The Last Tudor Read online

  Still, I don’t understand him. I think that I don’t understand anything. I can’t hear. That is the trouble: that I can’t hear what he is saying. The bells are so loud, the ravens so noisy, I must have misheard him.

  “What have we lost? I knew we were withdrawing. I knew she was defending Framlingham. Has there been a battle? Was John Dudley’s troop defeated?”

  “No battle. She won without a sword unsheathed. London has proclaimed Mary,” he says. “Despite everything I have done for you. That’s why they’re ringing the bells.”

  I drop my hand from the rein and stagger back from the big horse, and my father immediately takes it as his signal to go. Without another word he spurs his horse towards the open stable-yard gate. I run after him.

  “But what are you doing?” I shriek up at him. “Father! Where are you going?”

  “I’m only one man,” he says, as if that explains everything.

  “Where are you going?”

  “I’m going to proclaim Mary as queen, and then I will go and beg her pardon.”

  I am running beside his horse as he rides to the gateway, but I can’t keep up. I am falling behind. The gate is thrown open and I can see, outside, people dancing in the street and embracing each other, throwing coins in the air, people hanging out of the windows to shout the news down to those in the street, and all the time the terrible racket of the bells of hundreds of churches all clanging and clattering all over London at once.

  “Father, stop! Wait for me! What am I to do?”

  “I will save you,” he promises me, and then he spurs his horse on and canters through the open gate and gets through the crowd before anyone can recognize him as the father of the girl who was queen for less than two weeks.

  I stand like a fool looking after him. He will save me: that must comfort me. He has ridden out to save me. We have suffered a great reverse but my father has gone to make it right again. I must wait here and he will come back and tell me what I must do now. Whatever we were doing here—and now it seems to me like a dream when you wake and almost laugh, and take the nightmare to God in prayer for it was so strange and wild—whatever we were doing here, it is over. Or at any rate, I suppose it is over. Unless it is a temporary reverse and we will be restored.

  My father will save me as he has promised to do. John Dudley will have a plan. I had better get back to my rooms and make sure that no one else leaves. We don’t want to look disorderly. We don’t want to be Laodiceans, a people condemned for indifference as neither hot nor cold; we don’t want to shame Our Lord in the sight of His enemies. I had better look as if I am as sure of my father on earth as I am of my Father in heaven.

  I begin to think that it is as if they made me queen for a day like a Lord of Misrule, a fool in a paper crown, while I really thought that I was the true queen, and my tinsel scepter was heavy and my duties great. I begin to think that I have been capering. I am afraid that people have been laughing at me.

  I will die of embarrassment if this is the case, I can bear to be anything but ridiculous, and so I must stay in my rooms and order my ladies to stay with me, and Guildford’s court to stay with him. The cloth of estate was thrown down by my own father and I don’t tell anyone to put it up again. The throne is taken away without a word being spoken, the great seal of office is missing somewhere, the keys of the Tower are gone from the hook, and my rooms are empty.

  And now I find I was far too slow to keep my ladies with me. It is like the end of summer when one moment at Bradgate I notice that the swallows are circling the turrets faster and faster, and then suddenly there are none, and I don’t even know the day when they left. Just like the swallows, my ladies are vanished from my rooms. I did not know that they would go; I did not see them leave. Even my mother is missing, disappeared like a dark-backed swift. She went without telling me, taking Mary with her. I think worse of her than I do of Katherine, for at least that bruised reed came to me to say that she would have to leave. The only women left in the Tower are some lowly wives, the servants, the wife of the constable of the Tower who lives here, and my mother-in-law, Lady Dudley. Abandoned here, she looks ghastly, like a whale marooned on a cold beach, accidentally aground. She sits on her stool, her hands empty, no Bible to read, no shirts to sew, an idle woman with her plans in wreckage around her.

  “Have you heard from your husband?” I demand.

  “He has surrendered,” she chokes, her voice thick with grief. “At Cambridge. Surrendered to those who were proud to call him their lord only the day before.”

