The Virgin Elizabeth Read online

  “Come here, wife,” Seymour cried. Snatching Catherine from Elizabeth’s arms, he turned her to face him, kissing her full on the mouth. Elizabeth could see Catherine’s body fall limp under the passionate assault, and the Princess was forced to avert her eyes. Some inner voice called out to Elizabeth, Run, run from this place! But she was paralyzed, as rooted to the ground as the pear or cherry tree was.

  The kiss finished, Thomas disengaged his wife’s body from his own and held her to his side, one arm round her waist. Catherine was flushed, dazed, eyes glassy, as if caught in a spell the magician Seymour had cast upon her.

  “Lady Princess,” he said in four clipped syllables. Unheeding of his wife’s presence, Seymour devoured Elizabeth with his eyes, feasting on her soft unfettered curves, staring unabashedly at her with a gaze that began to unhinge her.

  “My lord,” she muttered so faintly she was herself unsure if she had spoken.

  “You are alone?” he asked rhetorically.

  Something in his eyes flashed dangerously and the voice came again into Elizabeth’s head that she should flee. But why run from her beloved stepmother and stepfather? she reasoned with the voice. They could not possibly harm her. They were her protectors. This was a queen of England standing before her and she was a princess. No harm could come to her in this garden. Her imagination had simply run away with her …

  “Now, Catherine,” Seymour suddenly commanded his wife.

  Her eyes darted sideways to her husband’s face and his expression seconded his words. But Catherine was clearly panicking and did not move from her spot. Nor did Elizabeth, who by now knew something frightful was about to happen but had no more power to move than her stepmother.

  “Catherine! Now!” Seymour shouted.

  Inertia defeated, the Queen Dowager’s hands sprang forward like two striking snakes, but Elizabeth had in that moment turned to run. She felt Catherine’s hand clamp viselike round her right arm.

  “Majesty!” cried Elizabeth, turning sharply back to confront the woman, but the eyes she found staring at her were mad eyes with nothing behind them with which to reason.

  “The other, Catherine!” Elizabeth heard Seymour urging. “Grab the other.”

  Now both of Elizabeth’s arms were pinioned behind her back by Catherine. The girl’s outward struggle diminished. If I lash out, she thought wildly, I might hurt the Queen. Confusion muddled her thinking, and something else — a morbid curiosity to know the meaning and outcome of this outlandish display orchestrated by Thomas — caused her to cease her struggling altogether.

  She was entirely still as Seymour came round to face her, his powerful body towering over hers. He was so close she could feel the heat rising off him, imagined she could hear the heart thumping in his chest. He smiled impishly at her, and in that moment she believed the silly prank was over, finished. No harm done to anyone.

  Suddenly Thomas Seymour grasped the collar of Elizabeth’s gown and ripped downward. As the dress tore away, revealing flesh, Elizabeth screamed and tried to escape Catherine’s grasp. But the older woman was stronger than Elizabeth had imagined her to be and nothing she did could free the pinioned arms.

  It was then Elizabeth saw the dagger in Seymour’s hand.

  Even her terrible nakedness before this man’s eyes paled against the fear of the raised blade glinting in the sun as it descended toward her body. A shriek of unreasoning terror had already escaped her as the dagger found its mark — the front of her voluminous gown. It slashed the fabric down the middle between her legs. At the sight of the rent gown Thomas laughed aloud and with many shorter stabs began shredding the skirt into pieces. Elizabeth, dumbfounded by the mad hilarity, watched helplessly as her dress, skirt and bodice both, was reduced to ribbons.

  Finally she found her voice. “Stop!” she cried. Seymour’s movements slowed — as much, Elizabeth thought, because there was no more cloth to shred as because of her command. “My lord, stop this please, please stop.”

  Finally the assault ceased altogether. Catherine, silent throughout the entire episode, released Elizabeth’s arms. Thomas’s laughter died. And Elizabeth — a princess of England — stood cowering between the Queen Dowager and the High Admiral of the King’s Navy, trying desperately to cover her nakedness with her hands. In the next moment she darted away and, grabbing her shawl to throw around her, ran through the south garden gate. It hung open for a long moment before a gust of wind slammed it shut with a resounding crash.

