The Virgin Elizabeth Read online

  Elizabeth found she could hardly sit still, so discomfiting were Catherine’s words. She wished the Queen Dowager would stop this talk about her mother — her rightly reviled mother, to whom Elizabeth owed not simply her bastardy but also her father’s shabby treatment for most of her childhood.

  “Like your mother,” Catherine went on, ignoring Elizabeth’s discomfort, “I was ambitious, but the ways in which Anne achieved her objectives were sometimes harsh. When an enemy was brought down — in the case of Cardinal Wolsey, for example — she gloated openly. Though he was widely hated, her manner earned her enemies of her own.”

  Catherine could see Elizabeth fairly cringing at her words, but plunged ahead. “Once her hard-won queenship was established, she made what I consider to be one of her deadliest blunders. She refused to share any of her power with other women of the court. She guarded it so fiercely and so singularly that her ladies — many of them more highborn than herself— came to resent her deeply When the balance of power began to shift, many of these women spoke out against her, happily bore witness to her alleged adultery, which led to her death.” Catherine paused thoughtfully, her expression reflecting seemingly fresh emotion rather than an old memory “Perhaps your mothers greatest folly was due not to arrogance or ambition but to a dearth of experience. Perhaps she did not understand your father nearly as well as she supposed she did. He was a complicated man with complicated motives —”

  “Why are you telling me this, Your Majesty!” Elizabeth finally blurted. She sprang from her seat and began pacing, hands flailing helplessly at her sides. “I do not want to hear about my mother. I do not!”

  “Elizabeth, Elizabeth,” crooned Catherine. “Please, I promise I’m not telling you this to torture you. Let me finish. I’ve told you of the mistakes Anne made, and how I learned from her poorly chosen methods, but more important were her contributions. In ways, she and I were sisters under the skin.”

  Elizabeth turned and stared at the Queen Dowager, who was smiling with that sweet mildness the Princess so loved in her. “Your mother was a champion of the New Learning, and that in itself was of great importance, for she carried on the traditions of learned women going back to Margaret Beaufort. But more important, she was the very ringleader of Protestant reform. Few people know this, Elizabeth, but your father placed her at the head of a coterie of powerful men in his government, and together this group devised the master plan for Henrys divorce from Katherine of Aragon and broke the power of the Catholic Church in England.”

  “I still do not understand, Your Majesty,” said Elizabeth, exhausted with upset and confusion, “why I need to hear this.”

  “Because it is queenly intelligence, my dear,” replied Catherine in a suddenly steely voice, “and you must begin to understand such things.”

  “But I shall never be queen. My brother sits on the throne and, despite what the Catholics would have the people believe about his sickliness, he is a healthy young boy. When he comes of age he will marry and beget heirs. And even if he should not for some reason have children, Princess Mary takes precedence over myself. What need have I, then, for queenly intelligence’?”

  Catherine was silent again as she studied the normally calm, pale-skinned girl who now, flushed bright pink, stood before her, nervously wringing her long-fingered hands.

  “Kings and queens rule, Elizabeth, not so much by blood as by the Fates, and the Fates have no master. You may never rule England, but just as easily, you may. Indeed, you may become a queen through marriage. So as long as you are under my protective wing I will see to it that you are prepared for any eventuality. Therefore” — Catherine took a long, slow breath, and the fierceness of her demeanor was suddenly transformed to ironic amusement — “whilst I am gone for the next fortnight, you shall oversee Chelsea House.”

  “I?” Elizabeth’s jaws fell open and she gaped wide-eyed at the pleasantly smiling Queen Dowager.

  “You’ll see to the planning of the meals — and take especial care in the buttery. There’s been something of a rebellion amongst the milkmaids.” Catherine suppressed a smile. “Of course the laundresses need constant overseeing or they’ll overstarch the linen. The candlemakers need the least watching, but the gardeners can be difficult in planting season. I’ve already told Master Beem, my cofferer, that you will be inspecting the books regularly —”

  “Your Majesty, I —”

  “— and your signature will suffice for any bills that come due in my absence.”

  “I thank you for your confidence in me but...”

