Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set (126 page)

My brother George broke the silence. “If you won’t come home, where will you go?” he asked.

I drew in a steadying breath. If Cowling Castle was not a choice, then there was only one possibility left. “To Chelsea,” I said. “To the Duchess of Northumberland.”

47

J
ane Dudley, who was still popularly known as the Duchess of Northumberland, in spite of her husband’s attainder and execution, welcomed me with open arms, glad to have assistance in her quest for pardons for her remaining sons. She was encouraged oby my success in obtaining Will’s freedom and hoped that soon Jack, Ambrose, Robin, and Henry would be released from the Tower of London.

Living at Chelsea was not easy. It was full of memories of my time there with the queen dowager and Princess Elizabeth and that other foolish Tom, Tom Seymour. And when Jane was not talking of her plans for the future, she spoke incessantly of her late husband, with whom she’d had a strong bond of love and respect, and of her son Guildford, the boy she’d hoped to see crowned king of England.

I missed my own dear Will more than words could express, but at least he was still alive. I tried
not
to think of him, but to no avail. He was always in my thoughts and in my prayers.

Tom Wyatt was executed on the eleventh day of April.

I accompanied Jane when she returned, again and again, to court.
She was never admitted to the queen’s presence, but she pleaded with Her Grace’s ladies to petition Queen Mary for pardons for her four sons. After the queen married Philip of Spain, on the twenty-fifth day of July, Jane sought out noble Spaniards at court, hoping some of them might sympathize with her cause. By then Elizabeth Tudor, now known only as the Lady Elizabeth, had been released from the Tower. That might have been an encouraging sign had she not been sent, closely guarded, to the royal manor of Woodstock.

I remembered my first progress and wondered if Elizabeth would be allowed to explore the maze. Perhaps, if she could find her way to the center, she would have some measure of privacy there. With servants who were also her keepers, she was to be closely watched, even though Cousin Tom, to his death, had insisted that she’d never condoned the rebellion or taken any role in it.

By the time autumn rolled around again, Jane’s sons were still in the Tower and her health had begun to fail. Her unceasing efforts on their behalf had left her pale and exhausted. The news that Jack was gravely ill sent his mother into further decline. She spent her days staring blindly out her bedchamber window at Chelsea. Only the imminent arrival of her first grandchild finally roused her from her melancholy. In October, accompanied by the entire Chelsea household, she journeyed to Penshurst to await the birth of her daughter’s child.

Mary Dudley’s husband, Sir Henry Sidney, had been one of the first to be pardoned by Queen Mary. He’d entered her service and been sent to Spain as part of the delegation to escort King Philip to England. As a loyal subject, he’d been allowed to keep Penshurst, an enormous, ancient, and impressive fortified manor house half a day’s hard ride from London. Traveling in litters with baggage carts, it took Jane and I nearly three days to reach there, but once we arrived at our destination we settled comfortably into one wing.

It was a largely female household at first, with Lady Sidney’s ladies and her mother’s women. Bridget Mardlyn and Alys Guildford were
still in Jane’s service, along with four other waiting gentlewomen. In the years since we’d first met, Alys and I had drifted apart, separated for a long time by the difference in our status. Neither of us had attempted to resurrect our old friendship.

We had been in residence at Penshurst only a few days before Sir Henry Sidney descended upon us. To our surprise and delight, he had all four Dudley brothers in tow. Jack, Ambrose, Robin, and Henry had been freed from the Tower. Even before reuniting with their wives, they’d come to see their mother.

For Jack there had been no other choice. Not only did his wife want nothing to do with him, but he was so ill that he’d had to be carried in a litter instead of traveling on horseback. His sister gave orders to install him in a corner chamber on an upper floor, where the sun would fill the room with light.

As the litter bearers carried him upstairs, Jack caught sight of me. “Bess,” he croaked. “There is a God, after all.”

“Blasphemer,” his brother Robin said on a choked laugh.

Tears sprang into my eyes. That Jack was trying so hard to sound jovial meant he was very ill indeed. He was thin and wasted and his skin had a bluish-purple tinge. The agonized sound of his coughing wrenched my heart.

