To Shield the Queen Read online

  The Blanchards, neighbours of my own family in Sussex, were well-to-do, but Gerald was a younger son which meant he must make his own way. His father would have given him a present of money or perhaps a small farm, if Gerald had taken a suitable bride, but I didn’t qualify. Oh yes, the Faldenes were well off, too, high enough up the social scale to have a tradition of court service even though we were not titled. But Ursula Faldene was not a well-dowered daughter of the house. I was the unfortunate disaster which had befallen an earlier Faldene daughter when she went to the court of King Henry VIII to serve his second wife, Anne Boleyn, and misbehaved herself with a court gallant whom she would not identify. Or possibly, couldn’t identify, my Aunt Tabitha had once, disagreeably, suggested. “How many of them were there, I wonder?” she had said to my mother.

  “There was only the one!” my mother protested. “But he was married and no, I won’t name him.”

  “Only one? Prove it!” retorted Aunt Tabitha.

  When I married, Gerald’s family consisted of his father Luke Blanchard, and his elder brother Ambrose, cold-faced men, both of them. I never saw Gerald’s mother, but I know he took after her. His candid, merry countenance must have been her legacy. In my own family, my grandparents had died some years ago, leaving Uncle Herbert, his dreadfully virtuous wife Tabitha, and their children, my cousins. There had been a scheme between the Faldenes and the Blanchards to marry Gerald to my cousin Mary but I ruined that. The two families weren’t on speaking terms now. I would have been cut off without a dowry, except that I’d never had one in the first place. I wasn’t expected, or supposed, to marry.

  In bygone days, the Faldenes used to cope with surplus or embarrassing females such as my mother by depositing them in nearby Withysham Abbey, but all that came to an end when King Henry, because the Pope wouldn’t grant him a divorce from his first queen and thus set him free to marry Anne Boleyn, thumbed his nose at the Holy Father, broke with Rome and divorced himself. While he was at it, King Henry also disbanded the monasteries and nunneries of England. Withysham was no longer an option. My grandparents therefore took my disgraced mother back. From then on she was little more than an unpaid servant in her own home, and I was reared to be the same.

  I do remember, when I was small, receiving occasional signs of affection from my grandfather. I recall him giving me sweetmeats now and then and he let me learn to ride. I remember him walking beside me, the first time I was put into a saddle, and steadying me while the groom led the pony round the stableyard.

  However, he died when I was eight and my grandmother followed within the year, and from then on my mother and I were at the mercy of Uncle Herbert and Aunt Tabitha, except that mercy was a commodity in short supply in their household.

  In time, I came to see that they were a couple whose public life and private life were completely different.

  Outwardly, they were respectable and kindly folk who gave to charity, entertained or were entertained by their neighbours in our part of Sussex, on the northern edge of the downs, and never failed to ask politely after the health of guest or host and the families thereof.

  In private, Uncle Herbert’s principal passion was money. He never bought anything without haggling over it; it hurt him to see anyone making a good profit out of him. Faldene tenants had to pay their rent to the last farthing on the exact day stipulated. Most households gave the servants lengths of clothing material at Christmas, and usually such materials were hardwearing and not too costly, but Uncle Herbert used to give the servants his cast-offs, and believe me, my uncle didn’t cast anything off until the nap was gone and it had at least three patches. His favourite occupation was sitting in his study and going through his ledgers in the hope of squeezing another groat or two into the credit column of the estate transactions. Uncle Herbert, in fact, hated giving to charity, and in private, said so.

  As for the punctilious enquiries over other people’s well-being: if only Aunt Tabitha had been half so anxious about the health of those under her control!

  Faldene House was in the modern style, with towers and crenellations which were impressive, but were there for ornament, not for use as lookouts or battlements. It had been built early in the century, replacing a much older house.

  It was poised charmingly on a hillside overlooking Faldene Vale, a downland valley which was half-filled with woodland as a bowl may be filled with wine, while our cornfields and meadows lay spread over the sides of the valley. When the wind was fresh, cloud shadows would race across those hillsides, and ripening crops would ripple like water.

