Her Highness, the Traitor (10 page)

Tonight, however, Harry paid me a visit. Usually I welcomed him, but tonight I resisted his attempts to remove my night shift. “You didn’t tell me about the Protector, Harry. Why?”

“Really, my dear, it was just a foolish omission.”

“Yet you told Jane.”

“Well, yes. She is interested in that type of thing.”

“And what makes you think I am not? I am not a dolt, Harry. But in any case, I am your wife and have been for sixteen years. I should hear these things from you, whether or not you think I am interested in them.”

“Well, yes,” Harry conceded. “There’s logic in that.” He grinned at me. “I’ve rarely seen you angry at me, Frances. It makes you rather interesting.”

I snorted, and Harry drew me to him, then removed my clothing and began to caress me in a manner that made me gasp and clutch him to me. He was not always so attentive to my own desires, and if this was the result of the council’s promotion of him—well, the council deserved the heartiest thanks. Perhaps it was also his way of apologizing; if so, I would accept it.

But as I climaxed, my mind was not on Harry. It was, I realized to my shame, on Adrian Stokes.

The council has agreed that you can see your husband on Christmas Day,” I told the Duchess of Somerset.

“Only for that one day? I had hoped for more.”

“It is the best I can do,” I snapped. “Really, as there are members of the council who would like to put him to death, I consider it a victory of sorts.”

Anne lowered her eyes. “Yes,” she said quietly. “I am sorry. I truly am grateful beyond words for what you have been able to do for us. It is just that I miss him so much, and I fret so about him. You cannot know what it is like, not knowing whether he will be alive a month from now.” She brushed a hand across her eyes, which did show the signs of many sleepless nights.

I patted her other hand. “The men who want his death are in the decided minority, I am told.”

The duchess bristled. “Why should anyone want my dear Edward’s death? He has done nothing, except to be too kind and forbearing to the peasants.” She rose from the chair in my chamber in which she had been sitting. “But I must go and make ready for my visit. There is so much to do. Do you think the guards will let me bring in my jam for him? And some new shirts and handkerchiefs?”

“I am sure of it. In fact,” I added archly, “you might want to get some new things for yourself, as well. You will want to look your best. The council has agreed that you may be alone with him when you visit.”

Anne let out a girlish squeal of pleasure. Then she kissed me lightly on the cheek and hurried away.

***

A few days later, John developed a fever, which confined him to his bed. After a miserable day, he was at last on the verge of resting for the night when a knock sounded on his chamber door and William Paulet, Lord St. John, was announced. “Tell him to come back at another time,” I said to our servant. “My lord is ill.”

“My lady, Lord St. John says it’s urgent.”

I sighed. All the commotion at our house that had taken place since Somerset’s removal had given me a certain appreciation for the man’s burden of office. I might have protested further, but John said sleepily, “Well, send him in, then,” and sat up. Quickly, I helped him adjust his nightcap to more statesmanlike effect.

“My lord—my lady—I apologize for coming at this bad time. But I did not think this could wait.” John nodded for him to keep talking, and Paulet continued, “Today I accompanied the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Arundel to the Tower, to interrogate the Duke of Somerset, as you instructed. To several questions, he stated that he had acted by your advice and counsel.”

“No doubt he did, in some instances,” John said wearily. He coughed.

“After we left the duke, my lord, the Earl of Southampton said that you and he should both be found traitors, and that you were both worthy to die.”

I rose. “My lord!”

“Go on,” John said.

“The Earl of Arundel agreed. They talked a little more and decided that on the day the Duke of Somerset was executed, you would be arrested and put in his chambers at the Tower. Then you would soon be tried yourself, and, undoubtedly, executed.”

“Undoubtedly,” agreed John. “Is there more?”

“They talked of having the lady Mary made regent, my lord, but I didn’t get the sense that they had approached her. The long and short of it, they want Somerset dead, and you with them.”

“That information was worth disturbing my sickbed for,” said John calmly. He squeezed my trembling hand and smiled at Paulet. “I shall keep it in mind. But for now, my lord, I must get some sleep, or the Earl of Southampton won’t have to take the trouble of plotting against me.”

