Francis and his court intend to arrive in April for the Feast of Saint George. We have three months to prepare. The royal dressmaker will soon begin work on your new gown. Your mother, the queen, sent word that she favours green trimmed with white for you. You’re to have a cloak made of cloth of gold.”
“I hate green,” I grumbled. Perhaps this was a battle I could win, although my gentle, patient mother matched my father in stubbornness. “And I absolutely do not care if green and white are our royal colours!”
“It seems that today madam dislikes nearly everything,” Salisbury said. “Perhaps in the morning the world will look better.”
“It will not.”
“Nevertheless, madam, it is time for prayers.”
I slid down from my lofty mattress and knelt on the cold stone floor beside the governess, as I did every night and every morning, and together we recited our prayers.
That finished, two of the serving maids came to remove my kirtle and dress me in my silk sleeping skirt. They snuffed out the candles until only one still burned. I climbed back on to my high bedstead and, propped on one elbow, watched my governess stretch out carefully on the narrow trundle next to my bed and draw up the satin coverlet. Salisbury was tall, and the coverlet was short. When she pulled the coverlet up to her sharp chin, her feet stuck out. This was the first all day that I had felt the least bit like laughing.
SOON AFTER my eleventh birthday in the spring of 1527, I, Mary Tudor, daughter of Henry VIII, king of England, and his wife, Queen Catherine of Aragon, teetered on a stool. The royal dressmaker and her assistants pulled and pushed at my betrothal gown, pinning and tucking the heavy green silk. Would they never be done with it? My head ached, and my stomach felt queasy.
“Come, madam,” the dressmaker coaxed. “You want to please your bridegroom, do you not?”
“No, I do not,” I snapped. From everything I had overheard from the gossiping ladies of the household, Francis, king of France, was extremely ugly and repulsive, a lecherous old man afflicted with warts and pockmarks and foul breath.
“But your father, the king, wishes it,” the dressmaker reminded me.
I sighed and stood straight and motionless. Your father, the king, wishes it. How I had come to dread those words! Soon the French king and his court would arrive, and I, obeying my father’s wishes, would place my little hand in the grisly paw of the horrible Francis and promise to be his bride.
FINALLY THE GOWN was ready, the preparations finished, and my trunks packed for the journey to London from my palace in Ludlow, near the Welsh border. Travelling with my entourage of courtiers and ladies-in-waiting, Salisbury and I were carried in the royal litter, which was lined with padded silk and plump velvet cushions and borne between two white horses. After almost two weeks of bumping over washed-out roads, we arrived, muddy and bedraggled, at Greenwich Palace on the River Thames, five miles east of London.
As I ran through the palace to find my mother, I found myself surrounded by commotion. New tapestries had been hung along the walls in the Great Hall. The royal musicians and costumers bustled about arranging masques and other entertainments. Carts delivered provisions for the banquets to the palace kitchens.
Despite the excitement, or perhaps because of it, I felt unwell. As the arrival of the French king neared, I suffered headaches and a queasiness of the stomach. My physician treated them with doses of evil-tasting potions, but they did no good.
Then word came that the ships carrying King Francis and his attendants had been delayed by storms. My bridegroom would not arrive until the weather cleared. An idea occurred to me: maybe his ship will he lost. Maybe he will drown and I won’t ever have to marry him. Almost as soon as the thought crossed my mind, I regretted it. As I had been instructed since early childhood, I would have to admit these wicked thoughts to my confessor, do penance, and receive absolution.
But as long as I had committed such a sin — a rather small one, in my opinion — I decided that I might as well try to turn it to my advantage. Kneeling on the hard stone floor, my spine straight as a lance, my hands clasped beneath my chin, my eyes turned towards Heaven, I prayed: dear God, if it be thy will to take King Francis, please send a good husband in his stead!
I was not sure what a good husband was. For that I put my trust in God.
FOR NEARLY THREE weeks the storms raged and then suddenly abated. Towards mid-April King Francis and his huge retinue of courtiers and servants landed in Dover. They made their way to Greenwich, escorted by my father’s knights and henchmen.
“Perhaps he won’t find me to his satisfaction after all,” I said hopefully to Salisbury.
“Perhaps, but that is improbable, madam,” said Salisbury. Her face, plain as a plank, was as serene as ever. “The French king requested a portrait, which your father sent him, nicely presented in an ivory box with the Tudor rose carved upon the cover. King Francis much liked the sweet countenance he saw therein.”
How infuriating! “Salisbury, why must it be this way? if I had asked for his portrait, to see if he pleased me, would I have got it?”
Salisbury laughed. “Unlikely. That is not the way of this world.”
“Well, it should be,” I grumbled, although I knew she was right.
THE FESTIVAL honouring Saint George, the patron saint of England, commenced with an evening banquet. This would be my first glimpse of the man to whom I would be betrothed. As King Francis entered the Great Hall with a trumpet fanfare, I could make out that he was nearly as tall as my father but much thinner, save for a little round belly. Unfortunately, he was seated at one end of the king’s table, and I at the other. I have always been shortsighted, and at a distance I could not see his features clearly. All I could make out were his white hands fluttering about like startled pigeons. But I could hear him — he had a laugh like a braying donkey.
As I was peering towards him, trumpeters announced the first course: two dozen dishes that included frumenty with venison; salted hart; roast egret, swan, and crane; lamprey; pike; heron; carp; kid; perch; rabbit; mutton pasties; and baked quinces. The second course followed with as many dishes — crayfish, prawns, oysters, conger eel, plover, redshanks, snipe, larks baked in a pie, boiled custard, and marchpane.
The custom, as Salisbury had taught me, was to have only a taste, a morsel of this, a titbit of that. It was usually a hard custom to observe, especially when the prawns and oysters appeared. Even though I was very fond of these delicacies, precisely the dishes that Salisbury would not allow me at home, when I caught sight of the white hands flying about at the other end of the table and heard the braying laughter, I lost my taste even for prawns. Imagine having to live with this for the rest of my life! I found that I could scarcely swallow.
The banquet concluded with the presentation of a grand dessert, a replica of Noah’s Ark, nearly three feet tall and made entirely of sugar. A procession of every kind of animal, both real and imaginary, moulded of almond paste, paraded up the gangplank of the sugar boat. On the deck stood a miniature couple, which I took to be Noah and his wife. Then my father pointed at the figures and called out loudly, “Look you! The king of France and our own dear Princess of Wales, greeting their loyal subjects!”
The company sent up a cheer. As was expected of me, I lowered my eyes and smiled, but I wanted nothing more than to run from the table.
When the feasting ended, it was time to present King Francis and his courtiers to my mother and me. This was the moment I had dreaded. The courtiers came first, speaking to me in French, Latin, and Italian. (“Stupid questions,” I complained later to Salisbury. “Asking me how old I am in three different languages.”) I replied easily, but my attention was on King Francis, who moved closer and closer. I could now clearly see his rheumy eyes and long beak of a nose.
Then the French king bent over my hand and kissed it wetly. I nearly gagged. “The jewel of England,” my father told Francis proudly. “My pearl