B009RYSCAU EBOK (16 page)

“No,” he said. “I don’t want to wait a minute longer than I must. Give me but time to wash and put on clean clothes, and let us be married.”

“Very well,” she said, kissing his stubbled cheek. “Nothing would make me happier.”

“I will give you my wedding gift now,” he said, “because I would have you wear it while we are wed.”

He pulled a small packet of wool from within his clothes and handed it to her. Bess’s fingers fumbled with the ribbon that tied it, and she gasped as the little bundle fell open. Within it lay a teardrop-shaped pearl on a gold chain.

“Oh, my love,” she whispered. “I’ve never seen anything so beautiful.”

He fastened the chain around her neck and looked down at her, eyes alight with tenderness and joy.

“Even more lovely than I had imagined.”

* * *

T
HE SAVORIES AND SWEETMEATS WERE BROUGHT OUT AND THE
aroma of spiced wine drifted into the great hall. Frances Grey and her daughters, and Bess’s mother and sisters, gathered around her as she was helped into her wedding gown. Her mother brushed her hair and settled a wreath of flowers atop her head. And at two in the morning of the twentieth of August, Bess became the wife of Sir William Cavendish. Lady Cavendish, she was now, though she could hardly believe it.

What had been intended as the wedding breakfast was served up as a predawn supper, the dozens of candles in their branched holders casting a magical glow on the darkened hall.

“We’ll have dancing and more festivities tomorrow,” Harry Grey said. “I know you’ve had a long day, Will. And I’m sure you’re eager for your bed.”

He cuffed William Cavendish on the shoulder and kissed Bess’s cheek.

William took up a candle and held out a hand to Bess, and they made their way up the stairs to Bess’s bedchamber. In their absence it had been prepared for their nuptial night. The air was sweet with the scent of the great bundles of roses that stood in bowls and vases and the rose petals that dotted the bedclothes. A fire burned cheerfully on the hearth.

The door closed, and they were alone at last, man and wife.

William bent to kiss Bess. She felt shy at the thought of giving herself to him as she knew she was about to do, but his warm hands were gentle on her skin and she was not afraid.

“May I undo you, my love?” he asked.

“Sure, I could never be undone as long as you are with me,” she said, smiling.

He unlaced her bodice and unhooked the fastenings of her skirts and helped her step out of them. She stood in her snowy chemise, her hair tumbling around her shoulders, the wreath of blossoms still on her head.

“You are so very beautiful,” he murmured, hands caressing her shoulders.

Then he picked her up and carried her to the big soft bed. She watched as he threw off his doublet and breeches. Clad only in his shirt, he climbed into bed beside her and took her into his arms.

* * *

D
INNER THE NEXT DAY WAS ANOTHER CELEBRATORY MEAL, AND
with William at her side, Bess felt truly happy.

“Lady Cavendish.” Harry Grey grinned at Bess across the table. “How like you married life?”

He winked and the other guests laughed. Bess felt herself go pink, but didn’t mind his teasing.

“Oh, fie, Harry!” Frances Grey exclaimed. “Don’t embarrass the girl.”

“Never mind, my lady,” Bess said. “Sir, with such a husband as I have, I like married life very well.”

She turned to William and he reached out for her hand and kissed it.

“There was no time for gifts last night,” Frances said, “but I have something for you.”

She placed a little gilded box on the table before Bess. Inside it was a brooch of heavy gold set with a piece of polished black agate. Bess held it out for William to see.

“It’s stunning,” she said. “I cannot thank you enough, madam.”

“A jewel fit for the jewel you are. I had it made for you in London.”

Bess touched William’s necklace at her throat. “How rich I am, both in finery and in love.”

“I have something for you, too!” Jane cried, presenting Bess with a little bundle of cloth tied with ribbon. Bess undid it and found that it contained a miniature portrait of Jane.

“How marvelous!” she exclaimed, hugging Jane. “The painter has got you exactly!” She touched a finger to the rosebud lips of the portrait. “Now I can have you with me even when you’re far away.”

