Just a Girl (9 page)

‘'Tis not so, Your Majesty, not so. We heard a scream and thought to save you from treachery – not to cause it.'

I allowed myself to look slightly mollified. ‘Perhaps I was dreaming and called out in my sleep.'

‘Aye, Your Majesty, aye, that'd be the reason.'

‘You may go, then,' I said to them, ‘and be careful next time you invade a lady's bedchamber.' And they left, pushing past my curious ladies, who had gathered about the doorway to see what all the fuss was about, still bowing, scraping and trying to put their swords away.

I sent for the rat catcher and his dog discreetly and they assure me they had caught the black rat, but perhaps they lied, or there is another behind my wall. Ugh, the thought makes me shudder.

The same soldiers will be outside my door tonight, no doubt, playing cards and swapping gossip. Now they sit in the antechamber to protect me, where once they sat in a similar closet to make sure I remained locked in. If I screamed now, would they rush to my rescue again? I wonder. Or have I frightened them so much that they would hesitate, perhaps fatally, before intervening? No matter. If an assassin's knife wishes to find me now, it must penetrate many more layers of protection than ever before. I felt I was so close to being killed many times and yet did not die. It still leaves me in wonder, that so many I have known, so many I grew up with, who had less reason to die or fear death than I did, have found themselves under the executioner's axe.

God's blood, now my wayward brain has turned itself to another face that haunts me, that of my kinswoman, Lady Jane Grey. There was no reason to think her fate would be other than to marry well and live a quiet life at her studies and her devotions. Poor Jane, it was all she ever wanted, all she ever expected. I knew she pitied my being royal. She told me so when both of us were living at Chelsea palace under the care of Queen Catherine Parr. She was showing me a translation from the Greek, and I was cross, because hers was more elegantly poetic than any nine-year-old child's had a right to be. I said something cruel to her about our difference in status, out of pique and envy.

‘I am pleased you are the king's daughter and not I,' she said in her low, calm voice.

‘Fine words, my lady, but idle ones. I would not swap my royal birth for any.'

‘You must live in a world not of your making. Others will scheme and plot to control you and, through you, reach power. I am a woman of no importance, and 'tis better so.'

She was hard to insult. She did not bridle as others did. She bent her head meekly beneath my harsh words and submitted, good Protestant that she was. My secret name for her was the little nun.

Poor Jane, poor little nun. How you must have come to rue your words.

Not long after Robin was wed, the little nun emerged again from the shadows, as she had done so often at Sudeley Castle. To my astonishment, she married Robin's brother, Guildford Dudley. I did not attend their wedding, as I was not invited. The marriage was arranged in haste. Some gossiped that it was for the usual reason, but I knew better. Jane Grey annoyed me, but she was no foolish wench, easily seduced into a handsome man's bed. There was something more sinister afoot. I was suspicious of the match and felt a threat growing. Edward Seymour had followed his brother to a traitor's death and Guildford's father, John Dudley, was now both lord protector and
unchallenged master of England. My brother, the king, had never been strong and now rumours whirled about, reaching even as far as Hatfield and my sister Mary at Framlingham, that he was failing fast. I wept when I heard the stories and longed to go to him, but John Dudley guarded access to him like a lion and excuses were always found to keep me away. Mary, as heir, was luckier, but her reports of his appearance were not good. I wrote to him, as always, and he replied with strange, distant, rather priggish letters, preaching to me about my virtue and my faith. In answer to my enquiries about his health, he claimed to be recovering, yet I remained uneasy. But my unease was nothing compared with Mary's.

As the Catholic heir to a Protestant king, Mary had been excluded and isolated. My brother had made her a gift of Framlingham Castle in the wilds of Suffolk, so I had not seen her very often during his reign. As I had grown from child to woman and we had seen less of one another, our relationship had grown more distant and a little wary, but as the reports of the king's imminent death gathered strength, we began to exchange letters more frequently. We both recognised that our future depended on one another. Catholic, Protestant or Mussulman, if my sister was Edward's legitimate heir, then I was hers. Not that either of us was as unwise or impolitic as to mention such a concern in our letters, but
we both knew why our correspondence had increased. We remembered the delay between our father's death and public knowledge of it and we knew the fanatical Protestants controlling my brother's council would do all in their power to prevent a Catholic queen sitting on the throne. Weak and relatively friendless women though we were, we would do what we could to make sure our father's children held on to his throne, by right of birth and by the will of God.

