The Queen's Governess (25 page)

Despite the dim light, I skimmed the piece. Dictated, evidently to Sir Thomas, was line after line of incidents and snippets of conversation Parry claimed to have witnessed
between Her Grace, the Lady Elizabeth, and Sir Thomas Seymour, Baron Sudeley, in the Chelsea household of the Queen Dowager, Katherine Parr, widow of our gracious sovereign, King Henry VIII of recent memory, and then the wife of said Baron Sudeley.

Some of it Parry had indeed seen; some was secondhand hearsay, just a bit off, tittle-tattle from others. Plenty of it implicated me for, as governess, I knew I should have stood up to Tom more than I did. Yet I had even gone to his wife, the king’s widow. I had lectured Elizabeth and warned Tom away, but neither of them had heeded me. Should I not now at least tell them those things in my own defense? Parry had given up what he had vowed wild horses would not drag out of him, so I, too, was surely doomed.

My insides almost let loose. My heartbeat kicked up to a canter, then a wild gallop. My hands shook so hard, the piece of parchment rattled.

“The game is up,” Sir Thomas said as he dipped his quill in the inkwell and poised it over fresh paper. With his other hand, he pulled Parry’s confession from me and set it beside his blank paper with a flourish. “So,” he prompted, when I yet sat still as a stone, staring at nothing and everything before me, “let us begin at the beginning and tell the truth, all of it. You have seen the torments that await liars and those who defy us!”

The Privy Council’s examiner’s words resounded in my ears and brain and soul. Another powerful man held sway over my life. How I wish I had found the courage to stand up to Cromwell, even to the king, and above all, to Tom Seymour. I know not what inner stamina then stoked my heart and head, but I decided then I must do my best to stand up to him, even in this fearsome place, for myself and for Elizabeth.

“That is mere hearsay and quite slanted,” I dared, with a nod at Parry’s confession.

“Are you calling the princess’s bookkeeper, Thomas Parry, a liar for this confession he has written out for us?” he demanded, waving it in my face. “I warrant Elizabeth Tudor has confessed to all of this and more by now. It is obvious she was in collusion with the Lord Admiral to harm the king and overthrow the power of the Privy Council and the Lord Protector!”

“Is it you, Sir Thomas, who is giving testimony or me?” I spit back at him. As frightened as I was, his hectoring got my hackles up, especially his insinuating that my princess would admit to treason. “Cease trying to put words in my mouth, and I will tell you what happened—none of it to be held against a fourteen-year-old girl who was in the care of the Queen Dowager—to whom the Council sent us—and her husband, the Lord Admiral, who was given his rank and estates by King Henry, or by King Edward, who then held him in high and fond regard, or by that very Council!”

He puffed out his cheeks and leaned back from the table. I held my breath, amazed I had come up with those words. “Enough about the princess who is not my duty,” he insisted. “Do
you
favor the Lord Admiral or his cause then, Mrs. Ashley?”

That set me back, but I prayed he knew naught of my past with Tom. Even though John had ferreted it out, he surely would not tell these examiners, for that could doom me.

“Favor that blackguard in what way?” I challenged, stalling for more time to think.

“Once, while at Chelsea, you were overheard to say to the princess that the Lord Admiral, if not wed, could be the highest ranking unmarried male in the kingdom—implying he could be a suitable husband for her.”

“More hearsay, obviously gathered by an eavesdropper who hoped to ingratiate himself with those who hired him. I was assuring myself she knew to keep clear of him, and she assured me at that time she would not want to wed him, even if he were free to do so. And if your spy was of any account, sir, he no doubt would have told you I warned her that any marriage she considered would need permission of the Council and the Lord Protector! Write that all down, sir, every word of it!”

“All right then, Mrs. Ashley, take your time and tell me more in your own words. You are well spoken, madam, and no one’s fool, and I respect that. I am ready if you are,” he said, and, after scribbling all that down, dipped and poised his pen again. When I just glared at him, he said, “Let us go on to this, then. Master Parry says in his deposition—”

“A much better term than calling it a confession, sir.”

“He says you rode in great haste to London three or so weeks before Christmas after a hurried conversation with the princess. Did you seek out Thomas Seymour that day and discuss his plans to capture the person of the king or pass on information about his wedding Elizabeth Tudor?”

