Mary loved children, was godmother to dozens, and surrogate aunt to dozens more. Why, thought Elizabeth, was Mary such an old maid? She would be twenty-six in five days’ time — surely it was possible to be a young maid if you were unmarried? But Mary was always being ill. She liked old things, games like valentines, St Thomas cakes, Shrove pancakes, maypoles, morris men, the Lord of Misrule on Twelfth Day, the Boy Bishop. Mary was a virgin. Elizabeth could not understand why this made her so unhappy. According to everything they had been taught, being a virgin was the most important thing in any girl’s life. Their abuse of this precious thing had brought about the fall of her mother, and of Catherine Howard, and lost them their heads.
Plans for the Lady Mary’s marriage were afoot again. So many plans had been afoot over the years that now they were lame and limping. Each failed scheme brought floods of tears from Mary, who blamed her father, and wailed that she was the unhappiest lady in Christendom. Mary wanted a real valentine, not the luck of fingers in a jar, and a slip of paper.
Everyone was to gather in Mary’s rooms at six o’clock. The fires were banked up, and twice the number of candles were lit as on an ordinary evening. Elizabeth noticed first of all that there were boxes of sweets for the guests. She hoped to be able to take unseen several of those gilded sugar lozenges flavoured with rose-water, called manus Christi. They were one of her favourites.
Prince Edward came in holding Lady Bryan’s hand. He was four and a half, and big for his age. He was now well recovered from last autumn’s fever. He broke away from his governess and trotted to Mary, grabbing her skirts with fat little hands. He wore a coat of crimson satin lined with silver, which Mary had sewn for him herself. Elizabeth had sewed him shirts, but these did not seem to have worn very well; perhaps her stitches had been too big.
The men all drew a slip of paper with a lady’s name out of the jar. The Prince was first, and nearly got his fist stuck, grabbing the papers.
‘One only!’ Mary said, fondly, putting the rest back.
What he got pleased him, however. ‘Jane the Fool,’ he announced with pride, because he could already read so much. Everyone laughed a great deal at this, and little Edward rode round the room on his valentine’s shoulders, crowing with glee. Jane was the King’s fool really, but she had been lent to Mary to cheer her a few years ago.
Sir Anthony Browne, who was old, drew the Lady Mary, and she blushed so deeply that Elizabeth suspected her of cheating. Sir Anthony was very fond of Mary, and his fondness was returned. In spite of being sixty, he was still a good-looking man. Perhaps Mary would have had him as a husband if she could. Of course, she could not. He was the King’s Master of Horse. Mary should have a man of higher rank than this. She had to pay him a forfeit, and gave him a brooch carved with the story of Abraham, with precious stones, and pinned it on him herself. Elizabeth noticed that Mary was wearing five different kinds of patterned or embroidered cloth, in four different colours, which seemed excessive, even for her.
Elizabeth’s own valentine turned out to be the younger Dudley boy, Robert.
‘Cock Robin and little Jenny Wren!’ Mary rumbled archly. Elizabeth in her russet dress, tucked away in her window seat, watching with bright eyes, did look a little like a perching wren. She did not much like being talked about as if she were a baby, and Jenny was a name for servants, though the wren was supposed to be a royal bird.
Called upon to pay her valentine a forfeit, Elizabeth fished out a cover for a primer, embroidered by herself with oak leaves and acorns. ‘Quercus robur — an English oak,’ she said. ‘Robert.’ It was not one of her best pieces of work.
Robert Dudley came to sit beside her. He had a cheerful grin, and seemed happy enough with his luck of the draw, and with her forfeit. He was a dark-haired boy, brown-eyed, with the brown and pink skin most people only had in summer. He was tall and looked bursting with health, rosy and glowing as if he had just come in from strenuous exercise. Elizabeth inspected him more closely than she had at the schoolroom table.
‘How old are you?’ she demanded.
‘Ten.’
‘When is your birthday?’
‘On the seventh of September.’
‘But that’s my birthday!’ Elizabeth sounded more indignant than surprised, as if he had usurped her day. He realized that he had taken her aback, which gave him an advantage over her slight air of superiority.
‘Oh, is it?’ he said, noncommittally. ‘But you are two years younger.’
