The King’s Daughter

I closed my eyes, not caring who saw me. I wanted to stop my ears. The greatest courage in the world could not suppress his scream at disembowelment. Cries from the crowd beat at my ears, of fury mixed with grief. Women screeched and wailed. I imagined I still heard his reassuring voice above the crowd, but it wasn’t possible, because, when I opened my eyes, a man was holding aloft his heart, shouting, ‘Here is the heart of a traitor!’

I felt a heavy downward pull. All my weight was sinking into my feet. My eyes blurred and my head swam.

Don’t fall! I was the First Daughter of England.

I leaned my elbows on the sill, as if to see better. Three more to go. God have mercy on them!

The First Daughter would not close her eyes again. Let that weasel-spy report that I watched without flinching. Though it was wicked for me even to imagine that I suffered. I locked my knees.

I tried to call up my wolf. Tried with her help to look through the scene under the Bishop’s window into the vast scoured space below the crags, at the combs of rain scraping the distant mountains. The mist blowing in to cover the dragon crouching in the Firth.

A second prisoner was pushed up the steps of the scaffold.

Perched on the Cat Nick, I narrowed my eyes and tried to peer down into the chasm between Edinburgh and the crags, at Holyrood Palace at the bottom of the valley, like treasure sunk at the bottom of a lake. Where I had spent my last days of happy childhood, that short wonderful time with my mother and Henry. All three together for the first and last time, before I was hauled away from my true home and slammed down here in this damp green country where they tore out the hearts of golden young men.

‘…Robert Wintour, will you renounce…?’ a voice intoned below me.

The hearts of the best and most chivalrous men, I thought. The golden heroes. The near-perfect knights, Catholic or not. Henry’s perfection was already turning the love of the people towards him and terrifying our father.

Wintour was climbing the ladder to the noose.

I tried to conjure up a wind off the northern sea to fill my ears. My eyes followed the long ascending spine of the Holy Mile up, up, clambering over hard, sharp grey rock to Edinburgh Castle itself, like a jagged outcrop of cliffs at the very top.

I heard another scream, then the thud of blades on a butcher’s block. The next severed head was offered to the sight of the crowd. The next heart.

Wintour gone.

Strident voices from below me drowned out the rush of wind from the Firth. Though invisible through the cloud, the rising sun was warming the blanket of grey that pressed down on London. I must stand through two more deaths to show my father that I could not be broken. My forest sprite had died, but he had protected me. The reflection of a torch flared as a window swung closed. I could smell smoke and blood.

Another man forced up onto the scaffold.

The Loch. I tried to see the loch to the north just below the castle. A dark, brooding eye that seldom caught the light, where the trowies emerged at night from their underwater kingdom to steal babies or play eerie fiddles that drew you into fatal dances…

The third man shouted, ‘It was no sin against God!’

I could not help looking down at this defiance. Not a demon, a blind man, his face terribly burnt.

I groped for the memory of the glint of the Firth…

Solicitously, the hangman helped the blind man onto the ladder. At the top, the prisoner crossed himself defiantly; was pushed off.

The noose may have killed him, in spite of the haste with which the hangman cut him down to suffer the rest of his punishment. I heard no scream this time, although I was braced for it. I clutched the sleeves of my crossed arms, hanging on. I forgot the man behind me and that he might, even now, be adding my white knuckles to his notes. I tried to remember my hand and Henry’s side by side, two rings…

Scotland slipped away from me. The carnage below me was stronger than my imagination. My eyes saw with horrible clarity, a butcher’s slab, dark blotches on the butchers’ aprons. Severed joints. Another heart held aloft in bloody hands.

I’ve hunted, I told myself. I’ve seen blood before.

But these were men. And the cruellest huntsman did not quarter his prey while it was still alive.

My hands tightened until my knuckles almost split my skin. As I stared down at the scaffold, the faces of the witnesses changed until they grew so terrible that I could no longer look at them or else my soul would have run away and left my body a hollow shell for ever. I would never find my way out of this dark forest where I was suddenly lost. Would never see sunlight again, never smile, or feel joy. What I saw below me was too terrible. It would darken my mind forever.

