8
Elizabeth
“H
e is your stepfather, Bess,” I kept reminding myself. But it did no good. “No good can come of dallying with such a rash and reckless knave,” I told myself times too numerous to tally. “Ambition is the star that guides him, and in following it he forgets to watch his feet; he will stroll right off the precipice someday, and if you go along hand in hand with him, gazing rapt like lovers do, so too will you.” But all he had to do was smile at me and I was deaf to reason and all serious thoughts went scurrying out of my mind like rats fleeing a burning building.
He would saunter in as I sat upon a velvet-upholstered stool, embroidering or reading aloud with Kate, with his arms overflowing with great bouquets of wildflowers. He would draw up a chair behind me and nimbly pluck off my hood and take my wavy waist-length Tudor-red tresses in his confident hands and weave them into a braid. Inserting the sunny yellow daffodils, deep purple violets, orange-yellow marigolds, sky-colored bluebells, pinks, buttercups, daisies, gillyflowers, and the vibrant multi-hued pansies called Heart’s Ease into the plait he had fashioned, he would marvel breathlessly at the golden strands amongst the red, picked out by the fire’s or the sun’s light, “like gilded threads worked into red damask.” And when I stood it would look as though I had a garden growing down my back. Sometimes he would come bearing only daisies and would lie at my feet, idly weaving them into chains and crowns to adorn both me and his “bonny, buxom Kate,” pausing sometimes to slowly, deliberately, pluck the petals, gazing at me, hard and bold as his lips mouthed the words: “She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me . . .” And a fire as red as my hair would ignite in my face, and the words would crash and pile into a hopeless jumble upon my lips or else stick in a tangled heap in my throat, and I would feel that for the life of me I could not sort them out again.
Another day he joined us for a picnic under the shady trees in the park. And I noticed, marveling yet again, at how my stepmother had changed from the days when she had been my father’s wife. Nowadays Kate seemed to walk in a dream, with her head lost in the clouds. Though Kate personified autumn in her colors, her red-gold hair and hazel eyes reminiscent of fall leaves, marriage to Tom had brought spring back into her life and rejuvenated her, making her more girlish and giddy and less matronly and dignified. At that particular picnic, she grew giddy, then just as quickly drowsy as Tom plied her with cup after cup of malmsey, until she fell asleep.
As she slumped against the trunk of an old oak tree, snoring softly, Tom stealthily removed her hood and plucked the pins from her hair so that it fell down about her shoulders. Next he took off her shoes and, reaching up under her skirts, with a sly wink at me, rolled down and peeled off her stockings. It struck me, like an arrow in the heart that, as he lifted her foot to his lips and delicately nibbled her little pink toes, that Tom’s eyes never once left my face. Indeed, his eyes fixed on mine, almost tauntingly, as if he meant to torment me by behaving thus with his wife right in front of me, as if he were flaunting privileges that were hers by right could never be mine.
Kate awoke with a cry at the feel of his teeth nipping at her toes, and Tom leapt up, laughing like a madman, brandishing her shoes and stockings high above his head, shouting if she wanted them back she would have to catch him as he took off at a fast run across the park. And I was treated to the most unlikely spectacle of the barefoot Katherine Parr, a woman renowned for her dignity, racing after him like a barefoot peasant girl shrieking and shouting with laughter as she ran across the grass, with her skirts bunched up about her knees and her hair streaming in the breeze.
I kept telling myself he was my stepfather and that it was wrong that I should have such thoughts about him. I kept reminding myself that he was Kate’s husband. Kate who had been the kindest woman in the world to me, taking me under her wing and nurturing me as if I were her own natural-born daughter. And yet . . . his behavior toward me contradicted the facts. He behaved like a boisterous young swain hell-bent on wooing and winning me.
One morning, just as the sun’s gentle butter-yellow fingers were beginning to whisk the dawn away, and I lay still in slumber, safe and warm inside the dark haven of my bedcurtains, I heard my door creak open. Drowsily, I thought I must remember to ask Mrs. Ashley to have the hinges oiled, then rolled over, burrowing deeper into the feather mattress, and thought no more about it.
Suddenly, my bedcurtains were wrenched open wide, and there, to my astonishment, stood the gardener, with the old battered wooden bucket he used to carry manure to fertilize the roses that bloomed so beautifully at Chelsea.