  A splendid place, Faldene, but as a home, it was not happy. My uncle and aunt, so apparently concerned for the welfare of others, were petty tyrants.

  Aunt Tabitha, thin and active and straight of back, was given to final pronouncements on all matters moral. She liked sitting in judgement on slacking maidservants and disobedient children, or on me when I had been caught reading poetry or playing with a ball when I should have been scraping carrots or mending sheets. Uncle Herbert was a contrast to his wife in appearance, for he was heavily built and grew more so as the years went on. However, he was good at delivering victims to Aunt Tabitha’s judgements, because indoors he wore soft slippers. For all his bulk, no one was better than Uncle Herbert at creeping up and catching people out. Once caught out, you could be casually struck or formally beaten, and the causes were often trivial.

  Aunt Tabitha also resented anyone who fell ill. The fact was, that she never ailed a day herself and was apt to regard any child or servant who went sick as a malingerer. She was quite capable of pulling someone out of bed if she thought their headache or fever was imaginary. I know. After the age of thirteen I was subject at times to violent headaches, with nausea, and I suffered much from Aunt Tabitha’s crude refusal to believe in this malady. My mother suffered, too, during the first stages of the lung-rot which killed her (though I believed then and believe now that the years of cold unkindness from her family had much to do with it). When it was clear that the illness was real, my aunt did let her rest in bed, but grudgingly, with much talk of her “charity” towards her fallen sister-in-law.

  My mother died when I was sixteen. Until then, she did her best to protect me from my family. She was in their power and therefore always had to be humble and polite towards them, but she was essentially a clever woman and she did her best by me. Aunt Tabitha meant me to grow up into another dogsbody; fetching, carrying, stitching, skivvying. But my mother managed to teach me to play the lute and the virginals and persuaded my aunt to let me share my cousins’ tutor by saying that I was over-lively and that this would keep me out of mischief. I had the sense to apply myself. Indeed, I was actually encouraged to study once Uncle Herbert had grasped that he could turn my education to advantage by using me as a clerk and secretary.

  As I grew up I spent many hours in his study, learning how to maintain ledgers and write letters in an elegant hand. Whatever I learned, though, was for my relatives to use. When my mother was gone, it was made clear to me that I was expected to spend the rest of my life gratefully serving those who had so generously taken me in. Marriage? No, that was for respectably born young women.

  When they discovered that I had supplied the deficiency for myself and stolen Cousin Mary’s prospective bridegroom while I was about it, Aunt Tabitha hit me so hard that I fell down, Cousin Mary threw herself on the floor and pounded it with her fists, howling, and I thought Uncle Herbert would burst a blood vessel.

  In other circumstances I might have pitied Mary, but I knew they would find her someone else fast enough, and she hardly knew Gerald. She didn’t love him. Gerald and I already knew we would have to marry without the consent of either of our families and our plans were already made. I escaped from Faldene that night and we ran away together. We took refuge with a friend of Gerald’s in the town of Guildford, on the way to London. We were married two days later in a nearby church, with the friend and his wife and parents as witnesses, and then went on to London, wh
ere Gerald was due to take up a post in the household of Sir Thomas Gresham.

  I was soon absorbed into the life of the large, friendly Gresham establishment, attending dinners there and being asked to hawking parties. My childhood riding lessons came in useful. I hadn’t ridden much since my grandfather died, but I had the basics, and soon developed some skill. It was much better fun than being dependent on a pillion. Gerald encouraged me. Gerald always encouraged me, in everything I did, just as I encouraged him.

  Four years later, when Queen Elizabeth came to the throne and sent Gresham out to Antwerp, we went too. With us went our little daughter Meg, her nurse Bridget Lemmon, and John Wilton. When he first decided to leave Sussex, Gerald had asked John to come as his personal man. John was willing, and signed on in our little ship of matrimony.

  And then the ship foundered on a black, evil rock of disease and stranded me, widowed, in Antwerp, with a small daughter, two servants, some rather expensive lodgings and just enough money for a couple of months.

