The Queen's Governess (35 page)

 

 

 

“Did he treat you
with the respect you are due as a royal sister-in-law?” I demanded the moment Elizabeth returned to her bedchamber.

“I can tell he’s bored, Kat,” she whispered, gesturing me over to the open second-story window, much as her mother used to do when she did not want conversations overheard. “Bored with waiting for an heir he is not sure is coming—”

“What?”

“Sh! Oh, the doctors and midwives and soothsayers claim so, but I can tell he’s not sure.”

“The queen would not make that up!” I protested.

“Sh! She believes it—desperately. Now, this is all my reading between the lines, of course.”

“In English or Spanish or the language of love?”

“Were you eavesdropping? I used my wiles to get what I want, I admit I did.”

“But what
did
he want?”

“I warrant not only ‘my love,’ as he put it—oh, do not look at me like that—he meant family love—”

“My green goat he did! I vow, he wants to wed you to someone where he can have access to your bed too.”

“He did mention a possible marriage, but I put that off. Kat, he promised we could leave as soon as Mary’s child is born. He’s leaving then too, though it grieves me it will be because he’s stripped the treasury of funds and plans to lead good, stout English soldiers against France, which should be our ally against Spain—and not the other way around.”

And so, I saw my girl had learned to use her feminine wiles for political purpose. How and where had she learned such in prison and rural exile? Had it come through her blood from her mother? This was a far cry from the young woman who had nearly been seduced by Tom Seymour. I had thought she had much to learn but, evidently, so did I.

By the end
of July, after putting off her heir’s birth time, and again from May, Mary collapsed in hysteria and admitted she could not be with child. As relieved as I was for the country and Elizabeth, I pitied Her Majesty too, for I knew how painful it was to long for a child with a man one loved and never be able to bear one.

Then, too, Philip of Spain left England for a trip home, some said to see his mistress he had been kind enough not to bring with him for his honeymoon. Mary sent for her sister and, in the only ten minutes they had had together in years, told her that she would soon have her beloved husband back and indeed conceive a child next time. It was dropsy and belly swelling and the cessation of her menses that had deluded her this time, she claimed. But at least Elizabeth, her entourage and I were allowed to head for Hatfield, where a letter from my beloved John awaited me.

I read it with shaking hands, yearning for him so strongly that I sensed how Mary must have made herself sick, longing for a child, desperate for something she could not have. John wrote he was studying the classics and Italian art at the University of Padua, where he was training horses and continuing to write his book,
The Art of Riding
. He had been to Bologna and Venice and had bought me some books and “pretty things.” They believed in
libertas scholastica
there, academic freedom. He was called an
ultramontana
, meaning a student who had come from beyond the Alps. He loved me greatly and missed me terribly—like a lovesick rustic, I kept kissing the page—and he bid me greet Her Grace for him and prayed the Lord God for our safety.

Beyond the Alps . . . pretty things . . . freedom . . . loved and missed me . . . safety . . .

I had held in my hopes and fears for him so long, I burst out in tears and fled outside, where Elizabeth came to comfort me as I had her so many times. We were in the privy garden when Sir Thomas Pope [a name I thought most appropriate for one sent from Catholic Mary], our latest gaoler, as Elizabeth called them, rode in with his wife and an entourage. It was another cruel reminder that I did not have freedom or safety or love, and mayhap never would.

HATFIELD HOUSE

 

 

 

F
rom the depths of despair came deliverance for me, Elizabeth and England.

On the vast stage of national events, tragedy: King Philip squandered English funds and men in a foreign war and lost it, too, when Calais, the last English property on the Continent, fell to the French. How proud the previous monarchs of England had been to yet possess that European stronghold, a legacy of the powerful Plantagenet past. It was said that Queen Mary declared that if she died and they cut her open, they would find the word
Calais
incised upon her heart.

Philip returned to her for a brief time and another pregnancy was proclaimed, but people just shook their heads and grumbled. With Mary—some called her Bloody Mary now—seeing would be believing.

Elizabeth’s entire household chaffed under the continued control of Thomas Pope and his wife, Beatrice, as we had under other watch-dogs all these years of waiting for events to fall our way. It gave me a new understanding of the term “lady-in-waiting.” But in the autumn of 1558, great gifts from God began to rain upon us.

The first was in this way: Elizabeth and I, with several of her ladies—trailed, of course, by the ubiquitous Popes—took a brisk, late November walk on the grounds before Hatfield House. Our daily exercise helped us to manage the tensions and the tedium of our days.

Her Grace, like her sister, was somewhat nearsighted, though not as bad, so pointing, I told her, “I see a messenger coming this way fast.”

“Dare we hope to hear another royal heir is a figment of disease and desperation?” she whispered.

We had heard that Mary was ailing sore, so I had hopes that someday the messenger would come to say she was on her deathbed and my girl should prepare herself to be queen. Mary had finally reinstated Elizabeth in the line of succession—though in line after, of course, any children she might bear Philip, who was by then King of Spain as well as England.

I shaded my eyes. Leaves were falling and blowing, but something about the rider’s form and style on that big horse struck me, a definite command of the great beast and of himself and—

“John!” I cried. The steed’s sharp hoofs threw gravel behind them like a cloud. “It’s John!”

