Tudor Throne

by Purdy, Brandy

  “Stuff and nonsense!” sensible Welsh Blanche Parry declared. “Dry your tears, woman, and don’t frighten our princess with such drivel! My own grandam told me about Radiant Boys, and My Lady”—she knelt beaming at my feet and took both my hands in hers even as Kat continued to snivel—“you have nothing at all to fear! Rather, you should rejoice! The one who sees a Radiant Boy will rise to the summit of prosperity and wield great power! And you didn’t see just one, My Lady, but two! Two Radiant Boys! Oh just think what great things shall come to you!”

  “Which is it to be then—Death or prosperity?” I wondered as, shrugging them both off, gesturing for them to leave me be, I went to stand by the window and watch the antics of the ravens while, in whispers, they continued to debate what the sight of a Radiant Boy truly meant. All I knew was that, whether it had been a true visitation from a boy who had been cheated of his chance to be king, or just a fever-dream, I would never forget it, but a part of me liked to think that one who would have been a great king but had been robbed of his destiny had come to smile down on and bless me, to show me that even though I felt lost in the dark now, a bright future lay before me, and he, hand in hand with his little brother, had come to be the candles to show me the way, to illuminate my destiny.

  29

  Mary

  But why did he not write to me? It seemed so strange that I had as yet received no letter from the man I was to marry. Talebearers gossiping within my hearing—I know they wanted me to hear them, they wanted to hurt me!—archly suggested that perhaps he was too busy, and with great glee and relish imparted tales of his amorous excesses.

  They claimed he had mistresses, some liaisons of some duration, others only for one night, and numerous bastards born as a result of both. They said he sometimes exchanged clothes with his grooms and went into low, common taverns to consort with the kind of women who frequented such places, his servant pretending to be the Prince, and the Prince enjoying a taste of freedom in the guise of his own servant.

  I also heard tales of a golden-haired Spanish girl, an alluring little nymph, a bud rather than a full-blown rose, who rarely left her couch of satin sheets, upon which she lay naked, except for the jewels Philip gave her, and whose exquisite little toes Philip liked to kiss and suck.

  Another scandalmonger told of a pair of twin sisters who shared a bath and washed each other most erotically while Philip and a few chosen friends watched. They were said to have had their portrait painted fondling one another’s breasts, and the painting was rumored to hang in Philip’s bedchamber in a cunningly devised frame that also contained a religious painting by Señor Titian which could be maneuvered via a lever to conceal the lascivious canvas if Philip so desired it.

  There was also talk of a dancing girl who performed at private parties for men of wealth and means and in a haze of incense rose up out of a black enameled red-velvet-lined coffin wearing only a corset, stockings, and tall leather boots, sometimes black, other times white, to dance seductively around the man she intended to offer herself to while sultry Moorish music played, ending her dance lying flat on the floor at his feet with her knees up and her legs spread wide so that her naked feminine parts were fully exposed to his gaze.

  The talebearers also spoke of a cinnamon-skinned girl, with hair like raven silk and a ruby in her navel, from some heathen land, plucked from the jade green stone temple where she used to dance before a golden idol and given as a present to the Prince to console the bereaved young man after his wife died in childbirth.

  Blushing in embarrassment and blinded by tears, I fled from such tales in horror, with my hands clasped tight over my ears, screaming at these “well-meaning” and “concerned” purveyors of slander to be silent if they could speak no good reports of my prince. But the damage was done. I could not outrun what was already inside my head; I carried these wild and lewd tales with me wherever I went and sometimes had lurid dreams about them at night.

  I tried to quash the jealousy raging like a stormy sea inside of me, but I just could not do it. And, finally, in blackest despair, I sent for Ambassador Renard.

  I ran to him the moment he came through the door, looking, I am sure, quite wild and frenzied, a very hag, with my hair and clothes all unkempt and my face red and swollen from crying.

  “I cannot marry His Highness,” I blurted out, “for he has been amorous! I am told he consorts with courtesans and dancing girls and has bastards too numerous to count!”

