the
window-seat to watch the rain teeming down the little leaded panes. She
sat very straight and still with her back to him and though he knew she
was crying he dared not go and take her on his lap. She was too old now
for familiarity from a distantly related man-servant. Mr. Shelton went out
of the room, leaving her alone, and felt sadly that that was how he would
always leave her now. He kicked the wall savagely when the door had
closed behind him and wished it was his sovereign lord and master.
Yet when Anne of Cleves arrived in England Elizabeth was at court
with her sister Mary to greet the lady after all. In decency Henry could not
leave her out—it would look so pointed. And once he had set eyes on this
new wife he decided rashly that he ought not to wish to see her himself.
He went to his wedding squealing like a staked pig, “What remedy, hey?
None but to marry this fat Flanders mare!” and the look he gave Cromwell
as he said it told that unfortunate man that he was not long for this world.
Anne of Cleves was a warm, compassionate, sensible woman. Everybody
liked her, except the husband who flatly refused to share her bed, but then
Henry had not been led to expect an amiable virgin sow. He was loud in
his disappointment and already in love with his new wife’s maid of honour,
Katherine Howard. This time it took Archbishop Cranmer only five
months to dissolve another unfortunate marriage for his master. Cromwell
laid his head on the block for bungling the affair, and on the morning of
that execution Henry married Anne Boleyn’s little Howard cousin.
The fat Flanders mare had escaped to comfortable retirement at
Richmond Palace, considerably happier to be known as the King’s “good
sister.” She had shown almost indecent relief at the annulment and had
indeed made only one condition to it. She desired to see Elizabeth regu-
larly because “I would rather have been her mother than your Queen.”
Only a foreigner could have hoped to get away with such insolence,
30
Legacy
and Henry, not daring to endanger relations with Cleves any further,
chose to turn the other cheek with astonishing restraint. Let her have
Elizabeth! Let her have anything she wanted provided he gained his
freedom without armed hostilities. So Elizabeth went often to visit “Aunt
Anne” and learnt sufficient cookery in the kitchens at Richmond under
the tutelage of that extremely practical German lady to justify her later
boast that should she be turned out of the realm in her petticoat, she
would make her living anywhere in Europe.
When she was not at Richmond, she was at court, having her pert
head turned by the attentions of Henry’s Rose without Thorns, the reck-
less, penniless, wanton little Queen who welcomed her with open arms.
At seven years old she had never been in such demand and she was ready
to worship the lovely, laughing girl, just on eighteen, who made so much
of her.
For a little over a year the court sunned itself in the warmth of Katherine
Howard’s youth, and it began to be said, with some reason, that the King
was in his happy dotage at last. Whoever Katherine favoured found a
place in the King’s circle; whoever she loved was automatically admitted
to his affection. And Katherine loved Elizabeth, her cousin’s child, and
made no secret of it. A place of honour at the royal table, a wardrobe fit
for a princess and the attention of the father she had always adored—all
this and more Elizabeth owed to the young stepmother who chose to
make an especial friend of her. The reign of Katherine Howard was the
high-water mark of Elizabeth’s turbulent childhood, one unending party
which, like her reckless little stepmother, she believed would never end—
t t t
Sunlight filled the deserted Long Gallery, winking on the massive stones
that adorned the King’s vast chest and fat fingers.
He was hot and short of breath to the point of tetchy irritation as
he