Just a Queen (7 page)

Nine

‘Had I been in Queen Mary's place, your excellency, I would have taken my husband's dagger and stabbed him with it.'

I flourished my hand as if it contained an invisible blade. The storm of emotion that had overwhelmed me when I first heard the news of the Italian musician's murder had passed to such an extent that I was beginning to take pleasure in the court gossip about the scandal, a scandal that was now on the lips of all Europe. Mary was no longer a wise, accomplished and fecund queen. Now she was a pitiful, foolish female who had married the wrong man for love. Where once I had feared she was seen as the superior queen, I took satisfaction from the scales finally tipping in my favour. I had already resigned myself to the fact that as long as we both lived, we would be compared constantly.

The assembled petitioners and courtiers applauded my play-acting and the Spanish ambassador, to whom I had addressed the bloodthirsty remark, acknowledged my antics with a smile and a bow, but as he straightened up I saw his elegantly raised eyebrow and remembered too late that we were still officially in negotiations about a possible marriage with his master Archduke Charles of Austria. Privately I knew that such a union would never take place and that was why I found it so easy to forget the many hours spent by our various representatives arranging the match.

Diplomatically, however, I knew it was important to keep my hand in marriage dangling before the Spanish, while also keeping it hopefully free of any daggers, imaginary or otherwise. I had to appear as if I was seriously considering the archduke's proposal. As all this flashed through my brain, I recognised my faux pas and hastily tried to rectify the situation.

‘Of course, my lord, if your master and I were married I would never take such action against him.' Even as the words escaped my lips I realised they were only making things worse. I tried to make amends, but, again, only compounded the difficulty. ‘Not, of course, that your gracious master, the archduke, would ever do something as extraordinary as the crime perpetrated by the consort of the Queen of Scotland.'

This would not do either and my mortification intensified. The ambassador, as befitted his profession, took pity on me and steered our conversation to more mundane matters. Nevertheless, I shuddered later when I thought how my words would be repeated and laughed at by my old friend and rival Philip of Spain. I only soothed myself back to sleep by reminding myself how much more humiliated Mary must be in her awful predicament.

When I was a little girl, Kat often warned me that pride cometh before a fall – particularly when I boasted of my achievements in the schoolroom, an admonition that never failed to irritate me. If only I had paid more attention.

We were enjoying a performance of conjurers. I remember the magician and his wonders vividly. He was able to make different coloured flames appear from the end of his wand and doves disappear and reappear beneath a silken cloth. Dressed in a weird purple costume decorated with moons and stars, the master conjurer was accompanied by a small band of musicians who played to punctuate and exaggerate the wonders of their master's magic. They beat the drum as the magician prepared to astonish us, and clashed the cymbals at the climax of every trick. It was pleasant to gasp at the sudden appearance of a bouquet of flowers – seemingly from nowhere, or to duck our heads as a newly conjured bird flew and flapped above us on release from its master's hands. It was also pleasant to receive the conjured flowers and the length of fine silk cloth that had miraculously remade itself after being snipped into little pieces by the conjurer's scissors. After running the silk through my fingers and peering at it closely through my spectacles I could attest there was no sign of either repair or damage.

The more religious members of my court sometimes whispered about witchcraft and the devil's work, but I had been assured by my servants that there was nothing supernatural about such trickery. It is all done with distraction and sleight of hand and relies on our willingness to believe. Magicians are apprenticed. They learn their trade as surely as cobblers or coffin-makers.

I was applauding the magician's latest trick when Cecil approached. ‘Your Majesty, important news from Scotland.'

There was only one thing that this could mean. I turned towards Cecil and leant closer. He told me succinctly and I slumped back in my chair. Then I commanded the magician to finish his trick, the musicians to stop playing and for the assembled company to be silent. Once all was quiet, I stood and pushed my chair back from the table. To my horror, my eyes filled with tears. To forestall them spilling, I blurted out the news.

