my life I have been adored by fools and hated by people of good sense, and they all make up stories about me in which I am either a saint or a whore. But I am above these judgments, I am a queen. “I expect no sympathy from her ladyship,” I say bitterly. “She is my cousin the queen’s most trusted servant, as is the earl. Otherwise we would not be housed by them. I am sure she is hopelessly prejudiced against me.”
“A staunch Protestant,” Mary warns me. “Brought up in the Brandon family, companion to Lady Jane Grey, I am told. And her former husband made his fortune from the ruin of the monasteries. They say that every bench in her house is a pew.”
I say nothing, but the small incline of my head tells her to go on.
“That husband served Thomas Cromwell in the Court of Augmentations,” she continues softly, “and made a fortune.”
“There would be a great profit in the destruction of the religious houses and the shrines,” I say thoughtfully. “But I thought it was the king who took the profit.”
“They say that Bess’s husband took his fee for the work, and then some more,” she whispers. “He took bribes from the monks to spare their houses or to undervalue them. That he took a fee for winking when treasure was smuggled out. But then he went back later and threw them out anyway and took all the treasure they thought they had saved.”
“A hard man,” I observe.
“She was his sole heir,” she tells me. “She had him change his will so that he disinherited his own brother. He did not even leave money to his children by her. When he died he left every penny of his illgained wealth to her, in her name alone, and set her up as a lady. It was from his springboard that she could vault to marry her next husband, and she did the same with him: took everything he owned, disinherited his own kin. At his death he left it all to her. That is how she got enough wealth to be a countess: by seducing men and taking them from their families.”
“So—a woman of few scruples,” I remark, thinking of a mother disinheriting her own children. “A woman who is the greater power in the household, who has things done to her own advantage.”
“A forward woman,” Mary Seton says disapprovingly. “Without respect for her husband and his family. A crowing hen. But a woman who knows the value of money.” She is thinking as I am—that a woman who does not scruple to make her fortune from the destruction of the church of God can surely be bribed to look the other way just once, for just one night.
“And him? The Earl of Shrewsbury?”
I smile. “D’you know, I think he is all but untouchable? All he seems to care for is his own honor and his dignity, and of all men in England, he must be safe in that.”
1569, WINTER, TUTBURY CASTLE: BESS
How much are we being paid for her?” I ask George as we take a glass of spiced wine seated either side of our bedroom fire. Behind us the maids are turning down our bed for the night.
He gives a little start and I realize that I am, once again, too blunt. “I beg your pardon,” I say quickly. “Only I need to know for my book of accounts. Is the court to pay us a fee?”
“Her Majesty the Queen graciously assured me that she will meet all the costs,” he says.
“All of them?” I ask. “Are we to send her a note of our expenses, monthly?”
He shrugs his shoulders. “Bess, dearest wife…this is an honor; to serve is a privilege that many seek but only we were chosen. The queen has assured me that she will provide. Of course we will benefit from our service to her. She has sent goods from her own household for her cousin, has she not? We have the queen’s own furniture in our house?”
“Yes,” I say hesitantly, hearing the pride in his voice. “But really, it is only some old things from the Tower. William Cecil wrote to me that Queen Mary’s household is supposed to be thirty people.”
My husband nods.
“She has come here with at least sixty.”
“Oh,” he says. “Has she?”
For some reason, known only to men and in this instance a nobleman, he has ridden at the head of a train of a hundred people for