They had agreed that they should meet only in the wee hours, as it was vital that their marriage be kept secret until it was meet that it should be made known. Now was not that time, but she had no intention of waiting any longer for her heart’s desire.
She had been married three times and had no children; she had long ago resigned herself to the fact that she was barren and there would never be any. Whilst that held its own profound sorrow for her, it also meant that she need wait no longer to begin her life with her beloved, even if it had to be done stealthily for the time being.
She was deliriously happy, happier than she had ever dreamed it was possible to be. And now she had given herself up to loving Thomas with all her being. Never had she been so satisfied.
The grass was thick and she had been lost in her thoughts. Without warning, all of sudden, there he was. The gate opened on silent hinges. Just as she had dreamed, Thomas took her into his arms and kissed her, long and lovingly. His hands were cold but his lips were warm. “Come,” he said breathlessly. “Let us away.”
They walked hand in hand through the orchard. As they emerged into the little garden, she whispered mischievously, “This reminds me of other cold nights in another garden.”
He stopped, scooped her up into his arms and said, “If a warm bed were not waiting, I should like to take you right here, as I used,” he whispered. His breath was hot in her ear.
It was tempting, but she wanted more than that now. She wanted to feel his skin next to her own, to lie beside him, fitted together like spoons.
He put her down at the door and with a long, delicate finger to her lips, she cautioned him to silence. Slowly, carefully, she opened the door. Again it gave a screech that she was afraid must surely wake the entire house. But soon the door was closed and bolted behind them; no other sound could be heard. It was the dead of night and all must surely be abed and long asleep by now.
What they were doing was risky; both of the princesses were staying with her, as was the Lady Margaret Douglas, now Countess of Lennox, and the Lady Frances Grey, Marchioness of Dorset. None of the old king’s relations had been made privy to the secret marriage of the Dowager Queen, as Catherine was now known. But the very risk itself lent a fillip to the whole clandestine situation.
Up the stairs; into the corridor, and quickly across; they gained the door to Catherine’s rooms. The door closed silently behind them, and for the next few hours, for Thomas must be gone before the dawn, neither had another thought but for the other.
# # #
Mary sat in the dim light of a single candle, watching her little cousin sleep. She had already burned through several tapers as the hours crept slowly by. The fire had died down to a few glowing embers, but the room was warm enough; she did not want to wake the child by moving about and mending it. And he seemed quite cozy under his little counterpane.
She was the sort of person whom, she had come to discover over time, required little sleep. She was always up with the sun to hear Mass, but she had no difficulty staying up late into the night. When at court, she would listen to the music in the gallery and join in the dance, which she thoroughly enjoyed. As the courtiers slowly disappeared from the hall to go to their beds, she would stay at the tables, dicing and gaming far into the night. She would always be amongst the last to leave.
But lately she had been stricken with a strange malady. She would repair to her rooms in the wee hours, seemingly exhausted, but found that she could not drop off to sleep. Her thoughts simply would not be still. It had come to the point where she would still be wakeful at dawn, when it was time to awaken and start the day, only to finally drop off into a dreamless sleep. Even so, she only slept for an hour, or two at the most. This had been going on for weeks, coincident she was certain, with the death of her father.
So now she sat in the chair, wakeful, with sleep seemingly very far away. It would be best if she were to take the sleeping child and return him to his mother. If he awoke and discovered that Margaret was not about, he would scream and wake the house. Mary leaned over him, smiling to herself at her earlier thought that in slumber, he looked so much like a little angel. She must be careful of his wings as she lifted him! She stifled a giggle at such a flight of fancy. But as soon as he was in her arms the smell that always moved her to tears assaulted her once again. A sleeping child simply possessed a unique scent, something that she had always thought of as baby smell. It was not unpleasant; it was just like no other odor she had ever encountered. As she carried the child, wrapped in his counterpane, the nearness of him brought tears to her eyes. If only little Henry, Lord Darnley, were her own!
There were no halberdiers at Chelsea. That was one of the things that delighted Mary so much about the place. It was a small, intimate manor, with no need for such. The walls had no cressets; they were covered with exquisite tapestries and paintings, and at intervals up and down each corridor, finely carved wooden tables held oil lamps, protected by metal shields that reflected the light, almost doubling its effect. Chelsea was a fine home.
Margaret’s rooms were next to Mary’s, so there was not far to go; Mary opened the door a crack, and could just make out a shape in the bed that was her cousin. She was fast asleep; Mary could tell by her even breathing. She carefully laid the sleeping child in his cradle, tucked him in, and stole out the door.
It was past the middle of the night. From the state of her candles, Mary had judged it to be an hour, perhaps less, before dawn. She took a few steps back towards her own rooms when a thought struck her. A mug of warm milk had been known to induce sleep. If she had one now, she might get a precious hour or two of sleep before the day began. That was another advantage of being in such a house. In a palace, one would have had to awaken one’s ladies, who would rouse a page, who would make his slow journey to the kitchens, no doubt grumbling all the way; a kitchen slut would be roused, a fire lighted, the milk warmed; at which point the page would be nowhere to be found. The kitchen slut would leave the milk, which would be retrieved by the page, who would make his slow way back. By the time the milk reached one, it would be long past efficacious, being so tepid that it was hardly worth the effort of drinking it. But at Chelsea, she could steal down to the kitchens and make her own hot milk.
The house was built on three sides around a courtyard. If she cut across the inner garden, she could be at the kitchen, which was at the end of the opposite wing of the house, in less time than if she traveled the interior route. And a breath of air might be welcome. Her own rooms were at the end of the main wing; all she need do was to turn into the east corridor, where just across from the queen’s rooms, there was a little back stair that lead directly into the garden. Mary turned on her heel, retraced her steps, and walked the short distance to the end of the main wing and made the turn into the east corridor.
# # #
The east wing of the house was reserved only for Catherine and her ladies. The queen’s rooms were at the end, with tall windows on two sides, one view facing the orchard and the river, the other facing the surrounding fields. As Mary neared the very end of the passage, where to her left was the little door to the back stairs that she sought, and to the right were Catherine’s rooms, she thought she heard the murmur of voices. Was someone else wakeful in the night, then?
Slowly the door to Catherine’s antechamber opened on silent hinges. But instead of the queen, there was a man. The corridor was lit with the little oil lamps and Mary had her candle, but at first she did not recognize him; his back was to her. He backed out of the room laughing and holding out his hands; she could hear the queen playfully shushing him. And then he pulled her out into the corridor, drew her to him, and kissed her.
Their deshabille was obvious; Catherine’s sleeping shift had slipped, revealing a creamy shoulder, and the man’s shirt and doublet hung open. Slung over his shoulder, tied by their top laces, was a pair of knee boots, and over one arm hung a substantial cloak. By some soldier’s sixth sense, the man turned and Mary found
herself face to face with the Lord High Admiral himself, Sir Thomas Seymour, now also Baron Sudeley. A gasp escaped Mary’s lips, and this sound made Catherine turn.
Catherine’s face was a study in confused horror; Mary stared wide-eyed at the couple, her mouth set in a round “O” of astonishment. The curious expression on Thomas’s face expressed nothing so much as wry amusement. For the moment, Mary was struck completely speechless.
The implication of what she was witnessing was unmistakable.
And then suddenly all the years of self-control, the polite decorum expected of a royal princess, the resigned acceptance of political and diplomatic necessities, exploded in a burst of emotion. Mary saw, in that moment, the red that people speak of when they are seized by a flash of blinding anger. The flash seethed until it became a white heat.
“How dare you!” she spat out, her voice barely a hissing whisper.
Catherine, herself schooled to years of demure modesty, felt her ire soar like one of the Chinese rockets that Henry used to so delight in. Thomas, aware of what was happening and thinking it very droll, dropped his arm from Catherine’s. He had no intention of holding them back; he wanted to watch the cats fight.
Catherine’s eyes smoldered and she replied, in a voice rendered deadly by its very softness; she self-consciously pulled her shift back up over her shoulder, tilted her chin up and said, “We are married.”
