The Last Tudor

THE TOWER,

LONDON, JULY 1553

It gets worse rather than better. My brother-in-law the sinfully handsome Robert Dudley has failed to arrest Princess Mary—or Lady Mary, as we now all have to call her. He is riding around Norfolk on a string of handsome horses, making sure that no one goes to help her; but he has not taken her into his keeping.

Half the lords tell me that she is certain to flee to Spain and this must be prevented at all costs for she will bring a papist army down on us, to the destruction of ourselves and the damnation of all of England. The other half say that she must be allowed to leave, so that she is exiled forever and there is no one to lead a rebellion against me. But instead of either of these, she does the one thing that is the very worst for us, the one thing that nobody predicted a woman could do: she raises her standard at her great house at Kenninghall and writes to my council and tells them that she is the true queen and that they will be pardoned for their treason if they admit her to London and the throne at once.

This is the worst thing for the righteous cause of reform. I know that God does not want her to take the throne, and that all her promises of allowing all faiths, and not forcing her heresy on the good Christians of England who have so recently seen the light, are part of the devil’s work to undo all that Kateryn Parr believed, that Edward achieved, and that I have sworn to continue. Princess Mary cannot take the country back to Rome and destroy our chance of creating a kingdom of saints. I am bound by God to oppose her, and I insist that someone muster an army and go and capture her. If she has to be imprisoned in the Tower for treason, so be it. She has had every opportunity to get a better understanding of the Word of God; she studied with Kateryn Parr just as I did, but she persisted in error. If we capture her and the council insists that she has to die for treason against the throne, against me, then so be it. I will find the courage to send her, and all heretics, to the scaffold. I will not be a weak link in the mighty army of God. I am called, I am chosen, I will suffer affliction as a good soldier of Jesus Christ, I will not be called and found wanting.

I spend hours on my knees in my rooms and my sister Katherine kneels beside me as I pray for guidance, my sister Mary beside her. Katherine is not at one with the saints. I can see that she is dozing and I dig her in the ribs with my elbow and she starts and says “Amen.” It does not matter. I must be staunch and true. Katherine is my companion and my sister. She can sleep, just like Saint Peter slept while Jesus was in an agony of spirit, even so I will take step after step towards a holy crown of sainthood.

In response to Princess Mary’s claim to be the true heir, the council proclaims me as queen, and all the lord lieutenants are sent to their counties to make sure that everyone knows that the king is dead and I am his named heir. Proclamations are pasted all over London; preachers make the announcement from their pulpits.

“Does anyone object?” I ask my father nervously.

“No, no, not a word,” he reassures me. “Nobody wants the Spanish brought down on us, nobody wants to return to the rule of the Pope.”

“Princess Mary must surely have some supporters in the country,” I say anxiously.

“Lady Mary,” he corrects me. “You would think so—but no one has stood up for her, whatever they think privately. Of course, the country must be riddled with papists, but they are not declaring for her. John Dudley has ruled the roost for so long, he prepared for this. As long as the Spanish don’t try to meddle.”

“We must muster an army.” I have no idea how an army is mustered.

“We are doing so,” he says. “I shall lead them.”

“No,” I say suddenly. “Truly, Father, I can’t do this without you. Don’t leave me with the Dudleys, not with Guildford and his terrible mother and father. Don’t leave me here with only Mother and the girls and no one to speak for me in the council. Mother says nothing against Lady Dudley, and Katherine is worse than nobody, Mary is too little. I have to have someone here.”

He hesitates. “I know that your mother would rather that I did not ride against her cousin Princess Mary. And I am not a military man . . .”

“John Dudley must go!” I exclaim. “It’s all his idea. It’s his plan. And besides, he put down the Kett rebellion only four years ago. He should be the one to go.”

“Don’t get upset,” my father says, a wary eye on the flush of color in my face and my raised voice. He looks over towards my ladies and gives my mother a nod as if she must come and calm me.

“I am not upset,” I say quickly. I have to reassure everyone, all the time. “I just need my family around me. Guildford has his: his brothers work for him, his mother is here, his father has done all this for him. Why should the court be filled with Dudleys, and you be sent away when I have only Katherine and Mary and Mother here?”

“I’ll stay, don’t fret. God is with us and you will be queen. John Dudley’s force will take the princess, even if she gets to Framlingham Castle and raises her royal standard there.”

