Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I

FOUR

Spring and Summer: Year of Our Lord 1566

The Palace of Whitehall

Windsor Palace

On Progress

Year of Our Lord 1567

The Palace of Whitehall

Windsor Palace

Stanstead Hall, London

What did she mean? She was telling the truth, of that I was certain. I had made a mistake. A terrible mistake. It took all of my strength not to race after them, gown held in my hand, as they departed Bedford House. Instead, I paced the great hall and wandered outside from time to time to see if William approached. He arrived several hours after the delegation left; he rode a fine horse, as all in his stable were, and had a manservant ride another one for me. Another set of horses conveyed a litter for my belongings, such that they were. They were so few that, had it not been beneath his station, we could have carried them in saddlebags instead. The day’s cool mist mingled with hot tears to blur my view of his face as he drew near.

He greeted me with kisses but then withdrew. “What is it?” he asked.

I was not yet a practiced dissembler, though I had come to believe ’twas a skill I must learn. “Come to the great hall,” I said. “The fire is still warm and we can talk there.” I led him in by the hand and we took our seats.

“Have they gone?” he asked.

I nodded. “Yes, they have. And on the way out, the princess took care to share a most distressing thought with me, one that I, of course, do not believe but must ask you.”

He shifted his body and his gaze away from me. My heart fell. I knew before I even asked him that it was true. “She says you are married. I know this cannot possibly be true because you told me yourself that your wife died one year ago, last April.”

He took my hands in his own. Although they were smooth and well groomed, they were also a bit frail. I became aware, perhaps for the first time, of the chasm of years between us. Thirty.

“I promise you that I have been honest, but perhaps not complete,” he said. “First, I would have you know that King Henry, the queen’s father, called me his integrity, his incorruptibility. It was true then, and it’s true now. If I can be trusted to be forthright with my sovereign—and I can—how much more will I be with you, my own true love?”

I softened then. “Yes, I believe you.”

“My belief,” he said, “is ‘love does no wrong.’ ”

“But . . .” I sensed there was more.

“I have a wife. Of sorts.”

I forced myself to breathe, uncomfortably aware that the Swedes were too far gone for me to catch up with them now, had I willed it.

He went on to explain that he had been married young, at his mother’s urging, to a great heiress. They were both children at the time, so they did not live together for twelve more years. Within a short time, his wife left him for another man, with whom she bore children.

“According to the Scriptures, I was free to remarry,” he said. “And after . . . courting . . . some women, I came to know Elisabeth Brooke, and with her faithfully spent twenty-two years, until her death. Parliament had declared my first marriage void; I wed Elisabeth in all honor and rightness.”

“And so?” I asked.

“Queen Mary declared my first marriage valid, and my second null, and imprisoned me in the Tower for treason, as you knew. When that queen died, there came a new government, which declared my marriage to Elisabeth valid. She, of course, died. But the current government is not sure but that there is a cloud over my marriage. My first wife still lives, and as the marriage has been valid and void, valid and void, there is some confusion.”

“I see,” I said. I dwelt in the silence for a moment before speaking. “Neither my faith nor my honor will permit me to live with you as husband and wife while unmarried.”

He nodded and spoke softly. “I would not have it otherwise. I had thought to have this righted by now, but it is not. I understand the queen has offered you a position among her ladies.”

“Yes,” I said. “I hadn’t understood then why.” I did not look at him but at my hands. I heard the queen’s birds singing mournfully in the distance. “What shall become of me?”

He drew near to me, and I leaned into him. “It shall be quick work to make right. And then we will marry and you will be mistress of all my property as you are now of my heart. Meanwhile, I shall see that you want for naught while at court or in my homes.”

We rode to the palace, which gave me time to think. I trusted him implicitly, and yet he hadn’t told me of this while I still had the chance to change my mind. Perhaps it was an oversight, and, truth be told, I wouldn’t have changed my mind anyway. I was aware anew, though, of how vulnerable I was. I was in a strange land with no family to protect me or my interests. The queen had seemed pleased with me, but I knew as well as any how fickle royal favor could be.

