The memory of my mother's fate was always somewhere in my mind and when I saw my father I often recalled that look he had given us in the courtyard and it sent a shiver through me; to see him happy with this young girl helped to soothe me. She was a Howard…a little like my mother, they said, and if she lacked her cousin's wiles, her vast sophistication, her wit and her lively mind, she made up for it with an infinite sweetness and good nature.

“Just fancy,” she said, “I am your stepmother. And I hope you will let me be your friend.”

Who would have expected a queen to talk thus to a girl who had been brought out of obscurity at her request?

The King smiled on me now because the Queen was fond of me. She talked round-eyed of my achievements and what my tutors had told her, opening her beautiful eyes wide and declaring that even to contemplate such learning was beyond her. At which the King said he was thankful for that, since she was perfect as she was—his rose without a thorn.

On the first night she dined in public with the King, she insisted that I be there as well. So there I was, opposite her, unable to take my eyes from her lovely laughing face, and watching the King touch her arm and her hand with such loving tenderness, calling her sweetheart in a voice which was soft and overflowing with love.

Kat said: “All will be different now. We shall have our rightful place. We shall be recognized as the King's daughter, which we are, of course. But our new Queen has a fancy for you, my Lady, and if she asks for your company, rest assured the King so dotes on her that she will have her way.”

If only it could have stayed like that I believe it would have made a great difference to us all. The King would have been happier for undoubtedly he loved her and, as Kat pointed out, she was not under the same stress to produce a son as my poor mother had been. “Moreover,” said Kat wisely, “the King is no longer in his first flush of youth. Don't whisper a word that I said so or it might cost me my head… but it is the truth and even kings cannot change it. No, His Grace the King has a delightful wife. Let us hope that he never wants another.”

But it seemed inevitable that the rumors must start. Kat told me of them.

“Wicked and unscrupulous men are plotting to bring a case against the Queen,” she said.

I could not understand but Kat explained that when the Queen was very young she was overflowing with affection. She was loving and giving…and that sort drew men to them like bees to the flowers and wasps to the honey. The Queen was so kind and tender to men that she found it hard to say no to them. When she was quite young it seemed she had said yes when she should have said no; and now those cruel people were looking back into her past to uncover some scandal.

“They think the Howards are getting too strong,” said Kat. “My faith! A little while ago it was the Seymours … now it's the Howards. The most dangerous thing on Earth is to be married to the King. A woman is better on her own. It may be that our little Queen would have been happier as the wife of Tom Culpepper, who they say adores her—and she not indifferent to him—than as the Queen of England.”

I did not see Katharine again. I heard terrible stories. They were accusing her of treason—that simple child whose only purpose was to be happy and make others so too. How could they? But even she, who had harmed no one, had her enemies. Thomas Cranmer questioned her about her past, accusing her of having entered into marriage with someone called Francis Dereham and thus in marrying the King committing adultery. There were tales of her wanton behavior with other men and she was arrested.

Kat said that the King was most distressed and would not at first believe those accusations against her. I was glad of that and hoped he would forgive her, but I suppose he was angry at having been deceived in her, thinking that all her loving had been inspired by him alone, and to learn that others had enjoyed it would be galling to a man of his nature.

I was very moved. I was reminded more vividly than ever of my mother. I kept wondering what she, who had held off the King's demanding passion for so long before she had submitted to him, had thought in her lodgings in the Tower, knowing that she was going to die, falsely and maliciously accused. And now poor little Katharine. She must have known what her fate was going to be. It was history repeating itself.

She was distraught, hysterical and terribly afraid. She was so young to die; and she did not believe that the King would agree to her death. She believed that all would be well if she could only see him and explain what it had been like in her grandmother's household where she had been brought up with all those young and lively people about her, and how they had been amused by her flirtations, which had grown into something more, and had helped her evade the rules laid down by her grandmother, the Duchess of Norfolk. She must have felt that she could make the King understand that she was older and wiser now and that she truly loved him and wanted to be a good wife to him. He was in chapel one morning when she escaped from those who were guarding her chamber and tried to reach the King; she ran along the gallery screaming but they caught her before she could get to him, and dragged her away. I wondered what would have happened if she had been able to speak to him. Would her life have been spared? I like to think that it might have been.

That February day stands out clearly in my memory. I had been thinking of her constantly since I knew that the King had given the royal assent to her attainder. Only two days later she was taken to the scaffold.

The poor child faced death meekly, they said, almost as though she did not understand what it was all about.

They buried her close to my mother in the Church of St Peter ad Vincula.

I felt ill for several days after. I dreamed of her mangled corpse and I shivered with a terrible fear for the fate of women in the hands of cruel men.


* * *

THE FOLLOWING YEAR my father the King took yet another wife and the result of this was that I was brought right into the family circle and began to feel more important than I had since the death of my mother. It was the first time in my life that I felt I belonged to a family.

Katharine Parr had been married twice before and of course Kat knew a great deal about her.

