Tudor Throne

by Brandy Purdy

  I called for Philip, I begged him to hold me. I needed to feel the strength of his arms about me; only he could make me well. I was poised to knock at Death’s door and only Philip could pull me back.

  Philip raised his head from the bosom of his “Golden Duchess.” They were lying naked on a bed of buttercups and her hair, the color of ripened wheat, was spread out, rippling all around her naked body in abundant golden waves so that she, with her ample, generous figure, seemed a very Goddess of Plenty. Annoyed at being disturbed, Philip glared at me with hard and angry eyes. “It is not when you need me to hold you, Mary; it is when I want to hold you,” he said, and lowered his head to resume suckling at the bountiful breasts of his golden goddess—Christina. And she laughed and called him “Pompion,” the French word for pumpkin, the name she had teasingly given him because of the round little belly he had acquired from too much drinking and debauchery.

  I couldn’t bear to look at them anymore, to see them like that, naked and intent on their own private pleasures, so I slammed the door and ran away.

  I was lost in a parched and barren landscape where nothing grew save sharp and ugly black thorns and nothing lived except horrid, slithering black serpents that hissed and looked at me with glowing red eyes. There was a cross in the distance. Our Lord was suffering upon it. I ran and threw myself upon my knees, hugging the cross below His feet. “I would die for you!” I cried as I looked up at Him and He looked down at me. And despite His suffering there was so much kindness and compassion in His face. All round me thorn trees sprang up, watered by the blood that dripped down from His pierced hands and feet, and the wounds caused by the thorny crown upon His brow. I hugged the cross tighter; I was surrounded, hemmed in on all sides, by thorn trees. They pinned me to the cross below Our Savior’s feet, and I felt His blood drip down to mingle with mine as the thorns impaled me. I felt the most peculiar ecstasy: a strange, beautiful, and bewildering blend of pleasure and pain so intricately bound together that I could not tell where one ended and the other began. And as the sharp black thorns pierced my heart I felt the urge to sing. I was past pain; nothing could hurt me now.

  A priest was standing at the foot of my bed, and as he held the Host aloft, I saw a golden light as warm and bright as the sun, only it didn’t hurt my eyes and make me want to turn away; I wanted to run straight into it and bask in that lovely golden warmth.

  And God shall wipe away all the tears; and there shall be no more death; neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: these former things have passed away.

  I was in a beautiful garden sitting on the warm green grass surrounded by rosy-cheeked tots with charming smiles and chubby little arms that reached out for me. When I swept them up into my arms they gurgled and smiled and laughed and hugged me tight. These were my babies, the babies I should have been bearing when I was a young woman, and the phantom children who had puffed out my belly with false hope when I was Philip’s bride. Now here they were, safe in my arms, loving me and wanting me just as I loved and wanted them. They nestled in my arms and gave me hearty, smacking kisses and smiled and clung to me. I rocked them on my lap and sang them the Spanish lullabies my mother used to sing to me, and I used to sing to Elizabeth, but now I was singing them to my very own babies. God was good; I truly was blessed among women.

  52

  Elizabeth

  It was a crisp November day, and I awoke thinking, strangely, of apples, their crispness and tart-sweet taste, longing for that crisp, juicy first bite all the time I was dressing in a simple white gown. I could not get them out of my mind. I felt so strange; I was unaccountably restless, I simply could not settle. For the life of me, I could not stand or sit still. Finally, without bothering to put up my hair or don a hood, I snatched up an old gray shawl and a book and went out into the park, heedless of Kat’s concerns about the chill that nipped the air and the possibility of rain.

  I walked aimlessly over the grounds and eventually settled myself on a bench beneath a great oak tree and tried to read. At the sound of hoofbeats my head shot up, and squinting into the distance, I beheld two horsemen hastening toward me.

  Dismounting from their horses, the Earls of Arundel and Throckmorton came and knelt before me, the latter holding out his hand and opening it to display upon his leather-gloved palm a gleaming gold and ink-black onyx ring. It was Mary’s coronation ring. I recognized it at once, and it could only mean one thing—my sister was dead.

  “The Queen is dead, long live the Queen!” they said.

  I turned my eyes heavenward, and clasped my hands in prayer and turned away from them. “Godspeed, Mary,” I whispered. “May you find in Heaven what you never found in life!”

  Then I turned around to face my destiny.

  “This is the Lord’s doing and it is marvelous in our eyes!” I announced as I took the ring and slipped it onto my left hand as solemnly and lovingly as if it were a wedding ring, which it was, for me, a sacred and eternal bond forged between myself and England.

  Then a third horseman, this one leading a second horse alongside his, was approaching. Robert Dudley, his head a riot of unruly, windblown black curls, dressed in jewel-toned velvets, somber yet gay, edged with a burnished gold braid. He was riding a black stallion, and leading alongside it a pure white horse caparisoned and saddled in silver and ermine. His hands made some sort of motion with the reins, and his lips moved in some soft, encouraging clucking sound perhaps, I was too far away to hear, and his ebony steed dipped its head low and bowed to me, then that magnificent virgin-white horse did the same, as Robin doffed his feathered cap, held it over his heart, and bowed to me from the saddle.

  I clapped my hands in pure delight, as happy as a young girl beholding the wondrous tricks of the gypsies’ performing horses at a country fair.

