Mary & Elizabeth
Emily Purdy

Contents

Prologue

The End of an Era

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Elizabeth

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Mary

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Mary

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Elizabeth

Postscript

A Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions

About the Author

Other Books by the Same Author

Copyright

About the Publisher

PROLOGUE

The End of an Era

January 28, 1547

Whitehall Palace

Wonderful, dangerous, cruel, and wise, after thirty-eight years of ruling England, King Henry VIII lay dying. It was the end of an era. Many of his subjects had known no other king and feared the uncertainty that lay ahead when his nine-year-old son inherited the throne.

A cantankerous mountain of rotting flesh, already stinking of the grave, and looking far older than his fifty-five years, it was hard to believe the portrait on the wall, always praised as one of Master Holbein’s finest and a magnificent, vivid and vibrant likeness, that this reeking wreck had once been the handsomest prince in Christendom, standing with hands on hips and legs apart as if he meant to straddle the world.

The great gold-embroidered bed, reinforced to support his weight, creaked like a ship being tossed on angry waves, as if the royal bed itself would also protest the coming of Death and God’s divine judgment.

The faded blue eyes started in a panic from amidst the fat pink folds of bloodshot flesh. As his head tossed upon the embroidered silken pillows a stream of muted, incoherent gibberish flowed along with a silvery ribbon of drool into his ginger-white beard, and a shaking hand rose and made a feeble attempt to point, jabbing adamantly, insistently, here and there at the empty spaces around the carved and gilded posts, as thick and sturdy as sentries standing at attention, supporting the gold-fringed crimson canopy.

There was a rustle of clothing and muted whispers as those who watched discreetly from the shadows – the courtiers, servants, statesmen, and clergy – shook their heads and shrugged their shoulders, knowing they could do nothing but watch and wonder if it were angels or demons that tormented their dying sovereign.

The Grim Reaper’s approach had rendered Henry mute, so he could tell no one about the phantoms that clustered around his bed, which only he, on the threshold of death, could see.

Six wronged women, four dead and two living: a saintly Spaniard, a dark-eyed witch – or “bitch” as some would think it more apt to call her – a shy plain Jane, a plump rosy-cheeked German hausfrau absently munching marzipan, and a wanton jade-eyed auburn-haired nymph seeping sex from every pore. And, kneeling at the foot of the massive bed, in an attitude of prayer, the current queen, Catherine Parr, kind, capable Kate who always made everything all right, murmuring soothing words and reaching out a ruby-ringed white hand, like a snowy angel’s wing, to rub his ruined rotting legs, scarred by leeches and lancets, and putrid with a seeping stink that stained the bandages and bedclothes an ugly urine-yellow.

Against the far wall, opposite the bed, on a velvet-padded bench positioned beneath Holbein’s robust life-sized portrait of the pompous golden monarch in his prime and glory, sat the lion’s cubs, his living legacy, the heirs he would leave behind; all motherless, and soon to be fatherless, orphans fated to be caught up in the storm that was certain to rage around the throne when the magnificent Henry Tudor breathed his last. Although he had taken steps to protect them by reinstating his disgraced and bastardized daughters in the succession and appointing coolly efficient Edward Seymour to head a Regency Council comprised of sixteen men who would govern during the boy-king’s minority, Henry was shrewd enough to know that that would not stop those about them from forming factions and fighting, jockeying for position and power, for he who is puppetmaster to a prince also holds the reins of power.

There was the good sheep: meek and mild, already greying, old maid Mary, a disapproving, thin-lipped pious prude, already a year past thirty, the only surviving child of Catherine of Aragon, the golden-haired Spanish girl who was supposed to be as fertile as the pomegranate she took as her personal emblem.

The black sheep: thirteen-year-old flame-haired Elizabeth, the dark enchantress Anne Boleyn’s daughter, whose dark eyes, just like her mother’s, flashed like black diamonds, brilliant, canny, and hard, as fast and furious as lightning; a clever minx this princess who should have been a prince. Oh what a waste! It was enough to make Henry weep, and tears of a disappointment that had never truly healed trickled down his cheeks. Oh what a king Elizabeth would have been! But no petticoat, no queen, could ever hold England and steer the ship of state with the firm hand and conviction, the will, strength, might, and robust majesty of a king. Politics, statecraft, and warfare were a man’s domain. Women were too delicate and weak, too feeble and fragile of body and spirit, to bear the weight of a crown; queens were meant to be ornaments to decorate their husband’s court and bear sons to ensure the succession so the chain of English kings remained unbroken and the crown did not become a token to be won in a civil war that turned the nation into one big bloody battlefield as feuding factions risked all to win the glittering prize.

“Oh, Bess, you should have been a boy! What a waste!” Henry tossed his head and wept, though none could decipher his garbled words or divine the source of his distress. “Why, God, why? She would have held England like a lover gripped hard between her thighs and never let go! Of the three of them, she’s the only one who could!”

And last, but certainly not least – in fact, the most important of all – the frightened sheep, the little lost sheep, the weak and bland little runt of the flock: nine-year-old Edward. So soon to be the sixth king to bear that name, he would be caught at the centre of the brewing storm until he reached an age to take the sceptre in hand and wield power himself. He sat there now with his eyes downcast, the once snow-fair hair he had inherited from the King’s beloved “Gentle Jane” darkening to a ruddy brown more like that of his uncles, the battling Seymour brothers – fish-frigid but oh so clever Edward and jolly, good-time Tom – than the flaxen locks of his pallid mother or the fiery Tudor-red tresses of his famous sire. His fingers absently shredded the curly white plume that adorned his round black velvet cap, letting the pieces waft like snowflakes onto the exotic whirls and swirls of the luxurious carpet from faraway Turkey. He then abandoned the denuded shaft to pluck the luminous, shimmering Orient pearls from the brim, letting them fall as carelessly as if they were nothing more than pebbles to be picked up, pocketed, and no doubt sold by the servants. Like casting pearls before swine!

“Oh, Edward!” Henry wept and raged against the Fates. “The son I always wanted but not the king England needs!”

Catherine Parr rose from where she knelt at the foot of the bed and took a jewel-encrusted goblet from the table nearby and filled it from a pitcher of cold water. Gently cupping the back of her husband’s balding head, as if he were an infant grown to gigantic proportions, and lifting it from the pillows, she held the cup to his lips, thinking to cool his fever and thus remedy his distress. But not all the cool, sweet waters in the world could soothe Henry Tudor’s troubled spirit.

The black-velvet-clad sisters, Mary and Elizabeth, the rich silver and golden threads on their black damask kirtles and under-sleeves glimmering in the candlelight like metallic fish darting through muddy water, sat on either side of their little brother, leaning in protectively. But as they comforted him with kind, reassuring words and loving arms about his frail shoulders – the left a tad higher than the right due to the clumsy, frantic fingers of a nervous midwife and the difficulty of wresting him from his mother’s womb – their minds were far away, roving in the tumultuous past, turning the gilt-bordered, blood-spattered, angst-filled pages of the book of memory….

1
Mary

All I have ever wanted was to be loved, to find on this earth a love as true and everlasting as God’s.

As Father lay dying, I remembered a time when he had well and truly loved me; a time when he had called me the most valuable jewel in his kingdom, his most precious pearl, dearer than any diamond. Those were the days when he would burst through the door, like the bright golden sun imperiously brushing aside an ugly black rain cloud, and sweep me up into his arms and ask, “How fares my best sweetheart?” and kiss me and call me “the pearl of my world!” Easter of the year I turned five, upon a whim of his, to illustrate this, he had me dressed in a white gown, cap, and dainty little shoes so densely encrusted with pearls I seemed to be wearing nothing else, they were sewn so thick and close. And when I walked into the royal chapel between him and my mother, holding their hands, turning my head eagerly from left to right to smile up at them, I walked in love.

On my next birthday, my sixth, I awoke to find a garden of fragrant rosemary bushes, one for each year of my life, growing out of gilded pots, their branches spangled with golden tinsel and glowing mysteriously from within with circles of rosy pink, sunny yellow, sapphire blue, emerald green, and ruby red light, emanating, I discovered, from little lanterns with globes of coloured glass concealed inside. My father had created a veritable fairyland for me, peopled with beautiful fairies and evil imps, grotesque goblins and mischievous elves, leering trolls, playful pixies, crook-backed gnomes, and gossamer-winged sprites, and the Fairy Queen herself, flame-haired and majestic in emerald green, all made of sugar and marzipan in a triumph of confectioner’s art. I stood before them timid and unsure, hardly daring to move or breathe, in case they truly were real and might work some terrible magic upon me if I dared interfere with them, until Father laughed and bit the head off a hobgoblin to show me I had nothing to fear. And there were four gaily costumed dwarves, two little women and two little men, every seam, and even their tiny shoes and caps, sewn with rows of tiny tinkling gold bells, to cavort and dance and play with me. We joined hands and danced rings around the rosemary bushes until we grew dizzy and fell down laughing. And when I sat down to break my fast, Father took it upon himself to play the servant and wait upon me. When he tipped the flagon over my cup, golden coins poured out instead of breakfast ale and overflowed into my lap and spilled onto the floor where the dwarves gathered them up for me.

In those days we were very much a family and, to my child’s eyes, a happy family. Before I was of an age to sit at table and attend banquets and entertainments with them, Mother and Father used to come into my bedchamber every night to hear my prayers on their way to the Great Hall. How I loved seeing them in all their jewels and glittering finery standing side by side, smiling down at me, Father with his arm draped lovingly about Mother’s shoulders, both of them with love and pride shining in their eyes as they watched me kneel upon my velvet cushioned prie-dieu in my white nightgown and silk-beribboned cap, eyes closed, brow intently furrowed, hands devoutly clasped as I recited my nightly prayers. And when I was old enough to don my very own sparkling finery and go with them to the Great Hall, I cherished each and every shared smile, sentimental heart-touched tear, and merry peal of laughter as, together, we delighted in troupes of dancing dogs and acrobats, musicians, minstrels, morris dancers, storytellers, and ballad singers.

And we served God together. Faithful and devout, we attended Mass together every day in the royal chapel. My mother spent untold hours kneeling in her private chapel before a statue of the Blessed Virgin surrounded by candles, a hair shirt chafing her lily-white skin red and raw beneath her sombrely ornate gowns, and hunger gnawing at her belly as she persevered in fasting, begging Christ’s mother to intercede on her behalf so that her womb might quicken with the son my father desired above all else.

When the heretic Martin Luther published his vile and evil blasphemies, Father put pen to paper and wrote a book to refute them and defend the holy sacraments. When it was finished he had a copy bound in gold and sent a messenger to present it to the Pope, who, much impressed, declared it “a golden book both inside and out”, and dubbed Father “Defender of the Faith”. To celebrate this accolade, Father ordered all the pamphlets and books, the writings of Martin Luther that had been confiscated throughout the kingdom, assembled in the courtyard in a great heap. In a gown of black velvet and cloth-of-gold, with a black velvet cap trimmed with gold beads crowning my famous, fair marigold hair, I stood with Mother, also clad in black and gold, upon a balcony overlooking the courtyard, holding tight to her hand, and clasping a rosary of gold beads to my chest as I, always short-sighted, squinted down at the scene below. I felt such a rush of pride as Father, clad like Mother and I in black and gold, strode forth with a torch in his hand and set Luther’s lies ablaze. I watched proudly as the curling white plumes of smoke rose up, billowing, wafting, twirling and swirling, as they danced away on the breeze.

I also remember a very special day when I was dressed for a very special occasion in pomegranate-coloured velvet and cloth-of-gold encrusted with sparkling white diamonds, lustrous pearls from the Orient, regal purple amethysts, and wine-dark glistening garnets, with a matching black velvet hood covering my hair, caught up beneath it in a pearl-studded net of gold. I was being presented to the Ambassadors of my cousin, the Holy Roman Emperor, Charles V. Though he was many years older than myself, it was Mother’s most dearly cherished desire that we would marry; she had always wanted a Spanish bridegroom for me and raised me as befitted a lady of Spain, and the Ambassadors had come to judge and consider my merits as a possible bride for Charles.

As I curtsied low before those distinguished gentlemen in their sombre black velvets and sharp-pointed beards like daggers made of varnished hair, suddenly the solemnity of the moment was shattered by Father’s boisterous laughter. He clapped his hands and called for music, then there he was, a jewel-encrusted giant sweeping his “best sweetheart” up in his strong, powerful arms, tossing me up high into the air, and catching me when I came down, skirts billowing, laughing and carefree, for all the world like a wood-cutter and his daughter instead of the King of England and his little princess.

“This girl never cries!” he boasted when Mother sat forward anxiously in her chair, a worried frown creasing her brow, and said, “My Lord, take care, you will frighten her!”

But I just laughed and threw my arms around his neck, his bristly red beard tickling my cheek, and begged for more.

The musicians struck up a lively measure, and he led me to the centre of the floor, took my tiny hand in his, and shouted that I was his favourite dancing partner, and never in all his years had he found a better one.

As the skipping, prancing steps of the dance took us past the Ambassadors, suddenly he ripped the hood and net from my hair and tossed them into their startled midst. He combed his fingers through the long, thick, rippling waves, then more gold than red on account of my youth – I was but nine years old at the time – and his pride and joy in me showed clear upon his face.

“What hair my sweetheart has!” he cried. “My Lords, I ask you, have you ever seen such hair?”

And indeed he spoke the truth. In my earliest years I had Mother’s Spanish gold hair lovingly united with Father’s Tudor red, blending beautifully into an orange-yellow shade that caused the people to fondly dub me “Princess Marigold”. “God bless our Princess Marigold!” they would shout whenever I rode past in a litter or barge or mounted sidesaddle upon my piebald pony, smiling and waving at them before reserved dignity replaced childish enthusiasm.

Though it may seem vain to say it, I had such beautiful hair in my youth, as true and shining an example as there ever was of why a woman’s tresses are called her crowning glory. But before my youth was fully past it began to thin and fade until its lustrous beauty and abundance were only a memory and I was glad to pin it up and hide it under a hood, inside a snood or net, or beneath a veil.

But oh how I treasured the memory of Father’s pride in me and my beautiful hair! The day he danced with me before the Ambassadors became one of my happiest memories.

I would never forget the way he swept me up in his arms and spun me round and round, my marigold hair flying out behind my head like a comet’s tail, as he danced me from one end of the Great Hall to the other.

I never thought the love he felt for me then would ever diminish or die. I thought my earthly father’s love, like our Heavenly Father’s love, was permanent, unchanging, and everlasting.

“This girl never cries!” Father had said. Little did he know I would make up for a childhood filled with unshed tears by crying whole oceans of them in later years, and that most of them would be spilled on account of him, the callousness and cruelty he would mete out to me in place of the love and affection he once gave so freely and unconditionally to me.

But that was yet to come, and in those early days I truly was a princess. I sat on my own little gilded and bejewelled throne, set upon a dais, and upholstered in purple velvet with a canopy of estate, dripping with gold fringe, above me, and a plump purple cushion below me to rest my feet upon. And I wore gowns of velvet, damask, and brocade, silk, satin, silver, and gold; I sparkled with a rainbow of gems, and snuggled in ermine and sable when I was cold; gloves of the finest Spanish leather sheathed my hands; I walked in slippers made of cushion-soft velvet embroidered with pearls, gems, or gilt thread, and when I rode, boots of Spanish leather with silken tassels encased my feet; and underneath my finery only the finest lawns and linens touched my skin. But it was not the prestige and finery I liked best; being my father’s daughter was what delighted my heart most. And during the bad years that followed the blissful ones, I used to think there was nothing I would not give to hear him call me “my best sweetheart” again.

Having no son to initiate into the manly pursuits, Father made do as best he could with me. He took me with him to the archery butts, and when I was nine he gave me my first hawk and taught me to fly her. We rode out at the head of a small retinue, me in my velvet habit, dyed the deep green of the forest, sidesaddle upon my piebald pony, the bells on my goshawk’s jesses jingling, and the white plume on my cap swaying. And Father, a giant among men, powerfully muscular yet so very graceful, astride his great chestnut stallion, clad in fine white linen and rich brown hunting leathers, with bursts of rainbow light blazing out from the ring of white diamonds that encircled the brim of his velvet cap, and the jaunty white plume that topped it bouncing in the breeze.

We were following our hawks when we came to a large ditch filled with muddy water so dark we could not discern the bottom. Father made a wager with one of his men that he could swing himself across it on a pole. But when he tried, the pole snapped beneath his weight, and Father fell with a great splash, headfirst into the murky water. His legs and arms flailed and thrashed the surface frantically, but his head never appeared; it was stuck fast, mired deep in the mud below.

Edmund Moody, Father’s squire, who would have given his life a hundred times over for him, did not hesitate. He dived in and worked to free my father’s head. I could not bear to stand there doing nothing but watching helplessly, praying and wringing my hands, fearing that my beloved father might drown, so I recklessly plunged in, my green velvet skirts billowing up about my waist, floating on the muddy water like a lily pad. As I went to assist Master Moody, the tenacious mud sucked at my boots so that every step was a battle, slowing me down and showing me how it must be holding Father’s head in a gluelike grip.

But through our diligent and determined efforts, Father was at last freed. Sputtering and gasping, coughing and gulping in mouthfuls of air, Father emerged and, leaning heavily between us, we helped him onto the grass, and he lay with his head in my lap as I tenderly cleaned the mud from his hair and face. An awed and humble cottager’s wife brought us pears, cheese, and nuts in her apron, and we sat in the sun and feasted upon them as if they were the finest banquet while the sun dried us. Father made a joke about how my skirts had floated about me like a lily pad and called me his lily. And when we returned to the palace he summoned a goldsmith and commissioned a special jewelled and enamelled ring for me to commemorate that day when I had helped save his life – a golden frog and a pink and white lily resting on a green lily pad. It was the greatest of my worldly treasures, and for years afterward a week scarcely passed when it did not grace my finger. Even when I did not wear it, I kept it safe in a little green velvet pouch upon my person so I would always know it was there with me, a proud and exquisite emblem of Father’s love for me.

