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  Quaking with tears, my knees gave way, and I collapsed sobbing at Ambassador van der Delft’s feet.

  Moved by my plight, he chivalrously bent to raise me. “Madame, I give you my solemn promise that I will deliver you from this lions’ den,” he said. “Weep no more, My Lady, your sorrows and fears will soon be past and your smile will be lighting up the imperial court.”

  Gallantly, he led me to the window seat and, thick as thieves, we began to plot my escape. In the following month of May, he was to officially take his leave of my brother’s court and board ship for Brussels. Before that time, I must withdraw to my Essex estate, Woodham Walter, which lay near Maldon, and await the arrival of a Dutch corn merchant in a small boat to sell his wares to the town and also my household. Disguised as a man I was to switch places with one of the men who accompanied the merchant or else I was to be smuggled out bundled in a coarse cloth grain sack. Once in the merchant’s boat, I would be borne out to sea where an imperial ship was anchored ready to convey me, and Ambassador van der Delft, back to the comfort and safety of my cousin’s court.

  It seemed like a fine plan, foolproof, and I was confident of its success. For the first time in months, I felt able to breathe easily and to sleep soundly as I counted the days until I would be free.

  But then it all began to unravel. First, Ambassador van der Delft took to his bed and died suddenly, but not without having the foresight to entrust the completion of his mission to his loyal secretary, Jehan Dubois.

  It was he who put all into motion, and accompanied by his brother-in-law, Peter, saw to it that an imperial ship was anchored off the coast in readiness, waiting for me, and then, upon the first day of July, in the guise of a corn merchant come to transact some business, he came prepared to whisk me away to safety.

  He found me in quite a state. A raging fever of commingled uncertainty, anticipation, and dread plagued me, made all the worse by a raging throbbing megrim and a queasy stomach that felt all aflutter and made me nervous of my dignity and bowels. Before, I had been so convinced that leaving was the right thing to do, but now I was not sure, an inkling of doubt tugged at my mind. My steward, Master Rochester, urged me to stay, claiming that horoscopes cast secretly by learned London astrologers known for their accuracy portended an early death for Edward. And the rumors from London seemed to confirm this with reports of ill health, an attack of measles following hard on the heels of a mild bout of smallpox, from which he had failed to bounce back. These combined illnesses had left him with a loss of strength and vigor, in a perpetual state of listlessness and lethargy, having a constant waxy pallor, a loss of appetite and weight, and a persistent cough that would not be eased by herbal lozenges or soothing syrups or depart in the natural course of things. While my loyal ladies, Susan and Jane, the only two I had entrusted with my secret plans, cried and clung to me, contradictorily begging me not to forsake them yet nobly urging me to go and save myself. I wept and wrung my hands; I did not know what to do.

  Herr Jehan found me ill-prepared. I had packed nothing. And Susan, Jane, and I ran back and forth stuffing shifts, gowns, and petticoats, shoes and stockings, into grain sacks and then taking them out again, whilst Herr Jehan and his brother-in-law Peter looked on in horror at the mounting pile of bulging sacks and implored me to take only the bare necessities.

  “As you can see, I am ill prepared,” I said sadly, gesturing to the sacks, even as one fell over and a carnelian-colored kirtle sewn with seed pearls tumbled out even as Susan and Jane busied themselves with stuffing two others. “I do not know how the Emperor would take it if it turned out to be impossible for me to go now after I have so importuned him on the subject!”

  In a rumpled, mismatched welter of my possessions, I sank down and pressed my hands to my aching brow.

  “I cannot leave tonight!” I gathered up the carnelian kirtle and hugged it tight against my breast. “I need more time! I pray you, Herr Jehan, return tomorrow night and you will find me better prepared, or better yet if you could wait until Friday, my ladies and I could meet you on the beach before dawn and you can row us out to the ship.”

  “Madame, what you suggest is impossible!” Herr Jehan exclaimed, giving me the distinct impression that he was growing irritated with me.

  “Impossible!” Peter affirmed.

