The Last Heiress

by Bertrice Small

  “Edinburgh is farther north, and just above the other side of England,” Elizabeth said, an amused look upon her face. “You obviously have little sense of direction, Flynn.” And she chuckled.

  “Then I shall admit to being curious as to this Friarsgate of yours, and thought to see it. I have important news for James, and I am finally to be relieved of my duties. My brother tells me he has a rich wife for me. I am at last following your advice, Elizabeth.”

  “Baen should be in from the fields soon,” she told him. “It is almost time for the haying to begin. Young Thomas is with him. And we have two other children: Edmund, who was, coincidentally, born nine months after Baen and I came home. And our daughter, Anne, born the fifth day of December last year. When I saw our daughter’s black hair I knew I had to name her after the queen.” And Elizabeth laughed. “How is she? We get little news here in our remote northern lands.”

  Baen Hay came into the hall and, seeing Flynn Stewart, held out his hand in a gesture of friendship. A little boy, tall, but quite young, walked with him. The child ran to Elizabeth and hugged her. “Welcome to Friarsgate,” Baen greeted their visitor. He kissed his wife upon her lips, and then, his arm about her, turned back to face Flynn Stewart. “What brings you here, sir?”

  “I have told him that if the queen wants me back I cannot go,” Elizabeth teased her handsome husband.

  Baen laughed. “Nay, sweetheart, I’ll not let you go again.” He looked to Flynn. “Will you stay the night, Flynn Stewart?”

  “Aye, and I thank you for the shelter,” Flynn replied.

  “And you will tell us the news of court over dinner?” Elizabeth said.

  “I will,” Flynn answered her with a heavy heart. How was he to tell her the terrible news that he carried? How much did she know of what had happened in those many months since she had last been with the court? Did her sister, a countess, he recalled, write to her?

  They chatted idly as the meal was served. It was a plain country meal such as he remembered from his own childhood. There was broiled trout, a potage of vegetables, venison, a roast capon, bread, butter, and cheese. The food was fresh and well cooked. Flynn watched in amusement as Elizabeth’s two sons helped themselves to cherries from a bowl on the high board, and then vied with each other to see how far they could spit the pits. He had been shown the infant Anne Hay with her black curls, who so resembled her father, and was already showing her mother’s lively personality.

  Now the children were all sent off to bed. He sat with Elizabeth and Baen outdoors on the early summer’s night. He could delay no longer. “Does your sister, the countess, write to you often?” he asked Elizabeth casually. “I should dislike repeating that which you already know.”

  “Nay,” Elizabeth said. “Philippa goes little to court now. She is almost as much a country wife as I am. I did receive a letter from her just before Anne was born. She and Crispin had joined the king and queen on progress into Wales last summer. She wanted to visit the place where our father was born. She said it was beautiful, but not as beautiful as Friarsgate, and bleak. And our cousins there more backward than she would have expected. And her best friend resides in Wales. She said little about anything else.”

  “Then I shall tell you all I know,” Flynn Stewart said. “Things went from bad to worse after you departed court. The women surrounding the queen were harpies. Her mother, her sister, Jane Rochford, Mary Howard, who was married to Fitzroy, the king’s son, among others. None loved her, but for one: Margaret Lee. After you left she was most sympathetic of the queen’s loneliness, and they became friends.”

  “Oh, I am glad!” Elizabeth said. “I thought of her highness so often, but I had to come home. Say on, Flynn.”

  “Margaret Lee was her only comfort. The king’s passion for Queen Anne had waned and burned out,” he said. “They quarreled bitterly, and often publicly. The king was openly courting other women—the queen’s cousin Margaret Shelton, among others. The more he dallied with others, the more shrewish the queen became.”

  “She was afraid,” Elizabeth said wisely. “Poor Anne. She was always afraid.”

  “Aye,” Flynn agreed. “There were two confinements the year after you left, but neither came to fruition. Then the king’s proposed alliances first with France, and then with Emperor Charles, began to unravel. The pope had excommunicated him for refusing to take the princess of Aragon back and restore the lady Mary. Last summer the king was despondent that all he had so long labored for was lost. The queen’s star glowed briefly once more, and they went on progress together. To all who saw them they seemed happy again but for the presence of Mistress Seymour. In late autumn it was announced that the queen was once again with child. The bairn would be born in July.

