The King's Daughter (28 page)

I stared. ‘But how on earth do you insert that inside anything?’ Let alone break anything. I thought.

‘If the woman is desired, it stiffens.’

‘But what if the woman’s not desired?’ I couldn’t imaginethe Melancholy Trout desiring anyone. ‘Why did the duke say that the Palatine would need every encouragement? What did he mean?’

Henry fumbled in his haste to tuck himself away. ‘That’s enough! I can’t tell you any more!’ He finished lacing his placket.

I knew my brother too well to push him any further. Had he done it with Frances Howard as rumour would have it? I suddenly wasn’t so certain.

‘Have you…?’ I began, in spite of myself.

‘I said, that’s enough!’ He set off so fast that I had to let him go alone. I sank down onto a bench and pretended to study the night sky. My brother had raised as many questions as he had answered.

40

After several hours of tossing in the dark and listening to Anne’s snores, I got out of bed and shook Tallie’s shoulder gently. I felt her flinch and freeze before coming fully awake.

It’s only me,’ I whispered. ‘I have questions.’

‘In the middle of the night?’

‘Please.’

We huddled with coverlets around our shoulders, in front of the banked fire in my little closet. Tallie knelt to prod the coals and light a candle.

‘How does a man stiffen if he doesn’t desire the woman?’ I burst out.

Tallie stopped lighting a second candle. Her shoulders tightened. ‘Why do you think I’d know that?’

‘I don’t think it. I tried talking to Henry. You’re the only one left whom I can ask.’ I watched her light the candle.

She looked up at me with narrowed eyes. ‘That’s the only reason?’

‘God’s Body! If you won’t answer my questions, who will?’

The pale tent of her coverlet rocked slightly, forward and back in front of the fire. I heard her suck the air in past her teeth and blow it out again. ‘I can’t,’ she said. ‘Ask anyone else.’

‘I’m to be married to a stranger,’ I said. ‘How do I know he’ll like me? What if he rejects me as King Henry did the princess from Cleves?’ I pulled my coverlet tightly around me.

‘He’ll like you.’ She continued to stare at the fire. I watched her absently rubbing the pale ovals of the nails of her left hand with her right thumb. In the orange firelight, the scars on the back of her hand stood out against their black shadows.

‘You can’t know that!’ I said. ‘And even if he likes me, I’m afraid of being ignorant of my part. I know almost nothing of the world, or those who live in it.’

She still said nothing. Her thumb still rubbed.

‘Please, Tallie! Why won’t you answer? How much do you know?’ I heard her give a little snort.

‘Hey, ho,’ she said to herself. She turned her head and looked at me for a long time across her tented shoulder. She looked away again. ‘Yes. I do know. More than you may imagine. You don’t know what you’re asking.’

She shook her head to herself. ‘I’m not certain I can bring myself to be your teacher.’ She dropped her forehead onto her hands and rocked again.

I stayed silent. Her argument was with herself, not me.

‘If you truly want to banish all ignorance,’ she said at last. ‘You can have your wish to visit Southwark… I can’t teach you but I can take you to the oracles, who will tell you more than you’ll ever wish to know about playing your part. Give me a few days to prepare our visit. I’ll tell you when all is ready.’

She wrapped her arms around her knees and dropped her head onto them.

41

WHITEHALL, 25 JUNE 1610

Tallie shook me awake. She was still in her nightshift and robe. ‘The king has sent for you.’

‘Now?’ I asked in sleepy alarm. ‘Before breaking my fast?’

‘At once, his footman says.’

I swung my legs out of bed. ‘A footman, you say? Not a man-at-arms?’

Anne groaned and lifted a face creased with wrinkles from her pillow. ‘What’s happening?’ She squinted through the parted bed curtains at the grey diamond-paned window. ‘It’s scarcely light yet.’

‘Her grace must dress to see the king,’ said Tallie.

‘It’s very early for his majesty to begin receiving.’ Anne sat up, jolted wide awake. ‘Aren’t you alarmed?’

‘Of course I am.’

‘I’m sure all will be well.’ She sounded very like her uncle, my guardian, as she mouthed this reassurance.

She and Tallie cobbled me into a gown while my maid tried to comb my hair. I washed my face, taking care not to spot my bodice with water, and wiped the crumbs of sleep from my eyes.

Tallie’s hands were cold when they touched my skin. I saw again how many risks she had run for me.

