The Virgin Elizabeth Read online

  The

  VIRGIN

  Elizabeth

  Also by Robin Maxwell

  The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn

  The Queen's Bastard

  The

  VIRGIN

  Elizabeth

  A Novel

  ROBIN

  MAXWELL

  ARCADE PUBLISHING • NEW YORK

  Copyright © 2001, 2012 by Robin Maxwell

  Cover image supplied by Royal Collection Trust/© HM Queen Elizabeth II 2012

  All Rights Reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner without the express written consent of the publisher, except in the case of brief excerpts in critical reviews or articles. All inquiries should be addressed to Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, places, characters, and incidents are either products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Arcade Publishing books may be purchased in bulk at special discounts for sales promotion, corporate gifts, fund-raising, or educational purposes. Special editions can also be created to specifications. For details, contact the Special Sales Department, Arcade Publishing, 307 West 36th Street, 11th Floor, New York, NY 10018 or [email protected].

  Arcade Publishing® is a registered trademark of Skyhorse Publishing, Inc.®, a Delaware corporation.

  Visit our website at www.arcadepub.com.

  10 98765432

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available on file.

  ISBN: 978-1-61145-741-4

  Printed in the United States of America

  For Anne Boleyn, her daughter Elizabeth, and Catherine Parr, whose courageous and extraordinary lives have endlessly informed, enriched and inspired me

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  I gratefully acknowledge my hardworking agents Kim Witherspoon and Maria Massie, who restored my faith in their profession, and my publishers Jeannette and Dick Seaver, who with loving acceptance made possible the flowering of my career. My cheerful and indefatigable publicist Phillipa Tawn, agent associates David Forrer and Alexis Hurley, and editorial assistant Casey Ebro made the day-to-day business of this author's life a pleasure. I thank my always erudite copy editor Ann Marlowe and Amara Dupuis, who typed this manuscript and supplied so much encouragement.

  Fellow author/historian Vicki Leon urged me to write this fascinating but rarely told episode of Elizabeth's life, and my husband Max Thomas — as always — provided me with love and the perfect environment in which to execute it.

  The

  VIRGIN

  Elizabeth

  Chapter One

  “The King is dead. Long live the King.”

  It was not by mistake that Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, had, for this somber pronouncement of Henry the Eighths passing, brought together perhaps the only two individuals in Britain who would have cause to fall into the sincere and copious weeping that young Elizabeth and Edward Tudor now commenced. It was hard to say if the boy's tears and sobbing at his uncle’s words should be attributed to the loss of his beloved father or to the sheer terror of ascending the throne of England at the age of nine.

  Despite a turmoil far greater than Edward’s — for her place in the scheme of things was, and had always been, convoluted in the extreme — the thirteen-year-old Elizabeth emerged as comforter to her half brother’s hysterical grieving.

  “Edward, Edward,” she crooned, brushing away her own tears with the palm of her hand. She accepted a handkerchief from the appropriately condolent Somerset but, rather than using the cloth herself, wiped the boy’s nose with it. The king of England allowed the intimacy as natural, the two having shared a deep and abiding affection one for the other ever since he had been a small boy.

  “May Edward and I be alone, my lord?” Elizabeth inquired of Somerset with polite dignity. She could see his lips tighten at the request, but the royal uncle backed away deferentially and pulled the nursery door closed behind him. Edward had fallen onto his bed in a new fit of weeping.

  Elizabeth was steadily regaining her composure, as much owing to her genuine concern for the miserable little boy who lay, perhaps for father never again would be only slightly less often than when he was living. Elizabeth had loved her father, loved him far more than he had ever loved her. There were times, she had to admit, when he had been unendurably cruel to his younger daughter. Elizabeth finally sat herself at Edward’s side and watched his slender body heave.

  “I am an orphan, Elizabeth,” he said between choked sobs.

