The King’s Daughter. Christie Dickason

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      When I was younger, Mrs Hay had often put me to bed with tales that kept me wide awake in the dark for hours, tales even more terrifying than the servants’ whispers of a ghostly abbot who sometimes stalked through my bed-chamber, which had once been his.

      Vivid against the shadowy canopy overhead, I saw the sword tip held to my grandmother’s pregnant belly while my father still lay curled inside. My grandfather’s sword tip, threatening his own wife and unborn son. My father almost killed by his own father, Lord Darnley, while he was still in the womb. Then I saw Darnley murdered, his twisted body blown out of his bed by a mysterious explosion, lying dead under an apple tree. I saw my grandmother, Mary, Queen of Scotland, beheaded because Protestant Queen Elizabeth believed her guilty of plotting with Catholics to usurp the English crown.

      ‘Papists,’ whispered Mrs Hay. ‘The devilish spawn of Rome.’ She kept her voice down because my Danish mother was a Catholic and one never knew who might be listening. But she did not hesitate to call my Grandmother Mary by her Scottish nickname—‘The Strumpet of Rome’.

      I learned that there had been two Catholic plots against my father here in England, before his backside had even touched the English throne. The Bye and The Main, I repeated silently to myself.

      When very young, I did not understand. Then, shortly after we came south, I had lost my own sweet governess, Lady Kildare. Her husband had plotted to kill my father in one of the Catholic plots. Though he was executed, she had survived. But my lovely, lively guardian, whom I loved dearly and who held my young heart in her care as tenderly as a mother, was wrenched from my life for fear that I might catch treason from her like the plague. I learned then about the bloody struggle between Papists, who were still loyal to the Catholic Pope in Rome, and the newer Protestants, a struggle set off in England by the old queen’s father, Henry VIII, my brother’s namesake.

      ‘Holy Mother, protect me!’ my forest spirit had cried.

      It was happening again.

      If anyone learned of our meeting—or even of his intent—I was tainted by treason for a second time. And I knewenough from Mrs Hay to be afraid of more than Papists.

      My father’s demon enemies were here in England, like the supernatural fanes and trowies who are invisible until they show themselves. In the dreams I had after my nurse’s stories, I saw devils riding on skeleton horses, the faces of dead men taking shape in the dust of the road. The sons of executed men clung to my father’s back whispering vengeance in his ear. No River Jordan cut off his English Paradise to leave all his Scottish ghosts behind, shouting impotently and shaking their fists on the far bank. They rode south with him.

      I knew from Mrs Hay that my father still searched his closet himself, every night before going to bed, for hidden assassins and still wore a doublet cross-quilted with thick padding to stop a knife. The fine embroidery over his chest and belly was laid with enough metal wire to dull any blade.

      I don’t know if Mrs Hay ever saw what else she was teaching me along with respect for my father’s youthful courage. I couldn’t think what wires or quilted padding could armour him against knowing that he had accepted the English throne from the woman who signed his own mother’s death warrant. My father had acquiesced to the death of my grandmother…his own mother. How could his children feel safe?