B009RYSCAU EBOK (12 page)

CHAPTER ELEVEN

May 1546—Whitehall Palace, London

B
ESS KEPT PACE WITH
J
ANE
G
REY, WHO WAS TROTTING IN AN
attempt to keep up with her mother. Far ahead, Frances Grey’s skirts billowed out behind her as she sailed toward the queen’s privy chamber.

When Bess and Jane entered the queen’s domain, Frances was already curtsying to the queen. Catherine Parr, in scarlet silk and at the center of a dozen or more ladies, looked up and smiled to see Jane, but Frances’s eyes were cold when she looked back at her daughter.

“Your Majesty,” Jane murmured as she sank into a curtsy.

“Dear Jane,” the queen said. “I’m so glad you’ve come.”

Frances Grey’s young stepmother, Catherine Willoughby, the Duchess of Suffolk, her blue eyes and pale skin set off by her gown of dove gray, came forward to embrace Jane.

“I know your uncle will be pleased to see you,” the queen said to Jane. “He and the prince are at their lessons just now, but be sure to visit with him before you go.”

Bess recalled that Henry, the ten-year-old Duke of Suffolk, had been sent to join the household of Prince Edward when his father had died the previous summer. The queen smiled at Bess and Bess curtsied as she passed, catching a faint scent of roses and cinnamon in the movement of the queen’s gown.

“I thank you, Your Majesty.” Jane bowed to the queen again, and Bess followed behind her as she made her way around the room, greeting the queen’s attendants. She had seen many of these ladies at court before, but had never been among them so closely. Many of them were the wives of the most powerful men in England, she knew. She held them in awe and was impressed by Jane’s easy grace as she made small talk. Jane Dudley, who had long been a friend of the queen, was wed to John Dudley, Lord Lisle, a member of both the king’s privy council and his privy chamber. Anne Seymour’s husband Edward, the Earl of Hertford, was the elder brother of the late Queen Jane, and still inward with the king.

And there was the Lady Elizabeth, the king’s younger daughter. She must be about twelve now, Bess thought, and no longer looked like a little girl, but was on the cusp of womanhood.

“My dear cousin,” Elizabeth greeted Jane. “It has been too long since we have seen each other.”

Lizzie was there, too, and embraced Bess. “I hope we have a chance to talk before you go. I’ve missed your company so!”

There was one man in the room, a black-robed cleric, and soon the queen called to her attendants to gather and listen. “We’re honored to have Dr. Crome to speak to us this afternoon.”

The queen sat, and her ladies settled around her in a multicolored sea of silk. A little black spaniel frisked toward the queen, barking, and put his paws on her lap.

“Gardiner!” the Duchess of Suffolk called sharply, clapping her hands, and the dog guiltily returned to her side.

“Gardiner?” Bess whispered to Lizzie. “Like the archbishop?” Lizzie only smiled mischievously.

Bess did her best to follow the preacher’s words, but she found what he said to be convoluted, and what she did understand alarmed her slightly. Was he really saying that Purgatory did not exist? And that Christ was not present in the consecrated bread and wine of the communion?

After Dr. Crome had left, the queen took up a sheaf of papers and read aloud. She spoke of King Henry, likening him to Moses, leading his people out of captivity and bondage.

Jane must have caught Bess’s frown of concentration, for she leaned close to her and whispered, “Freedom from slavery to the pope, she means.”

When the queen had finished reading, she led the ladies in discussion. Bess felt herself far at sea. She gathered that the words the queen had read were her own. She had never heard of a lady writing a book before, much less holding forth at length in a learned manner as the queen did. She felt herself nodding off and roused herself. It would never do to fall asleep in the queen’s presence.

Lizzie caught her eye and motioned her head toward the doorway, and Bess rose, moving as unobtrusively as she could.

“That’s quite enough of that for me!” Lizzie said with a laugh when they were outside the queen’s chamber. “It’s such a beautiful day, let’s go outside.”

