My dear Countess, being astute and a very wise woman, would have realized that the Duke was a very foolish man who had himself to blame for a great deal of his misfortunes. But also it would have been brought home to her that, in view of her own royal connections, she was in a very precarious position.
Children are perceptive and perhaps, being brought up as I had been, I was particularly so. But I do remember that time and I was very conscious of a change in the Countess. She must have been a very worried woman.
One day my mother arrived at Ditton. I was then six years old but being close to events such as the birth of Henry Fitzroy and the death of the Duke of Buckingham, I was beginning to acquire a greater understanding than would have been expected from one of my tender years.
My mother looked happy and, having been mildly conscious of the Countess's distress and that my mother had previously been anxious about something, I rejoiced to see her so.
She embraced the Countess and they talked together for a while. Then I was brought to them. My mother kissed me with great affection.
The Countess said, “I doubt not that Your Grace will wish to talk to the Princess alone.”
“Oh yes,” replied my mother. “I can scarcely wait to impart the good news.”
When we were alone, she sat down and drew me to her. I stood beside her, her arms encircling me. I watched the happiness in her eyes and eagerly waited to hear this good news.
“My dearest child,” she said, “you are to be betrothed.”
I was puzzled. I thought I was betrothed. When I was sixteen I was to go to France to learn how to be Queen of that country when I married the boy who was now Dauphin.
“Yes, my lady,” I said. “I know I am.”
She shook her head. “You do not understand, dear child. This is wonderful news. You are going to marry the Emperor Charles.”
The Emperor Charles! But he was our enemy! The Field of the Cloth of Gold had taken place to let him know how friendly we were with my future father-in-law, the King of France.
“But, my lady,” I stammered, “what of the Dauphin?”
My mother smiled tenderly at me. “That, my dearest, is over, and it greatly pleases me that this should be. It would have been a great tragedy. But let us rejoice. The Emperor Charles is the greatest ruler in Europe… next to your father,” she added quickly. “He is half Spanish… the son of my own dear sister Juana. It is what I have always wanted for you.”
I glowed with pleasure. If my mother wanted it, it must be good. And it was wonderful to see her so happy.
“Does my father wish this?” I asked.
She laughed. “He wishes it…or it would not be. You see, it is better for our country to be friendly with the Emperor than with France. Everything is good about this match. You are half Spanish through me … and the Emperor is through his mother. Friendship with the Emperor is better for England. The alliance with France brought us no good. It would have ruined the wool trade which is so important for England for our wool goes to Flanders, and Flanders is in the dominions of the great Emperor Charles—as is so much of Europe. But you are too young to understand…”
“Oh no, my lady. I want to know. I want to know … all.”
She took my face in her hands and kissed it. “This is a happy day for me,” she said.
So if it was a happy day for her, it must be for me, too.
After that my mother, Lady Salisbury and Lady Bryan talked to me often about the Emperor. They made me feel that I was the most fortunate girl in the world because I was to be his bride.
He was powerful; he was clever; he was handsome; he was everything that a young girl could hope for in a husband. By great good fortune I had been saved from a match with the wicked and corrupt Court of France, and now I was to be awarded the greatest prize in Christendom.
My bridegroom-to-be was twenty-three years old. I was six, so there did seem to be a certain disparity in our ages. This was nothing, my mother told me. I would soon grow up. I wanted to say that Charles would grow too and as I grew older so must he. In seven years, they told me, when I was fourteen, Charles would be in his prime.
It was wonderful to see everyone happy; so I was happy, too, for I believed that everything that pleased my mother must be good and right and please me.
One day she told me that Charles was so delighted with everything he had heard of me that he was coming to England to see me for himself and that if I pleased him there would be a formal betrothal.
I was a little anxious that I might not please him, but the Countess soothed my anxieties with a tender smile. “You are your father's daughter, Princess,” she said. “That is enough to please anyone.”
All the women of the household used to talk of my romance with the Emperor Charles.
“The Princess is in love,” they would say. “I declare she is always dreaming about her bridegroom. And who can wonder? Such a bridegroom! The great Emperor himself.”
It was a game to me. I laughed with them. It seemed wonderful to be in love because it made everyone so happy.
My mother came to Ditton. She was very excited.
“I have wonderful news for you, little daughter. The Emperor will soon be here.”
I clasped my hands. I should see him… this wonderful creature, this god who, in my mind, would be rather like my father but not frightening, tender like my mother, in spite of the fact that he was as powerful—or almost—as my father.
“Yes,” said my mother. “Although at this time he is engaged in a war, he is coming to see you.”
It seemed marvelous. No one told me that it was because he was engaged in a war, because he wanted my father's support against the French, that he had agreed to take me as his bride, even though he would have to wait years before I could take up that position, and that in his mind this was something which might never happen.
I believed then that he loved me. I had been told so, and it did not occur to me, at that time, that my elders did not always mean what they said. They had told me that I was going to live happily with him for the rest of my life, and this would begin as soon as I was old enough to go to him. What could be more enticing than a rosy future in the far distance, so that I could contemplate it with a comforting pleasure knowing that nothing could be changed for many years?
It seemed so simple as my inexperienced imagination grappled with the scraps of information I received. I saw the wicked King François, with his long nose and satanic eyes, who had betrayed my father at the Field of the Cloth of Gold, who, all the time he had been professing friendship, was trying to humiliate him, who had greeted him as brother merely because he wanted help against that knight of shining virtue, the Emperor Charles.
In due course Charles arrived in England. It was June, four months after my sixth birthday. I was at Greenwich, in a state of immense excitement because this most wonderful being would in due course arrive here and I should come face to face with him.
The Countess talked continually of him—of what I must do, of how I must not speak unless spoken to. I must practice the virginals, for he would surely wish to hear me play. I danced well, but I must dance better. I must outshine all other dancers. He would be interested in my learning perhaps more than my social graces. He was that sort of man. So I must be at my best in every way. There were discussions with the seamstress. What should I wear for the great occasion?