Jean Plaidy - For a Queen's Love - The Stories of the Royal Wives of Philip II

Moreover, said some who were less kind, Mary was jealous. Here was a young girl of twenty-two, with startlingly red hair and bright blue eyes—not exactly a beauty, but fair enough, and with youth on her side.

Philip was eager to meet this Princess.

He broached the subject while Mary was pretending to take an interest in the arrangements for the Christmas revels. She was, of course, not interested. Mary had no interest beyond the infant she hoped soon to bear.

“Your sister should be welcomed back to court,” he said.

Mary looked at him. Now he became aware of that obstinacy of his wife’s; he could see in her face the ugly temper which she had never before shown him, though he had heard of it.

“You do not know what she has done,” said Mary.

“Has aught been proved against her?”

“Plenty could have been proved.”

“But has not?”

Mary’s eyes, beneath the sandy brows which were so pale that they were scarcely visible, blazed suddenly. “Do you forget that it was due to her mother that my mother suffered as she did? When Elizabeth was born, my father declared me a bastard.”

“Her mother suffered in her turn,” said Philip. “Elizabeth was called bastard, and still is.”

Tears gathered in Mary’s eyes; they came easily during these days. “It is such a short time since Wyatt rebelled. Some of my ministers declared at that time that it was folly not to send Elizabeth to the block.”

“You should forgive her now and bring her to court.”

“Forgive her for trying to take the crown! Forgive her for winning over the people against me!”

“It is for the sake of the people that you should bring her to court. In governing a country, it is always unwise to ignore the people. They are not pleased that she should be banished from the court. Bring her here. Forgive her. Make friends with her, and you will please the people.”

“Forgive her! I cannot do that.”

“My cousin, Emmanuel Philibert of Savoy, will pay us a visit soon. He would be a good match for your sister.”

“You think he would consent to marry a bastard?”

Philip was silent. He would go to work slowly. He would not suggest to Mary just yet that she might as well make Elizabeth legitimate, because that was how the people regarded her, and if some still declared Elizabeth illegitimate, there were also those who had doubts of Mary’s legitimacy. Legitimacy was a ticklish subject where such a man as Henry VIII was concerned.

He said cautiously: “We could try to make the match, which would be advantageous from the points of view of both our countries, for, my dear wife, it would be a good thing for us if the Princess were out of the country.”

“Yet you ask me to have her at court for Christmas!”

“As a preliminary step toward getting her out of the country, my dear wife.”

When the Princess Elizabeth heard that she was summoned to court, she was torn between delight and apprehension. To one of her nature exile was purgatory; she loved gaiety and fine clothes; she hated obscurity and poverty. With her governess, Katharine Ashley, to whom she was alternately confiding friend and haughty mistress, she talked throughout the night after she had received the summons.

Katharine Ashley, who herself had spent many uneasy nights as a prisoner in the Tower, was terrified. She had been terrified of what would happen to her charge ever since she could remember. For haughty, wilful, arrogant as the Princess was, she was also warm-hearted, loyal, and brave—only Katharine knew how brave; and Katharine loved her better than anything in her life. It was Katharine’s dream—as it was Elizabeth’s—that one day the Princess would be Queen.

They had been breathless with eagerness when little Edward had died and they had seen first Jane Grey and then Mary take the crown.

“She is old, Kat,” Elizabeth often whispered in the quietness of her apartments at Hatfield or Woodstock. “She cannot live very long, for not only is she old, but she is sickly.”

“Hush!” Kat would mutter, her eyes gleaming with an excitement which never failed to urge Elizabeth to great indiscretion. “That’s treason!”

“Very well, Madam Ashley, report it.”

“What … report the future Queen of England!”

Then they would pretend to laugh together at their presumptuousness, knowing that neither of them thought the idea in the least presumptuous.

But Philip of Spain had married Mary and now Mary was to have a child; that child would stand between Elizabeth’s hopes of the crown forever. But Elizabeth was optimistic. She did not believe that Mary’s child would live even if Mary came safely through her pregnancy. And then? … Well, that was just what she and Kat liked to brood upon.

And now this summons to court had arrived.

“It is my brother-in-law who has asked to see me,” said Elizabeth. “You may depend upon that.”

“And why should he?”

There were several reasons, Elizabeth said. Would not a husband wish to meet his bride’s family? Might he not feel it was safer to have at court such an important personage as the Princess Elizabeth?

“You think the real reason is that he has seen your picture and fallen in love with you!” declared Kat.

“You have said it!” retorted Elizabeth. “Not I!”

They laughed frivolously together, as they did so often to enliven the monotony of their days of captivity.

They loved each other the more because they recognized each other’s weaknesses. Kat knew that her mistress was the vainest creature in England, that she really did believe that every man who smiled at her was in love with her; she was haughty; she could be mean; she could fly into sudden rages; but how Kat loved her! And Elizabeth loved Kat, for a host of reasons. She was her mother’s kinswoman for one; for another, she had taken the place of that mother whom Elizabeth had lost when she was three years old; and although at the time of Seymour’s execution it had been Kat and Elizabeth’s cofferer Parry who had been so indiscreet before the Council regarding Elizabeth’s and Seymour’s flirtatious conduct, Elizabeth knew that Kat had talked because she could not help talking—it did not mean that she loved her mistress any the less.

“In love with you?” cried Kat. “This gentleman from Spain? Why, he has all the beauties of the world at his disposal.”

“They say he is moderate and entertains only one at a time; and that one, for so long, has been my sister.”

“Now don’t you try your tricks with him, your little Majesty.”

Elizabeth laughed and then was serious as she tried to look into the future. She was frightened. How could she, who had known the loneliness of a prison in the Tower and the fear of what footsteps outside her cell might mean, receive with equanimity a summons to appear before that sister who she knew had little cause to love her? There was only one way to meet such an ordeal bravely; and that was not to think of an angry sister, but an amorous brother-in-law who, having seen her pictures, surely must find her more attractive than his wife.

“My darling,” said Kat, “have a care.”

“Silly Kat! What is there to fear? Go now and read what I wrote with my diamond on the window of this very room. Go, Kat, and read it aloud to me now.”

Kat made a mock curtsy and went to the window. She read slowly:

“Much suspected—of me,

Nothing proved can be,

Quoth Elizabeth, the prisoner.”

“’Tis true, Kat. ’Tis true now as it was when I wrote it.”

“Well, sweetheart, if you go tossing your head and frivoling with your sister’s husband as you once did with your stepmother’s, I shall be trembling in my shoes.”