  “But . . .” I tried to think of words that would persuade them.

  “Madame, we are leaving England tonight,” Herr Jehan said forcefully. “If you prefer to stay, you know best your situation, and the Emperor will be content with that and think no less of you. But if you desire to accompany me, you must come this instant!”

  I got shakily to my feet and began to wrench off my rings. “If I do not accompany you this time, will you at least take my jewelry to safety?” I tremulously asked as I held them out to him.

  “Madame!” Herr Jehan sighed in a vexed and irritable manner. “If I am to take your rings, you might as well go with them!”

  “I could go to my house at Newhall in a few days’ time, and we could rendezvous at Stansgate and . . .”

  The stern frowning faces and shaking heads of Herr Jehan and Peter stopped the words on my lips.

  “Madame, I am obliged to point out to you that there is danger in delay!” Herr Jehan said most emphatically, and Peter nodded in agreement. “It is imperative that we sail with the next tide. If I remain any longer, there is grave risk that all we intend will be brought to light.”

  “And I must add,” said Peter, “that I see no better opportunity than the present one. This undertaking is passing through so many hands”—he glared reproachfully at each of my servants in turn—“that it is daily becoming more difficult, and I fear it may not remain secret much longer.”

  “Great danger threatens us if we tarry,” Herr Jehan continued. “Already the countryside is in a state of unrest. They are wary and suspicious of the imperial ships anchored off the shore, and of me, a foreigner, a Dutchman, though I have given it out that I traveled with the imperial ship only to enjoy their protection against pirates. Now that I have sold my corn and have no other reason for remaining in Maldon, it will look highly suspicious if I linger. If we are to do this thing, Madame, we must go now!”

  “Yes, Madame.” Peter nodded. “Leave everything.” He swept a disdainful hand at the grain sacks, some bulging near to bursting and others sagging half empty, surrounded by a jumble of scattered and rumpled garments and shoes strewn all across the floor from one end of the room to the other. “Leave all this, and come with us. You are the Emperor’s beloved and much esteemed cousin, the daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and the true and rightful heiress to the English throne, and you will be provided for as befits your station, as a queen in exile. You will only have to make do without these comforts and luxuries for a few days; a very minor inconvenience surely when your very life is at stake!”

  “No, Madame, stay!” Master Rochester fell to his knees and begged of me. “For the very reason that the countryside is so unsettled. The constables and armed men are out on watch, there is not a back road or even a creek that is not under observation, and any person seen out at night is stopped and questioned. If you are stopped, even in disguise, you will be recognized, and it will not go well for you when the King’s men learn that you have tried to flee the realm.”

  There was a knock upon the door then and in came a wild-looking character with bushy ginger hair who was introduced to me as Master Schurts, one of Herr Jehan’s men.

  “This affair is going very ill, sir,” he announced, coming straight to the point without taking time for the polite conversational niceties. “The bailiff and other folk of the town wish to detain and search your boat; they suspect your involvement with the ship offshore. You had best leave right now. Already they have doubled the watch and posted men on the church tower, whence they can see all the country roundabout, and they have never done that before. And there is talk in the town of lighting a great bonfire on the hill to warn the people
of the surrounding villages that there is trouble afoot and to be on the lookout. Come now, I implore you, before it is too late!”

  Herr Jehan threw up his hands and heaved a defeated sigh. “We have let our chance go by!”

  “But what is to become of me?” I wailed. Now that the chance was lost I longed to turn back the clock and seize and run with it.

  “Madame,” said Herr Jehan, “the best service we can render you now is to leave your house immediately and as inconspicuously as possible.”

  “There is a way through the woods,” said Master Rochester. “I can show you . . .”

  Herr Jehan nodded and motioned to Peter and Master Schurts to follow him, and with a curt bow to me they hurried out.

  “But what is to become of me?” I cried after them, but they never looked back or answered, and instead left me weeping on the floor, crushing the carnelian kirtle to my breast, keening with despair, repeating over and over, “But what is to become of me?” as Susan and Jane knelt beside me and tried to console me.

