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  “Come now, dear one, I’ve seen you before. I’ve seen all of you before. Remember your devoted gardener who used to come to you early each morning to tend your rosy buds? And how well they have blossomed!” he said ardently, his gaze and voice full of admiration as he bent to teasingly tweak one rosy nipple.

  He knelt behind me and draped a string of pearls about my throat and whispered, his lips grazing my ear, “For the life of me, I cannot tell which is fairer—your skin or these pearls!”

  My whole body tensed and I shut my eyes and willed my heart to stay shut, for the locks and bolts I had placed upon it to hold fast. “Do not go back, Bess,” the voice of reason whispered urgently inside my head, “do not go back!”

  He took my hand, tugging my fingers from their tight, trembling grip on the tub’s rim, and kissed it before he slipped the garnet and ruby heart ring back onto my finger again.

  “Here is your betrothal ring, my bonny Bess, my soon-to-be bride!” he declared, kissing my hand again. “But I would dive for an even more precious pearl—a pink one!” And, careless of his fine, gold-embellished black velvet sleeve, he plunged his arm into my bath, his determined fingers avidly seeking the pink pearl of flesh between my thighs even as I backed away and shoved at him, all the time ordering him to get out.

  “I do not want you here or your ring on my finger!” I insisted.

  Ignoring me, Tom began to dream aloud; he was a man ever in love with his own voice.

  As his fingers deftly stroked that sensitive little nub, making my own body betray me, I squirmed and sighed, even as I gripped the sides of the copper tub so hard, my knuckles trembled and stood out white, and gritted my teeth, willing myself to resist. He talked about what our life together as husband and wife would be like—“passion and bedsport galore!” But then his touch changed, growing harder, as if there were anger behind it, and there was a strange faraway look in his eyes, as if he had forgotten where he was and what he was doing. Ambition, his guiding star—I saw it light a fire in his eyes.

  He was so lost in his dreams that he did not hear my pleas that he was hurting me. As I squirmed, trying to free myself, my hair tumbled down into the water, and his other arm rose up to circle round my throat so that my chin rested in the crook of his elbow—it was almost as if he meant to strangle me!—as the pressure of his finger on that most private and vulnerable part of me increased.

  His finger digging in, hurting me, pressing hard, as if it would rub that tender pink bud red and raw, he spoke of vengeance, of casting his brother “the high and mighty Lord Protector of the Realm” “down onto the dung-heap.” He would make him pay for denying him a place upon the Council, “hogging all the power for himself like a greedy hog at trough!” He would snatch the reins of power from the Regency Council and rule alone, Tom swore, as his finger continued to dig in cruelly, even as I squirmed and gasped and tried to push his hand away. “I will be king in all but name!” he declared, and revealed that he planned to marry Edward to Lady Jane Grey. And, being frail, Edward might not live to adulthood, which would leave Jane alone on the throne. Jane’s own parents dominated her with physical brutality, with harsh words, slaps, and pinches, and by lashing her bare buttocks with a riding crop to make her docile and malleable. “But I,” Tom boasted, “I can control her with kindness; she will be so grateful to me that she will do anything I ask. I can even make her fall in love with me if I have to.” Then he spoke of the dynasty we would found, my regal Tudor blood blending with his in a powerful mix of ambition and strength. Or things might work out so that I sat upon the throne as England’s Queen, with Tom at my side, of course. And, failing that, one of our sons was certain to be king someday, and he would be there, the power behind the throne, putting words in his mouth, and guiding his every move. “All England shall be my chessboard and I alone shall maneuver the pieces!”

  As my mind absorbed his words like a sponge, my horror rising like vomit in my throat, the very last morsels of desire I felt for him shriveled up and died, like grapes left too long upon the vine. I knew then that Tom, in spite of his words, had never really loved me, only my rank as royal princess, my place in the succession; I was only a stepping stone along the path to power and England’s throne where Tom aimed to either sit or lurk behind, either openly or stealthily, wielding all the power. Oh no, I vowed, I will not be your, or any other man’s, stepping stone!

