Beware, Princess Elizabeth

And I promptly forgot about her.

OUR WELCOME at the queen’s beautiful Chelsea Palace was as warm as one could wish for. Queen Catherine didn’t wait for me to beg her to receive me, but as soon as she had word of our arrival, she stepped out into the snowy courtyard to greet me. “How happy I am you have come to be with me,” she said with an affectionate embrace.

She led Kat and me through elegant halls with marble floors and walls panelled in oak to our own apartments, a spacious suite of chambers with windows overlooking the River Thames. After inviting us to join her at supper when we were ready, the queen left us to recover from our journey.

As servants carried in our trunks and boxes, Kat went about examining everything from the candles in the sconces on the wall (“Good quality beeswax,” she said approvingly) to the tester bed, with its canopy and curtains of heavy blue damask. “Look!” Kat whispered, poking her finger into the lofty bedding with its coverlet, also of blue. “Three mattresses, all well stuffed with wool.”

I took more interest in a small writing desk, intricately carved, with two wooden stools covered in leather. There was even a supply of goose quills and a knife to sharpen them, and a little inkhorn. A cosy fire crackled on the hearth. I felt that I should be content here.

After we had rested, cleansed our hands and faces, and changed our muddy petticoats for fresh ones, we made our way to the gallery. Fine tapestries lined the walls. At one end, in a place of honour, hung a portrait of my father. Nearby was a small portrait of my grandfather, King Henry VII. I stood gazing into the eyes of the two portraits and tried to imagine what those great kings might have been thinking as the artist painted their images. Then a servant in livery of green and white, the Tudor colours, appeared and announced that the dowager queen awaited us in her private apartments.

The servant pushed open a heavy door. I entered the queen’s privy chamber, ready to kneel before Catherine. But before I could do so, I found myself enveloped in the arms of Tom Seymour. I barely managed to suppress a startled cry.

“Welcome, dear sister Elizabeth!” he roared, and twirled me around before setting me down rather unsteadily on my feet. All of my life I had been carefully schooled in royal deportment, and so I was shocked at his behaviour. At the same time, I confess, I was also thrilled.

I looked with alarm from this handsome, boisterous man to the sweet, smiling countenance of my stepmother. Queen Catherine must have observed my confusion, for she immediately took care to present him formally: “Thomas Seymour, baron of Sudeley.”

What are you doing here? I thought, but I made a curtsy and murmured a bit breathlessly, “My lord.”

The baron bowed deeply. “My lady Elizabeth,” he said, now looking straight-faced and rather pompous, as though he had not just moments before swept me off my feet.

And the queen, still smiling benignly, called for hippocras to be brought.

As it was the Lenten season, our supper consisted of manchet – fine white bread – and several dishes made of fish. While we ate, the baron described to me the stone castle called Sudeley, three days’ journey to the northwest in Gloucestershire.

“It was the pleasure of your brother, the king, to present me with both castle and title,” Tom explained. Then, at the queen’s urging, Tom Seymour told several tales of wild adventure that I only half believed and made jokes that I did not entirely understand.

So the evening passed merrily, until at last Catherine excused us. The liveried servant reappeared to conduct Kat and me back to our chambers. The fire was dying, and once our maids had removed our gowns and kirtles we retired for warmth to our bed, which turned out to be just as comfortable as it looked.

“What think you now of the baron of Sudeley?” Kat murmured into the darkness.

“I think him—” and here I hesitated, remembering his raucous greeting. “I think him very bold,” I replied at last.

“I believe that the baron would have you as his bride,” said Kat calmly, as though informing me that a cat likes cream, “were you of an age. And it is not long until you shall be.”

“He would marry me?” I gasped. “But does not Catherine love him? Does the baron not intend to wed the queen, once her mourning ends?”

“So she hopes. But I believe it is you to whom Tom Seymour has lost his heart.”

“But, Kat!” I protested, excited but also frightened. “This cannot be! What shall I do?”

“Do nothing at all, dear Elizabeth,” Kat replied in that placid way that at times infuriated me. “Wait and see.”

Wait and see, I thought as I lay awake, staring into the darkness long after Kat’s breathing had deepened in sleep. Too much of my life was “wait and see”. Yet, for now, I had no choice – even if I had known what my choices were.

NOT LONG AFTER I moved to Catherine’s mansion, I learned that Tom’s brother, Edward Seymour, had also been given a new title by the king. He was now duke of Somerset. Furthermore, he had been named (or more likely had named himself) lord protector of King Edward.

“This means that Edward Seymour will rule in your brother’s stead until the king comes of age,” Kat said. “The lord protector is supposed to assist and advise the young king, but you can imagine who will have the real authority for the next nine years.”

This was not a surprise, for I had known from the moment my father’s death was announced that Edward Seymour intended to grasp the reins of power in England.

One more thing: Tom Seymour had acquired yet another new title. He was now called lord admiral.

I learned this during one of the many dinners and suppers I shared during the following weeks with Queen Catherine. At least half the time, the lord admiral had no navy to command, no ship’s crew to attend; he only had us. I was better prepared now for his rambunctious greetings, as he would jump out at me from behind a tapestry or a table, seize me and swing me once or even twice around, and call out, “Welcome, my lady Elizabeth!”

