The Virgin Elizabeth Page 6

  “Oh! Begging your pardon, Your Majesty!” exclaimed Sally Wilton. The girl had come flying round the corner, her arms crowded with cosmetics jars and hairpieces, and collided with Catherine Parr astroll in the corridor of Hampton Court’s north wing. The girl, one of her minor waiting women when she’d been queen, was horrified at the cloud of wig powder now enveloping them both and began curtsying frantically, eyes lowered.

  “Oh, Your Majesty, I’m so very sorry!”

  “All right, Sally. No harm done,” said Catherine in a kindly voice.

  “Thank you, madame, thank you.”

  “You go on your way, now. Do not keep your mistress waiting.”

  Another curtsy and Sally was gone, only to be followed round the corner by a young courtier whose face she did not recognize. He regarded Catherine with sanguine politeness and a mere nod in her direction. “Lady Seymour,” he said and went on.

  How different were the two greetings, Catherine remarked to herself— one from King Henrys court, one from King Edward’s. Or should she say the court of the Somersets? To one she was the beloved Queen Dowager, so titled until King Edward’s marriage. To the other she was merely the High Admiral’s wife, requiring little more than disdain. The courtier, thought Catherine, was most probably one of the Protector’s “new men.” The privilege normally reserved to the King — the raising of subjects to eminence — had been unceremoniously usurped by her brother-in-law and his wife, along with many other sovereign prerogatives. All of these new men and ladies would of course follow their maker’s lead and shower disrespect on any remnants of the old regime. And of course the Duke of Somerset’s fiercest competitor was his brother Thomas. The Duchess of Somerset meanwhile had claimed that Catherine, by marrying a man so far beneath her station, had forfeited her rights as Queen Dowager. Clearly the yeoman’s instructions to publicly announce Catherine only as “Lady Seymour” also announced the duchess’s perceived precedence over Catherine.

  No matter, thought Catherine; I have finally, after three tedious marriages for duty, made a marriage for love. She was ever warmed by this thought, this blessing shared by so few of her class. Nevertheless she had found herself this afternoon, as the ladies and gentlemen of the court were being coiffed and dressed for the evening’s festivities, drawn back to the royal residences where she had lived for several years as queen of England.

  It had been a rare time in her life, filled with equal measures of joy and dread. She had so loved the king’s children, each differently but deeply: Princess Mary, dear friend since school days, who had weathered banishment and bastardization by her father; Princess Elizabeth, a tender girl of nine when Catherine had been crowned, and similarly exiled by Henry; Edward, a sensitive four-year-old who had never known maternal love until Catherine came into his life. She had assembled from the scattered shards of Henry’s life a true family — one he at first grudgingly and later sincerely enjoyed, and from which Catherine derived the only true pleasure of her reign.

  The marriage to Henry had been a triumph of self-will and intellectual gamesmanship. She knew him as well as any woman alive, for she had been part of the Tudor family circle since infancy and had watched each previous marriage unfold, blossom, and wither. But she had never loved the King. In the years before he commanded her into his bed she had begun to fear and loathe him. The great and beautiful prince he had been in his youth — virile and athletic, as pious and scholarly as he was fun-loving — had devolved into a murderous and decrepit mountain of flesh, his stinking, pustulent leg an advertisement of the power-corrupted soul that lay within. Even Henrys faith, once inviolable, by the end of his life was as constant as the flight of a tennis ball batted back and forth across a net. He would hang, draw, and quarter traitors for refusing to uphold Catholic tenets on the same day he would burn heretics for their Protestant ideals.

  Once Henry had worshipped women for their intellect, preferring a sharp mind and quick wit to a pretty face. But by the time of her predecessor Catherine Howard’s ascendance, he had chosen his wife for her docility. Even Catherine, brilliantly educated and well known for her agile mind, had had to stifle herself, pretend she was a mere student to Henry’s all-knowing teacher, in order to save herself from scheming Councillors who would have liked to see her headless on the block.

