Chapter 3
Elizabeth shrieked in the high-pitched bursts of a lady pretending to be afraid and pulled me down a side path. Not back toward the house, I noted to my dismay, and she did not run very quickly.
“Your Grace …”
“Let us hurry, Eloise,” Elizabeth said in merriment. “Or he will be upon us.”
The man pursued us. Did he curtail his steps, or was that my imagination? Elizabeth jogged along more slowly still. I wanted to rip my hand from hers and race to my chamber high under the eaves, but Elizabeth held me so fast I’d need ten armed soldiers to pry myself from her.
We rounded a corner to another long trail, this one lined with yews. I saw ahead of us, unbelievably, Queen Catherine, who bobbed up and down on her toes, laughing.
“This way, my dears,” she called. “Come, come, else he catches us.”
And what shall he do if he does? I wondered as we scampered after her. Surely, with Catherine there, Seymour, our pursuer, could do nothing.
Two weeks ago, I would have believed this a harmless game. But I remembered the dark, cold passageway, the soft cloth in my arms, and the sour taste of fear as Thomas Seymour’s hand covered my breast. I felt again his fingers squeezing, the startling pain of it, the curling disgust deep inside me.
There are three of us, I told myself. We can hold him off.
“Come along,” Catherine shouted. “Hurry, do.”
We ran after her, skirts fluttering, Elizabeth laughing.
Catherine led us down a path and around a corner to a dead end. A high green hedge faced us, the boundary of the park. Here a stone bench offered the passer-by a place of peace.
For us, it was a trap.
I shrieked. “The other way!”
Too late. Seymour charged in behind us, penning us like calves herded for slaughter. I faced him, mouth dry and eyes wide, while Catherine and Elizabeth collapsed into each other in laughter.
Seymour came forward, growling and lurching in bearlike fervor. Catherine flung her arms around Elizabeth from behind.
“I’ve caught her, darling,” she said breathlessly. “I’ve caught her!”
Elizabeth continued to laugh. Her long hair came free from her hood and spilled down her shoulders in a cloud of red gold.
Seymour ignored me completely, intent on Elizabeth in his wife’s arms, a feral light in his eyes.
“You’ve caught us a lovely fawn, my dear.” He swatted playfully at Elizabeth, fingers barely brushing her bodice. “Naughty fawn, to run away.”
Elizabeth gazed at him in enjoyment. Seymour caught a lock of her loose hair and wound it around his fist. “What shall we do to punish our pet, my dear?” he asked his wife.
The love in Catherine’s eyes for him was painful to behold. “Naughty girl,” she said, hugging Elizabeth. “Naughty child.”
I stood in a daze, realizing with a cold jolt that three games were being played out before me.
One was Catherine’s—she happy to be lighthearted and jubilant with her husband.
The second game was Elizabeth’s. Catherine, behind her, did not catch the admiration in her stepdaughter’s eyes for Seymour. Elizabeth had wanted him to chase her, and she liked, better still, that he’d caught her.
The third game belonged to Seymour. He had exactly what he’d planned—Elizabeth cornered, with his wife’s help. I in his play, only Seymour knew all the parts.
Seymour’s gaze slid sideways to me. “You, Needlewoman. You must go nowhere without your needle and thread, eh?”
“Yes, my lord.” The words were a bare whisper from my dry mouth.
“And your scissors? What needlewoman is without scissors?” Before I could answer, Seymour held out his hand. “Give them to me.”
I froze in astonishment, but Catherine’s face lit. “Yes, dear Mistress Rousell, give them over.”
Elizabeth struggled in some earnest, though she laughed through her words. “No, no, Eloise, do not let them cut off my hair.”
“Give them.” Seymour’s command seared like ice.
Quickly I dipped my hand into my pocket and drew out the scissors. Seymour snatched them from me.
He rearranged his expression as he turned back to Elizabeth and Catherine, becoming the teasing gentleman once more. “Hold her, my love.”
“No.” Elizabeth squirmed against Catherine. “I beg of you, not my hair.”
“Very well,” Seymour said, pretending to concede the point. “Your hair is safe.”
He snatched up a handful of her skirt and began to snip it instead.
I cried out in anguish. I had labored over that skirt and knew every stitch of it.
The intricate gold and silver pattern had been difficult to match, the black overskirt so fine it was like gossamer.
I was very proud of that gown, which I’d designed to be beautiful for Elizabeth.
I watched, my heart sick, as Seymour proceeded to ruin weeks of my work.
Snip, snip went the scissors. Catherine and Elizabeth shrieked in delight. Seymour concentrated on his task, his breath coming fast, his gaze fixed.
