“You’re as silver-tongued as my father,” I said.
“I’ve had you brought here so that I can take you safely home to Chelsea,” he said.
“Swear to me that this isn’t a plot to kill me,” I insisted. I searched in my mind for something to help make this safe. “Zeus used to bring his gods to hell’s river to swear their sacred oaths. If they lied, he made them drink its poisoned water and it paralysed them. Swear on this great river that—”
“You’re not in your snug schoolroom now,” Francis replied, angry. “My world’s raw and cold and dangerous. So I’ll speak plainly. I don’t lie and you don’t need to threaten me with stupid tales of poisoned water and gods that never existed.” He got up and walked back to his boat. “Do you want me to take you or not?” In spite of his anger, there was suddenly a gentle pleading in his voice.
Still I hesitated. “My mother made her last journey along this river on May Eve – the royal barge was her death-boat. How do I know that your death-boat will not be mine?”
“You don’t,” he snapped.
Still I did not put my dainty shoe into the boat and he became impatient. “It will cost me dear if I don’t work tonight.” He untied the rope and picked up his oars.
I once asked Kat how we knew that God existed. Well, we don’t, she said. We have to make a leap of faith.
I made my leap of faith – into a boat so rank and rotten that even the branches of may blossom scattered inside could not disguise the stench of death.
“How can your mother bear Bedlam?” I asked.
“She promised your mother to give you her perfume and to tell you the truth if she could,” he replied. “A promise is a promise. She would have died for love of your mother. She would die for you. That’s what love is.”
It was a mystery to me. If loving somebody meant dying for them, would love be for me?
We did not speak again until we reached Whitehall Palace. There, Francis let the boat drift. At the spot where we had seen the drowned girl, my nerves were stretched to breaking. All my fear returned. Francis could tip me into the water whenever he chose.
His lantern cast shadows across his face. His beard, like Robert Dudley’s, was beginning to thicken, giving him a greater likeness to the portrait of my father. “I don’t want to be part of this…your life,” he said. “It stinks, like me. Why do men fight for every scrap of power? Why do they fight over God? It’s the same in France, now that King François is dead. Here Catholics hide in the woods to pray. There Protestants hide in castles with walls so high that only the birds can hear their prayers. One day, there’ll be terrible slaughter between the two. I’ll not stay in France once I’ve taken my mother back. There are other lands…”
“The New World?” I asked.
“No, further north…lands so vast that it doesn’t matter who I am, lands so cold that ships are stuck in the ice all winter, lands with forests full of bears…”
“Aren’t they as dangerous as the Dudleys and the Seymours?” I asked.
He laughed. “Yes. But their fur will keep me warm in winter.”
Towards Chelsea, dawn rose, casting pearls of shimmering light along the water. Francis rowed into the riverbank between Chelsea Village and the palace. I did not want to part from him and I begged him to stay for a while. The boat rocked gently in the wash of passing barges, swinging the lantern.
“Thank you, Francis for what you’ve done,” I said. “I’m sorry that I didn’t trust you, but a dozen boys a day claim to be my father’s son and…”
“The stench of death doesn’t invite trust,” he replied.
“I could bring you some camomile,” I said.
“What for?”
“For your sores,” I said.
“We can’t meet again. Tonight we’re safe. Nobody believes what happens on May Eve. But any other night…”
“It’s been the happiest night of my life,” I whispered. “But you can’t leave your mother in Bedlam any longer, Francis. I won’t let you.” I fumbled inside my pockets and pulled out all the coins left – a good sum. “You’ve been a faithful ferryman tonight. Accept your payment. Take your mother back to France now.”
He swallowed hard, as if he had never seen such gold and silver. “If I was found with money, I’d be accused of theft, bribery, conspiracy. No, it’s too dangerous. I’ll earn our passage.”
“But that will take for ever. You cannot leave her there.”
He shrugged.
Suddenly I was exhausted. I wanted to wash off the stench of Bedlam. I wanted to be back in my warm bed at Chelsea Palace. Francis sensed it. He held onto a branch to steady his boat and helped me out. I put out my hand for him to kiss. “Think of me,” he said. “I’ll be in some far-off land, but king in my own way.”
