The King's Daughter (35 page)
‘A hit!’ he cried. ‘And again!’
The force of his thrust pushed the other man off-balance. As his enemy clattered to the ground, Henry turned and ran at the quintain, set to one side on its pivot, waiting to be used for mounted practice. He struck the dummy figure dead centre with the tip of his lance. Then he backed up and ran at it again. Then again. And again. Even twenty feet away, I could hear his harsh breathing.
‘Henry,’ I called.
He did not hear me. He charged the quintain once again, sucking at the air now like a man with the quinsy.
The man-at-arms climbed to his feet and brushed at the mud on his thighs and buttocks. He and his comrade watched their prince from the far side of the waist-high barrier as he kept running at the dummy. Though lighter than the arms and armour used for the mounted tilt, both the steel halfarmour and lance were heavy, never meant for this repeated attack. Trying to use the unwieldy lance as a sword, Henry was beginning to tire.
He landed a blow off-centre. Ducked to avoid the spinning weight designed to punish any blow that missed the target point. He missed the centre again with his next attack. Then hit it. Then missed yet again and took the blow of the whirling sandbag on the side of his helmet. I felt the thud jolt my bones. Henry crumpled to his knees and stayed there, as if praying.
I started to run down into the yard, but his men vaulted the waist-high barrier and reached him first.
He waved them away, planted the grip of his lance in the mud and climbed it hand over hand until he was on his feet again. After a moment, he lifted his lance as if he meant to run at the quintain again. He took three steps, stopped, seemed to come to himself. He turned to hand his lance to one of the men-at-arms, then held out his arms so that they could undo the screws on his shoulders and unbuckle his breastplate from the back-guard.
He lifted off his helmet. ‘I was careless,’ he said. ‘Deserved that thump. Just as well we weren’t in battle. Which of you will give me a game of tennis?’
He didn’t look at me, but he didn’t tell me not to follow and watch the game, neither. His gentlemen had divined his humour. They let him win all three games of tennis he played but made him work hard enough for his victories to satisfy whatever demon was driving him. At suppertime he vanished.
He did not appear among ladies and gentlemen who gathered after supper in one of the great parlours. Then Tallie learned from one of his chamber grooms that the prince had gone swimming in the Thames.
I went down to the Privy Stairs. Apart from the guards, the water steps were deserted. The wake from passing boats splashed gently against the pilings. There was a three-quarters moon. Out on the dark water, I saw a small rowing boat and the white shirt of the oarsman. Beyond the boat, I saw the indistinct bobbing head of my brother.
The head seemed to vanish. For a terrible moment, I thought he might mean to drown himself and opened my mouth to scream ‘no!'. Then he surfaced from his dive.
I felt suddenly certain that I must not interrupt the thoughts he was chasing through the dark water.
HENRY
Swim.
Don’t think about it. Smile. Continue to get through the days with effort and sweat. You are watched. You are the ideal. You are the model, the next king of England. You must be perfect in every way. (… except in being a real man… no one must ever know. How did Bacon guess? What is wrong with me? Am I to turn out like my father, after all? A foolish gull who can be twisted about the slim white fingers of any pretty boy?… Slim white fingers that will touch him… Even the thought is intolerably wicked!)
Bacon lies! None of it is true! Cannot be true! I will not permit it to be true! Duty will carry me. My father, for all his weaknesses, understands that. And God understands. I have been chosen for this uncomfortable part. I accept it. God wills it. England wills it. Therefore, I will it.
I wish I could stop dreaming. I start each day by forgetting my dreams. Too messy, too dangerous. Forest, where I hear howling and strange animal grunts, close behind my heel, too dark to see them, but they’re there. Sniffing after me. If I can run fast enough, I willreach sunlight again – that clearing I see ahead, that open meadow, and leave those trackers snapping their jaws in the shadows.
Dive, down, down, colder and colder. Something brushes my leg. Back up! Back up! Dear God, please, where’s the surface, and light! Moonlight.
