The Virgin Elizabeth Read online

  “All right, you’ve hacked off my right arm and I’m using my left. See if you can cut me now.”

  The boy king, wooden broadsword in hand, was so flushed with exertion that his normally paper-white skin was red as a Tudor rose. Perspiration dripped from his temples as he tightly clenched his two-handed weapon and swiped impotently at his uncle Thomas, similarly armed but with his right arm held behind his back. They fought alone together in one of Edward’s private gardens under a dark, threatening sky. The pretty purse of red and silver, shy three gold crowns, lay on a bench nearby.

  “If I teach you one thing today, Your Majesty, let it be the importance of aggression.”

  The words seemed to spur the boy on. His next cuts were well aimed and powerful, though Thomas’s sword warded them off with expert ease.

  “My swordmaster teaches me that defense is best,” said Edward breathlessly.

  “Be on the defensive always, but follow up defense with aggression. Most men, if they should cut to your head, would parry and then back away.” Thomas demonstrated on the boy who was, ears and eyes and senses, fixed on this heroic swordsman. “I tell you now to parry your head, but follow it with a slash across the belly.” His final cut sliced within an inch of the child’s midsection. “Now you try.”

  Edward was proficient with the broadsword, but his masters had always during Henry’s reign been cautioned to be exceedingly careful with the King’s precious son. Now under his uncle’s tutelage he threw himself into the manly art with unbridled fervor. The thrusts and parries came fast and furious, surprising Seymour into a good-natured laugh.

  “Excellent, excellent,” he cried.

  But there was to be no respite.

  Thomas continued the fight as he talked. “Your young cousin Mary Queen of Scots has been smuggled out of Scotland to France.”

  “What!?” Edward stopped dead in his tracks, and even Thomas’s mock stroke that would have swiped off his head did not perturb him as much as the Admiral’s news.

  “I wondered if you’d been told,” said Seymour, then urged the boy to continue fighting. They began again. “I know you’re given very little intelligence. ‘Tis unconscionable. You are the King, after all.”

  “My father meant for me to be as much a king at four as at forty.”

  “Indeed he did.”

  “And now something as vital as my bride-to-be being spirited off to the land of our enemies —”

  “And betrothed to the Dauphin.”

  Edward’s cuts flew at Seymour even more violently.

  “Good, good, Edward.”

  “ ‘Twas my father’s greatest wish that I should marry with Mary of Scots and end the hostilities between our countries.”

  “And the threat of France’s invasion from the north.”

  “How could my uncle have allowed such a thing to happen?”

  “It pains me to say it, Your Majesty, but the Protector … and his wife … have more interest in growing rich than they have in your welfare, or, for that matter, the welfare of England.”

  The boy’s cuts and thrusts had become instinctively exacting. His uncle Thomas was using mind and body with equal precision to forward the sword lesson and the political one. “Do you remember hearing tell of your father’s chancellor, Cardinal Wolsey?”

  “Of course.”

  “Why did he fall from Henry’s good graces?”

  “He was grasping and greedy ...”

  “And became the richest man in England next to Henry. And powerful. So powerful they called him the King of Europe.”

  After a final cracking overhead parry, Edward chopped his sword point to the ground and leaned on the jeweled hilt.

  “Is that what my other uncle is up to?” demanded Edward.

  “I cannot say for sure, Your Majesty,” said Thomas as he laid down his broadsword. “But it is being said around the court that you” — he hesitated — “that you are king in name only.”

  Edward’s posture slumped visibly and he blinked back angry tears.

  “There is something else, nephew, though I do not like to say it.”

  “But you must. I command you.”

  “Your uncle, the Duke of Somerset, has begun referring to himself … as your brother.”

  The wooden broadsword in Edward’s hands flew up above his head and, as he swung around in fury, came crashing down on a stone bench. The wood splintered and the shaft broke in two.

  Thomas Seymour’s heart swelled. It was all going the way he had planned it. “Perhaps,” he said carefully, “’twould be better if my lord Somerset were dead.”

