“My mother won’t stay in London for fear of the plague.” Robert was staring at me and I twirled around for him. “Am I beautiful?” I asked.
“You’re like the moon and the stars,” he said. “You’re like the Queen of the Fairies.”
“I don’t believe in fairies.”
“Neither did I, until I saw you,” he replied.
How easily we slipped back into our childhood teasing. Robert handed me a sugar plate, wrapped in a silver cloth. Underneath were miniature marzipan oranges, each one bite-size, each one sparkling with sugar. I laughed. Jane clapped her hands, bright-eyed. I startled at the sight of her. I had not noticed that she was standing there.
“Robert and I used to steal oranges from my father’s hothouse,” I told her.
“Then we ate them hidden in the foliage,” Robert said. He put a miniature orange into my mouth and one into Jane’s. “Welcome to London, Lady Jane,” he said. “Have you felt the lash of Bess’s tongue yet?”
She blushed. Like me, she wore white. But white needs a woman’s shape. It is not the colour for a puny body and pale eyes.
Thomas Seymour watched us. He repelled me, yet he made my heartbeat quicken. He filled the room with his presence, as my father had.
“Red Beard is scowling tonight,” Robert said.
It was our nickname for my stepfather. Once I would have laughed. Now my eyes brimmed with tears, for I had felt so many emotions that day. “He’s as cunning as a fox,” I whispered. “He brushed my neck with that beard this morning and thought it amusing. Robert, he came into my bedchamber.”
“What? You must tell Kat, or Lady Catherine.”
I shook my head. “No. She deserves to be happy. I won’t let it happen again.”
“If he harms you, I’ll kill him.”
“Does he think I’m easy prey, Robert? Does he think I’m like my mother?” Jane was listening, eyes widening. Dusk was casting its shadows across the garden and gusts of wind came in, bringing the stench of mud from the river. In my mind, I saw Francis’s pale face, his livid sores, the silver box. “Go away, little cousin,” I said. “We’ve grown-up things to talk about.”
Robert gave her another orange and, reluctant, she left us.
I did not know how to begin. So I blurted it out. “Robert, will you do something for me?”
“Yes. Anything.”
“Will you be my eyes?”
“If you’ll be my lips.” He leaned over, as if to kiss me. He had never done that before. We had played childish games together, but they had never included kissing. We were too well chaperoned. My heart quickened as it had when Thomas Seymour had tickled me. I wanted him to kiss me, but I drew away. Tittle-tattle had told me this was the sort of thing my mother had done.
“Ice Queen,” he teased. “What will it take to melt you?”
“Be serious. I want you to find a boy for me…”
He laughed. “Wouldn’t you rather have a man? Who is he, this rival for my affections?”
“It’s not him. I want to speak to his mother. She was my mother’s lady-in-waiting.”
“Ah… They’re the most vicious. They’re hard-hearted creatures, because they’re close to power, but they don’t have it. They’re like ravens, pecking for scraps of gossip.”
“My mother was one, don’t forget, to Catherine of Aragon.” I lowered my voice to a whisper. “Robert, she’s promised to tell me the truth about my mother…whether she was guilty of those vile charges against her…”
He understood my need. He always has. But his eyes flashed with concern. “What can this woman tell you, Bess? There’s always somebody who claims to know what really happened… Somebody who’ll want something in return… And what if she tells you that your mother was guilty? What will you do? Search for somebody else to tell you otherwise?”
“I don’t know. But I’ll start with the boy. It won’t be difficult to find him,” I insisted. “He’s a gentleman yet he doesn’t look like one. He rows an old boat and wears a woollen hat.”
“Then the whole thing stinks of skulduggery,” Robert said.
“He stinks. You’ll smell him before you see him.” My heart was thudding. “He stinks of decay…and death.”
“Then there’s no use in asking me,” Robert replied, “for I’ve no sense of smell.”
“But will you do it – for me?”
