The Last Tudor Read online

  “My mind is on heaven,” I say steadily.

  “No, it isn’t,” she says with a sister’s sharp wit. “You think that she is going to forgive you without you apologizing. You think that you are going to win where John Dudley failed. You think that you are going to proclaim your faith and everyone is going to admire you for it, just like Roger Ascham, the tutor, does, and that ridiculous man in Switzerland.”

  She catches me on the raw. I am furious at the insult to my spiritual teacher Henry Bullinger. “You’re jealous!” I spit at her. “You name great men, but you have never understood their teaching.”

  “Jealous of what?” She raises her voice. “Of this?” Her gesture takes in the low-ceilinged interconnecting rooms, the view over the enclosed gardens, the Tower walls beyond them. “You’re in prison, condemned to death, your husband a prisoner condemned to death. There is nothing here that I would be jealous of! I want to live. I want to be married and have children. I want to wear beautiful gowns and dance! I want life. And I know you do, too. Nobody could want to die for their faith at sixteen. In England! When it is your own cousin on the throne? She will forgive you! She has forgiven Father. Just ask her forgiveness and come home to Bradgate and let us be happy! Think of your bedroom there, of your books. Think of the river path where we ride!”

  I turn from her as if she were tempting me. It is easier if I think of her as a worldly temptation, a little gargoyle-faced thing, not my pretty blond sister with her simple appetites and her foolish hopes. “No,” I say. “For whosoever will save his life, shall lose it: but whoso loseth his life for My sake shall find it.”

  I hear her little whimper as she faces the door and raps on it to be released. She has not been taught to argue as I have been taught from babyhood; she has education but no scholarship. It is very unlikely that she could ever persuade me of anything, my silly little sister. But I am moved by her tears. I would comfort her if I could, but I am called. I don’t turn to her but I remind her: “For I am come to set a man at variance against his father, and the daughter against her mother-in-law.”

  “Mother,” she says, muffled from behind her sleeve. She is mopping her streaming tears.

  I am so surprised that I take her by the shoulder and turn her round to face me. “What?”

  “Mother,” she says again. “It’s supposed to be son against the father and the daughter against the mother, not mother-in-law. You got it wrong because you hate Lady Dudley. And that just shows you, Jane. This is not the Word of God. This is you trying to get your own back on the Dudleys. You hope that the queen will forgive you without you changing your faith, and then John Dudley, who died renouncing his faith, will look like a coward and a heretic and you will look braver than him.”

  I flare with rage at her simplicity. “I am a martyr to your stupidity! You understand nothing. I am amazed that you know the Scripture, but you use it wrongly, to shake my confidence. Go now; and don’t come back.”

  She turns to me and her blue eyes blaze with the Tudor temper. She has pride, just like me. “You don’t deserve my love for you,” she says, with her own silly logic. “But you have it anyway, when you least deserve it. Because I see the trouble you are in even if you are too clever to know.”

  THE TOWER, LONDON,

  FEBRUARY 1554

  I had thought that the queen would release me for Christmas, but the twelve nights come and go and while the rest of the country is forced to celebrate the Lord’s birth with a Latin Mass, I praise Our Lord as a good Christian should, with prayers and reflections and no pagan bringing in of the green, no masquing or idolatry, no excess of drink or food. Indeed, I don’t think I have ever kept a Christmas so well before—my day was entirely devoted to prayer and meditating on the birth of my Savior, and reading my Bible. There were no presents and no feasting, and that is how I have always wanted to spend Christmas, and I have never been allowed this isolated purity before. I am so glad to be alone and fasting.

  “But how completely miserable!” Katherine wails. She comes from our London house, with gifts from my mother and father, and a new hood from her own wardrobe. “Jane, couldn’t you get a bough of holly? Not even a Yule log in the fireplace?”

  She releases a little tame robin that has come with her, and it perches on the empty stone lintel and trills, as if to complain that there is no greenery and no music.

  I don’t even answer her; I just stare her down, until I see her lip tremble and she says feebly: “Surely, you must be so lonely?”

  “I am not,” I say, though the truth is that I am.

  “You must miss us, your sisters, even if you don’t miss our lady mother.”

  “I have my studies.” But they don’t take the place of conversation, even the frivolous foolish conversation of ignorant girls.

  “Well, I miss you,” she says boldly, and she comes into my arms and puts her wet face into my neck and sobs loudly into my ear. I don’t repulse her, I hold her tighter. I don’t say, “I miss you too,” for what would be the point in both of us crying? And besides, I am living my life as a disciple of the Lord. I should miss nothing. If I have my Bible, I need nothing else. But I hold her tightly, as if I am holding a puppy: it is comforting though meaningless.

  “I have a secret to tell you,” she says, her damp cheek against my ear.

  “Go on.” We are not alone but my lady-in-waiting is seated at a little distance, beside the window for the light on her sewing. Katherine can whisper into my ear and the woman will think that we are crying together.

  “Father is raising an army.” It comes to me like a thread of sound.

  I can hardly hear her. I make sure that I keep my face hidden. “To rescue me?”

  I look as if I am weeping on Katherine’s rounded shoulder though I have to control myself not to jump and scream with delight. I always knew that my father would not leave me here. I always knew that if my lady mother could not persuade Queen Mary to release me, then my father would fetch me by force. I always knew that they would, neither of them, just leave me here. I am their eldest daughter, and the heir to the Queen of England. It’s not as if I am a nobody who could be easily forgotten.

  “Is it not terribly dangerous?” I ask.

  “Oh, I don’t think so,” my sister whispers back. “Nobody wants Queen Mary any more. Not now that she’s marrying the Spanish prince.”

  My mind is whirling. I didn’t know any of this.

  “She’s marrying?”

  “Philip of Spain.”

  “There will be an uprising against him? They will put me on the throne in her place!”

  “I think so,” Katherine says vaguely. “I think that is the plan.”

  “It’s not an uprising for Elizabeth, is it?” I ask, suddenly suspicious.

  “Oh, no,” she says. “Elizabeth has become a papist. She has asked the queen to send her crucifixes and chalices for her own chapel, and she has put her chaplain in a surplice and cope.”

  Not even a featherhead like Katherine could misunderstand signs like this. “Are you, at any rate, sure that Father is coming for me?”

  She nods. She has grasped this fact at least. “I am certain.”

  We pull apart and her eyes are shining and her cheeks are flushed.

  “Take the bird when you go,” I warn her. “You know I don’t like them.”

  To wait for rescue, knowing that your heavenly and earthly fathers have not forgotten their faithful daughter, is to be on the brink of adventure. It illuminates my days and makes my prayers passionate and hopeful rather than apologetic, waiting for a pardon. I knew, I always knew for a certainty, that the people of England, having been free to read, free to think, and free to pray directly to their Savior, would never return to the slavery of the mind and soul of the papist Church. I always knew that they would rise up against the Antichrist as soon as it was clear to them that their faith was being betrayed. It was a matter of time, it was a matter of faith. I must wait and be patient, as He is patient.