Prisoner of the Queen (Tales From the Tudor Court) (47 page)

I waited on bated breath, wearing the carpet in my bedchamber bare from pacing. This past week I had been diligently working with the assistance of Cecil on a drafted letter to Her Majesty, begging forgiveness and mercy and acknowledging my rash and disobedient behavior and praising her long reign. Robert Dudley even promised to deliver it to Her Majesty on my behalf. It appeared that those closest to Elizabeth agreed my punishment had lasted long enough.

It
was almost assured that with the backing of Cecil and Lord Robert, I should be reunited with my family at least, and I had agreed to even live in exile.

“My lady
.” Mrs. Helen interrupted my pacing to produce a package. “Lord Grey has given this to me to give to you. He says ’tis lucky you are to have received it.”

I gripped the package,
thankful for small miracles. The queen had ordered Ned and I to have no communication—and yet, a gift! Tearing open the paper revealed a brown leather book of poetry, coins, velvet fabric and diamond earrings, as well as a small wooden horse for Thomas.

My lady wife, Katherine Hertford,

I seek to know how you fare, given word from Cecil via your uncle that you have not been well, and I pray to the Lord that you are healed soon and delivered into health.

I miss you dearly, my love. I miss lying beside you, holding your hand, and sharing a laugh. While it was a life behind walls, and much too interspersed for satisfaction, those few visits we were allowed in the Tower were some of the happiest of my life.

Soon
, my faithful love, we shall be together again, making merry, and I swear one day we shall live as we always hoped—as man and wife, beneath our own roof with our own children prancing like pagans around us.

With much love and concern for your
well-being,

Ned, Lord Hertford

Oh, what sweet joy in his words! Just seeing Ned
’s concern for me had my strength renewing, and a new vitality filled my veins. Knowing my letter may well not be delivered, I sat down with ink, quill and parchment to pen a reply to Ned.

My dear husband,

N
o small joy, my dearest Ned, is it to me the comfortable understanding of your maintained health. I crave to God to give you strength, as I doubt not that he will. You, neither I, have anything in this lamentable time so much to comfort us, in our pitiable absence from each other, as the hearing, the seeking and countenance of good health in us both. Though of late, I have been unwell, yet now, I thank God, restored to health. I long to be merry with you, as you do with me, as when our little sweet boy in the Tower was begotten.

I wish you to be as
merry now as I was heavy when you came to my door for the last time, and it was locked. Do you think I forget what matters passed between us? No, surely I cannot but bear in memory far many more than you think, for I have good leave to do so when I call to mind what a husband I have in you, and my great hard fate to miss the viewing of so good a one. Very well, though I write you are good, you be my naughty lord. Could you not find it in your heart to have pity on me, to have given me more pains for more children, so fast one after another? No, but I would not have regard to rest my bones… I should have remembered the blessing of God in giving us such increase. I do not doubt, I should rather have been glad to have borne a great deal more pain than thought any too much…to bring them, so much is my boundless love to my sweet bedfellow that I was wont with joyful heart to lie by and shall again…

Thus
most humbly thanking you, my sweet lord, for your husbandly sending both to see how I do, and for providing coin. I most lovingly bid you farewell, not forgetting my especial thanks to you for your book, which is no small heart as well as with eyes. I can very well read it, for as soon as I had it, I read it over even with my heart as well as with eyes, by which token I once again bid you
Vale et semper salus
, my good Ned.

Your most loving and faithful wife during life,

Katherine Hertford

December 13, 1563

The queen would not forgive us. I was ill and wretched of body and mind for what she put us through. So long now! And to continue so. I wished to be dead and buried. I prayed to God he take me that moment instead of leaving me to languish in continual agony. What few small joys I had were not enough to keep me from this bleak and dark mood.

I threw myself on my bed
, weeping. For I had truly hoped, with Cecil’s assistance and the backing of Lord Robert, at long last we would have been pardoned. But Elizabeth continued her zealous cruelty toward me.

“My darling, you must stay strong, for your children,”
Mrs. Helen whispered, stroking my hair.

But I continued to weep. If these
tirewomen would leave me, for they were always watching, I might have thrown myself from the window.

“I pray God shortly will see me buried.”
Hopelessness consumed me. And once more I was aligned to the fact that if I were to perish, my family would be let free. I was the threat to Her Majesty. If I was gone, so would be the threat.

At my words,
Mrs. Helen gasped, her hands slapped to her mouth, and she, too, started to weep. She waved a maid to take Thomas from the room and then Mrs. Helen gathered me in her arms, cradling me as she’d just been cradling my babe. My stout and busty companion, and me wasted away to nearly nothing. She rocked me and prayed for life, while I silently prayed for death.

September 24, 1564

Eddie was three today.

I
had not seen him since before his second birthday.

Thomas
was little consolation to me. Nothing was. Even still, I hold Thomas close, squeezing his little body against mine, feeling his sweet breath on my cheek, watching his wide happy eyes take me in.

Whatever minute moments we
had together, where I could gaze into his crystalline eyes and imagine a different time and place, went by too quickly. Even though I smiled at him and kissed his tiny nose, he still sensed something was amiss. He stroked my cheek and gazed intently in my eyes.

I
could not hold his gaze for long. He reminded me so much of Ned, of Eddie. I turned from him and told one of the maids to alert the footmen which trunks were ready to be moved.

“Mama?”

“Yes, Thomas?”

