My mother always said that nothing was so unbecoming to a child as a pout. So I told Lady Mary over our chess game, but she looked up at me with her pinched little face and asked if I thought her merely sulky and disobedient, and if so, wouldn’t I prefer the company of her guardians, or perhaps even to return to court and the queen.
Truth be told, I regretted my words as soon as they left my mouth. And I did not prefer the company of her guardians, for Lady Shelton was aunt to Queen Anne, and I’d sooner look at Lady Mary’s honest unhappiness than Lady Shelton’s smiling ambition. As for the queen, I had known her when she was plain Anne Boleyn, lady in waiting to Queen Catherine, laughing and flirting and all the while plotting to destroy the royal family.
I could hardly say any of this out loud. But I didn’t have to speak, because Lady Mary managed something very like a smile and said, “Elizabeth would miss you if you went anywhere. She loves you very much.”
With that, she took my king and won the game.
Elizabeth was more interested in smearing damson jam around her mouth than winning at chess and expressing affection for her old Lady Governess. But she looked up when her name was mentioned and said, “My Margie.”
In the King’s family, love was very much like possession. I smiled, too, and said, “Eat your tart, your highness.”
Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Lady Mary’s face fall again.
Little wonder that she was unhappy, poor love. Once, she had been a princess, her father’s heir, as happy and clever a girl as ever lived. She could read Latin and play the lute and talk philosophy and religion with learned men.
Then came the King’s great matter, the Boleyn woman, taking it all away. In place of fine clothes and titles came bitter womanhood, unpredictable courses that kept Mary abed for days at a time, doubled over with cramps, and migraines that would leave her prostrate for a day, then linger as nagging headaches that made her bad tempered and unable to concentrate. Her mother was too far away to tell her that this was normal for some unlucky women, so she let the Spanish ambassador persuade her that the queen was having her poisoned. For two months I had to prepare all her food with my own hands, and I was no cook but the widow of a knight and a baroness in my own right.
Catherine died in January. Now I was all that Mary had.
I had been her Lady Governess when she was a child, and I loved her as if she was my own daughter, but she was a difficult girl.
◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊∆◊
It was a crisp, grey day in April, when the leaves were turning brown and the king—well, he had his own concerns, but we knew nothing of them until, just after noon, there was a bustle of movement outside, and we heard the servants calling, “The queen! The queen is come!”
Princess Elizabeth dropped her doll and climbed to her feet. “Mama! My mama is here!” She toddled over to her sister, sitting in the window with a book. “Let me up, Mary, my mama is here!”
Lady Mary made a great show of reluctance as she put her book aside, but she lifted her sister. I joined them at the window, expecting to see a great throng of people surrounding the queen. Royalty never travelled without their servants and courtiers, their courtiers’ servants, their priests and fools and jugglers. Today, Queen Anne was alone but for two ladies in waiting, and her smile was strained as she accepted her aunt’s embrace.
“Mama!” cried Elizabeth.
The queen looked up at the noise and waved to her daughter. She gave no sign of recognising Lady Mary or myself, but the strain around her mouth returned as she stepped inside.
“Why is she here?” Mary asked.
“To see her daughter.”
“Alone?” Mary bit her lip. “She’s planning something.”
“What? To stab you with a dagger hidden in her farthingale? She’s come to spend an hour with her daughter, child. Your mama did the same when you were small.”
Lady Mary scowled at the comparison, but I was saved by a light footstep in the hall. The door opened, and there was the queen.
She wasn’t beautiful, but neither was she the deformed monster her enemies portrayed. She had regular features, perhaps a little thin, but pleasant to look at. Her eyes were too wide and her mouth too thin, but cleverness made her eyes sparkle and her smile made her mouth seem kind.
She was not smiling today.
“Mama! I have a new doll and I learned a French song, and Mary has promised to teach me Spanish and Latin!”
