Mary & Elizabeth

Meanwhile, despite my pleas that I was not a well woman and thus should be left in peace, Edward’s Councillors incessantly hounded and bombarded me with stern reprimands for “making a grand show” of my celebration of the Mass and throwing my chapel doors wide in welcome to all and sundry who wished to attend. Edward, they said, had only intended that I myself alone be allowed the privilege of the Mass until I could be persuaded from the folly of my ways; he only tolerated my misguided ways because I was his sister. I repeatedly informed the Council that I could not bar my chapel doors against the faithful; denying them the Mass would be the same as condemning them to Hell, and I would not have that upon my conscience. “I am God’s servant first,” I declared, “and the King’s second. I can put no earthly master above our heavenly one, and His Majesty must understand and accept that or take my life, for I would rather die than give up my religion.”

They sent letters to explain to me as though I were a simpleton that the Act of Uniformity was meant to unite the whole of England under one religion, but by flaunting my beliefs and making myself appear as a candle in the dark to the Catholic rebels I was doing the country more harm than good; because of me, bloody civil war might erupt. Did I want to see England torn apart by religious strife? they asked, stressing that it was integral that I, the King’s sister, conform to the laws of the land. I should not hold myself up as above them or exempt, but instead set a good example for the common folk and nobly born alike to follow.

“I would rather lose my life than lose my religion!” I exclaimed time and time again, imploring them to understand that it would be my death to deprive me of the consolations of the faith I had been brought up in, but they had closed their hearts and were deaf to my soul’s anguished cries.

And so it continued, back and forth, to and fro, the same argument, again and again, but I knew it could not go on for ever. I prayed to God to give me strength to withstand it as I continued to live in fear of assassins or being walled up alive to die a lonely death in a crumbling old castle in the middle of nowhere, where no one could hear my screams or rescue me.

Every day I thanked God for my cousin, the Emperor Charles. The Spanish Ambassador kept him well apprised of my plight and brought diplomatic pressure to bear upon the Council, hinting that if I were harmed in any way or forced to forsake my faith the Emperor would declare war on England. That threat, for a time, at least, would keep me safe, as England could not afford a war, but, I also knew, many a murder had been arranged to mimic illness or natural death, and my health had never been robust, so none would greet the news that I had died of some malaise with great surprise. So I continued to live in fear, knowing that God was the only one I could truly trust to safeguard me, and into His hands I commended both my life and spirit.

8

Elizabeth

“He 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-coloured 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, marvelling 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 colours, her red-gold hair and hazel eyes reminiscent of autumn 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, 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 but 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 Catherine 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 behaviour towards me contradicted the facts. He behaved like a boisterous young swain hellbent 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 dived 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 downturned 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-grey 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 sweets 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, Catherine of Aragon, had been, nor the cold bed of the grave where my own mother, Jane Seymour, and Catherine 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 axe 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!

Every night, when the time came to say good night, I would watch Kate take Tom’s arm and ascend the stairs, clinging lovingly to him, the perfect picture of the devoted wife. And he, with his free hand, holding a candle to light their way. I would lag behind, my steps as leaden as my heart, my mind in an agony of torment as I watched their bedchamber door close behind them. Sometimes, Tom would wink back at me and then seize hold of Kate and sweep her up in his arms saying, “Did you not promise to be buxom and bonair in bed and at board? Well, tonight’s the night to make good on your promise, wife, then on the morrow we shall see how you do at board!” And, kicking the door shut behind him with his boot heel, he would carry her, giggling and snuggling in his arms, in to bed.

Alone in my bed, I would toss and turn as I imagined them locked together in a naked embrace, all caressing fingers and hungry lips. Every male organ I had ever seen started to thrust itself into my mind, a parade of phalluses, crude woodcarvings of cocks, illustrations in scholarly tomes pertaining to medicine and anatomy, paintings and statues, naked peasant brats howling at the roadside or playing in the mud, and my brother Edward as an alabaster-skinned infant being bathed in warm rosewater poured into a golden basin. And in the privacy of my bed, shrouded in the dark of night and drawn bedcurtains, my fingers began to stray more and more often down to the secret place between my thighs, to delve and explore where Tom’s ardent lips and tongue once had, but my own efforts were a poor proxy for his bold, practised touch. In a fever of frustration, seething with a jealousy that verged on hatred for my good stepmother, I would roll onto my side, pound my pillow with an angry fist and sometimes bite it with my teeth to stifle my frustrated sobs, and weep until at last I fell asleep.

