Young Bess

by Margaret Irwin

  But his father Norfolk, a grumpy fierce old man, they did not like; it was therefore possible to discuss his chances.

  ‘Mary will be sorry if he lives,’ said Edward, who had heard how Norfolk had tried to bully her into submission to her father’s divorce. ‘He told her once that if she were his daughter he’d knock her head against the wall till it was as soft as a baked apple.’

  ‘It’s that already,’ said Bess, and they all giggled. Somehow it was irresistible to make a butt of Mary when they got together, but she felt guilty and uncomfortable in doing so; poor old Mary, it wasn’t fair, especially just after she had been talking to her almost like a sister – well, a half-sister.

  ‘Why are you always rubbing your nose?’ Edward asked his sister suddenly.

  ‘I’m not,’ she said indignantly, and then in self-contradiction, ‘it tickles.’

  Ever since Tom Seymour had tweaked it in that game of Blind Man’s Buff she had felt anxious about her nose. Why did he say he’d know it in a thousand? Did he think it would be big or bony? She could feel just the faintest hook in the bone, but then all the heroines in the romances had aquiline noses. Still—

  ‘You’ll make it red if you go on,’ said Edward, and buried his own in St Paul again.

  Silence fell on them all except for the gentle rhythm of Mr Cheke’s faint snores and the sudden spurts and crackle in the fire.

  It was a wet windy night. The draught blew the woodsmoke down the chimney and the candle-flames this way and that. Bess noticed a winding-sheet of wax forming in one of them; was it for her father or for Norfolk? She shivered, and glanced at the others, but they had noticed nothing; they were deep in their Greek. ‘They’re only children,’ she thought.

  Mr Cheke woke with a snort as a puff of smoke blew into his face; he jerked up, saying, ‘Well, well, well!’ and tried to pretend that he was exclaiming at something he was correcting in the exercises and that he had not been asleep at all. The little girls smiled slyly at him; they had a great admiration for him – Jane because he was the best Greek scholar in Cambridge; Bess because he was so handsome and aristocratic looking that no one would guess his mother kept a small wine-shop in a back street there.

  ‘A forfeit!’ she cried, in what Jane thought a very pert way. ‘Whoever falls asleep must tell a story!’ And instead of reproving her, as Jane thought he would and should (again it wasn’t fair), he laughed in a shy pleased way as though she had paid him a compliment. So they all sat beside him, hunched on the hearthrug, with their hands held out from their wide sleeves to the spluttering blaze of the logs as the rain fell down the great chimney, and he told them the story of Saint George of Merry England and the Dragon. He told it well and dramatically, making Saint George speak in Latin in a very grand voice, and pointing out a great dragon with fiery eyes that they could all see in the fire. The girls listened with grave attention, but Edward startled them all by bursting out laughing. It was the more astonishing as no one had ever heard him laugh before; a pale little smile was the most he had ever achieved. Nor could he tell what he had found so funny in the story; he just went on laughing in that shrill childish treble, to their consternation, for no one in the Palace should do it on the night the King was dying, and for Edward of all people to do it was so odd as to be uncanny.

  Jane said in her sedate fashion, ‘They say Crassus laughed only once in his life, and that was at an ass eating thistles.’

  ‘But St George isn’t an ass,’ said Elizabeth rather sharply.

  ‘Hee haw! Hee haw!’ brayed Edward weakly, wiping his eyes; then began to laugh again.

  Was he bewitched? He looked as though he had been suddenly transformed into a goblin, with that small mouth stretched from one to other of the immensely long ears that peaked up above his straight hair, and the little round button of a chin turned to a sharp point. Was he really a changeling? Bess asked herself with a twinge of childish fear.

  Mr Cheke in his kind way said he was over-tired, excited, he had got another of his colds, and had better go to bed and he would tell Mother Jack to bring him a hot posset to drink. Mrs Jackson had been Edward’s nurse ‘as a child,’ he would explain gravely, but he still called her Mother Jack and got her to tuck him up in bed on every possible excuse; Bess said it was why he had so many colds.