“Lady,” I remind him. “Lady Mary. And it’s not her royal standard. It’s mine.”

John Dudley holds a great farewell dinner before he leaves London, a strange combination of sinful boasting and sinful fear. His speech is not heroic. I have read enough history to know that a man about to march out to defend his faith and his queen should sound martial. Instead of declaring the justness of his cause and the certainty of his victory, he warns everyone that he is risking his life and reputation, he conveys a real anxiety instead of false confidence.

Guildford and I are seated side by side, looking over the hall, the cloth of estate over my chair, not his, my seat raised higher than his, as his father threatens the council that he will betray them if they betray him. This is not the sort of speech that Caesar makes before he marches out to general acclaim, and so I tell Guildford.

“These are hardly loyal Roman tribunes,” he replies scathingly. “Not a single one of them is trustworthy. Any one of them would turn their collar if they thought they were on the losing side.”

I am about to explain why he is wrong when his father suddenly turns towards us, makes one of his grand oratorical gestures, and speaks of me. He tells them that I am queen of their enticement, forcibly placed on the throne rather than by my own request. Guildford and I blink at each other like a pair of owlets in a nest. What about my God-given destiny? What about my cousin’s right to will his throne to me? What about my mother’s legitimate claim, enshrined in the will of Good King Henry, handed over to me? Guildford’s father makes my coming to the throne sound like a plot, rather than an act of God; and if it is a plot, then it is treason.

John Dudley marches northeast to Suffolk, and those of us left in London embark on the business of government, but it feels like masquing rather than ruling until we know that Lady Mary is captured. Guildford does not dispute his name or title but dines every day on his own, in state, enthroned like a king under a cloth of gold canopy, with fifty dishes coming out to him, to be distributed among the huge court he has invited to give the impression of greatness. Sometimes I feel, madly, that he is usurping my usurpation, a plot inside a plot, a sin upon a sin. He and his court of knaves drink to excess and are rowdy. I can hear the yelling and the singing while I am dining with my ladies in my rooms. This would be bad enough, since gluttony is a hidden danger to salvation, but worse than this is that Guildford gets news of his father and his brother before the news is reported to me.

It is his brother Lord Robert who is raising troops against Lady Mary in Norfolk; it is his father, John Dudley, who is marching on her from London to Framlingham. Naturally enough, Guildford’s court is where the men go and ask for news; mine is a court of ladies and we are easily excluded. It is not that the messages do not come to me; they do come, everyone knows they must report to the monarch. But first they stop to tell the men. Of course, a queen’s court is bound to be the resort of ladies, but how am I to be a ruling queen if I am not at the center of the councils of men?

This is a puzzle for me that I had not foreseen. I thought that once I forced myself to accept the crown of the King of England then I would have the power of the King of England. Now I understand that taking power as a queen is a different thing. Men have sworn their fealty on their bended knees; but they do not enact manly loyalty to a woman, and—truth be told—I am very small and slight, and even with God at my back I am not imposing.

And these men are faithless. The very night after John Dudley marches out, I hear that William Paulet, the Marquess of Winchester, who was so foolishly quick to offer Guildford the crown, has taken himself off to his own London home without permission, and Katherine’s father-in-law, William Herbert, tries to leave as well. I will not accept this disloyalty against the will of God, and I send at once for the marquess and tell him to come back to his post.

I call the Privy Council together and I tell them that I am locking the gates of the Tower every evening at dusk and I expect every lord of the council to be inside. I expect all the ladies to attend me, my sisters too, my mother and my mother-in-law, my husband as well. They have put me on the throne in the Tower, and beside the throne and inside the Tower they will have to stay with me. Only if we stand together, with the saints in heaven, will we triumph, as John Dudley marches towards Lady Mary like the devil claiming his own.

William Herbert slinks back into my presence chamber, before midnight. I stay up late, my mother and my mother-in-law, Lady Dudley, with me. Even Guildford is with us, sober for once. Herbert’s son, still pale and sickly, comes in the room behind him, Katherine my sister half a step behind her young husband.

“You have to stay here, my lord,” I say abruptly. “We need you here in case there is news. We may need to call a council at any time.”

He bows to me but he says nothing. He has no defense.

“And I expect my sister’s companionship,” I say. “You may not take her away without my permission.”

