Part 12 (1/2)

Through it all, Kate kept silent, never daring to tell our lady-mother that she did not want to be queen and prayed every day that G.o.d would bless our royal cousin with a child of her own and thus spare her. Indeed, what good would it have done if she had spoken up? It would have only led to more angry words and blows. ”I shall wait and hope this cup shall pa.s.s me by,” Kate told me in the privacy of our room, ”and that I shall not be made to drink from it, for I've no desire to; I find it a vile and bitter brew, more poisonous than pleasurable, and sometimes it even kills. I would rather be queen of my husband's heart, to rule our household, with our children, pets, and servants as my loyal and loving subjects, than be empress of all the world.” But our lady-mother would only have laughed and called Kate a fool and boxed her ears while deploring her daughter's lack of ambition.

While Kate had all the praise and glory, I found that I was subjected to less mockery after the courtiers saw how greatly our royal cousin favoured us. It was wonderful beyond words to be spared the jibes and insults, even though it meant I was more or less ignored. No one thought I would ever be queen like Kate, so there was no need to try to curry favour and make a fuss over me. So I kept silent and watched. Many young men flirted with Kate, and young women sought her friends.h.i.+p. We had gone, almost overnight, from being reviled as turncoats to being revered as royal princesses, at court, though not by the people in the streets. Some even detested us as Elizabeth's rivals, though we never saw ourselves as such.

But people see what they want to see and are often blind to the truth. They feared we would usurp the succession as our sister had. Elizabeth did not love or even like us and was more to be feared than Mary. Elizabeth would be swift to punish any who dared come between her and her one true love-England. She would never forgive or be merciful and pa.s.sive. No, Kate and I agreed; better to die outright than be regarded as Elizabeth's enemy.

So many people longed for Elizabeth, including the lascivious golden-bearded Philip who was now the Queen's husband-palace gossip said he had peepholes drilled in the wall so he could watch Elizabeth undress and bathe. And to most of the common people, Elizabeth was England and their last link with their beloved Henry VIII. Loving Philip had cost Cousin Mary most of her people's love, and many thought she cared more for Spain than she ever did for England. The people's love affair with the last true Tudor princess, the vibrant, flame-haired Elizabeth, only grew more pa.s.sionate as England erupted in a blaze of persecution that sought to burn out every trace of the Reformed Religion. People went to the stake praying with their dying breath for Elizabeth's ascension, for her to come to the throne and deliver England from this evil.

It was an exciting and frightening time to be alive. In gowns of silver tinsel and Our Lady's blue satin, with crowns of silvered rosemary and blue ribbons on our unbound hair, we were there when Mary finally married her prince, and Kate was amongst the maids chosen to dance with Prince Philip at the wedding feast. She laughed and told me afterward that when he lowered her after the high lift in the volta, his tongue had flickered out like a snake's to lick and delve inside her ear and his hand had cupped her breast and compared its size and sweetness to the oranges in the garden of his father's palace.

We were there, in close and daily attendance, the two tragic times our royal cousin's womb bore phantom fruit. We knelt and prayed with her in her private chapel and took it in turns with the other ladies to read her prayers, psalms, and saints' lives, and sat for hours sewing and embroidering baby clothes. How Cousin Mary praised the rows of pretty roses I embroidered around the hems of those little white gowns! She would trust no one but me with this delicate task, declaring, ”Our little cousin Mary's roses are the prettiest!” Soon many ladies of the court were vying to have me embroider roses on the hems of their petticoats, to peek out whenever they lifted their skirts. For us girls who wore the Queen's russet and black livery by day, to emphasize the grandeur of the royal garb, for our wary cousin feared any who might outs.h.i.+ne her, it was a fun and harmless way for us to add a little colour and uniqueness to our bland attire. Eventually I was st.i.tching not just roses but all manner of flowers, in both becoming and unusual combinations-like pinks mated with marigolds; periwinkles coupled with yellow primroses; country daisies and the pet.i.te yellow b.u.t.tons of tansy; chamomile blossoms and scarlet poppies nestled amongst golden wheat; bluebells and b.u.t.tercups; festive red-berried and th.o.r.n.y-leaved holly alongside mistletoe with a profusion of white berries to tempt a lover's kiss; deadly poisonous but pretty purple monk's hood and jaunty yellow Turk's cap; purple-pink thistles amidst spires of lavender; purple-kissed blue forget-me-nots and pure white lily of the valley; or those great sweet-scented s...o...b..a.l.l.s of heavenly white blossoms known as guelder-roses that bloomed in May but bore poisonous red berries in autumn, and in my embroidery I could show both incarnations side by side.

