merchants and apprentices—when she went abroad. Already they were returning her smiles, liking her youthful beauty and her friendliness. “God bless the Princess Elizabeth!” they cried when they saw her. She was astute enough to know that this sign of her growing popularity must not show itself too often. It must not be known that already she was wooing the people, the common people who, those foolish ones did not fully understand, ultimately decided whether their monarchs should rule.
It was during the month of May when she made a discovery. She was lying drowsily on her bed in her apartment at the Dormer Palace; it was just on midnight, and through the slight opening where the curtains about her bed had not been pulled together, she caught a glimpse of the moonlight which flooded her room.
Suddenly she heard a sound in the grounds below. It might have been the snapping of twigs or the sound of a footfall—she was not sure; but she felt certain that someone was down there creeping stealthily about the gardens.
She remembered gossip she had heard among her women.
“They say he comes at night.”
“They say she meets him at the postern gate… and lets him into her chamber….”
Elizabeth had taken little notice. It was not unusual for a woman to have a lover, to bring him into the palace at night. She wondered now who the man was. If she discovered, she would tease the woman in the morning. She got out of bed and went to the window, creeping that she might not disturb her attendants who were sleeping in the room beyond, with the connecting door open.
She knelt on the windowseat.
Moonlight lay across the grass, and there…coming across it, was a man.
She had not been mistaken then….
She drew back suddenly in delighted terror.
He is coming to me! she told herself. How like him! He will climb the creeper to my room. And what shall I do? He will be seen. There will be scandal. I shall have to make them keep quiet…I…
She placed her hand on her heart and felt its mad beating under the thin stuff of her nightgown.
He must not come….
Yet she hoped, of course, that he would.
Then, as she watched, she knew that she need not fear his coming. She would not have to deal with a delicate situation, for she had no part in it—except that of lookeron. Another person had appeared. There was the small figure of a woman. She ran to Seymour, and he and the woman seemed to melt into one. The woman’s hood fell back exposing the head of the Dowager Queen.
Elizabeth watched their kissing, the hot blood in her face, the sweat in her palms.
“How dare he!” she murmured. “And how dare she!”
She watched them, her rage increasing. He had released Katharine now. They stood looking at each other; then he put his arm about the Queen and they turned toward the Palace.
So the Queen was taking Thomas Seymour secretly to her apartments. She was behaving, Elizabeth told herself, like any kitchen slut.
She remained kneeling at the window after they had disappeared, picturing them in the silences of the Queen’s chamber.
Her women would know, and they would keep her harlot’s secrets. Katharine Parr had always won the regard of those who served her. Doubtless Kat Ashley knew, for did not Kat make it her task to discover everything that went on? And Kat would have kept it from her mistress because she feared such news would wound her pride.
If I were Queen, meditated Elizabeth, if I were Queen of England now!
She gave herself up to thoughts of the torture she would inflict on those two.
But her rage was only temporary, for she loved them both. That was what hurt so badly. Who could help loving Katharine Parr? Ingratitude was not one of Elizabeth’s failings; she could not forget how the Dowager Queen had changed the state of the neglected princesses when she had become the King’s wife. Elizabeth must love Katharine for her virtues, while she loved Seymour in spite of his sins.
These two had betrayed her; but the Queen, of course, knew nothing of the betrayal. But he knew. He was laughing at her whose hand he had asked in marriage when he was the lover of Katharine Parr.
Elizabeth went back to her bed and tried, without success, to banish thoughts of those two together. The pictures her mind conjured up for her were so vivid. They embodied all that Elizabeth wanted for herself