Carr looked back unperturbed. His appointment to the Privy Council had just been announced.
‘I hold to my advice, your majesty,’ said Cecil quietly. ‘You are still friends with Spain. “The Peacemaker King” will lose nothing, and England will gain, if the princess marries the German Palatine.’
The king turned away impatiently while his Chief Secretary was speaking. He held out his wine glass to the server to be refilled.
‘That’s what you advise, is it?’ he asked, turning back. ‘Have you perhaps been working secretly against the French marriage all along? Undermining me? Telling that royal French cunny to go ahead and ally herself with our old enemy, Spain? Perhaps you advised Spain and France to unite against me.’
‘You know that I have always served both you and England loyally.’ Cecil’s voice was level.
‘How do I know that?’ shouted the king. ‘You fail to secure the money I need from Parliament. You fail to arrange the marriage I most desire for the First Daughter of England. How do I know that you truly want to succeed? Who are you preparing behind my back, as you groomed me while Elizabeth still lived?’
He turned back to me. ‘Word must have reached France how you dislike the Dauphin… laugh at him and call him names.’
The whole world called him names, I thought, furious at the injustice of his accusation. The whole world smirked at the former Dauphin and his reported antics.
‘And all the while, she’s in league with her brother, who wants to bury me alive.’ He pointed at me. ‘"I will not marry him!,” she says. “I would marry him instead.” Letting the world know that she would not marry the Dauphin, who is now a king. Nor the Prince of Savoy. Nor any Catholic prince. “Oh, who could marry a melancholy trout?” she asks.’
One of my ladies, I thought wearily. Or one of Henry’s gentlemen. Or a servant, or secretary, or a groom riding unnoticed at our side. One of the invisible people had blabbed.
Even so, my father must know that his accusation was unfair. The bride’s dislike of the groom had never before determined a marriage of policy.
‘Weel, one of you do something to put this right!’
‘What does your majesty desire us to…’ began Sir Thomas Lake.
‘God’s Body! Must I decide everything?’ The king lunged to his feet and stormed out.
I met Henry in the great open court, freshly arrived from St James’s.
‘Is the news true, then?’ he asked. ‘Are the betrothals now confirmed?’
‘We can both rejoice at our escape,’ I said, still shaky with contained rage. ‘But not within hearing of the king.’
‘I heard him as I crossed the park,’ said Henry with satisfaction. ‘Eating his heart out at full bellow. So much for his Middle Way! The Papist enemy is lining up shoulder-to-shoulder against us. England’s future role as a Protestant champion on the Continent grows more and more clear…’
Henry startled me by stopping and taking my hands. Both of his were cold. ‘Promise me again that you will marry the Elector Palatine!’
‘I promise,’ I said, puzzled by his feverish intensity. Impossible, uneasy thoughts stirred at the back of my mind like the old dreams of my father’s demons. I pushed them away again. When my father appointed Robert Carr to the Privy Council, I should have read the sign. Cecil had always opposed Carr’s advancement. I should have believed Cecil when he had told me in the boat that he had lost his power.
Just a few weeks later, in May, the impossible happened. Cecil died. After father and son had advised and guided the reigns of two successive monarchs, England no longer had a Cecil.
The death of the Chief Secretary set off an unseemly scramble. Unlike his father, Lord Burleigh, who had trained him, Cecil had not groomed a successor. He was more than ‘shrewdly missed'. The governing of England seemed fallen into chaos. I did not need Henry or Tallie to tell me how the kites and wolves fell upon his titles and functions, tearing off gobbets of power here, and sources of income there.
Bacon became Lord-Treasurer. My father did not name a new Chief Secretary. All dispatches for him were received by Sir Thomas Lake, who passed them to Carr who passed them on as he pleased to the king, who may or may not have read them before he sent them back to his favourite to stamp with the royal seal.
Cecil’s death also released a terrible flood of scurrilous popular attacks on him, quoted openly, encouraged by Carr.
‘Here lies Robert Cicil
Composed of back and Pisle’
And,
‘Here lies little Crookback
Who justly was reckon’d
Richard the Third and Judas the Second.’
