He put a hand on her shoulder. ‘What’s the matter, child? Here’s a nice welcome for me after these weeks! I’d hoped day after day to see you at Whitehall, but no, you had a cold and had to keep your bed – your flowerbed I should say,’ as she stepped back from him inadvertently over the little box hedge. Even Bess’s indignation had to break up in laughter as she shook the wet earth off her heel.
‘It was only a church cold,’ she said.
‘Now do you know I guessed as much! What’s your golden apple, my Lady Atalanta?’ and he took the pomander ball from her hands. ‘Remember that if, like her, you embark on a race for glory, you must never turn aside, as she did, for golden apples.’
Turning it round, he saw the watch-dial set in it and exclaimed, ‘Is this how you kill time?’
‘It won’t go anyway. It stopped’ – she paused and stole a look at him under drooping white eyelids, then finished on a note of exquisite melancholy – ‘on the night my father died.’
‘What a shocking little liar you are! Do you ever say a word you mean, or that you mean anyone to believe?’
‘Not often. What is the use?’
He put the pomander back into her hand and his own hand over hers, holding it and the golden ball together, and she shivered at the warm strong grasp. His voice too was warm and strong; what had Ashley said of it – that it would put courage into a mouse? But it did not put courage into her; she wanted to burst into tears, to fling herself into his arms, to fasten herself tight up inside his coat and never have to face the world again; and go on feeling those deep tones tingling through her like the throbbing low notes of a harp.
‘What has hurt you, little Princess?’
She struck away his hand and ran from him, turned at the edge of the pond and flung her pomander at him with all her force.
‘Catch!’ she cried on a high, merry note, but her face was that of a little fury, and she had thrown the hard gold ball to hit, not to be caught.
He dodged it and dashed after her, seized her by the shoulders and swung her round to him. ‘You little wild cub!’ he exclaimed, laughing, but like her his face was in earnest. And he held her a moment before he spoke again.
‘Are you so much a cub after all? It won’t be long before you’re grown up. Bess, will you marry me?’
‘You’re laughing at me again.’
‘And why not? Can’t one marry and laugh?’
‘Then you’ve only just thought of it this moment.’
‘What of that? Everything has to have a beginning.’
‘It’s monstrous, why you’re—’ No, she must not say she had just heard he was practically betrothed to her stepmother. She finished, ‘You’re nearly three times as old as me.’
‘But in ten years I’ll be only twice as old.’
‘Ah, you have thought of it before! You couldn’t have done that sum in your head on the instant.’
‘Witch! Will you have me?’
‘No.’
‘Why not?’
‘I’m too young.’
‘Not yet husband-high?’
‘Oh, as to that!’ She had nearly said, ‘I’m already as high as the little Queen,’ but she changed her ground. ‘I shan’t think of marrying for years yet, if ever, and I’m in mourning for my father – for two years at least,’
‘Tell that to the Merchant Venturers!’
She was casting wildly for her reasons. Suddenly she remembered what she had said to Ashley of himself and the Queen – an objection of even more force in her own case. ‘I couldn’t marry without the Council’s consent – I’d lose my place in the Succession.’
‘As much as your place is worth, hey?’ He was grinning, but not very pleasantly. ‘And why shouldn’t they consent?’
‘Oh well, there’s your brother—’
‘There is indeed my brother. I’ll see about that. And now answer for yourself. Wouldn’t you like me for a husband when you’re a little older? Wouldn’t you, my tawny lion cub? No claws out now!
“Noli me tangere, for Caesar’s I am,
And wild for to hold—”’
‘Who said that?’
‘Tom Wyatt, of your mother. And now another Tom is saying it of you. God’s soul, it will be a work to tame you!’
‘I’ll not be tamed by you or any. I’ll be myself alone, always, I—’
He put a hand under her chin and forced it up to shut her mouth. Then he bent slowly, his eyes laughing down into hers, his face came nearer and nearer, she knew he was going to kiss her on that forcibly closed mouth, and she stopped trying to move her head this way and that; she stood breathless, her whole body stiff and taut in expectation.