***

John slept that night; I didn’t. It was the Earl of Southampton—Thomas Wriothesley—who had interrogated Anne Askew, even turning the rack himself, it was said, when she was not forthcoming with the information Wriothesley sought. What he had sought was information that would link Catherine Parr herself, and some of her ladies as well, to what had then been regarded as heretical practices. I had been one of those women who stood in danger, for I had possessed books, passed around among us ladies-in-waiting and read aloud in the queen’s chambers, that were illegal then. Anne Askew’s brave silence in the face of torture had surely saved some of the rest of us from the flames.

Unable to get Anne Askew to implicate anyone, those who wished to see a return to the old religion had tried another tack—turning King Henry against the queen herself, even to the point of procuring an order for her arrest. It had failed miserably when the queen, advised of her enemies’ schemes, had groveled so humbly, and so cleverly, before the king, he had turned on the ones who had sought to destroy her. It would have been almost comical to see the king throwing the arrest warrant in Wriothesley’s own face, had we not been aware of how close Catherine might have come to sharing the fate of her predecessor: poor Katherine Howard.

And now Wriothesley had my husband in his sights. “Why would they want to execute you and the duke?” I demanded the next morning as soon as John awoke.

John shrugged and obediently swallowed the physic he had been given. “Terrible stuff. Simple, my dear. Wriothesley has held a grudge against Somerset since being deprived of his office as Lord Chancellor after the old king died. I stood with Somerset at that time, so he bears a grudge against me, as well. As for Arundel, he’s probably hoping for a restoration of the old religion—hence the lady Mary.”

“John, what shall you do?”

“Enjoy the Christmas festivities as much as I can in my state of health.”

“I don’t—”

“Wriothesley’s a fool. If he could only count, he’d know that there aren’t enough men of his stamp on the council to send Somerset to the block, or me either. I shall beat him at his own game, never you fear.” John looked at me straight on, and for the first time I saw real anger in his eyes. “And speaking of fear, I have never forgotten the fright he gave Queen Catherine, or you and the rest of her ladies. When I take him down, I promise you, you shall be there to see it.”

***

The Duke and Duchess of Somerset had their Christmas visit, and afterward went to hear a sermon at the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula—sitting on the same pew, the guards later told us, without so much as an inch between them, and gazing into each other’s eyes more than into their respective prayer books. The next day, Somerset’s children by Anne—he had eight living at the time, all of them under the age of twelve—paid their father a noisy visit. Uxorious as the duke was, he was rather less at ease among the brood of offspring that had resulted from his marriage, and I suspected he might have found his Tower lodgings peaceful after the last of them straggled out of the fortress’s walls.

Then, as December was about to fade into January, the council met once more in a conference chamber at our house, where John, wrapped from head to toe in furs against the sharp cold, croaked his way through the proceedings as I, at his bidding, brought physic in from time to time and plumped the pillows at his back. The meeting had been droning on for some time, the pillows were no longer plump but downright fat, and I was beginning to run out of excuses to stay in the room, when Wriothesley said, “My lords, now that the New Year is almost upon us, we must decide what to do about the traitor.”

“Traitor?” asked Henry Grey, Marquis of Dorset. A newcomer to the council, he had contributed little to it thus far, but did occasionally make remarks like this to remind the rest of the council he was still breathing.

“I refer, of course, to the Duke of Somerset.”

“He’s an incompetent,” said William Parr. A flush passed over his handsome features as he remembered his own ignominious performance at Norwich before John had been appointed to clean up the situation. “But not a traitor,” he continued lamely. “And I say this as a man whose own marriage he tried to invalidate.”

“He is a traitor,” said the Earl of Arundel. “What else would you call a man who all but handed the government over to the rabble?”

“Look at these,” said Southampton. He waved a sheath of papers: the charges to which the duke had agreed to plead guilty. Everyone in the council room looked up obediently, as did I from placing a warm brick against John’s feet. “Are these not the admissions of a traitor?”

“There is no treason in any of the charges against Somerset,” said John. “Only folly and mismanagement.”

“The man has acted traitorously; he must suffer the fate of traitors. It is time we started proceedings to attaint him, and to sentence him to death.”

“You seek his blood, my lord?”

“Haven’t I made it clear enough? I do.”

“Do you seek mine also?”