Those were the happy days before the sad years of ignominy and disgrace, penury, indifference, and disdain, the callousness and cruelty he learned under the tutelage of The Great Whore, Anne Boleyn, the threats and veiled coercion, followed by a sort of uneasy tolerance, a truce, when he offered me a conditional love wherein I must betray my conscience, my most deeply cherished beliefs, and my own mother’s sainted memory, and capitulate where she herself had held firm, if I wanted to bask in the sun of his love again.

To my everlasting shame, though I would hate myself for it ever afterward, I gave in to their barrage of threats. The Duke of Norfolk himself took a menacing step toward me and informed me that if I were his daughter he would bash my head against the wall until it was as soft as a baked apple to cure me of my stubbornness. And haunted by accounts of those who had already died for their resistance, including Sir Thomas More and cartloads of nuns and monks, I signed the documents they laid before me. “Lady Mary’s Submission,” they called it. I signed and thus declared my mother’s marriage a sin, incestuous and unlawful in the sight of God and man, and myself the bastard spawn born of it. Even though my most trusted advisor, the Spanish Ambassador, urged me to sign and save myself, assuring me that a victim of force would be blameless in God’s sight, and that since I signed under duress, in fear for my very life, the Pope would grant me absolution, such assurances did not ease my conscience or assuage my guilt, and my body began to mirror my mind’s suffering. My stomach rebelled against all food, my hair began to fall out, and I suffered the agonies of the damned with megrims, monthly cramps, palpitations of the heart, and toothache, and before I was twenty I was known throughout Europe as “the most unhappy lady in Christendom”, and the tooth-drawer had wrenched out most of the teeth Father had once called “pretty as pearls”, leaving my face with a pinched, sunken expression and a close-mouthed smile that was purposefully tight-lipped. It was a miracle I survived, and I came wholeheartedly to believe that God had spared my life so that I might do important work in His name.

I betrayed everything I held sacred and dear just to walk in the sun of my father’s love again, but it was never the same, and that, I think, was my penance, my punishment. It wasn’t the old welcoming, all-embracing warmth that had enveloped me like a sable cloak on a cold winter’s day; it was a weak, wavering, watery-yellow sunbeam that only cast a faint buttery hue, a faltering wispy frail fairy-light of yellow, onto the snow on a bone-chilling day. Just a tantalizing little light of love that left me always yearning for more, like a morsel of food given to a starving man only inflames his appetite. It was never enough compared to what had been before. But when I signed I did not know this. I was full to overflowing with hope when, in a presence chamber packed with courtiers, I knelt humbly before my scowling, glowering father and kissed the wide square toe of his white velvet slipper, slashed through with blood-red satin, reminding me of all the blood he had spilled and that it was always in his power to take my life upon a moment’s fancy. After I kissed his shoe I sat up upon my knees, like a dog begging, my tear-filled eyes eager and beseeching, and told him earnestly that I would rather be a servant in his house than empress of the world and parted from him.

But there were many years of pain and humiliation that preceded my surrender and self-abasement.

For seven years, and against all the odds, The Great Whore led my father on a merry dance that made him the scandal and laughing stock of Europe and turned the world as I had known it upside down. She swept through my life as chaotic, destructive, merciless, and relentless as the ten plagues of Egypt and nothing would ever be the same again. Like a mastiff attacking a baited bear, she tore away all that I held dear. “All or Nothing” was her motto and she meant it. She took my father’s love away from me and worked her dark magic to transform it into hatred and mistrust; she broke my mother’s heart and banished her to die in brokenhearted disgrace in lonely, neglected exile; she took my title of “Princess” and my place as heiress to the throne away from me and gave it to her own red-haired bastard brat; she even took my house away, my beautiful Beaulieu, and gave it to the brother who would loyally let her lead him to the scaffold after his own wife revealed details of their incestuous romance. I remember her sitting on the arm of Father’s golden throne, with diamond hearts in her luxuriant black hair, worn unbound like a virgin as her vanity’s emblem, whispering lies into his ear, poisoning his mind against me, exacting a promise, because she knew how much it meant to me, that in his lifetime he would never allow me to marry lest my husband challenge the rights of the children she would bear him. I remember how she laughed and threw back her head as he reached up to caress her swan-slender neck, encircled by a necklace of ruby and diamond hearts. The rubies glistened like fresh blood in the candlelight. The sight made me shudder and I had to turn away.

Like the “Ash Girl” in the story my nurse used to tell me, who was made to be a servant to her stepsisters, I was made to serve as a nursemaid to the puking and squalling “Little Bastard” who had taken my place in our father’s heart and usurped my birthright, my title and inheritance.

Elizabeth. I saw her come into this world with a gush of blood between The Great Whore’s legs at the expense of the heart’s blood of my mother and myself. I was made to bear witness to her triumphant arrival as Anne Boleyn, even on her bed of pain, raised her head to gloat and torment me, the better to conceal her own disappointment at failing to keep the promise she had made to give Father a son. But Father was still so besotted with her that, though disappointed by the child’s sex, he forgave her.

To please Anne, Father had heralds parade through the corridors of Greenwich and announce that I was now a bastard and no longer to be addressed or acknowledged as Princess; Elizabeth was now England’s only princess. My servants were ordered to line up and Anne’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk himself, walked up and down their ranks, ripping my blue and green badge from their liveries. And Anne’s father, Thomas Boleyn, announced that when they had been fashioned each would be given a badge of Elizabeth’s to replace mine, to show that they were now in her service. As I stood silently by and watched, my face burned with shame and each time another badge was torn away I felt as if I had been slapped.

Elizabeth. I should have hated her. But Christian charity would not allow me to hate an innocent child. No, that is not entirely true; my heart would not let me hate her. And no child should be held accountable or blamed for the sins of its mother, not even such a one as that infamous whore and Satan’s strumpet, Anne Boleyn.

At seventeen, the age I was when Elizabeth was born, I longed more than anything to be a wife and mother, and when I saw that scrunched-up, squalling, pink-faced bundle of ire, with the tufts of red hair feathering her scalp, my arms ached to hold her. I could barely contain myself; I had to almost sit on my hands to keep from reaching out and begging to hold her.

Even when I was stripped of all my beloved finery – even made to surrender the dear golden frog and enamelled lily pad ring Father had given me, and the little gold cross with a splinter of the True Cross inside it that had belonged first to my grandmother and then to my mother before she had given it to me on that oh so special sixth birthday – and forced to make do with a single plain black cloth gown and white linen apron, and to tuck my hair up under a plain white cap just like a common maidservant, and made to sleep in a mean little room in the servants’ attic, cramped and damp, with stale air and a ceiling so low, even petite as I was I could not stand up straight, still I could not hate Elizabeth. Even when I sickened and wasted away to skin and bones for want of food – I dared not eat lest The Great Whore send one of her lackeys to poison me – I could not hate, blame, or resent Elizabeth. Not even when I was wakened from a deep, exhausted sleep and brought in to change her shit-soiled napkins, I did not protest and wrinkle my nose up and turn away fastidiously, but humbly bent to the task and did what was required of me. And when her teeth started to come in – oh what pain those dainty pearls brought her! – I went without sleep and walked the floors all night with her in my arms, crooning the Spanish lullabies my mother had sung to me. Even when I was forced to walk in the dust or trudge through the mud alongside, but always three steps behind, while she rode in a sumptuous gilt and velvet-cushioned litter, dressed in splendid little gowns encrusted with embroidery, jewels, and pearls, while I went threadbare and wore the soles off my shoes as I stumbled and stubbed my toes over ruts and rocks or got mired in the mud, still my heart was filled with love for Elizabeth.

I relished each opportunity to bathe, feed, and dress her, to change her soiled napkins, rub salve onto her sore gums, tuck her into bed, coax and encourage her first steps as I held on to her leading strings, promising never to let go, and the wonderful afternoons when I was allowed to lead her around the courtyard on her first pony. And when she spoke her first word, a babyish rendition of my name – “Mare-ee” – my heart felt as if it had leapt over the moon. I loved Elizabeth; her leading strings were tied to my heart. Serving her was never the ordeal they intended it to be, for I knew who I was – I was a princess in disguise, just like in a fairy tale, and someday the truth would be revealed and all that was lost restored to me.

Sometimes I told myself I was practising for the day when I would be married and a mother myself, but I was also lying to myself as with each year my hopes and dreams, like sands from an hourglass, slipped further away from me even as I strained and tried with all my might to hold on to them until I felt all was lost and imagined I was watering their grave with my tears. For what man would have me? My father had declared me a bastard when his minion, the so-called Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, dissolved his marriage to my mother. And though I dreamed, I never really dared hope that someday someone would fall in love with me. Love was the stuff of songs and stories and, for me, as elusive as a unicorn. Sometimes, I know better than any who has ever walked this earth, no matter how much you want something, you still cannot have it.

And the promise of beauty I had, as a child, possessed had failed to ripen into reality; it had deserted me in my years of grief, fear, and peril. My first grey hair sounded the death knell to my last lingering hope that I might someday attract a suitor. I was seven teen, and a scullery maid who was secretly sympathetic to my plight was brushing out my hair before I retired to my comfortless cot for another miserable night. She gave a little gasp and stopped suddenly, and I turned to see a stricken, sad look in her eyes. Mutely, she brought my hair round over my shoulder so I could see the strand of grey, standing out starkly like a silver thread embroidered on auburn silk. I nodded resignedly. What else could I do but accept it? “Bleached by sorrow,” I sighed, and thanked her for her kind ministrations and went to my bed, but secretly, after I had blown the candle out, with the thin coverlet pulled up over my head, I cried myself to sleep as I said farewell to and buried one more dream.

But I had my faith to keep me strong. My mother always inspired great loyalty and love in those who knew her, thus she was able to find someone willing to take the risk and carry secret words of comfort to me. “Trust in God and keep faith in Him and the Holy Virgin and you will never be alone,” she lovingly counselled me. “Even though we are divided in body, remember whenever you kneel to say your prayers, I will always be right there beside you in spirit. Faith in Our Lord and the Blessed Virgin are the ties that bind. Always remember that, my darling daughter. And God never gives us more than we can bear. Sometimes He tests us, to show us how strong we really are, and that, as we have faith in Him, so too does He have faith in us, and wants us to have faith in ourselves.”

I was holding Elizabeth, then aged three, on May 19, 1536, when the Tower guns boomed to let Father, and all of England, know that he was free and the spell of the witch-whore had been broken. Elizabeth was now motherless, just like me. There we sat, a faded spinster in a threadbare black gown grown thin and shiny at the elbows and ragged at the hem, with a maid’s plain white cap to hide her thinning hair, and a porridge-stained apron, and a vibrant, precocious toddler in pearl-embellished sunset-orange and gold brocade to complement the flame-bright curls tumbling from beneath a cap lovingly embroidered in golden threads by The Great Whore who had given life to her.

Now it was Elizabeth’s turn to be a disgraced bastard accounted of no importance. And as fast as she was growing, soon she too would be in shabby clothes. Father wanted to forget, so I doubted money would be provided to keep her in fine array, so soon it would be goodbye to brocade and pearls. Our mothers were dead, mine a saint gone straight to Heaven and hers a whore and a witch gone straight to Hell – and our father had turned his back on us and called down the winter’s gloom and chill to replace the warm sun of the love he had once given in turn to each of us. Now all we had was each other.

I wasn’t with my mother when she died. When her body was laid open by the embalmers they found her heart had turned quite black and a hideous growth embraced it. I have often wondered whether it was some slow-acting poison administered by one of The Great Whore’s minions or a broken heart pining for her Henry that killed her. She died declaring that her eyes desired my father above all things.

On the day my mother was entombed, Anne Boleyn’s doom was sealed when she miscarried the son who would have been her saviour. Father’s eye had already lighted on wholesome and pure, sweet Jane Seymour, a plain and pallid country buttercup to The Boleyn Whore’s bold and tempestuous red rose. Her earnest simplicity and genuine modesty had completely won his heart, and it was only a matter of time; we all knew The Great Whore’s days were numbered, and the number was not a great one. I saw it as divine retribution, an eye for an eye, a life for a life. Anne Boleyn, whether some lackey in her employ had administered a killing dose or not, was responsible for my mother’s death, for which she dressed in sun-bright yellow to celebrate and insisted that Father do the same, thus, it was only fitting that her own life be cut short and a truly worthy woman take her place at Father’s side.

As I sat there rocking Elizabeth, hugging her tight against my breast, I remembered the last time I saw my mother. Dressed for travel, in the courtyard, with her litter and a disrespectfully small entourage awaiting nearby, she knelt and pressed into my hands a little book of the letters of Saint Jerome and her own treasured ivory rosary, which had belonged to her own mother, the beads grown creamy with age and the caressing fingers of these two strong and devout Spanish queens.

“God only tests those He cherishes, in order to strengthen them and their virtues,” she said to me, and then she embraced and kissed me. I never saw her again.

It was Jane Seymour who would work a miracle and persuade Father to see me. And as I knelt to kiss his foot, I saw from the corner of my eye her rust-red velvet gown and gold and black lattice-patterned kirtle as she stood meekly beside him. It was she who nodded encouragingly and looked at him with pleading eyes as I knelt there with bated breath awaiting my fate.

And then, after a tense glowering silence that seemed to hover like an executioner’s axe above my head, he gave his hand to me, and I saw upon his finger the great ruby known as the Regal of France, famous for its brilliance that was said to light up even the dark, that had once adorned the now desecrated and demolished shrine of Thomas Becket at Canterbury. Father had had it made into a ring, and for the rest of his life would wear it as a symbol of his mastery over the Church, flaunting the fact that he had kicked the Pope out of England and had enriched himself with “Papist spoils” when the monasteries were dissolved and the lands parcelled out, sold or gifted to favoured courtiers, and the monks and nuns who had done so much good, dispensing alms, succouring the poor, and tending the sick, were turned out to become beggars and vagabonds themselves. I recoiled, sickened, at the sight of that glowing blood-red ring and feared I would vomit all over his feet; it took all of my will to take his hand and kiss it. I knew my submission was yet another betrayal of God, my mother, and our beliefs.

But I did it. And his face broke out in a triumphant smile. He raised me to my feet, embraced me, and kissed me. And, at his urging, Jane Seymour did the same. I was allowed to sit on the dais, on the top step, at their feet, and the woman Father called his “Gentle Jane” soon became one of the dearest friends I have ever had. She did much to further my cause. In time, all my manor houses and lands were restored to me, the jewels that had been taken from me were returned, along with some that had belonged to my mother that The Great Whore had stolen, my old servants came back, and Father personally selected fine horses for me. I was given pets, Italian greyhounds and a parrot, and even for my first birthday after my return to favour, a female fool to entertain me and enliven the dull hours, and Father also chose a talented band of musicians to join my household. Queen Jane helped me with my wardrobe; old gowns were refurbished, and many new ones ordered. We sat together for hours scrutinizing the wares the London mercers laid before us. And she gave me a diamond ring from her own finger that I would forever cherish.

She had a generous heart and was kind to everyone, even Elizabeth. Treading with great delicacy and care, she engineered Elizabeth’s return to court and had her too-short-even-with-the-hems-turned-down bursting-at-the-seams gowns and pinching, parchment-thin-soled shoes replaced. What fun we had dressing her, each of us pretending that our deeply cherished dream of motherhood had come true and she was our very own little girl to clothe and choose pretty things for.

When I thanked Queen Jane for her kindness, she said to me: “Verily, I could not do otherwise. When I look at her I think if I had a daughter and some misfortune were to befall me, and I could not be there to see her grow up, I would hope that my successor, whoever she was, would be kind to her. There but for the grace of God, My Lady Mary, there but for the grace …”

When she was with child and craving cucumbers and quails, Father took care of the birds, sending as far away as Calais for them, while I sent her baskets brimming with cucumbers from my own country gardens.

I wept an ocean when she died. Even though her death gave Father his most heartfelt desire – a son, my brother, Edward – I still keenly felt her loss. Because of her kind heart, I was a princess again in all but name.

Other wives followed, but none stayed very long. And in between queens I was the first lady of the land, privileged to sit at Father’s side, presiding over the court, with everyone bowing, smiling, and deferring to me, and there was even occasionally talk that a marriage might be arranged for me, but, alas, nothing ever came of that.

After Jane Seymour came the Lady Anne of Cleves, a German Protestant princess, a heretic, but a merry soul with a heart of gold. One could not help liking her, even though the cleanliness and odours of her person and the dowdiness of her clothes left much to be desired. But Father could not stomach to lie with her and she obligingly, no doubt fearing the headsman’s axe if she did not graciously acquiesce, exchanged the role of queen for that of adopted sister and a substantial income that would allow her to lead the life of an independent lady of means.

And after Anne came the one people chuckled behind their hands about and called “the old man’s folly”, pert and wanton Catherine Howard with only fifteen years to Father’s fifty. I felt so embarrassed for him! I marvelled that he could not see how she demeaned his majesty. She made him the butt of jests and remarks that ran the gamut from pitying to lewd. She meant to be kind, I am sure, but she could not curb her exuberance; she did not under stand that being a queen meant one must comport oneself with dignity. Though I was some years older than she, and to call her my stepmother felt supremely awkward, she tried to befriend me, being overfamiliar as though she were my own sister, one with whom I had grown up in close intimacy, sharing everything. She would brazenly and openly discuss the most intimate things with no regard for modesty or propriety.

