The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (22 page)

“And how did we lie, Elinor de Lacey? God placed you in our arms more surely than if he had seeded you in my womb. What drove me to go to that holy well? What impelled Eppie to come with me? And that night, when those masked people knocked upon the abbey door . . . How had they come to know Eppie would be there?”

“I do not know.”

“I do,” Mother said fiercely. “God went to a great deal of trouble on our behalf, Mistress, and if I were you I would not quibble over loose threads, but be grateful.” Her voice broke. “As grateful as I am that He did!”

“Mother, there is more. Eppie says that . . . that the queen is my . . .”

“Hush, Nell!” Mother pressed her fingers to my lips to stop the words. “That part of the tale is
not
true. Mistress Jones is mad! I should have turned her out the instant she told such a lie!”

I peered into my mother’s face, desperate to believe her. “If you should have sent her away, why didn’t you?”

Mother flinched. “Because you loved her so. Because . . .”

I knew in that instant, felt my heart sink. “Because you were too just to condemn her for what you feared might be the truth.”

“Nell, I—”

“When the queen heard that I was born near the holy well of St. Michael and that Eppie was my nurse, things changed between us. I could see something in her eyes.”

“Elizabeth Tudor has spent her whole life being hunted by one wolf or another. She imagines danger behind every corner. You have the red-gold hair of a Tudor rose, but what does that signify? Henry was a lusty man and had mistresses aplenty. Nor was he the only red-haired man in all of England. Why, then, could you not get your coloring from some sprout started thus?”

Why did I sense there was something more, something she was hiding? “What you say is possible, but you cannot dismiss Eppie’s claim entirely. I can see it in your eyes. How could Elizabeth have concealed being with child, Mother? Would not her belly have shown? Look at how the servants chattered about the scandal with—”

We both started at the sound of the door latch. It opened, Lettice Knollys sweeping inside. “Lady Calverley!” She dropped my mother an arrogant curtsey. “Welcome to court! I believe you and my mother are near an age. Was she Catherine Carey then?”

“Your mother is a good and gracious lady by whatever surname. And a brave one. She was but a child when she kept vigil with Queen Anne in the Tower, even walking with her to the scaffold.”

“It was her duty as the queen’s own niece,” Lettice said. “Or was it duty to her natural father she felt?”

All England knew Catherine Carey Knollys had been conceived during Henry’s affair with Mary, the first of the Boleyn sisters he had bedded. And yet, to have the woman’s own daughter making jest of it was more than my mother could stand. “Your mother was one of the bravest women I had the privilege to know. You would do well to model your behavior after hers.”

“That is what my father is forever saying. But since there are no queens being beheaded at present I must shift for myself however I can. It is nearing time for the queen’s dinner, so Nell had best come along with me. Today she gets the great honor of holding a fine linen cloth for the queen to spit in.”

Lettice hoped to prick my temper, but I had more important matters on my mind than my position in the order of service we were to provide.

“Run along, Nell,” my mother bade me. “We can finish our discussion in private later.” She gave Lettice a pointed look. But where would we find such privacy at court?

I
T WAS NOT
until three days had passed that I was able to steal my mother away, into a closet near the queen’s chapel. By then, the strain was etched about her eyes, and I could see the cogs in her mind whirling. I had watched her solve a thousand problems over the years at Calverley. Some part of me still believed she could do the same even here. “I have been worrying this difficulty over and over in my head,” Mother said. “Trying to puzzle out how it might have been possible for the princess to hide such a condition.”

“And it is not possible, is it? The authorities interrogated her servants and they testified to it all—every humiliating incident with Thomas Seymour. There is no way something so earth-shattering could be kept secret.”

“I wish I could tell you that was so. But the more I think on it . . .” Mother pleated a fold of her black damask gown. “Nell, during the years Edward reigned people were not certain she was King Henry’s daughter. King Edward was a healthy boy. We all believed he would marry and father heirs of his own. Elizabeth was unimportant. She was not closely watched in Katherine Parr’s household. Katherine believed those she loved were as good and honorable as she was. It never occurred to her that her husband would seduce her stepdaughter beneath her very nose.”

“But playing bawdy games is different from stealing a princess’s virtue.”