While I bowed to the Queen, pushing Mary into a reluctant reverence, Elizabeth forgot all manners and formality. The queen seemed to shudder as Elizabeth ran towards her, though she concealed it quickly, forcing a merry note into her voice as she said, “My angel, how clever you are. The cleverest princess in Europe, I’ll wager, and smarter than most of the princes as well. Sing me your French song.”
She watched as the princess sang, her eyes hungry, committing this moment to memory. I had seen that look before, on Queen Catherine’s face in the weeks before Princess Mary was sent away to her own court in Wales, in recognition of her status as the king’s heir.
But Elizabeth was much too young for such a move, and surely the king hadn’t given up hope of getting a son from Queen Anne.
“Why are you here, Mama?” the princess demanded as soon as she had finished her song. “No one told us you were coming.”
“It’s a surprise. Don’t you like surprises?”
“Did you bring me a present?”
“Perhaps.” This time, the Queen’s smile reached her eyes. “That’s a surprise, too.”
“You did bring a present!”
From behind her back, the Queen produced a book.
“It’s about the French court, where I grew up,” she said. “Look at all the pictures! The lady in blue is Queen Claude.”
“She’s very pretty.”
“Can you find a picture of a yellow apple? You have to look on every page.” When Elizabeth had settled to her task, the queen turned to Mary and said, “We must speak.”
I held my breath, hoping that Lady Mary would have the good sense to keep her sharp tongue to herself. That thin hope scarcely had time to form before it was dashed.
“Speak?” Lady Mary said. ”About what? Sending my mother to a lonely death? Or leading my father and all of England into heresy?”
So sallow was Queen Anne that one might have mistaken her for the Spaniard, and the golden-haired, rosy-cheeked Catherine for the Englishwoman. Anne Boleyn’s colour rose only with her anger. Now, her cheeks flushed red and she spat, “Your mother died of old age and disease. As for heresy—” Miracle of miracles, she stopped and drew breath. When she spoke again, she was calm.
“Under different circumstances, I’d have enjoyed debating religion with you, Lady Mary.”
“The Word of God is hardly a matter for debate,” said Mary, but I saw her hesitate. Not quite distracted by the queen’s ploy, but curious nonetheless. A mirthless little smile tugged at her lips. ”Unless, I suppose, circumstances were very different.”
“Do you remember the visit I paid you two years ago?”
I knew nothing of such a visit. I eased myself into a chair beside Princess Elizabeth, hoping the Queen and Lady Mary would not notice me. God forgive me, I’ve always enjoyed a gossip, and in Henry’s England, a little knowledge can save a life.
Or condemn it.
“You told me,” Lady Mary was saying in a low voice, “that if I renounced my mother and the Pope, I might return to court. You promised me,” her voice turned bitter, “friendship.”
“I meant it,” said the Queen, “though you’re as unpleasant a girl as ever lived. I had thought to send you to France.”
“France.” Mary, good daughter of Spain, made it sound like hell.
“You’d like Queen Claude. She’s intelligent and educated, and appreciates clever women. She is a loyal friend to the Pope. You would have been happy in France.”
“Why are you here?”
“I fear,” the Queen’s voice was even, “that the king loves me no longer. I fear that my daughter will be…cast out.”
“As I was.”
“Yes.”
“Forgive me,” said Lady Mary, “but why am I meant to care?”
“My daughter. Your sister.”
“Perhaps she’ll be sent to wait upon the next heir. No doubt I will follow. Who has my father’s eye now?”
“Jane Seymour.”
“I remember her. She was kind to me.”
“She’s as stupid as a turnip. She can barely write her own name.”
“His Grace won’t mind,” said Mary. “As long as she gives him a son.” She sat down, arranging her plain skirts around her. “What have you done to displease him?”
“I don’t know.” The queen’s calm facade cracked at last. “I miscarried—our son died—but it was an accident, he knows it. But he was sitting with the Seymour woman in his lap—someone has filled his ears with poison, and so many lies, I can’t even—”
“Did you betray him?”
“No!”
“He thinks you did.”
“Lies,” said the Queen. “All lies.”
“Cromwell?”
“I believe so.”
