Even Mary seemed to believe the worst of me and sent a brooch of the penitent Magdalene to speak for her as a silent but nonetheless stinging rebuke. I was tempted to throw it in the river, but in the end good sense prevailed and I buried it at the bottom of my jewelry casket so I would not have to look at it. The ruby was a large one with much sparkle and a deep, rich color, and perhaps one day I could have it reset into a design less pious and more pleasing.
This experience had taught me a valuable lesson—that I could neither trust nor depend on anyone, not even the governess who had loved me like a mother for most of my life. For she betrayed me too, I discovered, when they laid her rambling hysterical confession before me, setting it all down in black and white how Tom had come to dally with me so many mornings at Chelsea and had even once cut the dress from my body leaving me almost as naked as Eve in the Garden of Eden.
I realized now that the only person I could truly trust and depend on was myself. I must learn to stand and walk alone,
Semper Eadem
. “Be always one,” and trust no one: That would be my motto for the rest of my life. Henceforth, I could never lean on anyone, or let my guard down, never confide in a friend, or set down on paper that which might harm or damn me if it were read by others. Even though as a princess, and perhaps someday a queen, I would live my life surrounded by others, I would always be alone
.
Even if I did not like it, I must learn to accept and bear it, for it was the reality of my life.
Semper Eadem
. I, Elizabeth, Elizabeth I—if Destiny ever decreed it—would always be alone.
But shining through the treachery was one bright beacon of hope. We had acted foolishly, unwisely, and indiscreetly, but none of us had committed actual treason. Somehow, even in the terrible place that was the Tower, surrounded and perhaps even confronted with the hellish implements of torture, Kat had had the wit not to admit that she had ever encouraged me to marry Tom, for to do so, without the Council’s consent, was indeed treason.
“These are my loyal and faithful servants,” I said calmly to Sir Robert as I laid aside Kat’s and Mr. Parry’s equally damning and rambling confession, “and I will not have them coerced by fear of torture into making false statements. Yea, My Lord, we have all played the fool where the Lord Admiral is concerned. We were all, I admit, gulled by his charms, but the question of matrimony was never broached. Mrs. Ashley, from the time I was of an age to understand such things, was always at great pains to impress upon me that I must
never
even
think
of a man as a suitor for my hand unless he came with the approval of the Council. And, indeed, My Lord, I never have; I have never thought, either seriously or frivolously, of marrying anyone, least of all Thomas Seymour. Though he fooled and flattered me for a time, which doth, even with my youth, reflect badly upon me and my brains, I never could suffer a fool in the real world and out of motley, and certainly not, even if the Council had allowed or even encouraged it, in the marriage bed.”
Tom believed that he would best his brother, but in the end it would be the other way around and Fortune’s Knave would break Ambition’s Fool as the Wheel of Fortune spun round. And all too soon my vain, handsome, cocksure Tom would lay his head on the block, and the mouth that had once rained hot kisses upon me and sung to me of cakes and ale would be silenced forever.
When they brought me word that he had died, they watched me very closely, thinking that when confronted with such news my face would betray the truth inside my heart. They thought that grief would loosen my tongue and all my most deeply guarded secrets would come pouring out on a torrent of tears. But I refused to oblige them.
I stood up straight, my eyes fever-bright but my flesh marble-pale, like a tall, slim, white taper in my virgin white gown, my flame-colored hair appearing all the brighter against my pallor, and shook my head and sighed, “Today died a man of much wit but very little judgment.” Quotable, succinct, and true; I daresay no poet could coin a more apt epitaph for Thomas Seymour.
Sir Robert flinched before me as if a wasp had stung him, and his lady-wife shook her head and heaved a sigh. “As cold as ice” she called me, as I walked out into the orchard where I could be alone, awash in a late-afternoon sunset that painted the sky with streaks of crimson, as if the very sky was bleeding for Tom, with the buttercups nodding knowingly and whispering against my white skirt.
It was true, my heart had frosted over, and I was cold; a core of ice had come to replace the fire of passion that had once burned so bright within me.
He died and I survived. And that day a part of me died too. Blinded by passion, like the blindfold Tom had tied over my eyes the day he led me to the heart of the hedge maze, I had nearly followed him blithely and blindly through the gates of Hell. I had walked into a trap, and I had had a narrow escape, jumping clear just moments before the trap snapped shut. But I hadn’t escaped unscathed. My virtue was maimed and marred, my honor was scarred, but I had survived—that was the important thing! Unlike my mother, I had been granted a second chance and I would
never
take that for granted. Sex, I had discovered, enslaves the female and empowers the male. When a woman surrenders to a man she becomes like the fly ensnared in a spider’s web, and it is only a matter of time before she dies. But this fly had broken free and flown away while the spider instead had died, strangled by his own web.