I cannot stop myself glancing at my mother to see if she agrees with me. She nods; even Lady Dudley makes a little gesture of agreement. Everyone knows that we have to stick together.

“Nobody may leave,” Guildford says, as if I have not already made that clear. “It is my father’s wish.”

We have to work together, we cannot appear disunited. We are the soldiers of God—we have to march in step—so the council meet, and we all agree that they shall write to Lord Richard Rich, who swore for me, but has now vanished, and remind him that he must stay loyal. The counties of Norfolk are wavering, the East is becoming uncertain. They are afraid that the sailors on ships in port will declare for Mary. They hold the meeting, they send the letter, but later in the morning Katherine comes to my rooms and pulls at my sleeve while I am writing, making me blot the paper.

“Look what you made me do! What is it?” I ask her.

“We’re leaving,” she says in a tiny whisper. “I have to go right now. My father-in-law says so.” She shows me her pet monkey in the crook of her arm. “I have to put Mr. Nozzle in his cage. He has to come, too.”

“You can’t go. I told him, I told them all. You were there, you heard it. You all have to stay.”

“I know you told them,” she says. “That is why I have come to you, now.”

I look at her. For the first time in our lives I look at her and see her not as a slightly irritating younger sister, part of the familiar landscape of Bradgate, like a pale rose in the garden that I pass every day, but a real girl, real as me, a young woman, suffering as I am suffering. I look at her white face and her dark emotional eyes and the strain that she is showing, and I feel no sympathy but much irritation.

“What’s the matter with you? Why are you looking like a wet May Day?”

“They’re all coming with us,” she says miserably. “Lots of them, anyway. Your council—the Privy Council—they’re coming with us to Baynard’s Castle. They have agreed with my father-in-law, William Herbert, to meet there. They are leaving you and going with him. I am sorry, Jane. I can’t stop them . . .” She trails off with a little shrug. Obviously, she can’t stop the lords of the land doing as they think fit. “I did say that they should not . . .” she begins feebly.

“But I commanded them to stay here! What do they think they are going to do at your house?”

“I am afraid that they’re going to proclaim Lady Mary.”

I just look at her, aghast. “What?”

She looks back at me. “I have to go, too,” she says.

Obviously, she has to obey her young husband and his all-powerful father.

“You can’t.”

“Can we ask someone?”

She is so ridiculous. “Ask who? Ask them what?”

“What we should do? Could we send a message and ask Roger Ascham?”

“The scholar? What do you think he could do? Now that my Privy Council is running away with your father-in-law, and proclaiming a papist as queen?”

“I don’t know,” she snivels.

Of course she doesn’t. She never knows anything.

“Father has to tell them,” she says in a whisper. “The Privy Council. Father must tell them not to come to Baynard’s Castle and turn against you. I can’t.”

“Well, tell him to tell them! Fetch him here now!”

“He won’t. I already asked. Our lady mother won’t.”

We are silent for a moment, more like sisters than we have ever been before, united in apprehension as it dawns on me that the right thing does not always happen, that the saints do not always march unstoppably to heaven, that the godly do not necessarily triumph, that the two of us have no more authority than little Mary. The monkey, Mr. Nozzle, pulls her handkerchief from her pocket and presses it into her hand.

“What about me?” I ask.

I see for the first time that there are tears in her eyes. “I don’t suppose you could come, too?” she says. “Come to Baynard’s Castle with everybody?” She gives a gulp. “Say you’re sorry to Lady Mary? That it was a mistake? Come with me?”

“Don’t be stupid,” I say harshly.

“If you and I were to say it was all a mistake? If I were to back you up and say you didn’t mean it? That they made you?”

I see her tighten her hold on the jacket of her pet monkey, as if he might give witness, too.

“Impossible.”

She shakes her head. “I didn’t think you could,” she says, and hands me her damp handkerchief and goes without another word from the room.

I look around me. Now I see that some of my ladies are missing and now I realize they have been absent since prayers this morning. My rooms are thinning out; people are deserting me.

“You are none of you to leave here,” I say harshly, and the heads bob up, as if they are all planning to run away from the Tower as soon as I am out of the room. This is infidelity, this is false faith. I think that women are especially inclined to dishonor. I hate them for it, but I can do nothing against them now. I cannot imagine how they can live with themselves, how they can pray. God will repay them for infidelity to me, His daughter. The mills of God grind slow; but they grind exceeding fine, as these great ladies and their dishonest husbands will learn.