Some ladies even craved garden vegetables, healing herbs, bountiful branches laden with dangling fruit, or beds of ripe berries encircling their hems. Even in the evening, when they might wear their own splendid attire, they still wanted to wear the floral bordered petticoats I made for them, often in colours brightly contrasting their gowns. At any moment as the ladies danced past, one might catch a beguiling glimpse of vibrant yellow daffodils beneath a purple velvet gown, bright pink peonies peeping out from underneath a brazen scarlet skirt, blueberries bursting ripe with flavour beneath a luscious pear silk, or even globe artichokes spreading their leaves beneath sunset orange satin. One might even catch a quick glimpse of the vibrant pink of the apothecary's rose hiding beneath a matron's modest mouse grey velvet, or spy the pink-speckled white bugles of foxglove, or even a row of flamboyant heart's ease pansies blooming beneath a widow's black weeds.

For the more daring and coquettish ladies, the ones who liked to lift their skirts especially high during the dance, I embroidered flights of beautiful rainbow-winged b.u.t.terflies or fat black and yellow bees fluttering up their stockings from ankle to knee. Even Cousin Elizabeth, then still at court under the Queen's wary, watchful eye, had me do a sumptuous silver and gold border of roses dotted with pearls on a cream taffeta petticoat to wear with the new silver and gold brocade gown Prince Philip had given her, ostensibly to satisfy his wife's complaint that Elizabeth dressed too plainly, seeing it as a secret message encoded in her clothes to show the Protestants that she was with them and only paid lip service to the Catholic creed. But it was all great fun, and for the first and only time in my life, I knew what it was like to be popular and sought after. It felt good to be important, even if it was for such a frivolous, flighty thing.

As each of the Queen's phantom pregnancies progressed, we were there to cater to her cravings for great bowls br.i.m.m.i.n.g full of mixed peppers, orange slices, olives, and goat cheese, and afterward to pat her hands, hold her head when she bent retching over the basin, and nurse and comfort her through the agonizing attacks of heartburn that inevitably followed these repasts.

As her suspicion, jealousy, and hatred of Elizabeth increased, we obediently sat and listened to her zealously recounting the lurid tale about how Elizabeth's mother, ”the great wh.o.r.e Anne Boleyn,” used to have the lowborn lute player Mark Smeaton concealed inside a cupboard in her bedchamber, to come out and pleasure her whenever she lay down naked and opened her arms and legs and called for ”something sweet.” She would pace back and forth, tear at her thin hair with her clawlike hands, and rant and rage about Elizabeth, insisting that she did not deserve the people's love, and was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d with not a drop of Tudor blood in her, though one only had to look at Elizabeth to know this was a mad delusion; none of the children King Henry sired ever resembled him more. But it sorely rankled our royal cousin to know that Elizabeth held the people's heart in the palm of her hand and had youth and patience on her side. She was shrewd enough to know that her chance would come; she had only to wait for it and the crown would be handed to her on a purple velvet cus.h.i.+on. There was no need for her to embroil herself in the dangerous schemes her sister imagined; Elizabeth was no fool. But every time a new conspiracy was uncovered or whispered of, Queen Mary was convinced Elizabeth was at the heart of it, and no one could persuade her otherwise.

Then, all of a sudden, Time tired of this frantic pace, dug in its heels, and slowed to the gait of a lazy, old snail. I remember exactly when it happened-the morning I awoke to my first monthly blood. I was thirteen then and fearing that I would never bleed; both my sisters had shed their first woman's blood early in their twelfth year; for them it had been like a belated New Year's gift. I remember Kate's courses started for the first time on St. Valentine's Day, and she saw heart shapes in the red stains on her sheets and declared it a sign that she would be lucky in love, but Jane thought it was all a confounded nuisance and went on to preach a ponderous sermon about Eve in the Garden of Eden.