  Kat Ashley and Thomas Parry marched side by side down the long first-floor corridor of Chelsea House toward Thomas Seymour’s study. Though they appeared grim as two soldiers united in a sacred cause, inwardly they were, each of them, floundering confusedly. Both bore the Admiral a great deal of affection. Kat, if truth be told, dreamt of him at night in ways that made her blush to even remember. Parry, his whole life spent in service to royalty, had been drawn by Seymour’s comfortable common touch and invigorated by his bold audacity. But the man had finally gone too far, Parry had to admit, with this outrage against a princess of England, against their Elizabeth.

  They knocked on Seymour’s door and were bade to enter. Seymour sat behind his desk poring importantly over a stack of documents, a uniformed naval officer standing at attention beside him.

  “Kat, Thomas.” He gave them a cheery smile, no hint of remorse or, it appeared, even memory of this morning’s assault on their charge. “Will you sit?” Seymour indicated a pair of benches in the corner of the room. “I’ll only be a bit longer with Captain —”

  “No, my lord,” said Parry “This cannot wait.”

  “Not a moment longer,” Kat added threateningly.

  They both took another step closer to the desk as if to insist that the officer should take his leave. In fact, the man looked questioningly at the Admiral, and with a small nod Seymour sent the captain from his study.

  The door had barely closed when Kat began. “How do you sit there, my lord, as though nothing at all had happened?”

  “Happened? What has happened?” he asked, sincerely perplexed.

  “Your assault on the Princess,” replied Thomas Parry Seymour’s calm so unnerved the servant that he doubted Elizabeth’s story for a moment. Certainly she had been attacked, but perhaps she had been mistaken about the identity of her attackers.

  “An assault on the Princess?” Seymour said incredulously. “As I recall, ‘twas an assault on a dress” He smiled a fool’s smile.

  But Kat’s face remained hard and Thomas Parry continued. “My lord, your behavior and the behavior of the Queen Dowager was — ”

  “’Twas a prank, Thomas, Kat. The Princess was done no harm.”

  “Only to frighten her half to death,” replied Parry.

  “She will recover,” said Seymour lightly.

  “The dress was cut to ribbons,” insisted Kat, “her bodice ripped off her altogether. She was naked from the waist up. ‘Twas a disgrace.”

  “How were we to know she wore no undergarments? That is the disgrace, Mistress Ashley.”

  “Oh!” cried Kat infuriated, “Well, if that is your answer, Thomas Seymour, then I think we shall be taking our leave. Come, Parry, we’ll see the Queen.”

  “No, no, wait!” Seymour had come to his feet at the mention of his wife. His voice became suddenly placating. “We mustn’t bother Catherine.”

  “As she bothered Princess Elizabeth?” Kat Ashley was not to be placated.

  “Perhaps we were too rough in our little game,” offered Seymour, moving round the desk. “But you must know we meant Elizabeth no harm. And she was done no harm.”

  Though Parry was starting to waver, Seymour was making no headway with Kat. He changed his tack. “You may have noticed the Queen has not been herself for some time… .”

  Kat was silent, unyielding.

  “Her moods have been incontinent since my return. I hardly know her myself.”

  “So, you blame your wife for your outlandish behavior?” Kat persisted. />
  “More to the point,” he said, looking down at his feet almost shyly, “I blame our child, the one she carries within her.”

  “The Queen Dowager is pregnant?” said Parry, taken entirely by surprise. A much-believed rumor had it that after three childless marriages, the woman was altogether incapable of conceiving.

  Kat Ashley’s eyes were saucers. She was wholly silent as this intelligence pervaded all previous notions of Catherine, and every romantic fantasy she had held for Elizabeth and the High Admiral. All of them collapsed in that moment like a house of cards.

  “Like all pregnant women, she has odd cravings. Sardines and marchpane — together.” He gave a sweet indulgent smile as if remembering. “But Catherine has become in her pregnancy a slave to several strange, extravagant, even … unnatural desires, whims. She is my wife and so I try to oblige her.” He held up his hands in a supplicating gesture. “Perhaps I should not have spoken so openly of the Queens most intimate —”

  “No, no, you were quite right to tell us,” said Parry quickly He seemed wholly relieved by Seymour’s explanation, though Kat was much less convinced.

  “Will you convey our apologies to the Princess,” Seymour said, finally contrite. “We meant to cause her no distress. ...” Then he chuckled at his own unintended pun.

