“Why, Lord Robert himself!” Clemence said. “So as he could marry Her Majesty,” she continued, her voice lowered. “Though others say ’twas his noble enemies, because with one wife mysteriously dead, the people would never accept him as king, now, would they? When Her Majesty’s sister, Queen Mary, married a man the people did’na like, they turned against her. Though all know the queen desires to marry Lord Robert, she dares not, lest she lose the favor of her people.”
I instantly understood that night’s whispers connecting Amy Robsart to Mary, Queen of Scots, her dead husband, Lord Darnley, and Bothwell.
“Is that all, my lady?”
“Yes, Clemence. And please rest assured that I will hold to faith anything you say to me. I shall not share what I learn with others, nor speak of our talk.”
She relaxed then and smiled at me before helping me polish my skin with a paste of ground almonds and water.
• • •
In August William left with the Earl of Sussex to Austria, to present the Order of the Garter to the emperor; in truth, they were also going to offer the queen’s hand to the archduke. Within months came a response to Her Majesty that while the archduke was eager to marry Her Majesty, he could not in good conscience agree to forgo his Catholicism and embrace Protestantism, a requirement she was not willing to negotiate. With regret, the discussions concluded without good fruit. Her Majesty sorrowed for days and I noticed her occasionally stroking her stomacher, as if mourning a lost child not yet conceived, perhaps an heir.
William returned home, and we hosted an evening at his manor in London. The queen attended, as did most of the nobility. I had been in England for better than two years, but had not yet eaten of the lingonberries that my sister had pressed on me as I’d left Sweden. I instructed William’s cooks to prepare them into a compote with sugar and water. They, like my life in England, were a mixture of sweet and bitter.
Although everyone was unfailingly gracious, few offered me a hand or a smile of friendship, save the queen. She sampled the lingonberries after the others had passed them by. “These are delightful, Lady von Snakenborg!” she declared. “I shall have a second serving.” She turned to His Grace the Duke of Norfolk. “Have you eaten of these, Norfolk?”
Norfolk had not, of course, but at that point he had little recourse but to eat them and declare them to his liking. Several other ladies did likewise, and while I appreciated the assistance Her Majesty sought to offer, I found compulsory compliments and feigned affection sharp in my ears. Lady Eleanor Brydges was the only person to offer genuine warmth to me. I made cheerful talk with her and sent some specially prepared comfit cake back to her lodging hoping that would be the flint to a friendship. I wondered aloud that night, to William, if things might be different if I were his wife. He promised to press the matter again.
Before Christmas, final word came that there was no prospect of annulment. William was legally married until death did them part.
I was shocked. I sorrowed. In my rooms at court, I angrily packed up all the gowns and jewels he had given me into a large casket to return to him and shouted in German, and then in Swedish, which I knew no one could understand. Clemence, ten years older than I and familiar with tempers, wisely absented herself.
William should have told me this at the outset! And now here I was, alone, adrift, unprotected.
Later I unpacked them all again. He had acted in good faith. He was kind and noble. He had treated me with affection and dignity. But I would need to think upon this in a different manner now. I would not speak to him of it until my thoughts were clear and a decision made. What would I do should I remain in England an unmarried maid? I did not mind serving the queen, and I appreciated her friendship, but I would never have chosen an unmarried life.
William bought me a magnificent horse as a Christmas gift and a fine necklace of emeralds set in gold, and I bought him some falcons that I arranged to have sent from St. Botolph’s fair in Lincolnshire. But our inability to marry was a devastating blow to both of us. Letters still made their way irregularly, and I prayed that I would not hear from my mother and be forced to respond with this ill news. I did not wish to give her information to pass along to Princess Cecelia for her evening’s amusement.
• • •
In January the Spanish ambassador reported to Her Majesty that Philip of Spain, husband to the queen’s dead sister, Mary, had arrested his own son, Don Carlos, and thrown him into prison for treason. Don Carlos starved himself in retaliation. We ladies were gathered in the Privy Chamber, where I sat mending one of the queen’s delicate ruffs, when Lady Knollys delivered yet more strange news.
“Lady Katherine Grey Seymour is also refusing to eat, Majesty. She is said to be near death, and in fact, those waiting upon her have said she speaks of going toward God as quickly as she can and begs you to care for her sons.”
My heart pained at this tender sentiment from a young wife who had been exiled and separated from her husband these many years—four years, I thought, before I arrived on these shores. She had married for love, but Lady Katherine had also married in folly. She had not only forgone the queen’s permission, a penal offense for those closely related to the queen and with a claim to the throne, but had admitted to the Archbishop of Canterbury that she and her husband had purposed to deceive Her Majesty. Worse, there was no proof of her wedding, as the only witness had died and the priest who had performed the ceremony could not be located. Her husband was found guilty of seducing a virgin of the blood royal, and when Lady Katherine bore a second son after trysts in the Tower, she and her husband were permanently separated.
Bad fortune had certainly chased down the ladies Grey, but if the truth be told, it was the queen’s brother King Edward and Jane Grey’s father-in-law, John Dudley, who’d set loose the hounds on the sisters by illegally bypassing Henry’s daughters for the legal succession.
“We are sorry for her ill health,” the queen stated before turning back to the manuscript she was lettering in her own hand. “But we can in no way force our good cousin to eat.”
Lady Knollys, also Her Majesty’s cousin as the daughter of Mary Boleyn, was ever reluctant to find fault with Her Grace. But even she looked shamed at this seeming lack of compassion. The lesson was clear: no courtier, nor cousin, nor lady should undertake marriage without the queen’s permission.
Another cousin, stronger and more dangerous, arrived on Her Majesty’s shores that May. Mary of Scots, fleeing the rebel lords in her own land, applied to her “good sister” the queen of England to help her back upon her throne. A pamphlet was circulated, Defense of the Honor of Queen Mary, which forcefully claimed Mary’s right to Elizabeth’s throne, as many English Catholics believed. The author was anonymous but the queen’s advisors widely believed it to be John Lesley, Bishop of Ross, and Mary’s ambassador to Elizabeth’s court, and were not afraid to say so publicly.
“Mary’s a plague upon this realm,” William told me one night as we dined together. “She murdered her husband and carries with her the vapor of death. The only question yet to be settled is whom shall the death she brings strike down.”
• • •
Lady Knollys’s husband, Sir Francis, was to meet the Queen of Scots and accompany her, with guards to protect his and her safety, to the castle in the north. Our queen had decided Mary was to be her “guest” while the matter of Mary’s involvement in her husband’s death was investigated. The queen could not send troops into Scotland to restore a tainted Catholic monarch to that staunchly Protestant nation, even if she were so inclined, which she was not.
Neither could she send Mary to France, which would be happy to receive her. France looked upon Catholic Mary as the rightful queen of England and would be only too eager to assist her in regaining the Scottish, and perhaps the coveted English, thrones. For Mary to stay in England was discomfiting as well. There were Catholic subjects in England who still regarded Her Majesty as illegitimate because they had not accepted King Henry’s marriage to the queen’s mother, Anne Boleyn, as valid. Instead, they held that of the king’s children, only Mary, born of King Henry’s Catholic first wife, Katherine of Aragon, and then Edward, born after Katherine of Aragon was dead, were legitimate heirs. The king’s will set had forth the order of succession: Edward, Mary, and then Elizabeth. After them came the descendants of his sister Mary. But he deliberately barred from succession the descendants of his sister Margaret, among whom was Mary, Queen of Scots. In some ways, I felt compassion for Queen Mary, exiled from her home in a land that was not quite welcoming to her, unable to act of free will in either place.