Chapter 13
Several days later, the agate-hard light reentered Elizabeth’s eyes as she marched through Richmond Palace to have another audience with Mary.
As I scuttled along behind her, I wondered if she would express her hot rage to Mary or be coldly offensive with her sister as she had been with Bishop Gardiner.
Mary likewise was in a temper by the time we reached her chamber. She thrust out her hand for Elizabeth to kneel to and kiss then snatched it away, leaving Elizabeth on her knees with no permission to rise.
“My council is displeased with you,” Mary snapped. “And this displeases me.”
Whatever sisterly affection Mary had expressed in the euphoria of her rise to the throne was nowhere in evidence. She glared at Elizabeth with an outrage that reflected Henry Tudor.
Elizabeth stared back at Mary, their father reflected in her as well. Just when I thought Elizabeth might respond in kind, she burst into sobs and pressed her hands tightly to her face.
Elizabeth’s body shook, but she never removed her fingers from her eyes. Perhaps she waited to manufacture tears before she raised her head to Mary again.
“You must forgive my backwardness, sister,” Elizabeth said, her voice muffled.
“I was raised in a household that taught nothing but the reformed faith. How can I transform myself in the space of weeks to something I have never known? I am all ignorance. Tell me, dear sister, what I can do to overcome this?”
While Mary’s expression did not soften, I saw her unbend slightly at Elizabeth’s contrite plea. She’d steeled herself for a long argument with heated, perhaps hateful words, and here was Elizabeth at her feet, weeping and begging for forgiveness.
“I am pleased to hear you acknowledge your error,” Mary said stiffly. “I know so many who refuse to even admit they’ve been led astray. You will come to chapel with me, sister. You will show the world what it is to repent your sins and beg God and the Virgin for forgiveness.”
I held my breath, waiting to see what Elizabeth would do.
I knew, through my whispered meetings with Colby whenever he sought me, that many in England were pleased that Elizabeth remained of the reformed religion.
They hoped it meant that the reformed church could continue intact, in spite of Mary’s wishes.
If Mary would not force her own sister’s conversion, they could believe the queen sincere in her wish for tolerance.
Mary appeared anything but tolerant as she stood over Elizabeth, her small hands clenched, her agitated breath pressing her bosom against her too-tight stomacher.
“Will you be willing to do as I ask?” Mary demanded.
Elizabeth gazed up at her sister, true tears on her face. “I beg you to give me books to read and a priest to instruct me. Help me to learn.”
Mary bent to Elizabeth, the sapphire crucifix at her neck nearly swinging into Elizabeth’s nose. “You will attend the Chapel Royal with me next week at the Feast of the Nativity of the Virgin. May I send a litter to you for your convenience?”
“I will come.” Elizabeth’s voice held a quaver. “You are a kind, dear sister.”
Mary at last relented. She lifted Elizabeth to her feet and then embraced and kissed her. Elizabeth daintily wiped her eyes and returned the kisses.
Mary dismissed her, watching her go with some suspicion, despite the hope Elizabeth had given her.
Mary’s suspicions would have been justified if she’d witnessed Elizabeth storming into her chambers when we returned to them, overturning tables and flinging aside anything she could lay her hands on.
“The fool,” Elizabeth snarled as I quickly closed the outer door. “She’s buried herself in her piety all her life, and now she wants to drag me down with her. Can she not see that people do not want her church, can she not hear their muttering?”
One of her ladies, Elizabeth Sandes, a staunch believer in the reformed faith, snorted. “Not over the droning of Latin and the ringing of chancel bells,” she said.
Elizabeth whirled on Mistress Sandes, her face red with rage. She glared at her lady for a few seconds, then abruptly burst into uproarious laughter.
Elizabeth began the morning of the Feast of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin by being sick in a bowl, the stink of it tainting her bedchamber.
She’d not been fabricating when she’d informed Mary and her chancellor that she was a victim of severe headaches. They could confine Elizabeth to bed for days, with her ladies in constant attendance to place cool cloths on her brow and dose her with herbs.
“I am wretched,” Elizabeth whispered. She clenched her teeth, her skin as colorless as the linens on her bed. “The pain tears at me like claws.”
Mistress Sandes suggested we send word to Mary and beg her to let Elizabeth rest, but Elizabeth instructed Mistress Sandes to help her stand, determination in every move. “Lace me into my gown, Eloise. My sister shall see what I am made of.”
We got her bathed and dressed, though it consumed most of the morning. The escorts who’d arrived to accompany us to the Chapel Royal grew impatient and irritated as Elizabeth kept them waiting.
