The Lady Elizabeth (43 page)

All condemned to death for indulging in stolen love, for enjoying the sweetest of life’s pleasures. Living beings, full of vitality and life, capable of arousal and passion—yet all had found that it was such a small step from the warm tumbled bed to the cold ax and the grave. Elizabeth suspected that she would never again surrender to desire without fearing that it might have fatal consequences; would never again give herself to a man without remembering the fate of these three.

“I have some tidings for you, madam,” Sir Robert said, a few days later. “Astley and Parry have been released from the Tower.”

“Oh, that is good news!” Elizabeth cried. At least there was some light in this present darkness. “When will I see them again? Are they returning here?”

Sir Robert looked uncomfortable.

“I fear not, madam. The council will not allow it.”

“I will write to the Protector,” Elizabeth said defiantly.

“It will do you no good,” he warned her.

“We shall see,” she replied.

When she saw the horseman through her window, she hoped that he had brought a reply from the Duke of Somerset. But when Sir Robert entered her chamber and she saw his grave mien, she realized that he brought news of far greater import.

His eyes never left her face as he delivered it, with Lady Tyrwhit and Master Ascham standing by, watching her too.

“Madam, it is my heavy duty to inform you that yesterday, the Admiral died on Tower Hill.” There was a brief silence.

“God rest him,” Elizabeth said simply, betraying neither by word nor expression her inner turmoil.

“I trust he did not suffer too much,” Ascham said quietly.

“Bishop Latimer reported that he died badly—dangerously and horribly, he said. God had obviously forsaken him.” Elizabeth sensed that Tyrwhit was saying this in the hope of provoking her into uttering something rash and indiscreet.

“Did he say aught of my Lady Elizabeth?” Lady Tyrwhit asked. He has briefed her, Elizabeth thought.

“He did write a final message, scratched with the point of a lace on his shoe, but it was considered treasonable, and was destroyed,” her husband said. “It was a foolish thing to do when he was about to face divine judgment.” He shook his head. “His fate I leave to God, but he was surely a wicked man, and the realm is well rid of him.”

Elizabeth turned her back on them and stared out the window at the snowbound gardens below.

“He was a man of much wit and very little judgment,” she said quietly, knowing they were all waiting on her every word. Well, she would say no more, however traumatized and confused she felt. One thing she had learned from this whole sad and dangerous business, and that was that she must in future keep her own counsel and never betray her true feelings. It was a harsh lesson for one who was just fifteen years old.

CHAPTER
16

1553

A
s the tall young woman pulled back the curtains and opened her window, the sun streamed in, burnishing her waist-length wavy hair. Her face was pale, her posture dignified. The severely cut black gown set off her slender figure to advantage, but its high-standing collar lined with fine white lawn and its lack of adornment suggested modesty and purity. There was a gravity about her that made her seem older than her nineteen years, and yet there was something of the coquette too. One only had to look at the way she moved her delicate hands with their long white fingers, vainly displaying them to advantage against the black stuff of her gown.

She moved to the table and picked up a letter, and her intelligent face registered a frown as she reread it for the third time. She certainly could not go hunting until she had dealt with this, or decided how to deal with it. But what should she do?

It had been some years since she had been in such a difficult dilemma. She thought back to that earlier time when she had faced danger. She had been lucky to escape so lightly, she knew, but it had been a close thing. She shuddered to think how her reputation had been all but ruined. Even after she had thought herself safe, that midwife had come forward with her lurid tale, and Elizabeth had thought herself discovered. Fortunately, most people had dismissed the woman’s story as far-fetched, and of course, she couldn’t be sure that it
was
the Lady Elizabeth whom she had attended. It all sounded most contrived.

Elizabeth had suffered, though, and not only from grueling anxiety. Her courses had returned, but they were much more painful than before. She was cursed with megrims, stomach pains, and jaundice. Often, her many ailments had obliged her to take to her bed; things had gotten so bad that at length, the Lord Protector himself had sent the King’s physician to her. Thanks to his kindly ministrations, she had slowly recovered, although she doubted she would ever be as well as she had been before.

In the end, the shameful gossip and the odious whispering had died down, and Elizabeth had firmly put the whole terrible business behind her, resolved to give lie to the rumors and to conduct herself in such a manner that no scandal should ever again attach itself to her name. And this she had accomplished—witness the somber clothes, as became a virtuous Protestant maiden, the laying away of her jewels, the pious observances in chapel, the frugality with which she lived, and the esteem in which she was now held at court and in the kingdom at large. The King her brother loved her; again she was his sweet sister Temperance. He corresponded with her regularly and looked forward to her visits, even though he still insisted on the strictest formality on the rare occasions when they were permitted to be together; and whenever he summoned her, she went to court splendidly attended, as the great magnate she was. Her only indulgence was her music, something she could not live without, and she never let a day go by without playing for hours on her instruments or welcoming musicians to her house.

