Beware, Princess Elizabeth Part 1

Beware, Princess Elizabeth.

Carolyn Meyer.

For Elizabeth Van Dorena".

inspiration, archeditor, and friend.

Prologue.

Hatfield, Hertfords.h.i.+re, England 17 November 1558.

THERE WAS A TIME, long ago, that I loved my sister. There may have been a time that Mary loved me. But that all changed. It had to, given who we were: the daughters of Henry VIII. Our father at times adored us but often shunned us and occasionally nearly forgot us. We were not the sons he desired.

Worse: I am the daughter of the woman Mary hated most in the world. She never forgave me for who my mother was: Anne Boleyn, who took the place of Mary's mother as queen.

When I was born Mary was forced to be my servanta"not an easy thing for a proud young woman of seventeen. How she must have loathed that! But then, before I reached my third birthday, my mother was dead, her execution ordered by my own fathera"and Mary's.

Yet, in spite of all, it seemed for a time that Mary was truly fond of mea"before she turned bitter, before she recognized that we were enemies.

My path to the throne has been long and fraught with peril. Now I am ready to follow in the footsteps of my father, England's greatest king. Mary, who hindered me at every turn, will soon be forgotten. But I promise you, history will remember me, Elizabeth, not for who my father was, or my mother or my sister, but for myself.

CHAPTER 1.

The Death of My Father.

The king is dead."

Those four words, cold as marble and sharp as flint, were uttered by the thin, cruel lips of Edward Seymour, the king's privy councillor and my brother's uncle. In this way I learned of my father's death. The date was the thirty-first of January, anno Domini 1547.

My father, dead! I knew that he had been ill, yet the news still came as a terrible shock. It seemed impossible that the great King Henry would no longer stride like a giant through the kingdom and through my life. I was not close to him, and I had spent little time with him in the years of my growing up. Nevertheless, he had been an enormous presence in my life. Now, suddenly, my father was gone. I would have neither his protection nor his occasional bursts of affection. I was alone, anda"I confess ita"I was afraid.

But I had no time to dwell on my own tumultuous feelings. My brother burst into tears at the news and threw himself sobbing into my arms. Named Edward in honor of this uncle, he was nine years old, a beautiful boy, delicate as a wren's egg. I held him, and my own tears fell upon his thick curls. I was thirteen, poised on the brink of womanhood, but at that moment I felt like a child myself. My brother and I were orphans, and now he was king. I can scarcely imagine his terror.

"When did my father die?" I asked Seymour, struggling to still the tremor in my voice.

"On the morning of the twenty-eighth."

"Three days past?" I asked sharply. "Why am I told only now?"

"There were decisions to be made," Seymour replied in a cold voice. "For three days no one but members of the privy council was informed of the king's death."

I glared at him. I did not trust Seymour, even then.Decisions concerning what?I wanted to ask boldly, but I did not, for I saw that my questions angered him.

Seymour was the brother of young Edward's mother, Jane Seymour, who had died soon after giving birth to my brother. Seymour had made himself so much part of our family that he'd carried me in Edward's christening procession. Now he was the most powerful of the privy councillors. Seymour had his own reasons for keeping the death of the king of England a secret. I guessed that it was to make sure of his own power over the new king.

Instead of demanding an explanation, I asked merely, "Has my sister, Mary, been informed?"

"She has," he snapped. "Madam, your questions could delay our arrival in London. Kindly summon your servants. We must leave at once."

"You have waited three days to tell us of our father's death," I retorted. "Now, if you please, have the kindness to allow me a little time to console my brother, the king." Without waiting for a reply, I knelt beside the sobbing, quivering boy. Only when he was somewhat soothed and my own feelings calmed did I call for Kat Ashley to prepare for our journey.

"LORD HAVE MERCY!" Kat cried out when I told her the news. She put on a great show of wailing and blubbering that I only half believed. Kat had been my governess and dearest confidante since I was three years old. We knew each other very well, and I sensed that although she deemed it proper to grieve for the death of the monarch, she could not forgive my father for his treatment of my mother and for the many times he seemed to have forgotten me. While Kat continued her lamentations, I summoned the maids of the chamber to begin laying out the black mourning garments I would need.

Eventuallya"not quickly enough for Seymour, but in good timea"our belongings were packed into panniers carried by horses, and our mounts prepared. Frost crunched beneath the horses' hooves as we plodded along rutted roadways. For once Kat was mostly silent, and I was finally able to give myself over to my grief.