“Seymour was arrogant enough to risk all for the prestige of bedding a king’s daughter.”

I flinched at the thought such a man might have sired me.

“When the dowager queen and I discovered Seymour atop Elizabeth that August I cannot tell you how stricken we all were; Elizabeth, too. She was painfully young. If Katherine Parr suspected the girl was with child, she would have moved both heaven and earth to shield her. I always knew that she did not banish Elizabeth to Cheshunt out of spite or to punish her. She sent the child to the care of her trusted stepdaughter in order to protect Elizabeth from Thomas Seymour.”

I tried to imagine what the women must have felt.

“Once Elizabeth arrived at Cheshunt she fell desperately ill, a sickness that confined her to bed. Months she suffered, I always believed stricken with guilt. The dowager queen was a mother to her, you see. In the months that followed, the two even wrote to each other. Katherine showed Elizabeth’s letters to me. Letters of a desperately penitent child starved for love. I think there were times I could have happily murdered Thomas Seymour in his bed.”

“The princess was lodged at Cheshunt. Is that not near the place where I was born?”

“It is.”

My nerves tightened with dread. Had I not boasted of just that location to Sir Gabriel soon after we met?

“Now when I think of those months my heart aches for her. Back then, my heart was far harder. She had wounded my beloved friend. Even if Katherine could pardon her, there was a part of me that could not forgive her. Now that I have a daughter of my own I better understand.” My mother touched my cheek. “Do not look so guilty, sweet. For once this is not one of my criticisms. It is only an explanation.”

“But she could not hide in her bed from everyone. Her servants of the body would have seen her swelling belly when they bathed her. Dressed her. Surely they would have exposed her secret? And to great personal gain in Queen Mary’s reign, when the woman would have given much to be rid of her Protestant sister.”

“Is it so impossible to think that good people might be inspired to help a child left so unprotected? Especially if Katherine Parr asked them to? The queen inspired great love and loyalty in those whose lives she touched, and it is likely that few people dared enter Elizabeth’s chamber when she was ill. There is no way to predict how deadly an illness might be. Plague, consumption, a putrid sore throat . . . any such infection can kill. If there was a plan to protect Elizabeth, the conspirators would take care few would see her. And who would have suspected Thomas Seymour’s seduction of the child? It was not until Katherine lay dead and the blackguard pressed his suit for Elizabeth’s hand that the world learned of the affair. By then any child would have been long born and discarded.”

“Do you not mean murdered?” I wanted to retch.

“Yes. Murdered. Were it not for one woman’s courage and a babe tenacious of life.” Mother drew a ragged breath. “That is, if events happened as I now imagine.”

“If they did, then Elizabeth ordered me to be destroyed. Like a pup born with its mouth cleft.”

“Perhaps. Or perhaps she was told you were born dead by those who wished to protect her. But even if the worst is true and she had a hand in ordering your death, even I cannot think too harshly of her. Imagine facing such a thing at fourteen. The terror of a child already named bastard by her own father, her mother beheaded, her stepmother aware she had been tumbled like a milkmaid. Elizabeth must have been half wild with horror, and denied the truth as long as possible. Eppie told me that she had seen cases where women were forced to lie with brutal men and were so traumatized that they did not suspect they were pregnant even when the pains began.”

“That is hard to believe.”

“Your father believed that the mind protects us from calamities too great to bear. For Elizabeth, what greater calamity could there be? The good news is that there is no way for anyone to prove for certain this tale of Eppie’s is true.”

“But—” I stopped.

There is,
I had meant to tell her.
A scrap of bed curtain stitched in silver
. Yet if mother knew it existed, she would see it destroyed.
I
should have done so myself, stuffed it into the flames long ago. It was the one tangible piece of where I had come from, held the key to who I really was. Once it was gone, it could never be replaced. I looked away from mother’s eyes, shining with love, with protectiveness.

“Mother, I am sorry. About defying you. Coming here. I did not understand.”

“I never wanted you to face this. I was afraid you would blame me. I was a coward.”

“No! Not you! Not ever!”

“Yes, Nell. A coward. I always knew your love for me was not on solid footing the way it was with your father and Eppie. I clung so tight, afraid of losing what bit of it I had, that I put you in danger.”

