Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (112 page)

What I remembered was that the queen’s jewel chest had been locked up for safekeeping in the King’s Jewel House in the Tower at the time of King Henry’s death. No matter what was in it, the Duke of Somerset had possession of it now. I wondered if Lady Somerset had convinced her husband to let her wear the queen’s jewels.

“A pity that the duke cannot see what a bad influence his wife is,” I said. “Perhaps then he would not let her lead him around by the nose.”

“I do not believe it is his
nose,
” Tom quipped.

Kathryn made a choking sound. Then she started to laugh. In spite of my troubles, I joined in. For a little while, I felt less sad.

A few days later, Kathryn asked a favor of me. She was concerned about her stepdaughter the princess. Elizabeth Tudor had her own household within the queen dowager’s at Chelsea. Her Grace’s tutor, a young man named William Grindal, had recently died. Elizabeth was so
distraught over his loss that she was refusing to consider any of the suggestions the lord admiral and the queen dowager had made to her for a suitable replacement.

The last time I’d spoken privily with the princess had been just after the death of Jack Dudley’s brother Harry. Princess Elizabeth had advised against love, since it always led to loss. She’d been barely eleven years old at the time. I wondered if, at fourteen, she still felt the same way.

I found Her Grace walking in the gallery for exercise. Mistress Astley and several maids of honor were with her, but they faded into the background to allow me to converse in relative privacy with their mistress.

She had grown taller, slimmer, and more graceful since our last encounter and already had a well-developed bosom. Innate or learned, she also possessed the dignified bearing of a member of the royal family.

“How am I to address you?” she asked bluntly, once she’d granted me permission to walk beside her.

“Bess will do, Your Grace.”

“Have you come to lecture me on my morals?” she asked.

Surprised into a laugh, I denied it. “I cannot imagine why you should think so,” I added.

“It was only a kiss.” She sounded defensive.

Since I had no idea what kiss she meant, I said nothing. After a moment, she gestured for me to sit beside her on the padded bench at the end of the gallery. From that height we could just glimpse the spires of London’s tallest churches, off to the east.

“Is my stepmother wroth with me?” Elizabeth Tudor asked.

“I do not believe so, Your Grace. The only concern she expressed to me had to do with the selection of a new tutor.”

A shadow crossed her face. “They want me to accept some relative of Master Grindal’s, as if putting another with the same name in his place will make up for his loss.”

“Is there someone you wish to have as your tutor, Your Grace?”

“Roger Ascham,” she said at once. “My master Grindal studied under him at Cambridge. I will have no other teach me.”

Noting the stubborn tilt of her jaw, I did not argue. Elizabeth stared past me out the window. She betrayed no nervousness. Her long, tapered fingers lay still in her lap. She did not toy with any of the many ornate rings she wore. But I sensed there was something else on her mind, something she debated sharing with me. Perhaps my current troubles, the fact that I had risked so much for love, made her think I would be a sympathetic listener. After a few moments, she unburdened herself.

“There is nothing wrong with a kiss beneath the kissing bough on Twelfth Night.”

“It is an old and honored tradition,” I agreed.

“Lady Tyrwhitt would make something out of nothing. She is an interfering busybody.”

I thought for a moment. “I have never had much to do with her, but she always seemed to me to be the most evangelical of the queen’s ladies.” A half-forgotten detail popped into my head. “She was writing a book of prayers when I knew her at court.”

“
Everyone
thinks the lord admiral is a most toothsome man,” Elizabeth said.

I began at last to see where this conversation might lead. Like so many other women, the princess had been charmed by the queen dowager’s husband. Still, I could not see the harm in it. Tom Seymour was safely married to Elizabeth’s stepmother and Kathryn was here at Chelsea to chaperone her young charge. So were Mistress Astley and all the other members of Elizabeth’s entourage.

The princess’s cheeks were pink and she could no longer meet my eyes. “He kissed me under the kissing bough at Enfield just as the queen dowager came upon us. It was a
real
kiss, and she did not like it.”

My heart went out to her. The casual kisses exchanged on meeting meant nothing, but the kind of kiss that held desire was something quite different, especially the first one a girl received from a man she found attractive. Only eight years separated us, but I suddenly felt decades older.