Jack asked for me as soon as he was settled in a bed. I tried to be strong and cheerful and give him reason to smile through his obvious pain, but in good light the signs of his deterioration were even more obvious. He was feverish and his limbs were swollen, so much so that he could lie comfortably only flat on his back. His fingernails were loose. When I saw that, I lost my composure.

“Were you tortured?” I blurted out.

Jack’s wheezing laugh sent him into a violent paroxysm of coughing. He lay there weakly when it was over, staring up at me with wide, agonized eyes. I realized, then, that the loose fingernails were yet another symptom of whatever it was that was killing him.

I knelt by the bed and placed one hand on his forearm. I could hardly see him through my tears, but I could hear his whisper. “You should have married me. We’d both have been happier.”

I did not disabuse him of the notion. “You are free now, Jack,” I told him. “The queen let you go.”

Behind me I heard a derisive snort. Ambrose Dudley and Sir Henry Sidney had remained behind when the other two Dudley boys went to pay their respects to their mother. It was Ambrose who spoke. “We have not yet been pardoned, nor has any of what was taken from us been restored. And the only reason we were let go has naught to do with compassion. King Philip is at war with France. He wants to raise an English army. Where better to find men with training in warfare than among imprisoned rebels?”

“Has everyone been freed?”

“Not all, no,” Sir Henry said. “Your aunt’s husband, Sir Edward Warner, is still being held. But even in his case there are signs of leniency. Lady Warner has been allowed to visit him, and she continues to receive his revenues.”

I was glad for Aunt Elizabeth’s sake, but neither the queen’s clemency nor King Philip’s machinations came soon enough to save Jack Dudley. I felt his arm jerk under my hand and forced myself to look at what remained of the handsome, sturdily built youth I remembered.

“I am lost in the maze again, Bess,” he whispered, “and this time I do not think I will find my way out.”

“You will.” I put every ounce of conviction I could manage into my voice. “We all will. Somehow.”

“I am glad you are here.” A moment later, he drifted off into slumber. It was not a restful sleep. His breathing was ragged and his ravaged face remained flushed with fever.

Sir Henry took my arm and escorted me from the room. I did not know Mary’s husband well, but he had once been in King Edward’s service and he’d known Jack from Jack’s earliest days at Hampton Court.

“Is there any hope for him? If you send for doctors—”

He shook his head. “I’ve seen this before. It is the same wasting sickness that claimed King Edward’s life. If the cleverest physicians in the realm could not save the king, no one can help Jack, either. He cannot keep food down. He’ll grow weaker with every passing day. There is nothing any of us can do but pray for the Lord to have mercy upon him and take his soul when his life ends.”

People I’d cared about had died in the past, Jack’s brother Harry among them, but I had never had to watch them go. There was something obscene about this lingering, increasingly painful process. Better to have died in battle, I thought, or by a headsman’s ax, than to suffer this way.

Jane was with her son when he died. She barely left his side during those last few agonizing days. Then she collapsed.

She recovered sufficiently to attend the christening of her first grandchild when Mary gave birth nearly a month later, but it was a bittersweet occasion. Jane wanted the boy named John, after her late husband the duke and his son Jack. Instead, Sir Henry chose a name that would reinforce his family’s loyalty to the Crown. The baby was christened Philip Sidney.

A few days later, Jane and I left Penshurst and returned to Chelsea. In the days that followed, I watched helplessly as Jane’s health continued to deteriorate. It was as if she’d lost the will to live when Jack died. By the middle of January, there was no longer any hope she would recover. Then she was gone.

She was buried with all the honor due her. Her daughter was chief mourner, and I bore Mary Sidney’s train in the funeral procession, weeping all the while. The other women of the household came after and then the choir in their surplices, followed by poor men and women, two by two, to the number of Jane’s years, gentlemen, two by two, yeomen, two by two, and then the coffin, carried by eight yeomen and four assistants.

The funeral sermon was based on the text
beati mortui qui in Domino moriuntur
. I did not understand a word of it, since it was entirely in Latin. The days of prayers in English had died with King Edward.