We process to dinner as usual. Guildford sits beside me on a lower chair, the golden cloth of estate extending over me. I look around the hall—there is no buzz of conversation, nobody seems to have any appetite. I could almost shrug. They all wanted this—why would they regret their own actions? Surely, they know that this world is a vale of tears and we are all miserable sinners?

The great door at the end of the hall opens, and my father comes in, walking stiffly as if his knees are sore. I look up but he does not smile at me. He moves towards me; the conversations die away and the room falls silent as he comes on.

He stands before me, his mouth working, but still he says nothing. I have never seen him like this before, I have a cold sense of dread that something terrible is about to happen. “Father?” I ask. Then suddenly, he reaches up and gets hold of a corner of the cloth of estate and tugs so hard at it that the posts that hold it steady over my chair fall sideways like cut timber, with a clatter, and the awning rips.

“Father!” I exclaim, and he rounds on me.

“This place does not belong to you. You must submit to fortune,” he says suddenly.

“What?”

“You must put off your royal robes and be content to live a private life.”

“What?” I say again, but I am playing for time now. I guess that we have lost, and he has chosen this strange behavior—more like a masque than a father speaking to his beloved daughter—so that it can be reported that he took down the cloth of estate with his own hands. Or perhaps words fail him; they don’t fail me; they never fail me. “I much more willingly put them off than I put them on,” I say. “Out of obedience to you and my mother I have grievously sinned.”

He looks as stunned. As if the flapping awning had spoken, or that block Guildford, who gawps at my side.

“You must relinquish the crown,” my father says again, as if I am arguing for keeping it, and he goes from the room before I can reply. He does not bow.

I rise from the throne and walk away from the tattered canopy. I go to my private rooms and my ladies follow. I see that one of them pauses to speak to my father’s servant.

“We will pray,” I say as soon as the door is closed.

“I beg your pardon,” the woman says from the back. “But your father sent a message to say that we can leave now. May I pack my things and go to my home?”

In the quietness of the deserted rooms I can hear the cheering from outside the Tower gates. The fathers of the city have commanded that there shall be red wine flowing in the fountains and every fool and knave is getting drunk and shouting, “God save the queen.” I go and look for my father. He will know what I should do. Perhaps he will take me home to Bradgate.

At first I cannot find him. He is not in the throne room, nor in the royal rooms behind the throne room. Not in the presence chamber, nor in the private rooms. He is not in Guildford’s quarters, which are quiet for once. Even Guildford is subdued, playing cards with only half a dozen cronies. They rise to their feet when they see me and I ask Guildford if he has seen my father and he says no.

I don’t stop to ask why he is so pale and strained, why his rowdy companions are so unusually quiet. I want to find my father. He is not in the White Tower, and so I go outside and run across the green to the chapel of Saint Peter in case he is praying alone before the small silent altar; but he is not there either. It takes me a long time to walk to the stables, and just as I enter I hear the bells of Saint Paul’s pealing over and over again, a jangle of noise, not the hour, not the chimes of the hour, just a full peal over and over, and then all the other bells join in, a cacophony, as if all the bells of London are ringing at once. Beyond the walls of the Tower I can hear people shouting and cheering. The ravens burst from the trees of the Tower gardens and from their hidden perches all over the Tower and swirl up at the noise like a dark cloud, a foreboding thundercloud, and I clap my hands over my ears to block out the noise of the ceaseless shouting bells and my sudden fear of the cawing birds. I hear myself say irritably: “I have no idea what this noise is for!” But I do know.

I run into the stable yard like a poor girl, my hands to my head, my skirts muddy, and find my father is on the mounting block, hauling himself into the saddle. I go to the horse and put my hand on his rein.

“What is happening, Father?” I have to yell over the noise of the bells. The gate to the stable bangs open as half a dozen lads abruptly run out, leaving it unfastened. “What in the name of God is happening now?”

“We’ve lost,” he says, leaning low down from the saddle to put his hand on my head, as if he is blessing me in farewell. “Poor child. It was a great venture; but we’ve lost.”

Still, I don’t understand him. I think that I don’t understand anything. I can’t hear. That is the trouble: that I can’t hear what he is saying. The bells are so loud, the ravens so noisy, I must have misheard him.

