“Perhaps she is,” I answered.

“She’s the most fascinating woman I ever saw! If I were in her place….”

Kate held her head high; I knew that she was imagining herself in that barge sailing down the river to the Tower where the King would be waiting for her.

The Queen’s barge had passed by; a passing boat rammed us and the water shot up soaking me to the skin. Kate burst into peals of laughter.

“We’d better go straight back,” said Tom nervously.

“Certainly not!” cried Kate.

“The Queen’s barge has gone.”

“I shall say when we shall go,” retorted Kate.

I was surprised that Tom was so meek. I had not noticed that he was before.

But Kate seemed suddenly to realize that everything she could see now after the passing of the Queen would be dull in comparison so she said: “Very well, we’ll go now.”

I was shivering in spite of the warm weather. I said: “We could have seen them pass from our privy stairs.”

“We could not have seen the Queen so close,” said Kate, “and I wished to see her close.”

“I’m surprised they gave us permission,” I said.

“I gave the permission,” retorted Kate.

“Do you mean my parents did not know that we were on the river?”

Tom looked uneasy.

“But who said Tom might row us out on such a day?”

“I did,” said Kate, and she was looking at Tom as she spoke. I wondered that she should have such power over him.

We were seen disembarking and my mother came hurrying out; when she saw my drenched clothes there was a great fuss. I was shivering! Where had I been? On the river! On a day like this! What had Tom been thinking of!

Tom scratched his head. “Well, Mistress,” he said, “I didn’t see the harm….”

My mother said nothing but I was hustled off to my bedchamber with instructions to take off my damp clothes and drink a posset.

Kate came up to tell me that Tom had been questioned and he had said that the young ladies wanted to go and he had thought there was no harm in taking them.

“Didn’t you tell them that you made Tom?”

“So you know I made him?”

“I couldn’t understand why he took us. He didn’t really want to.”

“You are right, Damask. He didn’t. But he dared do aught else when I commanded.”

“You talk as though you own him.”

“That’s what I’d like to do…to own people. I’d like to be the King or the Queen, with everyone afraid of offending me.”

“That shows an unpleasant nature.”

“Who wants a pleasant nature? Does that command people? Does that make them afraid of you?”

“Why do you want them afraid of you?”

“So that they do what I say.”

“Like poor Tom.”

“Like Tom.” She hesitated but she was so anxious that I should be aware of her cleverness that she blurted out: “I heard him coming out of Keziah’s bedroom early one morning. He wouldn’t want anyone to know, would he? Nor would Keziah. So if they want me not to tell they have to do as I say.”

I stared at her in amazement.

“I don’t believe it,” I said.

“That they sleep together or that I have discovered them?”

“Neither.”

“You get on with your Greek and Latin. It’s all you can do. You know nothing…nothing at all. And I’ll tell you something else. We are going to see the coronation. We are going to have a window in your father’s house of business.”

“Father would not wish us to see it.”

“Oh, yes, he does, and I’ll tell you why. I have made him.”

“You are not going to tell me he dares not obey you?”

“In this he dare not. You see, I said: ‘Uncle, why do you not wish us to see the coronation procession? Is it because you don’t believe the Queen to be the true Queen?’ Very innocent…I was…none could look more so. And he grew pale for there were servants there. You see, he dare not keep us away now and I knew it because if it were said that he would not allow his family to see the coronation, people would say he was a traitor and so….”

“You are wicked, Kate.”

“The way to get what you want,” said Kate, “is to make people afraid of not giving it.”

She was right. We did see the procession pass through the city. Father and Mother took us and we sat there at the upper window of his business premises looking down on the street which had been graveled like all those from the Tower to Temple Bar. Rails had been set up so that the people should not be hurt by the horses. My father’s house was in Gracechurch Street and it was a goodly sight to see the decorations of crimson and velvet and cloth of gold.

What a sight that was! All the nobility were present. There was the French ambassador with his retinue of servants in blue velvet; the archbishops were there and for the first time I saw Cranmer, the Archbishop of Canterbury, who looked very stern and serious. There were the Dukes and the Earls, the highest in state and church; and at last the one on whom all attention was centered—the new Queen herself. She lay in a litter made of cloth of gold shot with silver and two palfreys supported the litter and these were led by the Queen’s footmen. But it was the Queen on whom one must gaze, for she was magnificent with long dark hair flowing from the ruby-studded coif to fall around her shoulders like a silken cape. Her dress and surcoat were of silver tissue, ermine trimmed. She looked indeed a Queen, lying there in her litter with four handsome men to hold a canopy of cloth of gold over her.

I could not forget her; nor, I guessed, could Kate. She stared at her as though in a daze and I was sure that her imagination had transported her and she was that young woman in the litter, going to the Abbey to be crowned; she was the woman whom the King had delighted to honor even though he had to send many to their deaths in order to reach her. There were wonderful pageants in the street set about the fountain from which on this day wine flowed instead of water; but when the Queen had passed I knew that Kate lost interest in what followed.

My father’s men of business joined us for refreshments afterward and for the first time I met Simon Caseman—a man then in his early twenties.

