Secrets of the Tudor Court Boxed Set

29

The queen dowager and her husband, Tom Seymour, were entirely on her brother Will’s side. Kathryn’s dislike of her brother-in-law, the lord protector, and his grasping wife had increased tenfold since the day Anne Seymour, Duchess of Somerset, first tried to claim she had precedence over that “jumped-up country housewife,” Queen Kathryn. Kathryn was furious on Will’s behalf when Tom brought word that Will had not only been deprived of his seat on the Privy Council but had also been banished from court.

“I take heart from the fact that he was not imprisoned,” I said.

“Wise of you,” Kathryn allowed, but I could see she was fuming.

“Will still has all his titles and properties,” Tom said. “He continues to live at Norfolk House.”

“Waiting for me,” I said, and sighed. “I do not understand why the Duke of Somerset will not see reason. He cast off his own first wife for adultery back when he was still plain Sir Edward Seymour. He should sympathize with Will’s dilemma.”

“My brother is a hypocrite and a thief,” Tom said.

Kathryn stopped pacing long enough to smile at him. “It is fortunate for him that he did not attempt to approach me when we were at Enfield, else I might have done him bodily harm.”

“It is forbidden to strike a man at court, Your Grace,” Tom teased her.

“I could have bitten him. There is no law against that.” The queen dowager might have been small of stature, but she was fierce.

She reminded me at that moment of Rig, her spaniel, who had once dared to nip King Henry’s ankle. Rig was at Chelsea, too, but he was getting on in years and spent most of his time sleeping in a basket in a corner of the solar. In addition to Kathryn’s pets, her household numbered some 120 people, including Mary Woodhull; Lady Tyrwhitt; Will’s other sister, Anne Herbert; and Anne’s youngest son.

“I do not know which makes me angrier,” Kathryn continued, “that the duke has been leasing my dower properties without my permission, or that he still has not returned the jewelry left to me in Henry’s will. He will not even release my wedding ring, or the cross of gold my mother gave me. You remember the piece, Bess, the one with diamonds on the cross itself—and three pearls pendant as well.”

What I remembered was that the queen’s jewel chest had been locked up for safekeeping in the King’s Jewel House in the Tower at the time of King Henry’s death. No matter what was in it, the Duke of Somerset had possession of it now. I wondered if Lady Somerset had convinced her husband to let her wear the queen’s jewels.

“A pity that the duke cannot see what a bad influence his wife is,” I said. “Perhaps then he would not let her lead him around by the nose.”

“I do not believe it is his nose,” Tom quipped.

Kathryn made a choking sound. Then she started to laugh. In spite of my troubles, I joined in. For a little while, I felt less sad.

A few days later, Kathryn asked a favor of me. She was concerned about her stepdaughter the princess. Elizabeth Tudor had her own household within the queen dowager’s at Chelsea. Her Grace’s tutor, a young man named William Grindal, had recently died. Elizabeth was so distraught over his loss that she was refusing to consider any of the suggestions the lord admiral and the queen dowager had made to her for a suitable replacement.

The last time I’d spoken privily with the princess had been just after the death of Jack Dudley’s brother Harry. Princess Elizabeth had advised against love, since it always led to loss. She’d been barely eleven years old at the time. I wondered if, at fourteen, she still felt the same way.

I found Her Grace walking in the gallery for exercise. Mistress Astley and several maids of honor were with her, but they faded into the background to allow me to converse in relative privacy with their mistress.

She had grown taller, slimmer, and more graceful since our last encounter and already had a well-developed bosom. Innate or learned, she also possessed the dignified bearing of a member of the royal family.

“How am I to address you?” she asked bluntly, once she’d granted me permission to walk beside her.

“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.