that it was Sir Nicholas Carew, a courtier who often paid his respects in her mother’s apartments.
‘My dear princess!’
His voice was full of concern, so much so that Mary found herself unable, or at least unwilling, to blaze with wrath. Her mind began, unpleasantly, to go over the conversation just past, and to calculate how much of it he might have overheard.
Sir Nicholas was coming across the floor now. He too had a little beard, but his face was swarthy, rougher than many of the gentleman courtiers’ complexions. Mary knew that he spent a lot of time outside, with the horses. He was a great jouster.
‘Princess,’ he said, bowing again, and then, seeing that she was still choked up, he took her hand and led her gently back to the seat by the fire. He stood behind her, waiting, one hand on her shoulder. She felt calm flowing through him.
‘Sir … Nicholas.’ She hiccuped, and quickly used her fingers to dash away some tears that had crept out on to her cheeks. She hadn’t noticed them until now.
He whipped out a handkerchief, very clean and neatly folded. She grabbed it gratefully.
For once Mary didn’t mind the lack of etiquette. She tried to half smile, but must have produced just a ghastly expression.
‘I’ve had a bit of a shock,’ she admitted.
‘I know,’ he said. ‘I’m afraid I overheard. I know that was wrong, and that you are entitled to a private conversation. But your mother sent me to keep an eye on you. Once I saw she was talking to you, I was surprised, and I was worried for you. She is dangerous, you know.’
Mary nodded her head, sadly. Yes, she was dangerous. One part of her mind wondered how often her mother sent spies to watch upon her, but there was no time to worry about that now.
‘I can hardly believe that my father showed her my mother’s letter. But how else would she have got it?’
He sighed. Although he seemed so easy to talk to, Mary could tell that he didn’t want to answer.
‘Princess,’ he said slowly, ‘something is going to happen to you very often as you get older. There will be bad news, and no one wants to be the bearer of it. Especially to a person, like you, who occupies a powerful position. Probably no one has told you something that I must tell you now.’
‘Tell me what?’ Mary felt almost angry with him, for keeping her in suspense, although she knew that he was trying to be kind. A little bit of her scoffed at ‘powerful position’. She had no power at all, not even over where to go, what to eat, and when she could see her parents.
‘Tell me!’ she almost shouted, seeing him once again hesitate. He held up his palms, as if to beg for mercy.
‘You know that your father, like all kings, has had … mistresses?’
Mary nodded. Her mother had explained this to her, years ago. When a queen was pregnant, as Catherine often was, trying yet again to bear a brother or sister for Mary, then the king would go to the bedchambers of other women, to sleep there in their beds. It was not a big thing, Catherine had said, for he still truly loved Mary, and of course, Mary’s mother. It was just for his health.
Mary realised that she understood this in abstract terms, but she didn’t really understand what was involved. And certainly she didn’t know who the mistresses were.
‘Well, the Lady Anne is one of these mistresses,’ he said, speaking so quietly that he was almost whispering, and Mary had to strain to hear. ‘And she has gained great power over your father. He thinks himself in love with her.’
Mary realised that although nobody had told her, she had known this already.
‘But,’ she objected, ‘are you sure? She’s … a court lady!’
‘Yes,’ Sir Nicholas said. ‘He has been very tactless. Much better to leave his own wife’s upper servants alone.’
He glanced around. Mary could tell he was afraid that someone might hear. ‘It is dangerous to speak of such things,’ he said, ‘but I respect and admire your mother – she is a woman of the good true Old Religion that I myself share.’
Mary sank slowly from her seat to her heels. She seemed to have lost all the strength of her body. She leaned down towards the stool where the lady had sat, and rested her head on it.
‘What will happen to my mother?’ she whispered, almost to herself. ‘What will happen to her, if my father does not love her any more?’
She could feel the concern in his body, and the kind touch of his hand on her shoulder. ‘She is a Spaniard,’ he said. ‘She will fight to the death. And I believe that she will beat this … woman, this … concubine.’ He almost spat out the word.
Then it was as if he’d realised that he should say something more. ‘And, of course,’ he added quickly, ‘whatever happens between them, they will both love you. Whatever happens between your mother and father, you are still the daughter of the king.’
Mary raised her forehead to look at him, only taking in the first part of what he had said, the part about fighting. Of course! Her mother had warned her that this would happen. That princesses always had to fight to the death. She’d never thought, though, that the battle would begin within her father’s own privy chamber.
She looked levelly at Sir Nicholas, gathering all her strength.
‘Thank you, Sir Nicholas,’ she said calmly. She arched her neck, like a horse ready to trot proudly onwards. ‘I am glad that you have told me the truth.’
He stood at once, and bowed again, placing his hand over his heart.
‘You are your mother’s daughter,’ he said. ‘That strumpet, that woman, with her cheap and dirty … New Religion, as they call it, will never get the better of you two. And don’t believe that your mother rejected you,’ he said. ‘There has been some trickery with that letter, I’ll warrant. You must ask her. Don’t fear that your father wishes to set you aside, or does not love you. The whole court knows how proud he is of you.’
