The King’s Daughter

In a gap between dancers, I spied my guardian sitting with folded arms against one wall, now joined by Wee Bobby Cecil. From their gestures and Lord Harington’s frown, they appeared to be arguing about me. Bacon leaned on a pillar watching them while dancers jogged around him. I caught my guardian’s eye, then a gaggle of dancers hopped between us.

What use was a guardian, I thought, if he didn’t guard you?

The racket of voices and music grew louder until I heard only a blur of sound. The young man at my father’s feet tilted his head back while the royal hand toyed with his curls. My father leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

I stared down into my wineglass. I knew that I had just learned something else momentous but did not yet know what to make of it.

The king of Denmark hauled a woman onto his lap and began to play the clown with the hoops of her farthingale, threatening to put them over his head. Neither of them seemed to notice that her legs were exposed to the knee.

Lord Harington appeared at the foot of the dais, pinched and resolute. ‘Your majesty, with your permission…’ When he saw that my father still whispered into the young man’s ear, Lord H held out his hand to me.

‘Who is that man who was earlier standing beside Lord Salisbury?’ I murmured as he steadied me down the steps.

‘The French envoy.’

‘And the other, who didn’t speak? The one who still keeps staring at me?’

‘The Duc de Bouillon, envoy from the German Palatine, chief state of the Protestant Union in Europe.’

I didn’t ask about the young man leaning on my father’s knees.

I curtsied to my oblivious father.

Lord Harington mouthed words about my recent journey and the dangers of too much excitement. As we turned to leave, three of my father’s Scottish gentlemen began to lay loud wagers on how much more of the woman on my uncle’s lap would be seen before the night was done.

‘Depends on how oiled she is,’ said one.

‘Nae! Nae! S’nowt to do w’drink!’ another shouted back, as Lord Harington hustled me away. ‘A good bush need no wine!’ My father and uncle laughed loudly.

Lord Harington forgot himself far enough to give me a little push towards the door.

‘Where is Prince Henry?’ I asked, when we reached the corridor. ‘Why is he not here?’

Lord Harington pinched his lips. ‘Best if you had not been here neither.’

‘Can we go back to Combe now?’

Harington hesitated. ‘I will ask permission, but I fear that his majesty has not done with you yet.’

I walked a few feet in silence. ‘Are you still my guardian?’

I heard him breathe in sharply. ‘Yes, your grace. I will be your guardian until you marry. But I cannot remove you without the king’s permission.’

I nodded, but could not stop the unworthy, childish feeling that he was abandoning me in the monster’s lair.

14

Henry and I found each other at last, the following day, in the gardens. My brother was just as handsome as I remembered, but taller, and beginning to fill out into a man. He had been on his way to the tiltyard and carried a sword. It was our first time together in private since I had arrived from Combe.

‘I knew that you would be here,’ he said with delight.

‘I knew that you would be.’

We kissed each other gravely and stood looking into each other’s eyes, both of us a little shy after so long apart but buoyed up by the miracle of a shared impulse that had brought us both to the same place at the same time.

Henry in the flesh seemed very like the Henry in my head, apart from a faint new, darker smell that came off him when he kissed me. In Edinburgh, he had smelled of fresh cut grass.

‘What do you read in my face?’ asked Henry. ‘After studying it so earnestly?’

‘I wonder if you still love me,’ I blurted. ‘And I see that you have a red-gold fuzz on your upper lip and chin, just the same colour as my hair.’

‘You’re taller but are still my Elizabella,’ he said. ‘Quick as a squirrel, always darting and leaping, looking for a new nut.’

We ordered our attendants to stay by the fountain. Since most of them had sore heads, they were happy to comply. Over my shoulder, I saw Anne settle on a stone bench with one of Henry’s gentlemen. We set off together without them down the long central gravel path that divided the pattern of box-edged formal beds.

‘Where were you last night?’ I asked, instead of all the other questions I wanted to ask him.

‘I had to sit with them through dinner.’ My brother flushed and looked down at his feet crunching on the gravel path. ‘When I couldn’t tolerate their coarseness and drinking any longer, I excused myself.’

‘I lacked your courage,’ I said. ‘I stayed.’

‘It needed more courage to stay than to flee.’ He swung his sword in a fierce downward arc. ‘I never dreamed that our father meant to summon you last night. I would have stayed. I should have been there to protect you.’

‘Do you still wear your oath ring?’ I asked. ‘Like the one you gave me on Cat Nick?’ I held out my hand wearing his golden ship.

‘See for yourself.’ Henry held out his left hand with the matching golden ship on the middle finger. ‘Our hands are the same shape,’ he observed. ‘Even if mine are a little larger. In Scotland, we were so innocent of the true dangers. We should swear again.’

