Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (116 page)

At last Father spoke. “And what is to be done with the Duke of Somerset himself? Is he to be executed, as he executed his own brother?”

“I do much doubt it,” Will said. “Lady Somerset has already been set free.”

“And is already scheming,” I muttered. She’d lost no time ingratiating herself with Jane Warwick, who was far too softhearted when it came to old friends. The duchess had gone so far as to remind Jane that their children—Jack Dudley and Anne Seymour—had been all but betrothed before Somerset’s arrest.

“The Privy Council is not an instrument of vengeance,” Will said. “We seek only to do what is best for England.”

Father’s fulminating gaze would have disconcerted a lesser man, but Will met and returned it. Mother ended the standoff by poking Father in the ribs.

“This is a rare pleasure,” Mother said. “A
family
gathering. Have done with talk of war and court alike. My husband and older sons will soon return to Calais and who knows when I will see Bess again.”

For the remainder of the evening, she kept control of the conversation.

35

T
he Duke of Somerset was released from the Tower of London on the sixth of February. On the eighteenth he received a full pardon. At about the same time, Will was made great chamberlain of the king’s household. In May my father became a member of the Privy Council, although his duties at Calais kept him from attending most of the meetings. And, on the third of June, Jack Dudley married Somerset’s daughter Anne Seymour. King Edward himself attended the wedding.

Following the ceremony the duke provided a wedding feast of great magnificence. For entertainment there was a masque. It was the usual allegorical fare, with young ladies in absurd costumes representing various virtues. At nearly twenty-four, I was no longer asked to participate in such entertainments. I was a “matron,” only without the children that term usually implied.

I had begun to suspect that I might be barren. Will and I had been together now, barely apart for more than a night or two, for over two years, and that was without counting the months we’d had at Norfolk House before I’d been exiled to Chelsea. In all that time, I should have
conceived. I should have had two plump babies by now, as my sister Kate did. And I’d heard that my old nemesis, Dorothy Bray, in six years of marriage had produced four healthy children.

The wedding, with its constant harping on fertility, put me in a pensive mood. It was time, I decided, to reopen the subject of adoption. I approached Lady Somerset to ask for news of our mutual niece.

At the blank look on her face, I prompted her. “The queen dowager’s daughter. Little Mary Seymour.”

“Oh, that one.” She gave a dismissive wave of one hand. “You will have to ask the Duchess of Suffolk if you wish to know how she fares. We sent the girl to her, and I have had naught to do with the child since.” She did not even know where young Mary was lodged, but supposed she lived on one of Lady Suffolk’s Lincolnshire estates.

I went in search of Will, but it was time for the tilting. No festivity the young king attended was complete unless it included coursing. I found my husband with King Edward in an antechamber made all of boughs. From this “bower” we were to watch two teams of six young gentlemen each run two courses in the field.

“Will,” I whispered, tugging at his arm to draw him to the back of the company. “I wish to visit the Duchess of Suffolk.”

He went very still. “You mean you want to see the child.” The clatter of lances from the field and the shouts of the crowd drowned out my reply, but he could see the answer in my eyes. “Perhaps in the autumn?” he suggested when it was quiet again. Before I could object to the delay, he added, “A French delegation is due to arrive soon. You know the king relies upon you to act as his hostess.”

His Grace shouted encouragement to both challengers and defenders. He was as bloodthirsty as every other boy his age, and many years away from having a wife to charm and flatter foreign envoys, one of the responsibilities of a consort. At present, for want of a queen and lacking a woman of higher rank in residence, the task of entertaining ambassadors and other important visitors continued to fall to me. Most of the time, this pleased me. Just now it seemed a great burden.

“It is to our advantage to keep the French sweet,” Will reminded me, seeing my reluctance, “and you, my own dearest Bess, have a unique ability to delight every man you meet.”

I did not need to be flattered into doing my duty, but I took pleasure in Will’s compliments. Indeed, I took pleasure from everything about my husband, even after so much time together. I knew just how to please him, too, and as the wedding festivities continued, my thoughts drifted often to the night ahead.

