Just Flesh and Blood Read online

  My mother was not accompanied by any friends when she went to her death. The women appointed to attend her in the Tower were not from the ranks of the ladies who loved her, but rather from the ranks of those who did not. Blanche Parry saw my mother lose her life – it was from her lips that I so often begged to hear the horrible tale – but she watched from the crowd below the scaffold, not as an attendant upon it.

  According to Blanche, it was Lady Kingston who cut my mother’s hair. She was the wife of the Constable of the Tower, sent to spy. I hope the woman had enough pity in her to use the scissors gently and with care. They cut my hair when I was recovering from the fever of smallpox, to help save my life. They cut my mother’s to facilitate the headsman and so hasten her death.

  Blanche also told me how beautiful my mother’s hair was and how they loved to brush it to a shine.

  ‘Gently, Blanche. Gently!’

  ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty. There was a knot!’

  ‘A lover’s knot, perhaps?’ Only Mary Boleyn had the cheek to tease Queen Anne so, according to Blanche, and the queen tolerated such behaviour from her older sister. This time, however, she did not laugh, but instead became strangely solemn.

  ‘Alas, no, Mary. I have not been called to the king’s bedside for some time now.’

  ‘Perhaps he has not fully recovered from his fall at the joust.’

  ‘Perhaps he worries that you have not recovered from … well, from … your recent loss.’

  My mother had miscarried what might have been my brother only a few weeks before. How different both our lives might have been if that longed-for prince had been born.

  ‘I do not know and I have not seen him in a situation where I could ask him. He seems strangely distant, ever since his fall.’

  ‘All have remarked on his change of temper. Perhaps his head pains him still.’

  ‘Perhaps.’ And my mother sank her small chin onto her hand in a melancholy aspect.

  ‘Your hair is very beautiful, Your Grace.’ Blanche held up the mirror. ‘I have never seen hair shine like yours.’

  ‘It is your skill with the brush, Mistress Parry.’

  ‘Nonsense, Your Grace. I can brush my hair from now until kingdom come and it will never shine like yours.’

  ‘The king used to love to stroke my hair and wrap strands of it around his fingers and watch it slip through them – like spun silk, he’d say. Sometimes he’d sink both his fists into it and tug at it gently.’

  ‘He will do so again.’

  ‘I hope so, Blanche. I hope so.’

  I wonder if my mother grieved over being shorn of her hair. Or if the terror of losing her head made such a loss seem small by comparison. It is a ritual humiliation for a woman to have her hair taken from her head. Unless such drastic action is needed to cool her during a fever and so save her life – the loss of a woman’s hair is the mark of her shame. Was my mother ashamed when she went to her death? She did not say so. I know every word she spoke on her scaffold but there is one sentence of her brief oration that always brings me to tears.

  ‘… He was ever a good, a gentle and sovereign lord …’

  She said these words out of love for me, perhaps. I like to think her last thoughts were of what she could do to protect her little daughter, left alone as an infant in a hostile world. If she accused my father of killing her for spurious and manufactured reasons, she made me more friendless and more vulnerable. By speaking well and fondly of the king my father and the king her executioner, she gave him no excuse to look upon me any more harshly than he already did.

  Of course there was a bitter irony to her words. How could a gentle and a merciful prince be about to cut off her head?

  It makes me want to weep to think of the careful words she sent out into the world on my behalf with what must have been almost the very last of her breath.

  They say the swordsman made a little game to distract her from what was about to come. They say that after she had signalled she was ready, he said loudly so that she could hear him, ‘Now, where is my sword …?’ As if he did not have it already in his hands raised above her quivering neck. He did this as a kindness, I warrant, so that she did not anticipate the sword until it had already fallen and she was beyond anticipation of any kind. (Perhaps men can feel pity for women, after all.)

  I am dying slowly, by inches, and I am aware of every last moment of it. I cannot help but wonder if, when I die I will see my mother at last. I thrill at the thought of such a reunion.

  ‘When will you pay me?

  Say the bells of Old Bailey.’

  I am a small child again, in the nursery at St James’s Palace. My nurse, Kat Champernowne (she is not yet married to John Ashley), is giggling and holding hands with Blanche Parry, their arms raised to form an arch. Other ladies stand in line, doing the same, including a woman more grandly dressed than the others, who I think must be my mother. She is laughing the hardest of all. I am stepping through the arch of their arms, chanting the rhyme with them. I am breathless with alarm and excitement.

  ‘When I grow rich

  Say the bells of Shoreditch.

  Pray when will that be?

  Say the bells of Stepney.’

  I have played this game before and I know what is coming. I am almost bursting with anticipation. The women build the tension, slowing down the chant.

  ‘I’m sure I don’t know,

  Says the great bell of Bow.’

  And now the rhythm changes and I begin to giggle nervously.

  ‘Here comes the candle to light you to bed …’

  I shriek and begin to run out of the human arch but – too late – the women are moving their arms up and down fast in uneven waves and I must dodge and weave to avoid them. I laugh with delight.

  ‘And here comes the chopper to chop off your head!’