She looked around the table and felt overcome with gratitude for all that Harry and Frances Grey had done for her.

“I thank you both,” she said. “You have been more kind to me than I could ever have hoped, and have helped me to such a life as I never dreamed possible.”

“And now that life is just beginning,” Frances said. She raised her goblet in a toast to Bess and William. “And may it be long and happy.”

Part Three

MOTHER

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

Sixteenth of June, 1548—Northaw Manor, Hertfordshire

B
ESS GAZED DOWN AT HER BELLY, SCARCELY ABLE TO BELIEVE
how big it was. She had conceived soon after she and William had been married, and she would be brought to bed any day. She had already spent the past month immured in the birthing chamber, its walls and ceiling heavily hung with carpets and tapestries.

“It’s so dark!” she had protested as the windows had been covered over. But the midwife had insisted that it must be so, that ladies near their time must be sequestered, away from worries and foul air.

“At least leave me one window that I may open,” Bess had begged, and in that she had prevailed. So now she stood at the one unobstructed window, a golden square of light in the gloom of the chamber, hands clasped across her burgeoning middle. Below her on the old abbey grounds, the farm was busily carrying on with its daily round beneath the afternoon sun. A cackling rose from the poultry house as a kitchen boy entered. Cattle lowed as they were driven out to pasture. In the meadow beyond, two lads were gingerly beginning the task of drawing bees from one of the hives so they could gather the honey.

Just below Bess, in the kitchen garden, her younger sister, Jenny, was plucking sprigs of lavender to brew in hot water for Bess to bathe in. Bess had been pleased when Jenny had accepted her invitation to join her household as a lady-in-waiting, both because she was fond of her sister and took pleasure in her company, and because she was gratified at being able to offer Jenny opportunities she lacked at Hardwick. Jenny was fifteen, already worried about her prospects for a good marriage, whereas Bess had been only twelve when she went to serve Lady Zouche.

Leaving home had been easier for Jenny than it had been for her, Bess reflected. After all, she was going to live with her sister, and not among strangers. And their aunt Marcella Lynacre, a widow, had come at the same time, bringing with her a complement of a dozen servants, girls and lads from near Hardwick, happy to have good positions in service in Bess’s house.

As if she felt her sister’s eyes on her, Jenny looked upward and broke into a grin to see Bess looking down at her.

“That’s all you do, is stand in that window!” she teased.

“It’s all I can do! I can find no comfort in any position when I lie down.”

“Soon it will be over, and all worth it.”

“Yes, please God.” Bess said a silent prayer that both she and her baby would come safely through the ordeal of childbirth.

“There you are, Mistress Jenny!” William’s secretary, John Bestenay, came around the side of the house. “There’s a letter come for Lady Cavendish.”

He handed the folded square of paper to Jenny and retreated toward the kitchen door.

“I’ll bring it up directly,” Jenny called. “Is there anything you lack?”

“More water, if you please,” Bess said. “With some lemons. And some of those ginger cakes if there are any left.”

Jenny appeared at the door of Bess’s room in a few minutes with the refreshments and the letter.

“It’s from Jane Grey!” Bess cried as she broke the seal. “Written from Sudeley.”

She sat on a chair in the sunlight and read, smiling her thanks as Jenny handed her a glass of water with lemon.

“She’s left London with Queen Catherine and Thomas Seymour.” Even though Catherine Parr was now the wife of Thomas Seymour, to Bess she would always be the queen that had outlived King Henry.

“And are they all well?” Jenny asked, gathering up some petals that had fallen from the big jar of roses that stood on a table near the bed.

“They are in health,” Bess said. “But alas, heavy hearts all around, from the sound of it. The queen endeavors to be cheerful with her husband, but is sad to be parted from the Lady Elizabeth, and distressed at the reason for the parting, Jane writes. And, oh, dear, she says that poor Elizabeth wept most bitterly when she left Chelsea a month gone by, heartbroken and unable to bear her stepmother’s coldness.”

“A sad business,” Jenny said.