She could not believe that I had reached the ripe old age of twenty-four without ever having had a sweetheart, and would prod me incessantly, over and over again, asking incredulously, “You mean you never had a sweetheart, never?” And when I answered, alas, God had not so deemed to bless me, she embraced me and bemoaned the tragedy of my fate, then, blinking away her tears and tossing back her auburn curls, determinedly said we must do something to remedy it.

She arranged a masque for my birthday wherein a number of particularly handsome young men, whom she had chosen herself, were costumed as various flowers, dressed in shimmering satins and silks of the proper colours festooned with lace and embroideries and intricate silk renditions of the blooms they had been chosen to represent.

“We need a little springtime even in the chill of February!” the hoydenish young queen declared as she whooped and kicked up her heels and bade this garden of living posies to encircle and dance around me.

I remember there was a graceful pink gillyflower, a deep red rose who was rather bold, a haughty regal violet, a jaunty daffodil, a bluebell whose costume was cunningly devised to include tiny tinkling bells, a marigold whose tawny locks brought back memories of my youth, a flamboyant heart’s-ease pansy, a perky pink, a bashful buttercup, a profusely blossoming lavender, a rather indecent goldenrod who brushed me from behind to draw my attention to the prominent golden bloom sprouting from his loins, and a demure – by comparison to the rest – daisy. As they danced around me they each offered me silken flowers taken from their attire and sang, “Choose me, pretty maiden, do!”

Roses of vivid pink embarrassment bloomed in my cheeks and I desired nothing more than to break the dancing ring moving around me and escape to the privacy of my bedchamber. I disliked being the centre of such attentions, and there was a nagging suspicion at the heart of me that they were mocking and making cruel sport of me, the pathetic Lady Mary who was no longer young and had never been pretty like the Queen. Katherine crept up behind me and tied a kerchief over my eyes and spun me round and round until I staggered dizzily and feared I might disgrace myself by being sick, then gave me a shove into the arms of the nearest gentle man.

“Ah, heart’s-ease, that brings back memories, does it not, my dear Derham?” she teasingly addressed the vividly costumed gentleman who held me in his arms and had just removed my blindfold so I could see him smiling down at me with a set of very fine, even white teeth.

She drew me aside for a moment before we paired off for dancing and whispered wicked but kindly meant words in my ear, telling me that if I were so minded to meddle with a man, she knew of ways to prevent conception. I was appalled that she would speak of such, and even more so that she would possess such knowledge, and with flaming cheeks I pulled away from her and fled, forsaking the chance to dance with Master Derham.

Time would later disclose that, despite her youth, Catherine Howard had been a rather enthusiastic gardener herself, and that of the bevy of handsome fellows who had danced around me that night, two of them were known to have been her lovers. Francis Derham was purposefully costumed as heart’s-ease as a reminder of a silken flower he had once given his common-law wife – the Queen – a fact unbeknownst to Father, who called that wanton little guttersnipe his “Rose Without a Thorn”. And even at that time she was dallying with the daffodil – Thomas Culpepper, Father’s favourite bodyservant, who so tenderly ministered to his poor, sore and ulcerated legs.

She gave me a gold pomander ball studded with turquoises and rubies for my birthday, but I made a point of losing it. I wanted nothing from that foolish girl and hoped that perhaps some poor soul might find it and benefit from the sale of so costly a bauble.

It was only a matter of time before the truth came out and she died on the scaffold for her sins and Father was plunged into a deep, dark depression from which I feared he would never emerge.

But emerge he did, to take a sixth and final wife, the one who would nurse and care for him for the remainder of his life. He began and ended his married life with a Catherine. Both Catherine of Aragon and Catherine Parr were kind, clever, strong, and capable women. And though I liked her well, and she did much for my sister and me, seeing that Elizabeth received a formidable education every bit as good as that given to our brother, and persuading Father to reinstate us in the succession so we could both be called “Princess” again, still I mistrusted Kate on account of her Reformist beliefs. Though she kept it discreetly veiled, she was in truth a Protestant, a heretic, and encouraged my brother and sister to follow this path, which would lead them away from the true religion.

This made me both fearful and sad. I wanted to right the wrongs Father had wrought at The Great Whore’s instigation. I wanted to go back in time to a place of greater safety, to the tranquillity and traditions of my childhood, and the indescribably blissful feeling of rightness and a well-ordered world. I remembered the love, the peace, the sense of security and serenity I had felt when I walked, dressed in pearls, between my parents, who loved each other and loved me, and went hand in hand with them to kneel and worship God, to witness the miracle when the priest held the Host aloft and the bread became the body of Jesus Christ, our Saviour. There was nothing better and nothing else like it in the world, and I wanted my siblings to know and share it; I wanted faith to unite us, not tear us apart. The comfort of the Latin litanies, the adoring hymns writ to praise Him, the Miracle of the Mass, the Elevation of the Host, the comforting clickety-clack of rosary beads moving smooth and cool beneath devout fingers, the swinging censers filling the chapel with fragrant incense, the sprinkling of holy water, the flickering candles that reminded us that God is the light of the world, the crucifixes and statues, the tapestries and jewel-hued stained-glass windows depicting scenes from the Bible, the embroidered altar cloths, the golden chalices, the embroidered vestments the priests wore, the beautiful things offered up to worship, glorify, and adore God and His saints and the Blessed Virgin, and the relics and shrines and the miracles they wrought: the blind made to see, and the lame to walk. I wanted my siblings to behold, marvel, and adore all these sacred things. And the knowledge, and the comfort it gave, that all who believed and followed the true faith walked with God, and walked in love, and never walked alone. More than anything, I wanted to give this special and most precious gift, this beautiful and blissful serene sense of well-being and peace, to my siblings and every other man, woman, and child who lived and breathed, to restore it to the people of England from whom it had been violently and most cruelly taken away. And as I sat keeping vigil at Father’s deathbed, I knew then that this was my divinely appointed mission. I was ready and God would not find me wanting; I would dedicate my life to it.

2
Elizabeth

Nothing lasts forever, and everyone says “goodbye”, even if they don’t actually say it because they don’t have the chance or choose not to out of cruelty, cowardice, or spite; it is not a question of “if”, it is only a matter of “when”. L’amaro e il dolce – the bitter and the sweet. Life is not a banquet; we cannot always pick and choose of which dishes we wish to partake; we have to take the bitter and the sweet, the bland and the savoury, the delicious and the detestable.

Sage? Philosophical? Poetic? Lofty? Call them what you will. These thoughts have often run like a raging river through my life. As my father lay dying they crashed violently against the rocks of my mind until I thought the pain would knock me to the floor, gasping and clutching my head in the throes of a violent megrim. He had, like a river himself, mighty and majestic, beautiful and horrible, tranquil or terrifying, the power to destroy any who dared cross him, sweeping them aside or pulling them down to drown. When I was a little girl I thought he was invincible, but by thirteen I was old enough to understand that Time and Death conquer all that live; kings are no exception to the rule, merely mortals God infuses with a little of His divinity and power. A crown is a God-given gift, and the one to whom it is given wields the power that comes with it for the good of all, not just for personal wealth and glory.

I could still remember a time before the very mention of my name, let alone a glimpse of me, was enough to make my father roar and lash out like a wounded lion. For the first three years of my life I was adored, a true princess, in title, and in the way others treated me, with bows and flattery and words spoken in soft, deferential tones.

I vividly remember a day when all the court was dressed in sunny yellow, all was jubilation and celebration, but I couldn’t under stand why. When I asked her, my lady-governess said, “No, My Lady Princess, today is not a holiday,” but would not say more and sternly forbade me to ask my parents. I too was dressed in a gown of gaudy yellow, sewn all over with golden threads and spark ling yellow gems like miniature suns themselves that seemed to wink mischievously at me whenever the light struck them. I loved watching the big round yellow jewels set in golden suns on the toes of my shoes peep out and flash and wink at me with every step I took so that my lady-governess had to scold me to walk properly like a princess and hold myself erect instead of stooped over like a hunchback as she escorted me to the Great Hall where my great golden giant of a father, as big and bright as the sun itself he seemed to me then, swept me up onto his shoulder and paraded me about, showing me off to all his court.

My mother was there too, her belly bulging round like a ball beneath the sunshine-yellow brocade of her gown. My father smiled and patted her stomach and said this, at long last, would be the Tudor sun the soothsayers had predicted would come to shine over England.

“It was supposed to be you, Bess,” he smilingly chided me. “My son has certainly taken his time in coming, but he is well worth waiting for.”

He patted my mother’s stomach again. “Herein sleeps your brother, Bess, England’s next king. Guard him well, Madame, guard him well,” he told my mother, and though the words were said in a laughing, jocular tone there was no laughter in his eyes; they were as hard as blue marble. And there was fear in hers when she heard them, racing like a frightened animal trapped in a room it yearns to flee, running frantically from end to end, across and back, up and down, even though it knows there is no escape. Though she tried to hide it behind her smile I saw the fear full plain even though I did not understand it at the time.

Then we were off again, parading round the room. My father tore the little yellow cap from my head and tossed it high into the air.

“Take off that cap and show the world that Tudor-red hair, Bess, my red-haired brat!”

And I shook my head hard, shaking out my curls to show them all that I was Great Harry’s red-haired brat and proud of it.

Even the marzipan was gilded that day and he let me eat all I wanted. Then a big yellow dragon came prancing in, all trimmed with red, gold, and green, with the players’ dancing legs in motley-coloured hose with bells on their toes peeking out from beneath the swaying yellow silk and gilded and painted body. But it was no ordinary dragon like I had seen at other revels. Instead of a fearsome, toothy gaping mouth and menacing red eyes, its painted papier-mâché face was a woman’s, sadly serene like the face of Our Lord’s mother, the face of a woman who would feel deeply the sorrows of the world and feel its weight profoundly perched upon her shoulders. I heard someone say her name was Katherine. I didn’t know it then, I was too little to understand, that it was my sister Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon, the proud princess from Spain who had died vowing that her eyes desired my father above all things. Instead of mourning a strong and valiant woman, who had been despite her petite stature a tower of strength and conviction, we were celebrating her demise by eating gilded marzipan, laughing, dancing, and cutting capers, while dressed in the brightest gaudy yellow imaginable. Years later when I discovered the truth about that day I felt sick; every time I thought of it after that I wanted to vomit up all the marzipan I had eaten that day even though it had all happened years ago.

My father swept me up and bounded over to the dragon. He drew his sword and gave me the jewelled dagger from his belt.

“Come on, Bess, let’s slay this dragon!” he cried, and laughing, we both struck out at the dancing, capering beast until it fell with a great groan onto the floor, sprawling conquered at our feet.

“That’s my girl!” He hugged me close and kissed my cheek, and buried his face in my bright red curls. “My Bess is as brave as any boy!” he declared. Then he threw me up into the air and caught me when I came down, my yellow skirts billowing like a buttercup about me. “Praise be to God,” he cried as he spun us round and round. “The old harridan is dead and we are free from all threat of war! The Emperor Charles can kiss my arse!” he shouted, causing all the court to roar and rock with laughter. And I laughed too even though I did not understand.

But I wasn’t just Great Harry’s red-haired brat; I was Anne Boleyn’s daughter too. I have seen her portrait hidden away in musty palace attics, and when I look at myself in the mirror, only my flame-red hair, and the milk-pale skin that goes with it, are Tudor. All the rest of me is Anne Boleyn – the shape of my face, my dark eyes and their shape, my nose, my lips, my long-fingered musician’s hands, even my long, slender neck. That is why, I think, for so many years my father could not stand the sight of me, and even after I was welcomed, albeit reluctantly at first, back to court, I would catch him watching me, and there would be something in his eyes, as if he were a man who had just seen a ghost. I was the living, breathing shade of someone he had loved enough to change the world to wed and then hated enough to kill; in my parents’ marriage the pendulum swung from love to hate without the middle ground of indifference in between. I think that was also why I had the ability to so easily provoke his rage, even when I did not mean to, thus giving him an excuse, when the sight of Anne Boleyn’s living legacy became too much for him, to send me away from court, back to Hatfield.

“Back to Hatfield” was a phrase I heard many times throughout my childhood, spoken morosely by me, my lady-governess, or stepmother of the moment, or in a thundering roaring red-black rage by my father.

I’m not supposed to remember her, but I do. Everyone thought I was so young that I would forget. Most of my memories are blurred and fleeting, the kind where I strain and strive to hold on to them and bring them into sharper focus but, alas, I cannot. It is like gazing at one’s reflection upon the surface of a still, dark blue-black pool onto which someone then abruptly drops a stone, causing the image to break and blur. But there is one day I remember very well, though some of the details are lost or hazy. I cannot recall it moment by moment, word by word, but what I do remember is vividly crisp and clear, etched diamond-sharp into my memory.

A spring day in the garden at Greenwich, my mother was dressed all in black satin, and her hair, long, thick, and straight, hung all the way down to her knees like a shimmering, glossy cloak of ink-black silk. She knelt and held out her arms to me, and I toddled into them, a baby still uncertain on my feet, learning to walk like a lady in a stiff brocade court gown, leather stays, and petticoats, with pearls edging my square-cut bodice “just like Maman!” I crowed happily when I noticed the similarity.

She laughed and swept me up into her arms and spun round and round. Suddenly she stopped, looking up at the window above, where my father stood frowning down at us, his face dark and dangerous, like a thundercloud. Even from far away I felt the heat of his anger. I whimpered and started to cry, the murderous intensity of his gaze having struck such terror into my little heart. And in my mother’s eyes … a wild, hunted look, like a doe fleeing from a huntsman and a pack of hounds. In later years, when I first heard the poem by Thomas Wyatt, the poet who was said to have loved her, in which he likened her to a hunted deer, I would be catapulted back to that moment and the look in her eyes, and see my father as a mighty huntsman poised to strike the killing blow.

“Never surrender!” my mother said to me that day, an adamant, intense, ferocity endowing each word. “Be mistress of your own fate, Elizabeth, and let no man be your master!”

Uncle George, her brother, was waiting for her. She beckoned to my lady-governess and set me down and went to join him. He put his arms around her and she laid her head upon his shoulder, and leaned welcomingly into him as they walked away. I never saw her again.

Then there came a day when I heard the Tower guns boom, rattling the diamond-paned glass in the windows like thunder. I was sitting on my sister Mary’s lap. She hugged me close and kissed my brow.

“We are both bastards now, poppet,” she whispered, and told me that my mother was dead, but I didn’t understand. Mary shook her head and refused to say more. “Not now, poppet, not now; later, when you are old enough to understand.” Then she began to sing a Spanish lullaby as she rocked me on her lap.

But I knew something was very wrong, I felt it in my bones, and when the servants started addressing me as “My Lady Elizabeth” instead of “My Lady Princess”, that confirmed my suspicions that something was very wrong indeed. And when they thought I was beyond hearing, some even referred to me as “The Little Bastard”, though when I asked what that word meant, faces flushed and voices stammered and the subject was hastily changed or I was given candy or cake or offered a song or a story or a new doll to distract me.

My world had changed overnight but I could not understand why and no one would tell me. “Where is my mother?” I asked over and over and over again, but all those about me would say, with averted eyes, was that she was gone and I must forget her and never mention her again. She never came to visit me any more, when she used to come so often, and the gifts of pretty caps and dresses stopped, and when I outgrew those I had there were lengthy delays before other garments, nowhere near as fine and not crafted from a mother’s love, finally came to replace them. I used to feel her love for me in every stitch, but now that was gone; these new clothes were made by a stranger’s hands. I didn’t understand it; did this mean she no longer loved me? And there were no more of the music lessons where either she or Uncle George – and where was he? – would take me on their lap and guide my fingers over the strings. And she had only just begun teaching me to dance. Where was she? Why did she not come to visit me any more? Why wouldn’t anyone tell me?

Then one day I heard the chambermaids gossiping as they were making my bed. I had come back to get the pretty doll, the last one she had given me, in a gown made from scraps left from one of her very own dresses, its bodice and French hood trimmed with pearls just like hers. I stood there silent and still, with tears running down my face, unbeknownst to them, and heard it all. When they told how the French executioner – imported from Calais as a token of the great love my father had once felt for her – had struck off her head in one swift stroke, I screamed and ran at them, kicking and biting, pummelling them with my tiny fists, and scratching them with my little fingernails. The physician had to give me something to quiet me. That was the last time I let my emotions get the better of me; it was also the last time I mentioned my mother. I put my doll away, at the bottom of a chest, tenderly and lovingly wrapped in a length of red silk with a lavender and rose petal sachet, and vowed never to surrender and never to forget. I would never give any man the power to act as a living god and ordain my fate – life or death at his sufferance or fancy. Never surrender! I burned those words into my brain and engraved them on my heart.

Afterwards, a parade of stepmothers passed fleetingly through my life. Most had pity in their eyes when they looked at me, and tried, though it was not their fault, to atone for what my father had done, and give me their best imitation of a mother’s love.

First pale, prim Jane Seymour, whose shyness made her seem cold and aloof. She died giving my father the son he had always longed for. When Mary took my hand and led me in to see our new little brother, lying in his golden cradle, bundled against the cold in purple velvet and ermine, Jane Seymour lay as listless and quiet as a corpse upon her bed, as still and white as a marble tomb effigy. Her skin looked so like wax I wondered that she did not melt; the heat from the fire was such that pearls of sweat beaded my own brow and trickled down my back. I was four years old then and fully understood what death meant. And in that moment my mind forged a new link in the chain between surrender, marriage, and death – childbirth. It was another peril that came when a woman surrendered and put her life in a man’s hands.

