Young Bess (27 page)

In those first days after his arrest, Tom walked up and down his room in the Tower and talked, while his friend and servant Sir John Harington sat by the fire and stared at it in silence. He listened sympathetically to every word his lord was saying, while the back of his mind, which was irrepressibly given to statistics, computed the number of miles Tom must have already walked that day. He would verify the measurement of the room presently, but he must be doing a good average of twenty-five miles a day. At this rate he could have walked to the South Coast by now and got on one of Jack Thompson’s ships for France; in a fortnight he could walk across the Border to Scotland and freedom.

But at every few steps the Tower walls turned his footsteps sharp round and back again. Would he ever walk straight on, out into the air, except to his grave?

The subject of these gloomy fancies was far from indulging in them.

Tom was blazingly angry, but he still had no notion that there was anything to be really afraid of – except of the shock that his sudden arrest must have given his mother. He’d never forgive Ned for that – he’d let him know it too, the damned clumsy heavy-footed brute, so full of his own importance that
he’d got blunted to everything and everyone else – ‘he can only think in terms of Council speeches, he’s forgotten that the People are made up of persons. No wonder his wife is sick of the sight and in especial the sound of him – much good it does her to have a fellow like that in bed with her – if it weren’t for the loathing I’ve got for the bad-tempered bitch I’d cuckold Ned myself to show her what a Seymour can do.’

Three turns in silence, only two steps off four, then out he broke again, ‘This is to give me a jerk, that’s all. They’ve not a thing they can really hold against me. I’ll be out in no time, and by God if he thinks I’ll keep the peace the better for this brotherly hint, he’ll soon find his mistake! I’ll make him sorry he ever did such a damn fool thing as to clap me into the Tower.
Who
can be behind it? That’s what worries me. Ned would never have done this of himself.’

Another turn, then a sharp swing-round on his heel and a thump on Harington’s shoulder that nearly spun him into the fire. ‘By God, Jack, I’ve got it! I always knew it really, but I was too hot with Ned to think of anyone else. I’ll swear this is Dudley’s doing. I’ve always distrusted that fellow. Didn’t I say he’s a dark horse, hasn’t shown his form yet, but I’ll bet a thousand pounds he’s keeping something back that will show when it comes to a race for power. And that blind jackass Ned doesn’t see it, for all his conceit about his brains – but you know the Spaniard Chapuys always said Ned was “not very intelligent and rather haughty”!’ He interrupted himself with a roar of delighted mirth. ‘Sure enough, our Ned isn’t intelligent enough to see that this dainty fop the Earl of Warwick is making trouble between us for his own ends – the old tag, “divide et impera”, and so come in for the pickings. Isn’t it clear as mud?’

‘Clearer,’ said Harington, ‘if it’s clear that Dudley is in this thing. There’s nothing to show it yet.’

‘But someone must be, and if not he, who is it? Who else would gain?’

Harington hesitated. Then he said, ‘Your brother would gain, or thinks so, or he wouldn’t have done it.’

Tom stared at him, really shocked. ‘You bloody-minded old cynic, you don’t really think Ned did this of himself!’

‘I don’t know. What is the use of thinking, till one knows?’

‘There’s the mathematician! But we’ll soon know, for it’s bound to come out at the trial. That’s the best of a trial, everything comes out at it – you can see who’s against you, answer their accusations and show how piffling they are. And by God, I’ll show ’em a few things on the other side! I’ll bring it all out in the open about Ned stealing my wife’s wedding ring! And Fasterne – her own family lands. What’s he got against me compared with
that
? He’ll wish he’d never given me the chance to speak in public. And mark you, I’m going to get that chance. I’m not going to be let out with a warning after a few weeks in the Tower and told to take my medicine like a good boy and go quietly and not make a fuss. I shall insist on a trial. I’ll make it so hot for them all, they’ll wish to God they’d never touched me.’

And for several more miles he went over and over all the things that he would bring up against Ned at the trial.

He had walked nearly as far as the Welsh Border before he heard that there was not going to be any open trial; but not because he was to be set free without one. It was because they were bringing a Bill of Attainder against him.