I bolted up in bed, outraged, clutching the covers over my bare chest, as I often slept naked in those days, and my dressing gown was draped over a chair, nearby, but still beyond my reach. A sharp retort was primed to blast like a cannonball from my mouth, when suddenly his lips spread in a wide pearly smile that I recognized instantly as Tom’s, and he tilted back the brim of the battered old hat that had cast a dark shadow over his face. I gasped and braced myself as he raised the pail and flung its contents at me and I found myself sitting in the midst of a flurry of red rose petals.
Carelessly, he flung the pail aside, the bearskin on the hearth muffling the thud, then dove onto the bed right on top of me. I gave a little startled cry as I lay pinned beneath his weight, but his hand clapped quickly over my mouth stifled it newborn.
“Lady,” he said smiling, “I come to you in the guise of a gardener to tend my rosy buds.”
And with those words he raised himself and pulled the bedclothes down to my waist, pinning the down-turned covers with his knees, and holding my arms pinioned at my sides to prevent me from pushing him away or covering myself.
“Slow-blooming posies need nurturing and encouragement in order that they might grow and thrive,” he explained in a mockingly sage tone, ignoring the blush that dyed my face as red as the rose petals he had spilled on my bed, and the tears of shame that shimmered in my eyes. He ducked his head down and began to kiss the pallid pink nipples that sat in pools of rosy flesh upon my flat white chest.
Though I was thirteen, my body was indeed slow to blossom; my courses had only begun to flow and were as yet an irregular trickle rather than a full-blown crimson gush, and only a few sparse red tendrils curled around my nether lips.
I squirmed and struggled beneath him, caught between resistance and surrender. One moment I gasped and struggled hard, and the next I arched my back, offering up my paltry bosom for more of his exquisite kisses, sighing at this newly discovered delight.
With a lascivious grin and a last serpentlike flicking little lick, he abandoned my little pink paps, now throbbing and stiff, no longer pale but flushed a much rosier hue, and left a trail of meandering hot kisses down to my waist. Then he tore back the covers and let loose an exclamation of surprised delight.
“Pink petals amongst the red!” he cried, and promptly lowered his mouth to kiss my nether lips.
I nearly swooned as I squirmed and sighed beneath his questing, teasing tongue, exploring every nook and cranny of my most intimate parts, which no man had ever seen before. I was lost in a new world of bliss, a dream from which I never wanted to awaken, when suddenly a scream pierced the dawn, jolting me up in a rude awakening.
Mrs. Ashley stood in the doorway of her room, which adjoined mine, her eyes wide and her mouth agape.
With laughter twinkling in his eyes, Tom raised his head and winked at her.
“Careful, Mistress Kat, remember, curiosity killed the curious cat!” he chided playfully as he leapt off the bed and bounded out the door, pausing only long enough to pat her plump posterior and provoke an indignant cry from her.
I lay taut, in dead silence, too stunned and ashamed to even cover my nakedness, and Mrs. Ashley stood likewise stricken as we listened to his footsteps and laughter retreating down the hall.
“Bess!”
she exclaimed, an expression of horror spreading across her round, full-moon face.
“How could you?”
“Get out! Go away!”
I cried, the spell suddenly broken, yanking the covers up over my head, and turning onto my side, turning my back on my beloved governess, and wrapping them tight about me, as close as I could, like a cocoon, as I burst into angry, confused tears.
“Oh my darling girl!” Instantly contrite, wringing her hands and looking as if she too were about to cry, Kat wailed as she ran to me and tried to take me in her arms. I struggled free and refused to let her embrace me and, finally, she let me be, saying only that we must talk soon, for there were things that she, in a mother’s stead, must say to me. And at those words I wept all the harder.
Tom was a man brimming over with charm and winning ways and he began to woo Kat too, to overcome the rightful objections a governess should make when amorous advances are directed at her charge, especially one of royal blood—and a princess’s virtue and virginity must never be in doubt. He brought her bouquets of flowers, and baskets of berries he picked himself. He kissed her cheeks and twirled his fingers and stuck violets, pinks, and daisies in the frizzy, flyaway brown-gray curls escaping from the prim prison of her black French hood. Oftentimes he would creep up behind her and smack and pinch her ample bottom, saying he liked a full-hipped woman with great pillow-plump buttocks, and give her gifts of cakes and candies to further fatten them up. “I am fattening Mrs. Ashley’s great buttocks as if they were a Christmas goose!” he would jestingly declare, making her giggle and exclaim, “Oh, you are a
naughty
man!” waggling a finger at him as if he were a naughty schoolboy, and he would playfully snap his fine teeth at it as if he meant to bite it, and make her laugh all the more. There would always be an affectionate undertone to mar the severity of the scolds and reprimands she addressed to him. “A
very
naughty man!” she would repeat as she simpered and preened, blushed, and giggled, before she fluttered away, putting a little more sway into her steps and swing into her hips, darting a furtive glance back over her shoulder through coyly fluttered lashes to make sure that he was watching.
