by Jane Caro
My cousin Mary, the Queen of Scots, was born in December. The granddaughter of my aunt, she was queen within a few weeks of her birth; I remember pondering on her existence when they told me of her arrival into the world. I felt pity for the infant queen. What fate was to befall her? I wondered. She is Queen of France and Queen of Scots now, and, my advisors tell me, claims to be rightful Queen of England. Greedy little infant, hungry for crowns; one seems heavy enough to bear this night, to me. She is but a spoilt girl, ill advised by her French Guise uncles, and we may yet reconcile our differences, but it was foolish to begin so ill her relationship with a fellow queen. There will be many who challenge my right to my crown; many have called me bastard when princess. Why would they stop, now I am queen? I will need to cling tight to my crown once it is on my head, so tight that I do not lose either. If I win my subjects’ love, it seems to me, only then can I loosen my grip. The love of no one man will save me; only the love of many men.
Of all my father’s wives, it is the last I remember best and most fondly. Catherine Parr was a widow: older, wiser, so well educated she was called learned and was consulted on matters of theology by many. Few women are ever taken as seriously as she was and she gained her reputation in her own right, long before she married a king.
The whispers about this marriage that flew around the corners of the court, like some infernal interior breeze, were once again about her lack of enthusiasm for the match, and her love for another much younger man, another Thomas – Thomas Seymour. Once my father had fixed his beady eye on Mistress Parr, however, she had no choice. They were married in the summertime and I remember both the wedding and most of the marriage as a time of relative peace and serenity. My father was old, by now, not in years, perhaps, but in spirit. He was ill with a stinking, open leg ulcer that caused him great pain and restricted his movement. He found his solace in eating, drinking and the tender ministrations of his wife. But he was fearsome when he suffered: like a spoilt child he lashed out at those around him, roaring his displeasure. When my father saw my locket and banished me from the court and I was forced to slink away to Hatfield, far from my lessons, and my brother and sister, painfully aware of how hateful my presence was to my father, it was Queen Catherine who comforted me. It upset me to be in disgrace. I chafed at the injustice and the boredom of my banishment, but I had learnt to stifle my feelings. It had been a long time since anyone important had shown any interest in them. Queen Catherine showed interest, she counselled patience and eventually persuaded my father to let me return to court. It was also she who persuaded him to include Mary and me in the succession.
It is to the memory of Queen Catherine Parr I turn when I think of my destiny, of what it means to be a woman who rules. My sister’s reign has made many fearful of what more petticoat government may mean, and she is the example that most think on when they try to foretell my success or failure. Not to my face, I warrant you, but behind my back when they think themselves unheard, I know that many – nay, most – of the great men of this kingdom regard my accession with dread, no matter with what enthusiasm the ordinary people may greet me on the morrow. But I have another model in my mind: the regency of Queen Catherine Parr.
When I returned to Hampton Court in the midsummer of 1544, chastened by my long disgrace, with my mother’s likenesses (such as I still had) well hidden, it was to a court and a country ruled by a woman. My father was leading a military expedition in France. It was to be his last: a fact that all of us knew, but none of us yet admitted. He had placed his wise and much trusted wife in charge of his kingdom, children and affairs. I spent the three months of her rule as close to her side as I could manage. I watched as she took advice from my father’s council, weighed the evidence and made her decisions. I watched as she read, discussed and signed great documents and listened as she disputed with the men whose charge it was to carry out her orders. I was there when she met and charmed ambassadors, emissaries and plenipotentiaries, as she totted up rows of figures and kept my father constantly informed of all she had done. Silently, I exulted in the respect she soon gained and the deferential and collegial manner in which these men – even the most reluctant of them – soon came to treat my beloved stepmother. She was a mere woman after all, a female just like me.
My sister and my brother were also at court. Queen Catherine always liked to have us near her. We spent longer together as a family when she was queen than at any other time. Yet although we were all under the same roof, my brother and sister spent most of their time with their attendants, whereas I made every excuse I could find to shadow the queen and watch her at her work. She soon noticed, of course.
‘The business of government interests you, Elizabeth?’ she asked me one morning, scarce lifting her head from the parchment she was reading. I was sitting over my embroidery – it was to be a gift for her – trying to pretend it absorbed all of my attention. I wished to be invisible. I did not want to be sent on my way.
‘I know little about it, Your Majesty.’
‘Aye, but you have been my shadow these past many weeks and must know more now than once you did.’
‘It is your company I crave, good madam, grateful as I am to be returned to court and back in favour – by your good offices, as I know only too well.’
‘And I too enjoy the pleasure of your company, but do not be fearful of my enquiry. It pleases me to see you so intent on hearing and understanding all the business of the kingdom. I understand the hunger of a brain long starved of substantial food, and I also take pleasure in thinking my way through the weighty matters brought before me. Our sex, Elizabeth, is meant to content itself with the small business of life, and there are some of us – I doubt not that you are among them – who find this irksome. It is exciting to make a decision and see it put into effect, I will not deny it.’