‘Do you want to be my valentine?’
‘Well, I drew your name.’
‘You should say yes. I am the King’s daughter.’
‘Yes, then. If I am the first person you see tomorrow morning, I shall have to marry you. I’ll come and stick my head in your window!’
Elizabeth was not used to being teased by boys. Robert had been brought up among teasing brothers and sisters.
‘I shall never marry!’ Elizabeth said, suddenly very loud. Everyone heard.
Robert blushed, and felt a fool, as the company stared at them and laughed. As if he cared what she did. Why ever did she have to yell so loud, as if they had been holding hands, or something. She was only eight, and absurdly hoity-toity. A fat lot of choice she was likely to have in the matter of her marriage. She was a bastard. Neither she nor Mary could succeed to the throne. The most use her father could make of her was to marry her to secure the allegiance of some man or other, English or foreign. She would probably find herself married off at fourteen.
‘I shall marry Jane, and then she will be Queen Jane, like my mother!’ announced Prince Edward, and the laughter moved to him. Jane the Fool had a face that seemed made of putty; she could assume the faces of other people at will. The stubby, nondescript little woman began suddenly to mimic the King, bearing his little son off to bed. She was about five feet tall, and King Henry a giant, but she really did look like him; she all but grew a square-trimmed beard. Elizabeth and Robert rolled about the window seat, laughing.
‘Well,’ he said, spluttering, ‘they say hanging and wedding go by destiny — I wonder what’s in store for us?’
Elizabeth had not heard this saying before. It should be ‘heading’, not hanging. That had been part of her mother’s destiny, as had wedding her father. As to her own, that seemed very uncertain.
*
Alas, Apollo had grown gross. As the chariot of the god wheeled across the July morning, King Henry VIII stood below the clock gate at Hampton Court, top to toe in cloth of gold, rivalling the sun god. Elizabeth stared. Her father had appeared suddenly from the shadowy steps leading to the Great Hall. There he stood, leaning on his gold-covered walking staff, like the Colossus which once bestrode the harbour of Rhodes. Surely he was the eighth wonder of the world — yes he was — King Henry VIII. It gave Elizabeth huge satisfaction to be the daughter of the eighth wonder of the world.
This golden wonder was waiting to greet his bride. It was his wedding day — his sixth. Elizabeth was going to attend the ceremony, together with Mary, and a few other lords and ladies. Her back was to the sun, and it fell full upon the King. The plumes in his hat were as white as the doves which strutted in the outer court. On the vast golden expanse of his front, rows of white satin pullings were linked by sparkling jewels. A gold watch like a dumpling hung on a chain. A white frill of shirt collar was dainty around a beefsteak neck. The golden vastness bulged, outwards, sideways and forwards, like the round sun with his rays.
The King consulted the watch around his neck. The bride was due to appear. He stood below the new zodiac clock, over the gate, a huge, vastly complicated mechanism with four dials in one, and hand like his own fat forefinger, with a golden sun on it. The clock was the only thing which could draw Elizabeth’s eyes briefly away from her father. Thursday, 12 July 1543. In this month, Cancer the crab still prevailed. The King was a subject of Cancer; his fifty-second birthday had been a fortnight ago. Elizabeth was ruled by Virgo, the protectress of young virgins. She wondered what
sign the new Queen had been born under.
The bride’s name was Katherine Parr, Lady Latimer. She was twenty-nine years old, and had been married twice before, and twice widowed. Elizabeth had noticed how pleased and relieved people at court seemed to be at this match. Katherine Parr was a friend of everyone already, of Mary, of Kat Champernowne, of Lady Dudley, of Lady Denny; they had shared their lessons as girls. Everyone, including the King, was certain that this Queen was a virtuous woman, with no taint of past scandal, or inclination to future ones. Elizabeth was glad that her father had found someone who would be good. Previously, he had been very unlucky.
Katherine Parr came out of the doorway beside which Elizabeth, Mary and the other guests were standing. The King limped heavily forward, a slight frown changed to a beam. They met in the middle of the courtyard. Elizabeth watched intently. All women looked like dolls beside the King, and it occurred to her, that was how he liked them to look. Katherine Parr was not tiny, like Mary, but she seemed it now. She was not pretty, but she had pretty, amber-coloured hair, and clear skin, on which freckles could not altogether be banished. Her face was one of the see all, say little kind, with lips which, though not pursy, folded very neatly one on top of the other.