  “Madame!” Ambassador Renard took a step back, a pained expression on his face, and his hand rising to clasp his heart as if my words had hurt it. “I can scarcely believe it! I knew those who opposed His Highness would try to discredit him by slandering his good name, but . . . Can it be? Have you actually believed these ludicrous tales?”

  My heart leapt in my breast, eager to grasp at this newborn hope.

  “You mean these wicked, lascivious tales are not true?” I asked hopefully.

  “Madame, may I be so bold as to act as—dare I suggest it?—your uncle by proxy since you have no living male relative who can speak candidly and advise you on such matters?”

  “Oh yes, please do!” I cried, grasping at his arm as if only he could save my heart from drowning in grief.

  “Then come”—he led me to the window seat—“sit beside me, and dry your tears,” he said kindly, “and I shall explain. Madame, they have told you these things in an attempt to poison your mind against Prince Philip. He married young, at sixteen, to a lovely young girl, the Princess Maria of Portugal; though an arranged marriage, as royal matches always are, it was also a love match. Sadly, she died two years later giving birth to their only son, Don Carlos. His Highness has been a grieving widower ever since. A handsome widower at the age of only eighteen, heir to Spain, the Low Countries, and the gold-rich Americas, Madame, it is no vainglorious boast that he has been for some years accounted the greatest catch in Europe, and I cannot begin to count the number of princesses who have been paraded before him as prospective brides, but he has rejected all of them, until you; he wants you, Madame, only you.”

  “Oh! Oh, Señor Renard, you are like unto a tonic to my heart and nerves! How can I ever thank you?” I cried, smiling through my tears.

  “That is simple enough, Madame.” He smiled. “You can thank me by drying your tears and stopping your ears to any more of this base slander.”

  “I will,” I promised, “I will! And may God bless and preserve His Highness and speed him soon to me!”

  “Amen!” Ambassador Renard said, smiling also as he bowed gallantly over my hand and took his leave of me.

  God had well and truly blessed me; He had given me the prince of my dreams, and I must not let those gossipmongers acting as the Devil’s agents succeed in taking him away from me!

  30

  Elizabeth

  Sir John Bridges was unfailingly courteous, ever mindful of who I was and what I might someday become. Had I met him elsewhere I would never have taken him for a gaoler. He did everything in his power to make me comfortable and to set my mind at ease. He even had me to his home, a fine cottage within the confines of the Tower, to dine each evening with his family. And as we passed the Lady Jane’s scaffold, which had not yet been dismantled, he did his best to distract me. And when I complained that I was sickening for want of fresh air, he allowed me to walk every afternoon in the little walled garden adjoining his house.

  One day he even allowed me to visit the chapel, St. Peter ad Vincula, and withdrew quietly, leaving two yeomen guards stationed discreetly outside the door to escort me back when I was ready.

  My footsteps produced a ghostly echo as I traversed the dimly lit chapel. I sank down over the stone that covered my mother’s mortal remains, and then, impulsively, I lay down, resting my cheek upon it as I had once rested my head upon her breast and listened to the soothing sound of her heartbeat. In that instant, memories of my mother came rushing back to me, so vivid and intense they took my breath away. It was as if I were stan
ding in a doorway watching those within a chamber.

  I saw my mother in a gown of apple-green brocade, shot through with glimmering golden threads, her bodice and the half-moon-shaped French hood that perched upon her head edged with pearls, and her black hair cascading down her back, all the way to her knees, as if she were a carefree maiden instead of a wife and mother. And about her neck, the pearls with the golden B I remembered so well. She threw her head back and laughed as she swirled and spun to the music.

  And I was there; I must have been about three, in a russet velvet gown trimmed with gold braid and a cream satin kirtle and cap embroidered with golden butterflies. Patiently she instructed me in the steps, lifting up her full skirts so that I might see her dainty, green satin-shod feet deftly executing the steps.

  “Oui, chérie, très bien!” She nodded brightly, smiling her approval at my childish attempts to emulate her steps, clasping her hands together as she smiled down at me. “You shall be the finest dancer at this court one day!”

  And upon the window seat sat the man who might have been her twin, if she had one, my uncle George. He strummed his lute and sang the haunting melody known as “Greensleeves,” and his eyes followed my mother as his fingers caressed the lute strings.