Everything around me is too much. Men talk too much, smile too much. They bow too low. They stuff too much food into their mouths, drink too much, talk too loudly. There’s a disgusting amount of food on our table at dinner. I would be happy with bread and a slice of cold meat. A few nuts. A single mug of small beer. There are too many female breasts on display, too many lips parting over white teeth, too much flesh, like the display on a butcher’s stall. Meat for the taking. Being pushed at me, as if I were a Cannibal.
What is wrong with me? I smile knowingly when my men speak of Frances Howard… I can hardly bear to think of her. So far, she has seemed to keep her mouth shut, at least to the court at large. Secretly, I study her uncle and Carr for signs of mockery or derision. But the Howard clan want to put one of their women on the throne again – though I can’t think why, given the fate of the last Howard queen. Until all her last hopes are gone of being my queen, she’ll keep my failure as a man to herself. Given the family reputation, she’d likely manage to get a ‘royal’ babe planted, and dare me to damn myself by accusing her… who of her male acquaintance is ambitious enough, and daring enough to be her impregnating angel? Is that her game with Carr?
Reach, kick. Reach, kick. Feel each forward surge. No time to think… of anything… else… Who is that on the Privy Stairs?
My sister, my female self! She’s there now, on the steps, looking for me. Fearing for me. Yes. I confess to needing that fear. I saw it in her eyes today. I would marry her, if I could… Mustn’t even thinksuch thoughts. But we could rule as brother and sister. I think such things were done in ancient times… must ask my tutor. He will know, and is endlessly patient with me… God knows, he needs to be! Everyone praises my ‘wisdom’ and my ‘pleasant wit'. What lies they tell! But I must let them lie. It’s their part, just as accepting their praise is mine. At least, I am truly courageous. At least, I think I am. I don’t fear war, I almost wish we weren’t at peace. I relish fighting. Never happier than when riding at the tilt, or playing tennis against a challenging opponent. My father is a conciliator, an equivocator. ‘The Peacemaker King,’ he calls himself. Promising all comers whatever they want. So why does he wear a padded doublet against a possible knife attack?
Via media?
How dare he preach his ‘Middle Way'? My father is the worst of the excess around me here at Whitehall. His tongue is too large, his laugh too loud, his appetites so coarse and open. The bread crumbs and shreds of meat down the front of his coat. The vulgar size of his jewels, and his open delight in their sheer extravagance. He doesn’t care what men think of him. Because he is king. Because, if he lets himself begin to think about what sort of man he is, he will never sleep easy again. This new Bible of his is mere religious posturing. He’ll lose interest soon and be on to something else.
He holds steady to nothing. The curious jackdaw, forever dropping whatever he hold in his beak to flap off after a new fragment of glass glinting in the mud. A new trinket. A new boy.
I neither mind nor don’t mind that he is my enemy. It’s a fact. He may ridicule me before his toadies. But I trust both God and honest men to make a true judgement between us. He’s a fool to fear me, merely because his mother had cause to fear him. As a God-fearing Protestant prince, I am loyal to him as my anointed monarch. I would never wish to unseat him from his throne, even though I’ve heard the whispers and secret wishing. Virtue must wait its appointed time. But I vow that all honest men in England will be grateful when that time comes.
Elizabeth… my Elizabella… she’s left the steps now… lovesme truly and honestly and with all her heart. With the true loyalty of my hound. The only creature who loves me, besides my hound. And I love her in return. I confide in her things I barely know that I’m thinking, she seems so like another self. If she were a boy, we would truly be like the heavenly twins. Like Romulus and Remus, we would found another Rome.
Even now, we may yet make our new Rome in the New World. I will crown her the ‘Queen of the Americas', just as I promised her. Empress of all that is new and unsullied. She will ship me back riches, some of them not yet discovered – pearls from Chesapeake Bay, beaver pelts, gold and silver from mines not governed by the Spanish. I’ll have an army of dusky warriors with the same veiled fierceness as that Nymph of Niger our mother gave her… But that will happen only if I become king very soon. Or else, she will be married and gone.
I can’t bear to lose her. Who will I have left? Who will help me untangle my thoughts? Who will laugh at the snarls of the court? Who will get angrier than I do myself, at our father’s slights and insults to me, and imagine terrible punishments for all those who laugh?
Our mother is nothing. A cipher. A silly woman. She gave up long ago and wants only to get through the days as painlessly as she can. She’s a fool, but not a malicious one.
