Christie Dickason - The King’s Daughter

‘That’s what Lord Harington said.’

There was a moment of silence, in which I felt our thoughts pulling back from the same uneasy terrain.

Henry balanced his sword at the end of an outstretched arm. ‘This sword was a gift from Spain.’

‘It’s very fine,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘Not as fine as the suit of golden armour given to me by my spiritual father, who is the model for all kings.’

‘And who is that?’ I asked obediently.

‘Henri IV of France. A true warrior king. Unlike our father.’

I said nothing. Ever since I was six years old, Mrs Hay had whispered that the king wanted me to marry Henri’s son, the infant Dauphin of France. That was the future for which she had to prepare me, she had said. The closest I had come to imagining this future was the image of living with someone like my younger brother, Baby Charles, who lay somewhere between a nuisance and a pet.

‘Our father hopes I might marry the Spanish Infanta,’ Henry said. ‘He seems to believe that if I accept a sword, I might accept a bride.’

He stretched his arm over the low box hedge and began to tickle a daisy with tiny circles of the sword tip. I watched the tendons working in his wrist.

‘I cannot marry a Papist.’ He glanced up at me. ‘I don’t want you to marry a Papist, neither.’

‘I don’t much want to marry at all,’ I said. ‘But I must. Just as you must one day be king.’

Henry lunged with the sword. Silently, I admired the line of his leg and the steadiness of his blade. ‘We could run away together to the Americas.’ He straightened again and lowered his voice. ‘This is not idle dreaming, Elizabella. You won’t have heard of my interest in the London Company and its enterprise in the new Virginia colony, because I must hide it to avoid stirring up the commercial rivalry among the different English joint stock companies—the East Indies Company, the West Indies Company, and the Virginia Company. And it’s also better that Spain and France, who already have an eager foothold in the Caribbean, don’t know that the future king of England has a keen interest in the Americas.’

He lowered his voice even though we could not possibly have been overheard, except by the robin, which seemed to be following us. ‘I have invested money in the new Virginia colony, Elizabella. Even the king doesn’t know how much. His interests lie all in Europe. I am helping to shape a new British kingdom, which I will one day rule. The first expedition named their first landfall at Chesapeake Bay after me—Cape Henry. We could rule together there as brother and sister, as I believe happened in ancient times.’

‘I could marry a handsome savage prince,’ I said. ‘And you would marry his long-haired golden sister.’

‘Queen Elizabella,’ he said.

‘King Henry the Ninth of England, Scotland and the Americas!’ I made a deep reverence. ‘But how could you leave England?’

‘England would forgive my absence because I would send back so many riches from this other kingdom. Gold and silver. Coral. Beaver pelts, tabacco …’

‘…live bears and beavers for the royal menagerie…’

We stared at each other with excited surmise, even knowing that we spoke nonsense. The Americas might be real. Henry’s eventual rule there might be real. But Queen Elizabella of the Americas was idle dreaming.

Henry whacked the head off a daisy. ‘Meanwhile, we both must go wherever we’re summoned.’

‘But if you’re there, too, I won’t mind. We can suffer together.’

‘They wallow in beastly delights. It’s not right for a young girl to see and hear such things.’

‘But surely, I must learn the ways of the world before I’m sent out into it.’ I rolled my eyes and pretended to stagger.

Henry glanced back at our attendants. Then my earnest, well-behaved brother fixed me with a cold heavy-lidded stare. His eyes darted suspiciously around the garden then stared at me again. His fingers began to pick at his sleeve, then at his buttons. He tapped his foot. He chewed on his tongue. He took one graceless step then leaned an elbow on my shoulder

He had caught our father so exactly that I could not help giggling. Then I remembered the father I had seen in Coventry.

‘No more!’ I said. ‘Someone might see you!’

‘Our father dislikes me already. But like me or not, I’m his heir. He knows the value of both of us, you and me.’

He sounded so certain that he half-convinced me.

‘I must go practise swordplay now in the tiltyard with my friends,’ he said. ‘My trained band of gentlemen. Would you like to come watch us?’

‘Of course.’ I trotted to keep up with his quick stride, still bubbling with pleasure that he had shown me a hidden part of himself. ‘Perhaps one day, you’ll let me try.’

He looked amused. ‘If you wish, though I don’t know why you would.’

‘I wish,’ I said.

‘It will spoil your hands,’ he warned. He stopped and held out his own for me to see the roughened palm. I reached out across my skirt flounce and laid my hand palm down on his. We looked at our two hands in silence.

‘Wherever you are, I want to be,’ I said. ‘No matter how beastly.’

‘Would you truly tolerate being a witness to immorality like last night’s to be with me?’ asked Henry.

‘Yes,’

He nodded. ‘Then we will suffer together, as you say. And I will look after you.’

‘As far as my guardian permits.’ I wanted to hug him. Because my skirts made that impossible, I settled for a smile. Tomorrow I would ask if he had ever received my warning letter. Not today. Today was just right as it was.

But the right time to ask eluded me. Henry and I saw each other again several times after our meeting in the gardens and took pleasure from each other’s company. But we were always surrounded by a court racing in full cry after the pleasures of my uncle’s continued visit. Treason was not a subject for a snatched moment on the way to a banquet or tilt. Sooner or later, I would confront my fear of knowing the worst. But not yet.

Because I was not made for fear and gloom, I began to thread the bewildering events of my temporary new life together, to order them like a string of bright beads. Rashly, after the bad beginning of that first evening, I began to believe that I needed less protection than Henry and I had feared.

Though still an object of curiosity, I was only one of many entertainments on offer during my uncle’s visit. Courtiers vied to present the most lavish banquets and masques. Members of every noble family in England displayed their looks and skills as dancers and singers in these shows. So many spectators, supporters and enemies alike, crowded to see and discuss the performances that the women were forbidden to wear their wide-hooped farthingales in order to make more room.

Dressed in one or another of the new gowns that had put Lady H into a fever and emptied my guardian’s purse, I sat on the royal dais at as many of these masques as I could. There, I learned how much delight the stern-living Haringtons had denied me at Combe. I saw the true purpose of my lute lessons and my dancing master. Here was magic made real. A safe ecstasy. The perfect marriage of wonder and glue.

‘Did you ever see such things before?’ Anne would murmur close behind me. ‘Oh, just look at that!’

Transported out of my everyday self, I watched the sun rise behind wood and canvas mountains. I saw ladies of the court transformed into musical nymphs. Earthquakes destroyed temples. Monstrous lions roared out fire. Gods descended from the roof or sprang from cloven rock. A sky full of candles burned, and red, green and blue lanterns, and other mysterious lights that I could not name but which stirred unnamed memories and elusive wisps of lost dreams. The jewels that flashed in the folds of my gowns looked suddenly like fallen stars and my thoughts felt opened as wide as the night sky.