Then morning would come, and with the dawn came Tom. Sometimes striding in garbed in the gardener’s guise, ready to tend his “rosy buds”, others fully dressed for the day in fine velvet court attire gleaming with golden braid, or booted and gloved in riding leathers with a jaunty plume swaying in his cap, brandishing his riding crop and announcing, “I have come to spank my slug-abed!” But no matter what he was wearing he was always ready to rouse me. Sometimes he would come to me naked and bare-legged beneath his garnet velvet dressing gown with his cock protruding like a cannon at the ready to introduce to my eager, inquisitive hands and hungry mouth, to make me believe that I had some heady, intoxicating power over him.

I tried, albeit halfheartedly, to resist and do the right thing. Some nights I leapt into bed, gloriously and wantonly nude, wiggling and writhing sensuously against the sheets, impatient for the dawn and Tom to come and rouse me with his caresses. Other nights I forced myself to show more restraint and donned a proper form-concealing white linen nightgown or gossamer-thin cobweb lawn night-shift to tantalizingly veil my burgeoning woman’s body, so that he would tease me out of it, shouting, “Be gone, virtuous raiments!” and chastise me for my false modesty and pull me naked and squealing across his knees to spank my bare bottom until it bore a matching set of smarting red handprints and he could truly say, not just in jest, that he had left his mark on me.

Some mornings, to give myself the illusion of being in control, in full command of my body and emotions, I rose before the dawn, and bade Kat lace me into a severe high-collared black mourning gown with a stiffly boned bodice, and sat myself down upon the window seat with my head bowed over a book, so that when Tom arrived he found a proper paragon of virtuous and modest maiden-hood waiting for him.

And there were other mornings when he would catch me in the act of dressing. He would come in determined to play lady’s maid, and shoo the tittering, blushing Mrs Ashley out of his way with a swat at her “great buttocks”. He would help me draw the sheer cobweb lawn shift over my head, and help me with my stays and bodice laces, always letting his fingers dally most familiarly, standing behind me, pressing his loins close, as his hands roved over me, often lingering to caress the bones at my hips as he held me and his lips pressed a kiss onto the nape of my neck, or nuzzled my ears and shoulders. He would kneel at my feet to put my stockings on, pausing first to playfully nip and nibble my naked toes, before rolling the stockings up and tying my silken garters in pretty bows just below my knees. And he would brush my hair, one hundred long, luxuriant strokes, over my scalp and down to my waist, before his deft fingers began to braid and nimbly insert the pins before he crowned me with my crescent-shaped French hood, darting in to steal a swift kiss if there were a chin-strap that required fastening. As he tilted my chin up and trailed his fingers slowly over my neck, pretending to examine the strap, to make sure it was neither too tight nor too loose, oh how I would shiver and my knees would feel deliciously weak and it was all I could do not to fall at his feet and pull up my skirts and open my legs, begging him to take me. At such times, I was as shameless as a bitch in heat.

To my surprise, I revelled in being naked before him. I felt a hot and happy wanton pride and a surge of intoxicating power when I finally admitted it to myself and stopped pretending to a modesty I didn’t truly feel.

Throughout the day, whenever Tom was away – and oh how bereft and empty the house seemed without him! – I was often sullen and listless, weary as though I hadn’t slept at all, and prone to be short of temper and tart of tongue, to snap at those about me who innocently and unintentionally irritated my frayed and passion-inflamed nerves, as sensitive as a rotten tooth is to sugar. Shadows hovered beneath my eyes and Cupid’s arrow shot away all appetite for food. I hungered only for Tom, to greedily swallow down love’s nectar when his cock-cannon fired inside my eager mouth. But when Tom was near, all it took was a touch of his hand or even a look would suffice and my heart would go zing! like the sharply plucked strings of a harp, and what he called “the pink petals amongst the red” would grow moist with the dew of lust as I yearned for my gardener to come and tend my rosy buds, growing well now under his care. And I lost all trust I had ever had in my knees; I felt as if the whole of me would turn to water upon which a pulsing, throbbing, vibrant pink flower would bob like a lustily beating heart. As such fanciful thoughts assailed me, my whole body would quiver as if I were one of the wobbly fat ladies the pastry cook fashioned out of jelly for Tom’s amusement, and Kate would voice concern that I had caught a chill and order another applewood log thrown upon the fire, so solicitous was she for my welfare and blind to the truth before her eyes.