  Somehow I found the strength to pull his arm away from my throat, and I stood up and tore the string of pearls from my neck, letting them fall into the bath and onto the floor as I leapt from the tub. I wrenched that accursed ring from my finger again and flung it too into the bathwater and ran, naked and dripping, into my bedchamber.

  Tom ran after me and, just as I was about to cross the threshold, he caught hold of me.

  “Bess, listen to me! I know you are upset, aye, Kate’s loss shook me too, but I must tell you . . . Listen to me!” He shook me hard and slapped my cheek to stun me into silence. “Listen! I never loved Katherine!” he insisted as I stood there clutching my smarting cheek and reeling. “I only married her because I couldn’t have you. I asked the Council for your hand, but they just laughed at me, damn and pox them all, so I did the next best thing, I married her to be near you, because I knew you would come to live with her after your father died.”

  “Liar!” I screamed. “I know how you courted Kate before she married my father! You courted her with cakes and ale and braided wildflowers into her hair!”

  “Elizabeth! You wound me!” he cried, slapping a hand over his heart. “I thought you a young woman of passion and intelligence far beyond your actual years, but now you behave as a child and reason like one still in the nursery and not out of leading strings! Don’t you know I have been in love with you ever since the day you kicked Ned’s shin at your brother’s christening? For years I have been as one standing still, patiently enduring the ebb and flow of Time, trying to make do as best I could, while I waited for you to grow up. Aye, I dallied with Kate—I am a man after all and that is what men do. When I met her she was a widow, twice married to toothless old dotards. She had never known a real man, lusty, young, and vigorous between her thighs, and I gave her that. I was doing her a favor! She was ripe for it, begging for it, hot as a bitch in heat! And what man could resist that? But she took it for more than it was; she fell in love with me. I suppose it was only natural that she should; what woman wouldn’t fall in love with me? If I were a woman I would fall in love with me! But I swear to you, Bess, I swear to you on Kate’s grave, I was only dallying, waiting for you to grow up!”

  Over his shoulder, in the steam rising from my abandoned bath, I thought I saw Kate’s ghost take shape, mournfully mouthing these words of wisdom and warning: “Never give your heart lest it be betrayed!” It was the memory of the woman who had knelt at my feet and bared her heart and soul to me, telling me how after three times marrying for duty she was, at long last, free to follow her heart and marry for love, speaking to me from beyond the grave. She thought God had blessed her, and never realized until it was too late that the love she believed true was in fact false. Cupid had played my clever Kate for a fool and felled her with his dart fired by proxy from Tom Seymour’s cock to impregnate her and steal her life away even as she gave birth to the child she had always longed for. Kate had died. Whether it was childbed fever or poison that had ultimately taken her life, the result was the same: Kate died, but I was alive and determined to survive. I would not let Tom Seymour, by cock or concoction, be the instrument of my demise! He will not destroy me! I swore.

  “She loved you; I saw it in her face every time she looked at you!” I reminded him as shame flooded my heart. I had seen Kate’s heart upon her face but I had chosen to be heartless and ignore it.

  “As did you!” Tom reminded me. “I saw your love for me in your face, plain as the light of day!”

  I nodded, for I could not deny it. “And that is a cross I shall carry for the rest of my life. She loved me lik
e a daughter, and I, to my everlasting shame, betrayed her.”

  Summoning forth all my strength, I shoved him away from me, and slammed and bolted the door in his face.

  Tom began at once to pound and demand entry. And when I ignored him, he once again resorted to poetry, thinking with the romance of Tom Wyatt’s words that he could blind me to the truth and bring me back into his arms again.

  And wilt thou leave me thus?

  Say nay, say nay, for shame,

  To save thee from the blame

  Of all my grief and grame;

  And wilt thou leave me thus?

  Say nay, say nay!

  And wilt thou leave me thus,

  That hath loved thee so long

  In wealth and woe among?

  And is thy heart so strong

  As for to leave me thus?

  Say nay, say nay!

  And wilt thou leave me thus,

  That hath given thee my heart

  Never for to depart,

  Nother for pain nor smart;

  And wilt thou leave me thus?

  Say nay, say nay!

