I bit my lip, nearly drawing blood. How could my old friend have turned against me?
Late that evening, as I tossed sleeplessly on my wretched bed, the door of my room swung open silently. I lay still, hardly daring to breathe; with Nell and Bessie banished, there was no one to come to my aid. Silhouetted in the doorway loomed a hooded figure. Perhaps this was what Salisbury had feared for me all along: the attack that would take my virginity and leave me forever stained.
I had taken to sleeping with a heavy wooden candlestick by my side, and furtively I reached for it. If there was only one attacker, I believed that I might successfully defend my virtue. But if there were more than one, I was helpless—and doomed. Still, I would try. My fingers curled around the candlestick, and I waited. The door swung shut.
"Princess Mary!" Bryan whispered. She swept off her hood and dropped to her knees. "I beg you to forgive me. I came to you as soon as I could. I know that I'm being watched—Shelton does not yet trust me, and I must prove myself. I am forced to speak to you harshly."
I leaped from the bed and threw my arms around the old nursemaid. "Oh, Bryan! You've taken a great risk in coming here. And it's treason to address me by my tide—surely you know that? I beg you to take care. The palace crawls with the queen's spies."
"And so we must enlist spies of our own. I'm here because of my nephew, Sir Francis Peacham. Perhaps you remember him?"
I nodded; I did indeed remember him—a friend of my father's who often entertained at banquets with his lively flute-playing.
"Francis is a great favorite at court, although he despises the queen," Bryan said. "He plays the flute for her, but he must avoid exciting the king's jealousy. One of the queen's ladies is madly in love with my nephew; to please Francis, this lady persuaded the queen to send me to care for the infant princess. And so here I am! I fear there's little I can do to help you, except to be your friend. But Francis will be our eyes and ears in the queen's court; he'll get word to us as he can."
"I am grateful to you both," I said.
"I must warn you," Bryan continued, "I shall continue to scold you before others, perhaps even slap you, although not hard, in order not to arouse the suspicions of those twin she-devils, Shelton and Clere. Now," she said, raising the hood of her cloak, "I've stayed too long, and I must hurry away before I'm discovered." We embraced again. "Courage," she whispered, and in a moment she had disappeared into the shadow passageway.
CHAPTER 16: The Double Oath
Shelton herself triumphantly delivered the news: "King Henry has declared himself supreme head of the church in England. He demands that everyone sign a double oath acknowledging that he is head of the church and that his children by Anne will inherit the throne," she announced. "The penalty for refusing to sign is a traitor's death." She leered at me. "Do you understand, Lady Mary?"
I understood. Signing meant conceding that I was a bastard. "I will not sign," I said far more calmly than I felt. I dared not think what refusing would mean.
"The king will have you beheaded!" Shelton roared. "My niece the queen has threatened to have you poisoned. I heard it from her own lips!"
"I will not sign," I repeated.
Instead I wrote a letter to King Henry: "You are my father and my king," I wrote, "and I pledge myself obedient to you in every way but one: I am your lawful daughter, born of your lawful union with my mother, Catherine." I signed it Mary, Princess, the title I had been forbidden to use.
Then I waited, terrified but determined.
No reply came from the king himself. Instead Anne sent a message, requesting that I visit her at Greenwich and pay her the honor due her as queen. "By such a large act and yet one so small," Anne wrote, "I can guarantee that you will once again enjoy the king's favor and affection."
Furious, I tore Anne's letter to bits and scribbled a hasty reply. "I know of no other queen in England than my mother. Queen Catherine, and her only shall I honor."
All of this caused great anguish to Bryan. "I beg of you, madam, submit to the king's will. Do as he has ordered. Acknowledge your illegitimacy and live!"
"I cannot," I said quietly. "It is God's will that I reign someday."
"You can't rule if you're not alive, Mary."
"God will protect me." I hoped that it was true.
Then Sir Francis smuggled a letter to me from Chapuys, who warned, "If you don't submit to the king's will and agree to accept the status of bastard, you may find yourself imprisoned; tortured, even. Anne herself is determined to put down what she calls 'that proud Spanish blood' that flows in your veins."