‘Is a reason given?’ I asked.

She shook her head. ‘No reason.’

The doors of my ladies’ rooms were still closed when I rushed out of my lodgings behind the footman, into the gallery that led over the Holbein Gate towards the Riverside. Crossing a courtyard already buzzing with servants, I felt a chilly, early summer drizzle on my face and wished for my cloak. As I hurried through my father’s presence chambers, I saw that the portrait of the Dauphin had been removed from the sideboard.

Perhaps I had been detected after all, in my livery and boots.

Perhaps, for a reason I did not yet understand, he had decided at last to confront me with my letter to Henry.

The king was half-dressed in stockings and breeches but with his night-shirt over them and a long gown slung on top of it all. His sound foot wore a boot, his gouty one a soft slipper. There were only four others present in the royal bedchamber: Sir Robert Carr, the Archbishop of London, the king’s groom of the bedchamber, and a boy kneeling to coax the fire into warmth and light. The day was still too young for petitioners. In any case, my father disliked the ceremonial pomp of his Tudor predecessors as much as he feared assassins springing out of a crowd.

He did not let me finish my curtsey. ‘Y’haven’t done it too, have ye?’

‘Sir?’ My head jerked up. My curtsey wobbled.

‘Don’t think to imitate your cousin. You’ll succeed no more than she did.’

I straightened and looked at Carr and the Archbishop, who both seemed to know what he was talking about.

‘Which cousin?’ I asked.

‘That damned whore with that butter-wouldn’t-melt face! That treacherous, would-be queen! Don’t try to play the simpleton, you little polecat. You know very well that I mean your cousin Arbella.’

‘I know nothing of the sort!’ I said hotly. ‘What has she done, that you fear I might imitate?’

‘Marry behind my back!’ my father shouted. ‘And mind your tongue, lassie, or I’ll have you whipped for insolence.’

The Archbishop took pity on my confusion and stepped in smoothly. ‘The king’s advisors in the Privy Council are outraged on his behalf. The Lady Arbella has married without royal permission. To William Seymour. There is concern that they might unite their followers against the king and make an attempt to claim the throne.’

‘The Lady Arbella?’ I repeated. Defiant marriage seemed an unlikely crime for that dumpy, slightly sour, moody woman.

‘You haven’t married another bloody Seymour, have ye?’ demanded the king. ‘Or a Howard? Your mother hasn’t been plotting behind my back to marry you off to some Scottish duke? Don’t think I’ll let you ever again defy my choice of husband for you. Ye’ll not ruin me in Europe by secretly hustling some upstart into your marriage bed.’

I stared silently at the floor. I could not deny my defiance over Brunswick, but the injustice of his second warning made my face and neck burn.

‘At least this will put a stop to any talk of a Seymour marriage for you!’ said my father.

‘It was never my talk,’ I raised my head and met his eye. ‘My cousin is welcome to him! Perhaps she could be persuaded to marry the rest of my suitors as well!’

There was a long and dangerous silence.

‘Let me make myself clear,’ the king said at last. ‘I know that none of you can be trusted. I’ve kept too light a hand on your rein.’ The coldness of his heavy-lidded eyes witheredmy angry words like a winter blast. ‘I’ve played Solomon long enough. I shall choose you a husband before the year is done. And, by God, you’ll marry him!’

He limped closer and jabbed his finger at my face. ‘Don’t you ever again dare to defy me. If you ever again presume to tell me, as you did at Theobald’s, that you refuse to obey me, I will clap you under arrest as fast as I have your cousin and her husband.’

I pinched my lips tight against a reply.

‘And ye’ll stay locked in the Tower,’ he said. ‘Even if the mobs seduced by all your smiles and waving come to bay for your release. I rule England, not wilful, whoreish women. Not Parliament. Not the mob. By the will of God, I rule. D’ye understand me?’

I nodded.

‘Speak up! I cannae hear ye!’

‘Yes, father. I understand.’

‘Good.’ He turned his back and stumped back to his chair. ‘Now trot off before you enrage me again.’

As I curtsied again, to his back, I thought that my father sounded frightened as well as angry.

Now that my father had forced it to my attention, I saw how much Arbella and I were alike, in spite of our difference in age. Two unmarried royal females, both raised in isolation away from the sophistications of the court. Trying to find a place to put our feet, when our lives could be changed at any moment, without our consent. Both of us always on offer for marriage. Neither of us ever given.

