Traitor's Kiss by Pauline Francis Page A

“Did you know that your brother had chosen to insult her memory tonight?”
    â€œOf course I didn’t, Be— Elizabeth. I’m not so cruel – and neither is Edward. This illusion is the latest fashion in London, and Anne Seymour always seeks to be fashionable.” His mouth was too close. “You’re as beautiful as Salomé and you dance like her. So was your mother. I was a young man when she came to court. She bewitched with her black eyes…”
    â€œDon’t use that word.”
    â€œOh Bess, she entranced, enthralled, enchanted, just as you did tonight.”
    I was not listening. I was thinking: on this royal barge of satin and silk was a man of great power, the Lord High Admiral of England, who protected everything except my reputation. Out there, in a boat that reeked of death was my half-brother, who had no power, whose mother was in Bedlam because of me.
    Revulsion ran through me. “Remember your wife, sir, for she bears your child.”
    â€œHer lips aren’t so inviting.” He leaned over me, letting his beard brush my cheeks.
    Would he never be finished with such talk? Would he always think I was like my mother? Full of pride that I had dared to defend her, I stood on tiptoe to reach him and, by the silly smile on his face, he thought I was trying to kiss him.
    I tugged his beard and his eyes watered with pain. He cursed me. I cursed him. Then he lifted me off my feet, forcing me to let go. He dangled me in the air like a doll and I thought he would drop me into the Thames. Below, the icy water creaked against the sides of the barge and I thought of the girl in the death-boat, swollen with muddy water.
    At last, my stepfather took pity on me, for my teeth clattered with cold. He threw me onto the cushions. Then he stood at the barge rail, cursing the oarsmen for their slowness, cursing all the way back to Chelsea.
    Afraid, I cried into my gloves until the velvet was sodden. To calm myself, I watched the riverbanks flash by. Every candle had long been extinguished in the little cottages. Leafless trees showed solitary walkers scurrying for the safety of their homes.
    Such winter weeks had been the last weeks of my mother’s life, although she had not known it. From the stillbirth of the son that would have saved her, till May Day, when she was taken to the Tower, she saw my father’s affections change towards her. She could do nothing. She was a prisoner of vile gossip long before she was taken to be questioned.
    I pondered. My mother went to the Tower on May Day, in full daylight for all to see her. Yet May Eve is a night of mystery and mischief, a night when anything can happen if you believe it can. It is a night for madness.
    It was the night I would go to Bedlam.
    I snuggled deep into my sable furs and thanked God that I had made up my mind. At last, I dared hope. If Francis had told me the truth, I might speak to somebody who had loved my mother. I might unburden myself of the thoughts and doubts that had obsessed me for so long.
    Servants were waiting at the water steps with flaming torches that would guide us back to Chelsea Palace.
    â€œI’ll wait for Kat,” I said.
    Seymour scowled. “Don’t wait too long. People will talk.”
    I stood in the warmth of the fire braziers, watching their flickering glow on the water, warming my cheeks. On these steps, I had first seen Francis. On these steps my mother had come back to haunt me. Soon I would lay her ghost to rest.
    Kat came in on the Dudley’s barge. She was snoring as it moored. As soon as she saw me, she grumbled at me, her voice thick with sleep. “You shouldn’t have been alone with him .”
    â€œHe tricked me, Kat,” I said. “But I won’t let him trick me again – ever.”
    We set off for the house, arm in arm. Above us, rose stalks entwined, their thorns sparkling in the frost like tiny swords.
    Yes, it was decided. I would go on