A woman’s voice came ringing out into the garden, soaring on a clear high note of happiness, calling to them, laughing at sight of them, winging towards them, and Queen Catherine came running into the garden.
Bess wriggled furiously, trying to get her chin free of that grip of his finger and thumb, but it held like a vice and the Admiral never stirred.
‘Come here, my Pussy-Cat,’ he called, ‘and tell me how to deal with this vixen of yours.’
He had even taken her nickname for the Queen! Bess was aghast at his impudence – and his duplicity, for here he was laughing with Catherine and telling her practically all he had just been saying to herself, as though it were nothing but a joke, or – far more horrible thought – was it not duplicity? Had it really all been only a joke, which she had been fool enough to take seriously?
‘I’ve been asking if she’ll have me for a husband when she’s older, but she’ll have none of me. What’s more, she’s flung her watch at me – there’s a fine way to pass the time!’
He let go of her at last and strolled over to pick up the pomander and show the broken watch in it to Catherine, and Catherine scolded Bess lightly for her carelessness with her possessions, just as though she were a child. But then she was a child again now; they both seemed to think so; they did not mind her being there while they chatted together with gay, friendly intimacy that sometimes dropped on to a tender note and sometimes pranced into flirtation. Yet Catherine did not want her to leave them, she kept her arm round her as they walked, and though she did not bother to bring her into the conversation, she turned to her sometimes with a smile of such happy goodwill that it gave Bess a throb of awed envy, not for what Catherine possessed, but for what she was – so naturally good and kind and unsuspicious, as she herself could never be.
The wind was too cold for sauntering; they went indoors, and Catherine gave the Admiral a posset of mulled wine and spices to warm him after his ride, and still would not let Bess leave them. So she sat on a cushion by Catherine’s chair near the fire and played with her new greyhound puppy, and listened to their assured, easy, grown-up voices as they talked on and on, forgetting her (yes, he had even forgotten she was there), and felt unutterably miserable that she was only thirteen and a half.
They talked over Edward’s coronation last week. Thank heaven, Catherine said, that Mr Cheke had shown some sense, in spite of being a great scholar, by insisting that the service in the Abbey should be shortened so as not to exhaust the child more than was necessary: as it was, he had been sick from sheer nervousness all over his beautiful pearl-embroidered white waistcoat, even before the procession had started; and after it was all over he had had to go straight to bed instead of sitting up for the splendid banquet Tom Seymour had given to all the Court in his grand new house at Temple Bar – and here she went into a fit of giggles.
‘I can’t help it,’ she gasped out, ‘it looked so funny, you and your brother sitting on either side of his empty throne like a couple of watchdogs and glowering at each other across it! My Lord Protector had reason to glower, certainly,’ she added with quick tact, ‘for you outshone him completely in the procession. What a shout they raised as you rode by. It was like the roar of the sea.’
Tom looked pleased. ‘Ah, he laid down plenty of wine for them in the fountains this time, but they
’ll never shout “Good Old Ned!” for him as they did for “Good Old Hal!”– nor for the boy either,’ he added without even troubling to drop his voice, which made Bess certain he had forgotten her presence, for surely even he could not be so incautious as to criticise her brother in front of her?
She had stuck her two branches of lambs’ tails into a silver jug on a table and was watching the ghostly shadow of their dangling tassels that the pale sunset light had thrown on the wall. She thought of Edward being sick on his gorgeous Coronation dress – why couldn’t he have waited for a basin? Boys had no control. So they wouldn’t ever call him ‘Good Old Ned.’ Would they ever shout ‘Good Old Bess’ for her? But she didn’t like the sound of that – it would be better if it were ‘Beautiful Bess’ or ‘Our Glorious Bess.’
The city children would dress up as angels for her then, and sing, as they had done for Edward:
‘Sing up, heart, sing up, heart,
Sing no more down,
But joy in (King Edward) that weareth the crown.’
