The King's Daughter (47 page)
It’s only so that people may see better, I told myself, listening to the murmur that lifted me upwards. So that they may rejoice.
Then I saw Frederick, standing with his uncle, Count Henry of Nassau. My husband-to-be also wore silver. Henry’s diamond cross hung on his breast. He looked more than ever like a young boy.
Another small, encased nugget of flesh. We reached for each other with our eyes.
I felt Lady Harington guiding me by my train as if I were a horse on a rein. I felt her tug. It seemed that I must sit. I sank onto a stool. My mother sat to one side of me, still not looking at me.
I’m sorry you were forced against your will to trouble yourself to come, I thought angrily.
The Gentlemen of the Chapel sang an anthem. Then came a sermon by the Bishop of Bath and Wells.
I pulled against the weight of the jewels in my hair, fighting to keep my chin down.
Still the Bishop talked. And talked. The marriage at Cana… and still the marriage at Cana.
My father yawned audibly.
Then another psalm. The king yawned again, more loudly. In the corner of my eye, I saw him fidgeting with his cuffs. Then he pulled at his buttons. He uncrossed his legs and thumped his feet on the platform floor. He slapped his hands down on his chair arms as if about to rise and leave, just as he had stormed out of the launching of the
Prince Royal.
Just as he left any event he found too tedious. I knew then, with absolute certainty. He had devised the ultimate punishment for me. At any moment, he would stand up and walk out,shouting for everyone to stop their gawping and go home. There would be no marriage after all.
Don’t jump to conclusions, I told myself.
Suddenly, the Archbishop of Canterbury was nodding at me. I stood and gripped Frederick by the hand. I felt him trembling.
While the Archbishop intoned the many reasons for entering into holy matrimony, I heard my father sigh loudly. Then I heard the sound of vigorous scratching.
Trembling or not, Frederick spoke his ‘I will’ clearly, in English.
I did not look at my father as I made my own reply.
Then we came to it.
‘Who giveth this woman to be married to this man?’ asked the Bishop.
My father stood up in his wrinkled stockings and crumpled suit. ‘Weel,’ he said doubtfully, in his thickest Scots.
I closed my eyes. I heard the utter silence of several hundred held breaths.
‘That I do…’ He stopped. He gazed up at the ceiling. Still no one breathed.
I waited for the ‘not'. The unspoken word flapped and crashed through the air of the chapel, careening off the walls and ceiling. NOT! NOT! NOT! NOT!
The king sat down again.
I remembered nothing after that, except that Frederick looked into my eyes and spoke his part in English almost without mistake. I must have spoken mine, because the Bishop led us up to the altar for the final Benediction.
We are married! I thought. It has happened! Helpless to stop it, I felt a wide smile pull up the corners of my mouth until I must have been grinning like a looby. I swallowed against a bubble of laughter.
Not this time! I swallowed again, holding in relief and triumph and joy.
The Garter King of Arms proclaimed us husband and wife. ‘All health, happiness and honour be to the high and mighty Prince, Frederick,’ he cried. ‘By the grace of God, Count Palatine of the Rhine and Prince Elector of the Holy Empire; and to Elizabeth his wife, only daughter of the high, mighty and right-excellent James, by the grace of God, King of Great Britain.’
Wine and hippocras were brought from the vestry. Frederick gave my father a huge golden bowl for the toasting. I grew giddy with wine and good wishes. As we walked in procession back to the Banqueting House, the air was filled with shouts of ‘God give them joy! God give them joy!’
Then, outside the Banqueting House, a press of well-wishers sent up such a cheer for Frederick and me that I saw my father frown and pull his lower lip. But I was carried onwards towards the feast, into the music of Frederick’s trumpeters, blowing a shower of gold and brass notes from their silver instruments. From outside, the crowd roared back, ‘God give them joy! God give them joy!’
Frederick and I left the Wedding Feast at last, together with the official bedding party of Lady Harington, Northumberland, the Count of Nassau, Sir Thomas Lake, and various court officials.
‘I wish to visit the Privy Stairs on the way to my lodgings,’ I said.