  The next day brought a troop of the Lord Protector’s men galloping into Maldon “to stop the Lady Mary from going away,” and I knew I must abandon all thought of escaping.

  16

  Elizabeth

  In time, the scandal abated. And I resolved to live quietly in the country and devote myself to my studies. I had no desire to play a larger role in the drama of life at the moment and I knew I was better off out of the thick of things.

  England had a new Lord Protector now, John Dudley, the Duke of Northumberland. While the Seymour brothers were busy battling each other they had failed to notice the threat of Northumberland lurking in the background, biding his time, making plans and winning supporters, until it was too late, and Edward Seymour soon followed his brother to the block, and my brother had a new puppetmaster to pull his strings and put words into his mouth.

  When Kat came back to me, we flew into each other’s arms. Kat sank down onto her knees before me and vowed “never again to speak or even whisper of matrimony, not even if it would win the world for me!” and bathed my hands with her tears and humbly begged my pardon for betraying me in her darkest hour of fear when she had heard the bloodcurdling screams of the tortured and seen the bodies stretched in mortal agony upon the rack.

  I was so glad to have her back that, of course, I readily forgave her all. Though Anne Boleyn had given me life, Kat Ashley had given me the mother’s love I otherwise would have gone without; she had stood proxy for my real mother, and that counted much with me. But when I beheld the effects her stay in the Tower had wrought upon her person, I felt our roles shift. Though Kat would always love me like a mother, I had grown up. I would no longer be the child. On the contrary, I would now be the one who would take care of Kat for the rest of her life, though she would always see it as the other way around. The Tower had changed and aged my dear Kat beyond her years and, I feared, taken away years from her life. She was gaunt and grayer now, the rounded flesh Tom Seymour had so admired had melted away, and there was a wild, haunted look that hung about her eyes, a tremor in her hands that would remain always as a permanent reminder of the terrors of the Tower, and she jumped and started at every sudden and unexpected sound, and often I would hear her cry out in her sleep. For the rest of her life she would suffer greatly from the cold, bundling herself in layers as if she could never get warm enough, unable to dry out the dampness that had crept into her bones and eventually gnarled her hands and produced untold agony in her hips, knees, and feet.

  Our first night together again, Kat brushed out my hair before bed as she had always used to do. Kat was silent now, where before she would have been all chatter, but as she finished the final strokes she heaved a long sigh over the loss of the poor Lord Admiral, lamenting, “We shall not see his like again.”

  “We can only hope,” I answered, “but I fear the world is full of handsome, charming, foolish, and reckless men willing to risk anything to see their ambitions fulfilled.”

  “You’ve hardened your heart against him, poor man!” Kat sighed as she put down the brush and eased the dressing gown from my shoulders. “Such hardness does not become you, Bess; you are a flesh-and-blood woman with a heart, not a statue of white marble.”

  “Without his shell the tortoise is too vulnerable to survive for long, Kat,” I said sagely as I slid between the sheets and bade her good night.

  “But you’re not a tortoise, love,” Kat said softly as she drew the bedcurtains about me, shutting me in darkness, “you’re a woman.”

  I would never admit to her, or anyone else, how many nights after Tom died that I started awake after a dream in which Tom as a lasciviously leering satyr with a huge, throbbing phallus, and a wild, wicked laugh, chased me through the forest, reaching out and ripping away my diaphanous white gown as it billowed out behind me as I ran, until I was running stark naked through the forest. When he caught me he laid me down upon the sun-dappled ground and ravished me upon a bed of wildflowers, with ferns like green lace fans hanging over us. Trembling uncontrollably, I would bolt up in bed only to find my face wet with tears, my nipples hard, and a throbbing molten wetness between my thighs, as the memory of Tom’s hands and lips burned my body and scorched my soul, setting me on fire all over again, making me weep for what might have been even though I knew it never could have been. And I knew that long after Tom Seymour’s bones had moldered into dust inside his tomb I would still be fighting the war between practicality and passion, fighting against myself in a war that would never end until I drew my final breath.

