The Last Tudor

GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

LONDON, AUTUMN 1571

I wait for the order to pack my books and put Mr. Nozzle into his traveling cage, but none comes. Then I learn that William Cecil has been busy with other matters. He has uncovered a great plot to capture Elizabeth the queen. Thomas Howard is accused of working with Spain to raise an army to put Mary on the throne in her place. The court is in an uproar of fear, and nobody is going to release another heir, another Mary, even if it is only me, and everyone knows I have done nothing. Thomas Howard is returned to the Tower, the guards are reinforced at my aunt Bess’s house, and once again Elizabeth has three cousins in captivity.

I write to Thomas:

I thought I was to come to you, but it is delayed. I pray that it is nothing more than a delay. I am with you every day in my heart and my prayers. Your loving and constant wife, MK

I have no reply from him, but this does not trouble me for perhaps he has not yet had my letter, or cannot get a secret note to me. I am sitting at the window overlooking the London street when I see the doctor arriving and being admitted in the front door below my window. I have not complained of any ill health, and so I wonder who has summoned him and if Lady Gresham has poisoned with bile.

Sir Thomas himself opens the door and Dr. Smith comes into the room. So he has come to visit me. I get to my feet, filled with unease. If this is my freedom, why have they sent my physician? Why do they both look so grave?

I don’t wait for him to be announced or for him to make his bow. “Please tell me,” I say quickly. “Please tell me at once whatever it is you have come to tell me. Please tell me at once.”

The two men exchange a look, and, at that, I know that I have lost the love of my life.

“Is it Thomas?” I ask.

“Yes, my lady,” says the doctor quietly. “I am sorry to tell you that he is dead.”

“My husband?” I say. “My Thomas, Thomas Keyes? The queen’s sergeant porter, the biggest man at court? Who married me?”

I keep thinking, there is bound to be a mistake. My Thomas could not survive the Fleet in winter, get himself back to Kent, write that he will come to me, and then fail and die before we are reunited. It is not possible that our love story, such an odd unlikely story, could end so unhappily. I keep thinking, it is another Thomas, not my Thomas who stands as tall as a tree with his shoulders back and his kind eyes scanning everyone who comes to his gate.

“Yes, my lady,” the doctor says again. “I am afraid that he is dead.”