We arrived at court, and William promised to be back within a few days. I felt alone, nervous, and perhaps somewhat abandoned as I watched him ride away. He had his own quarters at all of the queen’s residences, of course, so we would see one another often. But I would also have duties waiting upon the queen. William had told me that it had been but a year since Kat Ashley, the woman who had raised the queen, had died. Since then, Blanche Parry, who had also been with the queen since childhood, had become the queen’s “mother at heart,” and she was very motherly indeed. Her Majesty had asked Mistress Parry to see that I had everything I needed.

“Her Grace has given you apartments near her own lodgings,” she said, showing me to a small suite of well-appointed rooms close upon the Royal Suite, and with an enchanting view. She lowered her voice. “The other maids of honor share chambers and maids, so it’s a singular honor that you’ll have your own rooms, a lady maid and servants, and a horse of your own. You are also excluded from the sumptuary laws, so you may dress in a manner which will befit accompanying Lord Northampton.”

“Oh, thank the queen for me, please,” I said. “I am overcome.”

“You can thank her yourself, Elin.”

“Helena, please,” I said. “I am an Englishwoman now. My name is Helena.”

• • •

I soon learned the queen’s daily routine and my part in it. We ladies were never to interfere in her politics or her court. At first I was downhearted about that, thinking that though I loved cards and games and needlework and horses, exercising my mind and my mouth was more to my pleasure. I soon learned, though, that the ladies had considerable power to influence, often heard Her Majesty’s speeches well ahead of the men as she practiced them in her chambers, and were able to persuade effectively by softer manner. The queen was never alone; we ladies trailed her, like purebred spaniels might trail a lesser woman, no matter where she went. She loved us well, though, and although it was always clear that she was the mistress, it was often clear that she was our loving friend as well.

The queen began her day with six or seven galliards, for exercise, and we ladies were expected to dance along with her. If she chose not to dance, she and we oft took a quick walk in the gardens. She said she was no morning woman but she was always back at her rooms very early to attend to her devotions and then to her correspondence. After we dressed her, her counselors came to see her in her Presence or Privy Chamber. She attended to paperwork for a while, then walked in a garden or a gallery with her ladies or Lord Robert. Afterward, she might ride in open carriage, so her people could see her, to a nearby park to hawk or hunt, often with Lord Robert, her Master of Horse.

When she was with him, the breath of life was breathed into her. Bliss.

William had provided my lady maid at his own expense. Although the queen had offered to provide one, she was glad to save the cost and William told me, quietly, that it would be better if he provided her for me.

“If I hire her, she knows that she is to carry out what I tell her to do as her primary responsibility. I’ve told her to answer any questions you may ask that would assist you to understand court, or England, our history, and the courtiers. She was educated somewhat before her family fell upon difficulties and she has served in noble households, so she will be a source of knowledge for you.”

I kissed his cheek. “Thank you, dearest William, for thinking of things I might not have even considered.”

My first difficulty arose within the first few days after I moved in. I asked Clemence, my lady maid, if she could arrange for a large urn of hot water and an empty one, too, to be delivered each evening.

“Of course, my lady, but if I may ask, why?”

“To bathe!” I said. This had not been a problem at Bedford House, occupied as it were by Swedes, but I had noticed since coming to court that the English did not all hearken to the northern habit of daily baths.

Clemence, bless her, did as I asked, and each night I bathed in water that I scented with my own herbal preparations, oftentimes rose but also marjoram. The Queen’s Majesty called me to her.

“Lady Helena,” she said, clearly pleased by the Anglicization of my name, “you always smell sweet and there is a fresh air about you. Why is that?”

“Swedes bathe daily, Your Majesty, in scented water, and I have continued that custom though I am now an Englishwoman.”

