B009RYSCAU EBOK (19 page)

CHAPTER TWENTY

May Day, 1549—Northaw, Hertfordshire

T
HE DAY WAS SO LOVELY THAT
B
ESS WAS LOATH TO GO INSIDE.
Soon, all too soon, she would be taking her chamber to await the birth of her child, shut away in darkness. Until then, she wanted to make the most of the gladsome, sunny world.

Servants had carried chairs, hassocks, and carpets out to the lawn before the house, and Bess and her flock of ladies basked in the sunshine as they worked. They were embroidering a pattern of leaves on bed linen that was to be a gift for Jane Dudley, Countess of Warwick, who, along with Jane Grey, would be godmother to the coming baby if it were a girl.

Bess and William had chosen their prospective godparents carefully, with an eye to their child’s advancement. Jane Dudley’s husband had continued his rise in power since Bess’s supper party the previous summer, and some said he held such power over the young king that it was he, not Edward, who ruled. Francis, the Earl of Shrewsbury, a member of the privy council who was a Derbyshire neighbor and patron of Bess’s dead father, was to serve as one godfather. If the child was a boy, John Dudley would be the other.

“This is lovely!” Bess’s stepdaughter Kitty exclaimed, admiring the yards of creamy cloth swirling over the carpet. She shot Bess a smile, her blue eyes twinkling.

“It is, and I’m sure her ladyship will be well pleased,” Aunt Marcella agreed.

Her widowed aunt had been an inspired addition to the household, Bess thought, looking at Aunt Marcella’s broadly smiling face. Bess felt completely at ease leaving Frankie in her care, and she provided a welcome touch of Hardwick for both Bess and Jenny. And Aunt Marcella had taken a warm interest in William’s daughters, who in turn adored her. She had adult daughters of her own, and Bess relied on her advice and experience in her efforts to be a mother to the girls. It wasn’t always easy. Kitty treated her with the courtesy due to a stepmother, but at nearly fifteen, was only seven years younger than Bess, and Bess knew she could never fill the place of the mother the girl had lost. Nan was only nine, and had spent half of her life without a mother. And Bess consulted with Aunt Marcella about William’s poor daughter Polly, and whether it would be best to leave her where she was or bring her to join their household.

“When will Jane Grey be here?” Jenny asked.

“About the first of June,” Bess replied. “I can’t wait to see her. I’m sure you’ll all love her as much as I do.”

“I feel I know her already, from all you’ve said,” Kitty mused.

“The poor girl writes that she longs to be here,” Bess said, tying off a knot and smoothing her handiwork in her lap. “Bradgate is in much turmoil. When the Lady Elizabeth’s household was broken up after Thomas Seymour’s death, many of her people took refuge with the Greys, and remain there yet, not knowing what to do with themselves.”

“It’s a shame the little orphan baby couldn’t stay there, too.” Bess’s stepdaughter Nan spoke up. “It wasn’t her fault what her father did, after all.”

“But it’s the way of the world,” Aunt Marcella sighed. “Great ones cause trouble, and littler people pay for it.”

Baby Mary Seymour, the child of Catherine Parr and Thomas Seymour, had lost more than her parents. Her aunt the Duchess of Somerset had refused to take her, and now the disinherited infant had found a grudging home with Frances Grey’s friend and stepmother the Duchess of Suffolk, who had been a close friend of Catherine Parr but was not even kin to the baby.

“Will Lady Jane be able to travel, with all the troubles?” Jenny asked, her eyes anxious.

Thomas Seymour’s death had provoked dissatisfaction with his brother the Lord Protector, and angry crowds had plundered houses in the countryside.

“The common folk don’t like him,” William had told Bess. “They don’t like so many changes to the old religion, and though the king supports the reforms, they lay the blame on Edward Seymour. And higher folk don’t like him, either. He’s arrogant and behaves as though he’s the king anointed. I fear what he may be bringing down upon himself.”

“Surely things will settle down,” Bess said. “The disturbances cannot continue long.”

