The Last Tudor

WINDSOR CASTLE,

AUTUMN 1563

Elizabeth, merry as a blackbird in a rose hip hedge, rides early in the morning, and all her ladies have to go with her, merry or not, like it or not. I am high on a big hunter and I ride without fear as I have done since I was a tiny child at Bradgate. My father always put me on a full-sized horse and told me that if I held the reins firmly, and made sure that the horse knew who was in command, it would not matter if I sat a little askew in the saddle because of the twist in my spine, and if I spoke clearly and firmly, then it would not matter that I am light and small. He told me that I can have a great presence even though I am of little height.

While Jane, my oldest sister, wanted to stay indoors with her books, and Katherine always wanted to play with her menagerie of little animals in the garden or in her room, I was always in the stables, standing on an upturned pail to groom the big horses, or clambering up the mounting block to sit bareback on their warm broad backs.

“You can’t let something like being born small and a bit twisty stand in your way,” my father would say to me. “We’re none of us perfect, and you’re marred no worse than King Richard III, and he rode out in half a dozen battles and was killed in a cavalry charge—nobody ever told him he couldn’t ride.”

“But he was a very bad man,” I observe with the stern judgment of a seven-year-old.

“Very bad,” my father agrees. “But that was his soul, not his body. You can be a good woman with a body that is a little short and a spine that is out of true. You can learn to stand straight as a yeoman of the guard, and you can be a beautiful little woman. If you never marry, then you can be a good sister to Jane and Katherine, and a good aunt to their children. But I don’t see why you shouldn’t marry and make a good marriage when your time comes. Your birth is as good as any woman in the kingdom, better than everyone but the king’s children. Truth be told, it doesn’t matter if your spine is out of true, if your heart is not.”

I am glad of his faith in me, and that he taught me to ride as well as anyone. He was the first to set me the task of standing straight and tall, and I have trained myself to do so. I have long days in the saddle behind Elizabeth and her ridiculous master of horse, and nobody ever thinks to see if I am keeping up or if I am tired. I ride as far and as fast as any lady of the court, and I am braver than most of them. I never slump in the saddle or grimace when my back is aching at the end of a long day. I never look to Robert Dudley as a hint that he might turn Her Majesty for home. I never expect any help from either of them, and so I am never disappointed.

It is not the riding that wearies me, but God knows I am tired to death of Elizabeth, and when we clatter over the cobbles at the great gate of Windsor Castle and the sergeant porter, Thomas Keyes, looks up at me with his concerned brown gaze, I nod to him with a little smile to tell him that I am exhausted only by this queen, not saddlesore but heartsore.

For all this happy time as the heat of summer goes on into autumn, while Elizabeth is spending her mornings at the hunt, and her middays at picnics and boating on the river, her evenings with plays and dancings and disguisings, my sister is imprisoned by our uncle, confined to three rooms with her baby, torn from her beloved son, and stolen from her husband.

Nothing troubles our royal cousin! Everything gives Elizabeth pleasure. She revels in the warm weather while London swelters and the plague spreads across the kingdom. Every village on every road out of London has a cottage with a cross on the door and people dying inside. Every riverside house along the Thames has its watergate locked and barred so that no barges from London can enter. Every city in the kingdom is digging a plague pit for the bodies, and every church praying that the plague passes over their congregation. Every healthy house bars its doors to travelers, everyone is fearfully hard-hearted. But none of this troubles Elizabeth. She flirts with Dudley in the heat of the day and slips through to his bedroom any night that she pleases, while my sister cries herself to sleep and dreams of freedom.

Thomas Keyes has to stay on duty at the gate of the castle and may not help me from the saddle, but there is always one of the young men of court quick to my side to lift me down. They know that my sister and her two boys are the next heirs to the throne; they know that my rank is acknowledged by the queen. None of them knows how great is my influence, and what I might do for them if they please me. I hardly notice them. My only smile is for Thomas Keyes, the queen’s sergeant porter; he is the only man that I would trust in this rivalrous pit of two-faced serpents. Thomas gives me a private nod as I go by, and I know that I will see him later in the day when Elizabeth is entertained by someone else and forgets to look for me.

“Where is Lady Mary?” she asks as soon as she is off her horse, as if she loves me dearly and has missed me all day, and I step forward to take her beautifully embroidered leather riding gloves. Someone else takes her whip and she holds out her white hand to Robert Dudley, who leads her out of the sunlight into the cool dimness of Windsor Castle, where breakfast is served in the great hall and the Spanish ambassador is waiting to greet her.