My father said: “Ah, Damask, this is Simon Caseman, who will be joining our household shortly. He is learning to be a lawyer and will live with us for a while.”

We had had a young man living with us before, but he had made so little impression on me that I had scarcely been aware of him. He had stayed for about three years, I supposed. That was when I was much younger; but it was not unusual for men in my father’s position to take those whom they were tutoring into their households.

Simon Caseman bowed. Then Kate came forward. Kate was always interested to make an impression and I could see that she had. I was not quite sure what I thought of Simon Caseman. One thing I did know was that he was different from that other young man whose name I could not recall and who although a part of our household had somehow made so little impression on me.

Simon Caseman asked Kate what she thought of the procession and she expressed her delight in it. I noticed my father looked rather sad so I didn’t join in quite so ecstatically, although I had been as delighted as Kate with the glittering pageantry.

It was necessary to wait until the press of people had diminished before we could make our way to the stairs and our barge. Father continued silent and rather sad.

When we entered the house, I said to Kate: “I wonder what she was thinking lying there in her litter.”

“What should she think of,” demanded Kate, “but her crown and the power it will bring her?”

During the September of that year there was great excitement everywhere because the new Queen was about to give birth to a child. Everyone confidently expected a boy. It was, the King had tried to make the people believe, the very reason for his change of wives. After all Queen Katharine had already borne him the Lady Mary.

“There will be great rejoicing,” my father said to me as we took one of our walks to the river’s edge, “but if the Queen should fail….”

“Father, she will not fail. She will give the King his son and then we shall be dancing in the big hall. The mummers will come, the bells will ring out, and the guns will boom.”

“My dearest child,” he said, “let us pray that this will be so.”

I was touched that he, whose sympathies were with poor Queen Katharine, could now be sorry for Queen Anne Boleyn.

“Poor soul,” he said.

“Many have suffered because of her, Father,” I answered.

“Yes, indeed,” he replied sadly. “Many have lost their heads for her. Who knows when she will be in like case?”

“But she is beloved of the King.”

“So were others, my child, and what of them when they cease to inspire that love? Many now rest in their quiet graves. When my time comes I should like to lie in the Abbey burial grounds. I spoke to Brother John about it. He thinks it can be arranged.”

“Father, I forbid you to talk of death! And it all began by talking of birth!”

He smiled rather sadly. “There is a link, dear child. We are all born and we all must die.”

A few days later the royal child was born. We heard that the King was bitterly disappointed, for the child, though healthy, was a girl.

There was rejoicing at her christening and she was named Elizabeth.

“The next one,” everyone said, “must be a boy.”

Christmas came with its festivities: mummers, carols, feasting and the decorations with the holly and the ivy. We were growing up and the following spring I heard Elizabeth Barton’s name for the first time because everyone was talking of her; she was known as the Holy Maid of Kent and she had prophesied that if the King put away Queen Katharine and set up Anne Boleyn as his Queen he would soon die; and now that he had done so, many people were certain that he had not long to live.

Brother John and Brother James came to see my father and the three of them walked about the garden in earnest conversation because they thought the Holy Maid could make the King realize his error. It might well be a sign from heaven, said Brother John. I don’t know what my father felt because he never talked to me about these matters. I realize now that he was afraid that I might, in my innocence, say something that would incriminate not only him but me, for young people could be deemed traitors. I understand now that the King was swept on by his desire for the woman who had fascinated him and his wariness with the Queen who no longer did. His senses were in command but he greatly feared the wrath of God toward sinners. Therefore he must convince himself that he was in the right. He must believe—what he said so constantly—that it was not his senses which dictated his actions but his conscience. He insisted that Queen Katharine’s previous marriage to his brother Arthur meant that she was not legally his wife because the marriage had been consummated, although the Queen swore it had not been. The reason his marriage had failed to be blessed with children—except one girl, the Lady Mary—was due to God’s displeasure, said the King. It was not his desire for Anne Boleyn which had made him demand a divorce from Katharine. It was his duty to provide England with a male heir. The new Queen had now one daughter and had proved herself fertile; the next child would be a son.

So the King reasoned and there was no logic which could defeat his conscience. This I learned later, but at the time I forgot the brooding sense of insecurity for hours at a stretch.

My mother did too. She was a gentle, pliable woman, who perhaps because she was so much younger than my father relied on him for everything and had few opinions of her own; but she kept our house in order and our servants were devoted to her; moreover she was becoming known as one of the best gardeners in the south of England. She was always excited when new plants were introduced into England; the musk rose had now arrived; and she grew that side by side with the damask. Corinthian grapes too had been brought from the Isle of Zante and she planned a vinery which gave her a great deal of pleasure.

She was, I gradually learned, the sort of woman who believes that if she shuts her eyes to unpleasantness it ceases to exist. I was fond of her and she doted on me; but I was never close to her as I was to my father. My greatest pleasure was to be with him, to walk with him down to the river or through the orchards and as I was growing older he could talk seriously to me, which I think gave him great pleasure.