Mary, Bloody Mary

King Henry owned numerous palaces and manor houses, and he had prepared Bridewell, one of the most beautiful, for the emperor’s visit. During his stay of several months, Charles began to teach me to play chess.

Then the visit was over. On the day before he sailed away, Charles kissed my hand and promised to return to claim me as his wife when I reached the marriageable age of twelve.

But one day, more than a year after Charles’s departure, a page dressed in the king’s green and white satin livery came to my chambers with a message. I broke the wax seal and read it: the king wished to see me at once. He had signed it, as he always did, Henricus Rex — Henry the King.

Immediately I picked up my petticoats and ran happily to the king’s chambers — down the long gallery, up the king’s staircase, through the guard chamber, where the yeomen all smiled and bowed to me, through the noisy audience chamber crowded with people waiting to see the king on official business, through the first presence chamber where important men conferred, through the second presence chamber where the king’s closest advisers stroked their beards and nodded knowingly as I skipped by, and finally into the privy chamber, where the king was seated at a great oak table, Cardinal Wolsey at his side. Breathless, I fell to my knees before my father and bowed my head for his blessing.

I seldom saw my father, who was usually off performing his kingly duties while I spent my days with my tutors. When I did see him, the visits were usually merry, but this time the purpose was entirely serious.

“You must write to Charles immediately,” the king said.

Quill, inkhorn, and parchment were fetched, and I climbed upon a seat at the table. Cardinal Wolsey himself sharpened the quill for me. I waited for my father’s instructions.

“You shall write the letter in Latin, of course…” that was not a problem; even at the age of eight I had mastered the ability to write in both Latin and English “…and speak of your deep fondness for the emperor,” the king ordered. “Hint at your jealousy that he has sought the favours — nay, the affections — of another. Then swear your devotion. Can you do that, Mary?”

“Yes, my lord,” I replied, having not the least idea what he was talking about: jealousy? Affections of another? But I dared not ask. I dipped the quill and began to write, while my father paced back and forth, dictating the words.

The king slipped a ring from his own finger to send with the letter to Emperor Charles. The ring was set with a large stone that glowed a deep and brilliant green.

“The emerald reflects the truth of lovers,” the king explained, although for me that was no explanation at all. “It will change colour from dark to light if one of the lovers be inconstant.”

Inconstant?

Then he turned to Wolsey, seeming to forget that I was there. I backed slowly out of my father’s chamber (Never turn your back on the king, Salisbury had taught me. Always kneel and remain kneeling until he gives you permission to rise.) and then hurried to find Salisbury to ask for an explanation.

My governess reached for a silver comb and began tugging it through my unruly curls. “The rumour has reached the king,” she said quietly, “that Charles is thinking of marrying someone else.”

“But Charles is betrothed to me!” I pouted, yanking away from the comb in spite of myself.

“Your father must be certain of Charles’s loyalty,” she said.

Weeks later as I sat with my mother and some of her ladies, practising my stitches, my father burst unannounced into her chambers. His face was dark with anger, and his eyes shot sparks of fury. The waiting ladies scattered like frightened doves, and I dropped to my knees and hoped he would not notice me. My mother serenely laid aside her needlework and rose to greet him.

“Damn the Spaniard!” he roared. “The emerald has changed from dark to light! Charles has broken his pledge to us and married a Portuguese princess!” He turned on his heel and stalked out, slamming the door behind him.

“Will my father find me another husband?” I asked, when I dared to speak.

“Of course he will, Mary,” my mother assured me. “Never fear.”

I resumed my stitchery. I was disappointed, for I truly liked Charles, and I was too young to be grateful that for the moment, at least, I was as free as I would ever be.

For a time after the betrothal to Charles was broken, I heard no more talk of future husbands. Instead, I received a message of another kind from the king: I was to be crowned Princess of Wales. I was nine years old.

CHAPTER THREE

Tudor Colours

Everything was in a kind of giddy uproar for my crowning ceremony. I was to have a new gown, pale blue silk embroidered with tiny flowers and trimmed in gold. Even Queen Catherine, who never cared much for finery, ordered a gown for the occasion. It had been a long time since I had seen my mother so happy.

