When Mary and I walked in the funeral procession, two of twenty-nine slow and solemn ladies—one for each year of Jane Seymour’s life—with bowed heads and hands clasped around tall, flickering white tapers, all of us clad in the simple, stark death-black dresses and snow-white hoods that meant the deceased had died in childbirth, I vowed that I would never marry. Later, when I told her, Mary shook her head and scoffed at this childish nonsense, hugging me close and promising that I would forget all about this foolish fancy when I was old enough to understand what being a wife and mother meant; it was something that every woman wanted. I bit my tongue and kept my own counsel, but I knew that my conviction would never waver; God would be the only man to ever have the power of life and death over me. And as I knelt in chapel before Jane Seymour’s catafalque, I looked up at the cross and swore it as a vow, a pact between God and myself. He would be my heavenly master and I would always bow to His will, but I would have no earthly master force his will upon me.
Then came jolly German Anne of Cleves, always pink-cheeked and smiling, a platter of marzipan and candied fruits, like edible jewels, always within reach. She even wore a comfit box on a jeweled chain about her waist so that she would never be without her candy. I helped her with her English and she taught me German, and was the soul of patience when helping me with my much hated sewing. But I had no sooner learned to care for her than she was gone, supplanted by flighty, foolish, vain, but oh so beautiful Katherine Howard.
I was amazed to learn that she was but a few years older than me; I was seven and she was a tender fifteen to my father’s half century when they married. When I heard that she was my mother’s cousin I was so excited and eager to meet her, I bobbed on my toes like an ill-bred peasant child, bursting with impatience and craning my neck to catch a glimpse of her. Yet when at last I stood before her I looked in vain for any resemblance to my slim, elegant mother in that plump-breasted, auburn-haired, green-eyed, pouty cherry-lipped little nymph whom my father called his “Rose Without a Thorn” in token of what he saw as her pure, untrammeled innocence. Though she was indeed beautiful, she had none of my mother’s elegance, intelligence, and sophistication; she was more like an illiterate country bumpkin dressed up in silks and satins. And though the court looked askance at her impetuous, impulsive ways, my father adored her.
I remember once, one rare occasion when I was allowed to stay up as late as I wished for some court celebration—“Oh do let her!” my flighty young stepmother implored, and my father was so besotted he could not resist her. As the dawn broke, Katherine Howard suddenly tore off her shoes and stockings, flinging them aside with careless abandon, not caring where they fell or whether the servants pocketed the pearls and diamonds that trimmed the dainty white velvet slippers, and ran out onto the lawn, like a great length of green velvet spangled with diamonds spread out by an eager London mercer, to dance in the dew in her bare feet, reveling in the feel of the blades of grass tickling her naked soles and tiny pink toes. She threw back her head and laughed and laughed, a silly, giddy girl taking joy in life’s simple pleasures, twirling dizzily round and round, lifting her pearl-white skirts higher and higher, much more so than was proper, as she spun around, while my father slapped his thigh and roared with laughter at her antics.
“Come on, join me!” she cried, and some of the more daring ladies shed their shoes and stockings and ran out to dance with her, uttering delighted, startled little shrieks and piglet-squeals at the chilly nip of the dew on their naked toes.
Beside me, my sister Mary gasped, appalled, and looked fit to fall down dead of apoplexy when our stepmother’s swirling white skirts rose high enough to give a glimpse of plump dimpled pink-ivory buttocks, but my father clapped his hands and laughed all the harder.
Dressed most often in virgin white dripping with diamonds and pearls so that she looked like an Ice Queen, my father’s “Rose Without a Thorn” would sit, stroking her silky-haired spaniel or a big fluffy white cat, or idly twirling her auburn curls around her fingers, and daintily nibbling sweetmeats or languorously trailing her finger through some cream-slathered dish and lingeringly sucking it off, always appearing distant and bored, yawning and indolent, unless there was a handsome gallant nearby whom she could bat her eyelashes at and exchange coy, flirtatious banter with. Children and female company often seemed to bore her, though she was always kind to me. The only time she seemed to ever really stir herself was to dance, and oh how she loved to do that, artfully swirling about, high-spirited, young, and carefree, as she lifted her skirts high to show off her legs and garters, pretending it was an act of exuberant mischance when in truth it was carefully choreographed and practiced for hours before a mirror in the privacy of her bedchamber. I knew this for a fact, for she had offered to teach Mary and me, but Mary had gasped in horror and dragged me out the door as fast as if we were fleeing the flames of Hell.
