Young Bess

by Margaret Irwin

  ‘A King among kings, he was their fellow from the first,’ Mrs Ashley declared, rolling up her eyes, and Mr Parry, turning his down modestly, said, ‘Ah, but what did he care for that, whenever there was a chance to prove himself a man among men? Off he dashed in the middle of all his success and splendour at the Hungarian Court, to fight in their quarrel against the cruel Turk. “A lion in battle,” so the King of Hungary wrote of him to King Henry.’

  Mrs Ashley took up the antiphony.

  ‘And as great a sailor as soldier – look how he drove off the French Armada when they outnumbered us by five to one!’

  ‘And I was there!’ Bess thought, hugging herself, while her eyes glowed in the firelight like a cat’s.

  But she could not contain in silence her pride and glory in that towering figure on the deck of the Great Harry as the enemy sails hove into sight over the edge of the bright sea. She laughed aloud, yet her laughter had a secret sound; they pressed her for its reason, and then she said in airy tones, ‘Three hundred tall ships sailing to invade England – and then “Pouf! the wind blew them away!” That was all that happened, so the Admiral said; “We’d the luck of the wind.” What would have happened if the wind hadn’t changed just then? But no, he was certain that England would always have luck, and the wind, on her side – on his side too,’ she added tentatively.

  Mrs Ashley quickly assured her that the Admiral was born to be lucky, the youngest son of three, as in the fairytales. Hadn’t he proved himself lucky in Court and camp, and, she hoped, (with a sly look) in love? Bess leant forward and nonchalantly touched a log of wood. She thought nobody would notice, but the tutor did.

  Mr Ascham’s brain was whirling in a vortex of emotions; jealousy was shot through with pride, and a new awareness of what he himself was capable, as well as that bold and handsome conqueror of his Princess’s thoughts. Yes, they were both of them men of this new many-coloured, fast-moving age, when a man was not content to be one thing merely, but was often courtier, soldier, statesman, sportsman, all in one.

  He had just had a grave warning from his former tutor that his passion for dice and the cockpit would be his ruin. But would it? He had put his best writing into this new book he was doing on the Cockpit; he was making English prose, a new thing, the thing that Englishmen would write in future instead of the old monkish musty Latin.

  Those two bawds were chuckling now over the Admiral’s pranks that had made him the favourite of King Henry and the playboy of Europe; ‘but of course his elder brother can never understand that. He can only see him as the bad boy of the family!’

  The tutor unexpectedly chimed in on an acid note; only Englishmen were so stupid as to think that to be solemn, dull and unpleasant was a sure criterion of solid worth and intellect. King Hal had known better, because the joy he took in living had been more French than English, and the keenness of his wits more Italian than either. ‘He was not content merely to govern with a strong hand such as England needed; he has made her excel in music, in singing and dancing above all other countries, and encouraged plays to be written in English – light and transient toys they are called by the solemn dullards, but there’s no knowing what those plays might become in the hands of some great poet. He wrote himself, was musician and composer, dancer and draughtsman, the best of our sportsmen – and our greatest ruler!’

  ‘And my father,’ Bess murmured.

  They spoke of King Hal, while she thought of the Admiral, and Mr Ascham of himself.

  ‘Man is a microcosm,’ he cried. ‘The full man should take all life for his province.’

  ‘What’s this about a full man?’ came a great voice from the doorway. ‘Here’s one that’s empty as an old can.’

  Bess half rose from her chair, then sat down again, gripping its arms. All the resentment that had been surging in her against the Admiral these past weeks was whirling away. She tried to clutch on to it. She had forgotten Catherine while she listened to praise of him; now she told herself, ‘Catherine is dead and he doesn’t care. Catherine is dead, and he and I made her unhappy. Catherine is dead, and it’s her I loved, not him. Oh God, make me go on loving her and not him.’

  It was no good. He was there at the end of the hall flinging off his cloak, he was striding across to her, lifting her hand to kiss it, and how warm and strong his grasp was round her fingers, how warm and strong his voice. His eyes were laughing into hers again – how dared he ever laugh at her again? She had told herself she would never laugh with him again – you might as well tell the grass not to grow nor the birds sing. She raised those drooping white-lidded eyes and looked full at him.

  ‘Why have you come, my lord?’ She tried hard to make the question sound casual and matter of fact.

  ‘Don’t you know, my Lady Bess?’

  There was no attempt to make the answer sound casual.

  Tom in fact had recovered. Which does not mean that he had never been sick – sick unto death, for that was what his soul had been, a ship that had lost its rudder and was veering wildly to the winds of despair and utter weariness of all ambition. He had been within an ace of killing himself in the days that followed Cathy’s death.

  But his body simply would not let him stay sad; the unthinking high spirits of sheer physical vigour would keep tingling through his veins, reminding him even in the very midst of his stormy grief that it was good to be alive. Being miserable was no use to anyone, least of all to Cathy. If he did not kill himself he must go on living; and if he went on living he must be busy, active, make plans, take chances, run risks, or he would be blue-moulded with misery. He must have bustle, music, the flickering light of hundreds of candles and torches, the noise of people coming and going, of people talking, courting him, discussing gay and desperate ventures, and of his own voice laughing away their fears.

