Queen Of This Realm Read online

  She knew my nature well and she immediately fell to her knees and buried her head in my skirts. “My lady, my dearest Princess, never will I leave you.”

  “Not for Mr Ashley?”

  “I think Mr Ashley could become a member of your household. I am sure no objection would be raised against that.”

  I was dubious. Kat! Married! No longer entirely mine!

  People did marry, of course, and Kat was young and comely. But I felt shaken. There was so much change in the air, and I did not want change though I knew it must come. There was too much tension in the air… throughout the Court, throughout the country. I felt it in the streets on those occasions I rode out for I was very sensitive to the mood of the people.

  And now Kat was to be married.

  Lovingly she assured me that nothing could ever make any difference in her devotion to me. I was her special charge, her Princess, close to her heart, never to be dislodged. She made me feel that she would even abandon Mr Ashley if marrying him meant losing me.

  Fortunately she did not have to make such a choice. My good stepmother said that there was a simple solution. Let Mr Ashley join my household. “I feel Thomas Parry is not as efficient as he might be,” she said, “and John Ashley is a very clever young man.”

  So our problem was solved and Kat became Kat Ashley. Parry stayed of course but John Ashley became a member of the household; I was very pleased because not only was he Kat's husband but there was a family connection between him and the Boleyns.

  We were at Hatfield and I was delighted to be there because Edward was with me. We used to converse in Latin—a language we both loved. I had a secret with which I intended to surprise him. There was a woman in my household, Blanche Parry, a Welshwoman, who was very proud of the fact that she had rocked me in my cradle. She was very fluent in her native language and I suggested she should teach it to me. With my aptitude I was soon able to speak in Welsh with Blanche and I thought it would be rather amusing to let Edward know that I had acquired the Welsh language of which he and the erudite little Jane Grey were ignorant. After all we Tudors had Welsh blood in our veins and royal as we were, we had inherited through our ancestor Owen Tudor.

  But before I did this there was disturbing news that my relatives Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, and Henry Howard, his son, Earl of Surrey, had been thrown into the Tower.

  Kat, as usual, knew all about it.

  “How could Surrey be so stupid?” she demanded. “Do you know what he has done? He has assumed the right to wear the arms of Edward the Confessor. He says the concession was granted to his family by Richard II. Of course the College of Arms forbade this, but what does my Lord Surrey do but ignore them.”

  “And do you mean to say that for such an offense Surrey and his father are in the Tower?”

  Kat came closer to me and whispered: “It's the Seymours. You wouldn't expect them to miss a chance like this, would you? He has played right into the Seymours' hands. Silly Surrey!”

  “Kat,” I said severely, “you forget yourself.”

  “So I do,” she replied.

  “You should not speak so flippantly of the Earl of Surrey. He is a very great gentleman.”

  “He must be if he can sport the royal arms.”

  “That was foolish of him.”

  “He might have known the Seymours were ready to pounce.”

  I was upset. I had felt quite a fondness for Henry Howard. He was a very handsome man but what made him more attractive in my eyes was that he wrote beautiful verses and people said he had me in mind when he wrote them. I always read them avidly and they gave me great pleasure so it was distressing to think of him in that cold dank prison. And his father with him—for the Duke of Norfolk could not be very young. He had once been my mother's chief adviser and although he had presided at her trial and arranged for her execution, he was still a blood relation—my own uncle.

  “It is all Seymour now,” said Kat. “My word, how they have come up in the world since their sister married the King. Edward the elder is a sharp one and he has the King's ear. As for Thomas …” Kat smiled knowingly. “Now there is a man. Do you know, I don't think there is another at Court to match him.”

  “Match him for what?” I asked.

  “For grace… for charm…He is so good-looking…so tall, so commanding. He's much more of a man than his brother. They say there is a little rivalry between Thomas and Edward Seymour. Thomas has no wife—as yet.”

  “Kat,” I cried, “since you have discovered the glories of marriage you think of nothing else. Have a care or Mr Ashley will be taking you to task.”

  She laughed but I could not join in her merry mood because I was thinking of poor Henry Howard in the Tower where my own mother had lodged before her death.

  I was quite fond of Hatfield then, although later I came to regard it as a prison. There was an air of peace about the ivy-covered walls, and Edward kept splendid state in the lofty banqueting hall. When we dined there I always sat beside him and we would talk seriously together, for Edward, who was as aware of the growing tension as I was and far more frightened of it, was becoming very serious indeed.

  I heard that the King was at Whitehall, the Duke of Norfolk and the Earl of Surrey still in the Tower, and the Queen in constant attendance upon the King who could not bear her out of his sight these days.

  It was December when visitors came to Hatfield. Kat saw the party in the distance and hastened to find me that she might be the first with the news. We went up to one of the turrets to watch the riders approach.

  I said: “I'll guess they are coming to tell us we are going to Court and I must warn Edward of their approach.”

  “Yes, you two should go down to greet them,” replied Kat.

  We had a shock instead of a welcome. Our visitors were guards who had come to escort us—not to Whitehall as we had thought—but Edward to Hertford Castle and me to Enfield. We were to be separated! We protested with horror at being parted but were assured that these were the King's orders and must be obeyed without question.

