The Last Tudor

CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,

AUTUMN 1566

I hear that, once again, she keeps Robert Dudley uncertain; but this is just as I predicted. I believe he will always be on the threshold of marriage with her and never be able to jump over. I believe that she will never marry anyone. I swore it years ago, I would swear it now. She will always hold him close enough to ruin his life, but never close enough to ruin hers. She returns to London from Kenilworth, and now she has to call a parliament. She needs funds. She is spending a fortune causing trouble in Scotland: spying and rebellion never come cheap. But parliament will not grant her money without a promise about the succession. They see that they have the chance to dictate to her. The Protestant parliament wants only one heir—my sister Katherine, with her Seymour son to come after her.

One day, when I am walking in the garden and admiring the blazing colors in the trees of the parkland, and the whirl of golden leaves around my feet, I see a square of white on the path before me. I pick it up in a moment and unfold it.

Your friends will speak for you and your sister. Neither of you is forgotten. England knows its heirs.

I tuck it in my pocket and when I get back to my room I burn it in the empty grate and mash the ashes with a poker. I find I am smiling. Perhaps soon I will be able to walk across a room that is wider than twelve feet. I will walk in a garden and out through the garden gate. Perhaps next spring I will hear a lucky cuckoo in Bradgate Park.

My unwilling host comes to me in my little room. He is wearing riding breeches and boots, a warm cape over his arm, a hat in his hand; he is not shamefaced, he is beaming. He bows low to me as I am seated on my single chair before the open window. At once, I am as alert as a deer scenting the wind for the smell of hunting hounds. What is happening now?

“You see, I am going away. I am going to London,” he says.

I nod, keeping my expression calm and interested while my thoughts whirl.

“I beg of you to stay quietly in my house while I am gone,” he says. “If you were to take advantage of my absence to attempt to leave, the queen’s displeasure would fall very heavily on me and on my wife. I dare not face it. You understand.”

“I have nowhere to go, and no one to meet; and I would not expose you or my sister to such trouble,” I promise him. “I don’t doubt that the queen would punish my sister and my nephews if I were to escape.”

He bows again. “Besides, I hope to return with good news for you and Lady Hertford, your royal sister,” he says.

I note that he gives Katherine her royal recognition and her married title. “Oh, really?”

He glances behind to make sure that there is no one lingering beside the open door. I close the window and turn to him. At once we are conspirators, guarding against spies.

“I am called to parliament,” he says. “We are going to insist that the queen names her heir. Only parliament can raise taxes for her, and we can stipulate the conditions. For once we are all agreed, we have not been divided by advisors from court, and we are united with the House of Lords. We will insist that she name her heir, and that her heir be Lady Hertford and her son.”

I could leap up and clap my hands; but I sit like the princess I am and I incline my head. “I am glad to hear it,” is all I say.

“When you are released”—he says “when,” he does not say “if”—“I hope you will tell your sister, Lady Hertford, that I have been as good a host to you as I was allowed to be.”

“I will tell her that,” I say fairly. “And I will tell her that you went to London when you were called and that you spared no effort to join with the others to persuade the queen to name my sister as her heir.”

He bows as low as to a member of the royal family.

“And,” I add, “I would be very obliged if you would visit Mr. Thomas Keyes in the Fleet Prison and insist that he is released.”

“I will raise it with my fellow members of parliament,” he promises. “Of course, no man should be held without charge.” He waits in case I have any other instructions. “Should I speak to anyone at court on your behalf?”

I smile at him. I am not going to name my friends or my few kinswomen. I will incriminate no one. “Let it all be done in the open,” I say. “Speak of me and of my sister to everyone.”

In my guardian’s absence I am allowed to walk and sit in the garden. I study and I write, I read my Bible and I draw. I even attempt some frescoes on the walls of my room, remembering the carvings of the Dudley boys’ in the stone chimney breast made by the Tower all that long time ago. I think that if Katherine and I are released, and she is named as heir and we are restored to our home, then this long painful story of family disloyalty and loss of love will be ended and the innocent children will be freed. I think of the little nephews and I pray that they will both grow up in their father’s beautiful house, under the care of both their parents, knowing themselves to be rightful heirs to the throne, certain to take their place. I think Katherine will be a good Queen of England: she will not usurp her powers or use spies and torture to get her way. Her boy who comes after her will be an honorable Protestant king, a Seymour Tudor king like my poor cousin King Edward.

After a week Lady Hawtrey receives a letter from her husband and brings it to me in my little room. She taps on the door and comes in when I call “Enter!”

“My husband has sent a letter from London to tell me how they go on,” she says, curtseying very low. “I thought that you would want to know the news.”

“I do,” I say. “Please sit down.”

She takes a stool by the fireside and I stay in my dining chair so our heads are level. She unfolds the letter and looks through it.

“He says that the House of Commons has joined with the House of Lords to remonstrate with the queen and that there have been angry scenes,” she says. “Both Houses are determined that Lady Katherine shall be named as the queen’s heir. The Privy Council agrees with parliament. The queen has quarreled with the Duke of Norfolk, with Robert Dudley, and the Earl of Pembroke.”

I listen intently. These are the queen’s key advisors and friends; the Earl of Pembroke was Katherine’s former father-in-law. I would never have thought he would have risked disagreeing with the queen over Katherine. None of these men stands to gain anything from the recognition of Katherine. Elizabeth has to see that they are doing this for the good of the country. Nor would any one of them speak against the queen unless they were certain of success.

“Now she has forbidden them to come to her presence chamber,” Lady Hawtrey reads. She looks up at me. “That’s extraordinary, isn’t it?”

“Yes,” I say tersely.

“She summoned thirty men from the House of Commons and would not allow the Speaker to come to her,” Lady Hawtrey reads. “My husband says that she shouted at them.”

I turn my head to hide a smile. I imagine the provincial members of parliament were terrified before the queen, who could arrest them without warning, and hold them without trial. But they didn’t weaken. They insisted on their right to advise her, and their advice was that she must marry and get an heir, and name one now.

Lady Hawtrey takes up the last page. “He’s coming home,” she says. “He says the work is finished. He says they are victorious.”

“She named Katherine?” I whisper disbelievingly. It is the only outcome open to Elizabeth if the Houses have stood, united, against her. “She has named her?”

Lady Hawtrey folds the letter and hands it to me. “See for yourself. She has sworn it. They have granted her the subsidy, and she has promised that they shall decide on her heir.”

She looks at me. “They have won her to agreement,” she says. “Did you think that they would?”

I give a trembly little laugh. “I did not dare to hope, all I could do was pray for it. They have been courageous and she has been persuaded to do the right thing at last.”

She shakes her head in wonderment. “She is an extraordinary woman, she is answerable to no one.”

“She is answerable to God,” I say steadily. “And He will ask her for Katherine, and for her boys, Teddy and Thomas, for her husband, Ned, even for Margaret Douglas and her little boy Charles, and for me and Thomas Keyes. The God who promised us that not a sparrow falls will ask the Queen of England where her cousins are tonight.”