“What have we lost? I knew we were withdrawing. I knew she was defending Framlingham. Has there been a battle? Was John Dudley’s troop defeated?”

“No battle. She won without a sword unsheathed. London has proclaimed Mary,” he says. “Despite everything I have done for you. That’s why they’re ringing the bells.”

I drop my hand from the rein and stagger back from the big horse, and my father immediately takes it as his signal to go. Without another word he spurs his horse towards the open stable-yard gate. I run after him.

“But what are you doing?” I shriek up at him. “Father! Where are you going?”

“I’m only one man,” he says, as if that explains everything.

“Where are you going?”

“I’m going to proclaim Mary as queen, and then I will go and beg her pardon.”

I am running beside his horse as he rides to the gateway, but I can’t keep up. I am falling behind. The gate is thrown open and I can see, outside, people dancing in the street and embracing each other, throwing coins in the air, people hanging out of the windows to shout the news down to those in the street, and all the time the terrible racket of the bells of hundreds of churches all clanging and clattering all over London at once.

“Father, stop! Wait for me! What am I to do?”

“I will save you,” he promises me, and then he spurs his horse on and canters through the open gate and gets through the crowd before anyone can recognize him as the father of the girl who was queen for less than two weeks.

I stand like a fool looking after him. He will save me: that must comfort me. He has ridden out to save me. We have suffered a great reverse but my father has gone to make it right again. I must wait here and he will come back and tell me what I must do now. Whatever we were doing here—and now it seems to me like a dream when you wake and almost laugh, and take the nightmare to God in prayer for it was so strange and wild—whatever we were doing here, it is over. Or at any rate, I suppose it is over. Unless it is a temporary reverse and we will be restored.

My father will save me as he has promised to do. John Dudley will have a plan. I had better get back to my rooms and make sure that no one else leaves. We don’t want to look disorderly. We don’t want to be Laodiceans, a people condemned for indifference as neither hot nor cold; we don’t want to shame Our Lord in the sight of His enemies. I had better look as if I am as sure of my father on earth as I am of my Father in heaven.

I begin to think that it is as if they made me queen for a day like a Lord of Misrule, a fool in a paper crown, while I really thought that I was the true queen, and my tinsel scepter was heavy and my duties great. I begin to think that I have been capering. I am afraid that people have been laughing at me.

I will die of embarrassment if this is the case, I can bear to be anything but ridiculous, and so I must stay in my rooms and order my ladies to stay with me, and Guildford’s court to stay with him. The cloth of estate was thrown down by my own father and I don’t tell anyone to put it up again. The throne is taken away without a word being spoken, the great seal of office is missing somewhere, the keys of the Tower are gone from the hook, and my rooms are empty.

And now I find I was far too slow to keep my ladies with me. It is like the end of summer when one moment at Bradgate I notice that the swallows are circling the turrets faster and faster, and then suddenly there are none, and I don’t even know the day when they left. Just like the swallows, my ladies are vanished from my rooms. I did not know that they would go; I did not see them leave. Even my mother is missing, disappeared like a dark-backed swift. She went without telling me, taking Mary with her. I think worse of her than I do of Katherine, for at least that bruised reed came to me to say that she would have to leave. The only women left in the Tower are some lowly wives, the servants, the wife of the constable of the Tower who lives here, and my mother-in-law, Lady Dudley. Abandoned here, she looks ghastly, like a whale marooned on a cold beach, accidentally aground. She sits on her stool, her hands empty, no Bible to read, no shirts to sew, an idle woman with her plans in wreckage around her.

“Have you heard from your husband?” I demand.

“He has surrendered,” she chokes, her voice thick with grief. “At Cambridge. Surrendered to those who were proud to call him their lord only the day before.”

I nod rapidly, as if this makes any sense to me, as if I am hearing her, but this is far beyond my understanding. I have never read anything to prepare me for a reverse like this. I don’t think there has ever been a reverse like this, not in any history that I have studied. A complete defeat without a battle? No defense at all? A great army mustered and marched out, but then turned around to go quietly away? It is more like a fairy tale than a history.

“Well, I shall go home,” I decide. I sound determined, but secretly I am hoping she will order me to her house in London, or command me to wait here for my father to rescue me.

