by Karen Harper
I had heard the twice-widowed heiress had told the king she would willingly be his mistress—quite a change from the way Anne, Jane and Catherine had played their cards. Henry Tudor was a dangerous husband, and Katherine Parr had wit enough to know it. A bit of doggerel had been going around that I hoped Elizabeth had not heard: “The king’s poor wives: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded—that’s five!” But now there were six, and what would be the fate of this lovely woman?
It was said the king had wed Katherine Parr partly because he needed a nurse for his old age, but it was also said that he was going to amend the Act of Succession to include any children they might have. What an optimist he was at his age, and the lady—now queen—had not caught a child in her other marriages. But if only it could be true that, after Edward and any future offspring, His Majesty might reinstate Mary and Elizabeth in line to rule the kingdom. It was my daily prayer, among all the twisted webs of rumors, that one might come true.
As we all followed out to where the bridal supper was laid in the great hall, I studied Katherine Parr, now age thirty-one but still in the flush of youthful good looks. She had reddish hair and warm hazel eyes. Though not a raving beauty, she seemed to glow from within, radiating warmth that had already drawn the king’s three motherless children to her. But I studied her especially because it was common knowledge that she had been swept away in love by Sir Thomas Seymour before she caught the king’s eye.
After being wed to and widowed by two men, the wealthy woman was thrilled to be courted by the handsome, dashing rake—yes, I admit he still was, for I had seen him from afar. Five years ago, it was said, Tom had turned down the Duke of Norfolk’s offer of marriage to his only daughter, the widowed Duchess of Richmond, a fine catch, because he was “aiming higher.” How much higher? I wondered. And since he belonged to one of England’s premier families and now boasted titles such as Baron Sudeley and Admiral of the Fleet and possessed great estates, why did he need a wealthy widow?
At any rate, the moment King Henry had turned his attentions to the widow Parr, she had accepted her fate to wed him, and Tom had quickly gone abroad as Ambassador to Belgium on top of his sea duties. He could stay away forever as far as I was concerned, the power-hungry, poxy wretch. He no doubt had a mistress in every port, and his paths at home and abroad were littered with trodden-down, longing women—but not me.
Early that autumn, when Their Majesties returned from their progress, we were all together at the rural palace of Ashridge in Hertfordshire. The king and queen seemed devoted to each other, and Her Majesty proved to be a loving stepmother Elizabeth adored, though it fretted me greatly that the girl had turned a bit testy around her father. I knew why. Just the week before we were summoned here, Elizabeth had grown so demanding about her mother that I had taken her for a walk alone—with two guards trailing us at a distance, that is—in the park at Hatfield where the tall oaks, beeches and sycamores shaded our way.
“So, you said my mother used to send me all sorts of pretty clothes?” she asked. Always questions about her mother. It was so simple to get to the topic I wanted to broach.
“Yes, and I kept some of them for you—perhaps for your own child someday.”
“Oh, I shall never wed, especially not to a king who might take my head as well as my maidenhead.”
“My lady, again I say, whom have you been talking to? You have sharp ears and a sharper tongue. Take your maidenhead, indeed! You know not whereof you speak and are too young to be bandying about such things,” I protested as we sat together on a wooden bench under a massive oak. Now and then an early acorn dropped on us, and the girl began to randomly throw ones she picked up.
“If I only had something from her as a keepsake,” she groused, “not some old baby clothes. My sister says she at least got a gold cross and chain from her mother’s things. I know she blames my mother for what happened to her, but I warrant she should blame the king—but I didn’t say so, Kat, so don’t scold me.”
I could not help but nod, tears in my eyes. So Elizabeth was carrying the extra burden that Mary resented her as well as the knowledge of why she did. If she could bear that, perhaps she was ready for the rest.
“If it means anything,” I said, trying to steady my voice, “my mother had a garnet necklace that came to me when she died but my stepmother took it away. Lovey, look,” I plunged on, turning toward her, “in some ways you are older than your years, so I do have something to tell you and give you. But what it is and means must be our secret. Can you keep a secret?”
