The Bastard Princess Read online

  The Bastard Princess

  By G. Lawrence

  Copyright © Gemma Lawrence 2015

  All Rights Reserved.

  No part of this manuscript may be reproduced without Gemma Lawrence's express consent

  To Matthew, for his love and support, and his patience.

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Chapter Twenty-Four

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  Chapter Twenty-Eight

  Chapter Twenty-Nine

  Chapter Thirty

  Chapter Thirty-One

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  Chapter Thirty-Four

  Chapter Thirty-Five

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  Chapter Thirty-Eight

  Chapter Thirty-Nine

  Chapter Forty

  Chapter Forty-One

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Chapter Forty-Three

  Chapter Forty-Four

  Chapter Forty-Five

  Chapter Forty-Six

  Chapter Forty-Seven

  Chapter Forty-Eight

  Chapter Forty- Nine

  Chapter Fifty

  Chapter Fifty-One

  Chapter Fifty-Two

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  About the Author

  Thank You

  Prologue

  February, 1603

  Richmond Palace

  I am old.

  I never wanted to admit that age had stolen up on me, but finally I can feel Death, a tangible presence, standing at my side waiting for me. I never took well to orders, and my reluctance to obey his call he seems to understand, but he will not wait for much longer.

  He too has a nation he must maintain.

  Soon he will beckon and I will have to obey this one, final command.

  Most people do not think on Death until they are old. But my youth was such that Death was a constant companion, hovering at my side, waiting for me to slip, expecting me to fall.

  If I have learnt anything during my long life that knowledge was formed in my youngest years, just as I was. There are three things that I learnt well, and learnt young.

  The first is that this world belongs to men. If a woman is to survive, to hold any power of her own, then she must be clever, ruthless and above all…lucky.

  The second is that power is a perilous, deceitful substance; its glowing surface conceals a wealth of darkness within. It should be approached and handled with the utmost of care, never forgetting its potential to corrupt and destroy. When the acquisition of power drives the soul of a person, they become blind and numb to all else. They will tread on the bodies of their friends and family to procure more of what they desire. They will pay for their purchase with their souls.

  And the third… that the Heart is the most dangerous enemy any person may come to face in their lives. The Heart is treacherous. It is the best of spies, the most gifted of liars. It is the unseen influence over your choices and it is always with you, shaping your decisions, whispering to you in the dead of night. You may think that you choose your path in freedom and in liberty; you may think your head considers all its choices and forges ahead on the best course with intelligence and deliberation. But all the time you are deceived by the cunning Heart; the true master of your world.

  Above all others, the Heart is the most dangerous enemy.

  Chapter One

  Late April

  1536

  Sixty-Seven Years earlier…

  The fish in the pool were little glints of gold twinkling in the afternoon light. I put out a hand to touch them and they flashed away like lightning. A small gurgle of laughter came from my mouth as I looked up with the wonder of a young child at the lovely woman who held me. I waved my hands and burbled my few words at her, trying to show her the amazing sights in the pond.

  My mother looked down at me.

  Even now, though I can barely recall her face, I remember her eyes; as dark and deep as the pond itself. I could see my own face staring back at me in them. And I could see the expression of gentle love in those beautiful eyes, for me.

  Her only child.

  I reached out a chubby little hand to her charming face. Much as I had sought to touch the fish in the pond, I sought to touch her fine eyes. But unlike the fish she moved towards me, nuzzling her cheek into the curve of my tiny hand and closing her eyes as she relished the feel of my skin against her own.

  I laughed with delight. My little laugh bounced around the gardens. It was a fine afternoon in the late spring; there still was a chill in the air but that afternoon it was bright and sunny and I was with my mother playing in our gardens. I was happy, excited to be here with my hand against the cheek of the most beautiful woman in the world.

  But when she opened her eyes they shone with tears.

  I was worried then. The gorgeous creature who was my mother was all-powerful in my world. She could not be sad. There could be no reason to be sad. We were together and when we were together all was right with the world. She had spoken those words to me and they were true. I reached out both hands to her, frowning and she smiled gently to see the worry in my face.

  Then, her eyes went from me and travelled across the lush gardens, up to the palace. There by a window stood the huge figure of the other most important person in the world. My father, the King.

  He stood at the window, looking out at us in the gardens. He was a huge man, tall and powerful. His clothes and fingers sparkled with jewels and gold, flashing and twinkling as the sun caught them with her light fingers. But his face was as dark as the sky before a summer storm.

