B009RYSCAU EBOK

by Gillian Bagwell

  “We stand by the queen, to be sure,” she told William, “but I will not have the Greys think that all their love and care for me is lost. They are yet our friends.”

  And now she was ascending the stairs to the warder’s lodgings where Jane was kept. A servant opened the door. Voices sounded in the background.

  “Bess!” Jane launched herself into Bess’s arms, and they clung together weeping. When Bess pulled back to look at Jane’s face it seemed to her that Jane was more pale than usual and there were shadows beneath her eyes, making her look far older than her sixteen years.

  “Oh, my darling girl,” Bess cried. “I feel as though I’ve been holding my breath these past months. I cannot tell you how relieved I am to see you once more, whole and well.”

  They walked in the garden, both bundled against the cold, with Jane’s three ladies-in-waiting trailing behind. Dark clouds scudded overhead and there was frost on the ground, but Jane insisted that the winter air would invigorate her.

  “You can’t imagine how it has depressed my spirits to be kept shut up this long while. Just to see the sky overhead, to feel the wind in my face, reminds me that I am alive.”

  “God be thanked,” Bess said.

  “And I do thank Him, every day. I pray for the people who are so led astray that they have now returned to the Mass and other Popish ways that had been repudiated.”

  “But Jane,” Bess said in alarm, glancing over her shoulder to hear who might be listening. “The queen decreed the return to the Mass! Surely you do not speak of such things?”

  “I do and I must.”

  “No, I beg you, do not so! Is it not enough that your father is pardoned and you will soon be free? There is nothing to be gained by standing in opposition to the queen.”

  Jane’s face was sad. “Do you not see, Bess, that to fall in, uncomplaining, with those who advocate a return to Rome would be like acquiescing to the will of Satan? Agreement of purpose is not always a good thing. Why, there is unity among thieves, murderers, and conspirators.”

  Bess felt despair wash over her. How was it possible that anyone could value the form in which faith was practiced more than life itself? What did it matter whether people took communion, or whether they believed that Christ inhabited communion bread and wine? But a glance at Jane’s face told her it would be useless to argue further. She took Jane’s arm in hers.

  “Well, I will pray only that soon you will be back at Bradgate, among your books, where you like best to be.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-EIGHT

  Twenty-second of January, 1554—Newgate Street, London

  THERE HAD BEEN RUMORS FOR DAYS OF PLANNED UPRISINGS IN response to the announcement that Queen Mary would wed King Philip of Spain, and as soon as William burst through the door, Bess knew that he bore bad news.

  “Frances Grey’s cousin Sir Peter Carew was summoned to court for questioning about these murmurs of rebellion. He did not come or send word, which surely means that he was involved in making trouble and is now a fugitive.”

  Cold fear gripped Bess’s heart, a feeling that had become sickeningly familiar over the past months. What would happen to Jane if Queen Mary thought that the Greys were acting against her?

  “But surely the Greys would not be so foolish as to be involved in any more plots,” she said, praying that it was true.

  “I wouldn’t lay money on it. Bishop Gardiner told me not an hour since that Edward Courtenay has confessed a plan to remove the queen and put her sister Elizabeth on the throne, and he named Harry Grey among the conspirators.”

  Jane. Save her and protect her, Lord, for this trouble is none of her doing.

  “Jane must be so frightened. I want to go to her.”

  William shook his head. “It’s not likely you’d be allowed.”

  Within days, the situation became more dire.

  “The queen is raising an army, and from what I hear, she’ll need it,” William told Bess. “Thomas Wyatt set up his battle standard at Maidstone and read out a proclamation against the queen’s marriage, charging all of England to rise to his cause.”

  “And will they?” she asked, her heart pounding.

  “He’s in a strong position to be dangerous if they do. He’s one of the largest landowners in Kent and during the Kett rebellion he put in place a hand-picked militia for the defense of the country. He could be at the head of an army very quickly.”

  Jane.

  “Where is Jane in all this?”

  “In a very ill place. The Earl of Huntingdon told the council that Harry Grey tried to get him to join the rising, saying that Wyatt had promised to put Jane Grey on the throne in exchange for Grey’s support.”

  A few days later, William told Bess that Harry Grey had failed to respond to a summons.

  “He’s been declared a traitor, as have his brothers. And the Earl of Huntingdon has set off to hunt him down and bring him back to London.”

  “Huntingdon?” she cried in confusion and despair. “But he supported Jane’s succession. Isn’t he in the Tower?”

  “No longer. Alliances are shifting faster than can be reckoned, for to be in the wrong place when the music stops will bring a most unhappy end.”

  Over the next days, the rumors flew. Wyatt was said to be marching toward London with five thousand men behind him.

  What if he should succeed? Bess thought, her hopes rising. Whoever ended on the throne, it wouldn’t be Mary. Perhaps Jane would go free, even if she wasn’t queen.

  “What if you raised men and went to Wyatt, as you went to fight for John Dudley last summer?” Bess whispered to William in the safety of their bed.

  “I have thought of it. I think of it still, but it is a very risky thing. I think the queen will prevail, and Wyatt and his supporters will die.”

