Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (19 page)

Outside the window of Elizabeth’s bedroom the branches of a tree, heavy

with new leaf, tapped monotonously against the little leaded panes as

though nodding in permanent agreement with all the pearls of philosophy

which tripped in incessant procession from Mrs. Ashley’s thin lips. Day

after day that falsely cheerful monologue buzzed hopefully, like a persistent

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bee, from one subject to the next, seeking a response, while through it

all Elizabeth lay still on the day-bed, like a marionette with no strings,

watching the branches dancing madly in the wind beyond her window.

She said yes and no at appropriate intervals and occasionally smiled lest

Kat’s feelings should be hurt, but in all she said or did there was a tired

indifference, a hopeless, resigned lethargy which filled the governess with

an increasing chill of fear and made her talk more and more wildly, until

at last, in desperation, she found she was talking treason.

“…don’t you
want
to be Queen of England?” she cried.

Elizabeth turned her head sharply on the cushions and stared at the

older woman. Her hands had clenched abruptly and her dull eyes ignited

like balefire.

“What are you talking about? You know I can never be Queen.”

“Why not?” said Kat artfully, fanning this spark. “Your father restored

you to the succession—no one now remembers—”

“That I was once the ‘Little Bastard’? I’m sure Mary does, and if

anything should happen to Edward, she will be Queen first and make

sure I never succeed her.”

Hope danced in Kat’s heart like a crazy imp. “She couldn’t exclude

you—the people would never stand for it.”

Elizabeth sighed wearily. “The people call me a whore,” she muttered.

“Then show them it’s a lie! Oh, my love, don’t you see it? All you

have to do is wait and the crown will fall on your pretty head as surely as

day follows night. Not yet—not for many years perhaps, but it will come,

I swear it.” She paused. “But once it’s yours of course they will try to take

it from you—all your enemies, France, even Spain—and that’s why you

must get well—to be ready. Ready to fight for your inheritance.”

Elizabeth sat still in stunned silence with Kat’s voice like a thunderclap

in her mind. It seemed as though all her life she had been waiting for this

moment, this sudden conception of her true purpose on this earth, born

to rule and so vindicate the mother whose only real crime had been to

bear a girl. To be Queen of England—it was all that could ever matter

to her now.

She got slowly off the couch and went to open the casement window,

pushing it wide with one painfully thin arm so that the wind slapped her

deathly pallor. She stood staring at the empty rose bushes beneath, which

would bloom red and white for the Tudor emblem, remembering the

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one Rose which would never open its eager petals to the sun again. “A

Rose without Thorns” Henry had called the child wife of his doting old

age, pretty laughing Katherine Howard for whom he had wept bitterly,

even as he had done her to death—and one before her. But he had never

been seen to weep for that one, not after he had split England in two in

pursuit of her. What fools women were to put themselves willingly into

the power of men!

The Admiral was dead and she must forget him. He was dead and he

had deserved to die; now at last she could admit it to herself. Whatever

the fierce link of passion that had sprung between them that day at

Chelsea, she believed now that ambition and not love had driven him

to the grave she might so easily have shared with him. Only the instinct

to hesitate and to hold back had saved her from complete disaster. And

now no memory of his bold face and gay bantering voice, however bitter,

could alter the knowledge that he had meant to use her like a pawn in his

treasonous designs.

No man, be he friend or foe, would ever have opportunity to use her

for his own ends again.

She turned from the window to look at Kat, still thin and wasted

from the rigours of the prison cell she had endured for the sake of her

young mistress.

She said quietly, “When I am dressed you may ask Mr. Ascham to

attend me in the solar.”

It was all she said, but Kat knew instinctively that it marked the end

of her mourning. Elizabeth began her lessons again, dressed with dark

severity in the plainest gowns her wardrobe had to offer, knowing she

must win back her reputation in the only manner now available to her, in

the role of the austere, high-born, Protestant maiden. The jewels and gay

gowns so dear to her repressed childhood vanity were shut away and her

image looked bleakly back from her steel mirror, a pale sombre outline,

bright hair hidden beneath a plain cap. Every natural instinct within

her she curbed—the levity, the coquetry, the vanity—all the wanton

clamourings of her wild Tudor inheritance were ruthlessly stifled until,

outwardly, she was a perfect model of learning and virginal propriety.

Even Lady Tyrwhitt was impressed. Slowly the scandalous rumours of

her conduct began to die away for want of fuel and the people murmured

her name with ever-increasing affection.

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There were no more mistakes. She stepped with faultless caution

around every issue that might draw her into dangerous controversy.

Archbishop Cranmer’s
New Book of Common Prayer
she accepted without

protest, where her sister Mary refused it outright.

She built an impenetrable wall around her heart, and the only outlet

of affection she allowed herself was for her childhood attendants. Though

Tyrwhitt had discovered Parry’s account books “were so indiscreetly

made it appears he had little understanding to execute his office,” she

demanded his place should not be filled. Parry retained his chain of office

and his fatuous sense of importance, while she audited the household

accounts herself, behind his back, and made strict economies.

In the quiet backwater existence at Hatfield she shrugged off frequent

bouts of illness like an angry cat shaking water from its coat. The only

thing she steadfastly nursed was her implacable hatred of the Protector,

and she listened with quiet satisfaction to all the rumours which suggested

his world was about to collapse around him at any moment. John Dudley,

Earl of Warwick, waited in the wings like an actor waiting for his cue.