Mary bowed her head again. The effort of looking confident had cost her greatly, and all she wanted to do was to curl up under a sheepskin on her bed and think it all over.
Perhaps she could even get warm and go to sleep and hope to wake as if the afternoon had never happened.
As she stepped out over the threshold of her father’s chamber, she sincerely wished that she had never come into it.
Chapter 7
May 1531, Windsor Castle
Sir Nicholas had advised Mary to question her mother about the letter, to find out what was true and what wasn’t. But when it came to the point, she just couldn’t find the words. What if her mother really had rejected her?
It was too difficult. Mary had to act so that her mother would ask her what was wrong. I can manage to live all by myself, Mary would say inside her head. I am a daughter of Spain, who never feels pain. Even now, when my parents probably don’t love me any more and want to be rid of me.
She had somehow managed to set aside Sir Nicholas’s warnings that the Lady Anne was capable of lies and treachery. She was worried that he had been too kind, and told her too much of what she wanted to hear. It was safest to assume the worst, to take the letter at face value. Her mother and father wanted to be without her.
Mary began to spend even more time by herself, skulking along the back corridors of the palace rather than face the constant discreet scrutiny of the guards. She would sneak to the gardens and walk there alone. And when her mother told her that she was outdoors too much, and ought to join the court ladies in embroidery, Mary said that she needed the exercise.
‘You are growing lean,’ Catherine said, worried. ‘Your husband the duke will not like that. It is better to be bonny and buxom for the business of producing babies, you know.’
‘And what would you know about that?’ said Mary coldly.
I care for nobody, no, not I, and nobody cares for me, Mary sang inside her head as she marched off daily between the clipped walls of the Greenwich garden hedges. She had to tell Nan Hussey not to follow her. ‘Leave me alone, Nan!’ she barked. ‘I’m not in any danger in the gardens. I want to … I want to just walk about by myself for once.’
There was just one friendly face in her memory, that of Nicholas Carew. Although palace life had never brought them together again, he smiled at her sometimes, across the Great Hall, or as she sat, sulking, in the ladies’ box at the jousting tournament.
Mary assumed she would be sent off with her own household as usual when spring came. She even asked when she would leave.
‘But Mary!’ her mother said. ‘Not long ago you were crazing and begging me that we might spend the summer together, both our households as one. So that’s what I arranged. Are you not pleased?’
Mary couldn’t deny the truth of this, so she made a sort of uncommitted mumble.
‘I wanted to spend the summer with my father,’ she added. It made her feel a tiny bit better to see her mother wince.
‘Well, my darling,’ her mother said, regaining her cool composure. ‘He is busy. And we will be together soon enough.’
In the spring, then, when it was time for Mary and Catherine and their servants to leave Greenwich, they rode together to Windsor Castle. Perched upon its hilltop, Mary loved this castle’s dramatic skyline of towers and turrets. As they travelled, she saw that leaves were coming out on the trees, but later, and slower, and less lusciously than usual.
‘It’s been a hard year so far,’ her mother said as they swayed up the hill in their litter.
Mary grunted.
‘A hard year,’ the queen said again.
Mary knew that she didn’t just mean the cold weather. This is what annoys my father, she said to herself. This is why he wants to be rid of us. She just can’t let anything lie. She always wants to talk, talk about unpleasant things.
But her mother hadn’t finished. She gave a big sigh.
‘Maybe,’ she said, ‘maybe here at Windsor we can make a fresh start, Mary. Can we be friends again?’
Mary’s mother spoke simply, just like a normal person, and Mary’s throat suddenly tensed up painfully, as if she’d been asked to swallow a frog. How could she possibly answer such a difficult question? It was better to say nothing.
Mary turned aside and looked out of the litter. Now there were people each side, lining the road up into the town, and waving their handkerchiefs.
‘Smile, Mary, I implore you! They are happy to see you.’
Mary noticed that as soon as they came within sight of the crowds, her mother’s voice was transformed, becoming honey-warm. She was sitting up straight too, waving and kissing her hand, and responding to the people’s good wishes on her side of the road.
You’re not my friend, Mary thought to herself. I don’t really know who you are. You change from moment to moment.
Mary couldn’t bring herself to kiss her hand, and just sat there in stony silence. She scoffed in her mind at the idea that these people by the road might care about her. All they care about, Mary thought, is seeing the rich dresses and the fine horses.
She stole a glance at her mother’s serene, smiling profile, still nodding and bowing to the Windsor townsfolk.
Mary remembered how a year ago she would have been delighted to be with the queen’s household for the summer. But now she knew that she was only her mother’s second choice.
A bitter voice started up in Mary’s head as she began to remember and enumerate how many other things were wrong in the world. She remembered the humiliation of the evil snake-tongued lady knowing all the family’s private business.
Another, more sober, voice in her brain told her that having the Lady Anne Boleyn to contend with was even harder for her mother than it was for her, and that she should have pity. But she didn’t pay the sober voice any heed. It was difficult, all so difficult, when Mary knew that her mother didn’t love her. And did her father love her or not? She had not seen him for so long.