Still I refused to sign. And so it was not really a surprise the night the guards came for me, bursting into my chamber where I lay sleepless and exhausted, and dragged me from my bed. Shelton was with them, eyes glittering with satisfaction. Despite my terror, I did not scream or cry out; I would not give them that pleasure.
The cell door clanged shut behind me.
"You shall stay there," Shelton shouted through the grating, "until you lose that obstinacy." There were the sounds of a key turning in the lock, footsteps fading down the passageway.
The cell was somewhere in the bowels of Hatfield. All of the royal palaces had dungeons, filthy places to fling thieves and drunkards and others who had displeased the royal inhabitants. I groped and shuffled through the pitch blackness to make out the size and shape of my prison. Five paces in one direction, three in another. I bumped into a rude plank against one wall and stumbled over a slop pail. As my eyes adjusted to the darkness, I could make out a small cutout in the stout wooden door, covered with a metal grille. Light from a torch somewhere in the passageway filtered through the opening and spread a lacy pattern on the stone floor.
I crept to the bare plank and sat on it. The cell was cold and I had no shawl. I shivered and wondered how long I was to be kept a prisoner.
Surely they won't let me die here, I thought. That would cause too much scandal. If I were to die, it would have to be something more subtle—a bit of poison in my soup, a pillow held over my face—so that it could be announced to the world that the king's bastard daughter died of natural causes. It was well known that I had long suffered from pains of various kinds—headaches, cramps in my belly from my monthly cycle, poor digestion. Who would know or could prove that my death had been otherwise?
But they might torture me, and I feared torture more than I feared death. What means might they use to torture me? How long could I hold out? I had never been physically strong.
I tried to pray. I believe that God heard me, because I became tranquil. I waited, and God waited with me.
I had no idea how much time passed, because the light coming through the grille never changed. A dour manservant brought me a bowl of thin broth with a few bits of rotting meat and vegetables floating in it and a chunk of stale black bread, but the arrival of these meals seemed entirely random. I had trouble sleeping under the best of circumstances; under these circumstances I slept not at all. Sometimes I thought I heard my mother s voice, calling out to me. Had she, too, been flung into a dungeon?
Days passed—I don't know how many. Then a light flared somewhere, rapid footsteps thudded in the passageway, and a key clanked in the lock. The heavy door was thrown open. "You have a visitor," Lady Shelton barked. I stumbled after her, my face and hands unwashed, my hair and kirtle untidy.
Suddenly I was thrust, blinking, into the bright light of day in an unfamiliar apartment. A gentleman waited for me. It was Norfolk.
"Lady Mary," he said sourly, drawing out the syllables. "I'm sure that my visit comes as no surprise."
"No good surprise, at any rate," I snapped peevishly, but inside I was sick with fear. Would the torture begin now?
"Your wicked tongue may someday cost you your head," Norfolk observed. "I'll get directly to the reason for my visit. It's to have you swear the double oath required by King Henry. When you are ready, I shall call for a Bible on which to take the oath and a pen with which to sign."
Norfolk's eyes were fairly popping from his red face. "By God!" he shouted, and slammed his fist on the table where the parchment was laid out for me. "If you were my daughter, I would not tolerate such obduracy! I would knock your head against a wall until it was as soft as a baked apple!"
I felt my insides heave. Bitter bile rushed into my mouth. I thought I would faint. "I will not sign the paper, and I will not swear the oaths," I repeated.
Norfolk stared at me. Then he swung around and stomped out.
I remained where I was, quaking, until Shelton found me there. "Look at you! A pretty sight indeed! No wonder you have no husband! What man would have the likes of you? What gentleman would lower himself to marry you, nothing but a bastard with neither looks nor wealth nor tide to compensate!"
I expected to be sent back to my black cell, but instead the queen's aunt merely shooed me away as though I were a stray cat. I stumbled back to my
chamber and resumed my duties in caring for the infant Elizabeth.