I hadn't seen my father for two years, since last he called me to court to celebrate the dawning of the new year. That was how he wasa"sometimes I was in the king's favor, sometimes not. It had been this way all my life. For a time he hadn't even acknowledged me as his daughter, long ago declaring both my sister, Mary, and me b.a.s.t.a.r.ds. (Mary is the child of his first wife, I of his second, and Edward of his third.) Yet, only weeks before his death, I learned that he had restored us to the succession, putting us in line for the throne after Edward and whatever children my father's only son would produce. My sister and I were still b.a.s.t.a.r.ds, but we were the king's heirs. I stood a long way from the throne, however, and it did not once occur to me that day as I rode toward London that I might one day become queen.

IT WAS LATE afternoon, and the torches were already lit when we reached London. We were chilled to the bone and aching with weariness. But we could not rest. We had to hasten at once to Whitehall Palace, where my father's body lay in state in the chapel. His enormous coffin was surrounded by dozens of mourners and as many flickering candles. As I entered the chapel, I gave a start and nearly cried out, for beside the coffin stood a wax effigy of the king, dressed in magnificent jeweled robes. The extremely lifelike figure didn't resemble my painwracked father as I last saw him. It was made to portray the king in his vigorous youth. I had never seen him like this. My earliest memories were of a man who was already turned fat and ungainly. I was unprepared for the feelings of loss and yearning that swept through me for the awesomely powerful man I had never known.

Near the coffin sat Queen Catherine, my father's sixth wife, pale but composed. It would be wrong to describe her as beautiful, for Catherine, at thirty-four, was past her bloom. But she had a kindness in her eyes and a generous mouth that, on less somber occasions, smiled easily. I thought how lonely she would now be without my father. She had been so attentive to him in his last months, when he was feeble and in pain. He had been a demanding husband, yet she was sure to feel his absence keenly.

By her side sat one of our cousins, Lady Jane Grey, gently stroking the queen's hand. As we entered, Jane jumped to her feet, and she and Edward rushed weeping into each other's arms. I stood silently by, observing the scene. I, too, felt like weeping, but I would never reveal my feelings so easily.

After Edward received Queen Catherine's embrace, it was my turn. I stepped forward and knelt before her, and when she raised me up I kissed her with true affection. As I did so I noticed the man who hovered near her chair with an air of solicitude. He gazed at me, and I couldn't help gazing back frankly. Two years previous, when I was last at court, I had met Tom Seymour, brother of Edward Seymour and another of my little brother's uncles. I'd paid little attention to him thena"I was but a child of eleven. But now thirteen and aware of such things, I was quite conscious of his eyes lingering upon me.

Tom Seymour was tall, at least six feet, although not so tall as my father, with a slender, athletic build. His dark hair fell over his brow, and his beard was red and abundant. His brown eyes generally glowed with merriment, although at times they seemed to smolder with less pleasant emotions. I thought him very handsome.

After gazing at me for a long moment, he bowed and greeted me cordially, expressing his deep sympathy. But almost immediately he turned to my brother with an outpouring of affection. Edward had been weeping more or less steadily since Seymour brought us the news. Now he suddenly brightened and fairly leaped into Tom's arms. Tom swept up the frail boy in an embrace that nearly engulfed him.

At that moment Edward Seymour stepped forward. "Set him down at once," he ordered Tom in a tone that brooked no refusal. "This is the king of England, you fool! Not some idle toy for your pleasure!"

The two Seymours stared at each other while my brother clung to Tom like a cub to its dam. Then, very gently, Tom set the young king on his feet again and knelt before him. "Your Majesty," Tom said reverently. Edward Seymour cast his brother a scornful look and turned away.

What interested me even more than the anger that flashed between the two men was something in the eyes of Queen Catherine. She gazed at Tom Seymour with an expression that could mean only one thing:She loves him.

At once I wondered:How long has she loved him? My father has been dead for less than a week! This realization troubled me; I cared for Queen Catherine, and I could not bear to think of her as a disloyal wife. My mind raced on:And what of Tom Seymour? Does he love the queen?

I WAS KNEELING in prayer by my father's coffin when my sister, Mary, arrived. Her entrance created a considerable stir. Unless we were called to court, we rarely saw each other, although we lived only half a day's journey apart and often exchanged politely formal letters.

