rabbit embroidered in fine red wool on one of my new smocks. ‘I may be only a countrywoman, but I know a thing or two about how things run there in London. And there’s Lord Salisbury to fear, of course, Robert Cecil…the twisted little son of Burleigh. The Chief Secretary has an intelligencer placed in every noble house in England…and in France too, I’ve no doubt. One of your women or grooms will most certainly be reporting to him.’
Anne had been listening with open dismay. ‘Will you not keep me as one of your ladies?’
‘Anne!’ said her aunt. ‘Don’t subject poor Lady Elizabeth to petitions already!’
I tried to imagine being without that placid, agreeable and slightly dull presence beside me, night and day. Warm, breathing, often less amusing than my monkey or dogs, but able to converse, to ask my opinion and able to understand my instructions.
‘But I must have Anne with me!’ I cried. I forgot how tedious I sometimes found her chattering.
Faced with Howards and all those other treacherous creatures described by Lady Harington, I could not imagine doing without Anne. ‘You must be my Lady of Honour!’
‘Yes!’ cried Anne. ‘Thank you, my lady!’ She turned to her aunt. ‘Now I must have some new gowns too! May I have one with satin bows at the waist? I am so fond of bows!’
Lady Harington nodded. Though she had reproved Anne for asking, my lady guardian could not hide her gratification at my choice of her niece. ‘You must keep each other steady,’ she said. ‘Whatever you do, don’t either of you make an enemy of Lady Elizabeth’s steward. You have no idea what petty tyranny that person can exercise over your daily life.’
At that moment, I wanted Lady Harington to come with me too, to guide me in a world that clearly would not be like Combe.
‘I will dine with my mother again, as I did when I visited her at Holyrood Palace,’ I told Anne that night. ‘The two of us together, in her little closet, which had a beautiful red, blue and gold painted ceiling, and a fire, and with only one or two of her ladies.’ Anne would fall asleep while I listed the delicacies we had eaten and the games we had played together after eating.
I did not tell Anne about the other scenes I imagined. In London my mother would take me in her arms again as she had at Holyrood. She would kiss my forehead, and look closely at me to see what sort of creature I had become, and say how much I had grown since she saw me last. I imagined how I might even, in time, tell her what had happened to me in the forest, so that she could tell me how brave I had been.
But in darker moments, I feared this London visit. I had not seen my mother for so long that I half-distrusted my memories of her. And I scarcely knew my younger brother, poor sickly Baby Charles, whom the queen had kept closer by her on the journey south than either Henry or me. I did not know where Charles was now, nor in whose care. I feared that Henry might no longer love me after being so long apart. The thought of my father stabbed my belly like a knife. Someone, somewhere, had my treasonous letter. In London, I might learn who had it. At such moments, I did not want ever to leave Combe.
In the end, God did not dare to deny Lady Harington’s prayers. Bad weather delayed my uncle for almost six weeks, even though it was already May. I arrived in London, panting for breath so to speak, just before the Danish ships arrived at Gravesend.
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON, 1606
At Holyrood, Henry had told me that our new people were good soldiers and successful merchants. He led me to believe that they were measured in temperament, being either wily or cheerful, and, when necessary, severe. The crowds I saw on the journey south had been clean, dressed in their finest clothes, and cheerful, made well-behaved by hope for their new monarch. At Combe, Lord Harington’s example led me to believe that the English prayed even more than Scottish Kirk men. But in the bishop’s little study overlooking the scaffold in Paul’s Churchyard, my view of the English darkened.
Tonight, I could not tear my eyes from the alarming but educating spectacle around the royal dais in the Great Presence Chamber. Though Lord Harington had done his best to shield me, I had learned within a few days of coming to Whitehall that the English were not just cruel. They were wild men. They cursed, fought and drank too much, just for the sheer joy of it, not to a purpose like the Scottish lairds. They sweated over dancing as earnestly as they practised with their weapons, then claimed that neither activity made them turn a hair. I had seen them tilt without horses, attacking each other on foot, and half-murder each other over a game of bowls. They came in all heights and colour of hair and skin. They believed that the rest of the world was theirs for the taking and, at full shout in any company, they resented the Spanish, Portuguese and Dutch as if these nations were other suitors daring to chase their women.
For the invading Scots, whom they openly called savages, they reserved their iciness. And their malice—drunk or sober.
And I had had other surprises, none of them good. My mother was not at Whitehall to greet me, but down river in her palace at Greenwich. To my consternation, I learned that she had recently been delivered of another baby, a girl, my sister Sophia, who died the day after she was born and whom I would never see. I had not known that my mother was pregnant again.
Because my Whitehall lodgings were still being carved out of the Small Closed Tennis Court, I had been bundled, with only Lady Anne, my chamberer, my single French maid, my sempstress, and two house grooms, into three rooms full of plaster dust in the old queen’s lodgings overlooking the Thames, which were themselves still being finished to house my mother and her household. My two horse grooms were found sleeping corners in the stables. The rest of my small retinue, including Lady Harington who in the end had insisted on coming with me, were sent back to Combe.
The king’s Lord Chamberlain, Thomas Howard, Earl of Suffolk, himself explained the difficulties to me. It seemed that the Lord Chamberlain, The King’s Master of Works and other officials still scrambled to squeeze the new king and his family—all with their separate households—into the former palaceof the unmarried, childless Queen Elizabeth.
Henry was at either Hampton Court or Windsor, but I had no time to seek him out before being told that he was gone again to Gravesend with the king, to welcome my uncle. I was left behind with Baby Charles, to be loaded down with our finest clothes, and allowed to greet our uncle, the Danish king, on the Whitehall water steps.
Now six years old, Baby Charles had all the failings of the runt in a litter of dogs. While we waited on the steps, he allowed me to take his hand but avoided my eye. His weaknesses deserved my sisterly protection, I told myself. I wanted to love him and vowed to be both tender and patient with him. By surviving for even this long, he had confounded a general expectation of his early death. Still in the care of his nurse, he was small for his age and walked unsteadily on legs bowed by a softening of the bones. Pale patches of scalp showed through his fine, thin hair. When he dared to speak, he stammered and formed his words with difficulty. When silent, he wore a sulky expression. He showed no interest in riding or even playing. But he was my own, my brother.
His hand tightened in mine when sudden thunder began to shake the air. A loose roof tile smashed on the ground. The water of the Thames quivered.
‘It’s only the guns at the Tower,’ I said. ‘Saluting the royal barges. Listen! You can hear the people shouting. They’re almost here!’
Distant cheers rolled slowly up the river towards us from crowds lining the banks.
The first boats appeared around the Lambeth bend, tiny spots of red and gold.
‘Henry’s c-coming!’ Baby Charles exclaimed excitedly. I glanced down. He was smiling for the first time since I had arrived in London.
‘Yes, Henry!’ I smiled back and squeezed his hand. He and I were bound by our love for Henry, at the very least. ‘Just listen to those cheers for two kings and a king-to-be.’
For