This time, he made a double flourish with both hands and bowed so deeply that I thought he would stand on his head and kick his feet into the air like a clown.
I saw eyebrows raised behind him.
When he straightened again, although his face was stern, I imagined a glint of laughter in his eyes. I cocked my head like a listening dog.
The courtly but diffident manner with which he had approached the queen now changed. His voice deepened. The fulsome words required by the occasion grew round and full, inflated until they seemed to fill his mouth and stretch his lips as they ballooned outward into the air.
He looked at me to be certain that I understood what he was doing. I gave him a tiny smile and equally tiny nod.
Yes.
‘O, Reine des étoiles et des océans…’
he declaimed. Oh, queen of the heavens and the seas…
‘Déesse de mon coeur…’
Goddess of my heart… He rolled out the words with such glorious mock pomposity that I forgot myself and grinned.
He expressed to me his overwhelmed humbleness, the infinite honour,
et cetera, et cetera,
filling the air around us with shiny, bulbous overblown words. He watched me as they floated upwards like a cloud of soap bubbles. I could almosthear them bursting high above all those rich robes and smirks. ‘Pop!’ ‘Pop!’ ‘Pop!'.
‘Princesse sanspareille…’
Peerless princess… Up they floated, trembling, shining, absurd. Pop! Pop!
‘Unique objet de mon espérance…’
Sole object of my hopes… Pop!
I was afraid to look at the king. He would know exactly what Frederick was doing.
With theatrical fervour, Frederick pressed both hands to his heart. He seemed fearless now, not caring what anyone thought but me.
Don’t jump to conclusions this time, I warned myself. Don’t believe just because you want. Perhaps he really is a fool and not just acting one.
I put on a glare like the queen and held out my hand, frowning as if thinking distant thoughts.
He took my hand and kissed it formally, but gave it a tiny squeeze. His hand was now very warm.
I had not mistaken his intent. He understood. He wanted to amuse me. I felt a stab of elation so sharp that it was painful. Who would have thought it could be so intensely delightful to be in collusion?
‘… la joie sublime,’
he concluded. He held the pause, waiting like a player for a flourish of unheard trumpets. Sublime joy, indeed.
When we left the Banqueting House, Frederick took my hand again, neither formally nor shyly but as if grabbing for safety, as if I were a lucky charm or an amulet. I should perhaps have objected to his familiarity before negotiations for our marriage had been advanced, let alone concluded, but I felt a rush of warmth at being able to give this feeling of safety.
‘How did you dare risk angering both the king and the queen?’ I asked.
‘Because only your opinion matters,’ he said. Then he blushed.
‘I wish that were true.’
Then he was dragged away with Henry to wash and change his clothes in his own lodgings at St James’s, though I felt that he would have preferred to go with me wherever I went, like a duckling following its mother.
From a high window, I watched him crossing the park with Henry. I felt startled but light. For some reason, I remembered my slight puzzlement at feeling the light blow on my head, alone in the forest long ago, before I saw that what had struck me was the golden leaf.
We both had to wait on the rhythms of state.
‘Anatomise him, Tallie! I beg you,’ I said. ‘He must have faults.’
‘If he’s a man, he will.’
Knowing now how she had been raised, I forgave her.
I did not speak to him again until the following afternoon. Then, although his visit to my lodgings was formal and we were always surrounded by other people so that we could not speak freely, we laughed a great deal at not very much.
After supper, we met again, this time without the hindrance or buttressing of ceremony. Attended only by Tallie and Lady Anne in my small presence chamber, while my ladies gamed and flirted in the outer room, I waited for him to slip and reveal his true vile nature, like Brunswick. In truth, I was already almost past unfavourable judgement. If Tallie saw faults, I no longer wanted to hear them. I was sliding out of my own control.
His eyelashes were longer and darker than my own, I noted in the midst of my confusion. He gave off a fresh smell, like mountain air. In the firelight, his dark skin looked smooth and elegant beside my fair, freckled Scottish hide – not so dark as Tallie’s but enough to make him a different creature from myself. He laughed happily when my dogs leapt up onto bench beside us and licked his ears and pawed at his legs.
Trey dropped onto his forepaws and stuck his rear haunchesin the air, offering to play. Frederick fell to his knees and slapped his hands on the floor to accept the offer.
