by Susan Kay
As suddenly as they had opened, the heavy eyelids fell like shutters and the suffocating sense of hostility left Mary. She looked at the finely chiselled little face on the pillows and felt the numb, uncaring calm of total despair. She had been warned; in the depth of her superstitious nature, she accepted that warning with wretched resignation.
She left the room and walked blindly back to her own. The lonely walls held no terror for her now. Anne’s vengeful soul did not hover there, nor in the dark winding corridors of any other palace.
It had found a better place to rest.
* * *
That same fateful May, Henry called his bastard son, the young Duke of Richmond, to his side, threw one arm around his shoulders, and told him with emotional tears how narrowly he and his sister Mary had escaped “from that woman who planned your deaths by poison.”
Two months later Richmond was dead, and Henry, mad with grief and terror, was screaming of witchcraft and curses. Elizabeth was cloistered at Hatfield and no one dared to mention her name in the King’s presence, not even Secretary Cromwell, who received a pitiful letter from the child’s governess, begging sufficient clothes to cover her decently.
For almost a year Elizabeth lived in a strangely altered world, a world which seemed reluctant to acknowledge her existence. Her skirts grew so short that she could see her ankles, the seams of her bodices split, the pretty little coifs sat so absurdly on the top of her head that she refused to wear them.
One hot August day she climbed into the window-seat in the Long Gallery, a puzzled but not unhappy little girl who thought it would be fun to hide from her attendants. For a long time no one missed her and a group of ladies gathered around the empty hearth with their embroidery and their wagging tongues.
“At least it was quick,” someone said morbidly, and in a moment the thing, which had never been openly discussed, was being chewed over with that restrained, ghoulish relish with which women discuss a tragedy that does not directly affect them.
“It’s always clean and quick with a sword—should be, too, for what it cost to bring that executioner from France. £23.6s.8d.—that’s fair pay for two minutes’ work. He gave her the best of everything, even in death.”
Somebody sniffed and said sharply, “Pity he didn’t see fit to give her a coffin. Imagine her lying there all day in a pool of blood till one of her women found an arrowchest.”
“Yes—all those flies, it was such a hot day! I wonder where she was buried?”
There was a decent pause as they bent their heads and applied their needles diligently. Soon they turned their attention to the new Queen, Jane Seymour.
“What does he see in her?—such a plain, whey-faced little sheep.”
“At least she’ll be faithful to him.”
“She’d better be! Christ’s soul, I wouldn’t share a bed with him to be Empress of the World.”
“Well, in my opinion, if the Lady Elizabeth had been a boy it would never have happened. A son for England is all he cares about now, and he’ll get one sooner or later, if he has to murder a dozen wives in the process—”
Elizabeth sat very still, staring out of the window. An hour later, Lady Bryan, searching angrily, pulled back the hanging and found her there, quietly arranging the black satin skirts of her favourite doll. She looked like any normal three-year-old, absorbed in play, and the doll too was like any other, save for one small detail.
It was headless.
The painted, black-haired bauble lay at the foot of the window-seat in an attitude which suggested that it had been thrown there. Bryan picked it up and turned to look uncertainly at her charge.
“It broke,” said Elizabeth flatly.
“Never mind.” Bryan was brisk, wrestling with a curious feeling of unease. “Give it to me and we’ll see if Mr. Shelton can mend it for you.”
Elizabeth put the doll behind her back.
“I don’t want Mr. Shelton to mend it.”
She got down from the window and ran out of the gallery, and some inner instinct warned Bryan not to make an issue of the incident. Clearly, in spite of her strict instructions, tongues had been wagging carelessly. She made a mental note to dispose of the wretched doll as soon as the child was safely in bed, but when she came to look for it later that night, it was nowhere to be seen.
She considered questioning the maids, then thought better of it; it would only start a lot of morbidly exaggerated rumours. It was better to assume that Elizabeth, having lost interest, had dropped the miserable object and that one of the servants had quietly disposed of it. And if, by some chance, it should continue to hang about the house in a forgotten corner, what did it matter anyway? It was only a doll, after all.
Chapter 2
The summer of 1537 seemed endless to Jane Seymour, dragging through the sultry days, heavy with the King’s child, and heavier still with guilt. A shrinking presentiment of death was upon her; Anne’s death and Anne’s neglected child were like twin millstones round her thin neck, pulling her down into an abyss of languid despair.
“For Christ’s sake, what ails you?” snapped Henry, and Jane turned her face away into the pillow.
“My lord—bring Elizabeth back to court and let me show kindness to her. I am afraid.”
Afraid for his unborn son, he knew it. And with Richmond’s death still heavy on his heart he too was afraid, afraid of a shadow, a shadow in the sun.
He brought Elizabeth back to court, but he could not bear to touch her. He stalked his palace like a hunted fugitive, fleeing the dreadful trusting smile of a little girl, but Jane at least was at peace; and her son was born safely. They called him Edward.
The bells rang, the crowds surged around the palace, singing and stamping, roaring their delight. Henry roared too, but with rather less conviction, for he had been through this before. The bells, the crowds, the gorgeous christening—and two months later a tiny coffin laid to rest.