How excited I was when I awoke and found the rusty red roses of womanhood blooming on my sheets. I bolted from my bed and rushed to the looking gla.s.s, hoping to see some change, praying as I ran that G.o.d had worked a miracle, and I would find that overnight ”the beastly little one” had been transformed, like a b.u.t.terfly emerging from its coc.o.o.n, into a beautiful, shapely, and slender young lady just like Kate. Yet one glance told me that during the night, when I had pa.s.sed obliviously in my slumber from child to woman, neither Father Time nor Mother Nature had left a gift for me to mark the occasion. I was still no taller than a child of five, a crouch-backed little gargoyle, and I knew that no corset, no matter how rigorously laced, would ever sculpt my stocky, tree-trunk torso into an exquisite hourgla.s.s like Kate's. And if I were to ever dare tread a public measure, the movements of my short, thick, vein-rippled, bowed little legs, fortunately hidden by my skirts, would occasion mockery, giggles, and glee instead of compliments on my nonexistent grace. When I raised my night s.h.i.+ft with my still stubby fingers and walked back and forth before the icy cruel, silvered gla.s.s, I saw that I still had the same waddle-wobble walk. Nothing had changed, and I knew it never would; I would be stuck inside this ugly, ungainly, squat little goblin's body until the day I died and G.o.d set my soul free.

”Mayhap in Heaven I shall be a raving beauty,” I sighed and said to the sad, ugly face staring back at me from the looking gla.s.s. Then the tears came. So suddenly they took me by surprise. I wept as though great stones of sorrow had been suddenly set down upon my shoulders and chest, threatening to crush me with this painful grief. I wanted my sister; I wanted Kate. But we no longer shared a room; that privilege had been taken from me and given to another, and I was left to sleep alone. No one wanted to share a bed with ”Lady Mary Gargoyle.” I wanted to run howling down the corridor and pound on her door in my bloodstained s.h.i.+ft and throw myself into Kate's arms, but womanly dignity and pride won out over a child's rage against unfairness. I would keep my blood a secret, for in truth, what did it matter that I was now a woman? There would never be a husband, a man, to love me. My body might as well be dry and barren, yet my heart, I knew, would always weep tears of blood for the carnal comforts and fleshly pleasures that would ever be denied me because of what I was. Unfortunately there were no n.o.bly born dwarf lads at court who could be mated with me, only the lowborn tumblers and fools in jingle bells and motley who came to entertain, and to them I was of too high an estate to ever be trifled with. Instead of desire in their eyes, I saw scorn and envy; unlike them, I did not have to make silly faces and cut capers to put food on my table; I was a duke's daughter with royal blood in my veins, born to live and die in comfort and ease. If Fate ever decreed that I should hold a sceptre it would not be tipped with jingle bells to be waggled at a laughing crowd while I rolled my eyes and stuck my tongue out.

The young Lady Jane Seymour, the late Lord Protector's daughter named in honour of his sister, ”the third time's the charm queen” who had died giving Henry VIII the son he desired above all things, was now Kate's best friend and bedmate. This Lady Jane was a.s.suredly one of the most delicate, gentle-hearted creatures G.o.d ever created, so sweet that indeed it hurt my heart to hate her. She had made a point of befriending Kate in the dark days just after Jane's death, when most of the court hypocritically shunned her as the sister of a traitor and a turncoat who had renounced the Reformed Faith to save her life and family fortune when many of them had done exactly the same thing, and a divorcee at only fourteen whose much-envied beauty and the flirtatious wiles she had boldly exhibited in the company of her former husband and father-in-law made her virtue suspect. But pale, ethereal Lady Jane in her gowns of her favourite heavenly blue reminiscent of the Holy Virgin's robes had no patience for such things. Perhaps it was because she knew she was not long for this world? Her lungs were weak; fever often brightened her cheeks and pallid, blue-violet eyes, making them glow with a watery luminosity that only made her more beautiful, especially since she had not had the misfortune to inherit the Seymours' prominent and beaky nose that usually marred their women's otherwise fine features. Her hair was the fairest I had ever seen, a s.h.i.+mmering silvery blond that always made me think of angel wings, but she often bemoaned was too limp to hold even a vestige of a curl. No matter how long her maid laboured twining it around the hot irons, it would fall flat, hanging straight to her waist, slick as silk, defying all pins, before the irons even had a chance to cool or for Lady Jane to make her way downstairs to whatever celebration she was preparing to attend in the Great Hall.

I didn't lose my sister all at once. The change happened gradually. Though I didn't begrudge her a friend, I could not help but resent anyone who came between us. My sister was in truth my only friend and I had great need of her. But the five years that separated us, though they had always seemed so inconsequential before, and I had always been old for my years, now seemed of a sudden so very great. I wanted to stop it, and the polite, bland smiles that Kate now favoured me with as though I were a stranger, or a mere acquaintance at most, instead of the sister who knew and loved her best. But I couldn't. When I tried to talk to her about it, she dismissed it as nonsense, jealousy, or just my imagination.

