Read Online Young Bess by Margaret Irwin - Free Book Online Page A
Authors: Margaret Irwin
Ads: Link
pudding. Then, even as she glanced, it sagged, a deflated bag, turned a greyish purple, and a tight smile twisted it as though trying to hold it together; the eyes opened for one instant in a puzzled, frightened stare – and then the crash came. He fell forward over the table, into clattering plates and knives and cups, and a great red pool of spilt wine pouring over and drip-dripping on to the floor like drops of blood.
Women shrieked, men sprang up, Edward Seymour rapped out a sharp order, and servants surrounded the King, bent over him, more and more of them, until at last they succeededin hoisting the inert mass into a poled chair, and staggering off with it through the wide-opened doors.
Bess unclenched her hands and saw the palms were bleeding. She looked at Tom Seymour, and saw he was looking at her. She looked hastily at her brother Edward, and saw he was finishing Jane’s marchpane. Edward liked sweets.
She slipped out and found her governess, Cat Ashley, who had already heard all about it.
‘But, Ashley,’ said Bess, ‘I thought it was François who threw the King.’
‘Sh-sh-sh,’ said Ashley.
CHAPTER THREE
The king lingered nearly a fortnight. His mind did not again wander. With Herculean courage he bent it to his will, though his face had gone black with agony, and his legs, which had had to be cauterised some time before, were plunged in a perpetual fire. Yet he forced all those last hours of his long torture to the service of his son, and the constitution of the government that might best safeguard his minority.
There was no time now to brood on the past; that company of long-forgotten comrades that had stepped forward as he began to lose his grip on life were driven ruthlessly back into the shadows. They were dead and done with; there was nothing to be done about them. With the hand of death heavy on him, every nerve and impulse in that fast decaying body reached forward to the future. His dying urgency was fiercer far than that of youth and hope.
For thirty-eight years he had worked tirelessly to secure his kingdom both on and from the Continent; to secure it at home in England, both from Papal interference and the revolutionary dangers of the New Ideas; and to secure its uncertain sovereignty over Wales, which now he had definitely incorporated with England by Act of Parliament ten years ago; over Ireland, where the sovereignty was far moreuncertain; and over Scotland, where, he had to admit in rage, it still did not exist.
With failing, gasping breath, he urged on his brother-in-law Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, the necessity of his completing Scotland’s conquest, as the first work to be done in the new reign.
Edward Seymour, as Prince Edward’s uncle, would be on the Council of Regency which Henry appointed; and with him fifteen of the wisest of his Ministers: a judicious mixture of the ‘New Men’ who inclined to reform, and conservative elements to act as a brake; such as Chancellor Wriothesley, a heretic-hater, to pull Cranmer’s lawn sleeve when it flapped too urgently at ‘Old Mumpsimuses’ – so he said with the ghost of a smile before it twisted into a grimace of pain. And he added Edward Seymour’s younger brother Tom to the Council, a lively fellow after his own kidney, with none of Edward’s priggish and possibly dangerous earnestness; he might act as a check on it, for the two brothers couldn’t abide each other.
Henry knew that Edward Seymour, beneath his stern exterior, was white with eagerness for him to die. He had accused Norfolk and Surrey of aiming at the sceptre – well, the pot may have accused the kettle. One could trust no one. The nobles were always ready to conspire, the commons to rebel. The nation itself had a proverb that the vice of the French was lechery, but that of the English, treachery. He had to leave his life’s work to a child of nine – and to what busy and ambitious schemers? What chances of treason and murder? ‘Woe to the land
Women shrieked, men sprang up, Edward Seymour rapped out a sharp order, and servants surrounded the King, bent over him, more and more of them, until at last they succeededin hoisting the inert mass into a poled chair, and staggering off with it through the wide-opened doors.
Bess unclenched her hands and saw the palms were bleeding. She looked at Tom Seymour, and saw he was looking at her. She looked hastily at her brother Edward, and saw he was finishing Jane’s marchpane. Edward liked sweets.
She slipped out and found her governess, Cat Ashley, who had already heard all about it.
‘But, Ashley,’ said Bess, ‘I thought it was François who threw the King.’
‘Sh-sh-sh,’ said Ashley.
CHAPTER THREE
The king lingered nearly a fortnight. His mind did not again wander. With Herculean courage he bent it to his will, though his face had gone black with agony, and his legs, which had had to be cauterised some time before, were plunged in a perpetual fire. Yet he forced all those last hours of his long torture to the service of his son, and the constitution of the government that might best safeguard his minority.
There was no time now to brood on the past; that company of long-forgotten comrades that had stepped forward as he began to lose his grip on life were driven ruthlessly back into the shadows. They were dead and done with; there was nothing to be done about them. With the hand of death heavy on him, every nerve and impulse in that fast decaying body reached forward to the future. His dying urgency was fiercer far than that of youth and hope.
For thirty-eight years he had worked tirelessly to secure his kingdom both on and from the Continent; to secure it at home in England, both from Papal interference and the revolutionary dangers of the New Ideas; and to secure its uncertain sovereignty over Wales, which now he had definitely incorporated with England by Act of Parliament ten years ago; over Ireland, where the sovereignty was far moreuncertain; and over Scotland, where, he had to admit in rage, it still did not exist.
With failing, gasping breath, he urged on his brother-in-law Edward Seymour, Earl of Hertford, the necessity of his completing Scotland’s conquest, as the first work to be done in the new reign.
Edward Seymour, as Prince Edward’s uncle, would be on the Council of Regency which Henry appointed; and with him fifteen of the wisest of his Ministers: a judicious mixture of the ‘New Men’ who inclined to reform, and conservative elements to act as a brake; such as Chancellor Wriothesley, a heretic-hater, to pull Cranmer’s lawn sleeve when it flapped too urgently at ‘Old Mumpsimuses’ – so he said with the ghost of a smile before it twisted into a grimace of pain. And he added Edward Seymour’s younger brother Tom to the Council, a lively fellow after his own kidney, with none of Edward’s priggish and possibly dangerous earnestness; he might act as a check on it, for the two brothers couldn’t abide each other.
Henry knew that Edward Seymour, beneath his stern exterior, was white with eagerness for him to die. He had accused Norfolk and Surrey of aiming at the sceptre – well, the pot may have accused the kettle. One could trust no one. The nobles were always ready to conspire, the commons to rebel. The nation itself had a proverb that the vice of the French was lechery, but that of the English, treachery. He had to leave his life’s work to a child of nine – and to what busy and ambitious schemers? What chances of treason and murder? ‘Woe to the land
Similar Books