Tom had stained my honor like a virgin’s bloodstain on a clean white sheet. And when people looked at me I feared that they could see that stain. I wanted my virginity, and my honor, back. Thus, from the day the scandal broke like a storm cloud above my head, pelting me with a heavy relentless rain of shame and suspicion, I began to effect plain white gowns, the virgin white of new-fallen snow and eggshells, lily white, the perfect white of a pearl, the shimmering nacreous flash of a fish’s belly, white—the unstained, unsullied color of purity, the emblematic color of virginity with which I would whitewash the bloodstain. I vowed to always keep my body straight and slender, to never let it grow womanly and round with the curves that bespoke fecundity, and to wear pearls about my neck, in remembrance of both my mother, whose favorite necklace had been a simple strand of white pearls with a golden
B
, and of the lustrous rope rash and reckless Tom had put briefly about my throat, and which I had broken before it could choke me like a noose. Now with pearls of my own choosing coupled with a straight, reed-slender form and a wardrobe of white dresses I would symbolically reclaim what had been taken from me—my virginity.
In that moment I said farewell to my dreams—there would never be a husband or children or lovers for me, only the flirtation, the dance, the prelude to romance but never the climax or fulfillment.
At midnight there was a knock upon my chamber door. I rose from my bed and drew on my dressing gown, and opened it to behold the sorrowful face of Tom’s manservant, the very one who had once stood above us on the staircase at Chelsea and showered us with red rose petals.
Wordlessly, he handed me a small square of black velvet, and vanished into the night.
I knew before I unfolded it what it contained—the garnet and ruby heart on a band of golden lovers’ knots, the rubies the color of freshly spilt blood and the garnet the hue of dried, dark, and clotted blood.
All of a sudden I felt as if I were indeed holding Tom Seymour’s heart in my hands. I swayed upon my feet as the truth sank in. Tom was dead. Never again would he hold me in his arms, never again would I feel the warmth of his body, his hot kisses and bold caresses, and the molten liquid thrill they kindled between my thighs. I would never again see him smile or hear him laugh or singing lustily of cakes and ale.
With an anguished cry, my fist closed tight around the ring, feeling the hard bite of the metal and gems, and clutched it to my own heart. I fell in a dead faint as, from beyond the grave, the ghostly voice of memory sang inside my head:
I gave her Cakes and I gave her Ale,
I gave her Sack and Sherry;
I kist her once and I kist her twice,
And we were wondrous merry!
I gave her Beads and Bracelets fine,
I gave her Gold down derry.
I thought she was afear’d till she stroked my Beard
And we were wondrous merry!
Merry my Heart, merry my Cock,
Merry my Spright.
Merry my hey down derry.
I kist her once and I kist her twice,
And we were wondrous merry!
15
Mary
T
hings did not get better, only worse, as I continued to flout the Council’s edict banning the Mass, throwing my chapel doors open wide in welcome to all faithful Catholics who wished to come, and celebrating Mass as many as six times a day. Those noble families that, despite fear of persecution, still clung to the true faith, vied to send their daughters to serve me, quite correctly praising my household as “a true school of virtuous demeanor and the only safe harbor for honorable young gentlewomen given to piety and devotion.” I knew it was only the threat of war from my cousin, the Emperor, that kept me safe, and I clung to the ultimatum he had issued to Edward’s Council as if it were a talisman. But living in constant fear took a drastic toll on me; my nerves frayed and unraveled, dreams of assassins lurking in the shadows kept me awake at night or disturbed my sleep with violent and terrifying dreams, and my mind began to turn seriously to the thought of escape.
Finally, I took up my pen and wrote adamantly to the Emperor, stressing the dangers of my situation. “If my brother were to die,” I wrote, “I should be far better off out of the kingdom, because as soon as he were dead, before the public knew it, they would dispatch me too. There is no doubt of that, because you know there is nobody in the government who is not opposed to me.”
I showed my letter to Charles’s ambassador, the good Francis van der Delft, before I entrusted it to him to deliver, but he urged me to wait. “Act in haste, repent at leisure,” he recited like a schoolmaster, adding that to run away would seem to some the same as renouncing my claim to the throne, and if my brother were to die I might have great difficulty in recovering what I had, by my actions, appeared to renounce; the people might not take to a queen they thought ready to bolt like a frightened rabbit running back to its hole at the slightest sign of danger or difficulty.
But I pleaded with him, knowing that he was about to retire due to failing health, to take me with him, to make conveying me to safety his last loyal act of service.
