The Redheaded Princess: A Novel (16 page)

"There is no child," Pussy Cat whispered to me.

"What do you mean, no child?”

“No baby was born. The information was false. She was not pregnant.”

“What was it, then?" I was dumbfounded.

"Nobody knows. Except mayhap her desire to bring forth a child. Don't question it. For your own safety, don't ask a thing when you see her."

But I was not summoned to see my sister until two weeks later. And that summons came late at night and we did not take the secret access to her apartments. Her men came to my door, with torchlights in hand, to take me outside and across the garden to the foot of the privy stairs that led to her bedchamber. The torchlights cast fearful shadows. The bushes, sculpted in the shapes of animals, came alive. Instead of the fragrance of flowers, I smelled the stench of death. I had taken the time to dress in my best, my white satin decorated with small pearls. As it swished when I walked, I thought they were taking me outside to assassinate me, about how my blood would look spilled on the white gown. I must always be in fear of death. For if Mary had no child, no heir, was I not next in line for the throne? And where would that leave her husband, Philip? As I knelt at Mary's feet I could not help but notice how old she'd gotten, how pale she was, how lined her face, how sickly her look. No robust motherhood here, I thought.

"You have not yet converted," she accused me, "to the true faith.”

“I have been attending Mass at Woodstock, Your Majesty."

"How can I trust you when you refuse to cooperate?"

"I am your sister."

Her laugh was sharp. "My husband insists we be friends. But I cannot help but keep you under constant guard. You represent a threat to me. What would you have me do?”

“As Your Majesty thinks best," I said humbly. For just then, behind her throne I saw a curtain move and I knew without being told that someone was there, listening. But who? Was her husband that underhanded?

"My first pregnancy proved false," she said to me. "But I will bear a child. You will not succeed to the throne. I will yet bear a child!"

"I am sure you will," I told her. Prince Philip stepped out from behind the curtain then, a man of small stature yet large presence. He was perfectly groomed and looked at me with sorrowful brown eyes as he held out his hands.

"My dear sister," he said, "welcome back into the family circle." I had Philip with me, though I knew not why. Had Mary complained of me so much that he grew tired of hearing it? Was he truly sympathetic to the abused younger sister, or did he just fear that if she died in childbirth I would be in line for the throne? Dear God, did he think that if Mary died he could marry me and become King? The thought made me draw upon all my strengths. I must be careful around this man. I must always think of tactics and attacks and regrouping my strengths, as if I were at war.

In the months that followed, although I was kept under watch and not allowed to roam freely, my life improved. I became part of the court and Philip paid constant mind to me. He danced with me, he flirted with me, he defended me against Mary's tirades. I must say that in some of her extravagance, my sister surprised me. Even I, who remembered my father's court, was stunned to learn what my sister spent a year on her table, and that eighteen kitchens were kept going at all times. In order to feed all the Spanish ambassadors; Philip's knights, soldiers, and servants; all Mary's ladies and aides and servants as well as the council; and visiting dignitaries, she went through in one day eighty to a hundred head of mutton, a dozen of fat beef, a dozen and a half of veal, poultry, game, deer, boar, and rabbit.

But what stunned me more than that was that every time I sat with them at table, Mary ate from gold plates. Philip ate from silver. Was she doing this to let him know he would never be King? I did not know my sister's mind. At times I thought she was more mad than my father had ever been. By Christmas, Mary declared she was with child again. And the whole charade began all over. One morning, the week before Christmas, I was in the knot garden, for it was a fair, beautiful day. I looked up to see a slow, black smoke drifting up over Fleet Street. Fire? I ran inside to tell Cat. But she knew it wasn't just any fire.

"It's your sister's work," she whispered.

"What work?”

“She's burning people she says are heretics. She started yesterday. She says she must cleanse England. Why do you think, when I finally reached you at Woodstock, I urged you to hear Mass? There was rumor this was coming. Only now"-- and Cat's voice broke--"now she must make amends and make sacrifices so her child will be born alive. There will be many burnings from here on, Bess, so just be quiet about it." Burning people? It could not be. I did not keep quiet.

I went to Philip. "Is it true, my Lord, that the smoke out there is from executions?" He nodded silently.