  “Then the princess of Aragon died on the day after Twelfth Night. The king refused to wear mourning, and threatened any who did. Instead he gave banquets and held tournaments in celebration. In late January he was unhorsed for the first time in anyone’s memory.”

  “He is too old to play at such games any longer,” Elizabeth said.

  Baen nodded in agreement.

  “How badly was he injured?” she wanted to know.

  “It wasn’t the fall that did the injury; it was his horse falling on him,” Flynn explained.

  “God’s wounds!” Baen exclaimed. “He was not killed?”

  “Nay, but he lay unconscious for two hours, and that wicked busybody Norfolk went running to the queen to say the king was probably dead,” Flynn Stewart replied.

  “She lost the child,” Elizabeth said fatalistically.

  “Aye, and that was the beginning of her end,” the Scotsman said. “After that the king visited her no more. He openly courted Mistress Seymour before all. The queen was sorrowing for her child—a son, by the way—and deserted by all but a few. The court rushed to align itself with what was to be the new regime, while the king looked for a way to divest himself of the queen, and not look the worse for doing it.”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “I am astounded the king would bother with Jane Seymour. Her chin recedes. Indeed, she has a double chin. She is past thirty, and her youth has long flown by. Her hair is the color of dung, and not beautiful at all. And that little prim mouth.”

  “She is meek and obedient,” Flynn said. “She never raises her voice. She has allied herself with the lady Mary.”

  “She is sly and guileful,” Elizabeth said bluntly.

  “Aye,” he agreed. “But allow me to continue my tale. Mistress Seymour, like the queen, held herself off from the king while at the same time encouraging him. He gave her many gifts, but ’tis said when he presented her with a bag of gold coins at Easter she refused, telling him that sort of gift was for another time. The king considered ways to rid himself of the queen, and he enlisted Master Cromwell in his endeavor.”

  Elizabeth shuddered. “The man has evil eyes,” she said.

  “Master Cromwell gathered an alliance together of the Seymours, those unhappy in Anne’s service, her cousin Nicholas Carew, and the lady Mary’s supporters. Suddenly the queen was being denounced publicly for immoral behavior. Two senior gentlemen of her privy chamber, Henry Norris and William Brereton, were arrested and brought to the Tower, along with Francis Weston, Lord Rochford, and a young musician in her household, one Mark Smeaton.”

  “But Norris and Weston have long been with the Tudor household. Henry Norris is hardly of an age to dally, and far too much of a gentleman to do so,” Elizabeth declared.

  “And he denied any misbehavior, but he was tried with Weston, Brereton, and the musician. If the queen were one for dallying—and none believed it of her, though they would say nothing aloud—Smeaton would have been the most likely candidate for her bed. He is young and beautiful. They tortured him dreadfully, and he told them what they wanted to hear: that he had committed adultery with the queen. But all know it to be a lie. Lord Rochford was tried separately for incest with her. All were condemned.”

  “Dear God!�
� Elizabeth’s eyes were wide with her shock. “The queen?”

  “Arrested May second and taken to the Tower. She was tried on the fifteenth of the month and found guilty of infidelity and adultery. She was also charged with having plotted the king’s death by means of witchcraft, sabotage of the succession, of committing sins too vile to enumerate, of bringing dishonor on her husband, the king, and her daughter, the lady Elizabeth, not to mention the realm itself.”

  “The lady Elizabeth? Not the princess Elizabeth?” Baen asked. He was both fascinated and horrified by the tale Flynn Stewart was telling. He sensed there was no happy ending to it, and his wife was going to be devastated. Reaching out, he took her hand in his.

  “Nay, the lady Elizabeth,” Flynn continued. “A new Parliament was called to legislate changing the succession. Old Crum found corrupt witnesses only too willing to testify lies and supply false evidence against the queen that would support their charges. She was condemned, of course, and sentenced to die by burning or beheading, to be decided by the king.”

