The Queen's Governess (20 page)

 

 

The next morn,
when we requested to speak with Elizabeth—and then when she knew our plight—her face lit up. She clapped her hands, jumped from her chair to hug both of us and cried, “I would love to go to another wedding, and we shall have a fine one here in the hall—if, that is, we can obtain royal permission. At least His Majesty is not angry with either of us anymore, Kat, and he and the queen have liked the needlework we’ve sent them, and they were proud of my translation of
Mirror of the Sinful Soul.
” She began to pace as she always did when she was planning something.

“We are so grateful to you, Your Grace,” John told her.

“Well,” she said with a sigh and a roll of her eyes, “I have seen you kissing outside in the moonlight more than once. It looked like great fun, but only with someone you really like. I vow, if I am betrothed to some foreign ruler as they say, I shall not like it if he is too old or cruel or wants to set me aside for another. So, then,” she said as she stopped her pacing so quickly that her skirts belled out, “let’s write the letter, and I warrant we can find some stable lad under your care, Master John, to ride to London with it. We must not wait until we all go to be with them next month. The only thing is, Kat, if you have a child, you must not leave me.” She stopped by her writing table, hands on hips, frowning now.

“No, my dearest Elizabeth,” I assured her, pulling away from John’s hand and walking over to take hers. “If I have any say in the matter, I will never leave you for any reason.”

“I, too,” John promised.

“Then let us write so we can plan a wedding. I am sure my father will favor a married couple with me—more stability, and he knows you both. Though, if I can help it, I will never wed myself, I do so love weddings!”

She gestured John to us and took both our hands, then brought them together. “And you,” the exuberant girl said, “will be my country family even though I owe allegiance to the king and queen.”

She tugged me close, even, I thought, as I had often done her. It was the summer of 1545, and in all my days, I had never been happier or felt safer. You’d think I would have learned something from the fates of Anne and Cromwell, more fool I.

 

 

 

Our wedding day
a fortnight later was crisp and clear. A local curate read our service in the Hatfield church just to the west of the palace, and we had a lovely bridal dinner in the solar, followed by dancing to the music of two lutenists and a drummer. I must admit, it was the first time I knew my husband—how strange that word sounded—could dance. He partnered me and then our twelve-year-old benefactress, who was having the time of her life overseeing everything.

Her other ladies prepared me for bed; Elizabeth herself had insisted we have a larger chamber down the hall from my old one. John came in, half dressed, teased and mussed by some of the male servants and our house steward. With fewer ribald jests than usual, since Elizabeth still stood wide-eyed in the hall, they shoved us into bed together and went back to their party downstairs.

That night, for the first time in my life, I surrendered myself to someone else, without worry, without qualms. I had struggled to be strong for so long, but now here was someone to trust and love, someone to tend to me as I did him. Oh, he knew the ways to pleasure a woman, my beloved John, but I had ever been a quick learner. He evoked a passion in me I had never fathomed and had foolishly thought I could control.

“Riding lessons, indeed,” I whispered as we were somehow wrapped together naked, tangled in bedsheets and my loosed hair.

“One lesson is never enough,” he murmured, looking sleepy-eyed with a lazy grin as he fondled my full breasts, which used to embarrass me so.

But with John, everything was perfect. There had been no pain of head or heart or maidenhead as when I had been ravished by the Seymour wretch. Everything was hot and wonderful, and I wanted more. I had fretted that John would ask me why I was not a virgin, but he had evidently been so intent he had not noticed.

“Then,” I said, lifting my knee over his leg to rub my thigh against his, “how do I request another lesson and what will be its price?”

He reached for me and the short, short night spun away to dust us too soon with the dawn.

