Traitor's Kiss (12 page)

I wished the days away.

The first blossom – hawthorn, bright against its black branches – set my heart racing. Then nature moved with the speed of the spring tides. Every day, leaves thickened on the trees, buds swelled, bees sucked.

I commanded time to stop. But it rolled on, as relentless as the river.

On May Eve, the kitchens gave off the scent of pies and puddings and sweet pastries. Maggie scolded the maids Mary and Bess for sitting on the kitchen steps, weaving marsh marigolds into a garland for the kitchen door. Tonight, they would bring back may blossom to garland the doors and gates.

I was ready. Over the past few days, whenever Kat had gone to gossip with Mistress Ellen, I had picked lavender for my pomander. I had placed my black velvet shoes and cloak under my bed. I did not fear Kat knowing what I would do. She hated May Eve for the noisy merrymaking that kept her from her sleep and she had already prepared her poppy-flower cordial.

But the path to truth is fraught with danger. I feared Bedlam as much as I had feared hell when I was a child, peeping into my father's kitchen.

What if the devil swallowed me and did not spit me out?
Who
would know?
Who
would rescue me?

Robert Dudley was the only person who knew about Francis. I would trust him with my deadliest of secrets.

Picnics were Lady Catherine's greatest pleasure. On the afternoon of May Eve, all that could be carried was brought from the house to the rose arbour: tables, benches, cushions, all set upon a richly patterned carpet. The arbour formed our walls, the rosebuds our ceiling. The parrot cages were hung from the wooden posts. Excited by the new scents, they fluffed out their bright feathers and snapped the air for insects who had dared to enter their cages. Sometimes they stretched out their beaks to peck the rose petals, and I could not bear it.

We all dreamed in the warming sun – my stepmother of the son she might bear; Jane of God, no doubt; and Kat and Mistress Ellen of their past a-Mayings before they became too noisy.

I dreamed of my new self. Would I look any different in the morning? As my eyes shone with the truth, would people whisper, “What a beautiful young woman our Princess Elizabeth is. She has left childhood behind.”

But first, to hell – and back.

I invited Robert Dudley to walk with me down to the river.

Kat straightened my headdress, smoothed my dress as if I were a bride. It was no more than tomfoolery, we knew that, because a royal marriage is decided by men of the Privy Council. But this was done with merriment, in honour of May. “In Spring, a young woman's fancy turns to love,” she said.

“A rosebud is too young for love,” Mistress Ellen said.

“Will you beg him to go a-Maying with you tonight?” Jane asked.

“Princesses don't go a-Maying.” I gave a laugh, halfway between despair and terror.

They looked from one to the other, as if the sun had already boiled my brain.

“I've told you again and again, don't laugh like that,” Kat warned. “You sound just like your mother.”

“And what's wrong with that?” I asked.

Robert and I walked under the roses. I felt my mother's presence in the unfolding rosebuds. Tonight, I would meet somebody who had loved her, and I would ask all the questions that had lain in my mind all my life, ever since I could remember. And, God willing, I would hear the truth.

Kat followed at a distance, giggling like a girl when Robert took my arm. Neither of us had mentioned Francis again, but his presence was unseen between us. I could smell him.

“Robert?”

He stopped, recognizing the begging tone in my voice. “If it's about that boy again, Bess, the answer's still NO.”

I stood on tiptoe to smell the roses. “I'm not
asking
today, Robert. I'm telling. It's something Kat doesn't know and she mustn't know –
ever
. Sometimes she lets the truth spill after a glass of wine. I spoke to Francis…the boy in the boat…at Twelfth Night.”

His face darkened. “You've spoken to
that
creature? Oh, Bess,
why
?”

“You know why. I'm going to see his mother tonight.”

“She'll cut off a lock of your hair and mix it with bat's droppings or rat's p—” He kicked a wooden post, making a parrot cage swing. The other parrots set up an ear-splitting squawk. “It smacks of witchery and worse.”

“You're the only person I really trust, Robert. Do you remember, on my birthday, you promised to be my eyes? Well, look for me tomorrow at the joust. If I'm not there, will you come and find me?”

“Let me come with you.”

I shook my head. “No. It would be too dangerous to be seen together. And I don't trust Thomas Seymour. He knows that we're close in our affections. He might use it against you one day.”

“Then don't involve me at all,” he said.

“I must, Robert, for I'm going to the worst place on earth.”

Robert cursed. “Where?” he asked.

Kat came closer.

I whispered “Bedlam”, as Francis had done. Robert drew out his sword and hacked at the rose heads. He was close to tears. “Let me rid you of Francis,” he said.

“I know what you're thinking. But Alys isn't mad, Robert. She isn't… Although if this
is
a plot to be rid of me… Well, it will be too late to find me anyway. I'll probably be at the bottom of the Thames.”

“He's dangerous, Bess. You'll never be safe as long as he's here. That's what men like him do. They go for the weakest—”

“I'm not weak.”

“You're a woman. He tells you a pitiful tale and you believe him. He's used you. Let me protect you. That's what men are for.” As we reached the river, he pleaded with me again. “How can I stop you, Bess?”

“You can't.”

“You're a fool to go,” he said.

“And I'd be a fool not to,” I replied.

But my words sounded hollow as I stood by the sunlit river with Robert. I wished that I did not have to go to Bedlam. I wished that I could forget the past.

Robert bowed and kissed my hand. Then he leaned over to kiss me. I waited, my skin tingling. But then Kat was between us, pushing us apart.

Strange, I thought. She had not truly protected me from Thomas Seymour.

With a short bow to Kat, Robert went straight to his barge. “I've lost my taste for picnics,” he said.

