The Last Tudor Read online

  “I’m to be married? Oh, God be praised! Thank God! At last! To who? To who?”

  “Whom,” I say coldly.

  “Oh, who cares? Whom should care? Whom am I marrying? Tell me!”

  “Henry Lord Herbert,” I say shortly. “The Earl of Pembroke’s son.”

  She blushes red as a rose. “Oh! So handsome!” she breathes. “And he’s young, our age, not some old heap of bones.” She has a pretty small bird clinging to her finger, and she lifts it to her face and kisses its beak. “I am to be married!” she tells it. “And to a handsome young lord!” The bird cheeps as if it understands her, and she puts it on her shoulder where it spreads its tail for balance and puts its head on one side to look at me, as bright-eyed as my sister.

  “Yes,” I say levelly. “He’s perfectly pleasing.”

  “And he’s godly,” she says to cheer me. “He’s Kateryn Parr’s nephew. Surely, you must like him.”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “How happy we shall be!” She gives a little twirl on the spot as if her feet have to dance for joy. The little bird flaps and clings on. “And I shall be a countess!”

  “Yes,” I say dryly. “And his father will be locked down hard into an alliance with our father and with John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.”

  She doesn’t think about this, the three most powerful men in the country, the three leaders of the reformed faith, coming together and marrying their children to each other to provide against betrayal. Trusting each other so little, so faithless in their shared faith that they barter their children to confirm their agreement, like Abraham taking Isaac up the mountain with wood and a knife to burn him for God.

  “Oh, but who are you to marry?” She pauses in her self-absorbed jig. “Who do they have for you? Are they staying with Seymour?” She gasps. “Oh! Not the king? Tell me! Tell me you’re not going to marry the king and be Queen Jane?”

  I shake my head, glancing towards the door. “Hush. This is all because the king is so ill. Their greatest hope is that they can show him that one of us has a son, so that he can make that boy his heir. They want us both to marry at once, get with child, and show him the boy as his heir.”

  “I could be the mother of the King of England?” she yelps. “Me? Not you? If I get a boy before you do?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She clasps her hands and laughs with delight. “So who are you to marry?”

  “Guildford Dudley,” I say shortly.

  My sister skids to a standstill. “Not Ned Seymour after all? They’re switching horses? You’re to have the young Dudley boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “The tall fair one?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “The mummy’s boy?”

  “Yes, Guildford.”

  “Well, that’s a comedown,” she crows. “You won’t like that! The second to youngest son of a new-made duke? You won’t get your ducal strawberry leaves off him!”

  My hand itches to slap her silly face. “It’s not a question of like or dislike,” I say steadily. “It is my father’s wish to ally with the Lord President of the council. It is Father’s determination that we shall be wedded and bedded so he can show the king his heirs to bring up in the reformed religion. Even little Mary is to be betrothed—to Arthur Grey, the son of the Baron of Wilton.”

  She gives a scream. “The baron with the scarred face? The ugly one?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Mary’s only eight! And Arthur must be twenty!”

  “He’s seventeen,” I say grimly. “But in any case, Mary is far too young to be married, and she’s too small. If she does not grow, how could she give birth? She has that twist in her spine; I don’t think she could birth a child. It’s all completely wrong. She is too small, and you are too young, and I am promised before God to Ned Seymour. Our parents gave our word. I don’t see how any of these weddings can go ahead. I don’t believe it can be God’s will. You must join with me and speak against them.”

  “Not me!” she says smartly. “I’m not defying our lady mother. If I can have Mr. Nozzle with me, I’ll stand behind you as you argue; but I can’t face up to her on my own.”

  “So that they don’t marry you to a stranger! So they don’t marry you while you’re still a child,” I exclaim.

  “Oh, I can marry Herbert,” she assures me. “I’m not too young. That can go ahead. I don’t object to it. The rest of you can refuse if you want, but I want to be married.”

  “None of us can marry anyone,” I rule.

  There is a silence; she pouts at me. “Oh, Jane, don’t spoil everything! Oh, please don’t!” She clasps my hands, and the bird cheeps encouragingly.

  “I’m going to pray on it. I have to listen to God.”

  “But what if God agrees with you?” she wails. “When does He ever want anything nice for us?”

  “Then I will have to tell Father that I have doubts.”

  He does not see me alone: that in itself warns me that I will not get a hearing. He fears my eloquence: “Oh, for pity’s sake don’t let her go on and on,” my mother always says.

  I go into the royal presence chamber like a Daniel going in to the lions. Edward the king is not in his court. He is behind the closed doors of the privy chamber, or he may even have retreated to the room behind that—his study and his bedroom. Out here, the court goes about its business as if there is nothing wrong. The Marquess of Northampton, William Parr, and his wife, Elizabeth, nod at me with a peculiar smile, as if they know all about everything—which they probably do. I sketch a little curtsey and feel even more uneasy.

  My mother and my father are playing cards with Sir William Cavendish and his wife, Elizabeth, my mother’s good friend our aunt Bess. The table is in the window bay so they have some privacy in the bustling room. My parents look up as I come through the crowd of people. I notice that people make way for me. The news of my betrothal to the son of the Lord President must have spread already, and my importance has grown with the news. Everyone shows respect to the Dudleys. They may be a new family, but clearly they have the knack of taking power and holding it.

  “Deuce,” my mother says, putting down a card, and makes an absentminded gesture of blessing over my head with her free hand as I curtsey to her.

  Aunt Bess gives me a warm smile. I am a favorite of hers and she understands that a young woman has to find her own way in the world by her own lights.

  “I have a queen,” my father says, showing his hand.

  My mother laughs. “And perhaps queens count, after all!” She turns to me, pleasantly enough. “What is it, Jane? Come to take a hand? Are you staking your necklace?”

  “Don’t tease her,” my father intervenes hastily, as I open my mouth to abjure the sin of gambling. “What is it, child, what do you want?”

  “I would speak with you.” I look at my mother. “Privately.”

  “You can speak here,” she rules. “Come closer.”

  Tactfully, Sir William and his lady rise up and stand a little to one side, her ladyship still holding her cards so that she can return to the sinful game without a moment’s delay. My father signs to the musicians to play and half a dozen ladies form up to dance. At once the men bow and join them, and in the noise of the dance nobody can hear me when I say: “My lord father, lady mother, I believe that I cannot be betrothed to Guildford Dudley. I have prayed on it, and I am certain.”

  “Whyever not?” my mother asks. She is so little distracted from her game that she looks at her cards and slides a few crowns across the table to the pile in the middle with only half her mind on me.

  Lady Bess shakes her head, as if she thinks that my mother should attend to me.

  “I am precontracted,” I say firmly.

  My father glances up at my pale face. “No, you’re not.”

  “I believe I am,” I say. “We all said that I should marry Ned Seymour. We made a verbal promise.”

  “Nothing in writing,” my mother remarks. To my fathe