I was surprised at how she looked. She would be thirty-one in a few days, but she appeared much older. Her skin was blanched, her face pinched, her once red-gold hair now faded and thin. She seemed shrunken inside her mourning clothes, and yet she glittered from head to foot with diamonds and pearls. In her love of jewels, at least, she resembled our father! We greeted each other as daughters of the king, as the occasion demanded, and wept in each other's arms. Yet there was no warmth in our embrace. We were not enemies then, but neither were we friends. For my part I felt no more than if I had been embracing a near-stranger.

As Mary and I stood by our father's bier, I recalled the summer our father had wed Catherine. After the marriage ceremony at Hampton Court in July of 1543, Mary and I, and Edward, had accompanied the bridal couple on a honeymoon progress through the countryside. Each summer my father made a royal progress to let himself be seen by his subjects, stopping for a week or a fortnight with n.o.ble families along the way and amusing himself each day with hunting. The purpose of this progress was to display his new wife as well as to hunt for deer.

No one paid me much attention that summer except Catherine, who was quite gracious to me. I was grateful for her kindness, for as a nine-year-old girl I did not like to be ignored. Wherever we went, little Edward, curly haired and adorable heir to the throne, was of course the object of much cooing and petting. But it was my sister, Mary, who received enthusiastic greetings from the crowds that turned out to hail us as we rode through hamlets and villages. This seemed to annoy my father, who took to teasing Mary about finding her a husband.

"Twenty-seven and still a virgin!" he would roar. "Perhaps I know of a German prince who would have you as his wife!" Then later it would be the French dauphin, or some Danish count. He teased her as one might taunt a dog with a bone.

"As my lord wishes," Mary would reply in her deep, almost manly voice, taking care not to show her hurt or embarra.s.sment.

Mary might have hidden her true feelings from our father, but I caught a glimpse of them one day when we stopped to rest by the side of a stream. Our servants rushed about, setting up planks on trestles beneath the branches of a large oak. While our meal was being laid out, I saw Mary wander off alone along the banks of the stream. My father's leg was paining him, as it often did, and Catherine was busy tending to his needs. Edward had fallen asleep on the couch brought for him. Partly out of boredom and partly, I suppose, out of jealousy that she was the favored sistera"my father didn't even bother to tease mea"I decided to follow Mary and to spy on her. What I thought I would witness I cannot say.

After a time her footsteps slowed, then stopped. She flung herself down on the gra.s.sy bank and burst into tears. I watched from behind a tree as she sobbed as though her heart were breaking. Part of me wanted to flee back to the royal company, where perhaps I might now receive some of my father's attention. But Mary's grief touched something within me, and after a time I stepped out from my hiding place. I didn't know what to say, and so I simply stood where she might notice me.

When Mary realized that she was not alone, she stifled a startled cry. "Yes?" she asked irritably. "What is it, Elizabeth?"

"You seem so sad," I said.

Mary gazed at me thoughtfully. "I am twenty-seven years old. I have neither husband nor child, nor any hope of one. It is a terrible thing to live without love, Elizabeth."

"I love you, dearest sister," I murmured, and I moved to lay my hand softly upon her cheek.

"You!" she said harshly, pulling back, and I stepped away in surprise. "You!"

Stung, I turned and ran back to join the others. The board was laid with a meal of meat pasties and fish pudding and ale, but I had no appet.i.te. Soon Mary joined us, her eyes puffed and reddened. My father noticed nothing, but I saw the new queen observing Mary carefully. Feeling rebuffed, I avoided Mary as much as I could for the rest of our journey. It was not difficult to do, for she seemed to avoid me as well.

When the royal progress ended at the close of summer, each of us returned to our homes. Mary went to her manor house at Hunsdon in Hertfords.h.i.+re, north of London. Edward was taken to his palace at Ashridge and I to Hatfield Palace, also in Hertfords.h.i.+re, accompanied by our various tutors and governesses. The king and queen returned to my father's favorite palace at Greenwich, on the River Thames, east of London. For a time I missed them, until I got caught up again in my studies and thought less and less of my family.

Since then I had seen little of the new couple or of Mary, except when we all were invited to court for Yuletide and New Year's, again at Easter, and once more at Whitsuntide. On those occasions I was careful not to approach Mary closely, no matter how genial she may have appeared. But now, at my father's funeral, I had no choice. I wondered what my sister's thoughts were as we stood side by side, her fingers entwined with mine.

CHAPTER 2.

Edward the King.

