The Last Tudor

HAMPTON COURT PALACE,

SUMMER 1559

Álvaro de la Quadra, the new Spanish ambassador, comes striding down the garden path in his sweeping bishop’s robes to bring me the news, as if we are friends and conspirators.

“Thank God I found you! The King of France is dead!” he says.

“My lord,” I say quietly. I am not as confident with him as I was with Count de Feria. He seems to think that we have an agreement, as if he has inherited me from the previous ambassador, an alliance rather than a liking.

“God bless him,” I say. “But I thought he was just injured jousting?” I am walking down the gravel path towards the allée of yew trees, with Janey leaning on my arm. Ned is going to meet us here, as if by accident.

“No! No! Dead! Dead!” says Ambassador de la Quadra, completely ignoring Janey and taking both my hands. “They have kept vigil beside his bed in vain. They have done everything they could, but nothing could save him. He is gone, God preserve and keep him. His son, little Francis, is king and your cousin Mary will be queen.” He lowers his voice. “Think what this means to you!”

I am thinking. I had no idea that the French king was so seriously injured. Men are hurt all the time in the joust, but what jouster kills his king? The French court will be in an uproar and he will be succeeded by his son, Francis II. This makes my cousin Mary Stuart queen twice over. She was already Queen of Scots, now she will be Queen of France. Her importance has doubled, trebled, exploded. Now she is queen of a huge country that is determined to grow greater. Now the French king himself will support the claim of his wife to the throne of England, with the French army behind him. Every papist in this country will prefer Catholic Queen Mary to Protestant Queen Elizabeth. Many more would say that she has been the true heir all along. She is the granddaughter of Margaret, the Scots queen who was Henry VIII’s sister, and her first husband the Scots king. Unlike Elizabeth, she is undeniably legitimate, royal on both sides, and more than anything else, she will have the great might of France behind her.

“Queen of France and Scotland,” I say thoughtfully. There she is, a girl no better born than I, not named in Henry VIII’s will like me; but she is queen of two countries before she is twenty-one.

“And so everything changes again,” the ambassador says to me quietly, taking my arm and leading me from Janey, who turns back for the palace, waving me away with my grand friend.

“I don’t see why,” I say. “And I should go back inside with Janey Seymour.”

“Because the new French queen’s Guise kinsmen will be eager for her to take her throne in Scotland and push back the reformed religion. Because they will encourage her to make her claim for the English throne. They won’t care about peace with England like the old French king; they want to rule Scotland and invade England from the south and the north.”

Really, he is too much for me, and I am afraid of his quiet voice, which weaves an argument thread by thread like a snare. “But this is nothing to do with me, Your Excellency. I don’t see why you come running to tell me.”

He smiles as if this is news that will make me happy. “I will send you word,” he whispers. “And we will come for you. An entourage will come for you.”

“What?” I ask, for this is completely unexpected. “What entourage?”

He smiles at me as if we have some long-standing secret agreement, and he says that my moment will come. “We will release you,” he says, “from the burden of your life here.”

Thank God that Ned steps quickly from a side path and then nearly jumps back again when he sees the ambassador. I say loudly: “Here is my friend Janey Seymour’s brother come to fetch me to her. Your Excellency must excuse me,” and I dash to Ned, who openly clutches at my hand. He waits only for the ambassador to bow and leave us before taking me in his arms and kissing me.

“Ned, what are they thinking of?” I demand wildly. “He says they are going to release me from the burden of my life? Are they going to kill me?”

“They’re planning to kidnap you and marry you to a Spanish heir,” Ned says tightly. “When I saw him with you then, I thought he might be persuading you to go with him. I heard it from someone just back from Madrid. It’s talked about all over Europe. They want a Spanish ally on the throne of England again. Someone they can trust. The old French king is dead and the Spanish won’t tolerate the new French queen as the heir to England. They won’t allow France to stretch her borders any more. They will back you against Queen Mary of Scots as the heir of England, and force Elizabeth to name you.”

“I can’t do anything about that.” I give a frightened little moan. “Elizabeth has to choose me of her own will. I can’t make her. And I can’t be the enemy of France! They can’t call me that. I can’t be the Spanish-favored heir for England against my cousin the Queen of France. Why don’t they see that I can’t do anything?”