I stopped laughing. He looked up. Suddenly we grew shy and still.
Trey barked to remind our visitor to pay attention to the game. Frederick smiled and slapped the floor again.
Apart from a slight shadow in his eyes, he now seemed perfect in every detail. I wanted to touch him. I felt sure that he wanted to touch me.
‘You should rejoin your ladies,’ Tallie murmured in my ear. ‘They are all about to burst with curiosity.’
For the rest of the evening, we made somewhat tedious conversation as if marking time with no purpose but to know that we exchanged words and could listen to each other’s voices.
A little before bedtime, he kissed me. It was only a forfeit in a game my ladies insisted on playing. But when he leaned over me and put his soft mouth against mine, I wanted him to go on and on kissing me. I could have leaned forever on the warmth of his mouth. I felt my life suffused by a warm, steady light. Happiness had not ended with my childhood, after all. If his kiss felt so good, I knew that I could tolerate the rest. A sudden warmth between my legs suggested that I might even enjoy it.
Then Belle growled from her place on my lap. My ladies laughed.
‘She’s jealous!’ Frederick said with delight. ‘Such a clever girl, to see the truth so fast.’ He knelt beside me and offered Belle his hand to sniff. ‘We must become friends, you and I,’ he whispered to her. ‘I’m sure we two love your mistress more than any other creatures alive.’
‘I’ll tell her to bite you if you insist on playing the fool,’ I said.
‘I’m not playing.’ Our eyes met over Belle’s head.
For the next few moments, we both scratched earnestly at
Belle’s fluffy head, aware only of how our fingers chanced to brush against each other.
‘I shall marry him,’ I told Anne and Tallie that night.
Six weeks later, any chance of the marriage was gone. The reason was even more terrible than the result.
OCTOBER 1612
In the second week of Frederick’s visit, Henry was forced by a fever to take to his bed. When I visited St James’s in the afternoon, he greeted me happily and assured me that he merely had a bit of a chill. Only the day before, Frederick and I had watched him playing tennis, stripped to his shirt.
But Peter Blank told Tallie that the prince had been voiding both stomach and belly for most of the morning, then drinking thirstily between bouts of the flux and vomiting. When Tallie pressed him, Peter confessed that the prince had also been ill twice in the week before Frederick arrived but had sworn all his attendants to secrecy, so as not to spoil the occasion. Then I remembered how pale Henry had looked while we waited in the Banqueting Hall, and how he sat on a chair when I had expected him to stand.
The following day, my brother seemed recovered. Then four days later, on the twenty-ninth of October, he missed the banquet in Frederick’s honour at the London Guild Hall. The next day, however, swearing that he was well again, he got up to play cards with Baby Charles and Prince Henry of Nassau, who had come to England with Frederick. He did the same the next day.
Then even Henry could no longer pretend. His doctors sent reports to the king at Whitehall. The prince was pale and lethargic and could not rise from his bed. His head ached. He continued to spew up all that he ate.
The king ordered a visit to see for himself. My mother insisted on going as well. In the end, all of us – father, mother, Baby Charles, Frederick and I – crossed the park together to St. James’s.
I scarcely recognised my brother. The doctors had shaved off his fair hair so that they could apply cupping glasses to his scalp to relieve his headaches. Newly-exposed knobs on his skull changed the shape of his head, making him into a stranger who looked something like my brother. The cupping glasses had burnt red circles into his scalp. His face, looking as raw and naked as a skinned rabbit, was pale and gaunt, stamped with dark half moons under his eyes.
‘Your majesties…’ Ill as he was, Henry tried to stand but had to lie back on his pillows again. He saw my horrified eyes on his hairless head. ‘Don’t fear, Elizabella,’ he said cheerfully. ‘It will grow out again before the wedding.’
Don’t weep! I ordered myself. Henry must not know what I see!
Our father stood back from the bed. ‘He’ll recover,’ he announced firmly. ‘I’ll send Mayerne.’
The four attending doctors exchanged glances. They understood very well. They had just been stripped of authority. Mayerne was the king’s personal physician.
The king turned and left. The queen and Baby Charles followed him.
‘Elizabella!’ Henry lifted his hand to hold me back.
