by Karen Harper
“My past? That you brutally raped me during Elizabeth’s mother’s coronation feast?”
He seized my wrists so hard I felt my hands go numb; he leaned down to put his face near mine and gave me a single hard shake. “Have you not noticed that I get my way now?” he demanded. “The king adores his uncle Tom who gives him money and gifts while his cold uncle Edward keeps him isolated at his studies and runs the kingdom. That needs to change. Much needs to change. Do you want me to see to it that Elizabeth’s governess is changed?”
His handsome face had contorted to a gargoyle mask, one I had seen only during that nightmare of a night he took my virginity. Was this the fun-loving, easygoing man who played cards with his wife and her guests, regaling them with stories of chasing pirates and the latest gossip and bawdy jests?
He finally loosed my wrists. “If you are not for me, Mrs. Ashley, you are against me. And if I see a sign of that, I swear—”
“Yes, you do swear. All the time.”
I thought he would strike me, but he plunged on. “God as my judge, I swear I will have you dismissed by my wife or the Council, no matter what sordid tales you concoct about me. I have heard and seen that John Ashley is a good and moral man, so he does not need to learn he has wed cheap baggage who wrote those lusty letters and spread her legs for me off and on over the years.”
Lusty letters? He must have had them amended to suit his needs. Over the years? I was sure, thanks to his travels and my assignments, I could disprove that, but he could still do me irreparable damage. As he swept me a mocking bow and left me standing there snagged in the thorns, I wanted to scream Liar! and every horrible name or curse I knew. But then I would be stooping to his level. God as my judge, indeed! I hoped this dreadful man would meet his fate and soon. I could summon no more words to tell him how much I hated him. But I feared him too. I would rather have had clever Cromwell back to threaten me. What if he besmirched my name so that my dear Elizabeth was taken from my charge? My only hope was that Tom would destroy himself—but would he take the princess and me down with him?
If I thought Tom’s actions were bad then, soon the darker days began. I felt sick to my stomach to see him flirt with Elizabeth. Oh, not blatantly at first, but a special smile, a wink, a quick touch on her back or arm or shoulder, seducing her affections. Her cheeks blazed color when he was near, and she moped about when he was gone, no doubt reliving moments with him. Oh, yes, I knew well those signs. The girl actually seemed glad when Jane Grey was taken back by her family, as if she had been some sort of rival for Tom’s attention.
I took to always referring to him as “the Queen Dowager’s husband,” though that seemed not to sink in. Finally, I said, “Although you turned the Lord Admiral’s marriage proposal down, he will think you are still interested.”
“Interested in him only as a friend and guardian, of course,” she said, intently regarding her hands as if she were looking for a chipped nail. Anne’s ruby ring glinted in window light. “I find him kind and cheerful, and I enjoy his company—his wife’s, too, of course,” she assured me.
I could not help myself; I turned sarcastic [and did not know until much later that a clay-brained man supposedly in Tom’s employ but evidently spying for his brother Edward was eavesdropping and took each word I said for gospel truth]. A hand on my hip, I said to Elizabeth, “If the Lord Admiral was not wed and all the Council agreed, would you want him for yourself, for he would then be the highest, noblest unmarried man in the land?”
“No, Kat, no,” she whispered. “Do not think such or say such!”
I leaned down to whisper in her ear, as harshly as I could manage, “Then do not look as if you desire such! His lordship obviously would have no qualms about a hasty, secret marriage after a spouse’s death, but it would ruin you! If you ever plight a secret troth or look like you would, you will regret it, my girl! We all will.”
She hugged me out of my vile mood, but I began to trust her not. Soon after, when I saw her and Tom walking in the gardens with his arm around her shoulders and hers around his waist, I pressed my knuckles against my lips and cried. The next morning, I told John what I saw happening. I almost told him all, but my stomach was tied in such knots I could not say more. What if he would believe Seymour’s lies over my protestations of truth? My John was a reasonable man but very protective of me. I could not risk one of his honesty—and humble rank—taking on the deceitful Lord Admiral and royal uncle. So I told myself that in omitting my past with Tom, I was protecting him as well as myself.