  I saw him too and cooed with pleasure. Next to my mother, he was my favourite person. He often snatched me from my maids and bounced me around the room showing me off to many smiling faces, rewarded by my giggles of happiness. I sometimes felt a little afraid of him. He was a great giant! But I knew too that he loved me, so my fear of him was always mingled with pleasure.

  My mother pulled me to her, lifting me, turning me, and pushed me in front of her, holding me out to my father. His dark face faltered at the window, he looked down at the floor and then up again at us. He frowned and then he turned away and walked off, disappearing into the darkness of the palace.

  The window was empty. He had gone.

  My mother held me for a while as though frozen, until I grumbled at being so long away from the loveliness of her face.

  When she turned me to her I saw an expression she had never allowed me to see before. She looked into my eyes, and briefly in those dark waters I saw an expression of real fear.

  She looked like an animal that was being hunted and knew not where to run.

  She kissed my head and my lips, blessed me with a prayer and then gave me to my maids. Amid my noises of protest, she left the gardens abruptly.

  My maids told me to b
e a good princess and to stay quiet. My mother was the Queen and she had many affairs to tend to. They took me back into the magnificent palace and as I walked away with them on my plump little legs, I looked back to see the shape of my mother, lithe and elegant, as she walked away.

  Her gown was deep green and slashed with crimson velvet, bright gold thread twinkled at her long-hanging sleeves, catching the afternoon’s light just like the fishes in the pond. Little seed pearls clung to her lovely dress as it swished from side to side as she walked. Her dark hair was covered by a hood of even darker silks that flowed down her slim back like water from a fall.

  Her hands were by her side, clenching into fists and then unfolding again quickly into hands.

  I knew she was scared and I wanted to help her. To reassure her that whatever it was, she would be able to conquer it. She was the most important person in the world, she could do anything.

  But I never got to say those words, or any others to her.

  A week later they took her away. My father’s men took her head and he married another woman. A pale, flabby, insipid woman took my mother’s place at his side.

  They said that my mother had never married my father; she had never been the Queen. They said she had done bad things. And then… they stopped talking of her at all.

  Her pictures and portraits disappeared from the walls. The badges that showed my father’s H and her A entwined together in lover’s knots were torn down and burned. The symbol of her crowned falcon became altered, painted over and re-cast into the phoenix symbol of the new Queen…

  I was no longer to be called My Lady Princess or Your Highness. I was now just the Lady Elizabeth, the King’s bastard daughter.

  It was as though I had never had a mother.

  But I remembered her. I was sure she must have been real. Although I was wise enough to never talk of her, I would go to bed and dream of her eyes. I was not quite three years old when she was taken from me.

  My mother was dead, by the will, if not the hand, of my father.

  My world would never be safe again.

  Chapter Two

  Hatfield House

  1537

  It was October. The long, dusky nights of summer had turned into the heavy, swollen nights of autumn. Leaves were falling russet and gold from the trees. A crisp chill was in the air, bringing cool mornings promising frosts soon to come. The harvests had been brought in and the house was alive with the zingy scent of sweet vinegars cooking down apples and pears to make cider and sauce.

  I sat at the window seat in a corner of Hatfield. My book lay open and ignored in my lap as I stared out of the window, thinking on what I do not remember. It cannot have been of much import, for I was a small child of only four at the time.

  But I remember the sound of cannon fire from far away, cutting through the calm of the autumn air, then the sound of church bells as they started to ring out clear and true. I remember the smell of crackling bonfires lit in the towns and villages nearby.

  And then the messenger came, riding fast with news.

  Lady Bryan, both my friend and governess, came to me, ruddy faced and excited by the news, her cheeks flushed and her hands quivering. A son was born to England she said to me; I had a brother now.

  At two-o-clock that morning, a prince had been born into the house of Tudor. He was named Edward and he was my new brother.

  My father, the King, had waited for years to finally have what had come to him by the grace of God on that autumn morning; a son to rule England in his stead when he died.

  My father, the King Henry VIII or the great Bluff King Hal as commoners called him, was overjoyed, as was England. London was afire with bonfires where people linked arms dancing for joy; wine flowed in place of water from the fountains. Churches sang out the Te Deum in thanks to God for assuring the King that he had made a lawful and righteous marriage. God had rewarded my father with the boy he had so longed for; there was no sign more sure or welcome of His approval.

