Young Bess by Margaret Irwin Read Free Book Online Page A

late. I could never have got anything half so beautiful for you if you had won. But you will win next time, won’t you?’
    ‘Oh no,’ said Mary with a rather bitter little laugh, ‘you will always win.’
    There was a moment’s uncomfortable pause. Why
did
Mary say these things? There was no answer one could make to them.
    But Queen Catherine, looking in to tell them to come and play Blind Man’s Buff, made everything seem happy and smiling again, as her dear Pussy-Cat Purr always did. She discussed Mary’s patterns and advised the goose-turd green rather than the brilliant new colour, popinjay blue, that Mary hankered after. ‘The goose-turd would be far more becoming to your delicate fair skin,’ she said tactfully, and they all giggled when Mary wrinkled up her round button of a nose and objected that it had a stinking name!
    Catherine took her arm as they left her room and chaffed her about all those gloves. Had the King of Poland sent them? He was the latest suitor for Mary’s hand; King Henry was encouraging him, and the Queen was really hopeful.
    But not Mary. There had been too many suitors ever since her early childhood: the Emperor Charles; James V of Scotland; François I, who had gallantly preferred her to the Princess of Portugal ‘with all her father’s spices’; even her own half-brother, the illegitimate Duke of Richmond, suggested by the ‘advanced’ Pope Clement as a means of securing the Succession – but found Henry less broad-minded. And now there was the danger that a foreign Papist husband would press her claim as the Papist heir to England: but still herfather used her as bait. ‘A bride in the hand is worth two in the bed,’ he said.
    ‘As long as he lives,’ she broke out, ‘I shall be only the Lady Mary, the most unhappy lady in the world.’
    She burst into tears, dragged her arm away from her stepmother’s, ran back into her room and slammed the door.
    ‘Poor woman!’ said the Queen, and turned to Jane and her small sister Catherine, who were looking profoundly shocked. ‘I pray you will never know such unhappiness as your cousin’s,’ she said. Something told her that it was no use saying anything of the sort to Bess, whose little pointed face had shut itself up in an inscrutable expression. ‘Come,’ she cried gaily, ‘we mustn’t miss the Blind Man’s Buff. The Lady Mary will join us at the banquet.’
    The Blind Man’s Buff had already begun, and Tom Seymour was Blind Man. Staggering and groping absurdly, his black sleeveless coat, lined with cloth of gold, swinging in a wild circular movement from his shoulders, he swooped and swirled and spun round on his heel, round and round like a gorgeous spinning-top, and the men thumped him on the back and then dodged away, and the girls pulled his coat and then fled shrieking as he darted on them. Bess flung herself into the game, plucked at his sleeve, then, more daring, pinched his hand and ran away, but he was after her; so directly that he must be cheating; she nearly called ‘A Cheat! A Cheat!’ but why should she? She wanted him to catch her, and in spite of her dodging he did. Now he had to guess who it was in three guesses; his hands stroked her face, her hair, her thin bare shoulders; he was an unconscionable time in guessing.
    ‘The Lady Mary,’ he said, and there was a shout oflaughter, but it was not too absurd, for Mary was short and Bess was already the same height. ‘The Dowager Lady Dorset!’ he said, to a louder yell of laughter, for the Dowager was past seventy. He must make very sure now or he would lose his guess. He pinched her ear, and gave a tweak to her nose. ‘The Lady Elizabeth!’ he said. ‘I’d know that nose in a thousand.’
    And he pulled off his bandage and tied it round her eyes while she said low, ‘You are a poor Blind Man not to have caught anyone before.’
    ‘Ah, but you see I didn’t want to – before.’
    Now it was her turn to clutch at the air, and swing round and