I clench my teeth so tight that they tingle. I ache for my stepmother almost as much as my mother.
Taking advantage of my changed mood, she follows me into my bedchamber. “What do you want, madam?” I shift, uncomfortable.
“There is other news from London,” she begins, “…of a more delicate and private nature…and not for my husband’s ears.”
“Ah – London news,” I reply. “You mean gossip.”
“I should tell you that this gossip has not died down, madam. Rather, it has grown. I thought that it would not settle, but melt away like first snow. But it has hardened into ice.” She pauses, pleased with her poetry, and stares at my belly. “They say that you are carrying Lord Seymour’s child.”
Anger, astonishment, panic – all quicken my heartbeat and bring my voice to a breathless whisper. “Do I look as if I am with child? I have not seen my stepfather since last May Eve.”
“They say that you visited him in London, in the autumn…when he boasted of marrying you.”
The devil grips my chest again. “I did not visit him. How could I? I have been unwell ever since I left Chelsea Palace.”
“Mmm…when you left Chelsea so suddenly…that illness is the cause of the other gossip,” she continues. “It is as vile and as foul as the first, but you should know what it is…”
I push her through the door. “All gossip is foul, madam, and I have had enough to last me a lifetime.”
I take to my bed. I often do and it serves me well. But I reckon without Lady Tyrwhitt. Kat used to bring feverfew and rosemary and lavender posset. Prayer is Lady Tyrwhitt’s remedy. She prays, morning, noon and night. She is everywhere, even outside my privy.
The water seeps at last from my body. I am slender once more. “As you see, madam, there is no child,” I say.
She cannot let it go. She leans towards me, whispering, “There is still the other gossip. I tried to tell you. A midwife has come forward to tell us that last autumn, around the time of your fifteenth birthday, she was summoned to the house of a nobleman somewhere in Hertfordshire, where a young woman of about your age, with long red-gold hair, gave birth to a healthy male child, which was taken from her.” She pauses so that I can take this in, because she has seen the look of incomprehension on my face. “It is said that you gave birth to Lord Seymour’s son. There is a great scandal hanging over you, madam.”
She throws out her arms to me. She wants me to run to them and weep for the loss of my phantom son.
This is how it must have been for my mother when slander was heaped upon her head. Did she laugh in her strange way, or did she protest, as I do now?
“Lies,” I shout. I do not care who hears me. “All lies. I am as pure as the Virgin Mary. Or does London gossip think that I was chosen like her for a virgin birth?” I point my finger at her. “This has come from you, madam. Only a woman knows how such spiteful talk dishonours.”
“No, no, My Lady, it wasn’t me. Who knows where such gossip begins?”
“But we know where it ends, don’t we? It spills into the Thames and takes its victims to the Tower.” I am almost crying. “I shall write to my brother, demand that he denies this slander in public. If necessary, I shall ask to be examined by his physicians who will—”
She blushes. “How do you know of such things?” she asks.
“Needs must when the devil rides,” I reply. “This is how it was for my mother, accused of such scandal that she was glad to lose her head.” I can hardly control my rage. “Do you think that I would lie with the husband of the only woman who has ever been a true mother to me?”
“Did your mother not lie with her brother so that she could bear a son?” she asks.
The inkwell is within reach. It is in my hands before I know it and I throw its contents over Lady Tyrwhitt. Black ink spots her cheeks and neck, like moles. Some settles in the puckers of her lips, puckered from too much praying, from too much gossiping. She scuttles away. “Send up more ink,” I shout after her. “I must write to my brother today.” My voice echoes into the stairwell. “If I do not write, who will?”
“It will not be worth the ink,” she calls back. “There is already a confession from the Tower.”
My heart almost stops. “Whose confession?”
She shrugs. “You shall know tomorrow.”
When Blanche Parry comes to light the candles, she finds me kneeling. I have knelt so long that she has to lift me to my chair, as they did my father before he died. She rocks me as she used to rock my cradle, and I let her. She is all I have now.