  Fragrant, velvet clad arms sweep me up from the game and hold me close, kissing the top of my head instead of chopping it off. But I do not want to be held. I want to play. I wriggle and squirm against her embrace until the woman puts me down.

  ‘Again! Again! Let’s play it again!’

  ‘Oh, enfant bien-aimé, you have worn us all out with your playing.’ And to emphasise her exhaustion, she plops herself down on the floor with a great pouff of skirts. I am not impressed. I can see by her amused expression that she is not really tired at all.

  ‘Pooh! Get up! Get up! I want to do it again!’

  I go over to the dark-haired woman with the elegant gown and grasp her long fingers in my small hand. I pull her with all my might. She plays along so that when she suddenly rises I fall backwards onto my bottom. It does not hurt, but I do not quite know whether to cry or to laugh. The women around me burst into laughter and the force of it frightens me a little. My face must have crumpled, because the elegant lady with the French accent sweeps me into her arms again and holds me close, kissing my forehead and soothing me with soft words. ‘Do not cry, ma petite, do not cry. You are always safe with me. No harm can come to you.’

  And then she begins to sing another song to me and my heart beats faster with delight, all frustration forgotten. It is my favourite game of all.

  ‘Rock-a-bye baby on the tree-top,

  When the wind blows, the cradle will rock,

  When the bow breaks, the cradle will fall

  And …’

  At this point the French lady flings me upside down until my head hangs down among her skirts while she holds tightly to my legs.

  ‘DOWN will come baby, cradle and all!’

  Then she sweeps me up again and throws me into the air and I laugh and laugh and hug the lady tightly when I land safely back in her arms. It is the happiest I can remember ever being.

  No matter how old we become it seems we never outgrow the need for our mother. Yet I also shrink from the idea of seeing her
again in the afterlife. I cannot help but wonder whether she will judge my actions here on earth as not worthy enough to have made up for her sacrifice and the terrible foreshortening of her life. I have felt the need to do right, to atone for her death, all of my days. I knew I had to survive and succeed to make up for what she had lost.

  I do not think she went to her death accompanied by guilt or by shame. I think she knew she was innocent of all the crimes with which she was charged. I think those who watched her die knew she was too, although they would never have dared say as much. My father died consumed by guilt and shame. My stepmother Catherine Parr told me that he screamed at phantoms as he lay on his deathbed and claimed that ghosts gibbered at him from its foot. I do not doubt that one of the ghosts he saw there in his delirium was the headless spirit of my mother. Perhaps she pointed at her wound and made him look at the ghastly mess he had made with his Toledo steel.

  I wonder – if her spirit did sit at the foot of his bed tormenting him – did she carry her head under her arm or had God put it back where it belonged? Will Mary of Scotland’s ghost carry her head? Is it she who will greet me at the gates of heaven and cast me out, pushing me hard so I plummet downwards to suffer in the everlasting fires of hell? Or will my mother greet me and gently ask me to sit once more at her side?

  How will I know which one is which? Aye, there’s the rub, for I never saw Queen Mary’s face in life and have no clear memory of my mother’s. She died too soon for me to fix her face in my recollection and portraits are a poor substitute. And both may have no head. What if I mistake one headless phantom for another?

  These are feverish imaginings. Nevertheless I look around me quickly in search of gibbering ghosts that point accusing fingers. I see nothing from an unearthly realm, just a clutch of apothecaries who dare not come closer, and behind them my ladies who pray for my immortal soul. I hope they pray hard. I think it is not possible to rule over men and not commit many sins. Yet, I was not bloodthirsty. As God is my witness I did all that I could to avoid the shedding of blood. I hated going to war and shifted and shied so skittishly when pressed to do so by my ministers that they cursed me and agreed among themselves that my equivocation was proof that women are not equipped to rule.

  ‘Your Grace, will you take a little refreshment?’

  It is Philadelphia Carey, my first cousin Henry Carey’s daughter, granddaughter of my Aunt Mary Boleyn, one of the few who will dare approach me in my extremity. Her gentle entreaty is to no avail. Despite my thirst, I clamp my lips together like a child refusing its pap and shake my head. Let us hasten to the end.

  Philadelphia rises up from her knees with a rustle of silken skirts and many heavy sighs. She turns to the assembled doctors and shakes her head sadly. I close my eyes. I know what they are thinking. That I should hurry up and die.

  But perhaps I am unfair. No doubt they are afraid of the changes that will come after me. I may have infuriated my ministers and attendants, but they know me well. I am the devil they know. My cousin James is the most feared ruler of all: an unknown one. I have never met him, but from his letters to me and from what my ambassadors say, he appears to be a bloodless little man – close-lipped and tight-faced. Although he is married and has been blessed with three children, there are rumours that he is fonder of boys than he is of women. Ah well, it is a common enough vice and best ignored. He, like me, like all of us, will one day have to give an account of himself to God and face a reckoning for all his abominations. The Stuarts must make their own future just as the Tudors made theirs. And the future is no longer any business of mine.

  There are flowers on the mantel. I can see them through the gloom because they are lit by a candelabra someone has hastily placed by their side.