  “I was hardly older than you when I took over my first household,” said Catherine firmly. “These are things a great lady, even a princess, must learn to do. You have excellent servants around you for guidance — Mistress Ashley, Master and Mistress Parry. I have every confidence in you, Elizabeth.”

  “But my studies?”

  “I expect you to continue your studies, of course, though Master Grindal has been informed of your additional duties. I’m sure he’ll give you some latitude.”

  “Where are you going?” asked Elizabeth, finally coming to her senses.

  “’Tis a secret,” replied Catherine with a decidedly wicked smile. “Now go along and see your tutor. Hell be wondering why I’ve kept you so long.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.” Elizabeth curtsied and moved to the door. She turned back and regarded Catherine Parr with bemused affection. “Thank you ... I think,” she said.

  Catherine laughed. “You are going to be fine, Elizabeth. You are going to make me very proud.”

  The overseeing of Chelsea House had in fact been daunting. Despite the good counsel of her servants, Elizabeth was faced every day with a hundred new tasks and decisions to be made. It was discovered that the whole stock of apples in the root cellar was rotten and must somehow be replaced, for the fruit was the Queen Dowager’s favorite. A shipment of wool cloth from Flanders arrived moth-ridden and had to be sent back. Catherine’s barge sprang a leak and a boatbuilder had to be found to repair it. Elizabeth fell into bed every night exhausted, though her mind continued racing, so that sleep evaded her for hours. And whilst Grindal made some allowances in her rigorous schedule of studies, he had no doubt been instructed by the Queen Dowager — who had clearly meant to test the Princess’s limits of endurance — to continue what for an average pupil would have been a full course of education.

  It happened that on the day of Catherine’s return home Elizabeth was preoccupied with several rounds of cheese that had gone bad, so when Lady Tyrwhitt poked her head into the buttery to say that the Queens carriage had just come through the gates, the Princess was taken entirely by surprise. She hurried to a looking glass and tucked her flyaway red curls into the combs of the simple coif she’d lately been wearing, and noticed with dismay that her bodice and kirtle were spotted with oil. But there was no time for perfection. She must be at the door to greet the Queen when she arrived.

  The great front doors, lined on either side with Catherine’s servants, were swung open just as Elizabeth reached them. Catherine Parr entered her house — but, thought Elizabeth in that instant, it was not Catherine Parr at all. A strange thought, but strongly felt nonetheless. It was not just the extreme radiance of the Dowager Queens face nor the spring in her normally dignified gait. The very soul of her had somehow changed.

  Seeing Elizabeth, Catherine embraced her with an almost crushing fervency, then pushed the girl back to arm’s length to look at her. When she noted the condition of Elizabeth’s gown and hair, she began to laugh.

  “Look at you, Elizabeth,” she said. “A proper lady of the house with half the larder on your bodice.”

  “I’m sorry, Your Majesty. I was quite taken by surprise at your return and I —”

  “No apologies! My house is still standing” — she looked around at her smiling servants — “and my staff has not mutinied. Whilst I’m sure you’ll have some stories of hair-raising domestic mayhem to tell, it appears you’ve survived the f
ortnight reasonably intact.” With great affection Catherine pushed one of Elizabeth’s errant curls behind her ear.

  In the next moment a commotion at the still open doors caused all eyes to turn and witness the explosion into Chelsea House of what was more a force of nature than a man. Lord High Admiral Thomas Seymour — tall and elegant, broad-shouldered, slim-hipped, with a great red beard framing a boldly handsome face — wore a smile that easily outshone the sun. As he came, a whirlwind through the hall, he greeted each and every manservant and waiting lady with a hearty back-slap or a brotherly kiss.

  Elizabeth, as if glued to the spot, watched as the women were reduced to tittering girls. The men, unsure what had just occurred, themselves began to smile and shift from foot to foot, bantering with each other in relaxed laughter.

  Kat, the Parrys, and the rest of Elizabeth’s household had just descended the staircase from her upstairs apartments when Catherine, beaming from ear to ear, announced, “I should like to present my husband, Lord Thomas Seymour, High Admiral of the King’s Navy and Baron of Sudeley.”