‘But it is not the natural business of women, surely, good madam.’
‘Indeed not, but for some of us circumstances place us in such a position and it is as well that should we be asked to take on the role of men; we are equipped by character and education to fulfil our unnatural task with competence.’
‘Such a circumstance is unlikely indeed for me,’ I said, and I could not hide my misery that what she called ‘the small business of life’ might be all that filled my future.
‘So it seems now, dear Elizabeth – Madam Ysabeau.’ How I thrilled to hear her use my father’s rare endearment. ‘But think of my expectations at your age. I was a mere gentlewoman, with no reasonable hopes for the future but marriage to someone approved of by my guardians, followed by a lifetime of child-rearing and household managing. Yet, here I sit, not just Queen of England, but Queen Regent, trusted by the greatest king of our age with the management of our kingdom.’ At this, she smiled and winked at me, her delight in her current situation writ large upon her face.
‘God works in mysterious ways, my Elizabeth. As yet, you are third in line for the throne. The king himself has placed you there, and it does you much credit that you so assiduously prepare for the great destiny that may yet await you.’
‘But my brother will rule after my father.’
‘Aye, and God preserve both of them for many, many years yet to come. But when you marry, you will not marry some minor nobleman as I did – at an age not much greater than yours is now – but some great prince of Christendom, and it will likely be through him or through the sons you bear, that you may one day find yourself placed in a position of great responsibility. And I know that should that day arrive, you will acquit yourself with great honour and ability.’
‘As you are acquitting yourself, Your Majesty, my father will be well pleased with you when he returns home.’
Alas, my prediction of my father’s pleasure was not to be fulfilled. He returned in September uneasy about the lack of a definitive victory following his expensive military adventure. His belief in himself as a great warrior king had taken a blow, so
he did not respond with much pleasure to a court that was full of praise for the wisdom and calm good sense of the rule of his wife. Her success compounded his sense of failure. He became sullen and snappish with his queen, chafing under her lectures about theology and the importance of a personal God and the right of all to read the Bible for themselves. Where previously he had been proud of his clever, bookish wife – who did not just read learned tomes, but authored some herself – suddenly he grew peevish and resentful, almost jealous. Having watched so many queens fall precipitously from grace and lose their influence, the queen’s enemies knew their business well. They began to gather rumours, filling my father’s ears with poison about heresy and witchcraft. With this most virtuous queen, there could be no credible claims of adultery, but her brains could be used against her and they were.
The plotters, whose ranks included the Bishop of Winchester and the Lord Chancellor, searched my stepmother’s library and found some heretical texts. They closely questioned her great friend, the Duchess of Suffolk, and tried to draw a direct line between the outspoken challenge to the church’s authority (and, therefore, my father’s) from the prophetess they called the Fair Gospeler, Anne Askew, and the queen. I later heard they tortured the Fair Gospeler before they burnt her at the stake, but stalwart to the last, she said nothing that could incriminate my stepmother. Used as I was to sitting quietly in corners, hovering on the edge of things, but careful never to draw unwarranted attention to myself, it was I who heard the rumours, saw the queen’s closest ladies being led away for questioning and watched as the bishop’s men emerged triumphant from her quarters bearing aloft the dangerous texts. So it was I who warned the queen of the danger she was in and, in so doing, I learnt another vital lesson about being a woman in a man’s world.
‘Madam! Madam!’ I burst into her presence, breathless both from fear and from the restrained and secretive haste I had been forced to make to get to the queen before her enemies could prevail upon my father to sign a warrant for yet another wife’s arrest.
‘What is it, child?’ she asked, starting up from her stool by the fire and dropping the book she had been reading in her surprise.
‘They have questioned the Lady Suffolk and arrested the Fair Gospeler and taken her to the Tower.’ I saw the blood drain from her face a little, but she rallied quickly.
‘Who has done this, and why?’
‘Bishop Winchester, Your Majesty. And Master Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor, among others. They have accused Mistress Askew of heresy, and witchcraft.’ Queen Catherine sat back abruptly on her stool. Her ladies gasped. We all knew the dread punishment for such crimes.
‘But what is this to me?’
‘They have searched your book closet, madam, and found what they were looking for.’ At this, one of her ladies burst into tears and others fell to their knees, praying for God to help them in their terror. But Queen Catherine was made of sterner stuff. She got to her feet again and in two steps was by my side, her hand on my shoulder. It felt firm and warm.
‘Send word to my husband, your father, that I am taken ill and that my life is feared for. Tell him that I am calling out for him in my extremity.’ I stood and gaped at her, not quite understanding the meaning of her words.
She gave me a sharp push. ‘Go now, make haste. Send word exactly as I say. Speed is everything.’ I turned to run to the door, when she bade me pause. ‘Elizabeth?’
‘Yes, madam?’