When Mary and I walked in the funeral procession, two of twenty-nine slow and solemn ladies – one for each year of Jane Seymour’s life – with bowed heads and hands clasped around tall, flickering white tapers, all of us clad in the simple, stark death-black dresses and snow-white hoods that meant the deceased had died in childbirth, I vowed that I would never marry. Later, when I told her, Mary shook her head and scoffed at this childish nonsense, hugging me close and promising that I would forget all about this foolish fancy when I was old enough to understand what being a wife and mother meant; it was something that every woman wanted. I bit my tongue and kept my own counsel, but I knew that my conviction would never waver; God would be the only man to ever have the power of life and death over me. And as I knelt in chapel before Jane Seymour’s catafalque, I looked up at the cross and swore it as a vow, a pact between God and myself. He would be my heavenly master and I would always bow to His will, but I would have no earthly master force his will upon me.

Then came jolly German Anne of Cleves, always pink-cheeked and smiling, a platter of marzipan and candied fruits, like edible jewels, always within reach. She even wore a comfit box on a jewelled chain about her waist so that she would never be without her sweets. I helped her with her English and she taught me German, and was the soul of patience when helping me with my much hated sewing. But I had no sooner learned to care for her than she was gone, supplanted by flighty, foolish, vain, but oh so beautiful Catherine Howard.

I was amazed to learn that she was but a few years older than me; I was seven and she was a tender fifteen to my father’s half century when they married. When I heard that she was my mother’s cousin I was so excited and eager to meet her, I bobbed on my toes like an ill-bred peasant child, bursting with impatience and craning my neck to catch a glimpse of her. Yet when at last I stood before her I looked in vain for any resemblance to my slim, elegant mother in that plump-breasted, auburn-haired, green-eyed, pouty cherry-lipped little nymph whom my father called his “Rose Without a Thorn” in token of what he saw as her pure, untrammelled innocence. Though she was indeed beautiful, she had none of my mother’s elegance, intelligence, and sophistication; she was more like an illiterate country bumpkin dressed up in silks and satins. And though the court looked askance at her impetuous, impulsive ways, my father adored her.

I remember once, one rare occasion when I was allowed to stay up as late as I wished for some court celebration – “Oh do let her!” my flighty young stepmother implored, and my father was so besotted he could not resist her. As the dawn broke, Catherine Howard suddenly tore off her shoes and stockings, flinging them aside with careless abandon, not caring where they fell or whether the servants pocketed the pearls and diamonds that trimmed the dainty white velvet slippers, and ran out onto the lawn, like a great length of green velvet spangled with diamonds spread out by an eager London mercer, to dance in the dew in her bare feet, reveling in the feel of the blades of grass tickling her naked soles and tiny pink toes. She threw back her head and laughed and laughed, a silly, giddy girl taking joy in life’s simple pleasures, twirling dizzily round and round, lifting her pearl-white skirts higher and higher, much more so than was proper, as she spun around, while my father slapped his thigh and roared with laughter at her antics.

“Come on, join me!” she cried, and some of the more daring ladies shed their shoes and stockings and ran out to dance with her, uttering delighted, startled little shrieks and piglet-squeals at the chilly nip of the dew on their naked toes.

Beside me, my sister Mary gasped, appalled, and looked fit to fall down dead of apoplexy when our stepmother’s swirling white skirts rose high enough to give a glimpse of plump dimpled pink-ivory buttocks, but my father clapped his hands and laughed all the harder.

Dressed most often in virgin white dripping with diamonds and pearls so that she looked like an Ice Queen, my father’s “Rose Without a Thorn” would sit, stroking her silky-haired spaniel or a big fluffy white cat, or idly twirling her auburn curls around her fingers, and daintily nibbling sweetmeats or languorously trailing her finger through some cream-slathered dish and lingeringly sucking it off, always appearing distant and bored, yawning and indolent, unless there was a handsome gallant nearby whom she could bat her eyelashes at and exchange coy, flirtatious banter with. Children and female company often seemed to bore her, though she was always kind to me. The only time she seemed to ever really stir herself was to dance, and oh how she loved to do that, artfully swirling about, high-spirited, young, and carefree, as she lifted her skirts high to show off her legs and garters, pretending it was an act of exuberant mischance when in truth it was carefully choreographed and practised for hours before a mirror in the privacy of her bedchamber. I knew this for a fact, for she had offered to teach Mary and me, but Mary had gasped in horror and dragged me out the door as fast as if we were fleeing the flames of Hell.

I noticed that a certain courtier, a particularly handsome fellow called Thomas Culpepper, had a most curious effect on her. Whenever he was near, a flush would blossom rose-red in Catherine’s cheeks and her bosom would begin to heave beneath the tight-laced, low-cut bodice of her gown until I feared her laces would burst and her breasts spring out, and until he left her presence she would act more distracted and empty-headed than ever. Once when I sat embroidering beside her and Master Culpepper came in, she bade me go and play in the garden as it was such a lovely day when in truth it was pouring down rain.

Then she too was gone, like a butterfly fated to live only a season – her head stricken off just like my mother’s, only by an English headsman’s weighty, cumbersome axe; there was no French executioner with his sleek and graceful sword for my father’s “Rose Without a Thorn”. And Master Culpepper’s head, I heard, and that of another man, one Francis Derham, adorned spikes on London Bridge, to be pecked and picked clean by the voracious ravens. And people began to tell tales about Catherine’s white-gowned ghost running along the corridors of Hampton Court, uttering bloodcurdling screams, begging and pleading for mercy, pounding futilely on the chapel door, as she had done the day my father turned his back and a deaf ear on her.

And I saw again how men and sex and marriage had destroyed another woman who was close to me, in blood if not in affection. My father, acting as a vengeful god on earth, had ordained her death, showing none of the mercy or forgiveness our Heavenly Father might have vouchsafed wanton little Catherine Howard.

“I will never marry,” I said to my best friend, Robert Dudley, whom I called Robin, who laughed at me and said he would remind me of my words when he danced with me on my wed-ding day.

Then, like the answer to a prayer, came Catherine Parr. Kind Kate, capable Kate, we all called her, a mature, twice-widowed woman with the gift of making everything all right, of solving every problem and soothing every hurt. Fearlessly, she went like an angel into the lion’s den and tended my father in his declining years. Never once did her nose wrinkle or disgust show upon her face when she tended his putrid, pus-seeping leg, applying herbal poultices of her own concoction and changing the bandages with comforting and efficient hands. Though it was an open secret that she harboured a strong sympathy for the Protestant religion, deemed heretical by many, including my staunchly Catholic sister, she won Mary’s affection and became a loyal friend and loving stepmother to her. And to me … She was my saviour! She did more than any other to restore me to my father’s good graces. And she took a personal interest in the development of my mind; she was passionate about education for girls, and took it upon herself to personally select my tutors and confer with them over my curriculum. Under her guidance, I studied languages, becoming fluent in a full seven of them, and also mathematics, history, philosophy, the Classics and the writings of the early Church Fathers, architec-ture, and astronomy. Nor were the female accomplishments neglected; equal time was given to dancing, music, and sewing, both practical and ornamental, and also to outdoor pursuits such as riding, hunting, hawking, and archery. But even she brushed her skirts perilously close to Death when she dared argue with my father, contradicting him about religion. A careless hand dropped the warrant for her arrest in the corridor and I found it and brought it to her.

Careful observation had already taught me that my father would always distance himself from those he meant to condemn; he would not deign to face them lest their tears and pleas for mercy sway him. I urged her to go, to save herself before it was too late. I begged her to swallow her pride and throw herself at his feet – so great was my love for her that I implored her to grovel, though the very thought of it sickened me – to claim that she had only dared argue with him to profit from his superior knowledge, to learn from him, and also, as an added boon, to distract him from the pain of his sore leg.

Though I was but a child, she listened to me, and was saved, but I would never forget how close she came to danger, or the power of life and death my father had to wield over her as her sovereign lord, husband, and master. Or the shame that she, one of the torchbearers of enlightenment and reformation, must have felt to have to lower herself in such a manner and humbly declare womankind, whose champion she was, weak and inferior, and that God had created women to serve men, and no female should ever presume to contradict, question, or disobey her husband, father, brother, or indeed any male at all.

Already I knew the value of dissembling for self-preservation. Once my father had favoured women with sharp, clever minds and the gift of intelligent conversation, but after my mother he put docility and beauty first and foremost, so that his last wife, Catherine Parr, must need stifle her intellect and bridle her tongue and play perpetual pupil to my father’s teacher. I don’t know how she stood it, but it only matters that she survived it.

Six wives … four dead and two living. Their history clearly showed me that marriage is the road to doom and destruction for all womankind and affirmed my conviction that never would I walk it; I would go a virgin to my grave. But I also knew, and feared, that there would be times in the years to come when God would test me.

3
Mary

“The King is dead. Long live the King!” Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, pronounced in a voice both loud and sombre. Even as Father’s minion, that heretical serpent Cranmer, leaned down to close Father’s eyes, all other eyes were turning towards the future – pale and weeping little Edward, aged only nine.

He sat there mute and quaking between my sister and me. And then he turned away from me and flung himself into Elizabeth’s arms, weeping more, I think, at the enormity of what lay ahead of him than for the loss of our father.

Though Edward had been his greatest treasure, the son he had spent most of his life longing for, Father had never truly taken him under his wing, never forged a bond of friendly father-and-son camaraderie with him; instead, like a priceless jewel, he had locked Edward away, safe under guard with every possible precaution, trying to protect him from any enemy or illness that might threaten the safety of his person and lessen his chance of surviving to adulthood and inheriting the throne. But in doing so, I fear, he made my brother unsympathetic and cold, immune to and unmoved by human suffering.

It hurt me, I confess, to have Edward turn from me instead of to me, and to hide my pain, I went to kneel by Father’s bed, to pray for his soul and say a private farewell.

Though I tried hard to hide it, I gagged at the stench, and tears pricked my eyes, but I did my duty and knelt at his side with the ivory rosary beads my sainted mother had given me twined around my hands. Poor Father, he would have much to answer for and, I feared, would linger long in Purgatory.

Tentatively, I reached out and touched the mottled pink-and-grey flesh of his hand. I bowed my head and kissed it and let my tears cleanse it. How often I had prayed for his anger to end, and for his love for me to bloom anew, like the perfect rose it had once been, not the blighted blossom that had struggled along for years after sweet Jane Seymour broke The Great Whore’s spell that had held Father captive like Merlin in the cave of crystal.

And now that he was gone, selfishly, I wondered what would become of me. Anne Boleyn’s ambition had paved the way for heresy to take root in England. And those roots had grown into tenacious vines that already held those dearest to me – Edward, Elizabeth, and the Dowager Queen Catherine – in their deadly, soul-destroying grasp.

I knew I would be pressured to conform. Most of the men on the Regency Council had profited well by the dissolution of the monasteries. They would be loath to relinquish their ill-gotten gains, and return to Rome all that they had stolen; thus they would encourage this heresy to flourish whilst they stamped and rooted out the true religion.

But I would confound them; I would rather give up my life than my religion. And I knew then, with complete and utter certainty, as I knelt beside the corpse of my father, that it was my duty to save the soul of England and, like a good shepherdess, lead these poor lost sheep back to the Pope’s flock. I prayed to God to give me, one lone weak and fragile woman, the strength to prevail against the virulent Protestant heresy that had come like a plague to blacken and imperil the souls of the English people, born of ambition and greed, not out of a true but misguided faith. And I knew then, as surely as if a holy beacon of pure white light from Heaven had just shone down upon me, that I had been chosen to guide my country back into the light. I felt a divine presence enfold and embrace me, as if angels knelt on either side of me, enveloping me in their snowy wings, and whispering in my ear that this was my purpose, my divine mission in life, the reason I had been born and survived all the perils and pitfalls that had marked and marred my life, and I would rather die a thousand deaths than fail our Heavenly Father!

I kissed Father’s forehead and stood up. I promised him that I would make right his wrongs, that the sins he had committed out of Satan-sent carnal lust and the wiles of that witch-whore would all be undone. England would again become a nation of altars blazing with candles as a reminder to all that God is the light of the world. I would be His instrument, His light-bearer, and lead my people out of the dark night of heresy!

4
Elizabeth

Poor little poppet, I thought as Edward wept in my arms. They will dress you up, put words in your mouth, and make you dance to their tune. And there, intently watching his prey with the same greedy, carrion-hungry jet eyes of a raven, is the puppetmaster – Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, the Lord Protector of the Realm, who will head the Regency Council, presiding over fifteen equally ambitious, power-hungry men, all of whom would not hesitate to pull him from his lofty pedestal and take his place. Poor little poppet indeed – I patted Edward’s back and murmured soothing words – you will have nine years to contend with this before you come into your own and can tell them all to go to the Devil and leave you be to rule your kingdom as you please.

From the shadowy, candlelit gloom of the deathbed they began to step forward, slowly surrounding us, first Seymour, then the other members of the Council, like sharks closing in around a lone sailor clinging to some bit of flotsam as they circle around, hungry for his blood. And I wondered then if my little brother, who was not so robust as he and our late father liked to pretend, had the stamina and spirit to survive until he reached his majority.

Boldly, I stared back at Edward Seymour, meeting those beady, black bird-of-prey eyes, and hugged my brother tighter, wishing I had the power to protect him.

“Edward,” I said firmly, pulling away from him. “Look at me,” I commanded as I stood up.

“The King is dead,” I said, calmly and straightforwardly. “Long live the King.” With those words I sank in a deep curtsy before my brother and kissed his trembling hand.

“I am too young to rule!” Edward sobbed.

“But not too young to reign,” I corrected.

With a gentle pressure of my hand, I urged him to stand beside me.

“You were born for this, Edward,” I said, my mind harking back to the three lives, three wives, that had been lost to bring this pale, frail boy into the world. “Your Majesty, it is time for you to greet your Council. These” – I waved a hand to encompass the solemn and stern-faced men who belatedly knelt before the pale, sobbing boy – “are the men who will assist you to govern in your minority and help you acquire the wisdom and skill to rule alone when you are of age.”

Edward Seymour came forth then and knelt before my brother, and I knew then that he was doomed. This ruthless man would never let go of the reins of power unless they were snatched from him by force. And my brother, God help him, had not that strength; he would never be more than a puppet king. A shiver snaked up my spine then and told me that Edward would never make old bones; either malaise or malice would send him early to the grave. And then the tears that I had fought so hard to hold back began to flow and, though I tried to stifle it, a sob broke from me.

“God’s teeth, stop that blubbering, Bess!” Edward snapped, endeavouring to make his voice sound gruff and deeper as he struck a pompous pose in imitation of our father’s favourite stance, hands on hips, legs apart. “I never could abide weeping women! Stop it, I say, I am the King and you must obey me; is that not so, My Lord?” he asked, turning to Edward Seymour for approval.

“Quite right, Your Majesty, quite right.” Seymour smiled as the rest of the Council began to praise my brother’s resemblance to his sire.

“My brother,” I whispered, “though you do not know it, you have just stepped upon a snake in the grass.”

“Do not vex me with riddles, Bess, I have not the time for them!” Edward glowered impatiently at me. “Come, gentlemen,” he said to his Council and then strode, with them scurrying and smiling after him, in a pompous parody of majesty, from the room where our father lay dead.

Poor Edward, he thought playacting was enough to make him worthy to fill our father’s shoes, and those about him would do nothing but encourage him to ape the king they had called “Great Harry”. After all, playing and perfecting the part would consume much of Edward’s attention, leaving them free to rule the realm as they pleased. It was as if they had taken a portrait of our father down from the wall, cut out the face, and bade Edward stand behind it, with his face poked through, parroting the lines they whispered, like a prompter in a theatre helping the actors to remember their lines. Edward would never be encouraged or allowed to be himself. He would grow up always pretending to be somebody else and in doing so would lose himself before he even knew who he truly was; that was the real tragedy of his life and reign.

5
Mary

In mourning for Father, I withdrew to the country to live quietly, though always in tense and wary expectation of the storm I expected to break at any moment when my brother and the hell-bound heretics who ruled him would officially outlaw the practise of the true religion in England.

Before he bade me farewell, Edward, with the Lord Protector, Edward Seymour, standing solidly behind him, told me that it was his dearest wish that I would purge my soul of Popish superstitions and cast out of my life all the Papist accoutrements and furbelows that went with it – the rosaries, crucifixes, chalices, candles, plaster saints, holy water, wafers, wine, relics, and censers, and such – and hear the word of God spoken in our own plain, good, wholesome, and unadorned English tongue, rather than the Latin that was the language of priests and scholars and mystified and muddled the minds of the unschooled and ignorant common people, making God more of an aloof stranger and mystery than a real and true presence in their lives. For what good were prayers learned by rote, phonetically, so that those uttering them could not understand? God and His Church did not need to be painted and perfumed and dressed up like a courtesan to be worshipped, Edward stoutly and pompously maintained, striking our father’s favourite pose and standing with his hands on his hips and feet planted wide. Better that it be plain and unvarnished, he continued, and nothing but the pure and naked truth.

I was horrified to hear my brother comparing my Church to harlotry, and I could not put the shame and fear I felt for his soul into words; I was struck dumb with horror. I was so disappointed in him that I was glad to quit his presence, though not prepared to give up the fight to save his soul; it was clear that Edward needed me. But I knew now was not the time to argue, and that I must choose my battles with care, for if I were defeated at the very start I would fail God and the great work He had saved me for, and Edward’s soul would be just one of the many that would be lost.