I take the gloves to the royal wardrobe rooms, dust them with a little perfumed powder, and wrap them in silk, and then I return to the hall to take my seat at the table for the ladies-in-waiting. Elizabeth sits at the top table with the Spanish ambassador on one side and Robert Dudley on the other. I sit at the head of the table for the ladies; I am her cousin, I am the daughter of a princess of the blood. We all bow our heads for grace, which Elizabeth defiantly hears in Latin to show her scholarship more than her piety, and then the servants bring in the ewers and bowls for us to wash our hands. Then they bring in one great dish after another. Everyone is hungry from the morning in the saddle, and the great joints of meat and fresh-baked loaves are served to each table.

“Have you heard from your sister?” Bess St. Loe asks me quietly.

“I write, but she does not reply,” I say. “She is allowed to receive my letters, though my uncle has to read them first, but she does not reply.”

“What’s wrong with her—oh! not the plague?”

“No, thanks be to God, it has not reached Pirgo. My uncle tells me that she will not eat, and that she cannot stop crying.”

Aunt Bess’s expression is tender. “Oh, my dear.”

“Yes,” I say tightly. “When the queen took her child, I think that she broke Katherine’s heart.”

“But she will forgive her, and she will reunite them. She is gracious. And Katherine is the only heir of our faith. Elizabeth must turn to her.”

“I know,” I say. “I know that she will in time. But these are hard days for my sister while we wait. And it is cruel to her two little boys, who have never known anything but confinement. Would you speak to the queen?”

“Perhaps they, at least, could be released . . .” Bess starts, and then breaks off as the queen rises from the breakfast table and says that she will walk with the Spanish ambassador and Robert Dudley in the walled garden. Three ladies are to walk behind her, the rest of us are free for an hour or two. We rise and follow her out of the hall and curtsey as she goes through the garden door, Robert Dudley offering his hand on one side, Álvaro de la Quadra on the other. Elizabeth is where she loves to be—at the center of attention with a man on either side. I think that if she were not a queen she would certainly be a whore. As they pass through, and the door is closed behind them by the guard, I slip away in the opposite direction, to the main gate. It is bolted shut against the plague, but there is a handsome guardsman on duty inside at the wicket gate. As I approach he bows and offers his hand to help me clamber through the narrow doorway.

Thomas stands on guard outside the bolted gate, arms folded over his broad chest, a huge man in the Tudor livery, the queen’s sergeant porter. I feel myself smile for the first time today at the mere sight of him.

“Lady Mary!” he says as I bob up at his elbow. He drops to one knee on the cobbles so that his face is on a level with mine, his brown eyes loving. “Are you free for long? Will you sit in the gatehouse?”

“I have an hour,” I say. “She’s walking in the garden.”

Thomas orders one of the guards to take his place and leads me to the gatehouse, where he watches me climb into his big chair beside his table. He pours me a glass of small ale from the pitcher in the little pantry, and takes a seat on a low stool close by, so that we are head-to-head.

“Any news of your sister?” he asks.

“Nothing new. I asked Robert Dudley if he would speak again to the queen and he says that it is no use, and it only angers her more.”

“You have to wait?”

“We have to wait,” I confirm.

“Then I suppose our business must wait, too,” he says gently.

I put my hand on his broad shoulder and finger the Tudor rose on his collar. “You know that I would marry you tomorrow if I could. But I cannot ask Elizabeth for anything now, not until she has pardoned Katherine. My sister’s freedom must come first.”

“Why would she mind?” he asks wonderingly. “Why does a great queen like her mind so much about your sister? Is it not a private matter of the heart? The Earl of Hertford carries an honorable name, why may your sister not live as his wife?”

I hesitate. Thomas has the simple views of an honest man. He stands at the gate every day and is responsible for the safety of a most contradictory queen. There are those who love Elizabeth and would die for her, who beg entry to her castles so that they can see her, as if she were a saint, so that they can go home and tell their children that they have seen the greatest woman in Christendom, laden with jewels in glorious majesty at her dinner. Then there are those who hate her so much for taking the country further and further away from the Church of Rome, they call her a heretic and would poison her, or knife her, or set a trap for her. Some visitors despise her for her promiscuity, some suspect her of adultery, and some even accuse her of using black arts, of being malformed, of hiding a bastard child, of being a man. Every man and woman of every shade of opinion passes under Thomas’s thoughtful gaze and yet he persists in thinking the best of them, trusts them as far as is safe, guides them homeward if he thinks they might be a danger, and believes that people are on the whole as good and kindly as himself.

