Читать книгу The Tudor Throne - Brandy Purdy - Страница 13

8

Elizabeth

“He is your stepfather, Bess,” I kept reminding myself. But it did no good. “No good can come of dallying with such a rash and reckless knave,” I told myself times too numerous to tally. “Ambition is the star that guides him, and in following it he forgets to watch his feet; he will stroll right off the precipice someday, and if you go along hand in hand with him, gazing rapt like lovers do, so too will you.” But all he had to do was smile at me and I was deaf to reason and all serious thoughts went scurrying out of my mind like rats fleeing a burning building.

He would saunter in as I sat upon a velvet-upholstered stool, embroidering or reading aloud with Kate, with his arms overflowing with great bouquets of wildflowers. He would draw up a chair behind me and nimbly pluck off my hood and take my wavy waist-length Tudor-red tresses in his confident hands and weave them into a braid. Inserting the sunny yellow daffodils, deep purple violets, orange-yellow marigolds, sky-colored bluebells, pinks, buttercups, daisies, gillyflowers, and the vibrant multi-hued pansies called Heart’s Ease into the plait he had fashioned, he would marvel breathlessly at the golden strands amongst the red, picked out by the fire’s or the sun’s light, “like gilded threads worked into red damask.” And when I stood it would look as though I had a garden growing down my back. Sometimes he would come bearing only daisies and would lie at my feet, idly weaving them into chains and crowns to adorn both me and his “bonny, buxom Kate,” pausing sometimes to slowly, deliberately, pluck the petals, gazing at me, hard and bold as his lips mouthed the words: “She loves me, she loves me not, she loves me . . .” And a fire as red as my hair would ignite in my face, and the words would crash and pile into a hopeless jumble upon my lips or else stick in a tangled heap in my throat, and I would feel that for the life of me I could not sort them out again.

Another day he joined us for a picnic under the shady trees in the park. And I noticed, marveling yet again, at how my stepmother had changed from the days when she had been my father’s wife. Nowadays Kate seemed to walk in a dream, with her head lost in the clouds. Though Kate personified autumn in her colors, her red-gold hair and hazel eyes reminiscent of fall leaves, marriage to Tom had brought spring back into her life and rejuvenated her, making her more girlish and giddy and less matronly and dignified. At that particular picnic, she grew giddy, then just as quickly drowsy as Tom plied her with cup after cup of malmsey, until she fell asleep.

As she slumped against the trunk of an old oak tree, snoring softly, Tom stealthily removed her hood and plucked the pins from her hair so that it fell down about her shoulders. Next he took off her shoes and, reaching up under her skirts, with a sly wink at me, rolled down and peeled off her stockings. It struck me, like an arrow in the heart that, as he lifted her foot to his lips and delicately nibbled her little pink toes, that Tom’s eyes never once left my face. Indeed, his eyes fixed on mine, almost tauntingly, as if he meant to torment me by behaving thus with his wife right in front of me, as if he were flaunting privileges that were hers by right could never be mine.

Kate awoke with a cry at the feel of his teeth nipping at her toes, and Tom leapt up, laughing like a madman, brandishing her shoes and stockings high above his head, shouting if she wanted them back she would have to catch him as he took off at a fast run across the park. And I was treated to the most unlikely spectacle of the barefoot Katherine Parr, a woman renowned for her dignity, racing after him like a barefoot peasant girl shrieking and shouting with laughter as she ran across the grass, with her skirts bunched up about her knees and her hair streaming in the breeze.

I kept telling myself he was my stepfather and that it was wrong that I should have such thoughts about him. I kept reminding myself that he was Kate’s husband. Kate who had been the kindest woman in the world to me, taking me under her wing and nurturing me as if I were her own natural-born daughter. And yet . . . his behavior toward me contradicted the facts. He behaved like a boisterous young swain hell-bent on wooing and winning me.

One morning, just as the sun’s gentle butter-yellow fingers were beginning to whisk the dawn away, and I lay still in slumber, safe and warm inside the dark haven of my bedcurtains, I heard my door creak open. Drowsily, I thought I must remember to ask Mrs. Ashley to have the hinges oiled, then rolled over, burrowing deeper into the feather mattress, and thought no more about it.

Suddenly, my bedcurtains were wrenched open wide, and there, to my astonishment, stood the gardener, with the old battered wooden bucket he used to carry manure to fertilize the roses that bloomed so beautifully at Chelsea.

I bolted up in bed, outraged, clutching the covers over my bare chest, as I often slept naked in those days, and my dressing gown was draped over a chair, nearby, but still beyond my reach. A sharp retort was primed to blast like a cannonball from my mouth, when suddenly his lips spread in a wide pearly smile that I recognized instantly as Tom’s, and he tilted back the brim of the battered old hat that had cast a dark shadow over his face. I gasped and braced myself as he raised the pail and flung its contents at me and I found myself sitting in the midst of a flurry of red rose petals.