  “Perhaps it would,” agreed Edward angrily. With that the boy king threw down the useless sword hilt and marched away into the palace without another word. But his uncle was anything but offended. He had given young Edward something to think about. He had given the child a great sword with which to kill Thomas Seymour’s dragon — as well as a reason to do so.

  Chapter Eight

  Elizabeth’s arrow sprang clean off her taut bowstring and, flying swift and straight, thwacked neatly into the bulls-eye’s red center. Robin Dudley, Jane Grey, and Master Roger Ascham loudly applauded the Princess’s efforts, and she, with a well-satisfied grin, curtsied playfully in their direction.

  “Well done, Princess!” called Ascham. Elizabeth watched him nudge Lady Jane off the bench to take her turn. Her cousin smiled warmly at the sweet-faced man whose hair was a mass of dark curly ringlets, and Elizabeth realized with some surprise how much affection she herself already bore for her new tutor. For a young man he was very wise, very learned, and altogether patient. Most of all he loved his profession passionately and could do naught but instill that passion in his students, who now included Jane and Robin besides herself. The Cambridge scholar, she’d discovered very soon after his arrival at Chelsea, believed true education could only be achieved through an equal balance of fervent study and relaxation. Music was of course encouraged, but archery, said Ascham, when practiced properly, had the effect of strengthening and focusing the mind. It had therefore become as much an aspect of the curriculum as Greek translation. He devised games for learning as well, round-robins for the memorization of ports and capitals, mnemonic devices for the remembering of the names of all the heads of state on the Continent.

  Lady Jane’s aim proved true. Everyone clapped for the girl, who flushed with as much pleasure as Elizabeth remembered her demonstrating since her arrival at Chelsea House. She too was flowering under the tutelage of Roger Ascham. Even Robin Dudley’s running debate, concerning his love for mathematics and Ascham’s disparagement of the same, diminished their affection for one another not at all.

  Since his arrival — and Thomas Seymour’s departure from the household almost two months before — Elizabeth had regained a measure of composure and at least the outward illusion of normalcy. She was no longer harassed by the early morning romps, or plagued with their associated guilty pleasures. Plunging enthusiastically into Master Ascham’s educational program, she could forget for many hours at a time the terrible emotions that had racked her mind, and the untoward sensations that beset her body.

  Still, there was Queen Catherine to attend, and the woman was clearly not herself. Her once sweet compassion and utterly sensible demeanor had transmogrified into vagueness and distracted irritability. Clearly Catherine missed Thomas’s presence, though she was not at liberty to express such sentiment. Ladies such as herself were trained from an early age to withstand their husbands’ long absences — in wars, at court, traveling to their distant properties. But far from the strong resiliency that Catherine had once exuded, she had become so fragile as to seem brittle, her eyes shining with such extreme brightness that one felt if she were lightly struck she might shatter into a thousand shards of glittering glass.

  Elizabeth, therefore, whilst paying the Queen Dowager all due respect — taking the required meals and walks and prayers with her — maintained a certain distance in feeling. It distressed the Prin
cess, confused her, and she believed it pained her stepmother equally. But there was nothing else to be done. Perhaps, thought Elizabeth, when Thomas Seymour returned, the Queen’s good humor would be restored and the Admiral would discontinue his advances toward her.

  If only Kat Ashley would leave off her incessant reminders of Seymour, Elizabeth mused, she might be able to forget him altogether. But the waiting lady missed no opportunity to call up his name, remark on his handsomeness or other fine qualities, say how she missed his booming good-natured voice, lament that the house seemed empty without his presence. How many times had Kat repeated her outrageous suggestion that Elizabeth and Thomas made so much prettier a couple than he and the Queen Dowager? Elizabeth steeled herself as best she was able, but the statements were nothing less than an assault on her already tumultuous emotions.

