The Virgin Queen's Daughter - Ella March Chase (3 page)

My mother squeezed me tight. “Some were not sorry as they should have been when she died.”

The princess winced. “You cannot doubt I grieve for the dowager queen.” My mother said nothing and the princess again turned her attention to me. “A position in my household is yours for the asking as soon as you are grown.” Her face turned suddenly fierce. “Someday you
will
wait upon me. When I am freed from here. Proved innocent as I must be. Promise me, Nell.”

I promised most solemnly.

My mother carried me through the gate the yeoman guard held open, then back to the privy chambers Father’s friend had assigned to us. She plopped me down upon the tester bed, a tearful Eppie in her wake. I caught Eppie’s hand. “The bear did not eat me! I only went to the garden to see the princess.”

Eppie looked as if she would rather I had visited the bear. “I told you to stay away from that woman! Did I not?”

“But she is most wondrous! When I am quite grown I am going to court to be one of her ladies!”

“No!” Eppie shrilled. “You cannot—”

My mother’s hand flashed out, striking my cheek with a crack that startled us all. Too stunned to make a sound, I pressed my fingertips to the place that stung.

“Never mention going to court again, do you hear me?” my mother demanded. “Never! You cannot know what it is like, Nell, what can happen to a woman there.”

“But I promised Princess Elizabeth—”

Mother grabbed my arms as if to shake loose any threat of defiance. “I am sorry to say it, Nell, but the princess will be dead long before you are grown. It is only a matter of time before her head rolls!” Tears welled up in my eyes as she spun around and strode from the room, leaving me to Eppie’s care. I reached my arms out to my nurse, waiting for her to cuddle and kiss away the burn of mother’s slap. But Eppie glared at me, her face white, her hands trembling.

“You need to be taught a lesson, you willful girl!” Eppie spoke so grimly it shook me to the bone. “You will remain locked in this bedchamber alone for the night to think of the wrong you have done!” She turned her back on me and walked out the door. I heard the iron bolt slide closed. I had slept in the same bed with Eppie every night of my life, smelling the scent of lavender that clung to her from the bundle of herbs she tucked between her breasts every morning. So it was unthinkable she would abandon me. But that night Eppie was good as her word. Not a soul came up the stairs, not even featherhead Arabella to bring me a candle when night blacked out all light.

I squeezed beneath the bed to hide when the room grew darkest. I writhed in my hiding place, stomach aching as if I had taken one of the fevers mother dreaded, my beloved gown clinging, sticky with sweat in spite of the chill in the room. I had clung to the belief that Eppie would come to help me undress, but as the hours slipped by even that hope disappeared. The bed yawned above me, too big without Eppie in it. Dawn seemed forever away.

Suddenly I heard a scraping sound. A sliver of light peeped beneath the bedchamber doors. Perhaps the guard watching my princess had decided to put me on the rack after all. The bolt slid back. The door swung inward. Father. A sob tore from my throat. I scrambled from beneath the bed and flew at him, nearly knocking the candle from his grasp as I buried my face against the rough cloth of his breeches. Father set the candlestick on a table; in a heartbeat, I was swept up into his arms. “How now, Mistress Magpie. What are these tears about?”

There was no help in a lie. Mother would tell him if I did not. “I took one of Dr. Dee’s mistakes and tried to help my princess escape.”

“His mistakes?”

“On his table. There was a key. He said he wished he could make it disappear.”

“You took a key from John Dee and gave it to Lady Elizabeth?”Father paled. “Did you say the key belonged to him?”

“I made it disappear like he wanted. Doesn’t that mean it was my key?”

“Yes, Nell. Thank God.” Father sucked in a breath. “You must never tell anyone where you found it. Dr. Dee might be in terrible trouble if you did. A child can make an innocent mistake, but a man known for working magic would be thrown into prison for the same thing.”

“I will never tell. I only wanted to let the princess out of her cage.”

“That was very brave of you, Nell, but not very wise.” Father peered into my face. “You frightened your mother and Eppie worse than I have ever seen them.”

“But I had to help my princess. They are going to cut off her head. Mother said so. And I am never to speak of my princess again, even though she made me promise to go to court someday and be her lady-in-waiting.”

“Ah, so
that
is where this tempest sprang from. Talk of you going to court.”

“Mother went there. You did, too. Why can I not go?”

For the first time in my memory Father evaded my question. I remember the strangeness of it even still. “There will be time enough to speak of court once you are older, Nell. For now, we have but two more days in London. Let us put this unfortunate incident behind us. We will speak of it no more. How would you like to see something so wonderful it will drive all thoughts of your troubles away?”

Father wrapped me up in his thick woolen cloak, the fox fur lining tickling my neck as he carried me, through the silent building, out into the dark courtyard. He spoke to a guard who gave him a lantern and pointed the way up to the Leeds, a narrow walkway along the battlements. I did not know it then, but it was there Elizabeth walked before she was allowed to visit the small garden—her footsteps carrying her from her own Bell Tower to the Beauchamp Tower, where Robert Dudley was being held. How strange, the man Elizabeth would love her whole life spent those same weary hours so close to her, yet another prisoner of the Crown.

“Stretch out your hands, Nell,” Father bade me as we reached the topmost part of the curtain wall. “You must hold something for me.” I started as something shimmering and mysterious appeared in his grasp. He placed it, cool against my palms, then tilted the object so I could see it in the lantern light, a flat brass disc about the size of a horseshoe, smaller metal cogs fitted on its surface. I ran my thumb across its bumpy face, feeling the etching carved deep in its surface. “Astronomers use it to study the sky,” Father told me. “It helps ship captains find their way across the open sea.”

“What is it called?” Curiosity blunted the edge of my earlier distress.

“It is an astrolabe. A tool for measuring the heavens.”

