“What a pity I shall not live to see you bloom,” she whispers.
The memory fades. And my tears flow so fast that the Thames should have burst its banks that night.
I slept late and when I came to breakfast, Mary had already left for Essex. We too made our way back by river to Chelsea Palace, on the silver water that could have taken me to Alys – and to the truth.
We were all out of spirits. It was a tiresome journey. A boat rowed in front of us to break the ice, but our progress was slow and chilling. A biting wind whistled through the canopy and chunks of ice struck the side of our barge. Of Francis, there was no sign. It was too cold for him to ply his deadly trade.
Once more, I regretted losing my temper with Francis. Anger is a brief madness, Lady Catherine said. It takes away our reason.
Chapter Nine
I entered my own Bedlam of writhing limbs and shrieking lips. My hands and feet swelled, then my whole body. Dropsy fills the body with water, although no one knows why. Kat did not call a physician, for I could not bear leeches to suck at my skin. I took to my bed.
Kat allowed no visitors, for Master Grindal had died of sweating sickness during Christmastide. A hush settled over the house. Everybody knew that the sweating sickness was swift of foot. You could dine at noon and die at dusk.
The strangest dream haunted me. My mother is there, young and laughing, holding the hand of a young man with eyes as dark as hers. She calls him her brother. But I am not a chubby child, as I am in my perfume memories; but the age I am now, with frightened face and hesitant step, trying to keep up with them as we walk in near darkness. My mother hands out apples and pears and bread to bony fingers poking through bars. It must be a prison, for there are many in London.
When I woke up, my eyes bulged like Jane’s, and my belly heaved at the memory of a stench so strong that Kat came running with a bowl.
Illness left me weak in mind and body. I burst into tears if the maids stared at me. I was quarrelsome. I would not speak to Jane or to Lady Catherine.
Melancholia is a prison. It shuts you in, without a window to the world. It distorts your thoughts. I forget my mother’s loving smile and soft words, remembering only her witch’s marks and her hand with its wriggling finger.
Virgil says that the way to hell is easy. Its gates are open day and night. But to find the way back to fresh air is hard toil.
He is right. Sometimes, I hated Francis for dangling the truth in front of me, like a grown-up teases a child with a toy and moves away and away until the child cries and gives up. I plotted my revenge. I would denounce him to the King. I would have him taken to the Tower. Sometimes I pitied him. Sometimes I pitied Alys, sent to Bedlam because she had come back to England to keep her promise to my mother. More often than not, I pitied myself.
The day came when I was strong enough to walk in the garden with Kat. I kept well away from the river. From the rose walk, I could see there was only ice on the water, like the ice in the wind on my face – and in my heart.
Roger Ascham rode in from Cambridge. I watched him dismount, bright-skinned, hair and beard curly. I had begged my stepmother to secure him as my new tutor because he is said to have one of the cleverest minds in England. Now I wished him back in Cambridge because I was not in the mood for study.
“Master Ascham says your books will make you better,” Kat said.
“What does he know?”
“More than you,” she said with great patience. “Get up, Bess. You begged him to be your tutor. You must welcome him and dazzle him with your mind.”
“I have no mind. It’s rotting like my teeth,” I said.
She gave one of her little warning coughs. “He’s already saying that Jane has one of the finest minds in England.”
“Why isn’t she studying with Doctor Aylmer?”
“She will, when he returns from Leicestershire. Master Ascham’s already started translating Virgil with her – double translation.”
I scowled. Kat knew I would. Roger Ascham had promised to try out a new method of learning Greek: I was to translate from Greek into English. Then from my own English back into Greek, to make sure that it matched. It would be exacting. It would be exciting. Ascham had already written a book about archery and he was going to write about education – my education.
“Ascham is mine, not hers,” I grumbled. “Yes, bring my clothes, Kat. I’ll go to lessons today. I won’t be outshone by my little cousin.”
But Roger Ascham was disappointed with me. He had given up the great minds of Cambridge to instruct a mind that had grown dull and dreary, a mind that if it sought the truth, must seek it in Bedlam.