“You must talk to the Queen Dowager,” he advised me after I met him on the riverbank and his oarsmen rowed away. “Perhaps she can rein him in. And, if she throws you both out, that will settle things and you can go live with Princess Mary, or if not that, your foster sister, Joan Denny, at Cheshunt in Hertfordshire, for she is with child while Sir Anthony is at court.”
“Elizabeth would never forgive me.”
“You will never forgive yourself if he steps over the line with her.”
“But he is married to a beautiful, wealthy and high-ranking woman who adores him, a woman who has made him the second—or first, I do not know—man in the kingdom!”
“Sweetheart,” he said, pulling me close, “this is not like you. Be your rational, calm self. Do not let them panic you. Perhaps you need to lay the law down a bit more to the princess or, as I said, even ask for support from the Queen Dowager.”
I nodded and thanked him, but I was prepared to do neither yet. Elizabeth had turned stubborn on this, and if I told Katherine, it would be like telling Tom and he might find a way to have me dismissed. But I thought, with his wife in the house and my keeping a sharp eye on Elizabeth—I took to trailing her day and night—surely nothing could accelerate.
Then one morning, the door to our bedchamber, for I slept in a truckle bed myself at her feet now, banged open. Groggy with lack of sleep from worrying all night, I rolled over but saw only two big, bare male feet and hairy lower legs beneath a nightshirt hem. Was I dreaming or were we at Hatfield and John had come to spend the night? I blinked and saw no one then.
Perhaps Elizabeth had waked me up, for she was giggling at something, then she squealed. I heard a smack as I clambered to my feet, nearly tripping on my night rail. Tom was bending over between the parted bed hangings, leaning far in, saying, “Get up, get up slugabed. Get up or I will have to tickle and even spank you!”
“My lord, for shame!” I cried. “Get out—out!”
“Ah, two lovely ladies in dishabille, nectar to my sore eyes!”
“This is most unseemly, and you know it!” I told him, and pointed at the door. “Take your leave now, my lord.”
My fourteen-year-old charge had dived under the covers and was still giggling. He dared to swat at her bottom, then, roaring with laughter, made for the door. He winked at me, swept one or both of us a bow and was gone with a slam of the door and a loud guffaw.
That morning, I asked for a word with Katherine. Her chaplain, Miles Coverdale, was just leaving after leading her through her morning devotions. “Yes, Kat,” she said, indicating a seat on the window bench where she sat. “You must forgive me if I yawn, for my lord keeps me up till all hours.” Her cheeks colored as if she, too, were but fourteen.
That hardly helped me get a good start with this. But John was right. I must stay rational, not emotional. What was going on behind this woman’s back, which Elizabeth, bright as she was, could not cope with emotionally, must be handled with kid gloves.
“Your Grace, the princess and I are so grateful for your sharing your home with us, but she is just an impressionable girl yet and the Lord Admiral is such a dynamic man that I fear she is becoming too fond of him.”
“Oh, he is so easy to love,” she agreed cheerily. “I can certainly understand how she might dream of having a man like that someday.”
“He loves pranks overmuch and is such a strong person she may not understand,” I stumbled on, praying the words I had reh
earsed would be of some use here. “I fear she will misconstrue his coming into her bedchamber to wake her up, especially since neither of them is yet dressed.”
“Oh!” she said, obviously surprised. A frown line appeared between her arched brows. “Yes, my husband’s tomfoolery can get out of hand, but he loves life so, loves me, too, and I am yet amazed we are together after—after everything. Such a blessing. Dear Kat, do not fret, for he means naught by it. I will not say a word to him, but will accompany him if he does such again, so Elizabeth will see it is all in fun and play.”
I was much relieved, both that she would not tell Tom what I had said and that her presence would put an end to what she so aptly termed tomfoolery. But it did not end. It all got worse.
Not only did Elizabeth’s stepmother actually partake in these morning raids—coming in with Tom and pulling the covers from the princess, who protested loudly yet loved it all—but there was an incident I could not ignore or forgive.