  How different was that Christmas from what I had anticipated! Poor Edward had been so unhappy at our parting and, since he was younger, he was less able to control his grief. I wrote a little note to tell him that I was as unhappy as he was by our forced separation and I was thinking of him all the time. He wrote such a tender letter back. I still have it.

  “The change of place, dear sister, does not so much vex me as your departure from me…It is a comfort to my regret that I hope shortly to see you again if no accident intervenes…”

  Tragedy intervened. We saw each other, but only briefly.

  In January I heard that the Earl of Surrey had been beheaded on Tower Hill. This depressing knowledge did not help me to bear the separation from my brother. Poor reckless Surrey! How prodigal people were of life…in risking it and taking it. It seemed to me such a trivial matter to die for. Oh, but I knew it was more than arms on an escutcheon. It was the deadly rivalry for power between two leading families—the upstart Seymours and the ancient one of Howard. The Seymours were in the ascendant. Of course they were. The Seymour brothers were the uncles of the King to be.

  To my great joy Edward was brought to Enfield.

  It was the last day of January, cold and frosty, when Edward arrived in the company of Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, and Sir Anthony Browne. I was amazed to see these two together in apparent harmony because Sir Anthony was a firm adherent of the Catholic Faith, and Hertford, because of his powerful position in the country, was the man whom followers of the Reformed Faith looked upon to lead them.

  As soon as they arrived I was summoned to the hall. Edward was standing there with Hertford on one side of him and Sir Anthony Browne on the other.

  “Edward,” I cried, forgetting ceremony. I ran to him and we embraced.

  The two men stood silently watching us and neither of us cared whether they considered this a breach of etiquette. There are moments when such matters can
be forgotten and affection given full rein.

  It was Hertford who made the announcement.

  “My lord and lady, I have grave news for you. Your father, our great and good King Henry the Eighth, has died in his Palace of Whitehall.” Then he fell to his knees and taking Edward's hand cried: “God save the King.”

  Edward looked startled. Then he turned to me. I put my arms about him and we wept. We had lost our father. I was old enough to know that we were fast moving into danger. I was not yet fourteen years old but I felt that I had been learning how to wade carefully in treacherous waters. But Edward… poor little Edward…to be so young… and a king!

  We were crying bitterly and my tears were more for my frail little brother than for the great and glorious, cruel and ruthless yet magnificent King who had just passed out of this life.

  A Man of Much Wit and Very Little Judgment

  MY LIFE CHANGED FROM THAT TIME. ONE THOUGHT WAS uppermost in my mind. It bewildered me—but not for long. It was so dazzling, so truly wonderful, so remote—and yet it was possible. One day I could be Queen of England.

  After having been known as the bastard daughter of the King, of no great significance, scorned and kept in mended garments, sent from place to place at the convenience of others, I had become of no small consequence. Henceforth people would treat me in a different manner. I began to see it immediately. I noticed the covert looks. Be careful, said their eyes. She could be Queen one day.

  I was savoring what a glorious sensation power can be. I was being given just that faintest glimmer of that which my father had enjoyed since the days when he was eighteen years old and became the King. To rule a country— a great country—what a destiny! And it could be mine.

  This new state had come about because of the conditions of my father's will. I was to receive three thousand pounds a year—riches for me—and a marriage portion of ten thousand pounds. True, I could only marry with the consent of the King—my little brother Edward now—and his Council. Edward would be easy enough to handle, but what of the Council? No matter. There was no question of marriage yet. But if any man tried to marry either my elder half sister Mary Tudor or myself without the consent of the Council, serious charges would be brought against him and my sister and me. That did not greatly concern me, for being not yet fourteen I had no mind to risk any lives for the sake of a romantic marriage.

  The crown, of course, would go to Edward. If he died without heirs, it passed to Mary; and if Mary should die, then I was the next in line, although the Catholics believed that my father had never really been married to my mother and I was a bastard! As this will was made a year or so before my father's death, he had stated that before Mary or myself would come any heirs he should have through Katharine Parr—adding ominously “or any future queen.”

  I could not stop myself from summing up the situation, turning it this way and that. Edward was very young and frail. I wondered whether he would marry and could be expected to get healthy offspring. Mary? Well, Mary was thirty-one and unmarried. Would she find a husband? Most certainly. And if she bore a son, what hope had I?

  So I warned myself again and again that I must not be overdazzled by even the remote prospect. I must rejoice that it was a possibility and prepare myself to play a waiting game.

  My father was buried at Windsor and his heavy body had to be lowered into the grave by means of a vise worked by sixteen of the strongest men of the Yeomen of the Guard. The members of the King's household had stood around his grave, the Queen's old enemy Gardiner with the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Treasurer among them. In accordance with custom they broke their staves over their heads and threw them down into the coffin.

  So passed the great King who had astonished the world by breaking with Rome and bringing about the biggest religious controversy ever known, who had had his will all his life, who had married six wives and murdered two of them—and God knows there might have been a third victim but for her adroitness and his failing health—all this and yet they mourned him. Was it because in spite of all his cruelty and his ruthlessness he showed great strength? Above all things, it seems, men admire strength. He was sentimental too and he had a conscience which would never let him rest. What strange contradictory characteristics were his! Yet, withal, men mourned his passing and turned regretful, fearful eyes to the new boy King.

