B009RYSCAU EBOK (29 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY-SIX

Twenty-ninth of September, 1559, Michaelmas—London

B
ESS WAS WELL PLEASED WITH
W
ILL’S HOUSE IN
T
UTHILL
S
TREET,
now that she had spent the week since they had been back in London seeing to the opening of the house. It had been dusty and unkempt, and barren of servants, as before their marriage, Will had usually spent his time in London lodging at Master Mann’s house in Red Cross Street, just outside the city walls near St. Giles’ Cripplegate. But now the house had been aired and scrubbed and dusted, fresh matting laid down, the kitchen well stocked, and a small army of servants hired, and the St. Loe home was not only comfortable and welcoming to Bess and Will and their friends, but ready for the crucial business of entertaining important guests.

The bustle of London! Bess’s heart rose at the thought of it. It had been years since she and her first William had regularly spent time there, and for so long the thought of London had carried with it the recollection of Mary’s burnings and the death of Jane Grey and so many friends. But now London was the land of Elizabeth, and England was smiling again.

Bess and Will had intended to remain longer at Sutton Court, where immediately after their marriage Bess had embarked on building an extension of the house to provide a suitable parlor, which the old manor lacked. But King Henri of France had died of his injury from the jousting accident and Will had been summoned to London to serve as one of the four attendant knights at the memorial service at St. Paul’s. So Bess had sent her children back to Chatsworth, in the care of her mother and her aunt Marcella, bringing her sisters Jenny and Dibby with her to London as ladies-in-waiting. She was grateful and happy that Will had insisted she use his money to resume the building at Chatsworth that had been suspended upon William’s death, and she received regular letters from her steward James Crompe about the progress of construction.

Bess could see the spire of St. Paul’s from her window and shivered, reminded of King Henri’s death. Had she but known it, on that golden day in Greenwich, when she had watched Will’s triumph in the tiltyard, her heart in her throat lest he should be hurt, the French king was already cold and stiff from exactly such a misfortune.

Henri’s death had done more than leave a grieving widow and nation, too. For now his son the dauphin was King Francis, and his wife, the sixteen-year-old Mary Stuart, was queen of France as well as Scotland. She had also proclaimed herself queen of England, as her grandmother had been Margaret Tudor, the sister of King Henry.

Bess turned at the sound of Will’s footsteps on the stair. Dear God, he seemed more handsome every time she looked upon him, she thought. He took her into his arms and kissed her, smelling faintly of leather and ale and tobacco, for he had taken up the fashionable and expensive new habit of smoking a pipe.

“What’s the news at court today, my love?” she asked, standing a-tiptoe to smooth his ruffled hair.

“No news but plenty of gossip,” he laughed. “Half of London, it seems, has been daily expecting the queen to announce her betrothal to the Earl of Arundel—the earl expecting it most fervently, I’m told—you should see the set of plate he gave her when she departed Nonsuch—and yet no announcement comes.”

Arundel was the widower of Harry Grey’s sister Kate. If Frances Grey’s brother-in-law married the queen and they had a child, Frances would be disappointed once again in her hopes of being mother to a queen.

The question of Elizabeth’s marriage was not only the subject of gossip, but was uppermost in the minds of her council, for of course she needed a man to rule, but it must be the right man. There must be no repetition of Queen Mary’s disastrous Spanish marriage.

“Will the queen instead choose Prince Erik of Sweden, do you think?” Bess asked. Will had told her that the Swedish prince was apparently so desirous of a match with Elizabeth that he planned to visit her in person.

“I’d sooner lay my money on the Earl of Arran,” Will said, sitting and pulling off his boots. “He’s solidly Protestant and heir to the Scottish throne, unless Mary Stuart should bear a child, and by marrying him Elizabeth would take the wind out of the sails of those who would try to put Mary on the throne in her place.”

“And will he come to woo?” Bess asked, climbing onto the bed and watching the play of muscles in Will’s back as he shed his doublet.

“He’d better be quick about it if he intends to,” Will said, throwing himself down beside her and pulling her on top of him. “Since the queen came back from her progress all the talk has been of how much time she spent in private with Robert Dudley and how free he is with her even in company.”

“And how does his wife?” Bess asked. But her mind was not much on Elizabeth’s suitors now, as Will’s hand was exploring beneath her kirtle, and through his breeches she could feel his hardness against her belly.

“Unhappy, I expect,” Will murmured, his lips nuzzling her ear. “But hush now, no more of Robin Dudley for the nonce.”

CHAPTER THIRTY-SEVEN

Twenty-first of November, 1559—Tuthill Street, London

W
INTRY DARKNESS HAD DESCENDED ON
L
ONDON BEFORE FOUR
in the afternoon, and as Bess stood gazing out the window toward the river, winking lantern light here and there was the only illumination in the streets. In the black sky above, stars glimmered beneath a moon waxing toward fullness.