Jane Grey had written to Bess regularly since joining the Seymour household, and Bess had been appalled to hear of the tumult that had taken place in April. Catherine Parr had walked in on her husband and Elizabeth in an embrace that was far from what was proper between a man and his stepdaughter. When Bess had learned the news, she had thought back to the day at Whitehall when she had met Sudeley, how she had felt the color rise to her cheeks as he looked down at her. It was easy to imagine that he might have had the same effect on the fifteen-year-old Elizabeth.

Catherine Parr had been beside herself with rage and hurt, and despair at the knowledge that as much as she loved both of them, she could no longer trust either of them fully, and her household could not contain them both.

She feels herself a fool,
Jane Grey had written,
because only now does she learn that Thomas Seymour courted the Lady Elizabeth before he turned his attention to her, which of course many people knew at the time.

“Is the queen not shortly to be delivered of a child?” Jenny asked.

“Yes,” Bess said, laying the letter on her lap and letting her hand caress the bold signature of Jane Grey. “But not for another month or two, I think. Poor lady. She little needs more grief at such a time.”

On the evening of the seventeenth of June, Bess’s pains began. Through the night she gasped and shrieked as she labored to bring forth her child. All the windows were covered now, and she no longer knew whether it was day or night. It seemed she had been in that room forever, the sweat drenching her nightdress and her hair, the still and heavy air causing her head to pound and stifling her as she gasped for breath, the flickering candlelight making her think she was in a tomb as she fell into a few moments of uneasy sleep only to be torn into wakefulness by another wrenching pain.

She lacked for no care or company, attended by the midwife, Aunt Marcella, Jenny, and all the female servants of the household by turn. At last, shortly after three o’clock on the afternoon of the eighteenth of June, she gave a last shuddering heave and felt the baby leave her. She closed her eyes and wept with relief, and in a few moments cried out with joy at the sound of her baby’s cry and at the miraculous slippery, red-faced being that was placed in her arms.

“A girl,” the midwife said. “And as bonny and healthy a baby as I’ve ever seen.”

* * *

C
USTOM DICTATED THAT A NEWLY DELIVERED MOTHER MUST NOT
rise from her bed for a fortnight, but Bess, though tired, was eager to be on her feet and doing again. She was up and about a few days after her daughter’s birth, and making plans for the christening.

“Look how many letters are come today!” Jenny exclaimed, bringing Bess a handful of sealed packets.

“Oh,” Bess cried. “This is from Frances Grey. She and Lord Dorset and the girls will be here, as well as her stepmother the Duchess of Suffolk and her sons. Lady Dorset and Lady Suffolk are to be godmothers, and the young Duke of Suffolk will be godfather. And this from Lady Zouche. And this from Lizzie—I’ve told you of Lizzie, have I not?”

At last came Bess’s upsitting, when she was officially permitted to sit in her bed and even to stir from it, though not too far. She insisted now that the windows be uncovered, and as Frances Grey and her daughters, Catherine Willoughby, William’s daughters, and other of her friends joined her and Jenny and Aunt Marcella for refreshment and happy gossip, the room was full of sunlight and warm summer breezes.

When Bess emerged from her chamber for the christening, bearing her little daughter dressed in a flowing white gown, she felt like a queen. William’s eyes were alight with joy. He had lost five children born to his previous two wives, and looking at her daughter’s perfect little face, Bess wondered how anyone could survive such losses.

The house was full of Brandons and Greys and Cavendishes, come to honor Bess’s child, little Frances.

“Of course she could be christened for no one but you, my lady,” Bess said to Frances Grey. “For it was you who gave me such love and so many wonderful opportunities while I was in your service. Not least the introduction to my dear husband.”

She held out a hand to William and he came to her side and kissed her cheek.

“It is I who am blessed to have you by my side, my love. I thank God for your safe deliverance and that of the child.”

It was a glorious afternoon, fleecy clouds scudding across the azure sky and the scent of ripening fruit in the air. Bess smiled as she watched golden-haired Henry, the twelve-year-old Duke of Suffolk, and his younger brother, Charles, race around the lawn, their dignity cast off for the moment.