Secret History of Elizabeth Tudor, Vampire Slayer

by Lucy Weston

Mordred has sown doubts in my mind about those upon whom I must rely. Whether he means to or not—and I suspect that he does—he is setting me apart, isolating me in ways that make me ever more susceptible to him.

  Mindful that I must guard against that, I raise my hand and summon the schoolmaster to my side. As he is new to court, my favoring of him draws immediate attention. Walsingham shows no awareness of it. His expression never changes as he comes near, bows again, and waits for me to speak.

  “I would take the sounding of your mind, good sir,” I say quietly so that we cannot be overheard. “What do you think I should do?”

  He appears neither pleased nor displeased to be challenged by me. I see no sign in him that he is afraid anything he says will be held against him later, as so many of my courtiers are when asked for an honest opinion. Indeed, he seems to have no concern whatsoever for himself.

  Cecil has done me a favor bringing him to me.

  “Mordred will use any trick he can to stop you,” Walsingham says, pitching his voice low for discretion’s sake. “He will seek to confuse your mind and make you question yourself. But if you hold true to your course, you will prevail. Of that, I have no doubt.”

  “Do you not? We have seen now the cost to me of gaining power as a Slayer, and yet I am nowhere near as strong as I must be if I am to defeat Mordred. Have you considered that in order to become what I must be, I may have to make myself into something my people cannot accept?”

  Truth be told, until that moment I had not fully posed the question to myself. Yet it was there, lurking in the swirling mists of my mind since my return to the world. Can I be Queen and Slayer both?

  “You will be what you were born to be,” Walsingham continues. “Nothing more and, God willing, nothing less.”

  Cecil is watching us and Robin as well. I take a breath and let it out slowly. The gaudy court recedes from my vision yet remains uppermost in my mind, as it always must if I am to survive.

  “There are more than a few who believe that no daughter of a witch can be rightful Queen of England.”

  I have never voiced my deepest fear to anyone, yet the schoolmaster draws it from me as though his unbending reason can wipe away my sin of doubt.

  “If you have concerns about your mother,” he says, “resolve them with all speed, else you can be certain that Mordred will use them against you.”

  I nod, my throat too tight for speech. It is a truism of kings—and of queens regnant—that the most valued counselor is the one who will dredge from our own minds the truth we already know but hesitate to speak.

  God bless the schoolmaster for doing so.

  Although I suspect that Kat would not be so gracious in her thanks.

  I tarry a little longer after Walsingham withdraws. Robin continues to stare at me as though by doing so he can compel my love. At length, he tries another tack and partners a lady in a dance. Her name is of no consequence and better for her that I do not dwell upon it. He makes a great show of favoring her, and she seems simpleton enough to think he means it. That at least affords me some little amusement, although I will also admit to a twinge of jealousy. But only a twinge whereas scant days ago before all this began my reaction would have been far stronger.

  My distraction grows as the hour wears on and night’s embrace deepens. Briefly, I indulge the thought of taking to the hunt again to feed upon the light. The price for doing so gives me pause, but I tell myself that this time I would be moderate, pace myself as it were, and escape such dire penalty.

  Still, I put the thought aside. For the moment, more urgent matters summon me. As soon as I can, I make a show of yawning and bid all good rest. Through torchlit passages lined by bowing courtiers, I make my way to bed.

  Night, 18 January 1559

  Kat is asleep in a chair in my chamber. The fire has burned low. I can only just make out her dear face, slack with dreams. I dismiss my ladies, shut the door behind them, and touch her arm gently.

  “Wake, old friend, with my apologies. It is urgent that we speak.”

  She is alert at once in the way of the elderly—she would curse me for describing her as such—who only skim the surface of sleep. I suppose they hesitate to sink too deeply out of fear that they will not wake again, although it is hard to think of Kat’s fearing anything. Her eyes blink once, twice, and see me.

  “My lady.” She starts to rise but I press her back into the chair and take the footstool at her feet.

  When she makes to protest, I insist, “No formalities tonight, for pity’s sake. I have had a stomachful of them.”

  Kat laughs, perhaps remembering how she and I used to sneak away to hidden places within the gardens at Hatfield where I could be only a child and she the woman who loved me. No concern for rank and none at all for the world where my life hung so precariously. Memories of those times and of her love have kept me knit together through the darkest days.

  She is of an age to be my grandmother but has been mother to me, the one constant in my life of turmoil. Twice she has been ripped from me, imprisoned by my enemies seeking a path to my destruction. Each time she proved valiant and true. If I had to trust someone with my deepest secrets, I could not choose better than Kat Ashley.

  On sudden impulse, I lay my head on her lap. She sighs and gently strokes my hair. Her fingers brush against the diadem I still wear. It pains me but I do not remove it. Tonight above all I must be Anne’s daughter.

  I look up and catch her gazing at me with such tender devotion that my throat tightens. She has ever been a woman of character, has Kat Ashley, the Devonshire girl of middling good birth who contrived to acquire an education any man would envy, avoided marriage until she was nigh on to forty years, when she took the husband of her own choosing, and drew the eye of a queen who entrusted her with that which she held most precious.

