The Lady Elizabeth Read Free Page A

had seen her was when the court was at Greenwich, a few weeks back; but that occasion had left Elizabeth disturbed and fearful. For the first time in her short life, she had sensed unhappiness and danger, for her mother and father had been angry with each other, very angry, and then her mother had grown tearful and distracted, which frightened the child. She could not understand why they were at odds, nor why, later, her mother had picked her up urgently and hastened to seek out the King once more. He had been standing by an open window, looking down on the courtyard below, when she approached him, and his anger was a tangible thing that left his daughter shrinking in her mother’s arms. Harsh words were exchanged, words that Elizabeth did not want to remember. She hated hearing her father calling her mother a witch, among other unkind names. Witches did bad things, things she could never associate with her mother. And what, she wondered, was a whore? And why should her mother have been so upset just because she had found the King with a wench called Seymour on his knee? There was nothing wrong with that, was there? Elizabeth herself had sat on his knee many times.
    She could not recall how it had ended. The last thing she remembered of the encounter was her mother lifting her up, willing her father to take her in his arms.
    “She is your true daughter!” Anne had wept. “You have named her your heir, and Parliament has approved it. She is yours—you have only to look at her.” Her father was frowning darkly, his face flushed with anger. He would not take her. Elizabeth had wriggled around and buried her face in her mother’s silken shoulder, full of fear. Then the Queen was almost running with her, hastening through one lavishly decorated apartment after another, until she reached a small wood-paneled closet hung with bright blue cloth. A young man was there, a priest by his garments, and when Elizabeth’s mother set her on the floor and sank to her knees on the prayer desk before the little altar, he laid a comforting hand on her shoulder.
    “Tell me, Daughter,” he said.
    “I may not have much time,” her mother whispered, mysteriously—and alarmingly. “Dr. Parker, I want you to promise me something. Swear you will do so.”
    “I will do whatever is in my power, madam,” he answered. There was great kindness in his blunt features. Then Queen Anne rose and began breathlessly murmuring in his ear, her words indistinct, so that Elizabeth could not hear them. Dr. Parker’s face grew grave.
    “If aught happens to me,” the Queen concluded, more audibly, “I must charge you with the welfare of my poor child here. Promise me you will look after her interests.”
    The kind man had not hesitated to promise, and Elizabeth began to hope that he would speak to her father the King and tell him not to be nasty to her mother anymore. She had been horrified to witness the father she idolized behaving in such a harsh manner toward her mother, and appalled to see Anne’s distress. It was all far beyond her infant comprehension, and all she wanted was to retreat into the safe little world she had hitherto inhabited, with her parents in harmony with each other, and she happy and secure in their love.
    Soon after that, Elizabeth had been sent back to Hatfield, a new doll in her arms—a parting gift from her mother. When she went, clutching Lady Bryan’s hand, to bid her father farewell, he had been his usual genial self, patting her on the head and smacking a kiss on her cheek. Once more she was his Bessy, which left her feeling greatly reassured, and by and by, as the daily routine of the nursery asserted itself, she began to forget the nastiness at Greenwich, and to believe that all was now well in her small world.
    Until Sir John Shelton had called her my Lady Elizabeth.
     
    Looking down on her little half sister, who was far too young to understand fully what she was about to say, Mary was filled with all the old