Traitor's Kiss

by Pauline Francis

  About this book

  I was only two when my father, the King, executed my mother, Anne Boleyn. People say she was a witch who stole his heart with her dark enchantments, but I can remember nothing of her. Yet still the malicious rumours of others haunt me.

  Now the gossips are saying vile things that threaten me. I am being held captive in my own palace until I admit that their lies are true. I try not to show I’m afraid, but if I cannot prove that I am innocent, I will be condemned to die… Like mother, like daughter?

  Traitor’s Kiss is the compelling story of the young Elizabeth caught up in a scandal that threatens her survival.

  For Lynda

  Contents

  Queen Elizabeth I quote

  The Tudor Family Tree of Princess Elizabeth

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

  Chapter Fifteen

  Chapter Sixteen

  Chapter Seventeen

  Chapter Eighteen

  Chapter Nineteen

  Chapter Twenty

  Chapter Twenty-one

  Chapter Twenty-two

  Author’s Note

  Acknowledgements

  Bibliography

  About the Author

  Usborne Quicklinks

  Raven Queen by Pauline Francis

  More compelling reads from Usborne Fiction

  “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king.”

  Queen Elizabeth I, 1588

  Prologue

  Hatfield Palace, Hertfordshire

  21 January, 1549

  A scream comes through the open window, so piercing that it stabs me into waking. Who is it?

  Kat will know.

  But Kat is not in her bed, although her clothes are scattered on the floor, twisted like bodies in the gathering light.

  I run downstairs, two steps at a time. At this hour, laundry maids should be crossing the courtyard. Master Parry should be giving orders to the servants. Roger Ascham, my tutor, should be in the schoolroom, for he likes to read before breakfast.

  But all is silent, except for the distant thud of horses’ hooves and the wind whining between the tall chimneys.

  Something is wrong.

  “KAT! KAT!” I stand under the oak and scream into the wind. Dawn lifts the mist around its crown and softens the frozen grass that chills my bare feet.

  I am Princess Elizabeth, daughter of King Henry the Eighth and Anne Boleyn, both dead. Kat is my only constant now. Without her, I do not know what to do.

  Shall I pray? No, I do not want to kneel. When my mother knelt for her execution, she did not know that the sword was already hidden under a heap of straw; so the swordsman struck off her head suddenly, from behind, and she knew nothing of it. Full of pity for her, he had taken off his shoes so that she would not hear him coming.

  That is the only good thing I have ever heard about my mother: that she died swiftly. As for how she lived, I have had only gossip to tell me.

  “KAT! Where are you?” The wind hurls sleet into my mouth.

  “Call as much as you want, but she will not come.” It is a man’s voice, just behind me. His peppermint breath warms my neck. He must have crept from the shadows of the tree with the stealth of my mother’s swordsman. I turn my head, take in his short hair and beard, his face bloated from Christmastide although Twelfth Night is two weeks past. Envy bites. I was not at court. The new King – my little brother Edward – did not invite me.

  I recognize this man. He was a gentleman in my father’s privy chamber and Master of the Horse to my stepmother, Catherine Parr, when she was Queen.

  I shift from one frozen foot to the other. “Sir Robert Tyrwhitt?” His bow is so brief that he hardly bends his back. “What brings you uninvited to my draughty palace on a winter’s day?” I try to keep my voice light, like the snowflakes settling on our heads, but I am chilled with fear. “Where is Kat?”

  “Mistress Ashley? She has gone away for a while.”

  His voice slaps me like the wind.

  That is what they said when my mother stopped coming to see me. I am two years old again and my throat tightens at the memory. I burst into tears as I did then, although I dislike the taste of salt. Now I tug at the collar of his fur cloak. “Is Kat dead?” I ask.

  “She might be soon,” he whispers. “She has gone to the Tower with your steward. He was the one who screamed just now.”

  “Why?” My voice dies in my throat.