Lady Harington and Northumberland exchanged looks but agreed. Humouring the shy bride, no doubt. Not even Frederick knew what I intended.
During the preparations for my wedding, Abel White had returned to England, to introduce a visitor from Italy, a Count Francisco Cointo di La Spada.
‘I was Salisbury’s man, whilst he lived,’ the newcomer told me. He was a tall fair man, clean-shaven and short-haired against the fashion. ‘His fire master. Now on loan to ademanding ruler in Italy.’ He gave me a devastating smile. ‘In truth, your grace, I’m also plain Francis Quoynt, of Powder Mote near Brighthelmstone.’
‘I know of you,’ I said. ‘It seems that you were much missed on a number of festive occasions in the last three years.’
‘My present employer is both demanding and jealous,’ he said, with a private smile. ‘The Principessa of La Spada in Friuli. But even she could not forbid me to carry out a final commission for my former patron, Cecil.
‘At the end of your wedding feast,’ he said. ‘As you progress to your lodgings, I ask you, in memory of Lord Salisbury, to stand for a short time at the end of the Privy Stairs, as if for a last breathe the air. And look to the south.’
The bedding party hung back respectfully at the palace entrance to the Privy Stairs. Music from the continuing dancing reached us faintly. Holding Frederick’s hand… my husband’s hand … I stood at the very end of the stairs, under the light of the two permanent lanterns, looking out into the darkness of the river and the marshes beyond.
The lanterns of distant wherries bobbed and traced slow lines of light. Small waves lapped at our feet, marking the dark water with pale lacings of froth. For an instant, close to the stairs, I thought I saw Henry’s shape surface and dive again.
Then a single rocket rose behind us. Before I could turn to see the source, a curtain of fire rose up from the flat darkness of the Lambeth marshes across the Thames. Then balls of fire began to climb, each one leaving a bright orange snake tail hanging in the night sky, before it exploded in showers of stars. Green, silver, gold, pink. More and more fireballs rushed up, chasing each other so closely that there was not a breath between them. They etched the entire sky with lines of sparks. The rumble of constant explosions beat at us like the irregular thumping of huge drums.
Frederick’s hand tightened on mine. It was a rising storm, as if the earth had turned to heaven and threw lightning bolts upwards, instead of down. Each rocket carried my heart and breath up with it. Each explosion jolted my heart. Again, and again and again, before I could recover from the jolt before.
Then, when I thought that there could be no more rockets left on earth, a pair rose together with only the quietest of thumps, leaving no tails. Mere sparks that cut upwards with a quiet mysterious purpose, higher and higher, above the rest. In silence, they rose and rose, seemed to pause, then jump upwards again, arching high over our heads, while the air still seemed to shake with the memory of past explosions.
I tilted my head back, unable to breathe, sure that the two sparks must be tickling the toes of the angels by now. Just as it seemed that I had imagined them, there was a double explosion that made the water jump at our feet. Higher than the moon, I saw two bright letters floating down, made of stars, our initials, Frederick’s and mine, F and E, wavering against the darkness like their own reflections in the river, drifting, holding their shape for a time, then blending into a new unreadable constellation.
Then the stars began to die, but so slowly that I held out my hand like a child trying to catch a snowflake, before the last one died far overhead.
Frederick gripped my arm and pointed at the far bank. The lantern-lit wherries had disappeared. The river was now dark and still. Then in the silence, from the far bank, I heard the faint sound of a Scottish pipe, so distant and strange that it might have played for a spirit dance at a loch-side, daring mortals to join the ring.
A torch-lit boat had pushed off from opposite shore and approached us silently, accompanied only by the single distant pipe and the splash of its oars. A mermaid with burning hair sat in the bow. The boat glided up to the steps. She held up her arms to me.
‘Take care!’ Frederick said sharply. But I had already descended the slippery steps to take from her hands the closed silver scallop shell she offered me.
The boat and mermaid pulled away at once, leaving behind a smell of burning saltpetre and sulphur. I climbed back up into the lantern light. I felt with my thumb, found the catch and opened the shell.
Inside was a fine single unset pearl, and a letter. I knew that signature. I had seen it many times on letters and state documents, taller than it was wide, elegant, with neatly squared shoulders, and always larger than any other signature that might also be on the page. In every way unlike the man whose hand had written it.
