B009RYSCAU EBOK (34 page)

CHAPTER FORTY-ONE

Thirtieth of July, 1561—St. Osyth’s Priory, Essex

A
SEARING WHITE FORK OF LIGHTNING RIPPED THROUGH THE
darkening sky, followed a second later by a clap of thunder so loud that Bess felt it in the very pit of her stomach. The spire of St. Paul’s Cathedral in London had fallen only a few weeks earlier after being hit by lightning, and Bess feared that the walls of the great house would collapse around her. But the old priory stood, and the only sound that came was the driving rain spattering against the windows and pounding into the dry ground below.

In the courtyard, servants were scurrying to carry the remains of the interrupted feast to safety inside. Platters of delicacies, richly upholstered chairs and benches, painted silk banners were all sodden and forlorn. All afternoon the clouds had seemed pregnant with the threatening storm, the sky crackling with pent-up energy. But not until the queen and her court were in the midst of the evening’s festivities had the storm broken.

Bess heard the door of the chamber open and turned to see Will, his clothes and boots drenched, rainwater running in rivulets from his hair and down his face.

“Is Her Majesty well settled?” she asked.

“Yes,” he said, dropping his cloak and hat onto the floor and unbuttoning his doublet. “She should be stepping into a hot bath just about now, and the royal nightgown was warming on the hearth as I left her.”

Bess went to him and untied the neck of his shirt.

“You’re wet to the skin,” she said, putting her hands against his chest. “And cold.” She stood a-tiptoe and pulled his head down to kiss her.

“And now you’ll be wet, too,” he said, peeling off his shirt.

“I don’t care.” She put her arms around him, marveling as always at the smooth hardness of the muscles of his back beneath her fingers, the coiled strength of his arms around her. God, what fire he kindled in her, no matter that his skin was slick with water and cold and that the fine linen of her chemise was now sticking damply to her. His dark hair was sleek against his head, and she reached up to touch it.

“You’re like a silkie.” She smiled. “A seal from the sea, come to land to steal a lady’s heart.”

“The land is almost as wet as the sea, and I’ll warrant the surf on the rocks would be the death of any silkie seeking the shelter of a lady’s bedroom this night.”

He sat on a bench by the fire and reached down to pull off his boots, but struggled with them, so heavy with water was the leather.

“Let me.”

Bess stooped before him, grasped the heel of one boot in her hands, and tugged, nearly falling backward as the boot came free of his foot. Soon she had the other boot off and before he could stand she moved so that she knelt between his legs and wrapped her arms around his neck. He kissed her deeply, his fingers tangled in her loose hair. She slipped a hand to the front of his breeches, caressing the hardness beneath the cloth, and heard his breath come ragged and hoarse. She threw her head back, arching toward him as his hands danced over her breasts, leaving her skin burning.

In one motion he stood and pulled her up into his arms, and then he carried her to the bed. He struggled to free himself from his breeches with one hand even as he was pulling her chemise up with the other, and then he was filling her with liquid fire, murmuring her name into her ear as he took her.

* * *

I
N THE MORNING THE SUN ROSE BRIGHT ON A CLEAR DAY, AND THE
court resumed its progress through a countryside that seemed to sparkle beneath the summer sky, despite the roads squelching with mud. They would reach Colchester that night and the next day make for the port town of Harwich. Bess was feeling the need of exercise and had elected to ride rather than be borne in a horse litter, and Frances, who since her recent marriage to William Brooke had been Lady Cobham, rode beside her.

“For all the distress of the privy council, I see no signs that the people do not love the queen,” Bess remarked.

Since they had left London on the fourteenth of July, the queen’s subjects had gathered along her route to stare upon her and to cry out their good wishes.

“There are even more folk along the roads today than when we first came to St. Osyth,” Frances said. “No doubt because those who missed the queen’s arrival have now come out to see her departure.”

Ahead of them, the queen’s litter came to a halt, and two tiny red-headed girls, their arms full of flowers, curtsied before the queen.

