Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (5 page)

“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 oppo-

site 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 the 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.”

t t t

22

Legacy

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.

23

Susan Kay

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.

24

Legacy

“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 privi-

leges, 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

25

Susan Kay

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 head!”

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

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Legacy

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.

t t t

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?”

“What an avaricious young lady you are!” he remarked, looking down

on her from a smiling height. “Remind me never to owe you any money.”

She looked at him anxiously, suddenly suspicious.

“You will come, won’t you?”

“If I can remember the way.”

“
Elizabeth
!”

They both looked round with a start, and Tom swept a mocking

bow to Mary Tudor’s unsmiling figure. Reluctantly Elizabeth bobbed a

curtsey and went to take her sister’s stiffly outstretched hand. The look

she gave him over her shoulder, the oddest mix of trust and coquetry he

had ever seen, was enough to decide him. He determined to find his way

back to the nursery at the earliest convenient moment. He considered

teasing Ned with his new conquest, but looking round saw, with a frown,

that his brother was with the King. Henry’s great voice boomed around

the crowded chamber, trumpeting victory like a cockerel, and Hertford

stood there, looking so smug, one might have thought he had borne the

brat himself. It was insufferable the way Ned pushed himself forward,

grabbing all the honours because of a few years’ seniority! Automatically

Tom began to elbow his way towards the Queen’s bed. At some point in

the night, between making his royal brother-in-law bellow with laughter

and his own brother glare with jealous envy, he spared a glance for his

sister and saw with a shock of horror that she looked half dead.

t t t

27

Susan Kay

Less than a week later they buried her, and for a while both Seymours

feared they might be burying their influence on the King with her.

Slowly, in the months that followed, they began to realise that this was

not the case. For once, a woman had been taken from Henry before he

had had time to grow tired of her charms, a woman, moreover, who had

martyred herself to give him the one thing he had wanted and lacked

all these years—a legitimate son. He was maudlin and sentimental and

enjoying a certain degree of reverent self-pity as he strolled one afternoon

in his privy garden with the brothers of his late wife.

“Your sister was the only woman in this world I ever loved,” he said,

and waited for the tactful words of condolence which bolstered his ego.

“The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away, Your Majesty,” said

Tom, and the sarcasm with which he said it took his brother’s breath

away like a blow in the crutch.

The King halted, examining the young man with eyes grown hard