Beaulieu
To The Lady Marys most excellent highness and grace.
Trusting that this letter finds Your Grace in the most excellent of health, may it please you to know that His Majesty the King, Your Graces most noble lord and father, announces with the greatest joy that His Majesty is to marry the Duchess Anna of Cleves, sister to the Duke of Jülich-Cleves-Berg.
Her Grace shall journey to England before the New Year, and it is His Majestys command that Your Grace have the honour of leading the noble ladies of the court in welcoming Her Grace at Greenwich Palace.
Orders have been given for Your Graces rooms to be refurbished in time for your arrival at Greenwich, at the beginning of December. His Majesty places the place at Your Graces disposal and instructs any bills for your journey and attire, to be forwarded to His Majestys Chamberlain for settlement.
Your Graces most assured friend and servant to my power.
T. Cromwell
Lord Privy Seal of England
"Princess? Bad news?" Susan asks, mistaking my horror for dismay.
"The worst" I reply with a grimace, handing her Cromwell's letter to read the words for herself. "The very worst news."
"I suppose it was to be expected." She murmurs. "What with the French and the Duchess of Milan's," she searches for the appropriate word, "unavailability."
"Her rejection," I say bluntly, not caring to mince my words. "I have heard what she said Susan, about having two heads at his disposal." Such insulting remarks would not have been worthy of a Queen of England. But this. To marry from a well-known Lutheran country, to take a heretic to wife, I cannot understand it. His Majesty has hunted down heretics and sent them to their deaths. Why would he now marry one?
The preparations for my fathers' marriage move rapidly and it becomes apparent it is not only Cromwell's enthusiasm for the match that brings the heretic, Anna, to England with indecent haste. The king is deeply enamoured with her portrait, so much so, I hear from Lady Hertford, that he has waived her requirement to provide him with a dowry.
The Queen's rooms at all of His Majestys palaces are refurbished and decorated ready for her arrival. With a household of one hundred and twenty-six people employed to serve her.
The only element not at His Majesty command is the weather in Calais, which is stormy enough to delay her arrival by nearly three weeks, leaving me free to celebrate the Christmas festivities with Edward and Elizabeth at Hertford Castle.
It is not until the day before New Years Day that I receive word from Cromwell that the Duchess has at last arrived in England.
It grieves me to have to leave Edward and Elizabeth during the delights of the Christmas season. They are both reduced to tears when I tell them I have to leave to welcome our future stepmother. I promise to return to them both as soon as my duty is discharged and promise to speak of them to her, though I have no wish to speak with an open heretic.
I think of pleading some indisposition or even acting the part of the patient in agony to avoid leading the welcoming celebrations her, but such deception is not in my nature. So, with the greatest of reluctance, I allow Susan to dress me in my new gown of cloth of gold and crimson satin and fur cloak in my rooms at Greenwich Palace, ready to receive the Duchess from Cleves.
Awaiting me at the pavilions in the grounds of the palace is a handful of the Duchess's senior ladies that are to be presented to her upon her arrival. The chief of which are my cousins and childhood companions, Frances Grey, the Marchioness of Dorset, and Lady Margaret Douglas. Both stand at the entrance to the pavilion, swathed in furs against the harsh January temperatures.
YOU ARE READING
Daughter of Time
Historical FictionFrom the minute she is sent to Hatfield, Mary Tudors' life, would never be the same again. When Mary Tudor receives the letter she has been dreading for years, it changes her world more than she ever could have imagined. The once indulged and shelte...