  “As I am … and your sister Mary” All of Henry’s children had long been motherless. Their half sister, Mary, had lost Queen Katherine of Aragon more than ten years before, after an enforced banishment from each other’s comfort and company at the king’s pleasure. Elizabeth had been barely three when her own mother, Anne Boleyn, was executed for adultery and treason. But poor Edward had lost his to a fever just weeks after his birth. Cruel prophesies at the time had promised that when he came to the throne King Edward the Sixth would be a murderer, as he had started his life by murdering his mother in childbed. So he had never known the demure Jane Seymour, Henry’s third and most beloved wife — the woman who had given him the son he had changed the world to have. The woman next to whom he had demanded to be buried.

  “You’re an orphan, Edward, but you have me, and you have Mary. You know we both love you very much.”

  “Who will tell Mary?” he asked, sniffing back his tears.

  “I’m sure your uncle Somerset will see to it.” Elizabeth’s own relations with Mary were bittersweet at best, as the tragic history their two mothers shared was an ever-present barrier between the half sisters. “And our father has made very sure that you will be well handled in your minority, Edward,” Elizabeth continued. “Sixteen members of the Privy Council, including your two Seymour uncles, were carefully chosen to oversee the regency. You shall have sixteen fathers.”

  “No one like His Majesty,” Edward wailed.

  “I know that.” Elizabeth’s lips twitched involuntarily and tears sprang unbidden from her eyes with the truth of her brother’s sentiment.

  Henry had been a truly magnificent man, even in his wretched old age. Until recently, with the excruciating pain in his ulcerous leg prostrating him for months at a time, he would confound his Councillors by suddenly insisting he be taken from his sickbed to hunt. There at the blind, his corpulence barely supported by his famous wide stance, the elegant archer would shoot all of an afternoon, his arrow rarely missing its mark. Then he would collapse in pain, raging violently at everyone around him, all the time cringing with inward revulsion at what the “handsomest prince in Christendom” had finally become.

  “And how can you forget the Queen?” said Elizabeth, composing herself. “She has been mother to us all for years now.” Henrys sixth and final wife, Catherine Parr, had done more for the royal children than courtesy demanded. Far more. Kind and generous in the extreme, she had not only lavished the little prince with affection but had miraculously rescued Henrys two bastardized daughters from poverty and obscurity, bringing them back from exile into the Tudor family fold. More important, Catherine had remonstrated with Henry until he had reinstated Elizabeth in the succession — an extraordinary act that she could never repay. Further, the Queen had personally seen to the young princess’s education and insisted that, when this day came, Elizabeth should come and reside under the roof of the Queen Dowager.

  “I do love Catherine,” Edward whimpered.

  “Of course you do. Now come, sit up. We have been expecting this for a good long while.”

  The little boy, dressed in the richest finery, sat up, face red and swollen, his le
gs dangling over the side of the bed. His feet did not yet touch the floor.

  “No one can take the place of our father, but think, Edward. You are the king of England now. You’ve been preparing for this day since you took your first step, spoke your first words. You are brilliant, at least Master Cheke says so,” she added teasingly. “You already have the manners of a great nobleman. You are a fine athlete, just as your father was. You understand how battles are fought. You’ve memorized every port on the coasts of England and the Continent. And you know four languages.”

  “My French is still poor.”

  “But your Greek is marvelous. And that’s the one that matters most. All else will follow. I tell you, Edward, you will be so utterly consumed with the business of state that you will forget you even have sisters.”

  “I shall never forget you, Elizabeth. Or Mary either. Its just…” Edward’s lips began to quiver again.

  “I cannot tell you not to grieve for our father. Heaven knows I shall miss him” — Elizabeth’s voice cracked with emotion — “but you were his greatest joy. His greatest hope.” Tears began gathering in Elizabeth’s eyes. “Much … was sacrificed so that you could be born.” A fleeting image of her mother kneeling at the block, and knowledge that the day following her execution Henry had betrothed himself to Edward’s mother, caused Elizabeth to shudder. “You were everything to him, brother. Everything. You must make him very, very proud.”