  He stares straight into my eyes. “To find out the truth,” he says.

  It has come to this. In my heart, I knew that it would. Too many things happened last year when I went to live in London. But Kat has done nothing – except love me. My tears double. I know what truth-seekers are like. I am one myself, and it has taken me to a place worse than hell.

  With little concern for my tears, Tyrwhitt commands me to meet him in the schoolroom when I am dressed.

  I stiffen. I am a princess. I give the commands.

  It is my palace. Not his.

  Then he is gone, in a swirl of snowflakes, as if I have dreamed him, and I stumble back to my bedchamber, drenched with sleet, reeking of fear – and anger.

  Why did I blubber like a baby in front of Tyrwhitt? He will think I am easy prey.

  Have I learned nothing this past year?

  Kat has not laid out my clothes. Blanche Parry has not brought water for me to wash. I call for her; but she does not come either. I run backwards and forwards, like a headless hen, searching for something to wear. Where is the sombre silk from yesterday? Where are my velvet shoes?

  I find the dress folded on Kat’s chair. It stinks. But so do I now. I put it on, fastening the buttons wrongly so that the collar lies crooked and the bodice is not tight enough to stop my heart racing. I splash myself with Kat’s perfume to hide my sweating fear and let my hair remain as crinkled as autumn leaves for I cannot find my comb.

  There are wooden steps that lead from the garden to the schoolroom, and I take them instead of the ones from the Great Hall, although I am chilled to the bone. I want to look through the window before I go in. If Tyrwhitt does not choose his words carefully, he will feel the lash of my tongue.

  The schoolroom window glows with candlelight.

  I stand on tiptoe.

  Tyrwhitt is seated in my tutor Ascham’s chair. He has put on all his finery: his sleeves are of scarlet silk to match the feather in his cap. His fingers are as slender as mine, flashing their rainbow rings: emeralds, rubies and sapphires.

  In this schoolroom, I learned to read and write at Kat’s knee. Here I read Virgil and Horace and Cicero. It is a room for royal children, its walls warmed by tapestries and cushions, softened by books and maps, perfumed by ink and parchment and warm candle wax.

  It is my sanctuary and I do not want Tyrwhitt in it.

  He has seen me and opens the door. I go in, and in spite of my dishevelled appearance, he sweeps off his feathered cap in a deep bow. Then he waves me to my chair. Ascham always keeps his chair close to the fire. Mine is close to the window and the garden door, for I hate to be shut in.

  I remain standing, stamping my foot, forgetting that my brother, the King, must have sent him. “You cannot come to my palace unannounced and take my personal servants to the Tower without my permission,” I protest, breathless.

  “Oh but I can, You
r Grace. The King’s Privy Council has commanded it.”

  “Well, I am the King’s sister and he will help me. And if he doesn’t, I shall ask my stepfather, Thomas Seymour. He is the King’s uncle.”

  “Your stepfather…” He lingers on the word, “…is no longer at home. He has also gone to the Tower.”

  I am slow to understand. “Is my stepfather to question my servants? He should have asked me first.”

  “Ah – no. He is a prisoner too.”

  My knees buckle.

  Tyrwhitt waits for me to ask what he has done wrong. I do not. When I was very young – after my mother died – I learned one thing: if you watch in silence, you will hear more. I sink into my chair.

  His chains of office clink as he fidgets. “Your stepfather, Thomas Seymour, has entered the King’s bedchamber in the middle of the night, and killed his spaniel when it barked,” he says. “He has boasted of becoming your brother’s Protector…and of marrying you, now that his wife, Lady Catherine, is dead.”

  I want to cry again at the mention of Lady Catherine. She was my father’s sixth and last wife. A few months after his death at Greenwich Palace almost two years ago, she married Thomas Seymour. I loved her dearly and I curse him in my mind. He is the reason that I did not see her before she died in childbed.

