Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (3 page)

in a foreign court. Elizabeth, her only child, all that was left to her out of

nine gaudy, worthless years. She would give up the crown and the jewels

and the magnificent gowns; but she would not surrender the child who

had cost her these things.

t t t

April at Greenwich and the pale sun shone invitingly down in the shel-

tered courtyard. Too cold to play out, thought Anne absently, watching

Elizabeth hide from their attendants behind a pillar, and yet she had no

heart to stop the game. She looked up at the palace, where the flash of

sunlight on diamonds had caught her vacant gaze, and saw the King. It

was days since he had spoken to her, and desperate for some gesture of

acknowledgement from him, she lifted her hand and smiled boldly. Once,

he would have sold his soul for that smile, but now there was no response.

His heavy face was moody and preoccupied; he stared past her, almost

without recognition, his sullen attention riveted upon the laughing child.

Anne knew a moment of wrenching fear. She remembered his subtle

cruelty to Katherine, how he had sent her from the court and forbidden

her all access to the Princess Mary. He meant to do the same to her. He

would take Elizabeth in payment for the boy she had lost, peevish as a

child denied a promised toy. And he would do it without a qualm of

conscience unless—unless she could shame him here in public.

“Elizabeth, come here.”

Elizabeth’s immediate response was to bunch up her sweeping skirts

and run clumsily across the courtyard in the opposite direction.

Anne repressed the sudden urge to scream.

“
Elizabeth
!”

The child froze at her tone, along with every other person in the

courtyard. The women clipped their chatter off dead and over near the

gate a young man paused to stare at her.

11

Susan Kay

Anne was white with tension; she dared not call again. Across the

courtyard she met her child’s eyes and saw in them the wilful, stub-

born nature that could defeat her even now. She held her arms out in

silence and waited an endless moment before her hands closed around

her daughter.

Triumphantly she swung Elizabeth round and up on to her hip,

carrying her beneath the window where the King still stood, looking

down on them. The frown that touched his face made her want to laugh

because she knew him so well, that sensitive conscience which craved

public approval in everything he did.

“Wave to him,” she whispered urgently in the child’s ear, knowing

how petty and stupid it would make him look before spectators. “Wave

for
Maman
.”

Elizabeth waved vigorously. Now he would open the window and

call them up; with everyone watching what else could he do? And once

Anne got him alone she would know what to do, she would know what

to say to him.

Her heart jerked violently as the King turned away without a word

or gesture.

“Bastard!” she breathed into Elizabeth’s hair. “
You bastard
!”

Slowly, wearily, trembling with rage and humiliation, Anne lowered

her child to the gravel and stilled the little arm which continued to wave

uncertainly at the empty window.

“Don’t cry, precious,” she said softly, wiping away two hot smudgy

tears with her thumbs. “When he rots in hell you will be King and Queen

both and the whole of England will wave to you.” She put both her

hands on the child’s thin shoulders and added darkly, “Let no man take

it from you!”

Elizabeth stared up at the palace, a bleak row of mullioned windows

sprawling beneath a multitude of turrets.

“Naughty
papa!” she announced sullenly; and that phrase, that into-

nation, so obviously borrowed from those worthy ladies who attended

upon her, made Anne’s eyes sting with sudden tears as she struggled a

moment longer to regain composure, normality—sanity.

“The King didn’t see us, that’s all,” she began shakily.

Elizabeth stamped her foot angrily.

“Did see me,” she muttered mutinously,
“did see me!
See
Maman
too!”

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Legacy

Anne knelt and cupped Elizabeth’s chin in her hand.

“If I could put a curse on him and all my enemies,” she whispered

venomously, “it would be just that—to look at you and see me!” She

hesitated. “Elizabeth—if
Maman
should go away you wouldn’t forget her,

would you?”

The child frowned, pouted, kicked at a stone. “Don’t want you to

go ’way!”

“Not for long,” said Anne hastily. “I shall go home to Hever perhaps—

or back to France—whatever he chooses. If he wants a divorce I won’t

make difficulties. I learned from Katherine, you see—take what you can

and go with dignity.”

She was silent a moment, vaguely aware that she should not be saying

these things to the child, yet unable to help it, swallowed up in the panic-

ridden sweep of her own thoughts.

The King of France is my friend, he could bring influence to bear on Henry. A

few months and I could send for her…he’ll be too busy with that Seymour sheep

to care by then…

She looked down at the child, sum total of her life’s achievement, her

legacy to this worthless world.

“Whatever his terms, he shall not part us for ever,” she said softly. “I

swear it!”

Elizabeth was silent a moment, held by the strange, compelling

urgency of her mother’s gaze; but at length she wriggled free of Anne’s

embrace to say brightly, “
Maman
hide now.”

Anne glanced towards the palace. Maybe it was not too late even now,

if she could only speak to him; show him just how reasonable she was

prepared to be—

“Not now, precious,
Maman
is busy. Tomorrow.”

She planted an absent kiss on the upturned face and swept out of the

courtyard, away from the pitying eyes of her women and the frightened

glance of a very young man, whose only place in history would be to

recall this day more than twenty years from now.

A cluster of women surrounded Elizabeth in Anne’s wake; unnerved,

agitated, mindless as a gaggle of geese, they hemmed her in a cage of silk

and taffeta, until, struggling furiously, she won a chink of light between

the smothering skirts.

Within that chink she framed the tiny image of a woman, all in black

13

Susan Kay

satin, slender and insubstantial, like a distant shadow. She stretched out

her fingers to that image, no bigger than a doll, and they closed around

nothing. Suffocated by the press of skirts, she kicked wildly at the nearest

woman and that lady, mortally offended, moved sharply aside; she had a

better view then.