  And lurking in a corner was the one I secretly called “The Dragon Lady,” the one with the beady eyes that burned with hate as she turned them first upon my mother and then upon her husband, my uncle George. Even after my mother and uncle were dead and gone she would still be there, lurking in the shadows, vigilant and alert, always watching, poking her nose into other people’s business, putting her eye to the keyhole or her ear to the door, until she also disappeared in the wake of the pert and pretty Katherine Howard, following her up the thirteen steps of the scaffold. Lady Rochford, I would later learn, had acted as go-between and helped my flighty and foolish stepmother to cuckold my father, and now they both lay entombed beneath the floor of St. Peter ad Vincula, not far from my mother and Uncle George.

  When the music stopped, my mother swept me up into her arms and sat down beside Uncle George on the window seat with me on her lap. There were colored silk ribbons tied to the lute and my fingers reached out for them.

  Laughing, Uncle George took me onto his lap and took my tiny hand in his big one and guided my fingers to pluck the strings. That day I played my first melody.

  Then my lady-governess came to take my hand and lead me back to the nursery. As I looked back over my shoulder, my mother moved to sit closer to my uncle George, and he began to tentatively pluck out the notes of a song he was composing, something about love, hesitantly singing, “and if the evergreen . . . ,” humming where the words were lacking.

  My mother nodded and sang, “. . . should wither on the bough . . .”

  He smiled and nodded back at her and replayed the notes as they sang together, “and if the evergreen should wither on the bough . . .” then paused to think, my mother tapping her chin and humming.

  As I accompanied Lady Bryan down the hall, I heard their voices growing fainter, singing words that compared the stars to little candles in the sky. Did they know even then, I wonder, that their own lives were fated to be snuffed out like candles?

  I would, I think, see them only once more, that day in the garden at Greenwich when my mother told me to “Never surrender!” Then they were both dead, their headless bodies entombed without ceremony beneath the cold stones upon which my cheek lay and my tears now dripped.

  I do not know how long I lay there, trying to hold on to the memories, to my mother’s laugh, her quick smile, and lively dark eyes. She was so alive! And the fine, masculine voice that sang, “I called my lady Greensleeves” as she danced, holding up her skirts so that I might see her feet, as her full hanging sleeves, of a design she had made famous to conceal a slight deformity on her left hand, swayed to the music.

  When I emerged from the dim interior of the chapel, blinking my red-rimmed eyes and whisking the tears from my cheeks, the night had already begun to push the sun from the sky, like a mother impatient to shoo her child off to bed, and the stars were vying with the dying orange-tinged light to come out to show off their diamond-bright sparkle, like a jewel merchant opening his case to display his wares on a bed of tufted midnight velvet.

  I looked back over my shoulder, back into the dark chapel, the wavering orange flames of the candles barely penetrating the gloom and, raising my hand to my lips, blew a kiss to my mother. Then I drew my back up fully erect, held my head up high, and walked back to my prison, determined, come what may, to do her proud.

  Some nights I dreamed that the dead surrounded my bed. The radiant spirits of the two little murdered princes, my mother, Uncle George, and the friends who had died with them, the men Kat told me my mother had called her Evergreen Gallants on account of their loyalty, flighty Katherine Howard, vengeful Lady Rochford, and poor little Lady Jane—they were all there, thronged round my bed, staring down at me, but not to frighten me, to warn me to be careful lest I meet their fate, but also to give me heart, to give me hope. And sometimes at night as I tossed restlessly in my bed, one foot in and one foot out of the dreamland between sleeping and waking, I would hear the mischievous laughter of two little boys, and feel their little hands tugging at my hair and bedclothes, tickling the soles of my feet, suddenly uncovered and exposed to the cold, or soft breath blowing on my face in the dark. The kinds of tricks little boys played upon their big sister. Yet I still did not know if they were real or just figments of my imagination.

  31

  Mary

  Why did he not write to me? He sent me jewels, but no letters! A smiling Ambassador Renard knelt and laid them one by one in the lap of my plum and gold brocade gown.