Kat bustled in, an older Kat, a touch stiffer in the joints since her sojourn in the Tower, but very firmly in charge of the household again. After promising the council never again to speak of any marriage plans for her charge, Kat had been restored to Elizabeth at the end of that terrible summer, although by then Elizabeth and Lady Tyrwhit had developed a grudging respect for each other. It was Lady Tyrwhit who, fond of collecting proverbs, had reminded Elizabeth of Cicero’s saying
Semper eadem,
which she now took for her motto, remembering that long-ago conversation with her father, whose memory she so revered. But Lady Tyrwhit could never have replaced Kat. Elizabeth had not forgotten their blessed and joyful reunion, both of them weeping on each other’s shoulders, mindless of rank and etiquette…

“Is something wrong?” Kat asked, clearing away plates and cutlery from the table. Although the letter had arrived the night before, Elizabeth had told no one about it.

“I think I have one of my headaches coming on,” Elizabeth said, folding up the paper and putting it in her pocket. Her headaches—often so bad that she could not see to read—were a legacy of that other time. But this time she was feigning.

“Can I get you anything?” Kat was all concern. “A brew of feverfew?”

“No, thank you. I think I will rest awhile.” Elizabeth went into her bedchamber and lay down on her bed. Then she remembered that she always had to have the curtains closed when she suffered a megrim, so she got up and drew them before lying down and taking out the letter again. At this rate, her head would be aching for real.

The letter was from John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland and Lord President of the Council, the man who now ruled England in the name of the fifteen-year-old King. Northumberland had overthrown Somerset four years before, and sent him to the block some two years later.

“There’s a kind of justice to it,” Kat had said. “After all, Somerset had his own brother executed. The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small.”

Kat rarely mentioned the Admiral, and when she did, it was with sadness. She had been smitten with the man, that much had become clear, but Elizabeth did not blame her. He had had a talent for making women respond to his charm. Her own feelings about him were still confused. She was sure now she had never truly loved him. Probably she had been merely infatuated, beguiled by the attentions of an older, attractive, and experienced seducer. Even now, remembering his dark good looks, she could still feel a thrill in her heart—a thrill that was tempered by sorrow and, yes, resentment, for Thomas Seymour had, through his foolish scheming, brought her nothing but trouble and pain. She had almost been brought down in his dramatic fall, her youthful folly threatening to implicate her in his rash grab for power. But he had paid for that, dearly, and she hoped he was at peace now.

She still shuddered when she thought of the precariousness of her situation back then. But now, it seemed, she might again be in peril. She did not like or trust Northumberland, a cold, ruthless man, unscrupulous and greedy for power. His dismissive manner toward her, on the rare occasions she visited the court, had led her to suspect that he held her to be of very little account. He controlled the young King, and through him the country; he had no time for the King’s bastard sisters. The only thing she could admire about Northumberland was his staunch Protestant faith. There was no doubt that he would defend it to the death.

The King her brother was another such. “The new Josiah,” they called him, and it was true. He was zealous in his faith, and he had been harsh to their sister Mary, constantly wrangling with her over her illegal celebration of the Mass in her household. Mary, it was rumored, had even tried to flee the realm. Were it not for the threats of her cousin the Emperor, the most powerful prince in Christendom, she would stand in the greatest peril indeed. Elizabeth had always taken care never to get involved in this interminable quarrel.

Yet Edward let Mary largely alone these days. He was ill now, this strange, wise-beyond-his-years boy. It had begun last year with a fever that many attributed to measles or a mild attack of smallpox, but since then the King’s health had inexorably declined. He had not been seen in public for months now, and it was rumored that he was suffering from a fatal consumption.

Elizabeth had begged, again and again, these past weeks, to be allowed to visit him, but Northumberland had steadfastly refused to allow it, ignoring her outraged protests.

“I wouldn’t mind, but he allowed Mary to visit the King,” she had complained to Kat, and then dashed off another angry letter to Northumberland, demanding to see her brother. Again, the Duke put her off with excuses, much to her mounting chagrin. At length, she had ridden out determinedly from Hatfield, making for London, but the Duke’s men had met her on the road and ordered her to go back. Frustrated and angry, she had sent Edward letter after letter, but had received no reply.

Her suspicions had mounted. If rumor spoke truth, and the King were indeed dying, why the secrecy? It was as if Northumberland were plotting something, she thought perceptively. Then, in May, had come the news that the Duke had married his son Guildford to Lady Jane Grey, and alarm bells began ringing inside Elizabeth’s shrewd head.

“So he allies the Dudleys with the blood royal,” she fumed to Kat. “I mistrust his intentions. She was betrothed to Somerset’s son.”

“I don’t understand why it bothers you,” Kat said perplexedly, thinking that Elizabeth was worrying over trifles. “Surely the Duke can marry his son to whomever he pleases?”

Elizabeth shook her head at Kat in exasperation and sighed.

“It has pleased him to marry Lord Guildford to a girl who is in line to the throne,” she explained.

“But the Lady Mary is next in line, then yourself,” Kat said. “Your father passed an Act of Parliament decreeing it,
and
he made provision for it in his will.”

“Yes, and who comes after us? The heirs of my father’s sister Mary. That means the Duchess of Suffolk and her daughter, Lady Jane.”