Lady Mary Read online

  To Emma Hindley,

  with thanks for all

  the Tudor fun

  Also by Lucy Worsley

  Eliza Rose

  My Name is Victoria

  Contents

  Prologue

  April 1525, Greenwich, in the Queen’s Bedchamber

  Part One: At Court

  Chapter 1

  April 1527, Greenwich

  Chapter 2

  April 1527, Greenwich

  Chapter 3

  April 1527, Greenwich

  Chapter 4

  22 June 1527, Hunsdon

  Chapter 5

  February 1531, Greenwich

  Chapter 6

  February 1531, Greenwich

  Chapter 7

  May 1531, Windsor Castle

  Part Two: In Exile

  Chapter 8

  April 1533, Beaulieu

  Chapter 9

  December 1533, Beaulieu

  Chapter 10

  December 1533, Hatfield

  Chapter 11

  December 1533, Hatfield

  Chapter 12

  New Year, 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 13

  January 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 14

  February 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 15

  February 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 16

  February 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 17

  February 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 18

  February 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 19

  February 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 20

  March 1534, Hatfield

  Chapter 21

  February 1535, Hatfield

  Chapter 22

  February 1535, Hatfield

  Chapter 23

  November 1535, Hunsdon

  Chapter 24

  January 1536, Hunsdon

  Chapter 25

  22 June 1536, Hunsdon

  Part Three: Return to Court

  Chapter 26

  July 1536, Hackney

  Chapter 27

  Late summer 1536, Greenwich

  Chapter 28

  Autumn 1536, Westminster

  Chapter 29

  December 1536, Fleet Street

  Chapter 30

  January 1537, Greenwich

  Chapter 31

  October 1537, Hampton Court

  Chapter 32

  October 1537, Hampton Court

  Chapter 33

  October 1537, Hampton Court

  Epilogue: Why I Wrote This Book

  Acknowledgements

  About the author

  Prologue

  April 1525, Greenwich,

  in the Queen’s Bedchamber, Mary is nine …

  ‘Press a little harder with the pen, Mary. Your letters are all faint.’

  ‘Like a spider’s footsteps.’

  Mary had spoken without thinking, but the image was striking, and it made her mother laugh. The tiny feet of a spider, trailing across the paper. Yes, Mary’s handwriting was difficult to read, unlike the bold, strong strokes of her mother’s draft that she was copying.

  ‘Mary! You are daydreaming again, aren’t you?’

  ‘Yes, Mother. Daydreaming. As always.’

  ‘No need to be pert!’

  Mary returned her attention to the task, but the spider wouldn’t leave her mind. She imagined him stopping a moment for a sit-down, crossing his many legs. It made her giggle. Laboriously, she tried to copy out the next few words.

  … my heart and soul will always be yours …

  Her mother was hovering anxiously, and Mary wished she would go away. Mary did not mind writing, even enjoyed it sometimes, but she hated to be watched. Yet she had to do this for Charles, the emperor, her beloved. Yes, he was her beloved. She had been told it so many times that she almost believed it. Mary stroked her gold brooch, its letters spelling out his name: THE EMPEROUR.

  Mary’s mother noticed what she was doing.

  ‘Ah yes!’ she said, delighted. ‘You are thinking of your husband-to-be. I see it! Thoughts of love and honour fill your head, angelito mio. What a magnificent future you have ahead of you – an empress! Nothing could be better, nothing more splendid. Your Spanish grandmother would be proud.’

  Mary was so used to her mother’s rhapsodies about her imperial future that she barely listened. But while her ears might not have been working, her eyes certainly were.

  ‘What’s that, Mother?’

  Mary noticed that Queen Catherine was holding something in her own fingers, turning it over and over, as if it were precious. She looked up from her examination of the tiny, glinting object, a triumphant smile on her face.

  ‘Can you see what it is?’

  Mary peered. It was a ring, clearly. But what kind?

