I say it hardly befits her, whose head comes only to the top of my bodice, to comment on my appearance. “You’re no taller than the queen’s dwarf,” I say crushingly. “Don’t tell me that I’m gurning.”
“I am no dwarf,” she says firmly. “I was born small but royal. I am quite different from Thomasina. Everyone says so.”
I can’t challenge her petite dignity. “Oh, and who are all these people who say so?”
“I do,” she says with huge dignity. “And it is me who matters.”
She has always been quite untroubled that she is so short and not growing anymore. Jane once told her that dwarfs in some heathen country were worshipped as gods, and it filled her with pride. She thinks very highly of herself for one who stands so low. I think it very odd that I should have had one sister who despised the world of the flesh, and one too tiny to desire it, and here am I, born between the two of them, tall and pretty, the most eager girl for worldly pleasures in all of the court.
“I suppose you want to marry him again,” Mary says sagely. “I would have thought that the way they treated you would have put you off the Herberts forever.”
I tell her, not at all! Not at all! We were never married, not at all! Just as she was never betrothed either. The marriage is denied and forgotten and I have no idea why he smiles so charmingly at me. He should have kept me as his wife if he likes me so much, if he had the sense to go against his family’s orders and follow his heart. But he made the mistake of letting me go, and now he sees that I am a center of attention at court, I am pleased to think he regrets it.
But the other gentleman—actually nobleman—who is taking an interest in me is even more surprising: the Spanish ambassador, Count de Feria.
I’m not a fool. I don’t think that he has fallen in love with my fair prettiness, though he is kind enough to tell me that I am like a little alabaster statue, my skin so clear and my hair as fair as an angel’s. He tells me they would kneel to my beauty in Spain, that I look like a painting of an angel in stained glass, luminously beautiful. I enjoy all this, of course, but I know very well that it is not my looks—even if they are the very best at court—that interest him. Of course it is my royal kinship, my proximity to the throne. And if the Spanish ambassador takes an interest in me, does that mean the heir of Spain—the King Consort of England himself—is also taking an interest in me? Concealing his attraction to me by an empty flirtation with Elizabeth? Am I, in fact, being groomed for the throne by the papists, just as Jane was pushed there by the reformers? Do the Spanish hope that when the queen dies they can declare me as their heir, and Philip will marry me, and rule through me?
I don’t ask the Spanish ambassador this directly; I am too clever for that. Of course I understand how these games of power are to be played. And he says nothing directly, except that I am admired by King Philip, and do I have a kindness for Spain? Am I a determined reformer like my poor sister or do I incline to the true Church?
I look down modestly, and I smile at my feet and say that no one could help but admire King Philip. I say nothing in the least heretical or even argumentative, but I swear to myself that I will be no one’s puppet. Nobody will ever order me again. If anyone is thinking of pushing me onto the throne, just as they pushed my sister, they will find that I am queenly in my own right; they will find that if they put the crown on my head, I will keep it, and my head as well. No one is going to tempt me into a usurpation that cannot be maintained. Nobody is going to tempt me to insist on my inheritance. I will be a careful wise servant of my own interests. I will not risk anything for my faith. If God wants me on the throne of England, then He will have to make the effort Himself.
But I listen carefully when the Spanish ambassador goes beyond flattery to plotting. If the Spanish persuade Queen Mary to name me as heir, and then support me, I am certain to succeed.
“And, despite your sister’s faith, do you incline naturally to the old religion?” Count de Feria asks me, sweet as the marmalade that he spoons onto my plate.
I look up at him from under my eyelashes as he invites me to deny my dead sister and everything she believed in. “Of course I follow the queen’s religion,” I say easily. “I have had to learn it all from the very beginning, and learn the Latin Mass too, since I was brought up in a household filled with reformers praying in English. But I have been glad to study and learn the truth.” I hesitate. “I am no heretic.”
Of course I am not. The queen my cousin who came to the throne so kindly, assuring us all that everyone should find God in their own way, executed my sister for her faith, and now brings in the Holy Inquisition to torture everyone else and burn Jane’s fellow believers. Not me! I am not going to be imprisoned for a form of words. I am not going to be beheaded for failing to curtsey to the Host, or forgetting to dip my fingers in the stoup, or any other thing that is life and death today, but did not even exist yesterday. Now the altars are hidden behind the rood screen so the priest’s work is all a mystery. Now there are statues in every niche, and a candle before every one of them. Now there are saints’ days when nobody works, and fast days when we are supposed to eat nothing but fish. There are all sorts of practices that I have had to learn in order not to look like a reformer and the sister of a dangerous reformer martyr. I bob and genuflect and sniff the incense with the most faithful. Nobody is going to name me as a heretic because I turn my back on the hidden altar and don’t pop up or down at the right moment.
I am determined on this. I am going to do whatever anyone asks of me. I am going to win a fortune from this most devout queen, and then she is going to choose a handsome man for me to marry and have beautiful sons. Then I will be the papist heir to the throne with one of the faithful in the cradle, and I don’t doubt she will name me as the next queen. This is my destiny. I will help it on its way but I won’t take any risks. So I smile at her husband’s ambassador, who is all but asking me if I want to be queen, and I make sure that he knows that there is no one in England more suitable.
Except for Margaret Douglas, of course, who thinks it should be her, except for little Mary Queen of Scots in her palaces in France who thinks it should be her with a French army to press her claims. Except for Elizabeth, the least likely heir to her half sister, disqualified by the law, by religion, by temperament, and by birth.
Elizabeth the Unhappy comes to court and sighs in the corners as if her heart is breaking for the imprisoned clergy and the martyrs burning at Smithfield. Elizabeth dresses very plainly, the liar, as if she does not love beautiful clothes and rich jewels. She is a peacock hidden in black. Elizabeth comes to Mass and holds her hand to her side as if she is in too much pain to bow to the Host, and sometimes she manages to faint and be carried out so that the waiting crowds outside can see her dying for her reformist faith, and think the queen is cruel to her half sister. Elizabeth the minx recovers with remarkable speed and can later be seen walking in the gardens with King Philip, his eyes on her down-turned face as he leans towards her to hear what she is whispering.
I think that Elizabeth is playing a long game and planning that the queen, who is sicker and quieter every day, will die, and then King Philip will marry her and make her his wife and Queen of England in Mary’s place. As the Spanish ambassador courts me, his master the king courts Elizabeth, and I see her maidenly reserve is as sincere as mine, and we both have our eyes on the throne.
She and I meet every day in attendance on the queen—and we bow to each other with careful politeness and we kiss as cousins, and I swear we both think: why, you are further from the throne than I am! What are they promising you? And I swear we both think: and if I am ever queen, you will know it!
WHITEHALL PALACE,
LONDON, WINTER 1558