But not yet.

Not yet- because on that moment, my arrival and first days at Hampton, Lady Elizabeth was just the somewhat frightening, way too thin, pale creature that was a total mystery to me. I spent every day in her company… or, actually, I spent every day in her rooms. And that, believe me, is a huge difference. I could as well have been a plant- there was not really such a thing as a feeling of “company” anyway.

The only contact I and my Lady shared, was limited to a quick, sometimes annoyed glance from beneath her thin, reddish eyelashes. Now and then…

And the other Ladies-in-Waiting… well, to say the least, I and them did not really get along quite as well as we should have. They were all, at least, three years my senior- I thought them arrogant and giggly, they thought me so small and childish.

Those things would change when Joan came.

But that came later…

Now, I still stayed at Hampton Court, Anno Domini 1546…

The least I could say of Bess was that she was fair. She did not in the least treat me otherwise than the others in the palace- I already realized that when I, for the very first time, attended dinner at King Henry’s Court.

I and Elizabeth were- of course- not placed at the same table. That was absolutely unthinkable. She, the Royal family and some others, sat at what we called “the head table”. It was placed somewhat higher than the “plain” tables, right in front of the Great Hall in Greenwich, and somewhat inferiorly placed stood the tables meant for us- three more, longer and somewhat less majestically decorated tables, next to each other. And there did we sat- the Ladies-in-Waiting, the whole court.

I still very well remember that very first time…

I was placed right between two idiotic, giggly beings who haughtily made the others address them as “Lady Anne” and “Lady Margaret”. Well, the one and only amusing thing about them was, that their first names corresponded with respectively my second and third name. But right there did the fun end.

Because I was tired of listening to their useless so-called “conversation”, I pointed my curious looks at the head table. There, I noticed Elizabeth, who obviously concentrated on her food and only on her food. She seemed to ignore everybody- even, apparently, her mighty father.

Not that King Henry took that much pains in order to converse with his youngest daughter… He, that tall, but awfully fat man who was Elizabeth’s father and our King, was centrally placed, on the largest and most richly decorated chair of them all. He was sitting between Queen Katherine, whom I had already met, and a small, fair-haired boy of about ten whom could hardly be anyone else than young Prince Edward, Elizabeth’s half-brother. Elizabeth herself sat between him and a rather ugly, tall woman. Only towards the end of the evening I realized that that must be the Princess Mary, the half-sister who was about seventeen years Elizabeth’s senior. She looked as if she approached the thirty years of age, and indeed, as I learned later on, she was exactly thirty on that night, when I “met” her for the first time. Princess Mary looked perhaps more like her father than any of the other children did, but she was unquestionably uglier. Her hair had the indefinable colour of mouldered wood, and her face wasn’t beautiful, perhaps exactly because she resembled her father that much? I wondered whether King Henry realized that.

Probably not, I imagined, as I looked; for a moment, straight into the watery, beady eyes of the man who was our King. He probably did not realize. I had always heard- but that could as well have been the grudge our family undoubtedly held towards the King- that King Henry did not realize many things…

When I very quickly got the feeling the Royal Family, though indisputably extraordinary, wasn’t that interesting as well, I redirected my gazes towards my two “companions”. Those two just got a rather strange fit of laughter, and Lady Margaret- a tall, thin girl with thick, black hair and blushes on her cheeks- asked me, still sniggering.

“How old are you actually, little one?”

She spoke those words in an exaggeratedly condescending tone, and I, who considered her question quite direct and very inappropriate, stretched my back and coolly answered

“My name is Fenella Howard and I’m thirteen years of age.”

As soon as those words had escaped my mouth, Lady Anne- a plump girl with reddish hair, freckles and a pale face- started hysterically laughing again, and Lady Margaret rolled her eyes.

On the moment itself, I did not understand, but later on I would see they did not mock my age, but my looks, and, partly, my last name as well. Howard.

Margaret and Anne were about eighteen, so they probably had been at Court already for about four years.

Long enough to have known my father’s cousin.

Lady Catherine Howard.

My great-uncle’s daughter who had once, though it had been just for one year, as a Queen reigned over England. Lady Catherine Howard, relative of mine.

King Henry’s “Rose without a Thorn”… who obviously had possessed some thorns after all, because she as well ended her short life on the scaffold.

I was nine when she died, and though I had never known her really well, I did know very, very well indeed what she had looked like, with her dark-blonde hair and her large, blue eyes.

I knew I resembled her.

I knew I, with my twelve years, was almost an exact copy of the Catherine Howard who had once, so many years ago, joined the Royal household. Of that same Catherine Howard who now was resting in her grave.

Without her head.

And because of that, exactly because of that, did Margaret and Anne laugh when I- fool!- was so kind as to even tell them my family name on top of it!

Howard. The last name of the most powerful, but perchance also the most powerless family in all England. My father and his two cousins… beheaded, all three of them in not even a decade.

I could only hope that my fate would not lead me that same way.

But it wouldn’t.

Elizabeth would take care of that.