She nodded approvingly. The queen was known to have a sensitive sense of smell; even the leather her books were bound with was not to be cured with anything pungent. From that day on I became one of the queen’s bed warmers. At night, before Her Majesty retired to her bed, one of her ladies climbed into the royal bed to warm the linens that Blanche had keep over; then the maid of honor left the bed just before Her Majesty climbed in. That lady usually spent the night sleeping on a small bed at the foot of Her Majesty’s great one. I didn’t mind. There were always two or three ladies in Her Majesty’s chamber, day or night, to protect and assist her as well as defend against malicious gossip.

One night, after the torches were snuffed in the bedchamber and Squires of the Body quietly prowled the hallways to keep watch for her security, Her Majesty was abed, with only me and Mary Radcliffe, another of her maids of honor, in the room, and she spoke quietly. “Lady von Snakenborg?”

“Yes, Majesty?” I said sleepily from the trundled bed at the foot of her bed of state.

“I prefer the marjoram-scented water you bathed in this evening. It leaves a soothing scent upon my linens and I believe I shall sleep most soundly.”

“If it pleases Your Majesty, I shall ensure to use it each time I am called to serve you in this manner,” I said.

Mary Radcliffe had had nary a word for me before that, but that night she sent a smile in my direction, visible by moonlight. The next day, I asked Blanche Parry if I might ask Mrs. Morgaynne, who was the queen’s apothecary, for some essence of marjoram to add to my own store of herbs and essences. “I shall sprinkle some upon Her Majesty’s linens each night whether or not it’s my turn to warm the bed.” Blanche Parry readily agreed.

There was no comfortable rest to be found in the week after, as we waited upon her in her Privy Chamber, where she was haranguing some of her councilors ahead of her presentation to Parliament. “Though I be a woman, yet I have as good a courage, answerable to my place, as ever my father had,” she scolded them all.

“Majesty,” Lord Robert began, “Mr. Molyneux has suggested that the money you have requested should be given only upon the contingency that Your Grace makes a declaration about your successor. This motion was very well approved by the greater part of the House!”

“It would be wise to consider it, Your Highness,” William said softly. “They mean it for your good, and the good of the realm. They want a successor named.”

“Was I not born in the realm? Were my parents born in any foreign country?” she demanded. “Is there any cause I should alienate myself from being careful over this country? Is not my kingdom here? Whom have I oppressed? How have I governed since my reign began?”

She sat down upon her chair of state, her stomacher pressing into her, bosom heaving. “I will marry as soon as I can conveniently. And as to the succession—I stood in danger of my life, my sister was so incensed against me. I did differ from her in religion, and for that I was sought for diverse ways from plotters and overthrowers. So I shall never name my successor, who may will to unseat me!”

She calmed and continued. “Some would speak for their master, some for their mistress, and every man for his friend. But my very life would become a target. Men foment about the second when the second is known. I know this better than any in the realm. As your prince and head, we must be left to judge the timing of the move, without prompting from our subjects. For it is monstrous that the feet should direct the head.”

No reassurance was forthcoming from those “feet” she trusted most. She waved to silence Cecil, her secretary of state and most trusted principal advisor, who’d begun to speak, then turned to my marquess. “Northampton,” she said to my great horror, “methinks you had better talk about the arguments used to enable you to get married again, to yon lady”—she looked toward me— “when you have a wife living, instead of mincing words with us.”

She rounded toward Lord Robert and said, “We had thought that if all the world abandoned us, you would not have done so.”

“I am ready to die at your feet, madam!” Lord Robert protested. He, more than any, would press her to marriage. With himself, if it could be!

“That has nothing to do with the matter.”

She loudly banned them entrance to the Presence Chamber and stormed off, calling for the comfort, of all persons, of the Spanish ambassador. We ladies, of course, said nothing at all, as was our place, but quietly slipped down the corridor.

• • •

By June the storm seemed to have lifted and the queen was dancing and making merry after dinner when Cecil took her aside and whispered something in her ear. Her face, normally pale, waxed into a death mask. She left the room immediately, and we ladies followed her.