At that confession, Mary was so non-plussed that for a moment she did not respond. And then she burst forth with such a veritable spate of vituperative invective that even Thomas was taken aback.
“How dare you marry before your year of mourning is ended!” In the white heat of her anger, she spared a thought for poor Philip; what would he think when he learned that the king’s own widow had married a mere ten weeks after her husband’s death? She could have been married herself at this very moment had she been willing to set propriety at naught! And perhaps she would have been well on her way to having a child to hold in her arms and cherish, a little son like Darnley!
Catherine’s eyes narrowed. “You are nothing but a jealous spinster!”
The insult rankled; it was Mary’s turn to gasp. “I would not be so had I been willing to compromise my reputation as you have done!” exclaimed Mary. “You are nothing but a brazen hussy willing to besmirch your good name and sully the memory of my father!” Mary’s voice was gathering in volume; soon she would be shouting. “May I remind you, Madam, that my father was a king, the greatest king this country has ever known, and his memory deserves better than a widow whose blood is so hot that she falls into the arms of the first fortune hunter to look her way!”
Catherine did look shocked at this, but made no reply.
Mary seized the opportunity to continue her harangue. “Know you not how far down you were on the list of candidates considered by your loving husband?” At this she looked Thomas full in the face, but still he seemed more entertained than anything else. She turned back to Catherine. “Oh, yes, I am Heir Apparent to the throne, so I was his first choice! And when I was unwilling, for Edward was nothing loath, I can tell you! …your precious husband turned to Elizabeth, bastard though she is! But the Lord Protector set him straight, I hear!” At this she looked Thomas in the eye and repeated the very words that his own brother had said to him, that such as they were not meant to be kings nor marry princesses, that they should be grateful for the blessings they already had, and not seek to aspire beyond their place. “But, oh, he did not stop there, my lady, oh no! Next he sought after Anne of Cleves, she being just that little bit richer than yourself and a true and noble lady born! She would have none of him either, and so he set his sights on the Duchess of Richmond, who also laughed in his face, from what I have heard!”
By this time Mary was red in the face and panting; the corridor was silent for a few seconds, while Thomas wondered how in the world Mary had come to hear practically verbatim a private conversation between him and his brother. The walls did have ears!
Catherine had had ample time to gather herself during Mary’s onslaught, and now she said haughtily, “Your sainted father broke the hearts of three of his wives, murdered two of them, and had the Duchess of Suffolk not had cold steel in her spine, he would have murdered me! Am I supposed to grieve for a king who asks to buried next to another woman, and who left me out of a family portrait, that he might paint his dead wife into it? I think not!” Catherine’s own chest heaved in her indignation. “Your father knew that I loved Thomas and that we had set our hearts on marrying, but he chose to break us up, just as he did with Anne Boleyn and Harry Percy!”
Mary’s eyes narrowed. “Do not speak to me of Mistress Boleyn, thank you very much! Another common, brazen hussy! What did the two of you think to do, rule the realm in my brother’s stead? You are nothing but a pair of base commoners, completely unsuitable for the high station to which you have been raised! You are not fit to wipe my father’s boots, let alone rule his kingdom!”
“Your illustrious father,” rebutted Catherine, “left this country bankrupt, its currency debased, her credit ruined, and in the hands of a child! The Council is fraught with internecine conflict, crisis upon crisis plagues the nation! The religion of the country is in a state of flux, and there is much unrest because of it! So much for his legacy!”
Catherine’s last words hung on the air like daggers; very quietly Mary said, “My father was quite clear about the religion he expected this country to practice. His very will asked for daily masses to be said for his soul in perpetuity. In perpetuity! And may I remind you, Madam, that during his reign the fires at Smithfield never burned brighter with the human torches of heretics? You were almost one yourself!”
This did make Catherine gasp, but Mary only stopped to draw breath and then began her tirade again. “Do you think that I cannot see it? Norfolk in the Tower, Gardiner disgraced, and now Wriothesley thrown off the Council!”