“Why do the other ladies take such an interest in it?” Bess asked as she and Lizzie made their way down a stairway and out into a garden. “Or do they only feign to do so, as it’s the queen’s writing?”

“Oh, some of them are very earnest in their beliefs,” Lizzie said, squinting at the sun. “Me, I don’t care too much.”

A tall, dark-haired man wearing deep green velvet entered the garden, in conversation with an older man. Lizzie noted him and raised her eyebrows at Bess.

“Thomas Seymour,” she whispered.

Bess recalled thinking him handsome when Doll had pointed him out to her at court three years earlier, and she thought he was even more so now. He broke off the conversation with the other man and walked toward where she and Lizzie sat, moving with arrogant assurance.

“Mistress Brooke.” He stopped before them and bowed, smiling down at Lizzie with more heat in his gaze than Bess thought seemly, and then turned his eyes on her. “And who is your pretty companion, Lizzie?”

“Elizabeth Barlow,” Lizzie said. “An old friend, for we served Lady Zouche together. Now she is in the household of Lady Dorset.”

“Ah, then you are well placed,” he said to Bess. His gaze drifted down her body, and though she was modestly dressed, she flushed, feeling as though he saw through her garments. He roused in her the same feelings she had experienced when she danced with Christopher Winters and when Edmund had kissed her at Lady Zouche’s house, and she dropped her eyes in confusion. He laughed, his voice deep and rich, and he wandered on.

Bess recalled that before Catherine Parr had married the king, she had been in love with Thomas Seymour. “I wonder if she finds it difficult to have him around,” she said, speaking her thoughts aloud.

“She may yet be his wife.” Lizzie spoke quietly, but Bess sensed a world of meaning behind her words and turned to her in surprise.

“The king is old,” Lizzie said, glancing around to be sure she was not overheard. “But perhaps things will change sooner rather than later.”

Whatever Lizzie was implying could not be good, Bess feared.

“The king wearies of the queen, some say,” Lizzie murmured. “And she has not got with child.”

“Oh, no, not that again.” Bess was aghast. Surely the aged king would not cast off yet another wife. “Is not Prince Edward enough to reassure him of the succession?”

Lizzie shrugged. “William says that the king is no longer making daily visits to the queen. And he has been paying especial favor to the Duchess of Suffolk.” Frances Grey’s stepmother was only twenty-six, and was very beautiful, Bess thought. But surely she would be canny enough to avoid being caught in the king’s snares?

* * *

A
S THEY WERE ROWED HOME FROM THE PALACE LATE THAT AFTERNOON
, Bess’s mind was awhirl with anxiety over what Lizzie had told her. She had thought the days of plotting and fear were done at court, but perhaps that was not so.

Jane, who had spent the entire visit in the company of the queen, was full of admiration for her and all that had been discussed that day.

“It is her second book from which the queen was reading,” she said, breaking in on Bess’s thoughts. “After she published the first, last November, the universities at both Oxford and Cambridge begged her to become their patroness! It is a wonderful thing she does, to take up such weighty matters.”

“Does she argue, as Dr. Crome does, that the Lord is not in the sacred bread and wine? Is that not contrary to what the Bible tells us?”

“That is not meant to be taken in literal terms,” Jane said. “Christ’s meaning in that passage is similar to the meaning of those other places of Scripture. When He says, ‘I am the door,’ ‘I am the vine,’ ‘Behold the Lamb of God,’ ‘That rock was Christ,’ and other such references to Himself, you are not in these texts to take Christ for the material thing which He is signified by, for then you will make Him a very door, a vine, a lamb, a stone, quite contrary to the Holy Ghost’s meaning.”

“So He is not those things?”

“Yes, all those indeed do signify Christ, even as the bread signifies His body in that place.”

“I don’t understand,” Bess said, “why these things should matter so. Or why anyone would die for what they believe.”

“Do you not?” Jane asked. “I do.”

