Excerpt of Royal Inheritance by Kate Emerson

ONE

Stepney, near London, October 1556

The portrait painter wiped his hands on a ragged
cloth already stained with a multitude of bright colors.
Annoyance infused his every movement. When he spoke, his
tone of voice brooked no argument: “I cannot complete this
child’s likeness, Mistress Harington. She will not sit
still.”

Hans Eworth was a master of his craft. Hireling he
might be, but his services were highly prized and he was
well compensated for them. However long it took him to
complete a commission, while he painted he usually had only
to command to be obeyed.

Audrey Harington spent a moment longer staring at
the view from an upper window in the mansion that had been
her husband’s town house for the last six years. It was the
finest residence in Stepney, barring only the nearby Bishop
of London’s palace. The house even boasted its own private
chapel, in spite of the fact that it took only a few minutes
to walk to the church of St. Dunstan, where everyone in the
household went for services on Sundays and Holy Days.

From her vantage point, Audrey had an unobstructed
view across more than a mile of flat fields and marshes to
the most terrifying place in all of England—the Tower of
London. Its stone walls rose to formidable heights, easily
visible even at this distance. An involuntary shudder passed
through her at the thought of all the poor souls held
prisoner there, some of them for no more than a careless
word. Some would eventually be set free. Others would be
executed. Their fate would depend less upon guilt or
innocence than upon the whim of Queen Mary and her Spanish
husband, King Philip.

Shaking off these melancholy thoughts, since
brooding about injustice would never accomplish anything,
Audrey turned to address a situation she could remedy.
Hester, her eight-year-old daughter, squirmed in the high-
backed chair in which Master Eworth had posed her. It was
well padded with red velvet cushions but any position grew
uncomfortable with the passage of time. The book Eworth had
provided as a prop might have held her attention had she
been able to read it, but it was written in Latin. The slim,
leather-bound volume lay abandoned, stuffed into the space
between Hester’s thigh and the seat of the chair and in
imminent danger of tumbling to the floor.

“Let me see what I can do.”

Audrey spoke in a genteel and well-modulated voice
and rose smoothly from the window seat. That simple act,
executed too quickly, was enough to betray her weakness. The
first moment of dizziness was as debilitating as a blow to
the head. The sensation did not last long, but by the time
she recovered her equilibrium, warmth had flooded into her
face. She needed no looking glass to know that hectic spots
of color dotted her cheeks.

As Audrey glided past Master Eworth, she avoided
meeting his gaze. He saw too much. His artist’s eye was keen
and she feared he had already noticed how greatly she had
changed since he had painted her portrait the previous year.
She had been exceeding ill of a fever during the summer just
past. Thousands had been. Hundreds had died. Many of the
survivors were still as appallingly weak as she was.

The woman in Master Eworth’s portrait no longer
existed. Perhaps she never had. That painting, hanging
beside the companion piece of her husband, John Harington,
in the Great Hall of their country house in Somersetshire,
showed a tall, slender woman of twenty-seven with red-gold
hair and sparkling dark brown eyes. In Eworth’s rendition,
Audrey wore a richly embroidered gown, radiated raw good
health, and looked out on the world with confidence.

To the casual observer, aside from the fact that
she now wore plain dark red wool for warmth, she might
appear unchanged. But Master Eworth knew better. So did
Audrey herself. Her vitality had been sapped by recent
illness, and she felt at times no more than a wraith.

In spite of the effort it took to cross the room
to her daughter’s side, Audrey did not falter, nor did she
do more than wince when she reached her goal and knelt
beside Hester’s chair. Illusion was more important than
reality, a lesson she’d learned well during the years she’d
spent on the fringes of the royal court.

Hester stared down at her mother with a sad
expression that made her appear far older than her years.

“What is it that troubles you, sweeting?” Audrey
asked.

“Nothing.” Hester looked away, toying with the
fringe on the arm of the chair.

“Is your hair braided too tightly?” The thick,
dark brown tresses, an inheritance from her father, had been
pulled back from her face and wound in an intricate manner
on top of her head.

“No, Mother.”

“Then you must keep your promise to pose for
Master Eworth. When your portrait is finished, it will hang
in the Great Hall at Catherine’s Court.”

“Distract her, madam,” Eworth interrupted, anxious
to resume work. “She must remain motionless if I am to do
her justice.”

“How long?” Audrey did not look at him.

“Another hour at the least.”

At this pronouncement, Hester’s lower lip crept
forward in a pout.

“Pick up the book and pretend to read,” Eworth
ordered. “For some unfathomable reason Master Harington
wants the world to know he has a well-educated daughter.”

“What if I read to you?” Audrey cut in before the
rebellion she saw bubbling up in the dark eyes so like her
own could boil over. “Then all you will have to do is sit
still and listen.”

Hester made a circle on the floor with the toe of
her little leather slipper. “What will you read?”

“You may choose any text you like, so long as the
book is written in English.” The Haringtons owned a
respectable library, but some of the volumes were in Latin
or Greek or French and beyond Audrey’s ken.

“Tell me a story instead. Tell me a true story
about King Henry.”

Audrey sighed. She should have anticipated her
daughter’s request. Of late there had been no curtailing
Hester’s curiosity about the late king. His portrait—a copy
of one Master Holbein had painted—had always been displayed
at Catherine’s Court, but Hester had shown no interest in it
until, one bleak and stormy winter evening, her father had
entertained her by recollecting the days long-ago when he
had been a gentleman of the king’s Chapel Royal.

Since then, Hester frequently asked for more tales
of that time. Her father had recounted a few of his
adventures, carefully edited, but Audrey had been reluctant
to speak of the past.

Then she had fallen ill. Coming within a hair’s
breadth of death had brought home to her that she had a duty
to tell Hester the truth—all of it. But the girl was still
so young. Could she even comprehend what Audrey had
experienced? She wished she could wait until her daughter
was a few years older, but she feared to delay too long lest
the opportunity be lost forever.

Master Eworth scuttled forward to reposition his
subject with the book. Audrey waited until he returned to
his easel before she began to speak. She kept her voice low,
although she was certain the portrait painter’s hearing was
sharp enough to overhear every word she spoke.

It did not matter. In the short time allotted to
the sitting, she could not delve very deeply into her story.
To tell the complete tale would take many hours, perhaps
even days. A sense of calm came over her as she began to
speak.

“The first time I met King Henry,” she told her
daughter, “I was younger than you are now.”