  Now Robin took his place before the target and Elizabeth found herself silently admiring his handsomeness and effortless grace as he set the shaft into the bow and took aim. At that moment she heard Catherine’s voice on the far side of the hedge behind the archery range. It was difficult to make out the words, but the Queen Dowager’s tone, while conversational, was loud and passionate. All in Elizabeth’s party became aware of Catherine’s approach and Robin held his shot, lowering bow and arrow to wait respectfully for the Queen and her companion to appear at the end of the hedge. But when she did appear, the shock of the moment riveted Robin, Jane, Ascham, and Elizabeth with equally ferocity. For the lady was altogether alone, talking only to herself or, worse still, to an invisible companion. So engrossed in the solitary conversation was the Queen Dowager that she never even looked toward the archery range nor saw the small party that, with unspeakable horror and pity, watched as she walked on and disappeared behind the castle wall.

  Jane Grey burst into tears and, brushing off her tutor’s comforting arms, ran for the house.

  Robin, Elizabeth, and Ascham exchanged a silent and entirely helpless look. Elizabeth’s chin began to quiver and tears blinded her. So engulfed in misery was the Princess that it came as a surprise when she felt a strong hand clasping her own. She blinked away the tears to find Robin Dudley standing before her, the boy’s face a mask of such complete and sincere compassion that her composure broke. She wept and he held her as Roger Ascham turned and left them to their private grief.

  “’Tis no one’s fault exactly,” said the Queen Dowager insistently Walking alone, she had already completed her first full circuit of the castle grounds and was beginning her second. ” ‘Tis no one’s fault except my own,” she added. “Or perhaps Elizabeth’s. I think Elizabeth is to blame at times. The way the girl looks at him or does not look at him. I see her attempting many times to avoid looking at him, but she wants to look at him. Undresses him with her eyes. I see her undressing him. But that she does harbor such lewd fantasies, well, that must be my fault entirely. She is just a girl, after all… but not so much younger than I when I took my first husband,” Catherine amended indignantly. She rubbed a spot on the back of her left hand, a spot she had rubbed so incessantly that the skin was raw almost to bleeding. She was altogether unaware of the damage or the pain. “Thomas,” she went on, her voice rising shrilly, “has no defenses against such a nubile young virgin, a virgin with the heart of a whore!” The sound of her own strident voice so surprised the Queen Dowager that she stopped her forward movement and fell silent.

  To her surprise she found herself in the rose garden, the balmy afternoon around her soft and benign. But she felt cold, her head spinning, frenzied… .

  She had been talking aloud again, talking to her dear mother, Maud, dead for more than ten years. She sought a stone bench and lowered her body onto it. Though she had told no one, for they would surely think her insane, her mother did speak to her. It had been comforting to hear Maud’s voice again, soothing her daughters fears, reminding Catherine how much Thomas loved her. Maud knew the truth. She swore that Elizabeth did not matter to Thomas, that he loved Catherine and Catherine alone.

  The Queen Dowager looked down at her hands and saw the spot she had rubbed raw. “He has been gone for so long,” she moaned to her mother. “So long ...”

  “But when he returns, my dear,” said the voice inside the Queen Dowager’s head, “he will be yours, all yours — your much-deserved beloved. Have no fear, have no fear.”

  He had returned to Chelsea in spirits so unnaturally high, it seemed to Elizabeth, that the house and the gardens and the wood could not contain all of Thomas Seymour. His boisterousness and constant booming laughter alarmed almost everyone except the Queen Dowager, who once again blossomed pink with love. Her mad monologue had never been repeated — at least in the presence of others — and whilst she was perhaps more demonstrative with her husband than thought seemly by most, she did appear sane enough. Kat Ashley was another who had nothing but praise for the man who, she insisted, looked handsomer and more virile than ever. Occasionally the Princess would overhear John Ashley speak sternly to his wife about her dangerous, perhaps treasonous ideas about her charge and the Admiral.

  Every day Elizabeth warred with her own divergent passions, praying for peace of mind and even for a modicum of daughterly affection for Thomas Seymour, whose behavior toward herself since his return had been unimpeachable. But with his homecoming Elizabeth’s torrid dreams of him had returned to haunt her nights.

