A Court Affair (23 page)

“
Please,
God,” I prayed fervently, “don’t let me fail Robert, don’t let me disappoint him yet again.”

To my immense relief, he was not lodged in a dungeon at all, nor was he shackled, and his person had not suffered any atrocities that I could see. He shared a good-sized cell with his brothers, and, to my surprise, they even had a few luxuries—there were books, decks of cards, a chess set, a lute, a set of ivory-keyed virginals, and even a pair of tennis rackets—and the remains of a generous meal replete with a round of cheese and a large bowl of apples sat upon the table. The apples I would later learn were for the porcupines; the brothers were allowed to visit the Tower’s menagerie, and Robert had taken a fancy to the porcupines and delighted in feeding them apples. There were velvet coverlets upon the pair of large canopied four-poster beds that the brothers shared, sleeping two to a bed, and the mattresses and pillows looked plump and inviting instead of threadbare and crawling with fleas as I had imagined prison bedding to be. There was even a spotted hunting hound whose name I knew to be Hugo lying by the fire lazily wagging his tail, and they even had Robert’s faithful valet, Mr Tamworth, to attend them. Nor did they lack for fine clothes either, judging from the sloppy array half hanging out of an open trunk at the foot of each bed, though what need a man in prison had for claret-coloured satin with gold piping upon the seams or velvet the colour of perry wine, I really could not fathom. There were even, draped across the backs of the fireside chairs, four fine-furred velvet dressing gowns in rich, jewel-hued colours and matching slippers with gilt threads, jewels, or tassels twinkling on the toes.

The Dudley brothers were occupying themselves by carving the family crest and their names onto the stone wall to leave behind as a souvenir of their stay in the Tower. When I entered, they were all in their shirtsleeves and breeches, hard at work, painstaking and precise as men unaccustomed to such labours and intent on getting it right. Ambrose and John were working on the bear and ragged staff, and Robert was carving a fancy border of acorns and oak leaves, while Guildford was making himself a wreath of gillyflowers. He showed me where he had already carved
JANE,
“the name of the one whose fault it is that we are all imprisoned here,” he explained as John and Ambrose fell upon my basket like greedy children, tossing aside the warm woollen stockings, gloves, and blankets, and carefully wrapped bottles of medicine I had brought, and going straight for the goodies—the sugar wafers, candied and sugared nuts and fruits, spice comfits, cream-filled pastries, fruit suckets, tarts, and cakes. I had even, just to be kind, brought some candied figs for Guildford, though I sincerely hoped he would not throw them at me. To my relief, he did not, and instead popped one into his mouth and after thoughtfully chewing and swallowing pronounced it “tolerably good”.

“You see, Madame, your husband has become a stonemason.” Robert flashed me a reassuring smile as he showed me his work, which was indeed fine, as was everything my husband did.

Before the words were entirely out of his mouth, I was across the room, hugging him tightly, burrowing against his chest as if I were holding on for dear life.

“Robert, oh, Robert,” I kept saying over and over until he put me from him, observing that my conversation was woefully repetitious and lacking in originality.

“Robert does not have a witty wife!” Guildford chortled.

And then, to my surprise, though we were not alone, my husband swept me up in his arms and carried me to one of the beds.

“Robert!” I protested. “Your brothers are here—they will see us!”

But he just shrugged as he laid me down and climbed on top of me.

“There are no virgins here to offend or shock,” he said, and he proceeded to have his way with me.

Thankfully, he left me dressed and merely lifted my skirts, and his body over mine kept his brothers from seeing overmuch of me, but, from over his shoulder, I could see them watching us as they munched the pastries and nudged and whispered to one another, laughing, smirking, and winking, and even sometimes calling out words of encouragement or advice to Robert. I shut my eyes and swallowed hard when I felt the sickness rising up inside me.

When it was over, as John, Ambrose, and Guildford applauded their brother, calling out, “Fine show, Robert, fine show!” he clambered off me and took several bows before he fastened his codpiece.

I bolted from the bed and ran straight for the door, hammering hard upon the thick wood and crying for the gaoler to let me out. I couldn’t bear to stay and try to pretend that nothing had happened; I couldn’t bear their eyes on me. I wanted to fly at Robert, scream and curse him, and demand, how could he do that to me? Take me like a common bawd, a woman hired from the streets, there before his brothers. He cared
nothing
for my feelings or my dignity!

