The Last Tudor

THE TOWER, LONDON,

AUTUMN 1561

It is hot and airless in the lieutenant’s small house, and I am not allowed out of my rooms, not to walk in the garden nor on the flat roof of the Tower where I could, at least, get a breath of air in the evening and see the sun set.

Every day the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward Warner, comes to my room and asks me who knew that Ned and I were in love, and who knew that we were married, who witnessed the betrothal and the marriage, and who encouraged us to do it and keep it secret.

He asks the same questions over and over again while Mr. Nozzle paws at the stone walls and tears miserably at the frayed edge of the tapestry, swinging dolefully on the dangling hem as if it were a bell rope and he were tolling a mourning bell.

Over and over again I tell Sir Edward that we were two young people in love, the witness was Janey, that no one else knew except perhaps the servants and, of course, the minister, and he writes it all down very carefully and says that the minister will be sought out and that I must hope that his story confirms mine. I say that my box of papers, which proves everything I say, is in the royal jewel house, and they will find it if they will but look for it. I say that I already told all this to Robert Dudley, and the lieutenant says that this has been noted. He asks what I told Bess St. Loe, and I stammer, remembering the dark that followed the sudden blowing out of the candle.

“Bess St. Loe?” I repeat, feebly.

“She has been arrested for questioning,” he says heavily. “Indeed, I have interrogated her myself for her part in this conspiracy.”

“Good God, is she in here too?”

He nods. “Under suspicion of treasonous conspiracy with you.”

“Sir Edward! That is so wrong! All I did was tell her that I was with child and beg her to help me for she had been a friend of my mother! God knows, there was no conspiracy. She cried out that I should never have come to her and ordered me from her room. She would not even speak to me in my trouble.”

He writes this down, very slowly, word for word. I have to bite my lip on my impatience. “Sir Edward, I do promise you, this is just a story about love and perhaps folly, but when I see Ned—”

“The Earl of Hertford is on his way from France,” he tells me.

My knees suddenly weaken and I feel behind me for the chair, and I sink down. “I must sit,” I whisper. I am breathless at the thought of seeing him again. I forget that we are in such trouble. I can only think that he is coming home to me. “He’s coming home?”

“He’s ordered home for questioning.”

“Ask him anything!” I say triumphantly. “He will say the same as me.”

“I will be asking him,” he says, dour as ever. “For he is coming here. He is under arrest, too.”

They bring Ned in at dusk, under cover of darkness, and I can hear the heavy boots on the pavement below my window. There are many prisoners walking with him surrounded by guards, a woman with her head bowed and crying, clinging to the arm of another man, someone dawdling and protesting at the back, a man with his arm laid across someone’s shoulder. There must be about a dozen of them, arrested all together.

At first I don’t understand who these people are. Then I realize with growing horror that Elizabeth has ordered the arrest of Ned and his servants; his brother; his sister-in-law; my stepfather, Adrian Stokes; my servants; ladies from the queen’s bedchamber; Bess St. Loe’s servants: everyone who ever knew me has been arrested for questioning. The queen is pursuing us as her father pursued the Pole family—down to the last little boy. The treasure house has been searched for my box of papers, my rooms have been stripped out and searched. Ned’s boxes from France have been confiscated and his house in London searched from cellar to attic. With all the power of her huge spy system, Elizabeth has launched a massive operation to root out a widespread conspiracy. Cecil’s spies are looking for a connection between supporters of my sister Jane, allies of Spain, enemies of Elizabeth, and anyone who would prefer a legitimate heir on the throne to a declared bastard. The queen has convinced herself that there is a plot, organized by the Protestants in England and the Spanish abroad, designed to put me on the throne of England and prevent Mary Queen of Scots from ever becoming queen and handing the country to her French family.

The guards around Ned pause at the gate of the lieutenant’s house and then enter, disappearing from my view. I think they are bringing him into my rooms, to live with me, and I rush to the door as if I could throw it open, and then I remember I am locked in and step back from it. I pull at my flowing gown; I am so afraid he will find my broad belly a shock. He loved the narrow curve of my waist—will he find me ugly in these last days of my pregnancy? I pat my hair, I straighten my hood. I go to sit in my chair and then I stand up again, by the fireplace. I could almost beat down the door in my impatience to see him.