  It became more difficult for Bess not to beg William to join Wyatt when she learned that Wyatt’s army had taken Rochester Bridge and seized a fleet of royal ships anchored in the Medway, along with their weapons and ordnance.

  “And now?” she argued. “You could go to Chatsworth; there are hundreds of men there who would go if you called them.”

  “No!” he cried. “I’ve left it too late! It would be a fortnight before I was back in London. It will all be over then. Besides”—he sighed hopelessly—“this is not like last summer. Then I set out from Chatsworth, and thanks be to God, learned that the cause was lost before I met with Mary’s troops. Marching on London is quite a different thing.”

  Then it’s hopeless, Bess thought. We have no choice but to sit and wait.

  On the third of February, Bess woke to the sound of cannon fire.

  “That sounds very close,” she said to William, and ran to the window and threw open the shutters. Smoke was rising from the east. When she turned back, William was already half dressed.

  “Stay inside,” he commanded her, and headed for the door of the bedchamber, strapping on his sword. He was back within a quarter of an hour.

  “Wyatt and his men have crossed the bridge and are making for Whitehall. The queen’s soldiers are marching toward the city. They’re like to meet on our very doorstep. Nothing for it but to batten down the hatches to meet the coming storm.”

  Bess and a few of the servants closed and latched all the shutters of the house and barred the doors, while William gathered the rest of the servants, and armed them with whatever was to hand.

  “Don’t go out unless I give the word,” he warned them. “But be prepared to defend the house against anyone who tries to get in, whether queen’s men or the others.”

  Soon Bess heard shouts, the tramp of feet, drums. Then the clash of steel on steel, the discharge of arms, screams, orders bawled above the chaos. She sat on her bed, feeling helpless, knowing that what was happening outside the windows must decide the outcome of what Wyatt had started. She remembered that Wyatt was Lizzie’s cousin, and wondered where Lizzie was, and if she was safe.

  By afternoon, the battle sounds had ceased. William w
ent out with half a dozen men to learn what he could.

  “The queen’s army turned back Wyatt’s men,” he told Bess when he came back. “There’s a corpse hanging in St. Paul’s Churchyard. One of Wyatt’s, I think.”

  “Is it finished, then?”

  “I don’t know. We’ll learn more tomorrow.”

  The next day he went to Whitehall and returned looking haggard and despairing. “That fool Grey has doomed himself and all around him,” he said, sitting on the bed.

  Jane.

  Bess went and stood before him, praying he would have some words of comfort. He took her hands in his, studying them as if he had never seen them before. He kept his eyes down as he spoke. “The queen has agreed to sign the death warrants of Jane Grey and Guildford Dudley.”

  Bess was seized by a wave of nausea and panic.

  “No! Surely she knows that Jane cannot mean her harm!”

  “I don’t think anyone knows anything anymore. All is in turmoil. But as long as Jane Grey lives, people opposed to Queen Mary will rally to her.”

  Bess had a sudden recollection of Jane returning from a visit with Mary years ago, prattling happily about her cousin’s kindness and praise for her. It had seemed then that Mary had provided Jane with the kind of encouragement and affection that her own mother did not.

  “When?” Bess asked, her throat so tight with fear she could barely speak.

  “Three days from now.”

  Bess’s head swam, and the last thing she saw before she slumped into William’s arms was the fear on his face.

  * * *

  THE NEXT THREE DAYS SEEMED LIKE A YEAR. DESPITE WILLIAM’S protests, Bess went to the Tower and tried to see Jane, but she was not permitted, and when she returned home she lay in her bed and wept until her head ached and she thought there could be no more tears left to be shed.

  On the day that Jane was to die, Bess rose from bed only to kneel in desperate prayer that somehow Jane might be saved. Were it not for William and the children, she would have prayed to be taken instead, if only Jane could live.

  When she heard William’s footsteps on the stair, she covered her mouth, steeling herself for the news that Jane was dead.

  “The execution has been put off,” William told her. “The queen has greater dangers than Jane Grey just now. The rebels have reached Knightsbridge. There are rumors that royal troops fled in the face of the attack and that the Earl of Pembroke has gone over to Wyatt’s side.”

  Bess’s hopes rose. “Will you join him? If enough men rally to him, perhaps he may win, and Jane will be restored to the throne.”

  “I would if I thought that it would do any good, but I think the tide is about to turn against Wyatt. Huntingdon and an army of three hundred men brought Harry Grey and his brother John captive to the Tower this day.”

  “Perhaps Queen Mary will change her mind,” Bess said desperately. She thought of the necklace that Jane had worn at her wedding, a gift from the queen. “Mary loves Jane.”

  But William shook his head. “There’s no going back now.” He took her into his arms, and she saw that there were tears in his eyes. “You make it harder for yourself if you hold out hope when there is none.”

  “How terrified she must be,” she wept. “If only I go could to her. She needs me; she has no one to comfort her now.”

  “She knows you love her. You must cling to that knowledge. The best we can offer her now is our prayers.”

  On the morning of the twelfth of February, a messenger brought a letter for Bess, addressed to her in Jane Grey’s bold handwriting. Bess was trembling as she broke the seal and read.