I saw now that we shared the same blue eyes, that her dull reddish hair might once have been as bright as mine. I could feel my mouth and cheeks settle into the sour, sullen lines of her face. I did not want to end up like my mother. I did not want to become Arbella, neither.

But this new, reported Arbella was far more interestingthan the old one. This Arbella had dared to challenge her fate – and my father.

‘If you want to be entertained,’ whispered Tallie when I returned, ‘spend this morning in the little presence chamber with your ladies. Everyone’s in a furore of outrage, delight and political speculation, even before breakfast.’

‘I’ll eat in here alone, thank you.’ I saw her face change when she caught my dark humour. She took the food from the chamberer, set it in front of me on the table in my little closet, and left me.

On reflection, and away from my father’s alarming presence, I felt less surprise at what Arbella had done. Imagining myself in her place, I saw that she had been too quiet, too detached. I remembered that, under her bland surface, she sometimes seemed to give off a subterranean hum like a locked cellar full of wasps.

After I had toyed with my bread and watered ale, I went into my bedchamber and joined Tallie, who was on duty for me just inside the door, eavesdropping on the Herd gathered outside in my small presence chamber.

‘But she’s such an odd, secret creature.’ Frances Tyrrell’s voice pretended surprise.

‘I don’t believe it. She’s almost thirty years old!’ Philadelphia Carey, who was still only fifteen.

‘You can still love at thirty,’ said Lucy, Countess of Bedford, who had joined them.

‘It’s not love! Her ambition has burst out at last. Why else marry a…’ The Other Frances stopped abruptly when I entered. The name ‘Seymour’ floated silently in the air.

‘Have you heard the astonishing news, your grace?’ asked Lucy, resigned to her repeated role as messenger.

‘That someone once rumoured to be my suitor has married my cousin?’ I heard the collective intake of breath. ‘Why ever would she do such a mad thing as to marry?’

There was a moment of uncertainty while they assessed my tone.

‘From ambition, your grace!’ said Other Frances. ‘Everyone knows that she’s been scheming all these years, playing a deep waiting game.’ There were murmurs of assent.

‘That’s unkind!’ protested Anne, her pink cheeks hot with fervour. ‘I’m sure that she fell in love and was overcome by reckless passion!’

‘It’s a pity then that they scarce had time to enjoy their wedding night before being arrested,’ said Lucy. ‘And doubly sad when she has at last found a flesh-and-blood husband instead of one born from her wishful imagination.’

‘Perhaps she simply grew tired of doing nothing,’ I said. Reaching the age of thirty and seeing nothing ahead but more of exactly the same life for the next thirty years. Unmarried, playing in masques, carrying my mother’s train.

All eyes turned towards me.

‘A dangerous impatience,’ said Lucy. ‘I hear she’s under house arrest with Lord Parry in Lambeth, and her new husband is in the Tower.’

‘They’ll both lose their heads,’ said Frances Tyrrell with suppressed relish. Her freckles stood out against a face white with excitement. ‘Marrying without the sovereign’s consent is a capital crime, if you’re royal.’

I looked at her sharply.

‘You can’t be executed for love!’ cried Anne.

‘Love is dangerous,’ said Lucy dryly.

‘But she didn’t act from love,’ insisted Other Elizabeth, stepping in to support Frances Tyrrell.

As I listened to their gossip, I found myself secretly cheering on this new Arbella, this defiant, scheming, ambitious traitor. I wanted to ask her why she had been so eager to undertake the realities of marriage at such great risk to her freedom, if not her life.

‘Love is dangerous,’ Lucy, Countess of Bedford had said.

She seemed to be in the business of giving warnings. I wondered if she meant this as a warning to me.

But the lack of love can be just as dangerous, I thought, thinking of my mother.

After breakfast, with Arbella and her extraordinary act still racketing around in my head, I sat in my outer presence chamber and forced myself to be civil to a string of petitioners. Among them were five men who wanted to place their sons or daughters in my household, a man with a peacock and hen for sale and a young silversmith who begged a commission for buttons. Then Tallie arrived to say that we would go to Southwark the following night.

42

On her advice, I confided at once in Anne. Not the whole story, but enough that Anne knew to cover my absence the following evening.

‘But what am I to say when someone sees that you are gone?’ she asked