  He caught again at all the old schemes that he had begun to let fall through his fingers in the first shock of his despair; countermanded the disposal of his household; sent for his everwilling old mother to come and take charge of the female part of it; and wrote off to Jane’s parents to have her returned to his care and his mother’s chaperonage, explaining that he had only sent her away because he had been ‘so amazed that I had small regard either to myself or my doings.’

  They hesitated; the Admiral was still dangling that prize of the Crown of England for their daughter, but was he a suitable match-maker? There were all sorts of stories about him and Elizabeth even while his wife was alive and the Princess a schoolgirl under his roof; and now he was a widower, with only old Lady Seymour to hold him in check – and when would she ever do, had ever done such a thing?

  Their timid half-denials put more life into the bereaved widower than all the beautiful letters of condolence he had received. Now he had something to do; he must ride off on the instant and put some spunk into these Grey creep-mice, and off he went to lead Henry Grey once more up and down the garden path. He told the old gentleman that if he backed out now he would lose all hope of ever getting a King for a son-in-law. Since there was no longer any chance of marrying the little Queen of Scots to King Edward, the Protector had now the single aim of pushing forward his own daughter, Janet Seymour, as his bride; Tom had certain knowledge of this, he declared, thumping Henry Grey’s top waistcoat button as the little man hummed and hawed and Tom had to bite his lip to keep from whistling ‘How shall I make this ass to go?’

  In fact, he only agreed to ‘go’ after the irresistible argument of ready cash. Tom paid the more pressing of his debts; and Jane Grey was told to write a nice letter to the Admiral telling him she would be glad to return to his guardianship.

  She needed no telling; the Lady Frances, reading her daughter’s letter, felt that Jane had rather overdone her ‘thanks for the gentle letters which I received from you’ and ‘your great goodness toward me…as you have been unto me a loving and kind father, so I shall be always most ready to obey your godly monitions and good instructions.’

  ‘God’s blood, I hope
not!’ rapped out her anxious mother, slapping her riding-whip against her fat thigh. ‘And why sign yourself his “most humble servant during my life”?’

  ‘Because I could not be it after my death,’ said Jane. The logic was unanswerable. And since even the threat of a whipping would not make Jane write her letter again, or even scratch out the last three emphatic words, it was despatched ‘this 1st of October 1548.’

  Through the great woods that spread for miles round Bradgate the Admiral and his retinue again came riding, the golden leaves falling round them; again he dined and wined, walked and talked, hunted and made merry with the Greys. But this time when he left, Jane rode back with him to his house in the Strand – a long ride, they had to stop at more than one town en route for cold beef and beer for themselves and their numerous escort, and Jane was astonished at the gusto with which he ate it, and, for the matter, at her own. On this lovely changing autumn day the world seemed to be beginning all over again.

  Yet only a month ago she had followed Queen Catherine’s corpse to the grave, her long black robes trailing behind her. And this splendid figure in the sunlight beside her, filling the keen air with his talk and laughter, had then been a great dumb beast, his face the dark shadow of what it now was. And Catherine would not be there to run out with little cries of greeting when they reached Seymour Place.

  ‘Oh God,’ Jane sighed to herself, ‘if only everything could always stay the same!’

  But in one respect change was welcome; her cousin Bess would not be at Seymour Place.

  Jane was only a side-line. Bess was the Admiral’s main ambition – and unfortunately for him, not only an ambition. He knew that to pursue her in haste was to imperil all his hopes, not only of her but of personal safety for them both; yet he could not help it. He was mad, but not blind; seeing the danger, yet remembering only the warmth of her lithe body tucked down beside him in the barge, of her pointed face dimly white in the luminous darkness of that night last May; of her evasive mocking answers to his furious questions.

  She had never told him who the man had been that he had seen merely as a shadowy form against the light as the girl leapt up to it, her arms outflung in a wild movement of childish abandon. She was growing up so fast; who was she seeing, falling in love with perhaps, even at this moment? There could be no one but the tutor; but these tutors were dangerous fellows, they were there all the time, and this one was young, a sportsman who taught her to shoot and play and sing as well as read Greek.

  Never trust a music master – he knew! He’d given music lessons himself, though not for money. But he’d got his reward. Was this Mr Ask’em (that’s bad) – Mr At’em (that’s worse) getting his?

  The possibility took him headlong down to Hatfield.

  The sight of Mr Ascham’s pleasant smile and square shoulders (a bookworm ought to stoop and frown) did not encourage him; nor did the way he sang praises of his pupil when the Admiral, as was right and proper, enquired about the Princess’s progress in her lessons. Sang was the word, for Mr Ascham became positively lyrical when he mentioned the beauties even of Elizabeth’s handwriting – true, he was forming it himself. And when he spoke of the grace and ‘grandity’ of her deportment, the Admiral, amused by this odd tribute to her budding queenliness, was seriously alarmed by the light that glowed in those mild brown eyes as they turned to follow the swift and resolute movements of his pupil. She went past them in the stiff embroidery of her clothes as though walking on Mount Gargaros on ‘new grass and dewy lotus and crocus and hyacinth’ bringing sunshine in her wake. Aloud, the tutor spoke the words of the old blind poet, and the Princess, turning her head, flashed him a smile and called something back as if capping his quotation. This Greek, the Admiral decided, gave them an unfair advantage.