“I did not, sir, but I shall recount for your ears and pen—and any eavesdroppers you yet here employ—exactly what happened.”

 

 

 

“I must say, I understand marital quarrels, Mrs. Ashley, but you yet insist you did not carry a message from or to the princess concerning the Lord Admiral?”

“I believe if you must ask that question again after I have answered it, your ears need a good cleaning out, Sir Thomas.” [I must admit, at this point, I was becoming more emboldened. Even though I am recalling this dreadful day from memory, I assure you I am not telling more here than was truly said.] “As I have oft done that for the princess when she was small, I could oblige you. Let me see what you have written, to be certain it is correct.”

“I am not your pupil, and you are to take orders from me.”

“Then move on to your next topic.”

“Very well. What was the argument between you and your husband about?”

My hard-won facade of bravado almost crumbled. For if he could pry that from me, I was doomed. All the Council needed was to hear I had been enamored of Tom Seymour years ago. Could Tom himself, interrogated here in the Tower or at his trial for treason, have even lied that our liaison was ongoing, as he had threatened to tell my John?

“Are you wed, Sir Thomas?” I countered. Lord help me, how my voice shook, despite my brazen plan.

“Many years, Mrs. Ashley. But I need to know—”

“Then you fully realize how petty arguments can become large ones. It began as a trifle, but I was so emotional that I reacted overmuch, and he stalked out and then we heard the news that the Queen Dowager had died, which greatly grieved us both as well as the princess, and then he went off in a huff before I could explain . . .”

“Yes, yes, all right,” he said, starting to scribble all that, then just giving up. “Mr. Ashley said it was a petty squabble too.”

My head snapped up. They had asked John all this, trying to snare us in a trap. But, by the grace of God—and my John’s bold spirit—he must have stood up to them too, and, even though he had said he was jealous of Tom, he did not give up on me. That was all I needed to give me even more courage—that and knowing my lovey was safe from these wretches.

“I ask you to record something, though, sir,” I said, my voice now more my own. He filled his pen again and sat alert. “Put down that it is so cold here that I cannot sleep at night and have the chilblains, and it is so dark I cannot in the day see to read, for I must stop the window with straw—put that down, sir.”

He actually wrote my complaint down. “And you may end with this,” I added. “For if it were possible that I might be with Her Grace again, never would I speak of marriage to her—no, not to win all the world. As touching Parry’s secondhand account of Thomas Seymour’s boldness in the princess’ bedchamber, the Lord I take as my witness, I spoke roughly to the Lord Admiral to get out of her chamber and leave off his untoward play. But he swore he would tell my lords of the Council, ‘So what if I do? I would they all saw it!’

At last I told the queen of it, who made a small matter of it to me and said she could come with him herself, and so she did ever after. Do you have that all, sir, crossing the
t
’s and dotting each
i
?”

“Yes, yes, sign here then, for I weary of your denials of any guilt.”

“Denials? I have told you all the truth, and not a bit of it conflicts with Thomas Parry’s words—or, I warrant, my husband John’s!”

So I signed boldly in my best hand,
Katherine Ashley,
and prayed to be done with it—and that on Elizabeth’s end, harried at Hatfield, Her Grace was holding up well.

[It was years after I suffered in the Tower that I found copies of my testimony and of the letters Elizabeth had written on my behalf, for she had them in her things, which I cared for. Without her pleas, despite my standing up for myself and John’s saying nothing incriminating even in the face of Tom Parry’s confession and threat of torture, I might have perished there. As it was, I spent weeks within, suffering not only from that cold, cruel place but from having been separated and dismissed from my lovely, bright girl, who—God help me, though I never told a soul then, though she was royal and I of lower rank—was like a daughter to me.]

M
rs. Ashley,” Sir Leonard Chamberlain, Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, informed me, poking only his head in the door of my cell, “good news for you and Master Ashley, for word has come you are both to be released today.”

So great was my shock and relief, I gasped and broke into tears. “And to be returned t-to Her G-grace’s household?” I stammered. By my reckoning, this was the nineteenth of March, and I had been in this place for nigh on four months. I dashed tears from my face and waited for news of the second-most-desired dream, a reunion with Elizabeth.

“Hardly that,” he told me, “but you are to be released into the custody of one William Cecil, privy secretary to Edward Seymour, the Lord Protector Somerset. I’ll be back for you within the hour,” he added, and closed the door.