Traitor's Kiss (16 page)

On my fifteenth birthday, a rider, dressed in Seymour livery, came early to the main door. I ran downstairs, only in my night robe, eager for news of her child, and for her invitation.

Kat was already at the open door, pale-faced, and by her side Blanche Parry was weeping. Kat held out her arms for me and I buried my face in her bodice. “My dearest Bess, Lady Catherine is dead,” she whispered. “Childbed fever took her as it did poor Jane Seymour. I said it would be dangerous at her age. Tom Seymour has a healthy daughter, named Mary.”

I sank into grief at once. I was carried to my bed, almost senseless with the sorrow of it. By nightfall, my body was swollen with dropsy, worse than last Christmastide, more swollen than the bodies that Francis took from the Thames.

In the weeks that followed, Lady Catherine's death took me to the brink of madness. I had seen enough lost souls in Bedlam to make me fear losing my mind. I held onto it, although I stared into the abyss many times.

“Am I with child, Kat?” I asked.

“Foolish girl, of course not,” she said. “One kiss doesn't make a baby – only a fool,” she said.

When I came to my senses, every tree stood leafless, every flower long gone. The silver woods of Chelsea and the hell of Bedlam were as far away as the moon that was now sharp with frost.

When I was well enough to be left with Blanche Parry, Kat visited London. Without her, the restlessness that comes from anxiety overwhelmed me. I fretted for Francis in his gruesome boat, and Alys, chained to her wall.

Kat came back bursting with news of Thomas Seymour – unwelcome news.

“Tom Seymour weeps for his dead wife and baby; but he keeps her ladies-in-waiting to serve you when you marry him.”

“Tom Seymour boasts of becoming your brother's Protector with bribes of money and sweets. If he doesn't curb his behaviour, he'll be in the Tower by Christmastide.”

“Tom Seymour talks of a secret plot to take the throne from your brother. If he can find out who the plotter is, he'll have the fellow hung, drawn and quartered and spiked on Traitor's Gate.”

Tom. Tom. Tom. It hurt my head.

I had fretted. Now I feared for Francis. I even feared for myself.

Thomas Seymour is not a man to have his power curtailed, I thought. If he cannot have the King in his grasp by marrying me, will he expose Francis, proclaiming himself a more worthy Protector than his brother Edward?
Another pup mewling for its master
, he had said on Twelfth Night.
Such pups should be drowned at birth.

I had asked Robert Dudley to warn Francis of any danger. Had I asked too much of him? Why should he do it? How
could
he? I longed to be able to warn Francis. But Bedlam was too far and I was still too weak.

Two weeks before Christmastide, we removed briefly to Elsynge Palace in Enfield, less than a dozen miles from London. In our absence, Hatfield Palace would be cleansed and made ready for the twelve days of Christmastide, which we would spend alone, for no invitation had come from the King. It was no more than I expected, but I missed him. I missed everybody, even Mary.

Kat and Master Parry, my steward, had business in London. My isolation at Enfield hurt even more. So close to where I had lived so happily – yet now so far. In my still-tortured mind, I saw Lady Catherine, her pretty palace, her perfumed roses leading down to the river – all for ever beyond my reach.

Soon, it was other images that came to haunt me day and night. I saw Francis at the bottom of the Thames – because of me. I saw Alys still chained in Bedlam – because of me. They had given me back my mother and asked for nothing. Now I must give them something in return: a safe passage to France.

The months of near solitude at Hatfield Palace had taught me that there would be nobody to help me. I had once found the courage to go to Bedlam alone. Now I would summon up that courage to return.

It is easy to ride out on a foggy night. Everybody sleeps early, for there are no stars and no moon to keep them watching at the windows. Fog dulls and muffles every sight and sound. I would be no witch riding alone through the black night. I acted out the simplest illusion of all: I rode out as a man. I took my stallion, Troy, for he was swifter than my gentle mare. I led him slowly across the cobbles, slipping a coin into the gatekeeper's hands. Blanche Parry was sleeping like a baby when I left. Even if she had glanced at me in half-sleep, she would not have known me. I wore black breeches and black riding boots that had belonged to Edward, and they pinched my feet. I wore the black cloak that had hidden me last May Eve. It still stank of Bedlam.

My hair was troublesome. I twisted and pinned and netted it until my arms ached. I thought of the piglet boys from Shrovetide. I would wear no false beard, although I wished for more hair upon my chin, like Maggie's. My throat thickened at the memory of her kitchen, warm and sweet with sugar.

In my saddlebag were clothes for Alys, stolen from Kat. I could find nothing that would have fitted Francis. Inside my cloak pockets was enough money for their passage to France. I would force Alys to take it.

I was one of the unhappiest people to cling to a horse, so unhappy that Troy smelled my fear rising from me like the steam from his flanks. He reared and refused until I calmed him with sugar.

Mile after mile I galloped. On the Great North Road I feared walkers most. Riders and carters would have no need of a horse but an exhausted man on foot could steal Troy as soon as look at me. So I did not dare trot or canter.

As we plunged through the damp fog, I remembered the story that Maggie had told me, the one that every Gloucestershire child heard at its mother's knee – the one of a dying witch who regretted the evil she had done in her long life. She wanted a Christian funeral when she died, and she begged her children to tie up her coffin with chains so that the devil could not claim her back. They did as she asked. But the devil did come for her. He rode in on a horse with spikes ridging its back, to punish her for turning to God. He broke open the coffin chains, brought her back to life and sat her on his horse. “She can still be heard screaming in the hills,” Maggie had said.

I was that wretched woman. Pains shot down my legs, through my buttocks, down my arms. Would I slowly die on the back of my horse and be condemned to ride this road for ever?