When discontent at the Protector’s rule broke out into open rebellion in

two serious revolts among the populace, it was Dudley who rode into

Norfolk to subdue the uprisings. He did so with a panache that won

over to him most of the Council, ambitious lords who now resented the

priggish, ineffectual rule of a man who had spilt his own brother’s blood.

If the Lord Admiral had been a rogue at least he had never been the

hypocrite the Lord Protector was now seen to be, cowering behind the

little King like an arrant coward. When Dudley returned to London with

his triumphant army, Somerset, sensing his real danger, seized his young

nephew and fled to Windsor Castle. There for a few desperate, futile days

he held siege against Dudley’s forces, while Edward regarded him bale-

fully, with an increasingly jaundiced eye, and thought how much better

life might be in a world which no longer contained any ambitious uncles.

Somerset was borne off to the Tower, with the memory of his young

nephew’s icy stare imprinted on his mind, half expecting that his end

was in sight. But Dudley was too clever for that. He had seen the effect

that Tom Seymour’s death had had on the public imagination and he

intended to bide his time a little longer. So “the Good Duke” was released

in disgrace, his rule virtually ended, his death postponed until it should

prove either convenient or desperately necessary. He was a broken stalk

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of a man now. Dudley played with him like a cruel cat, reducing him to

the status of a hunted mouse who found every hole stopped against him.

Elizabeth, waiting in the shadows to hear news of Somerset’s execu-

tion, was thrown into a transport of silent fury by this delay. Why didn’t

Warwick strike the death blow? Surely he would never allow the sneaking

white rat to escape! That possibility tormented her day and night and drove

her at last to step outside her self-imposed retirement for the first time

since her recent disgrace. In December of 1549 she accepted the King’s

invitation and returned to court for the Christmas celebrations. Whatever

it cost she must discover what Warwick intended for the fallen Protector.

She looked at the tall gangling boy who sat on the throne in the

Presence Chamber and failed to identify the child she had always thought

of as her little brother. He was a stranger to her. Under Warwick’s influ-

ence, he was striding towards manhood with desperate haste, throwing

off the stranglehold of learning and driving his frail strength to the utmost

at sports. He was thin, and flushed and racked with a persistent cough that

had an ominous sound. She sank to her knees before him, ashamed and

a little shocked that her first thought should have measured him squarely

for his coffin. She had once loved him very dearly, but he had not lifted

a finger to help her when she had been a friendless prisoner in fear of her

life; love was an unwelcome invader in the heart of princes.

It was to be a formal interview; she was not sufficiently restored to

favour to be allowed the privilege of seeing him alone. It had required

half a dozen deep curtsies to bring her to the foot of the throne and as she

rose from the sixth, she caught the pale, grave eyes of Protector Somerset’s

young secretary, Mr. William Cecil, upon her. He inclined his head slowly

in her direction and she surprised an odd look in his guarded expression.

Was it sympathy? It occurred to her suddenly that Cecil must have dealt

with all her correspondence to the Council during her imprisonment at

Hatfield, had no doubt seen the confessions of Kat and Parry, had likely

handled the details of the draft proclamation which officially sanctioned

her innocence. He was looking at her now with almost furtive respect.

How curious! Could it be then that Cecil did not believe she was a whore

after all? It would be invaluable to have a friend at court, and from the

cold, sly glances around her she knew there were few indeed prepared to

take that risk, and even fewer that she would ever dare to trust. With a

sudden irrational instinct she felt drawn towards the man.

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“You are welcome to court, my sweet sister Temperance.”

The King held out his hand and indicated that she might sit beside

him; he had used his old childish nickname for her. Temperance had

been chosen with teasing irony and shortened in private to its more apt

version of Temper ever since young Robert Dudley had annotated it, to

Edward’s huge satisfaction.

Temper, temper
! A shrill childish pipe echoed back from a sunny after-

noon in her childhood. Robin Dudley, that horrid little boy!

She looked up, and saw him at last standing among the Dudley

faction. And all the time she sat listening patiently to her brother’s

precocious monologue, it was Robin she watched from beneath

demurely lowered lashes.

t t t

Whilehall Palace sprawled around three sides of the Privy Garden,

bounded to the north by the Privy Gallery, a timber structure which

they had brought from a house of Wolsey’s at Esher at the time of the

cardinal’s disgrace. At the end of the gravel path Robin Dudley pulled

his purple velvet cloak around his broad shoulders, gathered a handful

of snow and flung it at a low-hanging tree. He grinned as the minor

avalanche which ensued showered an elderly spaniel circling beneath,

searching, with maddening procrastination, for the right spot.

The old dog paused in his dawdling and eyed his master with rheumy-

eyed reproach.

“Don’t look at me like that, you ancient villain, just get on with it!

God’s death, it’s cold enough out here to freeze my—”

A twig snapped behind him. He broke off abruptly and swung round

to look down into the cynical face of the Princess Elizabeth.

“Yes?” she said with a cool smile. “Do continue your conversation—I

should imagine Caesar sympathises with you, being considerably nearer

the ground than you are.”

She watched with amusement as the young man turned red to the

tips of his ears, thoroughly embarrassed to be caught talking to his dog

by this superior girl and the smug governess who was her permanent

shadow now. But as he knelt gracefully in the snow to kiss her formally

outstretched hand, he forgot his quick annoyance beneath a flicker of