  Catherine stopped to examine a corridor wall where her family’s coat of arms had once hung. It had been hastily taken down after Henrys death, replaced by the Seymour crest. She was thrust suddenly into thoughts of the past: her brief widowhood after Lord Latimer’s death, before Henry had asked for her hand — remembered the heady days of Thomas Seymour’s courting and the thrill of their trysts, recalled the rightness of her pleasure after twenty stifling years of young life married to old men, recollected her and Thomas’s hours of strategizing over how they would approach the King for permission to marry. Then the dawning horror that Henry’s intentions for his own remarriage had, in fact, settled on Catherine. There had been many tears on her part, much raging on Thomas’s, but of course there was nothing to be done except acquiesce. Henry had, no doubt, learned of their affair, but had been undeterred — for he had concluded that Catherine, Lady Latimer, was the perfect wife for himself, committed neither to the Catholic Gardiner faction nor to the progressive Protestants that included the Seymour’s and the Dudleys. The King simply announced his intentions to Catherine and, with the stroke of a quill, caused Thomas Seymour to disappear — sent him abroad on a years-long series of diplomatic and military engagements.

  Catherine had had to grit her teeth, plaster on a gracious smile, and comply, saying that God had placed this duty before her and she would not shrink from it. If part of her relished the opportunity to use the prodigious wit and political know-how she had acquired over years of life in the inner circle, that part was overshadowed by the profoundest grief at having lost her love and the physical pleasure she had found in Thomas Seymour’s arms. But her survival, she knew, was dependent upon a believable portrayal as Henrys contented and happy queen. And so she’d become Henrys helpmate and nurse, spending hours, as he gave audience to Councillors and ambassadors, with his ulcerated leg propped upon her lap. She endured his caresses and his oppressive, sweating nakedness in the great Bed of State.

  For happiness’ sake, she began the rejoining of the Tudor family and, most important, returned the princesses to the succession. She accompanied Henry on the grandest summer progress of his reign, then stood as regent and protector of the infant Edward, Henry’s heir, when the King departed for the French wars. She drew her ladies of intellect and devoted humanism round her in an ever more protective cocoon, and schemed very carefully to bring learning to the masses.

  Always smiling, gracious, and kind, Queen Catherine had won Henry’s trust and devotion. But always she feared him. Detested him. Watched as his once razor-honed mind fell into decay and his stony will eroded, so that the merest whisper from either faction could send him careening from one extreme of persecution to the other. She watched helplessly as the King allowed her dearest childhood friend, Anne Askew, to be viciously tortured on the rack and finally burnt at the stake for belief in her Protestant faith. Sometimes Catherine marveled that she herself had survived the attempt by the Gardiner faction to have her arrested and executed as a heretic. They had schemed against her so carefully, but she had groveled to Henry, pretending that her religious beliefs were the thoughts of a mere humble wife who needed her husband’s guidance. This had appealed greatly to his pride, and at the last moment he had called off her attackers, as hunting dogs would be pulled back from the cornered deer before they could rip it limb from limb.

  But her sacrifices were not all in vain. Having regained Henry’s trust, she began quietly instigating the reforms she and her women had dreamt of— not so much reforms of the Protestant faith as their beloved humanistic ideals.

  Then Catherine had watched Henry wither and begin to die. It was all she could do to control her elation, for in those months, as
the factions inevitably began taking their positions and honing their future plans, Thomas Seymour was called home from abroad. At court in his presence she remained coolly reserved, the faithful queen, when all the time she was silently shouting Thomas’s name, feeling his strong hands on her body, smelling the male musk of him, hearing him whisper her name as he moved inside her.

  Catherine was astounded at her own patience waiting for Henry to die. She arranged for Elizabeth to come to live with her at the Chelsea Dower House. She feigned appropriate grief on Great Harry’s passing, and felt nothing at her exclusion from the protectorship of the boy king Edward. Her duty was done. Finally she was free to live for herself. To live for love. True, there had been talk of Thomas’s overweening ambition, the machinations surrounding marriage proposals to the princesses, and even to Anne of Cleves. But from the moment of his return he had been ever attentive to herself, and he’d dismissed the marriage proposals as ugly rumors. She had, of course, believed him. How could she not? He loved her, had thought of no one in the previous years but her, and she adored him. The moment she had installed herself and Princess Elizabeth and their households at Chelsea, she and Thomas had begun their clandestine trysts. A mere four months after Henry had been laid to rest, they’d been secretly married.

