He considered his wife with approval.
“You did well to tell me what you heard. The Queen, poor lady! God rest her soul! I know you love her truly…” “And him, I hate as truly! ” said the right-minded Christian soul, Lady Tyrwhitt.
Her husband smiled thinly in his thin beard.
“I have no love for him, either! Nor have others I could name.”
In Elizabeth’s private sitting room at Hatfield the cofferer, Thomas Parry, sat at the table, quill in hand, checking a list of items on a long roll of paper. Dame Ashley sat near, a lace pillow and bobbins in her lap, her plump hands moving swiftly.
“I fail to see,” Parry said, his eyes on the paper before him, “why it should cost all this to run a small household such as my Lady Elizabeth keeps here at Hatfield. There was less money spent when we kept house with the Queen at Chelsea.” He peered sideways at Ashley.
“Why did we ever leave there? ”
“Because she chose to.” Ashley’s eyes followed the bobbins. Her tone was final. But Parry was not to be daunted.
“They have it differently at Court,” he remarked, his quill squeaking on the paper.
“You would, of course, be aware of all that goes on at Court,” Ashley said with heavy sarcasm.
“I have ears, like any other. I hear what is said.”
“Aye! and they lie in saying it—whatever it be.” Ashley 111
stubbornly kept up the pretense that they neither of them knew what they were talking about. “The Queen was with child. She could not have a harum-scarum thing like Bess on her hands, at such a time.”
“Her harum-scarum ways are wondrous quieted down,” was Parry’s comment. “And the Queen being now delivered, will we return to Chelsea?”
“Who knows?” was all he could get from Ashley.
“I am sorry the child was not a boy,” Parry said. “I know what hopes Lord Thomas had set on an heir.”
Ashley smiled in a placid and superior fashion.
“He’s just as set up over his girl, you mark my words.” Parry came to the point, without further fencing.
“Well, so he keeps from here, it will be better. For the love of God, let not his name and the Lady Elizabeth’s be closer linked than they are already. Nay, dame, no call to turn angry against me. I speak what I know. Her well-being and well-seeming are as dear to me as ever it is to you. You fretted yourself a-plenty over Lord Thomas’s behavior; what manner of use to pretend now?”
“Well, well. All that’s over and could be forgotten. Get you back to your adding of columns. That’s where your heart is.”
“Then leave off talking,” Parry ordered with dignity. He ran his eye down the column of figures as though searching for something. “Ah, here it is. Eighty pounds, an item, and no name to it. What was it for?”
“You marked it down. I did not. You should know.” “William Cecil comes for this report today. I cannot send
back a limping catalogue of her expenses for the Council to chew over.”
“Then ask her. She will tell you.” Ashley lifted her head and her hands halted among the bobbins. “What’s that? Someone comes from downstairs.”
“Like enough. The house is full of people. They go upstairs and down.” Parry made a sweeping movement of his pen to illustrate the remark. He was by way of quelling Ashley after her snub to himself. The two were excellent colleagues and good cronies but they sparred continually.
The door was flung open with such haste and force that it hammered against the wall. And instantly the same look of dismayed apprehension leaped into both the elderly faces: because there was only one person who would come charging into the room, into the house, in such a manner.
“Lord Thomas!” Parry ejaculated as Thomas Seymour strode in. He was in riding clothes, thick with dust and breathing deep and hard as though he had torn across country.
“Ashley,” he demanded curtly, “where’s Bess?”
It was so unlike him to take no genial notice of the two who stood gazing at him, to ignore Parry’s exclamation as though no one had spoken, that they looked from him to each other in puzzled questioning.
“In her chamber,” Ashley answered. She pulled herself together and deliberately assumed her usual manner of garrulous greeting, but there was an anxious look in her eyes. Elizabeth had once said that Ashley played mistress of the house to all comers, to such an extent that she herself had felt that she should borrow an apron of Amy and bob curtsies at the door.
… Ashley’s retort had been “Shame on you that there’s need for me to show some manners since you show so little! …”
“Oh, my lord,” she told him expansively, “it does me a world of good to see you. And my lady—how happy she’ll be! How does the babe? And how is my lady Queen?”
Seymour did not even answer. He looked past her to Parry standing by his table.
“Parry, give us leave awhile,” he said. “I would see Bess alone.”
Parry cleared his throat. His slow voice never rose or quickened at any time; his words carried the more weight because they invariably came in a mild grumbling tone.
“Begging your leave, my lord, may I ask that you keep Dame Ashley in the room? Your brother keeps a close watch on this house, and your own.”
“What of it?” Seymour said through his teeth.
“My lord,” Parry persisted heavily, “even at risk of your anger I must speak—”
“God! Hold your tongue!” Seymour shouted. It was the harsh cry of a man whose control is breaking under the intolerable. Men on the rack uttered such cries.
“My news will override your gossip,” he panted. “I meant it first for Bess, but run, run, and shout it out to the whole household. My news from Sudeley—”
“My lord—the Queen—” Ashley faltered.
“The Queen is dead.” Seymour swung on his heel and went to the fireplace, and gripped the carved overmantel, standing with his back to them.
“My lord …” Parry whispered helplessly.
“Go get me Bess,” Seymour said without turning his head.
Parry was out of the room without a word. Ashley spoke incredulously, as though half stunned.
“They told us she was well. They sent us word the babe was born and she was well—”
“She lay in her bed for a week and bled her life out,” Seymour said, speaking as though he were choking.
“My lord … my lord …” Ashley began to whimper.
“Kate’s gone. What’s left of my heart is here.”
Ashley came nearer, treading heavily, stood behind him, put out a hand to touch his bowed shoulder, and let it fall.
“For your own sake and my lady’s, bide your time, I beseech you, and come to her when it is meet. It will not do—my lord, it will not do—that you come fresh from your wife’s deathbed, to the girl half England believes you to have made free with.” Ashley paused to steady her shaken breath. And Thomas Seymour’s distraught and ravaged face took on an expression of something akin to respect as he looked at her. Old cluck-hen Ashley … bearding him … God save the woman, she’d fight like any eagle to defend her Bess!
She added, appealingly: “Your brother connives against you already, because of her.”
“My brother connives against me in any way he can, and always has, and will, until the end of time, or one of us is dead!”
The room had two doors, one from the main staircase, a second from a winding narrow stairway which climbed to Elizabeth’s great bedroom above. This door stood open, and she stood on the stairs, framed in it, before they heard or saw her. Her voice was dead and hollow-sounding, as she said: “Is it true?”
Seymour and Ashley turned simultaneously. Neither could speak. Elizabeth was across the room with her own darting flight, standing before him, her hands gripping his arms, her eyes searching his face. Her own was bloodless.
He could not speak.