  After years trying to rid himself of his first wife, barren Queen Katherine, and many more striving to win the hand of my mother Queen Anne; after his anguish at my mother’s betrayal and her subsequent execution, my father had at last, made a lawful marriage to plain little Jane Seymour, one of my mother’s own ladies in waiting, and had been rewarded with the birth of a son. There could be no man in England as happy as its King on the day my brother Edward was brought screaming into this life.

  When my mother was Queen, my own birth had come as a disappointment. If I had been the boy that she and my father craved, she would still be alive; a Queen honoured and respected as Jane was now. But a girl I was, a girl I always would be, and her position had become unsafe on the day that I was born.

  Lady Bryan would have never allowed me to talk of myself or my mother in this way. Blood of the Boleyns herself, she had loved my mother and she was devoted to me.

  But I could not help but hear the whispers of the servants, and I knew they were right. If I had been born a boy, that charming, beautiful mother whom I had scarcely known, and now barely remembered, would still be the Queen.

  But now I had a brother. The future King of England was born and he was…younger than me.

  It sounded strange to me, child that I was, that someone who was younger than me might come to rule the country. To my mind, nations were ruled by those who had grown up, not little babies who knew not one person from another.

  Once, I had been placed in the line of succession. When my mother was the Queen my father had fought for my title to be recognised above all other claimants, above my older sister Mary; I too had been the heir to the throne when I was just a baby and knew nothing.

  But with my mother’s fall, with her arrest and execution, my father had announced that his marriage to her had been unlawful. Nights before she faced the sword she agreed to this, signed her name on a paper next to his and their marriage was made null. I fell from being the heir and legitimate daughter of the King, to being but a bastard daughter of Bluff King Hal…. the bastard princess of England.

  Did that mean my father loved me not? I thought not.

  My father was the most impressive man I had ever seen. A titan who stood shoulders above any other men I knew. To me, being so small, he was enormous and the jewels on his clothes, the rich fabrics and diamond buttons made him shine like the stars. When he laughed and threw his great arms around a man or woman he was fond of, the sound would resonate through the world, it would make the heart pound just to hear it. All his emotions could be felt by those around him like the heat that radiates from the flames of a fire. He was the largest person I had ever seen or sensed. He was captivating, enticing, fascinating. He was the King.

  When his eyes rested on me, when his kiss fell on my head, I knew that he loved me. When he laughed and picked me up, I knew that I was special to him. But not quite special enough, it seemed, to warrant acknowledgment in the line of succession.

  I longed to see him. So little time I ever had to see either of my parents. My mother was in Heaven and my father was often too busy with affairs of state to much visit his little bastard. As his daughter I wanted for nothing, but I was not wanted for anything. It was a stark realisation for a little girl to come to, and a lonely one.

  Lady Bryan was holding the note in front of her like it was a holy volume. She bit her lip as she read, and then looked up at me.

  “The King asks that his daughters come to court to celebrate with the family,” she said to me in wonder. “You are to carry the robe of the Prince at his christening!”

  I could see that she was pleased, but she looked at me with a little concern; I was after all very young to be placed in such a vastly important role at a state occasion. I smiled at her, touched to see her fears for me. Lady Bryan was easy to love. She was firm and meted out punishment when required, but she was warm to me; compassionate and close. She loved me I think a great deal. Her first devotion had been to my mother, and when she died, Lady Bryan had rema
ined with me, to care for me as my mother would have wanted. She brought me a comforting link to the dead mother that I had hardly met.

  I stood up and straightened my dress. Standing soberly in front of my governess I said; “Tell me what I must do, Lady Bryan, and I will do it as you say.”

  She looked at me with pride and surprise. She was always commenting that I was much more grown than my years.

  She nodded to me.

  “It will take work and diligence, my Lady.” She smiled at me. “But we will begin as we should,” she said, “at the beginning.”

  Chapter Three

  Hampton Court

  Autumn 1537

  We came to Hampton Court, travelling along the river in a barge, the sides of the muddy, wet banks lined with people waving and cheering. Everyone was so happy to see a prince born.

  I waved back to the crowds and was greeted by the common people cheering me, jumping around wildly on the bank to try and get my attention. One man was so keen that he tumbled, twisted, and fell backwards into the river, landing with a great splash in the cold water. I laughed a little…. until a face from Lady Bryan stopped me in my tracks.