The Virgin Elizabeth Page 8

  Chapter Six

  Thomas Seymour pressed himself against the corridor wall and watched a still sleep-weary Kat Ashley scurry by to the fools errand on which he’d sent her. His servant had whispered in her ear just before dawn that a messenger from Suffolk was at the front door with a letter for her. Thomas had heard a piece of gossip that Mistress Ashley’s old sweetheart lived in Suffolk, and he judged that the woman would be curious enough about such a correspondence to abandon her post.

  The ploy, happily for Seymour, had left Princess Elizabeth deliciously alone in her bedchamber, perhaps still asleep. The greater her surprise, he’d discovered in the last weeks of these early morning visits, the greater his own arousal. It had become something of a game, he conceiving ever more shocking strategies to take Elizabeth by storm in her bedchamber, she attempting to outwit him by her own devices. First she had taken to wearing nightclothes in order to never again be caught naked as she had the first time he’d come to her. Then she’d begun waking early to be fully dressed when he appeared. She’d sometimes gone into the schoolroom, sitting prim and straight over her Greek translation, even before the sun was up. He’d followed her there, too, having a merry time chasing her round the desk till she’d fled shrieking back to her nurse.

  But all of her cries and protestations he knew to be halfhearted. She enjoyed his attentions, he was sure of it. And why shouldn’t she? He was a great man at the height of his vitality and good looks. Even women of wit and sophistication — his wife Catherine was one — were slaves to his charms. How could so tender and nubile a girl as Elizabeth resist him, no matter how outrageous his advances?

  This day he had slipped out of bed extra early, sending Ellen Wilcox, still groggy with sleep, to fetch Kat from her bed. Seymour had worried that the nurse would suspect a ruse, but she had indeed been fooled. What Mistress Ashley would discover at the front door was a playful letter from himself inquiring after her “great buttocks,” if they had grown or not, for he much admired them. She would feign embarrassment and give him a stern remonstrance, but he knew she would be mightily complimented by his attentions, unseemly as they were. Kat liked him very well. He knew this by the way her eyes fell on him when they stood together, the carriage of her shoulders, and the tilt of her head. With all her fine manners, Kat Ashley had the heart of a bawd.

  He slipped into Elizabeth’s chamber and found the girl quite alone and, blessed Jesus, in her bed asleep. The sight of her so helpless and milk sweet, her red hair spilling from beneath her nightcap onto the white pillow, stirred him violently It was all he could do not to lock the door behind him and ravish her on the spot. But he steadied himself. It would not do for his purposes to lose all control. There was a method to his madness that only he understood. He would tease and cajole and flatter her to distraction, then ignore her, turning the want to need and need to a frenzy of desire. He could see her mind was a muddle of passion and guilt in equal measures. Indeed, his plan was working perfectly.

  Elizabeth stirred, moaning in sleep. His arousal grew sharper. He must move quickly, for Kat Ashley would be returning momentarily. He threw off his robe so he stood in only a thin nightshirt and slippers. Then he climbed onto the bed and carefully straddled her body, pinioning Elizabeth between his widespread thighs. Thus positioned he struck, his fingers finding her waist and sides — and began tickling. She cried out in terror even before her eyes flew open. Recognizing her tormentor, she looked frantically around for Kat but found her gone. They were alone! Her squirming and struggling caused his tickling fingers to fall “accidentally” on breast, belly, or hip, and her shrieks finally, with the ceaseless onslaught, turned to helpless laughter. He was laughing too, laughing like a boy, delighted with his own prank.

  “Stop! Stop!” cried Elizabeth, gasping for breath.

  “Never!” shouted Thomas.

  She, agile as a cat, suddenly rolled out from under him, sprang from the bed, and bolted for the door. He dove with outstretched arms and caught her nightdress, halting her flight. He wrenched her back as he leapt to his feet and suddenly she was in his arms, face to face. They were breathless, nothing separating their bodies but two thin nightgowns. She could not, he realized with animal pleasure, be unaware of his sex, fully erect and pressing into her belly.

  “Come now, Elizabeth, give your stepfather a kiss.”

  Her eyes flashed wildly and, with more strength than he realized she possessed, she pushed Seymour’s shoulders back with the flat of her hands and screamed, “No!” Her face was bright with anger, her breathing ragged.

  “Be still. I only meant to show you some affection,” he uttered. “Truly.”