Sir Francis Bacon published his essay,
On Deformity.
I could not judge whether or not Cecil had ever takenbribes, or other men’s wives, or done any of the dreadful things of which he was accused. But it seemed to me that much of the venom was the sort that is loosed upon those who have climbed high by those who remain below.
Now that Cecil was gone, I waited for one of his enemies to try to stop the Palatine marriage, which he had supported. It’s possible that, in the confusion after Cecil’s death, it was simply forgotten until it was too late.
OCTOBER 1612
Trumpets! The future was closing on me. There was a rustling and scraping of silks against fine wool, of sequins against jewelled embroidery and gold fringes. Bodices creaked like trees in a wind. Boot soles scraped. Voices surged and fell like water running over stones.
We waited on the royal dais in the Banqueting House, under the canopy, gazing down the long space between the two rows of carved wooden columns. The galleries on either side of the hall were packed.
Summoned to appear the moment he arrived in England, the Palsgrave, Frederick V, Elector Palatine, was arriving in person to present his case. This was the husband I had chosen. A real one. Not made up. Real. I dug the nails of my right hand into my left palm to feel the pain. The more I tried to grip onto the moment, the more it slipped away. I seemed to have a fever, to float uneasily outside my body.
Why does Henry look so pale? And why does he laugh so loudly? I know that forced cheer of his, when he’s distracted by private thoughts.
What if the Elector doesn’t find me ‘handsome enough'? Will he refuse me in front of the court and my parents? I’m certain I will read his distaste in his eyes. What if he can’t imagine getting stiff with me?
What if I hate him as much as I fear?
Why did Henry suddenly reach for his chair and sit down, just now? I would expect him to be pacing and turning on the ball of his foot, as if imagining a sword fight. To be sending me encouraging looks.
Why was Baby Charles sent to meet my new suitor at the water stairs? Was Henry feeling too ill? Or did my father want to keep this German in his place?
Tracked by the sound of trumpets, my likely future, still out of sight, was climbing from a boat, mounting the water stairs, entering the gate, striding across paving stones. It entered the Banqueting House and paused, looking uncertain.
Deafened by the internal roar of my own body in my ears, I flicked a quick look at the new arrival. The husband Henry wanted for me. The husband Cecil had advised.
Disappointment made me feel sick, as if I had eaten bad meat. Was this what Henry wanted for me? Was this his ‘brother-in-arms'? The newcomer was as strange as the rough German tongue his representatives spoke among themselves. This was not another Frederick Ulrich hesitating just inside the door, but he wasn’t another Henry neither. If anything, he was more like Baby Charles than Henry, but darker than either of my brothers, with long black curls and an almost swarthy skin. His plain, salt-stained clothing stood out against the waiting splendour of the court. His linen collar had rucked up at the back. His guttery boots needed polish.
He was small, my own height, perhaps a little less. His curls, and round, rosy cheeks made him look no more than twelve years old, at the most. Was it possible that he wasfifteen? He had the large, dark, anxious eyes of a half-grown spaniel. Like a spaniel, he seemed wound-up and quivering with uncertainty.
I tried to imagine the reality of breeding with this boy.
Why didn’t he look at me? You’d think his eyes would seek me out before all else.
I saw heads lean together behind him. Smiles, a snigger. Something had happened on the way here. The story, whatever it was, spread from bent head to bent head, behind hands. He heard them and blushed as dark as my old leather boots. He straightened his back but did not look around.
He walked towards us through the stares, braving a shower of eye-beams like thrown lances. He waded forward through the massed curiosity as if breasting his way through deep water.
I felt reluctant admiration for this disappointing stranger. His bearing reminded me that, young as he was, he was already a ruler in his own right. Baby Charles would have turned and fled in tears, then hidden under his bed and refused to come out.
I was still deaf from the pounding of my blood. A freezing terror gripped me unexpectedly. I saw Frederick bow deeply to my father. Their mouths moved in an exchange of civilities. I couldn’t hear them through the roaring in my ears.
My father seemed friendly enough but was being the roughcast version of himself, not the oily international peace-maker. I’m reserving judgement, his manner said.