I noticed that a certain courtier, a particularly handsome fellow called Thomas Culpepper, had a most curious effect on her. Whenever he was near, a flush would blossom rose-red in Katherine’s cheeks and her bosom would begin to heave beneath the tight-laced, low-cut bodice of her gown until I feared her laces would burst and her breasts spring out, and until he left her presence she would act more distracted and empty-headed than ever. Once when I sat embroidering beside her and Master Culpepper came in, she bade me go and play in the garden as it was such a lovely day when in truth it was pouring down rain.
Then she too was gone, like a butterfly fated to live only a season—her head stricken off just like my mother’s, only by an English headsman’s weighty, cumbersome ax; there was no French executioner with his sleek and graceful sword for my father’s “Rose Without a Thorn.” And Master Culpepper’s head, I heard, and that of another man, one Francis Derham, adorned spikes on London Bridge, to be pecked and picked clean by the avaricious ravens. And people began to tell tales about Katherine’s white-gowned ghost running along the corridors of Hampton Court, uttering bloodcurdling screams, begging and pleading for mercy, pounding futilely on the chapel door, as she had done the day my father turned his back and a deaf ear on her.
And I saw again how men and sex and marriage had destroyed another woman who was close to me, in blood if not in affection. My father, acting as a vengeful god on earth, had ordained her death, showing none of the mercy or forgiveness our Heavenly Father might have vouchsafed wanton little Katherine Howard.
“I will never marry,” I said to my best friend, Robert Dudley, whom I called Robin, who laughed at me and said he would remind me of my words when he danced with me on my wedding day.
Then, like the answer to a prayer, came Katherine Parr. Kind Kate, capable Kate, we all called her, a mature, twice-widowed woman with the gift of making everything all right, of solving every problem and soothing every hurt. Fearlessly, she went like an angel into the lion’s den and tended my father in his declining years. Never once did her nose wrinkle or disgust show upon her face when she tended his putrid, pus-seeping leg, applying herbal poultices of her own concoction and changing the bandages with comforting and efficient hands. Though it was an open secret that she harbored a strong sympathy for the Protestant religion, deemed heretical by many, including my staunchly Catholic sister, she won Mary’s affection and became a loyal friend and loving stepmother to her. And to me . . . She was my savior! She did more than any other to restore me to my father’s good graces. And she took a personal interest in the development of my mind; she was passionate about education for girls, and took it upon herself to personally select my tutors and confer with them over my curriculum. Under her guidance, I studied languages, becoming fluent in a full seven of them, and also mathematics, history, philosophy, the Classics and the writings of the early Church Fathers, architecture, and astronomy. Nor were the female accomplishments neglected; equal time was given to dancing, music, and sewing, both practical and ornamental, and also to outdoor pursuits such as riding, hunting, hawking, and archery. But even she brushed her skirts perilously close to Death when she dared argue with my father, contradicting him about religion. A careless hand dropped the warrant for her arrest in the corridor and I found it and brought it to her.
Careful observation had already taught me that my father would always distance himself from those he meant to condemn; he would not deign to face them lest their tears and pleas for mercy sway him. I urged her to go, to save herself before it was too late. I begged her to swallow her pride and throw herself at his feet—so great was my love for her that I implored her to grovel, though the very thought of it sickened me—to claim that she had only dared argue with him to profit from his superior knowledge, to learn from him, and also, as an added boon, to distract him from the pain of his sore leg.
Though I was but a child, she listened to me, and was saved, but I would never forget how close she came to danger, or the power of life and death my father had to wield over her as her sovereign lord, husband, and master. Or the shame that she, one of the torchbearers of enlightenment and reformation, must have felt to have to lower herself in such a manner and humbly declare womankind, whose champion she was, weak and inferior, and that God had created women to serve men, and no female should ever presume to contradict, question, or disobey her husband, father, brother, or indeed any male at all.
Already I knew the value of dissembling for self-preservation. Once my father had favored women with sharp, clever minds and the gift of intelligent conversation, but after my mother he put docility and beauty first and foremost, so that his last wife, Katherine Parr, must need stifle her intellect and bridle her tongue and play perpetual pupil to my father’s teacher. I don’t know how she stood it, but it only matters that she survived it.
Six wives . . . four dead and two living. Their history clearly showed me that marriage is the road to doom and destruction for all womankind and affirmed my conviction that never would I walk it; I would go a virgin to my grave. But I also knew, and feared, that there would be times in the years to come when God would test me.