  Mary racked her brains for the colours of the precious stones that she had learned with Mr Featherstone. What colour was it? She examined it, turning it to the light.

  ‘It’s green, isn’t it? Is it … an emerald?’

  ‘Yes!’ Her mother was rapturous, in a way that always slightly embarrassed Mary. It was easy to learn her lessons from Mr Featherstone. It was harder to know what to say in any given situation. She wished, often, for less fuss and to be left alone with her thoughts. Mary rolled her eyes. Green and gold, green and gold; they were her mother’s favourite colours.

  ‘It’s a huge emerald, isn’t it?’ her mother continued. ‘As green as poison. And in a magnificent setting of gold as well. This will be your gift to your amado, Mary. We will send it with your letter.’

  Mary slightly lost interest in the ring, if it was to pass so quickly through her possession. ‘Oh Mary,’ her mother sighed. ‘You are not like other girls. You aren’t interested in jewels, are you? Don’t you want to keep it for yourself?’

  ‘Not really,’ Mary admitted. ‘I would rather have a sister. Or, if I can’t have a sister, then a kitten.’ Mary knew that she shouldn’t ask for a sister, or a baby brother. It made her mother upset. ‘Yes, I’d rather have a kitten,’ she said definitively.

  Her ruse worked. ‘Oh no, not kittens again!’ The queen was exasperated. ‘They have fleas, querida. And there is no place for them in the train of an army.’

  ‘But Mother!’ This time Mary’s attention was captured to the extent that she threw down her pen. ‘I am not in the train of an army. I will never be in the train of an army. I am stuck here in this royal palace, with nothing much to do, and nobody to play with, and loads of people gawping at me whenever I set foot out of our chamber.’

  Catherine at once looked very grim, and crouched down by Mary’s chair, looking sternly into her daughter’s face.

  ‘You,’ she said savagely, holding Mary’s eyes and jabbing at Mary’s chest with her finger, ‘are a daughter of Spain. You will not always be kept safe inside this luxurious palace, as you are now. You will look back on this as a time of great good fortune. The Wheel of Fortune can take you down as well as up, you know.’

  ‘But Mother,’ Mary said drily. She tired of this debate. She crossed her arms, sulky again. ‘My father is the king of England. Who could know better than him? And he says that women don’t go to war.’ It really was too exhausting to have this argument over and over again.

  Catherine continued exactly as if Mary had not spoken. ‘The time will come for bravery,’ she said, tapping a finger on the table. ‘You are a daughter of Spain,’ she said. ‘Your grandmother Isabella was a warrior queen. Even when with child she rode to war! And daughters of Spain are always ready to fight! To fight to the death!’

  Mary sighed. ‘But I don’t want to fight to the death,’ she said under her breath. ‘We’re not in the country of the blood-drinkers now.’
/>   She had heard her father refer to Spain in this manner. Although she did not know if Spaniards really did drink blood – what, out of goblets? – she thought it sounded impressively dismissive. But her mother wasn’t listening.

  ‘When you are married to Charles …’

  Catherine was clicking her fingers to regain Mary’s attention. It worked. Mary turned to find her mother’s blue eyes blazing at her, a sharp crease between her eyebrows.

  ‘When you are married to Charles, when you have come of age in a few years’ time, you will be an empress. You will have many enemies. People will try to take your power away from you. You must always, always be ready to fight to the death. I give you a great gift in telling you this.’

  Mary’s attention wandered again, as it so often did. She tried to imagine being married to Charles. She had of course met him, four years ago, when their marriage contract had been drawn up. But it would still be another four years until she would go to Brussels and live with him. It was hard to remember his face. It was hard to imagine being an empress, and being ready to fight to the death every single day.

  ‘I’d rather be queen of England than an empress,’ Mary said, with decision. ‘Can’t Charles come and live with me here?’ What a lovely thought this was! ‘He could live here, with me, and you, and Father!’ Mary spun round to her mother, stretching out her arms in enthusiasm, the letter forgotten, enraptured with her new idea.