“Come again tomorrow, and bring more candy!” Guildford called after me as I fled with my face burning red with shame. “And some lemon and chamomile for my hair; if I stay in prison too long, it will turn as dark as Robert’s!”

“Well, there are worse tragedies!” I heard the eldest, John, sharply retort, as I rounded the corner.

I wept and clung to Pirto all the way back to Camberwell, where we were staying with some of my mother’s people, my cousins, the Scotts, at their fine town house. Once safely back inside I tearfully waved aside their polite and concerned queries, unable to speak for the tears clogging my throat, stifling the words in a knotted jumble, and nothing would do but for me to have a hot bath and go straight to bed.

After that, I made my visits to the Tower as brief and seldom as I could. Though it shamed and hurt me to desert my husband, what he had done, and might do again, shamed and hurt me more. I knew that, as a man, Robert had needs, and as my husband, he had rights, and that it was my duty to submit and obey, but whenever I thought of going to the Tower, I would, in my mind, see myself back on that bed again, looking over his shoulder and seeing John, Ambrose, and Guildford winking, smirking, and laughing as they passed between them a jar of strawberry preserves and another of cream to dip the crispy sweet wafers in as they ogled us as if we were a public show they had paid their pennies to see. The thought of enduring that again made me sick. There were many times when I dressed myself and prepared to set out, only to turn back at the last moment when queasiness and faintness overwhelmed me on my cousins’ threshold, and the coachman had to be paid for his futile journey, and I helped back to bed.

“Whoever would have thought she would be so fastidious?” Guildford said of me another time when Robert reached for me and would have taken me to the bed, but I demurred, lowering my eyes and implying that I was unwell with my monthly courses. “
Everyone knows
country folk rut like animals and don’t care who sees them!” But I wouldn’t give in, and I didn’t care what Guildford thought of me.

On a late August morning I stood beside my husband and his brothers at the back of St Peter ad Vincula, the Tower’s chapel, under which the bones of the condemned mouldered, and watched as their father—who had, in a failed endeavour to save himself, converted to Catholicism—celebrated Mass. Before he was led out to die upon the scaffold, Queen Mary had granted him the privilege of hearing Mass and to confess and be shriven of his sins by her own priest.

“Truly I profess before you that the plague that is upon us now is that we have erred from the true faith these sixteen years,” the humbled and fallen Duke of Northumberland proclaimed, still hoping to the last for a reprieve.

Huddled together despite the summer heat, we watched as the man who had once been the power behind the throne and fancied himself a kingmaker, the almost founder of a new royal dynasty, betrayed everything he believed in to try to save himself. But it was all for nothing.

From the scaffold, he tried to save his sons. With his dying speech he begged Queen Mary for forgiveness and implored her to be kind and merciful to his children, “considering that they went by my commandment, who am their father, and not of their own free will”. And then he laid his head upon the block, the axe fell, and he died as I shut my eyes and cowered against Robert’s chest, jumping when I heard the heavy axe thud down.

Afterwards, back in his cell, Robert threw me onto the bed again. This time, though he was rough and hurt me, I did not protest. I closed my eyes tightly against his brothers’ lewd smirks and stares, and when I felt my husband’s hot tears drip down between my breasts, I held him even closer, as his hard flesh pounded and bruised my softness, and let my body give him whatever comfort it could.

In February, I forced myself to be brave and bent my head against the brutal, icy wind and rode to London again.

But I chose the wrong day to go visiting. I found myself caught up in a crowd from which I could not fight my way free. The press of their bodies pushed me forward, battering me against those surrounding me even as I tried to break free, until I found myself staring right up at the scaffold.

Clad in crow black with her shoulders and neck bare, I saw Lady Jane standing with her head bent over a small black book, then handing it aside and tremulously speaking her last words. And I bore witness to the macabre parody of Blindman’s Buff that followed when she knelt, blindfolded, and groped helplessly for the block before she found it and laid her head upon it. And though I shut my eyes tightly, I heard the axe come down, the crunch and crack as it broke through skin and bone.

