“Bess will do, Your Grace.”
“Have you come to lecture me on my morals?” she asked.
Surprised into a laugh, I denied it. “I cannot imagine why you should think so,” I added.
“It was only a kiss.” She sounded defensive.
Since I had no idea what kiss she meant, I said nothing. After a moment, she gestured for me to sit beside her on the padded bench at the end of the gallery. From that height we could just glimpse the spires of London’s tallest churches, off to the east.
“Is my stepmother wroth with me?” Elizabeth Tudor asked.
“I do not believe so, Your Grace. The only concern she expressed to me had to do with the selection of a new tutor.”
A shadow crossed her face. “They want me to accept some relative of Master Grindal’s, as if putting another with the same name in his place will make up for his loss.”
“Is there someone you wish to have as your tutor, Your Grace?”
“Roger Ascham,” she said at once. “My master Grindal studied under him at Cambridge. I will have no other teach me.”
Noting the stubborn tilt of her jaw, I did not argue. Elizabeth stared past me out the window. She betrayed no nervousness. Her long, tapered fingers lay still in her lap. She did not toy with any of the many ornate rings she wore. But I sensed there was something else on her mind, something she debated sharing with me. Perhaps my current troubles, the fact that I had risked so much for love, made her think I would be a sympathetic listener. After a few moments, she unburdened herself.
“There is nothing wrong with a kiss beneath the kissing bough on Twelfth Night.”
“It is an old and honored tradition,” I agreed.
“Lady Tyrwhitt would make something out of nothing. She is an interfering busybody.”
I thought for a moment. “I have never had much to do with her, but she always seemed to me to be the most evangelical of the queen’s ladies.” A half-forgotten detail popped into my head. “She was writing a book of prayers when I knew her at court.”
“Everyone thinks the lord admiral is a most toothsome man,” Elizabeth said.
I began at last to see where this conversation might lead. Like so many other women, the princess had been charmed by the queen dowager’s husband. Still, I could not see the harm in it. Tom Seymour was safely married to Elizabeth’s stepmother and Kathryn was here at Chelsea to chaperone her young charge. So were Mistress Astley and all the other members of Elizabeth’s entourage.
The princess’s cheeks were pink and she could no longer meet my eyes. “He kissed me under the kissing bough at Enfield just as the queen dowager came upon us. It was a real kiss, and she did not like it.”
My heart went out to her. The casual kisses exchanged on meeting meant nothing, but the kind of kiss that held desire was something quite different, especially the first one a girl received from a man she found attractive. Only eight years separated us, but I suddenly felt decades older.
“There was no reason for the queen dowager to be so upset,” Elizabeth continued. “Why should she be when she had no objection to anything he did last summer.”
“Last summer?” I prompted her, remembering that she had escaped proper chaperones for a moonlit ride on the Thames. Had there been more to the incident than I’d realized? I felt a faint stirring of alarm at the thought.
Elizabeth kept her head down and mumbled, “Naught but tickling games, and a race through the gardens. Her Grace and the lord admiral both.” She lifted reddish lashes to reveal dark eyes filled with despair. “And on Twelfth Night I wanted him to kiss me,” she whispered. “I wanted him to desire me. And all he said, when the queen dowager interrupted us, was ‘God’s precious blood, Kate, you make a fuss over nothing.’ Nothing! I am nothing to him.”
Her ladies, hovering at the far end of the gallery, sent worried glances our way but did not approach.
“He is married, Your Grace,” I said in a low voice. “It would not be right for him to desire you.”
“Being married does not stop the Marquess of Northampton from desiring you!”
I winced as if she’d struck me.
The princess drew in a steadying breath. “I beg your pardon, Bess. That was uncalled for. I know that the lord admiral and my stepmother have a true marriage and that they care deeply for each other. The matter of Lord Northampton and his estranged wife is entirely different.”
I did not contradict her, nor did I tell her how foolish she had been to encourage Tom Seymour, a man well known to be a devil with the ladies. Neither did I repeat my entire conversation with the princess to the queen dowager, only Elizabeth’s request that Roger Ascham be appointed as her new tutor.
30
My time at Chelsea Manor passed slowly. I felt cut off from the outside world. The many-turreted redbrick house had been designed as a country retreat and could only be reached by water and by a single narrow road that led to a tiny village of no importance.
I saw little of the princess, who was busy with her studies once Master Ascham arrived to take charge of them. Most of my time was spent with my two sisters-in-law and their ladies, including Mary Woodhull, and with Will’s nephew, three-year-old Edward Herbert. I enjoyed being “Aunt Bess” to the boy. Will and I had talked of having a child, but we had taken precautions to prevent conception during our time together, even after we were living as man and wife at Norfolk House. We’d wanted to be sure there was no question of legitimacy when I bore his heir.
In March, Mistress Lavina Teerlinck the paintrix arrived to make a portrait of the little boy. While she was at Chelsea, I commissioned her to paint me in small. When the miniature was finished, I gave it to Tom Seymour to take to Will. No one had thought to forbid him to own my likeness.
At long last spring arrived, making it possible to stroll out of doors along newly mown alleys and enjoy the gardens. I wandered beside hedges of privet and whitethorn and between banks of rosemary and borders of lavender, inhaling their warm scents. If I closed my eyes, I could almost imagine myself back in my own garden at Norfolk House.
I ventured into the orchard as well, where a mixture of trees had been planted less than ten years before—cherries, filbert, and damson. There were also two peach trees, already in flower and giving promise of a bountiful crop. The orchard was surrounded by fields. Sometimes, looking out across all that open space, a vista filled with cowslips, daisies, and gillyflowers, I found it difficult to remember that I was only a few miles from the center of London.
I walked as far as the postern gate that led to the road but I did not pass through. There was nowhere to go. I glanced back at the house that had been my home for more than three months. Surely the commissioners would make their decision soon.
My spirits lifted when I saw that young Edward had come outside with his nurse. There was a little stone basin in the privy garden that had been turned into a fishpond. Edward had his pole at the ready and the queen dowager herself was giving him instructions on how to land a fish.
She smiled when I joined them. “Are you an angler, Bess?”
“My brothers tried to teach me but I lacked the patience for the sport.”
“Why does that not surprise me?”
We stood side by side to watch Edward try his luck. Several minutes passed before I noticed that Kathryn kept touching her hand to her abdomen. “Are you unwell, Kathryn?”
A shy smile reassured me even before she answered. “Very well indeed, Bess. I am with child.”
I struggled to find words. This was most unexpected. Kathryn had been married three times before without conceiving. For a barren woman of thirty-four to suddenly prove fertile was the next thing to a miracle. “I envy you,” I said at last.