Her lips pressed tightly together, she turned those dark eyes to me and nodded solemnly.
“I had planned to wait until you were older—how old, I know not. You see, when your mother was in prison in the Tower before her death—”
“It wasn’t fair!” she burst out. “You said they loved each other when they met and when I was born!”
“Yes, yes!” I cried, pulling her closer so I could put my arm around her shoulders. I saw the guards were not only standing back at a distance but had the decency to be looking out at some deer that ran through the trees. Neither they nor anyone must know of what I was about to say and do—only, maybe, John, for I unburdened myself of much to him. “My dear girl, never forget or doubt you are a child of love, but sometimes love does not last.”
“Not with my father, but didn’t it last for her?”
“Yes, and she gave a speech before she died that showed she still loved and respected him.” Dear God, please, I prayed, help me find the right words here. “And you must respect him, too, no matter what he does or says, not only because he is your father, but even more so because he is our king. Now listen to me. If I give you something very, very special from your mother, I want your solemn vow that you will tell no one of it, especially your father, for he would not understand. It is a secret gift your mother gave me for you.”
“Then why did you not?” she asked, pulling slightly away.
“Because she made me promise I would wait until you were old enough that you would not lose it and old enough to accept the gift with gratitude and love and keep it a secret.”
To my utter amazement, as if she already knew, she looked down at the ring. What a bright girl, my Elizabeth. Slowly, I took the ruby and gold piece I had worn so faithfully from my finger. “Look, lovey,” I whispered, blinking back tears, “you press this stone and a tiny spring opens it to show portraits of you and her, face-to-face.”
She gasped as I opened the top and handed her the ring. Unspeaking, long she gazed at the portrait of her mother. “So we are yet together, always, in a way,” she finally whispered.
“Yes. Yes, she loved you very much, even as your father does, but in a different way.”
“That is the thing about men and women, isn’t it? They love in a different way? Oh, Kat, thank you, thank you,” she cried, hugging me hard. “I shall keep it always on a chain around my neck until I can grow into it.”
“We can have it fitted for your finger.”
“No, I can’t let it out of my sight, can’t have it changed from the very way she gave it to you. And, Kat, I love you dearly, now even more so because you knew her and she trusted you, just like I do!”
We sat there that day, both sobbing like babies with our backs to the guards as she held the ring and I hugged her to me. When we finally walked back toward the palace, hand in hand, and a white falcon swooped over us in the sky, I was sure that was my sign that Anne’s spirit was finally free.
But that gift of the ring, even hidden beneath Elizabeth’s bodice, backfired with a huge bang. At Ashridge the next month, she presented the king with a beautifully hand-worked pillow with embroidered Tudor roses. He had looked at me standing off to the side with Margaret Bryan and winked. But then everything went wrong.
On the lawn outside the walls, Elizabeth was playing at bowls with Prince Edward, whose Uncle Edward, now the Earl of Hertford, the brother Tom could not abide, was nearby too, always watchful of
his royal nephew’s well-being. The king, bless him and his wonderful wife, had promised earlier today he would be sending Parliament a new order of succession, including Mary and Elizabeth, so even Mary managed a smile that day. Like all three Tudor heirs, she greatly favored her new stepmother.
But Edward of a sudden stopped and said in his piercing six-year-old voice, “Why do you have a ring on a chain, sister? It popped out of your bodice, see? Oh, it’s come open! It has two pictures inside. Let me see!”
My heart careened to my feet. Anything Edward wanted, he got.
“No, it’s just privy pictures, my lord,” Elizabeth protested with a sharp laugh as she tried to tug it back from him.
“I want to see it! Uncle!” The boy pouted, turning to Edward Seymour instead of the king. “Make her show me!”