  She decided to go to bed too; it was better than doing nothing. She left the room with exaggerated grace, for she thought Mr Cheke was looking at her.

  But in bed she could not sleep. She lay watching the firelight through her bed-curtains, hearing the rain drip-dripping, and all the time the minutes too were dripping past; old Mumpsy-mouse was slipping along down the black rain-drummed river in his barge, landing at Westminster, coming up to Whitehall Palace, coming into that awful room where the King lay already unconscious, the greatest King England had ever had, people said, and there he lay, a rotting hulk, with the life drip-dripping away from him.

  She shivered and huddled the blankets more closely round her. All the warmth imparted by the silver warming-pans seemed to have gone chill; the sheets were cold as cere-cloths to wrap the dead in, so she told herself with an almost enjoyable thrill in working up her own fears.

  The great clock outside tolled out midnight: one, two, three, four—; if that hulk still kept its fierce hold on life, by eight o’clock tomorrow old Norfolk, listening to the rain, and the minutes dripping past, would then be beheaded. Would they go down to hell together, the King’s hands gripping his servant’s throat?

  She did not care for old Norfolk, but he was in ‘that very narrow place, the Tower, from which few escape except by a miracle,’ and that place exercised a terrifying spell on her imagination; was it because of her mother’s last hours there? Or because – because somewhere in the unwritten future she might find herself floating down the rain-drummed river to the Water Gate that is only opened to admit traitors?

  Past and future, death and life, the air all round her was full of forces struggling together in the dark, and behind them, flowing on endlessly, relentlessly, the dark river of Time, bearing them all away.

  With a sudden panic-stricken movement she leapt out of the bed, pulled on a long, fur-lined bedgown, thrust her bare feet into a pair of heelless embroidered slippers, and went hastily, stealthily out of the room.

  The Palace was alight, silent, waiting. She ran along the passage and paused as she saw at the end of the long gallery the armed halberdiers standing at attention like statues against the tapestry that moved in the wind so that its patterned figures looked more alive than they. What use were they? They could not hope to bar Death from stalking down the gallery, in through that door at the end. She slipped back behind the corner of the passage as she heard the faint sound of a voice, very low, but fast, urgent, almost desperate, coming near, then further away till lost in silence, then back again, up and down, up and down the gallery. She peeped round the corner again and saw Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, walking there with his friend Sir William Paget, the Secretary of State, and talking, talking as if he would never stop, flinging out his arm every now and then in an abrupt, angry gesture. Sometimes Paget would lay a hand on it as if to restrain him, and once he spoke, clearly, ‘Too many irons in the fire,’ she heard, but that was all, and indeed he had little chance to speak through that low persistent torrent of words. Their shadows ran up against the wall as they advanced, Paget’s thick nose and two-pronged beard sticking out of his great fur collar in absurd exaggeration, while Edward Seymour’s face ran into a long narrow point; the shadows grew, then dwindled, then came again, then away.

  The clock boomed out a single note. It was one o’clock, it was morning, it had only to strike seven more times and then—

  The door at the end of the gallery opened. The two men walking up and down stopped dead, their faces turned towards the open door and the little close-knit group of figures that came out of it, walking very slowly with bent heads and a faint intermittent murmur of voices, just as though they were mumbling in c
hurch, Bess thought. Old Mumpsy-mouse was in the middle of them, his face yellow and glistening with sweat under the waving torches; and, yes, with tears; he drew his sleeve across it and mopped it as he came up to Seymour and his friend, and said on a beautiful low yet clear note, like the toll of a bell:

  ‘All is over. His Majesty has died in the faith of Christ.’

  They were all coming on now down the gallery towards her. Bess had slid back behind the shadowed corner of the passage and now fled noiselessly down it. Had they seen her, were they coming after her? She dared not look back, she turned down a little stairway of only three or four steps, sped along another corridor, swung round a corner and fell against a man. She began to sob and gasp something about a nightmare.

  ‘Steady now, steady. What’s all this?’ said Tom Seymour’s voice.

