The Lady of Misrule (7 page)

‘And you know very well he'd never have chosen his half-sister as his heir. You do know that.'

She admitted she did, although she allowed no more than a defeated-sounding ‘Yes.'

‘But because he wasn't old enough to write a will—'

A gesture of exasperation from Jane:
Guildford, I know all this.

‘—my father had to see it through for him.'

His father, Lord President, protector of the boy-King, his facilitator, the man in charge.

‘Because whatever the King wanted to happen, my father had to make happen. And he always did. Nothing ever mattered to him except whatever the King wanted.'

She didn't deny it, but nor did she give ground: continuing her pacing, wrapped in her own arms.

Quieter, he said, ‘My father's loyal. That's what he is. Loyal to a fault.' Then, ‘It's easy for everyone else: sloping off, switching sides.'

Which was what Harry had done, although of course it had been more complicated than that. Or, no, simpler perhaps. His son had been captured
en route
to London by the other side and that had been enough for Harry: he'd do whatever they wanted, say whatever they wanted – and what a prize for them, the turnaround of an earl's brother – just as long as they let his son go. Which they did.

‘Everyone's pretending it was someone else's idea to declare you but they should ask themselves what they'd have done in my father's place. He's loyal,' Guildford repeated. ‘Nothing matters more to him than loyalty to the Crown. He'll be loyal to our new queen, too, if she lets him.'

That, I hadn't expected. Nor, from the look of her, had Jane.

There was a defiant glitter to Guildford's eyes. ‘My mother's gone to the Queen. They've let her go to the Queen, at Newhall.'

To pledge her husband's loyalty, he meant. To beg for his life.

Jane's response was no response, just a straightforward, unrelated question which took them back to where they'd begun: ‘Why did you want to see me?'

He didn't seem to have an answer. ‘Well, to –
I
don't know,' and an edge of complaint to it, as if she should be the one to know.

‘I must go,' she announced, to no one in particular but I was quick to peel myself from the wall. He didn't argue, but he did ask her if she'd come again. ‘We'll see,' was all she said, and wisely he didn't pursue it.

I couldn't have been less prepared for what happened when I followed her back inside the house: her whirling around to me in the gloom to seethe,
‘Did you hear that?

Hear what? I couldn't even properly see: my eyes hadn't adjusted and for that moment she was just a deeper darkness ahead of me in the stairwell.

‘Did you
hear
it?'

I couldn't think: with her there, breathing fire at me, I just couldn't think. Hear what? About the loyalty – was it that? The mother-in-law begging for mercy?

‘King'
she quoted, the word dredged with disgust. ‘Guildford was never King.'

Then I remembered:
king and queen
, he'd said;
throw rotten eggs at a king and queen
, meaning, as I'd understood it, the boy and girl who'd briefly been taken to be King and Queen. That was all he'd meant, I was fairly sure; no more than that.

She said, ‘He would never have been King and he
knows
it, he
knows
it,' as if I'd dare stand there and deny it. Then she was off, stamping up the stairs. ‘I couldn't have been clearer about that.'

And I, for one, wouldn't have wanted to be on the receiving end of that clarity.

Halfway up, she halted and turned to drive it home: ‘If he hadn't gone around
acting
as if he were King, we wouldn't be here now.'

Really? Did she really think that? People said he'd assumed airs, and I'd seen for myself the white and gold suit, but was that so bad? I was as happy as the next person to ridicule him – he did rather lend himself to it – but the fact was that he'd had a part to act, as queen's consort, and wasn't that all he'd been doing? Did she think the Queen would be so petty as to seek vengeance for that? Did she really, seriously blame her being held at the Tower on Guildford's white and gold suit?

‘He's my husband – I can't help that – and maybe the King did want me to be Queen, but since when did he want the next
king
to be
Guildford Dudley
?' and it was as if she couldn't even bear his name in her mouth. ‘I'm telling you,' and it came barrelling down the stairs like a threat, ‘he was never going to be King, whatever his father said.' With that, she stomped off, calling behind her, ‘My husband could've been Duke Whatever-he-liked, but King?', the words ringing out in the stairwell: ‘Over my dead body.'