Carelessly, he flung the pail aside, the bearskin on the hearth muffling the thud, then dove onto the bed right on top of me. I gave a little startled cry as I lay pinned beneath his weight, but his hand clapped quickly over my mouth stifled it newborn.

“Lady,” he said smiling, “I come to you in the guise of a gardener to tend my rosy buds.”

And with those words he raised himself and pulled the bedclothes down to my waist, pinning the down-turned covers with his knees, and holding my arms pinioned at my sides to prevent me from pushing him away or covering myself.

“Slow-blooming posies need nurturing and encouragement in order that they might grow and thrive,” he explained in a mockingly sage tone, ignoring the blush that dyed my face as red as the rose petals he had spilled on my bed, and the tears of shame that shimmered in my eyes. He ducked his head down and began to kiss the pallid pink nipples that sat in pools of rosy flesh upon my flat white chest.

Though I was thirteen, my body was indeed slow to blossom; my courses had only begun to flow and were as yet an irregular trickle rather than a full-blown crimson gush, and only a few sparse red tendrils curled around my nether lips.

I squirmed and struggled beneath him, caught between resistance and surrender. One moment I gasped and struggled hard, and the next I arched my back, offering up my paltry bosom for more of his exquisite kisses, sighing at this newly discovered delight.

With a lascivious grin and a last serpentlike flicking little lick, he abandoned my little pink paps, now throbbing and stiff, no longer pale but flushed a much rosier hue, and left a trail of meandering hot kisses down to my waist. Then he tore back the covers and let loose an exclamation of surprised delight.

“Pink petals amongst the red!” he cried, and promptly lowered his mouth to kiss my nether lips.

I nearly swooned as I squirmed and sighed beneath his questing, teasing tongue, exploring every nook and cranny of my most intimate parts, which no man had ever seen before. I was lost in a new world of bliss, a dream from which I never wanted to awaken, when suddenly a scream pierced the dawn, jolting me up in a rude awakening.

Mrs. Ashley stood in the doorway of her room, which adjoined mine, her eyes wide and her mouth agape.

With laughter twinkling in his eyes, Tom raised his head and winked at her.

“Careful, Mistress Kat, remember, curiosity killed the curious cat!” he chided playfully as he leapt off the bed and bounded out the door, pausing only long enough to pat her plump posterior and provoke an indignant cry from her.

I lay taut, in dead silence, too stunned and ashamed to even cover my nakedness, and Mrs. Ashley stood likewise stricken as we listened to his footsteps and laughter retreating down the hall.

“Bess!” she exclaimed, an expression of horror spreading across her round, full-moon face. “How could you?”

“Get out! Go away!” I cried, the spell suddenly broken, yanking the covers up over my head, and turning onto my side, turning my back on my beloved governess, and wrapping them tight about me, as close as I could, like a cocoon, as I burst into angry, confused tears.

“Oh my darling girl!” Instantly contrite, wringing her hands and looking as if she too were about to cry, Kat wailed as she ran to me and tried to take me in her arms. I struggled free and refused to let her embrace me and, finally, she let me be, saying only that we must talk soon, for there were things that she, in a mother’s stead, must say to me. And at those words I wept all the harder.

Tom was a man brimming over with charm and winning ways and he began to woo Kat too, to overcome the rightful objections a governess should make when amorous advances are directed at her charge, especially one of royal blood—and a princess’s virtue and virginity must never be in doubt. He brought her bouquets of flowers, and baskets of berries he picked himself. He kissed her cheeks and twirled his fingers and stuck violets, pinks, and daisies in the frizzy, flyaway brown-gray curls escaping from the prim prison of her black French hood. Oftentimes he would creep up behind her and smack and pinch her ample bottom, saying he liked a full-hipped woman with great pillow-plump buttocks, and give her gifts of cakes and candies to further fatten them up. “I am fattening Mrs. Ashley’s great buttocks as if they were a Christmas goose!” he would jestingly declare, making her giggle and exclaim, “Oh, you are a naughty man!” waggling a finger at him as if he were a naughty schoolboy, and he would playfully snap his fine teeth at it as if he meant to bite it, and make her laugh all the more. There would always be an affectionate undertone to mar the severity of the scolds and reprimands she addressed to him. “A very naughty man!” she would repeat as she simpered and preened, blushed, and giggled, before she fluttered away, putting a little more sway into her steps and swing into her hips, darting a furtive glance back over her shoulder through coyly fluttered lashes to make sure that he was watching.

But Tom had achieved what he set out to do—he had won an ally—and Kat began to sing his praises to me at every turn. And every night thereafter when she tucked me into bed with a peck upon my cheek she would wish me “sweet dreams of the Lord Admiral, my pet.” She seemed to forget that she was a governess, not a matchmaker, and that Tom was married to our hostess, my own dear stepmother. She would spin elaborate, fantastical dreams, castles in the clouds in which Tom and I dwelled as man and wife in wedded bliss, and she proudly presided over a nursery filled with our fine, handsome children. Her dreams were so vivid I could feel his ring upon my finger, the weight of the gold, the flashing green fire of the emerald that stood symbol for his everlasting love, and his naked body, muscular, hard, virile, and strong, spooned around mine beneath the covers of our marriage bed, with the warmth of his breath against the nape of my neck, the tickle of his beard, and his hand lovingly cupping my breast, the hardness of his manhood pressed against my bare bottom. I could even smell and taste the food and wine on our table, and hear the merry chatter of our guests. And there were our daughters, Emily and Cassandra, playing with their dolls, dressing them up and talking to them like little mothers, and our sons, Christopher and Mark, cantering about on hobby horses and fighting mock battles with wooden swords, shouting with laughter and crying when they took a tumble and scraped their knees, all under the watchful eye of their governess, Kat, of course.

