Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (2 page)

pets, you know.”

Markham laughed nervously. “Wouldn’t you rather have a dog, madam?”

“Ah no—too loyal! They present no challenge.” Behind the girl’s

steady eyes a shadow stirred, darkening them to the hue of gleaming wet

pitch. “My mother had a dog once. She used to make it jump through

a burning hoop to prove its devotion to her, until she found my father

did it better. He jumped through that hoop for over six years. When

he finally got tired of performing for her amusement he killed her. And

that’s what makes men such interesting pets, Markham—you never know

when they’re going to turn and bite.”

Markham sank on to the stone seat beside her, chilled into silence.

Between them the candle flared in a draught, sending ripples of light over

the girl’s angular face.

Strictly speaking it was not a beautiful face by conventional standards,

but it was curiously arresting. Elizabeth Tudor was a labyrinth. She drew

people, without conscious effort, into the maze of her own personality

and abandoned them there, leaving them to find their own way out

again—if they could. Most found they were unable to, many never even

tried. And those few who succeeded were troubled by a vague sense of

loss for the rest of their days. Isabella Markham, already safely in love with

a young man languishing within these same walls, would be one of those

few who held a lifeline to the outer world.

She looked up and found Elizabeth’s eyes upon her.

“You’re cold, Belle. Go and sit by the fire before it goes out.”

Markham resisted the narcotic of her presence, that instinctive auto-

matic inclination to obey her without question.

“I’m not cold, truly, madam.” She hesitated. “I’m curious.”

“Curious?” Elizabeth’s eyes were suddenly veiled and wary.

“About tonight—about the man you’re waiting for. Is he to be no

more than a pet to you?”

“Pet, playmate, partner,” said Elizabeth slowly, turning the words

around in her mind as a squirrel turns a nut. “How shall I know until

he comes?”

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Susan Kay

“He’s not coming now,” said Markham darkly. “I knew it would be

prevented. And to take such a risk in the first place—oh, madam, it’s
so

unlike you!”

“Is it?” Again that strange, maddening smile.

“You know it is! All these years you’ve been so careful, ever since—”

She stopped and looked away. “Ever since the Admiral.”

Elizabeth put one hand on Markham’s shoulder and tilted her chin

gently upwards.

“I can only die once, however many crimes are laid to my charge. I’ve

lived a nun’s life since I was fifteen and where has all that circumspection

brought me? Only here to this prison cell. Don’t you see, Belle, our fate

is written in the stars, we can’t alter it. And if I’m to go to my mother’s

death this spring,
careful
is not a word I wish to take with me.”

Markham said nothing. She was very close to tears. At length she rose,

curtsied and went obediently to her seat at the hearth, leaving Elizabeth

to rub the black glass where her breath had misted it, and stare out again

towards the river.

The sand in the hour-glass swallowed up another hour and the rats

chattered in the wainscoting; beyond the brooding fortress the east wind

wailed peevishly like a spoilt and fretful child.

4

Part 1

The Girl

“Affection? Affection is false.”

—Elizabeth

Chapter 1

H
er path to the tower wound back beyond her birth, to

the chance meeting of a man and a woman more than a quarter

of a century before that windswept April night of her imprisonment.

It was an uneventful meeting in itself, with nothing exchanged except

the electric glance of a lusty man and the coyly inviting look of an ambi-

tious girl; yet it changed the whole course of British history. It was the

beginning of a cataclysmic love affair that rocked Europe and turned all

England upside down, spawning in its wake a whole new Church, but

only one living child: Elizabeth.

Rank and virility had accustomed the eighth Henry to the quick

surrender of eager women, and when he misread that look of promise

in the black eyes of Anne Boleyn he never envisaged anything less.

He would conquer and walk away, and the world would no more be

concerned with the fate of Anne than it had been with a score of pretty

women who, at one time or another, had provided a few diverting hours

in the royal bed.

Six years later he was still waiting for that satisfaction, waiting in the

humiliation of the public gaze, with the world a scandalised witness of

his insane pursuit. War and religious schism hung in the balance, because

a wilful young woman had put the ultimate price on her favours, and a

prince, mad with desire, had sworn to pay it.

For six years the Divorce dragged through foreign universities and

papal courts, while Henry hacked at the legal shackles which bound

him to his wife, the Emperor’s aunt, Katherine of Aragon. And all

Susan Kay

that time Anne held him at bay, alternately enticing and repulsing,

changing a confident easy-going man into a monster of poisonous self-

doubt and paranoia, a man unable to distinguish friends from enemies,

who swept aside all opposition with a merciless hand. Late in 1532

Anne staked her fate on a final desperate gamble and surrendered the

citadel; by New Year she had laid her last card on the table and won

the game: she was pregnant.

Henry was aghast, amazed, overjoyed; neatly trapped, like a rabbit in

a snare, between his desire for compromise with Rome, and his pressing

need for the son Anne swore she carried. So an unborn child tipped

the balance and Rome lost the battle with Henry’s conscience. Within

three months a new independent Church of England had authorised the

annulment of Henry’s first marriage and presided over Anne’s extravagant

coronation in Westminster Abbey.

Four months to go, thought Anne, as she rode through the hostile

crowds, and neither the Pope’s impotent threats nor the moody muttering

of this ragtag and bobtail crowd could make a scrap of difference to her

new state. She was Queen of England and she would rule through Henry

as she had done these past six years of her scheming; if he died, she would

rule through the boy now kicking vigorously beneath her heart.