  17

  Mary

  Come what may, whether it meant the best or the worst for me, in England I must remain, so I decided to be brave. I assembled all my household, my servants, guards, and loyal retainers, and every staunch Catholic who would follow me, and bade them dress in deepest black velvet and bloodred satin, and hang round their necks their crucifixes, and either carry in hand or wear at their waist their well-fingered rosaries, and mount their horses and ride with me to London. And all six of my priests, despite the great risk to them, took up staves topped with gleaming gold and silver crosses, and donned their godly vestments, and accompanied us to serve as God’s standard-bearers. And so we took to the road, a thousand strong and devout Catholics.

  The common folk lined the parched and dusty roads to watch us pass, stiff-backed and unyielding. Despite the sweltering August heat and our heavy velvets and stultifying satins, we never for an instant faltered, and rode with calm dignity to London. The humble people could not fail to be impressed and raised their voices to bless and cheer us as we passed. Some would later swear that they saw in the clouds above us a phantom army of medieval Crusaders, wearing armor and the red cross on their white tunics, riding right in step with us. When I heard, it gladdened my heart, and I hoped fervently that it was true. Surely it was a sign from God, and it gave me comfort and courage to believe that those brave men and women who had gone to the Holy Land, some never to return, were with us in spirit.

  “If God is for us,” I told my people in proud, ringing tones, “none can be against us!”

  And with those words I nudged my mount with my booted heel, stiffened my spine, held my head up high, and rode through the gates of Whitehall to meet my brother and settle this matter once and for all. I was weary beyond words of living in fear, and of being harassed, hounded, and threatened by godless men whose only religion was gold, who tried to mold my conscience as if it were made of clay to suit their avaricious ambitions.

  They did not want to let me see Edward, but I insisted. Curiously, the royal bedchamber stank of rotting fish, but the moment I spied my brother I forgot all about it. He looked so small lying there in that great bed, the one that had belonged to Father. His face was nearly as white as the pillows his head lay upon. Up close, I could see the fading marks of measles and smallpox standing out starkly against his pallor. He wore a gold-embroidered nightcap to hide the fact that he had lost all his hair.

>   My nose crinkled and my stomach lurched; the rotting fishy odor that pervaded the room was stronger about the bed and impossible to ignore. Forcing myself to sniff it out, to discover its source, I moved around the bed, and at the foot I braced myself and turned back the covers. I gasped and leapt back, clutching both my hands over my mouth to stifle my scream. I staggered and swayed and had to clutch one of the great gilded bedposts to keep from falling. I feared I would vomit at the sight that lay before me. Tied tight to the soles of my brother’s feet with rough twine that bit most cruelly into his flesh were a pair of rotting fish, so far gone that in places I could actually glimpse the white of bone. And there was worse, much worse—the condition of my brother’s feet made me gag and want to turn away and run. What were the men entrusted with the care of him thinking? Every toenail had fallen out and against the pale white skin there were red streaks and mottled black and green sores rimmed in red and oozing yellow pus, and there was dried blood caked around the twine.

  Edward opened his eyes and looked at me, and I was startled to see how large they looked; the fever lent them an unexpected brightness and made them seem even bluer than they ever had before.

  “Oh my poor, poor brother!” I wailed, and, heedless of the proper ceremony due his station, I rushed to his side, and sank down onto the bed beside him, facing him. When I reached beneath the purple velvet coverlet and white sheets and tried to take his hand in mine I discovered that he was wearing white silk gloves, stained with the same telltale yellow pus.

  My eyes must have looked like pools of pity for he said to me, “I do not want your pity, Mary.”

  A fit of coughing convulsed him, and he struggled to pull himself up higher upon the pillows, scowling at me when I came to help him, proudly disdaining to proffer any thanks. His hand flailed out blindly to grope for a handkerchief on the bedside table. When I picked it up and offered it to him he glared at me and snatched it from my hand but nonetheless clutched it to his lips. When the coughing subsided and he lowered it I saw it was stained with blackish-red bile.