  My dear Bess, I know that you will weep for me, but I beg you to take comfort in the knowledge that I do not weep that God will take me from this vale of misery, for I know that in losing a mortal life I shall find an immortal felicity. As we are told, there is a time to be born and a time to die, and the day of death is better than the day of our birth. I pray you remember me in your heart and in your prayers, and that the Lord that has hitherto strengthened you so continue, that at last we may meet in heaven. With my most constant love to you, dear Bess, your Jane.

  A lock of red-gold hair tied with a bit of blue ribbon had been folded into the letter. Bess raised it to her nose and thought she could detect Jane’s scent. She kissed the lock of hair and curled it into her hand, as if by holding it close she could draw Jane to her, and sobs racked her.

  The sound of a cannon boomed and echoed in the distance, and Bess felt as though the shot had gutted her.

  “What noise is that?” she asked, knowing the answer even as she spoke.

  The young messenger’s eyes met hers and she saw that he was in tears. “It is done. Jane Grey is dead.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-NINE

  Eighth of March, 1557—Chatsworth, Derbyshire

  BESS LOOKED AROUND AT THE FRIENDS AND NEIGHBORS WHO had come to celebrate the christening of her baby, Lucres, who had been born the previous week, on Shrove Tuesday. The mood was relaxed and happy. The godparents were all close friends of Bess and William from nearby, rather than highly placed and powerful Londoners. Bess smiled at Jenny, standing next to their brother Jem and surrounded by a knot of tumbling, laughing children, including her three own little ones and Bess’s. Frankie was almost nine now, Harry and Willie were six and five, Charlie was three and a half and always into mischief, little Bessie would be two in a fortnight, and May, in the nurse’s arms, was fourteen months old.

  It had been the right decision to remove themselves from London, Bess thought. Of course William had to spend time at court, but he returned to Chatsworth as much as he was able, and it was so much more enjoyable to stay at home with her children rather than leaving them in Jenny’s care and dashing off to town.

  Besides, London was a place of horror now. In early February of 1555, a cleric named John Rogers, the prebendary of St. Paul’s, had been convicted of heresy and burned at the stake in Smithfield. It had been impossible to avoid the mood of terror and anger welling up among the people in the days before the execution. Worse, the smoke had drifted down toward the river, and Bess, more than seven months gone with child, had been overcome with nausea and revulsion, vomiting repeatedly with such ferocity that William had called a physician to attend her.

  That ghastly execution had been only the beginning, and since that time hundreds more had died in the flames—men and women, the feeble old and boys not yet come to manhood—for no more than cleaving to the religion that had been so stringently imposed by King Edward only a few years earlier.

  “I cannot bear it,” Bess had wept, holding a handkerchief over her nose and mouth to block out the stench of burning flesh. “Can we not leave?”

  They had been in London for the marriage of Frances Grey’s niece Margaret Clifford.

  “We must go to the wedding,” William had insisted. “Margaret Clifford is a relation of the queen, and the nuptials will be celebrated like a royal wedding. We cannot afford to have Queen Mary question why we are absent.”

  So they had attended the wedding, the feasts, the jousts and masques, and inside Bess had felt as if she were dying by inches. The Lady Elizabeth was there, the whiteness of her face standing out against her black gown, and watching her standing alone in a corner Bess was reminded of an animal, hiding trembling and silent in hopes of being overlooked by an approaching predator.

  Just as difficult as curtsying low before the queen, swollen with what had proved to be a false pregnancy, and smiling and chatting, had been coming face-to-face with Frances Grey and her daughters, all now serving in the privy chamber of Queen Mary.

  How could they do it? Bess shrieked inside her head. Had they forgotten Jane, whose blood had sodden Tower Green only three years earlier? Did they not recall that it was Queen Mary who had sent her to her death? Seeing the Greys only made Jane’s absence a new and tearing grief to Bess. And she had found herself looking for the grinning, ruddy face of Harry Grey, who had introduced her to William t
hose many years ago. But he had gone to the block only a few weeks after Jane, along with John Dudley and so many others, for his part in Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion. She had searched Frances Grey’s face for signs of sorrow but saw none, and the rage rose within her.

  Not long after that dreadful wedding, Frances had married Adrian Stokes, her master of horse, to universal surprise, ending any possibility that she would ever succeed to the throne. Kate Grey’s marriage to Henry Herbert had been annulled, and little Mary Grey’s espousal to her cousin dissolved, with as much dispatch and cold political calculation as the alliances had been made only months before. Bradgate Park, the house that Bess had called home and loved when she lived among the Greys, had been taken by the crown. Everything to do with the Greys had seemed baffling and heartbreaking to Bess, and she had wanted to be far from the court and all to do with it.

  Now, on this prematurely springlike day at Chatsworth, peace and happiness reigned, and Bess felt safe. Her mother came to her side, a goblet of good French claret in her hand.

  “The house is looking splendid,” she said, tilting her head back to admire the plasterwork of the ceiling. “The furnishings in my chamber are magnificent—such exquisite tapestries! You’ve done so much work since last I was here.”