Francis Letton - The Young Elizabeth

Now Lord Hertford was speaking. And as he spoke, he suddenly and surprisingly went down on one knee before the boy who stood staring at him, white-faced and wide-eyed.

He was announcing to Edward that his father was dead. And that Edward was King.

Elizabeth dropped nimbly to her knees before her brother.

In the same instant as these fantastic formalities were completed, the Lord Protector found himself distinctly embarrassed. For the new King and his sister burst into tears, and cried as though they would fiever stop. Some dutiful tears were in order, of course; but this flood of childish weeping went beyond bounds. Lord Hertford found himself not knowing what to do…

Edward was frightened, upset, and crying for a father who had always been fond and proud of him, cherishing him as

the long-awaited heir to the throne and delighting in him, as that giant of contradictions always delighted in all children.

Things were happening too fast for the small Prince. His father was dead, and voices were saying that he was the King. And kind Kate wasn’t here, nor was Uncle Tom. He felt the sudden nightmare which can panic a child.

Why (the Protector asked himself in exasperation) should her grace the Lady Elizabeth be sobbing almost in hysterics? She had been no more than on sufferance with her father for most of her life, until the present Queen had made him into a family man in his declining years.

Elizabeth was never prone to weep easily and was impatient with anyone who did. She was sufficiently schooled, and sufficiently wise, to know that she must shed some tears at the news of her father’s death, but here she was, crying as though her heart would break. Edward, the new boy king, had thrown his thin little arms about her and was gulping and hiccoughing with his face pressed into her neck.

The Lord Protector, after some useless attempts at comfort, was compelled to summon attendants. In bustled Dame Ashley, Elizabeth’s nurse and duenna, and brushed a very scanty curtsy to my lord, and swept the two into her own stout, cosy arms.

“There, there, then, sweeting! … Fie! what goings-on are these? Kings do not cry I Shame on you, Bess, that you set His Majesty no better example! Come, dry your eyes. Know you what’s in this box? Ah-ha! comfits … yes, and march-pane, too… That's better!”

Lord Hertford stalked out, in his customary, worried fashion, his thin lips smiled wryly. The door closed on the sound of his young Majesty being helped to blow his nose. Tears, and nose blowings, and comfits … it all served to set a seal on a fact which Edward Seymour realized with profound satisfaction: that a Protector and a Council were the imperative needs of the realm.

He related the story of the loyal children’s copious tears. It went down excellent well…

The royal house at Chelsea was a favorite abode. There was nothing palacelike about it; a riverside manor house of warm red brick with walled gardens and the fields coming to the walls like a green carpet, and the river rippling past in sun and mist. Close enough to London so that you did not feel yourself buried in the country, it was bright and airy as no palace was; the big windows filled the rooms with light. The rose-red walls of the garden were patterned with espaliered peaches and nectarines which drank the warmth of the sun.

On this winter morning the sun was veiled in layers of river mist but even so the upper rooms were full of the milky shimmer. Queen Katherine Parr sat at a long carved table, and the only sounds in the peaceful room were the crackle of logs on the hearth and the squeak of her quill pen as she wrote. Her smooth forehead was serious and her eyes bent on the parchment with some especial concentration, but a light played and flickered in her comely face. It was only three weeks since the King had died, but Katherine looked a very different person from the drawn, exhausted woman who came

hurrying through the palace corridors at the summons of death. Her intent face was smooth as a young girl’s and held a fresh, pulsing bloom, which belongs either to extreme youth or to a woman alight and alive with some secret satisfaction…

Suddenly the misty light was pierced and shattered and dispersed, and so was the placid stillness of the room. Thomas Seymour thrust the door open and strode in, smiling down at Katherine as she started and half rose.

“Tom!” Her face was in a glow. She leaned back against the table, her breath coming quickly—the picture of a woman tremulously, radiantly, waiting to be seized and kissed…

But Tom Seymour stood, legs apart, hands on hips, looking round the room.

“Well?” he demanded in a resonant shout, his blue eyes twinkling. “Are they not here yet?”

Katherine laughed.