We stopped walking. A robin landed on the wooden obelisk in the centre of the nearest bed and trilled encouragement. Solemnly, with the robin as witness, looking into each other’s eyes, we again pledged ourselves to rescue if the other sent for help.

Even against our father? I wondered if that was what Henry meant by ‘true dangers’. Having now had a little time to observe him, I felt a new weight pressing down on him. Like Atlas, he seemed to have shouldered the world.

The robin gave a final trill and jumped away into the air.

We smiled at each other. His presence still created that familiar circle of warmth that I wanted to step inside.

As we began to walk again, I thought how there was something bright and pure in him, of which he seemed unaware, that made crowds shout out his name and press forward to touch him. Today in the gardens, I saw how the women pushed out their bosoms at him. His grooms and gentlemen followed him with their eyes. Unlike our father, he was patient with attention and wore his golden manacles of duty as if they delighted him.

‘You might have needed protecting last night, too,’ I ventured.

‘From the king, you mean?’ He pinched his lips and turned his head away. ‘He would have been happy enough if I had stayed away altogether. But the people expect my presence.’

Even at my most hopeful, I had not thought this meeting would be so easy. Very soon, I would confess how I had once talked to him at night. And why.

‘We must both be strong,’ he said. ‘There will be more nights like last night while our uncle is here. The Danes are notorious for their drinking and carousing.’

‘That’s what Lord Harington said.’

There was a moment of silence, in which I felt our thoughts pulling back from the same uneasy terrain.

Henry balanced his sword at the end of an outstretched arm. ‘This sword was a gift from Spain.’

‘It’s very fine,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘Not as fine as the suit of golden armour given to me by my spiritual father, who is the model for all kings.’

‘And who is that?’ I asked obediently.

‘Henri IV of France. A true warrior king. Unlike our father.’

I said nothing. Ever since I was six years old, Mrs Hay had whispered that the king wanted me to marry Henri’s son, the infant Dauphin of France. That was the future for which she had to prepare me, she had said. The closest I had come to imagining this future was the image of living with someone like my younger brother, Baby Charles, who lay somewhere between a nuisance and a pet.

‘Our father hopes I might marry the Spanish Infanta,’ Henry said. ‘He seems to believe that if I accept a sword, I might accept a bride.’

He stretched his arm over the low box hedge and began to tickle a daisy with tiny circles of the sword tip. I watched the tendons working in his wrist.

‘I cannot marry a Papist.’ He glanced up at me. ‘I don’t want you to marry a Papist, neither.’

‘I don’t much want to marry at all,’ I said. ‘But I must. Just as you must one day be king.’

Henry lunged with the sword. Silently, I admired the line of his leg and the steadiness of his blade. ‘We could run away together to the Americas.’ He straightened again and lowered his voice. ‘This is not idle dreaming, Elizabella. You won’t have heard of my interest in the London Company and its enterprise in the new Virginia colony, because I must hide it to avoid stirring up the commercial rivalry among the different English joint stock companies—the East Indies Company, the West Indies Company, and the Virginia Company. And it’s also better that Spain and France, who already have an eager foothold in the Caribbean, don’t know that the future king of England has a keen interest in the Americas.’

He lowered his voice even though we could not possibly have been overheard, except by the robin, which seemed to be following us. ‘I have invested money in the new Virginia colony, Elizabella. Even the king doesn’t know how much. His interests lie all in Europe. I am helping to shape a new British kingdom, which I will one day rule. The first expedition named their first landfall at Chesapeake Bay after me—Cape Henry. We could rule together there as brother and sister, as I believe happened in ancient times.’

‘I could marry a handsome savage prince,’ I said. ‘And you would marry his long-haired golden sister.’

‘Queen Elizabella,’ he said.

‘King Henry the Ninth of England, Scotland and the Americas!’ I made a deep reverence. ‘But how could you leave England?’

‘England would forgive my absence because I would send back so many riches from this other kingdom. Gold and silver. Coral. Beaver pelts, tabacco…’

‘…live bears and beavers for the royal menagerie…’

We stared at each other with excited surmise, even knowing that we spoke nonsense. The Americas might be real. Henry’s eventual rule there might be real. But Queen Elizabella of the Americas was idle dreaming.

Henry whacked the head off a daisy. ‘Meanwhile, we both must go wherever we’re summoned.’

‘But if you’re there, too, I won’t mind. We can suffer together.’

‘They wallow in beastly delights. It’s not right for a young girl to see and hear such things.’

‘But surely, I must learn the ways of the world before I’m sent out into it.’ I rolled my eyes and pretended to stagger.

Henry glanced back at our attendants. Then my earnest, well-behaved brother fixed me with a cold heavy-lidded stare. His eyes darted suspiciously around the garden then stared at me again. His fingers began to pick at his sleeve, then at his buttons. He tapped his foot. He chewed on his tongue. He took one graceless step then leaned an elbow on my shoulder

He had caught our father so exactly that I could not help giggling. Then I remembered the father I had seen in Coventry.