It took a long while for us to traverse the grounds of the palace in the litter Mary had sent, as we had to move very slowly to not upset Elizabeth’s head. Elizabeth lay against the cushions, a cloth on her forehead. We hovered beside the litter with herbal balls and worried expressions.
Inside the chapel, Elizabeth descended the litter, her cheeks almost gray. As she entered the royal box, high in the chapel, she pressed her hand to her stomach and sat down next to Mary, breathing heavily. Jane Dormer, sitting behind Mary, scowled her disapproval.
Mary slid out a hand to clasp her sister’s. “I am pleased you have come. I shall not forget this.”
“My head pains me something terrible,” Elizabeth whispered back to her. “Let me sit quietly, or I am undone.”
Mary nodded in understanding. Jane Dormer continued to frown, her skepticism evident.
Below us Bishop Gardiner began his chanting, the syllables filling the chapel. A huge Bible was open on a lectern before him—I could see its colorfully decorated pages from my place behind Elizabeth.
As Bishop Gardiner read the Magnificat—the Song of Mary—his assistant priests waved smoking censers, coating the air with the thick scent of sandalwood and patchouli.
I found it oddly soothing, but Elizabeth groaned audibly, her voice mixing with the bishop’s intonations. “My head. Mistress Sandes, quickly.”
Mistress Sandes, who’d grimaced as soon as Gardiner had begun chanting, handed Elizabeth a silk ball filled with chamomile and lavender. Elizabeth pressed the pomander gratefully to her nose, closing her eyes and shutting out the heavy smell of incense.
Below us, the Holy Roman Emperor’s ambassador, Simon Renard, scowled up at the box, his smooth face set in annoyance. Mary, though, showed only concern for Elizabeth as she held her sister’s hand and chafed her wrist.
“Gloria patri, et filio, et spiritui sancto,” Gardiner sang.
The words were echoed by a soft retching sound from Elizabeth.
The service finally ended. Elizabeth, with Mary’s blessing, climbed painfully into the litter, and we retreated to her chambers. Elizabeth complained loudly not only about her head but her stomach all the way back.
But her theatrics were successful. Not a few days later, Jane Dormer led several of Mary’s ladies to Elizabeth’s rooms and presented Elizabeth with jewels from the queen, a ruby-studded crucifix among them.
Elizabeth expressed her gratitude through them to Mary and accepted the jewels as though they were her due.
The crucifix she pushed to the back of a drawer and never took out again.
Aunt Kat, Uncle John, and I were privileged spectators of Mary’s coronation that October, allowed to watch the new queen enter the Tower and then leave it the next morning to process to Westminster.
Elizabeth, dressed in white and silver, rode in a carriage behind Mary with Anne of Cleves, Henry’s fourth wife. I witnessed firsthand the cheers that arose when Elizabeth appeared, the Tudor princess, shining in the sunlight.
Luckily, Mary believed the adulation all for her.
Wine ran freely in the streets, pipes flowing from wine shop to wine shop to dispense the drink to all.
At Westminster Abbey, Mary stood proudly after the crown was lowered onto her head.
Tears flooded her eyes as every man and woman bent knee to her.
During the coronation banquet, Elizabeth sat with Anne of Cleves, and both ladies were made much of.
“They say Elizabeth looks far more like a queen than her sister,” Aunt Kat remarked to me as we celebrated that night in Elizabeth’s chambers at Whitehall. “In many’s opinion, the crown is on the wrong head.”
“Kat,” Uncle John admonished. We stood in a quiet corner, but Mary’s spies could be anywhere.
“Not to worry, husband,” Aunt Kat said quickly. “I’ve learned my lesson. No more dabbling in affairs of the crown. But I cannot help what others say.”
“Mary is queen now, whatever that may bring.” Uncle John released a resigned sigh.
“Though I admit it did not bode well, Mary having to request one of her noble gentlemen to dub knights at her coronation instead of doing it herself. That only emphasized that she cannot do what a man can do. A woman cannot don armor and lead an army, and she cannot dub the naked knights of the bath.”
“Will she marry Courtenay, then?” My mouth was full of sweetmeats, which I had overindulged in today.
A serving man had let me take a tray of them into my hands, more fool he.
“I cannot imagine Edward Courtenay as king. He would cause more trouble than Mary could soothe, I should think, from all I have heard about him.”
“Mary is old,” Aunt Kat said, forgetting that she herself was at least ten years Mary’s senior. “Courtenay is the sort who will always want a young and pretty woman. Like our own princess.”