He shakes his head, looking grim. “No. It’s worse than that. They don’t think that they can persuade Elizabeth to name you as heir, and they don’t think she can hold the country against a French invasion for Mary. They won’t allow a French queen on the throne of England. The plan is that they’ll take you, and declare you as the true heir, and invade to put you on the throne.”

I give a little scream. “Ned! They can’t make me do that!”

“If only your mother would speak to Elizabeth! If only Elizabeth would declare you as her heir; if only we could marry, I would make you safe.”

“I won’t marry a Spaniard,” I gabble. “I won’t! I won’t! I’ll only marry you.” I cling to him and I am distracted at once by his arms around me, his kisses on my face, the warmth of his mouth going down my neck. “Oh, Ned,” I whisper. “We can’t wait any longer. This changes everything. Don’t let the Spanish take me. I will be your wife. I won’t be forced to the throne like Jane. I won’t die like her without ever being loved.”

“Never,” he says. “They’re all as bad as each other, queen and Spanish ambassador, your mother and mine. All they think about is the throne. They don’t think about us at all. We were born for each other, we have to be together.”

I melt against him; I cannot care for the consequences. I want to live, I want to be loved, I want to be his wife. Ned gives a little groan and pulls me down to sit in an arbor. I press forward on him, he fumbles with his breeches, I lift my skirts like a whore in Southwark. I don’t care. I don’t want to think. I don’t want to die young without love. I don’t want to go another moment without him. He pulls me towards him and I gasp with the sudden pain that is such a joy, and then I gasp again for the flood of pleasure, and then I sigh, my face buried in his shoulder, and I am overwhelmed with the sensation and I am blind and deaf to anything but our own hushed panting and then a long deep sigh and silence.

We can be together for only a moment. As soon as I realize where I am, what I am doing, I have to scramble off him, take a snatched kiss, and dash back to my room. I change my dress as fast as possible, hurrying my women with the laces on my sleeves, the slow tying of my bodice, snapping at my maid as she pins my hood on my rumpled golden hair, and I get to Elizabeth’s rooms at a half run and join her court at the back, hoping that no one has seen that I am late.

Her dark gaze sweeps the rooms, like a peregrine falcon looking for prey, halts at my blushing face, comes back to me. “Ah, Lady Katherine,” she says, though she has not singled me out for months. I bob a shallow curtsey, swallowing down my fear. I am beloved of a great man, I am a Tudor. We are betrothed. This is more than she can say for sure.

“I see you do not trouble yourself to be on time,” she remarks. “I did not see you in chapel either.”

All of her ladies shrink back from the royal bad temper, making an avenue of gowns between me and the queen, and everyone looks towards me. I see Sir William Cecil’s tired face, irritable with impatience at the distraction. He is Elizabeth’s great advisor, and it tries his exhausted patience when she squabbles with her ladies when there is so much for her to do in the kingdom. I see Robert Dudley, who looks at me as if we are strangers. I see my aunt Bess St. Loe. She glares at me, as if she wishes I would behave better, and I see Mary’s little face half-hidden among the maids-in-waiting, and her grimace at my discomfort.

I think how faithless they all are. My sister was a queen, and I am five minutes late to Elizabeth’s presence chamber because I have been meeting with a man who loves me, a good man, who will defend me from the enemies of the kingdom, and they behave as if I am a naughty schoolchild and this bastard claimant can scold me.

I curtsey again, biting my tongue. “I am sorry, Your Majesty,” I say as sweetly as I can.

“Were you meeting the Spanish ambassador in a hidden place?” she asks.

William Cecil raises his eyebrows at her indiscretion. De la Quadra, the Spanish ambassador, at the back of the room, bows blandly, as if to say—not at all.

“Not at all,” I say steadily.

“The French ambassador?” she suggests. “For I hear on all sides that you are discontented at court, and I must say, I do not know how I might please you. Nor,” she says, savoring her spiteful joke, “why I should please you, given that it was your sister who took my throne.”