“Aye, the sight of her works magic upon them,” Bess said. “As she well knows.”

“Would they cheer so if they knew that she had just given Robert Dudley apartments in Greenwich that adjoin her own and a pension of a thousand pounds?” Frances murmured.

On the fifth of August, the court reached Ipswich, the farthest point of its journey, where the queen would stay for a week before making her leisurely way back to London. Bess was glad of the respite from travel, especially as it meant that Will had more time to spend with her. The chamber in which they were staying commanded a view of the town, and it was flooded with summer sunshine during the day and had a vista of the stars wheeling above the darkened land at night. During the days and evenings, Bess attended the queen, but the nights belonged to her and Will, and as he came into her arms each night, she prayed that their lying together would result in a child.

On the evening of the ninth of August, as Bess prepared herself for bed, she heard a knock on the door and opened it to find Kate Grey standing there, her eyes swollen and her pretty face streaked with tears. Bess’s first reaction was alarm, but surely if something had befallen the queen, Will would come to tell her of it.

“Kate, sweetheart, what’s the matter?”

She drew Kate into the room and tried to guide her to a chair, but Kate collapsed into her arms, sobbing like a lost child, her golden hair cascading over her shoulders.

“Oh, Bess, help me! I know you’ll know what to do!”

“I’ll help you if I can, love, but whatever is wrong?”

“I . . . I can’t tell you. I’m so afraid.”

Bess was baffled. She had seen Kate daily during the weeks they had been on progress and had noticed nothing amiss. What could have changed so suddenly? She stroked Kate’s hair, soothing her as she would one of her own children.

“Kate, dearest, I cannot help you if you won’t tell me what’s wrong.”

Kate lifted her eyes to meet Bess’s. “You won’t be angry?”

“Why would I be angry?”

“Because it’s so awful.”

“Kate, just tell me.”

“I’m with child,” Kate whispered.

Bess was staggered. Whatever she had been expecting, it wasn’t that. And now that Kate had spoken, she wondered how she could have failed to observe Kate’s condition, for certainly the girl’s trim waist looked thick, and now Bess noticed, everything about Kate shouted that she was breeding. Well, it was a problem, there was no mistake, but perhaps the situation could be put to rights.

“Oh, honey, why did you not come to me before?” Bess murmured. “And who has got you into this state? Surely the queen will make him wed you.”

But that would not fix a new and insoluble problem, she realized as she spoke. For if Kate gave birth to a bastard child, it would remove her from her place in the succession. Neither Elizabeth nor anyone else could overlook such a failing.

“He has wed me already.” Kate slumped into a chair and mopped her eyes with her handkerchief. “Edward Seymour is my husband, and the father of the babe.”

Bess felt as though she had been struck a blow with a cudgel. A cold sharp knot of terror clenched her belly. For Kate, looking at her so hopefully, must not grasp the seriousness of her situation. Under the Act of Succession put into effect under King Henry, no one of the royal blood could marry without the monarch’s consent. And that Kate should have married a Seymour, that family so closely tied to the Tudors by marriage and death . . .

“You didn’t marry him—surely you didn’t marry without the queen’s permission?” she cried.

“I did.” Kate jutted out her chin defiantly. “I love him so, and he loves me, and we had waited so long.”

Worse and worse!

“When?” Bess gasped. “When did you wed? How on earth did you manage it?”

“We married in November, when the queen was away at Eltham—Edward’s sister Jane helped us to do it, and we met in her rooms, but when she died it became difficult to find a way to be together . . .” Kate’s face crumpled and her weeping began anew. “And now he’s abroad—Cecil sent him to France—and does not answer my letters, and my belly can be hid no longer.”

“How far along are you?”

“Nearly eight months.”

Bess’s mind was reeling. How could she have failed to see what was right before her eyes? Because she was caught up with other things, with Will, the troubles with Ned St. Loe . . .

