Just a Girl (6 page)

Even so, the atmosphere in the palace remained strange, discordant. The lines of courtiers and councillors paying their respects were subdued. I knew how they felt; it was as if a pale and feeble moon had risen to take the place of the sun, as if the earth had become liquid and the sea solid. None of us could quite comprehend a world without the colossus of my father astride it.

Edward held his nerve and his dignity, accepting the words of loyalty and sympathy with a solemn nod of his head. Queen Catherine, Mary and I stood at the rear of the great hall. When I could I tried to catch his eye and send to him my love and my encouragement, but I do not know if he saw me at all. He said little and looked tiny, pale and drawn, sitting in my father's large chair. The contrast between the bulk of the old king and the slender proportions of the new one could not have been more pronounced. A footstool saved my brother from the indignity of swinging his feet in the air, but nothing could make him look other than a frightened little boy playing at power. It was clear that all the important conversations were taking place in side rooms, between
the lord protector and his newly appointed council. When at last the long dreary day was over, no doubt my poor little brother made his way to his private quarters, then dropped his head and sobbed into his arms as if his heart would break. Was he weeping for the loss of his father, who had loved him? Or for fear of the great responsibility that had just crushed him under its weight? People envy princes, they tell me. They would not, methinks, if they knew the reality of their lives. In only a few short weeks, small imperious Edward disappeared and that which we call king settled itself in his place. I am twenty-five, well versed in the ways of the world and the fearful duplicity of ambitious men, and if I approach my new life in sleepless trepidation, how must it have felt for the nine-year-old boy? Eventually it killed him, I suppose.

At the end of that long and wearisome day, we were finally permitted to see my brother in his private apartments, and my stepmother did not stand on ceremony. She took my brother into her arms and soothed his tears. She held him on her knee, rocking him from side to side, as he gulped and sobbed. But they had only a few minutes together before the lord protector, who appeared to hate my brother being out of his sight for any time at all, came unannounced into the room, puffed up in his newly acquired robes and chains of office. It was clear he did not like what he saw.
‘How now, my lord? What is this? A king does not mewl like an infant or sob like a girl. Leave the weeping and wailing to women, my lord.' When this failed to do anything except unleash a torrent of even more heartfelt sobs, the lord protector turned his attention to the queen. ‘This is your doing, woman. Unhand him before you entirely unman him.' I gasped audibly at his arrogance in talking to her with such disrespect, but Queen Catherine, though she eyed him sharply, let it pass. She had been deeply annoyed that, although his will left her a wealthy woman, my father had not also seen fit to declare her regent. But with that decision she was also wise enough to understand that any power she may once have had when my father depended on her so utterly was rapidly waning.

‘Kings are not the province of women, no matter how recently they were in swaddling clothes. Come with me, my lord,' he continued, ‘let me take you to your new apartments.' The little king, once so imperious, obeyed, still hiccuping with sobs. He got down from his stepmother's knee and took the man's proffered hand, but he held out his other hand for the queen, clearly indicating that he wanted her to go with him also. At this, the lord protector fell to his knees so he was speaking to my brother eye to eye. This time he tried a different approach: a softer, more cajoling manner.

‘Now, now, my lord, what is this? The queen is tired,
too and needs to be attended to by her ladies. Your tutor Master Cheke awaits you in your new rooms, but he has agreed there will be no lessons this day. You are to rest, my lord, and eat sweetmeats and Master Cheke has promised to read to you quietly. Will you come, Your Majesty, and take your rightful place among the men?'

My brother wiped his nose on the back of his sleeve and nodded wearily, but as he walked with his uncle from the room, he looked back at us and two large tears rolled from his eyes to his chin.

Poor little Edward, pitiful little king, we left him, my stepmother, my half-sister and I. We had no choice: the hard men of his privy council were hungry for government, eager to stamp their personality on the country and to reap the rewards that come with power. They wanted no soft-hearted women between them and their king. When my brother walked away, clutching the hand of the man who was called his protector, I did not protest. I merely curtsied, as a subject should, and pretended I did not see his trembling bottom lip and terrified eyes. I did not know then that it would be more than a year before I would see him once more.