Though reason tried to hold me back, Kat dragged me into her dreamworld, and they became my dreams as well. And oh how my heart leapt and soared each time he called me his, and melted at each endearment, each “darling,” “sweetheart,” “dear heart,” and “dear one.”

But what about Kate, his wife and my stepmother—where was she in all this? She had no place in our realm of dreams, though I loved her dearly and wished her no ill, certainly not the cruel fate of a forsaken wife like my father’s first bride and Mary’s mother, Katherine of Aragon, had been, nor the cold bed of the grave where my own mother, Jane Seymour, and Katherine Howard now reposed. My heart felt a sharp twinge of guilt whenever I thought of Kate, vying emotions of resentment and regret. I knew I wronged her, and part of me was sorely sorry for it, yet another part of me did not care one whit.

In times of quiet, away from Kat’s chatter and fantasy prattle, I fought at times to face and at other times to stave off stone-cold reality. Tom was a married man. I was a royal princess, with my reputation to guard as if it were a priceless treasure. If we gave in and surrendered to our passion, what kind of life could we have together? My warring emotions reminded me of my long-held conviction that I did not want to be a wife, yet a part of me deep down and buried kindled to that urge. But did the role of mistress suit me? Could my proud spirit buckle to and accept a life lived in waiting and longing and hoping for stolen moments, treasuring each tryst, prizing each pilfered hour as if it were a precious, perfect pearl pried from the heart of an oyster? And to know that I was a luxury, a pastime, a private pleasure to be enjoyed in strictest secrecy and the utmost discretion, fated always to come second, never first, to live on crumbs from Tom’s wife’s table. To always temper passion with precaution lest I face the deathly perils of pregnancy and the ignominy and disgrace of bearing a bastard. To dwell forever in the shadows, while Kate walked openly in the sun at his side, unless the Wheel of Fortune spun in such a way that fate would one day let me take her place, but that was far too cruel and horrid to contemplate, for I truly did love Kate and never for a moment wished her in her grave. And to never be able to take up my pen and write to him the words I love you, lest they fall into the wrong hands, and our secret be betrayed, and he, for the presumption of dallying carnally with a royal princess, face the headsman’s ax that was the penalty for high treason. Could I? Would I? Yes! In defiance of all risk and reason my heart sang out like a whole choir of fallen angels, Yes, yes, and again yes! Anything to be with and belong to Tom! For him I would play Love’s prisoner and Love’s fool! Oh, and I was indeed a fool for him!

Every night, when the time came to say good night, I would watch Kate take Tom’s arm and ascend the stairs, clinging lovingly to him, the perfect picture of the devoted wife. And he, with his free hand, holding a candle to light their way. I would lag behind, my steps as leaden as my heart, my mind in an agony of torment as I watched their bedchamber door close behind them. Sometimes, Tom would wink back at me and then seize hold of Kate and sweep her up in his arms saying, “Did you not promise to be buxom and bonair in bed and at board? Well, tonight’s the night to make good on your promise, wife, then on the morrow we shall see how you do at board!” And, kicking the door shut behind him with his boot heel, he would carry her, giggling and snuggling in his arms, in to bed.

Alone in my bed, I would toss and turn as I imagined them locked together in a naked embrace, all caressing fingers and hungry lips. Every male organ I had ever seen started to thrust itself into my mind, a parade of phalluses, crude woodcarvings of cocks, illustrations in scholarly tomes pertaining to medicine and anatomy, paintings and statues, naked peasant brats howling at the roadside or playing in the mud, and my brother Edward as an alabaster-skinned infant being bathed in warm rosewater poured into a golden basin. And in the privacy of my bed, shrouded in the dark of night and drawn bedcurtains, my fingers began to stray more and more often down to the secret place between my thighs, to delve and explore where Tom’s ardent lips and tongue once had, but my own efforts were a poor proxy for his bold, practiced touch. In a fever of frustration, seething with a jealousy that verged on hatred for my good stepmother, I would roll onto my side, pound my pillow with an angry fist and sometimes bite it with my teeth to stifle my frustrated sobs, and weep until at last I fell asleep.

