Just a Girl by Jane Caro Page B

icy displeasure her way, her life was safe. Now she had many enemies. As frail Edward’s heir and a Catholic among Protestants, she threatened many with her continued existence – not least the ambitious man before us – and threat begets threat, in my experience. The regent would show her no kindness, and my brother, though he loved his sister, had been trained to regard her as misguided. And, even then, at that relatively tender age, I knew he had no real power; he was but a little boy, about to be given over to the tender mercies of men who lusted for it.
    We rode that night for London, the thunder of hooves from our retinue shattering the peace of many a sleeping village. There was something frantic about Edward Seymour’s determination to get my brother tothe capital. I knew the time between the death of one king and the coronation of another was dangerous, but I still did not quite understand the desperation of this journey. Frightened and disoriented, Edward and I longed for some solitude to absorb this new world we now lived in and our very different places within it, but such an opportunity was not to be. I consoled myself that we would have moments alone together once we arrived, but I was sadly mistaken. When we clattered through a yet sleeping London in the early hours after our helter-skelter ride, as tradition demanded of the heir apparent, Edward was taken straight to the Tower. I wept afresh when I realised he was to be taken away from me.
    This ancient tower has a strange effect on all who pass through its gates, home as it often is to both those who are at the pinnacle of good fortune and those who have run out of luck altogether. It was hard not to feel my fragile and well-beloved brother was a prisoner, luxurious though his quarters no doubt were and deferential as the Lord Hertford and his attendants were to him. I could see by his distress when they separated us that his feelings were not dissimilar to mine.
    â€˜Elizabeth, Elizabeth!’ he cried out, as he noticed that attendants were ushering me away. ‘I want to stay with my sister,’ he cried, turning as if he would dismount and run towards me. I turned also and found firm hands restraining me.
    â€˜No!’ said Hertford and he grasped the reins of my brother’s horse and held them. ‘No, Majesty,’ he said again, remembering to whom it was that he spoke and softening his tone. ‘You must attend to your duties. You can rejoin the Lady Elizabeth ere long.’
    â€˜Everything is as it should be, Ed – Your Majesty,’ I added, yearning to soothe my poor brother’s fear. ‘You are the king now and must do your duty. I will be nearby and will come whenever you want me.’
    To my great relief, I was taken to my stepmother. I allowed myself to be comforted. What else could I do? Within hours my sister Mary joined us at Whitehall, solemn faced and dressed elegantly in sombre black. She greeted my stepmother fulsomely and sympathetically, dropping into a deep curtsy. When she turned to survey her little sister, only twelve years old to her twenty-five, she saw my eyes were red and raw from weeping and – as always, susceptible to the sorrows of children – she let go her formal and courtly manner, took two steps towards me and held me in her arms. It pains me now to remember that this was to be the last time ever my sister held me so. If I close my eyes I can still feel her breath on my hair and the soft, fine velvet of her gown.
    â€˜Ah, poor little Ysabeau, motherless and fatherless now are we both.’ She whispered her melancholy words so that I alone could hear. Then she let me loose and I burst into a fresh storm of weeping. Together thethree of us wept over my father and his passing and then we waited for whatever it was that would happen next. We waited for a long time. The strange inertia that had fallen over the royal household in my father’s dying days remained: