He reaches into his pocket. “I had this ring made for you. I sketched it out for the goldsmith as soon as we were betrothed.”
I give a little gasp of pleasure as he shows me his clenched hand then opens his fingers to show me his gift. It is exquisitely made. A hidden spring opens the broad ring and shows five golden links that form an inner ring.
“And I wrote you a poem,” he tells me.
I am entranced. I turn the ring over and over in my hand, admiring the little catch and how the entwined rings spring out and then hide again.
“As circles five, by art compact, show but one ring in sight,
So trust unites faithful minds, with knot of secret might,
Whose force to break (but greedy death) no wight possesseth power,
As time and sequels well shall prove; my ring can say no more.”
“A knot of secret might,” I repeat.
“I promise you,” he says. “No wight possesseth the power to break us.”
“No one,” I say, putting my hand in his.
The door bursts open without announcement and Janey comes in, feverish and flushed, with a rosy-faced redheaded man with a beard, dressed like one of the Swiss reformers in a black furred gown.
“Here,” says Janey, gesturing to both of us with a flourish.
He gives a short laugh at our clasped hands and the prepared bed, and bows to us both. Ned has the prayer book at the ready and he puts my wedding ring—my beautiful wedding ring with its secret might—onto the open page. The preacher recites the order of service and we repeat it after him. I am dazed: this is nothing like my first wedding at Durham House to a stranger, with my sister Jane going before me, marrying Guildford Dudley under protest, and two days of opulent feasting. I hardly hear the gabbled words in the strange accent; I hardly hear my own assent. It is over in moments and Janey sweeps the minister from the room and I hear the clink of a coin as money changes hands.
She is back in a moment. “I’ll drink to your health,” she says. “My brother and his wife. God bless you!”
“God bless us all,” Ned says. He looks down at me, his eyes warm, watching me turn his ring round and round on my finger. “Is it a good fit?” he asks.
“It’s a perfect fit,” I say.
“And what children you will have!” Janey predicts. “And so close to the throne! Tudor on one side, Seymour on the other. Say that you have a boy, and he is King of England?”
“Say we do?” Ned says meaningfully. “How shall we do that?”
“Oh! No need to hint me out of the door, I’m away!” Janey says, laughing. “I’ll read a book or play the virginals or write a poem or something, don’t worry about me. But we have to leave before dinner, remember. They will notice if Katherine is not in her place this evening.”
She flicks from the room, closing the door behind her. We are alone, my new husband and I. Gently, he takes the glass of wine from my hand. “Shall we?” he asks courteously.
As if we are engaged in some strange and beautiful dance, I turn away from him and gently he unties the laces down the back on my stomacher, so I can slip the bodice off, and stand before him in my smock. He unties the laces on his jacket and we are matching in our white embroidered linen. I turn my back to him again and he unties the ribbons at the waist of my skirt and drops it to the floor. I step out of it, and the undergown, and leave them there.
With a little smile at me, he unties the laces on his breeches and strips so that he is naked but for his shirt; he takes the hem and draws it over his head so that I can see all of him, the whole lean length of him. He hears my little sigh of desire and he laughs, and takes the hem of my smock and draws it over my head, and though I turn away and put my arms across my breasts, suddenly shy, he takes my hand and draws me to the bed. He gets in first, pulling me in beside him, and I slip between the cool sheets and shiver, and then he is on top of me and kissing me and I forget embarrassment and cold sheets and even the wedding and the minister. All I can think is “Ned” and all I can feel is my joy at the sensation, for the first time in my life, of his naked warm body against mine, from his whispering mouth in my hair to our entwined feet.
We make love, and then we doze, and then we wake and are filled once again with desire as if we will never again sleep. I am dizzy with pleasure when I hear, as if from a long way away, a tap on the door and Janey’s voice calling me: “Katherine! We have to go! It’s late.”
Shocked, Ned looks at me. “It feels like minutes,” he says. “What’s the time?”
I look to the window. I came here in the cold bright light of a frosty winter dawn and now I can see the yellow of the setting sun. “Ned! Ned! It’s nearly sunset!”
“Fools that we are,” he says indulgently. “Come up, my countess. I shall have to be your maid.”
“Hurry,” I say.
I pull on my clothes and he laces me, laughing at the intricacy of the fastenings. My hair is falling down and I want to wear my wife’s kerchief over it, but he says I cannot; I must keep it with his two rings close to my heart until we are allowed to tell everyone that we are wedded and bedded.
“I shall wear my rings on a chain around my neck,” I promise him. “I will put them on when I am alone in bed at night and dream that I am with you.”
He pulls on his breeches. “It will be soon,” he promises me. “I know Robert Dudley takes my side. He will speak for us.”
“William Cecil does, too,” I say. “He told me so. And Elizabeth will forgive us. How can she not? How can anyone say it is a bad thing to do? Our own mothers gave their permission.”
“Ned!” Janey calls from behind the door.
I hand him the key and he opens it. Janey is bright-eyed, laughing. “I fell asleep!” she cries out. “No need to ask what you two were doing. You look as if you had died and gone to heaven.”
“I did,” Ned says quietly. He puts my cape around my shoulders and we go out through the garden gate and down the little garden to the watergate. The incoming tide laps at the steps that were dry when we came, and Ned shouts for a wherry boat, which turns and comes to us. Ned himself opens the doors for the watergate and then hands me into the boat.
“Till tomorrow,” he says passionately. “I will see you tomorrow and I won’t sleep tonight for thinking about you and today.”
“Tomorrow,” I say. “And then every tomorrow for the rest of our lives.”
I slip into the palace, hopping through the little wicket gate that is set into the enormous double doors, waving an apologetic hand to the queen’s enormously tall sergeant porter, Mr. Thomas Keyes, for not waiting for his ceremonial opening. “I’m late!” I call to him and I see his indulgent smile. Janey trails behind me, her hand to her chest as she catches her breath. I am desperate to change my dress and be in the queen’s rooms when we process to dinner, but then I notice that something is wrong, and I pause and look around me.
People are not hurrying to dress; nobody is making their way to the queen’s presence chamber. Instead, it seems as if everyone is chattering on every corner, at every window bay.
For one terrible moment I think they are speaking of me, that everyone knows. I exchange one aghast look with Janey, and then Mary breaks away from a knot of ladies and comes towards me.
“Where have you been?” she demands.
“What’s happening?” I ask.
“It’s the little King of France,” she says. “He’s been ill, terribly ill, and now he is dead.”
“No!” I say. This is so far from my guilty dash to get into the palace in time for dinner, so discordant with my pleasure-drenched day. I look at Mary and I realize that I simply have not understood what she is saying.
“What?”