The Last Tudor Read online

  Sir Edward, for all that he is Elizabeth’s jailer and spy, cannot hide that he is moved. “Well, you can keep them,” he says, finally handing them over.

  “Thank you,” I say. I hold them to my lips. “These are the most precious flowers I have ever had in my life. Will you tell him how glad I am to have them from him, and how happy I am that we are together again, even if it is here in prison, where both our fathers were once imprisoned? Will you tell him that I love him still and that I don’t regret—that I will never regret—that he loved me and married me? Tell him that I pray every day that we will be together again as husband and wife, as we planned to be.”

  He shakes his head. “I’ll tell him that you like the flowers,” he says. “I can’t remember the rest.”

  “You could write it down,” I say, laughing at us both. “You write down everything else I ever say or do. Why not this?”

  Ned’s flowers bloom, tucked in the ribbon at my wide waist. I put them in my hair, I put a bud under my pillow and I press the last one in the pages of the Bible at the Song of Solomon, the psalm about love. I have forgiven him as if he never went away. I have forgiven him for this perilous place. I love him. His judgment is good. He is my husband and we have done nothing wrong.

  Mary comes to me again.

  “Are you sure it is wise to come?” I say, bending over my broad belly to kiss her cheek.

  “I come with permission, they want me to talk with you in the hope that you will say something incriminating,” Mary says without resentment, indicating a woman servant who curtseys and stands by the door, listening to everything that we say.

  “But how did you get here?”

  “I walked. Mr. Thomas Keyes, the queen’s sergeant porter, walked with us. He’s waiting downstairs to take me back.”

  I take no notice of the queen’s spy. Everyone in the Tower reports on me anyway; I never say a word that is not noted. I am interrogated every day, and they even listen to my prayers. They can listen all they like, all they will hear is that I love my husband, and so I should.

  “Is Her Majesty in good health? I pray for her good health,” I say.

  “I am sorry to say that she is not,” Mary replies. “She is very tired and very weary. She cannot eat. I think she is very distressed by her fears about a conspiracy. She is convinced there has been a mighty conspiracy against her. And the Scots ambassador has come to London to press her to name their queen, Mary, as her heir—instead of you. Of course, that would be a terrible mistake. She is feeling beset.”

  I bow my head. “She must do as she sees fit,” I say demurely. “But our line, from the king’s sister, named as the king’s heir, born in England and of the reformed religion, has the greatest claim.”

  “She must do as she wishes,” Mary agrees. “But she said to the Scots ambassador that naming her heir was like setting her winding sheet before her eyes. She said princes cannot like their own children.”

  Mary meets my gaze with her most limpid look. I mouth the words “Quite mad!” and she nods in agreement.

  “I wish I could beg her pardon and reassure her that she has nothing to fear from me,” I say for the benefit of the listening woman. We all know that no one could say anything that would cure Elizabeth of suspicion and fear. “I did a hasty act for love. She should see me as a fool perhaps, but not as her enemy.”

  “She doubts everyone,” Mary says. “She has imprisoned all the Seymours, and even our poor stepfather, Adrian, who is not responsible for us, and had no idea what you were doing at court. She is even afraid that William Cecil knew of your marriage and encouraged it.”

  I am genuinely amazed that she would doubt the man who has advised her from girlhood. “She should be sure that William Cecil never thinks of anyone but her. Of course he didn’t know of it. Would he have sent Ned away from me and thrown me into despair if he had sponsored our wedding and wanted us to conceive a child?”

  “That’s what I said,” Mary says, nodding to the waiting woman as if to invite her to report on all of this. “And she knows that I knew nothing about it either.”

  “It was secret,” I say simply. “We wanted a secret wedding, so no one knew but Janey. I tell them over and over again.”

  “Weary work,” my sister observes. “Do they ask you every day?”

  “Every single day they come in and I have to stand before them and they ask me over and over what we did and how we met and who knew.”

  “They make you stand?”

  I give her a wry smile. “They may not torture a lady of the nobility but they can certainly give me pains. At least I have a midwife who comes to me now, and she says that there is nothing wrong.”

  “Does she say when the baby will come?”

  “She doesn’t know exactly. Nobody knows. She thinks it will be soon.”

  The woman at the door stirs and Mary says: “I am not allowed to stay too long. I am only permitted to come and see that you are well, and that you have everything you need.”

  “I need to see my husband,” I tell her. “I need to see the queen.”

  Mary makes a little pout and shrugs her shoulders. We both know this is said for the benefit of the spy. Mary is allowed to bring me some apples, but not my freedom.

  “I will come again next week.” She bobs up from the stool and looks around at my pets. “Does someone walk the puppies? There is a terrible smell.”

  “There’s hardly any smell,” I say. “Anyway, it’s the moat. And I hope that the lieutenant will let me out in the garden and then I can take them all out. If he does not let me live in comfort, he will have to endure the smell.”

  The days are very long, and my room is hot and stuffy. I play with the puppies and I whistle to the linnets, let them fly around the room and call them back to my hand. Mr. Nozzle scrabbles painfully at the foot of the stone walls but then scampers up the chairs and takes a flying leap from one carved back to another. He jumps on the wall hanging and holds with one tiny black hand and then springs into my arms.

  “And what will you make of a baby?” I ask him. “You must be kind and not pinch him.”

  I listen for Ned, and sometimes I hear his footsteps on the floor. He sends me little gifts and every morning and night he taps with his heel to send his love. They do not allow him to send me anything written, and they still question us both every day. I hear them troop up the stairs to his room and back down again after an hour. I think they are hoping to prove that we conspired together against the queen, but by the end of the month the lords whom Cecil sent to question us seem to be as tired of their interrogation as I am. Without colluding, we tell the same story—the simple truth, and they have to believe that it was a marriage for love, that we had no thought that the queen would see us as anything but two young lovers incapable of resisting each other. Indeed, that was obvious to everyone from the beginning. Only the fearful Elizabeth thought it must be a conspiracy. Only the coldhearted Elizabeth would look for an explanation when everyone else would see springtime and youthful desire and thoughtlessness.

  THE TOWER, LONDON,

  AUTUMN 1561

  I notice the questions change. No longer are they asking who knew of our plans, who were our friends at court, how often did I meet the Spanish ambassador? Now they are on another tack. They are starting to concentrate on who was present at the betrothal, who witnessed the wedding. They ask about servants; who prepared the cold meats that Ned had in his bedroom? Who served the wine? Who was the minister? They ask about Janey.

  “So he was not known to you, this so-called minister?” Sir Edward asks me. The panel of three men have allowed me to sit as I complained that I am weary and near to my time, and it is late in the evening.

  “As I said when you first asked me.”

  “He was not attached to a church?”

  “I don’t think so. Janey ran out and fetched him.”

  “Fetched him from where?”

  It sounds so unlikely when they question me like this. “I do