  Elizabeth cried out as if in pain. “Dear God, could he not simply let the church dissolve his marriage, and let her go into exile in France? Why was it necessary to condemn her to death?” She was beginning to weep. Baen’s arm went about her.

  Flynn Stewart looked to Baen. The look asked if he should continue on with his terrible story. Baen nodded silently, and the Scotsman spoke again. “When Lord Rochford was tried separately, it is said his own wife testified he had told her that his sister laughed, saying that the king had bouts of impotence. She also hinted that her husband and the queen had been incestuous with each other.”

  “Never!” Elizabeth burst out. “Anne loved the king, and was loyal to him.”

  “On May seventeenth the five men were beheaded on Tower Green. Smeaton and Brereton were quartered afterwards. The queen was forced to observe. On the day she had been condemned, Archbishop Cranmer had pronounced the king and queen’s marriage invalid based on consanguinity because of his relationship with her sister. And the queen’s daughter was therefore declared illegitimate.”

  “Would that Cranmer had been so scrupulous before he crowned Anne England’s queen,” Elizabeth said bitterly. “How will he, I wonder, answer to God for his part in this terrible travesty?” Her gaze engaged Flynn’s. “She dead, isn’t she?”

  He nodded.

  “Tell me!”

  “When she was placed in the Tower they gave her four attendants, none friendly to her. Margaret Lee was allowed to lodge there, but forbidden from seeing the queen. I believe that the constable of the Tower, William Kingston, did let the queen and her friend have brief moments together. They say the queen was half-mad at this point. Sometimes she made great sense, and other times she babbled. It was her fear, of course. She feared for her child, and made an apology to the lady Mary for any unhappiness she had caused her. She begged that the lady Mary watch over the lady Elizabeth. She made a final confession and took communion, declaring she was innocent of all charges. Even the priest attending her declared privately that the queen was an innocent woman.

  “On the morning of the nineteenth day of May, she dressed herself in a beautiful gray brocade gown and pinned her hair beneath a black velvet cap trimmed with pearls. Sir William escorted her to the scaffold, where she removed her cap and then mounted the block. The courtyard was filled with spectators. They poured out of the court and down the hill and surrounded the White Tower. No foreigners were allowed, at the king’s command. The day was sunny and bright. The king would not allow her to be burned, and brought a swordsman from Calais for the execution. Kingston allowed Margaret Lee to be one of the four women escorting her. The queen gave her her book of devotions. They say she spoke bravely at the end. I was not there, for no foreigners were permitted. My account was given to me by one of Cromwell’s secretaries, who accompanied his master to the execution. Norfolk was there also.”

  “Aye, he would have been, wretched man!” Elizabeth said angrily. She could not cry now. She would cry later, when she was alone.

  “The king married Jane Seymour almost immediately afterwards,” Flynn told them. “So now it is Queen Jane.”

  “Was she at least buried with some honor?” Elizabeth wanted to know.

  “Not really. No coffin had been prepared. Her women took her head and wrapped it in a cloth. It was placed with her body in an old arrow box that was found. She is interred in the Church of St. Peter ad Vincula in the tower. Elizabeth, I am so sorry to have been the bearer of such awful tidings, but I knew you would want to know. Not from wicked gossip, but the truth.”

  Elizabeth stood up and looked at him. “Thank you,” she said quietly, and then she left the hall. But still the tears would not come. Anne Boleyn, that ambitious and frightened young woman, was dead. Anne, her friend. Her heart felt like a stone in her chest. She would never go south of Carlisle again.

  The following morning she bade Flynn Stewart farewell, and wished him good fortune in his marriage. Then she sent a messenger to Otterly begging her uncle to come at once.

  Thomas Bolton did not dally. There had been rumors, of course, just reaching the remote manors of the north. Elizabeth’s message had mentioned a visitor from court. He and Will cantered across the hills to Friarsgate to learn what had transpired. When his niece had concluded her tale, Lord Cambridge shook his head wearily. “I have grown too old,” he said, “to comprehend the ways of the mighty. God rest Queen Anne, dear girl. As your Scots friend has said, many believed her innocent, and I do too. The king’s behavior was vengeful and cruel, but then the best influence upon Henry Tudor was the princess of Aragon. Have you cried yet? You must weep your heart out, my angel, or you will get sick, I fear.”

