My mother is ill and sometimes withdraws from court altogether. Mary goes with her to Richmond. There are no struggles for precedence behind Elizabeth; my mother has lost all heart for the fight.
The only person who singles me out at all is the Spanish ambassador, Count de Feria, and he is still so charming and so admiring and so warm that I cannot resist confiding in him. I tell him that I think I will never be happy in England while Elizabeth is queen, and he says—so invitingly!—that I should go to Spain with him and the countess, where they will introduce me to the families of all the handsome noblemen who have gone home with Philip. He tells me that there is a new treaty between England and France and the young Mary Queen of Scots has been cheated by her royal French family in order to get peace. She will never be allowed to press her claim to the English throne again. She is discounted. I am the only heir to England.
I laugh—for how could I ever go to Spain? But I promise him that I will always take his advice, that he is my only friend, and that I shall marry no one without confirming my choice with him. But I am not so indiscreet as to tell him that I have already chosen.
NONSUCH PALACE,
SURREY, SUMMER 1559
The absence of Ned from court goes on and on, and now I hear that he is said to be unwell and has to stay with his mother to be nursed. They are a very sickly family. I don’t think Janey has been well since the day I met her, but she has never let it stop her attendance at court before. I would have thought that nothing could have been better for them both than traveling with the court on progress—riding every day and in clean air. I am sure that would be the best thing for them. I am afraid that his mother is trying to keep Ned from me, and this is so terribly unfair on me as I have done nothing to displease her or him. It is all the fault of Elizabeth, whose bad treatment of me makes everyone avoid me.
She persecutes me in a dozen small ways. I get poorer rooms than I should; I take precedence in processions but she does not favor me in private. I am not invited to draw pretty gowns from the royal wardrobe—she never gives me anything. Ladies-in-waiting are paid a small fee and make their fortunes from gifts and favors; but I never get anything from Elizabeth and nobody is ever going to pay me for an introduction as it is well known that she never talks with me.
I take a small satisfaction that when the court goes on progress, Elizabeth has to order the royal wardrobe to issue gowns to all her ladies, and of course, I wear them better than anybody. Her great flirt, the master of horse Robert Dudley, may try to forget that I was once his sister-in-law, but he still sees that I am mounted well on a strong hunter. Elizabeth may not favor me, but she cannot conceal that I am the most beautiful girl at court, exquisite when I am dancing, striking when I am riding. My stepgrandmother, who was a famous beauty in her day when she was the young wife of my grandfather Charles Brandon, kisses me on my forehead and says that I am far and away the prettiest girl at court, just like she was at my age. We travel for some weeks and then we go to Nonsuch Palace, which is a fairy-tale place set in beautiful grounds beside the river. The widower Henry FitzAlan, the Earl of Arundel, owns the palace and remembers his duty to the family of his first wife, my aunt, and brings me forward in all the entertainments he has laid on for the court. When Ned Seymour and Janey finally join the court, they find me dancing in the masques and leading the hunt on my new horse, at the very center of the summertime entertainments.
The daily rhythm of court life brings Ned to my side at chapel and breakfast, hunting and dinner, dancing and playing cards. Every day the court plans and performs a new event. My uncle Arundel has organized plays and masques, dances and picnics, races and tournaments. Robert Dudley is everywhere, with little touches of pretty ceremonies, extra celebrations. He is at the center of everything and nobody can take their eyes off him. He is a man restored to wealth and favor and he has the golden sheen of success on him. Elizabeth the queen is openly, obviously, shamelessly besotted with him. She cannot stop herself looking for him; her face lights up when she sees him. She is drawn across the room to him. I can see them look for each other, and see no one else. I think only I fully understand this. I know what she is feeling, because it is the same for me.
In the council room of the palace the senior lords, especially the old ones, call Privy Council meetings while the court is at play. There are constant emergencies, and messengers from parliament come every day urging her to marry Philip of Spain’s cousin, or the French prince: someone—anyone!—to give her a powerful ally and the chance of a son and heir. But Elizabeth rides all day neck and neck with Robert Dudley and dances with him all night, and any woman at court could tell the council that she does not even hear them. Helpfully, she agrees that she must be married, that the safety of the kingdom requires a great foreign consort, and the future of the kingdom must be secured by an heir, but her dark eyes follow Robert Dudley round the room as he goes from one beautiful girl to another but always ends up at her side.
Everyone is watching this courtship, and in the heady atmosphere of a court where the queen is openly, madly in love with a married man, everyone is free to flirt and even steal away and kiss. The older men and advisors who are so bad-tempered and grave, the older women who are so insistent on modesty and always hark back to how things used to be, are simply ignored when the Queen of England rides out with her horse shoulder to shoulder with the man they are beginning to whisper is her lover, their hands hidden, entwined, as they ride home.
Certainly no one is watching me, no one is watching Ned. We meet in Janey’s bedroom when she is too ill to get up from her bed. I am there to care for her; he is a good brother, visiting his sister. As she lies on her pillows and smiles sleepily on the two of us, we sit in the window and hold hands and whisper. We meet in every corner and doorway around the court for an exchange of half a dozen words and a brush of his kiss on my hand, on my neck, on the sleeve of my gown. When he passes me in the gallery, he catches at my fingers; when he plays a lute and sings a love song, he glances first at me, as if to say: these words are for you. We play cards together with Janey and my aunt Bess, now Lady St. Loe, in the evening, and we dance together when they call for partners. Everyone knows that Ned Seymour always partners Lady Katherine. Nobody else even asks me to dance, none of the girls flutter at Ned. Even the old ladies at court—his mother, my mother, and their sharp-eyed friends—have to observe what a pretty couple we make, so tall and so fair with royal connections on both sides.
What nobody sees is that when the dancing is over, we go to the corner of the great hall and his hand comes around my waist and he turns me towards him as if we are still dancing and he might hold me close.
“Katherine, you are my sweetheart,” he whispers. “I am mad for you.”
His touch makes me dizzy. I think I will faint but he holds me up. I let him put his hand under my chin; I allow him to turn my face up to his for a kiss. His lips are warm and urgent, and he smells deliciously of clean linen and orange water. He buries his face in my neck, and I feel him nibble the lobe of my ear. I cling to him, so that I feel him down the length of my body, his strong arms, his broad chest, his hard lean thigh against me.
“We have to marry,” he says. “It is a jest no longer.”
I can’t nod for his mouth is on mine. He releases me for a moment and I put my hand on the back of his neck to pull him back into the kiss.
“Marry me?” he says as his mouth comes down again.
HAMPTON COURT PALACE,
SUMMER 1559
álvaro de la Quadra, the new Spanish ambassador, comes striding down the garden path in his sweeping bishop’s robes to bring me the news, as if we are friends and conspirators.