She shakes her head. “You can’t. They’ve closed the gates on the Tower,” she says. “D’you think I would be here with you if I could leave? You were a queen; but now you are a prisoner. You bolted the gates to keep your people in; now they are bolted to keep you in. You will never see your home again. God grant that I do.”

“I shall be the judge of that!” I snap; and I turn and go out of the room to Guildford’s great chamber.

It is all but empty. I pause in the doorway as a wave of nausea overcomes me at the smell of old roast meats. A few men gather at the fireplace at the far end. A few servants collect goblets and some dirty plates. Guildford is alone, sitting on his great chair, the posts for his vainglorious cloth of estate leaning drunkenly to one side and another. He is like a jester playing at being a king, but with no court.

“Everyone’s gone,” I tell him as he stands and bows to me.

“Are we to go?” he asks. “Does my mother say we can go home now?”

“She says they have bolted the gates to keep us in, and they have arrested your father.”

He looks aghast. “I should have warned him,” he says. “I should have gone with him. If only I had ridden with him, at his side, as his son!”

“You’re drunk,” I say viciously. “And you know nothing.”

He nods, as if this is interesting information. “You’re right,” he tells me. “Right on both points. I am drunk. And I know nothing.” He gives a little giggle. “You can be very sure that half of London will be drunk tonight, and they will all know nothing. Especially, they will know nothing of us: us Dudleys.”

Guildford remains drunk for days, in his new rooms in the Beauchamp Tower where he is confined, without his court, without his friends, with only two servants to pull him out of bed in the morning and push him back into it at night. He is not allowed beyond his rooms, so I suppose he is a prisoner until Lady Mary pardons us. His mother keeps a silent vigil in my rooms. She is very poor company.

I study my books. Strangely, there is nothing for me to do. I am not allowed to leave the Tower, the gates are closed, but inside the high walls I can go where I like—across the green to the chapel, to the muniments rooms, to the gardens, to the stables. I like to walk on the ramparts between the towers overlooking the river in the evening. The cooler air settles my churning belly. I am still bleeding, I am still sick. Something is poisoning me. I don’t think I will be well till my father takes me back to Bradgate. I have started to dream that I am in my bedroom at home, overlooking the lake, but then I wake and hear the noise of the city and the flat light of the morning skies and realize that I am still far from my home.

I hear a clatter from the Byward Tower gate and peer over the wall to see who is entering. They are prisoners, there is a guard around them, and there are half a dozen men. I can hear the jeers of the crowd outside the gate, silenced when the gate slams shut and the bolts are drawn. I can just see the face of the leading prisoner. Lord, it is my father-in-law, John Dudley, walking proudly with his head up and his hat in his hand, and now I recognize his sons among the disgraced party. I thank God for His grace that my father is not among them. The Dudleys have been arrested and my father is free. He will be meeting our cousin Princess Mary and explaining how it came about, applying for my release. I thank God that it is the Dudleys who will be blamed for all this. It was their plan, and everyone knows it. They have been vaultingly ambitious for years, now they will be brought low, and serve them right.

The party is divided. My father-in-law goes to St. Thomas’s Tower over the watergate, and his sons are taken to the Beauchamp Tower to share their brother Guildford’s rooms. I watch them go down the steps, bowing their heads to enter the low doorway, and I feel nothing—neither sympathy nor fear for them. There is a little struggle as John Dudley tries to force his way down the steps to be with his sons. I can see the youngest, Henry, is crying. I suppose that Guildford will be glad to be with his brothers, but he will find that being drunk and knowing nothing will not save him now that his father is arrested.

I think I had better go back to my rooms, but when I get there I find that my clothes and my books have been moved, and I am now to live in the house of Mr. Nathaniel Partridge, the gentleman-jailer of the Tower. It is a pretty house, facing inwards over the gardens, looking towards the White Tower. My rooms are a good size and comfortable. I still have three ladies-in-waiting and a manservant. It makes no difference to me, I tell Mrs. Partridge, the wife of the jailer: “Outward show means nothing to me. While I have my books and my studies and I can pray, I need nothing else.”

She bobs a little curtsey, not the deep obeisance that she used before the Dudleys came in, under arrest. I find this very irritating, but then I remember that it is outward show, and I care nothing for it.

“Leave me,” I say quietly. “I am going to write.”