  Sir Thomas had come to know that ours was a runaway match, and when he first heard of it, he questioned Gerald about it, but he had liked me from the start and apparently accepted Gerald’s account of my unhappy life at Faldene. Now he was kind but seemed uncertain what to do with me. I had my pride. “I will write to my home,” I said bravely.

  In fact, I wrote both to the Blanchards and the Faldenes, explaining my position and asking their help, for Meg’s sake, if not for my own. She was four years old and pretty. My father-in-law might be willing to do something for his own granddaughter, I thought.

  I was wrong. Master Blanchard did not care if Meg and I died of starvation and nor, apparently, did Gerald’s brother Ambrose. They wanted nothing to do with us and would prefer never to hear of us again. The letter in which Master Blanchard Senior expressed these unattractive sentiments contained the outrageous remark that he was being generous in even bothering to answer what he called my whining appeal.

  The Faldene response was different. They were prepared to forgive my ingratitude and wilfulness and take me in, along with the fruit of my sin (that meant Meg, and since she was legitimate, the sin in question was presumably the theft of Gerald from Cousin Mary). And to Faldene I would have had to go, with Meg, to face a life of unpaid servitude, except that Gerald’s work had brought him to the notice of the Secretary of State, Sir William Cecil. Sir Thomas had commended Gerald by name on occasion, it seemed, and thought of writing to Cecil to explain my plight. The ship which brought Faldene’s answer to Antwerp also brought an offer for me to follow in my mother’s tradition and come to court to wait on the queen.

  There were drawbacks: that thirty pounds a year stipend for instance. The queen’s ladies usually had families behind them to support them. Nor could I have my daughter with me. It was better than going home to Faldene, though, and I agreed.

  I did go briefly to Sussex first, because I wanted to visit my mother’s grave, and while I was there, I wished to find a cottage to rent for Bridget and Meg. It would be easier to find one, I thought, in a place I knew.

  I stayed with John Wilton’s sister, whose husband had a small farm there. I did not need or want to call at Faldene House, although when I went to look at the grave, I was close to the house and it seemed odd to see it and not go there. After all, I had been reared there, however grudgingly. I did not altogether escape seeing my family, though. I was placing a bunch of bluebells on my mother’s sadly overgrown resting place, when Aunt Tabitha chose to walk through the churchyard. She saw me, stopped short, and then came briskly up to me.

  “Well, well. Ursula! What are you doing here? Are you intending to call on us?”

  “I thought you might prefer it if I didn’t,” I said quietly. “I am paying my respects to my mother’s memory, as you see.”

  She stared at me as if wondering whether she could still bully me and I stared back, determined that she should not. “This, I take it,” she said, “is the child.”

  I was holding Meg by the hand. I told her to make her curtsy and presented her to my aunt, who looked at her disparagingly and said, “Are you taking her to court with you?”

  “No. I am making arrangements for her elsewhere.”

  “Better leave her with us. We can see she is reared in the true faith and taught to be useful.”

  “In the true faith?” I said, and then realised that a faint tang of incense was clinging to my aunt’s clothes. I knew the smell, for when I had lived at Faldene, Queen Mary was still on the throne and mass was not only legal but obligatory. “You still hear mass?” I asked sharply.

  Aunt Tabitha looked offended. “We attend church regularly as the law enjoins,” she said. “If, in private, we follow our own beliefs, it is no one’s business but ours.”

  The conflict between the old Catholic religion and the new Protestant one was something that no one, noble or humble, could ignore. In the days of Elizabeth’s predecessor Queen Mary, it had been, literally and hideously, a burning question.

  Even after Elizabeth came to the throne and brought with her some semblance of calm, it was still the stream that drove the mill wheel of international politics and the cause of half the family feuds in the land. Elizabeth had made the land Protestant but some of her councillors were sympathetic to the old religion; most of them men who had served as Queen Mary’s councillors. The queen could not afford to do without their experience and didn’t try, and no one was being sent to the stake for Catholic sympathies. However, you could be fined or even imprisoned for hearing mass, or celebrating it. If mass was being said at Faldene now, it was illegal.

