The King's Daughter (19 page)

I nodded again, but she was no longer looking at me.

‘It will try to charm you with smiles and comic gestures and miniature hiccoughs.’ Words now overflowed from her. ‘Never let yourself kiss its tiny toes nor brush your cheek against its soft, round little belly, as I did with your brother, before I learned better. The child will be taken from you. You cannot fight the king’s will. I tried. I know. You must hand your babe over to someone else at once before it’s too late. Or you will feel a darkness enter your soul and think never to see the light again.’

‘But you stole Henry back!’ I cried. ‘From the Earl of Mar! Everyone said so! Mrs Hay told me.’

‘I took Henry from the earl’s servants, and from his lady. But I was no longer his mother. He was already grown and treated me as civilly as he would any other gentlewoman. I would not have had him even then if the king, my husband, had not used him to bribe me into behaving well on the way south to London.’

‘I’m here now!’ I had to make her see me. ‘You don’t have to steal me!’

She shook her head. ‘What use would it be to either of us to speak and grow familiar again? You’ll be married soon. Your father wills it. Then you will be sent much farther away than Warwickshire. Please go. I can’t bear your presence a moment longer!’

27

I will not! My feet drummed out the words as I marched back towards my lodgings in the little closed tennis court. I blundered blindly past the great presence chamber and across the large open court.

I will not end up like my mother! That will not be my life! Never! Never!

I would have to marry. I did not imagine that I could escape that fate. Like it or not, it was my part and my duty. But…

I veered into a narrow, open alley between two walls striped black and white with bands of flint and chalk. Suddenly, I found myself in the privy garden, staring at a large sundial set at the junction of four gravel paths.

At last, I understood my father’s threat in Coventry. The choice between marriage and execution. How marriage could kill as surely as the sword.

He would have to lock me in the Tower first. Kill me. I would not let misery warp me as it had my mother. I would not, like my mother, be destroyed by acceptance. I should have understood the pity in the Countess of Bedford’s eyes, instead of hating her for being close to my mother when I was not.

The gravel was sharp under my thin-soled shoes. I fledfrom the garden and its straight lines and geometric male authority. I turned left, had to turn right, then left again, found myself back in the great court. Then I saw that Anne and my footman had been panting after me and that we stood at the entrance to the public thoroughfare of Whitehall. At this moment, in my agitation, I did not recognise any of the buildings opposite. My imagined map had turned to mist.

When I stopped, my footman took back the silver box, which I had forgotten to give to the queen, and offered to lead the way to my lodgings. I nodded and followed blindly.

I had gone for my mother’s blessing and returned with a curse laid on me.

We climbed some stairs, crossed Whitehall through the Holbein Gate. My feet clicked out the rhythm on the polished plaster of the gallery floor. I will not! I will not!

28

Thalia Bristo was sitting on a stool against the wall in my study with her lute case on her lap. When she saw me, she stood and made an unsteady curtsy that reminded me of Faith and Hope trying to dance after too much wine. Here was another drunk like my father.

‘What are you doing here?’ I waved for Anne and the footman to leave me. I needed to be alone to think about what had just happened. I almost felt sick, but not quite. ‘Has no one given you anything to do yet?’

‘No.’

‘Why not?’ My head ached.

‘Waiting for an instruction from you, I imagine.’

‘Well, they can stop waiting! I don’t know what to do with you, for sure!’

‘I am not to be your music mistress, after all?’

‘I don’t know! Did I say that?’ Just now, I could not remember anything I had told her last night.

‘I see.’ She tightened her grip on the lute case. ‘Will you send me back, then?’

‘God’s Teeth! I don’t know where to send you, do I?’ I looked around to tell someone to take her away and give her work. But I had sent everyone away. Only Cherami and Belleremained, heaped one on top of the other in their basket by the study fireplace.

‘How can I send you back?’ I asked. ‘Rejecting her gift would offend the queen even more than I’ve offended her already!’

Thalia narrowed her eyes. ‘Why are you in such a temper?’

‘I’m not in a temper!’

‘Why not have a good bawl instead of shouting at me?’

‘I don’t want a good bawl!’

