Young Bess (22 page)

The first Protestant royal funeral took place in England with the Lady Jane Grey as chief female mourner, and Mr Coverdale, the translator of the Bible, to preach the sermon and explain that all the alms and offerings given were not ‘to benefit the dead, but for the poor only’; nor were the prayers and lighted candles for ‘any other intent or purpose than to do honour’ (but no benefit) ‘to the deceased.’

‘The new Church,’ said Elizabeth bitterly when she heard of it, ‘deserts her children at the grave.’

Jane Grey, who was visiting her on her way to her home at Bradgate in Leicestershire, was shocked at her cousin’s attitude. ‘It is illogical and impious,’ she said, ‘to pray for the dead.’

‘Would you say that if you yourself were at the point of death?’

‘I would, and shall. I shall ask people to pray for me as long as I am still living, but the moment I am dead it would be wrong.’

Yes, she would hold by that. Whatever Jane said, she would stand by. Bess gave a laugh which startled the younger girl, who had, however, some glimmering of what she was feeling.

‘She often wished you were there,’ Jane said. ‘She would
rather have had you with her than me, I know. She has left you half her jewels.’

Bess turned sharply away, and Jane, looking sadly after her, wondered why her cousin could not take her grief in a more Christian spirit. It seemed to make her harsh and mocking.

Jane had been so looking forward to her comfort and guidance; and Bess had just had her fifteenth birthday, which made her practically a grown-up woman. Jane would not have her twelfth for three weeks yet, but her parents seemed to think that made her one also, for they were saying it was not suitable for her to stay on in the Admiral’s household now that his wife was dead. She thought this absurd, for her great difficulty was to make the Admiral realise she was as old as she was. He still gave her dolls and spoke to her as though she were about six, and when she protested, said it was her own fault for being so small, she grew downwards like a cow’s tail.

But Bess, instead of agreeing how silly and tiresome Jane’s parents were being, only said that she wasn’t going to answer for the Admiral. And finding her so unsympathetic, Jane could not bring herself to tell her real sorrow; which was that it was the Admiral himself who had sent her away.

So shocked and stunned had he been by his wife’s death that all his far-reaching plans and ambitions had gone clean out of his head; he would not even keep his household, but talked of dismissing the lot and going right away, he did not know nor care where; and packed Jane straight off home to her parents as though she were a puppy he had tired of training.

And now Bess said she was lucky to have parents and a
home to go to, where she would be safe and be told what to do. Really she must be ill!

Mrs Ashley also thought her charge’s behaviour odd; the girl had been utterly bewildered and aghast at first at the news of Catherine’s death, yet seemed even more angry than sorry, and went about with a white face and shut set mouth when she did not fly into sudden and unreasonable rages.

The Admiral’s servant who brought the news told them of his master’s passionate grief; but Bess showed no sympathy, and when Mrs Ashley told her it would be only right and proper for her to write him a letter of condolence, she flew out at her governess like a spitfire and snapped out, ‘I will not. He doesn’t need it.’

Mrs Ashley told her she was monstrously unfeeling. What was worse, it looked so marked.
Someone
from the Princess’s household must write; ‘If Your Grace will not,’ she said in coldly formal remonstrance, ‘then I will.’

So she did, but when she showed the letter, Her Grace gave it an indifferent glance and said not one word about it, one way or the other.

Mrs Ashley’s conclusion was that the Princess did not believe in the Admiral’s grief for his wife; perhaps did not wish to believe it.

‘Your old husband is free again now,’ she said lightly one evening, when the girl’s fierce tension had for some time relaxed and she had flown suddenly into a wildly silly mood that seemed to welcome chaff and badinage – and whatever she might welcome, Mrs Ashley must try and give. ‘Oh yes,’ she continued, nodding her head, ‘You can have him if you will, and well you know it. If the Protector and the Council
give their consent, would you be so cruel as to deny him? You were his first choice, you know…’

Bess had clapped her hand over her governess’s mouth. ‘If you don’t stop talking,’ said a small clear deadly voice, ‘I’ll thrust you out of the room.’

One could never be sure what she would welcome.

