Philippa Gregory - Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 - The Queen’s Fool, The Virgin’s Lover, The Other Queen

But it was not the queen who stood before him on the path. It was only a girl, a little girl of about nine years old, with big solemn dark eyes and a white Spanish cap tied under her chin. She carried two books strapped with bookseller’s tape in her hand, and she regarded him with a cool objective interest, as if she had seen and understood everything.

‘How now, sweetheart!’ he exclaimed, falsely cheerful. ‘You gave me a start. I might have thought you a fairy, appearing so suddenly.’

She frowned at his rapid, over-loud speech, and then she replied, very slowly with a strong Spanish accent. ‘Forgive me, sir. My father told me to bring these books to Sir Thomas Seymour and they said you were in the garden.’

She proffered the package of books, and Tom Seymour was forced to step forward and take them from her hands. ‘You’re the bookseller’s daughter,’ he said cheerfully. ‘The bookseller from Spain.’

She bowed her head in assent, not taking her dark scrutiny from his face.

‘What are you staring at, child?’ he asked, conscious of Elizabeth, hastily rearranging her gown behind him.

‘I was looking at you, sir, but I saw something most dreadful.’

‘What?’ he demanded. For a moment he was afraid she would say that she had seen him with the Princess of England backed up against a tree like a common doxy, her skirt pulled up out of the way and his fingers dabbling at her purse.

‘I saw a scaffold behind you,’ said the surprising child, and then turned and walked away as if she had completed her errand and there was nothing more for her to do in the sunlit garden.

Tom Seymour whirled back to Elizabeth, who was trying to comb her disordered hair with fingers that were still shaking with desire. At once she stretched out her arms to him, wanting more.

‘Did you hear that?’

Elizabeth’s eyes were slits of black. ‘No,’ she said silkily. ‘Did she say something?’

‘She only said that she saw the scaffold behind me!’ He was more shaken than he wanted to reveal. He tried for a bluff laugh, but it came out with a quaver of fear.

At the mention of the scaffold Elizabeth was suddenly alert. ‘Why?’ she snapped. ‘Why should she say such a thing?’

‘God knows,’ he said. ‘Stupid little witch. Probably mistook the word, she’s foreign. Probably meant throne! Probably saw the throne behind me!’

But this joke was no more successful than his bluster, since in Elizabeth’s imagination the throne and the scaffold were always close neighbours. The colour drained from her face, leaving her sallow with fear.

‘Who is she?’ Her voice was sharp with nervousness. ‘Who is she working for?’

He turned to look for the child but the allée was empty. At the distant end of it he could see his wife walking slowly towards them, her back arched to carry the pregnant curve of her belly.

‘Not a word,’ he said quickly to the girl at his side. ‘Not a word of this, sweetheart. You don’t want to upset your stepmother.’

He hardly needed to warn her. At the first hint of danger the girl was wary, smoothing her dress, conscious always that she must play a part, that she must survive. He could always rely on Elizabeth’s duplicity. She might be only fourteen but she had been trained in deceit every day since the death of her mother, she had been an apprentice cheat for twelve long years. And she was the daughter of a liar – two liars, he thought spitefully. She might feel desire; but she was always more alert to danger or ambition than to lust. He took her cold hand and led her up the allée towards his wife Katherine. He tried for a merry smile. ‘I caught her at last!’ he called out.

He glanced around, he could not see the child anywhere. ‘We had such a race!’ he cried.

I was that child, and that was the first sight I ever had of the Princess Elizabeth: damp with desire, panting with lust, rubbing herself like a cat against another woman’s husband. But it was the first and last time I saw Tom Seymour. Within a year, he was dead on the scaffold charged with treason, and Elizabeth had denied three times having anything more than the most common acquaintance with him.

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