  I nod rapidly, as if this makes any sense to me, as if I am hearing her, but this is far beyond my understanding. I have never read anything to prepare me for a reverse like this. I don’t think there has ever been a reverse like this, not in any history that I have studied. A complete defeat without a battle? No defense at all? A great army mustered and marched out, but then turned around to go quietly away? It is more like a fairy tale than a history.

  “Well, I shall go home,” I decide. I sound determined, but secretly I am hoping she will order me to her house in London, or command me to wait here for my father to rescue me.

  She shakes her head. “You can’t. They’ve closed the gates on the Tower,” she says. “D’you think I would be here with you if I could leave? You were a queen; but now you are a prisoner. You bolted the gates to keep your people in; now they are bolted to keep you in. You will never see your home again. God grant that I do.”

  “I shall be the judge of that!” I snap; and I turn and go out of the room to Guildford’s great chamber.

  It is all but empty. I pause in the doorway as a wave of nausea overcomes me at the smell of old roast meats. A few men gather at the fireplace at the far end. A few servants collect goblets and some dirty plates. Guildford is alone, sitting on his great chair, the posts for his vainglorious cloth of estate leaning drunkenly to one side and another. He is like a jester playing at being a king, but with no court.

  “Everyone’s gone,” I tell him as he stands and bows to me.

  “Are we to go?” he asks. “Does my mother say we can go home now?”

  “She says they have bolted the gates to keep us in, and they have arrested your father.”

  He looks aghast. “I should have warned him,” he says. “I should have gone with him. If only I had ridden with him, at his side, as his son!”

  “You’re drunk,” I say viciously. “And you know nothing.”

  He nods, as if this is interesting information. “You’re right,” he tells me. “Right on both points. I am drunk. And I know nothing.” He gives a little giggle. “You can be very sure that half of London will be drunk tonight, and they will all know nothing. Especially, they will know nothing of us: us Dudleys.”

  Guildford remains drunk for days, in his new rooms in the Beauchamp Tower where he is confined, without his court, without his friends, with only two servants to pull him out of bed in the morning and push him back into it at night. He is not allowed beyond his rooms, so I suppose he is a prisoner until Lady Mary pardons us. His mother keeps a silent vigil in my rooms. She is very poor company.

  I study my books. Strangely, there is nothing for me to do. I am not allowed to leave the Tower, the gates are closed, but inside the high walls I can go where I like—across the green to the chapel, to the muniments rooms, to the gardens, to the stables. I like to walk on the ramparts between the towers overlooking the river in the evening. The cooler air settles my churning belly. I am still bleeding, I am still sick. Something is poisoning me. I don’t think I will be well till my father takes me back to Bradgate. I have started to dream that I am in my bedroom at home, overlooking the lake, but then I wake and hear the noise of the city and the flat light of the morning skies and realize that I am still far from my home.

  I hear a clatter from the Byward Tower gate and peer over the wall to see who is entering. They are prisoners, there is a guard around them, and there are half a dozen men. I can hear the jeers of the crowd outsid
e the gate, silenced when the gate slams shut and the bolts are drawn. I can just see the face of the leading prisoner. Lord, it is my father-in-law, John Dudley, walking proudly with his head up and his hat in his hand, and now I recognize his sons among the disgraced party. I thank God for His grace that my father is not among them. The Dudleys have been arrested and my father is free. He will be meeting our cousin Princess Mary and explaining how it came about, applying for my release. I thank God that it is the Dudleys who will be blamed for all this. It was their plan, and everyone knows it. They have been vaultingly ambitious for years, now they will be brought low, and serve them right.

  The party is divided. My father-in-law goes to St. Thomas’s Tower over the watergate, and his sons are taken to the Beauchamp Tower to share their brother Guildford’s rooms. I watch them go down the steps, bowing their heads to enter the low doorway, and I feel nothing—neither sympathy nor fear for them. There is a little struggle as John Dudley tries to force his way down the steps to be with his sons. I can see the youngest, Henry, is crying. I suppose that Guildford will be glad to be with his brothers, but he will find that being drunk and knowing nothing will not save him now that his father is arrested.