  Parry laughed, but Kat puckered her mouth in disgust. No man could possibly understand Elizabeth’s terror and humiliation in that morning’s violation of her.

  “Shame on you, Admiral,” she said and, turning on her heel, stormed out the study door.

  “Women,” said Seymour simply, and placed a friendly arm around Thomas Parry.

  “Women,” Parry intoned in agreement, all vestiges of disapproval having vanished.

  Then the two men laughed.

  Elizabeth's head hurt. She had stayed behind in the classroom long after Master Ascham and Jane Grey had gone for the afternoon, trying to finish a particularly difficult translation. As the day had faded her eyes began to burn and she realized she was lightheaded, probably from hunger. She’d again been unable to stomach any food at the midday meal. Perhaps she should write to her brother and ask if she might come to court for a visit. The pain of staying here at Chelsea House had become overwhelming. News of Catherine’s pregnancy had been the worst of it for Elizabeth, worse even than the horrifying scene in the south garden that had left the Princess so shattered that she had cried herself to sleep every night since, and had so disordered her digestion that eating had become impossible.

  The Queen Dowager had, since the episode, kept to her apartments. A blessing, thought Elizabeth, for what on earth would the two of them say to one another? Whose shame would be the greater?

  Kat, who had finally regained a sense of propriety toward the Admiral — after all, he was to be a father — had assured Elizabeth that none of the servants knew the sordid details of that morning. But the Princess could not fail to notice the sideways glances, the whispering and giggling as she passed, that gave lie to Kat’s assurances.

  Only Jane Grey seemed altogether oblivious. She had been in a state of frenzied excitement and joy that her beloved Catherine and adored Lord Seymour were expecting a child. She had even taken time from her studies to work on a wardrobe of tiny embroidered caps and smocks and blankets for the babe, and glowed with so much happiness one would have thought it was Jane that was with child.

  “Elizabeth.”

  The shock of Thomas Seymour’s voice, soft as it was spoken from across the room, paralyzed her. Back to him, she did not turn her body nor even her head, but knew all the same that he stood in the schoolroom doorway.

  “Elizabeth,” he repeated, and the sound as he spoke her name was sweet as a prayer. “There are some things I must say to you, things that cannot wait another day, another hour.”

  Still she did not move. She felt, rather than heard, him moving closer to her chair. She stiffened at his approach and suddenly sensed that he had stopped in place, careful not to frighten her further.

  The scrape of a bench on the floor announced that he’d taken a seat behind her, and when he began to speak again Elizabeth sighed heavily, relieved and thankful that she would not have to meet his eyes.

  “First,” he began after a long and painful silence, “I beg you to forgive me. There is no good excuse for what was done to you. But there is an explanation. If you bear with me, I will offer it to you.”

  The paralysis had extended to Elizabeth’s organs of speech so she could neither encourage nor question Seymour. No dialogue this, but a solitary litany of contrition. He spoke softly and humbly with no trace of his usual boisterousness or arrogance.

  “I have made a horrible mistake in my life, and only now are its consequences making themselves clear to me. You see, I have married the wrong woman. I was a younger son and therefore never constrained to take a wife for the furtherance of our family’s fortunes. I could,” he went on, his voice cracking with emotion, “I could have married for love.”

  But you did! cried Elizabeth silently, the words echoing inside her head. You married Catherine for love!

  As if he had heard those words, Seymour answered. “I had befriended Catherine before your father married her. Widow to two toothless old men she was by then, and starved for true manly affection. That is why she fell in love with me. I cared for her very deeply, but I did not love her in the same way, so that when the King summoned her for his wife I was honestly relieved. And happy for her, of course. She was, after all, queen of England. When Henry died five years later, it became clear Catherine had her sights set on me still. You must have heard, Princess, that I, in those months after your father’s death, approached the Council to ask for the hand of the woman with whom I was in love. That woman was you.”

  Elizabeth’s body began to tremble so violently that she was forced to clutch the desk to steady herself. Thomas could not help but see her shaking, but he went on with his story.

  “You may have heard rumors that I asked for Princess Mary’s hand, or the German cow of Cleves, but those rumors were nonsense. I had been watching you since your childhood, Elizabeth, had seen you buffeted about in the political winds and fearful turmoil of court. Seen you thrown away and ignored by your father, and finally returned to the fold by Catherine. And always, always you retained a grace and” — he groped for the words — “beauty in spirit that was matched only by the beauty of your form and face. Elizabeth, look at me,” he commanded.