The gateway the King had just left still had Elizabeth’s mother’s initial on the ceiling, entwined with the King’s — H and A, with a true lovers’ knot. She wondered why this one had escaped notice; perhaps her father was so tall he never needed to look upwards, as she did. Everywhere else in the palace, the HAs had all been chipped, or planed away, or repainted. There were still many HJs and a few old HKs, which had now become appropriate again.
The marriage took place in the tiny Queen’s chapel on the upper floor. Elizabeth had been at Greenwich for her father’s fourth wedding, to the Princess of Cleves, and here at Hampton for his fifth, to Catherine Howard, but she had only been six then, and could not remember much. It seemed a very small wedding for a King; Elizabeth counted eleven men and seven women, including herself.
That boy Robert Dudley had said, last year, when he drew her as valentine, that wedding was a matter of destiny. Why should there be a saying about hanging (or beheading) and wedding, so linking them together? Wedding was a dangerous business. Yet some people thrived on it. Lady Jane Dudley, Robert’s mother, who was standing behind her, did. The half-Spanish Duchess of Suffolk had been fourteen when she married the old Duke, and had blossomed on it. Perhaps it was most dangerous for Kings and their children. Yet Mary wanted to risk it. Mary looked as if she was going to be one of those who cried at weddings.
The Bishop of Winchester, Stephen Gardiner, conducted the service, which was short, and mostly in English. There was no Mass. Elizabeth imitated Mary in humble, pious posture, but her eyes darted from face to face, from the King to the bride, and back. Her father was pretending to look as if he had never been through all this before. When he said, ‘I Henry take thee Katherine…’ she felt a shock; she had almost never heard the King speak his own name before, and it sounded almost blasphemous — he was the King, not just a man called Henry. Would his wife dare to call him Henry? Had her own mother called him by name? He said: ‘To have and to hold, from this day forward, for better or for worse, for richer or poorer, in sickness and in health, till death us depart.’ He had certainly had to have and hold, mostly for worse, and some of them for a time which could be counted in days. Two of them had departed into death by his order, and one of them, poor Queen Jane, had died to give life to a prince.
The Queen promised ‘to be bonair and buxom in bed and at board,’ in other words, never to cross her husband, or to deny him anything. Men did not have to make this sort of promise. Never to disobey; Elizabeth often liked to disobey. She had to hold her breath when the wedding ring was put on, because she got hiccups. She pinched her nose, taking a deep breath. King Henry had groaned when he married Anne of Cleves that he was putting his head in the yoke. Katherine Parr was putting her finger, and her head, in the ring.
After the wedding, Elizabeth left Hampton Court, being sent back to Ashridge to join the Prince, while Mary went part of the way with the King and Queen on a honeymoon progress. In about a month, they came hunting in the forest of Ashridge, and decided to visit the Prince. Those of the court who had accompanied them were left behind, as the King refused to have them anywhere near his son, breathing their infections over the precious boy, or soiling the place with their numbers. It had been for this reason that he had not let the child come to Hampton Court for the wedding. But the Queen had persuaded him that the Prince needed to see his father, and new mother, and it would be as great a tonic for the King to see his heir growing and flourishing — reports of his health had lately been so good.
The Prince was not so excited or fearful of this visitation as were the members of his household. Armies of servants set to with mops and buckets, as if they did not do enough sweeping and swilling every day, twice a day. The King was worse than a woman for cleanliness. He had drawn up the regulations himself. No one unauthorized was to lay a finger on the Prince’s clothing; the washing up of his dishes and cutlery was to be done separately; there was to be an unprecedented clean-up of the kitchens. Dogs were banished from indoors, and there were so many jakes there was a choice for every week of the year.
The doorways at Ashridge must have been made for monks who had overdone the fasting since their youth. They nearly denied the King admittance. He had to stoop, then to sidle sideways, as first one half, then the other, was heaved over the threshold. Once in, he stood, leaning on his great staff, puffing. It was a wonder those clustering round got in at all. The King’s head nearly bumped the ceiling; a green man from the forest, who would have made two of Little John and three of Robin Hood.