“The men who sit upon my brother’s Council fear no God and respect no persons, but follow their own fancy. The most dangerous crime a person can commit in England today is to be a good Catholic and lead a righteous life. And I would rather die than give up my religion! My cause is so righteous in God’s sight that if His Imperial Majesty favors me, I need take no further justification in delaying, until I am past all help! When they send me orders forbidding me the Mass, I shall expect to suffer as I suffered once during my father’s lifetime!” I cried vehemently as I clung to his arm, my tears making damp spots upon the velvet. “I must fly beyond their clutches before the blow falls, as when that time comes they will order me to withdraw thirty miles from any navigable river or seaport, and will deprive me of my most trusted servants and, surrounded by strangers, and reduced to the utmost destitution, they will deal with me as they please. They know I would rather suffer death than stain my conscience. I beg you to help me, so that I may not be taken unawares. I am like a little ignorant girl, and I care neither for my goods nor for the world, but only for God’s service and my conscience. If there is peril in going and peril in staying, I must choose the lesser of the two evils! As soon as I am safe in my imperial cousin’s dominion, I trust him to act in my best interests and see that I am not cheated or thwarted of my just right to reign if it so pleases God to take my brother’s life!”
Quaking with tears, my knees gave way, and I collapsed sobbing at Ambassador van der Delft’s feet.
Moved by my plight, he chivalrously bent to raise me. “Madame, I give you my solemn promise that I will deliver you from this lions’ den,” he said. “Weep no more, My Lady, your sorrows and fears will soon be past and your smile will be lighting up the imperial court.”
Gallantly, he led me to the window seat and, thick as thieves, we began to plot my escape. In the following month of May, he was to officially take his leave of my brother’s court and board ship for Brussels. Before that time, I must withdraw to my Essex estate, Woodham Walter, which lay near Maldon, and await the arrival of a Dutch corn merchant in a small boat to sell his wares to the town and also my household. Disguised as a man I was to switch places with one of the men who accompanied the merchant or else I was to be smuggled out bundled in a coarse cloth grain sack. Once in the merchant’s boat, I would be borne out to sea where an imperial ship was anchored ready to convey me, and Ambassador van der Delft, back to the comfort and safety of my cousin’s court.
It seemed like a fine plan, foolproof, and I was confident of its success. For the first time in months, I felt able to breathe easily and to sleep soundly as I counted the days until I would be free.
But then it all began to unravel. First, Ambassador van der Delft took to his bed and died suddenly, but not without having the foresight to entrust the completion of his mission to his loyal secretary, Jehan Dubois.
It was he who put all into motion, and accompanied by his brother-in-law, Peter, saw to it that an imperial ship was anchored off the coast in readiness, waiting for me, and then, upon the first day of July, in the guise of a corn merchant come to transact some business, he came prepared to whisk me away to safety.
He found me in quite a state. A raging fever of commingled uncertainty, anticipation, and dread plagued me, made all the worse by a raging throbbing megrim and a queasy stomach that felt all aflutter and made me nervous of my dignity and bowels. Before, I had been so convinced that leaving was the right thing to do, but now I was not sure, an inkling of doubt tugged at my mind. My steward, Master Rochester, urged me to stay, claiming that horoscopes cast secretly by learned London astrologers known for their accuracy portended an early death for Edward. And the rumors from London seemed to confirm this with reports of ill health, an attack of measles following hard on the heels of a mild bout of smallpox, from which he had failed to bounce back. These combined illnesses had left him with a loss of strength and vigor, in a perpetual state of listlessness and lethargy, having a constant waxy pallor, a loss of appetite and weight, and a persistent cough that would not be eased by herbal lozenges or soothing syrups or depart in the natural course of things. While my loyal ladies, Susan and Jane, the only two I had entrusted with my secret plans, cried and clung to me, contradictorily begging me not to forsake them yet nobly urging me to go and save myself. I wept and wrung my hands; I did not know what to do.
Herr Jehan found me ill-prepared. I had packed nothing. And Susan, Jane, and I ran back and forth stuffing shifts, gowns, and petticoats, shoes and stockings, into grain sacks and then taking them out again, whilst Herr Jehan and his brother-in-law Peter looked on in horror at the mounting pile of bulging sacks and implored me to take only the bare necessities.
“As you can see, I am ill prepared,” I said sadly, gesturing to the sacks, even as one fell over and a carnelian-colored kirtle sewn with seed pearls tumbled out even as Susan and Jane busied themselves with stuffing two others. “I do not know how the Emperor would take it if it turned out to be impossible for me to go now after I have so importuned him on the subject!”
In a rumpled, mismatched welter of my possessions, I sank down and pressed my hands to my aching brow.