Blunt, my mother’s words. A lifetime of wistfulness, watching others gather up the love she had risked so much for, longed for during pregnancy after pregnancy. And yet, to tell her that I had loved her the same would be an insult to her honesty.

“I am sorry,” I cried.

“I am not. There. I have said it. It is all in the open now, like a wound that must have air to seal it properly at the last.”

In that moment I saw a different mother from the one I had known. I saw the woman who had been a rock for Katherine Parr when all of court had been shifting sands. I saw courage and strength and love. Most of all, love.

“We will survive this trial, Nell. You and I. Together.”

I wanted so much to believe her. “What if the queen guesses? What if someone finds out? When Eppie came to the palace she said the queen’s men were seeking her. She seemed so rattled I half believed she was mad after all.”

“Only you and I and Eppie know her tale and no power on earth would compel any of us to tell.”

I should have known the danger of tempting fate with such confident words. I should have remembered Kat Ashley had broken, told of Thomas Seymour’s licentious deeds when the right pressure was used. Within the Tower’s dread fortress, far stronger wills were broken every day.

Chapter Eighteen

December 25, 1564

C
HRISTMAS
D
AY DAWNED WITH GLOWERING GRAY
clouds that even the festive decorations could not banish. It was as if my fears pressed at the windows, trying to catch a glimpse of battles still to be joined. I had seen skillful jousting during the months court was in progress, yet never between two fearsome combatants wearing silken skirts. Instead of charging horses at each other in the lists, my mother and the queen chose the chapel after Christ’s Mass as their venue. But the spectators who gathered after the service watched with that same eagerness I had witnessed in the pavilion, people attempting to guess which contender would draw first blood.

It was obvious the court knew of the queen’s long-standing dislike of Lady Calverley. Some, like Lady Ashley, had actually witnessed the scandal that had forever planted Elizabeth Tudor and the loving friend of Katherine Parr on opposite sides of battle lines. Imaginations brewed all sorts of possibilities, the speculation that had marked my first weeks at court boiling over anew. Why had I been chosen as maid of honor when so many more powerful nobles battled to win the privilege for their daughters? And now the even more intriguing question presented itself: Why had my mother been invited to London when such bitterness stood between the queen and the Baroness of Calverley?

My mother stayed as close to me as she could after the service, slipping through the crowd until she was near my place with the queen’s other maids. As Elizabeth prepared to exit the chapel ahead of her courtiers, the queen paused to regard the carved wooden Christ child placed upon the altar for the day.

“What fear His mother must have known when she bore Him in a stable,” the queen observed. “Stealing the babe out from under the nose of a vengeful king and then fleeing with God’s own son to Egypt! It is no small feat to raise such an extraordinary child. I cannot imagine how one would do so.”

Secretary Cecil smiled. “Someday, Majesty, you will find out. When you give England an heir. A fine strong son.”

Hands clapped, voices murmured in the crowd as a hearty round of approval rippled through those nearest her.

“Yes,” the queen said. “A son.” Elizabeth’s own mother had died for want of one. Had Anne Boleyn produced a healthy prince, there would have been no trial for witchcraft and adultery, no beheading on Tower Green, no parade of other wives haunting Tudor palaces.

Elizabeth coughed behind her beringed hand. “If you remember rightly, Cecil, my stepmother, Jane Seymour, died giving England a prince. Childbirth is dangerous business. More difficult still, raising heirs to be proud of. Look at the whelps scrabbling over the French throne. It remains to be seen whether Henri Valois and Catherine de Medici produced even one in their vast litter worthy to wear a crown.”

“That will not be the case with Your Majesty,” Robert Dudley cut in. “No one can have any doubt that you would be an exemplary mother. You are a most doting godmother to . . . how many babes now?”

“I fear I lose count and am too full of holiday spirit to puzzle it out. But I observe mothers closely. Make a study of the science, one might say. For example, our recently arrived guest Lady Calverley.” The queen glanced about the party until she found my mother. “Come forward, Thomasin.”

My mother brushed past me to wend her way toward the queen. “You have a most remarkable daughter,” Elizabeth said. “What is your secret in raising her?”

My mother looked somehow taller in her sober black gown. “My methods are simple enough. A steady diet of Latin and the classics, exercise in clean country air, and a hearty dose of good sense. In short, a childhood much like the one you had, Majesty.”

