“You are pure and lovely. I do not want to keep you merely in my heart and mind, love, but in my arms.” He drew me close to him and as he did, I felt the truth of his words, truth that I had known, somewhere inside me, but that needed to be liberated by the affirmations of another. The hard nub of shame was replaced by the bright star of belovedness.
I am my beloved’s, and my beloved is mine.
We stood before Father Gregory that very afternoon, Lucy and Gerald as witness, Mary napping in the nave, and were married. My heart sang with the birdsong that accompanied our simple wedding; my traveling gown was dusty with the journey, and perhaps that was apt, as man and woman were joined together for whatever life may hold.
I heard again the gentle whisper in my heart. Who knoweth whether thou art come to the kingdom for such a time as this?
Yes, Lord, you have wrought all things together for good. Thank You.
Father Gregory kindly arranged for us to take over a nearby cottage inn for the night whilst Lucy, Gerald, and Mary remained at his parish house.
The servant laid out some cold ham and cheese along with fresh bread and some ale. She started the fire and turned back the finely wrought Irish linens on the soft bed. I dressed myself in a thin white gown edged with lace; I had not thought to bring anything to wear for a wedding night. And then I sat on the edge of the bed.
“I should have preferred to wear a lovelier gown,” I said.
“No gown at all is required or, indeed, desired,” Jamie teased, and when I blushed he laughed aloud. “You shall have to get used to the forthright speech of the Irish, madam, but I suspect you will fit in well. Soon you will meet my mother, and see what I mean.”
“I am a bit afraid,” I said.
“To meet my mother? You are English, so I can well understand that.”
I opened my eyes wide. “Will she not take to me because I am English?”
“Nay,” he said. “I but jest with you. What do you fear?”
“My introduction to the … intimate matters was not, as you know, pleasurable, but fearsome.”
He stroked my hair. “Do not vex yourself, Juliana. ’Twill be different with a man who loves you, who would chase across the sea for you with a day’s notice, who would forgo children of his own and love the one you bring. Who would die for you. We will take hours or weeks or months, if need be, till you are comfortable.”
He kissed my eyelids again, and then my cheekbones, and then traced his way down my face till he nuzzled and kissed my neck, which commissioned a legion of chills to race over my skin. I warmed with desire and as I leaned into him and kissed him back again and again with more eagerness than I realized I felt, I was certain that all would be well.
Later, when we lay listening to the quiet call and response of insects tangled in the marsh grasses, he said to me, “Mayhap God hath sent me to bind up the brokenhearted.”
I turned on my elbow to face him. “I thought you did not read holy writ.”
“I have of late become convinced that it’s better to be familiar with that which I transport,” he teased, and then sobered. “I began reading it after you said you would not have me. For solace. I found it to offer that, and more.”
I slipped as close to him as I could go. “’Tis the truth, you alone bind my broken heart. In His goodness, He has sent you. You are right.”
“I’ll be right about my mother taking to you too,” he said. “Wait and see.”
Although Jamie had his own estate that was deeper in Ireland, we stopped, on our journey, at his mother’s home, which was nearby his brother Oliver’s. I rode pillion behind him on his horse whilst the others followed nearby.
“Will you tell her that we are just married?” I asked. I nervously patted my hair and sought to brush any dust from my gown. “And how will you explain Mary?”
“I will tell her that you are my wife, and are now free to join me in Ireland, and that Mary is our child,” he answered. “More will not be required. All knew I had set my heart upon you and might expect that we married afore I set out to sea. They can wonder and answer their own questions as they may.”
I smiled and took his hand, glad to have married a bold man. “I do not wish to deceive her.”
“We shall not,” he said. “My mother is clever and kind, a secret keeper like my love.” He slowed the horse, turned around, and kissed me afore we continued.
His mother received us in her sitting room; she was a quail of a woman bustling about her rich reception room.
Mary, exuberant, ran in first and giggled as we tried to chase her down for a more respectable entry. She bumped into Jamie’s mother, marring Lady Hart’s gown with her face, red-stained from the wild strawberries we had enjoyed along the way.
“And who is this wee beauty?” Lady Hart reached down and took Mary by the hand.
“I Mary,” she said, and curtseyed unsteadily as she’d been taught.
His mother looked up at Jamie. “Mary! She’s named for me!” She took the child in her arms and I thought how different a grandmother she was from cold Lady Seymour.
Then Lady Hart smiled at me as Jamie drew me closer.
“This is my wife, Mother. Her name is Juliana.”
She took my hand and squeezed it before enveloping me in her warm, motherly embrace. After a moment, she looked at me kindly, but quizzically. “Juliana. ’Tis not a particularly English name.”
I grinned. We would get on just fine.
Finis
AUTHOR’S NOTE
What ever happened to Lady Mary Seymour?
This is an enduring mystery. The last known facts about the child include that Thomas Seymour did ask, as a dying wish, that Mary be entrusted to Katherine Willoughby, Duchess of Suffolk, and that desire was granted. Willoughby, although a great friend of Kateryn Parr, viewed this wardship as a burden, as evidenced by her own letters. According to biographer Linda Porter,
On 22 January, 1550, less than a year after her father’s death, application was made in the House of Commons for the restitution of Lady Mary Seymour … she was made eligible by this act to inherit any remaining property that had not been returned to the Crown at the time of her father’s attainder. But, in truth, Mary’s prospects were less optimistic than this might suggest. Much of her parents’ lands and goods had already passed into the hands of others.
The five hundred pounds required for Mary’s household would amount to approximately one hundred thousand British pounds, or $150,000 U.S., today, so you can see that Willoughby had reason to shrink from such a duty. And yet the daughter of a queen must be kept in commensurate style. Many people had greatly benefited from Parr’s generosity. None of them stepped forward to assist baby Mary.
Biographer Elizabeth Norton says, “The council granted money to Mary for household wages, servants’ uniforms, and food on 13 March, 1550. This is the last evidence of Mary’s continued survival.” Susan James says Mary is “probably buried somewhere in the parish church at Edenham.”
Most of Parr’s biographers assume that Mary died young of a childhood disease. But this, by necessity, is speculative because there is no record of Mary’s death anywhere: no gravestone, no bill of death, no mention of it in anyone’s extant personal or official correspondence. Parr’s biographer during the Victorian age, Agnes Strickland, claimed that Mary lived on to marry Edward Bushel and become a member of the household of Queen Anne, the wife of King James I of England. Various family biographers claimed descent from Mary, including those who came down from the Irish shipping family of Hart. This family also claimed to have had Thomas Seymour’s ring that was inscribed What I Have, I Hold till early in the twentieth century. I have no idea if that is true or not, but it’s a good detail and certainly possible.