“I cannot leave tonight!” I gathered up the carnelian kirtle and hugged it tight against my breast. “I need more time! I pray you, Herr Jehan, return tomorrow night and you will find me better prepared, or better yet if you could wait until Friday, my ladies and I could meet you on the beach before dawn and you can row us out to the ship.”
“Madame, what you suggest is impossible!” Herr Jehan exclaimed, giving me the distinct impression that he was growing irritated with me.
“Impossible!” Peter affirmed.
“But . . .” I tried to think of words that would persuade them.
“Madame, we are leaving England tonight,” Herr Jehan said forcefully. “If you prefer to stay, you know best your situation, and the Emperor will be content with that and think no less of you. But if you desire to accompany me, you must come
this instant!
”
I got shakily to my feet and began to wrench off my rings. “If I do not accompany you this time, will you at least take my jewelry to safety?” I tremulously asked as I held them out to him.
“Madame!” Herr Jehan sighed in a vexed and irritable manner. “If I am to take your rings, you might as well go with them!”
“I could go to my house at Newhall in a few days’ time, and we could rendezvous at Stansgate and . . .”
The stern frowning faces and shaking heads of Herr Jehan and Peter stopped the words on my lips.
“Madame, I am obliged to point out to you that there is danger in delay!” Herr Jehan said most emphatically, and Peter nodded in agreement. “It is
imperative
that we sail with the
next
tide. If I remain any longer, there is grave risk that all we intend will be brought to light.”
“And I must add,” said Peter, “that I see no better opportunity than the present one. This undertaking is passing through so many hands”—he glared reproachfully at each of my servants in turn—“that it is daily becoming more difficult, and I fear it may not remain secret much longer.”
“Great danger threatens us if we tarry,” Herr Jehan continued. “Already the countryside is in a state of unrest. They are wary and suspicious of the imperial ships anchored off the shore, and of me, a foreigner, a Dutchman, though I have given it out that I traveled with the imperial ship only to enjoy their protection against pirates. Now that I have sold my corn and have no other reason for remaining in Maldon, it will look highly suspicious if I linger. If we are to do this thing, Madame, we must go
now!
”
“Yes, Madame.” Peter nodded. “Leave everything.” He swept a disdainful hand at the grain sacks, some bulging near to bursting and others sagging half empty, surrounded by a jumble of scattered and rumpled garments and shoes strewn all across the floor from one end of the room to the other. “Leave all this, and come with us. You are the Emperor’s beloved and much esteemed cousin, the daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon and the true and rightful heiress to the English throne, and you will be provided for as befits your station, as a queen in exile. You will only have to make do without these comforts and luxuries for a few days; a very
minor
inconvenience surely when your very life is at stake!”
“No, Madame, stay!” Master Rochester fell to his knees and begged of me. “For the very reason that the countryside is so unsettled. The constables and armed men are out on watch, there is not a back road or even a creek that is not under observation, and any person seen out at night is stopped and questioned. If you are stopped, even in disguise, you will be recognized, and it will not go well for you when the King’s men learn that you have tried to flee the realm.”
There was a knock upon the door then and in came a wild-looking character with bushy ginger hair who was introduced to me as Master Schurts, one of Herr Jehan’s men.
“This affair is going very ill, sir,” he announced, coming straight to the point without taking time for the polite conversational niceties. “The bailiff and other folk of the town wish to detain and search your boat; they suspect your involvement with the ship offshore. You had best leave right now. Already they have doubled the watch and posted men on the church tower, whence they can see all the country roundabout, and they have never done that before. And there is talk in the town of lighting a great bonfire on the hill to warn the people of the surrounding villages that there is trouble afoot and to be on the lookout. Come now, I implore you, before it is too late!”
Herr Jehan threw up his hands and heaved a defeated sigh. “We have let our chance go by!”
“But what is to become of me?”
I wailed. Now that the chance was lost I longed to turn back the clock and seize and run with it.
“Madame,” said Herr Jehan, “the best service we can render you now is to leave your house immediately and as inconspicuously as possible.”
“There is a way through the woods,” said Master Rochester. “I can show you . . .”
Herr Jehan nodded and motioned to Peter and Master Schurts to follow him, and with a curt bow to me they hurried out.
“But what is to become of me?”
I cried after them, but they never looked back or answered, and instead left me weeping on the floor, crushing the carnelian kirtle to my breast, keening with despair, repeating over and over, “But what is to become of me?” as Susan and Jane knelt beside me and tried to console me.
The next day brought a troop of the Lord Protector’s men galloping into Maldon “to stop the Lady Mary from going away,” and I knew I must abandon all thought of escaping.