In truth maybe there were elements of all three tossed into the brew of emotion bubbling inside of me. I only know that whenever she was with Jane Seymour I felt as though a pane of thick gla.s.s divided us and I was always on the outside looking in, futilely trying to get her attention, trying to gain back the time Kate no longer had for me. It only made things worse when Lady Jane, with kindness in her forget-me-not eyes, would smile shyly and hold out her hand and invite me to join them, for I knew that if I did that pane of gla.s.s her gesture had banished would soon come back again, and I would feel an outsider, an intruder, an eavesdropper spying on them. So I schooled myself to proudly decline, turn my back, and thrust my nose up high, and walk away from that outstretched hand.

Even if my cold rebuffs hurt that gentle lady, I had to protect myself since no one else would. I knew that being with them, seeing the happiness they shared, would hurt me because I could never be a part of it. Knowing that it had once been mine made the pain even worse.

At court all the maidens who served Her Majesty slept two to a bed; it was deemed a special privilege or a sign of great disfavour for any to have a room all to herself. But this Lady Jane was often troubled by coughs and fevers, so few relished sleeping in the same bed with her lest they catch some vile contagion or her coughing and feverish tossing deprive them of a restful sleep. At first, Kate would only occasionally creep down the corridor in her s.h.i.+ft and bare feet to pa.s.s a night giggling and gossiping with her friend, but then a day came when, with the Queen's permission, she packed her things and moved them to Lady Jane's room. Every night thereafter I would lie awake, wis.h.i.+ng and hoping that Kate would come creeping down the corridor to spend a night with me, but she never did. I would picture the two of them, braided and frilled night-capped heads together, gossiping and giggling long into the night, just like Kate and I used to do, and weep into my pillow and wonder if G.o.d would ever see fit to send me someone to ease my loneliness. Kate said G.o.d had given her Lady Jane as a replacement for our own Jane, the sister He had taken home to Him, but who, if any, I wondered, would He give me to take Kate's place?

But at least Kate was getting better. Her heart was healing, or so I thought. I remember seeing her one night, with a handsome dark-haired boy in gold-piped crimson velvet. I watched with a glad heart as he manoeuvred her into a corner to steal a kiss after she had danced, the most beautiful damsel of all, in a masque, draped in a gold lace mantle over a green and purple gown embroidered with golden pearl-dotted vines and festooned with bunches of purple and green wax grapes, and beneath it, I noted with pleasure, the petticoat I had embroidered for her with bouquets of scarlet roses bound with golden bows and cl.u.s.ters of grapes. He caressed her bright hair, as he pressed forward, and so dazzled and smitten was he by her radiant beauty and charm as they bantered softly and smiled into each other's eyes that he absently plucked grapes from the cl.u.s.ters in her hair and had already eaten three before Kate laughingly inquired if he was aware that they were made of wax. Kate let him steal another kiss, and he caressed the side of her neck with hands that looked so soft and tender they made me long to be in her shoes.

When his hand travelled down to gently cup her breast, Kate let it linger there for a moment while she savoured his kiss before she laughed and danced away from him and ran to grab the hand of one of the court greybeards and, his potbelly jiggling, pulled him out to join the other dancers in a lively gavotte. I watched with a sad and happy heart, knowing that it would be Lady Jane Seymour, not I, who would laugh about it in bed with her that night. How I missed her and those sweet, sisterly confidences whispered against our pillows while all around us the palace slept.

I stood in the shadows and waited for her. As she and Jane Seymour walked past, heads together, giggling, on the way to their room, I boldly reached out and caught her skirt. Kate paused and stared down at me, and I saw the flash of impatience, and annoyance, in her eyes. When I did not speak and glanced meaningfully past her at Lady Jane, unable to keep the reproachful glare from my eyes, she demurely lowered her head and murmured that she was rather tired and would await Kate upstairs.

”Well, what is it, Mary?” Kate turned back to me, arms folded across her b.r.e.a.s.t.s.

Still I persisted. I had to know. ”Do you love him?” I asked hopefully.

”Who?” Kate asked irritably, as though she had no idea what I was talking about.

”The dark-haired boy in crimson. I saw you kiss him, and you let him touch your breast. He's very handsome, Kate, and he has kind eyes.”

With a flippant, world-weary laugh and a toss of her flame-bright curls, Kate said, ”It was only a kiss, Mary! It meant nothing! I was just having fun; isn't that what I'm here to do? Love is a snare.” She said this suddenly, with a brittle vengeance filled with unshed tears that threatened to seep through the cracks. ”I made the mistake of getting caught in it. But don't let it get you, Mary. Don't you make the same mistake! If you do, you'll never be free! It bites deep, holds tight, tears you when you try to pull free, and even if you do get away, it always leaves you marked with a scar so that you can never forget it, no matter how much you dance and laugh and let pretty boys kiss and fondle you.”

