Her Highness, the Traitor (20 page)

“So that if any man dare question what I have told you today, you will know the truth. Some will say that this devise is of your husband’s procuring, to put Lord Guildford on the throne through the lady Jane. It was not. The idea was mine. I will fight for it with my dying breath.”

He started coughing. A foul smell began to fill the chamber. “Go, please,” Edward managed.

Followed by John, I backed out of the chamber hastily.

***

“Does the lady Jane know of this? Do her parents?”

“Not yet. Once the judges get it ready, it will be more widely known.”

“And the lady Mary? The lady Elizabeth?”

“They will know in due time.”

“There are no plans to—” I could not finish my sentence.

“Harm them? Confine them? No. They shall be married to men we can trust. At least, that is what we are hoping for.”

“What if they do not go along? What if the emperor comes to the lady Mary’s aid and decides to restore her to the succession?”

“When has the emperor ever helped Mary?”

“When she tried to flee the country.”

“Yes, and what did she do? Panicked, and lost her chance. She’ll be happy as long as she has her Mass. If she has a husband and a Mass, all the better.” John saw the skeptical expression on my face. “Mouse,” he said gently, “you worry too much. The king has time. The physicians tell him so. Parliament will meet, and the king’s devise will have the force of law. The lady Mary won’t resist, particularly if a sweetener is thrown in. The same with the lady Elizabeth.”

I shook my head. There seemed to be far too many “ifs” in this plan, conceived by a dying lad of sixteen. Nor did the prospect of the crown passing to my slip of a daughter-in-law, who had never been brought up to such a task, fill me with confidence. “But the lady Jane can’t even properly run a household,” I blurted. “Just in that brief time at Chelsea, Guildford said, she drove the servants mad, telling them one thing one moment and countermanding it an hour later. She’s an intelligent girl, but she hasn’t an ounce of common sense.”

“She will learn it, as all rulers must. She will have councilors, remember.” John took my hand. “The truth is, you don’t like this idea. Neither do I. It goes against King Henry’s wishes—more than that, it goes against the law, until Parliament ratifies it. But if I must choose between obeying a dead king and a living king, I must choose the living one.”

“Even when what the living king wants is folly?”

“Is it folly to keep the lady Mary from turning the clock back? Is it folly to prevent bastards from ascending to the throne?”

“I suppose we shall find out,” I said. I stared out the window toward the direction of Suffolk Place, where our unsuspecting daughter-in-law was no doubt settling down with a passage of Greek for the evening. “In the meantime, I shall redouble my prayers for the king.”

You should see the Duchess of Northumberland look at her husband,” Jane said on the last day of her visit to us at Suffolk Place. “I call it the Lord and Master look, as if the man was Richard I and Henry V put together. She worships him. It’s sickening.”

I tried to recall what I had said that had set Jane upon her favorite topic as of late: the various shortcomings of the Northumberland household. It probably didn’t matter, as it took little to get her started.

“They had dancing the other night, and dancing makes some old war injury of his ache, so of course she doesn’t dance either,” Jane continued happily. “Instead, she just stands beside him, clutching his hand as if the two were courting instead of man and wife. I even saw them kissing that evening in a corner, like a couple of peasants at the fair. You’d never guess they were a duke and duchess, but of course they were never meant to be, were they? Thank goodness you and Father don’t carry on in such an undignified manner.”

Jane paused for breath, but only for a moment. Had losing her virginity made her so voluble, or was it the irresistible need to complain about her new relations? “They’re all like that, too—all the Dudley children and their spouses. All giving each other the same adoring looks, all stopping by every other day to sup with the duke and the duchess when they could be at their own homes. Except for the Countess of Warwick, of course. She doesn’t like them, either. She and I have become good friends.”

“Do you like Guildford at all?” Kate asked. Hearing that Jane had come to stay with us while Guildford recovered from eating a bad salad, she had decided to visit, too.

“He’s bearable,” Jane said. “At least he treats me with respect. He brought me a book before he fell ill, which was a far sight better than that talking parrot the duke gave to the duchess as a gift before I joined the family. It squawked ‘Sweet Jane’ the other day, and I was mortified until I realized it was referring to the duchess. It pays her little compliments all day long—a tiny green courtier with feathers. But don’t get me started on that parrot; I could go on forever.”

Jane sighed as Kate and I walked her to her waiting barge and waved farewell to her. Not an hour had passed when a servant arrived, wearing the royal livery. “Your Grace, the king has asked that you come to see him immediately. My lord Suffolk is with His Majesty and adds his request to the king’s.”

