The Redheaded Princess: A Novel (7 page)

One morning Sir Tom came upon me in the garden, where I was picking the first of the roses. "A word with you, Elizabeth," he said. He was somber, solemn near to the point of being stern. I set down my basket of roses on a nearby bench and turned to him. He sat down on the bench near the basket. "Mr. Grindal died last night of the sweating sickness." I burst into tears and dropped my cutting shears on the ground. My shoulders shook with sobs. Not only for Mr. Grindal but for my life here, for what I'd been going through, for my confusion about Sir Tom, for Katharine, for all of us. In a moment Sir Tom had me on his lap, at first to comfort me, and then it became something else as I hugged him close and felt the maleness of him and lost myself in his arms. Soon he was kissing me, and not like an uncle or a guardian, but like a man.

"I only married Katharine so I could be close to you," he was telling me between kisses, and we were like that, pursuing each other hungrily, when there came the sound of footsteps down the walk and we both looked up to see Katharine standing there, horrified.

"Oh, oh my sweet Jesus," she said. And she grabbed the side of an arbor and sank down on the brick walk. Immediately Cat and Mr. Parry and some of Katharine's maids came to help her up. Sir Tom pushed me off his lap, stood up, and went to kneel in front of his wife.

"Sweet wife, thank God you've come to save me from this girl. She is rashly wanton. I came out to comfort her for Mr. Grindal's death and she threw herself at me. Oh, thank the Lord you are here." Katharine said nothing. She just got to her feet, turned, and trotted clumsily back to the house.

***CHAPTER EIGHT

I had to admire Katharine. I don't think I could be as much the grand lady as she was if some little chit of a girl like me was caught kissing my husband. At dinner there was no discussion of it. We sat at table, all of us, including Lady Jane, without so much as a word of rancor or blame. We discussed the approaching fall season in London and the coming of Katharine and Sir Tom's child. He had been to two astrologers, who both told him it would be a boy. Already the first of many gifts for the nursery were coming in.

A goodly shipment had come this day and Sir Tom had had them opened. Now he recited them: "A set of silver pots and goblets. A silver porringer. Three more quilts and sets of sheets. Two pewter jugs, fashioned like animals to hold milk. A tester of scarlet. Six wall hangings.”

“We must make ready the nursery soon," Katharine said. And so went the longest meal of my life. After dinner Katharine summoned me to her private chambers. She was sitting on a red velvet lounge chair. I knelt at her feet. She did not ask me to rise. "My husband swears on his mother that there was no more between you than I saw," she told me. "But I fear your young blood. Don't forget, you have the blood of Anne Boleyn in your veins. You cannot help yourself, so it is my job to help you." I lowered my eyes at this mention of my mother. The blood of Anne Boleyn, I supposed, would haunt me all of my born days.

"I know how attractive he is to a woman. Oh yes, I know. But he is my husband and I know too that he loves me. So I am sending you away. To Cheshunt, deep in the woodland valley, where you will have a chance to think and to grow. You may take Cat Ashley and Roger Ascham. I will deny you nothing. But you have not only flirted here with my husband, you have put him in danger of being accused of treason for dallying with you." Treason! It meant losing one's head. Like my mother.

"I have, this very afternoon, sent letters to Sir Anthony Denny at Cheshunt, one of your father's gentlemen at court. He and his wife will welcome you tomorrow at Cheshunt." I said nothing. Nothing was expected of me. "God has given you great qualities, Elizabeth. Cultivate them always. And labor to improve them, for I believe you are destined, by heaven, to be Queen of England. Now you may rise and take your leave and oversee the packing, which your maids have already begun."

I rose. I kissed her. I thanked her. And I left the room. I felt cold, abandoned, put out. But I said nothing. I had brought it all upon myself. Of course Sir Tom had brought a lot of it down on my head too, but I couldn't bring myself to blame him. Sir Tom left before I did. The next morning I was taking breakfast alone in my room, as Cat Ashley had suggested, when I heard a commotion outside. I went to the large multi-paned window and looked down. There was a bevy of men of all stripes on horseback, two carriages full of possessions, and Sir Tom, mounted on his favorite horse, with all his dogs beside him, ready to ride off. He was doing the work of his title as Lord Admiral, going to some island, maybe the Scillies. He rode off with a great clatter, raising dust all about, without even saying good-bye to me. It was a warm, dusty day in early June. I rode my own horse rather than ride in the coach with Cat Ashley and Mr. Parry. I did not want to be preached at. The Vernon brothers rode on either side of me. And except for the disgrace I'd left behind me, it could have been a gay outing.