  I think I had better go back to my rooms, but when I get there I find that my clothes and my books have been moved, and I am now to live in the house of Mr. Nathaniel Partridge, the gentleman-jailer of the Tower. It is a pretty house, facing inwards over the gardens, looking towards the White Tower. My rooms are a good size and comfortable. I still have three ladies-in-waiting and a manservant. It makes no difference to me, I tell Mrs. Partridge, the wife of the jailer: “Outward show means nothing to me. While I have my books and my studies and I can pray, I need nothing else.”

  She bobs a little curtsey, not the deep obeisance that she used before the Dudleys came in, under arrest. I find this very irritating, but then I remember that it is outward show, and I care nothing for it.

  “Leave me,” I say quietly. “I am going to write.”

  I think I shall write my account of these days, and send it to my cousin Princess Mary. I think I should explain to her how all that has happened was not of my doing, and, if the deathbed wishes of my cousin the king are to be ignored, then I am content to become a subject once more, and for her to be the heir once more; indeed, to be crowned queen. As Tudors we have seen, God knows, enough changes. Her own mother was set aside and accused of a sham marriage, her title taken away. She herself has been princess and then Lady Mary twice in her lifetime. Princess Mary of all people will understand that my title can be taken away as readily as it was forced on me and that my conscience is clear.

  The next day, I hear a bustle under my bedroom window. By pressing my face against the cold windowpane I can just see that it is young Henry Lord Hastings, Katherine Dudley’s feeble husband, and it looks as if he is leaving the Beauchamp Tower where the Dudley boys are kept. He is laughing, shaking the hand of another man who has clearly come with the warrant for his release. The constable of the Tower, Sir John Gage, stands to one side, his hat in his hand. Clearly, young Henry is once again an important man, no longer an accused traitor like his new brothers-in-law. Of course, Princess Mary is bound to be merciful to her friends, and Henry is related to her governess, Margaret Pole, who died at the very spot where they now so lightheartedly exchange compliments. Henry must be pleased to be out of the Tower, which has been such an unlucky place for his family. As I watch him leave, striding along to the main gate, I see another man is coming in.

  They pass without even the smallest gesture of recognition, so I think it must be a stranger, and then I realize that of course Henry Hastings will make no gesture of recognition to anyone coming inwards. Like my husband, who said he was drunk and knows nothing, everyone will know nothing and recognize nobody in these days. Everyone who associated with the Dudleys will want to show that they know nothing and recognize nobody. Henry Hastings will be a stranger to anyone walking into the Tower: his own father is left in here, completely ignored. It is not safe to know anyone. And so it is done—Henry goes past this new arrival without another glance, just a little gesture of drawing himself away, a little turn of his head so their eyes do not meet.

  Smiling at this bitter masque, I watch him go, and then I turn my attention to the newcomer. At first I don’t recognize him. His head is bowed, his steps are slow, he looks like all the men who come in now: as if the breath has been knocked out of them, cut down to the height of gnomes, as they were when they all kneeled to me.

  So who is this new man, shuffling into prison? Which of my many self-appointed advisors is this, forced to face the wrong that he has done? I can see only the top and the back of his head but I feel certain that I know him—something about the set of his bowed shoulders, something about the dawdling feet. I cry out. Suddenly, I hammer on the thick glass of the window, hurting my palms as I slap them against the leaded panes. I scream but he cannot hear me. This broken man is the only one I can trust: “Father! Father! My father!”

  I request permission for my father to be housed in my rooms. This is foolish of me: he is not a guest in the royal palace; I am no longer a queen to allocate the rooms. I am under house arrest and he is a prisoner in the cells. I realize that everything has changed: everything. Not only can he not live with me, I am not allowed even to see him. I demand to see my mother.

  “She is not even in London,” the gentleman-jailer of the Tower, Mr. Partridge, says awkwardly. “I regret to tell you, Your . . .” he stammers over my title. “At any rate, she has gone.”

  “Where is she?” I ask. “Is she at home?”