Sir Francis, on the other hand… a devil but no fool. His sharp wit and snake eyes make me lose my words. Nothing stays clear in my mind when he begins to twist his words through it. He is evil! Dangerous. He says that he loves me, and claims to see the truth of my soul! I can’t let any man live who can truly see such truth. Except that it isn’t true, of course. Only the truth as he would have it. But his sharp wit carves other men’s thoughts into new unwanted shapes. ‘Ferret Eyes'! ‘Ferret Eyes!’ Elizabella made me laugh when she pulled faces at his back and called him names. What will I do without her when she is married and sent away? I can’t bear it!
I’ll be left with poor Baby Charles, who wants so much to be likeme. Tongue-tied and blushing when he’s with me. Unable even to lift my sword without staggering on his bowed little legs.
… Kick… reach… kick.
I find my only peace in exercise. Tilting. Tennis – innocent joy. The succulent perfection of hitting the ball in the exact sweet spot at the centre of the racket. My heart lifting in the arc with the ball, through the air. Then a blissful rush, no need to think. My body thinks for me. Whack! Whack! Another heart-lifting arc… a dive and save. Every muscle working together, a small piece of mind, like a single church candle, alight, guiding. The end known even before the other man misses. Truth at its most absolute and elegant. Standing, satisfied, breathing hard, no need to be any other thing than I am just at that moment.
Swimming. Sometimes, I really do swim. No words. Escape from words. As alone as I can ever be, even with that anxious watcher in the boat rowing after me. Here in the dark water, I remember that I am covered with living skin. I feel every inch of my bodily casing shiver with delight. I am golden, like my Spanish armour, as if my skin had turned to shimmering gold. I turn and float face upwards, looking up into the night sky. The water and sky are one. Broken light glitters on the water around me like stars. I imagine that my face is the moon looking up at its twin. I let myself urinate in the water, feel the fleeting warmth on my thigh. Like a baby. My secret sin. I think about putting my hand on my cock. I turn over and kick out hard, swimming fast against the current.
In the end, I simply marched past all my brother’s guardians and gate-keepers, none of whom dared to restrain me by force, walked into Henry’s closet and burst into tears. In his concern, he forgot that he did not want to speak to me.
‘Bacon is your enemy now,’ I sobbed. ‘I saw it in his eyes when he left you yesterday. What did he say to you? I fear what he might do!’
Henry shook his head. ‘Don’t be so fearful, Elizabella. He’s a clerk at heart, in spite of his sharp wits. He destroys with his pen, not a sword. And I don’t think that, even with his pen, he’ll dare attack the Prince of Wales. In any case, he’s nothing while Wee Bobby is alive.’
‘Why did he make you so angry? Was he attacking Wee Bobby again?… Thank you.’ I wiped my eyes and blew my nose on Henry’s offered handkerchief.
He shook his head. ‘He wasn’t…’
‘You were very angry,’ I insisted.
Henry moved his shoulders uneasily. ‘He attacked our father.’
‘Bacon attacked the king, to you? The king’s son?’
The white line flared around his mouth again. ‘He presumed to believe that I might agree with him.’
‘Was he trying to trap you into treason?’ I asked. ‘You must report to our father if Bacon is speaking treason…’
‘Worse than simple treason!’ said Henry unhappily. ‘And I can’t complain to the king! Bacon knows very well that I’m already out of the king’s favour. Am I to accuse our father to his face of the capital crime of being a sodomite? Bacon wanted to reassure me… that I need not… that the king’s… behaviour…’
‘You yourself often speak harshly of our father’s “behaviour",’ I said carefully. ‘As do I.’
Henry searched the ceiling for words. ‘Bacon wished to assure me that I must not think that all such… That there are other men, like himself, of greater refinement than the king, other ways to the same end…’ His mouth twisted. ‘Kindred spirits.’
I busied myself with the handkerchief.
‘As a “kindred spirit", he assured me that I need not have to be like my father!’ He snatched up his sword and slashed viciously at a curtain. ‘How dare he claim me as a “kindred spirit"?’
As often happens, a person can tell you what you need to know while they think they have revealed nothing.