  She sniffed and replied sharply, “I may be a green girl, but I’m no fool. These visits are creating a scandal in this house. You must stop coming alone into my apartments like this, my lord.”

  He did not reply, but stared deep into her eyes, attempting to relay the warm message he could not speak in words.

  “You must promise me that,” she persisted.

  “I shall never come into your rooms alone again,” he intoned solemnly.

  “You swear?”

  “On my honor.”

  “My God!” shrieked Kat, who stood like an angry bull in the doorway. “You tricked me, Thomas Seymour. And now look at you. In your nightshirt, and the Princess ...”

  He grinned sheepishly at Kat.

  “Get back in bed, Elizabeth,” she commanded. “And you leave at once, my lord.”

  “If you insist, Mistress Ashley,” he said, grabbing his robe.

  As Elizabeth turned her back on Seymour, he swatted her playfully on the backside.

  “Out!” cried Kat, and came at him as if to attack.

  As he dodged the fuming nurse, he pinched her buttock and whispered in her ear before scooting away, “They have grown to a wonderful size.”

  “Oh, oh! You’re a terrible man!” she shouted, but was unable to hide the affection in her voice.

  Heads poked out doors to see the figure of the lord of the manor disappearing down the corridor in his nightshirt and slippers. They exchanged disapproving glances and clucked at the scandalous commotion which had, almost daily in the past weeks, changed the once stately Chelsea House to a bawdy house. ‘Twas a bad business, this. It would come to no good end.

  As promised, Thomas Seymour never again came alone for his mad morning romps into Elizabeth’s bedchamber. When next he arrived, in fact, his wife was with him.

  As the pair fell on Elizabeth’s cowering figure beneath the covers and commenced tickling her, she had but a moment to wonder if her eyes were playing tricks, or perhaps she was dreaming. The two of them were in their nightgowns. Catherine’s thin, straight hair fell in wild disarray about her shoulders, and her eyes gleamed with so manic a brilliance that the Princess hardly recognized her much-loved stepmother. It was terrible to witness this paragon of virtue and erudition transformed into some mad creature pretending a gaiety that even Elizabeth could see cloaked appalling desperation.

  This frightful visit came as a complete surprise. To Elizabeth’s chagrin, Thomas had for a fortnight stopped coming altogether, after the visit during which she elicited his “promise” from him. She had been — though she could not say it aloud — more miserable than relieved. His absence left a gaping hole in her life. The first several days of his ignoring her had been tolerable, for she was buoyed by a fine-honed edge of anticipation. She dreamt incessantly of him and always pleasantly. There had thankfully been no recurrences of her carnal night fantasy. Instead, her dreams were suffused with the gentle glow of romance. Thomas bringing her a knot of red and white posies. Thomas riding to rescue her from an evil water spirit at the edge of a misty lake. He was always a gentle friend in the dreams, never the boisterous package of virility that he was in the daylight. He was somehow soft in his being, but strong, always strong.

  It was this man in her dreams with whom Elizabeth fell madly and hopelessly in love.

  Thomas’s abs
ence from her bedchamber lengthened into a week. Two. She became frantic. She’d catch sight of him riding out from the stables well after she’d come back from her morning ride. He was tall in his saddle, more graceful than a man his age and great size had a right to be. At meals, he was unerringly decorous to her, and maddeningly more attentive to Catherine than he had ever been before. The Queen Dowager warmed to this attention at first, but as the days progressed, Elizabeth saw the woman’s mind being drawn tighter and tighter, as a lute string might be stretched. Catherine’s temper grew short and she would screech abuse at Elizabeth or Lady Jane, then after an outburst she would smother the girls with apologies. One moment she was serious to tears, the next giggling so uncontrollably she’d have to excuse herself from the room.

  This morning the lute string had finally snapped. Catherine was not herself. As they struggled, wrestling and tumbling amidst the bedclothes with Catherine muttering lewd obscenities, Elizabeth grew more and more frightened of the woman. She was a strange chimera — the Queen Dowager’s body inhabited by the soul of a coarse wench.

  Kat, paralyzed by the sight of Catherine in so unseemly a state, stood by wringing her hands, her jaw flapping with disbelief. Occasionally she would reach out as if to snatch Elizabeth out of the lion’s pit, only to pull back for fear of being bitten. Catherine, strange as her behavior might be, was still the highest lady in the land. Who was Kat Ashley to restrain her?