“What? And the house so quiet? But there’s word they’ve left the inn where they stayed to bait the horses—”

“Ha! then they should be here any minute. Bess can outride any courier she sends before her—I marvel she’s not come ahead of her own message.”

He walked to the table, looked at the open parchment, his hand dropping to her neck and toying with her necklace clasp… Every tone, every gesture, proclaimed his footing in Chelsea manor. … He picked up the letter, dropped it as though it stung his fingers.

“Oh, God save us, no! Not again, Kate!”

Katherine smoothed the page.

“While Mary sends me word, 1 cannot let her go unanswered,” she said softly but firmly.

“And what is it now? What would she, this time?”

“The same as before. The same as every time. Elizabeth.”

Seymour’s face darkened swiftly.

“Then let Mary come here and get her,” he said sharply.

“Tom, you know right well that must not be. Let her come here, indeed, but stay here… That’s what I’m asking.”

Seymour turned, walking about the room.

“And you know right well that’s a thing not to be thought of. What! Mary in this house? Jealous of you, for that you were her father’s wife. Hating me, because she knows I love you. What hell’s brew do you think to concoct here? Let her be, Kate. Let her be.”

“She loved me,” Katherine said appealingly. “She was happy — after her own strange fashion—when she and Elizabeth and Edward were all together and in my care. And Mary loves Elizabeth, Tom.”

“Then let her love her somewhere that 1 am not,” Tom Seymour retorted.

Katherine had subsided into the high-backed carved chair. He stood behind it, leaned down, fastened his arms about her, laid his hands on her breast.

“Kate? Do you love me? Or is it these motherless brats of Henry’s that fill your heart?”

He stooped till his lips touched her ear.

“Are you a woman?” he whispered.

“Torn! …” All the love she had for him was in her voice.

“Are you mine?” he demanded, twisting her about to face him.

“Need you ask that?”

He knew there was no need.

He bent, picked up the letter again, crushed it in his hand and shot it across the room into the fire.

“There! Up the chimney with you, and take the smoke of these vapors with you! Enough of this melancholy Mary!”

“For shame!” Katherine shook her head at him. “Indeed, Tom,” she spoke earnestly, “I would be easier in my mind if we could win her approval. I have no statecraft, as well you know, but it is in my mind that we shall have need of friends, you and I.” She gave a quick sigh. “It’s strange—that it should be so difficult a thing, only to be happy…”

He drew her up from her chair.

“Kate, never fear! I have friends — aye, more and greater than my brother and his followers realize. There are matters to make them gape and stare, that they reck little of. … I point my toe and bend my knee to that Council of his when I deem it prudent … but, God’s strength! I am the best-liked man in all England, and they know it…

“Enough of this! My Kate, we have won to paradise. We’ll set a wall about it that none shall breach or climb. And have within that wall a life that only they can know who’ve bided their time for it — as we have.”

“But you will have Bess inside that wall,” Katherine reminded him.

“And would not you so have her?” Seymour asked.

“As I would have my own child and yours, if such there were,” Katherine answered with all her heart.

“And such there will be,” he told her roundly. “Do you doubt it, sweet?”

He took her in his arms, and Katherine gave herself up to the tight hold. Throwing herself against his breast, laughing, but with tears in her eyes.

“How can I ever doubt, or fear—or think of anything in the world but you—now, and forever?”

They stood, Thomas Seymour and the Queen, locked in that close embrace. But within a moment Seymour raised his head sharply.

“What was that?”

“What? I heard nothing—” Her head was still buried in his shoulder, her murmur came in the tranced tone of a woman lost to everything except the arms around her.

“I did. A horse—” He broke from her, strode to the window. “Oh, God be my joy! They’re here! Look you—look!” “It is! It is!” she exclaimed, as she joined him and peered down into the court below through the closed panes. “There’s a horse—no three—five—and a carriage — and more behind that.”

Tom put an arm round her.

“They ride as though the hounds were after them—”

“She always did,” Katherine said with a laugh and a shake of her head.

“I do not see her,” Seymour muttered impatiently. “Do you see her, Kate?”

“She’ll be in the carriage, for sure!”

“Should be, but will she so?” Seymour gave a shout of laughter. “What will you wager the carriage carries Ashley while our Bess rides pillion behind a groom?”