  There was a macabre story about something which had happened just before his burial. Kat told me this hesitatingly, pretending she could not tell and having to be forced to do so.

  “People are whispering about it,” she said. “I cannot say that it is true, but there are those who saw—”

  “Come on, Kat,” I said more imperiously than ever for was I not a potential heiress to a throne? “I command you to tell me.”

  Kat raised her eyes to the ceiling, a frequent gesture.

  “And I dare not disobey my lady's command. On the way to Windsor the cortége broke its journey at Sion House and there the body rested in the chapel. It was at Sion House, remember, that poor Katharine Howard stayed when they were taking her to the Tower. Poor child, they say she was almost mad with fear, for did she not have the example of her cousin to remind her of what lay in store for her? Well, the coffin burst, for the King's body was too great for its fragile wood, and the King's blood was spilt on the chapel floor. Now this is the shocking part. Are you sure you want me to go on? Very well. A dog was seen to run forward and lick the blood clean and although they tried to draw him away he snarled and refused to budge until there was not a speck of blood on the floor.”

  “Kat, where did you hear such a tale?”

  “My dear lady, it is being whispered throughout the land. You do not know of this because you were not then born but when the King was thinking of ridding himself of his first Queen, one Friar Peyto who cared nothing for what might befall him stood in his pulpit and declared that the King was as Ahab and that the dogs in like manner would lick his blood.”

  “What a terrible story!”

  “Tis terrible times we live in, sweet lady. The Lady of Aragon suffered greatly and was there any one of the King's wives who did not? Your own beautiful mother so desperate… And we saw the terror of the last Queen for ourselves, you and I.”

  “Kat, how dare you talk so about my great father!”

  “Only because commanded to do so by one who may well herself be mistress of us all one day.”

  Kat was smiling at me, and because she was Kat and said such words I could forgive her anything.

  I told her she was the most indiscreet person I knew and I hoped she did not chatter to others as she did to me. She was as excited as I was about my prospects and being less thoughtful and logical than I, she believed that I was almost on the throne.

  “The little King is very sickly,” she said. “He won't make old bones. And as for Mary, I sometimes think she does not enjoy good health. Whereas you, my precious one, are full of vigor. I said to John Ashley only the other day, ‘Our girl is destined for greatness. I feel it in my bones.'”

  “You are the most foolish creature I ever knew and I wonder that I love you. If any heard you express such sentiments, what do you think they would say of you? You would be accused of ill-wishing the King and you know I love Edward dearly.”

  “I don't think John Ashley wants to be rid of me yet,” said Kat flippantly, “so he won't betray me. Nor will you, my lady, for I cannot see you ever reaching that stage when you would not want your Kat there to look after you—throne or not.”

  “Oh Kat, do have a care,” I said, laughing.

  She would take no heed. It was not long before she was talking about a marriage for me.

  “Well, 'tis a merry state and one necessary to a woman.”

  “All women?” I asked.

  “All women, my clever lady.”

  “I am not so sure. What of my mother? Do you think she thought what a blessed state it was when she was on her way to Tower Green? Did Katharine Howard think it so when she ran screamin
g through the gallery? And what of Katharine Parr when she was confined to her bed in mortal peril? Do you believe they thought it then?”

  “You are talking of queens.”

  “Queens—or those who may be queens—must surely take special care before they embark on matrimony.”

  “Marriages are usually made for queens, dear lady.”

  “I have a fancy that I shall make my own, if indeed I ever decide to make one.”

  “I know one who would be very happy to take you.”

  “Who is that?”

  She was conspiratorial and her voice had sunk to a whisper. She put her lips to my ear.

  I flushed. I could not pretend that I had not noticed him and that I did not think him one of the most exciting men I had ever seen. He was tall, extremely good-looking and more than that had an air of gallantry and indefinable charm. There was only one man at Court who could fit that description: Thomas Seymour.

  “Ah, my lady,” went on the incorrigible Kat, “I see that you are inclined to look with favor on this very desirable gentleman.”

  “You see much which is not there, Kat Ashley,” I reprimanded her. “And how do you know he might have plans regarding me?”

  “Because I have eyes, my lady, and I have seen his own linger on you with much affection.”

  Was it so? And how did Thomas Seymour regard me? When he looked at me with that affection which Kat had perceived, did he see me wearing a crown? Was he, brother to that very Jane who had supplanted my mother, uncle to the frail King, looking out for his future?

  “If he asked for your hand, Princess, would you take him?”

  “You are impertinent, Kat Ashley,” I said and I slapped her face.

  She put her hand to her cheek. “And you, my lady, are hasty with your hands,” she said.

  I put my arms round her and kissed her. “I'm sorry I did that, but you can be very aggravating sometimes. I do not want to hear any more about Thomas Seymour.”

  “Do you not?” said Kat. “Shall we then discuss the weather or the new blue silk you have…or your embroidery?”