“Farewell, Francis. And until you leave London, be on your guard, although the danger will not come from me.”
“And you too, My Lady Elizabeth,” he replied. “Keep your back against the wall, like my mother.”
I watched him row away, bowed with the strain.
Tears welled. “Francis, one day, when I have the power…if ever I am Queen…I’ll recognize who you are.” But he did not hear me, for I had whispered the words, and he had already disappeared into the lapping darkness.
I walked slowly at first, tearful. Then my spirits rose and I ran, not from fear this time, but from delight. I skimmed the ground like a bird. The moon was sinking in a sky dark-blue with dawn; the river horizon already glowed with daylight.
My mother was no witch, I wanted to shout. And I am no witch’s daughter. She was no adulteress. I am no adulteress’s daughter.
Words can only hurt if you fear some truth in them. When they have not, they lose their power. So when an old man called out, “Witch,” I called back, “Not me, sir, nor my mother.” And hearing the lightness in my voice, he let me be.
I threw off my hood. I picked may blossom to garland my hair and danced my way back. I was Queen of the May, Queen of the enchanted woods that night, the maidens I met no more than fairies at my feet, their sweethearts no more than elfin creatures. And one day, if I wore the crown of England, I would be the greatest Queen England had ever known.
If only my happiness had not gone to my head that night, I might still be safe at Chelsea Palace. But I let it spill out for all to see and turned it into misery before the night was done. The enchantment was broken.
There was nobody to save me that perfect May dawn.
Chapter Fourteen
In the gloom of the kitchen, I thought it was Maggie hunched over the fire, turning over the last glowing embers in the hearth, until the figure turned and asked, “Where have you been, Bess?” The scent of sugar wafted from the pastry kitchen beyond.
It was my stepfather.
Startled that it was him, I stammered, “H-h-how did you know that I…?”
His lips were sulky. “Only witches go out at night alone.” He mimicked Maggie’s voice. “I’ve trained Maggie well, Bess, and not just how to make your roses. She knows how to please me, that’s why I brought her from Gloucestershire. But she liked you. If you hadn’t slapped her, she might not have come to tittle-tattle to me tonight.” He got up, staring at me in the faint light from the window. He took in the burrs and bramble leaves clinging to my cloak, my torn girdle, the garland in my tangled hair. “You look different, Bess. What have you been up to, my little princess? Where have you been? A-Maying with sweet Robert Dudley?”
“Just a-Maying.” I stayed by the door, ready to run. But he came close, took the garland from my head and threw it into the dying coals, where it sizzled, scenting the kitchen. Then he sniffed my face and hair, his beard tickling my neck as it had done that first morning. “You stink, Bess. You reek of evil. Have you been riding with the devil tonight? Are you still innocent?”
Oh, why did I answer him? Why did I not make my way straight to my bedchamber? And why did I tell the truth?
I pushed his face away. “Not so
innocent, sir, though not in the way that you mean,” I replied. “The devil has more shapes and sounds than I could ever have imagined and I’ve seen them all tonight. Sir, I’ve been to hell and back.”
He did not understand, and he did not ask. But he noticed that the happiness drained from me as I recalled the lost souls in Bedlam. “So what’s made you so happy and so sad? Only a man could do that…” His eyes flashed, jealous.
“You’re wrong, sir,” I cut in. “It’s a woman who has made me so, by telling me how my innocent mother was brought to her death so that my father could marry your sister…”
“And where did you learn this great truth, Bess?”
“In…” I stopped. “She helped my mother in her darkest times…one of her own ladies-in-waiting…but in doing so, she brought about her own ruin by bearing my father’s son.”
Thomas Seymour’s face did not darken with anger or surprise. He whistled under his breath. Then he laughed, quietly at first, then loud enough to wake the dead. He laughed until spittle trickled through his beard and dripped from the last curled hair onto the flagstones. “So he was another pup mewling for its master.”
I leaned against the table, exhausted and appalled that I had said so much. “This pup’s as much my brother as Edward.”
“Though not born to a Queen,” he said.
I was hot, even though the fire had almost died. The stench of Bedlam overwhelmed me. I wanted to wash.