Frances Grey was dead. Bess could hardly believe it, though the cold that seemed settled into her very bones was surely due to more than the weather. Frances’s face rose to her mind, as Bess had first seen it upon her arrival at Bradgate Park so many years ago. As always when she thought of Frances, Bess felt gratitude, bafflement, and heartache. Frances had taught her to be a lady, had engineered her marriage to William Cavendish, had lavished her with praise and motherly affection even while she stinted her love to her own daughter Jane.

Bess had last visited Frances a month earlier, when all the household at Sheen House in Richmond was in a happy state of commotion over the recent proposal by Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford and son of the late Lord Protector, to marry Jane’s sister Kate Grey. Frances had been hoping to get the queen’s permission for the marriage.

“My poor girl loves him and he her,” she had confided to Bess. “And moreover, the marriage would strengthen Kate’s position as successor to Her Majesty, though God grant there be no need of such a thing for many years to come.”

Bess’s heart had been wrung to see Frances clearly in pain from troubles in her gut, and looking weak and far beyond her forty-two years of age.

“Surely Her Majesty will agree,” she had said, wanting to soothe Frances but doubting her words were true, and inevitably thinking of Jane, and Frances’s previous ambitions to have a daughter for a queen.

And yesterday, Frances Grey had died, with her daughters Kate and Mary and her beloved husband Adrian Stokes at her side. Will had told Bess that the queen had already promised to bear the expenses of a great state funeral for her cousin and a tomb in Westminster Abbey, and agreed to a posthumous quartering of Frances’s coat of arms with the royal arms.

Yet what good would this glory do poor Frances? Bess thought. The end of all was death and being eaten by worms, whether king or commoner.

Why are you so morbid?
she chastised herself. Her life was as happy as she could wish it, with Will’s love and constancy in daily evidence and her children all healthy and well on the road to successful lives. Willie and Harry would start at Eton College soon, and Frankie was eleven, almost old enough that it was time to start thinking about a suitable husband for her.

Perhaps it was the season, when the short days and long nights somehow made her feel unreasonably that the sun might fail to rise someday and darkness would overtake the earth. Or maybe it was that she had only weeks earlier turned thirty-two. But that was nothing, surely. Her mother was hearty at close to sixty years of age, and she had every expectation of long life.

But no one knows when their hour will come, she thought, crossing herself reflexively, for she had never lost the habit.

Or perhaps the reason for her sadness was that despite their frequent lovemaking, she and Will had not conceived a child. True, they had only been married three months, but with her first William she had gotten with child almost immediately after their marriage and after every pregnancy, and she was beginning to fear that perhaps she was no longer capable of conceiving. The birth of poor Lucres had been difficult. Perhaps it had damaged her.

She thought of a baby with Will’s eyes, of seeing another son grow from babyhood to boyhood and to being breeched, and tears came to her eyes. She knew that Will wanted children, and she longed to be able to give them to him—especially a son. And then she worried that perhaps God might think that she questioned his wisdom, and would take away something that meant much to her.

Give me patience,
she prayed.
Give me satisfaction with the manifold blessings Thou hast given me, and let me continue in Thy loving care.

* * *

O
NE EVENING IN EARLY
D
ECEMBER
W
ILL CAME HOME WITH A
special spring in his step.

“Her Majesty has given you a wedding present, my sweet Bess,” he said, his eyes twinkling.

“Indeed?” He was not carrying anything that she could see, and she guessed he was enjoying the suspense. “And what might that be, dear husband? Has she given you a holiday, that we might spend Christmas at Chatsworth?”

“Not this year. But I think you will not mind it. You are to be made a lady of her privy chamber.”

Bess had not been prepared for such news and gaped at him in astonishment. Ladies of the privy chamber outranked maids of honor and ladies-in-waiting. Only ladies of the bedchamber, who took it in turns to sleep in the queen’s room, held more privileged positions.

“That’s—but—” She found she could not speak coherently.

“It is a great honor,” Will said. “And a mark not only of her gratitude to me but of her respect and affection for you.”

“She hardly knows me,” Bess finally managed to gasp.

“It doesn’t take much knowledge of you to like you, Bess.”

“Then I will strive to fulfill the trust she has placed in me.” She sat down suddenly on a chair near the fireplace, feeling faint. “Dear God. When do I begin? What do I do?”

“She has bid you to attend her next week. And I’m sure that any duties she may ask of you will be no more than you performed for Lady Zouche or the Duchess of Suffolk. Attending Her Majesty while she dresses, seeing to her clothes, providing company and amusement. She loves music, you know, and I’m sure would be pleased to have you play upon the virginals.”