“Stop all that!” the king bellowed. Everyone grew silent. He had been on edge lately because his sore on his leg was infected. It had been cauterized and gave him much pain, despite the royal physician, Dr. Butts, and the queen’s tending it and his sitting in a chair with it propped up. “Come over here, both of you.”
Like whipped puppies, they went. My heart was thundering in my chest. How I wished John were here—any ally. My knees almost buckled as the king lifted Elizabeth’s ring yet on its chain and squinted closely at the portraits within, pulling his frightened daughter close to him.
Doomed, I thought. I would be dismissed. It was almost as if my entire life—especially that last interview with Anne in the Tower and the memory of her head, severed at the neck, her lips yet moving, flashed through my mind.
“Who gave you this!” the king roared, and yanked the chain from her neck. “This is the Boleyn’s portrait!”
“My mother left it for me,” Elizabeth spoke back, now sounding strong, almost angry, hardly cowed. “Some well-wisher gave it to me, I know not who,” she lied smoothly, even so near the lion’s mouth.
“I’ll not have it!”
“No, Your Majesty, for it is mine.”
“That’s not what I meant. Did you mean to sass me? Ah, her daughter indeed! You will choose your loyalty, and if you choose her, it is because you are like her. You want to moon over this ring, I shall let you take it with you and go—and not write to me begging to come back—and just when I was about to put you in the line of succession!”
Shaking her head, Mary Tudor came closer, peering over the king’s shoulder at the ring, then, nearsighted as she was, squinting and frowning at it.
“Your Grace,” Elizabeth went on, “I love and respect you above all.” Good, I thought, words I had preached to her, despite my own feelings. “But may I not have this single remembrance of her?”
“You need no remembrance of her. You have a fine new mother now who does not deceive people. But I see you have the making of a willful woman. Kat Champernowne,” he roared, “I’ll not have a willful woman! Take your charge and begone and teach her better wisdom, or I shall hold you responsible!”
Fearful Elizabeth would fly to my defense, or that, on second thought, he would dismiss me, I moved. Rushing forward, I took Elizabeth by the arm and pulled her into a curtsy beside me. “Yes, Your Majesty,” I said, squeezing her hard enough that she winced. “Apologize to your sovereign and father,” I ordered her.
“Your Grace, I regret th—” she got out, but he threw the ring at her.
“No, my love,” he told the queen, who stood by, wringing her hands, “stay out of this, for I see her belligerent Boleyn blood is up. Get you gone, both of you!”
I snatched the ring from the grass, yet on its broken chain, and tugged Elizabeth away. The last thing I recalled was seeing the Princess Mary’s smirking face. We were packed and in a curtained litter heading home to Hatfield before Elizabeth’s pale, stunned countenance crumbled and she threw herself against me and sobbed wretchedly. “He—he might as well cut off m-my h-head, too,” she choked out, “for now I have the mark of the chain on my neck right where my mother lost her head!”
There was a red line where he had yanked the chain—as he yanked all the chains by which we were bound. The swaying of the litter almost made me ill. Again I saw Anne’s bloody neck, her body fall into the straw, her head . . . and held Elizabeth to me all the harder while we cried together.
It took the king over a year to work himself up to put Mary and Elizabeth back in line to mount the throne behind their brother and his future heirs, but at least he included my brave, sweet girl. [Whenever she was at court, until the day she became queen, Elizabeth wore her mother’s ring on a leather thong tied about her waist. Once the throne was hers, despite the fact she had many beautiful rings to adorn those long, slender fingers of which she was so proud, that ring never left her right hand.]
But, sadly, what the king’s daughter learned from being exiled from the court and her newly united family for a bitter year when she was ten—even forbidden to write to her father—was not only a lesson about the power of kings.
It was simply this: “I see it is not good to express one’s true feelings straightaway, especially to strong men,” she said after a week of intermittent sobbing and sulking. “There must be ways of dealing with them besides giving in. There must be, and, with your help, my Kat, I shall find them.”