  “God save the Queen!” my own dear gypsy cried out, putting his heart in every word. “Good Queen Bess; long may she reign!”

  I smiled and went to him. My hand reached out to stroke the nose of that beautiful virgin-white horse, but then I was distracted by the sunlight catching the gold and black ring. The way the gold flashed around the onyx made it seem to be winking at me, conspiratorially and knowingly, like a secret lover discreetly from across a crowded room. I held my hand out before me, gazing at the ring, and thinking of all it stood symbol for, solid gold proof that I was wedded to England now, and, softly and solemnly, as if I were speaking my wedding vows, I began to recite:

  Here is my hand,

  My dear lover England.

  I am thine with both mind and heart;

  Forever to endure,

  Thou maiest be sure,

  Until death us two do depart.

  I knew in that moment that the future was ours—mine and England’s, our destinies irrevocably entwined—and everything would be golden.

  The white horse nuzzled the side of my head, startling me out of my solemn reverie, and I laughed and reached up to disentangle my hair from her nose. I glanced up at Robin, and our eyes met, and we smiled at each other, then Robin held out his hand to me.

  POSTSCRIPT

  Elizabeth ruled England for forty-five years as “The Virgin Queen,” hailed as “Good Queen Bess” and “Gloriana.”

  In spite of having numerous suitors, and her grand passion for Robert Dudley, she never married.

  Anne Boleyn’s daughter, “the princess who should have been a prince,” became the greatest monarch England has ever known, surpassing the deeds of even her own great father. She turned England into a power to be reckoned with, defeated Philip’s bid to conquer and enslave England with his Spanish Armada, and ushered in a golden age of prosperity that gave the world such immortal talents as William Shakespeare and Christopher Marlowe.

  She never lost her people’s love or loyalty and died peacefully in her bed in 1603 at the age of seventy.

  Mary and Elizabeth both lie splendidly entombed in marble in Westminster Abbey under the epitaph:

  CONSORTS IN BOTH
THRONE AND GRAVE,

  HERE REST WE TWO SISTERS,

  ELIZABETH AND MARY,

  IN THE HOPE OF ONE RESURRECTION.

  A READING GROUP GUIDE

  THE TUDOR THRONE

  Brandy Purdy

  About This Guide

  The suggested questions are included to

  enhance your group’s reading of Brandy Purdy’s

  The Tudor Throne.

  DISCUSSION QUESTIONS

  1. Discuss the childhoods of Mary and Elizabeth. How were they different? How were they alike? How did their relationships with their parents, the loss of their mothers, the alternating periods of being in and out of their father’s favor, and their father’s multiple marriages affect and influence the women they grew up to be?

  2. Discuss Elizabeth’s dalliance with Thomas Seymour. What did she learn from it? Did it strengthen or weaken her? Did it make her wiser or leave her emotionally damaged? What do you think of Tom Seymour and his method of wooing women? Would you have fallen for him?

  3. If Edward VI had survived, how would Tudor England have been different? What would have happened to Mary and Elizabeth? Would they still be remembered today, or would they have been virtually forgotten, their names known only to serious historians of the period? And would Edward have spent his entire life imitating his father, or would he have eventually discovered himself and become his own person?

  4. Discuss the role virginity plays in Elizabeth’s life. What does it mean to her? Why does she emphasize it by adopting white dresses and pearls? Is it symbolic, psychological, or propaganda, or are the boundaries blurred among all three?

  5. Discuss the role Catholicism plays in Mary’s life. Why does she cling to her faith as a drowning person would to a life preserver? And why does she try to force her religion on her subjects even when they resist? She believes herself to be God’s instrument and that her life has been preserved to do His work; is this a sign of a delusional or unstable mind, or is she a sincerely devout person who means well but repeatedly makes bad decisions?

  6. Discuss Mary and Elizabeth’s relationship with each other and how it changes over the years. How are they alike and how are they different? Discuss the sources of friction in their relationship. Was there any way they could have gotten along and been loving sisters and friends, or were they doomed from the start to be rivals and adversaries?

  7. Discuss Mary’s relationship with her ardently Protestant cousin Lady Jane Grey. Why does Mary condemn her to death? Do you think she was right to do so?

  8. Discuss Mary’s and Elizabeth’s beliefs about and experiences with love, sex, marriage, and childbirth. Are the decisions they make about these things the right ones? Why do they make the choices they do?

  9. Mary sees Philip as a dream come true—but is he? Discuss Philip’s character. Is the man himself as pretty as his picture? Despite her subjects’ heated protests, Mary marries him anyway; was this a good decision personally or politically? Is the marriage what Mary expected it would be? How does it affect her emotionally and mentally?

  10. Why does Elizabeth carry on a flirtation with Philip when she knows this will hurt and provoke her sister? Is there a genuinely amorous element to it, or is it a purely calculated act of self-preservation?

  11. By the book’s end Mary has either lost or failed at everything that matters to her and dies a lonely, broken woman. Do you pity her or do you believe she got what she deserved? What, if anything, could or should she have done differently to avert this tragedy?

  12. At their last meeting, Mary realizes that Elizabeth is the phoenix that will rise from the ashes of her disastrous reign. What qualities do you think made Elizabeth England’s greatest monarch? Why did she succeed and Mary fail?

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  Copyright © 2011 by Brandy Purdy

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-7234-8