“He’s as bad as Wolsey. Maybe worse.”
“Then we have a common enemy,” said the Queen.
It was true, I realised, but she did not mean that their common enemy was Thomas Cromwell. It was the king. I saw horror dawning in Mary’s eyes—she loved her father, even now.
Such thoughts were treason. We’d be ruined, all three of us, and then who would protect Elizabeth?
Lady Mary stepped back.
“We have nothing in common,” she said.
This was a victory for Mary. For years she had resisted the call to be pragmatic and sensible—obedient to her father’s wishes—and ally herself to Anne Boleyn. Now the queen’s position was precarious, and if she fell, Mary could say, “Look, I was right all along.”
Jane Seymour—she was domestically-minded and dull, but she had always been kind to Mary. If the king married again, there would be no Spanish ghost hanging over his next wife.
For the first time in years, Mary’s desires were in accord with her political well-being.
There was a fierce hope in her eyes. After these years of pain, she finally had a tiny shred of power.
She straightened her spine and said, “What do you want from me?”
“My daughter.” The queen spoke softly, so that the princess, still absorbed in her book, wouldn’t hear. “She will need someone to care for her.”
“Me?”
“She is your sister. You seem to love her.”
“My mother taught me to love all my father’s bastards.”
The queen’s hand twitched. Many times she had said Lady Mary deserved to have her ears boxed, and occasionally I even agreed with her.
She did not move.
“Please,” she said.
A bitter little laugh escaped Mary’s mouth. “Would you put me in charge of her religious instruction? Or should I share my fond memories of her late mother?”
“Will I have to beg?”
“Lady Bryan will look after Elizabeth, as she always has.”
I’d hoped I was forgotten. But the queen cast a dismissive glance in my direction and said, “She’s not family.”
As if she had been born to royalty. I swallowed my irritation and helped Princess Elizabeth turn back to the beginning of the book, still searching for that elusive yellow apple.
Mary shifted in her chair, straightening her spine and raising her chin. She took on a fragile, brittle dignity. I could almost see her future: a middle-aged woman with a bitter tongue that concealed the pains—not all of them physical—of her existence.
When she spoke, her voice was very soft. “You wore yellow to celebrate my mother’s death. You persuaded my father to abandon their lawful, Godly marriage, then you hounded her until she died in a cold castle, miles away from those who loved her. Now you come to me and ask me to treat your daughter with kindness. Because you think—what? That I would treat my sister as badly as you have treated me?” Mary looked away, dismissing the queen. “You insult me.”
She hesitated, then added petulantly, “She’s a good, clever little girl, who will know her place and accept the one true religion, and whoever succeeds the King, we will serve him with humility and honour.”
Not so many years ago, she would have added, So there. It was all I could do to keep from laughing and applauding. The queen thought she was dealing with an ignorant girl, but Mary was as stubborn and clever as her parents, and as touchy about her dignity. This was her first victory since the king remarried, and by God, she was savouring it.
Not for nothing had the queen spent these past years pleasing the king. Her cheeks were flushed and her jaw set, but she inclined her head and said, “My thanks.” Then, so that Mary would not forget her place, she added, “Lady Mary.”
Mary’s lip curled, but she merely stood up, putting her hand to her temple.
“My head,” she said. “I need to rest. Lady Bryan—”
“I’m coming, child.”
As I got to my feet, Princess Elizabeth cried, “The apple! I found it!”
“Show me, my angel,” said the queen, “and I’ll read you the story.”
Having got what she wanted, however unexpected or unpleasant the means, we no longer existed as far as the queen was concerned. I took Mary by her elbow.
“I did well, did I not?” she whispered as I led her upstairs to her room.
“Your mother would have been proud.”
“It was my father that I had in mind.” She eased herself down on the bed. “I think I’ll sleep a little while.”
“It’s good for you.”
“And tomorrow,” she looked up at me, and
through the pain, there was a new determination in her eyes, “I
think I shall send my respects to Jane
Seymour.”
“Queenside” by Liz Barr