father’s teacher. I don’t know how she stood it, but it only matters that she survived it.
Six wives . . . four dead and two living. Their history clearly showed me that marriage is the road to doom and destruction for all womankind and affirmed my conviction that never would I walk it; I would go a virgin to my grave. But I also knew, and feared, that there would be times in the years to come when God would test me.
3
Mary
“T he King is dead. Long live the King!” Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, pronounced in a voice both loud and somber. Even as Father’s minion, that heretical serpent Cranmer, leaned down to close Father’s eyes, all other eyes were turning toward the future—pale and weeping little Edward, aged only nine.
He sat there mute and quaking between my sister and me. And then he turned away from me and flung himself into Elizabeth’s arms, weeping more, I think, at the enormity of what lay ahead of him than for the loss of our father.
Though Edward had been his greatest treasure, the son he had spent most of his life longing for, Father had never truly taken him under his wing, never forged a bond of friendly father-and-son camaraderie with him; instead, like a priceless jewel, he had locked Edward away, safe under guard with every possible precaution, trying to protect him from any enemy or illness that might threaten the safety of his person and lessen his chance of surviving to adulthood and inheriting the throne. But in doing so, I fear, he made my brother unsympathetic and cold, immune to and unmoved by human suffering.
It hurt me, I confess, to have Edward turn from me instead of to me, and to hide my pain, I went to kneel by Father’s bed, to pray for his soul and say a private farewell.
Though I tried hard to hide it, I gagged at the stench, and tears pricked my eyes, but I did my duty and knelt at his side with the ivory rosary beads my sainted mother had given me twined around my hands. Poor Father, he would have much to answer for and, I feared, would linger long in Purgatory.
Tentatively, I reached out and touched the mottled pink-and-gray flesh of his hand. I bowed my head and kissed it and let my tears cleanse it. How often I had prayed for his anger to end, and for his love for me to bloom anew, like the perfect rose it had once been, not the blighted blossom that had struggled along for years after sweet Jane Seymour broke The Great Whore’s spell that had held Father captive like Merlin in the cave of crystal.
And now that he was gone, selfishly, I wondered what would become of me. Anne Boleyn’s ambition had paved the way for heresy to take root in England. And those roots had grown into tenacious vines that already held those dearest to me—Edward, Elizabeth, and the Dowager Queen Katherine—in their deadly, soul-destroying grasp.
I knew I would be pressured to conform. Most of the men on the Regency Council had profited well by the dissolution of the monasteries. They would be loathe to relinquish their ill-gotten gains, and return to Rome all that they had stolen; thus they would encourage this heresy to flourish whilst they stamped and rooted out the true religion.
But I would confound them; I would rather give up my life than my religion. And I knew then, with complete and utter certainty, as I knelt beside the corpse of my father, that it was my duty to save the soul of England and, like a good shepherdess, lead these poor lost sheep back to the Pope’s flock. I prayed to God to give me, one lone weak and fragile woman, the strength to prevail against the virulent Protestant heresy that had come like a plague to blacken and imperil the souls of the English people, born of ambition and greed, not out of a true but misguided faith. And I knew then, as surely as if a holy beacon of pure white light from Heaven had just shone down upon me, that I had been chosen to guide my country back into the light. I felt a divine presence enfold and embrace me,
Six wives . . . four dead and two living. Their history clearly showed me that marriage is the road to doom and destruction for all womankind and affirmed my conviction that never would I walk it; I would go a virgin to my grave. But I also knew, and feared, that there would be times in the years to come when God would test me.
3
Mary
“T he King is dead. Long live the King!” Edward Seymour, the Duke of Somerset, pronounced in a voice both loud and somber. Even as Father’s minion, that heretical serpent Cranmer, leaned down to close Father’s eyes, all other eyes were turning toward the future—pale and weeping little Edward, aged only nine.
He sat there mute and quaking between my sister and me. And then he turned away from me and flung himself into Elizabeth’s arms, weeping more, I think, at the enormity of what lay ahead of him than for the loss of our father.
Though Edward had been his greatest treasure, the son he had spent most of his life longing for, Father had never truly taken him under his wing, never forged a bond of friendly father-and-son camaraderie with him; instead, like a priceless jewel, he had locked Edward away, safe under guard with every possible precaution, trying to protect him from any enemy or illness that might threaten the safety of his person and lessen his chance of surviving to adulthood and inheriting the throne. But in doing so, I fear, he made my brother unsympathetic and cold, immune to and unmoved by human suffering.
It hurt me, I confess, to have Edward turn from me instead of to me, and to hide my pain, I went to kneel by Father’s bed, to pray for his soul and say a private farewell.
Though I tried hard to hide it, I gagged at the stench, and tears pricked my eyes, but I did my duty and knelt at his side with the ivory rosary beads my sainted mother had given me twined around my hands. Poor Father, he would have much to answer for and, I feared, would linger long in Purgatory.
Tentatively, I reached out and touched the mottled pink-and-gray flesh of his hand. I bowed my head and kissed it and let my tears cleanse it. How often I had prayed for his anger to end, and for his love for me to bloom anew, like the perfect rose it had once been, not the blighted blossom that had struggled along for years after sweet Jane Seymour broke The Great Whore’s spell that had held Father captive like Merlin in the cave of crystal.
And now that he was gone, selfishly, I wondered what would become of me. Anne Boleyn’s ambition had paved the way for heresy to take root in England. And those roots had grown into tenacious vines that already held those dearest to me—Edward, Elizabeth, and the Dowager Queen Katherine—in their deadly, soul-destroying grasp.
I knew I would be pressured to conform. Most of the men on the Regency Council had profited well by the dissolution of the monasteries. They would be loathe to relinquish their ill-gotten gains, and return to Rome all that they had stolen; thus they would encourage this heresy to flourish whilst they stamped and rooted out the true religion.
But I would confound them; I would rather give up my life than my religion. And I knew then, with complete and utter certainty, as I knelt beside the corpse of my father, that it was my duty to save the soul of England and, like a good shepherdess, lead these poor lost sheep back to the Pope’s flock. I prayed to God to give me, one lone weak and fragile woman, the strength to prevail against the virulent Protestant heresy that had come like a plague to blacken and imperil the souls of the English people, born of ambition and greed, not out of a true but misguided faith. And I knew then, as surely as if a holy beacon of pure white light from Heaven had just shone down upon me, that I had been chosen to guide my country back into the light. I felt a divine presence enfold and embrace me,
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