Those men below me in their court robes served my father. With my father’s permission, they had imagined these practices, and conjured them into life. They were trowies, crept out from cold dark unknowable depths of black opaque water. Destroying the young and brave…If this could happen to men like Digby, then who was safe…? And I was captive in their world, trying to swim in their cold black water, where everything lovely had drowned. Cecil. My father…

I’d seen blood before!

I shook my head to try to clear my sight. But the faces below me would not change back into men.

The last prisoner died, after long repentance and many prayers for forgiveness. If my father wanted me to learn from this ‘clarifying sight’, I would. I watched now as if studying the actions of my enemy, in order to overcome him. Already older than my age, I now felt myself growing as ancient and cold as the waters of the loch.

It did not then occur to me, the First Daughter, the young she-wolf, that it might be safer to be seen as pliable and easy to rule than to challenge. It was not in my nature to understand the safety that lies in weakness. I was enough my father’s daughter to understand his speed of thought, the urge to pounce-and-devour. I was still young enough to believe that you triumphed by proving yourself the stronger.

In Coventry, I had stared at that padded jacket without grasping its true message. I had listened to Mrs Hay’s tales and learned courage from my father’s childhood but never seen the deeper truth. That the greatest threat grows, not from confident power, but from fear and uncertainty. My father was dangerous, not because he was a king, but because he had once been a frightened, vulnerable boy at the mercy of guardians and violent, unruly nobles. In my ignorance, looking down into Paul’s Churchyard, I determined to defy him.

10

I spoke to no one at Combe of what I had seen. Mrs Hay pretended that we had never left Combe. I would look at my lady guardian or at Anne as she chirped away about some small domestic adventure, and wonder if they saw no change in me, or if they merely feigned not to. Although Lord Harington must have known where I had been, he said nothing neither. The most that I could detect was the increased fuss Mrs Hay and the Haringtons now made about my health, asking unnecessarily often if I were chilled or overtired. Even Lord Harington’s habitual civilities, like, ‘How does your grace, this morning?’ seemed to carry weighty hidden meaning.

‘I am well,’ I would reply fiercely. I was the First Daughter. I had survived a kidnap attempt and learned that I could be a fool. I had not weakened at the terrible death of my forest spirit. I must believe that I had the strength to deal with whatever waited for me.

A noble posture is all very well in the intent, and when you are standing face-to-face with a clearly seen terror. But the unknown catches at your feet and steals your breath. I no longer slept but lay all night fretting and fearful in the dark, imagining first this way, and then that way, how things might be, and how they might unroll.

Henry did not write to say, however guardedly, that he had received my warning letter. Abel White did not return with Clapper, nor send word of how he had fared. After what I had seen in London, I now had little doubt that I had sent my old playmate to his death. A cold worm of guilty knowledge and fear lay coiled in my thoughts, a bump I could always feel even when the surface of my day seemed to be running smoothly.

With gritty eyelids and the ache of sleeplessness thumping at my brow bones, I tried to bury myself in the gentle patterns of life at Combe, as if they were the last, precious warmth of my bed on a freezing winter morning. I startled Lady Harington by my sudden meek application to needlework, and my prompt appearances for Scripture reading and the endless cycle of meals and prayers five times a day. Though the king had forbidden me the diet of history, classics and philosophy prescribed for Henry, I was allowed languages and womanly arts. To the amazement of my tutors, I tried to forget myself in my lessons.

Sometimes, I surprised even myself and managed to forget the worm of fear and guilt when French words brought my whole mouth alive, or Italian rolled off my tongue. When singing, playing my lute, and practising on my virginal, I forgot all else.

Also, because a princess must dance when introduced at court, I had to learn. Against the grain of their own stern morality, the Haringtons hired a dancing master. Under his knowing eye, with Mrs Hay watching us all, I practised how to curtsey. I advanced and returned. I glided, stamped and dipped. And sometimes, swooping across the floor or reversing in a turn, I experienced an instant of free flight. How could I not feel pure joy when every muscle was alive, riding the pulse of a drum?