“I—”

John rose and placed the hand on the sword that was propped up against his chair. “Know this, my lord: I am well aware that he who seeks his blood seeks mine, as well. You shall have neither, I tell you.”

He had never raised his voice. No one else in the room spoke. Then Southampton rose from his seat, his chair scraping the floor as he moved it backward the only sound in the room. Without a word, he left the room. Another chair scraped backward, and the Earl of Arundel followed.

No one else stirred from his seat. After a moment or two, John sat back down. “Shall we turn to the next order of business, gentlemen?”

***

That night, I saw John off to bed as I always did when he was ill, not trusting his comfort to our servants, devoted and competent as they were. Having seen that everything in his chambers was to my satisfaction, I kissed him good night and walked to my own chambers, where my ladies helped me to undress. (It amused me sometimes to remember there was a time not so long ago when I’d done that and almost everything else for myself.) It was an ordinary night, and yet as my ladies brushed out my long, heavy dark hair and braided it for bed, I sensed what had happened in that council meeting had changed our lives forever.

My husband, John Dudley, son of a man who had died upon the scaffold, held the rule of England in his hands.

Do I have to come?” asked Jane, laying down the wedding invitation we had received. “I am extremely busy with my translation.”

“Of course you have to come,” I said. “It will be the grandest wedding seen in years. The king himself will be there.”

Jane looked at Harry, who nodded. “I’m afraid your mother is right this time, my girl. Duty calls. Besides, you haven’t seen the king in a while.”

“There will be dancing and masques and a tournament,” I said coaxingly.

Jane looked unimpressed, but Kate, coming up in the middle of our conversation, said, “A grand wedding? Whose, Mother?”

“Anne, the eldest daughter of the Protector—”

“Frances,” Harry prodded.

“The Duke of Somerset,” I corrected myself. I had found it hard to break the habit of calling him by his former title. “She is marrying the Earl of Warwick’s eldest son, Lord Lisle.” Somerset had been freed from the Tower in February and, after a brief period of house arrest, had been restored to the king’s council, albeit in a position subordinate to Warwick, who as head of the king’s council was now known as the Lord President. “This marriage is proof of their good will to each other.”

“I can come, can’t I?”

“Of course you can, and Mary, too. The entire family has been invited.”

“Good,” said Kate. “The Earl of Hertford will be there, don’t you think? He’s good-looking.”

“Is that all you think of, Kate?” Jane asked. “At your young age?”

“He is a good-looking boy,” I said of Somerset’s oldest son. “It is no harm to say so.”

“Perhaps as proof of good will between the Duke of Somerset and our family, a match could be made between one of us and the Earl of Hertford,” Kate said. “Preferably me, as Jane is above such things.”

“It is not your place to suggest matches for yourself,” said Jane.

“Jane—” I began.

“Well, why not? That way, Jane is saved for the king, and I can marry an agreeable boy.”

“There is no intention of marrying Jane to the king, or any of you girls to anyone just yet,” Harry said. “Negotiations are afoot to marry the king to a French princess. As for the rest of you, Jane is correct. All of this speculation is unbecoming for maidens.”

Behind her father’s back, Kate stuck her tongue out at Jane, who magnificently ignored her. I should have reproved Kate, I suppose, but I did not.

***

“They can marry off all of Warwick’s boys to all of Somerset’s girls if they like, but does Warwick really think that Somerset’s going to be content with being a humble member of the council?” Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, asked as we waited for the king to appear at Sheen, which he had offered for the wedding. “Like it or not, he’s still a duke, and the king’s only living uncle. He can’t forget it. Neither should Warwick. And where is Warwick, by the way?”

“Perhaps he is ill. Poor man, having to miss his son’s wedding.”

The Duchess of Suffolk was about to snort a reply when a quiet voice said, “My husband is ill, my ladies. He regrets his absence keenly, but his health has been so uncertain these past few months, I begged him to keep to his bed.”

I stared at the Countess of Warwick before I caught myself. Though not unpleasing in her appearance, she could not be called anything but ordinary looking, but today, dressed elegantly in wrought velvet, she looked almost pretty and a couple of inches taller. She almost showed up the Duchess of Somerset herself. Was her transformation a temporary one due to her son’s wedding, or was this a consequence of her husband’s elevation? “I am sorry that your husband was not able to come,” I managed.