What on earth could the king want with me? I rose. “I will be ready straightaway.”

***

Not only my husband stood beside the king, but the Duke of Northumberland and his duchess. It was her presence that made me realize something truly extraordinary was going on.

I listened as the king explained with a heartbreaking calmness that he was dying, a statement corroborated by his frail appearance. I listened as he told me what everyone now knows, of his decision to disinherit his sisters. Then he told me my girl was to be the reigning queen of England.

Harry looked at me proudly as I heard the words that made my knees begin to shake under my gown. I barely knew the lady Elizabeth, many years my junior, but I had known the lady Mary almost since we were both infants. And now my daughter was to supplant her! “She cannot be queen, Your Majesty,” I said. “Not a reigning queen. She knows nothing of how to rule a kingdom.”

“Our grandfather Henry VII was not brought up to rule, either,” Edward said. “He gained his throne only because of the cruel murder of the young Edward V by Richard III, and yet he left England healthy and prosperous. Our own father was a second son, yet he made all of England quake before him.”

“But they were men.”

“The king is aware of that, my dear,” Harry put in.

“I beg Your Majesty’s pardon,” I said. “I am simply stunned by this. I have never looked to see my daughter rule.”

“It does your ladyship honor that you are humble enough to question your daughter’s ability to rule England,” said Edward tiredly. “But she will have men to guide her, wise men like her father and the Duke of Northumberland.”

I looked at the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, who stood by the king with their heads bowed respectfully. How far had they influenced what the king was saying now?

Edward continued, “Her sex hinders her no more than would that of the lady Mary, and she is of a godly persuasion, unlike our sister Mary. It is our wish that this be carried out, and the process has started already. The justices are drawing up the necessary documents for signature.”

“And my daughter knows nothing of this?”

“Not yet. It is our wish that she not be told until we are satisfied that everything is in place. We would not distress her until her smooth accession is assured.”

If my daughter could rule the kingdom, could not she be taxed with the responsibility of knowing about it beforehand? But I said nothing. Instead, I knelt and kissed Edward’s hand. Like the rest of his extremities, it was pale and swollen. “Your Majesty does us incomparable honor.”

“Our cousin is a learned and wise young woman,” Edward said sadly. “She will carry out our legacy and strengthen our religion. We know it.”

I took my leave of the king soon afterward, my mind so abuzz with the news I had just been told that, at first, I did not see the crone making her way to the chamber I was leaving. She saw me, though, and kicked a quick curtsey in acknowledgment of my rank. It was then I realized what an unlikely figure she was at Greenwich Palace. She looked as if she ought to be selling charms or potions in Southwark. “Who are you?”

“Madge they call me, my lady—Your Grace,” the crone corrected herself, nodding to herself in approval at guessing my rank. “I’ve come to dose the king.”

“On whose orders?”

“On the Duke of Northumberland’s orders, Your Grace. I come here every day. Reckon I’ve been doing it for a week or so.”

“What are you giving him?”

“Healing potions, Your Grace, of my own recipe. Mind you, the physicians don’t set much store by them. But the great folk, when they give up on the physicians, they call Madge, and then when my work does the trick, they praise God and slip me my fee on the sly. That’s the way it’s been, and that’s the way it’ll always be. I don’t care. I’m never slack of work.” The crone smiled, showing a handsome set of teeth.

“Are your potions helping him?”

“Not hurting him, at least,” Madge admitted. “’Tis too soon to tell. Sometimes it’s too late for even me. I won’t lie to you. That’s not how I work. I will tell you this—if I can’t bring him through, there’s no one who can.”

Over the next few days, life went on as usual in my household, as I obeyed the king’s wish and did not tell the lady Jane of the king’s plans. It was not a difficult matter keeping the secret from Jane, for knowing she was to be queen would surely puff up the girl more than ever. It was Guildford I longed to tell.

It could not be kept a secret for long, I foresaw. The justices had protested when the king had ordered them to give proper legal form to his devise. So sharp had their opposition been that John, straining under the impossible role in which he had been placed, had thrown off his doublet in front of the entire council and threatened to fight in his shirt any man who dared to defy the king. Calming himself, he had instead gone and spoken to the king, who summoned the recalcitrant justices to his side the next day. Then Edward himself had demanded, in a fury that had left him prostrate afterward, that the justices and the council carry out his wishes. Nearly all of the justices and the councilors had then engaged themselves, in writing, to carry out the king’s wishes.