‘Thank you, my child, thank you from the bottom of my heart.’ Then I ran with the memory of an earlier unsuccessful run hard upon my heels. I ran to find a messenger and to save her life.
And saved it was. The king forgot his peevishness when he heard that the queen’s life hung by a thread and he hastened to her side, just as she had wanted him to. Once there, he saw a woman in deep distress and, as always, when confronted directly with the sufferings of others, he was moved to compassion.
‘What ails you, my pigeon?’ he asked her.
‘I am sick, my gracious lord, with grief and fear.’
‘What grieves you, my darling? Who has frightened you?’
‘It is I myself, my lord, who has committed both crimes.’
‘Yourself? You speak in riddles. Are you feverish?’
‘No, my lord, just hot with shame, for fear that I have offended you with my womanly foolishness and I would not displease my gracious lord and master for all the gold and jewels in Christendom.’
‘How now, madam? I have not said so.’
‘No, you are too kind to admonish me. It is God, my saviour, who has revealed to me the error in my ways and the risk that I have taken in appearing to dispute with you – who is my superior in all things.’
‘It is true that of late I have felt you have taken it upon yourself to speak of things above your power of reasoning, and this has displeased me momentarily. But I have held my tongue, madam–’
‘As I should have done, my lord. And would have, if only my feeble powers of reasoning had been better able to show me the profound error of my ways. But, good my lord, I did not mean to appear to put my own beliefs and reason above your own. It was only my lack of skill in disputation and my feminine clumsiness that led me so to do. I merely thought that by occupying your mind in debate with me I might distract you from the pain in your poor leg. I felt it preferable that you be irritated by my inferior logic than by the discomfort of your ailments.’
‘Was it so, sweeting?’ The king’s face had softened and his small suspicious eyes had filled with sentimental tears. ‘If you speak true, it is a noble, wifely sacrifice that you have made.’
‘Not a sacrifice, my lord, because in the wisdom of your responses I learnt much about the true glory of God and the best way to worship and interpret His intentions here on earth. Perhaps it was through my delight in hearing the brilliance of your arguments and the true mettle of your mind that I fell into error. I could not bring myself to cease our conversations because of the pleasure your superiority of mind and heart brought to me. Can you ever forgive me, my lord?’
‘Right heartily, my darling.’ And he kissed her, just as heartily. ‘But you will not dispute so with me again, will you?’
‘No, my lord. I have learnt my lesson. Your Majesty doth know right well I am not ignorant of the great imperfection and weakness allotted to us women by our first creation, to be ordained and appointed as inferior and subject unto man as our head, from which head all our direction ought to proceed.’
With that, and with much else beside, good clever Queen Catherine Parr saved her own life and that of her friends. The Fair Gospeler was not to be so fortunate. She was fed to the flames to appease the plotters.
Now, when I close my eyes and think of my stepmother, it is not as much her face I see, as her calm presence. I can sense her in the room with me now, silent in a corner, her head with its smooth, dark hair bent over a scholarly tome or her embroidery. After her great fright, when my father was near, she spoke little, but when she did, all stopped to listen. The king’s suspicions were lulled by her continuing meekness and as he grew more querulous with increasing age and illness, he began once again to ask her advice in ways he would never have asked any other woman. Much as I loved Queen Catherine, and grateful as I was that she had used the good sense God had given her to save herself (whatever men may think of female brains), I could not help wondering if she was as my mother might have become, if she had been allowed to live and mature beside her husband. But it does no good to wish. The world is as it is, not as I may like it – not even now, when I am queen.
The world was not as Queen Catherine wanted it, either, yet she made the best of the circumstances she found herself in and, when my father died, she hoped her patience would be rewarded. As is so often the way with those who must manoeuvre for power rather than deal in it directly, she was to be both rewarded and punished. Although she never said as much to
me, no doubt she harboured hopes that her skill as regent would be remembered and that she would return to that role while my brother remained in his minority. But it was not to be. Powerful men stepped quickly between the king and his family and made sure that the regency fell to them. Her compensation was that, at last, she was able to marry the man she loved.
Most of the people I have seen die in their beds – and there have not been many lucky enough to make their exit in such a way – shrank their way out of the world, getting smaller and smaller until they almost disappeared. My father did the opposite. He swelled and swelled, growing so big that his legs could carry him no longer and he had to be wheeled from room to room. The ulcer on his leg stank so of decay that, despite all the expensive perfumes they bathed him in, it was hard to be in his presence for any length of time and courtiers spent much more time playing with their pomades than hitherto. Any exertion, simply getting him from bed to chair, from chair to privy stool, from chair to bed again, made him sweat and groan and his skin burn fiery red. His breathing was laboured and his tiny eyes darted from face to face with terror. He wept and prayed a great deal, and claimed ghosts sat on the end of his bed at night, taunting him. He clung to Catherine and she reassured him, prayed with him and soothed his fears. He became so dependent on her that he could not bear her to leave his side.
