Innocent Traitor (63 page)

My feelings for my father are ambivalent. I owe him the duty of a daughter, but it is his actions that have brought me to this extremity, and I am struggling to suppress my anger and pain at his reckless stupidity and his callous indifference to its consequences for me. But I cannot go to my death with hatred and resentment in my heart, so I am constraining myself to forgiveness.

I have mixed feelings, therefore, when my father sends me a message expressing his remorse for what he has done, and craving my absolution. Sir John Bridges has authorized this letter and tells me that I might send a reply if I so wish, although it must not be sealed.

Remembering my Christian duty, I take pity on my father, who also faces death and must die with such dreadful sins on his conscience. To bring him to an awareness of the health of his soul, I cannot help reminding him, in charity, of why I am to die. I write:

Father,

Although it has pleased God to hasten my death by your means, by whom my life should have been lengthened, yet I can so patiently take it that I yield God thanks for shortening my woeful days. I count myself blessed that, washing my hands with my innocence, my guiltless blood may cry before Almighty God.

Reading this over, I think it sounds a little harsh, so I end on a gentler note:

The Lord continue to keep you, that at the last we may meet in Heaven.

Your obedient daughter till death, Jane.

After Sir John has taken this letter, I am overcome with remorse: I should be comforting my father, not castigating him. The hours left to us on earth are too short for recriminations, and I must go to God with a heart cleansed of bitterness. Therefore, in my old prayer book, which once belonged to my grandmother Mary Tudor, and which I have decided to carry with me to the scaffold, I write a second message to my father:

The Lord comfort Your Grace. Though it has pleased God to take away two of your children, think not that you have lost them, but trust that we, by losing this mortal life, have won an immortal life. I, for my part, as I have honored Your Grace in this life, will pray for you in another life.

When the Lieutenant next visits me, which he does twice a day now to see if I have all I need, I ask him to ensure that my prayer book is delivered to my father after my death.

He looks at what I have written.

“Very proper, very fitting,” he says, then clears his throat. “Madam, I wonder—might I also crave some small remembrance of you?” His eyes convey far more than he is able to say.

I cast around, then pick up the velvetbound prayer book given to me by Guilford.

“You may have this, Sir John. I will inscribe it for you.” And I write:

There is a time to be born and a time to die, and the day of our death is better than the day of our birth.

Yours, as the Lord knows, a true friend.

Sir John reads my words. He cannot speak. He nods his thanks and leaves me.

Fighting back the ever-ready tears, I sit down to compose the speech that I must make from the scaffold. It must not be too long, for it will be a cold morning and I must not be seen to be delaying the execution. Nor must I appear to criticize the Queen or the sentence against me in any way: to do so might lead to the confiscation of my family’s property—if there is any left of it, I think grimly. My father will surely be attainted and deprived of his life, titles, and possessions, and the last will all be forfeited to the Crown, leaving my mother and sisters facing penury. So I will say nothing against the Queen. Indeed, I have no cause to.

I am writing out a fair copy of my finished speech when Sir John Bridges returns.

“Madam, I have received a message from the council. Your husband, Guilford Dudley, has petitioned the Queen for permission to say farewell to you in person, and Her Majesty has granted his request, if you are agreeable.”

I am already shrinking inside. I cannot cope with Guilford now. He belongs to a part of my life that I have put firmly behind me.

“How is my husband?”

Sir John shakes his head. “Very distressed, I fear. His jailers believe he is on the verge of collapse; he never ceases railing against what he perceives to be an unkind fate. He does not have your courage, my lady. Perhaps if you were to see him, it would calm him.”

“No, I prefer not to. I am sorry for him, but to be truthful, I could not face it. Yet I will send him a message. Tell him I desire him, for the love of God, to omit these moments of grief, for we shall shortly behold each other in a better place. Tell him also that I shall watch from my window as he leaves for Tower Hill on Monday.”

“I will pass on your message, madam,” the Lieutenant promises.

After he has gone, I sink down at my desk.

This waiting is sheer hell. It seems that every last refinement of suffering is to be my lot in these final days. Truly, I think that death, when it comes, will be welcome to me. At least I will then be at peace.

Mrs.Ellen

THE TOWER OF LONDON, 11TH FEBRUARY 1554

Distraught, I weep into my pillow, as I have done every night since last Wednesday. The pillow is sodden with my grief, and I am ragged from lack of sleep. It is all I can do to restrain myself from crying aloud my agony. Instead, I toss from side to side, whimpering in torment.