Screaming like a madwoman, striking out at those who surrounded me, slapping, kicking, and scratching, desperate to get free, not caring who my nails clawed or whose shins I bruised, I finally managed to clear a path for me and ran screaming all the way to Robert’s cell and threw myself weeping into his arms, begging him to hold me tightly and never let me go again.

As I clung to him, shaking and sobbing, I managed to blurt out what I had seen. Robert had also seen it looking from his window high above. He had watched it alone, Ambrose and John having been moved recently to another cell. And, though he had not seen him die, as Guildford was bound for Tower Hill, not Tower Green, twice he had seen his youngest brother pass below his window. The first time, he had walked pale-faced, trying so hard to be brave and hold himself proud, even though his chin and lips did mightily quiver, clad in sombrely rich, elegant black velvet embroidered with burnished gold roses and trimmed with frills of golden lace, with not one golden curl out of place. The second time, he rode in a cart, a broken, lifeless corpse, naked—the executioner had claimed Guildford’s clothes as part of his fee—carelessly wrapped in a blood-soaked sheet, thrown on straw to sop up the blood and keep it from staining the wood.

Robert had no comfort to give me, and, in truth, I should have been the one to give it. But I did not, and failed yet again as a wife.
He
was the one who had just lost a brother, not I. He thrust me away and rounded on me in a fury, speaking harsh words, shaking and slapping me, ordering me to compose myself; all the tears and hysterics in the world would not bring Guildford and Jane back, nor would they save him from following in their footsteps if Queen Mary so decreed it.

Later, when I had regained some semblance of calm, half-frightened back to my senses by my husband’s slaps, I went to him again as he stood with his back to me, still staring from that same window. I put my arms around him and laid my smarting cheek against his back.

“Are you still sorry that Guildford stole your destiny, that you were not the one to marry Jane?” I asked.

“You little fool!”
Robert spun round and shoved me away so forcefully that I fell hard onto the stone floor. “If it had been me, it might all have been a different story with a different end! They were a pair of weaklings and fools, he for his vanity and she for her books. Neither of them had it in them to rule; it was inevitable that they would be crushed. They hadn’t a dollop of
my
bravery and strength! But I was
born
to be King; it is written in the stars, that is my destiny!”

And he turned his back to me again, and I, knowing that it was wiser not to provoke him again, left him to his thoughts instead, with a pinch of grief for Guildford simmering, like salt, in the rich stew of his ambitions.

The second time I saw Elizabeth Tudor, I was hurrying in to visit my husband with a special treat for him, one I hoped would brighten his day and make him smile—a large sack bursting full of walnuts—when I chanced to look up. I saw the flame-haired Princess, who was now the prisoner of her own sister, accused of conspiring with the Protestant rebels to steal her throne. She was standing on the wall-walk, her black cloak flapping about her like the wings of the ravens that circled above, her vivid hair whipping in the wind. She stood there motionless, staring down at me, her face a hard, inscrutable white mask, like one carved of marble. I shivered, feeling like, as we said in the country, “a goose just walked over my grave,” and I bent my head and hurried on my way.

Looking back, I think that was when their affair began, when both of them lived in fear, as prisoners beneath the shadow of the axe, wondering if each day would be their last, if each sunrise and sunset they witnessed would be the last one they would ever see. When you know Death is looking over your shoulder, sometimes you throw yourself full force at Life, determined to dig your fingers in and grasp as hard, and hold as tightly, and get as much as you can from it, and savour
all
the delights and pleasures it has to offer. I know that now, but by the time I found it out, I was too tired and timid to grab.

I found Robert pacing restlessly about his cell. I could feel the tension and anger emanating from him like heat from a roaring fire. He was like a caged beast. I so feared his roar and bite that, had he not heard the gaoler unlock the door and announce me, I would have been sorely tempted to turn around and quietly tiptoe back out and come again another day. I should have expected what came next. Robert flung the sack of walnuts at the wall. It burst, sending the nuts that were his favourite clattering and scattering everywhere. Then he kicked a footstool with all his might into the wall, where it exploded into kindling, and then he flung a chair after it. I put my arms up to shield my face from the flying debris. I loved my husband so much, but at times like this, he
frightened
me.