I closed my eyes and inhaled hard. I wanted to slap her. But tears escaped and ran down my cheeks. I inhaled again, raggedly. More tears escaped. I made a noise between my teeth like a low growl. Gasped for air again. My nose began to run. ‘God’s wounds!’ I said between clenched teeth.

She waited silently until I began to breathe more steadily.

‘Here.’ She offered a handkerchief.

I snatched it and rubbed at my cheeks.

‘You’ll wear off the skin if you go on like that,’ she said. ‘And you’ve got your hair all into a bird’s nest. If you have a comb or brush, I can sort it out for you.’

‘That’s work for my maid.’

‘I’ve done it before.’ Crossing the floor to me, she was definitely unsteady. I sniffed but could not smell wine on her, just a sharp fruit odour like ripe apples.

I sat on a stool by the window in my sleeping chamber and let her unpin my hair. She shook it out without any of the remarks my maids usually made about the tangles in my curls, as if I had somehow willed them. Then, before using the brush, she combed my hair with her fingers. As she worked silently, I began to feel calmer. The steady, gentle tugging of her fingers slowed my thoughts.

‘I see why my dogs sit so still when I stroke them,’ I observed after a while. ‘They’re praying that I won’t stop…’

Her hands suddenly faltered. ‘I’m a gift from the queen, you said?''Yes.’ I squeezed my eyes against a new threat of tears.

She picked up the brush and set to work again.

But after a few strokes, her hands dropped heavily onto my hair. Then she braced herself with one hand on my shoulder, as Henry had done when imitating our father. I felt the shock of her weight pressing me down.

‘What’s wrong?’ Startled, I twisted my head to see her face. She looked very odd. ‘I can’t tell whether or not you’ve gone pale. Are you drunk?’

She shook her head.

‘Ill, then?’

‘I think I need a moment to…’ She made a small vague motion with her hand. Touched her head. ‘It has all been… You can’t imagine…’

‘Yes, I can!’ I said fiercely. After a moment, I asked, ‘Are you giddy?’

She nodded.

‘Sit down on my stool.’ I rose and poured us both a glass of
eau de vie
from the bottle on my big dresser. Her fingers were icy when they brushed mine.

She swallowed the brandy in a single gulp. ‘Thank you… Oh, Lord, straight to my head!’

‘You haven’t brought the plague from Southwark, have you?’

She shook her head. ‘Just hungry.’

‘Hungry? When did you last eat?’

‘Yesterday morning… bread and beer.’

‘You didn’t eat breakfast today?’ I asked.

She shook her head and made helpless circles in the air with her hand.

‘Nor dinner yesterday, nor supper last night?

She shook her head again.

‘Why not?’

‘Where would I eat?’

‘No one found you a place?’

Another shake.

Now that I thought about it, it seemed obvious. I felt a twinge of guilt.

‘No wonder you’re giddy.’ I gave her another glass of
eau de vie
and pulled up a second stool. ‘I’ll have my steward find you a seat for meals in my household mess.’ I called my chamberer and ordered bread and cheese.

Thalia rested her head in her hands until the chamberer returned. I watched her try not to gobble the bread and cheese. She ate even the cheese rind. Then she licked the pink tip of a finger, touched it to a last crumb on her lap, and popped it into her mouth.

‘Do you feel better now?’

‘Are you truly the Princess Elizabeth?’

I stiffened. ‘Who else would I be?’ Then I remembered how I had intended to apologise the previous night for not answering her question. ‘Yes, I am.’

‘Do you know who that tall, thin plain woman was, who came and looked at me yesterday, before I was brought to you?’

I touched my front teeth in question.

She nodded.

‘The queen, most likely,’ I said.

‘The queen of England?’

‘Yes. My mother.’ I couldn’t keep a bitter edge out of my voice.

‘You are truly the Princess Elizabeth?’

‘I just said that I am.’

She started to shake her head. ‘Hey ho,’ she said. Her voice wobbled. ‘Hey ho! Hey ho!’ She kept shaking her head so that her cloud of hair swayed, trying to keep up. ‘Oh, my! Oh, my!’

‘Are you going to bawl now?’ I asked. ‘If you are, I’ll give you back your handkerchief.’

29

THALIA

Wrong again, girl. She does know, silks and jewels notwithstanding. Poor girl. Even if I don’t know what caused it, I know misery when I see it.