  She looked up wildly into his face with incredulous relief, and flung her arms round him. He pulled her back through a doorway into a little bare room where the firelight flickered on new wooden panels all over the walls and ceiling. He thrust a taper into the fire and lit a couple of candles on the table, took her by the elbows and turned her face to the light, while she stared, fascinated, up at those square, humorously cocked eyebrows, so unlike his brother’s fretted brows, and saw how his short hair curled towards them at the side of his head.

  ‘Now,’ he said, ‘what’s the to-do?’

  ‘The King is dead.’

  Tom Seymour drew a soft whistle through his lips.

  ‘So-o-o! I’ve won a thousand crowns.’

  She swung sharply from him. ‘How dare you bet on the King’s death?’

  ‘Not so, my Princess. I bet on old Norfolk’s life. Always said there’s no axe long enough to reach him.’

  ‘Yes, he’ll live. I’m glad.’

  ‘Are you fond of your great-uncle?’

  ‘No. But I’m glad that someone who has gone to the Tower will get out again.’

  He nodded, with understanding. ‘Tell me, how did you know this of the King?’

  ‘I heard old Mumps— the Archbishop himself say it. He came out of the King’s rooms and told your brother – he was there walking up and down, talking, talking, talking.’

  ‘Trust Ned for that!’ he exclaimed with an unpleasant laugh, and added eagerly, ‘Did you hear what he was saying?’

  ‘Only one word – “Liberty.”’ (‘Oh, that!’ said Tom contemptuously.) ‘He was talking very excitedly – like this,’ she imitated the sawing movements of Seymour’s arm and the fierce solemnity of his face, in a way that made his brother chuckle – and she added, ‘but very low.’

  ‘Can’t trust his own shadow as usual – that’s the worst of these damned virtuous fellows, they never dare speak out. Well, he’s got his chance to now – it’ll be a great day for him and all his new notions. May he ride ’em safely, that’s all – and maybe he won’t!’

  He had forgotten her, his handsome angry face was sparkling with malicious interest as though he were looking on at some play she could not see; but suddenly he turned from it, looked sharply at her and asked:

  ‘What were you doing running about the Palace in your shift?’ and gave a pull at her bedgown, which she quickly hugged round herself again.

  ‘I was frightened. I heard the clock strike. I had to know – or anyway do something.’

  He bent suddenly forward, paused, then put his arms round her, kissed her swiftly on the chin and cheeks, and at once let her go as she struggled.

  ‘I’m thirteen and a half,’ she said indignantly. ‘I’m too old to be kissed.’

  ‘Too young, more’s the pity. Now run back to your room, or to your maids if you’re frightened, but don’t say you met me. Child, are you crying?’ He cursed softly under his breath. ‘I daren’t keep you here, it’s too dangerous, for you as well as me. Go to your Mrs Ashley.’

  She shook her head, gulping back her tears. ‘I don’t want women. I don’t like them. They always say the correct things and expect one to say them too. I shall say them all tomorrow, I shall cry then for my father. I am not crying for him now – I don’t know who it’s for – me, I think.’

  He took her by the shoulders, very gently this time, and began to shove her out of the room, but she twisted round to look up at his face. ‘One thing I must ask of you before we part,’ she said earnestly. ‘I may never have so good a chance again.’

  ‘Ask away then, but quickly.’

  ‘How is it you’d know my nose in a thousand, and just by feeling it?’

  ‘By feeling it,’ he replied, and kissed her again, this time on her nose.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Next day Bess waited to hear the news of her father’s death as if for the first time – but nobody told it to her. Nobody seemed to know of it; the doctors went to his room as before, the guard was changed outside his doors, all just as though he were still alive. The Palace was full of whisperings and hurryings, the street outside of troops marching; on the day after, Saturday the 29th, Parliament met, but still nothing was said and no one announced the King’s death.

  Bess had to nurse her secret knowledge until Monday the last day of January, when Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, with a long, grave, anxious face, told her and her brother together that their father was dead, and that he would now be a father to them. The Council had appointed him the King’s guardian and Lord Protector of the country.

