PROLOGUE
There once was a strong, benevolent lady who was walking through a frozen rose garden in the grievous chill of winter when her slipper brushed against something on the cobbled path. She saw that it was a snake, stiff with cold and nigh on dead, having run the fool’s errand of leaving its own nest to seize a better one.
Forswearing her initial hesitation, the lady placed the serpent close to her bosom, where it quickly warmed. When it revived, the serpent resumed its natural nature, bit its benefactress, and poisoned her with a wound unto death.
“Why have you done this?” she cried. “I have sought only to assist you!”
“You knew full well what I was when you drew me close to your heart,” replied the cunning viper.
“I am justly rewarded, then,” the lady sorrowed, “for pitying a serpent.”
—A retelling of Aesop’s fable
ONE
November: Year of Our Lord 1564
Tre Kronor, Stockholm, Sweden
Winter, Spring, and Summer: Year of Our Lord 1565
At Sea and Over Land
I may have been a maiden just shy of seventeen years of age, but I was no simpleton. I recognized beard burn on the fair face of my sister when she emerged, breathless, from a small closet off one of the king’s galleries.
“Have you been with someone?” I asked. By someone, she knew I meant a man.
She would not meet my gaze. But she answered, “Don’t be foolish, Elin.” She looked at my gown, plain cotton. “You’d best be preparing for the evening. The king is not likely to be pleased if we are not present when he commands the festivities to begin.” At that, she turned, held high her head, and proceeded down the long wooden hallway toward our mother’s palace apartment.
My stomach grew unsettled, as it always did when I was fed an untruth and forced by custom to compliantly digest it. Karin was right, though, that King Erik would not look kindly upon a late arrival. Everyone at court sought to keep the king placid and happy; he was a cart with three wheels, unsteady and liable to collapse at the slightest bump in the road, spilling his load on whoever was near. I turned and began to follow Karin into our mother’s lodgings when I heard a noise behind me, the quiet shutting of a door.
I turned to look back and saw a figure hurrying down the hallway in the other direction. “Philip?” I called after him.
My fiancé, Philip Bonde, was heir to the great Bonde mining fortune, and his face was as well favored as his purse. Before my father died some months earlier, he had finalized my betrothal to Philip. I was ever so grateful; my father had never expressed love or affection for me, preferring instead Karin, the baby, who resembled him in her blonde, blue-eyed beauty.
“Elin!” Philip stopped, turned to walk toward me, and then drew me into a quick, stiff embrace.
“Where are you going?” I asked, puzzled.
“Rather, whatever are you doing hanging about in the gallery when we’re to see the king within the hour?”
I was taken aback for a moment, recognizing, perhaps, that he sought to put me on the defense rather than account for his own presence.
He grinned and gently kissed my cheeks one by one in the French fashion, his beard lightly scratching my face, the unique spiced-herb blend of his wash water surrounding him, his lips freshly warm and soft though the hall was chilled. “I shall see you downstairs, soon.”
Then he turned and left.
I walked, slowly, to dress myself for the evening, unsettled, unhappy, confused. When I arrived at my mother’s chamber, my married sisters, Gertrude and Brita, were already fully gowned, and the lady maid was assisting Karin as she slipped into a stunning gown of green and silver. “Where have you been?” my mother clucked. I kept trying to catch my sister’s eye, but Karin kept her chin up and studiously avoided my gaze in the looking glass.
I knew.
“I’m here now,” was all I answered. After Karin was gowned, the lady maid turned to me, pulled out a gown of gold-stamped gray crushed velvet, and then shook it twice before bringing it toward me. After helping me dress she weaved gold threads through my long red hair.
I would be leaving on the morrow for England, with Princess Cecelia. So my gown had been most costly, a gift that was a dear sacrifice for my widowed mother and a token of her affection and esteem. I kissed her on the cheek, and we four girls followed her down to the great hall where Erik and his new mistress would arrive.
• • •
The hall was ablaze with torches and candles; flickering gold light, rolling fires, and the heat of hundreds of noble bodies warmed the cold Swedish night. I soon lost my family in the crowd of others and danced while the king’s court musicians played on. After an hour, I sought to rest and spied Karin Mansdotter in the corner, splendidly dressed and bejeweled but forlorn and alone. Although Sweden was collectively grateful for the opiate she was upon our sovereign, she was lowborn, the daughter of a tavern-keep, and had been, only months before, a lady maid to the king’s sister. Stunned by her beauty, Erik had plucked her from the rushes and made her his own.
“May I sit near you?” I looked at the red-covered chair next to hers, which was backed against a gilded wall.
“Oh, yes,” Karin Mansdotter said, breathless, then composed herself. “I mean, assuredly.” She smiled, and I smiled back at her.
“Are you afraid to sail tomorrow?” she asked. “I know I would be. Those ships are so small and the sea so vast!”
I found her forthrightness refreshing and laughed. “I am not afraid of the seas,” I said, catching Philip and my sister dancing together, again, out of the corner of my eye.
“Do the English speak German or Swedish?” she asked.
“No,” I answered. “But the princess has had Master Dymoke, Master Preston, and Master North teaching us the English language and customs for nigh on six years, since His Majesty decided to offer his hand to their queen.”
She looked at her lap, and I chided myself for bringing up so indelicate a topic.
“I hope they have lingonberries,” I said, and at that she looked up. I smiled but said nothing more, she watching the king as he made merry with the ladies of the court and I watching my sister and my fiancé entangle their hands. I wondered about the king’s mistress, born low and raised high so quickly, instantly forced to adjust to a court and a manner of life utterly different from her own, and no friend to help smooth the transition. My sister Gertrude had told us that when the king first took Karin Mansdotter as a mistress, she had been engaged to someone else. The king had asked his new paramour to send for her fiancé, and when he arrived, Erik had him killed.
Within a few minutes, Philip came to collect me and lead me to dance. “I’ve been seeking you!” he said.
“And now I have been found,” I said, cheered that he’d been looking for me. He took my hands in his own and, after we had danced for a while, led me into the long gallery next to the hall. The ceilings were painted with images of the king’s father, Gustav Vasa, and victory against the Danes, with whom we still fought. Torches along the gallery lit the room, but dimly, as they were few. We sat on a long bench, softly cushioned.
“You leave on the morrow,” Philip said.
“I don’t have to go,” I replied. “Princess Cecelia has five other maids ready to serve her on the journey and in England, and I am sure she would not miss me.” That was probably untrue, but I felt I must make any attempt to reach out to Philip before I left, given what I had seen earlier.