“You would know all about that, Lady Calverley, would you not?” Elizabeth gathered up the chain at her waist that held her pomander ball. She raised the scented sphere to sniff it. “You were seldom far from my last stepmother’s side. You accompanied her after she was widowed, and were present when she wed again. Far too soon for decorum’s sake, considering her late husband had been King of England.”

“Your opinion about their marriage was not always so disapproving, Majesty.”

Elizabeth dropped the filigreed ball, its chain rattling. Her face went still as marble. A crackle of anticipation set the crowd on alert and my hand knotted beneath the folds of my gown. What was my mother thinking, speaking to the queen so?

Mother smiled as if not noticing the queen’s displeasure. “It is fortunate you and I are grown women now, Majesty, and know opinions often change with time. Age gives us wisdom. Thank God we are not held accountable for youthful folly.” Suddenly I sensed what Mother was doing—laying the groundwork for the case she would later present to convince Her Majesty to allow me to return home. It was a great gamble to offend the queen, but no greater than remaining here.

“I find myself curious. What wisdom have the years granted you, Lady Calverley?”

“They have shown me that I am not a woman made for grand settings. I seek peace on my husband’s estates and wish only to have my child nearby.”

“Your child did not want your company the same way,” Elizabeth said with some pleasure. “She defied you to serve her queen.”

I winced, but mother did not betray the pain that must have cost her.

“I pray Elinor has served you well, Majesty. But that does not save a mother’s heart from missing her most sorely.”

“Nestlings must fly, whether one wills it or no. I find her quite useful in scholarly debates and questions of science. Just the other day we discussed my Catholic subjects’ unruliness about religion, debated whether harsh measures were needed to bring them to heel. Some of my ministers would crush them sharply. Your daughter said one cannot drag an animal to the trough and force it to swallow something that does not nourish it. A cow cannot be expected to eat what a hawk might. But both may live together in the same meadow.”

“Nell has a fine mind,” Mother agreed. “She inherited it from her father.”

“And what do you think I inherited from mine?”

The queen regarded Mother with wolfish intensity. I could hear the echoes of pain decades old, wounds left by those who insisted that Elizabeth was a bastard sired by the musician Mark Smeaton.

“You are a fine scholar, a gifted musician, regal in bearing, and have the love of your subjects. In face, of any of his children, you are most like Great Harry.”

Elizabeth looked pleased.

She did not feel Mother shudder, or discern the reason behind it.

C
HRISTMASTIDE AT COURT
. My mother had seen many, this would be my first. Feasting and mummers would fill days and nights, Morris dancers frolicking in bright apparel, their hobbyhorses and Saint George’s dragon drawing laughter from young and old alike. Boys who sang like angels would fill the musician’s gallery in the Great Hall, but I doubted we would notice, however sweet their song.

Twelve days of rejoicing Mother and I would be forced to endure, each with its own tradition: Christmas with its grand feast, then the Saint Stephen’s Day hunt, when the poor fox was pardoned. New Year’s Day with its long-anticipated exchange of gifts. The festivities would not end until Twelfth Night, when the decorations were burned, a chunk of yule log saved so it would protect the house from fire in the year to come.

As time crawled past it was as if Mother and I snatched each day from the fire, like we did raisins in the game Snap Dragon. Nipping the dried fruit with quick fingers from the blazing bowl of brandy someone had set alight. Our greatest hope? Once the queen was sated with roasted brawn and softened by gifts from her courtiers, Elizabeth might be willing to let me leave court. When time came for my mother to return home, pray God, I would ride out of London by her side.

Resolved as my mother was that this would be so, my own optimism sank further as each night passed. The queen demanded I wait upon her, seldom allowing me far from her side. Was she jealous of my mother drawing my attention? Or was the queen’s remarkable behavior something more strategic? A way to keep both de Lacey women close enough to catch us off guard when the time came to make her thrust?

As I prepared myself for the New Year’s festivities, thrice I tipped over bottles strewing the table before my looking glass. I stained my sleeve with wine, and muttered an oath when Moll dropped the hairbrush in my lap, snagging the satin. Mother gently motioned Moll aside and took the brush, drawing it through my hair in long, soothing strokes. I could remember her performing such a task only rarely. That made the experience all the more precious.