CHAPTER TWELVE

O
NLY A FEW WEEKS AFTER THE VISIT TO
W
HITEHALL, THE
D
UCHESS
of Suffolk arrived at Dorset House, visibly distressed. Bess accompanied her to Frances Grey’s withdrawing chamber and offered her refreshment, but the duchess waved her off silently, then pulled off her gloves and dropped them onto a table and paced until Frances Grey arrived.

“Why, Catherine, what’s amiss!” she inquired as she embraced her stepmother.

“Have you not heard? There have been a spate of arrests for heresy. Including Edward Crome and Anne Askew.”

“Dear God.” Frances went white. And no wonder, Bess thought, for Edward Crome was the preacher who had been in the queen’s privy chamber when they were there. And Anne Askew had visited Frances Grey at Dorset House. Bess recalled her well, a spirited and attractive young woman only a few years older than she was. Jane had told her that Mistress Askew had been cast out by her husband for disobedience, and then come to London where she had become some kind of preacher or reformer, and had been arrested for distributing evangelical books that had been banned.

“Both were questioned about evangelicals on the privy council and in the queen’s privy chamber. Frances, they were asked about me.” The duchess’s eyes were dark with fear. “And they put Anne Askew to the rack!”

Bess’s stomach gave a lurch of terror and revulsion.

“The rack?” Frances gasped. “B-but she’s a gentlewoman. Surely the privy council did not authorize such barbarism?”

“No, but it was done, nonetheless. The Lord Chancellor and solicitor general ordered the lieutenant of the Tower to rack her. He would not, and went to the king to object. So they did it themselves.”

“Thomas Wriothesley.” Frances spat out the name. “He would do it. And Richard Rich, too, I would believe it of him. But how came you to learn this? What happened?”

Bess felt rooted to where she stood. She felt exactly as she had when the horror of Cat Howard’s downfall was unfolding—afraid to hear what terrors she would learn of next, but unable to stop herself from wanting to know. For only by knowing what was happening could one hope to guess what way to run, where safety lay.

“She managed to smuggle out an account of what was done to her,” Catherine Willoughby said. “Wriothesley and Rich stripped to their shirtsleeves, and stripped her to her shift. They tore her on the rack. They tore her sinews and cracked her bones. The wife and daughters of the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower heard her screams, where they were walking on Tower Green.” The duchess was weeping now, and Frances Grey took her in her arms. “They racked her so that she fainted. And then they revived her to do it again.”

Bess found that she was holding herself, wrapping her arms around her chest and shoulders, as if she could feel her own arms being pulled from their sockets. She could imagine only too well Anne Askew’s face, contorted with agony, her soft voice raised in a wordless shriek under her torment. Jesu, if they could treat Mistress Askew in that way, they could do it to anyone. She wondered wildly if she could flee from London and return to the safety of Hardwick.

“Sweet Christ, would no one stop them?” Frances cried.

“Who was to stop them? At last they laid her on the floor and crouched by her for another two hours, demanding whether the queen or any of her ladies believed as she did, and whether they had aided her.”

Was the queen in danger then? Or Frances Grey? Or Jane? Or Lizzie, or Bess herself? They had all been at Whitehall to hear Crome. Bess found that she was trembling.

“And who is behind all this?” Frances whispered.

“Who else but Bishop Gardiner and the Duke of Norfolk?”

Norfolk. Why was he always at the heart of trouble and terror? Bess wondered.

* * *

I
N THE MIDST OF THE PANIC SURROUNDING
A
NNE
A
SKEW,
S
IR
W
ILLIAM
Cavendish came to Dorset House to discuss Bess’s suit with her.

“I have filed what is needful,” he said, “and Edward Seymour has said that he will put in a word on your behalf.”

“Thank you, sir. And how kind of Lord Hertford,” Bess said. “When will the matter come to court?”