“Well, we have Robert’s wedding tomorrow. I hope he will be able to attend that.” The countess smiled as we glanced in the direction of a handsome, tall young man who was strolling arm in arm with a very pretty blonde of whom no one in London appeared to know anything but her name. Harry and the rest of our household (including me, I am ashamed to admit) had amused ourselves on the barge, trying to figure out her possible origins. “A love match,” the countess said simply. “It happens.”

“I daresay your husband will make the best of it,” said the Duchess of Suffolk. Even I recognized the acid in her voice.

Jane Dudley heard it, too, but chose not to let it spoil her good humor. “Yes, as a matter of fact he has. He will establish Robert in Norfolk, though of course I imagine he and Amy will be spending much of their time in London.” She glanced around. “Ah, the Duchess of Somerset. I
must
speak to her about the musicians.”

“My, that little woman creeps up on one,” muttered the Duchess of Suffolk after the Countess of Warwick had hurried away. “I wonder if the Earl of Warwick is absent because he doesn’t share his wife’s enthusiasm for this match with Somerset’s girl? They say it was chiefly the work of the countess and the Duchess of Somerset. Who, I see, has not lost a single pearl as the result of her husband’s ill fortune.”

“Katherine! I thought you and the Duchess of Somerset were friends.”

“Oh, we are, but there’s no denying that Anne Seymour likes her jewels. And look at her! Six months gone, I’d say. It looks as if that visit she paid to her husband on Christmas Day bore fruit.”

I stole a look at my daughters to see if they had caught any of the Duchess of Suffolk’s cheerfully malicious commentary, but Kate was talking to Katherine’s two sons, who were my younger half brothers. Mary was admiring the brightly dressed courtiers and the foreign dignitaries who had been invited to witness this bonding between the two old friends turned enemies turned friends again. Jane, too, was eying everyone’s clothing, but not in the way I might have hoped. “Peacocks,” she said dourly.

“Peacocks?” I looked around for the exotic birds.

“These ladies, Mother. Look at them! Why, some of them are even painted. The Countess of Warwick certainly was.”

“She could use the help,” said the Duchess of Suffolk with a smirk. “But I would hardly say she looked like the Whore of Babylon, my dear girl. A spot of color to the cheeks or to the lips is a harmless thing, especially for a celebration. You must amend your opinions, child, to accommodate us mere mortals, or you will never get on in the world.”

“That is what I tell her,” I said.

Jane thrust out her lower, unpainted lip in a gesture I alternatingly found endearing and irritating. “John Aylmer says that it is vulgar and ungodly.”

“I really wonder sometimes why we keep that man,” I said. “He finds everything vulgar and ungodly. I marvel how he puts up with us.”

“No doubt through the stipend your husband pays him,” said the Duchess of Suffolk. She winked at me.

“Master Aylmer was not speaking of Your Grace or my lady mother,” Jane said. “Nor was I.”

“Well, good,” said the duchess. “I should hate to displease you, my dear.”

It was a rare thing to have an adult ally in my skirmishes with Jane, especially one as clever as Katherine. I would have been content to go on some more in this vein, but the sound of trumpets announced the approach of the king’s barge.

Edward stepped out, smiling at the assembled company. He was ruddier than he had been the last time I had seen him, for the Earl of Warwick, believing his knightly upbringing had been neglected, had arranged his schedule to give him more time for outdoor pursuits. This put me in mind of King Henry, my late uncle, especially when the young king looked around and frowned. “Where is my lord Warwick?”

The Countess of Warwick stepped forward. “Your Majesty, I am to blame. He removed to Hatfield for the sweet air, and I begged him to remain there, as his health has been so uncertain.”

“We fear the Earl of Warwick has been exerting himself too much on our behalf. It is a pity that he must miss his son’s wedding.”

“I am pledged to tell him all about it.” The countess smiled. “Though it is true, Your Majesty, that he wants none of the details that we women savor, so it will be a quick telling.”

“Do give him our best wishes, my lady.”

“I will, Your Majesty.”

“We miss him,” said the king softly. He turned to the Duke of Somerset, who had been standing near his duchess, just far enough apart from the rest of the council to look a little awkward. Somerset and the king had dined together recently, Harry had told me, but it had been a rather stiff, formal affair. “Your Grace.”