“No, Bess.” From the way he pressed his lips tight, I knew that he would not change his mind. “I’d do anything to protect you, but I can’t, even if I wanted to. I’m only fourteen. I can’t go anywhere alone either. My father…”
“Ah – your father,” I scoffed. “John Dudley, the Earl of Northumberland, the man who craves power over the King as much as Thomas Seymour does. I thought you were a man. But you’re still a boy.”
“And I thought you a woman from today, Bess. But you’re still a girl full of childish dreams.” Already he was looking over my shoulder. He wanted fun and he knew that it would not come from me that night.
“I was never allowed childish dreams,” I said. “Well, if you won’t find him, then I shall.”
The table filled with food: swan, goose, capon, pigeon, partridge, pheasant. Anything that had once flown lay there. My father’s wine glasses – a gift from Venice – had been brought out for the occasion and they gleamed. It was hard to remember that it was my birthday. So many strange things had happened. The happiness I had felt on seeing Robert had already drained away.
“Look, the cocks are preparing to fight,” Robert said, trying to warm the coolness that had come between us. “Red Beard’s loosening his ruff and his brother Blue Beard’s loosening his cuffs. Now they’re both stroking the feather in their caps.” His smile faded. “It may be only brother against brother today, but I swear, Bess, that one day it will be Seymour against Dudley.”
Thomas Seymour took the head of the table. Anne Seymour sat on his left, next to Robert Dudley and Lady Catherine. I took my place opposite Anne Seymour. Edward Seymour sat beside me, alongside Jane.
My stepfather raised his glass. “Let us drink to the good health of the Princess Elizabeth on her special day,” he said.
“And to the new reign of Edward the Sixth,” Edward Seymour responded. His deep-set eyes sparkled for the first time. He raised his glass. “To the King and all those who protect him. To my little brother Tom, now Admiral of the King’s navy. May he protect us at sea as I protect us on land.”
The brothers chinked glasses in front of me. “And to my brother, who takes what does not belong to him,” my stepfather said.
We all stopped drinking. We all watched Thomas Seymour, who seemed to be staring at his sister-in-law’s plump breasts. Indignant, she tried to pull up her bodice. But he was looking at her necklace, at the candlelight caught in every perfect emerald. I had not noticed them before. Now I stared too.
“I assume from your appalling behaviour, brother, that you have an axe to grind,” Edward said.
“Unfortunate choice of words,” Thomas replied. “But you are right. Your wife is wearing my wife’s jewels and they hang ill on her old hen’s neck. Such gems should lie flat so the light can catch the cuts. What is she doing with them?”
Anne Seymour defended the emeralds with her fleshy hands. Her neck, flushing now with anger, did the green no justice. “My husband gave them to me. In the absence of a queen, I am now the First Lady in the land.”
I listened, enthralled.
“No, that honour belongs to my wife, the stepmother of the King of England,” Thomas said.
Lady Catherine, alarmed, said firmly, “It doesn’t matter, Tom. I don’t like emeralds. They make my skin look sallow.” She stood and raised her dress enough to show her shoes, encrusted from heel to toe with diamonds. “I prefer diamonds. They last for ever.”
“Oh, but it does matter,” her husband replied, his face grim. “They were given to you by the King of England and they should not have been taken from you.”
Robert
leaned across the table. “Peck…peck…peck. Who will take out the other’s eyes first?” he whispered.
“Then let the King decide who shall have them,” Edward Seymour protested.
“That poor little boy,” Thomas sniggered. “He can’t even empty his bowels without your say-so. No wonder they say that he is clogged with…” He gulped his wine. “There is no more to be said. These jewels have belonged to every Queen of England for the last forty years, since Henry gave them first to Catherine of Aragon when they were married, and then to…” His voice trailed away.
“…and then he must have given them to my mother.” I said the word lightly. It was strange to say it in public. “Emeralds are for constancy, and she was as constant to my father, the King, as the earth is to the sun.” I laughed. It was my mother’s laugh, halfway between despair and terror. Kat glared a warning.