Time after time, I stumbled over my words. I had once translated three pages of Virgil in an hour. My mind used to work with the speed of the sword. Now it hacked and chopped at the words.
Ascham winced. “I was told that you shone like a star,” he said.
“The clouds came,” I said, ungracious. “But I am thinking about something, although not about Virgil. How do we ever know the truth about anything or anybody?”
“Jesus said that He is the truth,” Jane interrupted, “and the priests speak His truth.”
I glared at her. “How can they?” I asked. “Priests said that there was Purgatory. Now they say there isn’t. Priests said that the bread and wine changed into Christ’s flesh and blood. Now they say it doesn’t. Not even Archbishop Cranmer seems to know the truth, or want to tell it.”
“Are you still unwell?” she asked.
“Yes, sick of your eyes bulging with piety.”
I was sick of them both. I pleaded a headache and asked to leave.
“The Ancient Greeks used to apply electric eels to the head to cure melancholia,” Ascham said, “until one madwoman snatched the eels from her head and ate them raw and writhing.”
My stomach heaved.
I sat at my window. Dark clouds shadowed the sky beyond the river. A flash of lightning caught the lanterns of a barge. And a thought flashed into my mind with it, so simple and so wonderful that I laughed out loud. Unaccustomed to the sound these past weeks, Kat looked at me strangely and threatened to fetch me a calming cordial.
I am accustomed to the men around me having the power: Thomas Seymour, Edward Seymour, King Edward, my father, Robert Dudley, John Dudley… So accustomed to it that I had almost given away my power. In my childish innocence, I had waited for Francis to take me to his mother.
Why had I not thought it before? I did not need Francis.
I knew where Alys was. I would go to Bedlam.
If I went alone, I would be safe. If Alys refused to speak to me, I would have done my best. And if she did speak, I would lay my mother’s ghost to rest.
I would go in springtime, when every leaf would hide me on the way to hell for I would have no Charon to row me.
I could wait.
Had my mother not waited six years for my father to marry her? Had I not already waited long enough to hear the truth?
The next morning, bright sunshine and birdsong told me that the storm had passed. Into the darkness of February shone a few small suns: aconites, primroses and curling catkins.
The ice on the Thames cracked and water bubbled to the surface as sulphurous as hell. The river came back to life.
The sap was rising.
I ate like a horse. My stepmother pecked like her parrots. Her face was drained of colour. Her grey eyes were exhausted. I touched her burning forehead. “Are you unwell?” I asked, anxious.
“Yes. No.” She laughed. “I am with child, Bess,” she said. Her eyes brightened with happy tears. “It will be an autumn child like you and Edward and Jane, with red-gold hair and Tom’s flashing green eyes…”
“It will be a boy?”
“Oh, yes, and Tom will be content at last.”
We fell silent. Between us lay the ghosts of so many dead sons: Catherine of Aragon’s and my mother’s. Jane Seymour had borne a living son, but she had died from childbed feve
r. My belly twisted. I could not bear to be without Lady Catherine.
Impulsively, I took her hand and kissed it and in return, she kissed me on the cheek.
Kat’s face darkened. When we were alone, she whispered, “When she’s gone, you’ll want me.”
“But where’s she going?” I asked, startled.
“A first child at thirty-six is foolish,” she said. “But childbed or not, good people don’t last long on earth. God always calls them to Him. I don’t understand why. If he sent for the bad ones, we’d all sleep more safely in our beds.”
When Kat went back to sleep in her own bedchamber, I knew that Thomas Seymour would be tempted by mine. I got up early, long before first light, and sat at the window seat. As my stepfather tiptoed in, I greeted him.
He pretended not to be startled. “This light isn’t good enough to read by,” he said. “That’s why you’re so short of sight.”
“I can see plain enough, sir.”
He came to the window seat but I did not make room for him. “So what are you reading?” he asked.
“A poem,” I said. “Thomas Wyatt wrote it for my mother.”
