by G Lawrence
Your Majesty’s most humble sister and servant.
It was a long way to tell someone that you missed them and loved them, but I was often wont to get carried away in my letters. It wasn’t something I ever grew out of, in fact, I became more loquacious in my letters as I become longer in years.
There was a sorrow for me some months after I joined Katherine’s household when my excellent tutor William Grindal ailed and died. For four years, this quiet and clever man had taken the fabric of my mind and helped to fill it with all the sophistication and love of learning that he had. My poor master Grindal was so anxious even at the last stages of his illness that I should continue my studies that he asked that his great friend Roger Ascham be brought on as my next tutor. The dear man was more concerned, even at the last, with the continuation of my studies than he was with his own death.
We, all of us, remember best those who taught us well. Their names remain etched in our hearts for the rest of our lives. They were the first people we looked up to and who sparked mere learning, into love. I mourned for Grindal, and I never forgot him.
Ascham was interested in me. It was quite a prize, after all, to tutor the girl second in line to the throne, and he was delighted to find my mind was as inquisitive and as logical as his friend had told him in our lessons. There is something deeply ironic that during the time I was so taken with all the irrational feelings that a first infatuation brings to a girl, that Ascham wrote of me:
“Her ears are so well practised in discriminating all these things and her judgement is so good, that in all Greek, Latin and English compositions there is nothing so loose on one side, or so concise on the other which she does not immediately attend to and either reject with disgust or receive with pleasure as the case may be…She has no womanly weakness….her perseverance is equal to that of a man.”
I am thankful that my new tutor, who had such faith in my abilities, could not see the secret pondering and aching of my heart as I bent my head dutifully over Cicero or Aristotle. Thank goodness that Ascham had so little idea of my flighty sensibilities.
It was also at this time that my stepmother brought a young man, older than I of course, but then most people were, into my household.
William Cecil was a young and highly ambitious courtier of moderate background but with an immense amount of promise in his abilities. Katherine brought him into my company and we got along well, even from the very start. Cecil was likeable, affable, clever and assiduous, all things I liked well in people. Cecil became responsible for the management of my many estates and revenues. As a princess of the realm I had a great wealth which needed tight control whilst I was a minor and not in charge of it myself. There needed to be someone of impeccable credentials to care for my money and my land. When the day came that I should come into my inheritance as an adult, I wanted there to be plenty there to greet me. Cecil was clever with numbers, and with detail, he was moral and dedicated to my family; all things that a good manager of a princess’ estates should be able to do, he did with care and with devotion.
Good Cecil, one of the best and longest lived friendships that I should ever know came about through the offices of my stepmother. A woman I loved so much, owed so much to… and yet soon enough was to betray shamefully, and disgustingly.
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Chelsea
Autumn
1547
It started with so many little things; as many events of importance often do. A glance here and there, the way his eyes roved over my young body when he greeted me in the morning or the afternoon. The way he would draw me into his arms for a fatherly hug, and then hold me for a moment too long… the way he would linger at his customary kiss of my lips every morn….
In all outward appearances it would seem that Thomas Seymour was but my devoted stepfather; but in all the covert ways, in all ways unseen and felt, there was another purpose to his growing friendship with his “dear daughter” as he called me. Katherine could see no wrong in Thomas, at all. She adored him, and in that infatuation she was blinded to the manner in which he was approaching me. She thought it was beautiful that her chosen new husband should not only please her so much, but also be so openly loving and affectionate to her stepdaughter, the Princess of England. She thought that his ways of being around me were playful, innocent, fatherly… but my father was never to me as Thomas was. I understood his purpose well enough.
Thomas desired me.
I was more than just a sparkling match for marriage, a young heir to the throne, just turned fourteen, although that was enough to make me attractive to most men with ambition. But for Thomas Seymour I think there was also the heavy, hedonistic attraction of the danger that came associated with me and my body. Legally I was the property of the country, Council and the King. I could not marry without permission. Therefore the idea of a clandestine affair with a princess so forbidden, so un-touchable, was irresistible to a man as adventurous and reckless as Thomas Seymour.
I look on this now with the eyes of a woman who has seen much of the world, of men and of love. But then, then I was little more than a child; un-trained in the arts of love and un-used to having to restrain my feelings. God forgive me! I was not prepared to defend myself against such a man! When his dark eyes rested on my waist or hip, on my budding breasts or my neck, when I saw the path of those eyes across my body it would make me shudder with a feeling that I was not prepared to control… nor yet to reject.
There was in my heart for him the simple love that a first love always is; you know so little of the person you have fallen for, and yet you will never forget them, nor relinquish the affection you have for them… the first person that awoke such strong feelings in you.
I did not know what I wanted, but I knew I wanted him.