  Sometimes she wondered if her happiness was blinding her. There had been moments of late when Thomas’s behavior alarmed her. His desperation about retrieving the crown jewels bordered on the ridiculous. And she had seen how he sometimes looked at Elizabeth… . No! she chided herself. There was nothing to worry about. It was simply Thomas’s way Everything about him was bold and outrageous. Even reckless. That was why she loved him. She had been a patient and understanding wife to a far more dangerous character in Henry and the reward for a marriage to Thomas was so much greater. She could hardly wait for the next time they would share a bed… .

  “Lady Seymour.”

  The woman’s voice jolted Catherine out of her thoughts, the fantasy’s torrid sensuality causing her to blush as she turned to face the Duchess of Somerset.

  The high color in Catherine’s cheeks and the surprised expression pleased the Duchess, and she smiled patronizingly “Haunting your old residences, are you?”

  It took a moment for Catherine to comprehend the disrespect with which the woman had addressed her. She silently engaged her opponent with a steely gaze. “I hope you and the duke are comfortably ensconced in the queen’s apartments.” The arrogance of appropriating the royal rooms had been angrily commented upon by many of the Privy Councillors who’d been unseated by Edward Seymour’s unilateral Protectorship, but none of their opinions were sufficient cause to change the couple’s high and mighty accommodations. “To be honest,” Catherine continued, regaining her composure, “I miss these rooms not at all. I was, in fact, just thinking that I am far happier in my modest household with your brother-in-law than I was in these rooms married to the king of England.” She smiled sweetly to punctuate her statement.

  The duchess’s face was hard. “You can afford such nonchalance. Your husband the High Admiral” — she said the title with a sneer — “is quite ambitious enough for the both of you.”

  Just then Thomas Seymour was approaching the women unseen from around the corner, returning from the King’s apartments and his meeting with Fowler. Hearing his name and recognizing the voices, he quietly fell to one knee and, facing the wall, pretended to be tying a bootlace.

  “Lord Somerset has treated Thomas very shabbily,” said Catherine. “Truly, such behavior does not befit the dignity of someone in so high a position. Much as your husband aspires to royalty, Duchess, ‘tis clearly not in his blood.”

  Seymour sensed the path along which this argument moved and began praying silently that these two snarling cats would not touch upon the subject of the royal jewels. Fowler and his plan — a sensible one — were already in place.

  “My husband treats Thomas as he would any arrogant and self-serving subject,” the duchess insisted.

  “Subject!” cried Catherine, unable to control her outrage. “You two do place yourselves very high indeed.”

  Momentarily flustered, the duchess quickly regained her composure. “Thomas is the Kings subject, and Edwards responsibility is to protect the King from such men,” she said. “Such greedy men,” she added.

  “You dare speak of greed!” said Catherine, her voice rising shrilly.

  “I do. What else should Thomas’s interest in the jewels be called?” was the duchess’s retort.

  Behind the corner Seymour winced, but the Queen Dowager answered, unaware she was being led into a trap.

  “Those were a present from Henry to myself.” Catherine’s voice wavered. “You and the duke are taking this stand only to humiliate me.”

  “Why, Lady Seymour,” said the duchess with condescending sweetness. “You interpret this far too personally. My husband is simply doing his job. You see, legally, the jewels belong to England.”

  This was not an argument with which Catherine had thus far been confronted, and she became momentarily flustered.

  “Have the jewels, then!” she shouted. “I do not care if I ever see them again!”

  “Very good,” said the Duchess of Somerset coolly. “I’ll let my husband know you and Thomas will be pursuing the matter no further.”

  Furious, Thomas stood up and strode away, muttering evil curses at his brother, his sister-in-law — and his wife. How could Catherine have been so stupid! He had married her for her brains, not her beauty or feminine charms. He’d married her for her wealth, and for the ability and intelligence she had brought to bear while she’d been queen. As queen dowager he’d assumed she would continue to wield the most power of any woman in the kingdom.