Then I hear the terrible sound of them climbing the stone stairs that go past my rooms. They go past my door, they don’t stop to come in, they go on up to the rooms on the floor above. I cry out in disappointment and I run to the door and press my face against it, trying to distinguish Ned’s footstep, trying to recognize his breathing. I hear the door above mine open, I hear them go in, and the clatter as men drop bags, scrape the heavy wooden chairs on the stone-flagged floor, and then the slam of the door and the grate of the key in the lock and the noise of their feet on the stairs as they descend.

He is above me. If he stamped with his heel on the floor, I would hear him. If I screamed at the top of my voice, he would hear me. I stand for long minutes, my face tilted up to the ceiling, the puppies whimpering as if they are longing for him too, hoping to hear a word from my husband, home at last.

Every day now I have strange cramps and my belly stands out so firmly that I think the baby must be coming. “I cannot go on like this,” I say desperately to Sir Edward. “Do you want me to die in childbirth like Jane Seymour?”

He looks anxious. “If you would only confess,” he says. “If you would confess, then I could get you sent to your uncle, or to Hanworth, and the midwives could come.”

“I can’t confess to what I have not done,” I say. I am crying for pain and self-pity. I am in a truly impossible situation, for who can ever prove to a Tudor queen that she is not in danger? All the Tudor monarchs think that they are in mortal danger, often without cause. King Henry saw imaginary enemies everywhere, and killed good friends and advisors from his fear.

“I married a nobleman for true love. I insist that I see my husband. You must at least tell him that I am here, on the floor below him, and that I am near my time.”

There is a tap on the door. Of course, my heart leaps as if it could be Ned: suddenly freed and coming to save me. Sir Edward looks at me suspiciously.

“You are expecting a message?” he asks.

“I am expecting nothing. I am hoping for mercy.”

He nods to the guard who stands by the door and he unbolts it and swings it open. It is one of the lieutenant’s servants. “What d’you want, Jeffrey?” he asks abruptly.

The man bows. He is holding a posy of late roses, red roses. “These for the young lady,” he says. “From the Earl of Hertford.”

They are a deep red, Lancaster red. Nobody at the Tudor court would ever offer a white rose. I put out my hand and Sir Edward fussily shakes them in case a note drops out. Then he takes the posy apart looking for a message, and asks me what red roses mean to me; if they are a signal. I say that they mean that Ned is thinking of me, imprisoned just one floor below him. We are under the same roof again, as we have not been for months. He knows now that I was with child when he left me, and how I have suffered in his absence. He is telling me that he loves me. “That’s all,” I say. “He is a poet. Flowers are like words to him. Red roses tell me that he loves me still. Red roses are for true love.”

Sir Edward, for all that he is Elizabeth’s jailer and spy, cannot hide that he is moved. “Well, you can keep them,” he says, finally handing them over.

“Thank you,” I say. I hold them to my lips. “These are the most precious flowers I have ever had in my life. Will you tell him how glad I am to have them from him, and how happy I am that we are together again, even if it is here in prison, where both our fathers were once imprisoned? Will you tell him that I love him still and that I don’t regret—that I will never regret—that he loved me and married me? Tell him that I pray every day that we will be together again as husband and wife, as we planned to be.”

He shakes his head. “I’ll tell him that you like the flowers,” he says. “I can’t remember the rest.”

“You could write it down,” I say, laughing at us both. “You write down everything else I ever say or do. Why not this?”

Ned’s flowers bloom, tucked in the ribbon at my wide waist. I put them in my hair, I put a bud under my pillow and I press the last one in the pages of the Bible at the Song of Solomon, the psalm about love. I have forgiven him as if he never went away. I have forgiven him for this perilous place. I love him. His judgment is good. He is my husband and we have done nothing wrong.

Mary comes to me again.

“Are you sure it is wise to come?” I say, bending over my broad belly to kiss her cheek.

“I come with permission, they want me to talk with you in the hope that you will say something incriminating,” Mary says without resentment, indicating a woman servant who curtseys and stands by the door, listening to everything that we say.

“But how did you get here?”

“I walked. Mr. Thomas Keyes, the queen’s sergeant porter, walked with us. He’s waiting downstairs to take me back.”

I take no notice of the queen’s spy. Everyone in the Tower reports on me anyway; I never say a word that is not noted. I am interrogated every day, and they even listen to my prayers. They can listen all they like, all they will hear is that I love my husband, and so I should.