Though Edward liked to think otherwise, I knew my brother, though he now bore the title of “King” and “Supreme Head of the Church of England” was in reality only a little boy of nine, a child, and as such incapable of making decisions about such monumental matters as religion; he could not even govern himself, much less the consciences of others. I knew these thoughts were being put into his head, and these words, these blasphemies, put into his mouth by greedy, ambitious men who had grown rich off England’s break with Rome and the plundered gold and lands of the monasteries. They taught my brother heresy as they would a parrot a repertoire of pretty phrases. The poor child was merely a fountain spouting their gibberish and, to make himself feel more mature and grown-up, he had persuaded himself that he understood and believed what he was saying. And to bolster his ego, those about him encouraged him to see himself as an authority on such matters, and to weigh and expound upon them like a hardened and seasoned judge whose mind brimmed with many years’ knowledge and experience. They touted him as a theological scholar like Father had been, but a prodigy because of his tender years and “a virtuous marvel of learning and understanding”. He was urged to regard himself as the torchbearer who would lead England into enlightenment and free his people from the shackles of superstition. And it all went to his head and puffed up his pride to bursting so that he became arrogant, overweening, and almost unbearable. He was a pompous little prig, to put it bluntly, who even chastised me, a woman of undisputable virtue, for sometimes dancing after dinner and for my enjoyment of card games. He even took me to task about my clothing, describing my dresses as “overly lavish and ornate as your gaudy, overdecorated Church is.”

He was determined to start his reign like a great broom sweeping away all the Papist dust and rubbish that lingered in the land; out with the old and in with the new, he extolled like a cock crowing. And I began to hear reports of blasphemous and sacrilegious remarks he had made. “Holy water makes a good sauce for mutton if a little onion is added,” he declared in a sage and worldly-wise voice as he presided over a banquet. I heard it direct from the Spanish Ambassador, who had the misfortune to be present.

And it was said that he took immense delight in masques wherein the Pope was portrayed as a villain, a devil in disguise, or even a fool. In one such, dancers costumed as the Pope and a monk were beaten to death with English Bibles and the Book of Common Prayer – that vile, detestable book of collected blasphemies written by that vile, detestable creature Cranmer, who had declared my mother’s marriage legally invalid, an incestuous sin and abomination in the sight of God and man, and myself a bastard, and performed the marriage service for Father and The Great Whore. My poor misguided brother had had that evil, blasphemous book installed in every church in England to corrupt the souls of all who touched it. These wordy weapons were wielded by stern and serious Protestants clad in plain black who monotonously chanted, “The word of the Lord endureth for ever!” as concealed bladders of false blood burst and spurted from the prone, thrashing bodies of the Pope and monk, and my brother rocked on his throne and howled with glee and wished a similarly bloody fate to be visited upon all Catholics. And in another masque a dancing Pope suddenly threw off his bejewelled and embroidered robes and mitre to reveal the scarlet horns and tail of the Devil as he danced a rude jig replete with lewd gestures and loud belches and farts.

Such so-called “entertainments” were not for me, and I was glad not to be a part of my brother’s court. I could not have sat there and watched such a sacrilegious spectacle; I would have been afraid God would strike me blind and deaf for bearing witness to such blasphemy or else send a lightning bolt hurtling down from the heavens to annihilate the entire court.

For a time, they did indeed leave me in peace; they had things of far greater import to occupy themselves with than “a sour old maid who devotes herself to God in the absence of a husband.”

From Hunsdon, my haven in the Hertfordshire countryside, where I continued to celebrate the Mass with my household and any of the local gentry and common folk who wished to attend, I heard disquieting stories of churches being desecrated in London, denuded of all their ornaments and sacred treasures, and priests being violently attacked and even murdered. The beautiful jewel-toned stained-glass windows, depicting holy saints and stories from the Bible, were smashed, and paintings, tapestries, and statuary of like subjects were also destroyed. Holy books were defiled, often defecated or masturbated upon before they were cast onto the bonfires. And “pissing on the priest” became a favourite sport. Rough and uncouth men would corner some unfortunate man of God, beat him down, often with Bibles and prayer books, then whip out their masculine organs and ease their bladders upon his prone and injured person, laughing as their urine stung his bleeding wounds. I heard the tale of one poor priest who was forced to kneel as a man snatched up a golden chalice from the altar and urinated in it. The priest was held up and restrained and forced to drink the watery waste while those about him chanted, “Turn the water into wine!”

Those loyal to the true faith began to rally around me, like sheep frightened by a wolf running to their shepherd for comfort and protection. Though it was treasonous to speculate about the death of the sovereign, Edward was frail, and if he should die I was next in line for the crown. Some even came stealthily, cloaked and masked by night, to show me secretly and illegally cast horoscopes that affirmed Edward would not make old bones, to give me courage to endure my suffering and persecution as it would only be for a little while. Thus the greedy men on the Regency Council had great cause to fear me. I would make all the wrongs right and undo all the wrongs that had been committed against God and the true religion, and I would also have the power to punish the offenders. I would rid England of every taint and trace of heresy or die trying, and everyone knew it. And when they heard tell of like-minded people rallying around me, it was no wonder they quaked in their shoes and rested uneasily in their beds, but not more uneasily than I did, for I knew that I must with good cause fear for my life when a dagger or a poisoned cup could so easily rid them of these worries. There was even some talk of marrying me off to some foreign prince to rid the realm of the nuisance that was Catholic Mary.

Around this time a rather strange individual, a tall, shapely-limbed, fine-figured man with a long, auburn beard, dressed in a rainbow of silken fool’s motley, with gaily coloured ribbons tied in his bushy beard so that it seemed a nest of bows and silken streamers, intruded – mercifully briefly, but nonetheless disturbingly, upon my life.

It was my custom to take a daily walk whenever the weather was fine and circumstances permitted. I started this when I first became a woman; I found that it helped ease the cramps and pains of my monthly affliction, and from there it evolved into a habit, which I particularly delighted in whenever I was residing in the country. It was on one of these outings, when I and two of my ladies were on our way to visit a poor family I had taken an interest in, and bring them a basket of foodstuffs, and some blankets and clothing, when this man of mystery first made his presence known.

Suddenly a boisterous, but I must admit very fine, baritone voice boomed out of nowhere, shattering the quietude of the countryside, startling the birds, and nearly causing me to jump out of my skin and drop my basket. My heart beat at an alarming rate, and I pressed my hand over it as the mysterious voice belted out with great gusto:

I gave her Cakes and I gave her Ale,

I gave her Sack and Sherry;

I kist her once and I kist her twice,

And we were wondrous merry!

I gave her Beads and Bracelets fine,

I gave her Gold down derry.

I thought she was afear’d till she stroked my Beard

And we were wondrous merry!

Merry my Heart, merry my Cock,

Merry my Spright.

Merry my hey down derry.

I kist her once and I kist her twice,

And we were wondrous merry!

Then a tall motley-clad man sprang out from behind a flowering bush, with a basket of what appeared to be little golden cakes in one hand and a large cork-stoppered green flagon in the other, or so said my ladies, Susan Clarencieux and Jane Dormer. Being extremely short-sighted, I could never discern anything not directly before my face, and this bizarre character was always a rainbow-coloured blur to me; I never saw him close enough to discern his features.

Leaping from behind the bush, with his cakes and ale in hand, he began to merrily give chase, skipping and prancing after us, loudly singing all the while, but never presuming to actually catch up with and accost us. Sometimes he would pause and break into a wild wanton jig, throwing back his head and laughing, kicking his legs up high, or taking a honey cake from his basket and throwing it at me, though I leapt back from them as though they were cakes of cow dung. I didn’t know whether to be flattered, frightened, or amused, and Susan and Jane and I quickened our pace in consequence and hurried onward on our errand of mercy, though not, I must admit, without looking back often over our shoulders to track the fool’s progress.

When we departed after dispensing alms and aid to that poor family, enjoining them to “always trust and fear God” as we went out, he sprang from behind a tree and was there to chase us all the way back to Hunsdon in the same eccentric manner, singing, skipping, prancing, dancing, throwing cakes, and going through many loud repetitions of that ribald song until we were safely behind closed doors again.

After that I never knew when he might appear, always trailing after me but never daring catch me, singing that increasingly irritating song and flourishing a basket of cakes and a flagon of ale. Sometimes as I sat reading or sewing, a lone honey cake would fly through the open window and land on my open book or lap. And he began to leave me gifts of cakes and ale in all manner of places. One morning I awoke and swung my feet over the side of my bed only to have my bare toes sink into a platter of warm, moist honey cakes, sticky with drizzled honey, that gave every sign of being fresh from the oven. I found them in my pew at chapel, upon my desk, on my favourite garden bench, and even in the privy as if I might wish to partake of them while I eased my body of its waste, and once as I climbed into my coach I almost sat down upon a platter. And even, most alarmingly, I awoke some mornings to find them beside my head on the pillow. Another time when I prepared to take my bath I found the tub filled with ale instead of water with light golden honey cakes bobbing in it while that voice belted out that nerve-grating song outside the window.

Then, one night I was awakened from a sound sleep by an anguished male voice crying out, “I can’t stand it any more – I want to taste your honey cake!” as a head thrust beneath my bedcovers and a pair of strong masculine hands closed round my ankles and tried to spread wide my legs. I struggled free and ran screaming, in my bare feet and nightgown, down the stairs to the Great Hall.

“There is a man in my room!” I shouted as my guards and various servants swarmed around me. “He …” I paused suddenly, casting my eyes down and lowering my voice as I felt the heat of shame burn my face. I hugged my arms tight over my breasts, in that moment intensely aware that I was naked beneath my nightgown. “He … attempted indecencies upon my person!” I at last blurted out as I burst into tears and fell into Susan’s arms as Jane hastily brought a cloak to drape about my shoulders.

My guards raced upstairs to investigate and found my bedcovers upon the floor and a number of honey cakes arranged in the shape of a heart upon the white linen sheet, the outline filled in with red rose petals. And upon the table beside my bed, lit by a pair of rose-perfumed candles tinted the most delicate shade of pink, were a flagon of ale and two golden goblets adorned with a rich, glittering pattern of garnet hearts and diamond lovers’ knots. But of the intruder there was no sign.

Returning to my room on the heels of my guards, with Susan and Jane keeping close on either side of me, I went to the window and squinted out into the dark night. And there below me that familiar voice boomed out that annoyingly familiar bawdy tavern tune again.

I gave her Cakes and I gave her Ale,

I gave her Sack and Sherry;

I kist her once and I kist her twice,

And we were wondrous merry!

I gave her Beads and Bracelets fine,

I gave her Gold down derry.

I thought she was afear’d till she stroked my Beard

And we were wondrous merry!

Merry my Heart, merry my Cock,

Merry my Spright.

Merry my hey down derry.

I kist her once and I kist her twice,

And we were wondrous merry!

“Unleash the hounds!” I ordered, bristling with outrage. But he merely laughed at me, throwing back his head as he broke into a jig, kicking his legs up high and blowing kisses to me, before he had to flee with a bevy of barking dogs at his heels. After that night, I never saw him again.

Some weeks later the Spanish Ambassador came to dine with me. He told me he had heard that the Lord Protector’s brother, the Lord Admiral, Sir Thomas Seymour, had petitioned the Council for my hand in marriage, and that he had already most presumptuously begun to woo me until he was ordered by his brother to desist as neither of them was meant to marry a king’s daughter.

“If such is true, I know nothing about it,” I answered. “As for his courting me, I have only seen the man once or perhaps twice at court celebrations, and I have never spoken a word to him in my life.”

Later that evening as she helped me to undress, my faithful Susan ventured to inform me, in the most deferential terms of course, that such was not exactly the case, and that I had seen Thomas Seymour several times in the guise of that mad fool stranger we had called “The Cakes and Ale Man”.

“I naturally assumed you knew, Ma’am,” Susan said.

“No, indeed I did not know,” I assured her, “and I doubt I would have even if I had seen him close enough to discern his features. But if that is his way of wooing, his technique leaves much to be desired.”

“I quite agree, Ma’am,” Susan replied, “though he is said to have quite a way with the ladies, I think the rumours give him more credit than he deserves, as do the London moneylenders.”

After “The Cakes and Ale Man” had come and gone, all lapsed back into normality, but it was only the quiet before the storm.

6
Elizabeth

I could not remain at court, for the Lord Protector had decreed that during the King’s minority, while Edward was unmarried, it would not be seemly for single ladies, including the King’s sisters, to reside at court. I thought I was destined to go, yet again, back to Hatfield, and languish there for many years to come, with only occasional visits to Mary and the court at Christmastime to relieve the tedium, but Catherine Parr came to my rescue once again. I was like a daughter to her, she said, and she dreaded so to part with me, and asked me if I would like to come and live with her.

It was a dream come true to be at cheerful Chelsea, Katherine’s redbrick manor house set in a verdant green heart of woodlands, parks, and gardens overlooking a usually placid expanse of the Thames. The mullioned windows welcomed in the sun as if to dare the gloom to intrude, and everyone, even the lowliest servant, always went about with a smile on their face; everyone was happy at Chelsea. And I settled happily into a quiet routine of study and pleasant pastimes in Kate’s company.

And there was a mystery to spice up this bland but nonetheless pleasant existence – titillating gossip that Kate had a lover. And so soon after my father’s death! It was as unexpected as it was scandalous. Who would have believed it of Kate? I had always thought of Kate as such a practical, prim, level-headed, decorous lady, altogether lacking in passion, but apparently she had hidden depths. Even though her beliefs about religion and education were new-fangled and excitingly bold, I never once thought of her as the sort of woman who would fling herself into a lover’s embrace, especially not before the official period of mourning for her husband had expired.

My dearest, darling Kat, my plump, fussy, mother hen of a governess, Katherine Ashley, and I would crouch on the window seat in my bedchamber at night, bundled in our velvet dressing gowns, and watch by moonlight as Kate crept out cloaked and veiled amidst the night-blooming jasmine to the gate at the back of the garden to let him in, a tall, dark shadow stealthy as a phantom.

He would take her in his arms, bend her over backwards, and kiss her with a scorching passion that even we, sitting there watching from the window above like a pair of giddy, giggling house-maids, could feel as we tried to guess his identity. Then she would take his hand and lead him to the house and, presumably, up the back stairs to her bed.

And with the dawn’s first faint light, when Mrs Ashley still slept soundly, snoring in the small room adjoining mine, I would sometimes creep from my bed, the stone floor cold beneath my naked toes, making me shiver, to watch them, arms about each other’s waists, leaning into one another, as they walked slowly back to the garden gate, pausing to steal one last, lingering kiss before he took his leave, as the jasmine closed its petals for the day.

And then came the day when it wasn’t a secret any more. I received a summons bidding me to come to Kate’s chamber. And there he was – the rash and reckless, hotheaded and handsome, Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour of the winning smile and ready laugh. Handsome beyond words and measure, with sun-bronzed skin, wavy auburn hair, a long luxuriant beard, twinkling cinnamon-brown eyes, and a voice like a velvet glove on bare skin, he moved with a bold, larger-than-life, confident swagger that suggested he had never in his life known a moment of self-doubt, and wielded his charm like a weapon. Every woman who crossed his path seemed to succumb to that charm. Even staid and proper matrons were reduced to giggling, giddy schoolgirls simpering and blushing in his presence, with hearts aflutter and knees like butter, hanging on his every word, and men were enraptured and enthralled by his tales of adventure and derring-do upon the high seas and his dealings with the pirates who plied the Scilly Isles. He was the complete and contrary opposite of his icy, calculating, meticulous cold fish of a brother, the Lord Protector. Tom Seymour was the man every woman wanted to wed or bed and every man wanted to be.

When I walked in he was standing before the fire in Kate’s bedchamber, stretching his hands out to the welcoming warmth of the fragrant applewood logs as raindrops dribbled from his cinnamon velvet cloak onto the bearskin rug upon the hearth.

The moment I saw him my heart felt a jolt as if it had been struck by lightning and unaccountably I began to blush and tremble. I could not speak; my lips could not form the words to utter even a simple greeting. I felt as if my tongue had become a useless pink ribbon all tied up in tenacious, impossible knots. For the life of me, I couldn’t understand why. Then he was crossing the room. His hands were on my waist and he was lifting me up high, my feet dangling uselessly above the floor. My long red hair swung down over my shoulders to tickle his face as I gazed down at him and he in turn fixed me with an intense, penetrating gaze. Then, very slowly, he lowered me, and pressed me close against his strong chest – I felt sure he could feel my heart pounding as if there were a wild, bucking horse trapped inside my breast – and then … he kissed me! Long and lingeringly upon my lips, he kissed me! I surprised myself, even as I knew I should shove him away and slap him for his impertinence, and instead I wrapped my arms around his neck and clung to him.

“My Lord!” I gasped, blushing and befuddled, when his lips left mine.

“Well met, My Lady Elizabeth.” He smiled at me, displaying a set of perfect pearl-white teeth, sparkling from amidst his bushy beard, as he released me and his hands reached out knowingly to catch my elbows and steady me as my knees threatened to give way beneath my black damask and velvet mourning gown.

“I thought it only fair that since I have swept you off your feet at both our previous meetings I should continue in the same vein,” he said teasingly.

As he spoke his eyes roved over my body and I felt as if every stitch I wore was being peeled away, leaving me stark naked before his piercing gaze.

“Do you not remember?” An incredulous little frown creased his brow before he shook his head to chase it away and smiled again. “No, you cannot have forgotten! I am a man who always makes a lasting impression! The first time was on the occasion of my dear sister Jane’s first, and sadly last, Christmas as Queen …”

“Y-Yes, M-My Lord, I … I … remember …” Blushing and tongue-tied, I stammered, as my mind hurtled back in time to that Christmas of 1536 when Tom Seymour, dressed in motley coloured silks and ribbon streamers all trimmed with tiny bells, and a gilded tin crown, had presided over the Yuletide celebrations as the Lord of Misrule. All of a sudden he had swooped down on me and swept me up high into the air and demanded a kiss from me. Laughing, I threw my arms around his neck and complied wholeheartedly with a hearty smacking kiss that made all those about us laugh. I was but three at the time and not so mindful of my dignity, and everyone is apt to let decorum slip when the jolly, cavorting Lord of Misrule holds sway and the wine and wassail are flowing freely. Everyone looked on smilingly, observing that “Jolly Tom” had such a way with children, they naturally responded to him, and what a shame it was that he was still a bachelor and had none of his own. Then he set me down, and taking out a flute, called the other children to gather round, and bade us follow him, forming a living serpent of gaily garbed little bodies, weaving our way through the adults amassed in the Great Hall.