  Tyrwhitt smiles like a fond father. “Let us talk of Thomas Seymour and you.”

  “There is no ‘Thomas Seymour and me’. He is old enough to be… He is almost forty.”

  “Yet there are things” – he lowers his voice – “which you might want to confess to me now, before Mistress Ashley is forced to confess them…shameful things that we might attribute to, let us say, youthful folly.”

  The day has barely lightened beyond grey at the window. It was at such times that Thomas Seymour came to my bedchamber… I am close to fainting. Hunger gnaws at my stomach. I have not eaten this morning. “What do you mean?” I whisper.

  “You were seen in Lord Seymour’s barge on the Thames last Shrovetide…alone…and before that…” He coughs.

  The door creaks. Blanche Parry comes in, her eyes swollen with weeping. She does not look at me, but, clumsy with nerves, bangs a silver dish onto the table between us – a dish of sugar roses.

  My breathing quickens. My cheeks flush. Nobody makes sugar roses for me here. I do not permit it.

  Tyrwhitt knows.

  I do not know how this will end, but I know how it began – little more than a year ago, when the leaves curled like flames, on the morning of my fourteenth birthday…

  …with a sugar rose…

  Chapter One

  Chelsea Palace, London

  1547

  The door of my bedchamber creaked open, although it was not fully light outside, bringing in the sweet fragrance of sugar. I wriggled, mouth moist with anticipation, for Kat had promised me a birthday treat.

  Fourteen years ago, on this day – the seventh day of September – my father had roared: “I gave up the Pope for this!”

  “This” was me – another useless daughter like Mary, the daughter of my father’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon.

  The pain his words caused my mother must have been worse than the pains of childbirth.

  My birthday. The day when everything was cancelled – beer, banquets and fireworks – because I was not the prince that would have saved my mother, Anne Boleyn. It was the day that marked her descent into despair. Her agony did not end with my birth, but continued for almost three years, until the last sharp pain of the sword.

  I pushed these dark thoughts aside. Sugar! My teeth were rotting with it. But another scent came with the sugar, the sour and stale smell of the person who was carrying it. I got ready to scold the maid who had dared to bring her stench into my bedchamber, for, like my father, my sense of smell is keener than a bloodhound’s. My pretty palace at Hatfield contains mostly fragrant women, and my male servants must suck peppermint pastilles if they come into my presence.

  But I wanted Kat to have her surprise first. I closed my eyes and waited. Somebody lifted my hair and I thought it must be Kat herself. Something brushed against the nape of my neck, something rough and stinking of stale food. Confused, I twisted away from it, opened my eyes to curse whoever it was.

  It was my stepfather, Thomas Seymour, bare-chested and bare-legged, carrying a cloth-covered silver dish. He stroked his beard, laughing at his own silly trick.

  Part of me froze with fear. No man had ever entered my bedchamber, not even my father. No man had ever brushed my neck with his beard. And if Kat had to call a physician for me, she never left my side.

  Disappointment slowly replaced the fear. Since my father’s death in January, my stepmother, Catherine Parr, had invited me to leave Hatfield Palace to live with her and her new husband, Thomas Seymour. These last months had been the happiest of my life, in spite of my father’s death, for I had grown to love my stepmother deeply. As for my stepfather, he was vain and arrogant, but he had always made me laugh, until now.

  I did not know what to do.

  My stepfather thrust the dish under my nose.

  I backed away. “You frightened me, sir,” I said. “What are you doing in my bedchamber? Where is Kat?”

  He showed no shame. “Can a father not bring his daughter a treat on her birthday?” he asked. “I wish you well today, Bess.” I winced at his use of my pet name. He placed the dish on the bedcover between us and removed the cloth. In it lay a single sugar rose. It was white, although grubby at the petals’ edges, and the cook had tried to disguise its greyness with gold leaf. “A perfect rose for a perfect rose,” he whispered. “It was difficult for Maggie to make, Bess.”