He woke at every sound, fearful to find them plucking at his arm with the dreadful news. “My lord—the little prince—”
That beautiful May day when the Tower cannon fired, he had believed that he rode along the river bank to total freedom. Now he knew that his haunted sleep would never be free of a jealous presence unless he accorded it some token of satisfaction. He could not, of course, legitimise Elizabeth without making himself a public laughing-stock in Europe, but he could grant her a certain measure of status.
He thought of the christening, traditionally a midnight ceremony and no place for small children. He would make his public gesture there.
And perhaps then he could close his eyes without seeing a bloody sword above the neck of his new-born son.
* * *
The Lady Elizabeth was to bear the Prince’s chirstening robe to the front and be carried there, in the formal procession, by no less a person than the Queen’s eldest brother, Edward Seymour, Lord Hertford. The announcement produced tittering specualtion about the court and stunned silence in the nursery.
Lady Bryan sat heavily down by a smoking fire and wondered why this must happen now, when only another week or so would have seen her safely installed in the Prince’s nursery. Young Kat Champernowne, who had been so eager to take her place, should have borne this awful responsibility.
On the other side of the hearth a fat Welsh nursemaid caught her eye and smiled knowingly.
“Of course, madam, she might be ill.”
“She’s never ill,” said Bryan glumly. “Never.”
“She could be, if I doctored her milk. Oh, just a pinch, not enough to do her any real harm, but sufficient for the purpose if you follow my meaning, madam.”
Bryan looked up startled, scandalised—tempted. If the woman opposite had sprouted horns and a forked tail, she would not have been unduly surprised to see them.
A moment more she hesitated then stood up and marched to th
e door.
“Blanche Parry!” she announced primly. “You’re not fit to rock a peasant’s cradle!”
“Suit yourself, madam,” muttered Blanche, when the door had closed. “It’s your funeral.”
* * *
Midnight on a cold October night and the corridors of the palace were red with torchlight.
Elizabeth, released at length from the attentions of her tirewomen, climbed on Lady Bryan’s lap for inspection and the final adjustment of her coif.
“Am I beautiful?”
“Yes.”
Technically speaking Bryan supposed that was a lie, but doubted that anyone would ever notice. Certainly no man. If one as prejudiced as the Spanish Ambassador could call her “very pretty” there was little hope for the rest.
“How beautiful?”
“Don’t be vain!” said Bryan sharply.
Elizabeth was silent, fingering the folds of her new gown.
“Don’t you love me anymore?” she asked solemnly.
“What a question,” said Bryan, shocked and guilty with affection. “Of course I love you. I love you very much.”
“Better than my new brother?”
Beneath the child’s penetrating stare Bryan felt she had turned to glass, empty, transparent, brittle, and heartless. So she knew! One of the maids must have told her, some silly gossiping hussy with nothing better to do.
Tears glimmered suddenly in Bryan’s hard eyes. Such a difficult child in so many irritating ways and yet, if it were not for the honour and the status, nothing in the world would have parted her from her present post. Suddenly she pitied Kat Champernowne—young, inexperienced, unhardened, she wouldn’t stand a chance. And when you were paid to take care of a child, the worst thing you could do was to give your heart—you never got it back intact.
Behind her the door opened. Someone announced, “Lord Hertford, madam,” and Bryan started to her feet, tumbling Elizabeth from her lap in her confusion. As she sank into a hasty curtsey before the King’s eldest brother-in-law, Bryan saw the haughty gentleman was not alone; his younger brother, Thomas Seymour, lounged just behind him in the doorway and gave her a rake’s amused, appraising gaze. She blushed like a girl and lowered her eyes, remembering tales about him that, in modesty, she would have preferred to forget.
The two men, blood uncles to the little Prince, were as different as chalk and cheese. One, cold and cheerless as a crescent moon, the other, glowing like a noon-day sun; the sight of them standing side by side was charged with all the drama of a total eclipse. Cain and Abel, thought Bryan irrelevantly, and we all know how that finished—
“The Lady Elizabeth’s Grace will accompany my lord at his immediate convenience.” She got quickly to her feet and put a hand on Elizabeth’s shoulder, pressing her down into a curtsey.
The moment she had dreaded was at hand. Elizabeth, smiling obliquely at the younger man, held her fingers out formally to be escorted from the room like a court lady; and in that moment Hertford bent down without ceremony and picked her up.
The door closed and for the space of perhaps twenty seconds there was silence; then a familiar little voice shrilled into fury in the gallery beyond and Lady Bryan cringed and wished she had taken Parry’s unethical advice.
“I don’t want to be carried. I can walk—I can walk all by myself. Put me down, my lord. Put me down!”
“Cromwell told me the brat was a handful,” remarked Hertford sullenly over his shoulder. “I had no idea he meant it quite so literally.” He broke off abruptly. “She kicked me, did you see it? The mannerless little wretch actually kicked me!”
“I’m not surprised,” said his brother, smiling unpleasantly. “She’s the King’s daughter, not a sack of vegetables. I’d kick you too if you held me like that.”
“I’m sure you would.” Hertford’s glance was frigid with hostility. “And enjoy it if I gave you so much as half a chance—isn’t that so, dear brother?”
