The Last Tudor

THE TOWER, LONDON,

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1554

My lady mother and Katherine are allowed to visit Father; and Katherine leaves our father and mother to be alone together—as they always want to be—and comes to my room.

She does not know what to say to me, and I have nothing to say to her. We sit in awkward silence. She cries a little, stifling her sobs in the sleeve of her gown. While she is sitting so close, gazing at me with her tear-filled eyes, I cannot study, write, or pray. I cannot even hear my own thoughts. I am just gripped in a whirl of her regrets and fear and grief. It is like being churned in a butter tub; I feel myself going rancid. I don’t want to spend my last day like this. I want to write an account of John Feckenham’s discussion with me, of my triumph over his wrong thinking. I want to prepare my speech for the scaffold. I want to think; I don’t want to feel.

We can hear the noise of the carts bringing the wood to build the scaffold and the workers shouting for their tools, and guiding the carts to the green. At every rumble of the wood being tipped on the paving stones, at every rasp of the saws and tapping of a hammer, Katherine flinches, her pretty face white as skimmed milk, her eyes the color of ink.

“I will die for my faith,” I say to her suddenly.

“You will die because Father joined a rebellion against the crowned queen,” she bursts out. “It wasn’t even for you!”

“That may be what they say,” I reply steadily. “But the queen has turned her back on those who believe in the true way to God, broken her promise that people might worship according to their conscience, and is throwing the country under the command of the Bishop of Rome and the hidalgos of Spain. So she has turned against me because of my faith and that is why I shall die.”

Katherine claps her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen to treason.”

“You never listen to anything.”

“Father has lost us everything,” she says. “We are all destroyed.”

“Worldly goods,” I say. “They mean nothing to me.”

“Bradgate! Bradgate doesn’t mean nothing to you! So why say so? Our home!”

“You should turn your mind to Our Father’s house in heaven.”

“Jane,” she implores me, “tell me one kind word, one sisterly word before I say good-bye!”

“I can’t,” I say simply. “I have to keep my mind on my journey and my joyful destination.”

“Will you see Guildford before he dies? He’s asked to see you. Your husband? Will you be together for one last time? He wants to say good-bye.”

Impatiently, I shake my head at her morbid sentiment. “I can’t! I can’t! I will see no one but Brother Feckenham.”

“A Benedictine monk!” she squeaks. “Why would you see him and not Guildford?”

“Because Brother Feckenham knows I am a martyr,” I flash. “Of all of you, only he and the queen understand that I am dying for my faith. That is why I will only see him. That is why he will come with me to the scaffold.”

“If you would just admit that this is not about your faith, this is nothing to do with your faith—it’s only about Father’s rebellion for Elizabeth—then you wouldn’t have to die at all!”

“That is why I won’t talk with you, or Guildford,” I say in a sudden storm of unsaintly temper. “I won’t listen to anyone who wants me to see this as a muddle by a fool, which leads to the death of his daughter, a pawn. Yes! Father should have rescued me; but instead he rode out for another pawn and his failure has condemned me to death!” I am swept with rage and sorrow. I have raised my voice, I am shouting at her, panting. I feel that I have to claw myself back to peace, to calmness. This is why I cannot argue about worldly things with worldly people. This is why I cannot bear to see her, to see any of them. This is why I have to think and not feel.

She looks at me with her mouth open and her eyes wide. “He has ruined us,” she whispers.

“I’m not going to die thinking about that,” I hiss at her. “I am a martyr for my faith, not for a foolish accident. I will never die, and my father will never die either. We will meet in heaven.”

I write to my father. I always knew he would never die and now I am setting off on a journey, and I don’t doubt that I will see him at journey’s end.

The Lord comfort Your Grace . . . and though it has pleased God to take away two of your children, my husband and myself, yet think not, I most humbly beseech Your Grace, that you have lost them, but trust that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life. And I for my part, as I have honored Your Grace in this life, will pray for you in another life.