The Last Tudor

WINDSOR CASTLE,

CHRISTMAS 1563

My love gives me a gold ring set with a tiny ruby the color of true love, a deep red. I give him a thick leather belt to go around his broad waist. I work it myself with a shoemaker’s awl and I carve my name and my family crest into the thick leather. He can wear it turned to the inside, so that nobody knows but the two of us. When I give it to him and he takes it from the little silk bag that I have made, he blushes to his ears, like a boy.

I am so pleased with the ring he has given me. It fits my finger like a wedding band and he says I must wear it on my wedding finger when I am alone, for it is a pledge of his love to me and we are promised to each other.

“I wish we could marry and live together at once,” I whisper to him. I am sitting on his lap, his great arms around me. He holds me as tenderly as if I were a child, and yet I feel the pulse of his desire for me as a woman when I put my fingers on his strong wrist.

“I wish it, too,” he says. “The moment that you say the word I will fetch a priest and witnesses and we will marry. Or we can go to a church. I don’t ever want you to face the questioning that your sister has suffered. We will have witnesses and we will have our betrothal in writing.”

“They don’t care about me,” I say resentfully. “I am so small in Elizabeth’s eyes that she does not even fear me. It’s not as if I am like my sister, with half the courts of Europe making advances and weaving plots. My marriage is a private matter: it should make no difference to her whether I am married or single, whether I have a houseful of children or only you to love.”

“Then shall we marry in secret?” he asks hopefully. “Do you dare?”

“Maybe next year,” I say cautiously. “I don’t want to remind the queen of her anger against Katherine. I am hoping that the council will persuade her to set my sister free this month. Some scholars are making inquiries that will prove her to be the heir, and prove her wedding was valid and so her sons are legitimate heirs. I can’t think about anything else until that is written and published.”

Thomas nods. He has a great respect for the learning of my family, the more so since Jane is now recognized as a theologian and her published writings are read everywhere. “Are you writing any of the book?” he asks.

“Oh, no,” I say. “It is all being done by a senior clerk in the chancery, John Hales. He has seen the original king’s will and says that it clearly names my mother and her line as heirs after Prince Edward and the princesses. Hales has proved that our grandmother’s marriage was a good one, so our line is legitimate and English-born and Protestant. Now Katherine’s husband, Ned Seymour, is paying for the opinions of clergy overseas to show that he and Katherine’s marriage was valid too, with private vows, and their sons legitimate. When all the evidence is brought together, then John Hales will publish it and the country will see that Katherine is proven heir to the queen: legitimately born, and legitimately married.”

Thomas hesitates. He is a man with little education but he has much knowledge of the world, and he has been in charge of the safety of the palace and the queen since Elizabeth came to the throne. “Now, pretty one, I am neither a lord nor a clerk but I’m not sure that this is so wise. The queen is not a woman that ever feels obliged to follow what everyone else thinks. Even if the whole country thinks one thing, she’ll still go her own way. Remember the time that she was the only Protestant princess to stand for her faith, when her sister was Queen of England? She didn’t change her mind then, even though the whole country seemed to be against her, from the queen and all the Spanish downwards. It’ll take more than a book to persuade her, I reckon.”

“She did conform,” I say stubbornly. “I can remember her myself, going into Mass and moaning about it.”

“Coming out of Mass early,” he reminds me. “Complaining of sickness. And showing everyone that she would not stomach it.”

“Yes, but William Cecil is sponsoring this book,” I insist. “And Robert Dudley. What William Cecil thinks today, the queen announces tomorrow. In the end, she’ll take his advice. And he and his brother-in-law and all his advisors have commissioned this book, and will see it published. The queen will have to name Katherine as her heir when the whole of Christendom says she was truly married and all the Privy Council say she is heir.”

We hear the clock strike the hour. “I have to go,” I say, barely stirring from his warm embrace.

He lifts me down from his lap and, leaning forward, straightens my gown and pulls the creases from my sleeves. He is as gentle as a lady’s maid. He touches my hood and tweaks my ruff. “There,” he says. “The prettiest lady in the court.”