"It must be. The true faith must be restored. Your sister has decreed it.”

“But people are being burned alive." He shrugged. And then I remembered that in Spain, under the Inquisition, they did this all the time. And I was in a state of fear for myself and for Robin. True, I had gone to Mass at Woodstock and here. But what would happen if she put it to me to convert to the "true faith" or be burned? Would I have the courage to be burned, as those poor souls in London had? She made no excuses for what she did and she meted out no mercy. Rich and poor were burned, male and female, sometimes even children. Just for not being Catholic. She burned popular preachers, artisans, farmers. Some were blind or lame or could not hear. One woman was with child. Mary would, she vowed, cleanse England. Sometimes I wished my sister dead. Was that a sin?

Philip was leaving! He broke the news to Mary. He had suffered a terrible disappointment when there was no child. How could he be a true English monarch without an heir? So, I thought, both King and Queen feel unfulfilled when there is no child. Well, since I shall have no King to disappoint, I will bear no child. He was going back to Spain to attend to business. His father, Charles V, had decided to abdicate and leave the throne to his son. Philip told Mary not to worry. He would return in a few weeks. Mary was frantic, tearful and half mad with worry.

"You won't be here when the new Prince of Wales is born," she cried.

"I will be back. I promise," he said. My serving ladies told me that Mary tried to hold on to Philip in those last few days before he left. She tried to convince him of her stature, her state in life, her Queenship. They went in a procession through London. At Tower Wharf they took royal barges to Greenwich. They went to the Observant Friary, which Mary had refurbished. Our father had thrown out the monks after he broke with Rome and was seizing and closing down monasteries. Mary brought them back. She and Philip prayed, and on their return to Greenwich hundreds of people bearing torches accompanied them and stayed outside the palace while they said their good-byes. Then Philip, heir to Spain, the Low Countries, Austria, Sicily, Naples, parts of Germany, and the Americas, whose wife would not allow him to eat from a gold plate, left for Dover and the ship that would take him home.

***CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Mary continued being sickly after there was no child, or to put it in her words "no Prince for the kingdom." She stayed in her chamber, praying. She went to Mass twice a day. And I am ashamed to say that I went with her. For outward appearance I had converted to Catholicism. I hoped the people and God would forgive me this charade. I knew many others who had "converted" to avoid being burned at the stake too. Mary wrote to Philip daily in French, signing herself "your humble and obedient wife." Nature was in keeping with my mood. In September of that year, the year I was twenty-two, heavy rains came to England. The rains brought deep flooding, and people and animals lost their lives. Crops were ruined. Mary made me fast for three days. "You must atone for your sins," she said, so I fasted her Catholic fast, for which I would receive an indulgence from the Pope. Then things got worse. Philip started answering Mary's letters with the demand that he soon be crowned King of England. Mary said she had to ask the council and Parliament, who had to approve first. Philip wrote that he would not return until he was made King.

Then rumors came to England that Philip was enjoying himself in the Netherlands, that he daily went on hunts and attended weddings or other festivities wearing a mask. That he romped with his male friends until the early hours of the morning. That he was having an affair with Madame D'Aler, a beauty of whom he was enamored. Mary got thinner and sicker. She almost stopped eating, but she went on. She ordered more burnings. Even Oxford Archbishop Cranmer was burned at the stake.

Philip wrote again, asking that all his people be sent back to him, his clerks and household help, and his confessor, Alfonso de Castro. Now the public attended the executions, not to watch, but to demonstrate their anger, to raise an outcry. It was whispered that many longed for the Queen to die and be succeeded by her sister, Elizabeth. This only placed me in more danger, so I assured Mary of my loyalty. Mary had her cooks bake Philip's favorite meat pies and shipped them to him. Philip wrote, "My honor will only allow me to return to England if I am allowed to share the government with you."

My old friend Sir William Cecil wrote to me, "The French are getting ready to march on Spain. It is said that Philip asks Mary for money for the war and she is pouring money into it. She is selling, borrowing, and making us bankrupt here at home. Just to get her husband back." His word was true. My allowance was cut in half. Mary gave no explanations.