  “What troubles you, dearest?” Kat continues stroking my hair, soothing me as she did when I was a fretful child, unable to calm myself without her touch.

  “My mother—”

  Kat goes still. She has always discouraged questions about Anne, knowing as she surely did that my only chance of survival lay in unswerving loyalty to Henry. My father wavered dangerously enough as it was, alternately declaring me a bastard and restoring my birthright. If he had ever had reason to suspect that I nurtured love for my mother, he might well have thrown me to the wolves, for I was ever the living, breathing reminder of what he had done to her.

  “Was she guilty?” I ask. So few words, yet they contain all the wretched terror that threatens, like acid dropped upon a copper plate, to etch their design into my very soul.

  A moment passes, long enough for me to fear that Kat will not answer. Finally, she touches my shoulders gently.

  “Sit up, sweetling.” When I obey as I child would, she instructs, “Tell me what you think you know.”

  Kat’s discretion not withstanding, I have heard the whispers. I know something of the crimes for which Anne was called to account and for which she died. Even so, I can barely give them voice.

  “She was accused of unlawful … even unnatural relations with many men.” Including her brother, my uncle, but I will not speak of that.

  “Lies,” Kat says implacably. “Mad, wild lies that everyone knew could not possibly be true. Your mother was a woman of honor and pride. She would never have debased herself in any such way. Moreover, she understood full well the precariousness of her position as queen. She did all she could to avoid giving her enemies anything to use against her.”

  “Those who still loved the old queen, Catherine of Aragon, and blamed my mother for my father setting her aside?”

  Kat nods. “Those and others. Your mother believed in the true reform of the church. Many at court, including many close to your father, did not. They sought to undermine her.”

  “But the charges went beyond adultery. The King … my father thought her guilty of witchcraft.” This, too, I have heard. Henry did not bring that charge into court where it would, of n
ecessity, become public; he settled for accusing her of treason instead. But he made no secret that he thought her guilty of consorting with the Devil, even to the extent of toying with the notion of burning her.

  Kat leans forward, looking directly into my eyes. Without hesitation she says, “Your mother was no more guilty of that than of anything else.”

  Relief floods me, of course, but hard on it comes fresh pain. As grateful as I am to know of my mother’s innocence, it raises the question that has haunted me since I first began to glimpse the outlines of her terrible downfall. She had failed to bear a son, so be it. But why had Henry felt driven to destroy her so utterly? Why had he not simply divorced her, as he later did Anne of Cleves when he found her unpleasing as a wife?

  True, my father had executed a second queen, poor Catherine Howard. But she was a foolish girl who really had crowned him with cuckold horns. Humiliation more than anything else had driven him to slay her. What compulsion swung the sword that severed my mother’s neck?

  “You are convinced,” I ask, “that nothing ever happened that could have even remotely given my father cause to believe that my mother had dealings with the supernatural?”

  And there it is, the flick of an eye, a quick tilt of the head. Kat has never lied to me, of that I am sure. But I am equally certain that just then she is tempted to.

  “I had hoped,” she says softly, “that it would not come to this.”

  To what? What does she know? What does this woman who has loved me dearest and best all my life, who has never hesitated to do what was right for me, now hesitate to say?

  She slips a hand beneath the bodice of her gown and draws out a packet of yellowed parchment folded over and sealed by wax cracked with age. “I have carried this next to my heart since Mary died and you were proclaimed Queen. Before that, I kept it locked away, never touching it from the day your mother put it into my hands.”

  Something of my mother after all this time. I can scarcely credit it. I have nothing of Anne’s except the diadem made for her and curiously kept by my father when he might have had it melted down and recast instead. No other item that she ever touched has been preserved, at least not to my knowledge. Perhaps something is hidden away here and there, but if so, no one speaks of it.

  Now suddenly there is this—what?

  “Your mother told me to give this to you only if you ever asked the question you have just posed. Otherwise, she wanted you left in peace, untroubled by its contents.”

  “Do you know what they are?”

  Kat shakes her head. “I do not. They are for you—and only you—to know. Your mother made that clear.”

  My impulse as I take the packet is to break the seal right then and there and devour whatever lies within. But the circumstances under which I have received this message from my mother fill me with caution. Whatever I am about to learn of her, there will be no turning back from it.

  “Do you want me to stay?” Kat asks.

  Of course, I do. I want her to gather me into her arms, rock me back and forth, and tell me that everything will be all right. I want to roll back time and be a child again with no awareness of the sword that hangs over my life. I want to sleep without dreams of a woman swinging me round and round in a garden full of roses, and of the love she had for me shining in her eyes.

  It does not matter what I want. I am Queen and I must do what is needed whatever the cost.

  “Go to your rest.” When she hesitates, I add, “You have fulfilled your duty. Now I must do the same.”

  She obeys, reluctantly and not before embracing me most lovingly. I cling to her for a moment before finally forcing myself to let her go. Even then I have to resist the impulse to call her back.

  When I am alone, I sit in the chair before the fire and stare at the packet. My hands are steady as calm seeps over me. This is my mother, who will speak to me from across the grave. The woman who bore me, who died for doing so, and who still managed to endow me with power I can barely comprehend.