I stood against a hedge, the twigs prickling my back and poking through my hood. Pieces of skirt fluttered to the earth to lay like fallen flowers.
Seymour continued cutting like a man obsessed. In the end, the ground was carpeted with silk scraps, which swirled up on the breeze to be caught in the yew’s branches.
When Seymour finished and tossed the scissors aside, Elizabeth had nothing to cover her loosened stomacher and chemise but her stepmother’s cloak.
“For shame,” Aunt Kat admonished Elizabeth later that evening.
Elizabeth, in a dressing gown in her bedchamber with a cup of sweet herbal tea, at last looked stricken.
Only Aunt Kat could scold Elizabeth. She’d outgrown listening to her nurses, save Mistress Parry, long ago, but Aunt Kat held a special place in Elizabeth’s heart. Aunt Kat alone was allowed to speak her mind.
“The shame of it,” Aunt Kat continued. “Every lady and gentleman agog when you returned to the house.” Aunt Kat lifted her hands in the despairing way she often took with me.
“Thank the Lord the queen was with you, though she ought to have known better. Why that wise lady, who held the kingdom safe through months of war by herself, would throw away her dignity on a silly romp in the garden … I ask you.”
“’Twas only a game.” Elizabeth sipped tea, her slim shoulders drooping. She’d become a guilt-stricken girl again, the young woman who’d wanted a man’s attentions faded and gone.
“You might have thought so, but there are others who do not,” Aunt Kat said. “As his majesty’s sister, you must jealously guard your reputation. His Grace the king will likely make a good marriage for you, but if your reputation is in shreds, you will have to make do with the dregs.”
A defiant gleam entered Elizabeth’s eyes. “I could not prevail against both my stepmother and my Lord Sudeley.”
“Mind that you learn to.” Aunt Kat let out a sigh, her stern expression softening.
She could never remain angry at Elizabeth for long.
“He is a fine-mannered gentleman, is his lordship, and used to flirtations at court. You are not used to it, but Lord Sudeley does not understand this. Most young ladies your age have been married off already and know how to comport themselves. His lordship is not used to a simple household and does not understand.”
I, my mouth full of pins and my lap piled with Parisian silver netting, did not agree. Seymour knew exactly what he was doing and exactly how far to push his wife to obtain what he wanted.
At that moment, I assumed Seymour simply longed for a dalliance with Elizabeth. I could understand why—she was a beautiful young woman, with her red hair and beguiling eyes. She’d inherited the best of her father and mother.
I’d never seen Anne Boleyn, but I’d heard gentlemen who’d known her fall into eloquence about her.
Dark hair, pale face, not really much to look at, they admitted, until she turned her smile upon one.
Anne’s eyes had been starred with silver lights, and she could hold a gentleman with her gaze—or so they claimed—and have him in her thrall.
She’d also had a strength of character, intelligence and wit, combined with the polished manners of the French court, where she’d been sent at an early age. That wit had been her power, but also her downfall, used by her enemies against her.
Old King Henry had been robust and handsome in his youth, I’d seen in portraits, with hair Elizabeth’s shade and a physique envied by gentlemen in England and beyond its shores.
Henry had been strong, loud, restless, arbitrarily cruel or generous, devoted to his own passions, and unforgiving of those passions in others.
The king had been attractive and fiery, and Anne had been as well. Together they’d produced a daughter with grace, a sense of elegance, a calculating mind, and a presence like a whiplash.
Aunt Kat had a fond belief that she controlled this girl, and it was true that Elizabeth listened to Aunt Kat. But only to a point.
Seymour had designs upon Elizabeth, and I could see that Elizabeth was not unhappy with those designs. Elizabeth loved her stepmother, of course, but a handsome gentleman intensely interested in a young woman could cloud that young woman’s senses. Well I knew this.
I prayed that Elizabeth would not go so far as to betray Catherine. I burned inside with my secret knowledge of Seymour’s character, but I did not want to confess it in the presence of Elizabeth.
I waited until later, after Elizabeth had gone to bed, and Aunt Kat was alone in her chamber, nodding off over a book. I knelt at Aunt Kat’s feet and told her of my encounter with Seymour. I bowed my head, afraid and ashamed as only a girl of fourteen can be.
Aunt Kat closed her book with a snap. “And what were you doing traipsing about the galleries at that time of night, my girl?”
“Carrying cloth to the queen’s antechamber,” I explained. “I was anxious to begin on her gowns.”
Aunt Kat regarded me for a long moment then her usually canny eyes went deliberately blank. “You must have mistaken his intentions, Eloise.”