Free Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her by Susan Kay Page B

threw the core away into the straw,
    supposing with rough sympathy that she wept for her last stepmother.
    Perhaps she was afraid the same thing would happen again.
    “I expect,” he said, intending to be cheerful, “that the King will just
    divorce this one when he’s tired of her—then your uncle can have her
    after all.”
    That did not appear to comfort her at all. She began to get off the bale
    in a monstrous hurry.
    “He’s Edward’s uncle, not mine,” she sobbed, hunting furiously for the
    slipper she had lost in her hasty descent. “And he won’t marry her—he
    won’t marry anyone except—” She broke off so abruptly that her mouth
    snapped shut like the spring of a trap. He heard no more of whom she
    expected Tom Seymour to marry and it was to be four years before
    malicious rumour supplied the missing name to his by then unwilling ears.
    But for the time being he quickly forgot it.
    49
    Susan Kay
    t t t
    So the King married Katherine Parr and Elizabeth’s favourite step-uncle
    sailed away to sanctuary in Flanders. It was almost three years before he
    judged it safe to return to court, a court paralysed with fear and uncertainty
    under a sick tyrant’s rule. He felt the oppressive atmosphere as soon as he
    arrived and his bold laugh rang through the whispering corridors like a
    breath of fresh air. “He’s back!” said the gay glances of all the unmarried
    girls at he court; “He’s back!” said his brother’s sombre stare with a flicker
    of dislike and distrust; “He’s back!” said the King’s jaundiced eye as it
    roved over that bronzed figure, and remembered with envy how many
    years it was since he had looked like that.
    The new Queen folded her hands in her lap and carefully averted her
    gaze, afraid to betray herself by looking at him too directly. It had been
    the longest three years of her life, full of alarms and fears which had aged
    her. Tom could see in that first moment that she was not the gay laughing
    widow she had been when the King first set eyes upon her. Poor Kate!
    All around him Tom felt the nervous shifting glances of men who
    wondered how much longer they would keep their heads these days. And
    those few who did not fear the block, being spotless in their honour, were
    anxious lest their religious leanings should shortly lead them to the stake.
    Heresy had been a delicate subject for Catholics and Protestants alike
    ever since the break with Rome. Too orthodox a Roman Catholic and
    you were a traitor; too vigorous a reformer and you were a heretic. Either
    way Henry had the majority of his courtiers in a cleft stick and fear pulsed
    through the palace like a tangible force. He could not bear the doctrinal
    controversy spreading through England, nor could he accept that he
    was largely responsible for its growth. To suit his personal convenience,
    he had pushed open the door to the Reformation one necessary chink;
    now he found himself unable to close it once more and he was equally
    savage in his reprisals to offenders on either side of the religious fence.
    All he had done was to remove papal authority from the land, along with
    iniquitous monasteries—he’d never had much time for monks and nuns
    anyway—and now this insufferable spiritual chaos! Had he not made the
    position clear, simple and unquestionably right? Who dared to raise the
    voice of dispute in England? He would root it out with axe and rope and
    fire. He was King; he was Pope; was he not, perhaps, even God? Paranoid
    with suspicion, the small eyes ran here and there seeking treason and
    50
    Legacy
    heresy behind every face, while the little mortals around him trembled
    like autumn leaves in a fierce wind, torn between worship and hate for
    this ageing Zeus from whose hands had fallen so many thunderbolts.
    It was a relief and a pleasure for Tom Seymour to escape at last to the
    apartments of the royal children, where at least a man did not need to
    watch his every look and word. He strode down