The body of King Henry lay in state for twelve days. During the long hours that I was required to kneel beside his coffin, I had much time to think back upon my relations.h.i.+p with my father.

"You remind him of your mother," Kat once said when I complained that he paid me no attention. "Nothing will change that." And nothing did. He never spoke of it, of course. It was forbidden to utter the name of Anne Boleyn. It was as if my mother had never existed. Every trace of her had been removeda"every trace, that is, but me.

I owe my understanding of my father and my mother to dear Kat. Night after night, as we lay side by side in the darkness with the bed curtains drawn closed around us, it was Kat who whispered answers to my deepest questions. Sometimes I asked about my father and often about my mother. Kat is the only person with whom I ever spoke of Anne Boleyn.

"She was beautiful, with hair black as a raven's wing and eyes black as jet, and she was intelligent and witty as well," Kat would say of my mother. "She fascinated your father from the first time he set eyes upon her."

She fascinated him, but he already had a wife: Catherine of Aragon, who was Mary's mother. I learned, when I grew older, that my father had had his marriage to Catherine annulled in order to marry Anne. That first Catherine (three of my father's wives were named Catherine) did everything in her power to prevent the annulment. But my father banished Catherine, and Mary, too, to force her to consent to it. Yet, to her dying hour, even after my father had married Anne Boleyn and made her his queen, Catherine of Aragon refused her consent. Perhaps Mary had inherited from her mother that same stubbornness.

According to Kat my father believed Anne Boleyn would give him the son that poor old Catherine could not. To his great disappointment I, the only child of his marriage to Anne, was not a son. I was Anne's failure. When he no longer loved her, he determined to rid himself of her. He had her locked in the Tower and then contrived to have her sentenced to death for charges of adultery and treason. There was not a word of truth in the charges.

Would King Henry have ordered my mother's execution if I had been a boy? I believe not. He might have found love with another woman, as he was wont to do, but he would have let Anne live, and I would have had my mother. And so my feelings about my father were never simple and uncomplicated. I did love him, because he was my father and a great king. But I also harbored a dark secret: I resented him deeply for depriving me of my mother. The darkest secret of all: At times I hated him.

Then, just weeks after my mother's death, my father married Jane Seymour. "The opposite of your mother," Kat replied when I pressed her for a description of a woman I scarcely remember. "Pretty, I suppose, but rather colorless. Quite prim." Kat pursed her lips. "Queen Jane had the good fortune to bear a male child, to the king's delight. And then she had the good sense to die almost at once, before he tired of her."

Kat should never have said such a thing, of course, but Kat had a talent for saying things she ought not. Her tongue often brought her trouble.

My mother was not the only wife my father sent to the Tower and then had put to death. I was eight years old when his fifth, Catherine Howard, was sentenced to die. All the nervous excitement of this latest execution could not be kept from me, and it was as if my own mother's execution were being repeated. I wept, I cried out, for days I could neither sleep nor eat. Kat, frantic to calm me, summoned the court physician to prescribe a sleeping draught.

When I awoke it was over. I listened as servants whispered how Catherine Howard's head had been caught in a basket, her blood sopped up by crones with handkerchiefs, her body carried off for burial. The way it must have been for my mother, I thought, and I have thought of it many times since that day. Remembering Catherine Howard's death has always struck terror to my heart.

THE TWELVE DAYS of the lying-in-state ended. From the palace window Edward and Mary and I watched the somber procession that stretched for miles, following my father's coffin to Windsor Castle. By custom the monarch's heirs did not attend his funeral, but it seemed that nearly everyone else did. The wax effigy rode in a carriage drawn by eight black horses in black velvet trappings.

In the days that followed, I waited to learn what turn my life would take next. I had no control over events; I could only control my response to them. Wrapped in the silence of my own lonely thoughts, I paced the snowy paths in the bleak palace garden. My father was dead. My sister, Mary, was cold and withdrawn. My little brother, Edward, was now king. What will become of me? I wondered over and over. What will become of me? But I decided that, however much fear and worry now gnawed at my vitals, I would one day learn to rule my own life.

ON THE TWENTIETH day of February, anno Domini 1547, I witnessed the coronation of my brother, Edward. Those who were there the day in 1509 when my father was crowned were determined that this celebration would surpa.s.s it in grandeur.

