The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn (10 page)

T
HE GREAT LIVING SNAKE
was three miles in length and made of a thousand clanking, rumbling pieces which sent a long, thick cloud of dust into the sultry July afternoon. In its escape from the heat and filth and pestilence of London, the royal summer progress into the Kentish countryside — Elizabeth’s first as queen — had been underway for less than a week, but already the heavy and overladen carts and wagons, herds of livestock, and multitudes of pack horses carrying the baggage, goods, and furnishings of the entire court, had torn up the highway and wrought havoc — albeit a welcome one — on tiny farm communities along the route.

James Thomas, his plump wife Joan, and seven of their wide-eyed children had, with the permission of their landlord, stopped work for the better part of the day. Now they sat on blankets with pots of cheese, loaves of hard bread, and jugs of ale — a proper picnic — to watch, enthralled, the endless parade which was without question one of the greatest spectacles of their lifetime. The goods and cattle trundling down their rugged road were only the beginning of the remarkable pageant, for when they had passed, leaving their dust and droppings, then came the equerries and road masters carrying carved and painted coats of arms and brilliant banners which did not flap in the breeze so much as hang limply in the wilting heat. Guards and yeomen on their prancing horses surveyed the way before them. Gaily bedecked young maids of honor rode next, cheerfully holding handkerchiefs to their noses against the choking dust, followed by a company of liveried guardsmen, riding tall and alert in their saddles.

“Look here,” James Thomas instructed his family, for he had once in his childhood seen such a progress when Great Harry was king, and he had never forgotten the wonder of it, or the order of the thing. From the rough carts and herds of cattle, to stately carriages of ladies and gentlemen, the Lords of the Council, and finally to armored regiments of guards announcing that the royal person-. age was not far behind.

“This’11 be yer Queen comin’ now. Stand up, all o’ye,” he instructed, pulling them to their feet. “King Harry, he rode on horseback so I did get a good look at him. Aye, he was handsome and very tall and broad, too. But a woman now, I think she’ll not ride out in the stink and dust, but in a carriage.”

But James Thomas was wrong and happily so, for he and his family could now see, past the guardsmen, a fine jennet mare ridden by a red-haired woman who, resplendent in silver and brocade, sat high in her saddle and seemed to emit a kind of sunlike brightness all round herself.

“There she is!” cried Joan. “The Queen. “James could hear the children muttering, “The Queen, the Queen,” whilst the eldest boys commented on the fine horseflesh and trappings.

“Why, she’s tall like Henry, and fair like him,” said James Thomas, amazed.

“A good thing,” whispered his wife, as though the pale-faced woman waving and smiling at them as she passed could possibly hear. “With a mother like that ‘tis a blessing she takes after her father.”

Elizabeth, eyes burning with the dust and bright sunlight, her mare bouncing under her, was appraising the Thomas family at the very moment they were appraising her, silently thanking her good subjects, as she had thanked God, every day since her accession, for bringing her to the throne.

Her thoughts scattered with the sudden boisterous commotion of Robin Dudley, who reined his enormous stallion to a breathless halt next to the Queen as though he had this very moment returned from a great battle.

“Majesty!” he panted, his forehead beaded with sweat.

“My God, Robin, what have you been doing up ahead? Vanquishing St. George’s dragon?”

“I rode the distance to Canterbury to inspect the evening’s lodgings.”

“And then rode back again! Why didn’t you stay, silly?”

His eyes shone as he caressed her face with his gaze. “Because I couldn’t wait to see you, my love. It would have been hours. I too much like seeing you on horseback — the Queen on her summer progress. So proud and magnificent.”

“And with a desperately sore bottom. Stop them up ahead, will you, Robin. I want to get down and ride in the carriage awhile.”

He smiled at the familiarity with which they spoke, now that they were lovers. “Will you be stopping to visit the weavers’ cottage in Oxted?” he asked.

“Are they expecting me?” She sighed, exhausted.

“They are.”

“Then we shall not disappoint them.” Shielding her eyes from the brutal sun she peered out at the green rolling farmland dotted with sheep. It was the first time Elizabeth had seen this region of her country. “Robin, do you really think the people like this business, the whole court descending on them like a great plague of locusts?”