“This means that your father has decided you will one day be queen,” my mother said in her heavy Spanish accent, and kissed me on the forehead. “So the bastard Fitzroy is not in line for the throne, thanks be to God.”

I had heard a little about this “bastard Fitzroy”: that he was the king’s natural son and named Henry Fitzroy — Fitzroy means “son of the king"; that although Henry was the father, the child’s mother was not my mother, his wife, but a woman named Bessie Blount. It interested me that I had a baby brother who was kept hidden away somewhere. I understood that I must not speak of him to anyone, especially my mother. Someday I would ask Salisbury about this bastard half-brother. In the meantime I was happy to be the centre of attention.

On the day of the ceremony, King Henry made his entrance with a flourish of horns, accompanied by a host of earls and barons with their knights and servants. Cardinal Wolsey was there, of course, all in scarlet. He displayed his terrible teeth in something like a smile, but the smile never reached his glittering eyes.

I shivered and turned to my father. How magnificent he looked! He was dressed in close-fitting hose that showed off his muscular legs. Over these he wore red velvet trunk hose stuffed with cotton wool to form an onion shape and slashed to display glints of silver under the velvet. His doublet of quilted black velvet was covered all over with pearls and other jewels. In my eyes King Henry was the handsomest man in all the world.

“Are you ready, my princess?” the king asked.

“I am, Your Majesty,” I said, dropping into a deep curtsy.

The musty chapel swallowed up the light of hundreds of flickering candles, and the ceremony droned on tediously. My beautiful gown was hot and wretchedly uncomfortable, but I moved smoothly through my part, as Salisbury had trained me. Kneeling before my father as he set a jewelled coronet upon my head and invested me with my new title, Princess of Wales, I gazed up at him, basking in his approval. “My perfect pearl of the world,” he called me. “The jewel of all England.”

It was not until several days after the royal banquet in my honour that I learned my father had decided to send me far away. Nor did he tell me himself. Wolsey brought me the news.

The cardinal sat on a stool in my schoolroom, his fat fingers splayed over his fat thighs, listening to my music lesson. He had brought me a gift in honour of my new title, a beautifully illuminated book of hours. But then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Princess Mary, the king has given orders that you are to move to Ludlow Palace, near the Welsh border, where you will establish your own court. The queen will not accompany you. Lady Margaret, countess of Salisbury, will go with you in her stead. You are to leave in a fortnight, madam.”

I felt my lips begin to tremble. Determined not to let him see how upset I was, I stared hard at his heavy gold cardinal’s ring. “My mother is not to accompany me? But why? Why?”

“Because the king wishes it,” rumbled the cardinal, and he heaved his large buttocks off the stool. He held out his ring. Concealing my loathing, I bent to kiss it.

It wasn’t that I had not been away from my mother. We were often separated, she at one palace with my father, I at another with nursemaids and tutors. But she was never more than a few hours away and we saw one another often. Ludlow was a journey of ten days even when the weather was fine. I would see her only rarely.

Later, when the cardinal had gone, I wept inconsolably on my mother’s knee. But I received little comfort.

“No good will come of your tears,” the queen warned. “Your father, the king, wishes it” — those terrible words! — “and so it shall be. But remember that you are now one step closer to the throne. This is the beginning of your training to rule as queen. Salisbury is my dearest friend, and she will act as your mother in my stead, being kind when you require kindness, stern when sternness is in order. And we shall write to one another as often as we wish and send each other remembrances, and when your father, the king, summons us to his court, we shall all be together.”

MY HOUSEHOLD would number three hundred, including the privy council that would make governing decisions in my name and a staff of servants to tend everyone. Days were spent packing the belongings for all these people into wooden carts to he drawn by Flemish draft horses.