  And of course he could get nothing out of Elizabeth when he questioned her. Yes, Mr Ascham was charming; he made her lessons much more interesting than poor Mr Grindal had done; yes, it was an advantage that he was not only learned but a keen sportsman and musician.

  It was not the first time he had been baffled by this impertinent chit. Would he ever get the better of her till he held her in his arms and made her his own? Would he even then?

  He took her by the elbows and told her he was mad for her; and she looked up into his eyes and laughed.

  ‘You need not be so coy,’ he said. ‘The report goes now that I am to marry little Lady Jane.’

  She tore herself out of his hands and whisked away like a whirlwind. ‘So you’ve two strings to your bow! Then you’ll never shoot straight.’

  He gave a roar of delight at her sudden white fury. ‘You little fool, it’s a joke, that’s all. I’ll not have her if you’ll have me.’

  ‘Nor my sister Mary? Nor that unfailing stopgap, Anne of Cleves? Report has married you to both these lately. It says indeed that you don’t care whom you marry as long as it’s a princess and her dowry.’

  ‘So much the better,’ he answered casually, ‘The more they guess, the less likely to guess right.’

  ‘Is that why you’ve been making enquiries into their lands and inheritance as well as mine?’

  ‘Of course. Has it made you jealous? It has! Come, admit it!’

  ‘I’ll admit nothing,’ she cried in rage. ‘It’s nothing to me whom you marry.’

  ‘Not if it’s yourself?’

  ‘I won’t marry you, or anyone. I’ll not be tied and bound. A wedding ring is a yoke ring.’

  ‘Not between friends. Aren’t we good friends?’

  ‘Very good.’

  ‘And don’t you love me?’

  ‘I love a friend as myself. But I should love a husband more than myself, since I should be giving myself to him.’

  ‘And will you not give yourself to me?’

  He caught her to him, he kissed her again and again until she took fire from his lips and kissed him back suddenly, savagely, then tore herself away, darted across the room, picked up a comfit-box and started cramming her mouth with sweets as if to besiege it against further kissing, and mumbled with her mouth full, ‘You can’t marry me without the Council’s consent, or you’ll marry nothing. And that you’d never do.’

  ‘Would you?’

  Almost – when he looked at her like that, and his voice dropped onto that deep note – almost she thought she would give up anything she had to be his. Anything she had, yes perhaps – but anything she might have? Even that future that had been written for her in the stars? One could alter that future, for man had free will to disrupt his own fate if he would. Would she?

  She looked at him, and her eyes were not mocking now, nor angry; they were clear and blank as water in a glass. She swallowed hard, gulping down the last of the sweets.

  ‘No,’ she said.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  The Admiral decided to attend to business. He had already been doing so on the lines that had annoyed Elizabeth, enquiring into her lands and income and, disappointed with the results, comparing them with those of the other female legatees of King Henry’s Will, to make sure that she was not being cheated. He also tried to set about an exchange of her lands for those in the same area as his own in the west, and suggested to her that she should ask the Duchess to help work this with the Protector. Bess could hardly believe her ears. She ask the Duchess for anything?

  ‘I will not. I’ll not begin to flatter and sue now.’

  It was awkward. He could not explain that he was already fortifying his castle of Holt in Cheshire in case of a possible revolt, and that in that case it would be well to have her lands in line with his. A female conspirator just fifteen was not a good choice of ally.

  He fell back on his friends, and he had plenty of them. He asked them about their lands, how near they marched with his own, what power they had in them, urging them to increase it, and not merely with the gentry – ‘for they are not the fellows that count, they’re too cautious and heavy; the little they have hangs round their necks like a millstone, they’re for ever feari
ng they’ll lose it. No, the men for my money are the yeomen, the true leaders of the countryside, in touch with all the peasants as we can never be. Shake hands with the yeomen of England, and you have your hand on England itself.’

  And he urged on his friends those Rules for a Perfect Guest that had alarmed the Earl of Warwick: to take your own wine and victuals and leave them to your hosts while declaring their tough mutton and home-brewed ale and cider the best you ever tasted. By these simple means he would soon have the best part of the country with him; and as Lord High Admiral he had the sea, with the islands as naval bases at his back.

  When he had all that power in his hands, the Council would have to consent to his marrying Elizabeth. And of her own consent he was now pretty certain.

  Even he knew that he must not go and see her too often at this juncture, but the Ash-Cat was working steadily for him, and Parry, the cofferer and steward – ‘stout fellow Parry,’ and loyal to the bone to them both.

  He wrote frequently to her and gave the messengers orders to wait while the Princess wrote her answers; and write she did, always very properly and circumspectly: but she did not keep the messenger waiting. And he felt he could read between the lines.

  ‘I am a friend not won with trifles, nor lost with the like.’ What a queer solemn assurance from the chit who had just been flirting so lightly with him!