The Last Tudor Read online

  I spend hours on my knees in my rooms and my sister Katherine kneels beside me as I pray for guidance, my sister Mary beside her. Katherine is not at one with the saints. I can see that she is dozing and I dig her in the ribs with my elbow and she starts and says “Amen.” It does not matter. I must be staunch and true. Katherine is my companion and my sister. She can sleep, just like Saint Peter slept while Jesus was in an agony of spirit, even so I will take step after step towards a holy crown of sainthood.

  In response to Princess Mary’s claim to be the true heir, the council proclaims me as queen, and all the lord lieutenants are sent to their counties to make sure that everyone knows that the king is dead and I am his named heir. Proclamations are pasted all over London; preachers make the announcement from their pulpits.

  “Does anyone object?” I ask my father nervously.

  “No, no, not a word,” he reassures me. “Nobody wants the Spanish brought down on us, nobody wants to return to the rule of the Pope.”

  “Princess Mary must surely have some supporters in the country,” I say anxiously.

  “Lady Mary,” he corrects me. “You would think so—but no one has stood up for her, whatever they think privately. Of course, the country must be riddled with papists, but they are not declaring for her. John Dudley has ruled the roost for so long, he prepared for this. As long as the Spanish don’t try to meddle.”

  “We must muster an army.” I have no idea how an army is mustered.

  “We are doing so,” he says. “I shall lead them.”

  “No,” I say suddenly. “Truly, Father, I can’t do this without you. Don’t leave me with the Dudleys, not with Guildford and his terrible mother and father. Don’t leave me here with only Mother and the girls and no one to speak for me in the council. Mother says nothing against Lady Dudley, and Katherine is worse than nobody, Mary is too little. I have to have someone here.”

  He hesitates. “I know that your mother would rather that I did not ride against her cousin Princess Mary. And I am not a military man . . .”

  “John Dudley must go!” I exclaim. “It’s all his idea. It’s his plan. And besides, he put down the Kett rebellion only four years ago. He should be the one to go.”

  “Don’t get upset,” my father says, a wary eye on the flush of color in my face and my raised voice. He looks over towards my ladies and gives my mother a nod as if she must come and calm me.

  “I am not upset,” I say quickly. I have to reassure everyone, all the time. “I just need my family around me. Guildford has his: his brothers work for him, his mother is here, his father has done all this for him. Why should the court be filled with Dudleys, and you be sent away when I have only Katherine and Mary and Mother here?”

  “I’ll stay, don’t fret. God is with us and you will be queen. John Dudley’s force will take the princess, even if she gets to Framlingham Castle and raises her royal standard there.”

  “Lady,” I remind him. “Lady Mary. And it’s not her royal standard. It’s mine.”

  John Dudley holds a great farewell dinner before he leaves London, a strange combination of sinful boasting and sinful fear. His speech is not heroic. I have read enough history to know that a man about to march out to defend his faith and his queen should sound martial. Instead of declaring the justness of his cause and the certainty of his victory, he warns everyone that he is risking his life and reputation, he conveys a real anxiety instead of false confidence.

  Guildford and I are seated side by side, looking over the hall, the cloth of estate over my chair, not his, my seat raised higher than his, as his father threatens the council that he will betray them if they betray him. This is not the sort of speech that Caesar makes before he marches out to general acclaim, and so I tell Guildford.

  “These are hardly loyal Roman tribunes,” he replies scathingly. “Not a single one of them is trustworthy. Any one of them would turn their collar if they thought they were on the losing side.”

  I am about to explain why he is wrong when his father suddenly turns towards us, makes one of his grand oratorical gestures, and speaks of me. He tells them that I am queen of their enticement, forcibly placed on the throne rather than by my own request. Guildford and I blink at each other like a pair of owlets in a nest. What about my God-given destiny? What about my cousin’s right to will his throne to me? What about my mother’s legitimate claim, enshrined in the will of Good King Henry, handed over to me? Guildford’s father makes my coming to the throne sound like a plot, rather than an act of God; and if it is a plot, then it is treason.

  John Dudley marches northeast to Suffolk, and those of us left in London embark on the business of government, but it feels like masquing rather than ruling until we know that Lady Mary is captured. Guildford does not dispute his name or title but dines every day on his own, in state, enthroned like a king under a cloth of gold canopy, with fifty dishes coming out to him, to be distributed among the huge court he has invited to give the impression of greatness. Sometimes I feel, madly, that he is usurping my usurpation, a plot inside a plot, a sin upon a sin. He and his court of knaves drink to excess and are rowdy. I can hear the yelling and the singing while I am dining with my ladies in my rooms. This would be bad enough, since gluttony is a hidden danger to salvation, but worse than this is that Guildford gets news of his father and his brother before the news is reported to me.

  It is his brother Lord Robert who is raising troops against Lady Mary in Norfolk; it is his father, John Dudley, who is marching on her from London to Framlingham. Naturally enough, Guildford’s court is where the men go and ask for news; mine is a court of ladies and we are easily excluded. It is not that the messages do not come to me; they do come, everyone knows they must report to the monarch. But first they stop to tell the men. Of course, a queen’s court is bound to be the resort of ladies, but how am I to be a ruling queen if I am not at the center of the councils of men?

  This is a puzzle for me that I had not foreseen. I thought that once I forced myself to accept the crown of the King of England then I would have the power of the King of England. Now I understand that taking power as a queen is a different thing. Men have sworn their fealty on their bended knees; but they do not enact manly loyalty to a woman, and—truth be told—I am very small and slight, and even with God at my back I am not imposing.

  And these men are faithless. The very night after John Dudley marches out, I hear that William Paulet, the Marquess of Winchester, who was so foolishly quick to offer Guildford the crown, has taken himself off to his own London home without permission, and Katherine’s father-in-law, William Herbert, tries to leave as well. I will not accept this disloyalty against the will of God, and I send at once for the marquess and tell him to come back to his post.

  I call the Privy Council together and I tell them that I am locking the gates of the Tower every evening at dusk and I expect every lord of the council to be inside. I expect all the ladies to attend me, my sisters too, my mother and my mother-in-law, my husband as well. They have put me on the throne in the Tower, and beside the throne and inside the Tower they will have to stay with me. Only if we stand together, with the saints in heaven, will we triumph, as John Dudley marches towards Lady Mary like the devil claiming his own.

  William Herbert slinks back into my presence chamber, before midnight. I stay up late, my mother and my mother-in-law, Lady Dudley, with me. Even Guildford is with us, sober for once. Herbert’s son, still pale and sickly, comes in the room behind him, Katherine my sister half a step behind her young husband.

  “You have to stay here, my lord,” I say abruptly. “We need you here in case there is news. We may need to call a council at any time.”

  He bows to me but he says nothing. He has no defense.

  “And I expect my sister’s companionship,” I say. “You may not take her away without my permission.”

  I cannot stop myself glancing at my mother to see if she agrees with me. She nods; even Lady Dudley makes a little gesture of