These were all high concerns of State. But Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset and Lord Protector of England, found himself seeing each and all of them embodied, fantastically, in a single tall, magnificent figure with mocking blue eyes and the thundering, fearless laughter of a god on Olympus jeering at mortals. Whatsoever door the Duke opened, in his plans and aims, there stood Tom, straddling the threshold, barring the way, laughing in his face.
Long ago, there had been a roistering daredevil of a little brother whom he, Ned Seymour, had loved and guarded from harm.
Now, there was a giant in the path — always in the path— whom, God pardon him, he feared and hated now.
Two people were in the bright paneled parlor at Chelsea. And you might have thought them to be two carved figures, they were so motionless and so silent. Mary Tudor was seated in one of the high, carved chairs, rigid, erect, with a face of stone. There was something peculiarly ominous about that smooth, tight-buttoned face, with its pale, shortsighted stare and its compressed lips, blank and frozen thus. Mary’s face, like her mother’s, was the face of a plain, proud woman, a face which could have been homely but for the invincible dignity of the Aragon breed that was in it. It was a terrible thing to see that face, heavy, blighted with unhappiness and sickliness, struck into a mask of pent fury.
Ashley, standing in the window, felt it so, in all conscience. She stood with her eyes respectfully fixed on the floor, her hands crossed on her full gray skirts. Her plump face sagged with trouble. She was thinking, in a vaguely muddled fashion, that Bess’s tantrums, even the oaths which she’d picked up much too easily from the Lord Admiral, God forgive him! were not so bad as this stillness of my lady Mary. It was, somehow, as though a vessel of stone should stand brimful of something scalding, to spill at a touch.
For Mary Tudor was filled with resentments culled from long years of bitterness. From the favored daughter of her father’s first ill-fated marriage, she had become the cast-off, denied and left alone. She had been forced to see her mother set aside, and to watch her father, in his marriage to Nan Bullen, defy his faith and turn to all that seemed profligate and ungodly.
Not only this, but to heap insult on her already sorely tried existence, the birth of Elizabeth from that hated union cast her completely out of favor. It did little to soothe the hurt when Elizabeth herself, upon Nan Bullen’s death, was also turned out. The girl had always been a thorn in her side, try as she would to love her.
Poor Mary had been torn apart so often she herself scarcely knew the truth when she saw it. One thing alone remained with her — a single fantastic conviction—her religious fervor. It had been branded upon her conscience that she had once been forced by her father to deny her faith. Now, however, looking back upon that infamous forced lie, she would have died for her faith if called upon to do so. In her heart she believed that God had called her to live for it. She, in her own right, was heir now to the throne. In God’s good time she might be able to bring England back to the true fold.
It could be nothing but gall to this poor woman to sit here now, in this house, feeling that Katherine Parr had flaunted her marriage with Tom Seymour practically in the face of Henry’s funeral procession. And here in this house of prof-
ligacy and loose morals was Elizabeth, whom Mary at this time truly believed she wanted to save.
Small wonder then that Ashley stood, not knowing what to say—wishing for Katherine, to put an end to her embarrassment. But when at last Katherine stood upon the threshold, her face alight with pleasure, her hands outstretched in welcome, Ashley felt a pang of dread shoot through her. For one irrational instant, she wanted to move, to plant her solid body between the two royal ladies.
“Mary, my child!” Katherine was exclaiming. “1 cannot give you welcome enough! You have been gone from us too long!”
Mary had risen. She sank in a curtsy. The tight lips parted to utter, “Your Majesty.”
“Nay,” Katherine protested, “leave your courtly manners up in London. We’ve none of them here! My dear, my dear, I am so glad to see you!”
She kissed the cold cheek. Mary’s eyelids flickered. She stiffened, and did not return the kiss.
“Ashley, where is Elizabeth?” Katherine asked. “Truly, I know of no one she will be happier to see.”
“Strange!” Mary observed coolly, “when I’ve written her a dozen times these past months, bidding her come to me, and she has not.”
“Blame me for that,” Katherine told her gaily, “for I would have her stay here, and you too. We welcome you with all our hearts, Tom and I both.”
Mary’s rigid tension snapped. At the glassy glitter which flickered into her eyes, Ashley drew one of her wheezing breaths and involuntarily clasped her hands.
“I need no welcome from Tom Seymour. Nor from you either.”
“Mary—he is my husband,” Katherine said with a certain meaning emphasis.
“Husband! Oh God! Husband and wife! These words be tossed about in England, now, as though God's holy matrimony were a piece of decoration to be put on or tossed aside to please a whim! My father lay in his grave scarce two months before you’d wived you to this Seymour.” She all but spat the name. There was a moment’s painful silence. Katherine closed her lips on words that rose angrily.
“Is this what you came here to say?” she asked at last, quietly.
“I came here to say nothing,” Mary flashed, “but to take Elizabeth from here. I know how my sister consorts with evil here in this house, and you nod, and permit it, and smile, and close your ears, too—”
Her rigid control was gone. Her voice rose hoarsely and she breathed fast.
“What have you heard?” Katherine was utterly bewildered, but stern. She was no stranger to Mary’s hysteria; for the moment she saw this wild tirade as nothing more, and was resolute to quell it.
“Enough,” Mary retorted.
“What slanderous gossip is this? Ashley—” Katherine turned to the older woman.
“Truly, Your Majesty,” Ashley said thickly, “I have not spoke a word.”
“But could and would,” Mary snapped, “if given leave to do so.”
“She has leave,” Katherine said in the same bewildered manner. “What is it, Ashley?”
Ashley swallowed. Her worried eyes were bent, obstinately, on the ground. It seemed as though she could not face Katherine.
“It is matters—concerning the Lady Elizabeth—that I have sought you with before, madam.”
“Well? What is it now? Has she been up riding before dawn again?”
“Lord save us, no! She lies abed these days—till there be those come to rout her out,” Ashley returned significantly.
But the meaning tone glanced off Katherine’s hearing. The good woman was always fussing and clucking…
“I should know that,” Katherine laughed. “I’ve done it, many a morning.”
“Aye, Your Majesty.” Ashley’s tone was expressionless, heavily noncommittal.
Katherine looked in a puzzled manner from Ashley’s red face, obstinately down-bent, and with some queer triumph in it.
“What’s wrong with lying abed?” Katherine demanded easily. “I think it is a happier thing than rising in the cold before dawn.”
“You may jest as you will, Your Majesty, but there is too much freedom here,” Ashley said, and lifted her eyes and spoke with sudden vigor.
Her face was working with trouble. There were tears in her eyes.
“Oh, Ashley, Elizabeth is but a child!”
“By my faith,” the worried nurse broke out, “I think this girl was bom ancient!”
“Then give her childhood now, for that’s my purpose.”
Ashley wetted her dry lips. Her next words came in a volley forced from her with evident effort.
“Your Majesty—even to romps and frolics with your husband?”