I was not so very old. I could still conceive. We would simply have to try harder. I hid my smile as Will and I joined the other couples forming up for a dance.

“Perhaps we should return home soon,” I suggested when we made our reverences to each other.

“Are you not feeling well?” His voice was anxious, but the steps of the pavane carried us apart before I could answer.

“I would be glad to go to bed early,” I told him when we touched hands and paused for a moment face-to-face. I recalled the first time we had danced together and relished the memory.

“Ah,” he said. “I see.”

But first there was another tradition to observe, that of escorting bride and groom to their bed. Will and I had skipped this step, and I was glad of it. Jack Dudley’s brothers stripped him naked before they shoved him toward his young bride. Her blushes turned her flesh bright pink, all the way down to midbosom, the point at which it disappeared beneath the sheets.

Will caught me staring at Jack’s body and made a low, growling sound. I fixed him with a bland look, although I knew my eyes must be full of mischief. “He has a well-formed backside,” I observed, trying to sound innocent.

“That is not the part of him you were admiring,” Will complained.

“And I suppose you never peek at another woman’s bosom?” I teased him.

“I prefer yours.”

“And I prefer your . . . parts . . . to Jack’s.”

The flare of desire in Will’s eyes was so powerful that it had me gulping to take in air.

We were at Durham House, another of the Earl of Warwick’s properties near court. It was located on the Strand, just where the Thames curved, so that Whitehall Palace was in sight. Norfolk House was only a short distance away by boat or barge, but Will and I could not wait that long. We left the nuptial bedchamber with the other guests, but instead of heading for the water gate, Will seized a lantern in one hand and my arm with the other and hustled me along a corridor and up a flight of stairs until we came to a small room in a tower.

I was out of breath and laughing when he locked the door behind us. It was, by the evidence of desk and papers, some kind of workroom for a clerk. Beyond that, I glimpsed little except the narrow bedstead onto which Will tumbled me.

“We should have had all this,” he whispered. “The pomp. The ceremony.”

I shook my head, helping him unfasten his points and squirming to get my skirts out of the way. “I would change nothing.”

“I need you, Bess. Now.”

“And I need you.” I was more than ready for him, and as he slipped into my body and began to move, I sent a fleeting prayer winging heavenward that, this time, I would conceive. Then I thought of nothing but Will and of my own pleasure, for it was not only in the hope of children that we loved. We were as attuned to each other’s needs and desires as we had been that first night at Guildford. Will completed me, and I, him.

Later, replete, we rose and dressed and crept out of Durham House to return home. There, in our own bed, we made love again, more slowly this time, and I confided in Will my fear that I might be barren.

“I want children, Will,” I whispered.

“Children come as God wills.”

“What if it is not my fate to bear a child?”

“Then it may be I should say a prayer of thanksgiving.”

I sat straight up in bed to stare at him. “What?”

He tugged me back down beside him and tucked me in close against his side. “I mean only that I could not stand to lose you as I lost my sister.”

“Many women die in childbed, it is true.” My breath caught on a sob, thinking of Kathryn. “But others have large families with no ill effects—my mother; my grandmother, Jane Warwick. Even Anne Somerset.” She had seven more children living besides Lord Hertford, the Somerset heir, and the daughter she’d just married to Jack Dudley.

“We must leave it up to fate,” Will said in a soothing whisper. He kissed me gently on the cheek, the forehead, the lips. I cuddled close to him, secure in his love for me. I resolved to stop fretting about our lack of children. What we had already was unique and precious.

Out of respect for Will’s wishes, I did not mention Mary Seymour again for some time after that blissful night and, when the delegation from France arrived, I did my best to make them feel welcome. I must have succeeded. One wrote a poem to my beauty. Another gave me an enameled chain worth two hundred crowns as a parting gift.

36

B
y the time Yuletide came around again, celebrated with masques at Greenwich and Westminster, I was too busy to dwell on my continued barrenness. Besides, I believed Will when he insisted he was content to have a wife he loved and who loved him. I knew what a rare gift that was when so many of those around us existed in loveless arranged marriages. Some were happy enough. Other couples came to love each other in time, although not, I thought, with the passion Will and I shared. But far too many, like my brother William and my young uncle, Lord Bray, were shackled for life to women they could not abide.

