13

Mary

The seventh day of September, 1548, the day my sister turned fifteen, Katherine Parr breathed her last. The sad news came first with lurid rumor following fast on its heels. Thus I learned the whole sordid truth about Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour.

I had known all along that with Anne Boleyn’s whore’s blood coursing through her veins, Elizabeth must tread very carefully in carnal matters and not let her passions get the better of her. And here was certain proof that I was right, clear evidence that bad blood tells—like mother, like daughter. Elizabeth had embarked on a harlot’s progress and she had started young.

But it was worse than that, much worse. Katherine Parr had gone to her grave raging against her husband’s and Elizabeth’s duplicity. And Tom Seymour was said to have administered poison in place of medicine to hasten her demise. And afterward, instead of dismissing her maids and sending them home to their families after the funeral service with a generous purse to reward their service and loyalty, he bade them stay as they would soon have a new mistress to serve. And the “grieving widower,” supposedly shut away behind locked doors alone with his grief, had crept out, like a thief in the night, and ridden straight to Elizabeth. I had heard he had disdained me as a “dried-up old maid” and described Elizabeth as “born for bedsport; as ripe and juicy as a cherry Tudor wench, perfect for a man who should be king and, God willing, one way or another, would be.” There really was no end to the man’s audacity; he lived and breathed treason as naturally as a fish does water.

Oh what a banquet “The Cakes and Ale Man” and Elizabeth provided for the gossipmongers! I flushed with shame every time I heard their names spoken, and it was all I could do to hold my head up. My “good gossip Nan” even wrote to me that Elizabeth had been sent away from Chelsea because she was purported to be carrying the Lord Admiral’s child, a child that had been secretly born and disposed of, foully murdered according to the midwife who swore upon the Holy Bible that she had been taken blindfolded to attend a milk-fair redheaded young lady and had fought hard to save that slim-hipped girl from the clutches of Death. It was testament to her skill, she proudly asserted, that my sister still lived and breathed, and her child would have as well had it not been murdered.

I burned with shame and could not even bring myself to write to Elizabeth, a bastard who had borne a bastard and then suffered it to be killed to hide her shame. Every time I passed her portrait in the gallery I saw a redheaded version of Anne Boleyn. How apt that she had chosen to wear harlot-scarlet, and that neckline, exposing the curves of her shoulders, was immodestly low! I prayed for her soul—that was all I could do—beseeching the Holy Virgin to intercede with Our Lord so that He might show my sister the light and point her back onto the right path, the road to redemption and salvation, and save her from a life of sin and harlotry.

The next I knew Tom Seymour was in the Tower as, one by one, his brazen schemes came to light and crumbled into fairy dust. He was arrested after stealing into the palace late one night and trying to abduct Edward. He intended to carry him off and marry him to Lady Jane Grey. Fortunately the valiant actions of my brother’s spaniel, combined with the pistol shot Tom Seymour fired right between its eyes to silence it, alerted the palace guards in time to save Edward.

But in the end, I found I could not keep silent; I had to say something. It was my Christian duty. So I spoke to Elizabeth’s vanity, and sent her a large ruby brooch set round in heavy gold which I had the goldsmith engrave boldly around the great glittering harlot-colored stone with the words:

WHO CAN FIND A VIRTUOUS WOMAN?

FOR HER PRICE IS FAR ABOVE RUBIES.

And suspended below it, I had the jeweler attach an enameled oval medallion depicting the Magdalene drying Jesus’s feet with her long scarlet hair, and, dangling beneath it, a golden crucifix set with smaller rubies and diamonds.

I was confident that Elizabeth, clever as she was, would get the message. I hoped when she saw it her tarnished soul would smart with shame and want to be scrubbed clean, and that she, like the Magdalene, would see the error of her sinful ways and repent and redeem herself before it was too late.

But for nights after I sent it, I was plagued by the most disturbing dreams in which I saw myself suspended stark naked upon a wooden cross whilst Elizabeth, in a penitent’s white gown, with her head and shoulders draped in a mantle of Our Lady’s Blue, knelt at my feet, staring up at me with sad and pleading eyes. And then, out of a silver river that suddenly appeared as objects often inexplicably do in dreams, walked the nude and dripping form of Tom Seymour, his male organ greatly engorged and protruding like a battering ram. Seeing him, Elizabeth stood up, threw off her mantle, and stripped off her gown, letting it fall round her feet in an abandoned puddle of white to be sullied by the dust.

As she went to him she shook out her scarlet hair and paused for a tantalizing moment to teasingly cup her pert pink-tipped breasts and wiggle her hips at him. Then she was in his arms, and they were kissing passionately, and she began to sensuously slide her body up and down his as she used her hair to mop up the river water.

Bound helpless to the cross, I watched in horror, unable to cover my eyes, and acutely aware of my own nakedness, and the sudden humiliating hardness of my nipples, like brown pebbles upon my chest, and, even worse, the warm and wanton wetness between my legs as I struggled against my bonds, my thighs rubbing together in a way that only made it worse, but I couldn’t stop. And then, as if he could read my mind, Tom Seymour looked up at me and winked as he grasped Elizabeth by her hips, lifted her up, and lowered her onto his fleshly lance. I unloosed a bloodcurdling scream upon my cross as I began to bleed all at once from my eyes and ears, my hands and feet, and between the thighs I clenched so tightly, as if by doing so I could hold the blood back. It was always at that moment that I woke up, bolting out of bed with a scream on my lips that sent me running straight into my private chapel to fling myself onto my knees before the altar, never caring that the skin split and bled.