I was fourteen when he started his advances to me in earnest; a woman grown I thought, educated, the finest princess in the land, learned, wise so some would say… and yet when he came near me I would lose all my wisdom under the force of feeling he woke in my body. I would blush and he would smile; I would go quiet and he would touch my chin to raise my eyes to his, I would talk to Katherine on religious matters and he would pull me into his arms to dance around our chambers as Katherine looked on laughing. She saw nothing that he did as wrong, nothing as having any meaning other than that of an affectionate stepfather.
But that was most likely the thought farthest from his head…becoming a father-figure to me.
At night I dreamt he was my lover, sweeping into my chambers like one of the knights in the romances I was not supposed to read. He would grasp me by the shoulders and kiss me, tell me we should run together and rule in a foreign land as one… and then I would awake, pressing my hands between the wakened ache between my young legs, hardly understanding what it was I ached for. Although I understood what passed between a man and a woman in the marriage bed, I understood it technically after it was explained to me by Kat. Until I met and was courted by Thomas, I had had little idea of why people were eager to engage in such activities with one another.
But when I felt his body against mine as we danced, when I felt his hand brush my breast as though by accident, when I looked into his sparkling black eyes, I understood suddenly all the urges and compulsions that one may feel in the grasp of an attraction so strong, so sensual and so sexual, that it caused the breath to be punched from one’s chest.
Sometimes at night, I was doubled over, half in pleasure and half in agony, feeling the burning ripples of want for him pulsing through my chest, my lips and my loins. I tried to be quiet when I wanted to scream. I tried to hide everything I felt from the ladies who shared my chambers. Sometimes in the day I had to excuse myself just to press my cheeks and forehead against the cold stone wall of the outside of the house at Chelsea, just to cool the passions of my blood.
I was not armed for a battle against a man like Thomas Seymour. A man with huge experience of the female conquest, a man with twice the years I had, who covered all he
did with me under the mask of a respectable married man.
It was not long before his little daytime games were worked into other hours of the day and night too. Early one morning, before the servants or any of the house had risen, Thomas came suddenly into my rooms.
Kat and I were in bed. The morning was a little chilly and it was often our habit to warm each other in bed before the fires were lit. We happened to be whispering about Thomas himself when the curtains were thrown back and there, in nothing else but a night-shift and a bed jacket, was my handsome stepfather himself!
No man came into the bedchamber of a princess, especially not before she was dressed. I struggled up in shock, trying to arrange my own night shift that was quite sheer around me so that he would not see my naked body. My hair was loose around my shoulders and I was half-awake. I raised a hand as though to smooth my hair and saw him smile. He was delighted with his own appearance in my rooms. I, however was pale with shock and surprise, then went red with the thought that he could, and did, see through my shift, and was enjoying the view. Kat screamed a little and then giggled a bit, half in shock and half in admiration of the bold man. She stared at him with her mouth open, her eyes devouring the half-naked man before her.
“What are you doing here, my Lord?” I asked struggling to pull the covers around me as his hungry eyes roamed over me, catching glimpses of pink nipple and smooth skin. I blushed again, a deeper, shameful crimson.
Half of me was terrified that he had dared to jump into my rooms; half of me was enchanted with his daring.
Kat suddenly remembered herself, she was after all supposed to be my guardian and thus far a man had invaded my rooms and was standing half-naked at the end of my bed, a swinging shift not quite covering all there was to cover.
“My Lord Admiral,” she said, her voice quavering with the notion of having to tell her favourite off, “it is not seemly for you to enter the Princess’ rooms at this hour.”
Thomas laughed, a merry sound, his laughter bounced off the walls and thrilled me to the tips of my toes. It sounded so like the laughter of my own father in some ways.
“Can a man not come to wish his good daughter a good morning?” he said in a booming voice. The servants were rising, and I could hear their feet outside of the room, stopping to listen to the unusual sound of a man inside my chamber. I flushed again.
“Not… at this hour, my Lord…” said Kat, rising from the bed with a shawl around her and moving to herd the errant knave towards the door. Thomas just stood, resisting her harrying and smiled down at me again. His handsome face was flushed with pleasure and excitement. I could not help but smile a little back at him.
“Hah!” he said, seeing my smile, and he pulled Kat’s hands from his chest where they fluttered like nervous birds. He raised her fingers to his lips and kissed them gently and then, as Kat flushed as red as I, he laughed again and strode towards the door.
“I had thought the morning would be a good hour to wish my daughter a good morning, but I have been corrected by a learned woman such as Mistress Astley,” he laughed again. “The next time I wish my good daughter a good morning, I shall do so in the afternoon… would that suit you better?”
Kat laughed, as did I. He was so disarming, standing at the door, his hands on his hips in mock indignation, laughing at us.
“Oh… my Lord,” giggled Kat, looking at him with eyes that shone with admiration. She did not look on her husband with such eyes.