We rode through the countryside and people came out of their houses to cheer us on. Some of them threw flowers. At some places I stopped, to the dismay of my knights, who could scarce keep the people away from me. In one village there was a country fair, and the Vernon brothers agreed I could stop but not get off my horse. One lady brought me a meat pie, which I ate astride while people stared and shouted, "God save Princess Elizabeth."

An elderly man came up to me and put his hand on my horse's reins, and immediately Richard Vernon was there, hand on his sword hilt, pushing his horse in the way. "Away from the Princess," he ordered.

"I just want to tell her something," he protested feebly.

"It's all right, Richard, leave him be. What is it, sir?" I asked.

"The people don't have work," he told me in a whispery voice. "If they do, they receive too little. Prices are too dear, and when you purchase something it's of shabby value. Feather beds are stuffed with rubbish. There is a new law against being unemployed that makes it legal for vagabonds and their children to be sold into slavery."

I nodded, listening intently. "I'll tell my brother, the King," I said.

He shouted more troubling things at me as we rode off. "There are brigands roaming the countryside and stealing the sheep and whatever we have of value. The crops are poor this year." It seemed I could hear his voice, weak and appealing, in my head, long after we left him. What if I were Queen? I thought. What would I do about feather beds stuffed with rubbish? Mustn't a Queen care about such goings-on in her kingdom? How could I keep all my people happy? A haunting crescent moon was rising above the woodlands as we approached the stone manor called Cheshunt.

Through the thick foliage that seemed to protect the place I could see distant torchlights shining and vague shadows waiting. My knights rode on ahead. As we began the approach to the manor I saw how it rose in the moonlight, with peaks and turrets and blank windows, with shadows of trees splashed on the terrace, with the smell of roses coming from inside the courtyard. Dogs came to greet us, sniffing and wagging their tails. I felt a sense of peace overtake me as I dismounted. My whole household got down off their horses and out of the wagons, and the servants started to unpack my things. This looked like the perfect place to lick my wounds. To soothe my heart after Sir Thomas's betrayal of me the day we were caught in the garden.

Though I knew I could never forget how he'd flung himself at Katharine's feet and made me out a wanton, perhaps here I could put a new perspective on it. And here I could also properly mourn the death of my old tutor, Mr. Grindal, which I had been unable to do in all the commotion back at Chelsea. The Denny’s were on the marble front steps, waiting, more servants lined up behind them. "Welcome to Cheshunt," Sir Anthony Denny said. He was a short, fat man with a balding head. His wife looked like my Cat Ashley, and as she and the maids curtseyed to me, I could see over their heads to the large, cool interior of the house, where paintings hung on the walls and tapestries draped the windows and Persian carpets graced the floors. This is my world now, I told myself. Sir Tom and Katharine and Lady Jane seemed far away. My household. I am in charge. I was fifteen, a woman. And I was determined, from here on in, to act like one.

Denny showed me the gallery first thing the next morning. It was his collection, his doing, he said proudly. And so we walked through the great hall to the solarium above, where he pointed out a painting of my grandfather Henry VII. "Not only a King," Denny told me, "but a businessman and warrior. He ran the kingdom with a tight purse. Yet he fought against Richard the King at Bosworth Field to take the throne like a true warrior. And so founded the mighty Tudors."

My grandfather did not look like a warrior. More like a keeper of monies, like Mr. Parry. But one could never tell what was behind quiet eyes and a modest expression. "And here, your father." He pointed to a painting that brought to life all my memories. The massive trunk of a body, the fine set of the head under the familiar velvet hat with the feather, the bejeweled hands, the commanding expression. "Your father was a great King. But to his own sorrow, he has but one son." I thought of Edward, my brother. I thought of his persistent cough. "You are a true bairn of your father," he told me. "We are honored to have you here. I am honored to serve her who may be England's future Queen." And he bowed. Then righted himself. "Except, of course, that I am sorry for the sickness at Chelsea that killed your tutor and threatened your house." The sweating sickness. Of course! That was the reason Katharine had probably told him I was coming.