  The response was a burst of sincere applause, but when Thomas strode to Catherine and, pulling her into a bears embrace, kissed her full and passionately on the mouth, any decorum left in the house dissolved into hearty shouts of laughter and congratulations. When he finally released her, his eyes fell on Elizabeth standing nearby, stock-still and staring incredulously at the unexpected and outrageous display.

  “By Gods precious soul!” he fairly shouted. “She’s even more beautiful than you told me, Catherine.” Then with a bow more low and gracious than any man had ever honored her with, Seymour took up Elizabeth’s delicate white fingers and kissed them. “Princess Elizabeth,” he intoned solemnly, “I am ever at your service.”

  “My lord Admiral” was all she could utter before her servants, Kat at the fore, pressed forward to be presented to him. Elizabeth was so stunned by the man’s presence that although she was vaguely aware he spoke individually to each of her retainers, charming and disarming them every one, she was at the same time somehow absent, and, whilst conscious, paralyzed altogether. She prayed that she would not be called upon to speak again, for she was quite sure she would be unable. By God’s grace it was Catherine who next spoke.

  “I thank you all heartily for so warm a welcome home. And I thank my daughter Elizabeth” — Catherine turned and caressed the Princess with her eyes — “for making sure my new husband and I had a home to return to.”

  More laughter and applause as Catherine and Thomas made their exit to the palace’s east wing. Elizabeth’s servants gathering around her, themselves all atwitter, never realized that the fabric of the Princess’s existence had begun an unravelment that would, though at present imperceptible, come to threaten the lives of them all.

  Why, Elizabeth asked herself, do I not remember him as he is now? The question kept repeating as she walked through Chelsea’s corridors on her way to Lord and Lady Seymour’s private apartments. Surely she had seen the Admiral as recently as Edward’s coronation celebrations. The little king had even commented to Elizabeth on how gallantly his uncle had performed in the lists. Of course, Thomas would have been unrecognizable in heavy armor. But at the feasts afterwards, and in years past, she would have seen him at all the court events. In those days had he not been so grand, so boisterous, so marvelously handsome? Or had she simply been a child with no eye for such qualities in a man?

  Stop! she commanded herself. She must waste no more time in such thoughts. He was in a way her stepfather now as well as Edward’s uncle, and as much her family as the Queen Dowager. Thomas Seymour was part of Elizabeth’s future life, and she would find a way to control the unwelcome and entirely untoward emotions that his mere presence inspired.

  Kat had been no help. She herself seemed smitten with the man. It was the-High-Admiral-this and the-High-Admiral-that a hundred times a day. Though Elizabeth remained mum, Thomas was, in the first weeks of his presence at Chelsea, the center of every conversation. Elizabeth was witness to discussions of Thomas Seymour’s character and exploits by nearly every member of the household — from Thomas Parry on how Thomas had distinguished himself as a soldier and diplomat in Henrys French wars, from the cook on his culinary habits and appetites and demands, even from the laundress on how large his shirts were, for his shoulders were so broad and manly.

  Everything and everybody reminded Elizabeth of him.

  She paused outside Catherine’s door to collect herself. The Queen Dowager — she still retained the title — had summoned her, and she must do her best to appear calm and normal. The guards uncrossed their halberds to give her admittance, and she entered the grand bedchamber. Catherine was nowhere to be seen, but to Elizabeth’s horror, Thomas Seymour lay stretched, fully clothed but in an attitude of complete nonchalance, across the bed, head resting in his hands.

  “Good day, Princess,” he said in a deep and alluring voice, never bothering to rise, never taking his eyes from her. In fact, unless it were her imagination, it appeared to Elizabeth that he was examining her closely from foot to head, perhaps lingering on her torso and breasts, and the exposed whiteness of her upper chest and neck. She began to blush furiously and could think of nothing to say. Was she always to be tongue-tied around this man? she wondered with annoyance. And why was he still lying on the bed so indolently? She forced herself to inhale slowly, to calm herself— a small but worthy trick that Kat had taught her — and in a few moments her head cleared.