“Her skill in that is greater than mine, I believe.”

“Whatever is required of you, I’m sure you will perform it to perfection.”

* * *

L
ATER THAT NIGHT, AS THEY LAY IN BED, THE CURTAINS PULLED
shut against the drafts, creating a little haven of love and safety, Bess was still thinking about the queen’s honor to her.

“The queen owes you much, I think,” she said, her hand caressing the scratchy stubble of Will’s cheek. “More than you have let on.”

“She thinks so, it is true.” His voice was somber, and she sensed that something weighty lay behind his words.

“Will you tell me?”

“It was during the time of Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion, in which my father and many of my friends were also involved. I served Princess Elizabeth then, and as you know when Queen Mary insisted on the Spanish marriage, Wyatt’s plan was that Elizabeth should be put on the throne in place of her sister and married to her cousin Edward Courtenay, the Earl of Devon. But the plot was discovered and Courtenay was arrested. There was great fear that he would divulge what he knew, which was much, and so Wyatt and his allies were forced to act much sooner than expected.”

Bess recalled those terrifying days, when she had secretly hoped that Elizabeth would be queen but had not known whom to trust, and could say nothing.

“Sir James Croft came to Ashridge House where the princess was, to convey Wyatt’s urging that she remove to Castle Donnington, where Mary could not so easily get at her. She was very ill and in no condition to go anywhere. But she sent me to Tonbridge to give Wyatt her answer.”

The hairs at the back of Bess’s neck rose to think of Will putting himself in such danger, for if Elizabeth had agreed, it would have been treason, and Will implicated with her if her involvement was known.

“She supported the plot and would follow Wyatt’s plan,” she whispered.

“Yes. And had we not been forced to act before all was in place, it might have succeeded. But Wyatt was captured less than a fortnight later, and soon there was a harvest of death. Wyatt’s men with whom I had spoken in Tonbridge were among the first to die.”

“But not the last,” Bess said, her throat constricting with grief. It had been Harry Grey’s involvement in Wyatt’s conspiracy that had cost Jane Grey her life. Jesu, how close Will had come to dying for Elizabeth.

Will pulled her closer to him and kissed the top of her head.

“Mary ordered Elizabeth to court, ill though she was. The journey took a week, the princess riding in a litter and looking like a corpse. For that cruelty alone if for nothing else Mary should burn in hell.”

In the days following Jane’s execution, Bess had been so devastated that she scarcely knew whether it was day or night, but she recalled William telling her of Elizabeth being sequestered at Whitehall.

“Many were seized and imprisoned. Harry Grey and his brother, of course. Lord Cobham, Nicholas Throckmorton, Robert Dudley, and many more who were my friends. When I was arrested and taken before the privy council I knew that my only salvation—and that of the princess—was that they had no proof of my involvement or hers, for she was not so foolish as to have put anything into writing, nor was I.”

“You must have been very afraid.”

“I was. But I could not let them see it. I swore my allegiance to Mary and denied that I had stood with the rebels, even when they took me to the Tower and showed me the instruments of torture, which I knew had been in use on men who had less to hide than I. What they wanted most, of course, was proof that Elizabeth had been complicit in the plot. That was all that was needed for Mary to have Elizabeth put to death. But I would not be responsible for sending her to the block, though it cost my life.”

Bess could hardly breathe, thinking of how terrified she would be in such circumstances.

“I told them nothing.” His voice was hollow, and sounded near to breaking. “I told them nothing.”

“Did they torture you?” She wasn’t sure she could bear the answer but could not forbear from asking the question.

“They used me roughly enough.” His hand went to a scar on his cheek, his fingers brushing the pale line on his skin. Bess had wondered how he had come by it but had never asked. “They did not put me to the rack or the most severe means of questioning. I don’t know why. Perhaps because they thought if they killed me what I knew would be lost. But I think perhaps it was because I had so stoutly set my mind to deny that she knew aught of the plans that I came to believe it myself.”

“She was in the Tower, too.”

“Yes, and poor lady, she knew what men were suffering on her behalf.”

“How long did they keep you?”

“Four months in the Tower. Then I was taken to the Fleet Prison, and I knew that I had passed the greatest danger. It was another seven months before I was brought to a hearing. I was fined and my Somerset lands taken from me, but Queen Mary put me in command of a regiment and sent me away from London, and I had my life.”

“Elizabeth knew,” Bess said. “She knew what you had done for her.”

“Yes,” he said. “When I next saw her, not long before you came to Hatfield that day, she wept at the sight of me, and declared that she would be ever in my debt.”

“Not only her,” Bess said. “But all of England, did they but know it, for preserving her life that she might reign.”