The Last Tudor

THE TOWER, LONDON,

AUTUMN 1562

I wait for a visit from my little sister, Mary, with increasing confidence that she will come and tell me that we are to be released, but she does not come. She sends me a note to say that they are still at Hampton Court and the queen has taken to her bed with some illness; the physicians have been called, but nobody knows what is wrong with her.

“No, it is worse than that, she is fatally ill,” Ned whispers, coming to my room early, kissing his son and handing him back to the maid. “Come here,” he says, drawing me to the window seat where we can talk privately. Mr. Nozzle leaps up and sits solemnly between us.

“Fatally ill? I thought she was just dropsical again?”

“I have friends at court who send me the news. It’s serious, very serious. Kitty, the queen has taken smallpox. It is true: smallpox, and she is unconscious. Right now, she cannot speak or move. For all we know, she may have already died. She may be dead right now. The Privy Council is in emergency meeting. I am getting messages all the time. They are trying to choose a successor if Elizabeth dies.”

“If she dies?” I choke on the words. She has been such a curse and a blight on my life that I can hardly imagine a world without her. “Dies? Elizabeth might die?”

“Yes! Don’t you hear me? She could die. It seems unthinkable, but it is more than likely. She has the smallpox, and she is not strong. She has taken to her bed and her fever is rising. The Privy Council has been summoned. They have to choose an heir if she will not speak. She is dumb with fever, she is wandering in her mind. They are calling for Henry Hastings, they are calling for Mary Queen of Scots or for Margaret Douglas.” He pauses; he smiles at me, his eyes are bright. “But mostly, of course, they are calling for you.”

I take a breath. I think of the day that Jane was offered the crown and knew that she had to take it.

“Me,” I say flatly. I think of Jane and the terrible danger of ambition, I think of the temptation of the crown and the prospects for my son.

“Henry VIII’s will names your mother’s line after Elizabeth,” he says steadily. “Not Margaret Douglas’s mother, not the Scots line; your mother, and then you. Elizabeth said that inheritance should follow the natural order, but the Privy Council is not going to make Mary Queen of Scots, half a Guise, the Queen of England when we are at war with France and her family. The old king Henry’s will named your line. King Edward’s will named Jane and then you. There is only one Tudor Protestant successor. It’s you. Everything points to you.”

I think. I take a breath and think of my son, and the baby that should be born a prince. My imprisonment has sharpened my ambition. I will not suffer for being an heir and not claim my throne. “I am ready,” I say, though my voice trembles a little. “I am ready. I can wear my sister’s crown.”

He exhales as if he is relieved that I know my duty to my country, that I am prepared to take my place on the throne. “Elizabeth could be dead right now, and they could be bringing you the crown. They could be on the barge from Hampton Court and coming down with the tide.”

“Coming to me here, in the Tower?”

“Here in the Tower.”

I think how terribly unlucky it would be to start my reign where Jane started and ended hers. And then I think what a trivial stupid thought this is. I should be preparing my speech for when they come to tell me that Elizabeth is dead. “Could there be a war?” I demand. “If I took the throne, would the papists rise against me?”

He frowns. “Almost certainly not. They would have no support. Mary Queen of Scots can’t invade us while France is in uproar, and her family cannot send French troops to support her. Margaret Douglas writes a war of letters but has no army and no support in the country. She is under arrest herself and her husband is crying at the bars on his window, no help to her. Henry Hastings is from the old royal family and has no support. There is no one else. This must be your time. This must be the very time for you.” He nods to the maid’s closed door. “And for him. The heir apparent.”

There is a quiet tap on the door and I leap to my feet, knocking the table and spilling the wine. “Is it now?” I ask. I can feel my heart hammering and I think of the baby, safe and silent in my belly, and his brother just next door. I think that we are the new royal family and they may be bringing me the crown.

Ned crosses the room in three strides and opens the door. The guard is there, another man with him. “A messenger, my lord,” the guard says respectfully. “Said he had to see you.”

“You did right to bring him to me,” Ned says easily. The guard steps back and the messenger comes into the room.