“There was no reason for the queen dowager to be so upset,”
Elizabeth continued. “Why should she be when she had no objection to anything he did last summer.”

“Last summer?” I prompted her, remembering that she had escaped proper chaperones for a moonlit ride on the Thames. Had there been more to the incident than I’d realized? I felt a faint stirring of alarm at the thought.

Elizabeth kept her head down and mumbled, “Naught but tickling games, and a race through the gardens. Her Grace and the lord admiral both.” She lifted reddish lashes to reveal dark eyes filled with despair. “And on Twelfth Night I
wanted
him to kiss me,” she whispered. “I wanted him to desire me. And all he said, when the queen dowager interrupted us, was ‘God’s precious blood, Kate, you make a fuss over nothing.’
Nothing!
I am
nothing
to him.”

Her ladies, hovering at the far end of the gallery, sent worried glances our way but did not approach.

“He is married, Your Grace,” I said in a low voice. “It would not be right for him to desire you.”

“Being married does not stop the Marquess of Northampton from desiring you!”

I winced as if she’d struck me.

The princess drew in a steadying breath. “I beg your pardon, Bess. That was uncalled for. I know that the lord admiral and my stepmother have a true marriage and that they care deeply for each other. The matter of Lord Northampton and his estranged wife is entirely different.”

I did not contradict her, nor did I tell her how foolish she had been to encourage Tom Seymour, a man well known to be a devil with the ladies. Neither did I repeat my entire conversation with the princess to the queen dowager, only Elizabeth’s request that Roger Ascham be appointed as her new tutor.

30

M
y time at Chelsea Manor passed slowly. I felt cut off from the outside world. The many-turreted redbrick house had been designed as a country retreat and could only be reached by water and by a single narrow road that led to a tiny village of no importance.

I saw little of the princess, who was busy with her studies once Master Ascham arrived to take charge of them. Most of my time was spent with my two sisters-in-law and their ladies, including Mary Woodhull, and with Will’s nephew, three-year-old Edward Herbert. I enjoyed being “Aunt Bess” to the boy. Will and I had talked of having a child, but we had taken precautions to prevent conception during our time together, even after we were living as man and wife at Norfolk House. We’d wanted to be sure there was no question of legitimacy when I bore his heir.

In March, Mistress Lavina Teerlinck the paintrix arrived to make a portrait of the little boy. While she was at Chelsea, I commissioned her to paint me in small. When the miniature was finished, I gave it to Tom Seymour to take to Will. No one had thought to forbid him to own my likeness.

At long last spring arrived, making it possible to stroll out of doors along newly mown alleys and enjoy the gardens. I wandered beside hedges of privet and whitethorn and between banks of rosemary and borders of lavender, inhaling their warm scents. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine myself back in my own garden at Norfolk House.

I ventured into the orchard as well, where a mixture of trees had been planted less than ten years before—cherries, filbert, and damson. There were also two peach trees, already in flower and giving promise of a bountiful crop. The orchard was surrounded by fields. Sometimes, looking out across all that open space, a vista filled with cowslips, daisies, and gillyflowers, I found it difficult to remember that I was only a few miles from the center of London.

I walked as far as the postern gate that led to the road but I did not pass through. There was nowhere to go. I glanced back at the house that had been my home for more than three months. Surely the commissioners would make their decision soon.

My spirits lifted when I saw that young Edward had come outside with his nurse. There was a little stone basin in the privy garden that had been turned into a fishpond. Edward had his pole at the ready and the queen dowager herself was giving him instructions on how to land a fish.

She smiled when I joined them. “Are you an angler, Bess?”

“My brothers tried to teach me but I lacked the patience for the sport.”

“Why does that not surprise me?”

We stood side by side to watch Edward try his luck. Several minutes passed before I noticed that Kathryn kept touching her hand to her abdomen. “Are you unwell, Kathryn?”

A shy smile reassured me even before she answered. “Very well indeed, Bess. I am with child.”

I struggled to find words. This was most unexpected. Kathryn had been married three times before without conceiving. For a barren woman of thirty-four to suddenly prove fertile was the next thing to a miracle. “I envy you,” I said at last.

“Your turn will come.”