I have learnt that there is always great tension when one monarch dies and another waits in the wings. I have been an heir and a miserably dangerous time it was, and now, praise be to God, I am a monarch. I have no obvious heir and have already come under much pressure to marry and produce one. Those who pressure me do not understand how much I hate the idea of a marriage and fear an heir. Those who pressure me think not of my safety, though they couch their arguments in soft and flattering words; they think only of their own. It is no pleasure to be a second person, or to be shadowed by one.

But to return to the outwardly quiet but inwardly turbulent days that preceded my poor brother's untimely death, the rumours grew until they rushed from great house to great house like a whirlwind. I could feel the repressed excitement of all in my own household. They knew this change represented danger, but also great
hopes. My brother was four years younger than I was; my sister thirteen years older. Neither was strong. All of us did our calculations silently and wondered. We could not help it. We were no different from the rest of the kingdom: speculation and rumour became our daily fare. Lord protector of England he may have been, but John Dudley could no more control the thoughts of the Englishmen and women he sought to rule than he could halt the progress of the vicious wasting disease that stopped the lungs of my poor brother. I heard tales later of his horrible demise, alone, coughing up black bile, in terrible pain, a boy of fifteen with no one and nothing to comfort him but his Bible. Like my father, he longed to control the world he was leaving and changed his will accordingly. But so little temporal power does any of us have – even a mighty king – that he could never have imagined how those few strokes of his feebly held pen, undoing our father's will and excluding his sisters from the succession, unwittingly sentenced our cousin and childhood playmate to death.

Poor little nun, the conspiracy to make her queen was none of her making, of that I am sure. Her fate was settled by an accident of birth and a disastrous marriage. Granddaughter as she was to my father's youngest sister Mary, she had some hereditary claim to the throne, but she was fifth in line, after not just Mary and me, but also the other Mary, the infant Queen of Scots,
granddaughter of my father's older sister Margaret, and Lady Grey, her own ferocious mother.

While Mary and I exchanged our friendly, superficially banal but important letters, my poor befuddled brother crossed our names from the succession and replaced them with the words ‘the Lady Jane and her heirs male'. In the document that he called ‘Device for the Succession' he dismissed his loyal and loving sisters by saying we were both ‘illegitimate and not lawfully begotten'. I want to believe that, sick and dying, he was bullied into it, but I know better. As he grew ever more frail, it was his faith he clung to and he was prepared to sacrifice me, his Protestant sister, to prevent the Catholic one from inheriting the throne. I knew that throughout his reign he had bullied Mary, as had our father, ordering her to change her faith, preaching the Protestant gospels to her, convinced utterly of the rightness of his cause and the logic of his arguments. If only he had realised you cannot argue another out of their faith, particularly another as steadfast as Mary. They were brother and sister, after all. They shared the same stubbornness, the same belief in their own rectitude, but they did not share the same approach to God.

Still the dying boy lingered on, and as he struggled for every last breath, the great men around him struggled to keep their grip on power. They knew full well that their very lives depended on preventing my sister from
inheriting Edward's throne. Her life, and very possibly mine, depended on precisely the opposite. The stakes were high and all the players readied themselves as they waited – some by his bedside, others many miles away in their fortified palaces – for the stripling boy king to draw breath no more.

‘The king is dead.' Much as I had loved poor Edward, the words so long expected did not descend on me like a thunderclap as they had when the king in question was my father. No. It was the ensuing words that I waited intently to hear.

‘Long live the queen.' The young messenger looked at me nervously. I said nothing, but raised an eyebrow and cocked my head. He opened his lips as if to speak again, then licked them – unable to find the spittle, it seemed, to form the words. His demeanour told me all I needed to know. I tapped my foot impatiently and he blushed. ‘Queen Jane,' he whispered.

Clearly he expected a more explosive response, perhaps some swearing and stamping of feet, a well-placed ‘God's breath', perhaps, or worse. At the very least he wanted tears and girlish swooning. I gave him no satisfaction. Instead, I called my steward to my side. ‘The Duke of Northumberland, Lord Dudley, has placed his daughter-in-law upon the throne.'

