Prisoner of the Queen (Tales From the Tudor Court) Read Online Free PDF

Mrs. Helen, my governess. She would answer my questions, and she would do so with patience and love. She would embrace me and ease my fears.
    And I would endeavor to enter this imprisonment with the dignity expected of a princess of the blood—or else suffer for it.

    Chapter Two

    To whose mishaps and hateful fate,
    a world hit self gives place.
    Not long ago the case so stood,
    a knight of great estate
    In native soil by destiny’s lot
    a Lad y’s favor gave...
     
    ~Thomas Churchyard
    Elizabethan soldier and poet
    May 21, 1553
    My eyes stung. My head felt heavy. Even forcing my eyelids closed with my fingers, sleep refused to find me last night. Instead, I lay in bed, staring at the stone walls. I counted over two hundred cracks in the white plaster ceiling by the window. Made imaginary patterns out of the swirling embroidery on my bed curtains.
    ’ Twas my wedding day, but I would not be a happily wedded bride. After the feast, I would travel with my new husband to Baynard’s Castle, where I would reside under his family’s care—as if being fostered out to a guardian and not a woman wedded. My only saving grace was the castle was in London. In truth, only a short float down the Thames, and so I would be able to see my family often—I hoped.
    I rubbed my eyes. My betrothed and I had met before, briefly, last spring. I’d paid him no mind, not realizing what our fate would be. My sister Jane had made Henry’s acquaintance at court on occasion when he’d accompanied his father, Lord Pembroke, and she had described him as quite an oaf. At age fourteen, Henry was gangly of leg and arm and stout in the belly. He guffawed when he laughed and dribbled grease on his soft face when he ate.
    Not what I ’d dreamed of when I fantasized about becoming a wife. Biting my lip, I also lamented becoming a wife at age twelve.
    Mrs. Helen , my companion, bustled into the room and flung open the drapes, the screeching of the iron rings on the rod making my head ache. I felt justified in seeing the bleak gray sky. Clouds hung over the horizon, mixing with the smog of London.
    “Close the drapes, Mrs. Helen. There is not cause to wake today,” I said with a pout.
    “Oh, my lady, but ther e is! Today is your wedding day. And even if you are not so excited to marry, you should be pleased and pretty for your sister.”
    I gave an unladylike snort. Jane was marrying Guildford Dudley . Mother had lamented on and on about him not being a true prince of the blood and not good enough for her daughter. But Father had insisted.
    Jane was also not pleased with her groom. She had always held herself above others, and I did not think she would marry the fourth son of a common man who’d risen himself to power, and now titled a duke. Not when Father had groomed her to marry a king. I could only imagine what plans my sire had put into place to see such a thing happen, and now disappointment must run thick through his veins.
    H is princess, his means to a kingdom, would marry a lowly commoner.
    According to Jane , the Duke of Northumberland—Guildford’s father—had attained his status only with treachery. He had a hand in many a courtier’s demise. Even the king’s own Lord Protector had not been safe from Northumberland’s climb for power. The Lord Protector, His Grace, the Duke of Somerset, had been the dear brother to the late Queen Jane Seymour—executed for some trumped-up treasonous charge the cad Dudley had pinned on him. Jane said she was surprised Northumberland hadn’t been arrested himself.
    So while my companion, Mrs. Helen, lamented over my sour face, I found it necessary given that I, through my sister Jane, should be linked to such a man.
    I was happy to take a slobbering oaf over a Dudley.
    From down the hall, raised voices echoed, and something shattered.
    “Your sister ’s having a time of it this morning,” Mrs. Helen muttered.
    “Why?”
    “Well… ’Tis not my place to say. I shan’t be named a gossip.”