“You’ve been unwise, Bess. You must let me teach you. That’s what I’m here for. Ascham can teach you how men used to live…Horace and Virgil…and…I forget the others, but they were men who lived by the pen. Forget them, Bess. In this new world, men must live by the sword.”
“Or die by it.”
“May Eve turns minds to love, but also to hate,” he whispered. “What if this woman hates your mother for spoiling her life and she’s taking her revenge by feeding you lies?”
He could not hurt me any more with his cunning. “I trust her,” I said. “And if you cared for me, you’d be happy for me.”
“I do care, and that’s why I’m afraid for you, Bess. The pup and his bitch mother have used you badly. What if they’re plotting the King’s downfall? How will this look to the Privy Council? You’ve put us all in danger, you little fool. It smacks of treason.”
Treason. The word that chills the heart.
Exhausted. Excited. Now afraid. I was no longer sure of anything. And Thomas Seymour saw it.
“His mother has bewitched you, Bess,” he whispered. “Like your mother bewitched.” I was truly exhausted, but I would not cry. I knew his cunning now: mention my mother so that I would cry and he could comfort me. “Do you remember what I told you at Shrovetide? She rubbed love potions onto her lips to attract a man as honey attracts a bee…as your lips attract me now.” He pulled my lips together to turn them into a smile. His beard tickled my face again. Then he leaned over and kissed me full on the lips as a man kisses a woman, suffocating me, repelling me with his early morning breath.
The kiss of Judas.
Revulsion. Rage. Shame. All three – but mostly shame. I did not tug his beard. I remembered his dangerous strength from Shrovetide. I endured it.
Can you find such potions to make you hate, that I can put on my lips – or his?
O Dieu, m’aidez! Oh God, help me.
Only a pitiful moan made him let go. It came from Lady Catherine. I saw her over his shoulder, standing in the soft light, eyes and hair wild, clutching her swollen belly as if to protect her unborn child from the sights and sounds of her husband’s folly. I continued to stare at her, my face smarting from the scratch of his beard.
“Traitors!” she called out.
Yes, the worst word. But how could she think otherwise? Me, alone with her husband as dawn broke, both dressed as if we had just returned from some secret assignation. It would have been better if we had been wearing our nightclothes, as if we had chanced upon each other on a sleepless May Eve, when the rest of the world was out a-Maying.
“You fool, Tom,” she said. “To kiss the King’s sister is treason. I know that you’re a vain and arrogant man, but I longed for a healthy body in my bed after six years of a King who wanted only a nurse in his.” She fixed me with her wild eyes. “And you’re an even greater fool, Bess. I welcomed you as my own daughter, begging your father to give you back your name, to welcome you to court, and this is how you repay me. Like mother, like daughter?”
I winced. I had never known Lady Catherine to be cruel. “I’ve done nothing wrong,” I said.
“Look at you, child, flushed from first kissing. I wanted you to live with me for ever so that I could take the place of your misguided mother who bewitched every man she met. I warned you, Bess. You’ve crossed the line now – the invisible line, and who knows if you’ll ever make it back to the other side.”
“But I’ve learned the truth about my mother tonight. She was innocent. That’s what I’ve been telling T…your husband.”
“I did not hear you speak, Elizabeth. I only saw you kiss.”
Then she was gone.
Thomas Seymour did not follow his wife, but went into the garden. The open door let in shafts of sunlight, and the perfumes of a perfect May Day.
I went into the pastry kitchen, pulled the muslin cloth from the silver tray, scattering flies. On the tray lay a sugar rose, every petal clean and curled.
Maggie’s best rose yet.
You will grow into the most beautiful rose England has ever known, my mother had said.
My beauty now blemished. I crammed the rose into my mouth, worked my tongue around its petals until it dissolved. Its sweetness overwhelmed me.
But it was not enough. I returned to the kitchen, gorged on the rose petals drying on the window sill until my stomach heaved. I tipped the remaining trays onto the floor and stamped on the crisped petals. They released a heavenly fragrance and clouds of sugar, settling on my hair like may blossom. My shoes were sticky with sugar, my eyelashes and hair clogged with them, until Kat was slapping my cheeks, shaking me, and I clung to her, crying, “Oh, Kat, why did I go out tonight?”