“Do not fear, sweeting. A few more nights, then all will be well,” she encouraged as she set the brush aside and began rubbing the hip-length strands with red satin to polish them to a sheen. I wished I could believe her. But the moment we entered the Great Hall I could feel a charge in the air, the kind that seized Calverley’s hilltops just before lightning split the sky.

Rivers of candlelight illuminated the walls, loops of greenery draped every rail, and dangling from the ceiling were gay ribbons. The crowd pressed close, fighting to see the wondrous, rich gifts courtiers offered to their queen. Even I was transfixed as fantastical clocks, exquisite jewels, and gowns encrusted with gems were unveiled. As Robert Dudley approached the queen the whole room strained forward. That moment, something tugged at my skirt. I turned, expecting someone had trod on my hem. Instead, Mary Grey smiled up at me, her brown hair caught back in a white French hood trimmed with silver. My mother gave her such a warm smile it touched me. “Happy New Year, Lady Mary.”

Mary curtsied. “Lady Calverley. I hope you have gotten some sleep since you’ve taken my place as Nell’s bedfellow. She is terrible greedy when it comes to the covers.”

“This from the smallest woman at court, who takes up more space in the bed than Thomas Keyes would!” I said. “Add to that Polly and her pups, and it is a wonder I even get a sliver of the feather tick!”

“You see what I must endure,” Mary said to my mother, then passed me a packet.

I looked at it in surprise. “What is this?”

“Open it,” Mary urged, eager as if the gift were for her.

Shame stung me. “I do not have anything for you.”

“I did not expect you to.” She meant it, no rancor in her tone.

I tugged at the wrapping, unveiled a pair of stockings. They were an exquisite blue, thick and warm. I had seen just such a color when we ladies had been stitching with the queen. The silk yarn had been pillowed in Mary’s lap, her fingers awkwardly wielding four thin ivory needles. Mary had started the project over and over, her tongue stuck out just a little, her brow furrowed until it all but disappeared. I lifted the socks into the light. “Did you make these for me?”

“I tried them on Polly but they made her slip on the floor. I only give them to you because she would not have them.” Mary made a face so comical it should have made me smile. “I grew weary of you waking me up in the night with your cold feet.”

“Mary, I—”

“Yes, yes. I know. You are overcome with gratitude. Tell me later. I must steal away. I have another gift to deliver and I am certain the queen will not miss me.” Mary waved at the mass of courtiers that swarmed around Elizabeth, the nearby tables groaning with rich gifts. “If anyone asks tell them I was stricken with a headache or drank too much wine or some such.”

“But you look more pink-cheeked and glowing than I have ever seen you,” I observed, noting how her eyes were sparkling.

“Please, Nell. Just tell them . . .” Mary broke off with a chuckle. “Oh, you needn’t bother. If anyone notices I am gone it will just be an excuse to toast their good fortune!”

“Mary!” I exclaimed.

“You know it is true. But I do not care tonight. I doubt I will care what they think of me ever again!” She gave me a quick hug, then darted away, her tiny form swallowed up so quickly I could not catch her, say the words that suddenly rose up in my mind:
Be careful, my friend. For despite the commotion the queen sees far more than we will ever know
.

“Poor creature,” my mother said softly, looking where Mary had disappeared.

“Do you pity her because she is dwarfed?”

“No, though her size gives her trouble enough for a lifetime. I have sympathy for Mary because I knew her mother well. We were girls at court together and even then Frances was the most selfish, haughty woman I ever met. Three daughters she had in the years since then, and she twisted them all through her ambition.”

“Father said when Jane Grey was a girl she lived with Katherine Parr at Chelsea.”

“Such a solemn child she was, all huge, worried eyes and freckles on skin far too pale.” Sadness shadowed Mother’s face in stark counterpoint to the gaiety around us. “But her mind was hungry as yours, Nell. She would have been happy locked in a quiet garret somewhere as long as she had her store of books.”

I felt a jab of jealousy, imagining this quiet, perfect child. And yet, Mary claimed they had beaten Jane to force her to wed Guilford Dudley. She must have had a strong will as well.