At dusk, Lady Tyrwhitt remembers that she is here to soften me. She comes back. A deep ink spot still stains her left cheek, which she has tried to hide with white powder, and there is a fainter mark on her neck, half-hidden by her sapphire necklace. “We must not fight, Elizabeth, for we are stepsisters. Lady Catherine was also my stepmother. You know that she was married twice before she married your father?”
“So?”
“We should be friends if we are kin.”
I shudder. “I already have one half-sister,” I say, “and I have no need of another.”
Mary, Mary, quite contrary, the daughter of my father’s first wife, Catherine of Aragon, with Spanish eyes as dark as mine so that we cannot read each other’s thoughts, who hates my mother so much that the hatred spoils her once pretty face. Mary, who used to live with me here when I was young, always weeping with migraines and woman’s pains.
It is more than a year since I saw her at Twelfth Night, frowning at me as she touched her crucifix as if to protect herself from the devil.
I dismiss Lady Tyrwhitt. Tomorrow, I face the devil – her husband. And he will hold my life in his jewelled hands.
Chapter Twenty-one
6 February, 1549
I did not sleep last night. A brutal wind blew the riders in from London – I noticed hoof prints in the snowy courtyard this morning. Every tree is touched with frost. The fountain where my mother cooled me shimmers with ice.
A confession – whether it is Kat’s or Tom Seymour’s – could decide whether I live or die.
This is how it must have been for my mother. I am glad that she had Alys to comfort her before she died.
Blanche Parry, my old nurse, does not know how to console me. “I’ve done nothing wrong. Neither has Kat,” I cry. “What if her poor body’s been broken on the rack? What if they’ve pulled out her fingernails? What if Thomas Seymour’s said—”
“Hush, I won’t let them hurt you,” she murmurs. Her melodious voice soothes me for a while. Then Seymour’s face flashes in front of me. He is not a man to sit in the Tower staring at death. I feel his beard brush against my neck. My voice rises to a scream. “My stepfather will say that I bewitched him as my mother did my father. And they’ll believe him. Like mother, like daughter.”
Lady Tyrwhitt comes to fetch me early. We walk to the schoolroom in silence, taking the inside steps from the Great Hall, for she dislikes the snow on the garden steps. My tears are down to a trickle now, so light they could be taken for the gleam of sweat.
When I have entered the schoolroom, Lady Tyrwhitt locks the door on the outside. I run to the garden door. It is locked too. Tyrwhitt is standing in front of a good fire, sleek and fragrant, eyes shining. The flames in the hearth leap so high that they threaten to light the chimney. The room is stifling.
He glances down.
On the table, held open by the books of great men – Virgil, Horace and Cicero – is a parchment so fresh I can smell the ink. Whose confession is it? Seymour’s? He could take me to the Tower if he wanted his revenge because I refused him. Is it Master Parry’s? He has nothing to confess. But I know that in the Tower, you can confess to anything. People tell lies, in extremis.
Let it be Kat’s. What she does not know, she cannot tell. Can she? But what if her body lies broken on her straw mattress?
The devil grips my chest. “I must have air, Sir Tyrwhitt.” I am gasping like a drowning woman. “Yo
u know I hate to be shut in.”
“There is air enough here.”
But he brings me my chair and helps me to sit and gives me time to compose myself. “Who has confessed?” I ask.
“Your precious Kat.”
Relief calms me for a moment. I am safe from Seymour. But it is not over. “Has she been harmed?” I ask.
“No. She would have confessed nothing but for your steward, Parry. He broke first. You did not know it, but he and Mistress Ashley supped too much wine at Twelfth Night and she told him about you and Seymour. When he confessed, she had no reason to hold back.” Tyrwhitt leans over the parchment and clears his throat.
Here, in this room, Kat read heroic tales to me. Here Kat taught me to read them for myself. Here now I must listen to a story of foolishness and humiliation and pray that it does not contain anything that might incriminate me. I thank God again that I never told her about Francis or Alys. I also recognize the warning signs of my body: it shudders and my breath is shallow.