He nodded, his face as impassive as my own. Our
plans were well in place. I had thought of riding helter skelter to Framlingham to join forces with my sister, but the traitor Dudley was powerful. There was great resistance to the possibility of a Catholic queen, particularly among the nobility. I was a Protestant princess, disinherited unlawfully by my poor sick brother, aided and abetted, no doubt, by Dudley. Of course I wanted Mary to take the crown. Through her accession lay the sole path to my own position as heir. And I knew Dudley had no intention of passing the crown and the power to the Greys.

He intended his own son, Jane's husband, to be king and the English throne to be occupied by Dudleys rather than Tudors. His ambition was boundless, his right negligible, but his power considerable and his plan audacious. So I did what I had learnt to do when faced with courses of action that are all more or less distasteful to me. I did nothing. I worked on my embroidery, translated classic texts from Latin to Greek and from Greek to Latin, listened to my minstrels, practised upon my lute. I waited to see which way the wind would blow. I stayed in discreet correspondence with my sister, as she told me of the great events that were unfolding in the world beyond Hatfield, and silently I prayed to my Protestant God that both He and the Catholic one would favour our cause. But if Mary were to fail, I did not intend to face a traitor's death, so I kept my counsel.

Whether subject to Queen Mary or Queen Jane, whether Tudor or Dudley, my life was endangered. Whichever woman became the first Queen Regnant since Matilda, men would look to me as a focus for their ambitions, as the poor usurper Jane had prophesied. They would seek to marry and control me and through me reach the throne. This I knew, but still I needed to survive the events of history, the powerful forces over which, as yet, I had no control. So I held my tongue, committed to nothing and swore oaths to no one.

As is common, the nobility had not reckoned on the loyalty of the yeomen of England. Regular reports of their attitude gave us cause for hope. The proclamation of Queen Jane, for instance, was greeted with silence in the streets of London. When she was crowned, disembodied voices called out loyally for Queen Mary, queen by right. And as each day passed, more towns and counties foreswore Queen Jane and declared for Mary. Norwich, Colchester, Devon, Oxfordshire, the list grew; as one changed sides, so another gained the courage to do the same. Dudley gathered an army in Jane's name, but it was rumoured that he was forced to pay ten pence a man to find any who would stand with him. My cofferer, good Thomas Parry, confirmed this rumour when he returned from London and told us of the eerie silence that greeted Dudley's men as they rode and marched through the close streets with battle standards flying.

‘All you could hear, my lady, was the ringing of horses' hooves on the stones, the clumping of the men's boots, and the clattering of the knights' armour. A few of their captains tried to raise a cheer or two, my lady, but the crowd refused to take it up, so their cries died away quickly. That made the silence worse, somehow,' he said. ‘Not one cried “Godspeed”. After they'd passed, a few men and women spat on the stones where they'd been and into the piles of horse dung. I almost felt sorry for those soldiers. This fight isn't their doing, and no doubt some of them will lose their lives over it.'

The people's silence echoed mine; together we waited, close-lipped and wary. News reached us that Dudley had sent six ships to the port near Framlingham to try and capture my sister, but the crews refused to perform their commission. They rebelled against him – if it is possible to rebel against a rebel – and gave their vessels over to the command of Mary, whom they already called Queen.

Then the die was cast, and notwithstanding the exorbitant amount paid to them by Dudley, his troops threw down their arms. As my cofferer had foretold, they wanted no part of a battle they would surely lose and they wanted no part of a traitor's death. Almost without a blow, the brief, unlawful reign of Queen Jane was over and the reign of my sister, Queen Mary, began. And just as it had been politic to lie low under the reign
of one queen, so now it became politic to do exactly the opposite.

A few days before Mary's triumphant return to the city that was now her capital, I left my safe-house at Hatfield. With a retinue made up of all my household, and dressed splendidly for the occasion in livery of white and green, I rode in triumph to London. It was a hot July; the peasants were in the fields watching the wheat and the barley ripen. God seemed to be smiling on us all. His sun shone warmly from a porcelain blue sky, and a gentle breeze stirred the colours we displayed. The peasants we passed cheered us as we rode slowly and sedately towards the ancient city. There was an air of holiday about everyone watching. Bloody civil war had been averted and the rightful heir was on the throne. As I had hoped, when I rode past with my glittering retinue, the common people needed little encouragement to leave their tasks, run to the roadside and cheer themselves hoarse, while helping the public houses to do a roaring trade.