  I heard her voice once in the moment of my awakening.

  Now I will hear it again. Please, God, let me be guided by it.

  I split the seal and unfold the parchment, bending closer to the candle to make out the fine hand written there. A quick glance at the first words and my breath catches. The letter is dated two days before my mother’s execution.

  At the Tower, London

  17 May, Anno Domini 1536

  My beloved daughter, light of my heart and comfort of my soul, I rejoice at your continuance on this earth for my only wish has ever been to keep you safe. Pray God that Kat remains with you. If it has pleased the Almighty to take her to Him, I abide in faith that she will have entrusted this letter to the best of hands.

  Know that it is my hope that you will never read this. I yearn for you to live in peace, perhaps as a comfortable country woman far from the treachery that is the court. Should it please you, I hope that you are wed to a kind and loving lord, and that many children play at your feet.

  But if the secret horoscope that I had cast at the time of your birth proves true, none of that has come to pass. Instead, you are Queen. No doubt you are surrounded by those who believe that a woman is not suited to rule. Do not be swayed by their petty minds. Only you can protect our realm in the great struggle that will determine England’s fate for a thousand years and more. It is for this that you were born a woman and my daughter.

  In those days when I basked in the constancy of your father’s love, all swore that I carried the longed-for prince. So, too, did I swear to your father. Only one dared say otherwise. On a bitterly cold night in February in the year of your birth, I received a most unexpected visitor …

  A tear slips down my cheek and falls on the parchment, followed swiftly by another. I break off reading to brush them away before they can smear the ink. In the stillness of the room, where every pop and hiss of the fire seems magnified ten times over, I can manage only a single thought: my mother loved me. I have always wanted to believe that but now I know for certain. She did not blame me for her fate or regret my existence. She went to her death wanting only the best for me.

  To be the recipient of such love is humbling in the extreme, yet I am also exalted by it. She has reached across the grave to soothe my greatest fears and strengthen me in this time of trial.

  Regaining control of myself, I quickly read the next few paragraphs, my astonishment growing with each word. My mother describes her first encounter with Mordred, how he appeared in her apartment in Whitehall on that winter night, entering unhindered despite all the protection surrounding the newly wed Queen carrying the King’s child. He came, she believed, through a window that, though high above the ground, presented no barrier to him.

  At that time, she wrote, she knew only a little about the existence of vampires in England, stories passed down through her mother’s family, which had deep ties in Cornwall where Arthur had dwelt. She was afraid, naturally enough, at Mordred’s sudden appearance, but he made haste to assure her that he meant no harm. That was the first of his many lies.

  And then he warned her …

  … Mordred told me that the child I carried beneath my heart was not the fervently desired prince. I would bear a girl, and unless I took steps to prevent it, her birth would mean my death. I did not believe him. Such was your father’s power and will that I could not imagine the Almighty denying him the son he desired above all else.

  In the spring, with you in my belly, I went to my coronation. The night before, I was in residence here at the Tower. I cannot explain the impulse that took me into the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, but once there, I remained to pray. As I knelt before the altar, the world as I knew it fell away. I found myself standing on a hilltop within sight of the river Thames. A lovely woman beckoned to me. In the way of dreams, I recognized her as Morgaine, who is whispered to be the ancestress of my mother’s line.

  She, too, said that I would bear a girl, but she added that you would be the means
by which either great evil or great good came to reign over Britain. She cautioned that if I was to protect you and this realm both, I would have to make a terrible choice.

  And so the war for my soul began.

  You were born, my beautiful daughter. Even as I rejoiced at your life, the shadows deepened around me. Mordred’s visits grew more frequent. Despite Morgaine’s warning, I came to look forward to them. Alone of everyone I knew, he expressed no disappointment that you were a girl. But he did caution that the King, curdled by his disappointment, would in time strike out against me.

  Even so, the blow came sooner than I expected. I had not considered that Henry would set spies on me, searching for any grounds to free him from the wife he had come to despise. Nor that my association with Mordred would give them what they sought.

  By the time I realized the extent of the danger, it was too late. Henry was determined to be rid of me, and nothing I nor anyone else could do would stay his hand. Except Mordred. He pointed out that if Henry died before he could dispose of me, you would be Queen. Until you came of age, under the laws your father himself had set in place, I would be Regent.

  As such, I would be able to reform the country in ways that Henry balked at doing. There would be true freedom of religion and a rebirth of learning. So Mordred promised when he laid out his plan for me. All that he said would come to pass provided I agreed to one small concession: when you were of an age to wed, he would become your consort and rule as king over this realm.

  I love life as much as anyone and I long to be at your side as you grow. The thought that I must climb the scaffold that I can hear them building even now on the green and lay my head upon the block fills me with terror. But the alternative …

  I have arranged for your protection. Darkness will hover over you, but, God willing, by signs and symbols, prayers and portents, you will pass safely through into the light of your true destiny—Queen Regnant, protector of this realm, victorious over the demonic forces that, should you falter, will rule to the end of time.

  Beloved daughter, joy of my heart, know that with my last breath I think of you.