“Poetry!” He sneered. “What a pity that Wyatt didn’t lose his head along with the others. We wouldn’t have to endure his lovesick lines now.”
“Wyatt loved her long before my father but he didn’t pursue her once my father fell in love with her. Listen. You’ll like this: There is written, her fair neck round about, Don’t touch me – Noli me tangere – for Caesar’s I am.” I stared straight into his eyes. “Noli me tangere, sir.”
He backed away. He never came to my bedchamber again.
Chapter Ten
“Edward and Anne Seymour have invited us to their new house on the Strand,” Lady Catherine complained. “For Shrovetide,” she added. She was pulling a face, but not in jest.
Shrovetide is one of our greatest feasts. It marks the beginning of the forty days of Lent, when we remember Christ’s suffering before his crucifixion. Our earls and dukes and lords seek to outdo each other in their celebratory feasts.
“I shall plead sickness and leave early,” she said. “But you young ones must make merry after this long winter. There will be music again and dancing and all the other things we have missed.”
“Will you come, Bess?” Jane asked.
“YES!” I cried. I thought of my mother, dancing like a butterfly blown by the breeze. “And I’ll show the world that I’m better, that I’ve only been cocooned in my chrysalis this winter. And now the butterfly will emerge.” I twirled around, as if she were still holding me. “I’ll spread my wings this spring.”
“Take care,” Jane murmured. “Do not forget that butterfly wings are fragile.”
The new house – Somerset House – was still unfinished. Wooden poles stretched from the roofs to the ground, as did last autumn’s ivy, now grey with mould. But it would be splendid one day.
We were to dine and dance outside. Gardens, which would be glorious too, led down to the Thames. High tide and high wind together had allowed the river to seep into the lower garden, where it had frozen into a silver circle, like the moon beneath our feet.
Musicians strolled. Pigs roasted. Wine flowed faster than the water. Bundled in our furs against the bitter wind, we prowled like hungry wolves.
“Eat, drink and be merry, Bess,” Thomas Seymour cried, “from tomorrow, forty days of fasting. No meat. No wine. No…” He winked at Robert Dudley and stopped himself. “It is as bad as the forty days’ quarantine of the plague, though not as deadly. So, carpe diem, I say.”
“And you say it badly, sir,” Robert teased. “What will you give up for Lent, sweet Bess?”
“I’ve already given up what I love most,” I said. “Sugar roses.”
My stepfather roared with pleasure at my wit. He bore me no grudge. But I had not forgiven him. He must have already tainted me with tittle-tattle, if only in the kitchen.
Lute players struck the first chords of the galliard. My foot tapped. Nobody had danced in public since my father’s death. Thomas Seymour bowed and led me onto the ice. I was heavy in my sable fur, yet my feet were light. I did not feel the icy cold through my velvet shoes. My stepfather lifted me with ease, bringing me eye to eye with one of the lute players, a pretty boy who smiled at me.
The pleasure of the dance faded. Mark Smeaton had been a fine lute player at my mother’s court. He had smiled at my mother and she had smiled back. He had been stretched on the rack until his young body broke, until he confessed that he had lain with her, and the next day watched his entrails taken from his twitching body. Some said that I was his child.
When my stepfather put me down, I froze. Seymour was impatient. He wanted to dance with the most beautiful girl in the garden – me. He wanted me to leap to the music. He wanted me to turn every head, both male and female…as my mother had done.
Puzzled, he asked, “Have you forgotten how to dance, Bess? You’re as highly strung tonight as that lute.”
“They think that I’m Smeaton’s bastard,” I whispered.
“Who?”
I was almost crying. “Everybody.”
“The word belittles you, Bess.” He released a curl from my headdress. “This is Tudor hair, down to the last strand. Smeaton’s hair was as black as a moonless midnight. Nobody could doubt it. Do you think I’d care for you if it were otherwise?” He lifted me higher than before and people clapped at his daring. Then he handed me to Robert Dudley, who staggered with mock horror as he lifted me.