  And wilt thou leave me thus

  And have no more pity

  Of him that loveth thee?

  Hélas, thy cruelty!

  And wilt thou leave me thus?

  Say nay, say nay!

  I ran to my bed, shivering, and feeling as if the water still running in rivulets over my naked skin, and plastering my hair down my back, were turning into ice. I tore the covers back and dove onto the feather mattress, tarrying only long enough to blow out the candles on the table by the bed that I had meant to read by, before I tugged the covers up over my head, curled my body into a ball, and burrowed down, to fall asleep to the tune of my teeth chattering and the feel of the hot tears turning to ice upon my cheeks, as I ignored the passion-infused poetry that Tom Seymour lingered to recite outside my bolted door.

  The castle in the clouds which lust masquerading as love, like a wolf in sheep’s clothing, had built out of the bricks of a young girl’s dreams and illusions, had now, once and for all, been demolished, wrecked to ruins forevermore, never to rise again. I was free of Love’s chains; the truth and Tom Seymour’s shallowness, callousness, and lies had set me free.

  13

  Mary

  The seventh day of September, 1548, the day my sister turned fifteen, Katherine Parr breathed her last. The sad news came first with lurid rumor following fast on its heels. Thus I learned the whole sordid truth about Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour.

  I had known all along that with Anne Boleyn’s whore’s blood coursing through her veins, Elizabeth must tread very carefully in carnal matters and not let her passions get the better of her. And here was certain proof that I was right, clear evidence that bad blood tells—like mother, like daughter. Elizabeth had embarked on a harlot’s progress and she had started young.

  But it was worse than that, much worse. Katherine Parr had gone to her grave raging against her husband’s and Elizabeth’s duplicity. And Tom Seymour was said to have administered poison in place of medicine to hasten her demise. And afterward, instead of dismissing her maids and sending them home to their families after the funeral service with a generous purse to reward their service and loyalty, he bade them stay as they would soon have a new mistress to serve. And the “grieving widower,” supposedly shut away behind locked doors alone with his grief, had crept out, like a thief in the night, and ridden straight to Elizabeth. I had heard he had disdained me as a “dried-up old maid” and described Elizabeth as “born for bedsport; as ripe and juicy as a cherry Tudor wench, perfect for a man who should be king and, God willing, one way or another, would be.” There really was no end to the man’s audacity; he lived and breathed treason as naturally as a fish does water.

  Oh what a banquet “The Cakes and Ale Man” and Elizabeth provided for the gossipmongers! I flushed with shame every time I heard their names spoken, and it was all I could do to hold my head up. My “good gossip Nan” even wrote to me that Elizabeth had been sent away from Chelsea because she was purported to be carrying the Lord Admiral’s child, a child that had been secretly born and disposed of, foully murdered according to the midwife who swore upon the Holy Bible that she had been taken blindfolded to attend a milk-fair redheaded young lady and had fought hard to save that slim-hipped girl from the clutches of Death. It was testament to her skill, she proudly asserted, that my sister still lived and breathed, and her child would have as well had it not been murdered.

  I burned with shame and could not even bring myself to write to Elizabeth, a bastard who had borne a bastard and then suffered it to be killed to hide her shame. Every time I passed her portrait in the gallery I saw a redheaded version of Anne Boleyn. How apt that she had chosen to wear harlot-scarlet, and that neckline, exposing the curves of her shoulders, was immodestly low! I prayed for her soul—that was all I could do—beseeching the Holy Virgin to intercede with Our Lord so that He might show my sister the light and point her back onto the right path, the road to redemption and salvation, and save her from a life of sin and harlotry.

  The next I knew Tom Seymour was in the Tower as, one by one, his brazen schemes came to light and crumbled into fairy dust. He was arrested after stealing into the palace late one night and trying to abduct Edward. He intended to carry him off and marry him to Lady Jane Grey. Fortunately the valiant actions of my brother’s spaniel, combined with the pistol shot Tom Seymour fired right between its eyes to silence it, alerted the palace guards in time to save Edward.