I confess that I was not only prepared for his unconventional greeting, but I now looked forward to it. Catherine always watched this little ritual with a benevolent smile. When the lord admiral happened to be away on business, as he often was, I was disappointed. Of course, I took care to hide my disappointment. It would not do to have my kind stepmother suspect how eagerly I awaited those few precious, playful moments in Tom’s arms. I knew from the looks they exchanged that Catherine was deeply in love with Tom. What was not so plain was the depth of his feeling for her.

I was, as I have said, thirteen years old at the time, and I had begun to think of love for myself. Marriage did not tempt me, although I assumed it was my fate, as it was the fate of all women. Marriage was about securing property or power, and seldom had anything to do with love. I had only to look at my father’s six marriages to shudder at the prospect. Queen Catherine herself had been married twice to men much older than herself before she married my father, also much older.

Yet, I thought, when I do marry, it must be to a man like Tom Seymour: handsome, charming, dashing. “And”, as Kat was quick to point out, “with a bit of the devil in him.” She made that sound like a good thing. Increasingly, I wasted time in daydreams about what it might be like to be the wife of the lord admiral.

Then, early one May morning, Queen Catherine called me to her chambers. I was instructed to come alone. As soon as I arrived, she dismissed her waiting women. The queen bade me sit by her side, which I did, quite mystified by this unusual meeting. “I have a secret for you, Elizabeth, and for you alone. For my sake you must tell no one, although in time all of England will know.”

“I swear that I will speak of this to no one,” I said breathlessly.

“The lord admiral, baron of Sudeley, and I have married,” she said, blushing prettily. “Tom Seymour will no longer be a frequent visitor to our house. He will be living here with us.”

My head whirled dizzily with this news. I managed to convey my good wishes, but I confess that I felt a sharp stab of jealousy. Would the raucous greetings and the loud kisses on my cheek come to an end, now that Tom Seymour was my stepmother’s husband? It had been foolish of me to dream of him as someday being my own husband, although Kat herself had encouraged that fantasy.

I kept my pledge to the queen and said nothing at all, but finally the baron’s presence at odd hours provoked palace gossip. At last the marriage was made public.

Kat Ashley appeared profoundly shocked when she learned of it. “It is much too soon for this,” she declared, frowning in disapproval. “The dowager queen is bound to official mourning for a year. King Henry has been dead but three months!”

I did not mention that I had already heard the news from Catherine’s own lips, but I did remind Kat that she herself had predicted this event, as well as the untimely suddenness.

“Do not be pert, miss,” Kat admonished me, and I said no more.

THERE WAS ANOTHER change in our living situation, this one more to my liking. With Tom officially part of our Chelsea household, he brought with him his ward, Lady Jane Grey, who was also my cousin – my father’s sister Margaret was Jane’s grandmother. As young children Jane and I and my brother – and, for a time, Robin Dudley – had shared lessons with our tutors. Jane was nine years old, Edward’s elder by only a matter of weeks. Now Jane was under the lord admiral’s guardianship, according to an agreement made with her parents.

Jane Grey joined in my studies with my tutor, William Grindal. Despite the difference in our ages, I found Jane entirely my intellectual equal. Her Latin was as fluent as mine, if not better, and she was already reading Greek and Hebrew, in which I had but scant interest. Jane was a brilliant student, and I enjoyed the challenge she provided.

But it appeared that something else was going on. Kat, walking with me in the gardens outside Chelsea Palace, said to me, “I believe the lord admiral intends to see his ward married to the king.”

With her small bones and large, solemn eyes, rosy lips, and grave demeanour, Jane seemed a good match for my brother. But there were already rumours that the lord protector had chosen another of our cousins, five-year-old Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, to become my brother’s wife. This struck me as a particularly interesting rivalry – not between the two young girls, who would not be consulted in such a matter, but between the two Seymour brothers. Tom and Edward were each manoeuvring to promote his own interests. I had already concluded that Tom’s greatest ambition was to replace his brother and become King Edward’s lord protector.

My stepmother was caught up in her new marriage. Besides my governess, Kat, Jane was my only friend. She was a sweet-natured girl in addition to having an acute intellect, and we spent many amiable hours in each other’s company.

Although I was older by four years, there was little I could teach Jane, with the exception of embroidery. Her keen mind, though, was more challenged by Greek translations than by the couching of gold threads on a piece of silk.

“Oh, dear Elizabeth,” she would sigh. “Your stitches are so much finer than mine shall ever be!” And so on. Had she not been my only friend, the only young girl with whom I could speak and walk and ride in the park, I might have found her somewhat annoying at times. She was almost too perfect.

We were sitting at our needlework – I was embellishing the velvet cover of a book as a gift for Catherine, her initials entwined with the lord admiral’s, worked in silver wire – when Jane abruptly turned to me and murmured, “I am so happy here, Elizabeth. You cannot imagine how it was.”

“I, too, am happy,” I responded. Imagine what? I wondered.

“I should not speak of it,” she said.

“But do, dear cousin,” I urged.