(Queen Bess)
It had reminded her of the children playing on the village green at Hatfield:
‘Here we go up, up, up.
Here we go down, down, down,’
and she thought that one day her turn might come, and she would be up, up, up, not on a see-saw but on a white pony riding to her Coronation, and a tinsel-winged angel would come flying down (but you could see his wire ropes in the sunlight) from a triumphal arch in Cheapside and give her a purse of a thousand gold pounds, and she wouldn’t just drop it like a toad as Edward did because it was so heavy. But even Edward had shown pleasure at the tightrope dancer who greeted him with such amazing antics on a cord slung from St Paul’s Cathedral to the Dean’s door. It was grand sport being crowned; but her envy was the more painful for a throb of pity that Edward had been too tired to enjoy it as she would have done.
Her elders had settled down into a rich comfortable grumble; it was comfortable because they were sharing it so wholeheartedly, but they were both angry and indignant; Tom kept exploding into more and more surprising references to different parts of the Deity’s person, and Catherine kept beginning her sentences with ‘I should have thought—’
All the arrangements for the new regime seemed to have been just what the late King did not intend. The Council of Regency that he had ordered was being set aside as a completely subservient body to Edward Seymour, who had at once taken supreme power as Protector and got himself created Duke of Somerset, while Tom had been fobbed off with a couple of empty titles, for he was now Lord Sudley and Lord High Admiral – ‘God’s beard, what’s that to me who have been Admiral of the Fleet in good earnest?’ And of what account was an extra title or two at a Coronation when everybody got them? Even his bashful second brother, Homely Harry, had had to accept a knighthood to bring him slightly more into line as one of the King’s uncles.
But Tom had been given no working share in the Government nor personal control of the King, although, or no doubt because, the King liked him far better than his Uncle Edward. Catherine too had had good reason to expect a share in the Government, for King Henry had once appointed her Queen Regent during his absence in France; the only time a Queen Consort had had the title formally conferred on her. But what she really wanted was to be made personal guardian to the King; she had looked after him more closely than anyone these last few years, nursed him through illness and read his lessons with him; she knew how fond he was of her in his odd way, and that King Henry would have wished her to continue her charge of him.
‘It isn’t what Hal wished that counts now,’ said Tom, ‘it’s what our precious pious Ned wishes.’
‘I should have thought he’s pious enough to carry out Hal’s wishes. He was there when the King told his nobles to treat me always with as much honour as when he was alive – when he said I was to keep the jewels he’d given me.’ And suddenly she gave a sharp cry, ‘Oh, the jewels! I’ve just thought! I left them at Whitehall.’
‘God’s blood, why didn’t you keep a hold of them?’
‘I didn’t think of them, or anything else except getting here as fast as we could. I could hardly wait for my maids to pack. All those horrible whispers at Whitehall—’ she shuddered and hid her face in her hands. ‘You know they say the King was dead three days before—’ She broke off and laid a hand on Bess’s shoulder.
‘Yes, I knew that too, Madam,’ said Bess, and looked across her in cool challenge at Tom Seymour.
So he had not told Catherine how she had met him on the night the King died. But he paid her no attention; the jewels were worrying him far more.
‘You were mad to leave them behind,’ he said. ‘I’ll get them for you at once, before my sweet sister-in-law puts a claw on them.’
‘She could not, Tom. They’re the King’s jewels.’
‘Couldn’t she! You don’t know our new Duchess, our Lady Protectress! She’d say she’s protecting them for this King. And Ned would back her.’ His blue eyes were brilliant with anger under their dark brows; he sprang up, swearing torrentially, and looked round for his cloak.
‘Where are you going?’ she cried in distress.
‘To Whitehall and the whole Protectorate pack. I have a deal to say to them.’
He strode over to Bess and patted her head. ‘What else shall I say to them, my Lady Bess? Shall I ask them for your hand?’
She swung up her arm with a slap at his face, and he caught it by the wrist.
‘So here it is, you’ve given me it already.’