But certainly she listened with both ears when people spoke to each other, not to her, about the Admiral – especially if they spoke praise, which made her flush with pleasure. Mr Parry the cofferer, who kept all the household accounts, was a great friend of Mrs Ashley’s, and the two of them would casually remind each other, in front of their young mistress, what a great man the Admiral was clearly born to be; how he had begun to win position and notice entirely on his own merits, as a younger son, and before any of his sisters had made important marriages; how the sumptuous state he kept abroad for the honour of his country came as naturally to him as to any of the great princes of the House of Valois and of Hapsburg, and how his popularity with them had made his success as a diplomat.

‘A King among kings, he was their fellow from the first,’ Mrs Ashley declared, rolling up her eyes, and Mr Parry, turning his down modestly, said, ‘Ah, but what did he care for that, whenever there was a chance to prove himself a man among men? Off he dashed in the middle of all his success and splendour at the Hungarian Court, to fight in their quarrel against the cruel Turk. “A lion in battle,” so the King of Hungary wrote of him to King Henry.’

Mrs Ashley took up the antiphony.

‘And as great a sailor as soldier – look how he drove off the
French Armada when they outnumbered us by five to one!’

‘And I was there!’ Bess thought, hugging herself, while her eyes glowed in the firelight like a cat’s.

But she could not contain in silence her pride and glory in that towering figure on the deck of the
Great Harry
as the enemy sails hove into sight over the edge of the bright sea. She laughed aloud, yet her laughter had a secret sound; they pressed her for its reason, and then she said in airy tones, ‘Three hundred tall ships sailing to invade England – and then “Pouf! the wind blew them away!” That was all that happened, so the Admiral said; “We’d the luck of the wind.” What would have happened if the wind
hadn’t
changed just then? But no, he was certain that England would always have luck, and the wind, on her side – on his side too,’ she added tentatively.

Mrs Ashley quickly assured her that the Admiral was born to be lucky, the youngest son of three, as in the fairytales. Hadn’t he proved himself lucky in Court and camp, and, she hoped, (with a sly look) in love? Bess leant forward and nonchalantly touched a log of wood. She thought nobody would notice, but the tutor did.

Mr Ascham’s brain was whirling in a vortex of emotions; jealousy was shot through with pride, and a new awareness of what he himself was capable, as well as that bold and handsome conqueror of his Princess’s thoughts. Yes, they were both of them men of this new many-coloured, fast-moving age, when a man was not content to be one thing merely, but was often courtier, soldier, statesman, sportsman, all in one.

He had just had a grave warning from his former tutor that
his passion for dice and the cockpit would be his ruin. But would it? He had put his best writing into this new book he was doing on the Cockpit; he was making English prose, a new thing, the thing that Englishmen would write in future instead of the old monkish musty Latin.

Those two bawds were chuckling now over the Admiral’s pranks that had made him the favourite of King Henry and the playboy of Europe; ‘but of course his elder brother can never understand that.
He
can only see him as the bad boy of the family!’

The tutor unexpectedly chimed in on an acid note; only Englishmen were so stupid as to think that to be solemn, dull and unpleasant was a sure criterion of solid worth and intellect. King Hal had known better, because the joy he took in living had been more French than English, and the keenness of his wits more Italian than either. ‘He was not content merely to govern with a strong hand such as England needed; he has made her excel in music, in singing and dancing above all other countries, and encouraged plays to be written in English – light and transient toys they are called by the solemn dullards, but there’s no knowing what those plays might become in the hands of some great poet. He wrote himself, was musician and composer, dancer and draughtsman, the best of our sportsmen – and our greatest ruler!’

‘And
my
father,’ Bess murmured.

They spoke of King Hal, while she thought of the Admiral, and Mr Ascham of himself.

‘Man is a microcosm,’ he cried. ‘The full man should take all life for his province.’

‘What’s this about a full man?’ came a great voice from the
doorway. ‘Here’s one that’s empty as an old can.’

Bess half rose from her chair, then sat down again, gripping its arms. All the resentment that had been surging in her against the Admiral these past weeks was whirling away. She tried to clutch on to it. She had forgotten Catherine while she listened to praise of him; now she told herself, ‘Catherine is dead and he doesn’t care. Catherine is dead, and he and I made her unhappy. Catherine is dead, and it’s her I loved, not him. Oh God, make me go on loving her and not him.’