‘The Queen of Scots is lighter of a fair son, and I am but barren stock.'

The birth of Prince James changed everything. He was a boy, he was healthy and his mother still lived. The future of Scotland was now a little more certain. Nothing in this dangerous world is ever certain for long, however. Babies can and often do die. My own father was a second son; his brother Arthur was the one destined for the throne. Arthur lived long enough to be invested as Prince of Wales and marry Katherine of Aragon, although she bitterly disputed it. He died at fifteen, leaving his little brother Henry the heir to his father's throne. Kings, princes, queens and princesses die all the time. Indeed, the younger they are the more likely. My father sired many, many children who either died in the womb or very soon after they were born. From six wives (and who knows how many concubines) he managed only three children who lived into their teens and I am now the only one of his offspring still on this earth. I am also the one who has lived the longest. I am the same age now as my father was when he died.

Oh, it confounds me to think of such a thing! He seemed so old to me and though I know the mirror tells me that my age does not sit as lightly upon me as I would wish, I do not feel myself to be as old as he seemed. I am still nimble on my feet and do not have to be pushed through my palace on a chair with wheels. I stand straight, my back does not stoop and I do not huff and puff at the merest exertion. My knees may ache – a little – and the joints in my fingers are stiffened with being curled up around a pen for so many hours. (What is a monarch but a glorified clerk? We wield a pen far more often than a sword and spill more ink than blood.) I do not stink of putrefaction, nor do my legs carry huge oozing ulcers that must be dressed painfully every day. My sister, brother and I used to hear the king's bellowing and cursing down the corridors as Queen Catherine Parr tended his wounds. We shuddered at the sound then, and I shudder at the memory now.

At the time of James's birth, my battle with the smallpox was still quite fresh in men's memories. Whenever I as much as sneezed I sensed fear among those who surrounded me. But it was not only the fragility of my hold on life that exercised men's minds in those early days after Prince James entered the world. The gender of Mary's child changed everything, both for her and for me.

Men will always prefer another man to rule over them, even if that man be a mere suckling babe hardly a few hours old, no more aware of being boy, girl or turnip. From the moment of his birth, men began to turn their imaginations to the future of the baby prince and consequently away from the present of his mother.

Within days of his arrival, my advisors and – even less tolerably – those impertinent ruffians in parliament increased their demands that I should marry and bear a good English prince.

‘The House of Commons are threatening to refuse to approve your supplies, Your Grace, unless you either settle this question of your marriage or name a successor.'
The pre-eminent nobleman of the land, Thomas Howard,
Duke of Norfolk, proffered a document as he spoke.

‘Who are they to question their queen?'

‘They are merely expressing the fears of many of your subjects, Your Grace, including many gathered here today.' The noble duke took a step forward to emphasise his point, while behind him many of the members of my privy council began nodding.

‘My subjects have no right to any “fears”, as you call them, my lord. It is my task to care for the future of this kingdom, not theirs, not yours, nor anyone else's.'

The lords of my council ceased their nodding and Thomas Howard took a step back. ‘Your subjects daily hope and pray that you will wed and produce heirs from your own body, Your Majesty, and of your own blood. It is the natural way of things. You are still young and may yet prove as fertile as the Queen of Scots. But, if God does not see fit to bless you with your own issue, the new Prince of Scotland is a logical heir and should be so named.'

‘God's blood, Norfolk! You may be the first lord in this kingdom, but you forget yourself. I am ruler here and I will take no counsel on a matter so intimate to my own person and happiness – from any man. Nay—' and at this I turned from him to stare pointedly at the parliamentary petition that he still held in his hands, ‘nor from any group of men, no matter how puffed up by their own imagined importance.'

‘But it is natural for women to marry and bear children, Your Grace. It is the state that God ordained for them.'

‘You speak like a swaggering soldier, my lord duke. Hold your tongue.'