Or that’s what I would have read, in Frederick’s place.
I looked at the new arrival’s stained travel clothes and saw the subtle malice in the king’s pretended eagerness that had summoned this visitor to come at once, before he had time to change into finer, cleaner clothing.
In his salt-stained clothing, Frederick now turned to my glaring mother and bowed so low that two of his dark curls brushed the floor.
The queen pulled her lips tight across her teeth and extended one hand absently, as if brushing away a fly. She left her hand lying in the air, looked up at one of the tall leaded windows, frowning with interest at the red, green, and blue glass geometry. Frederick had barely taken her hand before she withdrew it, rubbing her fingertips together as if to brush them clean of dirt.
The poor little German spaniel could not have turned one degree darker without keeling over with an apoplexy.
The English courtiers near the door smirked again. Some of the prince’s German retinue frowned. Two of them exchanged glances. Henry flushed almost as dark as the new arrival.
Ignoring the smirks and whispers, Frederick bowed to the queen again and began a prepared speech to her majesty while she pretended that he wasn’t there and half of his audience grinned at his discomfort. My father sat back, mouth moving as if he sucked on a sugar lump, with that assessing look of his that can lead to the gift of a jewel or title or house or else to sudden rage.
With dignity, my poor suitor laboured through to the end of his pious, formalised, favour-seeking oration and turned to Henry. By now, I had settled enough to hear that he was speaking French. With smiles and geniality, my brother tried to make amends for our mother’s snub, but Frederick seemed uncertain whether or not to trust this apparent friendliness.
My anger rose at the smirking courtiers, at my mother.
Frederick came at last to me, the cause of this distasteful scene, the reason for his humiliation. I could not bear to think of what would be said in Heidelberg about the manners of the English court.
We looked at each other in a kind of terror. I felt a ridiculous impulse to burst into tears. Too much anticipation. Fury at my mother, at both of my parents for making this boysuffer such humiliation. I was trembling with rage, quite certain that it was nothing else.
Frederick came so close that I could see a line of sweat on his downy upper lip, and a faint smudge of fine silky hair.
He began to bow, to take up my hem and kiss it, as the custom required. With a quick glance at Henry, I curtsied until I almost sat on my heels and snatched up the hand reaching for my hem. In my agitation, I almost fell as I stood up again, but Frederick steadied me. Before I could change my mind, I pulled him closer, leaned across the ledge of my farthingale and kissed him on the lips.
I felt many things at that instant. Satisfaction mingled with indignation, both of which gave me a fervour I had not intended. We collided in mutual surprise and awkwardness. I heard someone in the crowd murmur,
‘Brava!’
I noted the unexpected warmth and softness of his full mouth.
I don’t know which of us was more startled.
So that’s what it’s like, I found myself thinking.
I let go of his hand abruptly. Just because I was willing to rescue him from humiliation, he must not presume that I thereby accepted him as a husband-to-be.
Don’t look at me like that! I thought. I can’t bear it. What I saw in those large dark eyes was hope. Too much like what I was feeling.
Not to be trusted.
He kept staring at me, the churning stew of thoughts going on behind his eyes clear for anyone to read, nothing hidden.
Don’t take that kiss so much in earnest, I warned him silently, though I didn’t mind the approval I saw. Don’t divine too much in it. I winked, the merest flicker of the eyelid, invisible unless you stood directly in front of me.
Frederick blinked. Then he grinned, a blazing flash of delight, gone before I was sure I’d seen it.
‘Princesse…’
He dipped his head to acknowledge mygesture. His face was solemn again but his pupils stayed wide and dark.
They were as unlike my father’s dangerous, hooded, pinpoint eyes as you can imagine, I thought. I felt us both now quivering with suppressed… not quite laughter. More like the bubbling of possibility.
I nodded my permission to proceed.
He struck an oratorical pose, one forefinger pointing upwards, his other hand clamped over his heart. He drew breath to begin his prepared speech to me. Then, with impeccable comic timing, he seemed to recall something he had forgotten. He rearranged himself to begin again.