The Last Tudor Read online

  I spend my afternoons in study and my evenings in writing. I have no objection to the little house, to the garden below it, with the gate to the green and the white Tower dominating the site. I can live in my own world, like a monk in his cell. I am working on a new translation of the psalms, and also on my letter proclaiming my innocence to the queen. I think I must explain to her that if she has released all but my senior advisors—John Dudley and his sons—then she can release me. She has forgiven my mother, whose lineage put me on the throne, who is actually closer than I am to the crown; she has released Lady Dudley my mother-in-law, who insisted that I should try the crown. She can release me. It is nonsensical if she does not.

  “Your mother-in-law went to Queen Mary,” Katherine my sister whispers to me on one of her rare visits to bring me clean linen and physic, as I still have spasms in my belly and I am still bleeding a little. Mr. Nozzle the monkey balances on her shoulder, and puts his dark little face into his hands. “Lady Dudley the duchess went to Queen Mary; but the queen would not even admit her.”

  “No!” I am as diverted as a bawd on a fish quay offered a sprat of gossip. I recognize an ignoble gleam of family pride. “No! Really! Did she know that the queen had seen our lady mother?”

  “Yes, but of course our lady mother is of the royal family and a favorite of our cousin the queen. Are the Dudleys of royal blood?” She smiles.

  “No, of course not; but he is a duke.”

  Katherine shakes her head. “Not for long. I think they will take his fortune and his title.”

  “But why? Since the queen has forgiven so many others?”

  “He did a terrible thing,” Katherine points out. “You know what I mean . . .”

  She trails off and looks at me, widening her eyes, as if I, so much better read and better educated than she, must know the words she will not say. She puts up her finger to Mr. Nozzle on her shoulder, and he holds it as if for comfort.

  I look at her with a face of stone and then see the easy tears well up in her blue eyes.

  “Jane! You do know!”

  “I promise you I don’t know what you mean, and goggling your eyes at me does not tell me anything.”

  “Because he was a traitor,” she whispers. “He tried to put a false queen on the throne. It is a sin against the crown, the country, and God. Everyone says he must die. Because he was a traitor. It is not that he sent out papers or wrote letters, like our father did. It was not words; it was deeds. He took a proper army against the queen, and his sons proclaimed a false queen at the point of a sword. They’re all going to be executed. They have to be.”

  Still, I look at her blankly. “Die? The Dudley boys?”

  I don’t think it’s possible that these five handsome young men should die. It’s not possible that their father—such a calculating, cunning man—should negotiate his way to the scaffold. The boys are too vital, their father is too clever. None of them can die.

  “And you too, Jane,” she says, speaking slowly, as if she is spelling something out for our little sister, Mary. “You do know, don’t you know? Since you were the false queen that they raised up. The Dudleys have to die for proclaiming a false queen, and you were her. So they are saying that you will have to die, too.”

  I look at my pretty sister, the only one who has dared to speak this terrible lie. “Oh, no, they can’t kill me,” I am shocked that she should even say it.

  “I know!” She is in complete agreement with me. Mr. Nozzle nods his grave head. “I really think they can’t. Surely, they can’t? But the thing is, Jane, they say that they will.”

  Katherine is a fool and I have known this forever. I don’t even argue with her; for what is the point of citing authorities and giving her pages that she simply can’t read? I might as well speak to her monkey or her kitten. I know that I have done nothing but obey my father and mother, and then obey my husband and his father and mother. This is not treason. It is no crime at all. It is a God-given duty: Honor thy father and thy mother that thou mayest live long in the land, which the Lord thy God shall give thee.

  Queen Mary—who studied as I did, with Queen Kateryn Parr, all four of us, Kateryn, Mary, Elizabeth, and I bent over our books together—will know this as well as I do. I will “live long” upon the land because I have honored my father and mother. It would be completely contradictory if I were to be executed for obeying my parents. It would be to deny the truth of the Bible, and nothing can do that.

  I complete my explanation for the queen, and when I am completely satisfied with it for rhetoric and grammar and the cleanliness of the pages, I send it to her. I expect she will read it and follow my reasoning and order my release. I make it clear to her that I had no idea why Mary Sidney took me to Syon House, and that she herself probably did not know, either. I had no desire for the crown myself, and I still do not. Once they had persuaded me of the legality and the rightness of the act, I did the best that I could. I don’t see what else anyone can ask of me. I had to obey my parents and follow the logic of an argument. As it happens, I thought it was the right thing to do—but I cannot be blamed for thinking that God’s work would be best done by a queen who studies His Word and follows His laws and is not in thrall to Rome. I don’t explain that to the queen, because I know that she would not agree, and a righteous word is not always pleasing, even though the argument is incontrovertible.

  I write at length, telling the new queen that I was advised—indeed, ordered—to take the crown by those who were set over me as older and wiser. “The error imputed to me has not been altogether caused by myself,” I say—which is as tactful as I can be, given that all of her court and all of her present advisors were once mine. I don’t hesitate to blame John Dudley or his wife or son; indeed, I point out that I have been ill ever since I was forced to live with them, probably poisoned.

  While I am waiting for her reply I continue with my studies and with my work of translation. I send for more books. I need to consult the authorities as I work and it is hugely irritating that some of these books are not available to me now, because the Pope has ruled that they are forbidden books and nobody can bring them to me. Banned! They are banning books written about the Bible by thoughtful commentators on the Word of God. This is how the Antichrist makes his way into the minds of men and women. This is how political tyranny is supported by religion. It comes as no surprise to me when I cannot get hold of the studies that I need, and so I have to quote from memory and make a note in the margins to check them when I am released to my own library at Bradgate where I can read everything I want.

  I try not to be distracted by a tremendous noise from the City, cheering and trumpeting and church bells ringing. I sharpen my quill and turn the page of the Greek grammar that I am studying. Now I can hear the yelling of the apprentices and women shrieking with joy. I don’t go up on the walls to look down; I can imagine what all the fuss is about. I don’t really want to see my cousin entering London through Tower Gate in triumph and releasing her favorites from prison. I just hope that she sends for me soon.

  I understand that first the guilty must be tried and executed before the queen pardons me. But I wish that I had been spared the sight of the false priests and even that old Antichrist himself, Stephen Gardiner, the enemy of reform, the persecutor of Queen Kateryn Parr, going into the chapel at the Tower to celebrate Mass for the turncoat traitors. I take my cushion to serve as a kneeler and I set my back to the window and lean my forehead against the cold stone wall to pray for my immortal soul, as the wicked old man preaches a sermon and raises the Host and generally makes magic and paganism in the chapel where I have so recently prayed directly to God without the need of anyone swishing about here and there in robes before the hidden altar, waving incense or spraying water.

  Not everyone thinks as I do. My father-in-law, John Dudley, recants his faith, makes his confession, and abases himself before bakers’ bread and vintners’ wine, pretending that they are body and blood in the hope of pleasing the queen a