As I clung entreatingly to Kate, begging her to have mercy and shield me, to take off one of her petticoats and give it to me to hide my nakedness, Tom roared with laughter, smacked my buttocks, and sliced through the laces in back of my stiff leather stays and tore them away, flinging them carelessly into the rosebushes. He then sliced nimbly through the little that was left of my shift, baring the pert, firm, little pink-tipped white mounds of my breasts, leaving me wearing only my black velvet slippers, white stockings, and black silk ribbon garters tied in bows below my knees.
“Look, Kate!” he exclaimed, grabbing hold of my shoulders and pulling me away from her, pinning my arms back, as I continued to plead with my stepmother to spare me just one petticoat to cover myself as impassionedly as ever a starving beggar cried for a crust of bread. “Our Bess has acquired a bosom at last! Just look at those dainty pink buds blooming proudly on those creamy little hillocks!” He jabbed a finger at my stiff, rosy nipples, actually daring to tweak them right in front of Kate! “And look there, Kate”—he pointed down between my tightly clenched thighs—“what a fine crop of carroty curls our Bess has got!”
A dam burst within me then and tears of shame poured from my eyes and, shielding myself as best I could with my arms and hair, I broke free of them and raced across the seemingly endless expanse of velvety green lawn while behind me Tom and Kate whooped and howled with laughter, doubling over and slapping their thighs and clinging to each other in their mirth. The gardeners and their helpers stopped their work, dropped their hoes and rakes and pruning shears, and stared wide-eyed as I ran past, blinking and rubbing their eyes in disbelief. I daresay it was the first and only time in their lives they had ever seen a naked princess running across a lawn.
As I burst into the house, I could not bear to meet the stunned faces of the servants, or their hastily turned backs or averted eyes, as I bolted up the stairs. How could I ever bear to face them again knowing they had seen me thus? Like a babe in the throes of a tantrum, I howled for Kat at the top of my lungs as I hurled myself through my chamber door and straight into her arms.
“How could she do it?” I demanded, when I told her what had happened and the part Kate had played in it.
“Aye, my little chick, it is unlike her to indulge in such unseemly sport,” Kat concurred, concern creasing her brow. “She was never a one to take pleasure in another person’s pain or discomfort but to always step in and try to remedy it. ‘Kind, capable Kate,’ your father always used to call her; he swore there was never such a one as her for making things right. More than once I heard him say had Lucifer hurt his knee when he fell and Kate had been there she would have slapped on a poultice and bound it up for him, just as she always did his own sore leg.”
“Then why?” I wept. “
Why
would she do this to me?” I sobbed as I laid my head on Kat’s pillow-plump bosom and she hugged me close and stroked my hair.
“It can only mean
one
thing, pet,” Kat said, pausing meaningfully, and I raised my head to look at her. “She is jealous of you; the Lord Admiral fancies you and she knows it.”
I stood up straight and blinked. It had never occurred to me that Kate even suspected; I thought her well and truly blind to what went on behind her back and beneath her own roof.
“Try to see it her way; she’s but five years shy of forty, a fair gracious lady she is to be sure, but”—Kat looked me up and down—“not a nubile young lass like you, pet. She sees the difference, mark you, my pet, and she
feels
it too, like a lance through her heart every time she sees him look at you. A ring on her finger doesn’t always make a woman safe where her husband is concerned. A betrothal band doesn’t come with a tether to keep him always at her side and in her sights or right next to her in bed at night. A man’s a man, love, even if you put a gold ring on his hand and have a churchman say words over it. Aye”—Kat beamed broadly, like a cat licking its whiskers over a bowl of rich cream—“she’s
jealous
of you, that she is, and with good cause, eh, pet? The Lord Admiral certainly is a handsome rascal, is he not, my bonny Bess?”
She giggled and nudged me knowingly, until I blushed and looked away, too embarrassed by the stark naked truth to meet her eyes.
The awkward moment was broken when there was a knock upon the door and Blanche Parry, the wife of my steward, called out in her cheery, lilting Welsh voice that she came bearing a gift for me.