Several days later, the justices produced the document, bearing the king’s great seal, which made Lady Jane Grey the heir to the throne. A hundred and two men signed it—the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely, dukes, earls, viscounts, barons, knights, lawyers, the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London.

They signed the document, and when it suited their convenience, most of the cowards forswore it.

***

The council had summoned Parliament to meet in September—the quickest this could be done, as elections would have to be held—but few believed the king would live to see it. By the latter part of June, he spent most of his time flat on his back, gasping for breath. John had even brought in a wise woman to save the king, with his permission, but she seemed only to make him worse, and was soon dismissed.

That same day, John’s man came from Greenwich. “Your Grace, my lord has charged me with a message. It is time to tell the lady Jane.”

I thanked him and summoned my daughter-in-law and Guildford to me. Guildford was out riding, but Jane came almost instantly—to my surprise, it being her usual policy to dawdle when I asked for her. “Your Grace, I was just going to come to you. I would like a few days to visit my mother.”

“I am afraid it cannot be.”

“Why on earth not? You promised that I could see her as often as I wished.”

I swallowed. “You are aware that the king is very ill.”

“Yes. They say he is dying. Has the lady Mary been summoned?”

“No. She has not been. She is not his heir.”

“Not his heir?” Jane stared at me. “Who on earth is, then?”

“You are. He has decreed that you will rule after his death.”

“He has disinherited his sisters? Both his sisters? Who told you this?”

“The king himself, and my husband.”

“I don’t believe you.”

I was beginning to wonder whether this girl was as intelligent as she was made out to be. “Why would I lie about such a serious matter, when I could so easily be proven wrong? I heard him tell your mother the same thing. Go to her if you wish. She will confirm it for you.”

“Then I will.” Jane turned around with a great swishing of skirts.

“But hurry back,” I called. “If—when the worst happens—you must be on hand to proceed to the Tower.”

A little while later, Guildford sought me out. “Mother? Where did my bride run off to in such a hurry? Or dare I ask?”

“Guildford, I have news for you.”

“She’s asked for an annulment?”

“No. This is not in jest, my son. The king has made your wife his heir. She will rule England when the king departs this life, which I fear will be soon.”

“You mean it is true what I have heard, that the lady Mary will not be allowed to succeed to the throne?”

“Yes. What else have you heard?”

“Not much. Some say that the lady Elizabeth will be chosen; others are saying the little Queen of Scots. Some are saying that Father will marry the lady Elizabeth and take the throne himself. I laid out the whoreson whom I heard saying that, actually. But this is the first I’ve heard that my wife is to be queen.” Guildford blinked. “What will that make me?
King?
”

“I believe Parliament will have to decide it. And, of course, the queen,” I added dutifully.

“But you think I’d make a good king, don’t you, Mother?”

“You have not been brought up to it any more than she has,” I reminded my son. “We must see what happens, Guildford. There is no precedent in England for this sort of thing. It may be that you are made a duke. Or that you are known as king consort. First, you must talk to your wife.”

Guildford, who apparently was already planning his coronation, scowled at the thought.

***

Several days passed, and my daughter-in-law had not returned from Suffolk Place, even as news came from Greenwich that the poor king was much worse. I sent a messenger to Jane and received a grand reply from the Duchess of Suffolk: the lady Jane was gathering strength to assume her new duties and preferred to remain at Suffolk Place.

This would not do. Jane might be Edward’s heir, but she was also a bride, with a husband she seemed to have forgotten about entirely. What sort of behavior was this for a future queen? I sent an equally grand reply back to Jane and her mother. After both of us mothers had acted up to our rank as duchesses (it was difficult to believe we’d held the titles for less than two years, I thought proudly), we at last reached a compromise: Jane, who did seem to be suffering from the strain of her impending role, would go to our house at Chelsea, where Guildford would join her.

Instead, Guildford was still with us on the morning of July 7, when Henry Sidney arrived with the dawn. He did not even stop to embrace his wife, whom he had not seen in weeks. “The king is dead.”

Instinctively, I started to cross myself, but stopped just in time.

“He died between eight and nine last evening, in my presence,” said Henry, wiping a tear from his eye. “Sir Thomas Wroth, his groom Christopher Salmon, and his physicians, Dr. Owen and Dr. Wendy, were there, as well. The king said a prayer of his own composition, then let me take him into my arms. He said that he was faint. Then he said only, ‘Lord have mercy upon me, and take my spirit.’ And the Lord did.”

We stayed silent for several moments in memory of the poor king, whom I prayed was now at last in the company of his gentle mother. Perhaps, I thought optimistically, he would even find comfort in his uncles Thomas and Edward. Then Guildford broke the quiet. “Should we tell Jane—er, the queen?”

