Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (6 page)

and shrewd with ruling. He had strolled in this same garden earlier with

some pretty little nobody, whose name he had already forgotten, hanging

on his arm and on his every word. His ministers were already combing

Europe for a suitable bride. They were simple facts of life that no one else

at court would ever dare to draw attention to, except this arrogant young

devil who had as good as told him to his face that he made a remarkably

merry widower. And slowly the corners of Henry’s thin mouth curled

into a smile of grudging admiration.

“God works in a mysterious way,” he remarked smoothly, eyeing

Edward’s lean white face with a certain satisfaction, watching him sweat

discreetly beneath his collar, terrified that his fool of a brother had ruined

all they had worked for. “And as you say, Tom—as you so rightly say—

who are we mere mortals to question
His
will?”

Edward Seymour’s breath of relief was clearly audible, the glance he

cast at his brother venomous as a snake’s. Henry saw it and was amused.

Divide and rule was a principle he took seriously. He put an amiable arm

about the young man’s shoulders and strode on between the two of them,

strongly reminded of the way chained bandogs strained to savage each

other. The aim of a good master was to keep them wanting to savage each

other rather than the man who held them in their chains; and Henry was

a good master; he knew all the tricks. While he lived there would be fair

balance held between the ambitious dogs about his court who jostled for

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Legacy

power; but he was no longer young and the Tudors were a short-lived,

unhealthy stock. A festering sore was creeping steadily up one leg and

the stench of it was beginning to permeate his rooms. The Seymours had

taken the scent of his weakness, like the good bloodhounds they were.

They padded after their master and looked to the future, to the possibility

of a child upon the throne and a long period of minority. But only Tom

followed the trail as far as the nursery door, and made a pleasure out of

political necessity by courting the affection of Henry’s son.

He had a chameleon quality which made him fit unobtrusively against

any background. In foreign courts the suave diplomat; on high seas the

respected captain; in the nursery the devoted uncle; in all of these roles

he was genuinely at home, without any conscious effort. There was no

need to feign affection for his royal nephew; he had an infinite capacity

for light-hearted love. And among those many little loves which gathered

about him, like a collection of semi-precious gems, there was Elizabeth,

that amusing, lively, acquisitive little girl, whose greed for life reminded

him so fondly of his own. “What have you got for me?” said her eyes

each time he appeared fresh from a voyage to foreign parts and the atti-

tude never gave him offence, for he also asked that same silent question

of everyone he met.

It was grand sport, this playing for power in virgin territory, a highly

enjoyable mixture of business and pleasure. There were pleasant byways

along the stony roads of ambition for those who were sharp enough to

read the map.

Tom Seymour took many a profitable detour down them; and enjoyed

the scenery.

t t t

Elizabeth was six when the King chose her next stepmother. He had been

nearly three years without a wife, a merry widower, and he was reluc-

tant to exchange his freedom for marriage with an insignificant German

princess named Anne. Indeed, the name itself might have put an end to

the negotiations before they started but for Cromwell’s thick-skinned

persistence. They needed the alliance with Cleves—and the woman was

comely, said Cromwell slyly, one had only to look at Holbein’s mini-

ature, specially commissioned for the purpose, to see that.

Henry looked and was appeased, yet stil his vague sense of unease

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Susan Kay

remained. Another Anne! However fair the creature, how could he help but

make unhappy comparisons? So, when he heard of Elizabeth’s hot impa-

tience to meet this new stepmother he was touched on the rawest of nerves.

“Tell her,” he snapped, turning on those who had thought to please

him with news of the child’s delight, “that she had a mother so different

from this woman she ought not to
wish
to see her.”

It fell to Mr. Shelton, governor of the household, to deliver the

King’s unkind message to his daughter. He saw her eyes widen in hurt

astonishment before she turned away slowly and climbed up into the

window-seat to watch the rain teeming down the little leaded panes. She

sat very straight and still with her back to him and though he knew she

was crying he dared not go and take her on his lap. She was too old now

for familiarity from a distantly related man-servant. Mr. Shelton went out

of the room, leaving her alone, and felt sadly that that was how he would

always leave her now. He kicked the wall savagely when the door had

closed behind him and wished it was his sovereign lord and master.

Yet when Anne of Cleves arrived in England Elizabeth was at court

with her sister Mary to greet the lady after all. In decency Henry could not

leave her out—it would look so pointed. And once he had set eyes on this

new wife he decided rashly that he ought not to wish to see her himself.

He went to his wedding squealing like a staked pig, “What remedy, hey?

None but to marry this fat Flanders mare!” and the look he gave Cromwell

as he said it told that unfortunate man that he was not long for this world.

Anne of Cleves was a warm, compassionate, sensible woman. Everybody

liked her, except the husband who flatly refused to share her bed, but then

Henry had not been led to expect an amiable virgin sow. He was loud in

his disappointment and already in love with his new wife’s maid of honour,

Katherine Howard. This time it took Archbishop Cranmer only five

months to dissolve another unfortunate marriage for his master. Cromwell

laid his head on the block for bungling the affair, and on the morning of

that execution Henry married Anne Boleyn’s little Howard cousin.

The fat Flanders mare had escaped to comfortable retirement at

Richmond Palace, considerably happier to be known as the King’s “good

sister.” She had shown almost indecent relief at the annulment and had

indeed made only one condition to it. She desired to see Elizabeth regu-

larly because “I would rather have been her mother than your Queen.”