I looked up at the vast sky, then down at the instrument in my hand. “This astrolabe is very pretty, Father.” I repeated the new word to write it on my mind just as he had taught me. “But it looks small to travel so far.”

“Your mind will make it reach farther than you can begin to imagine, Nell.” Father glanced about to make certain no guard had strayed near enough to hear us, then he boosted me up into a gap in the stone crenellations that looked like the Tower’s tooth had gone missing. “Look up at the sky, Nell. What do you see?”

“Stars.”

“And what do stars do besides shine, Little Bird?”

“The stars circle around the earth just like the sun and the moon.”

“And why is the Church so very certain that is so?”

“Because men are the most important creation in the universe. That is why God put us in the very center.”

“So we have thought all these centuries. But what if we have been wrong? Tonight Dr. Dee showed me a rare manuscript called
De Revolutionibus Orbium Coelestium
. Can you translate the Latin?”

“On . . . Revolutions of . . . Heavenly Spheres?” I said so loudly that Father hushed me with a nervous glance over his shoulder. Seeing we were still alone, he grinned at me.

“That is my clever girl! It is a book of theories written by a Polish astronomer named Copernicus. I have set Dee in search of a copy for the two of us as well.” Father sobered. “But the book is forbidden. You must not tell anyone about it, Nell.”

“I promise.” I had gathered up quite a store of secrets on my trip thus far.

“Copernicus made many calculations,” Father said. “He believed that earth is not the center of the universe at all. That the earth revolves around the sun!”

“But that is silly! I am quite sure God said . . .” I thought about what Father had said. “Do
you
believe Copernicus is right?” I was not certain who I should believe if it came to cudgel play between my father and God.

“Perhaps we are not as important as we think we are,” Father said. “That would be a nasty shock to most people, would it not?”

Then he kissed my nose and I knew he had won.

“Mother would not like it. She says everything we read in the Bible is true. That is why the Catholic priests are wicked. Because they keep all the reading to themselves.”

“It is best we keep this theory our secret for the time being. If we tell those who do not understand they will get angry.”

“I had a belly full of angry tonight,” I said. “It made me feel sick inside.”

Father scooped me down from the stones and hugged me against his stiff leather doublet. I leaned back in his arms, the sight of his face comforting me.

“Can I tell you a secret, too?” I toyed with the black strands of his beard.

“You can tell me anything, Little Bird.”

“Mother does not like my princess. In fact I am quite sure Mother hates her.”

Father said nothing, just leaned his bristly cheek against mine. Then he said, “You know that before you were born your mother served Katherine Parr, our bluff King Hal’s last wife?”

“Mother and the princess said she was very kind. King Henry was not. I do not think a person can cut off their own wife’s heads and be bluff at all.”

“A very astute observation. After the king died, Princess Elizabeth was given into Katherine Parr’s care. It was a new beginning, a chance at a better life. Your mother visited me at Calverley from time to time, but mostly she stayed with the dowager queen at the Old Palace in Chelsea, hoping her friend could be happy at last.”

“The lady should have been happy with King Henry dead! He could not cut off her head anymore.”

“Even when you believe you are safe, life can catch you unawares, Nell,” Father said softly. “In the end Katherine Parr suffered more heartache at Chelsea than she’d known at the king’s hand. Your mother blames the Princess Elizabeth for that. But the Lady Elizabeth was just terribly young, hungry for someone to love.”

“The princess told mother she misses the dowager queen every day,” I confided. “Did the dowager queen love the princess?”

“Yes, poppet. With her whole heart. And all would have been well for both of them if the dowager queen had not taken a new husband.”

“After all the bad things the king tried to do to her?” I asked, bewildered. “Why would she want another one of those?”

“She fell desperately in love,” Father explained.

“That does not seem like a wise idea.”

“Love is seldom wise. Katherine Parr made three marriages out of duty. At thirty-five she had been wife to two old men, and then queen to a cruel king. Who can blame her for being greedy for joy after all she had suffered, poor lady?” Empathy filled Father’s face in the lantern light. “She married in secret with your mother as witness.”

“Did she marry another king?” I asked.

“No, sweetheart. She wed Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour, the Baron of Sudeley, one of the most ambitious courtiers of his age.”

“Could he read Greek, Father? Or count all the stars?”

“No, Nell. Lord Thomas had more dangerous gifts. He was handsome and charming, a bold adventurer and skilled at seduction.” Father’s voice turned suddenly raspy. “You must never fall prey to a man like him, my Nell. I could not bear to think of you at the mercy of that kind of villain. Thomas Seymour destroyed every good and decent thing he ever touched.”

Father gathered me close, understanding without words my fear of going to back to bed alone. We watched the sun rise together like an astrolabe of gold over the Thames.

S
IX MONTHS AFTER
we left London a messenger rode between the stone lions that guarded Calverley’s gatehouse, then into the main courtyard framed by turrets and great redbrick walls. Hearing the commotion, Father and I crossed to the library window. The stranger’s livery was unrecognizable, dark with filth from the road, the cloth threadbare beside Father’s well-garbed servants in their silver and blue. He was so thin that Mother would have ordered the man to the kitchens to be fed before he so much as spoke. But she was off with Eppie delivering the miller’s babe.

“Perhaps it is just as well your mother is afield,” Father told me. “Please God it will be our copy of Copernicus from Dr. Dee and you can find more theories to test with your favorite plaything.” I had carried the astrolabe about as other girls carried dolls until Mother put a stop to it. But the chance to experiment once more with the beloved instrument delighted me as nothing had since our return to Calverley. After all the excitement in London my home in its quiet Lincolnshire weald seemed quite tame. Father scooped me up and hastened to the courtyard, but the messenger was not from Dr. Dee.