The King's Daughter (13 page)
The arriving courtiers hummed around us. Servants ran everywhere instead of walking, balancing platters or burdened under heaps of cloaks like ants with over-sized crumbs. Women tugged at their gowns and turned suddenly to go back to their lodgings to change their jewels. The air inside the house was rich with perfumes, herbs, wood smoke, sweat, dog, and roasting meats.
The usual feast preceded the masque. Wine fountains bubbled on the tables. The diners stretched to thrust their glasses under the transparent red sheets of falling claret. Serving men stood at every elbow with flagons of ale. I had seen this greedy, abandoned drinking before, but never with such a wild edge. A last chance to indulge, at the Chief Secretary’s expense. Even before the arrival of the roast meats, Cecil’s ambitious hospitality was beginning to unbuckle the evening.
‘Where’s the prince, your son?’ my uncle boomed, wavinghis glass at the packed tables. ‘I’ve scarce seen him since Gravesend!’
‘He’ll be off somewhere losing his voice with hallooing and singing of anthems,’ my father replied sourly, not caring who heard. ‘And praying for our souls, I don’t doubt. And rattling coins into his penance box against all the foul language he fears we’ll use tonight.’ He shot a malevolent look at Cecil, sitting at a lower table. ‘He needs better instruction!’
Seated with the women who were to be the chief maskers that evening, I heard one of them murmur that the Danish king had cast a vile spell over my father, just as the witch Circe once turned Ulysses and his men into swine.
‘Perhaps no spell was needed.’ Sly glances slid in my direction.
‘Hush,’ said another young woman. ‘You forget yourself.’ I recognised her as the fair-haired girl who had been dancing with William Seymour. This evening I could see her nipples peeking above the line of her bodice. I could have sworn that they were rouged.
‘The Danes are all drunkards. Everyone knows that!’ the first woman insisted. ‘All of them! I accuse only the Danes. It’s their long cold nights.’
Other voices joined in. ‘They’re not so bad as the Scots!’ ‘As you say, those cold, cold nights.’
‘English women…!’ The dancing girl with the rouged nipples rose to her feet and hoisted her glass. ‘Our honour is at stake.’
I saw now that she was only a little older than I in years though she seemed at least a decade more in experience.
‘Women, of all kingdoms and ages,’ she cried. ‘To the barricades! We must not lag behind the men in revelry.’ She saluted me with her glass. ‘Will you join us, your grace? I hear that you have a pretty singing voice and a neat foot for a figure.’
I met her cat-like blue eye. The countess of something… Suffolk? Derby, perhaps. ‘I still study the ways of the court,’ I said. ‘I’m a mere apprentice. Let me sharpen my battle skills a little more before I join you at the barricades.’
She shook her head and smiled but her eyes were assessing and cold. ‘Quite sharp enough already, I think. We must all take care when you decide at last to enter the lists.’ Her mocking curtsy was a little marred by a sideways stagger.
A Howard, I decided.
‘Faith! Hope! Charity!’ Yet another woman rose to her feet. ‘Come! The Queen of Sheba has already withdrawn. We must follow her to prepare.’
‘But you yourself are Charity,’ cried the woman who had called the Scots drunkards.
‘So I am!’ said the first in astonishment. ‘So I am! But I never begin at home… nor finish, neither.’ She knocked over her stool with her farthingale as she turned to go.
‘Courage! To the field!’ cried the young Howard woman. She marched away with her glass held high like a standard over her head. Faith, Hope and Charity followed tipsily, laughing, together with several others.
No one summoned me to sit on the royal dais, so I found a place by the wall from which I could watch but not be widely seen. I saw the Chief Secretary standing in the shadows below the two kings. Though he had arranged this ambitious evening to flatter the king, Cecil was keeping himself in the background.
Take note, I told myself. Ambition and power wear many guises, including modesty.
A trumpet fanfare set the audience jostling for position. Then an opening solo announced the coming of the Queen of Sheba to the Temple of Solomon. For the first two verses, I eyed the young man who sat at my father’s feet, gazing at my father in adoration even though the king ignored him. My father now sat on a stool on the royal dais, elbows on his knees, head hanging forward over his wine glass, staring at the floor.