Whoops, Tallie! Danger! Get your feet back under you. You let her foist your tender feelings like a silk handkerchief out of your pocket. She condescended to take care of you that day when it amused her. Nothing more. Why shouldn’t she take as much care for me as for her poxy dogs? I saw how much gold changed hands for me there in Southwark. Of course she’ll feed me, water me, keep me free of moth like a costly gown… the king’s daughter. How was I to know? A great noble woman, clearly. But she didn’t behave like a princess… how do they behave? Ambitious as my training was, I was never tutored in princesses.

But no fatal mistakes yet. And still here now, after most of two weeks, though the ground shifts yet again. Having given me away, the queen of England has now called me back. Sent for me direct. I don’t think the princess knows yet. Slippery ice!

30

At last, a bead for me to grasp, solid, inarguable, seen with my own eyes. Early that spring, Frederick Ulrich of Brunswick, son of my mother’s sister and the duke of Brunswick, arrived at Gravesend. Everyone said that the German prince was merely including England in an educational tour before he came to power. Henry sent him an invitation to dine at St. James’s Palace and asked me to join them.

‘I hope you will like him, Elizabella,’ said Henry, the day before Frederick Ulrich sailed upriver to London.

‘Is that the true purpose of his visit?’ I asked. ‘Liking? Did the king order you to arrange this dinner?’

Henry flushed, then nodded. ‘But Elizabella, I believe that it’s for the best. I would choose to entertain him in any case. From all that he writes, this Frederick is everything a Protestant warrior prince should be. He will be one of my strongest allies on the Continent when I am king. A true brother-in-arms, if he pleases you.’

At last, I was to be touched by those forbidden signs of love. I would be able to form an opinion. It felt like a victory.

‘How far is Brunswick?’ I asked.

‘Not much farther than France.’

Because Henry spoke so well of him and called him abrother-in-arms, I felt certain that this German, Frederick Ulrich, would be very like my brother. Tall and fair, with long legs, like Henry’s and mine, legs of a familiar shape. I would confound my father by finding joy, even in a political marriage.

‘… if he pleases you,’ Henry had said. My brother, if not my father, cared for my feelings in the matter.

‘What if I don’t please him?’

Henry laughed. ‘How can you not?’

That night, I sent for a German sempstress who worked in my wardrobe and, in exchange for a pair of amethyst ear drops, asked her to begin to teach me her language.
Ja.’
Yes.
‘Nein.’
No.
‘Danke.’
Thank you.

‘Ja,’
I repeated after her. Yes.
‘Liebe Frederick. Mein mann.’
My husband.

I saw myself escaping from my father forever, with a young man who would always remind me of Henry. Whom Henry would always be happy to see when he visited his beloved sister, living just across the German Sea. Only a few days away, with following winds.

I asked Tallie to sing me to sleep with German lullabyes.

‘Guten abend,’
I murmured sleepily.
‘Gute nacht.’
Good evening. Good night.

‘What if you don’t like him?’ she asked between songs.

‘I feel certain that I will.’

The next day, I changed my mind twice about which gown to wear to Henry’s dinner. I put on my amber necklace but found it too earnest and old. I replaced it with my lighter-hearted necklace of enamelled gold flowers. I ordered a chair to carry me across the park, rather than ride to St James’s and arrive windblown and smelling of horse.

Frederick Ulrich would be judicious, I reflected, while my maid pinned my bodice to my jewelled stomacher… like Henry, and serious of mind, but with the same sudden smiles when something amused him. He would laugh like Henry,at my attempts to amuse him. He would find me a good listener, to whom he could unburden his soul, just as Henry did. I would know him before we ever spoke. He would know me as the sister of his heart. In short, he would be another Henry. But he would be able to become my husband, which Henry could never be. I could imagine no better fate. I was already half in love with Frederick Ulrich before he bowed and kissed my hem to greet me when he arrived.

Alas, my brother’s standards were not those of a possible bride.

Under lowered lids, I eyed this great lump of a newcomer with dismay. His hair lay flat on his head and hung over his ears like dark, damp straw. His long red face and neck erupted in small boils. His French was appalling, his English coarse. I would have forgiven his lack of languages if what English he did speak had not been so full of oaths and blasphemies.