"Does not my father have another son?" I asked him. For I had heard of the boy Henry Darnley, a grand-nephew of my father's, whose mother was a Countess. But I had never seen him.

"Yes, and he thrives, strong and handsome.”

“And will he someday make a claim to the throne?”

“I think not. Not while there exists a you. And a Mary. But you must be careful, Princess. For much depends on the man you marry." The man I marry! Did he know about Sir Tom and me, then? Was he warning me? This man knew much about my family, I told myself. After all, he had served on my father's Privy Council. I must be discreet around him.

"Are you satisfied with your rooms, Princess?" he asked me.

"Yes. Everything is lovely.”

“We had short notice. Adjustments can always be made. And your tutor must feel free to ask favors also.”

“Thank you, Sir Anthony. I think I shall return to my rooms now." Perhaps a little more discretion around all would be the path to follow. For the first week I did as I pleased. I read and walked in the gardens and played with the dogs at Cheshunt. I rode, with James and Richard Vernon and Sir John Chertsey as escorts. I watched them joust and practice archery and swordplay. My Cat Ashley told me that my tutor wanted to start lessons, so I should take my leisure while I could. She did not know that my lessons were my leisure, another form of leisure, wherein I could lose myself in Cicero, Sallust, Aesop; in rich, soothing Latin; in musical French. And speaking of music, I knew we'd be practicing dancing, the virginals, the flute. Soon my lessons began.

And so, in my chamber of a morning, with the windows open to the July and August sunshine, with the sounds of the farm animals and the chirping of birds, I would sit with Roger Ascham. He took his job seriously, though he was not serious. He now wore, as if we were starting a new era of learning, a dusty black robe and fustian cap. His black curls were long now and he left them that way.

"Sir, I have neglected my studies," I said. "We must put aside all pleasure and bow our heads to the task."

He grinned. "Nicely put, madam, but I thought your studies were pleasure.”

“Shall we read Horace today, Master?" I asked. "I am in need of some poetry." And so we got back to work. And so I took pleasure in it. And so, for hours at a time, at least, I did not think of Sir Tom. Or wonder about Katharine's baby. The first week of September, a rider came up the lane, breathless, with a message. Katharine had given birth to a baby girl, and mother and baby were doing well. The note was from Tom, who'd gotten home just in time for the birth. I stared at the parchment in my hand, stared at his signature, wondered that he'd actually written to me. He seemed so far away, so much a part of my past, yet the signature and the fact that he'd touched this very paper quickened me. I felt tears in my eyes. Oh Tom, I thought, what's to become of us? Will we ever see each other again? Did I want to? He'd betrayed me, the day he shoved me off his lap and told Katharine he was just trying to comfort me because of Mr. Grindal's dying. But I still had some feeling for him. If he had come through the door at that moment, I would have trembled and run to him. And I hated myself for it.

Mornings, we worked at Greek and Latin, afternoons mathematics. Another week went by, and then one dark night another rider came up to the house with a message. I could not have borne it if Mr. Ascham had not been by my side. Katharine had died from childbed fever after giving birth and being delirious for days. The letter was from Lady Jane. I held it in my hand, not wanting to believe it. My heart wrung for Katharine. I refused to believe she was dead, and collapsed in Roger Ascham's arms. I did not go to the funeral, even though it was the first Protestant royal funeral ever held in England. I heard that Lady Jane was the chief female mourner so I wanted to stay away.

There was nothing I could do, and I did not want to see Sir Tom. And I would not send a note of condolence to him, as Cat Ashley wanted. She had to send it instead. I could not bear to go to the funeral of the woman I had wronged in spite of all her kindness to me. And, as it turned out, she had left me half her personal jewels. I warmed to the thought that this meant she had forgiven me. The leaves blew off the trees and the wind wrapped the manor house in cold. The days lost their color so that everything was painted in different shades of gray. Fireplaces were lighted throughout the house. Hot mulled wine was served at dinner. The dogs came into the house and gathered round the hearth at night. We existed, a world unto ourselves. Right before Christmas he came to see me. Cat Ashley came to the sun-filled room upstairs where I was reading Greek with Mr. Ascham.