Then morning would come, and with the dawn came Tom. Sometimes striding in garbed in the gardener’s guise, ready to tend his “rosy buds,” others fully dressed for the day in fine velvet court attire gleaming with golden braid, or booted and gloved in riding leathers with a jaunty plume swaying in his cap, brandishing his riding crop and announcing, “I have come to spank my slugabed!” But no matter what he was wearing he was always ready to rouse me. Sometimes he would come to me naked and bare-legged beneath his garnet velvet dressing gown with his cock protruding like a cannon at the ready to introduce to my eager, inquisitive hands and hungry mouth, to make me believe that I had some heady, intoxicating power over him.

I tried, albeit halfheartedly, to resist and do the right thing. Some nights I leapt into bed, gloriously and wantonly nude, wiggling and writhing sensuously against the sheets, impatient for the dawn and Tom to come and rouse me with his caresses. Other nights I forced myself to show more restraint and donned a proper form-concealing white linen nightgown or gossamer-thin cobweb lawn night-shift to tantalizingly veil my burgeoning woman’s body, so that he would tease me out of it, shouting, “Be gone, virtuous raiments!” and chastise me for my false modesty and pull me naked and squealing across his knees to spank my bare bottom until it bore a matching set of smarting red handprints and he could truly say, not just in jest, that he had left his mark on me.

Some mornings, to give myself the illusion of being in control, in full command of my body and emotions, I rose before the dawn, and bade Kat lace me into a severe high-collared black mourning gown with a stiffly boned bodice, and sat myself down upon the window seat with my head bowed over a book, so that when Tom arrived he found a proper paragon of virtuous and modest maidenhood waiting for him.

And there were other mornings when he would catch me in the act of dressing. He would come in determined to play lady’s maid, and shoo the tittering, blushing Mrs. Ashley out of his way with a swat at her “great buttocks.” He would help me draw the sheer cobweb lawn shift over my head, and help me with my stays and bodice laces, always letting his fingers dally most familiarly, standing behind me, pressing his loins close, as his hands roved over me, often lingering to caress the bones at my hips as he held me and his lips pressed a kiss onto the nape of my neck, or nuzzled my ears and shoulders. He would kneel at my feet to put my stockings on, pausing first to playfully nip and nibble my naked toes, before rolling the stockings up and tying my silken garters in pretty bows just below my knees. And he would brush my hair, one hundred long, luxuriant strokes, over my scalp and down to my waist, before his deft fingers began to braid and nimbly insert the pins before he crowned me with my crescent-shaped French hood, darting in to steal a swift kiss if there were a chin-strap that required fastening. As he tilted my chin up and trailed his fingers slowly over my neck, pretending to examine the strap, to make sure it was neither too tight nor too loose, oh how I would shiver and my knees would feel deliciously weak and it was all I could do not to fall at his feet and pull up my skirts and open my legs, begging him to take me. At such times, I was as shameless as a bitch in heat.

To my surprise, I reveled in being naked before him. I felt a hot and happy wanton pride and a surge of intoxicating power when I finally admitted it to myself and stopped pretending to a modesty I didn’t truly feel.

Throughout the day, whenever Tom was away—and oh how bereft and empty the house seemed without him!—I was often sullen and listless, weary as though I hadn’t slept at all, and prone to be short of temper and tart of tongue, to snap at those about me who innocently and unintentionally irritated my frayed and passion-enflamed nerves, as sensitive as a rotten tooth is to sugar. Shadows hovered beneath my eyes and Cupid’s arrow shot away all appetite for food. I hungered only for Tom, to greedily swallow down love’s nectar when his cock-cannon fired inside my eager mouth. But when Tom was near, all it took was a touch of his hand or even a look would suffice and my heart would go zing! like the sharply plucked strings of a harp, and what he called “the pink petals amongst the red” would grow moist with the dew of lust as I yearned for my gardener to come tend my rosy buds, growing well now under his care. And I lost all trust I had ever had in my knees; I felt as if the whole of me would turn to water upon which a pulsing, throbbing, vibrant pink flower would bob like a lustily beating heart. As such fanciful thoughts assailed me, my whole body would quiver as if I were one of the wobbly fat ladies the pastry cook fashioned out of jelly for Tom’s amusement, and Kate would voice concern that I had caught a chill and order another applewood log thrown upon the fire, so solicitous was she for my welfare and blind to the truth before her eyes.

Then suddenly a strange lethargy began to steal over Kate, sapping her energy. She grew listless and pale and often queasy, and began to shun her breakfast tray, and lie abed late. She took frequent naps throughout the day and retired early at night as if she could not wait to fall into bed and sleep. Sometimes she would even nod off over her embroidery or beloved English translations of the Scriptures. Heedlessly, Tom and I would laugh and off we would scurry for long rides, galloping across the countryside with the wind in our hair, or sometimes, when the fancy seized us, and Kate bade us go and enjoy ourselves while she went early, yawning, droopy-eyed and leaden-footed to bed, to sail in her barge beneath the silvery moonlight upon the smooth sparkling sapphire-black river.