But Tom had achieved what he set out to do—he had won an ally—and Kat began to sing his praises to me at every turn. And every night thereafter when she tucked me into bed with a peck upon my cheek she would wish me “sweet dreams of the Lord Admiral, my pet.” She seemed to forget that she was a governess, not a matchmaker, and that Tom was married to our hostess, my own dear stepmother. She would spin elaborate, fantastical dreams, castles in the clouds in which Tom and I dwelled as man and wife in wedded bliss, and she proudly presided over a nursery filled with our fine, handsome children. Her dreams were so vivid I could feel his ring upon my finger, the weight of the gold, the flashing green fire of the emerald that stood symbol for his everlasting love, and his naked body, muscular, hard, virile, and strong, spooned around mine beneath the covers of our marriage bed, with the warmth of his breath against the nape of my neck, the tickle of his beard, and his hand lovingly cupping my breast, the hardness of his manhood pressed against my bare bottom. I could even smell and taste the food and wine on our table, and hear the merry chatter of our guests. And there were our daughters, Emily and Cassandra, playing with their dolls, dressing them up and talking to them like little mothers, and our sons, Christopher and Mark, cantering about on hobby horses and fighting mock battles with wooden swords, shouting with laughter and crying when they took a tumble and scraped their knees, all under the watchful eye of their governess, Kat, of course.
Though reason tried to hold me back, Kat dragged me into her dreamworld, and they became my dreams as well. And oh how my heart leapt and soared each time he called me his, and melted at each endearment, each “darling,” “sweetheart,” “dear heart,” and “dear one.”
But what about Kate, his wife and my stepmother—where was she in all this? She had no place in our realm of dreams, though I loved her dearly and wished her no ill, certainly not the cruel fate of a forsaken wife like my father’s first bride and Mary’s mother, Katherine of Aragon, had been, nor the cold bed of the grave where my own mother, Jane Seymour, and Katherine Howard now reposed. My heart felt a sharp twinge of guilt whenever I thought of Kate, vying emotions of resentment and regret. I knew I wronged her, and part of me was sorely sorry for it, yet another part of me did not care one whit.
In times of quiet, away from Kat’s chatter and fantasy prattle, I fought at times to face and at other times to stave off stone-cold reality. Tom was a married man. I was a royal princess, with my reputation to guard as if it were a priceless treasure. If we gave in and surrendered to our passion, what kind of life could we have together? My warring emotions reminded me of my long-held conviction that I did not want to be a wife, yet a part of me deep down and buried kindled to that urge. But did the role of mistress suit me? Could my proud spirit buckle to and accept a life lived in waiting and longing and hoping for stolen moments, treasuring each tryst, prizing each pilfered hour as if it were a precious, perfect pearl pried from the heart of an oyster? And to know that I was a luxury, a pastime, a private pleasure to be enjoyed in strictest secrecy and the utmost discretion, fated always to come second, never first, to live on crumbs from Tom’s wife’s table. To always temper passion with precaution lest I face the deathly perils of pregnancy and the ignominy and disgrace of bearing a bastard. To dwell forever in the shadows, while Kate walked openly in the sun at his side, unless the Wheel of Fortune spun in such a way that fate would one day let me take her place, but that was far too cruel and horrid to contemplate, for I truly did love Kate and never for a moment wished her in her grave. And to never be able to take up my pen and write to him the words
I love you,
lest they fall into the wrong hands, and our secret be betrayed, and he, for the presumption of dallying carnally with a royal princess, face the headsman’s ax that was the penalty for high treason. Could I? Would I?
Yes!
In defiance of all risk and reason my heart sang out like a whole choir of fallen angels
, Yes, yes, and again yes! Anything
to be with and belong to Tom! For him I would play Love’s prisoner and Love’s fool! Oh, and I was indeed a fool for him!