Jane’s three surviving sons and their wives were among the mourners, as were a sprinkling of courtiers, including at least one Spaniard from King Philip’s household. Jane had made friends at Queen Mary’s court during her ceaseless petitioning for justice.

We laid the Duchess of Northumberland to rest in the church at Chelsea on the first day of February. When the coffin was carried in, I had a place in the world and a roof over my head. When I came out again into the cold, bright daylight, I was once more homeless and destitute.

A crowd had gathered and in the back stood a man in a slouch hat that shadowed his face. My heart skipped a beat and my breath caught in my throat as I recognized Will. Would he dare speak to me? If he tried, I knew I should not allow it. But when he strode boldly toward me, holding my gaze as he closed the distance between us, I did not have the strength to turn away. It had been almost a year since I’d last seen him. My eyes hungrily drank in every detail of his beloved face and form. I wanted to hurl myself into his arms and shower kisses on him. Deep inside, I ached to join with him again.

“I grieve with you, Bess,” he said, taking both my hands in his. “She was a good woman.”

I felt the jolt of that first contact all the way to my womb. “She was always kind to me,” I whispered. Torn between joy at being so close to Will again and sharp regret that we would soon have to part, I felt tears well up and fought to control them. I had cried far too much already.

“What will you do now?” he asked. “Where will you go?”

“I . . . I do not know.”

Worry over just that question had kept me awake nights. Every solution I considered had drawbacks. I would be a burden to any of Jane’s children, even if they would have me, and I could not return to my father’s keeping. Although I had exchanged letters with my family during my time at Chelsea, Father had not changed his mind about his condition for taking me in—he would do so only if I would agree to let him find me a new husband.

With an effort I forced myself to speak of mundane matters, but my
body swayed closer to Will’s, almost as if it had a mind of its own. “I might go to my brother William,” I said. Father’s stepmother had finally died, allowing him to make Cobham Hall the family seat. It was William who now lived at Cowling Castle, where he was overseeing repairs to the damages done by Wyatt’s siege. I did not think he would turn me away, or betray my presence there to Father, but I could not be certain of it.

“I have an idea,” Will said, tightening his grip on my fingers. “Come and live with me. My father’s lands in Yorkshire and Lincolnshire have been returned to me and I have a small house in the Blackfriars precinct of London.”

“Will, we cannot. The queen—”

“The queen has lost interest in me, Bess. All she thinks of is her husband, King Philip, and all he thinks about is his plan to make war on France with English troops.”

His words filled me with hope, but I was still afraid. “What of the queen’s threat? If she discovers we are together, she will force us apart and imprison us both.” I’d stayed away from Will all this time to protect him. I had no wish to endanger him now, nor did I want to spend the rest of my life locked away in the Tower of London.

“She’ll never know. I tell you, she has forgotten all about me.” A slow, charming smile curved his mouth. “Besides, what is life without a little risk?”

I felt myself weakening. “Better to ask what is life without love?” I whispered.

“Torment,” he declared as he gathered me close. “Be bold, my Bess. For my sake, for I vow I cannot bear to be without you any longer.”

I gave in. When Will left Chelsea for Blackfriars that afternoon, I went with him.

48

B
lackfriars was a walled enclave, nine acres of houses and tenements carved out of what had once been a friary. The precinct was now occupied by physicians, pensioners, and minor noblemen such as my mother’s brother, Lord Bray. My father had a house there, too, although he did not live in it. He leased lodgings to tenants, one on each floor.

Will’s house was just to the south of Father’s property. We had a small garden and stabling for our horses and, as Will had predicted, no one at court or elsewhere paid any attention to us. Those few neighbors who knew who we were were not inclined to cause us trouble. Indeed, some old acquaintances were glad we were together again.

In March, Will and I traveled to Brentford, just outside London, to stand as godparents to Elizabeth Cavendish. Her father and Will had been friends during King Edward’s reign and I knew her mother slightly because she—another Bess—had once been a waiting gentlewoman to Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk. Frances’s daughter, Lady Catherine Grey, was the child’s other godmother.