“And the second time,” he prompted, “was when I carried you in the procession for …”

I gulped and nodded. “ … my brother Edward’s christening.”

“Yes! God’s teeth, you do remember!” He smiled broadly. “I knew you could not have forgotten! My brother Ned was supposed to have the honour of carrying you, but you took an instant dislike to him – and who could blame you? – and kicked his shin and ran to me and threw yourself into my arms and said as regally as a little queen, ‘You may carry me,’ and when he tried to take you from me you bit him.”

I blushed at the memory and hung my head; I could not meet his eyes knowing my face was all aflame, and my stomach felt as if it were aswarm with thousands of anxious bees.

“Y-Yes, M-My Lord,” I said quietly, “I … I remember.”

“And now …” Tom smiled, oblivious to my embarrassment. “Here I am, to sweep you off your feet every day for many years to come! What, can it be? Have you not guessed, my clever Princess?” He threw back his head and laughed at my befuddled countenance. He spread wide his arms to show off his fine manly physique and the equally fine clothing beneath his sodden cloak. “Your new stepfather stands before you! – Here I am! Come, embrace me, Bess!”

I felt the most peculiar feeling then, a breathlessness that left me reeling, as if the breath had suddenly been knocked violently from my lungs. I couldn’t understand it then, my mind churned with confusion, but knowing that he was married made me feel as if a crushing blow had been dealt me and made me want to rage against fate, to shriek and strike out with my fists and tear with my nails. “He can’t be married!” I kept wailing despairingly over and over in my mind, “He just can’t be married!” I cried without under standing why the news should so distress me. Tom Seymour was a grown man about to cross the threshold of forty; he had remained a bachelor long past the age when most men are many years married, and the gossips had long wondered why he tarried so long without taking a wife. Now he had only done what society had always expected of him. So why should the news leave me reeling and ready to burst into tears? God’s bones, I hardly knew the man, so why was I ready to curse and shriek at the Fates that he should have been mine?

He took a step toward me, reaching out, as if he would draw me back into his arms again. I stepped back, even as I longed to run forward and hurl myself into them. I stumbled as my limbs tangled in my skirts, and only the quick grasp of his hand around my elbow kept me from falling.

“Tom!” a soft, gentle voice behind me said, and I started, unaccountably feeling a hard jolt of guilt, as if I had been caught doing something illicit, as my stepmother quietly entered the room and stepped past me to lay a gentle hand on her husband’s arm.

“For shame, Tom! You have broken the news too abruptly! Can you not see you have nearly felled her with the shock? Tut, tut, you are too impulsive, My Lord Husband! And take off that wet cloak, before you catch a chill; I want to be a wife this time, not a physician in petticoats. Sit down, please, Bess” – she turned back to me, smiling gently, encouragingly – “and I shall tell you all about it.”

Seeing me rooted there, my distress plain, Kate instantly took pity on me and guided me into the chair nearest the fire and knelt down before me, rubbing my hands.

“Please, dear, do not think unkindly of me – of us – for marrying in haste. I assure you no insult was intended to the memory of your father. I know many will think we have done wrong by not waiting a full year, until the mourning period had ended. But, dearest, the truth is, we were in love and planned to marry before your father’s eye lighted on me. But when it did, I renounced my own desires and did my duty to my King and country, and now … I am a woman five years past thirty and I long to be a true wife, and a mother, if God will so bless me. As you know, Bess dear, I was married twice before I wed your father; my youth was spent caring for husbands far older than myself with children older than I was. I thought it was my lot to go through life as a caretaker for the old and infirm and other women’s children. When I married your father and met you and Edward, and your little cousin Jane Grey, all in dire need of a mother’s love and guidance, it reawakened my desire for motherhood, to have a child of my own, and stirred such a longing in me I know not words great enough to convey the urgency and strength of it; there were times I wanted it so much it hurt me, as I thought it was a hunger that would never be sated. Please, judge me not too harshly, Bess, for grasping greedily at my last chance to fulfil my heart’s most ardent and deeply felt desire. Few of us are fortunate to marry where our hearts lie; do not condemn me for grasping at Fortune’s blessing, the chance to have happiness in this life, to not have to wait, to live in expectation of Heaven’s promise.”

“I …” I shook my head to clear it as I struggled vainly for composure; I heard her words but I was having trouble putting them together in coherent fashion. “Indeed, Madame, I … I do not blame you! I … It was just a surprise, that’s all,” I said abruptly, snapping my mouth shut and lowering my eyes as I could not bring myself to meet her loving and concerned gaze for fear that she might divine the truth that even then I was still floundering and grappling to understand. “Have I your leave to retire now, Madame? The surprise has brought on one of my headaches.”

“Of course, my dear!” I surrendered gladly to her gentle ministrations and let her help me from my chair and put her arm about my shoulders to guide me to the door.

Then he was there again, bounding in front of us, barring our way.

“But I’ve not told you how the deed was done!” he protested, taking my arm and leading me back to my chair.

“Tom!” Kate protested. “Let Bess go; there will be time aplenty for you to tell your tale later!”

Laughing, he wrapped his arms around her waist, scooped her up, and spun around and plunked her down into the chair opposite mine.

“Sit you down too, woman, your Tom has a tale to tell, and he’ll not be thwarted!” He chuckled as he plopped himself down beside my chair and his fingers began to play with a loose silver thread on my black damask kirtle.

“Now, Bess, how do you suppose I came to marry your fine stepmother?” he asked.

“I daresay you petitioned the Council, My Lord,” I said, surprised that I was able to speak so coolly when inside I was a raging inferno.

“The Council!” he sneered. “The Council? I, Thomas Seymour, petition that bunch of mutton-headed dolts?” He slapped his thigh and threw back his head and laughed. “A pox upon the Council, and that includes my dear brother, Ned, the Lord Protector of the Realm! The Council can kiss my fine white arse and thank me for the honour! Nay, pet” – he patted my knee – “I’m a man who knows how to get what he wants; and, as a rule, I shoot straight for the heart, of the lady or the problem. And why should I waste my time with that bunch of fools and knaves? Nay, Bess, the King himself gave our marriage his blessing; did he not, my buxom, kissable Kate?”

“Indeed he did, My Lord.” Kate smiled softly, indulgently, her cheeks rosy and her hazel eyes radiant and full of love. She was clearly a woman so deep in love she risked losing herself and drowning in it.

“Now, let me explain how I did it.” He gave my knee another pat. “My fool brother Ned has no more idea of how to win friends and make himself liked than a fish has. He dares to short the King of pocket money through some fool notion of teaching him economy and restraint! Fancy that, Bess. Did you ever hear such a foolish thing? Economy and restraint! God’s wounds, the boy is the King of England! Economy and restraint be damned. We are not talking about some lowly clerk who has to pinch his pennies to make ends meet!”

I sat up straighter in my chair, acutely aware that a war was raging inside me. My mind saw full plain that this man was a braggart and a fool, a complete stranger to common sense, who thought himself above and exempt from all the rules. But he was a handsome knave, a reckless rascal, with a winning smile, and a way with him that made me want to fall at his feet and offer myself to him like a pagan sacrifice. I felt my body, and my heart, lurch and tremble, wanting to be possessed by him, while my mind tried to pull them back, as if it were yanking on the reins of a runaway horse. No good can come of this, I told myself; but the parts of me that needed to listen were deaf to reason. The moment I had seen Tom Seymour standing before the fire, I too had cast common sense aside and embraced danger even as I embraced him. “Step back from the precipice and save yourself while you still can!” my conscience warned; but my rash, passionate, impetuous side shoved reason over the cliff to silence it.

“So I decided to step in and save my nephew from penury,” Tom was saying. “Since Ned had already cast himself as the bad uncle the stage was set for me to play the good one; jolly Uncle Tom, with his pockets always ajingle with coins, who never comes to court without a gift for His Majesty! I put my man Fowler at the King’s service, to keep little Neddy in ready money in my bsence, and praise me to the skies whenever he can, and I had him ask a favour on my behalf. I had him say to the King that I was of a mind to marry, and asked him if he would do me the very great honour of choosing a bride for me. I thought the poor little puppet would relish the chance to name the tune instead of just dancing to it. And I was right, I tell you, Bess. It gave his pride such a puffing up, plumping it up fat as a new-stuffed goose-down pillow it did! Was that not good of me? Well, Bess, first he suggested the Lady Anne of Cleves” – Tom wrinkled up his nose – “but, no, that would not suit me at all! I like my women with breath sweet as perfume, not stinking of sauerkraut! So my man tactfully put him off that. So, next, little clueless Neddy suggested his sister Mary, to wean her from the papist teat. But my mind and heart were set elsewhere, so Fowler, who knew in whose bed my inclinations lay, suggested the Dowager Queen, my beloved, bonny, buxom Kate here” – he blew her a kiss – “and little Neddy said, ‘Oh yes, that is a fine idea!’ And as a loyal subject to the King it was both my duty and my very great pleasure to obey his royal command! Now is that not a grand tale, Bess?”

“Audacious and amazing, My Lord.” My reason reasserted itself, slowly clawing its way back up from the sharp and painful rocks onto which I had impetuously shoved it.

Grasping the arms of my chair, I levered myself up. “Now I really must beg leave to retire…. My head …”

“Of course, my dear!” Kate leapt up and rushed to my side. “We have delayed you too long already.” She began to shepherd me toward the door again and her lips pressed a tender, motherly kiss onto my throbbing brow. “You do look pale, my dear. Shall I send you a soothing posset of chamomile?”

“No, thank you, Madame. I just need to rest,” I said as I bobbed a hasty curtsy and quickly fled.

I forced myself to walk swiftly but sedately, as becomes a princess, down the corridor to my chamber, but once inside I flung myself onto my bed and wept until the stars came out.

7
Mary

I was appalled when word reached me that my eminently sensible stepmother, Catherine Parr, had married “The Cakes and Ale Man”. Indeed, I was surprised that she had married anyone at all so soon after Father’s death; it showed a wanton and selfish disregard for his memory, and I had never taken her for one who would so brazenly and callously flout propriety. Father’s body was barely cold in the tomb before she was in another man’s warm bed; it was the height of disrespect and I could never forgive her for it.

I wrote to my sister and implored her in the most urgent and heartfelt words to forsake that unprincipled den of heretical wickedness and moral laxity and come and make her home with me, where both her body and soul would be safe in my household where the light of God’s goodness shone warm and ever-bright and all comported themselves with the utmost virtue and decorum. But Elizabeth declined, saying that she could see both sides of the matter, and both had equally valid points to make. And, to her mind, Father was as dead as he was ever going to be whether six months or six years had passed; Kate was well past the first flush of youth and desirous of motherhood before it was too late; and as for herself, she thought she would tarry there for a time as she liked it well enough, and she had good company and her studies to occupy her and did not feel herself morally endangered.

I felt a phantom slap of betrayal sting my face as I read Elizabeth’s words. My own sister had wilfully chosen to dwell in an immoral household, a place as wanton and unprincipled as a brothel, to wilfully let her morals and soul be corrupted, rather than make her home with me, a virtuous and righteous woman who permitted no indecorous mischief beneath her roof. I crumpled her letter in my hand and flung it into the fire, telling myself I should have expected nothing less from The Boleyn Whore’s bastard brat who probably was not even my sister anyway; I had always thought she had the stamp of the lute player, Mark Smeaton, about her features.

Meanwhile, despite my pleas that I was not a well woman and thus should be left in peace, Edward’s Councillors incessantly hounded and bombarded me with stern reprimands for “making a grand show” of my celebration of the Mass and throwing my chapel doors wide in welcome to all and sundry who wished to attend. Edward, they said, had only intended that I myself alone be allowed the privilege of the Mass until I could be persuaded from the folly of my ways; he only tolerated my misguided ways because I was his sister. I repeatedly informed the Council that I could not bar my chapel doors against the faithful; denying them the Mass would be the same as condemning them to Hell, and I would not have that upon my conscience. “I am God’s servant first,” I declared, “and the King’s second. I can put no earthly master above our heavenly one, and His Majesty must understand and accept that or take my life, for I would rather die than give up my religion.”

They sent letters to explain to me as though I were a simpleton that the Act of Uniformity was meant to unite the whole of England under one religion, but by flaunting my beliefs and making myself appear as a candle in the dark to the Catholic rebels I was doing the country more harm than good; because of me, bloody civil war might erupt. Did I want to see England torn apart by religious strife? they asked, stressing that it was integral that I, the King’s sister, conform to the laws of the land. I should not hold myself up as above them or exempt, but instead set a good example for the common folk and nobly born alike to follow.

“I would rather lose my life than lose my religion!” I exclaimed time and time again, imploring them to understand that it would be my death to deprive me of the consolations of the faith I had been brought up in, but they had closed their hearts and were deaf to my soul’s anguished cries.

And so it continued, back and forth, to and fro, the same argument, again and again, but I knew it could not go on for ever. I prayed to God to give me strength to withstand it as I continued to live in fear of assassins or being walled up alive to die a lonely death in a crumbling old castle in the middle of nowhere, where no one could hear my screams or rescue me.

Every day I thanked God for my cousin, the Emperor Charles. The Spanish Ambassador kept him well apprised of my plight and brought diplomatic pressure to bear upon the Council, hinting that if I were harmed in any way or forced to forsake my faith the Emperor would declare war on England. That threat, for a time, at least, would keep me safe, as England could not afford a war, but, I also knew, many a murder had been arranged to mimic illness or natural death, and my health had never been robust, so none would greet the news that I had died of some malaise with great surprise. So I continued to live in fear, knowing that God was the only one I could truly trust to safeguard me, and into His hands I commended both my life and spirit.

8
Elizabeth

“He is your stepfather, Bess,” I kept reminding myself. But it did no good. “No good can come of dallying with such a rash and reckless knave,” I told myself times too numerous to tally. “Ambition is the star that guides him, and in following it he forgets to watch his feet; he will stroll right off the precipice someday, and if you go along hand in hand with him, gazing rapt like lovers do, so too will you.” But all he had to do was smile at me and I was deaf to reason and all serious thoughts went scurrying out of my mind like rats fleeing a burning building.

He would saunter in as I sat upon a velvet-upholstered stool, embroidering or reading aloud with Kate, with his arms overflowing with great bouquets of wildflowers. He would draw up a chair behind me and nimbly pluck off my hood and take my wavy waist-length Tudor-red tresses in his confident hands and weave them into a braid. Inserting the sunny yellow daffodils, deep purple violets, orange-yellow marigolds, sky-coloured bluebells, pinks, buttercups, daisies, gillyflowers, and the vibrant multi-hued pansies called heart’s-ease into the plait he had fashioned, he would marvel breathlessly at the golden strands amongst the red, picked out by the fire’s or the sun’s light, “like gilded threads worked into red damask.” And when I stood it would look as though I had a garden growing down my back. Sometimes he would come bearing only daisies and would lie at my feet, idly weaving them into chains and crowns to adorn both me and his “bonny, buxom Kate”, pausing sometimes to slowly, deliberately, pluck the petals, gazing at me, hard and bold as his lips mouthed the words: “She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me …” And a fire as red as my hair would ignite in my face, and the words would crash and pile into a hopeless jumble upon my lips or else stick in a tangled heap in my throat, and I would feel that for the life of me I could not sort them out again.

Another day he joined us for a picnic under the shady trees in the park. And I noticed, marvelling yet again, at how my stepmother had changed from the days when she had been my father’s wife. Nowadays Kate seemed to walk in a dream, with her head lost in the clouds. Though Kate personified autumn in her colours, her red-gold hair and hazel eyes reminiscent of autumn leaves, marriage to Tom had brought spring back into her life and rejuvenated her, making her more girlish and giddy and less matronly and dignified. At that particular picnic, she grew giddy, then just as quickly drowsy as Tom plied her with cup after cup of malmsey, until she fell asleep.

As she slumped against the trunk of an old oak tree, snoring softly, Tom stealthily removed her hood and plucked the pins from her hair so that it fell down about her shoulders. Next he took off her shoes and, reaching up under her skirts, with a sly wink at me, rolled down and peeled off her stockings. It struck me, like an arrow in the heart that, as he lifted her foot to his lips and delicately nibbled her little pink toes, Tom’s eyes never once left my face. Indeed, his eyes fixed on mine, almost tauntingly, as if he meant to torment me by behaving thus with his wife right in front of me, as if he were flaunting privileges that were hers by right but could never be mine.

Kate awoke with a cry at the feel of his teeth nipping at her toes, and Tom leapt up, laughing like a madman, brandishing her shoes and stockings high above his head, shouting if she wanted them back she would have to catch him as he took off at a fast run across the park. And I was treated to the most unlikely spectacle of the barefoot Catherine Parr, a woman renowned for her dignity, racing after him like a barefoot peasant girl shrieking and shouting with laughter as she ran across the grass, with her skirts bunched up about her knees and her hair streaming in the breeze.

I kept telling myself he was my stepfather and that it was wrong that I should have such thoughts about him. I kept reminding myself that he was Kate’s husband. Kate who had been the kindest woman in the world to me, taking me under her wing and nurturing me as if I were her own natural-born daughter. And yet … his behaviour towards me contradicted the facts. He behaved like a boisterous young swain hellbent on wooing and winning me.