I ran to the bed, grasped his hand and stroked it. ‘Dearest Hal! Mend! I beg you! You must!’
‘Promise me again,’ said my brother, ‘that you will marry Frederick.’
‘Duty and happiness join together,’ I said. ‘Can’t you see how much he pleases me?’
Henry smiled. ‘I’m happy for it. But that’s mere liking. Promise me also resolve.’
‘I swear it!’ I said. ‘On this hand.’ I kissed his palm. Then kissed it again. ‘Grow your hair back as fast as you can!’
‘Elizabella…’
‘Bessie!’ my father shouted from the outer room. ‘Come away at once! You’ll tire the prince when he needs all his strength!’
‘You don’t tire me,’ said Henry. ‘Come back again, soon. I beg you.’
‘I will.’ I kissed his hand again. ‘I promise.’
My father glared when I emerged from the bedchamber. ‘You’re not to visit again, d’ye hear? You’ll catch the contagion.’
Contagion by illness, I wondered. Or contagion by Henry’s power?
That night, I asked Tallie to borrow men’s clothes for me again. She brought them, together with the first whispers of poison.
The Archbishop of Canterbury visited my brother.
Cold with terror and desperation, I set off to reach my brother disguised as a groom. I entered through the private gate that opened onto the park, using the key that Henry had given me. Then I slipped through the corridors and up the staircase in King Henry’s Tower to the door of my brother’s bedchamber.
Snatching a glimpse of the Dauphin’s portrait had been easy. This time, people were watching for me, on the king’s orders. This time, they saw me, not my livery.
‘I’m sorry, your grace, I can’t let you pass,’ said the man-at-arms on Henry’s door. ‘His majesty fears the spread of contagion.’
I tried to peer past him into my brother’s room. I could smell the sour stink of sickness and a fug of burning herbs.
‘Bring me my sword and hat!’ my brother was shouting. He struggled to rise from his bed. ‘I must be gone! They wait for me in Jamestown!’
‘Your highness, you rave.’ The doctor placed his hands on Henry’s shoulders.
Henry fell back onto his pillows. ‘I promised them I would come! I will disappoint…’
‘Henry!’ I screamed. ‘I’m here!’
Someone inside closed the door before I knew if he had heard me.
‘Your grace,’ said the man-at-arms. ‘If you will not leave at once, I must escort you back to Whitehall.’
I smelled burning feathers.
I retreated into the park again. Faintly in the distance, I heard my brother screaming. When it grew darker, I tried again through the kitchens, which opened directly onto the park, stealing a flagon of wine to carry with me as a further disguise. This time, I was stopped even sooner, on the outer threshold of Henry’s apartments. I tried once more, through the stables. They were alert for me everywhere.
The following day, I returned. I was stopped at the outer gate of the palace.
On the fifth of November, the king was told that his son was dying. ‘Eight years!’ he was heard to shout. ‘Eight years after the plot to kill him along with me!’ He fled to Theobald’s.
On the same day, first word of the prince’s illness reached the general populace. Prayers for his recovery rose in every church. Ralegh was said to have sent a sovereign cordial from his captivity in the Tower, claiming that his remedy was stronger than any poison known to man.
I paced the tennis court gallery and stared from the window across the park as if I could travel to St James’s by the forceof my will. Frederick stayed at St James’s, to be near Henry and ready to bring me word of any change.
‘You must try to go in my place!’ I told Tallie. ‘They might mistake you for Peter.’
Again, she borrowed clothes from Peter Blank. Late that night, she crept into my bed chamber and told me how she gained entry, taking a stinking close stool from a chamber groom doubled over with retching in the passage outside Henry’s chamber.
‘"I’ll empty that,” I said to him. And he was more than happy to let me.’ She avoided my eyes. ‘In the furore inside, no one noticed another groom coming and going with basins.’
Even a black one, I thought with terror. The doctors were blind with panic. ‘What are the doctors doing to save him?’
‘Their best,’ she said, after the slightest hesitation. ‘They’re afraid, but doing their best.’
‘Go back!’ I said.
She took my hands briefly and went.
I lay awake on my bed. I must have dozed because I woke the next morning to the sound of shouting and weeping. I flung myself from my bed and ran to the door of my chamber. My maid sat weeping on a stool.