The Last Tudor Read online

  We are a mismatched band. My stunted sister Mary’s promised husband, Arthur Grey of Wilton, towers above her. He is a young man already and thinks himself his father’s companion and fellow. He is far too old to be a playmate to Mary; she is far too young to be a wife to him. Of course she is too small to be wedded and bedded, and I think she will never be able to lie with a man and bear a child with her spine that was twisted at birth. Of course, Arthur Grey must secretly despise her. I thank God that they will live apart for some years and that she is to stay at home with our mother. I imagine they will get the marriage dissolved before she has to go to her husband.

  My new sister-in-law, Katherine Dudley, is a vain thing. They have given her to Henry Hastings, a highly educated scholar and courtier. He looks at his little bride bobbing up and down with a patient smile that will soon wear thin. My sister Katherine’s husband, Henry Lord Herbert, the young son of the Earl of Pembroke, never says one word to anyone throughout the whole two days. He is as white as a corpse and so sick that he can hardly stand. They say that they dragged him from his deathbed though he swore he could not walk to the altar. He is only fifteen years old. I hope that he does not make my sister a widow before she is a wife. Certainly, they cannot consummate the marriage while she is so young and he is so ill, so she is spared the ordeal that they force on me. These three unions that cannot be consummated only make me feel worse. I am the only girl who has to be both a bride and a wife, in deed as well as in name.

  “I don’t see why you have such a long face,” Katherine, my foolish sister, says. “You knew that if you were married you’d have to be fully married. It would be just the same for me if he were not ill.”

  “And me,” Mary says.

  “It wouldn’t be the same for you,” I say to Mary.

  “I don’t see why not,” she says stubbornly.

  I am too exhausted to argue with her. “And you’re too young,” I say to Katherine.

  “No, I’m not,” she says. “And anyway, you certainly aren’t.” She gives a little tweak to the kerchief I wear over my hair to indicate that I am now a married woman. “Come on, you’re to be first to go to your wedding chamber. Lucky you.”

  I feel unfairly forced, as my mother and new mother-in-law and all their ladies appear at the door and then come with me to the bridal chamber, watch as my ladies undress me, and then abruptly leave me with my new husband.

  It is not that he is unpleasant, not in any way. He is a handsome young man, fair and with a pleasing open face and bright blue eyes. He is far taller than I am. The top of my head does not even reach to his shoulder, and I have to crane my neck to look up at him, but for all his height he is light on his feet—a good dancer, they say—and he rides, hunts, jousts, just as he should. He has been raised in a godly household and is well read. If we were not married, I could say nothing against him but that he looks to his mother for every single thing. The big baby looks at her before he even opens his mouth, before he sits or stands.

  He is not my choice, he would not be my choice, and I am afraid that I am not free in the sight of God to marry him. But since we are married I can say nothing against him at all. A godly wife is obedient. He has been put over me as Adam was put over Eve. I shall have to be obedient to him, whatever I think of his judgment.

  Our wedding night is as awkward and as painful as I expected. I don’t even think it would have been any better if I had married Edward Seymour, though he might have been more confident than Guildford and perhaps would not have made me feel quite such a fool for not knowing what has to be done. The difficulty is that none of my books tells me anything about love, except in the most abstract sense. None of my books says anything about the pain, except the pain of sin. None of them warns me that the worst of it is the misery of having a total stranger struggling to do something to me—neither of us knowing exactly how it should be done, and when it goes all wrong, blaming me. I didn’t even know that anything was wrong except that at first it hurt and then it was disgusting. He is not inspired by desire or affection, and neither am I. I wait till he falls asleep and then I get up and pray for strength to bear this, as I have to bear everything else in this vale of misery, in the place which He hath set.

  Finally, the guests say their farewells, Katherine goes to her new family home at Baynard’s Castle to put her pale husband back in his sickbed, and nurse him like a mother, since his own mother is dead. My father and mother go home to Suffolk Place with little Mary; but I am left in a strange house, with the servants clearing up the mess of a two-day feast, with my mother-in-law locked in her chamber, and my new husband sulky and silent now that she is not here to tell him what to say or do.

  In the morning I am allowed to go home to my family but only to Suffolk Place. I am pining for the summer fields of Bradgate, but I have to stay in London.

  “My lady mother says you can go home if you want to,” my young husband says ungraciously. “But she says I have to dine with you the day after tomorrow and spend the night at your house.”

  “All my books are there,” I say, trying to excuse myself. “I need to go home to study.”

  “My lady mother says that you may.”

  I don’t ask him if they expect me to return soon. I think it better not to know. Perhaps I will be able to spin out a visit to our London house till the summer, and then if the king goes on progress, John Dudley and his sons may attend without their wives, and I may be able to go to Bradgate. The thought that I might get there, to ride in the woods and to see the harvest come in, to walk under a strawberry moon and take a boat out on the lake, is the only thing that keeps me at peace through the first days of my marriage. That, and my books, of course. I can always open a book and hide myself in that inner, private world.

