ON THE TWENTIETH day of January, news of the surrender of Calais reached London. Guisnes fell ten days later. King Philip’s war had cost England the Pale, the last English outpost on the Continent. After that, nothing seemed to go right. It was a year of heavy thunderstorms and hail, of floods, and of new outbreaks of fever. The cold, wet weather in summer and autumn produced food shortages.
At the end of September, some ten months after we’d parted with harsh words, my father died.
I returned to Kent for his funeral.
“He wanted only the best for you,” Mother said, a note of reproach in her voice.
“I know.” We clung to each other and sobbed, but shared grief could not change what was.
We’d barely buried Father when word came from Bedfordshire that Grandmother Jane was deathly ill. Mother and I reached her bedside only just in time to say farewell. She died on the twenty-fourth day of October. Devastated by the dual loss of husband and mother, my mother seemed to lose her will to live. The sickness that had taken my father and grandmother seized upon her weakened state and carried her off eight days later. It was left to me to take her body back to Kent.
My brother George arrived from London the next day. What I read in his face robbed me of my last vestige of strength. “Will?” I whispered.
“Ill of a fever.” He made a rueful grimace. “As who is not? I was sick myself shortly after Father died.” His flushed skin and persistent cough gave the lie to his claim that he had recovered.
I remained healthy, but I felt numb with grief and guilt and fragile in a way that I’d never been before. I could barely remember any longer what it felt like to be optimistic about the future. “I must return to Blackfriars,” I told George.
“I’ll take you,” he offered. “There is little either of us can do here.”
Our eldest brother, William, who had become Lord Cobham upon Father’s death, had matters well in hand for Mother’s funeral, just as he’d made arrangements for Father’s.
George and I left at first light the next day, taking Birdie Crane with us. With Mother’s death, Birdie had nowhere else to go.
We traveled by water and reached Blackfriars Stairs before nightfall. Griggs met me at the door of our little house, his face so grave I knew at once that he had more bad news to deliver.
“Is he dead?” I asked bluntly.
“Not yet, but he has taken a turn for the worse. I called a physician in. He says it is some new variety of ague that is raging throughout England. Our soldiers brought it back with them from France.” He spat to express his opinion of anything French.
I did not care where the disease had come from, only that it was killing my family. That Will might follow Father, Grandmother, and Mother to the grave was more than I could bear.
“The queen has been stricken, too,” Griggs said. “Some think the fever may carry her off.”
“The queen is about to die? Again?” I did not believe it. It seemed to me that all those I loved would be gone before Her Grace had the decency to succumb.
I nursed Will day and night, bathing him with cold cloths to bring down the fever, forcing him to drink strengthening broths. I tried every remedy Mother had taught me in the stillroom, but nothing seemed to help. Birdie Crane nagged at me to rest. She warned me that I risked my own health, but what point was there in living if Will did not?
When the bells began to ring on the seventeenth day of November, signaling the death of Queen Mary, I barely lifted my head from Will’s chest. I had fallen asleep sitting beside his bed.
Stiff and sore, I considered rising and going to the window. That required too much effort. Even when Birdie came in to confirm the news that the clanging meant the queen was dead and that her sister, Elizabeth, was queen, I felt no elation, no surge of hope. It was a struggle merely to overcome my sense of despair.
“Elizabeth?”
I gasped and turned to stare at Will. His eyes were open and clear for the first time in days.
I touched my hand to his forehead. The fever was gone.
“I’m here, Will,” I whispered.
“Not you, Bess.” His voice was hoarse from disuse. “Elizabeth. Elizabeth is queen?”
He’d heard the bells, heard Birdie’s announcement. “So it seems.”
He tried to throw off his blankets. “I must get up. I must ride to Hatfield. Everyone will flock to her now, seeking advancement. To stay away would—”
“You cannot go!” I pressed with both hands on his shoulders, forcing him back. When he lay still again, I glared at him. “You will kill yourself if you try to get out of bed too soon. You almost died, Will.”
“Then send word to her. Let her know we are her loyal subjects.” His agonized plea tore at my heart. “We must remind her, Bess. She must remember what we’ve suffered all these years at her sister’s hands. You must tell her.”
“I will write to her.”
“No. No, you must go in person.” With agitated fingers, Will plucked at his covers.
“I will not leave your side, not even to assure our future. If you die, Will, I have no future.”
He was too exhausted to argue for long. When he fell asleep, I wrote to Her Grace. The new queen was under no obligation to restore Will’s title or estates or marriage. And if she was as skilled at holding a grudge as others in her family had been, we had no hope of advancement. But I put my heart into my words and hoped for the best.
That done, I concentrated on helping Will recover. I made strengthening broths with my own hands, and gave him infusions of herbs to restore him to full health. In the days that followed, he continued to improve. I counted my blessings, resigned to accept whatever fate awaited us. We would continue the life we’d lived these last few years. What did it matter if we had titles or wealth? We had each other.
But one thing worried me. If the queen refused to restore the legality of our marriage, the Church of England could step in to separate us, as they had once before through the machinations of the lord protector. I’d been exiled to Chelsea. Will had been forbidden to see me again on pain of death.
Never again, I vowed. We would go into exile in France if we had to. After all, the former ambassador owed me a favor. A bubble of hysterical laughter escaped me at the irony of that!
Queen Elizabeth left Hatfield on the twenty-third of November, accompanied by over a thousand people. Over a thousand supplicants, I thought when I heard of it. With all of them vying for favor, what hope of preferment did Will and I have?
Her Grace moved into one of her own houses, the Charterhouse in Smithfield, outside the city gates, postponing her return to the Tower. I could understand why she was in no hurry to be installed there to await her coronation. She would remember all too well the months she had spent there as a prisoner.
The morning of the twenty-eighth of November dawned crisp and clear. Will was out of bed. He was still frail, but the Blackfriars precinct extended north to Ludgate and the houses along that wall overlooked the new queen’s route as she made her formal entry into the city. Will and I could sit in a window and watch the royal procession pass by.
When Queen Elizabeth came in sight, glittering with jewels and mounted on a brightly caparisoned palfrey, Will staggered to his feet and pushed the shutters open wider. He leaned out so far that I feared he would fall. I clasped both arms around his waist to keep him in. Only when I was sure he had his balance did I release him and glance away from his face.
Elizabeth Tudor’s piercing black gaze met mine. She had reined in her horse directly beneath our window.
Awkwardly, Will bowed while I made a deep court curtsy.
“We are glad to see you so well, my lord marquess,” the queen called out, using the title her sister had taken from him. “When you have fully recovered your health, you must come to court.” Her gaze shifted to me and she smiled. “And you must bring Bess—your wife the marchioness—with you.”