Certainly no one is watching me, no one is watching Ned. We meet in Janey’s bedroom when she is too ill to get up from her bed. I am there to care for her; he is a good brother, visiting his sister. As she lies on her pillows and smiles sleepily on the two of us, we sit in the window and hold hands and whisper. We meet in every corner and doorway around the court for an exchange of half a dozen words and a brush of his kiss on my hand, on my neck, on the sleeve of my gown. When he passes me in the gallery, he catches at my fingers; when he plays a lute and sings a love song, he glances first at me, as if to say: these words are for you. We play cards together with Janey and my aunt Bess, now Lady St. Loe, in the evening, and we dance together when they call for partners. Everyone knows that Ned Seymour always partners Lady Katherine. Nobody else even asks me to dance, none of the girls flutter at Ned. Even the old ladies at court—his mother, my mother, and their sharp-eyed friends—have to observe what a pretty couple we make, so tall and so fair with royal connections on both sides.
What nobody sees is that when the dancing is over, we go to the corner of the great hall and his hand comes around my waist and he turns me towards him as if we are still dancing and he might hold me close.
“Katherine, you are my sweetheart,” he whispers. “I am mad for you.”
His touch makes me dizzy. I think I will faint but he holds me up. I let him put his hand under my chin; I allow him to turn my face up to his for a kiss. His lips are warm and urgent, and he smells deliciously of clean linen and orange water. He buries his face in my neck, and I feel him nibble the lobe of my ear. I cling to him, so that I feel him down the length of my body, his strong arms, his broad chest, his hard lean thigh against me.
“We have to marry,” he says. “It is a jest no longer.”
I can’t nod for his mouth is on mine. He releases me for a moment and I put my hand on the back of his neck to pull him back into the kiss.
“Marry me?” he says as his mouth comes down again.
HAMPTON COURT PALACE,
SUMMER 1559
Álvaro de la Quadra, the new Spanish ambassador, comes striding down the garden path in his sweeping bishop’s robes to bring me the news, as if we are friends and conspirators.
“Thank God I found you! The King of France is dead!” he says.
“My lord,” I say quietly. I am not as confident with him as I was with Count de Feria. He seems to think that we have an agreement, as if he has inherited me from the previous ambassador, an alliance rather than a liking.
“God bless him,” I say. “But I thought he was just injured jousting?” I am walking down the gravel path towards the allée of yew trees, with Janey leaning on my arm. Ned is going to meet us here, as if by accident.
“No! No! Dead! Dead!” says Ambassador de la Quadra, completely ignoring Janey and taking both my hands. “They have kept vigil beside his bed in vain. They have done everything they could, but nothing could save him. He is gone, God preserve and keep him. His son, little Francis, is king and your cousin Mary will be queen.” He lowers his voice. “Think what this means to you!”
I am thinking. I had no idea that the French king was so seriously injured. Men are hurt all the time in the joust, but what jouster kills his king? The French court will be in an uproar and he will be succeeded by his son, Francis II. This makes my cousin Mary Stuart queen twice over. She was already Queen of Scots, now she will be Queen of France. Her importance has doubled, trebled, exploded. Now she is queen of a huge country that is determined to grow greater. Now the French king himself will support the claim of his wife to the throne of England, with the French army behind him. Every papist in this country will prefer Catholic Queen Mary to Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Many more would say that she has been the true heir all along. She is the granddaughter of Margaret, the Scots queen who was Henry VIII’s sister, and her first husband the Scots king. Unlike Elizabeth, she is undeniably legitimate, royal on both sides, and more than anything else, she will have the great might of France behind her.
“Queen of France and Scotland,” I say thoughtfully. There she is, a girl no better born than I, not named in Henry VIII’s will like me; but she is queen of two countries before she is twenty-one.
“And so everything changes again,” the ambassador says to me quietly, taking my arm and leading me from Janey, who turns back for the palace, waving me away with my grand friend.
“I don’t see why,” I say. “And I should go back inside with Janey Seymour.”
“Because the new French queen’s Guise kinsmen will be eager for her to take her throne in Scotland and push back the reformed religion. Because they will encourage her to make her claim for the English throne. They won’t care about peace with England like the old French king; they want to rule Scotland and invade England from the south and the north.”
Really, he is too much for me, and I am afraid of his quiet voice, which weaves an argument thread by thread like a snare. “But this is nothing to do with me, Your Excellency. I don’t see why you come running to tell me.”
He smiles as if this is news that will make me happy. “I will send you word,” he whispers. “And we will come for you. An entourage will come for you.”
“What?” I ask, for this is completely unexpected. “What entourage?”
He smiles at me as if we have some long-standing secret agreement, and he says that my moment will come. “We will release you,” he says, “from the burden of your life here.”
Thank God that Ned steps quickly from a side path and then nearly jumps back again when he sees the ambassador. I say loudly: “Here is my friend Janey Seymour’s brother come to fetch me to her. Your Excellency must excuse me,” and I dash to Ned, who openly clutches at my hand. He waits only for the ambassador to bow and leave us before taking me in his arms and kissing me.
“Ned, what are they thinking of?” I demand wildly. “He says they are going to release me from the burden of my life? Are they going to kill me?”
“They’re planning to kidnap you and marry you to a Spanish heir,” Ned says tightly. “When I saw him with you then, I thought he might be persuading you to go with him. I heard it from someone just back from Madrid. It’s talked about all over Europe. They want a Spanish ally on the throne of England again. Someone they can trust. The old French king is dead and the Spanish won’t tolerate the new French queen as the heir to England. They won’t allow France to stretch her borders any more. They will back you against Queen Mary of Scots as the heir of England, and force Elizabeth to name you.”
“I can’t do anything about that.” I give a frightened little moan. “Elizabeth has to choose me of her own will. I can’t make her. And I can’t be the enemy of France! They can’t call me that. I can’t be the Spanish-favored heir for England against my cousin the Queen of France. Why don’t they see that I can’t do anything?”
He shakes his head, looking grim. “No. It’s worse than that. They don’t think that they can persuade Elizabeth to name you as heir, and they don’t think she can hold the country against a French invasion for Mary. They won’t allow a French queen on the throne of England. The plan is that they’ll take you, and declare you as the true heir, and invade to put you on the throne.”
I give a little scream. “Ned! They can’t make me do that!”
“If only your mother would speak to Elizabeth! If only Elizabeth would declare you as her heir; if only we could marry, I would make you safe.”
“I won’t marry a Spaniard,” I gabble. “I won’t! I won’t! I’ll only marry you.” I cling to him and I am distracted at once by his arms around me, his kisses on my face, the warmth of his mouth going down my neck. “Oh, Ned,” I whisper. “We can’t wait any longer. This changes everything. Don’t let the Spanish take me. I will be your wife. I won’t be forced to the throne like Jane. I won’t die like her without ever being loved.”