  And now he had witnessed her being bested by his conniving harridan of a sister-in-law. Perhaps he had been wrong about Catherine, he thought with a sudden sinking feeling in his belly Perhaps he had set his sights on the wrong woman. Something, he decided, his jaw tightening, something would have to be done.

  From without, the fresh-built wooden banqueting hall, long and large and tall as it was, gave no indication of the splendor within. There, ten thousand points of flickering torch- and candlelight set the gilded walls ablaze, brought to life the myriad figures in the hung tapestries, and in the high cupboards along the wall, set all the Kings riches of silver and gold to sparkling.

  Therein, to horn and string and drum, England’s noblemen and ladies danced and masqued in honor of young Edward’s birth. Beneath the royal canopy the King, poised on the edge of his throne, seemed altogether merry at the spectacle. He was still puffed with pride at his own magnificent entrance to the entertainments, astride a white horse caparisoned in forest green with silver trappings, himself bedecked in a doublet of purple and gold. All had loudly cheered his arrival, and the boy’s normally stern expression exploded into smiles and childish laughter.

  This evening, Edward had instructed his musicians to play more voltas and galliards than slow, measured dances, and so the air was thick and warm with the revelers’ exertions. Cheeks were flushed, spirits high, and pulses racing.

  On nights like these Elizabeth lived to dance. Energy boundless, she stopped only when the music did, dancing each and every number played. She was envied by the ladies for her grace and exuberance. Gentlemen fought for the honor of partnering her. Robin Dudley had already had the pleasure three times this evening, but as Lords Clinton and Arundel playfully bantered for the next dance, young Dudley slipped behind them, grabbed Elizabeth’s hand, and guided her to the center of the hall where couples had already gathered, waiting for the music to begin. He gave her a wicked smile.

  “What a knave you are, Robin Dudley,” said Elizabeth with mock indignance.

  “You like dancing with me the best. Admit it.”

  “I’ll admit to no such thing,” she replied, trying to suppress a smile.

  “Look there,” said Robin, his tone shifting suddenly to seriousness.
“There’s your knave. He’s up to something.”

  Elizabeth followed Robin’s gaze to the throne, where Thomas Seymour, arrayed in shimmering orange and gold, was bending over the King and whispering in his ear. Edward nodded in agreement with his uncle, then stood suddenly. As Elizabeth and Robin watched, he strode across the hall, certainly aware that all eyes were on him, and stopped before an astonished Lady Jane Grey. The little girl’s mouth actually fell open as the King of England performed a deep, flourishing bow and, taking her hand, led Jane out onto the dance floor. The moment the miniature couple had struck their poses the music began. This was one of the few slow allemandes, and so conversation was possible throughout.

  “What did I tell you?” said Robin smugly.

  “Jane is Edward’s cousin,” Elizabeth replied evenly, “and they are friendly. Why should they not dance?”

  “Oh, they should dance. They’ll dance a king and queen if your stepfather has a say in it.”

  “Say what you like, Robin, but Thomas Seymour is no villain. He’s very good to me and exceedingly good to Jane.”

  “Not as good as he is to himself,” Robin replied, leading Elizabeth into a swiveling half-turn. Directly in her line of sight was Thomas Seymour again. He had moved to Lord Dorset’s side and, head lowered to the ear of Jane Grey’s father, conferred with the other man. Both wore what could only be construed as conspiratorial smiles, their eyes fastened on the dancing Edward and Jane. As Seymour and Dorset began to laugh, Robin brought Elizabeth round to face him, again neither of them missing a step of the allemandes rhythm.

  “Smugness doesn’t become you, Robin,” she said.

  “Perhaps. But I am right.”

  “If you insist.” Elizabeth sighed, then smiled. She’d caught sight of the Queen Dowager on the sidelines, watching her dance with Robin. Catherine’s face was aglow, as though deeply pleasured by the sight of her stepdaughter.