Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (9 page)

a soggy pellet of paper from the inkwell with a ragged quill.

“Father says there’s no such thing as ghosts,” he said derisively. “And I

wouldn’t be afraid to go there after dark even if there were!”

Elizabeth closed her copy of Terence and returned her own quill to

the central stand on the table.

“Tonight,” she said softly, “we’ll see just how brave you are.”

t t t

They stood in the silent gallery, huddled in their sable-trimmed night

robes, with their cold feet tucked inside velvet house shoes and their huge

shadows spreading over the panelled wall behind them.

“I don’t like it here, Rob,” said Guildford Dudley in a tremulous

whisper.

“Well, you would come,” snapped his brother, who didn’t like it

either, but was certainly not going to admit it. “I told you not to.”

“Aren’t you afraid we might see—
her
?”

“Nobody’s ever seen her. They only say that you can hear her voice

crying here at night.”

They both shivered, moved closer together, and were silent. At the far

end of the gal ery they could see the distant, bobbing light of a solitary candle.

For a moment it paused by the door of the Chapel, where the Queen had

been captured, then it came slowly, flickering and swaying, back towards

them. In her long white nightgown, Elizabeth looked like a smal ghost

herself, with the light shimmering over her pale face and glinting on her

red hair. Guildford clutched his brother’s arm and was roughly shaken off.

“Don’t be stupid, Gil.”

“I want to go back, Robin—I’m scared!”

“Cry-baby,” said Elizabeth sharply as she reached them. “What did

you bring him for?”

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Susan Kay

“I didn’t bring him,” said Robin furiously, “he followed me—he’s

always following someone, like a silly sheep.”

Guildford began to snivel softly into his furred sleeve. Elizabeth turned

away impatiently to set down her candle and beside it the little doll she

carried beneath her arm. After a moment she made the sign of the cross

above the flame and began to speak softly in Latin. They could not catch

what she said, but she looked so uncannily like a witch repeating the

words of an incantation that Guildford began to sob in good earnest.

“I want to go back, I want to go back. Come with me, Robin.”

“I can’t leave her here by herself,” said Robin sharply. “She’s only a

girl. Look—take my candle and go back if you want to—but don’t let

the guards see you.”

Guildford fled silently down the corridor and after a moment Robin

went over to her and touched her arm.

“What are you doing?” he asked uneasily. “What did you say just then?”

She picked up the candle and looked at him through the dancing

yellow flame.

“I said that I would never marry.”

He laughed outright. “Why did you say that?”

Turning, she glanced once more down the empty gallery and shivered.

“Because I meant it.”

“Oh,” he said uncomfortably and picked up the doll, turning it over

in surprise. “Why do you play with this?” he asked slowly. “It’s broken!”

“It’s not broken!” she said strangely and took it from him.

“Of course it is,” he insisted. “It’s got no—” The word died on his lips

as he saw her face. As he watched she took the doll and the candle and

began to walk away down the gallery.

He was forced to run after her, to avoid being left in the dark.

t t t

Months passed and the King, climbing out of a dark abyss of self-pity,

began to search for a new wife. Foreign princesses were conspicious by

their sudden absence in the matrimonial stakes, and a number of women

averted their eyes nervously whenever they felt the King’s gaze heavy

upon them. Among these anxious ladies was Lord Latimer’s widow,

Katherine Parr, who stared uneasily across the banqueting table to meet

Tom Seymour’s eyes and and look hastily away one more. The King

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Legacy

watched this interesting little side play and suddenly knew he had found

what he was looking for. He admired his brother-in-law’s taste in women

and very soon was making his intentions clear, amused by the opportunity

to get one up on Tom, that notorious ladies’ man.

Unaware of the momentous decision her father had made, Elizabeth

closed her book and went out to the stables with Robin, down the

kitchen stairs and past the tennis court, hitching up her skirts among the

dirty rushes. Beside a bale of hay lay a sleek bitch, suckling half a dozen

greedy puppies.

“Caesar’s litter,” said Robin proudly.

“Caesar
again!
Does he ever stop to eat?”

Robin grinned and they exchanged the furtive snigger of children

with a little worldly knowledge.

“Mother says he ought to be castrated.”

“If I were your mother,” said Elizabeth wickedly, “I’d castrate more

than poor old Caesar. She’s always pregnant.”

Robin laughed. “Father says Dudleys will inherit the earth.”

“They certainly ought to—they breed like rabbits.” Elizabeth shud-

dered. “It must be awful to have a baby every year.”

“It’s nothing,” said Robin, cheerfully heartless. “It’s only like shelling

peas. It’s much worse for a horse. They let me watch Black Cherry foal

the other day and the foal’s head was stuck so far back that old Wilks had

to get his whole arm inside and—”

“Be quiet!”

He turned to look at her in astonishment.

“Listen!” she said curtly.

Footsteps were crunching heavily across the courtyard and they

exchanged a look of alarm. There would be trouble if they were caught

together here, without her attendants.

“Over here!” said Robin and pulled her down behind the bale of hay.

The fat puppies waddled after them and the bitch growled as a tall man

came quickly through the door. They recognised Tom Seymour at once

from his golden beard and arrogant swagger, and Elizabeth, relaxing in the

sudden knowledge that they had nothing to fear from him, would have

stood up and shown herself in quick delight, but Robin held her back.

Almost immediately there was another sound outside, the sound of frantic

running footsteps and the swirl of a heavy train across the dried straw.

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Susan Kay

A woman dressed in unrelieved black burst suddenly into the barn

and fell into the arms of the waiting man, laughing and crying in a wild

panic, repeating over and over again, “What can I do—oh God, what

can I do?”