On the steps the image paused, looked back once, and disappeared

beneath the arched doorway. And that was her last conscious memory of

her mother—a shadow in the April sun, forever flying beyond the reach

of her frantic grasp.

t t t

On the first of May Anne was arrested and taken to the Tower, accused

of adultery with five different men. Three of them were the King’s close

friends, one a low court musician, one her own brother. When she heard

that last she knew the King was mad and lost all hope. At her trial she was

found guilty; she had expected nothing less and looked for no reprieve.

Then she was taken to Archbishop Cranmer and shown the annulment

papers. Crazy with relief she signed them, signed away her own rights,

signed away her child’s legitimacy and her inheritance—what did it

matter, after all, if she were only free to take Elizabeth and live abroad?

Back in her cell she learned that she was still to die, her reward for that

signature to be beheaded rather than burned, at the King’s pleasure. She

had betrayed Elizabeth for nothing—

On the 19th of May the sword of a French executioner severed her

neck. The Tower cannon echoed along the river bank to where Henry

waited on horseback, straining his ears to hear the first blast. Like a man

let out of Hell, he turned his horse and led the hunt across country to

Wolf Hall, where Jane Seymour waited, timid as a doe rabbit, to receive

his wedding ring.

Deep in the Hertfordshire countryside, in a house shrouded by a pall

of silence, Elizabeth’s chatter frayed the raw nerves of her attendants. She

had played most of the day in the privy garden in the hot May sunshine,

and no one had called her in to her lessons or taken her to task over the

rent in her gown. No one crossed her will at table or tried to make her

go to bed at the usual hour, so that by the end of that momentous day,

not a single tear had wet the cheeks of Anne’s only child. But, though

humoured on every side, she sensed the tense atmosphere and grew fretful

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Legacy

and belligerent. She was only bribed between the sheets at last by the offer

of her governess’s comfit box, and even with that trophy safely stowed

beneath her pillow, it seemed an endless time before she fell asleep.

Margaret Bryan was exhausted when she closed the nursery door and

her first impulse was to go straight down to the Great Hall and take her

ease with a tankard of ale. She went instead to the other side of the house,

to the room where Henry’s eldest daughter had sat alone all day, tasting

the bitter-sweet flavour of revenge.

It was a small, shabby room, hardly fit for a maid, let alone a king’s

daughter, and it was in darkness when Lady Bryan entered it.

“Madam?”

Mary Tudor started up from a hearth stool. In the light of Bryan’s

candle her young face looked yellow, haggard, almost old.

“Is she asking for me?” The voice too was old, hollow with guilt.

“No, madam.” Bryan smiled tightly. “I’d say you were the only thing

she didn’t demand tonight—a sweet, a story, a drink, the chamber pot,

another drink—God forgive me, but it would have tried the patience of

a saint. Still, she’s sleeping now.”

Mary sagged visibly with relief and sank back on the stool.

“Then you don’t think—you don’t suppose she was aware

of—anything?”

Bryan lifted her shoulders in a hesitant shrug.

“Who can say what she was aware of, madam? She’s so sharp—that

look of hers would see through lead.”

Mary bit her lip, but said nothing. Bryan glanced at her uneasily, put

the candle down and went over to poke the fire vigorously. “Madam,”

she said after a moment, “there are rumours in the Great Hall.”

Mary stiffened; her fingers crept automatically up to her crucifix as

she announced with wooden defiance: “The Princess of Wales does not

concern herself with idle gossip.”

“If you persist in this stubborn attitude,” said Bryan wearily, “the

King’s Grace will punish you further.”

“Oh no.” Mary shook her head, suddenly galvanised to life. “Bryan,

you don’t know my father as I do. He was so good, so gentle and

loving before the Concubine bewitched him. Now she’s dead I know

he will return to his senses and acknowledge me once more—his only

legitimate child.”

15

Susan Kay

Bryan was silent with pity for the mindless trust of a proud girl. In

all this long bitter history of tangled emotion nothing remained more

remarkable than Mary’s unwavering affection for the man who had

hounded her mother to the grave and broken her own health with years

of steady persecution. But the news from London should open her eyes

to the truth at last.

“It’s better that you hear this from me,” began Bryan kindly. “We

have it on reliable authority that the King’s marriage to Queen Anne was

annulled with her written consent several days before the execution.”

“It’s a lie!” shouted Mary. “She would never consent—never. She was

proud as Lucifer.”

Bryan’s gaze was steady.

“Cranmer has the document in his keeping, madam. In due time it

will be displayed at the King’s pleasure.” And
this
, she added silently,

is the man you defy, you stupid girl. Don’t you know the danger you

are in?

Mary stood up slowly. She was trembling with rage.

“Do you stand there, madam, and tell me to my face that my father

is a
murderer
?”

Before Bryan could reply she swung away, talking to herself feverishly.

“If it was done, it was done without my father’s knowledge. And what

of it? Guilty or innocent of the charge, you know she deserved to die. I

would he had burnt her at the stake like the witch and heretic she was! I

would I had been there to see it!”

Shaken and chilled by the harsh hysteria in Mary’s voice, Bryan curt-

sied briefly and left the room without another word. Useless to reason

with anyone in the grip of such ugly emotion; and in that moment, when

she had seen the girl look suddenly so like her father, Bryan resolved to

keep her distance in the future. The wretched fate of Mary Tudor was no

concern of hers; she had been a fool to add to her responsibilities and take

the risk of being seen by Anne’s sharp-eyed, sharp-tongued aunt. Angry