My charge, my darling child, whom I have carefully nurtured from birth as if she were my own flesh and blood, is to be butchered to death in the morning, just a few short hours from now. All that care, all that love—and I can do nothing to help her now. That she should be brought to this, to die so untimely in the most beautiful bloom of her youth—the prospect is unbearable.

It is against Nature, this taking of a young life. At sixteen, Jane should be occupied, like most girls of her age, with domestic things; she should be mistress of her own household with at least one infant in the nursery, and a lusty husband in her bed. She should be doing all the normal things that young women of her rank do: ordering the servants, stitching her lord’s shirts, making infusions in the stillroom, supervising the nurses. Instead, her life is to come abruptly to a bloody end.

It has been torture these past days to watch her, so slender and pretty, with her burnished red hair and the soft bloom on her freckled skin. Those childish hands with their thin fingers holding the pen that writes such adult words. The grace of her movements, the carriage of her head, the curve of her cheek. All the things I love about my young lady, who is at an age when a girl’s looks are at their finest, when youth is urgent with the zest for life, and the future stretches endlessly ahead. Yet by this time tomorrow, my child will be in her grave.

Was ever a condemned prisoner as innocent as this? She has not deserved this punishment. She is as good and honest as the day. It was that wicked Northumberland, and her unspeakable parents, who brought her to this. May God forgive them, for I never can. If I had my way, they would burn in Hell for all eternity. My hatred for them is like a canker, consuming me. Along with my grief and my pain, it is tearing me apart.

So far, I have managed—just, and only by a supreme effort of will—to maintain my outward composure for Jane’s sake. My prayer now is that I will not fail her on the morrow. If I can just be strong for a few more short hours…It will be the last comfort I can offer her.

Frances Brandon,
Duchess of Suffolk

WHITEHALL PALACE, 11TH FEBRUARY 1554

I am in my lodging at court, lying in the arms of my young master of horse, Adrian Stokes, and crying bitter tears for my daughter, whom I am to lose forever tomorrow.

Until last Thursday, when I heard the terrible news, my affair with Adrian, which I admit has been based purely upon lust, served as an antidote to my wild rage at my husband for his rash incrimination of Jane in his madcap schemes. But now Adrian barely exists for me. My innocent Jane is to pay the price of my husband’s treason, and he will in turn follow her to the block. Yet only one of them deserves to die. And if I could get my hands on Henry, I would kill him myself.

I no longer care that I am to be left widowed and destitute. Henry means less than nothing to me now. He forfeited all rights to my love and loyalty on the day he issued an ultimatum to Wyatt. At thirty-seven, I am still a handsome woman, and a lusty one at that, and I did not hesitate to inveigle my young master of horse into my bed. It was my way of having my revenge on Henry, but it also provided me with the comfort of another human body, and a means to ward off the night terrors that have beset me these past weeks.

Adrian came willingly enough and has proved a considerate and inventive lover. But tonight, as on the past three nights, his presence in my bed hardly registers.

Instead of turning to him hot with desire, as I did before last Thursday, I lie here punishing myself with remorse. I have been a harsh mother, when I could have been kinder and more understanding. I can see it now, with the benefit of hindsight and the clarity that follows misfortune and grief. What crucifies me especially is the knowledge that there is no way in which I can make reparation to my daughter, no way that she will ever be able to extend to me the forgiveness that I crave. I can only pray for God’s mercy.

The young man beside me is now asleep. He is distressed by the tragedy that is overtaking me, but blessedly distanced from it. I envy him his oblivion.

I know some are criticizing me for having returned to court, and perhaps it does look as if I am thinking only of my own future. But the Queen is my cousin, my own flesh and blood, and I had thought to soften her heart by my presence, which I hoped would call to her remembrance the plight of my poor child. But she has not condescended to notice me. I have waited hours, jostled by hosts of petitioners, for her to come forth from her apartments, bound for chapel or presence chamber, only to have her pass by me unseeing. I have tried to send messages begging for an audience, but none of my erstwhile friends will deliver them. I have even thought of throwing myself on my knees in the Queen’s path, but I know it would do me no good. The bitter truth is that I understand why Jane has to die.

I know that sleep will elude me tonight. Carefully I slide out of bed, put on my nightgown, take the candle, and make my way to the chapel. Here, on my knees before the altar, where a flickering lamp bears witness to the ever-constant presence of God, I immerse myself in prayer as never before, beseeching the Almighty to pardon my grievous faults and sins of omission, and to give me the strength to return to Him with a good and ungrudging heart the daughter that He gave me.

Queen Mary