  There was a dainty gold filigree necklace, as lacy and delicate as a cobweb, set with eighteen twinkling diamond brilliants, and a great table diamond as big as my thumb, and hanging below it, a large white teardrop pearl known as “La Peregrina,” “The Wanderer,” because it had traveled first from the Americas, and then to Spain, and now to England to be my bridal gift, but . . . no letter.

  “No letter,” I said mournfully as the tears began to flow, “when a few tender words written in his own hand would be worth more to me than all the jewels in Christendom!”

  “But, Madame,” Ambassador Renard said, “His Highness thinks a message carried from one set of lips to another is much more romantic than words written upon a page, thus he bade me tell you that these are the most lovely pair of gems in the world, barring two others—your eyes!”

  “Oh! How romantic!” My heart melted like butter inside my breast. “Did he really say that?”

  “Madame, having seen your eyes and how they shine with the love that fills your heart, I know exactly what he meant,” Ambassador Renard gallantly asserted as I clasped my beloved’s gifts to my galloping heart and lay back, almost swooning, against the soft cushions of my chair. I glanced over at Prince Philip’s portrait and impulsively held out my arms to it and in a breathless whisper sighed, “Come to me, my beloved!”

  32

  Elizabeth

  The hour I spent each fine, fair day in the little walled garden adjoining Sir John’s cottage brought a bright spot to my otherwise dull and dreary, fearful days. Indeed, it soon became the hour I looked forward to most of all.

  Two little children, a boy of five called Christopher, and a tiny tottering tot, his little three-year-old sister, Susanna, came, at first shyly, then more boldly, to visit me, bringing me bedraggled bunches of flowers, some with dirty roots still trailing below their stems, picked by their clumsy but well-meaning fingers.

  Susanna would settle herself, sucking her grimy thumb, upon my lap, and I would tell her stories. And her brother would take up a stick and brandish it like a sword, pretending that he would slay all my enemies, be my knight, and kill the dragons that threatened me, just like St. George. Sometimes he would creep close and whisper in my ear a message of greeting from “the dark-haired young ma
n who wishes to be remembered to you as your gypsy.”

  I knew at once whom he meant. Robert Dudley, my Robin, my childhood friend, born on the same day in the same year as myself. When Katherine Parr had brought me back to live at court, he was among the boys who shared my brother’s schoolroom where he was clever at mathematics but a poor study at languages. We had become fast friends, united by our love of music, dancing, and, most of all, fast horses. I had dubbed him “my gypsy,” because of his dark good looks, free spirit, and bold ways, as well as his magical affinity with horses. Like the gypsies who performed daring feats of horsemanship at the fairs, Robin possessed an innate understanding of horses; he knew instinctively how to gentle the most wild and troubled mount, and could soothe away their fears with a touch of a hand and words gently whispered in their ears.

  Each time Christopher whispered in my ear, I would send back a greeting to “my dear gypsy.” We had not seen each other for ever so long, not since I had left the court after my father died to make my home with Kate. How queer that we should be united here though divided by thick prison walls. Robin’s father, John Dudley, the power-mad Duke of Northumberland, had been the mastermind behind poor Lady Jane’s brief, ill-fated reign; he had married his youngest son, Robin’s vain and petulant brother Guildford, to that poor little bookworm; and now, though the mighty Duke, pretty posing Guildford, and poor Jane had all gone to their deaths, Robin remained a prisoner in the Tower, still awaiting his fate, always wondering, just like me, if each day would be his last.

  One day Susanna toddled up to me in her primrose-pink frock and pressed a sticky bunch of dirty, old, rusted keys into my hand, prattling in her baby talk “go free, Lady, go free!” and clapping and giggling at her own cleverness and pointing at the lock upon the gate.

  Snapping to attention, my half-dozing guard rushed over and snatched the keys from my hand. Susanna instantly burst into tears, and I gathered her in my arms and stroked her straw-straight yellow hair while chiding that churl of a guard that any fool could see that the child meant no harm. She was far too young to understand, and any fool could see that the keys were of utterly no use at all; they were more likely to unlock a cupboard than the sturdy lock upon the gate, though in their degraded rusted condition, I doubted they could be used at all.