Tom patted his brother’s hand with a maddening air of patronage.
“Claws in there, Ned, let’s draw no blood on a family occasion. This is our day of triumph—remember?”
“What triumph is there for me, I’d like to know, playing nursemaid to the illegitimate child of a low-born strumpet? Everyone will laugh at me.”
“They wouldn’t dare!” said Tom maliciously. Hertford marched on, impervious to sarcasm, his lean face longer than a mournful bloodhound’s.
“As I said to the King at the time,” he muttered half to himself, “it should have been you.”
The light-hearted mockery died out of the younger man’s eyes, leaving them hard and unsmiling.
“Any particular reason why it should have been me?” The voice was deceptively calm and still suggested half-hearted banter.
“Well, naturally, being the youngest, you have less stature to lose. When you consider my position as the Prince’s eldest uncle—”
“Christ’s soul,” exploded his brother, “the boy’s no more your bloody nephew than he is mine.”
Edward’s long stride halted abruptly.
“Just what exactly is that supposed to mean?”
“It means I’ll not thank any man who chooses to forget it,” said Tom coldly. “So take a little more care how you claim your first-born privileges, Ned, or you may find my brotherly fist in your fat ear!”
“Are you threatening me, you damned pup?” Edward’s free hand shot out and caught Tom by the collar and for a moment they stood there quivering with rage, ready to knock each other down, as they had done so often in their boyhood at Wolf Hall.
Elizabeth shut her eyes instinctively and hid her face in the chrisom. It was enough to bring Tom to his senses, making him shrug off his brother’s angry hand with a rueful laugh.
“Let it be! Not just now with the King waiting for us.” He glanced at Elizabeth with a wary smile. “And not with his daughter taking it all in. Believe me, Ned, this one misses nothing! Sharp as a dagger aren’t you, my pretty?”
Edward looked at Elizabeth too, half embarrassed as he let his arm drop limply back to his side, glad of the distraction.
“She’s no damned business to be listening,” he said primly. “It shows her want of breeding. Why the King wants the little bastard present has been beyond me from the start. I thought he couldn’t bear the sight of her since Boleyn lost her head.”
Elizabeth’s face stilled, suddenly empty, then the dark eyes blazed and she threw the chrisom on the floor and Edward dropped her at Tom’s feet in his effort to catch the trailing yards of white satin. It was the second time in less than ten minutes that she had landed without ceremony on terra firma and she was suddenly more than ready to yell.
She looked up at Tom and saw him shake his head and lay a finger against his lips. He had a wicked laughing look that made her reserve the yell for future use. Sitting on the rushes, she searched in vain for the source of his amusement and saw nothing but Hertford frantically shaking out the robe beneath the orange glow of a wall torch further down the gallery.
“Who’s a naughty girl then?” whispered Tom as he picked her up. She liked the admiring way he said that as though she had done something which gave him immense satisfaction and automatically her arms went about his neck in a quick, instinctive gesture of response.
“I don’t like him,” she said. “You may carry me instead.” The corners of his lips twitched beneath his fair moustache.
“I can’t do that, poppet,” he said lightly, “much as I’d like to.”
“But I want you to. I want it.”
Her lips trembled and stretched themselves into a thin querulous line; he knew an ominous sign when he saw one so close.
“Sweetheart,” he added hastily, “the King wants me to carry the canopy over your little brother. And if I make the King angry—”
“He will chop off your he
ad!”
The flat little statement made him blink in astonishment. He bit back an oath and managed to turn it into an uncomfortable cough instead.
“Well,” he said, struggling for nonchalance beneath her calm gaze, “you wouldn’t want that to happen to poor old Uncle Tom, would you?”
She touched his golden beard with a hesitant finger.
“No,” she murmured softly, “I wouldn’t like that at all. You have a nice head.”
“Then we’ll do our best to keep it where it is, shall we—just for a little while longer?”
She nodded solemnly, and then pouted.
“Does that mean he has to carry me?”
“I’m afraid so. But if you’re a good girl and give him no more trouble tonight I’ll give you a gingerbread boy.”
Elizabeth looked across the gallery. He was coming back, folding the chrisom with all the precision of a laundrymaid. She put her head down on Tom’s shoulder and twined her fingers in his hair.
“Two gingerbread boys?” she whispered.
He laughed and gave her a hearty shake.
“You shameless little minx. You really are just like—” He broke off unexpectedly. “It’s a bargain,” he continued, and was suddenly serious as he put her down.
Something, he could not have said what, had sent a chill jangling through every nerve in his body, making him for a moment inexplicably sad. They walked on down the gallery in silence and he was glad when they joined the crowds in the chapel.
* * *
Elizabeth, at the age of four, was seriously smitten with a puppy’s blind adoration for “Uncle Tom.”
The moment the christening was over and she was released from Hertford’s odious guardianship, she bobbed through a sea of hose-clad legs and swaying skirts in Queen Jane’s airless bedchamber, seeking the flamboyant garter which marked him in her memory.
At length she found him.
“I have to go to bed now,” she confided urgently. “Will you bring my gingerbread boys tomorrow?”