She laughed again, as though she were trying to pretend it was all a jest, and twirled away from me, dancing down the corridor with an obviously feigned gaiety, on her way to join Jane Seymour.

”I don't believe you!” I called after her. ”Your words are a s.h.i.+eld; you're just trying to protect your heart because you don't want to be hurt again!”

Kate froze, then whirled around and stormed back to challenge me. ”What do you think that you know about love?” she demanded.

”More than you think,” I answered boldly. ”Those who have never had it, who have had to learn to live without it, knowing it is something they can never realistically hope to have, but still nonetheless yearn and dream of it, know its worth far better than those who have had it given to them free and gratis all their lives, and will go on to love and love again, just as you will! Losing Berry isn't the end, Kate. You will find love again, or it will find you, I haven't a doubt of it!”

b.r.e.a.s.t.s heaving, Kate stood and stared at me as though I were her enemy, and, for a moment, I feared I had gone too far, that she hated me, there was such anger in her eyes. But then, abruptly, she gave a great sigh, briefly shut her eyes, then turned and walked away.

”I'm tired. Good night, Mary.” She tossed the words back coolly over her shoulder along with the hot blaze of her curls, but I thought I detected a quiver of tears hovering just beneath the words. As her steps quickened as she neared the stairs, I knew that this would be another night when she cried herself to sleep. Only it would be Jane Seymour, and not I, who would be there to hold and comfort her.

The next afternoon Queen Mary sent for me. She had sensed my unhappiness, I think, after Kate deserted me. When I entered her quiet, darkened chamber, where all the curtains were drawn tight against the sun that so cruelly hurt her poor, tear-swollen eyes, she was alone, bereft and grieving for her golden Spanish prince who had sailed away, never to return, leaving her alone with another phantom baby filling her belly with false hope. She sat on the floor, trailing black veils like a widow and straggling, dirty, matted hair that was now entirely grey but for a few pale yellowy orange streaks. It shall have to be cut off, I thought with a pang of alarm, knowing how sensitive Cousin Mary was about her hair, for not even Kate will have the patience to comb the tangles out.

She squinted hard at me, then her lips spread in a wide smile, showing swollen gums and the ugly black and yellow stumps of her few remaining teeth. She held up two dolls-a pair of little ladies arrayed in exquisite gowns she had made. There was a small chest nearby overflowing with more. Tiny gowns, kirtles, cloaks, petticoats, slippers, and headdresses spilled out onto the floor, and her sewing basket beside it, surrounded by sc.r.a.ps of gorgeous fabric and skeins of gilt thread, her silver sewing scissors, and a pincus.h.i.+on speared with pearl-tipped pins and shaped like a pomegranate that was a precious relic of her mother. She handed me one of the dolls, a little raven-haired lady in lemon velvet crisscrossed with gold piping and pearls, and bade me sit beside her whilst she cradled a honey-haired damsel in tawny rose brocade.

I was thirteen and fancied myself too old for dolls, so I felt a trifle foolish, and embarra.s.sed for her as well as for myself, but I didn't dare disobey nor could I bear to disappoint someone who had been so kind to me, one I knew to be in such pain, mayhap even dying if the whispers gliding like serpents through the palace corridors were true.

The hours dragged slowly past as we dressed and undressed the dolls and enacted little dramas with them. Suddenly she turned and rummaged in the chest and brought out two more dolls-a replica of herself in her sumptuous black velvet wedding gown, so densely embroidered with gold you could barely see the black beneath, and a male doll, golden-haired, with a little golden dagger of a beard decorating his chin, clad in gold-embellished white velvet and a bloodred cloak embroidered with pearls and golden thistles. She started to give him to me, but then, with a horrified gasp, as though she could not believe what she had almost done, s.n.a.t.c.hed him back and hugged him possessively against her breast and glared at me with crazed eyes that dared me to try and take him from her. I didn't know what to do. Thankfully the moment pa.s.sed, and she realized that I was no threat. With tears rolling down her face, she thrust the doll fas.h.i.+oned in her own likeness at me. Then, though she was crying so hard she could scarcely see, we reenacted the couple's nuptials until Queen Mary collapsed weeping on the floor and her two most devoted ladies-in-waiting, Jane Dormer and Susan Clarencieux, emerged silently from the shadows to help her back to bed.

