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

the
    window-seat to watch the rain teeming down the little leaded panes. She
    sat very straight and still with her back to him and though he knew she
    was crying he dared not go and take her on his lap. She was too old now
    for familiarity from a distantly related man-servant. Mr. Shelton went out
    of the room, leaving her alone, and felt sadly that that was how he would
    always leave her now. He kicked the wall savagely when the door had
    closed behind him and wished it was his sovereign lord and master.
    Yet when Anne of Cleves arrived in England Elizabeth was at court
    with her sister Mary to greet the lady after all. In decency Henry could not
    leave her out—it would look so pointed. And once he had set eyes on this
    new wife he decided rashly that he ought not to wish to see her himself.
    He went to his wedding squealing like a staked pig, “What remedy, hey?
    None but to marry this fat Flanders mare!” and the look he gave Cromwell
    as he said it told that unfortunate man that he was not long for this world.
    Anne of Cleves was a warm, compassionate, sensible woman. Everybody
    liked her, except the husband who flatly refused to share her bed, but then
    Henry had not been led to expect an amiable virgin sow. He was loud in
    his disappointment and already in love with his new wife’s maid of honour,
    Katherine Howard. This time it took Archbishop Cranmer only five
    months to dissolve another unfortunate marriage for his master. Cromwell
    laid his head on the block for bungling the affair, and on the morning of
    that execution Henry married Anne Boleyn’s little Howard cousin.
    The fat Flanders mare had escaped to comfortable retirement at
    Richmond Palace, considerably happier to be known as the King’s “good
    sister.” She had shown almost indecent relief at the annulment and had
    indeed made only one condition to it. She desired to see Elizabeth regu-
    larly because “I would rather have been her mother than your Queen.”
    Only a foreigner could have hoped to get away with such insolence,
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    Legacy
    and Henry, not daring to endanger relations with Cleves any further,
    chose to turn the other cheek with astonishing restraint. Let her have
    Elizabeth! Let her have anything she wanted provided he gained his
    freedom without armed hostilities. So Elizabeth went often to visit “Aunt
    Anne” and learnt sufficient cookery in the kitchens at Richmond under
    the tutelage of that extremely practical German lady to justify her later
    boast that should she be turned out of the realm in her petticoat, she
    would make her living anywhere in Europe.
    When she was not at Richmond, she was at court, having her pert
    head turned by the attentions of Henry’s Rose without Thorns, the reck-
    less, penniless, wanton little Queen who welcomed her with open arms.
    At seven years old she had never been in such demand and she was ready
    to worship the lovely, laughing girl, just on eighteen, who made so much
    of her.
    For a little over a year the court sunned itself in the warmth of Katherine
    Howard’s youth, and it began to be said, with some reason, that the King
    was in his happy dotage at last. Whoever Katherine favoured found a
    place in the King’s circle; whoever she loved was automatically admitted
    to his affection. And Katherine loved Elizabeth, her cousin’s child, and
    made no secret of it. A place of honour at the royal table, a wardrobe fit
    for a princess and the attention of the father she had always adored—all
    this and more Elizabeth owed to the young stepmother who chose to
    make an especial friend of her. The reign of Katherine Howard was the
    high-water mark of Elizabeth’s turbulent childhood, one unending party
    which, like her reckless little stepmother, she believed would never end—
    t t t
    Sunlight filled the deserted Long Gallery, winking on the massive stones
    that adorned the King’s vast chest and fat fingers.
    He was hot and short of breath to the point of tetchy irritation as
    he