Christie Dickason - The King’s Daughter

My father was watching him. ‘But can France afford her?’ he called. ‘No one else can!’

My humiliation was complete. I was not here to meet my uncle. My father had called me here to be inspected like a market heifer. A gangling, red-haired, freckled heifer, I thought savagely. ‘A Scots brat’. Exposed to the ridicule of the English court as crudely as if he had set me in the stocks.

The faces below me began to bob in a dance. My head felt like a net full of jumping fish. I no longer wanted to dance. I needed to escape from all those eyes and sort my thoughts. Trapped up there on my stool I looked again for Henry but could not find him. I imagined standing up and walking out. But in my imagination, the sea refused to part to let me escape. I would be trapped in a cage of bodies.

In a gap between dancers, I spied my guardian sitting with folded arms against one wall, now joined by Wee Bobby Cecil. From their gestures and Lord Harington’s frown, they appeared to be arguing about me. Bacon leaned on a pillar watching them while dancers jogged around him. I caught my guardian’s eye, then a gaggle of dancers hopped between us.

What use was a guardian, I thought, if he didn’t guard you?

The racket of voices and music grew louder until I heard only a blur of sound. The young man at my father’s feet tilted his head back while the royal hand toyed with his curls. My father leaned forward and whispered in his ear.

I stared down into my wineglass. I knew that I had just learned something else momentous but did not yet know what to make of it.

The king of Denmark hauled a woman onto his lap and began to play the clown with the hoops of her farthingale, threatening to put them over his head. Neither of them seemed to notice that her legs were exposed to the knee.

Lord Harington appeared at the foot of the dais, pinched and resolute. ‘Your majesty, with your permission…’ When he saw that my father still whispered into the young man’s ear, Lord H held out his hand to me.

‘Who is that man who was earlier standing beside Lord Salisbury?’ I murmured as he steadied me down the steps.

‘The French envoy.’

‘And the other, who didn’t speak? The one who still keeps staring at me?’

‘The Duc de Bouillon, envoy from the German Palatine, chief state of the Protestant Union in Europe.’

I didn’t ask about the young man leaning on my father’s knees.

I curtsied to my oblivious father.

Lord Harington mouthed words about my recent journey and the dangers of too much excitement. As we turned to leave, three of my father’s Scottish gentlemen began to lay loud wagers on how much more of the woman on my uncle’s lap would be seen before the night was done.

‘Depends on how oiled she is,’ said one.

‘ Nae ! Nae ! S’nowt to do w’drink!’ another shouted back, as Lord Harington hustled me away. ‘A good bush need no wine!’ My father and uncle laughed loudly.

Lord Harington forgot himself far enough to give me a little push towards the door.

‘Where is Prince Henry?’ I asked, when we reached the corridor. ‘Why is he not here?’

Lord Harington pinched his lips. ‘Best if you had not been here neither.’

‘Can we go back to Combe now?’

Harington hesitated. ‘I will ask permission, but I fear that his majesty has not done with you yet.’

I walked a few feet in silence. ‘Are you still my guardian?’

I heard him breathe in sharply. ‘Yes, your grace. I will be your guardian until you marry. But I cannot remove you without the king’s permission.’

I nodded, but could not stop the unworthy, childish feeling that he was abandoning me in the monster’s lair.

Henry and I found each other at last, the following day, in the gardens. My brother was just as handsome as I remembered, but taller, and beginning to fill out into a man. He had been on his way to the tiltyard and carried a sword. It was our first time together in private since I had arrived from Combe.

‘I knew that you would be here,’ he said with delight.

‘I knew that you would be.’

We kissed each other gravely and stood looking into each other’s eyes, both of us a little shy after so long apart but buoyed up by the miracle of a shared impulse that had brought us both to the same place at the same time.

Henry in the flesh seemed very like the Henry in my head, apart from a faint new, darker smell that came off him when he kissed me. In Edinburgh, he had smelled of fresh cut grass.

‘What do you read in my face?’ asked Henry. ‘After studying it so earnestly?’

‘I wonder if you still love me,’ I blurted. ‘And I see that you have a red-gold fuzz on your upper lip and chin, just the same colour as my hair.’

‘You’re taller but are still my Elizabella,’ he said. ‘Quick as a squirrel, always darting and leaping, looking for a new nut.’

We ordered our attendants to stay by the fountain. Since most of them had sore heads, they were happy to comply. Over my shoulder, I saw Anne settle on a stone bench with one of Henry’s gentlemen. We set off together without them down the long central gravel path that divided the pattern of box-edged formal beds.

‘Where were you last night?’ I asked, instead of all the other questions I wanted to ask him.

‘I had to sit with them through dinner.’ My brother flushed and looked down at his feet crunching on the gravel path. ‘When I couldn’t tolerate their coarseness and drinking any longer, I excused myself.’

‘I lacked your courage,’ I said. ‘I stayed.’

‘It needed more courage to stay than to flee.’ He swung his sword in a fierce downward arc. ‘I never dreamed that our father meant to summon you last night. I would have stayed. I should have been there to protect you.’

‘Do you still wear your oath ring?’ I asked. ‘Like the one you gave me on Cat Nick?’ I held out my hand wearing his golden ship.

‘See for yourself.’ Henry held out his left hand with the matching golden ship on the middle finger. ‘Our hands are the same shape,’ he observed. ‘Even if mine are a little larger. In Scotland, we were so innocent of the true dangers. We should swear again.’

We stopped walking. A robin landed on the wooden obelisk in the centre of the nearest bed and trilled encouragement. Solemnly, with the robin as witness, looking into each other’s eyes, we again pledged ourselves to rescue if the other sent for help.

Even against our father? I wondered if that was what Henry meant by ‘true dangers’. Having now had a little time to observe him, I felt a new weight pressing down on him. Like Atlas, he seemed to have shouldered the world.

The robin gave a final trill and jumped away into the air.

We smiled at each other. His presence still created that familiar circle of warmth that I wanted to step inside.

As we began to walk again, I thought how there was something bright and pure in him, of which he seemed unaware, that made crowds shout out his name and press forward to touch him. Today in the gardens, I saw how the women pushed out their bosoms at him. His grooms and gentlemen followed him with their eyes. Unlike our father, he was patient with attention and wore his golden manacles of duty as if they delighted him.

‘You might have needed protecting last night, too,’ I ventured.

‘From the king, you mean?’ He pinched his lips and turned his head away. ‘He would have been happy enough if I had stayed away altogether. But the people expect my presence.’

Even at my most hopeful, I had not thought this meeting would be so easy. Very soon, I would confess how I had once talked to him at night. And why.

‘We must both be strong,’ he said. ‘There will be more nights like last night while our uncle is here. The Danes are notorious for their drinking and carousing.’