I was used to moving. When my father held court, we stayed in one or another of the great palaces near London. Each summer my father went on progress, journeying into the countryside so that his subjects could see him. In autumn he hunted. Often my mother and I accompanied him on progresses and hunts, stopping for days or even weeks at a time in one of the king’s hunting lodges or at the country manor of a nobleman and his family. I had always enjoyed the bustle and excitement of those journeys. But this one was different. My heart was so heavy that for days I slept little and ate not at all.

The night before our departure my father summoned me to his chambers and gave me his blessing. I was angry and upset, but I could not show that. Why? Why? I wanted to cry out, but I was silent. My mother was present, and I ached to hurl myself into her arms but sensed that my father would not like such a display. I must behave like a future queen! My mother’s kiss that night seemed cool and dry, almost like no kiss at all.

On a late summer day, I sat miserably with Salisbury in my royal litter, waiting for the signal to be given for the journey to begin. The procession would stretch for miles, protected by royal henchmen on the lookout for brigands and thieves who preyed upon unwary travellers. As the trumpets sounded, I looked up for a last glimpse of my mother. She was standing at her open window, dressed in a plain kirtle. She waved to me and I watched her handkerchief flutter as we clattered out of the gates.

“When can we return?” I asked Salisbury frantically as we lurched forward.

“Yuletide,” she answered calmly.

Yuletide was nearly four months away. Such an unbearably long time!

As our procession wended towards Ludlow Palace, villagers along the way turned out to wave their caps and cheer.

“Greet your people, madam,” Salisbury instructed. “They’re saluting you.”

“I do not feel like it,” I protested.

“Feel like it or not, you are a princess,” Salisbury reminded me. “Smile and wave.”

Obediently I smiled and raised my royal hand to my subjects.

I MISSED my mother terribly. The arrival of a letter from Queen Catherine brightened me above all; I would rush to my room immediately to compose a reply. My attempts to write cheerful letters were always defeated by my yearning for her and by my complaints. The queen wrote regularly to Salisbury with instructions for my care, insisting upon discipline, wholesomeness, and simple food. I’m afraid I spent too much time writing to protest the boiled meat and plain bread and tasteless puddings that resulted. Later I would regret the time I had wasted with such unimportant matters.

I also complained about my tutor. King Henry, a man of sharp intellect and broad learning, had decreed that my studies must be rigorous. He hired a noted Spanish scholar, Juan Luis Vives, to oversee them.

Master Vives was thin-lipped and ill-tempered. Tufts of dark hair sprouted from his ears. He was never without his walking stick, which had a silver knob at the top in the shape of a fox’s head. I fancied it resembled the tutor himself.

“I see that you have been badly spoiled,” the tutor purred, like a cat about to pounce on a mouse. Then he changed to a roaring lion: “It is my belief that children should feel the rod upon their backs at least once a day.”

Terrified, I bent over my lesson book. Master Vives paced back and forth, smacking the stick into the palm of his hand, thumping the book with its point, or slashing the stick through the air until it whirred. Every time I made an error, I was sure that he would strike me. At the end of my long hours with Vives, I would run to hide my face in Salisbury’s bony lap.

“Don’t be afraid of him,” Salisbury comforted. “Your mother, the queen, has made it plain that he is not to lay a hand upon you.”

“But what about that awful stick he carries? May he strike me with that?”

“No, he may not.”

But what if he forgot my mother’s orders? I never remained comforted for long.

I loathed my tutor almost as much as I loved my governess. Salisbury had nothing to do with my studies but everything to do with my training in manners and court behaviour. When I was not with Vives or my tutors in religion and theology or my music teachers, I was with Salisbury, learning all the rules concerning sitting, standing, kneeling, eating, drinking, dressing, speaking, and every other public act. The lessons were excruciatingly boring, but Salisbury was always patient and kind.

And there were the larger lessons that Salisbury said I must master as future queen: to be gracious even when I felt ill, or tired, or sad. To show mercy even to those I believed did not deserve it. To control my anger, concealing it when necessary and showing it only when I meant to, and then sparingly. For me this was the most difficult lesson of all!