I wait for him to open the door to the guardroom and glance out. “All clear,” he says, and he steps back to let me out.

As I cross the courtyard from the main gate to the garden stairs, my cape wrapped around me against a sprinkling of snow, I have the ill luck to meet the queen herself, coming in from playing bowls on the frozen green. She has her red velvet hood trimmed with ermine pulled up over her ears. Her hand is on Robert Dudley’s arm, her cheeks rosy with the cold and her eyes sparkling. I step back and curtsey, sliding my ruby ring from my finger into the pocket of my cape before her quick dark gaze spots it. “Your Majesty.”

Thomasina, the queen’s dwarf, follows them and makes a comical little face at me, as if to ask me where I have been. I completely ignore her. She has no right to express any curiosity about me. I don’t have to answer to her, and if she prompts an inquiry from the queen, then I will find her afterwards and tell her to mind her own tiny business.

“Lady Mary,” Elizabeth says with an unpleasant tone. I cannot think what I have done to offend her, but she is clearly displeased. “Are you honoring me with your attendance at my dressing for dinner tonight?”

I can feel Robert Dudley’s reassuring smile rather than see it. I dare not look directly anywhere but into Elizabeth’s sparkling dark eyes. “Of course, Your Majesty,” I say meekly. “And the honor is mine.”

“Remember it then,” she says nastily, and sweeps past me. I curtsey, and when I raise my head, I catch a quick sympathetic smile from Robert Dudley and a cheeky wink from Thomasina. He follows in the queen’s wake. She lingers.

“Someone’s writing a book about your sister,” she informs me. “That’s why she’s so furious with you. She’s just heard about it. Apparently, it’s going to say that your sister will be the next Queen of England. You will be sister to the queen and aunt to the next king. Fancy a dwarf just like me so close to the throne.”

“I’m nothing like you,” I say coldly.

“Oh, do you think you will be taller with a great crown on your sister’s head?” she asks, smiling. “Will her elevation make you grow? Will you rise up higher if she makes you a duchess?”

“I don’t know what you are talking about.” I turn away, but she catches at the skirt of my gown in her little square-palmed hand, so like my own.

“What is it?” I say crossly. “Let me go. D’you think we’re going to brawl in the yard like page boys?”

“There are some that would pay good money to see it,” she says cheerfully. “But I have always made my living as a miniature lady, never as a merry dwarf.”

“And I have never made my living at all,” I say grandly. “And my height has nothing to do with anything. I’ll thank you to let go of my gown.”

She lets me go, but her impertinent smile never falters. “There is a book indeed, Lady Mary,” she says shortly. “The scholars are putting it together, piece by piece. A page stolen from the chancery to show that your family was named as heir by Henry VIII, evidence of marriage to show that your line is legitimate, proof that all three of you, Lady Jane, Lady Katherine, and you, are English-born, Protestant, and royal.”

“Don’t you speak of Jane,” I say warningly.

“Buried in a coffin as big as a child’s!” she says jeeringly, and I turn on my heel and stride away, but I can hear her pattering after me, and she dodges around me and blocks my way.

“You want to know the rest of this,” she tells me. “Listen, for your own good. The scholars’ reports from France and Spain all name your sister Katherine as the rightful heir. The queen is furious. If it was you commissioned the report, you’d do well to warn your clerks to make themselves scarce. You could tell your uncle to take a trip to France for his health. You’d better keep your head down and stop running off to kiss the sergeant porter.”

I bite off a gasp of shock.

“I see a lot,” she adds quickly. “You know how. Nobody pays any attention to us.”

“And why would you warn me?” I demand. “When you live in her shadow?”

“Because we’re both dwarfs,” she says bluntly. “We are both small women in a very big and dangerous world. We have a sisterhood of shortness, even if you want to deny it. So I say to you—don’t offend her. She’s furious enough with your family as it is.”

She gives me a cheeky little nod of the head, as if to drive the point home, and then she turns and skips across the yard, looking like a little girl running after a teacher, and I see the door to Elizabeth’s privy stair bang behind her.