  But in the end, I found I could not keep silent; I had to say something. It was my Christian duty. So I spoke to Elizabeth’s vanity, and sent her a large ruby brooch set round in heavy gold which I had the goldsmith engrave boldly around the great glittering harlot-colored stone with the words:

  WHO CAN FIND A VIRTUOUS WOMAN?

  FOR HER PRICE IS FAR ABOVE RUBIES.

  And suspended below it, I had the jeweler attach an enameled oval medallion depicting the Magdalene drying Jesus’s feet with her long scarlet hair, and, dangling beneath it, a golden crucifix set with smaller rubies and diamonds.

  I was confident that Elizabeth, clever as she was, would get the message. I hoped when she saw it her tarnished soul would smart with shame and want to be scrubbed clean, and that she, like the Magdalene, would see the error of her sinful ways and repent and redeem herself before it was too late.

  But for nights after I sent it, I was plagued by the most disturbing dreams in which I saw myself suspended stark naked upon a wooden cross whilst Elizabeth, in a penitent’s white gown, with her head and shoulders draped in a mantle of Our Lady’s Blue, knelt at my feet, staring up at me with sad and pleading eyes. And then, out of a silver river that suddenly appeared as objects often inexplicably do in dreams, walked the nude and dripping form of Tom Seymour, his male organ greatly engorged and protruding like a battering ram. Seeing him, Elizabeth stood up, threw off her mantle, and stripped off her gown, letting it fall round her feet in an abandoned puddle of white to be sullied by the dust.

  As she went to him she shook out her scarlet hair and paused for a tantalizing moment to teasingly cup her pert pink-tipped breasts and wiggle her hips at him. Then she was in his arms, and they were kissing passionately, and she began to sensuously slide her body up and down his as she used her hair to mop up the river water.

  Bound helpless to the cross, I watched in horror, unable to cover my eyes, and acutely aware of my own nakedness, and the sudden humiliating hardness of my nipples, like brown pebbles upon my chest, and, even worse, the warm and wanton wetness between my legs as I struggled against my bonds, my thighs rubbing together in a way that only made it worse, but I couldn’t stop. And then, as if he could read my mind, Tom Seymour looked up at me and winked as he grasped Elizabeth by her hips, lifted her up, and lowered her onto his fleshly lance. I unloosed a bloodcurdling scream upon my cross as I began to bleed all at once from my eyes and ears, my hands and feet, and between th
e thighs I clenched so tightly, as if by doing so I could hold the blood back. It was always at that moment that I woke up, bolting out of bed with a scream on my lips that sent me running straight into my private chapel to fling myself onto my knees before the altar, never caring that the skin split and bled.

  14

  Elizabeth

  It was past the midnight hour and we were all sound asleep, snug in our beds, except for my steward, Mr. Parry, who was burning the candles late over the account books, when the fists came pounding, incessant and demanding, upon the front door of my London house.

  Mr. Parry, who had fallen asleep at his desk, grumpily descended the stairs, rubbing the sleep from his eyes and barking at them to stop that infernal pounding. It was loud enough to wake the dead as well as the occupants of this house and those on either side, he said. His wife, Blanche, her graying blond curls sleep-rumpled, followed him down, clutching a pale pink shawl over her modest white nightgown. And Kat and I straggled after, yawning, with our steps still leaden with slumber. In my sleep-befuddled state, I had forgotten to pull on my dressing gown, and Kat, her braids fuzzy beneath her ruffled nightcap, did not think to remind me, so I descended the stairs with my hair flowing loose about the shoulders of my white long-sleeved winter nightgown to confront a representative from the Council and a detachment of armed guards.

  It was then that I learned that all Tom Seymour’s schemes had gone fantastically awry, their destruction as fabulous and outlandish as the schemes themselves had been. It had all ended in a comedy of errors. Tom was in the Tower now, charged with High Treason, and we—Mrs. Ashley, Mr. Parry, and I—stood accused of conspiring with him.

  Despite their heated, increasingly frightened and hysterical protests of ignorance and innocence, the guards roughly seized hold of Kat and Mr. Parry, wrestling their arms behind their backs, as they hustled them out into the icy January night to where a barge waited to take them to the Tower for questioning.