‘No more!’ I said. ‘Someone might see you!’

‘Our father dislikes me already. But like me or not, I’m his heir. He knows the value of both of us, you and me.’

He sounded so certain that he half-convinced me.

‘I must go practise swordplay now in the tiltyard with my friends,’ he said. ‘My trained band of gentlemen. Would you like to come watch us?’

‘Of course.’ I trotted to keep up with his quick stride, still bubbling with pleasure that he had shown me a hidden part of himself. ‘Perhaps one day, you’ll let me try.’

He looked amused. ‘If you wish, though I don’t know why you would.’

‘I wish,’ I said.

‘It will spoil your hands,’ he warned. He stopped and held out his own for me to see the roughened palm. I reached out across my skirt flounce and laid my hand palm down on his. We looked at our two hands in silence.

‘Wherever you are, I want to be,’ I said. ‘No matter how beastly.’

‘Would you truly tolerate being a witness to immorality like last night’s to be with me?’ asked Henry.

‘Yes,’

He nodded. ‘Then we will suffer together, as you say. And I will look after you.’

‘As far as my guardian permits.’ I wanted to hug him. Because my skirts made that impossible, I settled for a smile. Tomorrow I would ask if he had ever received my warning letter. Not today. Today was just right as it was.

15

But the right time to ask eluded me. Henry and I saw each other again several times after our meeting in the gardens and took pleasure from each other’s company. But we were always surrounded by a court racing in full cry after the pleasures of my uncle’s continued visit. Treason was not a subject for a snatched moment on the way to a banquet or tilt. Sooner or later, I would confront my fear of knowing the worst. But not yet.

Because I was not made for fear and gloom, I began to thread the bewildering events of my temporary new life together, to order them like a string of bright beads. Rashly, after the bad beginning of that first evening, I began to believe that I needed less protection than Henry and I had feared.

Though still an object of curiosity, I was only one of many entertainments on offer during my uncle’s visit. Courtiers vied to present the most lavish banquets and masques. Members of every noble family in England displayed their looks and skills as dancers and singers in these shows. So many spectators, supporters and enemies alike, crowded to see and discuss the performances that the women were forbidden to wear their wide-hooped farthingales in order to make more room.

Dressed in one or another of the new gowns that had put Lady H into a fever and emptied my guardian’s purse, I sat on the royal dais at as many of these masques as I could. There, I learned how much delight the stern-living Haringtons had denied me at Combe. I saw the true purpose of my lute lessons and my dancing master. Here was magic made real. A safe ecstasy. The perfect marriage of wonder and glue.

‘Did you ever see such things before?’ Anne would murmur close behind me. ‘Oh, just look at that!’

Transported out of my everyday self, I watched the sun rise behind wood and canvas mountains. I saw ladies of the court transformed into musical nymphs. Earthquakes destroyed temples. Monstrous lions roared out fire. Gods descended from the roof or sprang from cloven rock. A sky full of candles burned, and red, green and blue lanterns, and other mysterious lights that I could not name but which stirred unnamed memories and elusive wisps of lost dreams. The jewels that flashed in the folds of my gowns looked suddenly like fallen stars and my thoughts felt opened as wide as the night sky.

‘I didn’t know such things existed!’ I told Henry under my breath, when we met once at the door of the Royal Chapel before evening prayers. ‘Please tell me that you don’t think all the ways of the world are wicked!’

Sometimes the king was present with my uncle at these performances, though he would often fidget violently, then spring up in the middle of a song and leave before the final dance. Sometimes he stayed away altogether, reportedly locked in debate with his attendant wits or drinking in his lodgings, with or without my uncle. Sometimes, he vanished altogether to hunt at Newmarket or Royston, or at Theobald’s, Cecil’s great estate in Hertfordshire. I heard whispers that he disliked crowds and found excuse to avoid them, fearing a sudden assassin.

Whatever the reason for them, I rejoiced in his absences, which let me forget fear. With whole-hearted pleasure I could then attend tilts and applaud my brother fighting in the lists. I could marvel at fireworks where dragons spat flames at each other, Catherine Wheels blossomed on trees and rockets briefly imitated the stars. I could listen to music that made me want to weep with joy, as if the vibrating strings of the viols were the strings of my own heart. My body would lie singing under those bows.

‘Was that not fine music tonight?’ Anne would ask as we bedded down for sleep. ‘You could almost sing the tune along with the players. I do prefer the old songs, don’t you?’

One night, freed from my father’s heavy-lidded gaze, I danced for the first time with a man, in the general dancing that followed the masque. None of Lady H’s warning words had armoured me against his smiling gallantry nor against the disturbing yet exciting smell of a heated adult male body so close to mine. As we turned around each other, carried shoulder-to-shoulder on the music, face looking into face, I felt my future quiver with sudden, unexpected brightness.