He thrust out a hand to be kissed. First the Prince, then Mary, then Elizabeth. The hand was like that of some gigantic baby, all dimples and bracelets of fat, sausage fingers larded with rings, an emerald as big as a bean on the middle knuckle. Elizabeth landed a peck on the knuckle, gazing at the emerald, which was like looking at hot ice. If only someone, some day, would give her an emerald so big. Just two fingers of her father’s hand could surely have squashed her own, and squeezed out the juice. It smelled clean, and of perfumed gloves. The large, oval nails were scrubbed and pared and buffed, neat as a vain woman’s.
‘Daughter.’ This much King Henry was willing to acknowledge. Elizabeth was only a bastard. She got up from what she thought a successfully graceful and humble curtsy, and backed away. The King always smelled of most agreeable perfumes and sweet waters, yet he carried with him, and left behind him, wherever he went, a whiff of the charnel house. Even with the support of his staff, walking was at best painful for him, and at worst, torture. He did as little of it as possible. Yet he would not rest, and still rode, and hunted. Because of his difficulty in walking, and solace in eating, he had got very fat, and was getting fatter. All that green satin bulged and strained as if it were sausage skins stuffed to bursting, the bejewelled swag of his belly a monster bag pudding. He always made Elizabeth think of food, perhaps because of the banquets she had seen when visiting the court. Her earliest impression of her father had been of the biggest person she had ever seen. Once his stout knees had been her horizon, now it was the widest part of his girth, the middle.
The largest, strongest chair in the place was positioned to receive the royal backside, and a footstool brought to prop up his legs. The King’s legs were his only servants to fail in his service without incurring penalty of death. They made Elizabeth feel sick. Under the green satin, bandages made them like lumpy bolsters, travesties of the sturdy, muscular miracles of nature which had once done everything legs could do, and more. Giant, shapeless sausages. Gone bad, too, that was where the smell came from. Elizabeth averted her eyes, and tried not to breathe through her nose, which was difficult. She did not like being repelled by her father’s legs, for she had always so admired the rest of him. When she had been very small, he had a shoulder as
comfortable as a chair to sit on, and a beard soft and fluffy to touch. What terrible things happened to people’s bodies when they grew old.
Once the King was settled in the chair, his weight off his legs, he was ready to talk to his children. At his side was his new Queen, his comfort and blessing. Nothing would give him greater pleasure than to hear them call her ‘mother’. For someone who had never been a mother in her two previous marriages, Katherine Parr seemed born to the role. Elizabeth had already decided that she liked her, chiefly because the Queen troubled to speak to her particularly, and not over her head, as was the usual habit of grown-ups. Prince Edward could not stop staring, meeting her for the first time. He had wondered if she would bring him a present. Elizabeth hoped that he would not say so; he was a very outspoken infant.
King Henry beamed at his small son. He would have liked to take the boy on his knee, but he could not bear so much as a fly to sit there. ‘Well, Ned,’ he said, ‘you are growing into a tall strong boy.’
‘Yes,’ said the Prince, ‘if it please Your Majesty.’ Edward, whom Elizabeth thought looked a podgy, pallid sausage, like the King’s fingers, drew himself up to his full height of three feet, stuck out his pot belly, hooked his thumbs in his belt, and swaggered. King Henry liked the way his son stood there, obviously imitating himself. He gave a hearty laugh, then looked round at everyone else, who immediately laughed, too. He took Edward’s chin in two great fingers. ‘Just on six, eh! Soon be big enough to come hunting with me. When I last saw you, you were still in your skirts.’
Edward had begged especially to be freed from his skirts for the King’s visit; after all, he was only a month short of six. He strutted about in such a parody of his father that King Henry laughed until he shook like a heap of feather pillows, and swore his jester, Will Somers, could not have done better. The whole room roared. Edward swelled. Elizabeth knew that he would march about being the King for the next month. How consumed by delight the little Prince was when the King put on his new spectacles and began showing his son the inside of his watch, so he could see it ticking. Once, her father had shown Elizabeth the inside of a pair of virginals, though no one would believe she could remember the time when she was only three, the time when she had been in favour, and been shown things.
None But Elizabeth Page 2