  “I cannot cry, Uncle. I am yet numb,” Elizabeth told him.

  Lord Cambridge lingered at Friarsgate for several days, and on the morning he was to return to Otterly a messenger arrived from the Countess of Witton with a letter for Elizabeth. Opening it, she read it, and suddenly Elizabeth began to weep. She shook with the great tearing sobs that came forth from her heart and soul. Astounded, Baen, Lord Cambridge, and Will could but wait until she had ceased her sorrow.

  Finally Thomas Bolton ventured, “Dearest girl, what has your sister written that had sent you into such great grief?”

  Elizabeth looked up from the parchment and said, “She left Hughie her lute, Uncle.”

  And Lord Cambridge nodded. “Let none speak evil of this unfortunate queen to any in this family,” he said quietly. “For all the ill spoken of her, she was a good woman.” He enfolded Elizabeth within his embrace. “Now, dear girl, you have wept for your friend, and must move on again with your life. Let me see you smile, my darling Elizabeth. It is what she would want. Anne Boleyn never lived her life in halfhearted fashion. She lived it with gusto, with style, with elegance, and you must follow her example. Well, perhaps not entirely, dear girl.” And he kissed her on the forehead.

  Elizabeth began to laugh as suddenly as she had wept. “Oh, Uncle,” she said. “There is no one in the world who can put life in perspective quite as well as you can. Do not ever change.” And she kissed him back on his ruddy cheek.

  “Dear girl, at my age change becomes quite difficult, but one should always be ready to change. It is what makes life worth living. I never look behind me, Elizabeth, because I always want to know what is around the next corner. Of course, I have gotten into some difficulties over that trait of mine in years past, have I not, dear Will?”

  “Indeed, my lord, you have,” William Smythe agreed dryly, but he was grinning as he said it.

  “Well, my angel,” Thomas Bolton said, “it is time for us to begin that tedious journey back to Otterly. I shall come again, for, despite my horror of rustic living, I do absolutely adore Friarsgate. For some reason I always have.” He kissed her once again. “Good-bye, good-bye, my darling girl. Keep well, and keep that Scotsman of yours happy, but I can see how he adores you totally, delicious fellow that he is.�
�

  Elizabeth and Baen moved outside to see Lord Cambridge and his Will off. They stood watching as the two men trotted off down the road on their comfortable matching bay geldings.

  “He’s right, you know,” Baen said quietly. “We must move forward with our life. You were never comfortable with the court, Elizabeth.”

  “Nay, I wasn’t,” she agreed. Then she said, “It’s almost Midsummer, husband. Do you remember that first Midsummer we spent together?”

  “Aye,” he said slowly, “I do. Do you wish to revisit that summer, Bessie?” he asked her, a slow smile creasing his face.

  “Nay, I wish to move forward and make new Midsummer memories, Baen MacColl.” And, picking up her blue skirts, Elizabeth began to run towards the lake meadow, stopping but briefly to turn and shout at the man following after her, “And do not call me Bessie!”

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  Bertrice Small is a New York Times bestselling author and the recipient of numerous writing awards. In keeping with her profession, she lives in the oldest English-speaking town in the state of New York, founded in 1640, and works in a light-filled studio surrounded by the paintings of her favorite cover artist, Elaine Duillo. Because she believes in happy endings, Bertrice Small has been married to the same man, her hero, George, for forty-two years. They have a son, a daughter-in-law, and three adorable grandchildren. Longtime readers will be happy to know that Nicki the Cockatiel flourishes along with his fellow housemates, Pookie, the long-haired greige and white feline, Honeybun, the petite orange lady cat with the cream-colored paws, and Finnegan, the naughty black kitty.

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are either the product of the author’s Imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, business establishments, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  The Penguin Putnam Inc. World Wide Web site address is