The cocks stopped pecking. Blood glistened in their beards. Flesh flecked their teeth. Quietly, two of the most powerful men in England threw down their bones and licked their fingers.
The emeralds enthralled me. I could not look away. I got up and leaned across the table. I wanted to rip them from that ugly neck. But I did not do it. As they caught the candlelight, the precious gems must have caught a memory in my mind because I touched them gently, one by one. I have only a little neck, my mother had said on the scaffold. My heart ached for her.
Anne Seymour’s neck pulse beat wildly. “I am fit to wear the Queen’s jewels,” she boasted. Her mouth puckered with disapproval as she glared at me. “Your mother was not. Your father feared her as much as we fear witches on All Hallows Eve. Her chamber was full of lotions and potions that she used to put a spell onto men. Five of them: Mark Smeaton… Henry N—”
“I know their names,” I said. “Mark Smeaton. Henry Norris. William Brereton. Francis Weston. And George Boleyn, her brother. Tittle-tattle was my tutor, for nobody took the trouble to tell me the truth. Your vile words are not new to me, madam. They have followed me from the cradle and they will no doubt follow me to my grave.”
“It is your misfortune that you grow more like her every time I see you,” she said.
Her words finally released my pent-up anger. I leaned further across the table and tugged at the necklace. It snapped, showering the gems like hailstones on a stormy night. Some tinkled against the wine glasses. Others fell into the rush matting under our feet. Kat knelt to pick them up.
“Leave them,” I said. “If she wants them, let her get down on her knees. That’s what my mother had to do.” I turned to Edward Seymour. “You were there, sir. Did they put down fresh straw for her head, or was it soaked with her brother’s blood?”
“Your mother was England’s most troublesome Queen,” Edward Seymour replied. “She did not know how to hold her tongue, as you do not. Catherine of Aragon was a real Queen, the daughter of a King and Queen. She knew when to be silent. Tom, you’re her stepfather – aren’t you going to…?”
“Don’t tell me what to do,” Thomas Seymour spat. “You have the King, but I have the King’s sister.”
“Nobody has me,” I protested.
“Bess,” my stepmother pleaded. “Sit down. We are here to celebrate your birthday. You are not on trial.”
“Oh, but I am,” I said. “And as the daughter of Anne Boleyn, I am condemned by all of you.”
I sat down. I did not know what else to do. Jane gaped at me. And under the table, Robert Dudley took my cold hands and squeezed warmth back into them.
Kat scolded me for the second time that day as she combed my tangled hair late that night. “What’s wrong with you, child?” she snapped. “You longed to come and live here when your father died. You love Lady Catherine, and now you’re spoiling everything.”
“I didn’t know it would be so difficult. At Hatfield, there were few reminders of my mother. But it’s different here. They see her in me, Kat. I didn’t expect it.” She tried to pet me, but I pushed her away, irritated. “You heard what Anne Seymour said. Once…just once, I want to hear somebody speak well of my mother.” My words slurred. “Did she love me, Kat? How will I ever know?”
Kat did not reply. She had heard it too many times. She kissed me and blew out the candle.
Darkness is the time I think of my mother. When somebody – Kat was not with me then – told me that she had gone away – and not that she had died – I pretended that she was sailing the world to bring back treasure for me. I was only two when she left, so I could not remember her, except as a shadow. No face. No body. No voice.
But tonight was different. Now I had something that my mother had held in her hand. In the moonlight, I saw well enough to fetch the silver box.
As it sat in the palm of my hand, that little box became as magical and as mysterious to me as the Holy Sacrament sitting on the altar. People of the old faith believed that the bread and wine became the body and blood of Christ during their Holy Mass. I did not. Yet part of me believed that my mother lay there, in my hand.
I touched the box briefly. For a moment, I was touching my mother. I sifted through my thoughts…through sights and smells and sounds…straining to remember her. But she was still that shadow – the shadow of a witch and an adulteress.
The first chime of midnight. Soon my birthday would be over. I eased the lid. The tiny hinges creaked. Then it flew open, releasing not all the evils of the world but a heavenly fragrance – the scent of roses and others that I did not recognize – that quickened my heartbeat, because I knew it.