Morning streamed through the window. Birdsong began. A perfect May Day, shattered into a thousand pieces. Never again could it be made whole, however skilfully the pieces were stuck together.
Kat paced, face flushed, eyes half-closed. Dragged from her sleep, without her jewels and fine clothes, she looked old.
“What have you done, child?” she asked, again and again. She wrinkled her nose in disgust. “And where have you been?” She held up her candle, for the curtains were still drawn in my bedchamber. She studied the soreness on my chin and around my lips, the mud on the hem of my cloak, my torn girdle. “Have you been with Dudley?”
“No. It’s Tom Seymour who’s betrayed me, Kat. He kissed me and—”
“A May Eve kiss is nothing,” she said, too lightly. I had seen her face turn pale. “May Eve makes fools of us all, bewitches us all as much as midsummer with its new scents that make a woman swoon. But you surprise me, Bess. Surely you learned that lesson from your mother.”
I glared at her. “My mother didn’t live long enough to teach me,” she said. “You’re to blame for this, Kat. You should have protected me, but you simpered and giggled and blushed every time Seymour came into sight.”
“I did not kiss him.”
“Neither did I.” I wept piteously. “He kissed me. He saw that I was distracted and took advantage of me. Don’t you understand, Kat? It’s twelve years to the day since they took my mother to the Tower and now Tom’s tainted me. I’ve tried so hard to lead a good life, but he’s snared me.”
“Listen, Elizabeth, you’re not to blame. He is in the wrong, sniffing around the King’s sister. Your mistake was going out alone at night.”
I did not allow Kat to wash me before I went to bed. I lay in the filth of Bedlam that dawn. It was my penance for hurting Lady Catherine. As I tried to sleep, I thanked God that I had
not babbled about Bedlam. Would Robert search for me there if I did not appear at the May Day joust? There would be no joust for me. I was tainted by scandal.
I never forgave Thomas for one thing: he saw me as my mother’s daughter. By kissing me, he must have believed that I was like her, and thus he believed her to be guilty.
Sleep would not come. When I went into Kat’s chamber to be comforted, I found her kneeling in prayer – and crying. Then I knew that the threat was great. I knew that the sword that had taken off my mother’s head was hanging over mine.
Chapter Fifteen
In seventeen days, my mother was arrested, tried and beheaded. And seventeen days I waited for my punishment. No sugar roses. No egg whites for my skin. Nobody, except my own wretched self – and Kat. I hoped that Robert Dudley would ask to see me; but in my heart I knew that his parents would not permit it.
Lady Catherine announced that I missed the quiet of Hatfield Palace and would return there. I would not go to Gloucestershire for her baby’s birth.
“Be thankful,” Kat told me. “It’s only Lady Catherine’s love for you that might yet save your reputation. She understands what gossip did to your mother and she will protect you as best she can. As for Thomas Seymour, let’s pray that he doesn’t boast when he’s drunk too much.”
The roses were in full bloom the day I left Chelsea Palace – the roses that had led me to the river; the river that had led me to Francis. No fond farewells for me. Only a kiss from Jane, my little cousin, bruised and battered when she came here, now so much cleverer than me. Half-laughing, half-crying, and not understanding why I was leaving, she said, “Never to marry?”
“Never to marry,” I whispered back. “Just two wise virgins.”
When the litter was brought to the front steps – I was too weak and unhappy to ride like Kat – my stepmother showed herself. I threw myself at her feet and wept. It would have been better if I had not, for she took them for tears of remorse. At last, she took pity on me and spoke, fixing me steadily with her grey eyes. “I shall choose my words carefully, Elizabeth, for we both know and agree that once they are spoken, they cannot be returned. Your mother was vain and foolish, like my husband. I knew what he was when I married him, and why he married me, and I know that I love him more than he loves me. This could be his downfall, Elizabeth, and yours. The people will hate you if they hear of this because their hatred for your mother is never far from the surface. They will lick their lips at the scandal.” I shuddered at the word. “You are young and Tom should not have abused you in that way. You have one of the finest minds I have ever met. In time, with wisdom and guidance, you will go far beyond the Tower that took your mother…as far as the throne of England if you take care. But I cannot be sure that you will be safe from this scandal.”
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