  She would awaken in the half light of morning bathed in guilt, feeling so unclean that she would dress hurriedly and hie to the chapel to pray for her sins. On her knees, fingers tightly intertwined, she cursed her mother and the wanton Boleyn blood that ran in her veins. And she prayed for Queen Catherine, for though the madness was no longer clearly apparent, Elizabeth knew that something inside the woman must be festering. Catherine, Elizabeth had come to realize, loved Thomas too fervently, was sick with loving him. The woman had to know he did not return that affection in kind, and she must know, too, that he felt an unholy lust for his stepdaughter. Worse still, thought Elizabeth, the Queen Dowager must be aware the Princess, despite her outwardly proper behavior, was seething with love for her husband.

  How would it all end? Her mind’s torture ebbed and flowed like a treacherous tide. Sometimes — as when she put her mind to studying, immersing herself in Plato’s Republic or struggling joyfully for just the right word in a difficult translation — she found respite from all feeling. Then without warning the terrible thoughts would strike her, a great black wave that engulfed her, drowned her, till she gasped for her very life.

  Perhaps, she prayed, perhaps it was over. Thomas had not come to her rooms since his return, had not gazed at her longingly, had barely spoken to her in private. Perhaps his love for the Queen Dowager would return to what it had been at the start of their courtship. Perhaps Seymour had never thought of herself in the way Kat insisted he did, in the way she dreamt he did.

  Perhaps life would resume as it had been before Catherine’s marriage to Thomas. Grace, peace, and sanity would again descend on all those who resided in Chelsea House. That was Elizabeth’s sometimes prayer kneeling in the chapel as the morning sun finally found its way through the narrow windows and bathed her with light.

  Other times, God help her miserable soul, she prayed for Queen Catherine’s death so that Thomas Seymour could once and forever be her own.

  Master Ascham had been unwell with the flux in the morning, and Elizabeth had gone alone to the south garden to read the assigned chapter of Plutarch’s Lives. Her eyes had begun to trouble her, especially in the dim of the schoolroom, and the light in this hedge- and stone-walled garden was clear and strong. Farther from the house than the other yards, it was infrequently visited and altogether quiet. Elizabeth had brought a meat pie still warm from the baker’s oven and a flask of light ale for her lunch. There were fruit trees — plums, apples, cherries, pears — from which to pluck her dessert. She had chosen for her seat a bench that lined one of the garden walls, so with the two cushions she had brought along and the empty
box she had overturned, draped with a shawl and placed in front of the bench, Elizabeth had fashioned for herself a comfortable rest, one in which she could prop up her legs and lean back in relaxation. She was glad she had insisted to Kat that she not be laced into the stiff stomacher which held her torso rigid and perfectly erect, making free breathing difficult. Certainly the undergarment shaped the female body into its most perfect form, but this was to be a day of sweet and solitary pleasure, and the simple gray silk gown felt as comfortable as a nightdress. Now, as the sun illuminated the Greek words on the vellum page, Elizabeth reveled in the feel of her natural body and the unhindered flow of her breathing.

  She heard voices outside the garden walls. Muffled though they were, Elizabeth recognized Lord Thomas and Lady Seymour at once. Her body stiffened instantly, for although the Queen Dowager was laughing, the sound was anything but gay. It was, Elizabeth sensed with alarm, tinged with hysteria.

  As their voices grew closer, Elizabeth leapt from the cushioned seat and began self-consciously straightening and rearranging her loose gown. Suddenly the wooden gate flew open, and with a cry Catherine came flying through it as if she’d been propelled violently from behind. Elizabeth dashed instinctively for the Queen Dowager to steady her, lest she fall. The Princess caught her stepmother up in her arms and heard the gasping laughter, felt the perspiration-damp fabric of her gown.

  “Madame!” was all Elizabeth had time to utter before the force that had propelled the Queen into the garden followed her in. Thomas Seymour, in a loose lawn shirt clinging to the lines of his muscular torso, was laughing and altogether nonchalant. His face was newly tanned and his red hair and beard flared with golden fire in the sun.

  A man has no right, thought Elizabeth in that moment, to be so painfully handsome, no right…