But she was not bold in a brazen way, for all of her red hair, and her smiling face, and the energy of her every movement. She deployed all the modesty of a young woman, with a sideways sliding smile at the man who lifted her back into the saddle, and a flirtatious turn of the head as she gathered up the reins. She looked like someone who knew all the pleasures of being a young woman and was not prepared to take the pains. She looked like a young woman who knew her mind.
I looked from her to the Lady Mary, the mistress that I had come to love, and I thought that it would be better for her if she made plans to marry off Lady Elizabeth at once, and send her far away. No household could be at peace with this firebrand in its midst, and no kingdom could settle with such an heir burning so brightly beside an aging queen.
Autumn 1553
As Lady Mary became established in her new life as the next Queen of England I realized that I must speak to her about my own future. September came and I was paid my wage from the queen’s household accounts, just as if I were a musician or a pageboy in very truth, or one of her other servants. Clearly, I had exchanged one master for another, the king to whom I had been begged as a fool was dead, the lord who had sworn me as his vassal was in the Tower, and the Lady Mary on whom I had been battened all this summer was now my mistress. In a move contrary to the spirit of the times – since everyone else in the country seemed to be coming to court with their palm outstretched to assure her that their village would never have declared for her had it not been for their own heroic isolated efforts – I thought that perhaps the moment had come for me to excuse myself from royal service and go back to my father.
I chose my time carefully, just after Mass when the Lady Mary walked back from her chapel at Richmond in a mood of quiet exaltation. The raising of the Host was not an empty piece of theater to her, it was the presence of the risen God, you could see it in her eyes and in the serenity of her smile. She was uplifted by it in a way I had only ever seen before in those who held to a religious life for conviction. She was more abbess than queen when she walked back from Mass, and it was then that I fell into step beside her.
“Your Grace?”
“Yes, Hannah?” she smiled at me. “Do you have any words of wisdom for me?”
“I am a most irregular fool,” I said. “I see that I pronounce very rarely.”
“You told me I would be queen, and I held that to my heart in the days when I was afraid,” she said. “I can wait for the gift of the Holy Spirit to move you.”
“It was that I wanted to speak to you about,” I said awkwardly. “I have just been paid by the keeper of your household…”
She waited. “Has he underpaid you?” she asked politely.
“No! Not at all! That is not what I meant!” I exclaimed desperately. “No, Your Grace. This is the first time that you have paid me. I was paid by the king before. But I came into his service when I was begged as a fool to him by the Duke of Northumberland, who then sent me as a companion to you. I was merely going to say that you, er, you don’t have to have me.”
As I spoke, we turned into her private apartments and it was as well, for she gave a most unqueenly gurgle of laughter. “You are not, as it were, compulsory?”
I found I was smiling too. “Please, Your Grace. I was taken from my father on the whim of the duke and then begged as a fool to the king. Since then I have been in your household without you ever asking for my company. I just wanted to say that you can release me, I know you never asked for me.”
She sobered at once. “Do you want to go home, Hannah?”
“Not especially, Your Grace,” I said tentatively. “I love my father very well but at home I am his clerk and printer. It is more enjoyable and more interesting at court, of course.” I did not add the proviso – if I can be safe here – but that question always dominated me.
“You have a betrothed, don’t you?”
“Yes,” I said, disposing of him promptly. “But we are not to marry for years yet.”
She smiled at the childishness of my reply. “Hannah, would you like to stay with me?” she asked sweetly.
I knelt at her feet, and spoke from my heart. “I would,” I said. I trusted her, I thought I might be safe with her. “But I cannot promise to have the Sight.”
“I know that,” she said gently. “It is the gift of the Holy Spirit, which blows where it lists, I don’t expect you to be my astrologer. I want you to be my little maid, my little friend. Will you be that?”
“Yes, Your Grace, I should like that,” I said, and felt the touch of her hand on my head.
She was silent for a moment, her hand resting gently as I knelt before her. “It is very rare to find one that I can trust,” she said quietly. “I know that you came into my household paid by my enemies; but I think your gift comes from God, and I believe that you came to me from God. And you love me now, don’t you, Hannah?”
“Yes, Your Grace,” I said simply. “I don’t think anyone could serve you and not come to love you.”
She smiled a little sadly. “Oh, it is possible,” she said, and I knew she was thinking of the women who had been employed in the royal nursery and paid to love the Princess Elizabeth and to humiliate the older child. She took her hand from my head and I felt her step away, and I looked up to see her going toward the window to look out at the garden. “You can come with me now, and bear me company,” she said quietly. “I have to talk with my sister.”
I followed her as she walked through her private rooms to the gallery which ran looking out over the river. The fields were all shaven bare and yellow. But it had not been a good harvest. It had rained at harvesttime, and if they could not dry the wheat then the grains would rot and there would not be enough to last through the winter, and there would be hunger in the land. And after hunger came illness. To be a good queen in England under these wet skies you had to command the weather itself; and not even Lady Mary, on her knees to her God for hours every day, could manage that.
There was a rustle of a silk underskirt and I peeped around and saw the Lady Elizabeth had entered the gallery from the other end. The young woman took in my presence and she gave me her mischievous smile, as if we were somehow allies. I felt like one of a pair of schoolmates summoned before a severe teacher and I found that I was smiling back at her. Elizabeth could always do that; she could enlist your friendship with a turn of her head. Then she directed her attention to her sister.
“Your Grace is well?”
Lady Mary nodded and then spoke coolly. “You asked to see me.”
At once the beautiful pale face became sober and grave. Lady Elizabeth dropped to her knees, her mane of copper hair tumbled around her shoulders as she dropped her head forward. “Sister, I am afraid you are displeased with me.”
The Lady Mary was silent for a moment. I saw her check a rapid movement forward to raise up her half sister. Instead she kept her distance and the cool tone of her voice. “And so?” she asked.
“I can think of no means where I have displeased you, unless it is that you suspect my religion,” Lady Elizabeth said, her head still penitently bowed.
“You don’t come to Mass,” the Lady Mary observed stiffly.
The copper head nodded. “I know. Is it that which offends you?”
“Of course!” Lady Mary replied. “How can I love you as my sister if you refuse the church?”
“Oh!” Elizabeth gave a little gasp. “I feared it was that. But sister, you don’t understand me. I want to come to Mass. But I have been afraid. I didn’t want to show my ignorance. It’s so foolish… but you see… I don’t know how to do it.” Elizabeth raised a tearstained face to her sister. “Nobody ever taught me what I should do. I was not brought up in the way of the Faith as you were. No one ever taught me. You remember, I was brought up at Hatfield and then I lived with Katherine Parr and she was a most determined Protestant. How could I ever be taught the things you learned at your mother’s knee? Please, sister, please don’t blame me for an ignorance which I could not help. When I was a little girl and we lived together, you did not teach me your faith then.”