Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set

35

The Duke of Somerset was released from the Tower of London on the sixth of February. On the eighteenth he received a full pardon. At about the same time, Will was made great chamberlain of the king’s household. In May my father became a member of the Privy Council, although his duties at Calais kept him from attending most of the meetings. And, on the third of June, Jack Dudley married Somerset’s daughter Anne Seymour. King Edward himself attended the wedding.

Following the ceremony the duke provided a wedding feast of great magnificence. For entertainment there was a masque. It was the usual allegorical fare, with young ladies in absurd costumes representing various virtues. At nearly twenty-four, I was no longer asked to participate in such entertainments. I was a “matron,” only without the children that term usually implied.

I had begun to suspect that I might be barren. Will and I had been together now, barely apart for more than a night or two, for over two years, and that was without counting the months we’d had at Norfolk House before I’d been exiled to Chelsea. In all that time, I should have conceived. I should have had two plump babies by now, as my sister Kate did. And I’d heard that my old nemesis, Dorothy Bray, in six years of marriage had produced four healthy children.

The wedding, with its constant harping on fertility, put me in a pensive mood. It was time, I decided, to reopen the subject of adoption. I approached Lady Somerset to ask for news of our mutual niece.

At the blank look on her face, I prompted her. “The queen dowager’s daughter. Little Mary Seymour.”

“Oh, that one.” She gave a dismissive wave of one hand. “You will have to ask the Duchess of Suffolk if you wish to know how she fares. We sent the girl to her, and I have had naught to do with the child since.” She did not even know where young Mary was lodged, but supposed she lived on one of Lady Suffolk’s Lincolnshire estates.

I went in search of Will, but it was time for the tilting. No festivity the young king attended was complete unless it included coursing. I found my husband with King Edward in an antechamber made all of boughs. From this “bower” we were to watch two teams of six young gentlemen each run two courses in the field.

“Will,” I whispered, tugging at his arm to draw him to the back of the company. “I wish to visit the Duchess of Suffolk.”

He went very still. “You mean you want to see the child.” The clatter of lances from the field and the shouts of the crowd drowned out my reply, but he could see the answer in my eyes. “Perhaps in the autumn?” he suggested when it was quiet again. Before I could object to the delay, he added, “A French delegation is due to arrive soon. You know the king relies upon you to act as his hostess.”

His Grace shouted encouragement to both challengers and defenders. He was as bloodthirsty as every other boy his age, and many years away from having a wife to charm and flatter foreign envoys, one of the responsibilities of a consort. At present, for want of a queen and lacking a woman of higher rank in residence, the task of entertaining ambassadors and other important visitors continued to fall to me. Most of the time, this pleased me. Just now it seemed a great burden.

“It is to our advantage to keep the French sweet,” Will reminded me, seeing my reluctance, “and you, my own dearest Bess, have a unique ability to delight every man you meet.”

I did not need to be flattered into doing my duty, but I took pleasure in Will’s compliments. Indeed, I took pleasure from everything about my husband, even after so much time together. I knew just how to please him, too, and as the wedding festivities continued, my thoughts drifted often to the night ahead.

I was not so very old. I could still conceive. We would simply have to try harder. I hid my smile as Will and I joined the other couples forming up for a dance.

“Perhaps we should return home soon,” I suggested when we made our reverences to each other.

“Are you not feeling well?” His voice was anxious, but the steps of the pavane carried us apart before I could answer.

“I would be glad to go to bed early,” I told him when we touched hands and paused for a moment face-to-face. I recalled the first time we had danced together and relished the memory.

“Ah,” he said. “I see.”

But first there was another tradition to observe, that of escorting bride and groom to their bed. Will and I had skipped this step, and I was glad of it. Jack Dudley’s brothers stripped him naked before they shoved him toward his young bride. Her blushes turned her flesh bright pink, all the way down to midbosom, the point at which it disappeared beneath the sheets.

Will caught me staring at Jack’s body and made a low, growling sound. I fixed him with a bland look, although I knew my eyes must be full of mischief. “He has a well-formed backside,” I observed, trying to sound innocent.

“That is not the part of him you were admiring,” Will complained.

“And I suppose you never peek at another woman’s bosom?” I teased him.

“I prefer yours.”

“And I prefer your . . . parts . . . to Jack’s.”

The flare of desire in Will’s eyes was so powerful that it had me gulping to take in air.

We were at Durham House, another of the Earl of Warwick’s properties near court. It was located on the Strand, just where the Thames curved, so that Whitehall Palace was in sight. Norfolk House was only a short distance away by boat or barge, but Will and I could not wait that long. We left the nuptial bedchamber with the other guests, but instead of heading for the water gate, Will seized a lantern in one hand and my arm with the other and hustled me along a corridor and up a flight of stairs until we came to a small room in a tower.

I was out of breath and laughing when he locked the door behind us. It was, by the evidence of desk and papers, some kind of workroom for a clerk. Beyond that, I glimpsed little except the narrow bedstead onto which Will tumbled me.

“We should have had all this,” he whispered. “The pomp. The ceremony.”

I shook my head, helping him unfasten his points and squirming to get my skirts out of the way. “I would change nothing.”

“I need you, Bess. Now.”

“And I need you.” I was more than ready for him, and as he slipped into my body and began to move, I sent a fleeting prayer winging heavenward that, this time, I would conceive. Then I thought of nothing but Will and of my own pleasure, for it was not only in the hope of children that we loved. We were as attuned to each other’s needs and desires as we had been that first night at Guildford. Will completed me, and I, him.

Later, replete, we rose and dressed and crept out of Durham House to return home. There, in our own bed, we made love again, more slowly this time, and I confided in Will my fear that I might be barren.

“I want children, Will,” I whispered.

“Children come as God wills.”

“What if it is not my fate to bear a child?”

“Then it may be I should say a prayer of thanksgiving.”

I sat straight up in bed to stare at him. “What?”

He tugged me back down beside him and tucked me in close against his side. “I mean only that I could not stand to lose you as I lost my sister.”

“Many women die in childbed, it is true.” My breath caught on a sob, thinking of Kathryn. “But others have large families with no ill effects—my mother; my grandmother, Jane Warwick. Even Anne Somerset.” She had seven more children living besides Lord Hertford, the Somerset heir, and the daughter she’d just married to Jack Dudley.

“We must leave it up to fate,” Will said in a soothing whisper. He kissed me gently on the cheek, the forehead, the lips. I cuddled close to him, secure in his love for me. I resolved to stop fretting about our lack of children. What we had already was unique and precious.

Out of respect for Will’s wishes, I did not mention Mary Seymour again for some time after that blissful night and, when the delegation from France arrived, I did my best to make them feel welcome. I must have succeeded. One wrote a poem to my beauty. Another gave me an enameled chain worth two hundred crowns as a parting gift.