She dismissed all but Lady Knollys, Blanche, Anne Russell Dudley, Mary Radcliffe, and myself.

As we helped her undress, silent tears slid down her face, coursing through the light powder she’d been made up with, streaking the faint sheen of whipped egg white that held said powder in place and smoothed her first wrinkles.

“Our cousin, the Queen of Scots, has given birth to a fair son,” she said. Our hearts broke for her. Queen Mary had provided her kingdom, and if the plotters were satisfied, perhaps Elizabeth’s kingdom, with a prized heir, which meant stability, continuity, surety. A male heir was what the English desired but which our queen was as of yet unable or unwilling to provide.

As I readied myself for bed that evening, I, like the queen, wondered if I should ever have a child of my own, something I had greatly desired since my own girlhood. I had recently realized that William had been married twice and had not yet sired a child.

• • •

Almost every summer, barring illness or plague, the queen would journey through and stay at some of the towns and estates in her kingdom, greeting the common people she held with motherly affection and being entertained by her courtiers. That summer on Progress, we stayed for some time at Lord Robert’s estates in Kenilworth. Some said that the queen was his wife in all but name, but I, having slept in her room and observed how impossible it would be to be in the queen’s presence alone, vigorously disagreed. We women surrounded her chambers night and day, and anyone who thought the queen could be expertly redressed by an unpracticed man, alone, had not been present in her bedchamber when the hour-long gowning and pinning was under way.

I would admit, though, that they oft strolled together in the public gardens at Kenilworth unmolested by courtiers or other subjects. One afternoon William and I were arm in arm enjoying the roses when we came upon Robin, as she called Lord Robert, and the queen. I wondered if this Robin was a songbird she would like to cage, and was about to jest about it with William, but stopped myself. I did not think he would find it particularly amusing, as he was not given to either wry humor or to Lord Robert. As we passed them and I curtseyed, I thought I spied a faint bit of beard burn upon the queen’s fair and smiling face. Though I could not be certain, I hoped it was true. Every lady deserved to be kissed.

We stayed at many manors and in many towns on Progress. Her people, her “children,” came to greet her with poems and poesies at each stop along the way. In Sandwich the good housewives had prepared a feast for the queen of 140 dishes, and to the horror of William Cecil, she tasted of them all without first having her taster test them for poisons. Instead, she indicated loudly enough to bring honor to all who had prepared them that some of them should be reserved for her and brought back to her lodgings for private consumption, which put a satisfied, and adoring, smile on the face of each and every townswoman.

The queen listened attentively to the Latin discourse of a young scholar in Norwich, declaring it to be among the finest speeches she had ever heard. I rather thought that the young man would have taken up arms for her then and there if it had been required. She praised all and berated none.

Late that evening, as we were unpinning her gown, Lady Knollys commented on the time the queen took with each of her subjects.

“In truth, I love them well,” the queen responded. “And I am certain they know it. For if they did not rest assured of some special love toward them, they would not readily yield me such good obedience. As it is, they know I have their highest and best interests always in mind.”

I spoke of that with William, late in the eve, before the dying fire in his apartment within the home of our host. He sipped his wine thoughtfully and then said, “Yes. But they greatly desire the queen to marry and to bring forth a son, to have the succession settled. They are discomfited by the thought of years of war that threaten a kingdom without an heir. And many feel it is unnatural for a woman to rule.”

“Will she marry?”

He lowered his voice. “She must. But whom? No matter the offers, parrying, and diplomatic considerations, I believe that the queen’s honor and faith will not let her choose a Catholic prince for herself or for her people. Protestant princes are few, and they are entangled in costly wars that would bring this realm nothing but debt, of which we already have an abundance after the . . . generous spending of His Majesty King Henry and the warring of Queen Mary at the provocation of her Spanish husband, Philip.”

