The Queen's Governess (13 page)

The king’s physician, despite his ride from London, was garbed in the traditional long gown with fur-trimmed wide sleeves. I knew from my time of illness that had made me miss a trip to France that the more fur on the gown, the more learned the man, so this was a skilled physician indeed. A neck ruff echoed the ruffles at his wrists—much dust stained—and he wore a close-fitting cap with ear flaps. He bled Mary, inquired of her astrological signs, then bathed her forehead in distilled water of lavender to refresh her from her megrim.

“Dear lady,” I heard him say after he had treated her with other herbs and possets—one, he’d said, containing crushed pearls, a curative to also relieve headaches—“I believe the source of your disease may come partly from your circumstances.”

My eyes widened and my ears pricked up. Was the royal physician fishing for some sort of dangerous reply from her, or was his sympathy—and subtle criticism of her treatment here—sincere?

Tears filled her eyes; I saw her nod and grasp his hand. I knew she was desperate for any kindness and care. “Doctor, before you go,” she said, “would you mind if I practiced my Latin a bit? It has been a long time, and I fear it grows rusty.”

He adjusted his hood and nodded. “You may, my lady.”

She spoke quickly, desperately, I thought. My Latin was a bit rusty too, but I caught the tenor of her words. Using perfect pronunciation, she begged the doctor to tell the Spanish ambassador in London, Eustace Chapuys, that she was being terribly treated here in her sister’s household, at the command of the king’s wife. King’s wife—
uxor regis
—that’s what she called the queen, and I had to admire her pluck. “And, please, I beg you, tell no one but Chapuys,” she hurried on in Latin, gripping his wrist, even as Lady Bryan entered the small chamber to see how she was doing, “that the king is threatening me with execution for my continued resistance, but it is the fault of that woman who has bewitched him!”

“Ah, my lady,” the doctor said in English, standing hastily and patting her shoulder, “I shall pray for the best for you. And your Latin does need a bit of work.” But he nodded to her and pressed his hand to hers before he went below, for he was not to be permitted to remain the night. [I add a note here. Years later, I learned that the brave royal physician had indeed informed the Spanish ambassador of her deplorable treatment, but had begged him not to remonstrate with the king or she would be even more imperiled.]

Tears ran from the corners of Mary’s eyes when he was gone. She blinked them back and looked straight at me, silent but pleading. She knew full well my Latin was good, for we had spoken it together before we’d been admonished by the house steward to speak the king’s English in the English princess’s household. So Mary was trusting me not to betray her.

That night, I sat over a piece of paper with my pen poised, realizing I now had the very thing Cromwell, and certainly the queen, desired: proof to put Mary away in the Tower, if not worse. Cromwell had done so much for me, and my future greatly depended on his goodwill. Anne Boleyn had befriended me and trusted me near her precious daughter, whom I loved and wanted to protect.

But I crumpled up the blank paper and sailed it into my low-burning fire, where it caught and flamed to ash. When the king’s steward, Lord Shelton, my friend Madge’s father, asked me the next day if I had overheard what the Lady Mary had said to the doctor in Latin, I told him she was reciting parts from Caesar’s conquest of Gaul, but was also referring to her father as the Caesar of England, who had conquered the hearts of his people.

I admit I had now learned to lie, even under fear and threat of duress, even if it meant defiance of the powers in the kingdom. That skill was to serve me well later as I continued to serve the Tudors.

 

 

 

The king was coming.
Cromwell was coming. The household was in chaos.

The queen had visited rather often, once with His Majesty, but this was a visit on his own to see his little daughter. But would he see his older daughter?

Poor Mary, despite all she’d been through, had hopes. I could understand that now. Though her father had betrayed her and her mother, she loved him yet and wanted his goodwill, not only so she would not be completely cast aside from the line of succession, but because something instinctively made daughters love their fathers, even bad ones. Yes, I knew that.

Still weak from her illness, Mary waited in her small chamber, praying she would be summoned while the king dandled Elizabeth on his knee and carried her about downstairs, remarking how she looked Tudor through and through. Still, I must admit, Elizabeth had her mother’s eyes and graceful, long-fingered hands. Though she was not yet two years old, she had inherited her mother’s love of finery and tendency to primp and preen. Oh, yes, and she had both the Tudor and the Boleyn tempers, a volatile combination.

But Cromwell was the only visitor who called on Mary that day. As I passed in the hall, I could hear him berating her for still being so stubborn toward the queen, for not knowing her place as bastard, not heir. When he left her room, I ducked into another so he would not know I was hovering. He had already scolded me for not giving him what “cannon fodder” he needed to deal with Mary Tudor once and for all. But he had urged me to stay in the little princess’s affections, for the future lay in her.

While everyone was down in the great hall with the king, I knocked on the closed door of Mary’s room. “Who?” came her distinctive low voice.

“Kat, my lady.”

“Enter.”

She sat at her table before a small mirror, with a handkerchief crumpled in her hands as if she’d collapsed there after her interview with Cromwell. Her eyes and nose were red.

“I shall tell you plain in English and not Latin, Kat,” she said. “I loathe him but love him and long to see him.”

I knew who she meant.

“But I am not to be summoned. I have not seen him for years, and he cannot even bid me good day or fare-thee-well. I wish I were dead!”

“No, no,” I said, and began to cry too. I knelt by her stool—let anyone who came upon us think I was bowing the knee to her. “My lady, you have too much to live for. Your heritage, your mother . . .”

“Yes, yes,” she said, pressing her clasped hands to her mouth. “Tell no one of my despair. I would show my father I am his indeed, strong and regal . . .” She shook her head and blew her nose.