“I expected to find you thin and wasted,” he said, “but you have…”
“…grown plump on sugar,” I finished. “But I’m giving it up for Lent.”
“And your mother, too, I hope.” Robert tickled my back as he rushed me through the air. I shivered with excitement. Then he touched the nape of my neck briefly as he set me on the ground and I liked it as much as I had hated my stepfather’s touch.
Robert and I stole into the Great Hall, although we had not yet been summoned inside. It too would be glorious by summer, when the walls had been panelled with wood and warmed with tapestries. For Shrovetide, the dais under the musician’s gallery had been prepared for the evening’s entertainment.
This dais was overhung with deep blue silk, painted with silver stars and a full moon. A veil of gossamer silk hung in front of a large table, which was draped with a golden cloth. Silver curtains hung at the sides of the dais. Along the bare walls of the hall, fire torches gave off a great heat and the perfume of lavender and thyme.
It was a sumptuous sight.
Outside, a trumpet fanfare summoned the other guests. Like ours, their winter-pale faces glowed at the sight. I made for the back of the hall, to stand closer to the door, but it was too late. The crowd of guests forced us to stay where we were. Thomas Seymour pushed his way to the side of the dais, pulling Jane behind him.
As soon as we were all assembled, an insistent drumbeat sounded from the gallery. Rising above it came the wail of a plucked viola string. A man’s voice spoke from behind one of the silver curtains. “In a far-off desert lived King Herod, who had married his dead wife’s sister, Herodias,” he announced. “One of Jesus’ disciples, John the Baptist, condemned Herod for what he had done…”
I gasped at the daring of it, for my father had married his dead brother’s wife, Catherine of Aragon, and later blamed this marriage for his lack of a son. “Herod’s wife had a beautiful daughter, Salomé, who danced better than any girl in the land…”
As his voice died away, fire torches were lit on the walls behind the veil, and a young woman began to dance barefoot on the table. Wrapped in silken cloths, she shimmered like the stars above us as she coiled and uncoiled to the rhythm of the drum, casting shadows across the veil that separated us.
Nobody could doubt the beauty of her curving body. Robert’s wine dribbled from his lips and he circled his arm around my waist.
It was a clever ploy, for women are not permitted to dance f
or public display. I swayed with her, remembering how my mother had danced with me in her arms. If she had been here, would she have dared to dance for us? Would I have found the courage to dance with her?
The dancer was breathtaking. In seconds, Salomé had plucked us from the icy cold, carried us on her gossamer wings and set us down under the desert’s starry sky. I forgot the past and the future. I only wanted to be her.
The music died. Salomé faded into the shadows as the fire torches were extinguished. “King Herod, moved by her great beauty, granted Salomé anything she wanted,” the voice went on. “Salomé’s mother whispered to her daughter, ‘Ask for the head of John the Baptist on a silver platter. That will put an end to his evil talk about me.’ And Salomé, a dutiful daughter, did as her mother commanded.”
A trumpet blast brought an executioner onto the dais, sword in hand, eyes bulging through the holes in his black leather mask. Fear stabbed at me. “Whatever Lady Seymour has chosen to entertain us tonight, I want no part of it,” I whispered to Robert. But he was still in his far-off desert and did not reply.
I could not push my way out. I closed my eyes instead. Only the sound of laughter that greeted John the Baptist made me look again. The veil had been drawn back. The table had been brought forward. In front of it stood a boy aged about ten or eleven, plump and pretty with golden hair as curly as a piglet’s tail. His dark beard did not match his hair and this had provoked the laughter. I laughed a little too. After all, what had I to fear? This was only a Shrovetide spectacle.
Thomas Seymour stamped his foot, shouting, “Give us a man, not a boy. His beard droops like…” He whispered the next words and the men around him laughed. “Where did you get it? From John the Baptist’s head?”
The terrified boy tried to run away, but the executioner caught him by the collar and pushed him up onto the table, where he lay face down.
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