  “My name is Elizabeth, sir.”

  “The rose is a secret flower, for its centre is hidden beneath so many petals…”

  My skin tingled. My heart was beating too fast. He should not have brought it to me. He should not have brushed his beard against me.

  “Eat it now,” he went on. “Maggie says that she has put too much water on the petals and they may not hold together for long.”

  I kicked him in fury. He laughed softly and caught hold of my feet, tickling my toes. My spine tingled. Then he took my hand and ran his fingers up my arm. To my confusion and disgust, I did not want him to stop. I wanted him to tickle my neck again.

  Then he forced open my clenched hand and placed the rose in my palm.

  Disgusted with him, disgusted with myself, I threw it back at him. It split against his nose, showering sugar crystals onto his beard.

  It is not in my nature to run, but run I did, as if the devil himself was after me: following the scent of sugar to the kitchen, through the back entrance into the garden, through lavender and thyme, until I reached a rose walk. Here I slowed to catch my breath. Some roses had been battered by last night’s storm and their damp petals clung to the soles of my bare feet. Their heavy fragrance made my head spin and I glimpsed a shadowy figure reaching out to me; I did not know if it was friend or foe – or my stepfather.

  I shuddered. “Who’s there?” I whispered.

  The air moved in the early shadows. Not as a dress or underskirt rustles. This was like the movement of a whole person, displacing the air around my head like the swish of a sword. I touched my neck, calling out wildly, “Show yourself!”

  At once, the air stilled.

  It was a sudden autumn gust, I told myself – or nothing at all. But how can nothing make the blood rush to the head, the spine shiver?

  Chapter Two

  Still afraid, I ran on…too far, for the gardens led down to the River Thames. It was the only thing I did not like about Chelsea Palace. I hated the stench of the river, for every privy in London empties into it. It was the only time I missed my sweet-smelling palace of Hatfield, where I had lived since I was a baby.

  The stink of human filth brought downstream would have turned my stomach alone, but mixed with the Thames mud, it almost made me retch. That mud smelled of everything rotten: ro
tting meat, rotting vegetables, rotting fruit, rotting rats and cats…everything rotten.

  Today, there was something worse than the stench. Silver eyes stared at me from the riverbank, dead eyes of dead fish abandoned in the mud by a high tide.

  Women and children fought for every fish. Men, digging deeper with their hands, tugged out live eels. Some, forgetting their bellies, had gone for richer pickings: a rusted lantern, splintered wooden planks, a silk-tasselled cushion. Above them, fighting for the same spoils, gulls shrieked and swooped.

  A boy was watching from an old rowing boat. When he saw me on the water steps, he jumped out and made his way towards me. I ran back up the steps, retching and breathless, but the smell followed me, so dank and fetid that I did not want to breathe at all.

  I stopped and turned to face him. He was tall and straight-limbed, unlike the scavengers, whose legs and backs were bowed. His sturdy legs glistened with mud. Only weeping sores marred his handsome face. They flushed his forehead and cheeks, fading into his faint beard.

  I had a strange feeling that I already knew him.

  His clothes did not seem like the ones English men wore, but like those of the French men I had seen at court, though his lace collar was frayed, his breeches faded. And no man I ever knew of, whether English or French, would wear a woollen hat pulled over his ears.

  “I won’t harm you,” he said. His voice was gentle – and a gentleman’s, although it seemed from his accent that he was used to speaking French.

  I paused, curious that he had not bowed or doffed his hat. “Do you know who I am?” I asked.

  He took in my tangled hair, my night robe and my muddy feet. His small mouth broke into a surprisingly wide smile. “Yes,” he said.

  “Then you will know that I do not speak to men, except kings, princes, earls, dukes and lords – and never to strangers.”

  “My name is Francis, named for the great King of France.”

  “There is…was…only one great King – my father, Henry the Eighth.”

  “I was born in France.”

  “And what is your family name?”