In the Shadow of the Crown Read online

  I was still grappling with my conscience. I had committed perjury. I had agreed to that which in my heart I abhorred. I prayed constantly. I talked to my mother as though she were with me.

  “Understand, please, dear Mother. I did this because I believe that in time it will have been proved to be the right action to have taken at this time. They would have tried me for treason if I had refused. They would have trumped up some charge against me. If the King could kill his wife, why not his daughter? Chapuys knew it. I acted on his advice and one day, I swear on all that is sacred to me, that when the opportunity comes I shall bring England back to the Holy Church.”

  That was the motive I kept my eyes on. And I began to believe fervently that what I had done—however much it had been against my principles— was the only way in which I could have acted.

  Elizabeth was at Hunsdon, still under the charge of Margaret Bryan. I was with her a great deal. All my enmity toward her had gone. How could one dislike a three-year-old child? Her mother might be evil but what crime had the child committed? Lady Bryan never ceased to marvel at her. She was the most perfect child it had ever been her joy to know, she told me. She was so bright and eager to learn.

  “Nose into everything,” said Margaret fondly.

  “If it is there, she must know what and why. Questions… all through the day. And she remembers, too. To see her skip and dance… and hear her little voice singing…She can already handle a lute, you know.”

  Then she would express her fury at the manner in which her little darling was being treated now.

  “Look at this kirtle! I have darned and patched it. I need new clothes for her. I keep asking but none come. It is a shameful way to treat a princess.”

  “Hush, Margaret,” I cautioned her. “Do you want to be charged with treason?”

  She shook her head sadly, “I know not what we are coming to.”

  I took her hand and pressed it.

  “I know. I understand your feelings. It happened to me… just like this. At least Elizabeth is too young to understand.”

  “There you are mistaken. That child is old for her years.”

  “That is well. She will have need of her good sense, I doubt not.”

  “My poor innocent lamb! I suppose I must go on with this patching. She asked for her mother. ‘When will she come to see me?' It breaks my heart. At least it seems a little brighter for you, my lady. Perhaps you can put in a word for your little sister.”

  “I will… when I can.”

  “Bless you. There has been such suffering, but none should hold that against this little one.”

  “I do not,” I said. “Nor would my mother.”

  Margaret nodded. She was too moved for words.

  There was a great deal of talk about what was happening throughout the country. During the previous year my father had set Thomas Cromwell to make a report on the conditions of the monasteries. This had sent a ripple of unease throughout the land. The monasteries were devoted to the Church of Rome, and everyone knew that this was no ordinary survey. It was a further gesture of defiance toward the Pope; and Cromwell was prepared to give my father what he wanted, knowing full well that he dared do nothing else.

  The result was the Black Book in which were set down all the evils which were said to be practiced within those walls. I could not believe it. There were sinners everywhere, I knew, but according to Cromwell the monasteries he visited were hotbeds of vice. We heard stories of orgies between monks and nuns, of riotous and lewd behavior, of unwanted babies being strangled at birth and buried in the grounds.

  It was time, said my father, in his most pious tones, that these matters were brought to light and given close examination.

  There was a great deal of wealth in the monasteries, and the royal exchequer, which had been so well stocked by my shrewd and careful grandfather, had become much depleted during my father's extravagant reign. A great deal of money had been spent on his lavish entertainments, his splendid journeys, his magnificent jewels, and latterly on bribery all over Europe in the hope of getting agreement on his divorce. The exchequer needed bolstering up and the spoils from the monasteries could play a good part in doing that.

  An Act had now been passed for the suppression of all monasteries whose incomes were less than £200 a year.

  I wondered whether that was an experiment to see how the people reacted to it. The larger monasteries were left unmolested; but I could imagine that many an abbot was trembling in his sandals.

  Then I was told that I was to meet the King, and everything else was banished from my mind.

  My feelings were mixed. I wanted to see him. Part of me could not forget those days of my early childhood when he had loomed so large in my life—a god, all-powerful and gloriously benign. I had been so proud that he should be my father; and although I loved my mother more dearly than any living person, it was he who filled me with awe and admiration. His smile of approval had made me sublimely happy, and no matter how cruelly he behaved to me and those I loved, I still had the same special feeling for him which I was sure could never be entirely eradicated.

  He would not come to Hunsdon; nor should I go to Court …yet. He wanted to see me first and he did not want too much noise about it. He must have felt a little uncertain about meeting a daughter who had for so many years defied him and had only just signed her submission most reluctantly.

  I was to be taken at an appointed time to a country house where he would receive me.

  I could not eat. I could not sleep. I hovered between excitement and apprehension. I prayed for guidance. I talked to my mother, begging her, once more, to understand why I had betrayed her in words, although in my heart I would always be true to her.

  I talked to Susan Clarencieux of my fears.

  She reassured me. “My lady,” she said, “you need have no fears. You are royal…as royal as the King.”

  I put my finger on her lips. “Hush, Susan. I do not want to lose you. Such things as you say could be construed as treason.”

  “It is true.”

  “Truth can sometimes be treason, Susan. There. I am worse than you. We must guard our tongues. Let's talk of other things. What am I going to wear?”