“Not much of a life,” she said. “First married to Lord Borough…old enough to be her grandfather some say. Well, at least he had the decency to die when she was seventeen, but what did they do but marry the poor girl to Lord Latimer who had already had two wives before. He only died this year, and there she is thirty years old and at last free…or so she thinks. I'll tell you something… she had hopes of Thomas Seymour… yes, our Prince's own bold uncle … a fine upstanding gentleman, they say, and poor Katharine Parr head over heels in love with him, which is easy enough to understand.”

“It must have been his brother who carried me at Edward's christening,” I said.

“Thomas is quite different from my lord Earl, they say. Stern… that's Hertford… seeking high office, never forgetting for a moment that he is the uncle of the heir to the throne. Perhaps Thomas doesn't either…What a handsome man he is! I saw him once…”

“And is Katharine Parr going to marry him?”

“Well, they say the King himself has his eye on her.”

“It can't be. He's… old.”

“Who says the King can't do as he pleases? Will it be a crown for the widow Parr? I'll warrant she'd rather have a plain gold ring from Thomas Seymour. There is a certain risk to a woman who becomes the wife of your royal father. There! Forget I said that.”

“But it's true, Kat,” I said soberly.

My father married Katharine Parr in July just over a year after that February day when Katharine Howard laid her pretty head on the block.

Katharine Parr proved to be different from my father's other wives. I think the most noticeable of her qualities was her motherliness. She was meant to be a mother and she deeply regretted that none of her marriages with old men had brought her children. She mothered the King, which was perhaps what he needed at his time of life. He was fifty-two years old now, his indulgences had been many and he was showing his age. I suppose the death of Katharine Howard had a particular effect on him. He had been happy with her for that short time; she might not have been so exciting as my mother, but her docility and overflowing affection had pleased him; he had not really wanted to be rid of her, but he could be ruthless when he believed himself to have been deceived. His rude health was failing him now; his bulk was turning to fat and he had an ulcer on his leg which caused him great pain and made him very irritable. Katharine Parr knew how to dress it and he used to sit with his foot in her lap, which gave it some ease. She had had a great deal of practice in looking after ailing husbands, and she was very capable at it. The King was fond of her in a mild way, but that seemed to suit him nowadays.

It was that motherliness in her which brought her to beg a favor from the King. He had a family, she reminded him, and it was sad that they were not all together under one roof. Mary Tudor was a woman now; but the two younger ones, Elizabeth and Edward, should be together. She would be a mother to them and he should be a good father.

He gave way, and for the first time I found myself within a family. I was delighted. For one thing it brought me closer to Edward, who was not only my brother but the future King. I was at the time ten years old and every day growing more and more aware of what intrigues went on about me. I realized now that because of my position as the King's daughter the smallest event might be of the utmost importance to me.

The peaceful existence of those days was due to my stepmother's influence. Yet being young I quickly chose to forget how suddenly storms could blow up and it did not occur to me that anything could happen to disturb this newly found contentment. One of my chief pleasures was the company of my brother. He was somewhat pale and thin and not overfond of outdoor sports and pastimes, a fact which did not please my father; but he loved his books, and so did I. We used to run into the schoolroom even before lesson times and could not wait to get to work. We were different in some ways although we looked alike—both had the same white skin and reddish gold hair and bright eyes with a tawny look in them—alert eyes that darted everywhere and took in everything. Edward was perhaps more of a scholar than I was. He absorbed facts, stored them in his mind and never forgot them. He accepted what his books told him and never questioned anything whereas I hesitated over every problem. I was constantly asking the question why.

During this time, when Edward was about six or seven and I was four years older, we would converse together and I would express my doubts, which I was amused to see shocked him a little. Kat used to listen to us and say we were a pair of old wiseacres; and although we did not always agree we never quarreled. The love between us was great and growing. I think he was disturbed by so much responsibility weighing on his frail shoulders; he felt more insecure than I did and looked to me for companionship and even some protection.

Because of his importance he could not be taught by someone like Kat. To tell the truth I was getting a little beyond her myself. “You know more than I do,” she said ruefully on several occasions. The Queen realized this and consulted my father with the result that the most learned tutors in the land were found for my brother, and because I shared his apartments I was fortunate enough to share his tutors as well. There was Dr Richard Cox, the Provost of Eton, who was a very erudite gentleman, and later on Sir John Cheke himself came from Cambridge. He brought with him Roger Ascham, who was very interested in my work and wrote letters of encouragement to me.

There were many at Court who marveled at this intense desire for knowledge which my brother and I possessed; they thought it unchildlike, but Kat said it had come about because my brother grew so tired out of doors, but he never did with his books; and as for me, it was the manner in which she had taught me which had encouraged my love of learning. “I never forced you,” she said. “Roger Ascham once said to me, ‘If you pour much drink at once into a goblet the most part will dash out and run over; if you pour it softly you may fill it even to the top and so Her Grace (meaning you, my Lady) I doubt not by little and little may be increased in learning that at greater length cannot be required.' I remembered that, and I always made learning fun, didn't I? You and I could make of it a game which we could play together… until now when you have become so wise as to outgrow me.”