The day before the coronation, as the royal procession wound its way through London, trumpeters blew fanfares to proclaim the approach of the boy-king. My little brother, dressed in cloth of silver embroidered in gold and belted with rubies, pearls, and diamonds, was mounted high on a huge white horse trapped with crimson satin. He was followed by the n.o.bility of the kingdom, according to rank. The two Seymour brothers, Edward and Tom, took the lead.

So much splendor on such a delicate young boy! He wore a look of proud hauteur, but I knew that was a mask to disguise his fear. For a little while I imagined myself in his place, arrayed in ermine and jewels, surrounded by members of the privy council in their rich velvet robes. Henchmen carrying gilded poleaxes and knights in purple satin riding fine horses would precede my royal litter.

But I was not the queen, and short of a miracle I would never be queen. I was a.s.signed a place far back in the procession, behind my sister, Mary, who sat in a chariot with Dowager Queen Catherine, the highestranking woman in the kingdom. Beside me rode Anne of Cleves, my father's fourth wife, a German princess my father had decided to wed seven years earlier on the basis of a small portrait he'd seen.

Anne of Cleves had spoken only German when she'd stepped off the s.h.i.+p that brought her to Dover. She was stoutly built, her skin pockmarked, her gowns and headdresses drearily old-fas.h.i.+oned. The king immediately saw that the flesh-and-blood woman did not match the portrait, much less his dreams of her, but he married her anyway. Six months later he had the marriage annulleda"and sent to the gallows his chief secretary, Cromwell, who had arranged the match. Since the divorce Anne had had the status of "the king's sister" and had lived comfortably in one of the country houses he had given her with plenty of jewels and money to soothe her injured feelings. We were often paired at official occasions. We were fond of each other, and I was glad for her company. We were two women, one old and one young, who counted for little in the kingdom. Anne may not have cared, but I confess that I did. I was the trueborn daughter of King Henry VIII!

That night Edward slept in the Tower of London, traditional for each monarch in the history of England, including my mother, who spent the night there before her crowning as queen. It amuses me to think that I was present for that event, less than three months before my birth, riding in her belly, beneath all her jeweled finery.

But now my thoughts were not of Edward's coronation, but of another matter entirely that had been troubling me for days: the look I had seen Queen Catherine bestow upon Tom Seymour. I knew that Kat would speak forthrightly once I had found a way to introduce the subject.

That night we retired to the chambers a.s.signed to us. All but one of the candles were extinguished, and we climbed onto the high bed and drew the curtains against the cold. Our servants slept.

"Tom Seymour and the queen...," I began hesitantly.

"She was in love with him before, you see," said Kat, almost as though she had read my thoughts. "Catherine has been in love with Tom Seymour these many years, since long before she married King Henry. And who can blame her? Do you not think him extraordinarily handsome?"

The handsomest I have ever seen, I thought. Aloud I said, "I scarcely noticed," and feigned a yawn. Then, "Will they wed, then, do you think?"

"The dowager queen must first complete a year of official mourning," said Kat. "We shall see if she lasts six months."

With that Kat rolled onto her side and fell fast asleep, leaving me to lie awake pondering this bit of news.

THE NEXT MORNING, after a solemn procession from the Tower to Westminster Abbey, the coronation commenced, hours of pomp and ceremony that left everyone exhausted. By evening the celebrants had recovered sufficiently, and the revelry began at Whitehall Palace, the new king's official residence.

Throughout the banquet no one paid me the least attention, as usual. I was seated far down the table from King Edward and completely ignored, as only a thirteen-year-old princess of lowly status can be ignored in the vast sea of dukes and d.u.c.h.esses, marquises and marchionesses, earls and countesses, barons and baronesses. But when the dancing began, my old friend Robin Dudley suddenly appeared at my side.

Robin had shared lessons with Edward and me and our tutors when Robin and I were eight years olda"our birthdays are within days of each other. He was a merry lad then, as good-looking as he was good-humored, but I had not seen him in some time. Now thirteen, no longer a boy but not yet a man, he had the same bright eyes, reddish brown hair, and quick smile that I remembered well. He approached me shyly, but as soon as we joined the other dancers, his shyness vanished.

The dance was my favoritea"lavolta, in which the partners take turns lifting each other off the floor. Of course, the lady does no actual lifting; the gentleman first executes a leap and then seizes the lady by the waist and propels her high into the air. When finally we stopped, breathless and laughing, Robin brought me a cup of hippocras and begged me to tell him where my life was taking me.

"I cannot say, Robin," I told him frankly as we sipped the spiced wine. "I am the king's daughter, but I think they have all forgotten me."