  For so long I had had few clothes and what I had were mended; but recently new garments had been sent to me and now I believed I could dress so that I would not look too shabby for the occasion.

  Command came that I was to leave the following morning. Margaret Bryan came to me on the night before. She sat by my bed and held my hand as she used to in those long-ago days when my trials were just beginning.

  “Have no fear,” she said. “All will be well. Remember, you are his daughter.”

  “He forgot that once.”

  “Nay. A man does not forget his daughter. He was plagued by other matters.”

  “And I would not say what he wished me to. And now, I have, Margaret. God forgive me.”

  “Hush, hush,” she said. “Everything will be understood. Try to rest. Be yourself… and all will be well.”

  At the door she paused and looked at me.

  “Do not forget the child,” she said. “She is only a baby. Speak for her… if there is a chance.”

  I said, “I will, Margaret. But I must go carefully. He is so full of hatred for her mother now … as once he was for mine.”

  “They are both gone now, God rest their souls,” said Margaret. “It is the poor children who remain.”

  She then left me and I tried to compose myself and prepare for the next day's ordeal.

  AT DAWN WE SET out and by mid-morning had reached our destination.

  There I met the father whom I had not seen for five years. With him was his new Queen.

  For a few moments we stood looking at each other. I wondered what he thought of me. When he had last seen me I had been a thin, spindly-legged girl of fifteen. Now I was a woman. I knew I had gained in dignity, especially so since I had been aware of my destiny. But I was so shocked by the chan
ge in him that I could think of little else.

  When I had last seen him he had been the most handsome man I had ever known. He had stood taller than most men; he had always been recognized by his height and width at all those masques where he had delighted in trying to disguise himself. His complexion had been florid, but healthily so. Now it was purplish rather than pink. His weight had increased enormously. His was no longer an athletic figure. “Corpulent” would be a more accurate way of describing it. But it was his face in which the greater change had taken place. In the past there had been an engaging aspect. Could I call it innocence? Hardly. Perhaps rather a boyish delight in the world and himself which at that time had seemed endearing. Even in those days we had dreaded to see his mood change, which it had done now and then, and the small mouth would become a thin, straight line and the little eyes points of light almost disappearing into his full face. Much of the old benignity had departed. New lines had appeared to rob him of that quality. To look at him now, so large in his surcoat with the puffed sleeves barred with strips of fur and built-up shoulders which increased his size and made him a figure of splendor, completely over-awed me. I felt very small and insignificant beside such a glittering figure and I knew that I could never do what I had thought during my journey here that I might, which was to throw myself at his feet and beg him not to ask me to deny my mother and the Church of Rome.

  To see him there, powerful and formidable in the extreme, I knew that I should never do it even if I could.

  And beside him was his new Queen—slender, pretty, looking frail beside his great girth, gentle, welcoming, a little hesitant, but endeavoring to tell me she was pleased to see me.

  I went to him and knelt. He gave me his hand, which I kissed. Then he made a gesture for me to stand up, so I did so.

  “At last,” he said. “I rejoice to see you, daughter.”

  I was trying to overcome my emotion and he sensed this. It pleased him. He saw me as the repentant daughter, asking for forgiveness because of her foolish behavior which had caused him pain.

  I would have knelt to the Queen but she had taken my hands. She must have been about the same age as Anne Boleyn… but she seemed younger and I felt older in experience.

  There was nothing false about the greeting she gave me. She smiled tremulously. “Oh welcome…welcome,” she said. “I have so wanted this meeting.”

  The King smiled at her indulgently.

  “The Queen speaks for us both,” he said.

  He dismissed everyone so that we should be alone together, he said, and talk as a family should.

  So we were alone and he spoke of his sufferings, of how he had been mistreated, but now that he had his good Jane beside him, all that was behind us.

  He sat in the chair which had been provided for him, and Jane brought up one for me so that I could sit beside him.

  “Your Grace must not wait on me,” I said.

  “But it is what I want,” she told me with her rather girlish smile. “I am so happy. I have always wanted you to be at Court, and now you are going to be there.”

  The King was evidently enamored of her. She was so gentle and seemed to me guileless. She was as different from Anne Boleyn as one woman can be from another. Therein, I supposed, lay her attraction.

  Jane sat close to the King, who from time to time patted her knee. I thought she was like a little kitten, and I could not suppress the question which rose in my mind: How long can he be content with her?

  Meanwhile she was eager to show herself my friend.

  “We shall arrange for you to come to Court … in time,” said the King.

  “Yes,” added Jane, “and it shall be soon.”

  “I shall be leaving for the hunting season shortly,” said my father. “Perhaps after that.”

  “Thank you, Your Majesty,” I said. Recently he had given himself the title of “Majesty” which was now generally used instead of the old “Your Grace.” After all, dukes could be Graces, but only the King—and Queen— Majesties.

  “You are uneasy, daughter,” he said. “Do not be so. Now that you have confessed your faults, I forgive you freely. She who did you much harm has now reaped her just deserts. Witchcraft is a fearsome cult. It must be crushed wherever we find it. And now … if you will be my good child, I will be father to you.”