He lightly kissed her hand and then the top of her head, and in another moment he was gone, Catherine pattering out beside him, plucking at his sleeve, begging him to be cautious, her tone half laughing and wholly loving.
Bess was left alone. She raised her eyes to the wall and saw the shadowed pattern of her branches fade fainter and fainter as the light died, until it disappeared and the wall was blank.
CHAPTER SIX
Four days later, Catherine told Bess that she and Tom Seymour would marry as soon as it was possible for her, so recent a royal widow, to do so. They had just become formally betrothed, with rings and a written contract of marriage, but this would have to be kept the closest of secrets while Tom set about getting the consent of the Council to it. She had written to him to wait two years, but he had scratched out ‘years’ and changed it to two months.
She looked anxiously at the wooden little face in front of her, pale, with the mouth set in a determined line and the eyes regarding her so steadily yet blankly; Catherine could not see what lay behind them. Surely she liked Tom; Catherine could not imagine any woman of whatever age failing to do so, and he was so charming with her, teasing her so gaily, and really fond of her too. She did want this odd difficult girl to be glad of their marriage, to know that her home would be with them for as long as she wanted it. She said this last, and Bess thanked her, and then remembered to smile and said she could not imagine any home as home without her Pussy-Cat Purr on the hearth. Catherine, feeling baffled, admitted that it was indeed extraordinarily soon for her to be planning her next marriage, only a month after the King’s death had been made public; she told her of her previous betrothal to Tom and how all thought of it had had to be laid aside at the King’s command to her to be his wife.
Bess thought, ‘Why does she tell me all this, and of her betrothal now, when if I were foolish or treacherous it might bring ruin to them both?’ How silly women were, always telling each other things, however dangerous! She would never tell any woman anything; even if it were not dangerous, what was the use? You never knew what the other might be thinking about it. Here was she thinking all sorts of angry, contemptuous things about Tom Seymour, while her stepmother prattled on in her artless fashion about his wonderful loyalty and constancy in having waited for her these long three and a half years, and never wanting to marry anyone else, though he might have made such brilliant matches.
‘Such brilliant matches,’ thought
Bess, ‘to a King’s daughter and second in succession to the throne’; yes, he had wanted that; and if she were as foolishly girlish as her stepmother she would now be telling her so, and causing all sorts of mischief for all of them.
But had Tom really wanted it, or had he only been playing at it?
Her questions tormented her. Catherine, looking down at her shut face, asked her what she was thinking.
‘That I should be happy, Madam, ever to find a tenth part of the happiness you deserve.’
It was far too good to be satisfactory.
Catherine with a sigh went over to her little Italian escritoire and began to write to Tom. Within three minutes she had forgotten that odd difficult girl as she scribbled in hot haste, her face flushing and her breath coming faster in delicious excitement.
‘I pray you be not offended with me in that I write sooner to you than I said I would, for my promise was for but once in a fortnight. Howbeit, the weeks are shorter at Chelsea than in other places.’ She smiled broadly at the excuse, and indeed she had a better; she must tell him that his brother Edward had said he would answer all her requests about her jewels, etc., when he came to see her, which he had said more than once he would do, and had not done. ‘I think his wife has taught him that lesson, for it is her custom to promise many comings to her friends and to perform none.’
Then, having signed it in a hurry, she remembered all the things she really wanted to say, and a P.S. followed, longer than the letter, telling him how she had always wanted to marry him, ‘before any man I know.’ She had had to give up her will, and now God had given her it again – ‘God is a marvellous man.’
And then she remembered that she must tell him if he visited her here in secret he must come so early in the morning as to be gone again before seven o’clock when anyone was about, and to come always by the postern gate in the garden and the lonely marshy road across the fields over the footbridge that was ominously named Bloody Bridge from the number of murders committed there by highwaymen – a terrible precaution, when he must ride alone in the dark hours to preserve their secret, but the danger from highway robbers to such as Tom was nothing to the danger of the Council – and the Duchess, his brother’s wife.
Young Bess Page 9