While Kate slumbered peacefully and obliviously in her bed, we would lounge by the fire, late into the night, lolling together on the bearskin rug, dipping strawberries into wine or cream and feeding each other, with Tom’s head resting in my lap or mine in his. Once he even dared take a strawberry and reach beneath my skirts with it, pressing it gently between my legs, against the pink heart of my womanhood. And, drawing it out again, the ruby-red heart-shaped fruit glistening with my juices, he looked up at me, deep into my eyes, as he slowly savored it. I shivered and quivered and felt as if the core of me were slowly melting and soon all that would be left of me was a hank of red hair and a puddle of flesh-colored wax at his feet. He made even something as simple as eating strawberries a sensual delight.

One night he recited a poem to me:

They flee from me that sometime did me seek,

With naked foot stalking in my chamber.

I have seen them gentle, tame, and meek

That are now wild and do not remember

That sometime they put themselves in danger

To take bread at my hand; and now they range

Busily seeking with a continual change.

Thanked be fortune, it hath been otherwise

Twenty times better; but once in special,

In thin array after a pleasant guise,

When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

And she me caught in her arms long and small,

Therewithall sweetly did me kiss,

And softly said, “Dear heart, how like you this?”

It was no dream, I lay broad waking.

But all is turned thorough my gentleness,

Into a strange fashion of forsaking;

And I have leave to go of her goodness,

And she also to use newfangleness.

But since that I so kindly am served,

I would fain know what she hath deserved.

Afterward, he told me that the poet, Sir Thomas Wyatt, had written it for my mother, each stanza heart-heavy with longing and regret for their lost love, the chance fate had cheated them of when my father, the determined hunter and mighty Caesar of Wyatt’s most famous poem, marked her out as his and fastened a black velvet choker about her neck like a dog’s collar set with diamonds spelling out “Noli Me Tangere,” making it plain that she was his.

By firelight, Tom resurrected, just for me, the fascinating creature that was Anne Boleyn. Through his words he made her live again, letting me see her as, in a moment of triumph, she danced and waded through red rose petals which my father had ordered suspended in a golden net beneath the ceiling to be released, to rain down, upon her entry into the Great Hall. And how she had laughed and spun around, her black hair swinging gypsy-free all the way down to her knees, with my own unborn self making her belly into a proud little round ball beneath her crimson gown. The gold cord laces on the back of her bodice had been left unfastened, for her personal comfort and to better accommodate me, and the tasseled ends bobbed and bounced, mingling with the blackness of her hair as she danced, and also to boast, to flaunt her success in the faces of her enemies and the naysayers who had dared declare that Anne Boleyn would never be queen. Giddy with triumph, she threw back her head and laughed and laughed as she spun round and round, stirring up rose petals and, watching her, my father smiled with joy.

Tom was a man who loved to live on the slicing edge of danger’s razor. As time passed, he grew bolder and more flagrant in his attentions to me, touching or looking at me in such a suggestive way right in front of Kate and other members of the household that I feared the truth would be revealed.

Once when my tutor had stepped momentarily out of our schoolroom, Tom seized the chance to run in, drop to his knees, and crawl beneath the table where I sat absorbed in my Greek translations, and duck his head beneath my skirts. I gave a startled cry and Master Grindal opened the door just as Tom was backing out from beneath the table and standing up. He made some excuse about having come to see how his stepdaughter’s lessons progressed only to discover me in a state of fright because of a spider, which he had just killed, but my flaming hot blush, and the absence of a dead spider, betrayed the truth, I am sure. And Master Grindal knew it took much more than a spider to frighten Elizabeth Tudor.

Another afternoon we were strolling in the garden with Kate when Tom decided that I had been overlong in wearing mourning for my father; he was tired of seeing me in black all the time, and so saying, unsheathed his dagger and, bidding Kate hold my arms behind my back, he began to cut my black velvet gown away from me until it was reduced to nothing but a pile of useless ribbons curling round my feet.

But he did not stop there. As the jagged ribbons fell and twined round my ankles like ebony snakes, his dagger rose and thrust down again and again, slicing through my starched white petticoats and soft lawn shift, his hands snatching and tearing away the frayed white strips, baring my limbs and privy parts.

My face burning with shame, I struggled against Kate’s grasp. I was surprised by her strength; her graceful white hands were suddenly as strong as shackles. Turning to try to see her face, I thought I glimpsed a gloating malice lurking in her eyes before it disappeared so swiftly I was never truly certain if I had seen it or merely imagined it. I twisted hard against her, with all my might, and finally succeeded in wresting my wrists free. I twisted around and grasped and clung to her, my face flaming crimson as the roses that bloomed nearby, as I felt a breeze caress my now newborn-naked buttocks. My whole body felt on fire with shame, and yet . . . there was something else, something that made my knees grow weak. There were distinct threads of excitement and desire plaited so intricately with the humiliation, shame, and fear that I could not for the life of me tell where one ended and the other began. I couldn’t understand it, and it frightened me; it undermined my illusion of being in control, mistress of my own mind and body. I was in such a state of turmoil; peace of mind became akin to the Holy Grail to me!