It was no good. He was there at the end of the hall flinging off his cloak, he was striding across to her, lifting her hand to kiss it, and how warm and strong his grasp was round her fingers, how warm and strong his voice. His eyes were laughing into hers again – how dared he ever laugh at her again? She had told herself she would never laugh with him again – you might as well tell the grass not to grow nor the birds sing. She raised those drooping white-lidded eyes and looked full at him.

‘Why have you come, my lord?’ She tried hard to make the question sound casual and matter of fact.

‘Don’t you know, my Lady Bess?’

There was no attempt to make the answer sound casual.

Tom in fact had recovered. Which does not mean that he had never been sick – sick unto death, for that was what his soul had been, a ship that had lost its rudder and was veering wildly to the winds of despair and utter weariness of all ambition. He had been within an ace of killing himself in the days that followed Cathy’s death.

But his body simply would not let him stay sad; the
unthinking high spirits of sheer physical vigour would keep tingling through his veins, reminding him even in the very midst of his stormy grief that it was good to be alive. Being miserable was no use to anyone, least of all to Cathy. If he did not kill himself he must go on living; and if he went on living he must be busy, active, make plans, take chances, run risks, or he would be blue-moulded with misery. He must have bustle, music, the flickering light of hundreds of candles and torches, the noise of people coming and going, of people talking, courting him, discussing gay and desperate ventures, and of his own voice laughing away their fears.

He caught again at all the old schemes that he had begun to let fall through his fingers in the first shock of his despair; countermanded the disposal of his household; sent for his everwilling old mother to come and take charge of the female part of it; and wrote off to Jane’s parents to have her returned to his care and his mother’s chaperonage, explaining that he had only sent her away because he had been ‘so amazed that I had small regard either to myself or my doings.’

They hesitated; the Admiral was still dangling that prize of the Crown of England for their daughter, but
was
he a suitable match-maker? There were all sorts of stories about him and Elizabeth even while his wife was alive and the Princess a schoolgirl under his roof; and now he was a widower, with only old Lady Seymour to hold him in check – and when would she ever do, had ever done such a thing?

Their timid half-denials put more life into the bereaved widower than all the beautiful letters of condolence he had received. Now he had something to do; he must ride off on the instant and put some spunk into these Grey creep-mice,
and off he went to lead Henry Grey once more up and down the garden path. He told the old gentleman that if he backed out now he would lose all hope of ever getting a King for a son-in-law. Since there was no longer any chance of marrying the little Queen of Scots to King Edward, the Protector had now the single aim of pushing forward his own daughter, Janet Seymour, as his bride; Tom had certain knowledge of this, he declared, thumping Henry Grey’s top waistcoat button as the little man hummed and hawed and Tom had to bite his lip to keep from whistling ‘How shall I make this ass to go?’

In fact, he only agreed to ‘go’ after the irresistible argument of ready cash. Tom paid the more pressing of his debts; and Jane Grey was told to write a nice letter to the Admiral telling him she would be glad to return to his guardianship.

She needed no telling; the Lady Frances, reading her daughter’s letter, felt that Jane had rather overdone her ‘thanks for the gentle letters which I received from you’ and ‘your great goodness toward me…as you have been unto me a loving and kind father, so I shall be always most ready to obey your godly monitions and good instructions.’

‘God’s blood, I hope not!’ rapped out her anxious mother, slapping her riding-whip against her fat thigh. ‘And why sign yourself his “most humble servant during my life”?’

‘Because I could not be it after my death,’ said Jane. The logic was unanswerable. And since even the threat of a whipping would not make Jane write her letter again, or even scratch out the last three emphatic words, it was despatched ‘this 1st of October 1548.’

Through the great woods that spread for miles round
Bradgate the Admiral and his retinue again came riding, the golden leaves falling round them; again he dined and wined, walked and talked, hunted and made merry with the Greys. But this time when he left, Jane rode back with him to his house in the Strand – a long ride, they had to stop at more than one town
en route
for cold beef and beer for themselves and their numerous escort, and Jane was astonished at the gusto with which he ate it, and, for the matter, at her own. On this lovely changing autumn day the world seemed to be beginning all over again.