The following afternoon, I watched from our window as perhaps a dozen horsemen arrived together at the far side of the inner bailey and rode unhurriedly across to our house. They were impressively dressed, and their horses beautiful. I'd seen horsemen before down there, of course, but only in pairs at most, distantly, and mid-assignment. Never a show of them, like this, and never at our door. What could a dozen mounted gentlemen want with anyone here? Not that I was worried, because whatever or whomever they'd come for, they were in no hurry, staying in their saddles but slackening their reins and indulging in some back-stretching. Through our open window, I caught snatches of conversation: sons, dogs, a troublesome reeve. Chit-chat. Definitely an off-duty air to the gathering. I didn't hear anyone leaving the house to greet them, nor did they seem to expect it; they sounded happy enough to be there beneath our window in the sunshine.

Then came a second, similar group, joining the first with comparable languor, and a third, by which time I'd realised
their riding up to the house was simply to leave room for those behind: this was some kind of procession coming to a close here.

Before long there were dozens of noblemen down there on their wonderful horses. Was Harry somewhere among them? Harry, taking his place as the fine, upstanding man he was supposed to be. And if he was there, would he know I was here? Should he spot me, he might come up. It wouldn't be easy, though, to have him here; he'd be out of place. I didn't want him coming up here.

So, I drew back, unable then to see much more of the oncoming archers than a protracted jostling of bows, and behind them the flashes of sunlight on silk suggesting the presence of standard-bearers. Well over a hundred men in all, was my guess. The green's already-patchy grass would be getting a good kicking. Absorbed as I was, I jumped when Jane spoke up: ‘Is that the duke?'

She spoke up but didn't look up: I could tell the difference, by then, from her voice alone; I didn't need to tear myself away from the spectacle to know she had her head in a book. I wondered if, in turn, had the hubbub of the crowd and the haze of horses not been drifting through our window, she'd have known from my demeanour that I was witnessing something quite different from the everyday, humdrum business of the bailey.

The duke? Could all this be for the duke? He'd be arriving under escort, I knew – but this? Horsemen and archers and standard-bearers. A hundred or more men, in all.

How would I know if he was there? Even if it were easy to distinguish anyone in particular down there, which it wasn't, I didn't have a clue what he looked like. But then actually I did – I did see him and I did know it was him in the very instant that Jane offered the clue: ‘Scarlet cloak,' adding, ‘He always wears it,' as if he did so specifically to bore her.

Mid-crowd, a man was indeed dismounting inside an eye-catching bloom of that finest cloth.
Got him.
‘Yep, he's there,' I crowed; and then, when she didn't respond, ‘There he is!'

‘Is
he.' Sarcastic, as if she'd never been interested.

Suit yourself.
Me, I was avid to see whatever I could of the man who'd run England for the past couple of years then had the gall to ignore a king's daughter and, in her place, declare his own daughter-in-law.

The scarlet-sporting duke was joined by four others, fine figures of men but with a residual delicacy of boyhood and an air of dejection. These, I guessed, were the sons, the beloved sons. A huddle of sons, around whom other men busied themselves, conferring and casting around for direction. The duke showed no sign of discomfort, didn't cower as his sons did; at ease and busy, he appeared, as if he were at least equal to those other men in the matter of bringing about his detention. Which, conceivably, he was: the outstandingly capable duke. Only when he turned in pursuit of one of those men did I see that there was something amiss with that heavy-swinging but light-as-air cloak of his; but not until he turned again did I properly see the splatter, all down the back. An extravagant, glistening mess. Real, actual egg-throwing, then, and
it took my breath away to see it because that must've been some ride through London. No wonder the sons were unnerved.

