The Last Tudor Read online

  “I need to rest,” I say. I think that if Ned left shortly after us he will catch up now and I will be able to doze with him in the shade of the trees, and for the first time in our lives we will be able to be together without deception. I will sleep in his arms and wake to his smile.

  “Make sure that someone watches out for my husband, his lordship, on the road,” I caution the commander of our guard.

  “I have sentries posted,” he says. “And he will see your standard from the road.”

  They spread carpets and shawls on the forest floor, and I bundle my riding cape under my head. I lie down and close my eyes, thinking that I will rest for a moment and that soon I will hear the sound of Ned and his guards riding towards us. I smile sleepily, thinking how excited Teddy will be at being on a great courser, riding with his father, outside the walls of the Tower, for the first time in his life. I think of his tight grip on his father’s neck and the tenderness that Ned showed when he held him close.

  And then I sleep. I am so relieved to be out of the plague-stricken city that my worries slide away from me. It is the first sleep that I have had in freedom in two long years, and I think the air is sweeter when it does not blow through bars. I dream of being with Ned and the children in a house that is neither Hanworth nor Pirgo, and I think it is a foreseeing and that we are going to live happily together in our own house, the palace that we said we would build when I am queen. I sleep until Mrs. Farelow, the wet nurse, gently touches my shoulder and wakes me, and I know that it is not a dream, that I am free.

  “We should be getting on,” she says.

  I smile and sit up. “Is Ned here yet?”

  “No,” she says. “Not yet. But it is a little cooler.”

  There are a few scattered clouds over the burning disc of the sun and a cool breeze from off the hills. “Thank God,” I say. I look at the wet nurse. “Did he feed well? Can we go on?”

  “Oh yes, your ladyship,” she says, getting to her feet. “Do you want him?”

  I take my beloved baby boy into my arms and he beams to see me. “I can almost feel that he is heavier than this morning,” I say to her. “He is feeding well.”

  “A proper London trencherman,” she says approvingly.

  The guards bring up the horse, and the commander has to lift me into the saddle. I think that Ned will lift me down at Pirgo—he will surely have caught up with us by then—and I take up the reins and we ride forward.

  It is pearly evening twilight by the time we ride up through the parkland to the big gabled palace of Pirgo. My uncle comes out of the great front door to greet us, his household, servants, retainers, and companions lined up on the steps. It is a welcoming greeting, but he is not smiling; he looks anxious.

  “My lord uncle!” I so hope he has forgiven me for lying to his face; surely, he will see that I could do nothing else.

  He lifts me down from my horse and he kisses me kindly enough, as he always did. I gesture to the wet nurse and to Thomas. “And this is your newest kinsman. His royal brother, the viscount, Lord Beauchamp, is coming behind us with his father. I am surprised they have not joined us, but his horse cast a shoe as we were leaving and they had to come later.”

  He only glances at my baby and then returns his attention to me. “You’d better come inside” is all he says.

  He tucks my hand in his arm and leads me through the great double doors at the front of the house into a grand presence hall. His wife is nowhere to be seen, which is odd, as I would have expected her to greet me. After all, I am a countess, and now the declared heir to the throne of England.

  “Where is Lady Grey?” I ask a little stiffly.

  He looks harassed. “She sends her courtesies and she will come to you later. Come in, come in, your ladyship.”

  He leads me upstairs and through an impressive presence chamber, then a second smaller room, and finally to a privy chamber with a good-sized bedchamber behind it. I know these rooms: they are the second-best rooms. Elizabeth stayed here in a better suite. I think I will insist on the best rooms, but before I can speak, he closes the door and presses me into a chair.

  “What is it?” I ask him. I have a sense of growing dread that I cannot name. He is usually so confident, and yet he looks uncertain as to what he should say. He tends to be pompous, yet now he seems to be at a loss. “My lord uncle, is there something wrong?”

  “Did they tell you that Lord Hertford is coming here?” he asks.

  “Yes, of course. He is riding behind us,” I reply.

  “I don’t think so. I have had word that you are to be housed here alone.”

  “No, no,” I contradict him. “We were to leave the Tower together this morning. He was only delayed because they were shoeing his horse. He is coming behind us and he is bringing Teddy—our son, little Lord Beauchamp. Teddy insisted on riding with his father. He will take him up before him on his saddlebow. I expect they are taking so long because Teddy wants to hold the reins.”

  Again, he hesitates, and then he takes both my hands in a cold grip and says: “My dear Katherine, I am deeply sorry to tell you that your troubles are not over. You are not released, and Lord Hertford is not free either. You are not to be housed together. He is being taken to Hanworth, where his lady mother will be responsible for his imprisonment, and you have been sent here, where I have been ordered to keep you a prisoner.”

  I am so astounded by this that I can say nothing. I just look at my uncle and I feel my jaw drop open. “No,” I say simply.

  He is unblinking. “I am afraid so.”

  “But she freed me, at everyone’s request, so that I could leave the city because of the plague!”

  Neither of us needs to say who “she” is.

  “No, she did not. She was persuaded by the whole of the court that you could not be left in the Tower in such danger, but she has not pardoned you, nor forgiven you, and she has certainly not freed you. You are to be kept here, by me, as much a prisoner as if you were still in the Tower in the charge of the guards. I have orders that you are to see and communicate with no one but the servants of my household and they are to prevent you from leaving.” He pauses. “Or even going outside.”

  “Uncle, you cannot have agreed to this? To be my jailer?”

  He looks at me helplessly. “Would it have been better to refuse, and leave you to die of the plague in the Tower?”

  “You are imprisoning me? Your own niece?”

  “What else can I do if she orders it? Would it be better if she put me in the Tower with you?”

  “And Ned? My husband?”

  “His mother has promised to keep him within two rooms of her house. He is not pardoned or forgiven either. His own mother is guarding him.”

  “My son!” I say in a rush of panic. “Oh my God! Uncle! Our little boy, Teddy. I let him ride with Ned thinking they were following. Where is Teddy? Is he coming here? Are they sending him here to me?”

  My uncle, pale with his own distress, shakes his head. “He’s to live with his father and grandmother at Hanworth,” he says.

  “Not with me?” I whisper.

  “No.”

  “No!” I scream. I run to the door and wrench at the handle, but as it turns and the door does not open, I know that my own uncle’s servants have already locked me in. I hammer with both my hands on the wooden panels. “Let me out! I must have my son! I must have my son!”

  I spin round and I snatch at my uncle’s arm. He fends me off, his face white.

  “Uncle, you have to make them send Teddy to me,” I gabble at him. “He is not even two years old! He has never been away from me. He’s not like a royal boy who has spent his life with servants: we have never been parted! I am his only companion, I have mothered him night and day. He will die without me! I can’t be parted from him.”

  “You have your baby,” he says feebly.

  “I have two children!” I insist. “I bore two children, I must have two children! You cannot take one from me. You cannot allow h