Only a foreigner could have hoped to get away with such insolence,

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Legacy

and Henry, not daring to endanger relations with Cleves any further,

chose to turn the other cheek with astonishing restraint. Let her have

Elizabeth! Let her have anything she wanted provided he gained his

freedom without armed hostilities. So Elizabeth went often to visit “Aunt

Anne” and learnt sufficient cookery in the kitchens at Richmond under

the tutelage of that extremely practical German lady to justify her later

boast that should she be turned out of the realm in her petticoat, she

would make her living anywhere in Europe.

When she was not at Richmond, she was at court, having her pert

head turned by the attentions of Henry’s Rose without Thorns, the reck-

less, penniless, wanton little Queen who welcomed her with open arms.

At seven years old she had never been in such demand and she was ready

to worship the lovely, laughing girl, just on eighteen, who made so much

of her.

For a little over a year the court sunned itself in the warmth of Katherine

Howard’s youth, and it began to be said, with some reason, that the King

was in his happy dotage at last. Whoever Katherine favoured found a

place in the King’s circle; whoever she loved was automatically admitted

to his affection. And Katherine loved Elizabeth, her cousin’s child, and

made no secret of it. A place of honour at the royal table, a wardrobe fit

for a princess and the attention of the father she had always adored—all

this and more Elizabeth owed to the young stepmother who chose to

make an especial friend of her. The reign of Katherine Howard was the

high-water mark of Elizabeth’s turbulent childhood, one unending party

which, like her reckless little stepmother, she believed would never end—

t t t

Sunlight filled the deserted Long Gallery, winking on the massive stones

that adorned the King’s vast chest and fat fingers.

He was hot and short of breath to the point of tetchy irritation as

he lumbered over the wooden floorboards like a clumsy baited bear,

watching the two maddening figures darting further from his reach. He

had no hope of catching them in the fair contest he had demanded as proof

of his rejuvenated youth, and even as he thought it, he saw Elizabeth turn

her head, met the cool considering glance, and knew she knew it too.

A moment later she was sprawling full length in the dirty rushes. The

little Queen exclaimed and began to run back, but Henry reached his

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Susan Kay

daughter first, picking her up with the effortless movement of one hand,

and brushing the clinging straw from her bodice with lingering fingers.

There was an odd expression in his eyes as he turned her chin up and

kissed her slowly and deliberately on the mouth.

Anne
!

Elizabeth shivered. He released her.

“Are you hurt?” asked Katherine, touching her arm.

“She’s not hurt,” said Henry strangely. “She knows how to fall. She

has been well taught.”

Beneath his compelling gaze, Elizabeth flushed and muttered some-

thing about catching her foot in her gown. But still the King smiled at

her strangely, with mocking tenderness.

“Take care of that foot, Bess, it has discretion. Only find a tongue to

match it and you’ll be a politician.”

Katherine laughed lightly, a little tinkling note of affectionate indul-

gence, sweet and shallow, like herself.

“Ah, my lord, she speaks so well, better than I. What could possibly

be amiss with her tongue?”

“That tongue,” said Henry shrewdly, “is the tail that wags the dog,

too long and too impudent by half. It would answer the Devil himself as

pertly as it answers me—isn’t that so, child?”

“Assuredly, sir.”

Elizabeth looked up; her eyes were black and hard, crazy with daring,

no longer a child’s. “But then—some would say it was the same thing.”

She had gone too far.

Even ignorant, tactless little Katherine caught her breath as the King’s

eyes narrowed to slits and the veins bulged at his temples.

Do you mock me still, you devil’s strumpet
?

Her gaze wavered, crumpled, became a bewildered tearful amber

stare. Henry saw it and softened.

Anne, you bitch, only you could use a child against me
!

He reached out and touched his daughter’s pale cheek.

“You should have been a boy,” he said softly. “Why were you not a

boy?
Why?”

Elizabeth bowed her head guiltily and stared at his huge jewelled feet.

“You will be wasted,” he said resentfully and turned away.

The cruel sunlight etched a score of tiny lines in the sagging skin

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Legacy

around his eyes and mouth. He felt old and petulant as the dead past

rushed upon him and a dark murderous mood, inseparable product in

him of any prolonged contact with Elizabeth, was growing steadily.

Wasted! Six years of his prime, his lovely glowing virile life, and

nothing to show for it but a haunted conscience and this strange, fright-

ening little girl. Why in God’s name hadn’t the child died at birth, like

her brother, and spared him the continual torment of a hideous memory?

How narrowly he had got her born in wedlock, this love-child conceived

in the triumph of Anne’s artful capitulation. Her unborn promise had been

the final spur that made him brave the break with Rome. For her sake he

had taken on the world, torn down the English Church, chopped off the

heads of loyal friends who could not stomach the change—More, Fisher,

all good men—got himself excommunicated, everlastingly damned after

death. For her sake he had lost his immortal soul, and though the mother

had died for it, the child lived on to torture him, telling him with every

movement of her body and every flicker of her bold, clever eyes, that she,

not his pale puny son, was the heir he wanted.

But she was useless to him. Women were not fit to rule kingdoms. He

had built his life around that simple axiom, murdered to justify his belief

in it. If he questioned it now, he made a mockery of his whole existence.

All he had done, he had done for England, to save this wilful little half isle

from the hazardous rule of a woman. His greatest achievement, as man

and monarch, must be the siring of Edward. He could not, would not see

the seed of greatness in Elizabeth. He did not want to see it: the thought