I looked around at the men who had crowded into my chamber, their mulish expressions telling me all I needed to know. They might hold their tongues, for now, but they were of one mind. To them I was a foolish and emotional woman, skittishly refusing to accept my destiny and so refusing to secure theirs. How little they knew me. Suddenly I felt close to tears. Alone, unprotected. Was there no one to take my part? Was there no one who understood that the very thought of marriage and motherhood made my innards turn sick and the blood in my veins run cold?

‘And what of you, Robin? What have you to say to me? Are you willing to abandon me to the tender mercies of some unknown man? To see me suffer the same marital horrors as my sister, my cousin or—' I stopped myself from uttering the names Anne Boleyn and Amy Robsart – my mother and Robin's own dead wife.

‘Good madam, dearest queen. I would never abandon you. I swear that I am ready to die at your feet at anytime – even here and now.'

‘What has that to do with the matter? What good would your death do me? And what use are your chivalrous gestures? You are like the rest. You wish me to marry and you do not care how miserable it may make me to do so.'

Now I took a step towards them and as one they stepped backwards. Those at the rear of the group found themselves pinned against the wainscoting, something I might have found funny in other circumstances. This was my privy council, the men on whom I was meant to rely, the men who were my allies and most trusted servants. I felt betrayed by them all.

‘The devil take you and your disloyalty – every man Jack of you! You are craven, churlish and whore-begotten. You pledge your loyalty from one side of your mouth, but in truth I am no more to you than a burdensome fool to be cajoled and flattered. You would swap me for some other prince in a heartbeat if given the opportunity. I will not be moved by your prating and I will prolong this impudent audience no longer!' With a wave of my hand, I sent them and their cursed petition out of my sight.

When I reached the privacy and safety of my own chambers, I threw objects around the room and stamped my feet as I ranted about the impudence of men to my startled ladies. When I paused for breath, I looked at their faces and suddenly felt as alone with them as I had with the men of my council. Kat, my Kat, the woman who had sung to me as a baby, admonished me as a child and stayed fiercely loyal to me through good times and bad, had died almost a year before and my heart still grieved for her. When she was alive, I could confide almost anything to her and she would soothe me and when we were alone put her arms around me as if I was once again a child. Kat was as good a mother to me as any woman could have been. Blanche Parry had replaced Kat as my chief gentlewoman and she was next in closeness to me, but she was not Kat and never could be. Kat was gone. (Not that Kat would have offered me much comfort. When she was alive, she was as quick as all the rest to urge me to marry and provide an heir.)

Looking at the bowed heads of my women, I felt the fury leave me, to be replaced by a weariness so profound I felt I might drop where I stood. The candlestick I had picked up to hurl across the room fell from my fingers onto the floor with a dispiriting clunk. I sank down onto a stool and put my chin in my hands. Blanche, the bravest of my women, stepped towards me, but I waved her away. ‘Get out,' I said quietly. ‘All of you.'

My weariness and depression of spirits did me no good. The pressure from every quarter intensified. Bitterly I wondered why the birth of a baby to another woman should have made my own life so damned uncomfortable. Once again, some other person's decisions were affecting my own life and future. Finally because I could avoid neither the question nor the impertinent petition indefinitely, I summoned a delegation of fifty-seven members of the two houses of my parliament. Unable to bear any more earnest entreaties to either give up my unmarried state or name my own winding sheet (for so I have always regarded an acknowledged heir), I forbade them to speak. They could present me with their petition if they must, but in silence. I would speak to them; they would hold their peace.

As I awaited their delegation, I sat in state, elevated on my throne and dressed carefully for the occasion. Truth be told, I was feeling vulnerable to the logic of their pleading. I knew that an heir was a reasonable thing to ask of me as their prince, but it was the one thing I would never give them. To mask my insecurity, therefore, I wished to awe them with the trappings of my royal status, to blind them with my flashing and glittering jewels and the magnificence of my robes. I planned every detail of the audience to communicate how presumptuous they were to seek to influence me upon any matters at all, let alone those that pertained intimately to my person.