When Anne went into labour that hot, still seventh of September,

there was silent anticipation all over the sprawling riverside palace of

Placentia at Greenwich. Tension had everyone by the throat, for friends

and enemies alike of the new Queen knew how much depended on the

birth of a son, the final vindication of all the ugly and unprecedented

events which had led up to the “the Concubine’s” present triumph.

It was just after three in the afternoon, when the heat was at its most

oppressive, that they brought the news to Henry and for a moment he

refused to believe it was true. After all the frustrations, the humiliations,

the risks to his power and his eternal soul—another girl to take the place

of Katherine’s daughter, Mary, recently bastardised to make room for a

new prince.

One by one the horrors he had dared to defy rose up to hit him like

separate blows. Excommunication; war; rebellion—they were words to

make any Christian monarch tremble, but he had risked it all and much

more for the spurious promise of a clever woman who had not been quite

so clever after all. Oh yes, he could hear it already, the tittering sniggers,

8

Legacy

the self-righteous satisfaction that would attend the announcement in

European courts that “God has entirely deserted this king.”

Blood pounded through his swollen veins and throbbed hot with

the urge to take the whole world in his mighty hands and crush it like a

ripe fruit. They were plucking at his sleeve, asking in timid voices if he

would be pleased to look upon his new daughter. As he went blindly out

of the room, only pride restrained him from having the brat thrown into

the river; no one must know how keenly he felt this failure to justify his

own behaviour.

Anne’s room was still crowded with spectators, who backed out hastily

when the King entered. The child lay on a cushion on the midwife’s lap,

naked, bawling, and still caked with blood. He paused to examine her

resentfully and found her as ugly as only an unwanted new-born child

could be, yet perfectly formed, infuriatingly healthy. He remembered his

sons by Katherine, miserable, mewling scraps of short-lived flesh that had

torn his heart with anguish. There was nothing about this child to excite

his concern or his pity, and he would have turned away without another

glance when a tiny flailing hand closed about his thumb and smeared him

with blood—Anne’s blood.

He jerked his thumb free and was about to wipe it fastidiously on

his sleeveless coat when he stopped and stared at it curiously. He ran his

thumb across the palm of his other hand and watched the red streak grow

long and thin.

Anne’s blood!

Turning his vast bulk slowly, he looked at the only woman in the

kingdom who had ever dared to make him look a fool.

That familiar piquant face was pale with exhaustion, but still haughty,

even in defeated terror, still held high on that white neck. Such a little

neck; odd how he had never seen before how easy it would be to break

or sever it. One blow was all it would take—and then—freedom, a

possession he had lost more than six years ago and never missed, till now.

He felt them watching him, the sharp-eyed biddies who had tended

her through the birth, old doctor Butts standing with silent reproach by

her bed—yes, he must move to greet her civilly and hide his thoughts.

Not yet. Another year he would give her to rectify this grievous failure—

and then he would see.

Bending to kiss her cold cheek, he realised that he no longer loved her.

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Susan Kay

He was like a man awakening from a drugged dream to find reality chill

in his hands. It was as though he looked no longer on her face, but on her

soul, finding it unlovely and grasping, touched with evil.

For years his people had said she was a witch, ensnaring him with

unnatural arts, and he had dismissed the allegation as the superstitious

gossip of ignorant minds. Suddenly he saw how that allegation might be

useful. Seduced into marriage by foul practices of witchcraft—why, he

would be innocent of all those crimes he had committed for her sake.

Twelve months—not a day longer: and for a moment he passionately

hoped she would fail.

t t t

The new baby, dismissed by the Spanish Ambassador as “the Little

Bastard,” was sent to the royal nursery at the old palace of Hatfield,

there to live in royal estate, attended by Queen Katherine’s bastardised

daughter. Mary Tudor had suffered many humiliations since the day

her father fell under the Concubine’s influence, but this was the final

degradation. The two years she spent at Hatfield, waiting in a menial

capacity upon Elizabeth, were years of unimagined persecution which

warped her generous nature for the rest of her days, “I know of no other

princess in England but myself,” she said on her arrival, and for that

allegation, stubbornly maintained, was kept a virtual prisoner in a house

governed by Anne’s relatives. Stripped of her status, forced to take her

meals in the Great Hall with the servants, forbidden the courtesy of a

food taster, she lived in daily fear of poison and spent her only happy

hours in the nursery.

Katherine of Aragon was dead, and had she dared, Anne would have

seen to it that Mary Tudor followed her mother swiftly to the grave. But

the birth of Elizabeth had diminished her hold upon the King; she could

no longer use him to strike down her enemies, as she had earlier disposed

of Cardinal Wolsey and others who stood in her path. A short while

longer her influence wavered, like a dwindling candle flame in a strong

draught, until the day she was delivered of a still-born son.

“You will get no more boys by me,” said Henry, ominously calm. “I

see God does not mean to give me male children.”

He turned on his heel abruptly, walked out of her room and out of her

life, leaving her to the vultures.

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Legacy

Without the mantle of his protection she knew the days of her power

were ended. She suspected divorce and feared annulment; but even in the

depths of her despair she never once considered death.

Henry avoided her company; the court shunned her; Secretary

Cromwell quietly gathered his evidence. She was aware of nothing but

a hollow sense of insecurity as she played with Elizabeth and taught her

to prattle a few words in the French which reminded her of happier days