Christie Dickason - The King’s Daughter

Rue spoke of repentance and sorrow. Rue spoke of regret. Rue could heal but also curse.

He dared not write but sent this vegetable messenger instead.

I could read only one conclusion. Abel had failed in his mission for me.

After supper that night, I sat beside my fire holding the sprig of rue between my palms willing it to tell me more.

The reappearance of Clapper cracked open the door holding back the future. It told me that, like the warmth of a morning bed, this life was going to end. Just as someone elsewhere had chosen to send back my horse, my true life elsewhere would begin whenever my father willed it. I could not let Combe and its people take root in my heart. I had merely borrowed this world and would soon have to give it back. I had no colours, or tastes, or smells for what awaited me.

I begged my tutors to tell me about Italy, France, Spain and the German states, in any of which I might, or might not, find myself living for the rest of my life.

I coaxed Mrs Hay to visit me at bedtime as she had once done. While Anne lay goggle-eyed beside me, my old nurse told me yet again the tales of my family’s past, carrying the seeds of my future.

I watched the Haringtons together. I listened to the tone of their voices, watched what distances they kept between them, noted their exchange of glances, trying to sniff out the dark truth about this mysterious thing, marriage that made my father threaten me with it as the alternative to execution.

A perverse impatience began to press like a belch in my gullet. I hated my own helplessness and the false safety of Combe. Knowing the worst would be better than knowing nothing. At least then, I could try to think what to do.

I would fall asleep each night holding the fragment of stone from the crags in one hand, cradling the smuggled Belle with my other arm. I was a creature of marsh and granite, temporarily asleep, buried in a green, green forest. But I could hear hoof beats in the distance, drawing closer.

‘We might have been given more warning!’ Lady Harington sawed at her roast meat so fiercely that her ear-drops flashed and her lace collar quivered. She gave up and slammed down her knife. Her small hands made fists on the table.

‘One would think a shell had exploded in the forecourt,’ said her husband mildly. ‘It’s only a summons to London for a short time.’ He tugged unhappily at his moustaches, so hard that the end of his long bony nose was moved from side to side.

Lady Harington snorted. ‘Do you imagine that duration makes any difference to her grace’s needs? If she’s to be presented to a king, it matters not one whit whether she stands there for an hour or for five days.’

‘It might matter to her,’ my guardian murmured

My Uncle Christian, who was my mother’s brother and King of Denmark, was coming to England. I must join the English court in London to be presented to my visiting uncle.

‘His majesty could land in England at any time,’ said Lady Harington. ‘We must all pray for contrary winds. Not tempests,’ she added hastily. ‘Merely winds from the wrong direction, and strong enough to delay his arrival until I can arrange what is needed.’

Her husband sighed and nodded.

Suddenly, I needed new gowns, embroidered smocks, standing collars, falling collars, and stomachers. To go on show before a foreign king, the First Daughter of England must have embroidered slippers, jewelled sleeves, silk stockings, gloves, purses, handkerchiefs. I overheard orders for pearls by the pound and silver lace by the bale and hoped that my guardian’s cousin had managed to arrange extra money to repay Lord Harington for these expenses.

All at once, there was no time for riding, no escape to stables or garden. I had to stand still for measuring and fittings, while tailors and dress-makers from Coventry shook out stiff rustling taffetas and satins and cooed and knelt with their lips clamped tight on pins and turned me a half inch this way or that.

‘She must take gifts to give to her new people,’ I overheard Lord Harington say to his wife in despair. ‘Surely, she will now be given a full household. Wherever shall I find the money to buy all those necessary scent bottles and pieces of gold and silver plate?’

‘She must have them, all the same,’ replied Lady Harington. ‘We, and our care for her, will be under scrutiny at Whitehall just as much as she.’

As urgently as new gowns, I needed final instruction from Lady H, which she crammed into me like last-minute stockings into a travelling chest.

‘You will become a magnet for the ambitious,’ she warned. ‘All wanting something from you. We’ve protected you from such people here at Combe. But in Whitehall…’ She rolled her eyes just enough to make clear her doubts about the protection I would find in London. ‘These climbers will try to turn your head with flattery, to win your favour. I hope you’ve learned here to be sensible enough to disbelieve them all.’

‘Oh, yes, madam.’

‘Distrust all compliments as flattery.’

‘Yes, madam,’ I said with less fervour. Was it not possible that an occasional compliment might be deserved?

‘Take special care with your new ladies, for I’m certain you will have some, even for a short visit.’ Her eyes narrowed as if assessing these distant figures. ‘Every one of them will be someone’s creature. They will report everything you do. Never forget. Beware, in particular of the rival noble families. The Howards will no doubt insert one of their bitches into the hunting pack. They can’t bear not always to be at the centre. And Northumberland will also buy a place for one of his nieces…Serving you will be a sure step to a good marriage.’

She frowned at a 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.