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.”
Uncle John rumbled in his throat, and Aunt Kat flushed. “Never mind, John. I shall not give it another thought. She looked fine today, did our Elizabeth. She would make a regal queen.”
I squeezed my eyes shut. “Please tell me you have not turned conspirator, Aunt.”
“Of course not,” Aunt Kat said in surprise. “But Mary isn’t yet married, is she? She might be too old to bear children, in any case—she is thirty-seven after all. Elizabeth is her heir. Elizabeth may be queen before our time on earth is out. No need for conspiracies at all.”
Colby, I mused as I nibbled another sweetmeat, thought differently. He did not seem to be a man willing to sit back and wait to see whether Mary bore children or not.
I’d decided that Colby wanted me to remain close to Elizabeth for two reasons—first to keep her safe, and second to ferret out whether she would support any schemes dreamt up by him and Lord Robert.
I understood why Colby might plot to put Elizabeth on the throne. Elizabeth was English, born of Tudor Henry and an English gentlewoman. Mary was half Spanish and sympathetic to the Holy Roman Empire.
Mary wanted to pull England back under the harness of the pope, while Elizabeth wished England to remain free and unencumbered. The Holy Roman Empire was strong and vast, its Hapsburg princes more than ready to snare England in its net.
Colby and Dudley were clever, popular, and rash. Colby had dragged me right into the heart of things by confiding too much in me. If I were sensible, I would flee at the very sight of the man and refuse to speak to him again.
But secretly I agreed with Colby. If a plot came to oust Mary, I would be in the thick of it, risking my neck to help my princess. I knew this as well as I knew my own name.