As I clung entreatingly to Kate, begging her to have mercy and shield me, to take off one of her petticoats and give it to me to hide my nakedness, Tom roared with laughter, smacked my buttocks, and sliced through the laces in back of my stiff leather stays and tore them away, flinging them carelessly into the rosebushes. He then sliced nimbly through the little that was left of my shift, baring the pert, firm, little pink-tipped white mounds of my breasts, leaving me wearing only my black velvet slippers, white stockings, and black silk ribbon garters tied in bows below my knees.

“Look, Kate!” he exclaimed, grabbing hold of my shoulders and pulling me away from her, pinning my arms back, as I continued to plead with my stepmother to spare me just one petticoat to cover myself as impassionedly as ever a starving beggar cried for a crust of bread. “Our Bess has acquired a bosom at last! Just look at those dainty pink buds blooming proudly on those creamy little hillocks!” He jabbed a finger at my stiff, rosy nipples, actually daring to tweak them right in front of Kate! “And look there, Kate”—he pointed down between my tightly clenched thighs—“what a fine crop of carroty curls our Bess has got!”

A dam burst within me then and tears of shame poured from my eyes and, shielding myself as best I could with my arms and hair, I broke free of them and raced across the seemingly endless expanse of velvety green lawn while behind me Tom and Kate whooped and howled with laughter, doubling over and slapping their thighs and clinging to each other in their mirth. The gardeners and their helpers stopped their work, dropped their hoes and rakes and pruning shears, and stared wide-eyed as I ran past, blinking and rubbing their eyes in disbelief. I daresay it was the first and only time in their lives they had ever seen a naked princess running across a lawn.

As I burst into the house, I could not bear to meet the stunned faces of the servants, or their hastily turned backs or averted eyes, as I bolted up the stairs. How could I ever bear to face them again knowing they had seen me thus? Like a babe in the throes of a tantrum, I howled for Kat at the top of my lungs as I hurled myself through my chamber door and straight into her arms.

“How could she do it?” I demanded, when I told her what had happened and the part Kate had played in it.

“Aye, my little chick, it is unlike her to indulge in such unseemly sport,” Kat concurred, concern creasing her brow. “She was never a one to take pleasure in another person’s pain or discomfort but to always step in and try to remedy it. ‘Kind, capable Kate,’ your father always used to call her; he swore there was never such a one as her for making things right. More than once I heard him say had Lucifer hurt his knee when he fell and Kate had been there she would have slapped on a poultice and bound it up for him, just as she always did his own sore leg.”

“Then why?” I wept. “Why would she do this to me?” I sobbed as I laid my head on Kat’s pillow-plump bosom and she hugged me close and stroked my hair.

“It can only mean one thing, pet,” Kat said, pausing meaningfully, and I raised my head to look at her. “She is jealous of you; the Lord Admiral fancies you and she knows it.”

I stood up straight and blinked. It had never occurred to me that Kate even suspected; I thought her well and truly blind to what went on behind her back and beneath her own roof.

“Try to see it her way; she’s but five years shy of forty, a fair gracious lady she is to be sure, but”—Kat looked me up and down—“not a nubile young lass like you, pet. She sees the difference, mark you, my pet, and she feels it too, like a lance through her heart every time she sees him look at you. A ring on her finger doesn’t always make a woman safe where her husband is concerned. A betrothal band doesn’t come with a tether to keep him always at her side and in her sights or right next to her in bed at night. A man’s a man, love, even if you put a gold ring on his hand and have a churchman say words over it. Aye”—Kat beamed broadly, like a cat licking its whiskers over a bowl of rich cream—“she’s jealous of you, that she is, and with good cause, eh, pet? The Lord Admiral certainly is a handsome rascal, is he not, my bonny Bess?”

She giggled and nudged me knowingly, until I blushed and looked away, too embarrassed by the stark naked truth to meet her eyes.

The awkward moment was broken when there was a knock upon the door and Blanche Parry, the wife of my steward, called out in her cheery, lilting Welsh voice that she came bearing a gift for me.

Kat snatched up my dressing gown and hurriedly bundled me into it as the door swung wide and in marched Blanche leading a procession of serving maids, each with her arms outstretched, carrying a complete new gown—bodice, over- and under-sleeves, skirt, and kirtle—in a rainbow of colors, all the best ones to suit my flame-bright hair, dark eyes, and milk-pale skin. There were a whole gamut of greens as bright as emeralds, to the more subdued shade of moss, pease porridge, and the deep green of the forest. And tawny trimmed with gold, garnet, russet, and sunset orange, sunshine yellow, regal purple, peacock blue trimmed with peacock feathers, cloth-of-gold, delicate pink, and crimson. As it was the fashion for gowns to be made in detachable parts, so that kirtles and sleeves could be mixed and matched with different bodices and skirts, dozens of eye-catching combinations were possible, and I need never appear dressed the same way for many a day. And behind them all came Tom Seymour, sauntering audaciously into the room, whistling a lively tune, as if he had not just moments before humiliated me by stripping me stark naked in the rose garden.

Like an indignant mother hen, flapping and squawking in defense of her chick, Kat rushed at him.