“An Englishman, then?” I grinned, truly fond of William. “I find myself much given to marrying an Englishman.”

“Ah, that it should come quickly to pass,” he said as he kissed me lightly.

“Our marriage or hers?”

“Both. We know whom you should marry, my lady.” He clasped his hand over mine. “But the queen?”

“Lord Robert?” I asked.

“Mayhap,” he admitted. “As she has raised him to earl, making him of sufficient rank to partner her.”

“Why do I sense your reluctance?”

“The Dudley family is scattered with traitors who tried, like vines, to circle the royal oak and climb to the throne. Elizabeth loves Lord Robert well, but I am certain she does not forget that Lord Robert’s father conspired to keep her from her throne by placing her cousin Jane Grey, married to Lord Robert’s brother Guildford, on it in her rightful stead.”

“Lord Robert’s father and brother Guildford are now . . . ?”

“Executed. I believe Lord Robert well loves the queen, but most others believe he is simply another choking shoot of the Dudley vine. Whether or not the queen, in her great love, will risk being entwined with him, only time will tell. Which nobleman in this kingdom will bow the knee to Lord Robert? I’m sure I couldn’t say.”

• • •

After we returned to London, I made my way to the queen’s library. Lady Blanche, also keeper of the queen’s books, said I might take any of them back to my chamber to read for my pleasure, and to assist in my English. I was excited to find some histories and some Greek myths and stories, as well as a tiny New Testament in which was written on the forepapers, in Her Majesty’s own hand, “I walk many times into the pleasant fields of the Holy Scriptures, where I pluck up the goodly green herbs of sentences by pruning, eat them by reading, chew them by musing, and lay them up at length in the seed of memory by gathering them together so that having tasted Thy Sweetness, I may less perceive the bitterness of this miserable life.”

I made my way back to my chamber and, as I did, glanced out the window at one of the turreted towers of the palace. I’d heard that King Henry had quietly, officially, married the queen’s mother, Anne Boleyn, here at Whitehall in one such tower, while my lady was already comfortably resting inside her mother’s womb. Did she even now wonder about her mother? Was her mother’s beheading the beginning of the bitterness of Queen Elizabeth’s life? Or was it the lack of a husband, of children? The bitterness of knowing that others greatly desired your death so that they may poach your royal perquisites and power?

I wished I had my own mother nearby to discuss these things, to offer affection and counsel. I yearned to hear from her, but she had not written to me, or if she had, the letters had not made it through the Danes. The thought of home, and of belonging, brought me pain, so I quickly dismissed it. I had thought to be married by now, and perhaps on my way to becoming a mother myself.

I carefully thumbed through the pages of the Scriptures I had just borrowed and noted diverse passages that someone, perhaps the queen herself, had underlined, for it was in the same ink found on the forepaper she’d written upon. One of these, in the Epistle of Paul to the Ephesians, struck me:

For the husband is the head of the wife, even as Christ is the head of the church: and he is the savior of the body. Therefore as the church is subject unto Christ, so let the wives be to their own husbands in everything.

I plucked from the seed of my memory Her Majesty saying that it was monstrous that the head should take direction from the feet. Should she marry, the example of her sister, common practice, and Holy Writ all declared that she would no longer be head, something she knew very well.

As for my own marriage, there seemed to have been no progress on the matter and little interest except from William and myself.

“I cannot continue to live in limbo,” I said to him. “I do not know what I am or who I am or where my place is. Your . . . Lady Anne Bourchier, she could have a long and robust life.” At that I noted that one of his servants flicked her eye toward me, unusually, and briefly.

I didn’t wish ill upon Lady Anne, but I wished to have my own situation resolved.

“I will take it up again with the council,” William promised. “It was not so difficult to set aside a false marriage last time, when I married Elisabeth Brooke. But I need to win new champions to our side, and that takes time.”

“By when?” I asked softly, but wearily, sensitive to the fact that this troubled him, too, but needing an answer.

“Within a year.”