  “Stop, stop!” Elizabeth gasped just as Thomas Seymour lunged across her body to grab and tickle his wife. Catherine shrieked with surprised delight and in turn grasped a handful of his hair, pulling him to her for a kiss. Their moist faces, glowing with the heat of exertion, were inches from Elizabeth’s own, and when their lips parted, the couple turned and smiled crazily down at the girl. Thomas sank his face into Elizabeth’s neck, nuzzling her noisily. Taking her cue from him, Catherine followed suit and buried her face in Elizabeth’s shoulder, now bare, for her shift had pulled down, exposing a breast as well In the awful panic of the moment, Elizabeth saw that her nipple was hard and erect, and Thomas had stopped his nuzzling to gaze at it.

  “Kat! Kat, help me!” Elizabeth screamed in mortification.

  The sound of her charges voice finally roused the nurse from her helpless stupor. With a loud cry she flung herself on the pile of writhing bodies. Unheedful of all consequence, she shoved aside the grappling attackers and laid her own body lengthways across Elizabeth's.

  “Out, out, both of you! For shame, for shame!”

  “Come, Catherine,” Seymour cried laughingly. “Queen Kat has spoken.”

  With wide eyes Elizabeth peered over her nurses shoulder and saw Thomas reaching for his wife. But the Queen Dowager was staring down at the bed, at Kat’s prone figure protecting Elizabeth’s slender frame with her own. A look of abject horror swept across her face as if she had only then realized what she had done. Then Seymour gathered Catherine by the waist and took her from the room.

  “I don’t know what’s come over Her Majesty,” said Kat as she pushed herself off Elizabeth and lay panting beside the girl on her bed. “She ought to be ashamed.”

  Elizabeth was bereft of all speech. She had prayed for Thomas’s return. Despite her guilt, she had prayed to Jesus for one more moment of intimacy with him, no matter how outrageous and sinful the circumstances. Then he had come to her bed with Catherine. What was he thinking? Did he not love and desire herself? Wait, wait! What was she saying? He was a married man. Married to the only woman she had ever called mother.

  Kat had finally caught her breath. She sat up and smoothed her nightgown around her.

  “And what of her husband? Should he not be ashamed as well?” asked Elizabeth, searching desperately for some raft of sanity in this ocean of chaos.

  “He is a man, Elizabeth, and cannot be held accountable for his lusts.”

  “Does he lust for me, then, Kat? Do you think — ?”

  “I meant, I mean —”

  “Does he lust for me!?” shouted Elizabeth, suddenly forgetting the ugliness of what had just occurred.

  “Shh!” hissed Kat and, pulling away from Elizabeth, she climbed down from the bed. She began searching frantically for her slippers on the floor. “Of course he does. And why wouldn’t he? His wife is middle-aged and plain. She’s bedded with three old men for husbands. Kat was on her knees now, searching for the slippers under the bed, and seemed temporarily to have forgotten that one of those old men had been Elizabeth’s father. “You, sweet girl, are as radiant and beautiful a virgin as any who’s walked on this earth. Who would blame him for desiring yourself. Hah!” Kat cried, and came up with the slippers in hand. “If you ask me,” she continued, sitting on the bed and putting the slippers on one at a time, “you and the High Admiral make a sight more handsome couple than he and the Queen Dowager.”

  “Katherine Ashley!” cried Elizabeth, trying to sound horrified but barely stifling her delight.

  “Well, ‘tis true, but you forget I said that. Do you hear me?”

  “Yes, Kat,” said Elizabeth demurely.

  “Now, I’ve got to get dressed and down to the kitchen. They’ll all have heard of this by now and I’d best do what I can to quash the rumors before it’s made out worse than it was. We’ll have all our meals sent up today and pray that His Lordship and Her Majesty come to their senses. Might as well get yourself back in bed, then,” Kat added. She shook her head as though trying to rearrange the mess of thoughts and emotions within it and bustled into the adjoining room to dress.

  Elizabeth lay back, closed her eyes, and in seconds had conjured the face of her beloved. The back of her long pale fingers caressed her own cheek and slender neck and, hidden under the covers, found the pink rosette centered in the small mound of her breast. It was erect and still hard, and the gentlest touch made her womanly place quiver delightfully.