  The flickering light is not enough to show their true colours and they are shadowy and darkened, but I can still make out the pink of the roses and the deep blue of the hyacinths.

  They fill the vases in my private apartments with fresh flowers daily, but I have rarely taken much notice. Now, the beauty of this simple posy – even in this restless shadowy light – hits me with an intensity that almost hurts. I would rather look at the flowers than any of the faces staring at me from the gloom. The roses hang so heavy on their slender stems they droop and blush before the straight-backed hyacinths. One flower turns its head up; the other angles it down.

  ‘Robin! You cannot expect me to be impressed by the gift of my own rose, grown in my own garden by my own gardeners.’

  Robin had given me a flower. If we walked in the garden he would often search the flower beds for the most perfect specimen, neither too tightly furled as a bud, nor so overblown it had passed its prime. When he found what he was looking for he would pluck the rose then fling himself on one knee and offer it to me with an exaggerated flourish. I loved him best when he was playful and self-mocking. It was at those moments that I felt less like a queen and more like a flesh-and-blood woman.

  I was laughing at his teasing face.

  ‘Will you not take my humble offering? This rose in the pink of its fragile beauty?’

  ‘I will take it, if you insist, but it is my own, so it is a gift from myself to myself.’

  ‘Everything I own is yours, Your Grace.’ He remained on his knee as I tucked the rose into my kirtle.

  ‘No, indeed, sweet Robin, if this gift is any guide, it seems everything I own is yours.’

  A petal falls from a rose in the vase on the mantel and I feel it like a blow.

  There – in my mind’s eye – is my Robin’s handsome, laughing face with his neatly trimmed beard set off by his perfectly starched and laundered white ruff. As he kneels before me, I am looking down on his green hunting cap that sits rakishly atop his auburn curls. It bears a scarlet feather that bobs up and down as he throws back his head in delight at our banter.

  How I loved him. To take my ease with him at the end of the day was reward enough for all my labours. To ride with him – my master of horse – was the highlight of my calendar. To resist him was the trial and discipline of my life.

  Now, at this the last, do I regret that I never succumbed? That I never allowed myself to fully know his body as is common for men and women?

  Robin’s face was very close to mine and his eyelids were heavy and low. I could feel his breath against my cheek. I sat motionless, afraid that any movement on my part might break the spell. He came closer still and his hands were suddenly around my waist. Then his lips were on mine and I thought my heart might burst through my chest and, although I knew what I ought to do when a man (actually he was still a stripling) took such liberties, I did no such thing. Instead I threw my arms around his neck and kissed him back most heartily.

  We were very young, not yet fifteen, I think. We were both at the court of my brother, King Edward, who was already ailing. Robin’s father was busily protecting his position as regent and I was of no particular interest to anyone, being a distant second in line to the throne. Such was the chaos in the court that those who should have been watching us were easily distracted and we had taken full advantage to sneak away. We had been racing one another through the park, enjoying the sunshine and the opportunity to stretch our limbs and fill our lungs. Then we had dropped – out of breath – onto the grass beneath the shade of a spreading oak. It was as we were half-sitting, half-reclining together, catching our breath, that a new mood had overtaken us. We who were never alone were suddenly quite alone and we were young and beautiful and the sap of youth ran urgently through our veins.

  We kissed each other passionately over and over and we took other liberties, exploring one another in ways that should have made us ashamed, but did not. No one could see us, of that we were certain, but somehow I still kept a rein, my clothing stayed on, even if a few buttons were undone and a few ribbons loosened. Eventually, strangely peaceful, we sat quietly, my head upon Robin’s chest, his arms around my shoulders.

 
‘I shall marry you when I am old enough.’

  ‘Why aren’t you old enough now? Your brother Guildford is younger than you and already betrothed to Lady Jane Grey.’

  ‘That’s my father’s doing, not theirs. I will only marry for love and I love only you.’

  ‘I love you too,’ I said, shyly. ‘But I can’t marry you.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘Because I am of royal blood and they will not let me marry the one I choose. They will want to marry me off to some foreign prince or potentate who will be ugly and smelly and beat me with a stick.’

  ‘We could run away!’

  I just shook my head. ‘If we tried that they’d have you up for treason and chop off your head.’

  ‘But I can’t let you marry an ugly, smelly brute of a foreigner who will beat you!’

  ‘Don’t worry. If I can’t marry you – and I can’t – then I won’t marry anyone and they cannot make me.’

  ‘You can be my mistress, then, and I will keep you in a fine house and visit you whenever I can—’

  I stopped him talking nonsense by kissing him again and thrilling once more to the touch of his hands as they roamed about my person.

  ‘My Lady Elizabeth!’

  We sprang apart, but we were fortunate. It was Kat, my loyal governess, who had happened upon our hiding place, sent to search for me when my absence was finally noticed.

  ‘I’ll thank you to keep your hands to yourself, Master Dudley. Honestly, the pair of you, carrying on like wantons! Count yourself fortunate that it was me who found you and not someone else! You could have landed in the Tower for this, young man and’ – Kat turned to look at me – ‘as for you, you deserve a whipping!’