  The idea that I would want to go to Bradgate, that I would seek my mother as a refuge from a home even less kindly than hers, makes me understand for the first time what God said to Eve: I will increase thy sorrow, when thou art with child: with pain shalt thou bear thy children, and thy lust shall pertain unto your husband, and he shall rule thee. Truly, it is a sorrow to be a woman; and Eve shows us that to be a wife is even worse.

  It is agreed between Lady Dudley and my mother that I can live with my parents at Suffolk Place, as long as I visit the Dudleys regularly and dine with them often. The first weeks of my marriage are spent like this. But Lady Dudley breaks this arrangement by coming into the privy chamber before dinner, as Guildford and I are sitting in awkward silence, and saying: “Now you must send for your clothes and all your things, Jane. You are to stay tonight and you must stay after. You will live here now.”

  I rise and curtsey to her. “I thought I was to go home,” I say. “My mother is expecting me home tonight.”

  She shakes her head. “It is all to be changed. My lord has written to me that you must be here. You have to stay here with us. We have to be ready.”

  Guildford, on his feet at the first sight of his mother, kneels to her, and she rests her hand in blessing on his curly head. “We have to be ready? He’s worse?” he asks eagerly.

  I look from the woman to her kneeling son. “Who’s worse?”

  She gives an irritated little tut at my ignorance. “Leave us,” she says to the ladies who have come in with her. “Sit down, Jane. Guildford, sweet son, you come here to me.”

  He stands behind her, like Mr. Nozzle clinging to Katherine, watching my face as his mother tells me: “The king, God bless him, is worse. You knew at least that he was ill?”

  “Of course I knew that. I often sit with him.”

  “Now he is worse. His doctors say that he will not survive the summer.”

  “The summer?” This is impossibly soon. I thought that he might live long enough to marry and have a child. I had no idea that they were saying that we might lose him within the year. “God save His Grace,” I whisper, shocked. “I did not know. But how can it be? I thought he was only—”

  “That’s not important,” she cuts me of
f. “What matters most is his will.”

  Actually, what matters most is his eternal soul. But I cannot tell her that now.

  “He has changed it,” she says. There is a ring of triumph in her voice. “Changed it, and all of the council have sworn to the changes.” She glances up at Guildford as he smiles down at her. “Your father has seen to it,” she says. “He is prepared for everything.” She turns back to me. “The king has excluded his half sisters from the succession,” she says briskly, ignoring my gasp of surprise.

  I get to my feet, as if I must stand to find the courage to argue with her. “That cannot be,” I say slowly. I know that Princess Mary is the next in line; whatever I may think of her religion there is no denying her right. Heirs cannot be named at random. The throne is not to be given away. My cousin the king knows this, the country knows this. Whatever my father says it cannot be that the king could choose his heir. There is no Tudor boy. He cannot prefer one cousin over another.

  “It will be,” Lady Dudley says. “And she will know it for a fact when he dies.”

  I am suddenly afraid that this is treason. Surely, it is treason to speak of the death of the king; surely, it is treason to speak against the princesses?

  “I think I had better go home,” I say.

  “You’ll stay here,” she raps out. “This is no time for you to run to your mother.”

  Scornfully, I look at her son, who clearly never has to run to his mother for he is always under her wing.

  “You have to be here so that my husband can fetch you to the Tower,” she explains.

  I gasp. The last man fetched to the Tower by her husband ended with his head on the block: Edward Seymour.

  “No, you fool,” she says irritably. “You will have to go to the Tower on the death of the king. You will have to be seen at the Tower. My husband will want to keep you safe.”

  It is simply too incredible, and too ridiculous for me to consider. I know that my father and my mother will never allow me to be taken to the Tower by John Dudley.

  “I’m going home,” I say firmly, and I walk to the door. I will not be part of this. My barge is waiting for me at the pier, my ladies are waiting for me in the gallery. Nobody can stop me going home to my mother with the news that the Dudleys have run mad, that they think that they can change the succession, and that they want to take me to the Tower.

  “Stop her,” Guildford’s mother orders him.

  He steps forward and takes hold of my wrist. I round on him. “You let me go!” I spit, and he flinches back as if Katherine’s kitten had suddenly turned on him and scratched his face.

  I don’t wait for a second chance. I dive out of the room and take to my heels. I run through the palace, I clatter across the gangplank. “Cast off!” I say breathlessly, and then I laugh because I am free.

  SUFFOLK PLACE, LONDON,

  JUNE 1553

  I see that my mother is in a state of fury before I have even entered the room or have a chance to tell her that I am mistreated by Lady Dudley. She is striding up and down her privy chamber, my father sitting at the table, silently watching her, his fingers steepled together, his expression guarded. She whirls around as I come in and then she sees my white face.

  “They’ve told you, then.”

  “Lady Dudley told me,” I say quietly. “But I don’t understand. I came away at once, Father.”

  “Tell her!” my mother commands him. “Tell her what John Dudley has done and you have all agreed!”

  “It became clear to the king and to us all that he will not live to have children of his own,” my father says heavily. “His doctors doubt that he will even live to see your son born.”

  “And with Princess Mary and Elizabeth set aside, then I am the next heir,” my mother asserts loudly.

  “The doctors say weeks, not even months.”

  “Blessed God! So soon?” I murmur.