Even better, Anne had to learn too, so that I could practise dancing with a partner. Inevitably, as she was short, dainty and neat, while I was tall, long-limbed and wild-haired, I most often ended up dancing the man’s part. When the dancing master at times insisted that Anne play the man so that I could practise my proper part, and she then tried to guide or to lift me, we would grow helpless with giggles.

I rode every day but Sunday, always under guard, chiefly on Wainscot, a little mare who was the lovely pale silvery brown of Russian oak, my favourite horse among the score stabled for me at Combe, now that Clapper was gone. Every day, I imagined Henry riding beside me, smiling at me across the space between us on the crags above Edinburgh, while the heads and haunches of our dogs bobbed up and down above the long silver-tasselled grass.

When Lady H was not watching, I helped the stable grooms with their combing and brushing and tried not to think about Clapper and Abel White. I never rode in the forest on the far side of the ford.

To fill any gaps in those quiet days, into which thoughts might otherwise rush, I wrote letters. I spent hours practising my signature in different sizes and coloured inks, including gold, to discover which self I should send out into the world.

Above a golden signature, I wrote in French to the Queen of France, whose son I might one day marry if my father had his way. With a chilly heart and in plain oak gall ink, I wrote formal, perfectly spelled and much re-copied letters of devotion to my father. In reply, I received stern admonitions drafted in a secretary’s neat, official hand.

I wrote often to Henry, now at either Windsor or Richmond. He sent back loving letters to me, full of tilts, swords and horses. I read and re-read them, searching for secret meaning but still found no hint of my warning. My own letters to him grew harder to write. The brother in my mind was fading. I was wearing him out with overuse, rubbing him thin and ragged at the edges.

One day, after feeling out of sorts and shouting at Anne, I discovered a pink stain on the back of my smock. A month later, the pink stain reappeared, a darker red this time, and my stomach ached dreadfully. I knew then that I must be dying. The worm of fear had gnawed away my vitals. The weight of guilty secrets had torn my innermost tissues. I was bleeding to death. My life would slowly seep away from that mysterious opening between my legs and no one but me would ever know why. I refused food for the rest of the day. It was best to get it over and done.

That night, one of my chamberers provided rags and explained that I would not die but had begun my monthly bleeding, which would continue forever, until I grew old. I didn’t know whether to feel relieved or oppressed by her information. For reasons I did not understand, this messy, uncomfortable inconvenience also meant that I must now have Anne as my bed-fellow every night.

Though good-natured, Lady Anne Dudley was cursed by a sense of the obvious. ‘Look, there’s a butterfly,’ she would announce. Or she might observe, ‘It’s raining today.’ Or, ‘Aren’t those flowers red!’

I knew that she liked elderberries and disliked rhubarb, liked meat pies, disliked sauces made with ground almonds or wild garlic. I knew that she avoided melons for fear that they would make her belch. I also knew that she snored gently, just like Belle.

‘I shall sew with red silk today,’ she would say. ‘No! The blue is far better for this flower…the centre of it, in any case. What do you think, my lady? Perhaps yellow for the petals? Or would blue be prettier for the petals and yellow for the centre, do you think?’

On the other hand, she was almost always cheerful and willing. ‘Whatever you wish,’ she would say. ‘Shall I find Belle’s other collar, then?’ Or ‘I shall go at once and change into my riding skirts…’

Soon after she arrived at Combe, we had become the angel and the imp. I felt safe deciding that we should dig a secret cave in the hay barn where we might talk unheard. Or that we jump from an upper window to test whether our skirts would spread to slow our decent. Anne always agreed to whatever I proposed, but if she turned pale and silent when she trudged at my side, I would take pity and turn back—for her sake, I would tell myself, but with secret relief.

When we began to share a bed each night, I made the best of it, and entertained myself by whispering to her in the dark that the wind thrumming under the roof was the Death Drummer who always played before someone died. Or that trowies lived under the stones of the Smite ford and would reach up and pull her down if she tried to cross…I had seen one myself, I assured her.