“’Tis a monstrous burden in some ways, but it is an ancient custom — country hospitality. And we do bring our own wine and beer, after all,” he added with a crooked smile. He took her hand then, unmindful of the stares of the coach drivers behind them. “They love you, Elizabeth. Your people want to see their new queen. And I wager they like what they see.”

Dudley spurred his horse, rode to the head of the liveried guard, and ordered them to halt, allowing the train of supplies and cattle before them to plod ahead. Elizabeth let herself be helped from the saddle by one of her equerries. Her legs were rubbery from the long ride, and as she walked back to the ornate Dutch-made carriage, she slapped dust from her heavy brocaded riding skirt. Inside the carriage Kat Ashley dozed against the rose silk cushions, a thin film of perspiration lending a sweet shine to her lightly wrinkled face. Elizabeth’s old and trusted servant Thomas Parry sat across from Kat hunched over a large account book, squinting at a column of figures. He sprang to help the Queen into her carriage.

“Madame, have you done riding for the day?” he inquired.

“Yes, Thomas. From the feel of it, maybe forever.”

Unconsciously examining the Queen’s face for signs of serious fatigue or illness, Parry handed her a flask of clear water. Elizabeth drank deeply until it was empty. Parry, like Kat Ashley, had been in Elizabeth’s service since her early childhood. His wife, Blanche, had rocked the Princess in her royal cradle. Now the young queen collapsed wearily next to Kat, glancing affectionately at the older woman.

“She couldn’t wait to be gone from that stinking, flea-infested house, but I think she hates the traveling more,” whispered Elizabeth, hoping not to wake her waiting lady.

“Well, she’ll be having to get used to it, will she not? July to November, every year from now on,” said Parry.

“I expect I’ll get to see a lot of my kingdom.”

“Aye, you will do that.” Thomas Parry smiled at the thought. Elizabeth’s kingdom. How close she had come to losing it all before it could be hers.

Elizabeth, too, was remembering — the dangerous tribulations that she and Kat, Thomas and Blanche Parry had shared and suffered. She had thought much on those times in recent days, since reading Anne’s diary describing the early months of Henry’s enforced courtship of her mother.

What choice has a young girl when a king or nobleman forces his affections on her, what choice but to submit? thought Elizabeth. A woman had no escape. A hart — a hind — pursued by the hounds. A woman’s mind confused by the rigid teaching that a man must always have what he desired. That a woman’s wants meant nothing, nay, less than nothing. Her mother pursued by Henry. Herself, but a girl, pursued by Thomas Seymour.

Lord High Admiral. The name and the image of him flew into her mind unbidden. She could see him clearly, handsome and swaggering with his long red beard and iron-hard arms.

Thankfully Parry had gone back to his accounts, so he did not notice Elizabeth’s face flush with the simple thought of a man dead more than ten years.

She closed her eyes. She could smell him … oh God, taste him … could even now hear that rich voice booming “By God’s precious soul!” in a jovial oath that pierced the dull haze of sleep a moment before the heavy bedcurtains were ripped open and Thomas Seymour’s overlarge presence filled her sunny apartments.

“Rise and shine, Princess. ‘Tis too fine a day to lay about in bed.”

Elizabeth had flushed scarlet as she sought to cover her small naked breasts with the lawn sheets and squirmed lower under the covers, unable to speak for sheer embarrassment.

“Admiral, for shame!” cried Kat Ashley springing from her pallet at the foot of Elizabeth’s bed. Seymour, barelegged in his nightgown and slippers, had already leapt into Elizabeth’s four-poster and was tickling the thirteen-year-old girl until her shrieks of helpless laughter echoed through Chelsea Manor. Kat rushed to the bedchamber door and slammed it, then stood arms akimbo over the writhing tangle of bodies and bedclothes, trying to decide how to end this outrageous display.

But as she watched the pair of them, the large, handsome red-bearded man and her dear Lady Elizabeth, she felt her sternly pursed lips soften into a smile. They were a pretty couple, far prettier than the one Seymour made with his homely middle-aged wife, Catherine. Kat wished desperately that she had never harbored such scandalous thoughts, but she had to admit that Elizabeth and Catherine were not the only women in this household that Thomas Seymour had bewitched.