  So that was why he had delayed the news – in order to make all his arrangements safely first, and take the supreme power before the country knew what had happened. Bess, mustering her tears, and gazing up at his noble countenance (he had a finer head even than his brother Tom’s, but few noticed that), swiftly calculated what steps he must have already taken.

  So that was what he had been talking about with Paget in the midnight gallery, with their shadows going up and down, up and down – no wonder Paget had tried to restrain him! ‘Too many irons in the fire’ – how many?

  Even little Edward, without her clue to his uncle’s actions, could see something of what had happened; he began to cry and say he didn’t want a Lord Protector, and if he must have one he’d rather have Uncle Tom, and where was Uncle Tom? Edward Seymour looked grim at mention of his brother and did not answer; when he spoke again it was about something else and in a severe, repressive voice.

  Edward began dimly to realise that he would never see his father again, and that nobody else would ever make so much fuss over him; he put his head down on his arms and sobbed: ‘I don’t want Protectors, I want – I want my father.’

  Bess, who had begun to cry dutifully for her father, found herself doing so in good earnest. She put her arm round the little boy; they clung together and ignored their uncle, who hovered uneasily over them, trying to find something comforting to say, and failing, even to his own ears. It was odd, he reflected scornfully, his delicate eyebrows shooting up into his already worried-looking forehead and making a sharp network of new wrinkles – it was very odd how much better his rascally younger brother would have succeeded. Children must be as undiscerning as women, for they all alike adored Tom. But he had more important things to see to, and at last, to their relief, he went away, and as everybody else seemed too busy to attend to them at the moment, they were left alone.

  Sitting there huddled together like a couple of forlorn fledgelings, they heard the trumpets sound outside and the long strained shout of the heralds: ‘Le roi est mort. Vive le noble roi Edward.’

  ‘I don’t want to be King,’ sighed Edward, his flaxen head still tucked into Bess’s shoulder.

  She gave it a little shake. ‘Yes, you do. You’re going to be a great King like your father. Uncle Edward won’t last long. You’ll grow up soon and do what you want, and not what he wants.’

  ‘He wants me to marry that baby, the Queen of Scots, and she, Aunt Anne, wants me to marry Janet, and I don’t want either.’

  ‘How do you know?’

  ‘Janet told me so herself. She heard them talking when they tho
ught she was asleep.’

  Janet was Edward Seymour’s pretty, clever little daughter, and Bess was not at all surprised that her mother planned to marry her to the King. Edward grumbled on, ‘All these cousins – all these nasty little girls – I don’t want any of them. Janet is not royal, she’s my subject. When I marry, I’ll have a princess, a foreign one, well stuffed and jewelled.’

  ‘Stuffed?’

  ‘With money, silly, and lots of fine clothes, and perhaps a province or a navy. I’m not going to be fobbed off with a cousin and no proper dower. The Seymours are a beggarly lot, they haven’t enough clothes to go round. They can’t have, or they wouldn’t have taken Surrey’s when they got him beheaded.’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  But it seemed it was true. Edward had heard that too from Janet (in whose company he had been thrown by her mother), that her parents had seized not only the dead Earl of Surrey’s house and possessions and splendid horses – ‘Yes, even White Cherry whom he would never let any one else ride’– but all his clothes down to the very caps and stockings. A vision rose in Bess’s mind of the gorgeous scarlet dress Surrey had worn on board the Great Harry, and she broke into horrified, hysterical laughter at the thought of it on Edward Seymour, who always wore the plainest dark clothes. It wasn’t possible. Of course it must have been his wife, their Aunt Anne, who had done this horrible thing – a vulgar rapacious woman, as handsome as an Arab hunter, but with an eye like a gimlet and a mouth like a steel trap. It was all the more horrible because Surrey, though hating Edward Seymour as an upstart, had been attracted by the flashing vigour of his wife and paid her attentions which she prided herself on rejecting; he had written her an ode, ‘On a lady who refused to dance with him,’ a title that fascinated Bess, for how could any woman have refused to dance with Surrey?

  She was their thin aunt; Jane’s mother, the Lady Frances, their fat aunt. Sometimes they argued which was worse; Bess thought she knew.