“It was your father who threw Norfolk into the Tower and shunned Gardiner!” Catherine shot back.
“Yes,” said Mary, “because the Howards could not be trusted not to declare my brother a bastard and rule England in his stead! I cannot condone the king’s break with Rome, nor the Dissolution of the Monasteries, but I do know that my father died desirous of keeping England a Catholic country, and what happens? Within hours of his death, his entire Council refutes his wishes, and wastes no time shamelessly bestowing upon themselves noble titles and riches that the treasury, as you so astutely pointed out, cannot afford! The Council, and you included, Thomas Seymour, are nothing more than a passel of self-righteous hypocrites who seek to overturn centuries of faith in pursuit of your own aggrandizement, property and power! All of you are determined, against my father’s express wishes, to cast down the Mass in favor of the Reformed faith! Wriothesley was thrown off the Council for no other reason than that he is Catholic! All of you have shamelessly enriched yourselves at my brother’s expense, and at the expense of the kingdom! And he just an innocent child! And to add insult to the injury,” at this she turned to face Thomas, “your brother pronounces himself Duke of Somerset, a royal title belonging to my grandfather’s Beaufort line!”
“Is that not the bastard line from which the Tudors sprang?” asked Thomas blandly.
Suddenly the mist cleared from Mary’s eyes and she realized that here they were, two women railing at each other like fish wives, with a common cur egging them on. Mary drew a deep breath and in a normal voice, ignoring Thomas’s jibe, she said, “The Council is composed of upstart parvenus not fit to govern this realm. God help England.”
At that everyone was silent for a few moments.
And then Thomas laughed and said, “Well, now that you are privy to our secret, perhaps you can speak to the Council for us.” The cynical grin on his face was maddening, but she had debased herself enough. She longed to slap his mocking face, and scratch Catherine’s until the blood flowed, but she would not.
Catherine, the panic evident in her ey
es, placed a hasty hand on Thomas’s arm. “Oh, no, please,” she said. “Now is not the right time!”
Mary sneered. “Yes, Madam, ashamed you are of that which you have done, and ashamed you should be! You are an immoral woman and I will not stay under your roof for one moment longer than I need.” With that she turned on her heel and was astonished to find Frances, Margaret, Elizabeth, Lady Tyrwhit and Lady Suffolk standing behind her, their faces pale with shock.
Whitehall Palace, June 1547
“I have said no, and no is what I mean.”
“But my heart’s darling,” pleaded Edward Seymour, Lord Protector of England. He was afraid of no man, but he was afraid of one woman, and that woman was his wife. “The late king’s will is quite clear on the subject. Queen Catherine is to be the first lady of the realm until King Edward marries.”
“Edward is a child!” shouted Anne. “And if you think that I am going to wait upon the wife of your younger brother when I hold the highest position of any woman in this land, you are dreaming!”
At this Edward looked very pained. “But, my sweeting, it makes no difference to whom she is married. She is still the widow of the late king; she is the Dowager Queen, and so will she be until God takes her. You must accept this.” He disliked arguing with his wife; she was his Diana, his Athena, his…
“Are you listening to me?” Anne stood, eyes flashing, hands on hips, glaring at him; a truly magnificent woman.
Her petite figure, her pretty face, her fragile looks, all belied her tough-as-nails nature. She had been the making of him after the debacle with his first wife. Any man might one day wake to find himself a cuckold, but how many men could say that they had been cuckolded by their own father? For that was what had happened to him. The shame had been hard to bear when it all came to light. And then Anne had come along and saved him. He owed his sanity, his very life to her. He would have done for her, given her, anything in his power. But this he could not do. She must, she simply must, carry the queen’s train, a privilege any other lady of the court would have been thrilled to perform. It galled him to be the de facto king of England, ruler of the realm in all but name, and not to be able to grant her permission to take precedence over the Dowager Queen. For that was what she really wanted, what she demanded; her refusal to carry Queen Catherine’s train was incidental. What his wife was really demanding was to be recognized, and treated as, Queen of England.
The Baker's Daughter Volume 2 Page 5