I hoped it would arrive before I was as old as she was, but I gave her the smile she expected before we went back to watching our mutual nephew catch fish.

A few days later, my sister Kate arrived at Chelsea. It had been years since I’d last seen her. At nineteen, her resemblance to our mother was striking. That was shock enough, but the news that she was en route to her new home in the company of a husband left me speechless.

Experienced at smoothing over awkwardness, the queen dowager expertly separated the newlyweds, engaging John Jerningham in conversation so that Kate and I could steal away to my chamber. I’d heard not a word from anyone in my family since I’d arrived at Chelsea. The letters I’d sent to Cowling Castle had gone unanswered.

I did not know what to ask Kate first. Before I could decide, she rushed into my arms and embraced me. “I have missed you, Bess! It was very bad of Father to forbid us to write to you, but he was furious when he heard you were Northampton’s mistress.”

“I am his wife, Kate.”

Her eyebrows winged up. “If you say so.”

“I do. And I do not need Father trying to arrange my life.”

“He means well,” Kate said. “And I am well pleased with the husband he picked out for me.”

“Then you are fortunate. I doubt I would have been happy with the results of his matchmaking. I have nothing against Sir Edward Warner, but I do not want him as a husband.”

Kate’s eyes widened. “Sir Edward Warner? Is that why he came to Cowling Castle?” She started to laugh.

“Why is that so funny?” I had the feeling I’d been insulted, but I could not fathom how.

“Because he’s to marry Elizabeth Brooke, after all. Just not you.”

That took a moment to work out. Then I was the one gaping. “Aunt Elizabeth?”

Kate nodded. “They announced their betrothal last month.”

She rambled merrily on, telling me all about my brother William’s new wife, and what the younger boys were up to, and how excited she was to be going to her new home. It was the lot of daughters to wed and leave their childhood homes behind. Sometimes they moved so far away from their parents and siblings that they never saw any of them again. Tears welled up in my eyes. I was not so very far away, but because of the lord protector’s vengeful wife and her hatred of the queen dowager, I had lost both husband and family. I flung my arms around Kate and hugged her as tightly as she’d earlier embraced me.

“Promise me we will see each other as often as possible,” I begged her. “Swear to me that Father’s disapproval will no longer keep us apart.”

Kate used her own handkerchief to wipe away my tears. “I promise. Oh, Bess, if only you could be as happy with your Will as I am with my John.”

After Kate’s visit, it was harder to convince myself that everything would come out right in the end. Try as I might to distract myself from longing for Will, he was always in my thoughts. There were even times when I imagined that I heard his voice.

I was walking in the garden, inhaling the soothing scent of the lavender border, when it happened again. Resolutely, I continued on my way, certain my mind was playing tricks on me until I heard the thud of running footsteps and turned to see my own dear Will loping toward me.

He caught me by the waist and swung me around, grinning from ear to ear. “My lady Northampton,” he said, “are you ready to come home with me?”

31

W
e went first to Norfolk House for a private reunion but the next day we were off to court so that Will could formally present me to King Edward as his wife. My marriage to Will had been validated by the commissioners. He was permitted to remarry, they said, because his first wife’s adultery had been proven, and proven adultery dissolved a marriage, allowing the aggrieved party to take another wife. The decision was controversial because there was no precedent in canon law, but it had been made. I was not only Will’s wife, but also Marchioness of Northampton, one of the highest-ranking ladies in the land.

I found myself strangely awed by the ten-year-old boy king. He was dressed all in white silk, with a white plume in his bonnet and a sword buckled to his belt. In attendance were two boys his own age clad all in black. Following protocol, I curtsied three times as I approached His Grace and sank to my knees when he addressed me.

King Edward had a somber mien for one so young, and a direct gaze that reminded me of his sister Elizabeth. His eyes were less disconcerting, perhaps because they were gray rather than black. He seemed
genuinely pleased to accept me as kin—his aunt through my marriage to Will and the fact that Will was Edward’s stepmother’s brother—and gave his blessing to our union in a clear, high voice. I fancied I could hear the Duchess of Somerset gnashing her teeth in the background. I thanked him, kissed the hand he extended toward me, and then walked backward from the room. I made my final curtsy at the door as it was opened behind me by one of the king’s pages.