  With that Elizabeth burst into tears. Edward, suddenly the comforter, placed an awkward arm around his sister. Then, laying his head upon her shoulder, Edward, King of England, began weeping anew.

  Chapter Two

  Hooves thundering on the damp spring earth, the geldings galloped side by side, their riders urging their racing mounts as they had since Elizabeth and Robin Dudley had been children. Elizabeth pulled ahead, grinning triumphantly at her competitor, her horse flinging clods of soggy grass up behind it.

  “Ha! Ha!” she heard Robin crying, spurring his horse faster. He would catch her soon enough and pull ahead laughing as the wind whipped his long hair. And so it went, one overtaking the other, through the meadows and the wood, bounding across narrow streams till the animals were spent and the pair, reining in their horses, reluctantly dismounted.

  They fell to the moss-covered ground breathless, reclining, hands under heads in the oak’s dappled shade. There was no one, thought Elizabeth — save Kat — with whom she was more at home than this childhood friend. She turned her head and found Robin, eyes closed, sucking in great gulps of the fragrant air, and smiled. He was a handsome boy, almost exactly a year older than herself, and she suddenly realized that sometime in the past months he had finally overtaken her in height, his voice becoming deep and manly. His betrothed, Amy Robsart, was a very lucky lady indeed, Elizabeth mused. For not only was she promised a handsome young husband instead of a toothless if wealthy old widower for her marriage bed, but Robin lusted for the girl, and she him. They could hardly wait the two years for their wedding. Such a match was very rare, and some even whispered that it was doomed, for carnal desire in a marriage was not in the natural order of things.

  In the next moment, eyes still closed, young Dudley spoke. “My father met with Amy’s father yesterday.”

  “Robin!”

  “What?”

  “You’ve done it again.”

  “What did I do?” He turned on his side to face Elizabeth, bent his elbow, and propped his head on his hand. He wore a slightly amused expression and was, as always, extremely attentive.

  “Just then I was thinking of the future Amy Dudley and in the next moment you mentioned her father.”

  “So I’ve read your mind again,” he said, picking an oak leaf off the shoulder of her black riding gown. Only four months since her father’s death she was still officially in mourning.

  “Well, I don’t like it,” said Elizabeth with mock petulance, for she did like his uncanny ability very much. Certainly her beloved nurse, Kat Ashley, loved her, and the Queen Dowager had been exceedingly kind and affectionate, but no one in the world cared enough about what Elizabeth was thinking to read her mind.

  “Then I shall not do it again,” he said with an ingenuous grin. He, of course, knew how flattered she felt to be so well known and cared for by him.

  “What did they talk about, your father and Lord Robsart — besides their children’s lusting after one another?”

  Robin’s face colored with embarrassment, but the great reserve for which his father, John Dudley, was well known had recently begun to flavor Robin’s character as well. He ignored Elizabeth’s lascivious reference when he answered.

  “Their concern is growing every day at the way our government is being run. And the Privy Council is furious at Edward Seymour —”

  “The Duke of Somerset,” Elizabeth corrected with a touch of sarcasm.

  “Indeed the duke, and self-proclaimed at that.” Robin sat up, the intimacy between them giving way to the fourteen-year-old’s political diatribe. “They’re saying that he and Lord Paget were busy changing your father’s will even as he lay dying.”

  Elizabeth winced but did not interrupt. Now that she was living out in the country at Chelsea House with the Queen Dowager, Robin — through John Dudley — was her most valuable source of information about the goings-on at court. As she’d suspected it would, her brother’s correspondence since his accession, whilst remaining cordial, had become less and less frequent.

  “The pair of them, Somerset and Paget, simply usurped control from the Councillors King Henry had chosen to guide Edward, and Somerset took it for himself. Now he’s sole Protector and no one else has a say in the King’s business — unless of course you count the Duchess of Somerset. And she’s a horrible, conniving old cow.”