  Silent tears were streaming down her face, tears she did not wish him to see. She did not move except for her trembling.

  “Elizabeth ...” Now he was pleading. “Please, look at me.”

  Slowly she turned in her chair and saw his face. It, too, was wet with tears. A sob caught in her throat.

  “You are the most ravishing creature I have ever in my life known. You are brilliant of mind and sweet of heart. When I realized that I could not have you, something inside me withered and died. I was once a man of courage and dignity and pride. But I admit to you now that I” — he seemed unable to go on, overcome with shame — “I married Catherine because I knew you were living under her roof. I had to be near you, Elizabeth. I had no choice. But of course you were unreachable, a virgin princess, and I was a married man. My thinking grew perverse. My mind snapped. I began the morning visits. I could not help myself, I swear. I had to be near you! ‘Twas unconscionable behavior and I apologize with all my heart.” He paused as if to fortify himself to continue. “Catherine is, of course, an intelligent woman. She could not fail to see what was happening to me. But nothing was ever said, and so she grew more and more desperate. I think she believed that if she joined me in those romps I would somehow come to love her. But when I did not… she began to go mad.”

  The tragedy of the story filled Elizabeth with the most grievous pain she had ever known, but still she had no words to utter, no comforting sentiments to extend to this broken man before her.

  “Then she became pregnant and I was forced
by the responsibilities of the Admiralty to leave Chelsea House for many weeks. By the time I returned, well, you could not fail to see her deterioration. What happened in the south garden was — God help me — inspired by Catherine, and I, crazed with guilt and grief at this prison that is my marriage, allowed myself to be drawn into it. As I said, I’m not excusing myself, Elizabeth. I just wish your forgiveness. And I want you to know what I feel for you. My heart” — he touched his chest gently with his fingers, the gesture unbearably melancholic — “is broken. For I love you passionately, Elizabeth, and I know I can never, ever have you.”

  He uttered a short rueful laugh, then stood and moved for the door. Before he departed the classroom he touched his heart once again and was gone.

  Elizabeth, stunned by her beloved’s terrible confession, laid her head in her arms and wept.

  Never before had Thomas Seymour acted so much the kind and reserved gentleman, and never had Elizabeth succumbed to such unutterable despair. He was doting and devoted to his wife, who every day grew more plump and healthy, and charming and generous to his ward Jane Grey Thomas seemed to Elizabeth the perfect figure of a man — an ideal husband and father brimming with the qualities every girl in her dreams of marriage imagined, and in true life rarely found. But here he was, flesh and blood, respected head of a great household, High Admiral of the King’s Navy — and he loved her. Pined for her. And she could never have him.

  Elizabeth was not alone in her improved estimation of the man. There was great whispering at Chelsea House that Lord Seymour had come to see the error of his ways and reformed himself. He went frequently with Catherine to the chapel. They walked slowly together, her small hand tucked in his arm, she smiling up at him with unabashed adoration, all transgressions forgotten. Her madness was a fading memory.

  With Elizabeth, Thomas was painfully restrained and correct. He was careful never to encounter her in private, and in public studiously refrained from meeting her eye. But when they chanced to be in one another’s presence — at mealtimes, at prayers, or on a family occasion — he would never fail to make the most subtle but telling of gestures. He would, so she could see it, slightly and briefly touch his fingers to his heart. This signal of his ever faithful love tore at her soul. Sometimes she thought him cruel for the small act of constancy, but more often she found herself waiting breathlessly for it to come. When it did, she was forced to control her sigh of relief that he had not forgotten, and still loved her. Sometimes she worried that she had never in the schoolroom that afternoon admitted to him the reciprocity of her love. Every night as she lay in her bed, sleep evading her, she found eloquent words to voice those feelings. But they would never be spoken aloud. He was Catherine s, now and forever. Elizabeth had, truthfully, never been devout — nothing like her sister Mary or even Jane Grey. Prayers for her heart’s guidance had gone unanswered and there seemed to be no help coming from God. Nights were the worst, for her dreams were filled with Thomas, the ones in which he was sweet and kindly, more painful to remember than those in which the pair of them practiced all manner of lewd and sinful behavior. When she believed her suffering could become no greater, Elizabeth dreamt a dream that saved her.