The Last Tudor Read online

  “My orders were to escort you. I don’t know any more,” the captain says.

  The crew cast off and raise their oars and then when the barge is pushed from the pier they dip them, all at the same time, in the water. The hortator beats one strike of the drum and they all pull together and the barge leaps forward, making me rock in my seat. Again and again the drum pounds softly and the barge rocks me to its beat. The sun on the water is dazzling, the baby is heavy in my belly. I am terribly afraid, and I don’t know what I should fear. I wish that Ned were here. I wish with all my heart that Ned were here.

  For once in my life, I have nothing to say, not a scream of protest, not even a flood of tears, not one word. I am so shocked I am struck dumb. Where Elizabeth sank down onto the steps at the watergate and wept in self-pity and made sure her words were recorded, I am silent. I disembark from the barge, I take the outstretched hand to help me up the steps. I go quietly, like a frightened child, to wherever they lead me, up the stone steps and through the garden gate into the front door of the lieutenant’s house, the mansion house of the busy little walled village that includes both mint and armory, treasure house and palace, prison, and place of execution.

  They help me up the narrow staircase to a good-sized bedchamber at the front of the house, and when I sink into a chair, they go out and close the door quietly. Then I hear the key turning in the lock. It is not a long terrible grating sound—it is an oiled lock that has been used often. I am only another prisoner.

  THE LIEUTENANT’S HOUSE,

  THE TOWER, LONDON, SUMMER 1561

  When I get up in the morning and look through the leaded panes of the small window, I can see the green where they built the scaffold and beheaded my sister. If I squint to the left, I can see the chapel where they buried her severed head beside her slight truncated body. I sleep in the bed that was hers when she was queen, I cry into her pillows. I sit in her old chair. The tapestries that hang on the walls are those that hung in her bedroom.

  On the other side of the Tower grounds, past the White Tower and out of sight, are the stables where she put her hand on our father’s rein and begged him not to leave her. I can hear the clang of the gate that opened for him on that day. This is the place of my sister’s crowning, betrayal, and death. My father is buried here, too. This is where Elizabeth, with extraordinary cruelty, has chosen to imprison me.

  She took her time like the heartless automaton that she is. She smiled at me on progress, she waved to the crowds along the route. She favored me before the Spanish and the French ambassadors. She said nothing, not even to Robert Dudley when he told her the news that triggered her jealous hatred. She gave everyone—even me—to understand that I was still an heir, just as I was before he confessed to her, that I am her cousin, her lady-in-waiting, a favorite, a girl she regards as her daughter. Actually, she behaved as if he had said nothing, that she had heard nothing. It was as if no confession had ever been made, and Bess St. Loe and Robert Dudley said nothing either.

  She allowed me to return early to London and—when she could act easily and fast, secretly and unchallenged—she had me arrested and locked up in these three rooms, overlooking Tower Green, where the beheading of my sister plays over and over again in my mind’s eye whenever I look out of the window.

  Of course, she’s not going to behead me. I am not so timorous that I imagine things are worse than they are. She is furious with me, but I have committed no crime. I will be held here, in moderate comfort, with my pets and my women, until the baby is born, until Ned comes home, and then we will both beg her pardon and be released, and we will have to live quietly at Hanworth until she forgets or forgives me. At the worst she will treat me as she does our cousin Margaret Douglas—with suspicion and dislike. Like her, I will raise my Tudor son, and laugh up my sleeve.

  Like it or not, any boy of mine will be the next King of England; my rights will pass to him. This could make Elizabeth more kindly to me, as she can raise him as her heir, and then nobody can insist that she marry. But, since it is Elizabeth—a barren Tudor from a tyrannical line—it may make her angrier with me, as the prettier younger cousin who has done what she cannot. There is no way of knowing with Elizabeth. I cannot guess at her mind. I would never have imagined that she would imprison a woman about to give birth for doing nothing worse than marrying the young man she loves.

  As she establishes her rule, the whole country and I learn that she is powerful and unscrupulous. I truly believe her to be a tyrant as wicked as her father, but I don’t fear that she will do worse to me than hold me in this shameful imprisonment until the birth of my son. She means me to be humiliated, and she has triumphed. Indeed, she has brought me very low.

  “Oh, no, she plans far worse than this,” Mary my sister says, climbing up into one of my high dining chairs, and sitting back, her little feet stuck out in front of her.

  “What could be worse?” I ask.

  Mary is my only visitor, though the court has returned to London, and she is escorted by a woman who is certain to be spying on us and reporting everything we say. No one else comes to see me. My ladies are allowed to serve me, my gowns have been sent to me, my plates with my family crest and my silver forks; my linnets from Janey are in their cage. I have half a dozen of Jo’s puppies in their basket and Jo watches over them all as Ribbon the little cat watches her. Mr. Nozzle the monkey is exploring the walls and fireplaces of the three rooms over and over, round and round, going from tapestry to mantelpiece, table to floor, and back up high again. I feel worse for him than I do for myself, as Mr. Nozzle loves a garden in sunshine and these rooms are always dark and stuffy during the day and cold at night.

  “The queen has decided that there was a plot,” Mary says quietly. “She thinks that the Spanish arranged your marriage with Ned and that they will turn her from the throne and make you queen and him consort, and your son will be raised as heir, as rival heir to the French candidate—the Queen of Scots.”

  I stare at Mary. “This is madness. Ned is as staunch a Protestant as any in England, and I am sister to Jane Grey! Nobody can think that we would turn papist for the throne of England. Nobody can think that we would join with the Spanish!”

  There is a tap at the door and the woman spy is distracted. “But she does,” Mary whispers quickly. “Because it’s exactly what she would have done herself. She would have done anything to become queen. She doesn’t realize that everyone is not the same. She would never marry for love, so she doesn’t believe that you did.”

  “Someone must tell her that I meant no such thing!” I say. “Robert Dudley must tell her. William Cecil will tell her that I always reported the Spanish ambassador to him!”

  Mary shakes her wise little head. “Oh Lord, it’s worse than that at court! Now she suspects both of them, too. Robert Dudley because he knew of your marriage—”

  “Because I told him myself! And he told her the very next day!”

  “And Ned is in France and on his way to Rome. She thinks he’s going to report to the Pope.”

  “He’s with Thomas Cecil! Does William Cecil think that his own son has gone papist?”

  “Exactly, I told you, it’s terrible at court. She says, over and over, why would the two of them go to Rome, if not to meet with the Pope? Did Cecil know? Is this his plot? It looks very bad.”

  “Only if you think that everything is treason.”

  The woman spy returns to her seat and looks from one of us to the other, fearful that she has missed something. We turn our bland, pretty smiles on her.

  Mary folds her little hands in her lap and looks at me steadily. “That’s exactly what she does think, all the time. Especially of us cousins.”

  I stand up and I pull my flowing gown tight over my belly so she can see how big I am. Since the shame of my arrest I have gone into loose gowns and anyone can see that I am nearing my time. “Do I look like a woman about to flee to Spain? Do I look like a woman capable of leading a treasonous army against the Queen of Eng