He stopped walking. He stopped talking. He stood dead
still and stared before him. It was Harington who could no longer bear the silence, though a man discreetly trained to it. He had married a bastard daughter of King Henry’s, oddly named Ethelred, and with masterly lack of snobbery in a snobbish age never let it be supposed that she was anything but the bastard of Henry’s tailor. And in these last weeks the Council had tried their utmost by bribes and threats to get out of him any incriminating evidence on the Admiral’s relations with the Princess Elizabeth – but all in vain.

Short and sturdy, he glanced uneasily up at that magnificent figure of his patron, like an unhappy dog, and at last murmured, ‘I’m afraid this looks bad.’

But Tom did not hear him.

A Bill of Attainder was the surest and deadliest weapon they could bring against him. Thomas Cromwell had used it again and again to rid King Henry of anyone he wished out of the way without the inconvenience of an open trial – until the King turned it on Cromwell himself. And now the Protector had turned it on his brother.

‘So – Ned –
is
in it!’ He spoke as though he had seen a ghost.

Harington looked at his watch. It was twenty-five minutes since the Admiral had last spoken. And still he had not moved.

Ten minutes later he said, ‘Then there’ll be no trial. I’ll not get a hearing.’

Five minutes, and he said, ‘Ned
must
be in it.’

Two minutes, and he moved in a mad rush across the room, sweeping everything off the table with a stroke of his arm, kicking over a heavy chair, and gripped Harington by the
shoulders till the fingers seemed to meet through his flesh.

‘He
can’t
do this thing. He’s my own brother, he’s stood by me again and again – in a damned superior priggish way if you like, but – he
can’t
mean to kill me.’

‘Let
go
!’ said Harington.

Tom dropped him. ‘It would kill Mother. He must know that. If he doesn’t mind killing me, he’d mind
that
, wouldn’t he? Answer me!’ he roared.

‘He won’t let himself think he’s killed her,’ Harington replied, feeling his shoulder tenderly.

‘By God, I believe you’re right. He has my head under his belt.’

But still he could not believe that Ned would keep it there – still less, put it on a spike. From his nursery days he had been brought up to think of his eldest brother as good. Why, even the common people were now all calling him the Good Duke.

There must be some compensation for being good, and now he would find out what it was: a good man did not cut off his brother’s head. Ned would still stand by him, somehow or other. Ned would find a way to get him out.

But then the Governor of the Tower, who was very friendly, especially after sharing a bottle or two of Tom’s wine, brought him news of the proceedings in Parliament. There were many who objected to a Bill of Attainder being brought instead of an open trial; there were speeches against it in both Houses, especially in the Commons.

But the Lord Protector, ‘declaring how sorrowful a case this was for him, did yet regard his bounden duty more than his own son or brother’.

‘“His own son” – the Roman father, hey? He’s getting on his toga for the rôle. By Christ’s soul, he means to do it! Once Ned starts talking about duty, anything may happen. He’ll talk himself into being good enough to kill his brother, yes, and his own mother. And never see that he’s an unnatural monster – only a man who does his duty – the damned inhuman conceited swab of dirty cotton mopping up the mess that his own injustice has got him into, mopping it with his own flesh and blood. “His bounden duty” – “Foy pour devoir” – that our father used to preach to us, the fine old man, shouting the family motto out like a battle-cry – and Ned the good boy of the family lapping it up like a cat with cream – to see what use he could put it to. If he were living now, he’d have strangled Ned in his cradle to prevent it coming to this – to kill me and “my Margery” as he always called her, and used to say the verse that was written to her, and watch her blush –

“To Mistress Margery Wentworth” – yes, old John Skelton wrote that to her when they were both young.

She’s using them now, no doubt – on her Ned. And small good they’ll do her – or me. For she’s using them on a stone, a clod of earth long since fossilised, a man who’s never known what it is to be one, who’s wrapped himself round with a cloud of
“wordes well devised” so that he sees and hears nothing but what he says himself. So that he can call it his bounden duty to kill me! My God, I’ll kill
him
! Just let me get my hands on his scrawny throat when I get out!’