It is her speaking of Jane that makes me forget myself. I feel a flare of rage, as hot and as passionate as my earlier rush of desire. I will not have this red-headed usurper insulting my sister. “You need not strive to please me,” I spit. “And I am only a little late.”

She could leave it at that; she has bigger things to worry about than my pertness. But her plucked brows arch high in surprise at my reply. “You are quite right for once: I have no obligation to be good to you,” she says nastily. “For sure, you are no good lady to me. What do you bring to my service? You are late and rude, your mother is ill and always absent, and your sister half-size. I don’t have full measure of a lady-in-waiting from any of the three of you. Or should I say two and a half?”

My anger flares out of control at her joking about my little sister. “You need do nothing for me. Nothing could compare with what you do for the Dudleys! For sure, you bend over backwards for him,” I say loudly and slowly, straight into her pale face, her rouged cheeks, her eyes widened with horror.

There is a little scream from Bess St. Loe, and I see Robert Dudley scowl. Mary’s hands are clapped over her mouth, her eyes wide above them. Elizabeth herself says nothing, but the hand that grips her fan is shaking as she fights to get herself under control. She does not look at Robert Dudley, at this insult to the two of them; but she glances up at William Cecil, who inclines his head as if he would whisper in her ear. He need say nothing: she knows that if she responds to me with anger she might as well pin my words on the door of Saint Paul’s: everyone will hear what I have said. Cecil mutters urgently, telling her to ignore me, pass off my outburst as a joke.

She opens her rouged lips and she laughs loudly, like a cawing crow. “You are merry, Lady Katherine,” she says, and rises up from her throne and walks the length of the presence chamber and speaks to someone else, someone of no importance, as if she would run away from me and my righteous disdain.

I sense Ned at my side, even before I turn my face and see him. His eyes are bright with pride. “Vivat!” he says. “Vivat regina!”

I am in terrible disgrace for insulting Elizabeth. No lady-in-waiting dares to be seen with me, and the Spanish ambassador bows to me in public but avoids me in private. I think that no one pays any attention to me at all but Ned, my beloved Ned. But if he loves me, I don’t care that I am neglected by everyone.

Elizabeth is in the darkest of bad tempers, hagridden by thoughts of our cousin Mary Queen of Scots inheriting the great throne of France with her powerful kinsmen to back her claim on England. Nobody dares to speak to approach her, only Robert Dudley can distract her from her fears.

“You take care,” my little sister, Mary, says, affecting the wisdom of a woman two feet taller than she is. “You can’t afford to offend the queen. There’s only one woman at court who can speak honestly to her. There’s only one woman at court who can reprimand her.”

I laugh. “D’you mean Kat Ashley’s great remonstrance?”

Mary’s ready smile beams at me. “Lord, I wish you had seen it,” she says. “It was as good as a masque. Mrs. Ashley on her knees begging the queen not to favor Robert Dudley so openly, swearing that she would lose her reputation, reminding her that he is married and that she should not be constantly in his company, and Elizabeth, saying that if she loved Sir Robert, she didn’t know who could stop her.”

“But what did you all say?” I demand. “You ladies.” This scene took place in Elizabeth’s bedroom when she was dressing. Kat Ashley, her former governess, is the only woman brave enough to tell Elizabeth that the country thinks she is a complete whore and Robert Dudley an ambitious adulterer. My sister was lucky enough to be spectator to this scene. She was holding Elizabeth’s gold-tipped laces, waiting to lace her shoes, when Kat went down on her knees to beg the queen not to behave like a whore.

“We all said nothing, because we’re not brave fools like Kat Ashley,” Mary says stoutly. “I’m not reckless with a temper like you. You think I’m going to tell the Queen of England not to chase after the man she loves? You think I’m going to stand up to her like you did?”

“He’s not free to love,” I say primly. “And neither is she. There’s the difference between them and me and Ned. She is a queen who should marry for her country, and he is a man already married—and there is me and Ned, young and free and both noble.”

“You’re never talking of marriage with Ned?” Mary demands.

I go down on my knees to her, so that our faces are level. “Oh, Mary, I am,” I whisper. “I am! I promise you that I am.”