The noblewoman playing the Queen of Sheba emerged from the golden temple, carrying an ornate basket filled with gifts of a jelly castle, cakes and wine for the two kings. Her ladies, scantily clad in veils, pantaloons and turned-up slippers, danced on behind her. The Queen of Sheba staggered and almost dropped her basket. Out of step with the accompanying trumpet fanfare, she wove unsteadily across the floor towards my father and uncle under their canopy.
She reached the dais, attempted to climb onto it, tripped, fell headlong, and flung her gifts into my uncle’s lap. The jelly castle shattered and slithered down his legs in glistening, jewel-like blobs. The cakes and wine made a red porridge on his lap and in the crevices of his cut-out sleeves.
Servants rushed forward with napkins. The Queen waved away an offered hand and pushed herself back to her feet, haunches first like a cow. She smiled at the two kings. With great care, she revolved, walked away, and attempted to join her ladies in their dance. When they raised their arms above their heads to begin a turn, two of these ladies fell over backwards onto the floor, as drunk as owls.
‘Come back here, madam!’ shouted the king. My father stood up unsteadily, negotiated the steps, and began to dance with the Queen. But he managed only a few steps before he, too, fell to the floor. Flat on his back, he then spewed the contents of his stomach over his coat.
The young man at my father’s side leapt from his stool to help three grooms, instructed by Cecil, to carry the king into an inner room to lay him on a bed to recover.
I watched them go, the man who so terrified me, now helpless, stinking and ridiculous. Temporarily unseated, although no one seemed to notice. Across Lord Salisbury’s great hall, I saw Lord Harington searching the dense noisy crowd, as purposeful as a tracking hound in a mêlée of drunken peacocks. I was certain that he was looking for me. This time, I was not ready to be rescued. I was studying thecourt and king with my new eyes, remembering what Henry had once told me, that there are two places where a sword thrust will always kill an armoured man – the armpit and groin – but you must know them. I thought of my monster father made slave to his own shameful weakness. The evening had still more to teach me. I stepped behind a pillar of the Temple of Solomon.
Now Faith, Hope and Charity entered from the golden temple, bearing their gifts for the two kings. They stood uncertainly at the foot of the royal dais, staring at my father’s empty stool.
Hope curtsied first and opened her mouth to speak. Then she closed it again. She peered up at the ceiling as if seeking her missing words. With a ‘Pray forgive me, your majesty,’ she staggered off again. Faith had already disappeared. I heard her being noisily sick behind the temple.
Through the press of bodies and fog of smoke and wine fumes, I spied the feather on Lord Harington’s hat, still moving purposefully, drawing closer. I moved farther from the wall-mounted torches, deeper into the shadows. His face crossed a gap in the crowd, wearing a comical look of horrified distaste.
I ducked around a couple locked together at the mouth, out of Harington’s line of sight into the lee of a statue. With one eye alert for my guardian’s questing feather, I stepped up onto the wide plinth of a marble Roman general, with a red silk scarf thrown over his head and a feathered hat on his sword.
Clinging to a marble knee, I watched Charity wobble up the steps of the dais to my uncle’s feet. She presented him with a jewelled casket then spewed her supper across his knees, on top of the remaining jelly, cake and wine.
She drew herself up and studied her handiwork. ‘I shall go home now,’ she announced loudly. ‘There is no gift left which Heaven has not already given Your Majesty.’
Other revellers now threw themselves into hauling down the setting to take away parts of it to keep. A pillar of the Temple crashed down. I heard wood crack. Canvas tore. Men began to pull the costumes from the female dancers. Bare breasts flashed and jiggled.
I turned in alarm towards the sound of screaming. Then I saw that both men and women were laughing. I looked away from the tangle of bodies.
Its rider unseated, the court horse had now bolted.
‘Your grace,’ said Lord Harington behind me. ‘There you are!’ White around the mouth, he offered his hand to help me down. ‘Please come with me!’
I took his hand. I had seen enough now.
‘This is no place for you,’ he said. ‘In the morning, whether his majesty likes it or not, I take you back to Combe.’
‘I like it,’ I said. ‘Whether the king does or not.’
Harington gave me a startled look. Then his gaze turned thoughtful.
