Whenever she visited the household, she and the Countess would talk of me. My mother wanted to know everything I did and said and wore. She made me feel cherished; and the greatest sorrow of my early life was due to those occasions when we had to part.
She would say: “Soon we shall be together again and when I am not here the lady Countess will be your mother in my place.”
“There can only be one mother,” I told her gravely.
“That is so, my child,” she answered. “But you love the Countess as she loves you, and you must do everything she tells you and above all remember that she is there… for me.”
I did understand. I was wise for my years. I had, as Alice Wood, the laundress used to say, “an old head on little shoulders.”
Soon after that, when I was two years and eight months old, my first betrothal took place.
A son had been born to François Premier, the King of France, and my father and the Cardinal believed that it would strengthen the friendship between our two countries if a marriage was arranged for us. Although I was almost exactly two years older—the Dauphin was born on the 28th of February 1518—we were of an age. I had no notion of what this was all about. I do vaguely remember the splendid ceremony at Greenwich Palace, largely because of the clothes I had to wear. They were heavy and prickly; my gown was of cloth of gold, and my black velvet cap so encrusted with jewels that I could scarcely support its weight. My prospective bridegroom, being only eight months old, was naturally spared the ceremony and a somewhat solemn-looking Admiral Bonnivet represented him. I remember the heavy diamond ring he put on my finger.
The great Cardinal celebrated Mass. I was too uncomfortable in my unwieldy garments to be anything but pleased when it was all over.
The Countess told me that it was a very important occasion and it meant that one day I should be Queen of France. I need not be alarmed. The ceremony would not be repeated until the Dauphin was fourteen years old— by which time I should be sixteen… eons away in time. Then I should go to France to be prepared for the great honor of queenship.
My mother did not share in the general rejoicing. I learned at an early age that she did not like the French.
I was three years old when an event took place which was of the greatest importance to my mother and therefore to me, although, of course, at this stage of my life I was blissfully ignorant of it and of the storms which had begun to cast a cloud over my parents' marriage.
Later I heard all about it.
I had sensed that there had been a certain disappointment at my birth because I was not a boy, and I was aware some time before my third birthday that there was an expectancy in the Court which had seeped into my household. People whispered. I caught a word here and there. I think I must have been rather precocious. I suppose any child in my position would have been. I did not know what the undercurrents meant but I did somehow sense that they were there.
My mother was ill and I heard it murmured that this was yet another disappointment, though “it” would only have been a girl. The King was angry; the Queen was desolate. It was yet another case of hope unfulfillled.
“Well, there is time yet,” I heard it said. “And after all there is the little Princess.”
And then a boy was born—not to my mother, though. He was a very important boy, but he could not displace me. He was flawed in some way. He was—I heard the word spoken with pity and a touch of contempt—a bastard.
But there was something special about this bastard.
I learned the story later. Bessie Blount was not the King's first mistress. How my poor mother must have suffered! She, the daughter of proud Isabella and Ferdinand, to be forced to accept such a state of affairs. Men were not faithful… kings in particular… but they should veil their infidelities with discretion. I heard many tales of Bessie Blount; how she was the star of the Court, how she sang more prettily and danced more gracefully than any other; and how the King, tiring of his Spanish Queen who, in any case was more than five years his senior, was like every other man at Court fascinated by her.
There had been another woman before Bessie Blount's arrival on the scene. She was the sister of the Duke of Buckingham and was at Court with her husband. The Duke of Buckingham considered himself more royal than the Tudors. His father was descended from Thomas of Woodstock, who was a son of Edward III, and his mother had been Catherine Woodville, sister to Elizabeth, Queen of Edward IV. So he had good reasons—particularly as the Plantagenets were inclined to regard the Tudors as upstarts. My own dear Countess of Salisbury was very proud of her Plantagenet ancestry but she was wise enough not to talk of it.
However, the erring lady's sister-in-law discovered what was happening and reported it to her husband the Duke, who was incensed that a member of his family should so demean herself as to become any man's mistress, even if that man was the King. Being so conscious of his heritage, he was not the man to stand aside and had gone so far as to upbraid the King. It was really quite a storm and I could imagine the interest it aroused throughout the Court and the anguish it brought to my mother.
The woman was taken to a convent by her brother and kept there. The King and the Duke quarrelled, with the result that Buckingham left the Court for a while. I suppose it was not considered to be a very serious incident but I believe it was the first time my mother had been aware that the King looked elsewhere for his comfort.
The Bessie Blount affair was quite another matter—no hole in the corner affair this. My father was now petulantly showing his discontent. All those years of marriage and only one child—and that a girl—to show for it! Something was wrong and, as my father could never see any fault in himself, he blamed my mother. He convinced himself that he had nobly married his brother's widow; when she was helpless, he had played the gallant knight as he loved to do in his masques and charades, and out of chivalry he had married her. And how had she repaid him? By producing children who did not survive…apart from one daughter. It was unacceptable in his position. He must have heirs because the country needed them. He had been cheated.
There was no longer pleasure to be found in the marriage bed. God had not made him a monk, so it was only natural that he, so bitterly disappointed in his marriage, should turn aside for a little relaxation to enable him to deal effectively with matters of state.
So there was the delectable Bessie, the star of the Court, so enchanting, desired by many. It was natural that she should comfort my father.
Perhaps it would not have been so important if Bessie had not become pregnant; and even that in itself could not have made such a stir. But Bessie produced a boy—a healthy boy! The King's son—but, alas, born on the wrong side of the blanket, as they say.
A ripple of excitement ran through the Court, so obvious that even I, a child of three years, was conscious of it.
When my mother visited me, I noticed a sadness in her. It grieved me momentarily but when she saw this she was determined to hide it and became more merry than she usually was.
I forgot it. But later, of course, looking back, I saw that it was, in a way, the beginning.
The boy was named Henry after his father. He was a bright and goodlooking child, and the King was proud of him. He was known as Henry Fitzroy so that none should forget whose son he was. Bessie was married to Sir Gilbert Talboys, a man of great wealth, for it was considered fitting that as she was a mother she should be a wife. The boy must have the best and his father saw much of him. My mother used to talk to me about it during those dark days when the King's Secret Matter was, in spite of this appellation, the most discussed subject at Court.