“What did that paper say?” I began to struggle again, with no more success than before. “What is going on?”
“You and Will are commanded to separate,” Jack answered. “You are to be placed in the queen dowager’s keeping at Chelsea.”
“No! I will not leave him.”
“You do not have a choice, Bess,” Jack said, not unkindly. “Nor do I.” Then he gave orders for the servants to pack my belongings.
He would not allow us a proper farewell, or even a few words in private. When I tried to ask questions, he ordered me to be silent.
Tears streaming down my cheeks, I watched from a window as the lord protector’s men rode off with Will in custody. My limbs felt like ice, and those frozen appendages refused to support my weight. I sank into my chair, engulfed by a suffocating anguish. Time passed. I had no sense of how much later it was when Jack escorted me out of Norfolk House and onto a waiting barge. We were to be rowed upriver to the queen’s dower house—a little more than two miles away.
“I do not understand,” I whispered as the oarsmen set us in motion. “Where have they taken Will? What have we done to deserve such treatment?”
“You have been living in sin for months,” Jack said. “Surely you cannot be surprised to have been found out.”
“I am not Will’s mistress. I am his wife.”
“Yes, more’s the pity. If you had not gone through a form of marriage with him, you’d not be in so much trouble now.” At my bewildered expression, his finely arched brows lifted. He took off his bonnet, raked one hand through his dark hair, and shook his head. “You truly did not realize, did you? Or else you ignored anything it did not suit you to know. Aye, that’s more likely. You always were one to go your own way.”
“That is unfair, Jack. And I’ve always been good at finding my way out of trouble.”
“Yes, I remember how we escaped from the maze at Woodstock.” He sighed. “Norfolk House is hard by Lambeth Palace. Did you think that your neighbor, the archbishop of Canterbury, would not notice that you were living there?”
“Even so, what have we done that is so wrong?” I asked. “It is only a matter of time before the commission—”
“That was your first mistake. The archbishop is a member of that commission. By his lights, you should have waited for them to make a ruling before you did anything. He reported your presence to the lord protector and Somerset flew into a rage.” Jack’s lips twisted into a rueful smile. “You can imagine Lady Somerset’s reaction.”
I shivered, and not because of the icy river water on every side.
“The charge against you, Bess, is adultery.”
I felt as if I’d been kicked. For a moment all the breath went out of me. “Must I do penance?” I whispered. I knew the punishment. It was to walk barefoot to church wearing nothing but a shift.
“You will be spared public humiliation, but you are confined to Chelsea until further notice. The queen dowager and her husband, the lord admiral, should return there within the week.”
“And Will? What of him? Where has he been taken?”
“To court.”
I breathed a sigh of relief. I had been afraid he would tell me Will was bound for the Tower of London, where his old friend the Earl of Surrey had so recently been executed. Surrey’s father, the Duke of Norfolk, the last owner of Norfolk House, was still a prisoner behind its impenetrable walls.
“Will is to be deprived of his seat on the Privy Council and reprimanded.” A look of pity came into Jack’s dark eyes. “And the charge against him is not just adultery, but also bigamy. He is forbidden, on pain of death, to see you or write to you until after the commission has rendered its verdict.”
29
The queen dowager and her husband, Tom Seymour, were entirely on her brother Will’s side. Kathryn’s dislike of her brother-in-law, the lord protector, and his grasping wife had increased tenfold since the day Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, first tried to claim she had precedence over that “jumped-up country housewife,” Queen Kathryn. Kathryn was furious on Will’s behalf when Tom brought word that Will had not only been deprived of his seat on the Privy Council but had also been banished from court.
“I take heart from the fact that he was not imprisoned,” I said.
“Wise of you,” Kathryn allowed, but I could see she was fuming.
“Will still has all his titles and properties,” Tom said. “He continues to live at Norfolk House.”
“Waiting for me,” I said, and sighed. “I do not understand why the Duke of Somerset will not see reason. He cast off his own first wife for adultery back when he was still plain Sir Edward Seymour. He should sympathize with Will’s dilemma.”
“My brother is a hypocrite and a thief,” Tom said.
Kathryn stopped pacing long enough to smile at him. “It is fortunate for him that he did not attempt to approach me when we were at Enfield, else I might have done him bodily harm.”
“It is forbidden to strike a man at court, Your Grace,” Tom teased her.
“I could have bitten him. There is no law against that.” The queen dowager might have been small of stature, but she was fierce.
She reminded me at that moment of Rig, her spaniel, who had once dared to nip King Henry’s ankle. Rig was at Chelsea, too, but he was getting on in years and spent most of his time sleeping in a basket in a corner of the solar. In addition to Kathryn’s pets, her household numbered some 120 people, including Mary Woodhull; Lady Tyrwhitt; Will’s other sister, Anne Herbert; and Anne’s youngest son.
“I do not know which makes me angrier,” Kathryn continued, “that the duke has been leasing my dower properties without my permission, or that he still has not returned the jewelry left to me in Henry’s will. He will not even release my wedding ring, or the cross of gold my mother gave me. You remember the piece, Bess, the one with diamonds on the cross itself—and three pearls pendant as well.”
What I remembered was that the queen’s jewel chest had been locked up for safekeeping in the King’s Jewel House in the Tower at the time of King Henry’s death. No matter what was in it, the Duke of Somerset had possession of it now. I wondered if Lady Somerset had convinced her husband to let her wear the queen’s jewels.
“A pity that the duke cannot see what a bad influence his wife is,” I said. “Perhaps then he would not let her lead him around by the nose.”
“I do not believe it is his nose,” Tom quipped.
Kathryn made a choking sound. Then she started to laugh. In spite of my troubles, I joined in. For a little while, I felt less sad.
A few days later, Kathryn asked a favor of me. She was concerned about her stepdaughter the princess. Elizabeth Tudor had her own household within the queen dowager’s at Chelsea. Her Grace’s tutor, a young man named William Grindal, had recently died. Elizabeth was so distraught over his loss that she was refusing to consider any of the suggestions the lord admiral and the queen dowager had made to her for a suitable replacement.
The last time I’d spoken privily with the princess had been just after the death of Jack Dudley’s brother Harry. Princess Elizabeth had advised against love, since it always led to loss. She’d been barely eleven years old at the time. I wondered if, at fourteen, she still felt the same way.
I found Her Grace walking in the gallery for exercise. Mistress Astley and several maids of honor were with her, but they faded into the background to allow me to converse in relative privacy with their mistress.
She had grown taller, slimmer, and more graceful since our last encounter and already had a well-developed bosom. Innate or learned, she also possessed the dignified bearing of a member of the royal family.
“How am I to address you?” she asked bluntly, once she’d granted me permission to walk beside her.