“What have you said to ruffle his feathers?” Kat asked.

“Nothing – except the truth. And now he hates me for it.”

“No, he doesn't,” Kat said. “Hate and love are opposite sides of the same coin, that's all. It just depends which way it falls. Hate today. Love tomorrow.”

Tomorrow. If I had known what was to happen before dawn, I would have never left my bed.

Chapter Twelve

I came face-to-face with Maggie in the kitchen, although it was long past dusk. Smooth-cheeked and smooth-lipped, she stumbled with her swift curtsy in her eagerness to meet her sweetheart.

“Maggie, wrap some rose petals for me,” I said. There was disapproval on her face as she took in my black velvet cloak and hidden hair. “May not a princess go a-Maying?” I asked.

“Yes, but not alone, Your Grace.”

“Mistress Ashley dislikes May Eve.”

“Folks'll talk. They'll say 'tis only witches that go out alone in the dead o' night.” It was an innocent remark or a well-intentioned warning as it turned out, but with nerves already taut, I slapped her. Her cheek, so carefully whitened, flushed. She took a spoonful of salt and twisted it into a piece of muslin. “Best sprinkle this as you go then,” she said, “lest the devil comes for you.”

Anger fuelled me through the gardens and to the woods. I ran so fast that sweethearts parted to let me pass.

I forgot Maggie. I forgot the men of the old faith.

The woods were intoxicating to a princess never allowed out alone at night. The air, scented with may blossom and rambling roses, bluebells and foxgloves, spoke of laughter and love. Evil could not linger here.

Moonlight had worked its magic, lighting up the trees to create a fairyland, making darker hollows where young men and women kissed. All the young women I met were dressed in white, glowing like fairies out to make mischief. Around me, birds, confused by the brightness and noise, sang their hearts out.

What would it be like to go a-Maying with Robert Dudley, to laugh and love alone with him away from prying eyes? We could run barefoot, picking may blossom, unwatched except by other lovers, equally under love's spell and we would gaze, enchanted, into each other's eyes until dawn.

But Maggie was right. The sight of a black-cloaked woman alone at night made the young men draw their sweethearts close and call out “witch”, and I envied the girls to be cosseted and caressed.

At the edge of the woods, I turned towards the river path. I remembered it well from my riding. It narrowed and darkened under twining trees. Little moonlight penetrated the trees here and I felt my way as if I had no sight. Brambles caught my cloak, tugging me back and I had to pull hard to free myself, spoiling the soft cloth. I could have been playing blind man's bluff.

But those childish days were done.

I was alone.

Here and there, a glimmer of moonlight on evening dew showed the way, and so too did the lanterns of barges so heavily garlanded that the woods seemed to have taken to the water. One of the boatmen offered me a ride free of charge for the beauty that he knew must be hidden by my hood, but I ignored his calls. It was not a risk I would take.

I walked under the trailing willows, exhausted not by the walk, but by the fear of what was to come. Branches creaked. Twigs snapped. I remembered the men in the woods.

About a mile further on, the sweet scented air of Chelsea gave way to the stench of London. My cloak was already ripped, my shoes near ruin, my breathing uneven. I stopped to catch my breath. A terrible thought came to me. What if Francis had already taken his mother back to France? Why should she wait for me?

I slowed, almost blinded by tears.

In my heart, I was afraid, although I did not want to admit it. Soon, I would have to pass the water steps of Whitehall Palace, and the Seymour and Dudley houses. I would have to take my chance, darting from shadow to shadow past the guarded water steps or worse, brave the streets of London.

Between the devil and the deep sea.

At Westminster, before I came to Whitehall, I decided to risk the streets rather than the river path. Reluctantly, I turned away from the water with its cooling midnight mists; from the silver thread that would take me to Alys.

I plunged into a narrow street. I had never walked in a street before. In palaces, people move with purpose and good manners. They part as I pass. Not here. I pushed and elbowed my way between beggars, drunkards and cutpurses. This was May Eve – a wild night of no curfew – when anything might happen.

The street brought me to the great hunting park behind my brother's palace, teeming with May merrymakers and disgruntled deer running away to hide.

It is not possible to be lost in London. Its churches and towers and turrets are its landmarks. Now the steeple of St Paul's Church beckoned. The streets that took me there were the worst: stinking of rotting vegetables and animal hides; of dung from stables and pigs and horses; of the sick who lived there.

Even the dead stank. The churchyard at St Paul's gave off a cloying stench of rotting corpses.

I did not expect to find hell outside Bedlam.

So this was the life that lay beneath the silver and gold and glitter of my life. Like the mud that oozed below the sparkling river, I had known that it was there. Had I not glimpsed it on my birthday? But now I saw it in all its awfulness, so putrid that no blossom, no may greenery could disguise it.

I shuddered and thanked God that I had been born to the King and Queen of England.

I feared it all. It would take only one bolder than the rest to pull back my hood, to recognize me and call out my name. What then? Would they eat from my hand or stab me in the back?

With my last strength and courage, I made my way north to Bishops Gate. Beyond the gate, two open drains carried filth away from a building that had the look of a monastery – a sloping roof of cloisters on two sides, a bell tower, an arched doorway. It was situated in the foulest place that God could have created and I wondered if he had not delegated its creation to the devil.

A silver coin gave me entry to Bedlam. Another bought me light – yet no lantern, only a candle slender enough to remind me that I should not linger there. The guard drew back the creaking bolt on the door. A vile stench rose to meet me. I hesitated, glancing beyond the city wall to Moor Field, as if taking my last view of the world. Moonlight caught the sails of a windmill and the steeple of a little church. Cloths stretched out to dry and, whatever their colour, the moonlight had touched them all with silver.