“Do not worry, Lady Agneta,” the princess soothed. “I shall be as a mother to Elin Ulfsdotter. She shall be in my constant care, as will all of my ladies, and I will return with her safely, and soon.”

My mother, still beautiful, bowed her head, a tear trembling in the corner of her eye. “Thank you, my lady.”

Princess Cecelia then left us to our parting sentiments while she went to bid farewell to her own family. Her new husband, the Margrave of Baden, waited for her on board, having no Swedish family to part from.

My mother had already given me her gift earlier in the day, a golden locket necklace with a sketch of her on her wedding day, and a recent one of me, inside. Each of my sisters came to me in turn. Gertrude pressed a jar of dried lingonberries into my hand, then softly kissed my temple, as we sisters did out of affection. “Good-bye, dear sister,” she said. “I shall pray for you.”

Brita came next and held out a new needle for my lacework. She kissed my temple and murmured her affection before stepping aside for Karin. My head snapped up as I saw that she wore one of my gowns, a favorite of rose pink.

“You shan’t need it for a few months,” she said without remorse. I held my temper and my tongue in front of the others; my mother disapproved of outward displays of emotion, finding them lowbred. Karin, too, kissed my hairline and bade me a safe journey and a speedy return. I noticed, as I held her near, a faint aroma of the spiced scent of Philip’s wash water. I looked at her, alarmed. She had betrayed me, she had! I did not want to leave, and yet it was too late; Princess Cecelia was motioning us all toward the ship.

It did not occur to me until later that Karin alone had offered no gift upon my departure excepting, perhaps, a Judas kiss.

The ship wound its way through the fjords and into the open ocean. What should have been a journey of perhaps one unpleasant month turned into a nightmare of nearly ten. There was no ill weather that did not bedevil us, from ice storm to windy squall that threatened to scupper the ship nearly every week. The seas churned, gray trimmed with foamy white ribbons like an old man’s beard, and most days we kept to our cabins.

When the seas were not unwelcoming, the Danes were. They proved to be the hellhounds we expected them to be, harrying us from one coast to the next and forcing us to travel over ice-sheathed land by horse-drawn sleigh to friendly noble homes before boarding ship again. If it weren’t for the loyalty I knew I owed my king, I might have wondered if he’d signaled our route to distract the Danes from his brother Johan, whom he loved, in Finland.

“Why complain of cold when we are on our way to see the wonderful queen of England?” our princess cried in joy. Although I saw the irony in her warm pleasure while we numbed with frost, I was truly happy for her. For many years, since her brother Johan had visited England and returned to tell of its wonders, Cecelia had prepared herself for her own journey of diplomacy, mastering the language with only English merchants as teachers.

Within a few months it was clear that Princess Cecelia was with child, and we all gave a portion of our foodstuffs so she and the babe would not suffer. “I have to look away when she is sick over the side of the ship,” Christina Abrahamsdotter confided in me. “My innards pain me for lack of food, and then I watch as my supper lurches from her stomach into the sea.”

We began to run out of wood, too, with which to warm ourselves. Princess Cecelia sat shivering in a corner chair. “I need more coats!” She looked at us by turn and we reluctantly shed our warm outer clothing, and she took them one by one and layered them upon herself. From then on we ladies went about with our thinner inner garments. We often danced about in our light dresses to keep ourselves warm while the princess, now comfortable, sang English sea songs and English hymns. This did not endear any of us to royal service, but we were well trained enough to say nothing.

It was also clear that Princess Cecelia had been turning her husband away from their marital bed. Master Preston sternly warned the ship hands from even looking upon us, but he was not of a rank to speak thus to the margrave. One night the margrave appeared in my cabin as Bridget was attending to the princess.

“Hello, schön Elin,” he said, his German tight-toothed and proper. “I have been waiting for the right time for us to become better acquainted. You are the most beautiful girl at court.”

I moved away from him, steadying my feet with the constant pitching of the ship. “I think we know one another well enough already, sir.”

“But I do not, Elin,” he said. I could not even account his behavior to drunkenness, as he appeared to have all of his wits about him. He drew closer, and I grabbed hold of the feeble chair in the corner of our cabin to steady myself. As he advanced again, I feigned that I was losing my balance and pushed the chair in his direction, aiming a wooden leg for the part of him where he would feel the most pain.

He doubled over and cried out.

“I’m so sorry, my lord, I lost my balance,” I said. But I did not draw near to help him, and my voice was not falsely contrite. He left my cabin muttering and did not return again. I smiled when I thought upon it and Bridget did, too, when I told her.

Winter warmed to spring, which then unfolded into summer. We became truly alarmed that my lady would give birth before we reached London, and there was not a married woman among us, much less a midwife. Cecelia had no such concerns. Her greatest joy was that her firstborn would be birthed in the land of the queen she’d so admired for her autonomy and freedom.

One night in late summer we were happily informed that we were nearing Calais, from where they would send a message ahead that we were nearly to England. I sat that evening with Bridget; we had become as sisters during the journey and there was no thought too private for me to share with her.

“I should have married Philip by now,” I said with regret, speaking aloud the relentless thought I’d pushed back a dozen times over the months past as I lay abed wondering what he and Karin were doing in Stockholm. “It is September. Autumn.”

“Do not fret,” Bridget said. Her voice did not convey the confidence of her words.

“Perhaps they will marry him to my younger sister in my stead, as Gustav Vasa did with Princess Cecelia’s first fiancé,” I worried.

Bridget lowered her voice. “There will be no need to marry your sister to your fiancé, because your father did not find you willingly in bed with another man, drag you out by your hair, and unman the culprit.”

I agreed, and we smiled bemusedly together in the pitching cabin. The king had a coin struck with Cecelia on one side and the virginal Susanna from Holy Writ on the other, circulating the idea of his daughter’s innocence every time the coin was used. I didn’t know if the coin had made it to Baden, but the margrave had not hesitated to take Cecelia as his bride.

“There may be other reasons for Philip to desire to wed Karin,” I said, twisting the ring on my third finger, which had grown bony during our long journey. “We have been so very long gone.” She took my gown. She took my fiancé. In truth, he desired her before we’d even left. “And my dowry was not paid, which makes our engagement uncertain. Or void.” He’s always preferred her to me. Who would not?

“ ’Tis nothing to think upon now,” Bridget said sensibly. “We are far from Stockholm, and near to England. We must act upon that which is here, and we do not know what lies just ahead.”

“Are you unsettled by that?” I asked her.

She, who was typically calm and self-assured, merely nodded but didn’t speak. I, too, was anxious and unsettled, though I didn’t understand exactly why.

We were thin and weary and our teeth hurt in our heads, but we were here; within days England beckoned on the horizon, green and gold and holding out her arms to welcome us, I hoped, like Freya, the mythological Norse goddess of beauty and love.



TWO

September, October, and November: Year of Our Lord 1565