‘God bless Princess Elizabeth!' they cried.

I cried back, ‘Long live Queen Mary!'

‘She is the image of her father,' I heard more than one beaming householder declare to another. ‘Look at that red hair! They say her father's was just as fiery.' It always cheered me to hear loud comments about my resemblance to King Henry, because it pushed the slur
of illegitimacy a little further away. I confess I made a special effort to display my long hair as I bowed and nodded, this way and that, from the back of my fine horse. I noticed when I shook it so that it glistened and gleamed in the sun, the applause grew especially loud.

When we arrived at the outskirts of London, others had also gathered to welcome their new queen. They had come for many reasons: curiosity, loyalty to old Henry's daughter, and, as always in the affairs of men, a lust for advancement through royal favour, for riches, for power. As we rode through their ranks, a few cried out my name. I turned and acknowledged their homage and some of them cheered. There was a sense of tranquillity that evening, because England had been put back to rights, God was in his heaven and the queen about to take possession of her castle. Dudley, Lady Jane and her husband had been taken to the Tower. Slender though my affection was for the little nun, I did not much like to think of her mouldering in its grim apartments. I hoped my sister was minded to be merciful. Her usurper was a mere girl, an obvious pawn manipulated by cynical men vastly her senior in age and experience. I would put in a good word for my cousin when I saw the opportunity and she would be happy to take herself off to a quiet life in a country house somewhere, surrounded by her books, her devotions and her beloved Master Ascham. I shuddered at the thought of yet another of my female
relatives facing the axe. I was becoming superstitious about axes and crossed myself when I heard wood being chopped or passed timber cutters on the road.

I rode slowly through the lengthening shadows of that summer evening, pondering on our different fates and relishing the sounds of soldiers who had won their fight so peaceably, the low muffle of chatter, the occasional shouts of laughter, the snatches of song, and the stamping, whinnying and neighing of tethered horses. Tomorrow there would be a triumphant parade of fealty to their new queen. Memories of poor little King Edward, my unfortunate brother, were already fading fast. Not so memories of my father, bluff King Hal, as they called him, remembered by Englishmen still as a great king, so great that they would defend to the death the right of his children to inherit the throne. The affectionate loyalty they felt for my sister, a woman and ruler as yet unknown to them, was all due to Henry's blood running in her veins and their own stubborn sense of what was just. On that pleasant evening six long, perilous years ago now, I felt profoundly grateful to those rough men as I wove my way slowly through their camp, acknowledging with a nod their gentle acclamations.

Someone took the reins of my horse and guided us carefully to the gates of the city, which were now topped with my sister's standard and that of my father.
How bravely they flew in the breeze against a darkening summer sky. I dismounted and my guide gave the reins of my horse to a member of my retinue. Quietly, as the householders of London closed the shutters of their windows against the falling dark, as the nightwatchmen began their guard of their precincts and made their comforting, melodic hourly call, I walked through the close houses and winding streets. My guide led my horse silently and my followers, somewhat depleted in number, followed just as quietly. As I walked, I pondered my new situation. My sister was queen and I was heir to her throne. We stayed silent all the way to Somerset House, where a new and grander bedchamber awaited me than I had ever occupied before. It had been my sister's quarters the last time I had seen it and now it was mine.

As I lay on my bed that night, I was almost as wakeful and wary as I am tonight. But it was not the unfamiliarity of my room that disturbed me. It was the thought of what sleeping in that grand chamber signified, of the future it foretold, my future, grown suddenly more precarious and exciting as heir to the throne of England. What a conundrum I offered my sister: wrong mother, right father, right nationality, wrong religion, right gender, wrong age. I was a threat – any fool could see that. I was also her only royal ally. Just as I would have to tread carefully around
her, so she would have to exercise considerable wisdom regarding me. She would wish to convert me, as she would wish to convert the rest of England. This would be her undoing, I imagined. The English would not take kindly to interference in religion. Right quickly had they chosen Protestantism over Catholicism, for they did not love priests and – whether they could read or not – embraced with alacrity their right to read the word of God for themselves.

My sister was a goodly woman – kind, brave and devout – but she was no statesman. She had a mission and doubtless she believed it came from God. I shuddered as I lay in her bed, imagining what the next few years might be like, for both of us and for England. She was the death knell of all my brother's hopes for his reign, his religion and his country – and I was hers.