Seymour rolled onto his back and lay smiling up at Kat. “Come woman, dress your charge quickly. We hunt this morning.”

“Out of the bed now,” she ordered him, finally finding her voice which, she lamented, was less one of authority than playfulness. “All right, Elizabeth,” she added. “Up you get.”

“Make him leave.”

“Out,” Kat told Seymour. “The Princess needs her privacy.” “I’ll turn my back,” he replied and stood facing the heavy velvet arras. “Go on, I won’t peek.”

Kat and Elizabeth exchanged a dubious look.

“I’m not leaving, so make haste, ladies.”

With an embarrassed giggle Elizabeth jumped out of bed, winding the thin sheet round her, and stood as her waiting woman hurriedly slipped a cotton kirde over her reed-thin frame.

“Wear the russet jacket and the black brocade skirt,” he snapped as though he were still at sea barking orders to his seamen.

As Kat laced her into a bone corset the Princess wondered if her stepmother knew where her husband was, if she knew what a fool he was making of her. Elizabeth tried to push all thoughts of the mild-mannered Catherine Parr from her mind, for she loved the woman dearly. Indeed, Catherine was the only mother Elizabeth had ever known. A slap to her petticoated buttocks made Elizabeth squeal with surprise. She turned to see Thomas Seymour grinning impishly at her. But before Kat could push him away he had kissed Elizabeth’s flushed cheek and given her waiting woman’s thigh a good pinch.

“Beautiful,” he said, looking Elizabeth up and down in a quick inspection. “The stables in three quarters of an hour, no later!” He bounded out the door, leaving the two women floundering in the wake of his audacity.

Now as the royal coach rocked and rumbled over the pitted road Elizabeth conjured the memory of her adored stepmother Catherine Parr. Elizabeth had been nine when Henry, by then an old and sickly man, had married Catherine, his sixth wife. Finally relieved of any illusions of marrying for love or producing more male heirs, he’d been content with a woman whose holdings would strengthen his northern borders, one who might offer him some comfort in his old age. And comfort she gave him, sitting for hour upon hour with his sore leg propped upon her lap, arguing companionably about philosophy and religion. When Henry chose Catherine, she had been for many years central to a coterie of steely-minded, forward-thinking noblewomen who, by patronizing the great scholars and tutors of the Continent, brought the teachings of humanism and religious reform to court and wielded the first real, if limited, power over kings and princes that Englishwomen had ever enjoyed.

But, Elizabeth mused, her adoration for Catherine Parr sprang from something far deeper than respect, for she had within months of her coronation not only soothed the raging spirit and pain-racked body of her husband but plucked the long-estranged “bastard” child of Anne Boleyn back from lonely exile and into the warm bosom of the royal family. Henry once again showered his red-haired girl with affection and allowed Catherine to oversee Elizabeth’s brilliant classical education. The Queen in one swift maneuver had bestowed upon her stepdaughter her life’s most precious gift — the restoration of Elizabeth’s place in the royal succession.

Four years later Henry had died, leaving his widow the richest woman in England. Elizabeth’s home was with the Queen at Chelsea, and she and her younger half brother, Edward — now king at age nine — were comforted by Catherine’s kind ministrations. But then within three months of Henry’s death everything changed again. The dowager queen had fallen hopelessly and passionately in love with Thomas Seymour, uncle to the young king and Lord High Admiral of the Navy.

In those bewitching days the house at Chelsea had fairly thrummed with sensuality and Elizabeth found the high-spirited courtship of Thomas and Catherine unfolding before her girlishly romantic eyes. There was laughter and music and merriment and kind affection shown all round — an utterly intoxicating existence for the studious and modest young princess. Elizabeth watched fascinated to see the once demure and utterly serious-minded Catherine dissolve into a giddy, lovestruck girl. And so when Thomas Seymour’s pursuit of Elizabeth had begun in earnest, she had been entirely unprepared to distinguish assault from innocent good fun.