Sometimes I frightened her with tales of a wild and unruly Scotland, where, I said, I was allowed to ride for miles by myself, seeing only the eagles and the seals on the rocks. ‘And at dinner,’ I would tell her, ‘the nobles put their elbows on the same table as the king. And had such fierce debates that they leapt up and hacked at each other with their knives until blood flew through the air, and you didn’t know whether you drank wine or blood from your glass.’

‘You must find England very tame and tedious,’ she said once.

Stricken by her look of misery, I continued to lie and assured her that she and I entertained ourselves so well that I hardly ever thought of Scotland at all, anymore.

My guardian, Lord Harington, continued to be kind enough to me and always respectful, never raising his voice in anger, and guiding me as if I had been his own daughter. In the absence of other parents, I might have loved him.

But one night, soon after I had first arrived at Combe, I had attempted to spy, to learn more about my new home. Hidden in the stairwell, I overheard him complaining to his cousin, who was also named John Harington, a godson of the old queen, and now, so I was told, one of my brother’s gentlemen.

‘Will you try to have a word when you’re next at court? The king has ignored my last letter.’ My guardian sighed. ‘She’s a heavy charge laid upon me by his majesty—and likely to prove a costly one.’

I flattened myself against the wall of the staircase, grateful to be wearing a soft gown. There was a long pause, during which I held my breath and felt my pulse begin to thump in my ears.

‘I know that his majesty is concerned with weightier matters than a daughter,’ Lord Harington went on. ‘But perhaps, coz, you might think how to prod his memory on the subject of the promised allowance for keeping her. Or have a word with Cecil.’

My heart, already half on offer, had slunk back to its kennel with its tail between its legs. Now, since our return from the execution of the Gunpowder Traitors, I felt that his heavy charge weighed him down almost unbearably.

Just once, shortly after my return from London, our eyes locked over the supper table. His glance held so much concern that I had to glare down at my plate to prevent tears. The people in my life would keep changing. There was nothing I could do about it. When I was married, I would leave not only Combe, and England, but also my guardian. That night over supper, for the first time, I thought that I might miss him.

His wife, Lady Harington, on the other hand, had terrified me from our first meeting. My lady guardian was a woman of absolute certainties. Unlike her easy-going husband, she had a fearsome frown and strong views on how a young girl should be schooled. After my return from Coventry, she carried on her detailed instruction as if never interrupted. Whether her steady purpose grew from ignorance of what had happened or defiance, I could never decide.

Both Anne and I had already learned how to wipe our fingers at the table, to take the precious salt on the tips of our knives, and to count our linens against pilfering by our women. Teaching by her own example as well as by words, Lady Harington now marched on through the long list of other bad habits that we must learn to prevent in our servants.

No serving man ever dared to piss in the corners of her fireplaces. No scullery maid at Combe ever polished a glass on her sleeve or blew her nose in her apron. By constant example, Lady H showed us how to measure respect or insolence in others, to the very finest degree. And how to bring down with an acid word anyone who stepped over any of the invisible lines of rank and place that she taught us to see. She adjusted the angle of my head when I curtsied. For three months, I nodded meekly and accepted her instruction. Any moment, I thought, she might teach me how to make order out of the rest of the tumbling chaos of life.

Sometimes I tried to play again as I had once done, when I still felt like a child. I would make Belle sit up in a miniature gilded carriage in her blue velvet collar whilst Cherami, my most obliging small greyhound, pulled her across the floor, his nails clacking like tiny hoofs. While Anne laughed and clapped, I looked on as if from a great distance.

When the late winter weather allowed, I sometimes sat very still in the gardens and tempted the robins to eat crumbs from my hand. Once, while Anne made a dumb show of being ill, I tasted a worm to try to understand its attractions. I whistled back at the wild birds, trying to speak their language, but caused agitation in the bushes and trees.

‘I think you’ve confused them,’ said Anne.

In truth, birds, with their sharp little eyes and edgy flutter, troubled me.