I cannot take my eyes from the scroll in his hand. Perhaps it has the royal seal, perhaps it is the Privy Council informing me of the death of Elizabeth and telling me that they are on their way.

Ned holds out a peremptory hand. The messenger gives him the scroll. It is a short scrawled message. “Says I am to trust you,” Ned says to the man. “What’s the news?”

“The queen has named Robert Dudley.”

“What?” Ned’s exclamation is so loud, his shock is so great, that I hear Teddy wail in the maid’s room and she opens the door and peeps out.

“Nothing! Nothing!” I command, waving her back to the baby. I turn to the messenger. “You must be mistaken. That cannot be.”

“Named him as Protector of the Realm, and the Privy Council have sworn to support him.”

Ned and I exchange incredulous looks.

“It’s not possible,” I whisper.

“What does your master say?” Ned demands.

The man grins. “Says that they won’t argue with a dying woman but that your wife should be ready.” He turns to me and makes the deep bow for a royal. “Says it can’t be long. Nobody would support a Dudley, and nobody will have another Protector. The queen is out of her mind with fever. By naming Robert Dudley, she has given the Privy Council the right to crown who they please. She is beyond reason; they cannot reason with her. Nobody will ever give the crown to him. The queen has denied her own line, she is a traitor to her own throne. Everyone knows it has to be Lady Hertford.” He bows to me again.

Ned nods, thinking fast. “Nothing to be done until the queen has gone, God bless her,” he says. “Any move we make can only be then. We are her loyal subjects as long as she draws breath. We will pray for her recovery.”

“Yes,” the man says. “I’ll get back to Hampton Court and tell my lord that you understand. You’ll hear as soon as there is any more news.”

“We live in extraordinary times,” Ned says, almost to himself. “Times of wonders.”

Of course we cannot sleep. We don’t even lie on the bed together and kiss. We can’t eat. We are both of us incapable of doing anything but walking fretfully around the two rooms and looking out of the window into the dark garden in case there is a torch bobbing towards us. I change my gown so that I look my best when the lords come with the crown. I put a cloth over the linnets so that they go to sleep and don’t sing. The dogs are quiet in their box and I put Mr. Nozzle into his cage. Without a presence chamber, without a court, we are as dignified as we can be. I sit in the one good chair and Ned stands behind me. We cannot stop ourselves posing, like actors in a masque, playing the part of majesty even while the messenger may be riding towards us to tell us that the script is ready, the playacting has become real.

“I will reward the lieutenant of the Tower,” I remark.

“Not a word,” Ned cautions me. “We are praying for the recovery of the queen, God bless her.”

“Yes,” I agree. I wonder if it is wrong to outwardly pray for someone and secretly hope that she dies. I wish I could ask Jane: it is just the sort of thing she would know. But really, how can I want Elizabeth to live, when she has been such an enemy to me, and to my innocent son?

“I am praying for her,” I tell Ned. I think I will pray that she goes directly to heaven, and that there is no purgatory; for if there were, she would never escape.

We hear the first trill of birdsong, loud in our silent room, and then one by one the songbirds start to call for the day. A thrush sings a ripple of song, loud as a flute. I stir in my seat, and see that Ned is looking out of the window. “It’s dawn,” he says. “I have to go.”

“With no message!”

“Any messenger will find me easily enough,” he says wryly. “I’m going nowhere. I will be locked into my cell in the Tower. And if the message comes for you, then they will send for me as soon as they have told you . . .” He trails off. “Remember, if anyone asks, you prayed all night for her health,” he says. “You were here alone.”

“I will say that. And really, I did.” I cross my fingers behind my back on the half lie. “Will you come tomorrow night?”

He takes me in his arms. “Without fail. Without fail, beloved. And I will send you any news that I hear. Send your lady-in-waiting to me at dinnertime and I will whisper to her anything that I have heard from Hampton Court.” He opens the door and then hesitates. “Don’t be misled by gossip,” he says. “Don’t leave your room unless the Privy Council themselves come to you. It would be fatal if you were seen to accept the crown, and then Elizabeth recovered.”