At last the Yuletide season arrived, and as Salisbury had promised, there was an invitation to court. I loved court life — the pretty gowns, the jewels, and especially the banquets. The long, hard journey — by horseback and litter from Ludlow to Richmond Palace on the River Thames and thence by royal barge, winding downriver from Richmond past London to Greenwich Palace — seemed not so long nor so hard. There would be time with my mother and perhaps a private visit with my father. There would be music and dancing every night and jugglers and fools for amusement. My father would show me off, the Princess of Wales, the jewel of all England, and I would be the centre of attention.

But when the Yuletide season ended after Twelfth Night, I had to return again to Ludlow. Although my heart ached when the time came to bid my mother farewell, I did not weep. “Until Easter, then,” I said to her, assuming that I would once again be called to court.

“Perhaps,” she said. “We can at least hope.”

It was not until later that I remembered that conversation. Why did she not say, “Yes, until Easter”? She must have sensed that our lives were about to change.

I counted the weeks until Easter, but no invitation arrived from my father. The third great court festival of the year was Whitsuntide, at the end of May, and again I waited, nearly ill with impatience. I was not permitted to write to my father, begging for an invitation, but I bombarded my mother with letters, entreating her to send for me. Her replies were warm and loving, as always, but she did not answer my questions: why was I not called to court? When will I see you again?

Instead of being called to court, I received a summons from the king to come to Bridewell for yet another ceremony. This time it was not the Princess of Wales who would be the focus of all eyes, but my half-brother, Henry Fitzroy. At this ceremony King Henry intended to invest Fitzroy, his illegitimate son, with a string of royal titles: Duke of Somerset, Lord High Admiral, Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Warden of the Marches, Duke of Richmond.

It would have done no good to complain. And I was thrilled at the chance to be with my mother. But when we finally reached Bridewell, I found Queen Catherine in no mood for idle chatter. She was furious.

“Not only will Fitzroy receive all of these titles but he is to have a household even greater than yours, Mary” she fumed when we had a moment to ourselves before the ceremony began. She turned to Salisbury. “Imagine a six-year-old bastard outranking a princess!” she kissed. Then she whispered angrily to me, “Clearly you are no longer the king’s choice to inherit the throne. He intends to put his bastard son in your rightful place. The people will not stand for it, nor will I.”

Throughout the long, tedious ceremony I had a chance to observe my rival, a pretty boy with golden curls, swathed in ermine and weighed down with jewels. He looked thoroughly miserable, and I felt a little sorry for him. But only a little! The last trumpet fanfares had scarcely died away when my mother swept off to make her protest to the king. I waited fearfully outside the privy chamber. My father stormed out, rushing past me without seeing me, his face blood red and his eyes shrunken to pinpoints of rage. When he was gone, I tiptoed to my mother’s side.

“It is no use,” the queen said, slumped wearily in her chair. “He will not listen. And now to punish me, he has informed me that he’s taking away my three most cherished ladies-in-waiting and sending them back to Spain. I shall be so alone!”

That was the first time I had known my father to rebuke my mother, and it frightened me deeply.

I did not know it then, but Anne Boleyn’s poison had already begun its deadly work. Nor did I know then that I would not see my father or my mother for nearly a year. By the time of my betrothal to King Francis, Anne’s poison was eating at my father’s soul.

CHAPTER FOUR

Falconry

Following my betrothal to Francis, I was relieved, for the first time, to leave my father and return to Ludlow. But suddenly there was another change of domicile. My father did not even bother to write; Wolsey sent the message that I was to move to Richmond Palace. I did not understand why. Nevertheless, I was glad.

Richmond was quite beautiful, with a great tower and fourteen slim turrets, dozens of state apartments, and two chapels royal. It was surrounded by vast acres of forestland and deer parks. Best of all, Richmond was close to London, only a few hours’ journey by barge upriver from Greenwich.