One morning, just as the sun’s gentle butter-yellow fingers were beginning to whisk the dawn away, and I lay still in slumber, safe and warm inside the dark haven of my bedcurtains, I heard my door creak open. Drowsily, I thought I must remember to ask Mrs Ashley to have the hinges oiled, then rolled over, burrowing deeper into the feather mattress, and thought no more about it.

Suddenly, my bedcurtains were wrenched open wide, and there, to my astonishment, stood the gardener, with the old battered wooden bucket he used to carry manure to fertilize the roses that bloomed so beautifully at Chelsea.

I bolted up in bed, outraged, clutching the covers over my bare chest, as I often slept naked in those days, and my dressing gown was draped over a chair, nearby, but still beyond my reach. A sharp retort was primed to blast like a cannonball from my mouth, when suddenly his lips spread in a wide pearly smile that I recognized instantly as Tom’s, and he tilted back the brim of the battered old hat that had cast a dark shadow over his face. I gasped and braced myself as he raised the pail and flung its contents at me and I found myself sitting in the midst of a flurry of red rose petals.

Carelessly, he flung the pail aside, the bearskin on the hearth muffling the thud, then dived onto the bed right on top of me. I gave a little startled cry as I lay pinned beneath his weight, but his hand clapped quickly over my mouth stifled it newborn.

“Lady,” he said smiling, “I come to you in the guise of a gardener to tend my rosy buds.”

And with those words he raised himself and pulled the bedclothes down to my waist, pinning the downturned covers with his knees, and holding my arms pinioned at my sides to prevent me from pushing him away or covering myself.

“Slow-blooming posies need nurturing and encouragement in order that they might grow and thrive,” he explained in a mockingly sage tone, ignoring the blush that dyed my face as red as the rose petals he had spilled on my bed, and the tears of shame that shimmered in my eyes. He ducked his head down and began to kiss the pallid pink nipples that sat in pools of rosy flesh upon my flat white chest.

Though I was thirteen, my body was indeed slow to blossom; my courses had only begun to flow and were as yet an irregular trickle rather than a full-blown crimson gush, and only a few sparse red tendrils curled around my nether lips.

I squirmed and struggled beneath him, caught between resistance and surrender. One moment I gasped and struggled hard, and the next I arched my back, offering up my paltry bosom for more of his exquisite kisses, sighing at this newly discovered delight.

With a lascivious grin and a last serpentlike flicking little lick, he abandoned my little pink paps, now throbbing and stiff, no longer pale but flushed a much rosier hue, and left a trail of meandering hot kisses down to my waist. Then he tore back the covers and let loose an exclamation of surprised delight.

“Pink petals amongst the red!” he cried, and promptly lowered his mouth to kiss my nether lips.

I nearly swooned as I squirmed and sighed beneath his questing, teasing tongue, exploring every nook and cranny of my most intimate parts, which no man had ever seen before. I was lost in a new world of bliss, a dream from which I never wanted to awaken, when suddenly a scream pierced the dawn, jolting me up in a rude awakening.

Mrs Ashley stood in the doorway of her room, which adjoined mine, her eyes wide and her mouth agape.

With laughter twinkling in his eyes, Tom raised his head and winked at her.

“Careful, Mistress Kat, remember, curiosity killed the curious cat!” he chided playfully as he leapt off the bed and bounded out the door, pausing only long enough to pat her plump posterior and provoke an indignant cry from her.

I lay taut, in dead silence, too stunned and ashamed to even cover my nakedness, and Mrs Ashley stood likewise stricken as we listened to his footsteps and laughter retreating down the hall.

“Bess!” she exclaimed, an expression of horror spreading across her round, full-moon face. “How could you?”

“Get out! Go away!” I cried, the spell suddenly broken, yanking the covers up over my head, and turning onto my side, turning my back on my beloved governess, and wrapping them tight about me, as close as I could, like a cocoon, as I burst into angry, confused tears.

“Oh my darling girl!” Instantly contrite, wringing her hands and looking as if she too were about to cry, Kat wailed as she ran to me and tried to take me in her arms. I struggled free and refused to let her embrace me and, finally, she let me be, saying only that we must talk soon, for there were things that she, in a mother’s stead, must say to me. And at those words I wept all the harder.

Tom was a man brimming over with charm and winning ways and he began to woo Kat too, to overcome the rightful objections a governess should make when amorous advances are directed at her charge, especially one of royal blood – and a princess’s virtue and virginity must never be in doubt. He brought her bouquets of flowers, and baskets of berries he picked himself. He kissed her cheeks and twirled his fingers and stuck violets, pinks, and daisies in the frizzy, flyaway brown-grey curls escaping from the prim prison of her black French hood. Oftentimes he would creep up behind her and smack and pinch her ample bottom, saying he liked a full-hipped woman with great pillow-plump buttocks, and give her gifts of cakes and sweets to further fatten them up. “I am fattening Mrs Ashley’s great buttocks as if they were a Christmas goose!” he would jestingly declare, making her giggle and exclaim, “Oh, you are a naughty man!” waggling a finger at him as if he were a naughty schoolboy, and he would playfully snap his fine teeth at it as if he meant to bite it, and make her laugh all the more. There would always be an affectionate undertone to mar the severity of the scolds and reprimands she addressed to him. “A very naughty man!” she would repeat as she simpered and preened, blushed, and giggled, before she fluttered away, putting a little more sway into her steps and swing into her hips, darting a furtive glance back over her shoulder through coyly fluttered lashes to make sure that he was watching.

But Tom had achieved what he set out to do – he had won an ally – and Kat began to sing his praises to me at every turn. And every night thereafter when she tucked me into bed with a peck upon my cheek she would wish me “sweet dreams of the Lord Admiral, my pet”. She seemed to forget that she was a governess, not a matchmaker, and that Tom was married to our hostess, my own dear stepmother. She would spin elaborate, fantastical dreams, castles in the clouds in which Tom and I dwelled as man and wife in wedded bliss, and she proudly presided over a nursery filled with our fine, handsome children. Her dreams were so vivid I could feel his ring upon my finger, the weight of the gold, the flashing green fire of the emerald that stood symbol for his everlasting love, and his naked body, muscular, hard, virile, and strong, spooned around mine beneath the covers of our marriage bed, with the warmth of his breath against the nape of my neck, the tickle of his beard, and his hand lovingly cupping my breast, the hardness of his manhood pressed against my bare bottom. I could even smell and taste the food and wine on our table, and hear the merry chatter of our guests. And there were our daughters, Emily and Cassandra, playing with their dolls, dressing them up and talking to them like little mothers, and our sons, Christopher and Mark, cantering about on hobby horses and fighting mock battles with wooden swords, shouting with laughter and crying when they took a tumble and scraped their knees, all under the watchful eye of their governess, Kat, of course.

Though reason tried to hold me back, Kat dragged me into her dreamworld, and they became my dreams as well. And oh how my heart leapt and soared each time he called me his, and melted at each endearment, each “darling”, “sweetheart”, “dear heart”, and “dear one”.

But what about Kate, his wife and my stepmother – where was she in all this? She had no place in our realm of dreams, though I loved her dearly and wished her no ill, certainly not the cruel fate of a forsaken wife like my father’s first bride and Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon, had been, nor the cold bed of the grave where my own mother, Jane Seymour, and Catherine Howard now reposed. My heart felt a sharp twinge of guilt whenever I thought of Kate, vying emotions of resentment and regret. I knew I wronged her, and part of me was sorely sorry for it, yet another part of me did not care one whit.

In times of quiet, away from Kat’s chatter and fantasy prattle, I fought at times to face and at other times to stave off stone-cold reality. Tom was a married man. I was a royal princess, with my reputation to guard as if it were a priceless treasure. If we gave in and surrendered to our passion, what kind of life could we have together? My warring emotions reminded me of my long-held conviction that I did not want to be a wife, yet a part of me deep down and buried kindled to that urge. But did the role of mistress suit me? Could my proud spirit buckle to and accept a life lived in waiting and longing and hoping for stolen moments, treasuring each tryst, prizing each pilfered hour as if it were a precious, perfect pearl pried from the heart of an oyster? And to know that I was a luxury, a pastime, a private pleasure to be enjoyed in strictest secrecy and the utmost discretion, fated always to come second, never first, to live on crumbs from Tom’s wife’s table. To always temper passion with precaution lest I face the deathly perils of pregnancy and the ignominy and disgrace of bearing a bastard. To dwell forever in the shadows, while Kate walked openly in the sun at his side, unless the Wheel of Fortune spun in such a way that fate would one day let me take her place, but that was far too cruel and horrid to contemplate, for I truly did love Kate and never for a moment wished her in her grave. And to never be able to take up my pen and write to him the words I love you, lest they fall into the wrong hands, and our secret be betrayed, and he, for the presumption of dallying carnally with a royal princess, face the headsman’s axe that was the penalty for high treason. Could I? Would I? Yes! In defiance of all risk and reason my heart sang out like a whole choir of fallen angels, Yes, yes, and again yes! Anything to be with and belong to Tom! For him I would play Love’s prisoner and Love’s fool! Oh, and I was indeed a fool for him!

Every night, when the time came to say good night, I would watch Kate take Tom’s arm and ascend the stairs, clinging lovingly to him, the perfect picture of the devoted wife. And he, with his free hand, holding a candle to light their way. I would lag behind, my steps as leaden as my heart, my mind in an agony of torment as I watched their bedchamber door close behind them. Sometimes, Tom would wink back at me and then seize hold of Kate and sweep her up in his arms saying, “Did you not promise to be buxom and bonair in bed and at board? Well, tonight’s the night to make good on your promise, wife, then on the morrow we shall see how you do at board!” And, kicking the door shut behind him with his boot heel, he would carry her, giggling and snuggling in his arms, in to bed.

Alone in my bed, I would toss and turn as I imagined them locked together in a naked embrace, all caressing fingers and hungry lips. Every male organ I had ever seen started to thrust itself into my mind, a parade of phalluses, crude woodcarvings of cocks, illustrations in scholarly tomes pertaining to medicine and anatomy, paintings and statues, naked peasant brats howling at the roadside or playing in the mud, and my brother Edward as an alabaster-skinned infant being bathed in warm rosewater poured into a golden basin. And in the privacy of my bed, shrouded in the dark of night and drawn bedcurtains, my fingers began to stray more and more often down to the secret place between my thighs, to delve and explore where Tom’s ardent lips and tongue once had, but my own efforts were a poor proxy for his bold, practised touch. In a fever of frustration, seething with a jealousy that verged on hatred for my good stepmother, I would roll onto my side, pound my pillow with an angry fist and sometimes bite it with my teeth to stifle my frustrated sobs, and weep until at last I fell asleep.

Then morning would come, and with the dawn came Tom. Sometimes striding in garbed in the gardener’s guise, ready to tend his “rosy buds”, others fully dressed for the day in fine velvet court attire gleaming with golden braid, or booted and gloved in riding leathers with a jaunty plume swaying in his cap, brandishing his riding crop and announcing, “I have come to spank my slug-abed!” But no matter what he was wearing he was always ready to rouse me. Sometimes he would come to me naked and bare-legged beneath his garnet velvet dressing gown with his cock protruding like a cannon at the ready to introduce to my eager, inquisitive hands and hungry mouth, to make me believe that I had some heady, intoxicating power over him.

I tried, albeit halfheartedly, to resist and do the right thing. Some nights I leapt into bed, gloriously and wantonly nude, wiggling and writhing sensuously against the sheets, impatient for the dawn and Tom to come and rouse me with his caresses. Other nights I forced myself to show more restraint and donned a proper form-concealing white linen nightgown or gossamer-thin cobweb lawn night-shift to tantalizingly veil my burgeoning woman’s body, so that he would tease me out of it, shouting, “Be gone, virtuous raiments!” and chastise me for my false modesty and pull me naked and squealing across his knees to spank my bare bottom until it bore a matching set of smarting red handprints and he could truly say, not just in jest, that he had left his mark on me.

Some mornings, to give myself the illusion of being in control, in full command of my body and emotions, I rose before the dawn, and bade Kat lace me into a severe high-collared black mourning gown with a stiffly boned bodice, and sat myself down upon the window seat with my head bowed over a book, so that when Tom arrived he found a proper paragon of virtuous and modest maiden-hood waiting for him.

And there were other mornings when he would catch me in the act of dressing. He would come in determined to play lady’s maid, and shoo the tittering, blushing Mrs Ashley out of his way with a swat at her “great buttocks”. He would help me draw the sheer cobweb lawn shift over my head, and help me with my stays and bodice laces, always letting his fingers dally most familiarly, standing behind me, pressing his loins close, as his hands roved over me, often lingering to caress the bones at my hips as he held me and his lips pressed a kiss onto the nape of my neck, or nuzzled my ears and shoulders. He would kneel at my feet to put my stockings on, pausing first to playfully nip and nibble my naked toes, before rolling the stockings up and tying my silken garters in pretty bows just below my knees. And he would brush my hair, one hundred long, luxuriant strokes, over my scalp and down to my waist, before his deft fingers began to braid and nimbly insert the pins before he crowned me with my crescent-shaped French hood, darting in to steal a swift kiss if there were a chin-strap that required fastening. As he tilted my chin up and trailed his fingers slowly over my neck, pretending to examine the strap, to make sure it was neither too tight nor too loose, oh how I would shiver and my knees would feel deliciously weak and it was all I could do not to fall at his feet and pull up my skirts and open my legs, begging him to take me. At such times, I was as shameless as a bitch in heat.

To my surprise, I revelled in being naked before him. I felt a hot and happy wanton pride and a surge of intoxicating power when I finally admitted it to myself and stopped pretending to a modesty I didn’t truly feel.

Throughout the day, whenever Tom was away – and oh how bereft and empty the house seemed without him! – I was often sullen and listless, weary as though I hadn’t slept at all, and prone to be short of temper and tart of tongue, to snap at those about me who innocently and unintentionally irritated my frayed and passion-inflamed nerves, as sensitive as a rotten tooth is to sugar. Shadows hovered beneath my eyes and Cupid’s arrow shot away all appetite for food. I hungered only for Tom, to greedily swallow down love’s nectar when his cock-cannon fired inside my eager mouth. But when Tom was near, all it took was a touch of his hand or even a look would suffice and my heart would go zing! like the sharply plucked strings of a harp, and what he called “the pink petals amongst the red” would grow moist with the dew of lust as I yearned for my gardener to come and tend my rosy buds, growing well now under his care. And I lost all trust I had ever had in my knees; I felt as if the whole of me would turn to water upon which a pulsing, throbbing, vibrant pink flower would bob like a lustily beating heart. As such fanciful thoughts assailed me, my whole body would quiver as if I were one of the wobbly fat ladies the pastry cook fashioned out of jelly for Tom’s amusement, and Kate would voice concern that I had caught a chill and order another applewood log thrown upon the fire, so solicitous was she for my welfare and blind to the truth before her eyes.

Then suddenly a strange lethargy began to steal over Kate, sapping her energy. She grew listless and pale and often queasy, and began to shun her breakfast tray, and lie abed late. She took frequent naps throughout the day and retired early at night as if she could not wait to fall into bed and sleep. Sometimes she would even nod off over her embroidery or beloved English translations of the Scriptures. Heedlessly, Tom and I would laugh and off we would scurry for long rides, galloping across the countryside with the wind in our hair, or sometimes, when the fancy seized us, and Kate bade us go and enjoy ourselves while she went early, yawning, droopy-eyed and leaden-footed to bed, to sail in her barge beneath the silvery moonlight upon the smooth sparkling sapphire-black river.

While Kate slumbered peacefully and obliviously in her bed, we would lounge by the fire, late into the night, lolling together on the bearskin rug, dipping strawberries into wine or cream and feeding each other, with Tom’s head resting in my lap or mine in his. Once he even dared take a strawberry and reach beneath my skirts with it, pressing it gently between my legs, against the pink heart of my womanhood. And, drawing it out again, the ruby-red heart-shaped fruit glistening with my juices, he looked up at me, deep into my eyes, as he slowly savoured it. I shivered and quivered and felt as if the core of me were slowly melting and soon all that would be left of me was a hank of red hair and a puddle of flesh-coloured wax at his feet. He made even something as simple as eating strawberries a sensual delight.

One night he recited a poem to me:

They flee from me that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek

That are now wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range

Busily seeking in continual change.

Thanks be to Fortune, it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but once especial,

In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown did from her shoulders fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small,

And Therewithall so sweetly did me kiss,

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream, for I lay broad awaking.

But all is turned now through my gentleness

Into a strange fashion of forsaking,

And I have leave to go of her goodness,

And she also to use new-fangleness.

But since that I unkindly so am served,

“How like you this,” what hath she now deserved?

Afterwards, he told me that the poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt, had written it for my mother, each stanza heart-heavy with longing and regret for their lost love, the chance fate had cheated them of when my father, the determined hunter and mighty Caesar of Wyatt’s most famous poem, marked her out as his and fastened a black velvet choker about her neck like a dog’s collar set with diamonds spelling out “Noli Me Tangere”, making it plain that she was his.

By firelight, Tom resurrected, just for me, the fascinating creature that was Anne Boleyn. Through his words he made her live again, letting me see her as, in a moment of triumph, she danced and waded through red rose petals which my father had ordered suspended in a golden net beneath the ceiling to be released, to rain down, upon her entry into the Great Hall. And how she had laughed and spun around, her black hair swinging gypsy-free all the way down to her knees, with my own unborn self making her belly into a proud little round ball beneath her crimson gown. The gold cord laces on the back of her bodice had been left unfastened, for her personal comfort and to better accommodate me, and the tasselled ends bobbed and bounced, mingling with the blackness of her hair as she danced, and also to boast, to flaunt her success in the faces of her enemies and the naysayers who had dared declare that Anne Boleyn would never be queen. Giddy with triumph, she threw back her head and laughed and laughed as she spun round and round, stirring up rose petals and, watching her, my father smiled with joy.