  Catherine’s fierce look dissipated in an instant, as it often did when something amused her. But then a shadow crossed her face. She turned back to Mary, revealing her profile like a hawk’s, her heavy eyelids that came down half over her pupils, making her look ancient, timeless.

  ‘Girls like you, Princess Mary,’ Mary’s mother said, ‘must always go to live abroad. Like I did, you know that! And you should be pleased to leave this miserable land of England, where they don’t care for girls anyway. Just look at the way your father insists that he still has no children. No children! Despite having you, a wondrous Spanish beauty. Although you have red-gold hair – that’s not so Spanish. But of course you get that from me.’

  Mary lowered her chin to her chest. Red-gold hair, indeed. It was more like a sort of warm light brown. And despite her mother’s pride in the colour of Mary’s hair, she personally thought it was the same shade as her father’s. It was kind of her mother to call her a beauty, but Mary was suspicious of such terms. She had often examined her nose in the curve of the silver water jug. It flared, rather like the nose of a mule. She would turn her head from side to side, trying to make it look smaller, and indeed, at a certain point the swell of the vessel would make it disappear. All bad things could disappear, she thought, if you looked at them in the right light. But what was it that her mother was going on about now? The letter, oh, the letter. Yes, she must finish the letter to Charles.

  The half-empty page looked enormous. Mary’s writing had so far only filled a tiny bit at the top. She should have started lower down, so as to make it look like a long letter with less work. She picked up her pen.

  Will anything even come of it? Mary asked herself as she dipped it into the ink. Charles never wrote back. Mary sometimes suspected that her mother went on about things too much, and that this had the effect of boring people and turning them away. Too many letters; too many words.

  She tried to imagine Charles reading the letter, trying on the ring. But what came to mind was a frowning man tossing the letter aside, as her father so often did. Secretaries picked up his discarded correspondence afterwards, from the floor, and took it away to deal with it, while he instead strode out saying that he was going hunting.

  ‘Perhaps,’ she said tentatively, ‘I write too often to Charles. Perhaps it bores him to receive all these letters.’

  ‘Mary! It is your duty to write often to your amado.’

  It wasn’t easy to suggest that her mother might ever be wrong.

  Mary sighed. She had known, really, that she would not get off so easily. ‘He needs to be reminded,’ Catherine said, as if to herself, ‘of his ties to Spain. Of his ties to me, his aunt, stuck here in this damp island and married to a piece of soft curds of cheese. He needs reminding,’ she said, her voice rising, ‘of his own duty, which is to marry my daughter.’

  ‘Soft curds?’ In her mother’s ravings, these were the only words that Mary picked out. ‘My father is not soft like cheese, you know!’

  ‘Ah, you are indignant, my spitting cat!’ Catherine said, with a laugh. ‘That’s the spirit. I never knew such a girl for daydreaming, nor one who more admired her father. You worship him too much. You should save your worship for God!’

  ‘Honour thy father and mother,’ Mary said primly. ‘Isn’t that true?’

  Catherine knelt again, looking closely into Mary’s face. For a moment Mary feared that she’d get told off for answering back.

  But not this time.

  ‘It is true,’ Catherine said gently. ‘But especially honour your mother, and honour God. That is the Spanish way. There are many spies and liars in the world, but you must always, always trust me. Now, to work. Finish writing out that letter and then we can play.’

  I would prefer to make up my own letter rather than copy yours, Mary thought to herself rebelliously as she pulled the draft closer to see it better. And my father is not soft like cheese at all. He says that girls can’t be king. And because he’s the king, and knows everything in the world, he can’t be wrong.

  Chapter 1

  April 1527, Greenwich

  Mary is eleven …

  ‘And where …’

  The great bellowing roar came from the courtyard outside the window. Mary looked up, delighted.

  ‘And where is the high …’

  The deep, booming voice was louder now, coming closer, climbing the stairs. Mary had been stuck in a velvet chair for hours, with her mother’s ladies fussing all around her, doing her hair and fastening heavy necklaces around her throat until her head almost ached with the strain of remaining upright. She felt the gold links move and clank a little as she stretched her neck round to look between the ladies towards the door.