He forgot that he would not get out.

The Council came, to remind him.

His eyes like a hungry wolf’s sought Ned among them. But he was not there.

They read him the thirty-three charges against him. He demanded to hear them from the witnesses themselves, in open trial. He was told he could have no open trial, he could call no witnesses in his defence. He could answer to the charges against him now, by himself, or not at all.

‘Then not at all,’ he said. What was the use if he could not answer the men who made them? They had risen up against him as fast as daws rising up from corn at the shot of a gun – ‘Caw, caw, caw,’ they cried, flapping forward, croaking their accusations, clawing and pecking at his eyes – and nearly all were those he had thought his friends, fellows he had dined and drunk with and talked to freely, who had nodded in agreement and then chimed in with lists of their own grievances. But now they had all come forward to quote his words as heinous treason, and not a hint of the eagerness they had shown to join in the intrigues they now exposed.

Even Henry Grey whose debts he had paid, whose daughter was under his roof, even Grey had pulled his long melancholy moustaches and turned informer against him.

And Tom could not answer back, to him or any of them. But talking over the charges afterwards with Harington he was cheered again.

‘There’s not enough to hang a cat among the lot of them. Their worst charge is slackness in dealing with pirates. But they’ve not attempted to prove it, and if they did, the punishment can only be dismissal from my post as Admiral, with a large fine. There’s not a thing that amounts to treason. It’s not treason to want to marry the Princess Elizabeth, and they’ve made that the principal charge. But they’ve got no change out of it – not one word to help them from the girl herself, bless her stout little heart!’

Bess would prove a match for Ned any day; she had done so since she was four years old. Hilariously he reminded Jack Harington how she had to bear the christening robe for the baby Prince Edward when she herself had been too small to walk all the way in the Procession, and so Ned had been given the doubtful honour of carrying her – to his intense discomfiture, for she had grabbed off his cap and plucked at his beard and all but wriggled herself out of his arms, and everybody had laughed at him – him, Ned – who could not bear to be laughed at!

‘And still she’s as slippery as an eel. “Wild for to hold” – she’ll always be that.’

His pride was sharpened with regret, for he himself had not yet held her, only begun to do so, only enough to know how exquisite would be the triumph when he did.

He swerved sharply to other charges against him – plentiful as blackberries, but as waterlogged as those picked in November.

‘Was there ever such blether as to call it treason because I married Cathy so soon after the King’s death that
if
she’d had a child at once, it
might
have been thought to be the King’s.
Confuse the issue, hey?’ he suddenly shot at Harington, who gaped in amazement that he could still joke. ‘Well, if that’s treason, why did no one say it then, instead of waiting two years? Because no man thought such piffle – nor does now. It’s the cloven hoof of the Duchess kicking that bit of mud out from her petticoats!’

‘There’s more mud from the pulpits,’ murmured Harington.

For the preachers were carrying on a furious campaign to work up public opinion against the Admiral. The Bishop of Worcester, Dr Latimer, thundered out sermon after sermon to prove his wickedness. But his proofs could not be said to justify the death penalty.

Imprimis
. A woman executed for robbery nine years ago had said her bad life was due to having been seduced by the Admiral about ten years before that.

Item
: The Admiral had not attended family prayers regularly twice daily when at home with his wife, but was apt to ‘get himself out of the way like a mole digging in the earth.’

Item
: He had said this brand new Prayer Book was not really God’s holy word, but old man Cranmer’s.

Item
: He had tried to get his King away from his lessons and out to sports in the open air – ‘Now woe,’ cried the Bishop, ‘to him, or anyone else, that would have my Sovereign not brought up in learning, and would pluck him from his book!’

This list of his crimes brought the heartiest roar of laughter Harington had heard from his master since he entered the Tower. ‘What’s the use of turning the pulpit into a dung-heap if that’s the worst they can rake up against me? They nose out
muck near a score of years old, and all they can find is a drab’s word for it. And it’s treason to care for the King’s health and pleasure! Just wait and hear what the boy himself will say to that!’