The Last Tudor Read online

  “Lady Hertford,” I hiss, claiming my married title with what might be my last breath. “I am the wife of the Earl of Hertford.”

  Roughly, she pushes me to my hands and knees and, like a laboring mare, I groan and push as she commands and rest as she orders, and then I feel the strangest sensation, a slither and a wriggle, and she says: “God bless you and help you, you have a boy.”

  My baby, Viscount Beauchamp, is to be called Edward for his father and his forefathers. He can trace his line back to Edward III and beyond. Royal on both sides, his birth should be greeted with celebrations, with the salute of cannon and announcements all around Christendom, but they put me into my bed, and tuck him in beside me, and nobody even visits. They take him to be baptized in the chapel of the Tower, and my poor little boy is christened in the font that stands over the tombs of his family. It is as if the mortuary of traitors at the Tower of London is our family chapel. His aunt is buried below the font, and his grandfather Grey. His grandfather Seymour is buried there, too. He is not even baptized by a minister, but by Sir Edward, the lieutenant of the Tower, his jailer, because the godforsaken Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Elizabeth, will not allow an ordained minister into the prison to bless the soul of her newborn cousin. This makes me cry. This is so low. She is so low. To forbid a priest to bless an innocent baby. She is below lowness.

  THE TOWER, LONDON,

  WINTER 1561–62

  I cannot be unhappy with my baby cooing in his cradle and smiling when he sees me. He is more amusing than any pet; he is quite enchanting. Even Mr. Nozzle sees that a prince has come among us, and serves him with the same delighted surprise that my ladies show when they run to fetch a scrap of cloth to lay on my shoulder when he gives a little belch after his feed, or hold his waving hands and tiny plump feet when I unstrap his swaddling bands.

  I feed him myself, as though I were a peasant girl, and I laugh to think that Elizabeth, in her tyranny, has given me the greatest joy I have ever known. If I had given birth to the little viscount in a royal palace, where his birth merits, he would have been out of my hands the moment he was born, and I should have lived apart from him. He would have been kept in a royal nursery and I should have been with the court—wherever it happened to be, even if I had to be away from him for weeks. He would have been raised to be a stranger to me and his first smile would have been to his wet nurse. But since I am imprisoned and he—as innocent as me—is incarcerated too, we are like little birds in a cage, singing and preening together, as happy as my linnets.

  He nestles against me at night, he sleeps in my arms. I learn to wake and listen to his quiet rapid breathing. Sometimes he lies so still that I put my ear to his tiny button nose to convince myself that he is alive and well, and that in the morning he will open his eyes, as blue as speedwell, and smile at me.

  They tell me he is a good baby. Indeed, he never cries. But they tell me that I spoil him, by picking him up as soon as he stirs, by carrying him with me from one room to another, by holding him on my lap when I read or write, putting him to my plump breasts as soon as he pummels his little face into my bodice. The milk springs easily; the love comes, too. This is a happiness that I never dreamed could be. I did not know that it was possible to love a child so much that his birth is a delight and his life is a miracle, and nothing, nothing will ever make me regret him.

  We call him Teddy. I put a blue ribbon from my window every morning so that his father, when he looks down from his own window, shall see that his son is well. I wish he could see what a handsome boy he is going to be. I wish he could see how the two of us, just as Janey promised, have made a baby of exquisite beauty. He has my fair hair and dainty features; he has Ned’s long lean body. He is fit to be a prince. Of course, he is a prince. He is Elizabeth’s heir and the next in line for the throne of England, whether she acknowledges him or not.

  There were no Christmas gifts for this little boy from the court that he will command. Only Mary visits me, bringing a little music box that I recognize from the great receiving room at Hampton Court.

  “I stole it,” she says frankly, winding it up and setting it before Teddy, who pays no attention at all.

  “Mary!”

  “I don’t consider her to be the owner of the royal treasures,” she says bluntly. “They’re more yours than hers. If you are to be overlooked as the heir for having a child out of wedlock, why should I serve a queen that everyone knows is a Dudley whore? Born of the Boleyn whore?”

  At once, I glance to the door, but there is no waiting spy today.

  “Exactly, nobody has come with me but Thomas Keyes, the sergeant porter, who was good enough to walk with me. He’s waiting downstairs.”

  “He’s not listening?” I ask nervously.

  “He does not spy on me. He is a true friend,” she says. She climbs up into one of the tatty chairs and shakes her head. “It’s all changed again. There’s no spy on me. They don’t care what you say anymore. They accept that you acted in love and there is no plot to discover. They’ve given up questioning and they have released all the prisoners but you and Ned.”

  I am so pleased, I clasp my hands together. “They accept my marriage? We are to be released?”

  “No, I think the plan is to deny it, and shame you.”

  The disappointment is no surprise. I think I had known this was coming when they changed the questioning last year. But with a son in my arms and my husband under the same roof, I hardly care what people say about me. I know the truth, and I know what Ned is to me and I to him, and God knows. Who cares what Elizabeth says? As soon as we are free we can remarry and who will care then?

  “Will they deny our marriage and then will she let us go?”

  Neither of us needs to say who “she” is. Elizabeth has become a monster in my mind. One Tudor queen took my sister; the other will take my good name.

  Mary makes a little gesture with her hand that says maybe yes, maybe no. “She’d do anything to keep you locked up, but she’s running out of reasons. They reported the interrogations of the Seymours and of Aunt Bess, and of you and Ned, to the Privy Council, and it was obvious that the two of you married secretly for love. They looked for the minister who married you but couldn’t find him. I don’t think they looked very hard. But anyway, you had exchanged vows and you have a ring. It’s a private marriage. Elizabeth’s mother had little more. The Privy Council have waited for days for her to invent some crime, or make up a law that she can claim that you have broken, but she says nothing.”

  “Why doesn’t she speak?”

  Mary’s pretty face is twisted with malicious giggles. “Because she’s afraid,” she whispers. “Terrified. Half the country would prefer Mary Queen of Scots as Queen of England because they’re papists, and the other half, the Protestant half, would prefer you now that you’re married to an Englishman and have a son and heir. Nobody really wants her, a barren queen, especially one who is in love with a wife murderer.”

  I give a little gasp at Mary’s bitter description of Elizabeth and her lover, Robert Dudley.

  “Well, they don’t,” she says bluntly. “And who can blame them? There’s no more prosperity for the country than when Mary was on the throne; there’s no greater peace. Now we’re threatened by both France and Spain and our queen won’t marry to get us an ally. Everyone has their own preference for the heir, and all Elizabeth has said is that we can’t inherit because our father was executed for treason, and our cousin Margaret Douglas can’t inherit because her parents weren’t married. That leaves only Mary Queen of Scots, and she won’t name her! What the people want is to know where they are, and who will be the next king, and if she won’t tell them, then they’ll decide for themselves.”

  I glance towards the cradle. “Teddy,” I say simply. “It has to be Teddy. I come after Elizabeth, and Teddy is my son.”

  “Of course,” Mary says. “Everyone knows that. Which is why the Privy Council can’t bring themselves to agree that she can keep