Kat snatched up my dressing gown and hurriedly bundled me into it as the door swung wide and in marched Blanche leading a procession of serving maids, each with her arms outstretched, carrying a complete new gown—bodice, over- and under-sleeves, skirt, and kirtle—in a rainbow of colors, all the best ones to suit my flame-bright hair, dark eyes, and milk-pale skin. There were a whole gamut of greens as bright as emeralds, to the more subdued shade of moss, pease porridge, and the deep green of the forest. And tawny trimmed with gold, garnet, russet, and sunset orange, sunshine yellow, regal purple, peacock blue trimmed with peacock feathers, cloth-of-gold, delicate pink, and crimson. As it was the fashion for gowns to be made in detachable parts, so that kirtles and sleeves could be mixed and matched with different bodices and skirts, dozens of eye-catching combinations were possible, and I need never appear dressed the same way for many a day. And behind them all came Tom Seymour, sauntering audaciously into the room, whistling a lively tune, as if he had not just moments before humiliated me by stripping me stark naked in the rose garden.
Like an indignant mother hen, flapping and squawking in defense of her chick, Kat rushed at him.
“For shame, My Lord Admiral, stripping a princess of England naked . . .”
“But see, Mrs. Ashley,” he said with a broad smile, and a wave of his hand to take in the bounteous array of new gowns, “now I have come to clothe her!”
“Oh!” Kat cried, affection fighting a losing battle with outrage being played out across her face, “you are a
wicked, wicked
man!” She waggled a finger at him, then convulsed in blushing giggles like a schoolgirl when he playfully snapped at it with his fine white teeth.
He caught her to him in an embrace, and drummed his hands playfully upon her plump buttocks. “Come now, Kat,” he cajoled. “Now that you’ve forgiven me—and I know you have, woman, it’s as plain as that pretty nose on your face!—will you not intercede with Her Highness there and persuade her to forgive me? Remind her that just as forgiveness is a divine quality, ’tis a worthy virtue for royalty as well!”
“Oh!” Kat cried and threw up her hands and rushed back to my side, rosy-cheeked with her face wreathed in smiles. “Come now, pet,” she turned to me and cajoled, as I continued to hold myself aloof, back straight and nose in the air, looking anywhere but at Tom. “See what pretty things the naughty man has brought you to atone for his naughtiness! It would be most unkind not to forgive him! And he is right about forgiveness being a fine, princely quality! And it would not be meet to stand on your dignity and hold a grudge when the
dear
naughty man has brought you all these pretties!”
The smiling servant women formed a circle round me, each holding her arms outstretched, offering the gorgeous gowns to me, as Tom came and put his arm around my shoulders and drew me close to kiss the top of my head. And in that instant I was conquered, my knees melted like wax over an open flame, and I crumpled into his embrace.
“Oh, Bess! My darling Bess!” he cried, burying his face in my wild, disarrayed hair.
“Are all these
really
for me?” I asked.
“Every one! And all chosen by me, just for you, my bonny Bess!” he declared proudly. “I meant what I said—it’s high time we got you out of mourning. Youth and beauty deserve color, not crow black! So I have come to tempt you! Look at this one, Bess!” He reached out to caress a gown of pink brocade. “Cunny pink!” he said, causing all the women to giggle and blush. “What?” he protested. “It is very close to the color of cunny lips; is it not, ladies? Here!” His hand shot out to snatch the sash from my dressing gown, causing it to fall open. “Let us compare!” He held a fold of the pink gown close to the cleft between my thighs. “Indeed it is!” he beamed. “Upon my soul, I declare, I have a fine eye for color, haven’t I, ladies?” He looked round the room for affirmation and all agreed that indeed he did as I blushed furiously and gathered my robe close about me. “And look!” He held the skirt of the pink gown up. “Is there not something suggestive of the shape of a woman’s cunny in the pattern of the weave?” he asked mischievously, sparking another round of blushes and giggles all around.