“It could be weeks or months, but that’s all to the good as it gives us time to prepare. You will surely be called to testify, and that can rattle the nerves of anyone.” Sir William smiled at Bess, and in his presence, she felt more calm and safe than she had in a fortnight.

“May I ask you something, sir?”

“Certainly.”

“This business with Mistress Askew . . .” Now that she had begun, Bess didn’t know what to say.

“Shocking and terrible.” Sir William’s face was grim.

“It all makes me feel so frightened. I wonder who might be next, to be questioned, to be . . .”

Bess was shaking, and Sir William put a steady arm around her shoulders.

“Of course you do. Who would not?”

“Do you mean that you worry, too?” Bess whispered, looking up into his warm gray eyes.

“I do more than worry. I fear, sometimes.”

Bess stared at him. “You do?”

He nodded. “When sands are shifting as you walk, it is hard to know where to put your feet.”

“Then what do you do?”

“Keep your head about you. Keep your counsel. Speak your mind to no one that you do not trust utterly.”

“How am I to know who to trust?”

“Let them prove themselves to you.”

Who did she trust beyond question? Her mother and the rest of her family. Lizzie. Jane, of course. She looked back at Sir William, his face gentle and patient, and recalled Frances Grey’s admonition that she think about Sir William as a possible husband. Yes, she trusted him, too. And that, more than anything else, was important to her in a man she thought of marrying.

“Thank you, sir,” she whispered. “You are a good friend to me.”

He smiled. “I cherish those words, Bess. And I will strive to be the best friend to you that I may be. Always.”

* * *

A
FEW DAYS LATER
B
ESS HEARD
H
ARRY
G
REY TELLING HIS WIFE
that the queen’s sister and two more of her closest friends, Lady Lane and Lady Tyrwhitt, had been arrested.

“They searched their rooms for heretical books, or aught else they could find to do them damage.”

Bess thought of Jane’s translation of the queen’s book. What other works might she own that could be considered dangerous? Would Frances Grey hide their books? Was she safe from the reach of such inquiries?

“What has become of them?” Frances Grey asked.

“They were set free again, but there may be more attacks to come. And Anne Askew has been condemned to burn as a heretic.”

Bess felt herself grow faint, and held fast to the chair she stood behind.

“She was offered mercy if she would recant her beliefs,” Harry Grey said, “but she refused.”

“Then she will die?” Frances’s voice was little more than a whisper.

“Aye. The only question now is who else may be brought down. For Gardiner and Norfolk and their faction greatly fear and resent the queen’s influence on the king and the prince, and I fear would do anything they can to harm her. It is like Cromwell and Anne Boleyn all over again.”

Bess thought of Queen Catherine’s warm smile. And she thought of Cat Howard, how innocent she had been of the destruction that was about to fall on her. Like a lamb to the slaughter. And she thought of Anne Askew, facing death by fire.

“What shall we do?” Frances cried. “I am to wait on the queen in a few days’ time.”

“Then you must go,” her husband told her. “But for your life, do not discuss anything that could cause the least whisper of suspicion.”

* * *

I
T WAS A BEAUTIFUL SUMMER’S DAY WHEN
B
ESS AGAIN MADE THE
journey to Whitehall by boat with Frances and Jane Grey, but a cold lump of fear lay in the pit of her stomach. They made their way through the rooms of the palace to the queen’s privy chamber. The mood among the ladies there was vastly different from what it had been on their previous visit, she thought. There was little chatter, and what talk there was took place in lowered voices. The queen was attired in dark gray, and the color seemed to have been drained from her face. There was no preaching and no reading. The ladies worked at needlework, their eyes on the bright skeins of silk in their laps and the lengths of linen stretched in embroidery hoops in their hands.

Bess was relieved to find Lizzie in the queen’s chamber, for perhaps Lizzie would be able to tell her more reliable news than she had heard. They had just gone to sit together on a window seat when a man’s voice interrupted the quiet hum of conversation.

