Виктория Холт - Queen Of This Realm

As soon as they arrived I was summoned to the hall. Edward was standing there with Hertford on one side of him and Sir Anthony Browne on the other.

“Edward,” I cried, forgetting ceremony. I ran to him and we embraced.

The two men stood silently watching us and neither of us cared whether they considered this a breach of etiquette. There are moments when such matters can be forgotten and affection given full rein.

It was Hertford who made the announcement.

“My lord and lady, I have grave news for you. Your father, our great and good King Henry the Eighth, has died in his Palace of Whitehall.” Then he fell to his knees and taking Edward's hand cried: “God save the King.”

Edward looked startled. Then he turned to me. I put my arms about him and we wept. We had lost our father. I was old enough to know that we were fast moving into danger. I was not yet fourteen years old but I felt that I had been learning how to wade carefully in treacherous waters. But Edward… poor little Edward…to be so young… and a king!

We were crying bitterly and my tears were more for my frail little brother than for the great and glorious, cruel and ruthless yet magnificent King who had just passed out of this life.

MY LIFE CHANGED FROM THAT TIME. ONE THOUGHT WAS uppermost in my mind. It bewildered me—but not for long. It was so dazzling, so truly wonderful, so remote—and yet it was possible. One day I could be Queen of England.

After having been known as the bastard daughter of the King, of no great significance, scorned and kept in mended garments, sent from place to place at the convenience of others, I had become of no small consequence. Henceforth people would treat me in a different manner. I began to see it immediately. I noticed the covert looks. Be careful, said their eyes. She could be Queen one day.

I was savoring what a glorious sensation power can be. I was being given just that faintest glimmer of that which my father had enjoyed since the days when he was eighteen years old and became the King. To rule a country— a great country—what a destiny! And it could be mine.

This new state had come about because of the conditions of my father's will. I was to receive three thousand pounds a year—riches for me—and a marriage portion of ten thousand pounds. True, I could only marry with the consent of the King—my little brother Edward now—and his Council. Edward would be easy enough to handle, but what of the Council? No matter. There was no question of marriage yet. But if any man tried to marry either my elder half sister Mary Tudor or myself without the consent of the Council, serious charges would be brought against him and my sister and me. That did not greatly concern me, for being not yet fourteen I had no mind to risk any lives for the sake of a romantic marriage.

The crown, of course, would go to Edward. If he died without heirs, it passed to Mary; and if Mary should die, then I was the next in line, although the Catholics believed that my father had never really been married to my mother and I was a bastard! As this will was made a year or so before my father's death, he had stated that before Mary or myself would come any heirs he should have through Katharine Parr—adding ominously “or any future queen.”

I could not stop myself from summing up the situation, turning it this way and that. Edward was very young and frail. I wondered whether he would marry and could be expected to get healthy offspring. Mary? Well, Mary was thirty-one and unmarried. Would she find a husband? Most certainly. And if she bore a son, what hope had I?

So I warned myself again and again that I must not be overdazzled by even the remote prospect. I must rejoice that it was a possibility and prepare myself to play a waiting game.

My father was buried at Windsor and his heavy body had to be lowered into the grave by means of a vise worked by sixteen of the strongest men of the Yeomen of the Guard. The members of the King's household had stood around his grave, the Queen's old enemy Gardiner with the Lord Chamberlain and Lord Treasurer among them. In accordance with custom they broke their staves over their heads and threw them down into the coffin.

So passed the great King who had astonished the world by breaking with Rome and bringing about the biggest religious controversy ever known, who had had his will all his life, who had married six wives and murdered two of them—and God knows there might have been a third victim but for her adroitness and his failing health—all this and yet they mourned him. Was it because in spite of all his cruelty and his ruthlessness he showed great strength? Above all things, it seems, men admire strength. He was sentimental too and he had a conscience which would never let him rest. What strange contradictory characteristics were his! Yet, withal, men mourned his passing and turned regretful, fearful eyes to the new boy King.

There was a macabre story about something which had happened just before his burial. Kat told me this hesitatingly, pretending she could not tell and having to be forced to do so.

“People are whispering about it,” she said. “I cannot say that it is true, but there are those who saw—”

“Come on, Kat,” I said more imperiously than ever for was I not a potential heiress to a throne? “I command you to tell me.”

Kat raised her eyes to the ceiling, a frequent gesture.

“And I dare not disobey my lady's command. On the way to Windsor the cortége broke its journey at Sion House and there the body rested in the chapel. It was at Sion House, remember, that poor Katharine Howard stayed when they were taking her to the Tower. Poor child, they say she was almost mad with fear, for did she not have the example of her cousin to remind her of what lay in store for her? Well, the coffin burst, for the King's body was too great for its fragile wood, and the King's blood was spilt on the chapel floor. Now this is the shocking part. Are you sure you want me to go on? Very well. A dog was seen to run forward and lick the blood clean and although they tried to draw him away he snarled and refused to budge until there was not a speck of blood on the floor.”

“Kat, where did you hear such a tale?”