“For shame, My Lord Admiral, stripping a princess of England naked . . .”

“But see, Mrs. Ashley,” he said with a broad smile, and a wave of his hand to take in the bounteous array of new gowns, “now I have come to clothe her!”

“Oh!” Kat cried, affection fighting a losing battle with outrage being played out across her face, “you are a wicked, wicked man!” She waggled a finger at him, then convulsed in blushing giggles like a schoolgirl when he playfully snapped at it with his fine white teeth.

He caught her to him in an embrace, and drummed his hands playfully upon her plump buttocks. “Come now, Kat,” he cajoled. “Now that you’ve forgiven me—and I know you have, woman, it’s as plain as that pretty nose on your face!—will you not intercede with Her Highness there and persuade her to forgive me? Remind her that just as forgiveness is a divine quality, ’tis a worthy virtue for royalty as well!”

“Oh!” Kat cried and threw up her hands and rushed back to my side, rosy-cheeked with her face wreathed in smiles. “Come now, pet,” she turned to me and cajoled, as I continued to hold myself aloof, back straight and nose in the air, looking anywhere but at Tom. “See what pretty things the naughty man has brought you to atone for his naughtiness! It would be most unkind not to forgive him! And he is right about forgiveness being a fine, princely quality! And it would not be meet to stand on your dignity and hold a grudge when the dear naughty man has brought you all these pretties!”

The smiling servant women formed a circle round me, each holding her arms outstretched, offering the gorgeous gowns to me, as Tom came and put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close to kiss the top of my head. And in that instant I was conquered, my knees melted like wax over an open flame, and I crumpled into his embrace.

“Oh, Bess! My darling Bess!” he cried, burying his face in my wild, disarrayed hair.

“Are all these really for me?” I asked.

“Every one! And all chosen by me, just for you, my bonny Bess!” he declared proudly. “I meant what I said—it’s high time we got you out of mourning. Youth and beauty deserve color, not crow black! So I have come to tempt you! Look at this one, Bess!” He reached out to caress a gown of pink brocade. “Cunny pink!” he said, causing all the women to giggle and blush. “What?” he protested. “It is very close to the color of cunny lips; is it not, ladies? Here!” His hand shot out to snatch the sash from my dressing gown, causing it to fall open. “Let us compare!” He held a fold of the pink gown close to the cleft between my thighs. “Indeed it is!” he beamed. “Upon my soul, I declare, I have a fine eye for color, haven’t I, ladies?” He looked round the room for affirmation and all agreed that indeed he did as I blushed furiously and gathered my robe close about me. “And look!” He held the skirt of the pink gown up. “Is there not something suggestive of the shape of a woman’s cunny in the pattern of the weave?” he asked mischievously, sparking another round of blushes and giggles all around.

“This one!” he exclaimed suddenly, darting forward to snatch a gown of bright robin’s egg blue silk exquisitely embroidered with sunny yellow daffodils around the cuffs, bodice, and hem, with gold brocade under-sleeves and kirtle. “I want to see you in it now!” And so saying he shucked the robe from my shoulders, and even though Mrs. Ashley protested that to be properly dressed I needed proper undergarments—shift, stays, and petticoats—he tugged the dress over my head, then set to work adjusting the ties that attached the sleeves and bodice, before turning me round and lacing up the back, while I found myself nearly swooning at the exquisite sensation of silk against my naked skin, without the lawn and linen of shift and petticoats, and the prison of the stiff leather stays, posing a barrier between. I blushed hotly as I felt a burst of wetness between my thighs and my nipples stiffen, making their presence known through the beautiful blue silk, and lowered my eyes, shamed by the knowing smiles, titters, and whispers of the serving maids and wished Tom would dismiss them.

“There!” Tom beamed. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s high time you leave off those melancholy weeds; there’s no point in such vibrant beauty going around dressed like a storm cloud in black and shades of gray all the time!”

And then he was on his knees before the clothespress, fishing out the black mourning gowns and somber-hued satins and silks and damasks of ash and cinder, a whole gamut of grays from the most delicate to the darkest, and flinging them out.

“Away with this! Away!” he ordered. “I hereby banish you from My Lady Princess’s wardrobe! In with the new and out with the old!” he said to the serving maids and they obligingly laid down their armloads of peacock finery upon my bed and began gathering up the discarded garments of grief and mourning. “And now”—Tom smiled at them—“out with you all!” He pinched and patted their bottoms as they obediently filed out, blushing and giggling, a smile on every face.

“Now then.” He turned smilingly to me. He started toward me but then made a detour to my bed, where he snatched up a deep crimson satin gown trimmed with glittering jet spangles, beads, and black Spanish lace. “Wear this for me tonight, Bess. It reminds me of the dress your mother wore the night she danced in rose petals. Wear it for me tonight, Bess, and we too shall dance in rose petals!”

Then he enfolded me in his arms and kissed me long and lingeringly, then let his lips trail down the curve of my neck, and over my shoulder, down my arm to my hand, to the fingertips, before he backed slowly out the door.