 

 

 

We were all back
and forth to court for the next two years, until January of 1547 when the king took ill. Elizabeth’s education had proceeded apace and was greatly strengthened by her being permitted to sit in with Prince Edward’s tutors and nobly born school-fellows from time to time. She especially formed a friendship with Robert Dudley, one of Edward’s boon companions. They were close enough that they called each other Robin and Bess. But at Yule that year, the king took a turn for the worse, and all three children were sent to their respective rural households.

“The queen will nurse him back to health,” Elizabeth told us more than once. “ I am so glad they are reconciled. How dare others try to tell the king she had heretical books and so was dangerous.”

I nodded, and my eyes met John’s as the three of us rode toward Hatfield House during our daily exercise. He and I had several of those same books in our possession, hardly heretical—books about the new religion, Protestantism, called so because its adherents protested the rigid practices of the popish Church.

Behind us came a rider at full gallop. John turned and lifted in his saddle. He rode a black stallion called Commander, and I was on Ginger’s filly, Meadow. Elizabeth rode the three-year-old Regal, a horse John had let her name. The passing of Brill and Ginger, as well as the loss of people I had known, made me realize how much time had passed.

“It’s Jamie, from court,” John said, his breath visible in the frosty air. “Perhaps His Majesty has rallied, and we are summoned back again.”

Jamie, one of the men who had worked for John, reined in and nodded to Elizabeth, who sat between the two of us. “Your Grace”—he addressed her as such since she was back in the royal line of succession as princess—“you are ordered to Enfield to await the arrival of your brother.”

“My father’s health?” she asked.

“Tenuous, but as ever, he is determined and strong.”

As we went into the house to pack, for the first time I tried to imagine what England would be like without the king. I had known no other, for he had inherited the throne in 1509 when I was but three. Despite his gross weight and painful leg, I knew that he would recover. But I did wonder how much the messenger had not told us. After all, it was high treason not only to plot the death of the king but to mention it or imagine it, as if someone besides the Lord High God could know one’s thoughts. So, in effect, all my agonizing over this was illegal!

“Back to Enfield,” John whispered to me as he brought round our horses as we set out the next gray-sky morn.

“Yes, there is that,” I said, and smiled.

We both loved Enfield Palace in Middlesex, even more than we favored Hatfield. Called Enfield Chase by some for its large hunt park, it was a reddish brick, moated manor house, not a sprawling place, but charming and livable. Still, it had an impressive gatehouse and an approaching avenue lined with lime trees. The outer court bustled with domestic activities, but the cobbled inner court around which were built the privy apartments had a fountain where splashing water echoed pleasantly in the chambers about. Enfield boasted a chapel, a covered bowling green and conduits bringing in fresh water from up the hill. Two lakes teemed with fish, and the water gardens offered exquisite moonlight strolls. A bridge over Maidens Brook connected lush orchards to the enclosed deer park where John had led visitors and Elizabeth herself to the hunt. In short, it was John’s and my favorite place.

But when we reached Enfield late that afternoon, it looked frozen in place and time. We had not seen it in the winter. The moat was iced, frost etched the windows and fresh snow sat pure upon the ground. We were greeted by the household steward and told that a message had already arrived that the prince and his entourage, headed by Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, would be here soon. We had barely eaten and changed clothes when the royal party, with many more guards than I had ever seen, some in Tudor and some in Seymour livery, clattered into the inner courtyard and dismounted around the fountain.

From a second-story window, I watched John take charge of their horses. Elizabeth hurried out to greet her brother with a curtsy and a hug. Hand in hand—for they were yet children—they disappeared under my window, and I rushed down to greet them. The earl, Prince Edward’s uncle and Tom’s brother, dominated the scene. He had a more pointed face than Tom and a long, dark beard. His features seemed sharp, accented by an aquiline nose; his stance and attitude were ever aloof. To my dismay, he immediately ushered Elizabeth and Edward into the old medieval hall and closed the door on us all.

“How does the King’s Majesty?” I asked one of the earl’s men.

“Not well” was all he said.