  “Robin!”

  “Well, she is.”

  “I think this is your father speaking, and he’s still angry at Somerset for taking away his admiralty and giving the post to his brother.”

  “You’re quite wrong, Elizabeth. My father’s not angry at all, despite the fact he’s a better man for the job than Thomas Seymour will ever be. What the ‘demotion’ means is that my father is able to stay close to court now, which is desirable, and that Seymour will be forced by his duties to ship off to sea for the better part of the year. We’re all a good deal better off without him. My father says he’s the most grasping, unscrupulous man ever born on English soil.”

  “Is that what he says?” said Elizabeth, mildly amused.

  “Seymour was unsatisfied with all his new titles and properties,” Robin went on, “and was wildly jealous that his brother snatched away the regency for himself. He’s still steaming about the lowly place he was given in the King’s coronation procession. I tell you, the man gives ambition a bad name.” Robin smiled then, his demeanor lightening with the irony of his last statement. It was well known that his own grandfather Edmund Dudley had been executed for his ambitiousness, and John Dudley, though more reserved in his own political pursuits, was no stranger to powermongering.

  “You may be right about the Duchess of Somerset,” said Elizabeth, “but I think my brother is better off for having one firm hand guiding him than sixteen. Nobody can ever agree on anything in Council, you know that, Robin. And by the time they’d got through arguing, Edward would be completely confused and never know which side to take. He’s just a little boy, and his uncle, from what I have heard, is a pious and high-minded gentleman of many accomplishments. He’s a scholar, and a famous soldier —”

  “And so harsh and snappish he makes grown men cry,” Robin finished for her.

  “Really?” Elizabeth’s interest was piqued. “Whom did he make cry?”

  “Lord Rutland for one, in the Council Chamber. And he’s obsessed with subduing Scotland. He’s already gathering forces to invade.”

  “I believe he’s right to care about Scotland,” argued Elizabeth. “They’re allied with England’s oldest enemy. If ever France wanted to inv
ade us they could come marauding across the Scottish border.”

  Robin stood and moved to his mount. As he lifted the front foreleg and examined the foot, he continued speaking. His natural ease around horses had already earned him a reputation as one of England’s finest young horsemen.

  “You make a good point. It’s just his arrogance that riles people. His unshakable belief that the protectorate is his God-given right. And worst of all...” Robin hesitated for a very long moment.

  “What is worst of all?” demanded Elizabeth.

  “Worst of all is the way he treats the King. He ignores Edward entirely. Your brother might as well not be alive. He’s never consulted on anything. And only four months into his regency Somerset’s adopted the royal we.’”

  “I think you’re being rather too hard on the duke. And his brother.”

  “Maybe on the duke, but not on the Lord High Admiral. I tell you Thomas Seymour is scheming wicked schemes. There are rumors about, you know.”

  “The ones that have him asking for my sister Mary’s hand in marriage? I’ve heard them. I don’t believe them.”

  “And his courting Anne of Cleves?”

  “I don’t believe that either.”

  “He asked the Council for your hand, Elizabeth,” said Robin pointedly.

  Now Elizabeth stood, flushing with indignation as she straightened her riding habit.

  “That is simply a lie,” she said crisply. “You really should keep to political commentary, Robin Dudley Gossipmongering doesn’t become you.” She stood at her horses side and silently waited for a foot up. Robin complied instantly and she took the saddle. She felt, as always, the grace and natural ease with which he deferred to her. Although Elizabeth had only recently regained her title as princess — and at thirteen, with a robust Tudor brother at the beginning of a long and glorious reign, was accorded virtually no chance of ever sitting on the English throne — Robin Dudley treated with her as he would a queen. And it was for this reason, thought Elizabeth as she rode back to Chelsea House with her best friend at her side, that she loved him the most.