“Oh what a man! A fine lusty fellow, is he not, Bess?” Kat enthused. “If he weren’t married already I am as sure as sure can be that he would look to have you, to be buxom and bonair in bed and at board!”

“But he is wed already,” I reminded Kat and myself, though in truth it seemed not to matter. Indeed, I was often surprised by just how little I cared.

That night, after supper, before he took the already yawning, bleary-eyed Kate’s arm to escort her upstairs, he brushed a good night kiss onto my cheek and whispered one word—“Midnight.”

At the appointed hour, I descended the stairs, wearing the crimson gown he had requested. He was waiting for me. And while his wife slept obliviously in a room above our heads, a lute player began to softly strum a pulsing, sensual Spanish melody and Tom led me out to dance. “You dance as light as a dust mote on a sunbeam,” he said as his manservant leaned over the banister and tossed handfuls of red petals down on us.

I laughed, threw back my head, and spun round and round beneath the fluttering, fragrant red petal rain. Tom stood back and watched me, and then he reached out his hand and pulled me into his arms, and kissed me passionately, holding me so close it felt as if our two bodies had fused into one.

Yet things were never quite the same after that day in the garden. Kate seemed to grow colder, to hold herself more guarded and aloof around me. A layer of thin but impenetrable frost had frozen over my warm stepmother—just enough for me to see that she was still the same person she had always been, but that her feelings for me had changed. And another seemed now to have replaced me in Kate’s heart—my nine-year-old cousin, Lady Jane Grey, a shy little scholar who loved learning above all things, who had recently come to live with us at Chelsea. Though I did not begrudge Jane, whom I knew to be much maltreated and beaten for the slightest mistake or most trivial imperfection by her cruel and ambitious parents; this child sorely needed affection, kindness, and encouragement. I confess, my stepmother’s coolness hurt me, and because of it I was not always as kind to Jane as I should have been. She looked up to me, in a kind of awe, as if she admired me, with her mouth agape, and I would snap tartly in passing that she had best close it before a fly flew in, and go on my merry way without a thought for her feelings. And whenever Tom gave the poor little mite so much as an iota of his attention I reacted harshly, meting out even more rudeness and unkindness, so jealous was I of his time and affection, and I would sulk until he teased me out of my dark, pouting mood.

Though always proper and deferential, the servants’ behavior toward me seemed also to be rimmed with frost. Sometimes I would come upon two or three of them unawares, huddled together in conversation, and hear my name and my mother’s and such remarks as “bad blood will tell,” knowingly asserted. And tales of my mother’s trial and the crimes she had been accused of—adultery and incest—were dredged up again with gossipy relish and assurances that I was bound to go the same way.

And Kat . . . Someone must have spoken sharply to my Mrs. Ashley, for of a sudden a bolt of mighty lightning seemed to demolish the castles in the clouds she had built. She awoke from her dreams with the troubling realization that she had erred in her duties as governess to a royal princess by encouraging her virgin charge to dally with a married man, and set about trying to remedy the situation and scrub away the tarnish she had allowed to blacken my name and reputation.

But against Tom Seymour’s fatal charm we were all powerless. Kat found herself in the same quandary as I did myself—her heart saying one thing and her head another. She made an effort to arise earlier to rush me out of bed and into my clothes before Tom came sauntering in for his early morning visits.

“Must I sleep fully clothed to thwart him?” I groused at having to rise before the dawn.

“Nay, lovey,” Kat said, her words contradicting her actions as she laced me into my gown, “you are even more comely in only your hair and bare skin. The Lord Admiral his naughty self told me that when you blush you are like a statue of pink ivory sprung to life!”

And on mornings when she was loathe to drag herself out of her warm bed, Kat did manage to come in before matters went too far, to shoo “that naughty man” out and to scold him for coming bare-legged in his nightshirt and slippers into a maiden’s bedchamber. “It is a most improper way to come calling, My Lord!” she chided as sternly as she could against that dagger-sharp deathly charm.

I had yet to grant him the ultimate favor, and Kat was determined that my virginity, a woman’s most precious commodity, and vital to a princess in the royal marriage game, should be preserved until my wedding night whether my bridegroom be the Lord Admiral or someone else—a fine prince perhaps?—as yet unknown to me.

But Tom had a way of getting the better of her, and if he was inclined to tarry, there was nothing Mrs. Ashley could do about it. I remember him once dropping to his knees and scampering about the room on all fours, barking like a dog, as he gave chase to my flustered governess, running her round and round the room, before he pounced and sunk his teeth into her “great buttocks” through her voluminous billowing white bedgown. Kat yelped and clutched her bottom. “Oh you wicked, wicked man!” she cried as she fled back into her bedchamber and bolted and barricaded the door behind her. And muffled by its thickness we heard her repeat again that Tom was a “wicked, wicked man” and never had she seen the likes of him, whilst I fell back on my bed, convulsed with glee, and he, still playing the fool, bounded up onto the bed and began to kiss and lick me from head to toe, like a great big, playful puppy.