“Is Her Majesty in good health? I pray for her good health,” I say.

“I am sorry to say that she is not,” Mary replies. “She is very tired and very weary. She cannot eat. I think she is very distressed by her fears about a conspiracy. She is convinced there has been a mighty conspiracy against her. And the Scots ambassador has come to London to press her to name their queen, Mary, as her heir—instead of you. Of course, that would be a terrible mistake. She is feeling beset.”

I bow my head. “She must do as she sees fit,” I say demurely. “But our line, from the king’s sister, named as the king’s heir, born in England and of the reformed religion, has the greatest claim.”

“She must do as she wishes,” Mary agrees. “But she said to the Scots ambassador that naming her heir was like setting her winding sheet before her eyes. She said princes cannot like their own children.”

Mary meets my gaze with her most limpid look. I mouth the words “Quite mad!” and she nods in agreement.

“I wish I could beg her pardon and reassure her that she has nothing to fear from me,” I say for the benefit of the listening woman. We all know that no one could say anything that would cure Elizabeth of suspicion and fear. “I did a hasty act for love. She should see me as a fool perhaps, but not as her enemy.”

“She doubts everyone,” Mary says. “She has imprisoned all the Seymours, and even our poor stepfather, Adrian, who is not responsible for us, and had no idea what you were doing at court. She is even afraid that William Cecil knew of your marriage and encouraged it.”

I am genuinely amazed that she would doubt the man who has advised her from girlhood. “She should be sure that William Cecil never thinks of anyone but her. Of course he didn’t know of it. Would he have sent Ned away from me and thrown me into despair if he had sponsored our wedding and wanted us to conceive a child?”

“That’s what I said,” Mary says, nodding to the waiting woman as if to invite her to report on all of this. “And she knows that I knew nothing about it either.”

“It was secret,” I say simply. “We wanted a secret wedding, so no one knew but Janey. I tell them over and over again.”

“Weary work,” my sister observes. “Do they ask you every day?”

“Every single day they come in and I have to stand before them and they ask me over and over what we did and how we met and who knew.”

“They make you stand?”

I give her a wry smile. “They may not torture a lady of the nobility but they can certainly give me pains. At least I have a midwife who comes to me now, and she says that there is nothing wrong.”

“Does she say when the baby will come?”

“She doesn’t know exactly. Nobody knows. She thinks it will be soon.”

The woman at the door stirs and Mary says: “I am not allowed to stay too long. I am only permitted to come and see that you are well, and that you have everything you need.”

“I need to see my husband,” I tell her. “I need to see the queen.”

Mary makes a little pout and shrugs her shoulders. We both know this is said for the benefit of the spy. Mary is allowed to bring me some apples, but not my freedom.

“I will come again next week.” She bobs up from the stool and looks around at my pets. “Does someone walk the puppies? There is a terrible smell.”

“There’s hardly any smell,” I say. “Anyway, it’s the moat. And I hope that the lieutenant will let me out in the garden and then I can take them all out. If he does not let me live in comfort, he will have to endure the smell.”

The days are very long, and my room is hot and stuffy. I play with the puppies and I whistle to the linnets, let them fly around the room and call them back to my hand. Mr. Nozzle scrabbles painfully at the foot of the stone walls but then scampers up the chairs and takes a flying leap from one carved back to another. He jumps on the wall hanging and holds with one tiny black hand and then springs into my arms.

“And what will you make of a baby?” I ask him. “You must be kind and not pinch him.”

I listen for Ned, and sometimes I hear his footsteps on the floor. He sends me little gifts and every morning and night he taps with his heel to send his love. They do not allow him to send me anything written, and they still question us both every day. I hear them troop up the stairs to his room and back down again after an hour. I think they are hoping to prove that we conspired together against the queen, but by the end of the month the lords whom Cecil sent to question us seem to be as tired of their interrogation as I am. Without colluding, we tell the same story—the simple truth, and they have to believe that it was a marriage for love, that we had no thought that the queen would see us as anything but two young lovers incapable of resisting each other. Indeed, that was obvious to everyone from the beginning. Only the fearful Elizabeth thought it must be a conspiracy. Only the coldhearted Elizabeth would look for an explanation when everyone else would see springtime and youthful desire and thoughtlessness.