The Last Tudor Read online

  William Cecil himself comes to the queen’s rooms, waits for me to come out to the privy chamber, and asks me to take a message in to the queen in her bed.

  I hesitate. “She is seeing no one,” I say. “And Blanche Parry is to be the first lady of the bedchamber.”

  He bends down so he can speak quietly in my ear. “It would be well that she heard this first from you,” he says, “since I cannot enter.”

  “I’m not your best choice for bad news,” I say reluctantly. I can feel a sense of dread in my belly, although I think there can be nothing wrong with my sister: William Cecil would not torture me like this if Katherine were ill. “What’s happening?”

  “Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, has married the Queen of Scots,” Cecil says quietly. “Keep your voice down.”

  He does not need to warn me not to exclaim. I know how disastrous this is for England. I keep my expression blank as well. “Henry Stuart?”

  “Yes. And she has made him king.”

  Now my face is frozen like a mask. Mary Queen of Scots must be madly in love, or simply mad to give the crown and the throne to a youth who could be bought for a sovereign. I guess that she so wanted to be the wife of a king once more that she thought she would make one, choosing to ignore that Henry is a born courtier without any touch of the regal.

  William Cecil admires my stillness, and goes on: “She has put herself far beyond any possibility of succeeding to the English throne—a papist and now with a weak husband. She is no threat to us. We would never have accepted Dudley as a King of England coming in at her side; we certainly won’t have Darnley. We will not have a papist king and queen, and not even the French will support her, married to a man like him.”

  “It is her undoing,” I whisper. “She has thrown away her future for a boy.”

  “Yes,” Cecil confirms. “Clearly she has been persuaded that he and his father can defeat her enemies. Already they have persuaded her to raise an army to make war on her own people, on the Protestant lords: her own people of our religion. She has made herself into our enemy. So for England, there is only one possible heir left. Mary Queen of Scots is a declared enemy to our religion, Margaret Douglas is her mother-in-law, your sister is the sole remaining heir. The queen will see this now, so take her the news yourself, and stand before her while you tell her, so that she knows what a faithful family she has.”

  Elizabeth’s fury with her rival queen quickly replaces Elizabeth’s grief. She rises from her bed, orders a private funeral for Kat Ashley, and then storms into the Privy Council, demanding that they make war on the Scots.

  There is a rebellion in Scotland. The Scots queen’s half brother the Earl of Moray has turned against her. Though he welcomed her to Scotland and advised her earlier, he is a staunch Protestant and cannot stomach a papist queen with her papist jumped-up king. Although Elizabeth has no real interest in fighting for religion, she decides to support the bastard James Stewart, Earl of Moray, against his ordained queen and half sister. She sends him a fortune in gold to pay his followers and every messenger brings us news of his treason and demands for more help. The Privy Council ask each other, even ask us ladies, what the queen is doing, supporting a rebel against a crowned queen, sending money but not sending an army, doing enough to encourage him but not enough to ensure his victory. The French ambassador comes to court in a cold rage and says that if Elizabeth supports Protestant rebels against a legitimate half-French papist queen, they will intervene also . . . and all of a sudden, Elizabeth loses her heart for the Protestant cause and the bastard rebel; all of a sudden she remembers her loyalty to a fellow queen. To overthrow one woman in power is to threaten every woman in power. Suddenly, Elizabeth is an ally.

  Besides, all the news we have from Scotland is of the young queen’s triumph, and Elizabeth hates to be on the losing side. Queen Mary raises an army and she leads it herself; she pursues her half brother in a series of running battles and finally chases him over the border. From our garrison in Newcastle-upon-Tyne he begs for reinforcements, he limps south to London, a frightened man, and Elizabeth astounds him with a strong reprimand for disloyalty to his queen and half sister. Thomasina and I exchange one bland look as Elizabeth leaves Moray and the Protestant cause in Scotland in ruins, and the court baffled as to what she really wants.

  She does not surprise me. For there is no sense in how she treats me, or how she treats Katherine and her little boys. Elizabeth is driven by fear, and she takes sudden anxious decisions and then reverses them. Mary Queen of Scots will never be heir to England now, but still Elizabeth does not recognize my sister, as fearful of a powerless woman in captivity as she is by an armed rival on her border. She will not release my sister, who may die under house arrest, if she cannot be reunited with her husband and little boy. The court, the Privy Council, the queen’s allies, even her enemies look in vain for consistent strategy from Elizabeth. They do not see that it is spite not strategy that drives her against her cousins: my sister and Queen Mary. It is rivalry, not politics that persuades her. I know this, for all her cousins suffer from her spite and rivalry: me too.

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,

  SUMMER 1565

  I am lying in Thomas’s arms, listening to his steady breathing, watching the sky in the window opposite his bed slowly grow from dark to pale and then blush with the peach and pink of the rising sun. I don’t stir, I don’t want to wake him; I want this moment to never end. I feel a deep sense of peace and joy with this big man beside me, his arms around me, his breath warm on the back of my neck.

  There is a sharp little tap-tap on the door, and I am instantly alert and frightened. Nobody knows that I am here; I must not be found here. I raise myself up in the bed and at once Thomas is on his feet and out of bed. He sleeps like a sentry—he is always ready to wake. He moves like a big cat, silent on his broad feet, and I snatch up the sheet and hold it across my nakedness and jump down from the high bed. I step back into the room, so that I cannot be seen from the doorway. Thomas pulls on his breeches, glances to see that I am hidden, nods at me to stay quiet and still and speaks to the bolted door. “Who goes there?”

  “It’s Thomasina, the queen’s dwarf!” comes the urgent hiss. “Open up, Thomas Keyes, you great fool.”

  He hides a smile and unbolts the door, barring it with his arm. She does not have to duck her head to slip into the room and she sees me. “I knew you would be here,” she says breathlessly. “It’s true then. You’re married. You’d better get dressed and come at once. She knows.”

  I gape at her. “How?”

  She shakes her little head. “I don’t know. She asked for you the moment she woke this morning, God knows why, and then they found you were not in your bed.”

  “I can make something up.” Frantically I pull on my gown, Thomas ties my laces. “I can say I was visiting a sick friend.”

  “Here, let me,” Thomasina says, pushing him aside. “Great lummox. I must go. You can’t be found with two of us in your room, Thomas Keyes! That would be a scandal indeed!”

  For the first time ever, I don’t correct her. I don’t say there are not two of us here, there is one princess and one dwarf, we are not two of the same thing. I don’t pause in cramming my feet into my little shoes, and tucking my stockings in the pocket of my cape. She has come to warn me because she believes in our sisterhood, one little woman helping another in a dangerous world. I won’t deny my affinity with her again. She has been a friend to me now, and a sister.

  “Who told her?” I demand. I fold up my long hair and cram my hood on top. Thomasina is quick and skilled with a couple of pins.

  “One of the maids,” she said. “She didn’t dare do otherwise. She just said you weren’t in your bed. Not where you are. But we’ve all known that you two were courting for months. Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without permission from the queen?”

  “There’s no law against it,” I say pedantically. “There was a law but it was repeal