That, at age ten, so was it any wonder that later in life she acted as she did, both untouchable goddess and terrible tease, wary yet wanting, and “wild for to hold,” as the poet Wyatt who had loved her mother once wrote? But the tough times of our year in exile was only one small step in the making of Elizabeth Tudor.
“Is she asleep?” John asked me as I met him by moonlight in the knot garden to the south of Hatfield House two years after the king had banished us. Whenever the weather was good, we stole time together here or in the privy gardens by the west side of the palace. At other times, we had to make do with furtive kisses and caresses in dim corridors or even the back stairs.
“One never knows with her, as she is likely to lie awake, thinking her thoughts and dreaming dreams half the night. At least she is much calmer now that she is back in Their Majesties’ good graces and has been to court off and on.”
“I tired her out as best I could on our ride this morning. Kat, I have nothing else to teach her about riding. At age twelve, she rides better than men twice her age.”
Business done, we kissed, then he just held me against him, my head tucked under his chin. “It’s an old cliché,” he whispered, “but we cannot keep meeting like this.”
“But she’s included you in our evening discussions. Tutor Grindal was surprised to find her horseman so well-read, a thinker and fine conversationalist.”
“It’s why I told you nearly in my first breath the day we met that I was writing a book,” he said. “I didn’t want you to think I could only talk to horses.” With our arms about each other, we began to stroll the twisting gravel paths through the shadowed garden. How sweet the mingled scents of the gillyflowers and roses on this summer night. I shall always recall this moment and every single one with this man, I thought.
“My love,” I whispered, “I knew a man who spoke as well as you was good for more than mucking out royal stables.”
“What am I good for to you, sweetheart? We’ve been parted too much and face being separated again at the king’s whim. We have hidden our love from even Elizabeth, when, if she could, she would champion us. You, like she, are back in the king’s good graces. It is past time to ask for permission to wed.”
I turned sharply toward him and caught my toe in my skirt, but he had a good hold of me. “It sounds like a business deal.”
“Far from it, but if I take you around the other side of the hedge, we will not speak at all, for you will be at my mercy—and I cannot wait to have for you in my bed any more than I can manage to continually pretend we are simply acquaintances or friends or companionable fellow servants. Kat,” he went on, talking quicker now and pressing my hands in his, “we are both people who use words well enough, but I want more
. I want you for my wife, lover and mistress. Beyond that, words just won’t do!”
“Then I shall only say ‘yes!’ I told him, and kissed him hard and was soon lost in his love.
The next morn, when we requested to speak with Elizabeth—and then when she knew our plight—her face lit up. She clapped her hands, jumped from her chair to hug both of us and cried, “I would love to go to another wedding, and we shall have a fine one here in the hall—if, that is, we can obtain royal permission. At least His Majesty is not angry with either of us anymore, Kat, and he and the queen have liked the needlework we’ve sent them, and they were proud of my translation of Mirror of the Sinful Soul.” She began to pace as she always did when she was planning something.
“We are so grateful to you, Your Grace,” John told her.
“Well,” she said with a sigh and a roll of her eyes, “I have seen you kissing outside in the moonlight more than once. It looked like great fun, but only with someone you really like. I vow, if I am betrothed to some foreign ruler as they say, I shall not like it if he is too old or cruel or wants to set me aside for another. So, then,” she said as she stopped her pacing so quickly that her skirts belled out, “let’s write the letter, and I warrant we can find some stable lad under your care, Master John, to ride to London with it. We must not wait until we all go to be with them next month. The only thing is, Kat, if you have a child, you must not leave me.” She stopped by her writing table, hands on hips, frowning now.
“No, my dearest Elizabeth,” I assured her, pulling away from John’s hand and walking over to take hers. “If I have any say in the matter, I will never leave you for any reason.”
“I, too,” John promised.
“Then let us write so we can plan a wedding. I am sure my father will favor a married couple with me—more stability, and he knows you both. Though, if I can help it, I will never wed myself, I do so love weddings!”