It was my mother’s perfume.
My maids at Hatfield Palace used to sprinkle rosewater on the soft skin in the crook of their arm, on their wrists and behind their ears before they went to meet their sweethearts. I took some of the creamy perfume and did the same. Then I lay down and closed my eyes. I had seen them do that too, as if swooning at the memory of something beautiful.
In the warmth of my bed, the fragrance deepened, suffocating me, and I feared that it was poison. Then the shadows sharpened into a clear shape – my mother, not as a ghost, but as flesh and blood. I saw her with my child’s eyes. I smelled the same fragrance on her skin.
My heart turned over.
I am two years old again. We are in the nursery at Hatfield Palace. I can see my little bed, with its silver-tasselled counterpane. I can see myself clutching the neck of a grey rocking horse, squealing as it lurches backwards and forwards. The green satin ribbons in my hair swing like the emeralds around her neck. My mother is holding me by the waist and every time I squeal, her lips pucker in a kiss to my cheek. Then her silk-soft hair brushes my cheeks like butterfly wings, and tickles my nose until I sneeze. I knew that her eyes were dark, for mine are like hers, but now I know that they shone with love for me.
“Oh, what a perfect little rosebud you are,” she whispers. “You will grow into the most beautiful rose England has ever known.”
Slowly, on the last chime of midnight, her voice fades and with it her face, her fragrance, her body.
Now I understood. Perfume reminds us of people more than anything else. That is why I had felt the air rustle in the rose walk. It had been a half-memory, the fragrance not strong enough to bring her whole to me. My heart swelled with love for her. Yes, she left me. But she had left me her most precious gift – her perfume box.
As I drifted in and out of sleep, I hugged the first truth about my mother: she had looked at me with love.
Chapter Five
It must be like falling in love, I thought.
I have never been in love. But from what I have heard from the maids, the feelings that I had the next morning came close to it. I wanted to stay with my mother. I wanted to think about her all the time. I wanted to see her again and again. The faint fragrance on my skin still brought her to me. She was softness and light and silkiness.
But I could not stay in bed. I liked my little bedchamber, with its soft bed and its window seat looking onto the Thames and the turning windmills on the opposite bank. There were birt
hday roses on the mantelpiece, releasing their fragrance in the firelight.
Until yesterday, I had felt safe. But now I would not risk my stepfather returning. I would walk in the garden early, although I would not go as far as the river.
I wrapped myself in my cloak.
Yesterday, I had run like the wind. Today, I ran downstairs on fairy feet, so light that I did not wake the caged parrots hanging in the corridor that led to the back entrance.
Outside the kitchen door, I paused.
I smelled sugar.
Once, when I was six or seven, I had wandered into my father’s kitchens at Whitehall Palace. I had never forgotten the sight. His vast kitchens swarmed with young boys – not much older than me – in a heat so searing that they had taken off their clothes. The stench of their sweating bodies made me sick. Kat found me crying by the roasting spit. But it was not being lost that made me cry. In truth, with its writhing limbs and fire and roasting flesh, I thought I had entered hell that day.
Now the sweetness tempted me. I opened the door and went in.
This kitchen was my father’s in miniature. Its low beams were hung with herbs – comfrey, camomile, feverfew, lavender and rosemary. Baking bread gave off its own sweet smell. The window sills were crammed with trays of sugared rose petals, ready to crisp in the first sun.
“Close the door, you fool,” a voice called, so sharp that it could have taken off my head in a single blow. It came from a small room beyond the kitchen and I made my way there. It was a cool room with no windows, other than a small skylight in the roof. In the dim light, I could only make out three white shapes: a sugar loaf, a mound of paste and a face. As my eyes grew used to the darkness, I saw three women at work: breaking off sugar crystals; rolling out paste; cutting with a knife. It was the woman nearest to me who had the palest face. Above her top lip lay a cloth as ghastly as her cheeks.
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