I PASSED AN anxious fortnight, afraid to eat what was put before me, afraid to close my eyes at night, my nerves scraped so raw that Elizabeth's cries and even her laughter were unbearable but still had to be borne. Then I received another visitor. This time it was Cromwell.
Cromwell was seated; he did not bother to rise when I entered the chamber. "Lady Mary," he began in an unctuous tone. I noticed how much the man resembled a toad— a sweating toad, at that. Beads of perspiration oozed from his pores and dropped onto his doublet.
"You wished to see me," I replied.
"Sit down, won't you?" Cromwell continued. "It will make our conversation more pleasant. I've already called for hippocras to be brought. A satisfying refreshment for a hot day." He pulled out a handkerchief and wiped his glistening face.
I remained standing, a pointed rebuke to the man's ill manners. A servant poured spiced wine from a flagon into two goblets. I refused mine. "You wished to see me," I repeated.
Cromwell sighed deeply. "Stubborn, stubborn, stubborn," he murmured. Then he leaned forward, his fingers splayed on the table, and rolled his toad eyes upon me. "Lady Mary, listen well: You must renounce your claim to the title of princess. It is the king's will. You and your mother must yield. The king's new marriage and its heirs must be accepted. There is no other way."
I met his stare. "I will not."
"The king will break your resolve if he has to break your neck to do it," Cromwell said.
"The king will do as he wishes. I will not sign."
Cromwell leaned back and drank deeply from the silver goblet. "In some ways I admire you," he said, setting the empty goblet down with a thump. "But you are a fool, Lady Mary. And you will surely die for it."
CHAPTER 17: Rumors
During the long, wet summer of 1534, Sir Francis Peacham supplied us with tidbits of gossip from Henry's court. Anne was trying to distract the wrathful king with a succession of elaborate banquets. Sir Francis himself was often called upon to perform and to find others—mummers and tumblers, actors and musicians—to provide amusement as well. There were rumors that the queen was once more with child, but when there was no evidence of a pregnancy, Anne's temper became more violent and unpredictable.
One victim of Anne's spite was Susan, now countess of Chichester. Susan was pregnant, visibly so, and the sight of a healthy young woman carrying a child sent Anne into a rage.
"She threw at me everything upon which she could lay her hands," Susan wrote in a letter that somehow reached me unopened. "Fortunately, her aim is poor, and the objects fell harmlessly—harmless to me, if not to the objects themselves, all smashed or dented." I recalled the goblet and pomander Anne had hurled at me; I had not been amused when I was the target, but Susan had a way of putting things in a humorous light. "Since she could not strike me, she banished me. And so here I am, away from court and—happily, if only briefly— from my noble husband, who resembles nothing so much as a pet marmoset. At least I anticipate with joy the birth of my child."
I read the letter over several times, until I could quote it from memory. I wished that I could keep it to read again whenever I needed cheering, but it wasn't safe to do so. I burned the letter in the candle flame and dropped the gray ash out of my narrow window, watching the flakes drift lazily into the bleak courtyard below.
ON ONE OF those infrequent days in August when the sun had broken through the dark clouds, Bryan and I took little Elizabeth for a stroll in the privy garden. The child was nearly a year old and had just learned to walk; curious about everything, she seemed to be everywhere at once.
Elizabeth had our father's red-gold hair and her mother's black eyes. She was charming—adorable, in fact. But she had also inherited her parents' mercurial temperament and often shifted from gaiety to fury in the blink of an eye. I refused to address Elizabeth as princess, but I did call her my sister. Though I had not wanted to love this child, who now possessed everything that was rightfully mine, I found her creeping into my affections. As Bryan and I talked softly, Elizabeth toddled toward me, clutching a flower she had plucked, and reached up to pat my cheek with great tenderness. I could not close my heart against her.
"The queen has been heard arguing with the king more than ever," Bryan said so quietly that the maidservant who dawdled nearby couldn't hear. "Anne insists that she has heard from a soothsayer that as long as you and your mother still live, she will be unable to conceive a son. She urges the king to have you both murdered. She is relentless; she will not be stilled."