But egg was all it was, and perhaps a little of whatever else people had found to throw that would do damage – which was anything, really, because it wouldn't take much to put paid to fabric as fine as that. It wasn't what they might have thrown that shook me, though, it was that they'd thrown it at all. Anyone who wears such a beautiful cloak does so in complete surety that nothing adverse will come its way, and it was that confidence which the Londoners had wanted rubbished. Could I have joined in? However horrible the duke was, however much he'd cheated the people of England, could I have gone to some street corner with my egg or eggs and whatever else, my hands full or with a bagful, and perhaps even scooping up some dung: could I have stood there at the ready and, as he'd ridden by, taken aim and actually lobbed it? No half-measures when it comes to throwing – a throw's a throw or it's a mere letting go. Could I have lobbed an egg with the force to have it smash on his back? And then what would I have felt to see its impact, its momentary cling, its nasty slide? There's no fighting a thrown egg, no negotiating with it; you just have to take it.
He always wears it
, Jane had said, and there he was, wearing it still, ludicrously sullied though it was. He could've taken it off, but there he was, toughing it out. As I watched, he joined the man whom he'd addressed and together they strode from view, leaving the sons at a loss, which was when one of them began to cry:
right there, in the middle of that crowd, openly crying, wiping his eyes, his bearing gone. My intake of breath had Jane ask, ‘What?' and I was just about to tell her – the ruined cloak, the young man overwhelmed – but I found I couldn't. Not because she'd be upset but because, I feared, she wouldn't.

Guildford's father and brothers were taken to the Beauchamp Tower where, the following morning, Jane's own father became a fellow-prisoner, although he'd arrived with no procession of any kind and we'd have been none the wiser if not informed by a carefully sympathetic Mr Partridge. Jane didn't ask Mr Partridge if she could send any message and none came for her, and then within days her father was free again, perhaps because he was the Queen's cousin's husband, or perhaps – as Jane seemed to suggest – because he was a harmless idiot.

‘Oh, he's no danger,' she'd said airily, when I'd raised it.

We were getting ready for bed at the time: she sitting on the bed and me kneeling up behind her, combing her hair. Her ivory comb was carved with four figures and once, spotting me looking at them, she'd said, ‘Paris,' which had me ask who she knew in France and she'd had to explain that Paris was a man judging which of three goddesses was the fairest; and when I'd asked whom he'd chosen, all she'd said was ‘The wrong one.'

Now she was saying, ‘My father's no threat to anyone. Full of talk, that's all. And all of it about himself.'

She raised a hand to signal I'd done enough combing, and we scrambled to swap places.

‘To his mind,' she said, ‘he's a thinker, but he's easily impressed and the Lady Mary knows it.'

Lady Mary,
not ‘the Queen', but that was an oversight, surely, a slip of the tongue. I said that she too would soon go free, because if her father – an instigator – was already pardoned, then it couldn't be much longer before that privilege was extended to her. Not that I particularly relished the prospect, although of course I didn't mention that. Whenever she went free, so would I, but I didn't feel quite ready to go. Sometimes – times like these – I quite liked being here in the Tower. Or perhaps it was that I quite liked not being at home.

Jane said knowingly, and not without satisfaction, ‘Oh, I don't think she'll be quite so forgiving of me.'

I turned to object, but was stilled by her touch to my head. She said, ‘We didn't part, last, on good terms,' then told me how, when she and her family had last stayed with the Queen, back when she was still Lady Mary, she'd gone into the chapel with one of the household's ladies in search of her little sister, and the lady had genuflected to the reserved sacrament. Jane said, ‘I asked her why she did that and she said, “Because our Lord is there.” So I said, “Where?” Inside the reserved sacrament, she meant, on the altar. “Because
I
don't see him.'” The combing ceased, and fabrics rustled as she slid down from the bed. “‘
I
see something the baker made.” And of course she went and told Lady Mary, who was –' she
paused to indicate the next words weren't her own ‘–“very disappointed” in me.'

Exasperated, I said, ‘And that surprised you?'

After all, the Queen had lived for years in fear of her life for exactly that belief.

Inspecting her stockings for holes, Jane was sharp in return: ‘No, it didn't surprise me. But it needed saying.'

‘Did it?' I almost laughed. ‘Did it, though?' What difference had she hoped it would make? Had she thought the Lady Mary might suddenly see the error of her ways?
Oh, how silly of me! Because now that you mention it
…