We danced again. His blue eyes pressed into mine but shifted away just before I could grow awkward with self-consciousness. I glanced at his mouth, under his fair, curly moustache. He bowed over my hand and delivered me back to my chair. I danced with other men. Smiled at Anne as I passed her in a figure. Then I danced with my first partner again. And again. Whenever the drums began, I flew.

‘Elizabella.’ Henry arrived at my side when I sat down to catch my breath. He looked magnificent in cream-coloured silk embroidered with pearls. His russet hair gleamed. He studied the heaving mass of dancers below us. Nodding and smiling at acquaintances, he said under his breath, ‘It’s fitter exercise for women than for men.’

I scarcely heard him. I was watching the slim lean shape of my first partner as he danced with a fair-haired young woman. She had full breasts, I noted, trapped quivering behind her bodice top. And a knowing look in her eyes that I envied.

Henry followed my gaze. ‘A Seymour,’ he said, meaning the man. ‘William, has a brother, Thomas. Distant cousins who carry royal Tudor blood.’ He stared at the girl, but did not name her.

We watched William Seymour duck his neatly barbered head to lead his partner under the arched arms of another couple.

‘I’m told that he has hopes of marrying you,’ said Henry.

‘If marriage means nothing but dancing,’ I said, ‘he would suit me very well.’

Henry shook his head earnestly. ‘Our father will never let an ambitious English noble get so close to true power.’

‘Then I must be content to dance with him.’ But in truth, I was sobered by the cold purpose I now knew lay behind that smiling gallantry. I felt foolish, out of my depth. I could never lower my guard.

After that night, I lost much of my taste for masques and dancing and began to take refuge whenever I could in a more familiar haven, the royal stables in Scotland Yard. They held wonders never seen at Combe. Rows and rows of shining flanks. An entire barn full of saddles and tack. War saddles with sheaths for weapons. Ceremonial saddles set with gold. Ladies’ side-saddles with curved heads and X-shaped heads. Embroidered saddlecloths and jewelled cushions.

Wearing an old gown, with my farthingale left off, I persuaded the grooms to let me curry and brush my own horses several times a week. When finished in the stables, I wandered into the royal kennels where a greyhound bitch had just whelped, to watch the pups clamber over each other and nose for the teat. The King’s Master of the Hounds welcomed me and let me select a pup to have when it was weaned.

I chose one of the two dogs. I watched him wriggle to the top of the squirming pile, latch on to a teat and hang on undeterred even when another pup stepped on his face. ‘Mars,’ I said.

The Master of the Hounds also told me that the lioness in the menagerie at the Tower, named Elizabeth after me, had whelped. Poor Anne had to come with me from Whitehall and attend me for hours as I sat by the stacked-up cages, on a chair carried there for me, watching the infant lions suckling and learning to play.

‘I can’t think why you like it so much here,’ muttered Anne in a rare moment of rebellion. ‘It stinks.’

‘You just want to go back to Whitehall so you can flirt,’ I said. I had spoken lightly and was startled to see my old play-mate’s cheeks burn as red-hot as a sunset.

Then, I saw my first play, performed by the king’s own company of players in the temporary Banqueting Hall, built when the old one burned down. Not a mix of songs, dances and poetic declamations like the masques. Just bald, unadorned words, spoken as we speak ourselves, if a little more loudly. With the exception only of the murderous queen in the story, who struck me as strange until I finally saw that she was played by a boy, the players seemed to live as we did, progressing through time, breathing, loving, loathing, fighting, scheming, suffering, murdering.

But what braced me upright in my chair was the whiff of truth that drifted down from the trestle stage of the King’s Men. Not all men at court were flatterers after all, even when they wore flatterers’ clothes. This play had been written for my father, to be presented before him and my Danish uncle. It was tricked out in the usual flowery dedication. And yet it spoke terrible truths, more truth than any of the flattering poetry of the masques I had seen.

I looked around the Banqueting Hall. I could not believe that no one else noticed. An ambitious, Scottish would-be king. From a place described as ‘too cold for hell.’ A king who killed his rivals for the throne. A man with a vast and fearful imagination that showed him vividly what horrors might await him. A man of foreboding. Of changeable purpose.

‘Faith, here’s an equivocator,’ complained the player Porter. ‘…that could swear in both scales against either scale…’

Конец ознакомительного фрагмента.

Текст предоставлен ООО «ЛитРес».

Прочитайте эту книгу целиком, купив полную легальную версию на ЛитРес.

Безопасно оплатить книгу можно банковской картой Visa, MasterCard, Maestro, со счета мобильного телефона, с платежного терминала, в салоне МТС или Связной, через PayPal, WebMoney, Яндекс.Деньги, QIWI Кошелек, бонусными картами или другим удобным Вам способом.