Now there were uprisings, some serious and some put down immediately. Sir Henry Dudley, a distant relation of Robin's, was raising a force to land on the Isle of Wight and march on London. The plot was discovered and put down. People were questioned, tortured, put in the Tower, and hanged. Mary tried, by having my apartments searched, to connect me to the plot, but she could not. To apologize, she gave me a diamond ring for my birthday. People were secretly sending me presents to prove their loyalty to me. Sir Nicholas Throckmorton sent me a pair of perfumed gloves. Lord Paulet of the Privy Council sent a necklace of pearls that had once belonged to his mother. Lords Clinton, Derby, Bedford, Pembroke, Sussex--all on the Privy Council--sent bottles of scented water, velvet slippers, gold-trimmed neckerchiefs, and boxes of sweetmeats. All "for my birthday," which was September 7. But I understood. The nobles were declaring their loyalty to me. Somehow, Philip contrived to return. He said, laughingly, that his father was afraid of angering the Queen of England, who has so graciously supplied Spain with gold and silver, arms, and provisions for her army.

So, Philip returned -- fresh from the "mating dens" of Amsterdam, it was flung about. He returned in February of 1556. Philip wanted me to marry. Oh, it isn't as if the subject had never been spoken of before. Over the years there had been many negotiations for my hand, some even serious. But I never paid mind to them because that was part of being a Princess of the realm. By the time both parties were ready to honor such negotiations, their countries might have been at war, or at the very least at odds, and so all promises were broken. But now was different. Now King Philip was my brother-in-law. Now my "intended" was his son from his first marriage to a young Portuguese woman, who had died in childbirth. His name was Don Carlos. And he was all of ten years old. Philip returned to England with the joy of it on his lips and in his face.

"I have told Carlos all about you, Elizabeth, and he is truly smitten," he said on the day they broke the news to me.

"But he's only ten years old!" I cried. "By the time he is old enough to wed, I'll be an old lady!”

“It is your duty to wed as you are assigned to wed," Philip reminded me. But I knew he only wanted me to marry his son so that if Mary died the boy would be King of England. And England would still be under the thumb of Rome and the Catholics.

I refused. "I will not! I will never marry anyone!”

“Not marry?" Philip laughed at me. "It is your bounden duty! Now go and write to Carlos and tell him how happy he has made you by his offer."

I knew, of course, that it was one more of the dangers of being a Princess, to have an arranged marriage. Yet I was determined never to marry, by arrangement or not. But the dangers of that winter were numerous, and not only mine. War came, war with France, a country better equipped than ours. And we were losing. Mary soon was with child again and all groaned and prepared for a new ordeal. She grew in girth. And the more battles Philip lost, the more she burned people at the stake in London.

I stayed away from her. I managed, somehow, to wrangle her consent to go back to Hatfield. Hatfield, my childhood home. There were my people ready to greet me, Mr. Parry and Roger Ascham among them. Hatfield, where I could speak without being afraid, where I did not have to worry about what mood Mary would be in today. Where I did not have to watch my every utterance to Philip. Or hear the rumors that he had gone abroad in London last evening to seek out women. Or that he liked poor and parentless little girls.

I settled in at Hatfield. I hunted with my knights, I checked the larders, I even greeted people at the back door who came with corn and flour and vegetables from the gardens of my estates. One thing was different about these farmers this year, however. They all knelt before me. They all called me "Princess," and their eyes shone when they spoke to me. They told me about the fall rains and floods and how they had managed to save the wheat just in time. And how many animals they had lost. I encouraged them to talk, and soon they were telling me how they waited for me to become Queen. I shushed them good-naturedly. And then they would ask about Mary's new baby, and take off their hats and promise prayers for the little one. Letters kept coming to me from Don Carlos.

"My love," he wrote, "I cannot wait until the day we meet. My father has told me of your handsome looks, your skill at sports and at hunting. The whole of my life lies in the balance until I see you with my own eyes. Wait for me. I ripped up the letters and threw them in the fire. Somehow word got out through London that Don Carlos was wooing me. And the people began to riot. They did not want this son of a Spaniard for their King. Weren't the burnings enough to keep Mary satisfied?