Will and I were blessed. We certainly wanted for nothing except a child. We had wealth, honors, land, and no fewer than 154 domestic servants to look after us.

We spent Twelfth Night at Cowling Castle, finally reconciled with my father. Once our marriage had been declared legal, he’d been obliged to accept it, but it had taken some time for him to get over his annoyance with me for having defied his wishes.

In the spring, Will left England at the head of a delegation to the
French court that numbered 251 men, including a personal entourage of 62. My brother William went with him. So did Jack Dudley, Lord Lisle, and John, Lord Bray, my mother’s brother. Their mission was to bestow the Order of the Garter on King Henri II and to negotiate for a bride for King Edward.

This embassy to France was a most prestigious one. It was a great honor for Will to lead it. But his departure meant we would be separated for months. I dreaded that, even more so when I realized that, with him gone, I would be in an ambiguous position at court. I could continue to live there without my husband, but so long as the young king did not have a wife, such an arrangement would be awkward. Instead, I decided to retire to Esher, a small manor near Hampton Court.

I planned to move there right after Will left for France. Our parting was as painful as I’d feared. We made love with near frantic intensity on the night prior to his departure. Then I went with him to the dock in the morning, demanding one last kiss before he climbed into the waiting rowing boat that would carry him out to his ship. I watched him clamber aboard and continued to stare at it as the fleet caught the tide and sailed away. I stood with my hand shading my eyes, my gaze intent, until Will’s flagship was nothing more than a speck in the distance. Only then did I mount my horse and ride hard for Esher. It was more than a day’s journey, but I did not stop to rest until I was too exhausted to do anything but fall into a bed at the nearest inn and sleep till sunrise.

My fine, large house overlooked the River Mole, and while Will was away, I redecorated every room to suit my fancy. That passed the time for a week or two, but I was already growing desperate for distraction when, to my delight, I discovered that one of my near neighbors was that same Lady Browne I had met at Chelsea. Her dower house at West Horsley was a mere eight miles distant, an easy ride for an accomplished horsewoman.

“We are both named Elizabeth,” she remarked the first time I paid her a visit.

“As are half the women in England,” I reminded her. “Those not named Catherine, Mary, or Jane. My friends call me Bess.”

Her lips quirked up in a rueful smile. “And I am known as Geraldine, thanks to that wretched sonnet the Earl of Surrey wrote to me when I was but a child. He meant well—he thought to praise my virtues so that I would attract a noble husband—but I would have been far happier to have remained unnoticed.”

“You did make an excellent match.”

“Sir Anthony was very good to me.”

Geraldine had something of Jane Warwick’s calm demeanor. I found her company soothing and we exchanged several more visits over the next few weeks, until an outbreak of the sweat put an end to such diversions, as well as to my plans to journey to Cowling Castle to see my family during Will’s absence.

The sweating sickness was no respecter of rank. The last time it had ravaged the land, hundreds had died, healthy one hour and ready for the winding sheet the next. As summer advanced, the death toll climbed.

Only England was afflicted, not France, for which I was thankful. But every day brought more letters from family and friends telling me of loved ones lost. A particularly terrible tragedy befell Catherine, dowager Duchess of Suffolk. Her sons, the young Duke of Suffolk and his brother, both King Edward’s longtime companions, died within a day of each other. I had barely absorbed the enormity of her loss when Will’s sister, Anne Herbert, sent word that the duchess had also lost the third child in her keeping.

Two-year-old Mary Seymour was dead.

I had no close friends among my ladies with whom I could share my grief, or the terrible guilt I felt. If I had insisted upon adopting the queen dowager’s child, she might still be alive.

But there were deaths everywhere. Even the Duke of Somerset’s household was afflicted, although none of his immediate family died. Then one of my own ladies succumbed, and I realized that no place was safe. If Will and I had taken Mary Seymour in, or if we had been blessed with babies of our own, we could have lost them to this terrible illness. A child could die as easily at Esher as anywhere else.