On the journey south from Scotland, well-wishers had given me six caged birds to join my animal family—two larks, a finch and three paraquettos from the West Indies. I felt that the little creatures wished to be friendly but could not trust me, who had the power to thrust them back into their cages. Their fragility terrified me—those tiny bones and trembling heartbeats, so fast that my own heart would crash to a halt at such a speed, or else burst into flame. I feared that I might accidentally crush one of them in my hand. This terrible power alarmed me so much that I avoided handling them. Unobserved, I released a lark and a paraquetto and said that they had escaped.

Then I found the remains of the paraquetto left under a bush by a cat. Staring down at the sodden little bundle of bloody blue and green feathers, I wondered if, after all, even unhappy, they were not safer in their cages. I knew that I was the true assassin.

The paraquetto. Abel White. Clapper. Lord Harington burdened. Digby dead. Because of me.

‘I am dangerous to know,’ I whispered one night to Anne. ‘Even for you.’

‘Why?’

Could she not see why? I thought. She had heard Mrs Hay’s tales.

‘I just am,’ I said.

‘Don’t be absurd!’ She rolled onto her side away from me. ‘Unless you mean the risk of tearing my best gown.’

11

Winter was clinging on into March, treading heavy-booted on the first green shoots of early spring. My large hunting greyhound, Trey, lifted his head and tested the damp grey air. Then Wainscot, too, lifted her head. Her ears swivelled towards the entrance avenue leading to the main house at Combe. Because Anne had chosen to stay inside by the fire, I was riding with only a groom and six of my hounds.

I held a small bunch of little wild daffodils to inhale their fresh odour while I rode, though I knew better than to curdle the milk by taking them into the house. Then I heard the hoof beats that my dog and horse had already heard. I shivered and threw down the daffodils. I pressed Wainscot forward through a haze of dark leaf buds, still as tight as fingertips while Trey and the other greyhounds sprinted ahead.

As we broke out into the avenue, a riderless horse was trotting down the track towards us. Riderless, like a horse in the tapestries of battlefield scenes, or at a king’s funeral.

Wainscot gave a joyful whinny of welcome.

Clapper. Without Abel White.

I swung my right knee over the saddle head and slid to the ground. When he saw us, Clapper broke into a canter and nearly knocked me over as I ran to meet him. Surrounded by a mêlée of wriggling dog haunches and sniffing noses, I hugged him, rubbed his neck and kissed his nose and breathed in his smell. It really was Clapper, not the ghost horse I had imagined for an instant when I first saw that he had no rider. He was sleek and well fed. He still wore his old tack. I quieted Trey, pushed past Wainscot who had arrived close behind me, and began to search the saddle for a message or some other sign of who had returned him.

No pouch. No saddle bag. No sheathe for a sword nor a lance-holder where a paper might be hidden. No letter tied to the bridle. I flipped up the saddlecloth. Nothing there. Nothing under the quilted leather pad of the seat. Nor fastened to the back of the cantle, nor under the saddle flaps.

‘Did you escape and find your own way back here alone?’ I asked him.

Then, under the small buckle guard at the top of the girth straps, I found something. Not a letter, a small blue-grey spring of rue, threaded through the steel buckles. I extracted the sprig carefully and held it to my nose.

Clapper nudged me hard. I put a calming hand on his neck. I needed to think.

A fresh-cut evergreen herb, not dried, still sharply musky with its odd animal smell. It had to be a message. It had not found its way into the buckle by itself. It had been put there by someone who knew that I would search.

Evergreen. I looked at the sprig in my hand. Surely that was the message—evergreen. Perhaps Abel was still alive after all

But rue? My first surge of joy turned sour. Even in this wintry weather, there were other plant choices. He…whoever it was…I wanted the messenger to be Abel White but tried not jump to conclusions…might instead have chosen the evergreen bay to signify victory, honour and success. Bay protected. But he had not sent a victor’s bay.

Or he could have sent protective rush. Or round-leafed box, or a mottled heart leaf of the little sowbread cyclamen, to ward off evil spells. Or even a feathery stem of grey mugwort that is tucked into a traveller’s shoes to give him strength for his journey. I could have read a happier story in any of those.

Rue spoke of repentance and sorrow. Rue spoke of regret. Rue could heal but also curse.

He dared not write but sent this vegetable messenger instead.