  “She is not at your home,” he says. He speaks slowly, choosing his words with care. “She has gone to the queen to sue for pardon.”

  I am so relieved I could almost weep. Of course! She will speak to her cousin to get a pardon for my father. God be praised! “She will send for me, and for Father. We will go home to Bradgate.”

  “Indeed, I hope so.”

  “Where is the queen?”

  He looks shifty, as if he thinks it better that I don’t know. “She is coming,” he says. “She is on her way to London, by easy stages. Going slowly.”

  “I want to see her too,” I say bravely. After all, she is my cousin. Once I was her little favorite. She knew that I was not of her faith, and yet she still offered me pretty gowns. I wish now that I had been more gracious in my opposition to her wrong thinking. But nonetheless, we are still kinswomen. I should speak to her. It would be better for me to explain to her directly. I am composing a justification, but I should perhaps apologize to her in person.

  He looks at the floor, at the toes of his boots; he does not raise his eyes. “I will tell them that you request an audience with Her Majesty the Queen,” he says. “But I am told that you are not to be released.”

  “Until the queen sends for me,” I say.

  “Until then.” But he does not sound as confident as I did; and I was pretending.

  THE TOWER, LONDON,

  AUGUST 1553

  I keep watch from the window, like a bereft child, but I never see my father again, though I see more men from my short-lived council coming in under arrest. Then, as the days go on, I see them, one by one, going out again. They are all released. Of course the queen is merciful. Why should she not be? She has defeated this ill-considered rebellion and won by public acclaim what she could never, as a heretic, deserve. She should thank her enemies rather than punish them, for they united the country for her. She makes them all pay huge fines—each one of them will pay her a fortune.

  I think, wryly, that she has little choice but mercy—if she executed every one of her Privy Council that bent his knee to me, she would have no Privy Council at all. Every nobleman in England called for me to be queen; she has no choice but to release them. Instead of beheading them, she will raise funds, just as her father and grandfather used to do: fine them and swear them to her service with terrible penalties on their estates.


  “Your father has been released,” my lady-in-waiting remarks to me after morning prayers.

  “What? How do you know?”

  “He left in the night, the Partridges’ little maid told me.”

  “He has escaped?” I stammer. I cannot understand what has happened.

  “No. He was released. But he chose to go out quietly before the gates opened at dawn. The little girl thought you would want to know that he is safe. She is of the reformed religion like you. She was proud to take him his ale from the alehouse and his dinner from the pie shop. She thought it was an honor to serve a man that risked his life for the reformed faith.”

  I nod like a little doll with a head that rocks when it is tapped. Nod, nod, nod. I go to the corner that I have reserved for prayer and reading my Bible. I kneel and I thank God for my father’s safety, for the mercy of the queen, and for the persuasiveness of that great woman my mother. She must have promised the world and hereafter to get a royal pardon for her husband. I should be very glad that she is persuasive and that she has worked for my father. My father is safe. That is the most important thing. I should be very glad. I don’t let myself wonder that he did not come to see me before he left, nor why I am not released with him. I know that my parents, who have always commanded my obedience, will order me to their side as soon as they want me. I know that we will be together again. I know that we will be at my home, at Bradgate. No one will take that from us, no one will ban me from my little bedroom, the ornate garden, the fields, the woods, the library with the hundreds of books. Only God knows, in His mercy, how glad I shall be to get there.

  The summer weather gets hotter. My room is cold and damp in the night, and stifling at two in the afternoon. I am allowed to walk in the enclosed garden before the Partridges’ house or sometimes Mrs. Partridge and I walk on the walls that overlook the river. At twilight there is a fresh wind from the sea. When I smell the salt on the cool air, I feel suddenly uplifted, as if I might soar on it like the crying seagulls. I feel as if I might spread my wings and fly with them. The City seems quiet. I am surprised. I would have thought that the godly could not have borne a papist queen, I would have thought they would have risen against her; but it seems that the combination of Princess Mary, the concealed power of Spain, and the hideous power of the Antichrist have done what my advisors swore could not be done—put a papist woman on the reformed throne of England and not a word said against her.