I settled in quickly at Richmond. One early summer evening soon after I arrived there, I set out to explore the grounds with my favourite attendant, Lady Susan. Only with Susan, of all my ladies, did I feel the stirrings of true friendship. Susan, with her halo of flame-red hair, was clever and adventurous. She was the daughter of the duke of Norfolk, one of my father’s closest advisers. But there was something more: Susan was the cousin of Anne Boleyn. For the past two months, ever since the masque, I had thought often of the way my father had looked at Lady Anne as we danced. Their image sent a shiver of danger through me. And though I felt drawn to Susan, something told me not to ask her about this dramatic cousin — at least, not yet.

As Susan and I walked, we came upon a tall, thin lad who carried a small living thing cupped in his hands. I told him to show me what he had. He opened his hands carefully to reveal a hawk, newly hatched and quaking with fright.

“Who are you?” I asked the lad.

“Peter Cheseman,” he said. “My father is assistant to the royal falconer” he added, a note of pride in his voice.

“And that bird you hold?” I asked. “Has it a name as well.?”

“No, madam. It’s no good, this one,” he explained. “See, she is injured. My father says it is worthless to try to train her. But I mean to prove him wrong.”

“And so you shall,” I told him boldly, although I had not the least idea how a lowborn boy like Peter had any better chance than I, a princess, did of proving a father wrong.

Lady Susan took a particular interest in the injured bird, and thereafter she and I found excuses to visit it as often as I could escape from Master Vives and my studies. One day we arrived to discover Peter in a state of distress.

“Cat got her” he blurted out. “My fault altogether.”

“It was not your fault, Peter!” Lady Susan insisted. “I’m sure you did all you could. Had it not been for the cat, I’m sure your effort would have made her a fine hunter!”

Peter looked at Susan gratefully, and I wished that I had been the one to offer him such reassurance.

Towards the end of summer the hawks finished their moult, new feathers replacing the old ones, and became active hunters again. Nearly every day when my lessons were finished, I began going out with Lady Susan to the mews where the hawks were kept. We watched as Peter and his father trained peregrine falcons, kestrels, and merlins in the hunting of birds and small game.

One afternoon we found Peter in the weathering yard, coaxing a young hawk to fly from its perch to his fist. When finally the bird spread its wings and glided to Peters gloved fist, clutching it with its curved talons, Peter rewarded the bird with a titbit of meat.

“Soon this one will be ready to fly in the open,” he said. Peter smiled — a lovely smile, I thought. “And then she’ll be ready to hunt.”

Peter explained the lessons that the bird must learn: first, to sit by its captured prey but not devour it; once that has been mastered, to fly with its kill to the falconer’s fist. “No one needs to teach her to hunt — that she’s born knowing,” he said, tenderly stroking the hawk’s feathers. “Teaching her to trust you, there’s the hard part,” Peter said. “It’s no good teaching her to kill for you if she goes off with her quarry and sits in a tree somewhere.”

I left the yard and hurried directly to Salisbury. “I wish to study the art of falconry,” I announced. I argued that my father hunted with falcons and that my mother, too, used to ride out with the king, a merlin perched upon her gloved fist. Salisbury wrote to Queen Catherine, who sent her approval with a gift of silver bells to be attached to the bird’s leg and a soft leather hood to cover the bird when it was being carried to the hunt. When the gifts arrived, I rushed to the mews to show the bells and hood to Peter.

“Now,” he said, “we must find you a hawk, and you’ll learn together.”

Peter trapped a young hawk, a merlin with eyes the colour of marigolds, and we began to train her. This was to be my bird. “It’s the females that are wanted,” he told me, because they’re bigger and stronger than the males.” I named the merlin Noisette, the French word for “hazelnut” because of her lovely colour.

“Have to get her used to her new life among people, people who walk about or who ride horses,” Peter said. “It must be a strange thing for birds, eh? And always there’s to be a reward for her. If you don’t give her a reward, she won’t work for you. You can’t force her to hunt for you — she’ll fly away and never come back. But you must not reward her too much. When her crop is full and she has no appetite, then she won’t hunt for you. She’ll do best when she’s a bit lean — not starving, mind, but beginning to think keenly of her next meal — that’s when you take her out. If you’ve trained her right, she’ll come back to you when you whistle.”