Tom was a man who loved to live on the slicing edge of danger’s razor. As time passed, he grew bolder and more flagrant in his attentions to me, touching or looking at me in such a suggestive way right in front of Kate and other members of the household that I feared the truth would be revealed.

Once when my tutor had stepped momentarily out of our schoolroom, Tom seized the chance to run in, drop to his knees, and crawl beneath the table where I sat absorbed in my Greek translations, and duck his head beneath my skirts. I gave a startled cry and Master Grindal opened the door just as Tom was backing out from beneath the table and standing up. He made some excuse about having come to see how his stepdaughter’s lessons progressed only to discover me in a state of fright because of a spider, which he had just killed, but my flaming hot blush, and the absence of a dead spider, betrayed the truth, I am sure. And Master Grindal knew it took much more than a spider to frighten Elizabeth Tudor.

Another afternoon we were strolling in the garden with Kate when Tom decided that I had been overlong in wearing mourning for my father; he was tired of seeing me in black all the time, and so saying, unsheathed his dagger and, bidding Kate hold my arms behind my back, he began to cut my black velvet gown away from me until it was reduced to nothing but a pile of useless ribbons curling round my feet.

But he did not stop there. As the jagged ribbons fell and twined round my ankles like ebony snakes, his dagger rose and thrust down again and again, slicing through my starched white petticoats and soft lawn shift, his hands snatching and tearing away the frayed white strips, baring my limbs and privy parts.

My face burning with shame, I struggled against Kate’s grasp. I was surprised by her strength; her graceful white hands were suddenly as strong as shackles. Turning to try to see her face, I thought I glimpsed a gloating malice lurking in her eyes before it disappeared so swiftly I was never truly certain if I had seen it or merely imagined it. I twisted hard against her, with all my might, and finally succeeded in wresting my wrists free. I twisted around and grasped and clung to her, my face flaming crimson as the roses that bloomed nearby, as I felt a breeze caress my now newborn-naked buttocks. My whole body felt on fire with shame, and yet … there was something else, something that made my knees grow weak. There were distinct threads of excitement and desire plaited so intricately with the humiliation, shame, and fear that I could not for the life of me tell where one ended and the other began. I couldn’t understand it, and it frightened me; it undermined my illusion of being in control, mistress of my own mind and body. I was in such a state of turmoil; peace of mind became akin to the Holy Grail to me!

As I clung entreatingly to Kate, begging her to have mercy and shield me, to take off one of her petticoats and give it to me to hide my nakedness, Tom roared with laughter, smacked my buttocks, and sliced through the laces at the back of my stiff leather stays and tore them away, flinging them carelessly into the rosebushes. He then sliced nimbly through the little that was left of my shift, baring the pert, firm, little pink-tipped white mounds of my breasts, leaving me wearing only my black velvet slippers, white stockings, and black silk ribbon garters tied in bows below my knees.

“Look, Kate!” he exclaimed, grabbing hold of my shoulders and pulling me away from her, pinning my arms back, as I continued to plead with my stepmother to spare me just one petticoat to cover myself as impassionedly as ever a starving beggar cried for a crust of bread. “Our Bess has acquired a bosom at last! Just look at those dainty pink buds blooming proudly on those creamy little hillocks!” He jabbed a finger at my stiff, rosy nipples, actually daring to tweak them right in front of Kate! “And look there, Kate” – he pointed down between my tightly clenched thighs – “what a fine crop of carroty curls our Bess has got!”

A dam burst within me then and tears of shame poured from my eyes and, shielding myself as best I could with my arms and hair, I broke free of them and raced across the seemingly endless expanse of velvety green lawn while behind me Tom and Kate whooped and howled with laughter, doubling over and slapping their thighs and clinging to each other in their mirth. The gardeners and their helpers stopped their work, dropped their hoes and rakes and pruning shears, and stared wide-eyed as I ran past, blinking and rubbing their eyes in disbelief. I daresay it was the first and only time in their lives they had ever seen a naked princess running across a lawn.

As I burst into the house, I could not bear to meet the stunned faces of the servants, or their hastily turned backs or averted eyes, as I bolted up the stairs. How could I ever bear to face them again knowing they had seen me thus? Like a babe in the throes of a tantrum, I howled for Kat at the top of my lungs as I hurled myself through my chamber door and straight into her arms.

“How could she do it?” I demanded, when I told her what had happened and the part Kate had played in it.

“Aye, my little chick, it is unlike her to indulge in such unseemly sport,” Kat concurred, concern creasing her brow. “She was never a one to take pleasure in another person’s pain or discomfort but to always step in and try to remedy it. ‘Kind, capable Kate,’ your father always used to call her; he swore there was never such a one as her for making things right. More than once I heard him say had Lucifer hurt his knee when he fell and Kate had been there she would have slapped on a poultice and bound it up for him, just as she always did his own sore leg.”

“Then why?” I wept. “Why would she do this to me?” I sobbed as I laid my head on Kat’s pillow-plump bosom and she hugged me close and stroked my hair.

“It can only mean one thing, pet,” Kat said, pausing meaningfully, and I raised my head to look at her. “She is jealous of you; the Lord Admiral fancies you and she knows it.”

I stood up straight and blinked. It had never occurred to me that Kate even suspected; I thought her well and truly blind to what went on behind her back and beneath her own roof.

“Try to see it her way; she’s but five years shy of forty, a fair gracious lady she is to be sure, but” – Kat looked me up and down – “not a nubile young lass like you, pet. She sees the difference, mark you, my pet, and she feels it too, like a lance through her heart every time she sees him look at you. A ring on her finger doesn’t always make a woman safe where her husband is concerned. A betrothal band doesn’t come with a tether to keep him always at her side and in her sights or right next to her in bed at night. A man’s a man, love, even if you put a gold ring on his hand and have a churchman say words over it. Aye” – Kat beamed broadly, like a cat licking its whiskers over a bowl of rich cream – “she’s jealous of you, that she is, and with good cause, eh, pet? The Lord Admiral certainly is a handsome rascal, is he not, my bonny Bess?”

She giggled and nudged me knowingly, until I blushed and looked away, too embarrassed by the stark naked truth to meet her eyes.

The awkward moment was broken when there was a knock upon the door and Blanche Parry, the wife of my steward, called out in her cheery, lilting Welsh voice that she came bearing a gift for me.

Kat snatched up my dressing gown and hurriedly bundled me into it as the door swung wide and in marched Blanche leading a procession of serving maids, each with her arms outstretched, carrying a complete new gown – bodice, over- and under-sleeves, skirt, and kirtle – in a rainbow of colours, all the best ones to suit my flame-bright hair, dark eyes, and milk-pale skin. There was a whole gamut of greens as bright as emeralds, to the more subdued shade of moss, pease porridge, and the deep green of the forest. And tawny trimmed with gold, garnet, russet, and sunset orange, sunshine yellow, regal purple, peacock blue trimmed with peacock feathers, cloth-of-gold, delicate pink, and crimson. As it was the fashion for gowns to be made in detachable parts, so that kirtles and sleeves could be mixed and matched with different bodices and skirts, dozens of eye-catching combinations were possible, and I need never appear dressed the same way for many a day. And behind them all came Tom Seymour, sauntering audaciously into the room, whistling a lively tune, as if he had not just moments before humiliated me by stripping me stark naked in the rose garden.

Like an indignant mother hen, flapping and squawking in defence of her chick, Kat rushed at him.

“For shame, My Lord Admiral, stripping a princess of England naked …”

“But see, Mrs Ashley,” he said with a broad smile, and a wave of his hand to take in the bounteous array of new gowns, “now I have come to clothe her!”

“Oh!” Kat cried, affection fighting a losing battle with outrage being played out across her face, “you are a wicked, wicked man!” She waggled a finger at him, then convulsed in blushing giggles like a schoolgirl when he playfully snapped at it with his fine white teeth.

He caught her to him in an embrace, and drummed his hands playfully upon her plump buttocks. “Come now, Kat,” he cajoled. “Now that you’ve forgiven me – and I know you have, woman, it’s as plain as that pretty nose on your face! – will you not intercede with Her Highness there and persuade her to forgive me? Remind her that just as forgiveness is a divine quality, ’tis a worthy virtue for royalty as well!”

“Oh!” Kat cried and threw up her hands and rushed back to my side, rosy-cheeked with her face wreathed in smiles. “Come now, pet,” she turned to me and cajoled, as I continued to hold myself aloof, back straight and nose in the air, looking anywhere but at Tom. “See what pretty things the naughty man has brought you to atone for his naughtiness! It would be most unkind not to forgive him! And he is right about forgiveness being a fine, princely quality! And it would not be meet to stand on your dignity and hold a grudge when the dear naughty man has brought you all these pretties!”

The smiling servant women formed a circle round me, each holding her arms outstretched, offering the gorgeous gowns to me, as Tom came and put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close to kiss the top of my head. And in that instant I was conquered, my knees melted like wax over an open flame, and I crumpled into his embrace.

“Oh, Bess! My darling Bess!” he cried, burying his face in my wild, disarrayed hair.

“Are all these really for me?” I asked.

“Every one! And all chosen by me, just for you, my bonny Bess!” he declared proudly. “I meant what I said – it’s high time we got you out of mourning. Youth and beauty deserve colour, not crow black! So I have come to tempt you! Look at this one, Bess!” He reached out to caress a gown of pink brocade. “Cunny pink!” he said, causing all the women to giggle and blush. “What?” he protested. “It is very close to the colour of cunny lips; is it not, ladies? Here!” His hand shot out to snatch the sash from my dressing gown, causing it to fall open. “Let us compare!” He held a fold of the pink gown close to the cleft between my thighs. “Indeed it is!” he beamed. “Upon my soul, I declare, I have a fine eye for colour, haven’t I, ladies?” He looked round the room for affirmation and all agreed that indeed he did as I blushed furiously and gathered my robe close about me. “And look!” He held the skirt of the pink gown up. “Is there not something suggestive of the shape of a woman’s cunny in the pattern of the weave?” he asked mischievously, sparking another round of blushes and giggles all around.

“This one!” he exclaimed suddenly, darting forward to snatch a gown of bright robin’s egg blue silk exquisitely embroidered with sunny yellow daffodils around the cuffs, bodice, and hem, with gold brocade under-sleeves and kirtle. “I want to see you in it now!” And so saying he shucked the robe from my shoulders, and even though Mrs Ashley protested that to be properly dressed I needed proper undergarments – shift, stays, and petticoats – he tugged the dress over my head, then set to work adjusting the ties that attached the sleeves and bodice, before turning me round and lacing up the back, while I found myself nearly swooning at the exquisite sensation of silk against my naked skin, without the lawn and linen of shift and petticoats, and the prison of the stiff leather stays, posing a barrier between. I blushed hotly as I felt a burst of wetness between my thighs and my nipples stiffen, making their presence known through the beautiful blue silk, and lowered my eyes, shamed by the knowing smiles, titters, and whispers of the serving maids and wished Tom would dismiss them.

“There!” Tom beamed. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s high time you leave off those melancholy weeds; there’s no point in such vibrant beauty going around dressed like a storm cloud in black and shades of grey all the time!”

And then he was on his knees before the clothespress, fishing out the black mourning gowns and sombre-hued satins and silks and damasks of ash and cinder, a whole gamut of greys from the most delicate to the darkest, and flinging them out.

“Away with this! Away!” he ordered. “I hereby banish you from My Lady Princess’s wardrobe! In with the new and out with the old!” he said to the serving maids and they obligingly laid down their armloads of peacock finery upon my bed and began gathering up the discarded garments of grief and mourning. “And now” – Tom smiled at them – “out with you all!” He pinched and patted their bottoms as they obediently filed out, blushing and giggling, a smile on every face.

“Now then.” He turned smilingly to me. He started towards me but then made a detour to my bed, where he snatched up a deep crimson satin gown trimmed with glittering jet spangles, beads, and black Spanish lace. “Wear this for me tonight, Bess. It reminds me of the dress your mother wore the night she danced in rose petals. Wear it for me tonight, Bess, and we too shall dance in rose petals!”

Then he enfolded me in his arms and kissed me long and lingeringly, then let his lips trail down the curve of my neck, and over my shoulder, down my arm to my hand, to the fingertips, before he backed slowly out the door.

“Oh what a man! A fine lusty fellow, is he not, Bess?” Kat enthused. “If he weren’t married already I am as sure as sure can be that he would look to have you, to be buxom and bonair in bed and at board!”

“But he is wed already,” I reminded Kat and myself, though in truth it seemed not to matter. Indeed, I was often surprised by just how little I cared.

That night, after supper, before he took the already yawning, bleary-eyed Kate’s arm to escort her upstairs, he brushed a good-night kiss onto my cheek and whispered one word – “Midnight.”

At the appointed hour, I descended the stairs, wearing the crimson gown he had requested. He was waiting for me. And while his wife slept obliviously in a room above our heads, a lute player began to softly strum a pulsing, sensual Spanish melody and Tom led me out to dance. “You dance as light as a dust mote on a sunbeam,” he said as his manservant leaned over the banister and tossed handfuls of red petals down on us.

I laughed, threw back my head, and spun round and round beneath the fluttering, fragrant red petal rain. Tom stood back and watched me, and then he reached out his hand and pulled me into his arms, and kissed me passionately, holding me so close it felt as if our two bodies had fused into one.

Yet things were never quite the same after that day in the garden. Kate seemed to grow colder, to hold herself more guarded and aloof around me. A layer of thin but impenetrable frost had frozen over my warm stepmother – just enough for me to see that she was still the same person she had always been, but that her feelings for me had changed. And another seemed now to have replaced me in Kate’s heart – my nine-year-old cousin, Lady Jane Grey, a shy little scholar who loved learning above all things, who had recently come to live with us at Chelsea. Though I did not begrudge Jane, whom I knew to be much maltreated and beaten for the slightest mistake or most trivial imperfection by her cruel and ambitious parents; this child sorely needed affection, kindness, and encouragement. I confess, my stepmother’s coolness hurt me, and because of it I was not always as kind to Jane as I should have been. She looked up to me, in a kind of awe, as if she admired me, with her mouth agape, and I would snap tartly in passing that she had best close it before a fly flew in, and go on my merry way without a thought for her feelings. And whenever Tom gave the poor little mite so much as an iota of his attention I reacted harshly, meting out even more rudeness and unkindness, so jealous was I of his time and affection, and I would sulk until he teased me out of my dark, pouting mood.

Though always proper and deferential, the servants’ behaviour towards me seemed also to be rimed with frost. Sometimes I would come upon two or three of them unawares, huddled together in conversation, and hear my name and my mother’s and such remarks as “bad blood will tell,” knowingly asserted. And tales of my mother’s trial and the crimes she had been accused of – adultery and incest – were dredged up again with gossipy relish and assurances that I was bound to go the same way.

And Kat … Someone must have spoken sharply to my Mrs Ashley, for of a sudden a bolt of mighty lightning seemed to demolish the castles in the clouds she had built. She awoke from her dreams with the troubling realization that she had erred in her duties as governess to a royal princess by encouraging her virgin charge to dally with a married man, and set about trying to remedy the situation and scrub away the tarnish she had allowed to blacken my name and reputation.

But against Tom Seymour’s fatal charm we were all powerless. Kat found herself in the same quandary as I did myself – her heart saying one thing and her head another. She made an effort to arise earlier to rush me out of bed and into my clothes before Tom came sauntering in for his early morning visits.

“Must I sleep fully clothed to thwart him?” I groused at having to rise before the dawn.

“Nay, lovey,” Kat said, her words contradicting her actions as she laced me into my gown, “you are even more comely in only your hair and bare skin. The Lord Admiral his naughty self told me that when you blush you are like a statue of pink ivory sprung to life!”

And on mornings when she was loath to drag herself out of her warm bed, Kat did manage to come in before matters went too far, to shoo “that naughty man” out and to scold him for coming bare-legged in his nightshirt and slippers into a maiden’s bedchamber. “It is a most improper way to come calling, My Lord!” she chided as sternly as she could against that dagger-sharp deadly charm.

I had yet to grant him the ultimate favour, and Kat was determined that my virginity, a woman’s most precious commodity, and vital to a princess in the royal marriage game, should be preserved until my wedding night whether my bridegroom be the Lord Admiral or someone else – a fine prince perhaps? – as yet unknown to me.

But Tom had a way of getting the better of her, and if he was inclined to tarry, there was nothing Mrs Ashley could do about it. I remember him once dropping to his knees and scampering about the room on all fours, barking like a dog, as he gave chase to my flustered governess, running her round and round the room, before he pounced and sunk his teeth into her “great buttocks” through her voluminous billowing white bedgown. Kat yelped and clutched her bottom. “Oh you wicked, wicked man!” she cried as she fled back into her bedchamber and bolted and barricaded the door behind her. And muffled by its thickness we heard her repeat again that Tom was a “wicked, wicked man” and never had she seen the likes of him, whilst I fell back on my bed, convulsed with glee, and he, still playing the fool, bounded up onto the bed and began to kiss and lick me from head to toe, like a great big, playful puppy.

Another time, when she walked in just as he was lifting the hem of his nightshirt, to mischievously show me what I had done to him, Kat gave a squeal of horror and Tom turned smilingly to her and lifted his nightshirt still higher and began to walk towards her, holding his cock like a weapon. “Lift up that skirt, woman,” he smilingly commanded. “I want to see if those great buttocks of yours are truly the stuff of dreams and then, perhaps, I shall indeed stuff this between them!” With a terrified shriek, Kat fled, again to lock and barricade herself in her room, leaving me, her charge, to fend for myself, as Tom shucked off his nightshirt and leapt laughing onto my bed and into my arms.

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