Thomas strode out the door, boldly, laughing to himself about the proper hour in which to wish another a good morning as the servants came past him ready to light fires and tidy as they did every morning.
And yet this morning they were greeted by the sight of me, still abed, half-dressed and with the bedclothes pulled around me like a protective shield as the half-naked form of my stepfather strode out of my chambers. My face was flaming red and my eyes were shining with both fear and with desire. I could not still the restless rise and fall of my breasts as I sought to control my breathing. I could not decide if I was terrified, or enchanted.
God knows what they suspected. But even if my stepmother had no idea of what her husband was getting up to, the rest of the house surely did.
Chapter Thirty
Chelsea
Winter
1547
Kat’s husband John was far more worried about the scene in my chambers than Kat was; this he made plain to Kat and then to myself. He said that we needed to take more care when it came to the Lord Admiral. Kat, although she loved her husband, had been used to being independent for so long that she did tend to follow her own instincts rather than her husband’s advice in life. So, whilst being a good wife when he was in the same room and agreeing with him, she effectively and resolutely ignored his wishes and spent most of her time giggling, gossiping and in all ways she could, encouraging me to flirt with Thomas.
I wonder now that she never worried for her position, or for the real danger that Thomas might actually take what he wanted from me. He was after all much stronger than I, and had he forced himself on me, I would have had little power to escape him. But I do not think that my dear Kat actually thought that far ahead. She, like Katherine and like me, had fallen for the Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour and all his charms. She could see he admired me, and short of having your own love-affair, it is sometimes nearly as satisfying to be able to encourage that of a friend.
Besides, as she said so often to me, Thomas was mine first. He had just settled for Katherine.
It is so easy to believe what you want to in the words of your friends. But it was dawning on me that this situation was getting more and more out of control. I felt entirely as though I might fly apart at any moment, as though the skin on my body and the blood in my veins might burst through the pent-up excitement of all that was occurring in this house. But I was also afraid, afraid to lose control, afraid of what might come of these visits from my stepfather.
Over the next few weeks, Thomas appeared regularly in my bedroom in the morning. I took care after the first couple of times to go to bed with two shirts on so that he could not see through one to my naked skin. But when he saw this trick it only seemed to encourage him to further intimacies; he started to jump onto the bed with loud cries and shouts, grab the bed clothes and wrestle them off me. As he pulled off my sheets he sometimes managed to pull of one of my night shifts, and he would tickle Kat and me into weeping hysteria, jumping around on the bed with us.
Screaming, giggling, and fighting off a man twice my size and power was both exciting, because I believed myself in love with him, and fearsome, when I felt the power really behind that lithe body. He was outrageous, but I started to get an edge of alarm in my mind each time he did something more shocking than the last act… where would he stop? Would he stop?
I did not know, and I had no one eager to help me rein him in.
Kat loved every second of it, screaming and running from him in her nightshift, throwing herself in between me and him as he pounced across the bed growling at me. Just feeling him near her was enough to make her glow with excitement. John Astley and his friend Thomas Parry, were becoming increasingly aghast at what was becoming a daily romp in my bedchamber, John tried to caution his wife on what would become of my reputation should this become public knowledge.
Kat, again, ignored him.
Katherine, my stepmother, was almost blissfully unaware of anything untoward going on. She had found out that she was pregnant, carrying her beloved’s child in her belly, and in this state that she had so longed to be, she had found a kind of peace and a marked refusal to see any ill in her Thomas. Her face was calm and beautiful at all times and she hummed to herself as she wandered about the great house. Later, the thought came to me that most likely Thomas’ restless pursuit of me in the bedchamber was most likely fuelled by his inability to lay with his wife in her pregnant condition. But I did not know such then… and since I could barely reconcile the two emotions of terror and desire withi
n me as he came on his visits to me each morning I was in no position to give much thought to anything.
One morning Katherine followed him to my chambers and found him pulling the bedcovers off me and Kat as we screamed and giggled. Katherine stood in the doorway and when I looked up I saw a look of pallid shock on her face at the scene of her husband wrenching the covers from a screaming young woman, looking for all the world like some raping knave in a legend.
And then Thomas saw me staring at Katherine and he bounced towards her laughing. The look of adoration, of relief, that swept over her face as he turned his visage to her was as pathetic as it was empty of all thought. The woman I admired so for her fine brain and clever words was a fool for this husband of hers. He had only to smile at her, and she was entirely within his power.
“Come, Katherine!” he said, pulling her to the bed. “I come in here to wish my good daughter a merry morning, and she and her serving woman tell me that I am to leave! Well! I shall have none of that from a little snippet! Am I the Lord of this house or no? Am I the girl’s father or no?”
Katherine started to giggle and shake her head. He was just so outrageous, so over the top and foolish, you could not help but think he was as innocent as he seemed. But it was all a trick. Thomas Seymour knew how to work women well. He knew how to lie.