Tyrwhitt reads: “Written on the third day of February, in the year of Our Lord, fifteen hundred and forty-nine, the confession of Mistress Katherine Ashley, companion to the Princess Elizabeth, as follows: that last year at Shrovetide, the Princess Elizabeth went out on a barge upon the Thames alone with the Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour, and at other times he came to her bedchamber and tickled her…and I am not worthy to govern the King’s sister…” He pauses.
I must stay silent. I must bear this humiliation.
“…The Lady Elizabeth once told me that the Lord Admiral loved her too well and that Lady Catherine came suddenly upon them when they were alone and in each other’s arms and fell out with both the Lord Admiral and her stepdaughter. This was why the Princess Elizabeth was sent back to Hatfield Palace…”
Tyrwhitt puts down the parchment. He plucks a quill from its pot and places it in front of me, with a fresh piece of parchment. “You may write your own confession now if you wish,” he says.
He thinks that he has me, like Thomas Seymour did when he kissed me. He thinks that humiliation will loosen my tongue as it did before and take away my power. He thinks that because I have been foolish, I shall babble myself into confessing something I did not do. And he wants to use me to bring Seymour to the block.
I refuse the quill. I search every scribbled word of Kat’s confession. “There is more,” I say. “Did you think that I would not read it myself? The Princess Elizabeth swore that she would never marry without the King’s consent or that of the Privy Council.”
My breathing steadies. Warmth comes back to my cheeks. “There is nothing to convict me of treason here, sir. As Kat says and I have said a thousand times, I never promised to marry Lord Seymour without the King’s consent.”
His mouth twists with disappointment. He smells the King’s disapproval already. “And the other things?” he asks, uncertain. “The sugar rose…the child…?”
“The child?” I am red-hot with anger. “I shall write to Edward Seymour and complain that I have been badly slandered. If you seek advancement, sir, you may find yourself returned to Lincolnshire sooner than you think.” He pulls his fur tight. “So…Tyr-whit-twit-to-twhoo…” I call. He scowls. I am ruffling his feathers as others must have done in jest before. “Not such a wise old owl now… What did you call it that first day? Let me think back. Ah, yes. I remember. Folly. The folly of youth.”
His fist thuds against the table. My books tremble and threaten to tumble. “Who do you think you are?” he shouts. “If you mock me, then you mock your own brother – the King. Don’t you care for what is right or wrong? You are…” His face is on fire.
“…just like my mother,” I finish. “Yes, and proud to be so, for she was innocent of any crime, except loving my father too much. All she wanted was a son for him, but he sent her a sword. Do you know that the swordsman was sent from France before her sentence was passed? She stood no chance. Have you already ordered my sword? Or will it be the axe for me?”
“You are impossible, madam.” He paces, ranting under his breath.
“Calm yourself, Sir Tyrwhitt. Are you not too old for so much blood to rush to your head?”
He hammers on the door instead, until his wife comes to turn the key. Before he leaves, he stares at me for a full minute. Then he slams the door behind him and I hear his furious voice all the way to the Great Hall.
I open the window, breathe deep. I do not care if the devil himself comes in, for he can do me no harm now.
Can he?
I did not like the look on Tyrwhitt’s face. Now I know when a man has a trick up his sleeve; Thomas Seymour taught me on May Eve.
My shoulders sag.
No, I am not out of the woods yet.
Chapter Twenty-two
14 February, 1549
I shall always remember that night when I danced under silver leaves, when I wore my leafy crown – when I was innocent. But I shall always remember the shame that followed, for it has made me a prisoner here. Now I am once again in the darkest part of the wood, where a man threatened me, where danger still lurks.
Somebody searched my chamber yesterday. A forbidden perfume lingered on my pillows and on my sheets, the one that makes my eyes water.
Elizabeth Tyrwhitt’s perfume.
Does she think I have no sense of smell?