‘I thank you,’ I said, and let him lead me for the moment to a safer place.
The thought came to me, as clear and definite as an icicle, that happiness belonged to childhood, and that, when I wasn’t looking, my childhood had ended.
For there is no question, but a just fear of an imminent danger, though there be no blow given, is a lawful cause for war.
‘Of Empire', Francis Bacon
Envy worketh subtilly and in the darke, and to the prejudice of good things.…
‘Of Envie', Francis Bacon
WHITEHALL 1610
JAMES
How dare my own son despise me? He scarcely troubles himself to hide his scorn. I can read the set of that prim mouth while he seems to obey. I’ve heard how the people shout, ‘The golden prince!’ He soaks up the love of the commons as if he means to leave none for me. He swaggers in front of me on those lovely long legs, so unlike these scraggy shanks of mine. Perhaps he’s someone else’s get, after all… As for my Bessie – twice marked by treason. Hell-cat… hellkit… If you allow it, an infant viper can still sting you to death.
Henry must be mine – who else would have been willing to roger his mother? A silly whore, or would-be whore, if she could. A whore like my mother. Whore, whore, whore! That’s the truth my tutor once beat into me. ‘Say it!’ he ordered me. ‘Your mother is a whore!’
Mulier portentosae libinis!
‘Say it!’ My blood is tainted. My stock is dangerous. Whores and traitors are my heritage and my legacy. My own children carry the taint of treason.
I did not ask to replace my mother on the throne. I was a babe! But a dangerous one all the same. A babe with bloody hands. With such cunning subtlety, my own King’s Men dared to accuse me in their play! Yet I dare not accuse them for fear of condemning myself.
Again and again, it’s proved. I can trust no one! Not even my own blood, my own seed. I allow Wee Bobby power because he’s hated by the people. England would never tolerate another crook-back on the throne, not after Crooked Dick… I like that… ‘Crooked dick’… even in the darkest truths, I find little gleams of wit… or a crude jest. Be honest. I lodge my affection only in the beautiful and stupid, where I can control. Even when infatuated by a perfect line of lip, the shell of an ear, a wrist, a thigh, a promising codpiece, a fresh healthy young prick, I’m alert. I know I can think faster than any of my lovely boys.
I dare them to sneer. I rampage through the gardens of their delicacy. That’s true power – to command obedience from those who want to scorn. I pick my nose and scratch my groin, just to watch them force smiles and pretend to see nothing amiss. If I were God, I could pick their noses for them, and scratch their groins… I could strip off their clothes and ride on their backs naked, and they would not dare protest. God would not have to bow to his twisted little Treasurer and meekly agree to cut his costs. God would not be reproved like a naughty school boy for neglecting his work.
Our Father Which art… where’s the cushion for my knees? Father, tell Your son on earth how he must speak for You. Hold him firm in the place You have ordained for him, a mortal Prince of Peace. Without Your Will, there is only sad comedy.
… Beauty. Oh, my sweet Robert! I can drown in you. In your company, I too become beautiful. Beauty softens my sinews… thaws the frozen rivers of my veins. Even pans of hot coals can’t warm this bed as beauty can.
My whelps, Henry and Elizabeth, at least give pleasure to the eye. If not, I’d have them put down like the dangerous cubs they are… I jest, of course. No one could fear Baby Charles, who jumps in terror if you speak to him and can’t get his words out past his teeth. ‘Fa… fa… fa… father…’ Alas, he’s no beauty.
I must teach Henry not to trust his power. Teach him not to trust anyone – least of all that flattering little dwarf who thinks I don’tsee how he battens on my power. A leech like all of them, but a necessary leech.
… No one hides here behind this hanging. Nor here… But they will come again at night with their knives and lock me in my chamber, again, with the breathing, and the rustling. Blind, deaf, I’ll feel them around me.
What was that? Listen! Do they come?… LIGHT THE CANDLE AGAIN! DEAR GOD! COME! LIGHT, HERE! PLEASE, LIGHT AGAIN!
I made peace between England and Spain. Where is peace for me?
Elöi, Elöi Elöi, läma sabachthani?
My God, My God, why hast thou forsaken me? The candle must not go out again. Fill my bedchamber with lights!