“Not yet. The duke has expressly requested that the king’s death be kept a secret for a day or so, as was King Henry’s death. Everyone is to stay where he or she is for now. The lord Robert has been sent to bring the lady Mary to London.”

“To imprison her?”

“No. To explain to her why this must be, the duke says, and to explain the financial arrangements that have been made. She will be treated generously if she cooperates.”

Almost, I thought, as if she had been one of King Henry’s cast-off wives.

***

Over the next couple of days, we at Sion House received encouraging reports from John and the others at Greenwich. Only one unsettling piece of news arrived: Mary had abruptly left her residence at Hunsdon to head toward the coast of Norfolk, evading my son Robert. Was this journey coincidence, or had someone been giving her information? If it was the latter, was she once more planning to escape abroad? While we waited to hear more of Mary’s moves, there was little for us at Sion to do but to plan Jane’s coronation—and Guildford’s, for it seemed eminently reasonable he be crowned as her consort (at the very least). We were in the process of listing those we thought should be appointed to Jane’s household (scrupulously, we made certain all of her own relations were duly represented) when late on July 9, John ordered that Jane be brought from Chelsea to Sion.

“I’ll fetch her,” offered Mary. She winked at her brother. “King Guildford would probably scare her off if he went in person.”

Guildford gave a regal scowl.

Presently, Mary returned, escorting Jane into the room where John conducted business, and a short time later I saw John, the Duke of Suffolk, the Marquis of Northampton, the Earl of Arundel, the Earl of Huntingdon, and the Earl of Pembroke arrive. Guildford went to meet them. My friend the Marchioness of Northampton had been deputed by the council to bring the Duchess of Suffolk to Sion, and they arrived just as John’s man came to my chamber. “The men want the ladies to join them,” he said succinctly.

We charged—“hastened” would give the mistaken idea we were delicate about it—into John’s chamber. There Jane stood, surrounded by a group of kneeling men. “Mother!” she cried, turning so sharply poor Northampton was assailed by her skirts. “They are telling me that the king is dead! Is it true?”

“It is true,” Frances said gently. “The king has gone to God.”

“Well, of course it is true,” I put in irritably. “Why would all these men be kneeling before you if it were not?”

Jane recovered to give me an icy stare, and I realized my place. “Your Majesty,” I said, and knelt so low to the ground that every bone in my being protested.

John craved Jane’s permission to allow the company to rise. She gave it in a distracted manner, and John, reading from a long sheet of parchment, outlined what all of us knew already: the king had disinherited his sisters in favor of Jane. Once again, we all knelt, the men promising to defend Jane’s right to the throne with their very blood.

Jane stared down at us. Then she sank to the ground and began weeping, but only as long as was proper. After she prayed in silence, she accepted Guildford’s proffered hand and rose to her feet. “I have not sought this crown, which is too great a weight for a person as insignificant as myself. But if it is rightly and lawfully mine, I beseech His Divine Majesty to grant me such grace and spirit that I may govern to his glory and service, and to the advantage of the realm.”

“Long live the queen!” we shouted.

***

After Jane accepted the crown, there was an interminable banquet that was far more memorable for its awkwardness than for the quality of the fare. The queen alternated between looking confused when the other guests did her honor and looking annoyed when they did not. No one seemed quite to know what to do with Guildford, the new royal consort, who finally ended up sitting at a table with his brothers, all of whom I suspected were drinking too much wine. John and the Duke of Suffolk sat with the rest of the royal councilors, most of whom had a dazed look on their faces. Only the Marchioness of Northampton appeared entirely happy. “Who would have thought my matchmaking would be for a queen?” she asked rhetorically.

When the banquet had at last ended, John followed me to my chamber. “Well, we’ve carried out the king’s will. I hope we’ve done the right thing. I realized at the banquet tonight that I really know very little of Lady Jane—I mean, Queen Jane. Oh, she’s learned, all right, but is England safe in her hands?”

“The king thought it would be.”

“Yes. I hope he’s right. I wish he’d been given more time, so that Parliament could have given its approval of these arrangements.” Tears came to his eyes. “I still can’t entirely believe he’s dead. I was fond of the lad. I kept hoping for a miracle.”

“I am sure it will all be well.”

“I hope so. I keep picturing King Henry glowering down at us from heaven, asking what we were doing listening to a mere boy.” John sighed and kissed me good night. “With that image in mind, I believe I’ll keep to my own chamber tonight.”