Young Bess Read Online Free PDF

men, though Henry had outstripped the rest of the company, but he had beckoned her on, so he must wish her to hear this conversation. Bess they did not notice; she was, indeed, at some distance and looking out to sea as though absorbed in the other ships, but her sharp ears had been listening acutely. Why was her father so kind to old Mumpsimus? (Yes, that was the perfect name for him and his meek bag face – a mouse with the mumps!) Henry had, as it happened, a warm and affectionate respect for Cranmer’s disinterested love of learning and his lack of ambition, but as these qualities did not appeal to Bess, she discounted them. And the King had been angry enough, so she had heard, when he had first received the accusation of his Archbishop’s toying with heresy. But then someone had said Cranmer was too useful for the King to lose him. How useful?
    Was it because he had already got rid of three wives out of six for the King, and might be required to get rid of a fourth? The notion came to her on a sudden heartstop of dismay asshe realised what prompted it, for she could hear her father’s and stepmother’s voices – arguing! How could the Queen be such a goose? ‘Whichever goose roasts’ – the King always said he liked nothing so well as a good theological argument; that he liked women to be intelligent – but surely anyone would know that he only liked an argument when he got the better of it; and however intelligent a woman might be, she must be less so than himself. Queen Catherine was arguing the case for translating the Bible into English; Henry was shouting that, in consequence, ‘that precious jewel, the Word of God, was being disputed, sung, and jangled in every alehouse and tavern,’ which showed how he was getting the worst of it, for he was only quoting from his last speech in Parliament, since he could not think of a fresher answer.
    Catherine evidently began to get some sense of her danger, for without any crude change of subject she adroitly introduced some flattery on the great and beneficial changes Henry had made in England’s religion. But that wouldn’t do; couldn’t she see that the King had never wanted to introduce any changes in religion, that he was as ardent and conservative a Papist as anybody – with this one exception, that he alone was to be Pope.
    And behind all Bess’s anxiety was the terrifying fact that the Queen’s friend, Lady Anne Askew, had been arrested for denouncing the Mass, and had been tortured in the Tower more than once. Was it an attempt to make her implicate the Queen? Whatever happened, Catherine must not plead the cause of her friend now – let her be tortured, racked, burnt, but if the name of Anne Askew were mentioned now, it would be the death-knell of Catherine Parr.
    It didn’t look as though Catherine would get the chance to mention it, for Henry was doing all the talking now, watching her out of the corner of a hot, intemperate eye while he threw out some ominous chaff: ‘So you’ve become a learned doctor, have you, Kate? You’re here to instruct us, we take it, not to be instructed or directed by us?’
    Kate quickly protested, but, unheeding, he began to roll his great head and mutter, ‘That’s a pretty business when women turn clerics; a fine comfort for me in my old age, to be taught by my wife!’
    It was going to happen – it was happening now – nothing could stop it. Bess shut her lips tight to keep from screaming aloud. Could nothing else happen to prevent it? Why couldn’t the French sail up
now
and attack? More fervently than any stout fellow of Norfolk, she prayed silently for a sight of their foes. ‘Oh God, let them come and invade England
now
, quick!’
    ‘Anne Askew!’ The fatal name had been spoken, it crashed on the air like the crack of thunder. But it was not the Queen who had uttered it; it was the King, accusing her of having sent the condemned woman money and promises of help, of having received heretical books