  ‘And where is the high, mighty and powerful princess …’

  Mary was now giggling, and wiggling out of her chair, and darting between the ladies-in-waiting. It was two years later. Mary knew that she was too grown up, now, for playing the old games with her father. But somehow, she could not stop. Behind her, she sensed her mother’s body give a slight resigned droop, and her unwilling smile.

  ‘The PRINCESS MARY?’

  With that, Mary’s father was in the queen’s bedchamber, and picking Mary up under the armpits, and spinning her round and round in the air. She shrieked with excitement.

  ‘Oof!’

  Unceremoniously, her father dumped her to the floor. The ladies-in-waiting did their usual trick of disappearing, slipping away silently with serene smiles. As they left, they revealed Mary’s mother standing by the dressing table.

  ‘Yes,’ said Catherine drily. ‘She is not so light now that she is eleven!’

  ‘Eleven, nearly a lady! And nearly ready to be married! Now, let me see you.’

  Mary’s father had been staggering about, pretending that she had broken his back, while she smirked and giggled. But now he drew himself up and settled his fur-trimmed robe back on his shoulders.

  ‘Come on, stand up straight!’ Mary’s father said, scanning her up and down with his blue eyes. ‘Let us see this princess of ours! The ambassadors are here from your suitor, and they want to inspect you. They’ll report back to him, you know.’

  ‘Oh, I think that our daughter will make you proud,’ said Catherine lightly. She stepped forward and placed her hands on Mary’s shoulders. ‘Stand straight, angelito mio,’ she whispered in Mary’s ear.

  Mary slowly twirled for her father in her velvet dress and necklaces, slightly resisting the pressure of her mother’s hands.

  ‘Have we not done well, my love?’


  Queen Catherine showed off two hours’ handiwork in Mary’s carefully selected velvet gown. She and her ladies had sewn Mary into it, stitching pearls along her neckline and braiding her hair into a crown. Although she was eleven, Mary was too young, still, to hide her hair under a pointed hat like her mother’s. She sometimes longed to feel the weight of such a headdress. Then she would be grown up, and probably married. People would take her seriously, not just tell her how clever she was, then move the conversation on to other things.

  ‘Where are her fur-trimmed sleeves?’

  He was asking suspiciously.

  Catherine pantomimed surprise.

  ‘I thought she was to play the virginals,’ she said.

  ‘Catherine, don’t start again. This is all agreed. Yes, my daughter is certainly to play the virginals.’

  Mary twitched at the sudden chill in the atmosphere. She knew that it had been long ago confirmed that she would perform for the ambassadors on the virginals, despite her mother’s reluctance to have her do so.

  ‘It is agreed, my liege,’ Catherine said, smooth as silk. She was using a voice that Mary thought of as treacherous. She would say the nicest things in this voice, but she didn’t mean them. ‘Oh yes, it is agreed that Princess Mary will play the virginals. And for that she cannot wear her heavy sleeves. That’s why she is not wearing them, obviously. They’re quite safe, here in the box.’ She nodded to a heavy leather trunk, brought up that morning from the royal wardrobe department in London, and raided by the ladies for Mary’s costume.

  Catherine’s father nodded, appeased.

  ‘All right, no sleeves,’ he said. ‘I’ll give you credit, Catherine – you might not want this match for our daughter, but you have made her look as fine as any princess in Europe.’

  Mary was not feeling particularly fine. In fact, she was beginning to feel more than a little foolish under her heavy clothes and her parents’ scrutiny. Her scalp was starting to complain where her hair had been plaited a bit too tight. But then, her father’s approval was important. He so rarely came up to see them in their chamber. It was worth going through all this to make him proud.

  ‘Up, stand up straight!’ he said tetchily. ‘And what’s this? Oh, but this is a nice touch.’