  “Good day, my lord,” said Elizabeth, astonished at how relaxed she actually sounded. There was even a slight air of mocking in her voice she had hoped to achieve. “I do hope ‘tis not illness which keeps you from rising to greet me.”

  He smiled that smile which illuminated the world around him.

  “’Tis your loveliness, not my laziness, that jellies my knees and makes me incapable of standing, Princess,” he answered. “If I tried, I fear I would fall helpless at your feet. And then you would laugh at me.”

  Elizabeth had already in perfect seriousness uttered, “I would never laugh at you, sir,” when she realized she had fallen into the trap of his charming arrogance. In the space of a simple exchange it was she, in fact, who lay helpless at his feet. She was, however, spared further humiliation when Catherine entered from the adjoining dressing room. As she passed the canopied bed, the Queen Dowager had only time to extend her hand to her stepdaughter and say “Elizabeth —” before Seymour sprang like a snake from his supine posture, grabbed his wife’s waist, and pulled her down on the bed next to him.

  “Thomas!” she cried, but she was laughing happily as she struggled in so undignified a manner in the presence of the Princess. He was covering Catherine’s face and neck with kisses. Finally he released her, and she sat up trying to catch her breath and regain a semblance of dignity.

  “Come here, Elizabeth,” she said, suppressing the remainder of her smile. “Come, sit with me. And you,” she added with a mock glare at Seymour, “sit up.” He obeyed as a chastised child would a mother, propping his back against the headboard, his feet stretched out before him. The two women sat with their feet hanging off the edge of the bed.

  “Your stepfather is a prankster, Elizabeth. He is incorrigible.”

  Elizabeth smiled uneasily, even more at a loss for words than before.

  “Here is our problem,” Catherine continued. “We have married, as you know, but we’ve done the deed without the King’s permission.”

  “Without my brother the Protectors permission,” Seymour added with what Elizabeth believed was an edge of bitterness.

  “Despite the King’s affection for me, and mine for him, Henry chose that I should not be part of Edwards upbringing. So I’ve not had much leave to see him these last months,” Catherine said, smoothing the hair that had been ruffled in her wrestling match with Seymour. “We know how close you and your brother have remained,” she continued, “and were wondering if you felt we were still sufficiently in his
good graces to approach him … directly about our marriage. ‘Tis after the fact, and we fear the duke’s feathers will be ruffled —”

  “The duchess’s feathers, more likely,” interjected Thomas, his eyes rolling heavenward.

  “If the Protector is angry, but we have the clear support of the King, we believe we can weather the storm a bit more handily.”

  Lord and Lady Seymour were now staring at Elizabeth expectantly.

  “You wish my opinion?”

  “We do, Elizabeth,” said Catherine. “You know your brother’s heart better than anyone.”

  Elizabeth grew quiet and serious, proud to be consulted on so weighty a matter. She thought for a very long moment. She silently recounted everything she had been told about Edward, about the Protector and his wife, and about Thomas Seymour. Finally she spoke, her tone and expression grave.

  “I think you’ll find the support you desire from my brother. He does love you very deeply, Your Majesty. As it is with myself, you are the only mother he has ever known.” Elizabeth paused thoughtfully. When she next spoke, she looked down at her hands rather than risk embarrassing herself with an untoward display of emotion. “As for you, Admiral, Edward much admires yourself. He was aware of our father’s affection and the favors he granted you before he died. And whilst the time has been short since King Henrys death ...” It was getting harder and harder for Elizabeth to go on. “I think Edward would wish your happiness and blessings even above protocol. Of course it has already been done” — now she looked up and saw the pair of them listening intently to her words — “and cannot be undone. I would suggest you write to him. If you fear interception” — she looked down at her hands again — “from the Protector, I mean, you might place the letter within one I send, for I do not think the duke … fears me … enough to censor my correspondence with Edward.”

  With that, Elizabeth sighed deeply. She had never before spoken so long or commandingly on a subject of political importance. But when she finally looked up at the faces of her stepparents she was relieved to find them smiling, pleased, and holding hands. Her own heart soared to think she shared such intimacy and possessed the power to make those she loved happy.