When next I saw him, more than a twelvemonth later, he was a different child: his eyes cold, his tongue well guarded, his attitudes stiff and unbending, particularly when we spoke of men worshipping God. Master Cheke, religious zealot that he was, had done his work well. I do not even know if my brother was pleased to see me. We spent a few awkward and formal hours together, talking in polite generalities, before I left and wept again for the lively little boy I remembered. I felt bereft. They had ripped him from me and I knew we would never play or converse with one another in the old easy way as brother and sister ever again. I also knew I no longer had much place in his new life and that I would see him but rarely. Indeed, between that meeting and the next almost as much occurred to change me as had happened to change him.

My sister and I stayed with our stepmother at court until April, then Mary, being fully grown, departed
for her own household to manage her newly acquired estates. As a girl of only thirteen, I left the court with the queen and went to live with her permanently. By this time, my stepmother had a brash and vigorous new husband, my brother's other uncle, the admiral, Thomas Seymour. Somewhat to my chagrin, Queen Catherine had wasted no time in marrying the man she had always loved. It suited me ill that anyone could forget a man like my father so quickly, no matter how old, smelly and querulous he had become, but what choice did I have? I was wounded, frightened and grief-stricken; I clung to my stepmother as the only family I had. My sister Mary, kind though she still was, had no interest in caring for me, and no doubt Hertford would have had much to say about the two princesses living cheek by jowl. I was in need of a guardian, I loved Catherine despite my sulking, and it suited Hertford well to keep me under the weather eye of his brother – at least at first.

God's breath, to this day I cannot think of the admiral, or of his wife, without shame. I was so young, so giddy, foolish, so unused to love or attention, to freedom, that I felt like a captive released, a bird escaped from its cage. Catherine was also freed from her servitude to my father and it had a similar intoxicating effect on her. We who were usually so solemn and considered, willingly joined the admiral in his rough-and-tumble romping games.

The games began innocently enough. One morning,
soon after Kat Ashley and I had taken up residence, I was woken by the curtains around my bed being ripped open. Shocked and a little frightened, I sat up clutching the covers to my chest. Clad only in his nightshirt, my stepfather stood at the end of the bed. Before I had time to protest, he had leapt onto the mattress and begun tickling me ferociously.

‘So, my fine princess,' he crowed, ‘if you are to be my daughter, you shall be treated as one – and about time, too.' He was strong and I could do little except wriggle about, shrieking and giggling beneath his arms. I wanted him to stop – no one in my life had ever treated me so – and I wanted him not to stop. But I was not master of my breath long enough to form any words; I could do little but shriek and squirm. His hands seemed everywhere on my body, all at once: under my arms, on my stomach, under my ribs. The more I squirmed, the more delicate the places his fingers found. I looked up and saw the surprised face of Kat Ashley (hair askew under her nightcap) staring at us both as we rolled about.

‘For shame, my lord, my lady,' she began to say, but Thomas Seymour was having none of that.

‘Aha!' he said. ‘Just the woman I need. Here, Mistress Ashley, hold her legs down. They kick at me dangerously.' And, used to being commanded by men who were used to commanding, she did as she was bid. Worse, as she gripped my ankles, her demeanour changed, from one
of trepidation to delight. She always has had an eye for a handsome man and I am sure she noticed the way his nightshirt slipped up and down his thighs.

‘Beg for mercy!' Lord Seymour laughed, his hard fingers digging into my bony frame.

‘Aye, aye,' chortled foolish Kat. ‘Beg for mercy and we shall cease.'

But I could not beg for mercy. I still could not catch my breath long enough to speak. At that moment, my stepmother entered the room, awakened no doubt, by the ruckus, because my room was directly beneath hers. I saw the shock of what she saw, vivid in her face.

‘My lord Thomas, leave the child alone!'

