The Queen's Governess (18 page)

I heard a hissing sound behind me and turned. Surely, not a snake! No, a disembodied voice whispered, “Mistress! Mistress!’

From behind a hedge, Master Stephen, Cromwell’s man, gestured to me. My first impulse was to shake my head and walk closer to John. Could this man, who had never quite risen above being a loyal lackey to Cromwell, plan to take over for him? I stood and moved closer, though not around the corner of the hornbeam hedge. In my quick glimpse of him, I thought he looked harried and hounded.

“Have they a hue and cry out for you?” I asked.

“They released me after rough questioning. I’m heading home—to York. But I swore to my lord I would deliver messages to some. They let me see him briefly yesterday.”

“A message for me?”

Suddenly, the man was racked with huge, gasping sobs. His balled fists propped on his knees, he bent over, looking as if he would be ill on the ground. I took a step closer, around the hedge, and touched his shoulder.

“Were you there today?” I asked.

“It was awful,” he choked out without looking up at me. “Bungled, too many blows—inept axman or intended, I know not. I kept thinking,
Cromwell never could stand incompetence of any sort
.”

He straightened and brushed his sleeve across his face to wipe away mucus and tears. “He said—tell you that, when we met that first day in Devon—even if he knew what fate lay in store for him—ruination and a shameful death”—he sniffed again—“that he would not have turned back. That it was worth it.”

“Yes. That sounds like him. Each one of us must decide what is worth great risk,” I whispered, turning the ring on my finger around and around with my thumb.

“If there’s more to tell, I can’t recall. He said so much in the little time they gave us, and I—I was terrified they wouldn’t let me leave, but—they only wanted him.”

“Yes, that is so. I hear his son will even inherit his father’s old title of baron, but then he is wed to a Seymour.” My knees were shaking; my stomach clenched. As much as I had detested and feared Cromwell over many of the fifteen years I had known him, I grieved for him and this man. Once again, I wanted to flee this place and its rulers, not only my dear little charge’s father she adored but Sir Thomas Seymour. I had not seen him for years, but did not want to.

“Go with God, Stephen,” I called to Cromwell’s faithful man as he turned and strode away. Then I mouthed silently, “Go with God, because devils still reign here.”

But my heart lifted when I saw John striding toward me, holding on to Elizabeth’s pony’s bridle while she held the reins. “Some good news and some ill,” he told me, gesturing behind him at a man walking back toward the palace who must have brought him information.

I clasped my hands between my breasts. “We can go to Hatfield?”

“I will tell my Kat, Master Ashley,” Elizabeth declared. “I and my household are to leave on the morrow, but Master Ashley is not to join us until my father and the new queen return from their progress, mayhap in the autumn. That is because the Master of the Horse is with my father and so Master Ashley is needed here to oversee all in his absence.”

I nodded and blinked back tears, not only in my disappointment that John would be held here longer. Not only because I was moved by how logically and regally the child had relayed that information. It had finally hit me hard how careful John and I must be not to be caught together in compromising positions—that is, situations— including by my beloved little mistress. Perhaps my long years of keeping Cromwell’s secrets would now be useful, for one sniff of the things His Majesty had warned me about could ruin our relationship with Elizabeth—if and when John ever came to live with us at all.

HAMPTON COURT

 

 

 

I
stood in the back of the chapel, listening to the wedding vows of King Henry and his sixth wife, Katherine Parr, Lady Latimer. Craning her neck to see, Elizabeth perched next to her sister in the second pew, directly behind Prince Edward and his uncle, Edward Seymour. I could only pray that my talk to the nine-year-old about sober, calm decorum had sunk into that bright brain, for at times she was a highly excitable child.

Yesterday, I had been forced to chase her and young Edward Tudor through some of the dusty privy passages connecting the king’s suite to the outside. They had somehow discovered the privy door from the clock courtyard and, shrieking like banshees, had played tag on the stairs within the dark walls. Servants could hear their voices but not locate them, for few knew the secret. [I would not have known either, but Queen Anne had told me of the hidden stairs and narrow passages years ago, and I had more than once peeked behind the arras to note the outlines of their small doors.]

So I deduced how the two clever children had given their little entourage the slip. Holding a lantern aloft, trying not to trip on my skirts, out of breath, I pursued them up two flights of twisting stairs to the king’s—thank the Lord—empty bedchamber and retrieved them there, running madly about, all sweaty and dusty and as happy as two young children could ever be.

Today Elizabeth was nearly beside herself with joy to be near her father, to be treated kindly by his new wife and to be attending her first wedding. Besides, although the three Tudor children had been with their sire from time to time since Queen Jane’s death, Elizabeth was also thrilled to be with Mary, now twenty-seven, and Edward, now five. Mary made a show of fussing over her, so Elizabeth had never quite yet grasped the fact her older sister deeply resented her. Despite my love for my royal charge and the little family of her intimate servants we had gathered about her in the country, she ached for affection from her royal family and longed to please them.

“I vow to be buxom in bed and board,” the bride was saying. Her voice trembled slightly. “In sickness and in health, to love, cherish, and to obey, till death us do part . . .”

It had been a challenging three years. The king’s previous young wife, his “virtue personified,” had lied to cover up her licentious past. Worse, abetted by George Boleyn’s widow, Jane Rochford, who had been the first person to greet me when I arrived at court, Catherine Howard had taken a lover behind her besotted royal husband’s back. Like her cousin Anne, she had died on the block in the Tower shortly after her lovers—actually guilty ones, unlike with Anne— had been hanged, drawn and quartered. Though I had not known His Majesty’s fifth queen nor had I attended her execution, all that had brought back to me the horror of Elizabeth’s mother’s death.