”Go away, little gargoyle,” Susan said over her shoulder as they led their weeping mistress away. ”This is no place for you.”

As I closed the door behind me, I heard Cousin Mary's sobs grow into keening wails as she cried for her Philip.

Soon she was dead. We were bathing her corpse and dressing her for the last time in the blue velvet and ermine gown she had worn on her coronation day, carefully pinning it to conceal how loose it hung upon her emaciated frame. Kate's clever fingers worked wonders with the dirty, matted hair, snaring it in a golden net beneath a coronet of spring flowers formed of precious gems.

As we worked silently over her corpse, outside the bells tolled and the people sang and danced in the streets, and wept with joy, to welcome the young woman they called ”Our Elizabeth.” She was the phoenix that had risen from the ashes of all the Protestants ”b.l.o.o.d.y Mary” had burned to cinders along with her popularity, throwing her people's love onto the pyre and eradicating all memory of the once-beloved ”Merciful Mary” and the even more dimly remembered ”Princess Marigold.” Now her death was cause for jubilation, a national holiday that would be celebrated for many years to come.

As Kate rubbed rouge onto the gaunt cheeks that were like yellow wax in the candlelight, our eyes met over that poor, pathetic body and we silently wondered, now that Elizabeth was queen, what would become of us. Elizabeth, unlike Mary, had never favoured or befriended us, but neither had she been cruel, only coolly indifferent; to Elizabeth we were just there, like pieces of furniture. I hadn't told Kate, but I had already set to work embroidering a petticoat with red and white Tudor roses and the crowned golden initials ER, ”Elizabeth Regina,” as a gift for her, to show that we had no royal pretensions, we weren't pretenders to the throne, and we wanted only peace, not to be embroiled in conspiracies and schemes. I prayed Elizabeth would read correctly the message embroidered in those royal roses of red and white petals that symbolized the union of the houses of York and Lancaster. Our very survival might depend on it.

14.

With the advent of Elizabeth, Lady Jane Seymour's health began a sharp decline; her bad days now far outnumbered her good. The Queen didn't like having a fever-bright consumptive with a hacking cough too near about her and often gave her leave to retire from court to her family's country estate, Hanworth, in Middles.e.x. She sent Kate with her as ”a remedy against loneliness for a young girl so accustomed to the crowded life at court.”

To our immense relief, Queen Mary's demise had not substantially altered our position, except we, like most of the court, were Protestants again. We rode once more in golden chariots clad in ermine-banded crimson as part of an even more splendid coronation procession, and wore again our red silk petticoats with the golden b.u.t.terflies in remembrance of our lost sister. We also retained our privileged posts as ladies-of-the-bedchamber.

But Elizabeth, though graciously cool and largely indifferent to me, was always very wary of Kate. Though Kate would have gladly gone on her knees and sworn that she didn't want to be queen, she wanted only to be happy, as a wife and mother, that a loving, happy household was the only kingdom she coveted, it wasn't enough. Elizabeth knew that as long as she remained the unmarried ”Virgin Queen,” which she seemed bound and determined to do despite the confusion and consternation it caused, Kate would be regarded as the heir presumptive; thus many would flock around and flatter her and even devise plots to bring her to the throne sooner rather than later.

There were many in the world who thought Elizabeth's claim to the throne tenuous at best. Those who refused to acknowledge the marriage of Henry VIII and Anne Boleyn said Elizabeth was a b.a.s.t.a.r.d born of an illicit and illegal union, and thus the Crown should go to someone more worthy and of unblemished pedigree, someone like my sister Kate, and her resemblance to the ”Tudor Rose,” Mary Tudor, ”The French Queen,” was often favourably cited. There were even whispers of a Spanish plot to abduct Kate and marry her by force to Philip's imbecilic son Don Carlos, a youth who took fiendish delight in torturing animals and servants. But Kate wanted no part of any of it, and certainly none of Don Carlos and his manias and madness. If anyone dared try to speak to her about her ”royal destiny,” she would stop her ears and flee their presence as fast as she could.

That was why, I thought, it pleased her so much to escape the court, to travel by a slow horse-drawn litter to Hanworth with her invalid friend. It was the only way Kate could know true peace, away from the maelstrom of plotting that was Elizabeth's court. ”Deliver me from this viper's nest of intrigue!” she would always cry as she bolted down the steps into the courtyard and leapt, una.s.sisted, into the litter, impatient to be off and away from it all, looking forward, never back, not even to wave at me.