  “I should inherit in weeks, not even months!” my mother squawks.

  “But the king was determined to get to a male heir, as soon as possible,” my father continues, overriding her grunt of protest. “And so he wanted to pass over your mother—for the good of the country—to the next generation, to you and your sisters—and to the generation after that: your son, Jane.”

  “But you said—”

  “So he has named you as queen, and any son that you have will be king after you. He can’t name a boy as yet unborn, so he names you.”

  “And the whole council, including your father, have signed to this!” my mother exclaims. “Excluding me! Casting me aside! And they expect me to agree! They go to the king and sign away my right!”

  “I don’t see what else we could do,” my father says patiently. “I put your case very strongly, but it was the solution of the king’s own devising to get us to a king within a generation.”

  “It puts John Dudley’s grandson on the throne!” my mother explodes with anger. “That is why he has brought the council round to the king’s wishes! John Dudley planned this from the very beginning: Jane crowned queen in my place, and Guildford Dudley beside her, and that tribe of Dudley brothers become royal dukes! Whereas I—the daughter of the Queen of France, the niece of the King of England—am passed over. And you tell me I must agree to it!”

  Quietly my father regards her. “Nobody is denying your royal blood,” he says. “It is that which brought the king to Jane in the first place. Your right passes to her, and you become My Lady the Queen’s Mother, the greatest woman at court after her.”

  “I shall have to pray on this,” I tell him. “It cannot be right. The king has sisters.”

  “The king prayed on it, we all did,” he says. “God told him that it was the only way to get a Tudor boy on the throne.”

  “And I am to have him?” I ask, thinking of Guildford’s painful fumblings. “I am to conceive a Tudor heir, and give birth to a Tudor boy where five wives could not?”

  “If it is God’s will,” my father reminds me. “And you will be head of the Church of England. Think of that, Jane. Think of that.”

  I go to pray. My little sister Mary finds me in the chapel, on my knees, gazing blankly at the white wall behind the bare table of the altar. All around us like ghosts are the shadowy outlines of the paintings of the saints showing through the limewashed walls, frescoes that were bright and inspiring when the chapel was first built and people needed such toys because they had no Bible and were not allowed to pray directly to God. I must do anything to save my country from slipping back into those times, enslaved to a distant pope, with a papist queen preaching lies to an ignorant people.

  “The Duchess of Northumberland, your mother-in-law, has sent for you,” Mary whispers. She stands beside me as I kneel and her head is the same height as mine. “Sent one of her ladies-in-waiting to tell our lady mother that you have to go home to them at once. She said that you were disobedient and that it would be the undoing of all of us if you are not to hand when they need you.”

  I look up but, stubbornly, I don’t move. “I won’t go.”

  “Our mother said that you would not go, she said that you could stay here, and Lady Dudley said in that case she would keep Guildford at her home, and you would be known for a disobedient and estranged wife.”

  I look blankly at my little sister. “I have to obey my husband. I swore to be his wife,” I say miserably.

  Mary’s eyes are huge in her pale face. “That’s what Mother said.”

  “She insists I go back?”

  “You have to go.” Mary nods. “Mother says it is her wish.”

  I rise to my feet. I feel as weary as my cousin the king, fighting for his life while everyone quarrels about his legacy. “I’ll go then,” I say. “God knows what is going to happen next.”

  My stomach churns as the barge carries me back to the Dudleys’ house. I can see my tall husband waiting on the pier, and as the barge comes up alongside and rocks gently, he gives a little bow. When the gangplank is run ashore and the rowers hold the
boat fast to the ropes, he gives me his hand to help me step down to the quayside. I glance up at the blank windows of the house, which seem to overlook the gardens and the river as if they were watching for me and are not best pleased.

  “Yes, my father sent me to meet you,” he says. “He’s watching us from his windows. He wants to see you in his rooms at once.”

  “I’m not well,” I say. “I am sick.”

  “That won’t get you out of it,” he says unsympathetically. “He came home from Westminster the moment that he learned you had gone to Suffolk Place. Against his wishes, against my mother’s request, against my orders.”

  “I really am sick,” I say to him. “I will have to go to my room. I can see no one. Ask your father to excuse me, tell him that I have to lie down.”

  “I’ll tell my lady mother,” he says, “but she’ll probably just come into your room and make you.” He hesitates, like one unhappy child warning another. “You can’t lock your door, you know. There’s no key. If you go to bed, she’ll just come and pull you out.”

  “She can’t beat me,” I say with grim humor.

  “Actually, she can.”

  He turns from me and leaves me there, in the garden, standing alone but for my ladies, until one of them comes up and takes my arm and helps me to my room.

  Within moments, just as her son predicted, Lady Dudley opens the door, enters without knocking, and looms over me, her face avid. “Are you sick in the morning before chapel?” she asks.

  “Yes,” I say. I try to sit up but to my surprise she presses me back down on the pillow.

  “No, lie down, rest. And do you have a faintness in your head?”

  “Yes.”

  “Are your breasts tender?”

  I find this so intimate from a woman to a daughter-in-law in whom she has shown no previous interest, that I flush and do not answer.