  “You will of course do what you think right,” I said, “but I most certainly will not burden you with Meg.”

  “You never did know the meaning of the word gratitude, Ursula. I can only hope you don’t go the way of your mother. There’ll be plenty of lusty, well-off gallants at that red-headed heretic’s court, I don’t doubt!”

  I took my leave of her coldly and led Meg away.

  Now, sitting on the window seat in my room at Richmond, I thought grimly that I would survive somehow. I would keep myself decent; I would make my way at court, and I would keep Meg out of Faldene’s clutches, too.

  But to prosper at court apparently meant hiring a lady’s maid. Dear God, how was I to afford that? It would take half my stipend! Feverishly, I tried to think of ways and means. There was a small garden with the cottage I had found for Bridget and Meg. Bridget could read, though only just. I would write her a clear, simple letter, telling her to grow vegetables and keep hens, and try to sell things—eggs, pullets, onions, lettuces. It wouldn’t be enough, but I must just do my best.

  The door opened and back came Lady Katherine Knollys with her woman. “Would you believe it? I’ve already heard of someone who might suit you!” she announced. “One of the maids of honour is being sent home for being caught in compromising circumstances with a young man, and leaves court tomorrow. She comes from the North, but her tiring woman is a Londoner and doesn’t want to go with her. She intends to seek another position. I suggest that you interview her in the morning.”

  “Thank you,” I said tonelessly. “You are very kind.”

  • • •

  I was presented to her majesty later the same day. I had changed into a black velvet gown, decorated only with a few seed pearls. The gown had a small farthingale and a little white linen ruff and with it I wore a silver net for my hair, and a silver pendant. It was a becoming ensemble, which was fortunate because it gave me confidence. Being presented to Queen Elizabeth of England was quite an ordeal.

  To begin with, Lady Katherine gave me a terrifying list of dos and don’ts. I must curtsy thus, and speak only if invited to do so but then must speak clearly and without stammering. And although I was here, as much as anything, because my mother had served the queen’s mother, I must not allude to Anne Boleyn in any way, or even to Kate Howard, Anne’s cousin, who had also been married to King Henry, and had been beheaded,
like Anne, for adultery.

  “Her majesty never speaks of them. She may well think of them privately, especially her mother,” said Lady Katherine. “She has shown great kindness to the Boleyns and their kin, of whom I am one—my mother was Queen Anne’s sister—but the past is never mentioned. You must also . . . ”

  I felt positively frightened before I even entered the room where the queen was to receive me. With Lady Katherine, I had first to cross a crowded antechamber, and then pass through an inner door with guards who placed their pikes across it until Lady Katherine gave our names, when they let us pass with a clash of pike-handles on the floor as they set their weapons upright again.

  Inside, was a big room with an ornately painted and gilded ceiling and tapestried walls. This too was crowded, with courtiers male and female, and my sovereign was seated on a dais at the far side of an immense expanse of floor, across which I must walk, at Lady Katherine’s side, under the eyes of what seemed to me like an audience of several hundred.

  Quaking inwardly, I tried to keep my head up and my gaze fixed on the glittering figure of the queen. Viewed from afar, that was all she was: just a sparkling effigy on a chair with a high, pointed back. The odd thing was that as we approached, she did not become more human. Yet she was only a young woman, not yet twenty-seven, only months older than I was myself. It was extraordinary.

  At the foot of the dais, Lady Katherine and I sank into our curtsies. A cool, even voice told us to rise, and as we did so, Lady Katherine began on a formal introduction, while I took my first good look at my sovereign.

  I saw . . .

  An astounding dress of ash-coloured satin, iridescent with gold embroidery, the waist so tiny, so pointed, that it was hard to believe that a human body could be held within it. I saw many ropes of pearls; a close ruff of lace, with more pearls at the edges; matching wrist-ruffs; a pearl headdress; pale red hair crimped into a cap of curls.