no man had been important, except the King; now there were several men all struggling for pre-eminence. She wished she could have talked freely to John; she wanted to warn him. How he would laugh if she did! He had never considered her opinion worth asking for.
Young Robert knew of her fears and tried to soothe her.
“Why, Mother,” he said, “my father will win. He will beat the Seymours.”
“Your father will beat all who oppose him,” said Jane; and her voice trembled. She could not dismiss from her mind memories of that day when her father had brought John home. Such sights as John had seen on that day were often to be witnessed on Tower Hill.
“I’ll tell you why my father will beat them, Mother,” said Robert. “He is now in command of the King’s armies, and therefore his position is as strong as that of the Lord Protector Somerset.”
And Jane had to be content with that.
The new Earl of Warwick lost little time in arranging advantageous marriages for his children. His eldest son John should be affianced to the daughter of the Protector himself; his daughter Mary was to marry the King’s friend, Henry Sidney.
“Your turn will come, Robin,” said his mother.
Robert’s answer was: “I, Mother? I shall choose for myself.”
When he thought of marriage he thought of the redheaded Princess. Was he looking rather high? Robert did not think so. Who could be too high for Robert? Moreover she was a bastard. Yet he did not object to that. He had admired her spirit, the way in which she had commanded the children, the way in which she had cajoled him into calling her “Your Grace.” What impudence, and yet what dignity! What arrogance mingling with a certain promise of … he was not quite sure what.
“Yes,” he affirmed, “I shall choose for myself.”
Strange rumors were afloat.
The younger Seymour was attainted of high treason. He had plotted, it was said, to seize the government and marry the Princess Elizabeth.
Robert was bewildered by the news. He had, of course, seen Thomas Seymour, Lord Sudeley, rich and magnificent, swaggering through the Court, the eyes of the women gleaming as they followed him. All had agreed that Thomas Seymour was the handsomest man in England; but at that time Robert was yet a boy and no one had noticed him.
The rumors were shocking, for they involved the Princess. Robert was angry when he heard of them. He did not believe them, he told himself; and yet when he thought of her, smiling at him, fluttering her sandy lashes, how could he be sure that what he heard was not true?
His mother talked of the rumors with the ladies of her household; she would sit in the gardens at Chelsea and talk with her friends.
“Was it true then … the Princess but a girl of thirteen and a Princess … so to conduct herself!”
It did not help matters that the man with whom the Princess was reputed to have behaved so disgracefully was the husband of her stepmother, Katharine Parr.
Robert heard it all, the story of the flirting and the rough horseplay; he heard of the occasion when the daring Seymour had cut her dress to pieces while sporting in the gardens of the Chelsea Dower House; there were stories of his visits to her bedchamber, of tickling and smacking and kissing while the Princess was in bed. The Princess Elizabeth had been known to ride in a barge on the Thames like a light woman.
Robert thought of it all, pictured it, saw Seymour and the Princess in that embrace which it was said had exposed the guilty affair to Katharine Parr when she had come unexpectedly upon them and witnessed it.
There was no end to the tales, and snatches of conversation stayed in his mind.
“And have you heard the rumors? I had it from a very reliable source … someone who knows … from the midwife herself. Do not speak of this to any other. One dark night the midwife was awakened from her bed by men and women in masks and made to follow them, bringing with her the tools of her trade. She was blindfolded until she reached a certain house, and there she delivered a child. She was warned that if she spoke a word of what had happened her tongue would be cut out. The lady who needed her services was young and most imperious. She had red hair …”
Robert was more angry than ever then,