Though she was no longer young, I knew she would be in haste to marry and conceive an heir, a Catholic prince, and then what would my fate be? To live in peace with my books and my learned friends at Hatfield? Ha! It might just be possible for Lady Jane, now that the succession had been set aright, but I knew enough of the world to understand that no such quiet future could ever be mine. Every addle-headed, crackpot Protestant zealot would make me the focus of his dreams and ambitions, and with my consent or no, I would be under suspicion for every traitorous act or seditious word.

As I lay there alone, considering my future, I found I was no longer entranced by the fine silken sheets or the opulence of the bed hangings. I decided that once again I would lie low; I would behave as an exemplary princess should. I would be demure, quiet and I would keep my eyes downcast. I would seek instruction in the Catholic faith, yet never quite achieve conversion and claim my slowness indicative of the seriousness of my intent. I would attend mass, but only when at court. Regardless of the provocation, I would utter no word of complaint or criticism. I would procrastinate and beg that I was indisposed or ill. I would make no claims about my own importance and act always as the affectionate, loyal sister and subject. I would infuriate, perhaps, but I would do all in my power not to frighten. When the inevitable occurred and some blind fool raised a rebellion invoking my name, I would do nothing by action or word that could impugn me.

It was the Tower I dreaded. That was where my mother's life had ended and the place where poor Queen Katharine Howard had been hauled, kicking and screaming out her terror of death. I was not much more than the age of Katherine when she died. The blood surged as strongly through my veins as it had through hers. With my head against the pillow I felt and heard the pulse of my life beat firm and strong, as hers must have done, and I held it right dear. Tears
of fright and pity for myself escaped my closed eyelids. With my sister as queen, I had so much to lose, but, if I could play events wisely, so much to gain.

Lying that night in the restless bed of the next in line, I was more afraid than I am this night – afraid that even my good head might not be enough to see me safely through treacherous waters. I felt alone, unprotected and young. I cried for my own mother, yet did not forget how often women – even queens – died in childbirth and poor Mary had never been robust. Anxious, and, yes, treasonous thoughts circled in my head, hour after wakeful hour. I only slept once I had made the decision to take my retinue and ride out of the city on the morrow, greet my sister as she approached and ride back with her in triumph through the streets of London. It was important to establish right from the beginning of this reign that I was her loyal subject, her sister and her rightful heir.

‘I shall announce you, my lady,' the soldier said and disappeared behind the flap at the front of the tent. I ran my fingers through my hair and tried to smooth some creases from my dress. I was suddenly nervous. I had not seen my sister for many years and now she was no longer a despised and neglected princess, but my queen. How would she greet me? Would she see me as friend or foe? Our correspondence had been friendly enough and
I hoped that my support during the Dudley rebellion would stand me in good stead. However, before I had time to reflect much longer upon the strangeness of this meeting, she stood before me.

I had forgotten how small she was – inches shorter than I – and she looked so much older than I remembered, though she was in years but thirty-two. Despite her rich velvet gown and proliferation of exquisite jewellery, she looked tired, tousled and travel-stained. Lowering my head with a genuine sense of fealty, I curtsied to her. ‘Your Majesty,' I said, ‘may I congratulate you on your great victory.'

She stepped towards me and put a not ungentle finger under my chin; with it she guided me to my feet. ‘You have grown,' she said, in a voice that was just as I remembered – low and melodic, with the hint of something exotic, perhaps Spanish in its tones.

‘Aye, Your Majesty.'

‘You must find me greatly changed, old woman that I have become.'

‘Oh no, Your Majesty, you have not changed at all.'

‘More flattery,' she said, in a weary voice, almost as if she were talking for her own ears only. ‘I daresay I must get used to it.' Then she seemed to make an effort and smiled at me. ‘It is good of you to come and join me, Elizabeth. You and I are all the family we have left.'

Strangely and against my will, I found my eyes awash
with tears. The queen noticed and her manner became even more as I remembered it when we were children. She seemed nothing like a queen to me at that moment; more like a woman, careworn with work and demands beyond her capacity. I felt an answering sympathy and loneliness as I met her gentle, yet exhausted, gaze. Here was a woman who ought to have been a wife and mother of a large brood, a thrifty and efficient housewife. But she was over-burdened by the prospect of monarchy and, as I soon discovered, martyrdom.