And then came shrill cries, even a scream from Elizabeth. Instinct took over. I bolted for the door and pulled it open before one of the earl’s men could stop me. The two royal children stood in the wash of late light before the bank of windows, holding tightly to each other and wailing while Seymour stood there, just watching.

The king is dead,
I thought. On this cold, late January day in the new year of 1547, the king is dead! And before me stood the new king, a thin boy of nine, and my thirteen-year-old Elizabeth, now but two lives from the throne.

“I have not summoned you!” the earl shouted at me as I held both children to me and Elizabeth locked her arms around my waist.

“She is my charge!” I challenged him.

“Then both of you can unhand and kneel to your new sovereign,” he ordered.

And so we did, soon backed by the others, all on our knees before one very frightened boy—frightened, I believed, as much by his uncle as by his father’s loss and his new lofty place.

 

 

 

Just when I thought
Thomas Seymour was out of my life for good, I found I was mistaken. I was outraged at him because, immediately after the king’s death in the winter of 1547, he secretly made marital advances to the Princess Mary, then to Anne of Cleves, no less, and—the blackguard—even to Elizabeth! I had overseen her written refusal to him, though, I admit, I would have worded it more strongly. But ever since the king had sent her from court four years before, my princess had managed to get her way with powerful men more by honey than by vinegar. I recall parts of her reply to Seymour yet:

CHELSEA HOUSE, VILLAGE OF CHELSEA ON THE THAMES, NEAR LONDON

 

 

 

Once again, I thought we were safe from Tom when, shortly after the old king’s funeral and the new king’s coronation, a command came to us from the Privy Council, now headed by Edward Seymour who had been named Lord Protector of the king and kingdom during the boy’s minority. They were ordering the Princess Elizabeth into the care and household of the Queen Dowager, Katherine, at her new home in Chelsea on the Thames just southwest of London.

We were ecstatic, for we had feared a far worse situation. Elizabeth was very fond of her stepmother, and she could keep her household. We were close to London and so the seat of power. She had thought she would see her brother more, but the Lord Protector was keeping him very isolated. At first all went well in the lovely house, gardens and orchards at Chelsea until John was summoned back to Whitehall to help the Master of the Horse, who had hated to lose his talents in the first place. As a result, we were separated by nearly an hour ahorse or a quarter-hour trip by boat. John managed to visit twice a week, early morning, most often by boat since he had struck a deal with some oarsmen.

But one day, as the sun was just coming up, and I met him by the water stairs, his first words were not
I love you
or
I miss you.

“I’m not the only one coming here to meet a beautiful woman,” he told me with a quick kiss.

“What?”

“I learned late night that the Lord Admiral, Thomas Seymour, has been riding to Chelsea secretly for months and is being let in the back gate by the fields. He takes a steed from the stable nearly in the middle of the night and returns it before dawn each day.”

“What? Surely, he’s not hoping to see Eliza—”

He shook his head. “His groom was drunk last night and told me that he has been secretly wed to the Queen Dowager since five weeks after King Henry died.”

My gasp nearly drowned out his next words, and not because they had wed in such indecent haste.

“They’re going to announce it publicly soon,” he went on, “and all hell is going to break loose from the Privy Council and Seymour’s brother. So keep your and Elizabeth’s heads down, because Sir Thomas will soon be lord here. Kat. Kat! Did you hear what I just told you?” he said, giving me a little shake.

I know not what my expression was, but it must have been horrified. I had never breathed one word to John about my past with Tom. And Tom had threatened me if I told anyone, he would ruin me. I could not stomach being near him now, and under his command—no!

“I—I did hear you,” I stammered. “I must get Elizabeth out of here. After that proposal of his to her—what if Katherine learns of it—that she was second—or fourth place? I heard he is charming and always looking to entice someone higher—and who is higher than the Queen Dowager but Elizabeth? She will be in his household, under his aegis—all of us. I am going to write a letter begging the Princess Mary to take her in.”