* * *

“
W
HAT A PERFECT LITTLE CREATURE!”
J
ANE
G
REY CRIED, CRADLING
baby Temperance in her arms. “How is it possible that hands can be so tiny and so perfect? And look at her hair—just your color!”

Temperance’s eyes, cloudy blue, settled on Jane’s face with an air of vague consternation.

“Oh, you sweet poppet, all is well in your world,” Jane murmured, her lips grazing the baby’s forehead. “Look at all your gifts!”

Temperance hiccupped and Bess laughed.

“Yes, an abundance of riches for such a little mite.”

Beside the cradle a table stood heaped with christening gifts—tiny feather beds and bed linens; woolly blankets; a little counterpane of red silk; embroidered gowns; a porringer banded in silver; five silver spoons from Jane; carpets to hang over the windows in cold weather; a set of bed curtains for when Temperance should outgrow her cradle; two little “milk beasts,” pewter jugs cunningly made in the shape of a lamb and a calf; a set of silver cups from the Earl of Shrewsbury; and most glorious, a silver salt cellar, the gift of John and Jane Dudley, who had come all the way from London for the christening.

“Temperance,” Jane mused. “Such a pretty name. How did you come by it?”

“It’s what the king calls his sister the Lady Elizabeth!” Bess laughed. “And so I honor her without seeming to name the child for myself.”

Tamsin, the baby’s nurse, took Temperance from Jane and laid her into the soft nest of the cradle, and Bess took Jane’s arm in hers and led her back to her own bedchamber.

“I’m glad we have a little time to ourselves before supper,” she said. “Pray tell me how things are with you. How are your sisters?”

“My sisters are well and send their love.” Jane seemed to speak almost as if by rote.

“And how do you find it being back at Bradgate?”

Jane looked down at her hands in her lap and when she lifted her eyes they were sad.

“It seems always that nothing I do can please my parents. When I’m in their presence, whether I speak or keep silence, be merry or sad, no matter what I do, be it sewing, playing, dancing, or anything else, I feel I must do it even so perfectly as God made the world, or else I am so sharply taunted, so cruelly threatened, and sometimes given pinches and smacks, that I think myself in hell.”

“Oh, Jane, no!” Bess could not bear to think of her sweet Jane being as little valued as she seemed to be. How was it possible that Frances and Harry Grey could be so kind to her and so cruel to a girl as intelligent, accomplished, and full of affection as Jane?

“What can I do?” she asked.

“Nothing, I fear,” Jane said. “But much of the time I can stay out of their way. You know how they love hunting, and whenever they’re in the country they’re frequently in the field. Then I am left to myself.”

“Do they see nothing of your accomplishments?” Bess asked.

Jane shrugged.

“Perhaps, but whatever I do accomplish, there is always more lying ahead of me. You know they have great ambitions for me.”

“Do they still favor Thomas Seymour’s plan of marrying you to the king?”

“They have said nothing of late, and certainly I do not raise the issue, as I’m not eager to be married yet.”

“Jane, sweetheart, my heart breaks for you.” Bess caressed Jane’s cheek.

“It’s not all darkness,” Jane said. “You recall my tutor, Mr. Aylmer? I love him well and spend as much time in his company as I can. He teaches me so gently, so pleasantly, and with such fair allurements to learning, that I think the time nothing while I am with him. And when I am called from him, I fall on weeping. I wish they would just leave me to my books.”

“I marvel at the mind that lies within that pretty head of yours.” Bess smiled. “Latin, Greek, rhetoric—is there nothing you cannot learn?”

“How to die,” Jane said.

Her face was serious and the hairs at the back of Bess’s neck rose.

“Why do you say such a thing?” Bess gasped.

“Plato. He writes of the death of Socrates, and how bravely he faced it. ‘When I come to the end of my journey,’ he said, ‘I shall attain that which has been the pursuit of my life.’”

“You are far too young to think of your death,” Bess said firmly. “For God’s sake, Jane, we must find a way to give you more enjoyment in life.”