I think I shall write my account of these days, and send it to my cousin Princess Mary. I think I should explain to her how all that has happened was not of my doing, and, if the deathbed wishes of my cousin the king are to be ignored, then I am content to become a subject once more, and for her to be the heir once more; indeed, to be crowned queen. As Tudors we have seen, God knows, enough changes. Her own mother was set aside and accused of a sham marriage, her title taken away. She herself has been princess and then Lady Mary twice in her lifetime. Princess Mary of all people will understand that my title can be taken away as readily as it was forced on me and that my conscience is clear.

The next day, I hear a bustle under my bedroom window. By pressing my face against the cold windowpane I can just see that it is young Henry Lord Hastings, Katherine Dudley’s feeble husband, and it looks as if he is leaving the Beauchamp Tower where the Dudley boys are kept. He is laughing, shaking the hand of another man who has clearly come with the warrant for his release. The constable of the Tower, Sir John Gage, stands to one side, his hat in his hand. Clearly, young Henry is once again an important man, no longer an accused traitor like his new brothers-in-law. Of course, Princess Mary is bound to be merciful to her friends, and Henry is related to her governess, Margaret Pole, who died at the very spot where they now so lightheartedly exchange compliments. Henry must be pleased to be out of the Tower, which has been such an unlucky place for his family. As I watch him leave, striding along to the main gate, I see another man is coming in.

They pass without even the smallest gesture of recognition, so I think it must be a stranger, and then I realize that of course Henry Hastings will make no gesture of recognition to anyone coming inwards. Like my husband, who said he was drunk and knows nothing, everyone will know nothing and recognize nobody in these days. Everyone who associated with the Dudleys will want to show that they know nothing and recognize nobody. Henry Hastings will be a stranger to anyone walking into the Tower: his own father is left in here, completely ignored. It is not safe to know anyone. And so it is done—Henry goes past this new arrival without another glance, just a little gesture of drawing himself away, a little turn of his head so their eyes do not meet.

Smiling at this bitter masque, I watch him go, and then I turn my attention to the newcomer. At first I don’t recognize him. His head is bowed, his steps are slow, he looks like all the men who come in now: as if the breath has been knocked out of them, cut down to the height of gnomes, as they were when they all kneeled to me.

So who is this new man, shuffling into prison? Which of my many self-appointed advisors is this, forced to face the wrong that he has done? I can see only the top and the back of his head but I feel certain that I know him—something about the set of his bowed shoulders, something about the dawdling feet. I cry out. Suddenly, I hammer on the thick glass of the window, hurting my palms as I slap them against the leaded panes. I scream but he cannot hear me. This broken man is the only one I can trust: “Father! Father! My father!”

I request permission for my father to be housed in my rooms. This is foolish of me: he is not a guest in the royal palace; I am no longer a queen to allocate the rooms. I am under house arrest and he is a prisoner in the cells. I realize that everything has changed: everything. Not only can he not live with me, I am not allowed even to see him. I demand to see my mother.

“She is not even in London,” the gentleman-jailer of the Tower, Mr. Partridge, says awkwardly. “I regret to tell you, Your . . .” he stammers over my title. “At any rate, she has gone.”

“Where is she?” I ask. “Is she at home?”

“She is not at your home,” he says. He speaks slowly, choosing his words with care. “She has gone to the queen to sue for pardon.”

I am so relieved I could almost weep. Of course! She will speak to her cousin to get a pardon for my father. God be praised! “She will send for me, and for Father. We will go home to Bradgate.”

“Indeed, I hope so.”

“Where is the queen?”

He looks shifty, as if he thinks it better that I don’t know. “She is coming,” he says. “She is on her way to London, by easy stages. Going slowly.”

“I want to see her too,” I say bravely. After all, she is my cousin. Once I was her little favorite. She knew that I was not of her faith, and yet she still offered me pretty gowns. I wish now that I had been more gracious in my opposition to her wrong thinking. But nonetheless, we are still kinswomen. I should speak to her. It would be better for me to explain to her directly. I am composing a justification, but I should perhaps apologize to her in person.

He looks at the floor, at the toes of his boots; he does not raise his eyes. “I will tell them that you request an audience with Her Majesty the Queen,” he says. “But I am told that you are not to be released.”

“Until the queen sends for me,” I say.

“Until then.” But he does not sound as confident as I did; and I was pretending.