‘Very well,' he said and, with a great wink to me, turned the game on his wife. He swept her into his arms and onto the bed beside me. Now it was her turn to squirm and shriek, batting uselessly at his hands, trying as I had done, to evade his strong, intrusive, teasing fingers. For a moment, I could not believe what I was seeing: my solemn, much respected stepmother, Dowager Queen of England, on her back, in her nightclothes, kicking her legs wildly in the air, breathless with terrified laughter. I sat, still as a statue, catching my own breath, uncertain whether this was a great game or a great outrage.

‘Help me, Elizabeth!' he cried. ‘Don't just sit there. Hold her down until she begs for mercy.' And then
there was the briefest moment when I could have stood on my dignity as King Henry's daughter and stopped it all before it even started. I could have called a halt to the dangerous game and all that consequently unfolded, but I did not. I was a thirteen-year-old girl, I longed to play, I longed to be a real daughter – not a princess, but Elizabeth, someone to be loved. I wanted to have fun, as other children did. Now I think it was the thrill I felt that spurred me on, when this man far beneath me in status, dared to call me just by my name. Kat and I grabbed an ankle each and held my stepmother's legs for all we were worth, laughing at the sight she made and at our own daring. We all knew that this was a dangerous game indeed. Thomas Seymour was unceremoniously tickling a former queen and – as it has turned out – a future one, to put us both in our place as mere women and establish his power over us in the guise of a game. And, mere women that we were, there in our nightclothes, we loved it.

Admiral Seymour had the keys to every room of the old palace at Chelsea; he could come and go as he pleased. Yet, he did not wake me every morning. Often weeks might pass before I woke to his teasing face peering round my curtains, sometimes because he was away, but mostly because he understood the essence of the game, its unpredictability. The fact that he might be there kept me unnerved, on edge, frightened that he
would appear, frightened that he wouldn't. Sometimes he came two, three, four mornings in a row; sometimes not at all. When I woke to nothing but songbirds I was desolate. I lay in bed remembering his hands on my body, always outside my nightdress, but roaming wherever they would. And I remembered the end of those tickling games, when we lay together on the bed, quietly, with my head on his chest, listening to the strong
thump, thump, thump
of his heart, his arms outflung, mine held stiffly by my side, my fingers curled up with longing to touch him, to stroke the curls on his head, the hair on the backs of his hands. I did not feel like a daughter at those moments, or like a girl. I felt like a woman. When I saw him with my stepmother and they thought they were not observed, when I saw him put his hand up and under her skirts and bend her backwards beneath his kiss, I felt waves of something I could not identify flow over and through me. I envied her, and let myself think – for a foolish moment – that there might be some advantages to being married after all.

Whenever the queen came upon us playing our dangerous game, in my bedchamber or in the gardens around the old palace, the admiral cleverly included her. Once, he came upon me on a fine summer's morning embroidering in the rose garden. (Mary's careful training had borne some fruit.) He pounced upon me and grasped my scissors in a flash.

‘Fie, fie, sir!' I cried, as he held them high above my head. Although I was tall, he was taller. ‘For pity's sake, sir, give me my scissors.'

‘Indeed, I shall not,' he replied. ‘You must retrieve them yourself, or pay the forfeit.' And with that, he hung the scissors on a branch of the tall chestnut that shadowed the garden, where he could reach them, but I could not. I tried to climb the tree, but could not find a foothold. I tried to shake it, hoping to dislodge the scissors from their branch, but its trunk was thick and my feeble attempts failed. I mounted the bench I had been seated upon and tried to reach towards the scissors, teetering on my slippers. The scissors remained tantalisingly out of reach, but I strained so hard I began to wobble on my perch and gave the admiral a chance to take me in his arms and save me from a fall.

‘Cry forfeit.' He laughed. Then, as he pinioned me, the laughter left his voice and it became softer, but more insistent. ‘Cry forfeit.' I had been squirming in his arms, but now his grip was so insistent, I could hardly move. The game had changed. I tried to struggle again. I panted with the effort, but he held me so tightly it hurt. My head was crushed against his chest and I could hear the
thump, thump, thump.

‘Forfeit,' I whispered, wrenching my head free, so I was looking up at him as he looked down on me. He bent his head closer to mine, so that his lips brushed my ear.

‘Say again, Elizabeth,' he whispered, as quietly as I had done. My heart pounded, but I did not lower my eyes nor move my head away.

‘Forfeit. I surrender, my lord.'

‘What is this?' The queen's voice broke the moment and I raised my head to see her lifting the branch of the tree that had sheltered us.

‘The Lady Elizabeth has cried forfeit!' boomed the admiral. ‘Hold her, my love, whilst I administer the penalty.' With that, he released me to the ground and his wife took both my arms and held them behind my back. He took the scissors from the tree and approached me with them raised and open for a moment, and I panicked. What did he mean to do with them? I kicked my feet at him, but to no avail: the queen held me fast.

‘Sew, wilt thou? I'll give thee sewing to do!' And he began to slash my dress with my scissors, cutting it to ribbons, exposing my petticoats, my shift and my stockings. The air and the excitement goose pimpled my skin and I shivered and screamed, half in terror, half in delight. As he cut the rich silk, I looked to the terrace. A small group had gathered, brought hither by the noise we were making. Kat Ashley and two serving wenches laughed at my predicament, but, behind them, my tutor, Roger Ascham, shook his head and pursed his lips. I stopped my shrieks for shame. Only too ready to compare me, unfavourably, with his other pupil, that silent child
Lady Jane Grey, he was witnessing to my horror yet another example of my deficiencies. I made one last bid for freedom and broke the grasp of the queen.

‘Keep the scissors,' I cried as I ran from them across the grass, my long legs unhampered by my shredded skirts. ‘But let me go free!'

‘You should not allow such liberties,' said my tutor when, freshly gowned, I appeared for lessons.

‘And how can I prevent them, Master Ascham?' I was stung by his tone. ‘I am the ward; they are the guardians.'

‘You could prevent them, my lady, if you wished to. You are a king's daughter and have the authority. The admiral does not dare play so fast and loose with Lady Jane.' And there it was, the inevitable comparison with my cousin.

‘She is but a child.'

‘Indeed, my lady, all the more reason for you to be more careful.'

‘Child or no, I heard he schemed to marry her.' Kat Ashley's love of gossip and her determination to pass on what she has heard below stairs to me has stood me in good stead on many an occasion.

‘Perhaps so, my lady, but he has no such intention with you. The admiral now has a wife. A circumstance you should pay more mind to.' I gasped at the insinuation and opened my mouth to protest. Was he about to accuse me of committing adultery?

But he held up his hand to hush me. ‘If I go too far, I am sorry for it, but you lack guidance, my lady, and as I am your teacher, it falls to me to supply it. I wish to protect you. A princess must have more care than most women about not simply what she does, but what people
say
she does.' He lowered his voice and kindness softened his tone. ‘People are saying things, my lady, and you are too fine a creature to have your reputation sullied so.'

My eyes filled with tears at his words. Kindness has always undone me more effectively than harsh treatment and I wanted Master Ascham's good opinion more, now that my father was dead, than anyone else's then living. ‘But how can I protect myself? The admiral has the keys to all the rooms in the house and can burst into my chamber anytime he wishes.'

‘Ask to leave, my lady. Move your household away from theirs.' At this, I wept bitterly. I did not want to leave the only home where I felt important and loved, where, however risky it was, I was able to stop being a king's daughter and just be Elizabeth, the girl growing into a woman. Master Ascham, never one to show his feelings, looked horrified at the effect of his words and patted me awkwardly on the back. ‘Now, now, perhaps I have been too harsh.' He held out a greyish handkerchief. ‘Dry your eyes, we can waste no more time on this. We must proceed with our translation.
Lady Jane completed hers weeks ago.' He was a clever man, wise in the ways of his students. Nothing was guaranteed to dry my eyes and sharpen my appetite for my work like a comparison with that bookish child.