We were at Katherine’s mansion at Hanworth near Hampton Court in the summer of 1548, picnicking. What began as a combined game of hide-and-seek and tag soon began to worry me, for Tom was “it,” and supposedly searching for all of us. He and Elizabeth had been gone quite a while, but things were just too quiet. I left my hiding place and began to search for Elizabeth myself. Then I heard her shrieks. Curse it, delighted ones again, I could tell.
I rounded a clipped yew hedge and gasped. Katherine was holding Elizabeth’s arms to her sides and Tom was slicing her skirts into a hundred ribbons with a dagger. Once, twice, before I reached them, I saw him surreptitiously thrust a hand through the long cuts he’d made and fondle her inner thighs—something Katherine could not see from her vantage point.
“My Lord Admiral!” I shouted. “Stop, stop, my lord!”
“Just retribution for a saucy wench who called me a cutup. Didn’t she, my sweet?” he asked Katherine.
She nodded, laughing. “I will buy her a new gown,” she assured me, loosing Elizabeth at last. “It was all in good fun.”
I was appalled, especially at this woman’s abetting her husband’s rank behavior. Besides, in King Henry’s days, no one dared draw a sword or dagger in the presence of any member of the royal family. I feared where this would all end and, once in our chamber, scolded Elizabeth soundly. Still, that night I clearly heard her heave huge sighs upon her bed and not only, I warrant, because she thought I was a stuffy watchdog. I feared the sighs were because she was yearning for more than Tom Seymour’s hand upon her bare thigh.
Finally, it happened, the thing that put Katherine on my side. She, who was barren in her two previous marriages, had told us she with child. She was elated, though she became much more emotional. I planned to try to talk to her again, this time asking her if she would write to Edward Seymour to ask if the princess’ household would be permitted to visit Hatfield for the rest of the summer and autumn so that the princess could be assured her principal residence was being well tended.
Katherine seemed amenable and went down the hall to her husband’s office to ask him what he thought. I believed her asking Tom would doom us—maybe me for certain—but I tagged along. Elizabeth’s departure from here must be accomplished at any cost.
The scene that met us made me recall the time Anne Boleyn had seen her husband caressing and kissing Jane Seymour. The door stood barely ajar and Katherine swung it open. She gasped, and I peeked around her shoulder, just in time to see Elizabeth, straightening her bodice and shaking out her skirts, jump away from a huge desk against which Tom leaned. The pomade color she had on her lips was smeared on her and him.
“Thomas!” Katherine cried, and slapped at the door instead of him.
“It is not as it looks, so—” he began, but his wife fled and there I stood.
“This is your fault,” he accused, pointing his finger at me. “You brought her here to—”
“I did not,” I cried, “for I still could not fathom even you sinking so low! How dare you seduce or force any woman—servant or gentry, noble or royal! Your Grace, come with me, for I think we are leaving.”
“I did not mean to hurt Katherine,” Elizabeth said in the hall as I hustled her upstairs as if she were a little child. “I do not know how it happened, Kat.”
“It happened because you did not heed my warnings and are a mere innocent at this, especially with a man of his ilk. I only pray the Council does not get wind of it and assume you let him go further than a kiss, because that is where he was heading. You know, Your Grace, when Anne of Cleves wed your father, she thought pregnancies were caused by kissing, and everyone laughed and mocked her, but reputations are as fragile as that.”
“It was only our second kiss and nothing else happened, really. And what do you mean, ‘of his ilk’? A dashing man? A buccaneer?”
I amazed myself then, for I blurted out, “A ravisher of trust and dreams and young women’s bodies. I know for a fact that if he cannot seduce and yet desires, he forcibly takes.”
She gasped and stared wide-eyed at me. “Someone you knew—He hurt—forced someone you knew?”
I nodded jerkily, not looking at her so fiercely now, but turning my eyes away, peering into my own past, my own soul. How much must I—dare I—tell her?
