Carolyn Meyer - Mary, Bloody Mary

On the day of the ceremony, King Henry made his entrance with a flourish of horns, accompanied by a host of earls and barons with their knights and servants. Cardinal Wolsey was there, of course, all in scarlet. He displayed his terrible teeth in something like a smile, but the smile never reached his glittering eyes.

I shivered and turned to my father. How magnificent he looked! He was dressed in close-fitting hose that showed off his muscular legs. Over these he wore red velvet trunk hose stuffed with cotton wool to form an onion shape and slashed to display glints of silver under the velvet. His doublet of quilted black velvet was covered all over with pearls and other jewels. In my eyes King Henry was the handsomest man in all the world.

“Are you ready, my princess?” the king asked.

“I am, Your Majesty,” I said, dropping into a deep curtsy.

The musty chapel swallowed up the light of hundreds of flickering candles, and the ceremony droned on tediously. My beautiful gown was hot and wretchedly uncomfortable, but I moved smoothly through my part, as Salisbury had trained me. Kneeling before my father as he set a jewelled coronet upon my head and invested me with my new title, Princess of Wales, I gazed up at him, basking in his approval. “My perfect pearl of the world,” he called me. “The jewel of all England.”

It was not until several days after the royal banquet in my honour that I learned my father had decided to send me far away. Nor did he tell me himself. Wolsey brought me the news.

The cardinal sat on a stool in my schoolroom, his fat fingers splayed over his fat thighs, listening to my music lesson. He had brought me a gift in honour of my new title, a beautifully illuminated book of hours. But then he added, almost as an afterthought, “Princess Mary, the king has given orders that you are to move to Ludlow Palace, near the Welsh border, where you will establish your own court. The queen will not accompany you. Lady Margaret, countess of Salisbury, will go with you in her stead. You are to leave in a fortnight, madam.”

I felt my lips begin to tremble. Determined not to let him see how upset I was, I stared hard at his heavy gold cardinal’s ring. “My mother is not to accompany me? But why? Why?”

“Because the king wishes it,” rumbled the cardinal, and he heaved his large buttocks off the stool. He held out his ring. Concealing my loathing, I bent to kiss it.

It wasn’t that I had not been away from my mother. We were often separated, she at one palace with my father, I at another with nursemaids and tutors. But she was never more than a few hours away and we saw one another often. Ludlow was a journey of ten days even when the weather was fine. I would see her only rarely.

Later, when the cardinal had gone, I wept inconsolably on my mother’s knee. But I received little comfort.

“No good will come of your tears,” the queen warned. “Your father, the king, wishes it” — those terrible words! — “and so it shall be. But remember that you are now one step closer to the throne. This is the beginning of your training to rule as queen. Salisbury is my dearest friend, and she will act as your mother in my stead, being kind when you require kindness, stern when sternness is in order. And we shall write to one another as often as we wish and send each other remembrances, and when your father, the king, summons us to his court, we shall all be together.”

MY HOUSEHOLD would number three hundred, including the privy council that would make governing decisions in my name and a staff of servants to tend everyone. Days were spent packing the belongings for all these people into wooden carts to he drawn by Flemish draft horses.

I was used to moving. When my father held court, we stayed in one or another of the great palaces near London. Each summer my father went on progress, journeying into the countryside so that his subjects could see him. In autumn he hunted. Often my mother and I accompanied him on progresses and hunts, stopping for days or even weeks at a time in one of the king’s hunting lodges or at the country manor of a nobleman and his family. I had always enjoyed the bustle and excitement of those journeys. But this one was different. My heart was so heavy that for days I slept little and ate not at all.

The night before our departure my father summoned me to his chambers and gave me his blessing. I was angry and upset, but I could not show that. Why? Why? I wanted to cry out, but I was silent. My mother was present, and I ached to hurl myself into her arms but sensed that my father would not like such a display. I must behave like a future queen! My mother’s kiss that night seemed cool and dry, almost like no kiss at all.

On a late summer day, I sat miserably with Salisbury in my royal litter, waiting for the signal to be given for the journey to begin. The procession would stretch for miles, protected by royal henchmen on the lookout for brigands and thieves who preyed upon unwary travellers. As the trumpets sounded, I looked up for a last glimpse of my mother. She was standing at her open window, dressed in a plain kirtle. She waved to me and I watched her handkerchief flutter as we clattered out of the gates.

“When can we return?” I asked Salisbury frantically as we lurched forward.

“Yuletide,” she answered calmly.

Yuletide was nearly four months away. Such an unbearably long time!

As our procession wended towards Ludlow Palace, villagers along the way turned out to wave their caps and cheer.

“Greet your people, madam,” Salisbury instructed. “They’re saluting you.”

“I do not feel like it,” I protested.

“Feel like it or not, you are a princess,” Salisbury reminded me. “Smile and wave.”

Obediently I smiled and raised my royal hand to my subjects.

I MISSED my mother terribly. The arrival of a letter from Queen Catherine brightened me above all; I would rush to my room immediately to compose a reply. My attempts to write cheerful letters were always defeated by my yearning for her and by my complaints. The queen wrote regularly to Salisbury with instructions for my care, insisting upon discipline, wholesomeness, and simple food. I’m afraid I spent too much time writing to protest the boiled meat and plain bread and tasteless puddings that resulted. Later I would regret the time I had wasted with such unimportant matters.

I also complained about my tutor. King Henry, a man of sharp intellect and broad learning, had decreed that my studies must be rigorous. He hired a noted Spanish scholar, Juan Luis Vives, to oversee them.

Master Vives was thin-lipped and ill-tempered. Tufts of dark hair sprouted from his ears. He was never without his walking stick, which had a silver knob at the top in the shape of a fox’s head. I fancied it resembled the tutor himself.

“I see that you have been badly spoiled,” the tutor purred, like a cat about to pounce on a mouse. Then he changed to a roaring lion: “It is my belief that children should feel the rod upon their backs at least once a day.”

Terrified, I bent over my lesson book. Master Vives paced back and forth, smacking the stick into the palm of his hand, thumping the book with its point, or slashing the stick through the air until it whirred. Every time I made an error, I was sure that he would strike me. At the end of my long hours with Vives, I would run to hide my face in Salisbury’s bony lap.

“Don’t be afraid of him,” Salisbury comforted. “Your mother, the queen, has made it plain that he is not to lay a hand upon you.”

“But what about that awful stick he carries? May he strike me with that?”

“No, he may not.”

But what if he forgot my mother’s orders? I never remained comforted for long.