“This one!” he exclaimed suddenly, darting forward to snatch a gown of bright robin’s egg blue silk exquisitely embroidered with sunny yellow daffodils around the cuffs, bodice, and hem, with gold brocade under-sleeves and kirtle. “I want to see you in it now!” And so saying he shucked the robe from my shoulders, and even though Mrs. Ashley protested that to be properly dressed I needed proper undergarments—shift, stays, and petticoats—he tugged the dress over my head, then set to work adjusting the ties that attached the sleeves and bodice, before turning me round and lacing up the back, while I found myself nearly swooning at the exquisite sensation of silk against my naked skin, without the lawn and linen of shift and petticoats, and the prison of the stiff leather stays, posing a barrier between. I blushed hotly as I felt a burst of wetness between my thighs and my nipples stiffen, making their presence known through the beautiful blue silk, and lowered my eyes, shamed by the knowing smiles, titters, and whispers of the serving maids and wished Tom would dismiss them.
“There!” Tom beamed. “Didn’t I tell you? It’s high time you leave off those melancholy weeds; there’s no point in such vibrant beauty going around dressed like a storm cloud in black and shades of gray all the time!”
And then he was on his knees before the clothespress, fishing out the black mourning gowns and somber-hued satins and silks and damasks of ash and cinder, a whole gamut of grays from the most delicate to the darkest, and flinging them out.
“Away with this! Away!” he ordered. “I hereby banish you from My Lady Princess’s wardrobe! In with the new and out with the old!” he said to the serving maids and they obligingly laid down their armloads of peacock finery upon my bed and began gathering up the discarded garments of grief and mourning. “And now”—Tom smiled at them—“out with you all!” He pinched and patted their bottoms as they obediently filed out, blushing and giggling, a smile on every face.
“Now then.” He turned smilingly to me. He started toward me but then made a detour to my bed, where he snatched up a deep crimson satin gown trimmed with glittering jet spangles, beads, and black Spanish lace. “Wear this for me tonight, Bess. It reminds me of the dress your mother wore the night she danced in rose petals. Wear it for me tonight, Bess, and we too shall dance in rose petals!”
Then he enfolded me in his arms and kissed me long and lingeringly, then let his lips trail down the curve of my neck, and over my shoulder, down my arm to my hand, to the fingertips, before he backed slowly out the door.
“Oh what a man! A fine lusty fellow, is he not, Bess?” Kat enthused. “If he weren’t married already I am as sure as sure can be that he would look to have you, to be buxom and bonair in bed and at board!”
“But he
is
wed already,” I reminded Kat and myself, though in truth it seemed not to matter. Indeed, I was often surprised by just how little I cared.
That night, after supper, before he took the already yawning, bleary-eyed Kate’s arm to escort her upstairs, he brushed a good night kiss onto my cheek and whispered one word—“Midnight.”
At the appointed hour, I descended the stairs, wearing the crimson gown he had requested. He was waiting for me. And while his wife slept obliviously in a room above our heads, a lute player began to softly strum a pulsing, sensual Spanish melody and Tom led me out to dance. “You dance as light as a dust mote on a sunbeam,” he said as his manservant leaned over the banister and tossed handfuls of red petals down on us.
I laughed, threw back my head, and spun round and round beneath the fluttering, fragrant red petal rain. Tom stood back and watched me, and then he reached out his hand and pulled me into his arms, and kissed me passionately, holding me so close it felt as if our two bodies had fused into one.
Yet things were never quite the same after that day in the garden. Kate seemed to grow colder, to hold herself more guarded and aloof around me. A layer of thin but impenetrable frost had frozen over my warm stepmother—just enough for me to see that she was still the same person she had always been, but that her feelings for me had changed. And another seemed now to have replaced me in Kate’s heart—my nine-year-old cousin, Lady Jane Grey, a shy little scholar who loved learning above all things, who had recently come to live with us at Chelsea. Though I did not begrudge Jane, whom I knew to be much maltreated and beaten for the slightest mistake or most trivial imperfection by her cruel and ambitious parents; this child sorely needed affection, kindness, and encouragement. I confess, my stepmother’s coolness hurt me, and because of it I was not always as kind to Jane as I should have been. She looked up to me, in a kind of awe, as if she admired me, with her mouth agape, and I would snap tartly in passing that she had best close it before a fly flew in, and go on my merry way without a thought for her feelings. And whenever Tom gave the poor little mite so much as an iota of his attention I reacted harshly, meting out even more rudeness and unkindness, so jealous was I of his time and affection, and I would sulk until he teased me out of my dark, pouting mood.