The Last Tudor

SUFFOLK PLACE, LONDON,

SPRING 1553

It is as well that I don’t set my heart on handsome Ned Seymour as a husband. His father’s return to power is short-lived and ends in his death. He was caught conspiring against John Dudley, and arrested, charged, and then executed for treason. The head of the family is dead, and the family ruined again. His famously proud wife, Anne Stanhope, who once had the criminal pride to push my tutor Dowager Queen Kateryn to one side so that she might go first in to dinner, is widowed and imprisoned in the Tower. Ned does not come to court at all. I was lucky to escape marriage with a young man who—however kind his eyes—is now the disgraced son of a traitor.

It is as well that I never let my father’s ambition enter my prayers either, though I cannot help but know that all the reforming churchmen, all the Protestant believers, every living saint in England, wants me to marry the king and to lead a kingdom of pilgrims to our heavenly home. Not that my cousin King Edward says this—he insists that he will marry a royal from somewhere abroad; but clearly he cannot tolerate a papist princess. Of all the Protestant girls, I am the most suitable, devoted to the religion that he and I share, childhood friends, and the daughter of a princess of the blood.

Significantly, my father has ordered that I be taught rhetoric—a royal skill—and I choose to study Arabic and Hebrew as well as Latin and Greek. If the call ever comes for me to take the crown, I will be ready. I lived with Queen Kateryn Parr: I know that a woman can be a scholar and a queen. Actually, I am better prepared than she was. But I will not fall into the sin of coveting the crown.

The king’s half sisters do not follow my example in either study or religious devotion. I wish that they did. They do all they can to maintain their positions at court and their places in the eyes of the world but not in the sight of the Lord. None of the royal cousins walks in the light as I do. Princess Mary is a determined papist, and only God knows what Elizabeth believes. The other direct heir, Mary of Scotland, is a papist, being raised in sinful luxury at the court of France, and Margaret Douglas, daughter of my great-aunt Margaret who married a Scotsman, tucked away in Yorkshire is said to be a papist too.

But Princess Mary is the closest heir to the throne and we have to show her every respect, whatever we think of her religious beliefs. My own mother and John Dudley’s wife ride in Princess Mary’s train as she enters London with a great show of force, as if to remind everyone that she is the king’s heir and that they are all the best of friends.

Alone, of our family, I refuse to wear ornate clothes and ride in Mary’s train. I will not peacock about in a richly embroidered hood. But she sends me gowns as if she hopes to buy my cousinly love, and I tell her lady-in-waiting Anne Wharton that I cannot endure to hear that a vain thing like Princess Elizabeth is praised for dressing more modestly than me. I shall wear nothing but the most sober garb. There shall be only one royal theologian in England, one heir to the reformer Queen Kateryn Parr, one maid to lead the reformed Church, and it shall be me. I won’t be seen to dress more gaily than Elizabeth, and I won’t riot along in a papist train.

That was the end of cousinly love. I don’t believe that Princess Mary had any great affection for me anyway, since I once insulted the enormous crystal monstrance that holds the wafer for Mass on her chapel altar by asking her lady-in-waiting why she curtseyed to it. I intended to wrestle with her soul—engage her in a holy discourse where she could explain that she, as a papist, believes that the bread is the very body of Jesus Christ. Then I would have shown her that it was nothing but bread—that Jesus himself meant the disciples to understand that He was giving them bread at the Last Supper, real bread, and inviting them to pray for Him at the same time. He was not saying that it was His body. He was not speaking literally. Surely, any fool can see this?

I thought it would be an extremely interesting discussion and one that would have led her to true understanding. But unfortunately, although I knew exactly what I intended to say, she did not reply as I expected. She did not speak at all as I thought she would, she only said that she was curtseying to Him that made us all—a completely nonsensical answer.

“How?” I asked, a little flustered. “How can He be there that made us all, and the baker made Him?”

It didn’t come out right at all, and God must forgive me that I did not build up to the argument, repeating my point three times, as in my rhetoric lessons. I did it much better in my bedchamber than I did in the papist chapel at Beaulieu, and this can only be because the devil protects his own, and Anne Wharton is under his hairy hoof.

I went back to my room to do the speech again in the looking glass. I saw my pale face, my bronze hair, my little features and the tiny speckle of freckles over my nose that I fear spoils my dainty prettiness. My pale skin is like the finest porcelain except for this dusting that comes in the English summer like seeds from the willows. I was hugely convincing when I played both sides of the argument on my own: I shone like an angel when I wrestled with the soul of the imaginary Anne Wharton. But the real Anne Wharton was impossible to persuade.

I do find people are very difficult to convert; they are so very stupid. It is hard to raise sinners to grace. I practiced a few lines to myself and I sounded as powerful as a preacher; but while I was rehearsing my argument Anne Wharton went to Princess Mary and told her what I said, and so the princess knew me as a committed enemy to her faith, which is a pity, for she was always kind and petted me before. Now she despises me for my belief, which she sees as error. My outstanding faith as error! I shall have to forgive that, too.

I know that she will not have forgiven this, nor forgotten it, so I am not comfortable following my mother and riding in Princess Mary’s train, but at least Princess Elizabeth is in a worse position. She cannot even come to court since her disgrace over Thomas Seymour. If I were her, I would think myself in a hell of shame. Everyone knows that she was all but his lover, and after his wife’s death he admitted that he planned to marry Elizabeth and steal the crown. God save England from an intemperate woman like Elizabeth! God save England from a papist queen like Mary! God help England if Edward dies without a boy heir and the country has the choice of the papist, the flirt, the French princess, or my mother!

Princess Mary does not stay for long. Her brother’s palace is not a happy court. My cousin King Edward has a cough that he cannot clear. I can hear it rattle when I sit beside him and read to him from Plato—a philosopher that we both love—but he gets weary quickly and has to rest. I see my father’s hidden smile as he observes that I have been reading Greek to the King of England, but everyone else is only worried that he looks so ill.

Edward manages to attend the opening of parliament but then he takes to his bed. The councillors and the lawyers go in and out of his bedroom and the rumor is that he is planning the succession and writing his will. I find this hard to believe. He is only fifteen—we are the same age—I cannot believe that he is making a will. He is too young to prepare to die. Surely, the summer will come and he will go on progress and in the warm weather he will lose his cough and be well again? I think if he would just come to Bradgate and sit in the gardens and walk by the river and take a boat out on our wide, beautiful lakes, he would be certain to get well again. His will can be stored with all the great papers of the council and forgotten about. He will marry and have a son and all the calculations of which heir might attract whose support will be forgotten. He will marry a great princess from Europe with a mighty fortune, and I will become her friend and a great lady at court, probably a duchess. I might marry Ned Seymour despite his father’s disgrace. He might regain the title; I might still be a famously learned duchess and a light before the unworthy.