“What shall it be, my darling princess?” my father asked. “Is it life or death for poor old Jack? You must say!”
I was quite dazed from the gory sight. “I say let him be killed!” I declared in a trembling voice, knowing that was what my father wanted me to say but wishing with all my heart I had the power to save the bear’s life.
“Well said!” my father shouted. He made a sign to the bearward, who sent in one last dog to lunge at the wounded bear’s throat.
I watched the huge animal fall and expire, and I glanced at my betrothed, King Francis. His hands still fluttered aimlessly, although he looked a bit pale. At least his donkey bray was silenced.
THREE DAYS AFTER the banquet, I stood stiffly between King Henry and Queen Catherine at the betrothal ceremony, dressed in the new green and white silk gown. The golden robe trailing from my shoulders was so long and heavy that I required six attendants to carry it. So many sparkling necklaces were draped around my neck that I thought I would choke. Francis leered at me and slipped a diamond and ruby ring on my finger.
How much of this must I endure? I wondered, and again I felt cramping and nausea. Tears might have gathered in my eyes if I had allowed them, but I had been trained not to weep in public. “Ista puella nunquam plorat,” my father used to boast in Latin as he carried me around the Great Hall: “This girl never cries.” He didn’t know how much I cried when I was alone.
That evening there was another banquet, even more lavish than the one before. When the meal ended, the king signalled me to leave the royal table and prepare for the masque. This was another of my father’s ideas; he loved dressing up in the most elaborate outfits the royal costumer could devise. He had ordered me and seven ladies of my mother’s court and seven court gentlemen to be costumed, like him, in attire suggestive of the Far North. The fur-trimmed costumes were to my liking, and I truly enjoyed dancing. Since my arrival at Greenwich, my dancing tutor had rehearsed me and the ladies in our steps until we all knew the dance perfectly.
It was during these rehearsals that I had noticed a particular lady-in-waiting in my mother’s court. The lady’s thick black hair, gleaming like a raven’s wing, was left to fly wild, while other women tucked theirs modestly beneath a snood or coif. Her eyes were shiny and black as onyx, skin pale as milk, body thin and supple as a willow. A black ribbon circled her neck with a large diamond at her throat. She stood out among the group of rosy-skinned ladies with their pale blue eyes and golden tresses. Forty-nine ladies-in-waiting in my mother’s household wore pretty bright-coloured gowns, but this one dressed all in dramatic black and white.
The lady’s name was Anne Boleyn. I had learned by eavesdropping that she was the daughter of England’s ambassador to the French court, and she had grown up in France. Soon after she and her sister returned from France, my mother had invited them to join her court. Anne spoke French in a playful, mocking manner, quite different from the formal French of my tutors. She was witty and clever; her frequent, trilling laughter attracted everyone’s attention. She was not of royal blood — she was called simply Lady Anne — and yet she behaved as though she were royalty. I thought her fascinating.
The masque began. I led the seven ladies, including Anne, out of a make-believe ice cave, hung with garlands of greenery, and on to a low platform. There we were joined by eight men swirling long fur capes. The velvet half mask that hid King Henry’s eyes did not hide his identity — he was always the tallest man in any crowd, standing well above six feet. When the dancers were paired off as planned, the masked king held out his hand to me to dance the stately pavane. But as we executed the complicated steps, I noticed that my father’s eyes were not fixed on me but instead followed the black-haired dancer. There was an eagerness in his look that I had never seen there before, and it troubled me.
I needed to learn more about this Anne Boleyn.
You have nothing to worry about for the present,” Salisbury assured me as we commenced our journey back to Ludlow on a glowing May morning. Dew sparkled on the hedgerows, and the air was sweet with the smell of blossoms. “Before he sailed for France, King Francis complained to your father that “the princess is so small and frail that no marriage is possible for three years, until she is at least fourteen.’”
“‘Small and frail’ — is that what he said?” I cried. “So I do not please him after all! Why did he not say this before we pledged our troth?”
“You please him well, madam. He simply worries that you may not be robust enough to bear children. But this need not concern you. My prayers are answered: you will have plenty of time to grow to womanhood. And who knows what may happen?”
“I shall never marry!” I moaned. “I hate the men my father chooses for me! And if I do not satisfy a pompous old windbag like Francis, then whom can I satisfy?”
This was my third betrothal.
The first had been to the dauphin, the eldest son of this same King Francis, and took place when I was barely two years old and still lived with both my parents at Greenwich Palace. Naturally I could remember almost nothing of that event, but Salisbury had often described the occasion for me.
All I could recall was a jowly hugeness in scarlet satin looming over me — Cardinal Wolsey, that bloated friend of my father’s, who placed a ring with a sparkling stone as big as a wren’s egg on my finger. Wolsey, with his long, yellow teeth and cold, grey eyes, had always frightened me.
I could also remember gazing up at my father and smiling at him, and my father smiling back. How I adored him! How I loved being carried proudly on the king’s shoulder around the Great Hall of the palace as he showed me off or fed me dainty bits from his own plate while my mother frowned in disapproval.
Then, four years later when I was nearly six, my father decided that marrying me to the dauphin would not be in England’s best interests — or in his own. The betrothal was broken.
My mother explained, and Salisbury explained, that from the time of my birth — I was my parents’ only living child — my father had pondered the choice of a husband for me. Not a husband, even, but the promise of a husband. Many promises might be made and broken before there was a real wedding.
“A daughter is not as highly prized as a son would be,” Salisbury said, “but a princess is still precious. She is a valuable tool for forging alliances between kings and kingdoms. You must not concern yourself with it, Mary, because you have no say in any of it. Your mother, the queen, had no say when her own father, King Ferdinand of Spain, betrothed her to Prince Henry. These are the affairs of men, and especially of father’s, and most particularly of kings.”
I loudly protested this idea. My father adored me! Surely my happiness would be most important to him!
“Your happiness has nothing to do with it, madam,” Salisbury said in her infuriatingly calm way.
To my sorrow I learned that Salisbury was right: my happiness