The Tudor Throne by Brandy Purdy Read Free Book Online

wrapped in a length of red silk with a lavender and rose petal sachet, and vowed never to surrender and never to forget. I would never give any man the power to act as a living god and ordain my fate—life or death at his sufferance or fancy. Never surrender! I burned those words into my brain and engraved them on my heart.
    Afterward, a parade of stepmothers passed fleetingly through my life. Most had pity in their eyes when they looked at me, and tried, though it was not their fault, to atone for what my father had done, and give me their best imitation of a mother’s love.
    First pale, prim Jane Seymour, whose shyness made her seem cold and aloof. She died giving my father the son he had always longed for. When Mary took my hand and led me in to see our new little brother, lying in his golden cradle, bundled against the cold in purple velvet and ermine, Jane Seymour lay as listless and quiet as a corpse upon her bed, as still and white as a marble tomb effigy. Her skin looked so like wax I wondered that she did not melt; the heat from the fire was such that pearls of sweat beaded my own brow and trickled down my back. I was four years old then and fully understood what death meant. And in that moment my mind forged a new link in the chain between surrender, marriage, and death—childbirth. It was another peril that came when a woman surrendered and put her life in a man’s hands.
    When Mary and I walked in the funeral procession, two of twenty-nine slow and solemn ladies—one for each year of Jane Seymour’s life—with bowed heads and hands clasped around tall, flickering white tapers, all of us clad in the simple, stark death-black dresses and snow-white hoods that meant the deceased had died in childbirth, I vowed that I would never marry. Later, when I told her, Mary shook her head and scoffed at this childish nonsense, hugging me close and promising that I would forget all about this foolish fancy when I was old enough to understand what being a wife and mother meant; it was something that every woman wanted. I bit my tongue and kept my own counsel, but I knew that my conviction would never waver; God would be the only man to ever have the power of life and death over me. And as I knelt in chapel before Jane Seymour’s catafalque, I looked up at the cross and swore it as a vow, a pact between God and myself. He would be my heavenly master and I would always bow to His will, but I would have no earthly master force his will upon me.
    Then came jolly German Anne of Cleves, always pink-cheeked and smiling, a platter of marzipan and candied fruits, like edible jewels, always within reach. She even wore a comfit box on a jeweled chain about her waist so that she would never be without her candy. I helped her with her English and she taught me German, and was the soul of patience when helping me with my much hated sewing. But I had no sooner learned to care for her than she was gone, supplanted by flighty, foolish, vain, but oh so beautiful Katherine Howard.
    I was amazed to learn that she was but a few years older than me; I was seven and she was a tender fifteen to my father’s half century when they married. When I heard that she was my mother’s cousin I was so excited and eager to meet her, I bobbed on my toes like an ill-bred peasant child, bursting with impatience and craning my neck to catch a glimpse of her. Yet when at last I stood before her I looked in vain for any resemblance to my slim, elegant mother in that plump-breasted, auburn-haired, green-eyed, pouty cherry-lipped little nymph whom my father called his “Rose Without a Thorn” in token of what he saw as her pure, untrammeled innocence. Though she was indeed beautiful, she had none of my mother’s elegance, intelligence, and sophistication; she was more like an illiterate country bumpkin dressed up in silks and satins. And though the court looked askance at her impetuous, impulsive ways, my father adored her.
    I remember once, one rare