“Your Majesty, the king commands your presence in the privy garden.”

Bess thought the queen went even paler than she had been, and saw her fingers tighten on the arms of her chair, but when she spoke, her voice was calm.

“Then we shall with all obedience attend him.”

She rose and her ladies fell in behind her, following her down the stairs and outside like a flock of ducklings after their mother.

The king stood in the garden where Bess had spoken with Lizzie when she had been at the palace last. He was even more stout than he had been when last she had seen him, and it appeared that his head was almost bald under his jeweled cap.

“Madam.” He held out a hand to the queen and she went to him, curtsying deeply as she put her hand in his.

The queen’s ladies stood uncertainly as the king led the queen away down a path among the bordered flower beds. He was limping, but seemed to be taking care not to lean on the queen for support.

Suddenly Bess heard heavy footsteps, the sound of many booted feet marching. She turned and saw that a party of guards was approaching, the blades of their halberds glinting in the sun. At their head strode Thomas Wriothesley, the Lord Chancellor. The man who had himself turned the crank on the rack, breaking the frail body of Anne Askew. A wolflike smile was on his face, and even from this distance, Bess heard the queen gasp.

This was just what had happened on that dreadful day at Hampton Court, Bess recalled with vivid clarity. She had been dancing with Cat Howard and her ladies in the queen’s chamber when just such a troop of guards had arrived. She and Lizzie exchanged a terrified glance.

The king let go the queen’s hand and stepped away from her. She stood all alone, terror etched on her face. Bess wanted to run to her, to protect her. But what could she do, against three dozen armed men?

But the king was advancing on Wriothesley, his face contorted with anger, and now it was Wriothesley who looked confused and afraid. He dropped to one knee and bowed his head as the king snarled down at him. Bess couldn’t hear the words, but the king’s face was that of a savage animal. Wriothesley began to rise and was clearly pleading with the king, but the king raised a hand as if to strike him, and Wriothesley fell to his knees in complete submission.

“Arrant knave, beast, fool!” the king shouted. “Take your pack of dogs and begone!”

Wriothesley scrambled to his feet, gesturing the guards to follow him, and they retreated in disorder.

Bess looked to the queen and saw the look of intense relief wash over her face, instantly replaced by a careful mask.

The king stumped back to the queen’s side and she raised her eyes to his.

“Alas, my lord, what has your poor chancellor done to anger you so?” Her voice and face were all innocence. “I will be a suitor for him, for surely his fault was occasioned by some mistake.”

Bess held her breath. What a gamble on the queen’s part, she thought, not to let on that she had known Wriothesley’s purpose. Would it anger the king?

But the king patted the queen’s hand. “Ah, poor soul,” he said, a lopsided smile cracking his face. “Thou little knowest, Kate, how little he deserves this grace at thy hands. On my word, sweetheart, he hath been to thee a very knave, so let him go.”

* * *

T
HE KING KEPT THE QUEEN WITH HIM IN THE GARDEN FOR A TIME,
but it appeared obvious to Bess that his leg was paining him, and the only reason he did not dismiss the queen and return to where he could be comfortable was to disguise the fact that he had only wanted her there while he played the scene with Wriothesley, for it had indeed seemed like something out of a deadly masque.

When at last the queen returned to her privy chamber with her ladies, she retired to her bed. Frances Grey huddled in a corner whispering with the Duchess of Suffolk and the queen’s sister, Lady Herbert. Bess took the opportunity of going to Lizzie, and they retreated to the window seat. Bess gazed at the garden below and shivered despite the warmth of the day.

“She knew it was coming,” Lizzie whispered.

“She knew?” Bess was shocked.

“Well, she had known she was in grave danger and that it had passed. Though seeing the guards must have given her a turn.”

“I would think so. It did me.” As Lizzie shared a pillow with the queen’s brother, she likely knew more about what had gone on than almost anyone. “What has happened,” she asked, “that she knew she was in peril?”