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 Page B

mockery of his whole existence.
    All he had done, he had done for England, to save this wilful little half isle
    from the hazardous rule of a woman. His greatest achievement, as man
    and monarch, must be the siring of Edward. He could not, would not see
    the seed of greatness in Elizabeth. He did not want to see it: the thought
    turned his brain.
    She will never be Queen, he told his restless conscience. Edward will
    marry and sire many sons. And after Edward there is Mary. Should I
    replace her in the succession she will never rule. You waste your soul in
    vain, Anne. She will never be Queen. Your day is done—
    Defiance eased his spirit and the grey mood lifted a little; he lowered
    himself stiffly into a chair and beckoned the living forward. They sat
    on cushions at his feet and he smiled at them smugly, for it gave him a
    perverted pleasure to see them together, Anne’s cousin and Anne’s child,
    both his, to use as he pleased.
    He was doubly blessed in Katherine, his Rose without Thorns; she
    was his jewel of womanhood, lusty but pure. “No other will but his” she
    had chosen as her motto, and every man at court knew what it meant.
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    Susan Kay
    None had loved his Rose as he did and none would ever dare. By God,
    they knew the price!
    Elizabeth leaned against his knee and her flaming hair spread like a
    silk cloak across his thigh. Beautiful hair! He liked to stroke and twine
    it round his fingers while he lolled sleepily in the great chair and his
    thoughts, like little imps, danced him back to Hever Castle, to the first
    wild days of his pursuit of Anne. He had never loved that way before and
    he never would again. No man would. Anne was a unique experience.
    Whoso list to hunt, I know where is an hind .
    Wyatt had written that of her, Thomas Wyatt her cousin, who had
    made no secret of his love for her. Bitter and public had been the rivalry
    between himself and the King for her favours, until at last Wyatt bowed
    to defeat, not through fear of Henry but because he saw at last he had
    nothing to offer Anne that could compete with a crown.
    Who list her hunt, I put him out of doubt,
    As well as I, may spend his time in vain;
    And graven with diamonds in letters plain
    There is written her fair neck round about,
    “ Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
    And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.”
    Wyatt had relinquished her, written his famous poem of farewell, and
    Anne had shown it to Henry as proof of the man’s integrity, to quiet
    his jealousy. But he had never been sure after that, never quite sure,
    whether she had come to him unsoiled as she swore. And he was jealous
    of Wyatt, jealous of all those stolen moments of her extreme youth, of
    every moment in her life which he had been unable to share. Jealous,
    jealous, murderously jealous. Sometimes, in painful moments of honesty,
    he wondered if that were not the reason he had insisted on her death, a
    grim determination, after she had agreed to all his terms, that no one else
    should enjoy her. He had wanted to kill her and only regretted that, in
    common decency, he could not wield the axe himself.
    At the time of her arrest, he had sent Wyatt to the Tower, along with
    those five other men; it had seemed the perfect moment to be revenged for
    al those years of uncertainty and anguish. And he would have sent Wyatt to
    his death, along with the rest, if it were not for those wretched lines of verse.
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    Legacy
    “Nole me tangere, for Caesar’s I am— ”
    No, he knew Wyatt had not committed adultery with her, no matter
    what they had done together before the marriage. He knew Wyatt too
    well, the stubborn courage which had made him challenge his monarch
    on man-to-man terms, the honest integrity which had made him keep his
    distance once he retired from the field of honour. He could not square
    Wyatt’s death with his conscience and so the man had been released.
    Whenever he woke now from guilty, terrified dreams he could point to
    Wyatt’s