‘It’s from Cecil.’ I angled the letter into the lantern light to read.
‘Your grace, my pilgrimage is done. Yours now begins, travelling roads I cannot see and cannot smooth for you. I would that I could serve you and your brother still…
My voice caught on those last words. If Cecil had lived, I might have learned whether or not my father had ordered my brother’s death. If he still lived, his enemies and my brother’s might never have dared to act.
Frederick added his hand to steady mine, so that the paper did not shake too much to read.
All I can give is yours to take, though I fear it be very little and far from sufficient for the likely need. I remain as discreet for your cause in my death as in my life. May any good advice I might by chance have given help to protect you in the darkness of shadows. Please accept from me, on this joyful day of new beginning, a final gift of hopeful light. Ever your most humble and obedient servant, Salisbury. ‘
In the bottom of the shell were some dark grey ashes. I touched them thoughtfully, then shook the remains of my dangerous letter to Henry into the river.
‘This was a wedding gift from the late Secretary,’ I managed to say to the party waiting at the palace door.
Then Frederick and I were alone except for my maid. Even my dogs had been banished to the antechamber for the night.
My ears throbbed with the sudden silence. For hours my head had been constantly filled with shouts, cheers, trumpets. Faintly in the distance, the dance music played on. Bursts of rowdy voices came from different places around the palace. I knew that the official bedding party had their ears pressed to my door, listening for whatever we might give them to hear, as if the maidenhead of Thames might ring like a bell when it was cracked by Rhine.
Earlier, the weight of jewels had been taken from my hair to be counted and locked away. But my elaborate night-dress pricked my neck with lace and gold embroidery and seemed to weigh almost as much as my wedding gown.
Just before she left me, Lady Harington had gripped my hands with unexpected warmth. ‘You must let the prince do his duty,’ she murmured. ‘Even if it seems strange to you.’ She sounded even more severe than usual. ‘He must perform his part. Your duty is to allow it, no matter how your modesty might protest.’
She gave both my hands a little shake, as if jostling strength from her own body into mine, like shaking flourfrom a sack. She helped me into the bed, which had been decked with ivy, bracken and branches of rosemary. I slid my hand under my pillow to touch the iron knife I had place there earlier, for good luck, along with my piece of Scottish granite. When my fingers brushed one of the rose petals strew on my pillow, it felt like cold, dead skin. The dish of fortifying caraway seeds set on Frederick’s pillow looked like mouse droppings.
Sir Thomas Lake, the Count of Nassau, Northumberland, Baby Charles and other groomsmen had led Frederick into the room. He had likewise been stripped of his wedding finery and clothed in a heavy night shirt and a fur-lined, brocade gown. Then Lady Harington left with Sir Thomas, Nassau, Northumberland and the others, to stand in the passage outside the door.
Frederick and I could not look at each other. How could it be right that the most private parts of our bodies should be so openly in everyone’s thoughts? The heavy-footed beasts, our state selves, Thames and Rhine, had followed us, just as I had feared. For one instant, I was tempted to give a bloodcurdling scream to see if all those listeners would run back in again.
Frederick, the bridegroom Elector Palatine, now studied the floor. I could not think how to free us from these other selves and the terrible burden of lifeless Duty they had dropped at our feet. I looked at the door. All those ears listening to hear if we performed our duty. I suddenly feared that I might need to use Southwark skills after all.
This was unbearable.
‘Psst,’ I said.
Frederick looked up.
I stuck my tongue out at the door. Frederick imitated me. Then he put his hands to his ears and waggled his fingers at the door. I imitated him. We smiled at each other uneasily.
It was a start.
‘Let him see you,’ Tallie had said.
I climbed out of bed and beckoned for my maid to unfasten the night dress, feeling a blank terror.
The maid peeled off my stiff silk carapace and folded it over her arm.
Wearing only a fine silk shift, I nodded for her to leave us. I did not trust my voice.
We watched the little door of the private stairs close behind her. She would guard the door to make certain that no one else left or entered my chamber that night. We were truly alone for the first time.