The best Mary could do for the paupers who had gathered outside the entrance to the castle was to summon up a weak and watery smile. She took the coins her mother handed her and tossed them out with some energy.
That night, in the queen’s rooms of the castle, overlooking the vast blue view, they were both busy with Mary’s father’s shirts. They were stitching the blackwork embroidery he liked round the neck and sleeves, something they had always done together. Mary’s sewing was almost as neat as her mother’s, and for a while the repetitive action soothed the nasty thoughts in her head.
She really hoped that her mother wouldn’t start up again with the difficult questions.
But it was too late.
‘Mary,’ she began, without looking up. ‘You know we make these shirts so carefully – do you also know that your father loves to receive and to wear them?’
Mary’s head lurched up, like a deer catching the scent of the dogs.
‘I know,’ said Catherine, still looking down at her hands and working away methodically, ‘that something has happened. That you are worried about something. Is it your father? Or is it me? You have not been the same for many months.’
It was true. But Mary shook her head, angrily. To her dismay, a couple of scalding-hot tears squeezed their way out from under her eyelids, and she could no longer see her needle.
Catherine threw down her linen.
‘What is it, querida?’ she asked again, gently. ‘How have I deserved your displeasure?’
In a halting whisper, Mary started to speak.
‘I saw your letter,’ she said. ‘I was in the king’s rooms, and that lady was there, and she showed me a letter you wrote, saying you would rather live with him than me. That’s why I suggested that I should leave. I know you don’t really want me here. I know that you and my father and probably that lady too would all prefer it if I was out of the way.’
In an instant, Mary’s mother threw down her embroidery, and flew across the room, and knelt by Mary’s chair.
‘My darling!’ she said. ‘How can you think that? I wrote that letter, but I didn’t mean it. It was only for politics. I must stay near the king, because he is the source of all the power. If I am near him, and have influence, then I can keep you near me. Surely you see that? Surely,’ she said, amazed, ‘you see that I love you, more dearly than life itself, and that every action I make is guided by the thought of what’s best for you?’
Mary’s stomach lurched.
Oh, she had been so wrong.
Of course, she really had known this, underneath. Of course this was true. Why had she even, for one second, believed what the wicked lady had told her?
She hiccuped something about Sir Nicholas having said so.
‘Oh, he is a good man,’ Catherine said decidedly. ‘If you want counsel, you can do no wrong with him. He is a man well able to see past the … blinkers your father sometimes wears. Your father is so weak, so easily swayed by the opinions of clever people who get near to him. That’s why I must stay close to him, always as close as possible, though it would be my heart’s desire for you and me to go away, far away, and live quietly together. But to do so, in the end, would be our downfall.’
Mary coughed, and even came close to a little giggle at her mother’s over-the-top expression. ‘Why would it be our downfall?’ she asked. ‘Why do we always have to stay and fight to the death? And when you write a letter, why doesn’t it say the truth?’
‘Because,’ the queen said sadly, ‘we can’t always afford, in our position, to speak the truth. And because if we fall from your father’s good grace, other people will trample upon us. It’s the price of being a princess. Once you’re a princess, you’re always a princess. We can’t go and live in a nunnery with the wise sisters the nuns – much as I would like that
– because then other people would blacken our names, and seek to destroy us utterly. It is because I play the game well, the game of politics, that I believe that you and I will outlast all the other people who take advantage of your father. He will come back to us soon.’
Despite the trusting stare of her mother’s fierce eyes, Mary made a mental reservation. Her father was not this weathervane figure that her mother described. He was the most powerful and strongest man that Mary had ever seen, breaking lance after lance in the jousting tournament yard.
Or he had been. It was an awfully long time since she had seen him.
It could be, she conceded, that the Lady Anne Boleyn had changed him.
‘So,’ she said, slowly, ‘we will live at Windsor Castle and wait here, for my father to come?’
‘Indeed we will,’ her mother said, with decision. ‘I think it will not be long, for I know that he doesn’t have enough linen to see out the month. He has been travelling, and hunting, and seeing his friends, but remember this, Mary – he always, always, comes back for his new shirts when the time is right.’
Mary felt a little worm of hope stirring inside her. Perhaps he really would come back, like he had promised. Perhaps he would soon be calling her his pride and joy once again.
Nan Hussey was at the door.
‘What is it, Nan?’ Catherine was abrupt, annoyed at being disturbed. Mary looked down at the floor to hide her red, sore eyes, although she didn’t know why she bothered when it was only Nan.
Nan could see that they had been speaking about something important.
‘I’m sorry to interrupt,’ she said, ‘but here is a letter from the king. The messenger has just arrived. I thought that you would want to see it at once.’
‘Oh!’ Catherine got to her feet and bounded across the room to seize it. ‘Just as I said, Mary. I’m sure he’s writing to say that he’s coming here soon. I told you so!’
Mary thought that in this candlelight, her golden hair glowing, her mother looked just as pretty as when she had been a teenage Spanish princess, marrying her handsome husband in St Paul’s Church. It was a scene which her father had painted for her in words many, many times before.