She began to cry, soundlessly. I waited an endless moment for her to ask who it was Tom forced, or even tell me she knew that it was I. Perhaps she was too caught up in her own shock and shame, or else she could not fathom that her strict, stern Kat was ever in such a situation with the very devil. But she only nodded and clung to the bedpost.
I, too, turned away and began to pack, trying to calm myself, for my heart was nearly pounding out of my chest as I forced my thoughts back to this current predicament. I might value my reputation, but Elizabeth’s was of utter, utmost importance and in some peril again, thanks to the bastard we must now flee.
At least the fact she had admitted it was the second kiss from Tom comforted me, for she could have lied it was the first. Still, she had always been smarter than me. But, when it came to that sugary, self-serving, seducing whoreson Tom Seymour, not smart enough.
At first, we were permitted to stay with my dear friend Joan Denny at Cheshunt from which place Elizabeth sent the Queen Dowager an apologetic letter signed Your Humble Daughter Elizabeth . Katherine wrote her a gracious letter in return. The fact that Joan was about to give birth made Elizabeth feel even guiltier for being sent away shamefully from her pregnant stepmother. But what bothered me was that Sir Anthony Denny quickly came home and kept asking me and Elizabeth questions, framed kindly enough, about how we had gotten on with the Lord Admiral. I could tell he was pressing for details, some of which, I feared, someone else had already told him. We both managed to remain vague and noncommittal.
While we were at Cheshunt, Tom Seymour seemed to go on an increasingly dangerous rampage against his brother, something I had seen coming for years. Sir Anthony told us that Tom, who also had the title of Master of the Ordinance and Warden of Wales, was boasting that he was so popular in the western counties he could raise ten thousand armed troops. Rumors said he even stored gun-powder in his London mansion, Seymour House. When Anne Stanhope, Edward Seymour’s pompous wife, argued that she should take precedence over Katherine at court affairs, Tom publicly insulted her and his brother. Tom’s name was on everyone’s lips, and I could only rejoice his lips were long gone from me and my princess.
At the behest of the Privy Council, we moved to Hatfield House. Except for missing Joan and her new son, I was delighted we were home again. John himself rode in from London with the news that the Seymours were now parents, for at Sudeley Castle, where Tom was no doubt hoping his heir would be born, on August 29, Katherine had been delivered of a baby girl, named Mary. The old adage that history repeated itself was never more true, I thought, and I mourned Anne Boleyn not producing the king’s heir to preserve her own life all over again. Still, if she had borne the son King Henry coveted, the world might not have had Elizabe
th.
“I wish we could have been with Katherine,” Elizabeth bemoaned as she, John and I sat over a late supper the day he rode in. “I wish I could see her child.”
“I am sure you will,” I said, and took her hand across the corner of the table. “Someday, when the Lord High Admiral is chasing pirates at sea, we shall go to see Katherine’s child.”
John, frowning, cleared his throat and said, “They say he has taken bribes from pirates to permit them to ply the seas around the Scilly Isles, and that he’s used the money to buy more weapons.”
“He had best beware,” Elizabeth observed, “else his brother will think he is raising an army against him and the Council—even against my royal brother.”
“Exactly, Your Grace,” John said. “It is important to see not only the strengths in people but their weaknesses too.”
After we had played but one hand of primero, she insisted we walk outside without her. John had only this night before he would be heading back to his duties, and the moon threw silver light on the shadowy paths before us. I was surprised he did not sweep me off to bed at once, as he had been wont to do, but I sensed he had something on his mind.
“Can you not convince them to let you come to serve here?” I asked, leaning my head on his shoulder as we walked.
“I believe that is in sight. I was told today that the fact I had stayed in touch with the princess through my wife while you were living with the Queen Dowager showed my loyalty to the princess.”
“Oh, John!” I threw my arms around him.
“But there is one thing,” he said, not returning my embrace but merely standing within it. Foreboding sat hard on my heart.
“What? I don’t care about anything if we can be a family again!”
“One of the oarsmen who always rowed me to Chelsea used to be a bargeman for King Henry.”