As we watched, Elizabeth lurched into a bed of violas and began pulling at the purple-and-white blooms. Her fists full of flowers, she laughed and tried to run away from the maidservant. The servant gave chase. But when the little princess lost her balance and tumbled into a heap, the laughter changed instantly to a tearful roar.
"The king is nearly driven out of his mind by her," Bryan continued. "There are other rumors that the king has taken a new mistress, one of the queen's ladies. So Anne strives ever harder to hold on to the king. She knows that if she doesn't soon give him a son, she'll lose all."
"The sooner the better," I muttered. "She had no right to him in the first place."
"Fool!" Bryan cried suddenly, and boxed my ear so hard that I whimpered in real pain. "You are to be looking after the princess, not standing about like a tree stump!" she shouted.
My ear pounding, I ran toward Elizabeth, who was red-faced with fury. As I did I noticed that several servants sent by Cromwell as spies had appeared. How long have they been there? I wondered. Instantly Elizabeth stopped bawling and, eluding the servant girl, ran straight into my arms. I dried her tears and accepted her kisses, returning them in kind.
ANNE SELDOM CALLED FOR Elizabeth to be brought to her at Greenwich, but for the occasion of her daughter's first birthday, Anne planned a splendid celebration. I was commanded to attend. And so I stood with the other servants in the Great Hall of Greenwich Palace and watched as a roasted peacock, gilded beak aflame, was carried in accompanied by a fanfare of trumpets and sackbuts.
Seated on the royal dais at King Henry's side, Anne was dressed in black as usual; her hair was caught in a net of gold beneath a coronet blazing with diamonds and rubies. Even from a distance the queen appeared more pale and gaunt than ever. Between courses King Henry carried Elizabeth around the Great Hall on his shoulder, showing her off. I remembered that he had once showed me off with the same pride. He gave no sign that he saw me. The memory combined with the awareness of my present circumstances plunged me into melancholia. I wanted only for the evening to end so that I could escape to that same poor chamber where I had stayed when Elizabeth was born.
"THE KING IS coming tomorrow for a visit to Princess Elizabeth," Shelton announced a few weeks later, back at Hatfield. She addressed Bryan as though I wer
e not present. "Lady Mary is to be locked in her chamber during the king's stay. Best if she's kept from his sight, for I've heard more talk that he'll have her beheaded if she refuses to swear the oaths." Only then did she appear to notice me, bestowing on me an acid smile, showing teeth.
My heart beat rapidly, and I struggled to conceal my trembling. Perhaps Shelton spoke the truth!
"And so she shall be," Bryan declared, seizing me by the arm and pulling me away. "Stop struggling so hard!" Bryan hissed, dragging me down the gloomy passageway. "I'm trying to help you." When we reached my chamber, Bryan whispered, "It's better if you're here. These are Anne's orders, you may be sure of that. At least you'll be safe with a guard posted at your door." And then she went away, leaving me alone.
Locked in my chamber I passed a long and sleepless night, listening to the sounds of the palace and the murmur of the guards outside my door. The next day I heard the trumpets heralding the king's arrival and waited with trepidation and pounding heart to learn if he might send for me. But if he did, then what? Would he order my death? Have me thrown into prison again until I agreed to sign? Hours later trumpets signaled the king's departure. Still I hung in an agony of suspense,
I hoped that Bryan would come to release me and bring me whispered news. Instead it was Shelton who appeared in the doorway, arms folded tightly across her bony chest. "You have a visitor," she said, cold eyes glinting.
Another visitor? My father had gone. Who, then? In a panic I wondered if it might be Norfolk or Cromwell or another of my father's advisers, come to haul me to the Tower to face a traitor's death. Wordlessly I followed Shelton to my fate.
I nearly wept with relief when I discovered that the visitor was my former tutor, Master Fetherston. I hadn't seen him for two years, and I realized how the passage of time must have changed me by the look of surprise and concern that flickered across his cherubic face. For his part Master Fetherston had changed little, except to grow even plumper.
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