That evening it seemed to Bess that Jane had taken her words to heart, for the girl seemed almost giddily happy at supper, chatting and laughing with Jenny and Bess’s stepdaughters. They were good company for her, Bess thought, for Kitty was less than two years older than Jane and Nan three years younger.

After supper, as Bess sat talking with Jane Dudley, she was pleased to see Jane giggling in a corner with the other girls, her cares forgotten for the time being.

“I am so honored to have you as godmother to Temperance, your ladyship,” Bess said to Lady Warwick, “and most particularly that you chose to come so far with such troubles afoot in the land.”

A week earlier, on Whitsunday, the day of Temperance’s birth, riots had broken out across England upon the introduction of the Book of Common Prayer in English, rather than Latin. The situation had undoubtedly grown rapidly worse, since the week following Whitsunday was by tradition a break in the round of working in farm and field, so laborers throughout the land were free from work and able to gather.

“It is a most pernicious situation,” Jane Dudley agreed.

William, flanked by John Dudley and the Earl of Shrewsbury, joined them just in time to hear Jane Dudley’s remark.

“No good can come of it,” he said. “Where there is any lack of order, there needs must be perpetual conflict.”

“Yes,” John Dudley said, his face stern. “But Edward Seymour has cast away the treason and heresy laws that now are needed to stamp out the fires that are raging everywhere.”

Bess was surprised at Dudley’s words. She had never heard anyone speak so bluntly about dissatisfaction with the Protector, except when she and William talked in the privacy of their bedchamber.

“That’s true,” Shrewsbury agreed. “The lower sort of people are angry at the way they are treated, and rise up. The gentry and the nobility resent Seymour for failing to take control, and for his profiting richly from the dissolution of chantries. All are against him, it seems.”

His eyes met John Dudley’s, and Bess shivered. In such glances plots were born.

Further serious discussion was interrupted for the moment when Jane Grey and Kitty dashed over to Bess, excitement dancing in their eyes.

“May we go outside, Bess?” Jane begged. “The evening is so warm and pleasant, and the moon so beautiful.”

“Yes, do,” Bess said. “But don’t stray far, and come in if you begin to feel a chill. I don’t want you catching a catarrh.”

The girls ran off hand in hand, and Bess noticed that John Dudley’s eyes followed them.

“A comely girl, Lady Jane is,” he remarked.

“And sweet and good, too,” Bess said. “It’s a joy to have her here.”

“She must be but a year or so younger than our son Guildford,” Jane Dudley murmured.

“She’s just turned twelve,” Bess said.

“What do you hear of plans for her marriage?” John Dudley asked. “Is Edward Seymour still trying to match her with his boy?”

Bess felt a stab of worry and protectiveness. Jane, in the line of succession for the throne, no matter how far down it, could easily become a pawn in a game over which she had no control.

“I don’t know,” she said. “Whoever marries her will get a prize to be treasured, and I hope her parents will bestow her on someone who will bring her happiness.”

* * *

“
I
MUST GET BACK TO
L
ONDON AS SOON AS YOU ARE CHURCHED,”
William told Bess that night as he blew out the candle and climbed into bed beside her. “These stirrings pose a grave danger to the stability of the state. The changes to the prayer book have come to stand for all the casting away of the old religion.”

“No great surprise,” Bess said. “The new communion tells us that Christ’s body and blood are not in the holy bread and wine. It upsets people, especially as it is only a few years since that people burned for saying as much.”

Bess had listened to the impassioned arguments for the reforms that had been made to the church, but in truth, she cared little one way or the other. She found comfort and peace in being in church, and had a love for the old church buildings that had stood through so much, but she felt that God was present, whatever words were used, and whether they were spoken in Latin or English. And she had seen all too clearly that it was dangerous to hew to strong beliefs.

William, whose rise to power and prosperity had so much depended on his efficient work in the business of the dissolution of the monasteries—the receiving and inventorying of gold, plate, and other goods of the abbeys and friaries—had even less sentiment than she.

“It’s more than the rebellion among the people that worries me, though,” he said. “I’ve watched John Dudley eyeing Edward Seymour for a long time. Now Seymour is in a precarious position. His brother’s execution did him damage.”