She must have come in when I was walking in the garden. Tyrwhitt has lulled me. He has left me alone this last week, ever since the confession came – until yesterday. His wife disturbed the books on my writing desk. She rearranged my gloves. Was she searching for my mother’s box? If not – what else? What does Tyrwhitt know? Does he want the perfume box to accuse me of witchcraft? Does he know that Francis gave it to me? Does he know who Francis is? If I give him what he wants – what I think he wants – do I risk opening Pandora’s box? The threat from Tyrwhitt is as great as the threat from Thomas Seymour, except that Tyrwhitt is far cleverer. He does not give up his prey so easily.
And I have nobody to protect me.
Today is Shrovetide. There will be no feasting or dancing on ice or illusion for us. Tomorrow, forty days of fasting for Lent.
And I must be done with Tyrwhitt. If I cannot outwit him today, I shall lose my wits. I must use them before I become ill with fear.
My head creaks and groans like an ice-bound ship, waiting for the wooden planks to split under the crushing ice.
If I do not outwit Tyrwhitt, there will never be a crown on my head, for I shall have no head to wear it. If I am to survive, I must change my skin as a snake does.
I am the daughter of the King and Queen of England. And Sir Robert Tyrwhitt will know it when he sees me. It is time for silver and silk and the soft sheen of pearls.
He will have his illusion today.
When I call for Blanche Parry, she comes at once. She opens the oak chest at the foot of the bed, shakes out my white and silver dress, the glorious dress that I wore for my last portrait, just before my father died. It is richly embroidered with flowers, a pearl at each centre. Its wide sleeves have silver cuffs. It still fits, for I have grown thin these last months. Only the bodice is tight over my breasts. And the sleeves are too short, but I do not mind, for they reveal my elegant hands. Pearls to brighten my skin – the three-pearl pendant made to match Lady Catherine’s – and pearls at my ears and fingers, and circling my waist on a thin girdle.
“Leave my hair loose,” I tell Blanche. “I like it that way. I shall curl it around my finger to remind Tyrwhitt that I am a Tudor, to remind him that one day a crown might sit there.”
Blanche weeps with pride, remembering my past splendour.
It is noon. I have kept Lady Tyrwhitt waiting, pleading pains in my head and stomach. Kat used to bring me feverfew, but Lady Tyrwhitt prayed for me. She still suspects that I am with child, even though the swelling of dropsy is slight.
When I have sent Blanche for Lady Tyrwhitt, I take the perfume box from its hiding place. I kiss the falcon crest. It is my last
link to my mother and I might have to do without it.
Lady Tyrwhitt sinks into a deep curtsy when she sees me. She did not mean to do it. I can see it by the surprise in her eyes. She acted from instinct.
Tyrwhitt is asleep, sitting up. His eyelids twitch. When he hears us enter, he struggles to stand and groans at his aching knees.
But it is into his eyes that I look, for I need to understand him. I see what I need to see: the look of a man who has sought greatness all his life and craves to be in the presence of it.
He sinks into a bow until I command him to sit. I stand as I stood for my portrait. He must have seen it many times, for it has hung at Whitehall Palace these past two years: eyes looking straight at him, mouth firm, hands – my beautiful hands – holding a book. I have forgotten the book.
“Leave us,” I say to his wife, “and give me back the key to my schoolroom.”
She is astonished at the queenly command in my voice. She glances at her husband, arching her eyebrows in a question and he nods. She places the key on the table and I put it in my pocket.
Tyrwhitt watches, body tense. From my dress, he knows that this is the last game between us. One of us will win today.
With a flick of my wrist, I conjure the perfume box from my sleeve, as Francis did. How it gleams in my hand. Yes, silver is my colour. “If you wanted it so much, sir, why did you not ask for it?” I say.
He is clever. He gives a short laugh, feigns surprise. “Ah, yes, the box. The maids say that it contains a love potion that you used to enchant Thomas Seymour, that you smeared it on your body and on your lips at night. They say that when you used it, your face became lovesick. Or did you use it to hide the stench of sin?”
I laugh in return, although it is the laugh that Kat dislikes – my mother’s laugh, halfway between despair and terror. At the look on his face – as if it has evoked a memory of her – I calm myself.
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