“You could wave him farewell.”

“They will not let me near him.”

“I know a place on the rooftop from which you could wave at him in the courtyard as he mounts, but you would have to climb many stairs in the tower turret—up on the battlements.”

Her head lifted. “I could wage my own war on the battlements,” she said, nodding. “He may not see me, but I shall see him, even if from afar, but I am still so weak from my affliction. Will you help me?”

Devil take it—take them all,
I fumed silently, but said, “I will, but we must go now.”

She struggled up the twisting staircase, out of breath. I dared to touch her royal person with my hands right on her waist and arm to help her climb. We emerged into a stiff breeze and startling sunlight, perhaps just in time, for we could hear horses stamping and snorting in the courtyard below amidst the murmurs of many voices.

“I must do this alone,” she told me, squeezing my hand. “They must not know of your help to me. Go down now. Be seen among them all.”

“Yes, Your Grace,” I told her, using the forbidden form of address.

“Dear Kat, I shall not forget your kindnesses. Go!” she commanded, and pushed at me feebly.

I, too, was out of breath and sweating when I ran out a side door into the courtyard and mingled with the small crowd from the household encircling the royal party. Crowded toward the back of the cobbled courtyard were clusters of manor workers, no doubt thrilled to see their king. Everyone was prepared to bid His Majesty farewell. I glanced up and saw Mary above, leaning on the crenellations, waving.

Others noticed too. Necks craned. People gasped. The king had mounted before he noticed the lifted faces and looked up.

Silence fell. Only the creak of a saddle and shifting of a horseshoe on a cobble sounded.

Mary stepped even closer to the edge. Adjusting her skirts, she knelt in obeisance to her father and king. I gasped as I recalled her words to me that she would like to die. Surely, she would not cast herself off in protest! I would be to blame, for this ploy was my idea.

Still ahorse, the king bowed to her, sweeping off his plumed velvet hat in a broad and graceful arc. “Good day and good health to you, daughter!” he called out, then turned and led his entourage from the courtyard through the cheering, waving crowd.

It was a good thing he was soon outside the walls, heading down the gravel road, or he might have noted that the commoners, if not their betters, kept cheering when he was long gone, not for their king but for their once-upon-a-time, half-Spanish Catholic Princess of Wales.

WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON

 

 

 

D
earest Kat, I’m so happy we’re together again!”

I was thrilled to see my old friend Joan Champernowne, now a twenty-two-year-old bride, Lady Denny. She had previously been widowed, when it was often the women who died in childbirth to leave young husbands behind. Still, I was not happy to be summoned back to court by the queen. In my nearly two-year absence from public life, Lady Joan Denny had arrived with her husband, who was much in favor with the king. Sir Anthony Denny had received rich lands in the full-scale dissolution of the monasteries and had been appointed to the office of king’s remembrancer, or keeper of his personal records. And, truth be told, Sir Anthony kept accounts of who received or purchased former church lands. That royal largesse was still a powerful enticement to keep subjects in line who might balk at the king’s increasing control of church and state.

Joan’s appointment as one of the queen’s ladies swelled that number to nearly twenty. But, as delighted as I was to be reunited with her, I was torn about the reunion with Queen Anne I was awaiting as we stood in her privy chamber at Whitehall. The only relief I felt—though it pained me deeply too—was that I would not have to face John Ashley after how I had avoided him and left court without so much as a farewell. Because his father was ill, he had gone home for several months to help his half brother with their horse-breeding concerns.

I listened to Joan’s excited words about court life in a melancholy humor, for I had once felt the same as she did now. At least she had a well-placed protector in her husband. Unfortunately for me, I learned that the Seymours had continued their rise: not only had Tom’s favorite sister Jane come to court and caught the king’s eye, but Edward Seymour had been appointed a gentleman of the king’s privy chamber. Tom was soon to return from one of his glorified errands abroad, and I dreaded seeing the wretch again.

Though Joan pointed Jane Seymour out to me, I could have picked her out myself, perhaps because Tom’s face was branded in my mind forever. As different as was Mistress Jane’s coloring from that of her brothers, she had the Seymour nose and mouth, and Tom had told me she was blond with blue eyes. While Joan regaled me with stories of her own family, I cast glances at the Seymour woman, who seemed quite the opposite from her gregarious, aggressive brothers. She was also as day is to night from the bold, enticing, dark-haired and dark-eyed royal mistress she served. Anne was all for the new religion, but Joan said that Jane was still as Catholic as they come. If I had to sum up Tom’s sister from watching her for that quarter of an hour, I would say she was sweet, shy and demure.
King’s roving eye or not, she won’t last long at court,
I thought.

I was also surprised to see quite a number of king’s men—including the poet, Thomas Wyatt—in this chamber immediately adjacent to the queen’s bedroom. In Anne’s early days here, the approach to that ultimate sanctuary through a series of rooms was well controlled. From the presence chamber where most courtiers were permitted, the withdrawing chamber winnowed out all but those closest to the queen before the even more limited access to the Privy Chamber and then the very private bedchamber. How things had grown lax around Anne in the years I’d been away.

Now heads turned and elbows poked ribs; we slowly hushed as raised voices sounded through the door of Anne’s inner sanctum. Quite clearly she cried, “George, I am sick to death of it all! She’s ill, so why can’t she just die?”

I mouthed my words to Joan: “The Queen Dowager or the Lady Mary?”

“She could mean either,” she whispered back.

Anne plunged recklessly on: “Catherine took the motto ‘Humble and loyal,’ so why isn’t she? She is overly proud and pompous to defy the king!”