The Last Tudor Read online

  “You go,” Janey says. “If anyone asks, say that I am ill and Katherine has taken me to my room.”

  Mary rolls her eyes impertinently and follows the ladies. Janey and I step out of the garden door and into the cold deserted courtyard. I open the letter.

  “What does he say?” Janey asks, her voice muffled through her sleeve that she holds to her mouth, trying not to cough in the damp air from the river.

  I raise my blurred gaze from the letter, but I can’t see her, my eyes are so filled with tears. “He says he will marry me out of hand,” I whisper. “As soon as the court returns to London. He says we are to wait no longer, that he will not listen to William Cecil’s warnings nor to anyone else. He says Robert Dudley advised him to trust to time, but Robert Dudley did not trust to time and is ruined. Ned says that he will no longer trust and wait.” I burst into tears and grip her hands. “Janey! He is going to marry me!”

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,

  AUTUMN 1560

  The Privy Council is meeting and the queen is attending with two of her ladies to stand behind her chair, but I am not required. Quietly, I drift from the presence chamber, up the stairs to the room for the maids of honor. Janey is waiting for me, and we go to her private room off the main chamber.

  She fusses over me, taking off my hood, combing my hair, and pinning the hood on again. “This was a lovers’ quarrel,” she says. “Nothing more. Thank God that it is over and done with.”

  I find I am smiling as if, suddenly, nothing mattered after all. “He wrote such a wonderful letter.”

  “He’s a poet,” she replies. “His heart is in his words. And Frances Mewtas is nothing to him.”

  “He should never have taken her hand after they had finished dancing,” I say.

  “He knows that,” Janey agrees.

  “And the next evening, was he with her?”

  “He did not even see her. He was playing cards with the squires. He promised me it was so, and I saw him myself. That was your jealousy.”

  “I am not jealous!”

  Janey regards me with her head on one side. “You are not?”

  I laugh but there is a catch in my throat. “Janey, it is this place, full of lies. And being so uncertain, and having no permission to marry and never a good time to ask! And now with Elizabeth and Robert Dudley parted forever, and him back at court but not able to be with her, everyone despising him for being a wife murderer and Elizabeth too afraid to even speak to him . . . how will she ever be happy again? We can never ask permission for our wedding! Elizabeth will never allow anyone happiness. Not when she has lost her own lover forever.”

  In answer, Janey goes to the door and makes a beckoning gesture. Ned slips in. I get to my feet. “Ned,” I say uncertainly.

  He does not scoop me into his arms this time, he does not sweep me off my feet. He bows very formally, then says, as if he has a prepared speech in his pocket, “I have borne you goodwill of a long time, and because you should not think I intend to mock you, I am content, if you will, to marry you.”

  He takes my hand. I can feel that I am trembling. From his pocket he takes a ring and he slides it on the third finger of my left hand, it is a betrothal ring. It is a diamond, cut to glitter, elegantly pointed along the length of my finger, as if it would join our two hearts with its bright fire.

  “What d’you say?” he whispers. “How d’you like me? How d’you like my offer?”

  “I like both you and your offer, am content to marry with you,” I say solemnly.

  “Will you witness our betrothal?” he asks Janey shortly.

  “Oh, yes!” she gasps. She stands before us, looking from one to another.

  “I, Edward Seymour, take thee, Katherine Grey, to be my wife in futuro,” he pledges. “And in proof of this I give you this ring, and this purse of gold, and my sacred word.”

  I have never attended a betrothal. I don’t know what I am to do. I look up at the handsome face of my husband-to-be.

  “You say the same,” he says.

  “I, Katherine Grey, take thee, Edward Seymour, to be my husband in futuro,” I repeat his vow. “And in proof of this, I accept this ring and this purse of gold, and your sacred word.”

  “And so I witness,” Janey volunteers.

  Edward drops a little purse of coins into my hand, which symbolizes that he is giving his fortune into my keeping, and then puts his hand under my chin, turns up my face, and kisses me on the lips. I think: I will never be alone or unhappy again.

  “When shall we marry before a priest?” I whisper.

  Again, it is Janey who has the plan. “When the queen next goes hunting, we could come to your house,” she suggests to Ned. “I’ll find a priest.”

  “A preacher,” Ned specifies.

  I think of how my sister Jane would never have let me be married by a priest of the old faith and I smile at him. “Of course,” I say. “But no one who knows us.”

  “A stranger,” Janey agrees, “so that he tells no one and does not know who you are. I will be one witness. Who shall be the other? Your sister?”

  I shake my head. “No, for when we tell the queen, she will be furious, and I don’t want Mary to take the blame for me. I’ll bring my maid.”

  “Soon, then,” Ned says. “As soon as the queen goes hunting. But we are as married now as we will be later. We are husband and wife. This betrothal is as binding as wedlock.”

  Janey smiles. “I’ll sit in the maids’ chamber,” she offers. “No one will come in.”

  She goes out and the door closes behind her. Ned locks it and puts the key into my hand. “I am your prisoner,” he says. “You can do what you want with me.”

  I hesitate. I can feel my own desire, I can hear it in the thudding in my ears.

  “I am your promised husband,” he says with a smile. “You really can do what you want with me.”

  I take the ties of his linen shirt that fasten it at his throat and I tug at them. “I want you to take this off,” I whisper.

  “You want me naked?”

  I am as hot as if I had a fever. I have to see his bare shoulders, his chest, the laces at his breeches. I long to see his thighs, his lean buttocks. I feel the heat in my face as he cups my cheeks in his hand, and he says: “Thank God that you want me as I do you.” He shucks off his shirt and I take a little breath at the sight of his lean torso, then I step forward and lean my flushed face against his warm bare chest.

  He slides down his breeches, he is naked underneath. “Command me,” he whispers.

  “Lie down,” I say, and he stretches out, naked and shameless on his back, and I let myself creep up the length of his body and lie on him.

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,

  NOVEMBER 1560

  And then we have to wait, and it is delicious timeless pleasure and pain together. Every morning I hope that perhaps today Elizabeth will say that she is going to Hampton Court, or to Windsor for the hunting, or to New Hall or to Beaulieu or anywhere—I don’t care where her ridiculous fancy takes her if she would just go! But day after day Ned is on one side of the presence chamber and I am the other, and we have to nod politely as if we were friends, and we dare not speak to each other until the evening dancing throws us together, and now, though we have so much more desire, we have more fear, and we dare not go to the corners of the room and whisper.

  It is an exquisite joy to see him, to snatch a moment with him. It is agonizingly wonderful to wake in the morning and see that it is a good day for hunting: sharp and bright and cold, and surely Elizabeth will go today? And then, when she says nothing, it is a delightful torment to dance with Ned, and steal away with him for a kiss and dare to do no more. It is a passionate courtship and now I know the joy that his touch brings to me. It is lust deferred, it is love delayed, there is nothing in the world more delightful than being in his arms, unless it is knowing that I will be in his arms later . . . but not now.

  William Cecil, the queen’s advisor, comes over to sit besi