  Suddenly, she cared very little for the scandal of it, allowed her worry for the Queen Dowager’s state of mind and any consequences to recede to the most distant shores in her world of dreams. She loved Thomas Seymour and he lusted after her. Nothing, she thought lazily, nothing under heaven could be sweeter.

  “I’m afraid I’ve some unhappy news, Elizabeth.”

  The Princess looked down at the Queen Dowager sitting alone at a desk in the schoolroom. The Princess had come there as she always had, continuing her Greek translations during her tutor’s absence. This day she had been surprised to find her stepmother.

  “I’ve already informed Lady Jane ...” intoned Catherine morosely.

  “Grindal?” cried Elizabeth, staring round wildly as though searching the room for her teacher. She turned to face Catherine, whose eyes were red-rimmed and shimmering with tears of grief, though the dark circles beneath them and the deepening lines of worry at the corners of her mouth and forehead, Elizabeth knew, had been forming for many weeks before this.

  “He died on Wednesday.”

  Elizabeth’s hand flew to her mouth to cover the twisted shape of its grieving. “We knew he had taken ill, but not so sick as to die,” she said.

  “The plague took him,” Catherine said simply.

  “Plague!” cried Elizabeth. “So, he travels to Cambridge for a holiday and instead dies of the plague? What sense is there in that?” Tears had begun streaming down Elizabeth’s cheeks. “He cannot be dead!”

  “I’m sorry, my dear.” Wearily Catherine stood. She could not bear to meet her stepdaughter’s eye, and instead moved for the door. “He was a good friend, Master Grindal. He will be missed.” Then with nary a comforting embrace, the Queen Dowager departed.

  Elizabeth looked down at her volume of Xenophon and the unfinished translation beneath the inkwell. With an angry sweep of her arm, she knocked them all from her desk. Everything around her was crumbling, and everyone had become insane. She needed desperately to find some solace or she, too, would go mad.

  Tears still blinding her, she turned on her heel and walked quickly down the long corridor fr
om the schoolroom to the manor’s front door. The chilly morning air stung her wet cheeks and she wiped her face unceremoniously with the back of her sleeve. She headed for the stables.

  Elizabeth galloped wildly across the rolling meadows and through pastures, scattering herds of grazing sheep, ignoring the rutted roads and twisting lanes altogether, for this was the quickest route to Warwick Hall and the comforting presence of her best friend in all the world.

  The Dudleys lived in modest splendor. Robins father, John, had been, along with Edward Seymour, the most trusted advisor of Henry VIII. Aside from the Tudors who were royal, the Dudleys and Seymour’s were unquestionably England’s most prominent and important families, figuring in the country’s politics since Great Harry’s father had stolen the throne from Richard III and killed the last Plantagenet king on Bosworth Field. For their loyal service to the Crown, the Tudor kings — Elizabeth’s grandfather, father, and now her brother — had bestowed upon the two families the greatest wealth and authority possible. Elizabeth’s and Robin’s lives were, therefore, inordinately and inexorably bound, and it was well that there was a deep and sincere sympathy between them.

  A frequent visitor to Warwick Hall, Elizabeth was shown in immediately by the house servants. Moments later Joan Dudley had greeted the Princess and enfolded her in a warm embrace.

  “Margaret,” said the older woman, “bring the Princess some cold ale,” then, to Elizabeth, “You’re very flushed, my dear.” She examined Elizabeth’s perspiring face. “I hope you’re not ill.”

  “Sick at heart perhaps, but not unwell. Thank you for asking, Lady Dudley Is Robin about?”

  “You’ll find him in the forest with Ambrose and their birds. At breakfast I mentioned a taste for plump quail and they said they’d find me some.”

  “Then will you excuse me?” said Elizabeth distractedly and turned to go.

  “Your ale, dear ...”

  But Elizabeth was already gone.

  It did not take her long to find the boys, for Elizabeth had hawked and hunted with them in these woods and meadows for years. From a distance it would, for anyone else, be difficult to tell apart the two Dudleys — now riding hell-bent across the field. Ambrose was older but Robin was tall for his age. To Elizabeth’s eye, however, the distinction was obvious — Robin’s assured posture in the saddle, his extra-broad shoulders on the slender frame promising a magnificent man as he matured into them. Once she had him in her sight, Elizabeth felt herself calm immediately and slowed her mount to a trot. There was something so reassuring about Robin Dudleys presence, some unfathomable kinship that soothed her. All pretenses fell away when they were together. She trusted him entirely.