“I don’t know why Elizabeth cannot tolerate Katherine’s marriage,” I say, measuring my words. “I know that she fears that if Katherine is named as her successor, then everyone will desert her and Katherine will plot against her, just as Margaret Douglas, another of our cousins, does. But more than that, it’s not just Katherine—Elizabeth doesn’t like anyone marrying; she doesn’t like attention on anyone but herself. None of us ladies-in-waiting expect permission to marry. She won’t even allow us to talk about it. Everyone at court has to be in love with her.”

Thomas chuckles tolerantly. “Well, she’s the queen,” he concedes. “I suppose she can have her court as she likes it. Shall I come in this evening when I have locked the gate?”

“I’ll meet you in the garden,” I promise him.

He takes my little hand in his huge paw and kisses it gently. “I am so honored,” he says quietly. “I think of you all day, you know, and I look for you coming in and out of my gate. I love to see you riding by, so high on your horse and so pretty in your gowns.”

I lay my cheek against his head as he bows over my hand. His hair is thick and curly and it smells of the open air. I think that in all of this dangerous uncertain world I have found the only man whom I can trust. I think that he does not know how precious this is to me.

“When did you first look for me?” I whisper.

He raises his head and smiles at my childishness, in wanting the story repeated. “I noticed you when you first came to court when you were not even ten years old, a tiny little girl. I remember seeing you on your big horse and fearing for you. And then I saw how you handled him and I knew that you were a little lady to be reckoned with.”

“You were the grandest man I had ever seen,” I tell him. “The queen’s sergeant porter, so handsome in your livery, and as tall as a tree, as broad as a trunk, like a great oak tree.”

“Then when you were appointed as a lady-in-waiting, I would see you come and go with the court, and I thought that of all of them, you were the merriest and sweetest lady,” he says. “When your sister went creeping out through my gate, with her hood over her fair hair and I knew she was seeing a lover, I nearly thought to warn you; but you were so young and so pretty I could not be the one to bring worry into your life. I didn’t dare to speak to you at all until you started to say good morning to me. I used to look forward to that—‘Good morning, Captain Keyes,’ you said. And I would stammer like a fool and I couldn’t say a word in reply.”

“That’s how I knew that you liked me,” I tell him. “You spoke clearly enough to everyone else, but with me you were as tongue-tied as a boy. And you blushed! Lord! What a big man to blush like a schoolboy!”

“Who was I to speak to such a lady?” he asks.

“The best man at court,” I tell him. “I was so glad when you offered to walk with me, when I went to visit Katherine in the Tower. When you said you would escort me, and that the streets were not safe. I was so glad to have you at my side. It was like walking beside a great calm shire horse: you are so big that everyone just gets out of the way. And when I saw her, and she was in such distress that I would break down and cry with her, and then I would come out and you would be waiting for me, and I felt comforted just by your being there, like a mountain. I felt that I had an ally. An ally as big as a castle. A strong friend.”

“Certainly a tall one,” he says. “I would do anything for you, my little lady.”

“Love me always, as you do now,” I whisper.

“I swear that I will.”

He is quiet for a moment. “You don’t mind my being married before?” he asks quietly. “You don’t object to my children? They live with their aunt at Sandgate, but I would be glad to give them a loving stepmother.”

“Would they not look down on me?” I ask awkwardly.

He shakes his head. “They would know you for a great lady even when they bent low to kiss your hand.”

“I should like us to have children,” I say shyly. “First I will care for yours, and then perhaps some of our own.”

He takes my hand and holds it to his warm cheek. “Eh, Mary, we are going to be happy.”

We are silent together for a moment, then I say, “You know, I have to go now.”

He rises up from the stool to his full height and his head brushes the ceiling. He is nearly seven feet tall, from enormous boots to curly brown hair. When I stand beside him, my head is level with his polished leather belt. He opens the door for me and I go to the great barred gate of Windsor Castle and he opens the wicket gate inside it.

“Till tonight,” he whispers, and closes it gently behind me.