“My dear lady, it is being whispered throughout the land. You do not know of this because you were not then born but when the King was thinking of ridding himself of his first Queen, one Friar Peyto who cared nothing for what might befall him stood in his pulpit and declared that the King was as Ahab and that the dogs in like manner would lick his blood.”

“What a terrible story!”

“Tis terrible times we live in, sweet lady. The Lady of Aragon suffered greatly and was there any one of the King's wives who did not? Your own beautiful mother so desperate… And we saw the terror of the last Queen for ourselves, you and I.”

“Kat, how dare you talk so about my great father!”

“Only because commanded to do so by one who may well herself be mistress of us all one day.”

Kat was smiling at me, and because she was Kat and said such words I could forgive her anything.

I told her she was the most indiscreet person I knew and I hoped she did not chatter to others as she did to me. She was as excited as I was about my prospects and being less thoughtful and logical than I, she believed that I was almost on the throne.

“The little King is very sickly,” she said. “He won't make old bones. And as for Mary, I sometimes think she does not enjoy good health. Whereas you, my precious one, are full of vigor. I said to John Ashley only the other day, ‘Our girl is destined for greatness. I feel it in my bones.'”

“You are the most foolish creature I ever knew and I wonder that I love you. If any heard you express such sentiments, what do you think they would say of you? You would be accused of ill-wishing the King and you know I love Edward dearly.”

“I don't think John Ashley wants to be rid of me yet,” said Kat flippantly, “so he won't betray me. Nor will you, my lady, for I cannot see you ever reaching that stage when you would not want your Kat there to look after you—throne or not.”

“Oh Kat, do have a care,” I said, laughing.

She would take no heed. It was not long before she was talking about a marriage for me.

“Well, 'tis a merry state and one necessary to a woman.”

“All women?” I asked.

“All women, my clever lady.”

“I am not so sure. What of my mother? Do you think she thought what a blessed state it was when she was on her way to Tower Green? Did Katharine Howard think it so when she ran screaming through the gallery? And what of Katharine Parr when she was confined to her bed in mortal peril? Do you believe they thought it then?”

“You are talking of queens.”

“Queens—or those who may be queens—must surely take special care before they embark on matrimony.”

“Marriages are usually made for queens, dear lady.”

“I have a fancy that I shall make my own, if indeed I ever decide to make one.”

“I know one who would be very happy to take you.”

“Who is that?”

She was conspiratorial and her voice had sunk to a whisper. She put her lips to my ear.

I flushed. I could not pretend that I had not noticed him and that I did not think him one of the most exciting men I had ever seen. He was tall, extremely good-looking and more than that had an air of gallantry and indefinable charm. There was only one man at Court who could fit that description: Thomas Seymour.

“Ah, my lady,” went on the incorrigible Kat, “I see that you are inclined to look with favor on this very desirable gentleman.”

“You see much which is not there, Kat Ashley,” I reprimanded her. “And how do you know he might have plans regarding me?”

“Because I have eyes, my lady, and I have seen his own linger on you with much affection.”

Was it so? And how did Thomas Seymour regard me? When he looked at me with that affection which Kat had perceived, did he see me wearing a crown? Was he, brother to that very Jane who had supplanted my mother, uncle to the frail King, looking out for his future?

“If he asked for your hand, Princess, would you take him?”

“You are impertinent, Kat Ashley,” I said and I slapped her face.

She put her hand to her cheek. “And you, my lady, are hasty with your hands,” she said.

I put my arms round her and kissed her. “I'm sorry I did that, but you can be very aggravating sometimes. I do not want to hear any more about Thomas Seymour.”

“Do you not?” said Kat. “Shall we then discuss the weather or the new blue silk you have…or your embroidery?”

“You would be safer talking of such things.”

She laughed and I laughed with her and she went on to tell me that Sir Thomas Seymour had been created Baron of Sudeley and made Lord High Admiral. “The late King left him two hundred pounds in his will and I verily believe, my lady, that had His Majesty lived there would have been the honor of marriage into the King's family for him. The King loved Thomas Seymour … and who would not love such a fine, witty and handsome gentleman?”

“I believe there are some who do not love him.”

“Oh, that brother of his—the Duke of Somerset if you please now. He is the big man. He has the King in his charge. They say Thomas is a little jealous of his brother.”

“They say, Kat? It seems to me that it is Kat Ashley who says this and that, and she is the very mistress of gossip throughout this land.”

“And who profits from what I discover more than my lady?”

That was how we talked and there was hardly a day when Thomas Seymour's name was not mentioned between us.

I had to admit I was thinking a great deal of him. I had known for some time that he was interested in me… even before my father's death. He was my brother's favorite uncle. I believed that Edward was not very fond of the elder Seymour. Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset to give him his newly acquired title, was a man of immense ambition and extreme ruthlessness. Now that my father was dead, he had become Protector of England and was in a position of complete authority. It was natural that Thomas, the younger brother and favorite uncle of the young King, could not happily accept a subordinate position.

However the Seymours were the important family in the country now. They had nothing to fear from the Howards. Surrey had been beheaded and the Duke, his father, was still in the Tower; his death warrant was to have been signed on the night before the King died, but the King being too weak to add his signature to the documents, the execution had been waived, though Norfolk continued a prisoner.