How grateful I was that my little charge and I were not living at court then, for, to tell true, Catherine Howard’s trial for adultery and death brought back memories of losing Elizabeth’s mother as well as memories of how I could not help but admire Anne Boleyn. Ah, how I used to study her way with men, her cleverness and, indeed, her love for her daughter. My little lovey had lost her mother so young, and I could fully sympathize with how she longed for her and was passionate to know about her.

“Did you know my mother well?” she had asked me recently.

“She was kind to me, and I did favors for her too. She was a lovely and well-read woman, just as you shall be if you concentrate on your studies. Now read me that passage again,” I had said, pointing to the page, “because you must learn how to pronounce several of the words—Plan-
tag
-e-net, see here?”

“But if she was so lovely and learned, why did my father put her away and then she died?”

“You know your sire, lovey. He—they disagreed on some things, and one must not disagree with a king.”

“But she was a queen and that’s second best. I heard he had her head chopped off, just like Catherine Howard’s!”

“Who told you such things? You come to me if you have questions like that!”

“But, my Kat, that is what I am doing!”

More than once we had gone in such circles. Despite my rehearsing what to say, conversations about her mother always went awry, and I agonized about how to best frame my answers. Should I tell her exactly what happened but, of course, lay no blame? I, too, had come from a bitter past where my young mother died tragically, even amidst my suspicions of murder. I knew precisely how it felt to have a stepmother, half siblings and an indifferent father.

I had to be so careful, for in truth I did blame the king for Anne’s loss, though she had been foolish too. But things like adultery, incest—witchcraft and sorcery? I feared that, however intelligent Elizabeth was, she was not yet prepared to hear any of that. So I concentrated on telling her of happy times her mother had, of her firm belief in the new religion and how, while her parents were wed and she was born, they loved each other. Each time, I came closer to the truth, closer to giving her Anne’s ring, but I held back.

“Your Majesty, please repeat after me,” Bishop Gardiner intoned, dragging me back from my agonizing to the joyous occasion at hand.

“With this ring I thee wed, with my body I thee worship and with all my worldly goods I thee endow. . . .”

The king’s voice droned on. John Ashley had been with us for nearly two years at Hatfield, and we were desperately in love. But with the increased household staff—Elizabeth’s retainers in and about Hatfield or the other rural homes we stayed in now numbered nearly one hundred twenty—it was difficult for us to be unseen alone, though we managed at times. It was a dangerous courtship but a wholesome one, lest we be discovered and chastised or dismissed, or lest I find myself with child. But how badly we wanted a bed of our own, a marriage of our own, so that . . .

The king was kissing his blushing bride, loudly, soundly. They turned and walked toward the back of the chapel, he beaming, she looking dazed and even apprehensive, and why not?

I had heard the twice-widowed heiress had told the king she would willingly be his mistress—quite a change from the way Anne, Jane and Catherine had played their cards. Henry Tudor was a dangerous husband, and Katherine Parr had wit enough to know it. A bit of doggerel had been going around that I hoped Elizabeth had not heard: “The king’s poor wives: divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded—that’s five!” But now there were six, and what would be the fate of this lovely woman?

It was said the king had wed Katherine Parr partly because he needed a nurse for his old age, but it was also said that he was going to amend the Act of Succession to include any children they might have. What an optimist he was at his age, and the lady—now queen—had not caught a child in her other marriages. But if only it could be true that, after Edward and any future offspring, His Majesty might reinstate Mary and Elizabeth in line to rule the kingdom. It was my daily prayer, among all the twisted webs of rumors, that one might come true.

As we all followed out to where the bridal supper was laid in the great hall, I studied Katherine Parr, now age thirty-one but still in the flush of youthful good looks. She had reddish hair and warm hazel eyes. Though not a raving beauty, she seemed to glow from within, radiating warmth that had already drawn the king’s three motherless children to her. But I studied her especially because it was common knowledge that she had been swept away in love by Sir Thomas Seymour before she caught the king’s eye.

After being wed to and widowed by two men, the wealthy woman was thrilled to be courted by the handsome, dashing rake—yes, I admit he still was, for I had seen him from afar. Five years ago, it was said, Tom had turned down the Duke of Norfolk’s offer of marriage to his only daughter, the widowed Duchess of Richmond, a fine catch, because he was “aiming higher.” How much higher? I wondered. And since he belonged to one of England’s premier families and now boasted titles such as Baron Sudeley and Admiral of the Fleet and possessed great estates, why did he need a wealthy widow?

At any rate, the moment King Henry had turned his attentions to the widow Parr, she had accepted her fate to wed him, and Tom had quickly gone abroad as Ambassador to Belgium on top of his sea duties. He could stay away forever as far as I was concerned, the power-hungry, poxy wretch. He no doubt had a mistress in every port, and his paths at home and abroad were littered with trodden-down, longing women—but not me.

 

 

 

Early that autumn,
when Their Majesties returned from their progress, we were all together at the rural palace of Ashridge in Hertfordshire. The king and queen seemed devoted to each other, and Her Majesty proved to be a loving stepmother Elizabeth adored, though it fretted me greatly that the girl had turned a bit testy around her father. I knew why. Just the week before we were summoned here, Elizabeth had grown so demanding about her mother that I had taken her for a walk alone—with two guards trailing us at a distance, that is—in the park at Hatfield where the tall oaks, beeches and sycamores shaded our way.