The Lady Elizabeth Read Free Page B

conflicting feelings. She loved the child dearly, knowing that she was an innocent whom it would be unfair to hold responsible for the wrongs that her mother had done Mary and her own mother, Queen Katherine. Yet she could never forget that Elizabeth was Anne Boleyn’s child, and Mary had hated Anne Boleyn more than any other mortal on earth.
    She should forgive, she told herself; her faith demanded it. But it was hard, nay, impossible, for the hurts had cut too deeply. Were it not for Anne Boleyn, her father would not have wickedly broken with the Pope in Rome, her mother would not have died abandoned and alone, and she herself would never have been declared a bastard—she, who had been the King’s true heir and successor to the throne—nor made to act as maid-servant to the baby Elizabeth. But her father—and here again, there was that conflict of emotions, and loyalties, for she loved him too, for all her fear of him—had fallen in love, bewitched by the black eyes and cunning charms of that whore, Anne Boleyn; and after that, twenty years of chaste and loving wedlock to Queen Katherine had counted for nothing, and Mary’s world had crashed in ruins about her.
    Her sainted mother had borne rejection, harassment, exile, and mortal illness with great patience and fortitude, insisting all along that she was the King’s true wife, and believing through the weary, bitter years that he would one day come to his senses—even after he had set her aside and married Anne, even in the face of Anne’s threats to have Katherine and Mary executed for their refusal to acknowledge that marriage, which, Mary knew, was no true marriage.
    On her knees, Mary had prayed that she might be granted that same patience, that fortitude. But she had been young, bitterly miserable, and deeply resentful, and she missed her mother desperately. How she had longed to be with her: Her yearning for the comfort that only Katherine could give had been constant, and not even five years of enforced separation could diminish it. And nor, she had found, could death, for Katherine had been dead these six months, poisoned, Mary was convinced, on the orders of that woman. She had been ailing for some time, and when they had cut her body open for the autopsy, they had found her heart to be black and putrid. What else could that betoken but poison? And then her father and the whore, wearing yellow for the mourning, they said, parading Elizabeth around the court, gloating in their triumph.
    Anne had not gloated for long. On the very day of Katherine’s funeral, she had miscarried of the son the King so desperately wanted, had failed him in the same way that Katherine had failed him. He had been King of England for twenty-seven years, and still had no son to succeed him. Just two daughters, both now declared bastards.
    Which brought Mary back to the matter at hand, the dread task from which she shrank. Elizabeth’s pointed little face was looking up at her, her black eyes inquiring. Apart from her coloring, she was entirely Anne Boleyn’s child—even her long-fingered hands were Anne’s. Anne, Mary remembered, had had a sixth finger—a devil’s mark, some people were saying, knowing that it was at last safe openly to revile her. But her detractors were not so many now, for astonishingly, in the wake of what had happened recently, there were an increasing number who expressed sympathy…
    Yes, Elizabeth was her mother’s child, in her appearance and her quick wits, her mercurial temperament and her vanity: Already, she held herself with poise, delighting in fine gowns and peering into mirrors to admire herself. But was she King Harry’s? This thought had tortured Mary ever since she had heard the accusations against the lute player Mark Smeaton. Mary had never seen him herself, she had not been at court for many years, but some of her friends there were of the opinion that Elizabeth had a look of him, although of course they could not be certain, since