“Be quiet, be calm, Kate—my poor Kate. It can’t be for long. The

King is old—the King is often sick. Our time will come if you are wise

and careful now.”

“Wise! As wise as Katherine Howard or Anne Boleyn? Oh, Tom,

Tom, how can I bear it?”

“You must bear it, Kate, you must! If you refuse him now it will

mean both our heads, for he knows about us—oh yes, he knows! There’s

nothing misses the old devil’s eye! He told me this morning that I was to

go to Flanders as his ambassador. He’s clearing the stage, Kate—for your

sake and mine I must go without a word of protest. And when he asks for

your hand, as he will do any day now, you must say yes.”

“I won’t, I
can’t
! Oh, Tom, take me with you—we could go to France,

to Germany, anywhere, we would be safe.”

Tom Seymour shook his great head and his voice was bitter.

“He spares neither man in his anger nor woman in his lust. We would

be hunted down before we reached Dover. Marry him now with a brave

heart and know that in a year or two he will be dead—he rots before our

eyes with that leg. And when you’re free you’ll find me waiting—”

Savagely he closed her protesting mouth with his own and they clung

together in an agonised moment of passion.

“Go now,” he said softly as they broke away from each other

at last. “You must not be missed. God keep you, God help you,

Kate—my Kate.”

Crushed and apathetic she went to the door in silence and slipped

away and after a few minutes he followed her. The barn was silent again

except for the restless stamping of horses’ hooves and the soft cooing of

the pigeons who sat on the rafters.

Robin knelt up, picked the clinging straw from his apricot hose, and

whistled softly through clenched teeth.

“It looks,” he said calmly, “as though Katherine Parr will shortly be

your new stepmother.”

Elizabeth said nothing for so long that he looked round in surprise

and found that she was crying. Two big tears had rolled down her white

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Legacy

little face and she was staring at the puppy who had curled asleep on her

velvet skirts.

He sat on the bale of hay, swinging his long legs and feeling oddly

uncomfortable, as he would feel perhaps to find another boy crying at

his side. A steadily increasing line of sisters inured him as a rule to girlish

tears, but this furtive grief affected him like a premonition of tragedy. He

felt a curious need to make her stop.

Hunting for a handkerchief, he discovered that as usual he hadn’t got

one. Instead he found the apple he had been saving for some appropriate

moment of privacy. He polished it against his doublet, eyed its round

rosiness with regret, and after a moment’s hesitation he offered it to her.

She looked up, drew the long hanging sleeve of her dress across her

nose in what he considered to be a most vulgar fashion and climbed up

beside him on the bale of hay.

“I don’t want it.” After a moment she remembered to thank him.

He began to eat it himself before she could change her mind; he was

always hungry. But all the time he ate he was horribly aware of those

silent tears rolling faster and faster. At last he said uncomfortably, “I wish

you wouldn’t cry like that.”

“I’m not crying—there’s something in my eye.”

He turned to look at her with open disbelief. “What—both of them?”

She made no reply to his gross impertinence and refused to look at

him. He finished the apple and threw the core away into the straw,

supposing with rough sympathy that she wept for her last stepmother.

Perhaps she was afraid the same thing would happen again.

“I expect,” he said, intending to be cheerful, “that the King will just

divorce
this one when he’s tired of her—then your uncle can have her

after all.”

That did not appear to comfort her at all. She began to get off the bale

in a monstrous hurry.

“He’s Edward’s uncle, not mine,” she sobbed, hunting furiously for the

slipper she had lost in her hasty descent. “And he won’t marry her—he

won’t marry anyone except—” She broke off so abruptly that her mouth

snapped shut like the spring of a trap. He heard no more of whom she

expected Tom Seymour to marry and it was to be four years before

malicious rumour supplied the missing name to his by then unwilling ears.

But for the time being he quickly forgot it.

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Susan Kay

t t t

So the King married Katherine Parr and Elizabeth’s favourite step-uncle

sailed away to sanctuary in Flanders. It was almost three years before he

judged it safe to return to court, a court paralysed with fear and uncertainty

under a sick tyrant’s rule. He felt the oppressive atmosphere as soon as he

arrived and his bold laugh rang through the whispering corridors like a

breath of fresh air. “He’s back!” said the gay glances of all the unmarried

girls at he court; “He’s back!” said his brother’s sombre stare with a flicker

of dislike and distrust; “He’s back!” said the King’s jaundiced eye as it

roved over that bronzed figure, and remembered with envy how many

years it was since he had looked like that.

The new Queen folded her hands in her lap and carefully averted her

gaze, afraid to betray herself by looking at him too directly. It had been

the longest three years of her life, full of alarms and fears which had aged

her. Tom could see in that first moment that she was not the gay laughing

widow she had been when the King first set eyes upon her. Poor Kate!

All around him Tom felt the nervous shifting glances of men who

wondered how much longer they would keep their heads these days. And

those few who did not fear the block, being spotless in their honour, were

anxious lest their religious leanings should shortly lead them to the stake.

Heresy had been a delicate subject for Catholics and Protestants alike

ever since the break with Rome. Too orthodox a Roman Catholic and

you were a traitor; too vigorous a reformer and you were a heretic. Either

way Henry had the majority of his courtiers in a cleft stick and fear pulsed

through the palace like a tangible force. He could not bear the doctrinal

controversy spreading through England, nor could he accept that he

was largely responsible for its growth. To suit his personal convenience,

he had pushed open the door to the Reformation one necessary chink;

now he found himself unable to close it once more and he was equally