“I’ve been lacing my gowns looser, wearing my kirtle higher, draping myself with shawls in hopes of hiding my belly. But now I’ve got so big it cannot be hid much longer. And people are talking about me, I know it. I see them whispering . . .”

“We must get word to Edward,” Bess said, her mind racing. “I’ll write to him. Or perhaps I can speak to Cecil and he will bring Edward to heel.”

“I fear that he’s forsaken me,” Kate sobbed. “I even tried to go back to Henry.”

Oh, God, the depths of desperation that Kate must be in, Bess thought. Kate had married Henry Herbert, the son of Lord Pembroke, when Jane Grey married Guildford Dudley and Henry Hastings married Catherine Dudley, only for the marriage to be annulled in the disastrous aftermath of the Wyatt rebellion.

“My father-in-law wrote to me; he suggested that Henry and I live as man and wife. At first Henry’s letters were full of love, but”—Kate’s shoulders were shaking with sobs now—“he must have found out about Edward, and now he writes with such venom, calling me whore and worse. Oh, Bess, I don’t know what to do. I know I must confess the marriage to Her Majesty—surely she will understand—but I’m afraid to speak to her myself. Will you not speak to her for me, dearest Bess?”

Bess stared at Kate, appalled at the web of secrets and utterly foolish choices in which Kate was stuck—and in which she herself was now hopelessly entangled.

“But it’s—” Bess tried to steady her voice, to speak calmly instead of shrieking in panic. “Kate, you must know—for anyone of royal blood to marry without the queen’s consent is treason.”

Treason, and for her to connive to keep such a marriage secret was treason, too. For a woman convicted of treason the punishment was death by burning. The smell of the smoke that had drifted from Smithfield to Newgate Street before she had fled London during Queen Mary’s reign seemed to flood her senses. Her gorge rose, and with it, panic.

“How could you do such a thing?” she cried.

Kate gaped at her, clearly alarmed and surprised by her reaction.

Bess struggled to control her fear and anger.

“I am most heartily sorry,” she continued, striving to speak gently, “that you have acted without the consent of the queen’s majesty, for I greatly fear how she will take such news.”

Now Kate’s tears had stopped and it was Bess who was weeping. She paced, wringing her hands in her chemise, her stomach churning. She feared she would vomit and sank to her knees, burying her head in her arms. All she could think was that the wretched girl had put her in such danger as Bess had never been in her life. Cat Howard, Jane Grey, Harry Grey, Edward Seymour, Thomas Seymour, John Dudley—the faces of so many she had known who had died for their folly or someone else’s swam before her. She staggered to her feet, took Kate by the arm, and guided her to the door.

“I must think—I must consult my husband”—dear God, this disaster would come crashing down upon Will’s head, too—“my mind is whirling.”

“But—” Kate gaped at Bess as Bess opened the door. Bess thought Kate looked like an animal about to be slaughtered and took the girl into her arms again.

“Go to bed. Try to sleep.” She kissed Kate and stroked her hair. “All will be well. But I must think, I must consult with Will. We’ll speak in the morning and find a way to set all to rights.”

Bess shut the door behind Kate and leaned against it, gasping for air, trying to clear her head. Immediately she was consumed with remorse. How could she have turned Kate out like that, when the girl had come to her for help? She would go to Kate, bring her to sleep in her own room for the night, make her feel comfortable and safe, promise her that a solution would be found, and pray that she could somehow make it so.

She opened the door to find Will, startled at the door being yanked open.

“Dear God, what’s wrong?” He took her into his arms and pulled her into the room.

“Everything. Everything is wrong. Oh, Will.”

Bess wept as she poured forth the terrible story. Will’s face went white as she spoke and when she had finished, he slumped onto the bed and sat in silence for some moments. His actions alarmed her even more, for she had never seen him less than self-assured.

“I’ll go to Her Majesty first thing in the morning,” he said at length. “I don’t think she’ll thank me if I wake her to tell her such a tale.” He shook his head. “Poor Kate. But how can she have acted so rashly? And Seymour, too!”