“Where go?”

“A new place, Thomas. We shall watch the leaves turn colors from a new window.” How did one explain to a babe that we were prisoners, that this was not our home, that we had no home?

“Leaves? Colors?”

“Yes, they’ll turn from green to red, orange and yellow.”

“
’Lellow.”

I smiled
as he rolled the word on his tongue and frowned. “You shall see, I promise. Now run along.”

One of the maids gripped
Thomas’s hand and led him away with promises of milk and sweet bread.

I
sighed heavily and glanced about the room all in disarray. I was to be moved to Ingatestone, away from Uncle John. My new jailer would be Sir William Petre. Someone had taken it upon themselves to further my misery by publishing a pamphlet proclaiming my claim to the throne as being stronger than that of Elizabeth and our cousin Mary, Queen of Scots. No one thought of the little lives they were ruining, my children’s lives. Poor Thomas did not even know his father or his brother.

Soon, little Eddie
would not know the love of a parent. My good Ned was being removed from Eddie. Ned would be housed with a man who despised him and had been the one vicious tongue to the queen approving of our imprisonment, Sir John Mason. Cecil told me this man once proclaimed that prison was too good for us. I could not imagine what horrors he would see my husband put to.

At least Eddie
would be able to remain with Her Grace, Lady Anne. I’d sent countless letters begging for Eddie to be returned to me, but Her Majesty sent only a curt reply: no. To make matters worse, Uncle John had been arrested. Supposedly, they thought him linked to the disdainful manuscript because of the harsh words he’d written in a letter to Cecil about the queen—of which she happened to get a hold. Now I questioned my trust in Cecil. In his letter, my uncle had complained bitterly to Cecil of my lot, wishing he could be the queen’s confessor and lament to her of her cruelty and that God would not forgive her unless she freely forgave all the world.

Foolish man.

I felt numb.

I
did not feel at all.

Nearly one year later… August 15, 1565

Word had come to me that my sister Mary had married in secret, Thomas Keyes, the queen’s sergeant porter.

Forsooth, the
queen should surely blame me for setting an example.

Keyes
resided in Fleet Prison, and Mary had been placed under house arrest. God keep them safe and save them for their foolish ways.

“Lord Thomas awaits you in the gardens, my lady.”

I nodded and stood to join my son in the gardens for our daily walk. I did it for him, for I gained no pleasure in worldly things. I’d not heard from Ned in at least a year. No word from the duchess either concerning my Eddie. Half my days were spent wondering. Were they sick? Did they live? Where were they? Did the queen treat them well?

I no longer dabble
d with herbs, nor sewed shirts for the poor. My head pained me much, and I was weak, prone to illness and megrims.

Poor child. It would
have been best for Thomas to go to the duchess’s, too.

Little Thomas took my hand in his, holding tightly to my fingers. His hand was small and warm, and I rubbed my thumb over his knuckles.

I looked down at him, his head covered in a miniature cap that looked very much like the ones Ned used to wear. Velvet, trimmed with an austere silk ribbon and a brightly colored feather stuck on the side. He looked up at me with his clear blue, innocent eyes.

“Want to play dice with me, Mama?”

My eyes widened as I took in his prideful expression. He even puffed out his little chest. “Dice? Where did you learn to play dice?”

“The footmen play it, and they showed me how.”
He stuffed his hand in his pocket and pulled out a pair of dice. “See? They even gave me some to play with.”

I smiled at his excitement. “You will have to show me how then.”

He jumped from foot to foot and yanked his hand from mine to clap. “Yes! I will show you!”

He gripped my hand again and started to run. I lifted my skirts with my free hand and ran beside him. His exuberance for life, for fun
, was intoxicating. I hoped he could always be this way. Alas, innocence was taken from us all at some point. But for now I would enjoy this moment of angelic peace.

June 16, 1566

There might have been light at the end of the tunnel of despair.

Little Thomas and I
had been moved once more, because Sir William Petre had become quite ill. But we had not moved far! We were at Gosfield Hall, which reminded me so much of Bradgate Manor, and I was pleased for my little three-year-old Thomas to see such a place as this.

My new wardens
were very old. Seventy-seven-year-old Sir John Wentworth and his wife. They should not be able to keep a good eye on me, and I had had word that Mason, Ned’s jailer, was dead, and his widow had kept my husband as prisoner. We once more were able to write, and it had been nearly two years since last I’d heard word from him.

Ned
had sent me presents of jewels and fabric and furs, as well as fabrics for sweet Thomas. He’d even said we might soon be together!

There
was much turmoil at court as Mary, Queen of Scots, had also given birth to a son.

But I
was not worried. I did not want the crown as much as people would try to force it upon me. All I wanted, all I
craved
, was to be merry once more with my Ned and to play together with both my sweet boys.

March 3, 1567

My darling wife,

At long last, our time to celebrate may be at hand! One
lord, who dared to come so close to Her, has sent his older brother to speak with me in regards to forming an alliance. They have decided to back you in the matter of freeing you and in the matter of the succession, in light of the news of the death of the Scots queen’s husband. They have even gone to speak to the duchess, my mother, as well. Cecil is pleased at this turn of events since you know he has oft lent a hand to our side. We may soon be free! Pray, my love. I shall see you soon, I pray for it nightly.

Your
Loving Husband in Truth

Could it have been true? Lord Robert had attempted to aid me before, and now he would seek to do so again? And what would he gain from it?