Grey fog, brown fog. Then the black fog that told me I was close to London. Before the city wall, I recognized Moor Field and its little church, its spire swallowed by fog. In agony, I dismounted, tied Troy to a tree and entered the church. I sank to the flagstones, crying out in pain from my tormented limbs. The stink of the floor made me heave. Here people had recently relieved themselves, and not just of their sins.

Above me was Christ's body, bent low by his cross, the blood on his hands and feet seeping through the whitewashed walls. My father had destroyed the monasteries. My brother was destroying the churches. Such a waste, I thought, the whitewashing of the old faith into the new. One faith, one Christ. But I liked the new faith. Without it, I would not have been born.

I went the rest of the way on foot. It is a terrible thing to be alone in London after dark, even if you are dressed as a man. But soon I forgot my tormented limbs and strode like a man. No wonder men walk this world. They wear no dainty shoes and silk to slow them down.

This was no night of merriment and magic, of whispered secrets and softened footsteps like last May Eve. It was a night for evil, when the stench of the fog itself catches the back of your throat, and clogs it with terror.

When I had first come to Bedlam, I was haughty and arrogant, although I did not know it. I had thanked God that I had been born to the King and Queen of England. Now I saw the horrors with the eyes of an outcast myself and the sight unsettled me. The stone alcoves of London Wall were crammed with children who clung to my cloak, like leeches to wounds, sore-skinned, filthy-faced and barefoot. Their eyes begged. I wanted to give them money, but I dared not draw attention to myself, dared not risk being robbed of the money I carried for Alys.

If ever I were Queen, I would help these wretches. I would have them eating out of my hand and they would never go hungry again.

No questions were asked at the gate of Bedlam. The silver coin gave me entrance once more. I remembered to pay for a candle. Then I pulled my cloak around my face, held my breath and prepared to step into the filthy gloom.

Chapter Seventeen

Alys would weep again when she saw me. She would say that I was as brave as my mother. My agonized limbs hardly carried me through the vile cloisters where screams pierced my consciousness and set my heart racing, to the windowless corridor to her cell door.

I paused. There was no scent of rosemary and mint and may blossom – only a sour stench. I smiled at my foolishness. It was now December, not May and their scent would have long since died. There was no clicking of her knitting needles – only a scuttling and a scampering.

My heart thudded as I went in.

Alys's chains hung loose. Her ragged clothes were neatly folded next to them, wriggling with rats. I held my candle to every corner, to make sure that she was not huddled there.

Her cell was empty.

My heart lifted. Francis must have taken her to France.

I forced every aching muscle to move again. Like a drowning woman gasping for air, I ran through the cloisters. I would never have stopped running but for the creature that came from the shadows, whether at the sight of me or by chance I did not know. Wreathed in the fog seeping through the skylight, it rose, like a writhing sinner in hell's smoke; but only as far as its clanking chains would allow.

Hypnotized by the sound, I could not move. Then the creature tried to stand. It was a woman who must have once been tall and straight, now bowed by chains.

I held up my candle. “Alys?” I called. I saw that this was some other woman, wrinkled and almost bald. She watched my candle shine onto a pool of water and bent down to lap it. My stomach heaved. I paused to let the feeling pass. Then I turned to go.

Behind me, I heard a sharp intake of breath, like a sword swishing through the air. The sound rooted me with fear. I shuddered, as if something cold touched my neck. It had happened, as I had always feared. A swordsman had crept up behind me and I was not kneeling in readiness; I had not made my peace with God or spoken my words of forgiveness. But there was no flash of silver, no pain, no eternal silence. Instead a voice called, “Traitor!” and rough hands gripped my neck through the bars, knocking off my cap.

I fought with the fury of somebody who fears that death is close. Pushing my feet against the bars, I pulled myself away long enough for the hands to briefly slacken and release me. I slumped to the ground, hair uncoiling, desperate for breath.

The angry voice quietened to a whispered question: “Lady Elizabeth?”

I looked up at a young man. His face and clothes were blurred in front of me, but I made out his turquoise hose and the orange silk that showed on his velvet sleeves and breeches. He wore a short ruff, though unhooked and hanging loose, and an orange plume in his cap. Where had I seen these clothes before? As my breathing calmed, I saw that the buttons had been torn from his doublet, the buckles from his shoes.

They were Robert Dudley's clothes, though now the worse for wear. He had worn them when he came to dine on my birthday. But it was not Robert clutching the bars. It was Francis.

Since May Eve, he had grown more and more like my father as a young man – in the fullness of his lips, in his red-gold beard, now matted and stiff with dried spittle. He took off his cap, made a short bow. Only his hair was different. He had tugged out handfuls, exposing the sores of scrofula.

“Francis? What are you doing here?” I asked. “Where's your mother?”

His eyes wandered up to the rotting roof and back to the filthy flagstones. Then they settled on my face. He drew back his lips over his dirty teeth and laughed, so strangely that I did not know whether he might be mad or not. “I wanted nothing of your world,” he said. “I told you that on May Eve. It's false, where a promise means nothing, where only lies flourish…”

“Where is she?” I asked again.

“She's dead.”

My heart lurched. I must have cried out loud enough for the old woman to tell me to stop my woman's wailing. I touched Francis's cheek and watched his tears twinkling in the candlelight, each one as perfect as the pearls on Lady Catherine's brooch.

“
How?
” I asked. He did not reply and I rattled the bars to keep his attention. “I've not ridden like the devil all the way from Enfield only to ride back without knowing.”

“Dudley came to warn me that your stepfather was wild with grief, wild for power, was asking about a red-haired boy in a death-boat,” he replied. “He had to act before Seymour did, so he said.”

“He's right. He promised that he would do it for me,” I told him. “I've been ill, Francis, and alone…”