Innocent Traitor by Alison Weir Page A

four years younger than me, and despite our religious differences—she is adamant in the old faith, and I think she suspects my true beliefs—we enjoy a firm friendship.
    Poor Mary. She is twenty-seven and will never be resigned to spinsterhood, yet she is already aged beyond her years. Of small stature and painfully thin, she has the Tudor red hair, piercing eyes, a blunt nose, and a tightly buttoned mouth. She was a sweet, pretty child, the darling of her parents—my mother once waited on Queen Katherine, and I remember her telling me how much she and the King doted upon Mary, but when her father fell for Anne Boleyn, poor Katherine fell from favor, and Mary with her, and now there is little left of Mary’s childhood prettiness—it was destroyed by the sorrows and injustices heaped on her from the time she reached the age of eleven. The separation from her mother, her father’s stern treatment, and Anne Boleyn’s malicious and vindictive threats all left her embittered and hypochondriacal.
    She has also confided to me that she will be haunted forever by what she did after the King married Jane Seymour and she thought herself safe at last.
    “Queen Jane,” Mary told me in her deep, gruff voice, “wanted me restored to my father’s affections and my rightful place at court, but His Majesty was adamant that this would be conditional upon my signing a document acknowledging that my mother’s marriage was incestuous and unlawful.” There were tears in her eyes as she forced out these words, and my heart dissolved in pity.
    “How could I betray my mother’s memory thus?” she cried, twisting her hands. “For three years I constantly refused to recognize that concubine, Anne Boleyn, as Queen. But my courage was running out, my health was broken, and so were my spirits. In the end I bowed to the pressure and the threats and signed, and I’ve never known a moment’s peace since. I cannot forgive myself for what I did in that moment of weakness.”
    She was rocking in her misery, and I held her close.
    “Now, my Lady Mary, you must not blame yourself,” I murmured. “An oath taken under duress is no true oath at all. God will surely absolve you for what you did.” She paid me no heed. She pulled back from me, and her eyes were burning with a passion I have rarely seen in them.
    “I have my faith,” she declared. “They cannot take that away from me. It is the faith my mother instilled in me, and in being true to it, I am being true to her. It is my only comfort and solace.”
    Having fallen by the wayside that one shattering time, Mary will never again allow herself to compromise on matters of faith or principle, I am sure of that. But Prince Edward is, quite rightly, being raised in the religion of his father and will never turn back to Rome, so I fear that Mary, powerless as she is, is destined to see the old ways, to which she is so devotedly attached, vanish slowly but surely.
    Uncomfortable though she is with the new order, Mary is yet kind and generous to a fault. The common people, remembering the affection they had for her mother and the dignity with which she bore her trials, love her and bring her many touching small gifts—a basket of fruit here, a length of ribbon there. She adores babies and children and is godmother to many, although sadly, as yet, mother to none. I know that is a source of great grief to her. If only I could persuade my lord the King to find her a husband, I think that marriage would be the making of her.
    The Lady Elizabeth is a pert ten-year-old who seems old in the ways of the world. She is formidably clever and quick-witted, and it gives me great pleasure to oversee her lessons. It was I who, at the King’s request, appointed her tutor, William Grindal, who has devised a comprehensive classical curriculum, in which languages feature prominently. Latin, Greek, French, Spanish, Italian, even Welsh…among her many talents, the Lady Elizabeth has a rare gift for languages