  “You will be welcome at Court,” said Jane. “We shall be friends…we shall be as sisters.”

  The King laughed at her. I thought her charming in her rather simple way.

  He asked about my household at Hunsdon. I said that of recent date it had begun to grow.

  “You shall have the comforts you once enjoyed before you were misguided enough to oppose my will.”

  “I thank Your Majesty.”

  “Aye… and you will find there will be much for which to thank me.”

  Jane laughed happily. I thought she was really a good creature and was genuinely rejoicing in my changed fortunes.

  I wondered whether I could mention Elizabeth but the dark look which had come into his face when he had spoken of her mother made me hesitate. Not yet, I thought, I must tread very carefully.

  “Yes,” my father went on. “Be a good daughter and you will find me not ungenerous. I am giving you a thousand crowns so that you can indulge yourself. Get some little comforts, eh? I'll swear you could use them.”

  “You are most gracious…”

  His face had become soft and sentimental, as I remembered it from the past. “Aye… and ready to be more so…as you will find, will she not, Jane?”

  Jane smiled from me to him. “The most generous King in the world,” she said ecstatically.

  I thought how different she was from my mother as well as from Anne Boleyn. Could it be possible that this one could give him what he wanted? If she could provide a son, yes. And if not…I found myself looking at that white neck.

  She had taken a diamond ring from her finger and held it out to me.

  “It would make me very happy if you would wear this for me,” she said simply.

  Then she took my hand and slipped the ring on my finger.

  “You are so good to me,” I told her.

  My father watched us, his eyes glazed with sentiment. How quickly his moods changed! I wished that I did not see him quite so clearly. Part of me wanted to go on believing in the image I had created in my childhood; but I kept thinking of my mother. On whose order had the Welsh beer been produced? Had she been poisoned? I thought of Anne Boleyn, the one for whom he had sacrificed his religious beliefs and had run the risk of losing his crown; and yet there had come the day when she had been taken out to Tower Green and her head had been cut off with a sword specially sent from France. What could I think of such a man? How could I love him? And yet, in spite of all I knew of him, in a way I did.

  Poor little Jane Seymour, what would become of her?

  The mood passed. Jane, with her simple reasoning, had an effect on us. She saw this as a family reunion and she made us see it as such. I lost some of my qualms; my father forgot that he was King; in that brief moment we were father and daughter, and Jane's presence, with her simple faith in the goodness of human nature, had created this scene in her imagination and, briefly, we accepted it.

  It was a pleasant half hour. There was laughter: I was delighted to be with my father, for after all he had done, he was still my father, and such was the aura which surrounded him that I could suppress my fears of him. Whether it was love, I do not know; but it was something akin to it. And while we were together, I forgot that I was deceiving him, that I had lied to him; and he seemed to forget the past when he had had it in his mind to poison me or take my life in some way.

  Jane was there, rejoicing that the dissension in the family was over; and everything was as it should be; in the future we should all love each other.

  Such is the power of innocence.

  I DID NOT SEE my father for some time. He went off with the Court for the hunting season. My household at Hunsdon was
growing, as was customary for a person of my rank. People were sending me gifts. Thomas Cromwell had taken me under his wing and had sent me a horse as a present.

  The newly elevated brother of Jane Seymour was now Lord Beauchamp and Chamberlain. He wrote to ask me what clothes I needed.

  I was delighted. I was able to ask for some materials which Margaret could make into clothes for Elizabeth. I was getting quite fond of my little half-sister. She was such an engaging child, and our friendship gave great pleasure to Margaret. My reconciliation with my father delighted her, and that helped to ease my conscience. She was fond of me but the darling of her heart was young Elizabeth, and she was so pleased because she thought I should be able to do something about the neglect from which the poor child was suffering.

  Then there was trouble in the North which gave me some uneasiness for, in my vulnerable position, I could so easily be implicated.

  The appearance of the Black Book, containing its accusations against monks and nuns, and the suppression of the smaller monasteries, had been the cause of this unrest. The first sign of trouble was in Lincolnshire but this was quickly suppressed by the Earl of Shrewsbury, who assured the objectors that everything that had happened had been sanctioned by Parliament.

  It was not long before a more serious revolt broke out in Yorkshire. The people were against the break with Rome and they wanted the Supremacy of the Church to be in the hands of the Pope as it always had been. A man called Robert Aske led the people on what he called the Pilgrimage of Grace. They marched with banners depicting Christ on the cross on one side and on the other a chalice and wafer. They did not accept the King as Supreme Head of the Church. The Pope had been for them and their fathers Christ's Vicar on Earth and still was. No Acts of Parliament could change that. They wanted the true religion brought back to England.

  The revolt quickly spread through the North. These men were ready to fight for the religion they wanted. But there were rumors. If they succeeded, the King, who had set himself up as Head of the Church, would naturally be deposed. He had in their eyes one legitimate heir, for they had always believed that my mother was the true Queen of England and legally married to the King. That heir was the Princess Mary; and although their main aim was to restore the true religion, it was hinted that it was also their plan to set me on the throne.