I am so afraid of her that I actually feel a shudder at the thought of making such a mistake and having to face her with a genuine accusation of treason against me. “I won’t! I won’t!” I promise him. I swear to myself that I will never be queen for nine days like my sister. I will be queen for the rest of my life or not at all. I cannot make it happen one way or another. Everything depends on the strength of a sickly woman of nearly thirty years old, fighting one of the most dangerous diseases in the world.

“And pray for her health,” Ned says. “Make sure that people see you praying for her.”

We hear the door below open and the guard whisper hoarsely up the stairs: “My lord?”

“Coming,” Ned replies. He gives me one hungry kiss on the mouth. “Till tonight,” he promises me. “Unless something happens today.”

I have to wait all day. The lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward, comes to visit me and finds me on my knees before my Bible. “You will have heard that the queen is sick,” he says.

I get to my feet. “I have been praying for her all day. God bless her and give her strength,” I say.

“God bless her,” he repeats, but his half-hidden glance towards me shows me that we both know that if she slides from unconsciousness into death then there will be a new Queen of England and the little boy in the cradle will be Edward Prince of Wales.

“You may like to walk in the garden,” Sir Edward offers.

I incline my head. “We’ll go now.”

I cannot sit still, and I may not go anywhere. I cannot concentrate on reading and I don’t dare to daydream. “Lucy, bring Teddy’s ball.”

I wait and I wait, starting up every time I hear the challenge from the gatehouse and the big gates creak open, but there is no more news from Hampton Court. Elizabeth is locked in a long silent battle for her life, and the Privy Council are trading favors to choose the heir to the throne. Nobody will consent to Elizabeth’s nomination of Robert Dudley for Protector. Dudley himself—with his own father buried in the Tower in the chapel, beheaded for treason—knows that it cannot be, though I swear that his eager ambition, Dudley ambition, must have leapt up when he first heard of it.

He will be favoring his family’s candidate: Henry Hastings, who married the Dudley girl in the round of weddings that saw Jane and me married off to reinforce Dudley power. Even now, eight years after Jane’s death, the old Dudley plot for the throne rolls on like a great watermill wheel incapable of stopping, that turns one wheel and then another and then the great grinding stone that shakes the whole building. The plot is set in motion, the water flows, the mill wheel turns; but nobody will support Dudley.

Nobody will openly support Mary Queen of Scots. She is a papist and her kinsmen are making war on Huguenot Protestants and mustering to fight English soldiers in Le Havre. Overnight she has become England’s enemy, and she will never recover her reputation as a ruler who will tolerate our religion. Very few people favor Margaret Douglas. For all that she is of the royal family she is widely known as a papist, imprisoned for the most diabolical of crimes. Nobody would accept such a woman as Queen of England. There is no one else of blood royal and of the reformed religion but me. No one else whose line was named by the king’s will. I shall wear my sister’s crown.

All day I hear this, like plainsong, in my head, as I play with Teddy in the garden and help him to stand and let him jump on my lap. All day I hear over and over again: “I shall wear my sister’s crown, I shall fulfill her dream. I shall complete the task that Jane started and there will be rejoicing in heaven.”

At dinnertime I send my lady-in-waiting to wait on my husband. I send a basket of peaches by way of a gift, and she takes them to his dinner table. She comes back to me, her lips compressed as if she is holding in a secret.

“My lady, I have a message.”

“What is it?” I hear in my head: I shall wear my sister’s crown, I shall fulfill her dream.

“My lord said to tell you—thank God—that the queen has recovered. She has come out of her swoon and the spots have broken on her skin. He said God be praised she is better.”

“God be praised,” I repeat loudly. “Our prayers have been answered. God bless her.”

I turn and go into the house, leaving Teddy with the maid, though he calls after me and raises his arms to be lifted up. I cannot let anyone see the bitterness in my face. She has recovered, that false kinswoman, that evil queen. She has recovered and I am still here in prison and no one is going to come and set me free. Nobody is coming to crown me today.