Elizabeth gasped, but, lifting my skirts, I was off, running. Yes, John. I was not dreaming. John had come home to me!

He called my name, once, twice, but I was too out of breath to answer. He looked so fine, his face sun-colored, his cloak flapping behind him like the wings of a great bird. Sturdy, broader-chested than I recalled. He slowed slightly, called out, “My love!” and, with one arm, leaned down to snatch me up into the saddle before him.

My bottom bumped across his shin and knees, but I just held to him as we bounced along, managing a kiss that went from nose to chin until he reined in. I did not even heed the others when the Pope, as we called him behind his back, protested, “You were not announced, sirrah!”

“Welcome back! Do you have news, my lord Ashley?” Elizabeth’s clarion voice rang out, also ignoring the sputtering Pope as she grasped John’s booted ankle.

“That I have returned to serve Your Grace and be a husband to my wife again!” John helped me slide to the ground, then dismounted and knelt at Elizabeth’s feet. “I returned in secret a few days ago and have been living at Cecil’s house in Wimbledon,” he told her, “but I could wait no longer to see you, Your Grace—or the stubborn woman who has long served you.”

She extended her hand to John, and he kissed it. My hands gripped hard together, joy rampaged through me. She tried to raise John, but he stayed down.

“I have more news,” he said. “Her Majesty, your sister, is gravely ill, God rest her soul—despite it all.”

“I’ll not have such talk, Lord Ashley!” the Pope interrupted again. “ ’Tis treason to talk such of the queen’s dying. Now, everyone back inside and you, sirrah, with me.”

“He is my servant and friend,” Elizabeth said, rounding on the Pope, “and he stays with me and Mistress Ashley. We will know our queen has left us only when she sends to me the coronation ring—she told me thus when I last saw her.”

That sobered Thomas Pope and me. Why had my girl not told me that? But if John was right, that Mary was truly, finally, going to depart this earth, then Elizabeth Tudor would no longer be my girl but England’s queen.

That day I recall she had her way, keeping John with us. Even the Pope, who had been the bane of our existence for nigh on three years, backed off and bowed to her wishes. People—all but me—had begun to treat her differently of late. Hope for a new beginning was in the air, blowing the past away, just as the wind blew these leaves. We started back inside, the three of us walking together: John with one arm around my waist, the other holding his horse’s reins; Elizabeth with her arm linked in mine and already peppering John with questions about his learning at the university.

But then, again, I heard more horses coming and turned back to look up the lane again. “Riders,” I said. “A great cloud of them.”

“John,” Elizabeth said, “give me a boost up on your horse. I want to be over there, under that biggest oak, should this be my time.”

My insides cartwheeled at the thought. That many riders, come clear to Hatfield, could only mean one thing. Were all our years of fearing, of waiting, over?

I thought she might ride out to meet them, but she did as she had said. She rode across the lawn to dismount under the massive oak where she and I had talked of many things, where I had given her her mother’s ring. John and I hurried to stand behind her—the others came too, but at first I looked not at anyone but Elizabeth of England.

Bareheaded, her fur-trimmed cloak blowing in the brisk breeze, her cheeks burnished by the wind and excitement, she stood waiting for the men to dismount. Eleven of them, I quickly counted. And Cecil! Cecil was not only among them but seemed to lead them. I saw others of Queen Mary’s Privy Council I recognized, some who had favored Elizabeth and some who had not. And tall and proud, intentionally slow in dismounting, sinfully handsome—dear Lord in heaven, it was Robin Dudley. We had heard that he had been released from the Tower and sent to France to fight for King Philip, who had told Mary she should pardon him, but we’d had no news of his whereabouts or well-being.

Our friend William Cecil nearly vaulted off his horse and went immediately to one knee, with Robin—all the men—uncovering their heads and going down too. John and I knelt behind her with the Popes on their knees farther back. Her red-gold hair glinting in a shaft of sudden sun, Elizabeth stood awaiting their words and her destiny.

“Your Grace—Your Majesty,” Cecil said, out of breath. He extended to her in his palm the onyx coronation ring that left the monarch’s hand only upon death. For one moment, Elizabeth stared wide-eyed at it, not moving, mayhap not daring to believe.

“Your royal sister—I regret,” Cecil said, looking up and biting back a smile that lit only his eyes, “has sadly departed this life, and left to you the Tudor throne and the realm of England, Scotland and Ireland.”

Blinking back tears, Elizabeth took the ring. Shaking, she thrust it on the fourth finger of her right hand. It was too big, but I knew this huge task that lay before her would never be too big for my girl—my queen.

“This,” she said in her lovely, clear voice, “is the Lord’s work, and it is marvelous in our eyes.”

I knew full well she was quoting the Bible, but I thought about that word
our.
It was the plural royal prerogative, but I believe, after all she and I and John had been through together, that
our
meant us, too.

 

 

 

Within several hours,
while place seekers clear from London and English folk from nearby shires flocked to the gates of Hatfield to glimpse or petition their new queen, Elizabeth met with the members of her newly named, yet incomplete Council in the great hall at Hatfield. It was, I heard her announce to the lords in attendance, “a place I find most dear, for it was here my royal parents used to entertain in their happy days.” I saw she wore not only the coronation ring on her right hand, but her mother’s ring next to it.