Somerset’s face brightened. “My dear nephew, I am grateful you can honor my daughter’s wedding with your presence.”

The king nodded a little distantly, then turned back abruptly to the Countess of Warwick. “Perhaps we can send the earl our physician?”

Behind the king, the Duchess of Somerset opened her mouth, then shut it again as her husband sent her a glance.

***

“It’s been like that since January, my friends in high places tell me,” the Duchess of Suffolk said later in her chamber at Sheen, where the two of us had gone to freshen up after the ceremony. The Duchess of Somerset and the Countess of Warwick had joined each other in weeping sentimental tears over the marriage of their offspring, though not, as Jane had snidely observed, so many tears that they affected their carefully painted faces. The Duke of Somerset had given a rather long speech alluding to his own happy marriage and, rather irrelevantly, it was thought, to the spiritual growth he had experienced in prison. The young Earl of Hertford had said something to Kate that had sent them both into silent giggles during the finest part of the speech, and Will Somers, the elderly fool who had previously served King Henry, had protested that Somerset had spent more time making the speech than he had in the Tower. “The king would trail after Warwick like a dog after a master, if he were allowed to. To the earl’s credit, he doesn’t exploit it—much, though I dare say he enjoys it. I can’t say I ever thought of Warwick as being a brilliant man, but he appears to be the only person in England who has had the sense to figure out that the king wants to be treated as a king, not like a little boy.”

“I do feel sorry for the Pro—Somerset, I mean. The king hardly spoke to him just now, and I think the Countess of Warwick or the earl’s brother Andrew must have prompted him to do that much.”

“It’ll sort itself out. Mind you, I’m not saying how it will sort itself out, or whether anyone will be the better off for it. But tell me, Frances. You are friendly with the lady Mary. Was she not invited? Or did she choose not to come?”

“She was invited,” I said uneasily. “I suppose she chose not to come.”

The lady Mary had refused the king’s invitation to visit his court the previous Christmas, although the lady Elizabeth had arrived and had had great fun playing hoodman blind with Robert Dudley over New Year’s. I could still hear Harry fuming about her absence, which he and much of the rest of the king’s council had regarded as a personal affront. “She’s got this absurd idea in her head, such that it is, that if she comes to see the king, he will lock her into the Tower for hearing Mass. Doesn’t it occur to her that if that was what he wanted to do, he could simply send men to arrest her?”

The Duchess of Suffolk followed the line of thought Harry had been arguing in my head. “Why she has to be so stubborn is beyond me. The council allows her to hear Mass, which is more than it really should be doing, in my opinion. All they ask is that she not allow half of the countryside to hear Mass with her. It seems quite reasonable.”

“Her religion means a great deal to her. It was what helped her through those days when King Henry was ridding himself of her mother.”

Katherine gave me an odd look. “Sometimes, Frances, I wonder if you don’t have Papist sympathies yourself. Though I suppose Harry Grey would have thrown you out of your house long before if you did.”

“It is not that. It is simply that my mother and the lady Mary’s mother were friends, and we have been, too, of sorts. And she has been kind to my daughters.” I looked out the window to where the servants were putting the finishing touches to the hall, made entirely of boughs, where we ladies were to dine with the king. “I shall go see her after these weddings, I believe. After all, she is my cousin.”

***

“The goose was the idea of Amy’s family,” said the Countess of Warwick ruefully the next day. Suspended between two posts, the poor creature was squawking in terror as a group of young men took turns at trying to decapitate it. The king and most of the men were watching this display with a certain enjoyment, but the countess had her fingers half over her eyes, and the Duchess of Somerset, putting her hands on her belly significantly, had declared herself ill and demanded that the duke take her to their chamber. The countess turned to her fourth son, standing nearby. “Guildford, you are good with your sword. For God’s sake, go there and put that poor thing out of its misery this very instant.”

“It’s not my turn.”

“Make it your turn. Tell them I ordered you to, as the mother of the groom!”

Guildford, a tall young man who was about thirteen, nodded and went to do his mother’s bidding. In one swift stroke, the goose’s head was severed from its body.

“Thank the Lord,” said the Countess of Warwick. “Such folly men engage in.” She turned to my eldest daughter as Guildford ambled back. “They tell me you are remarkably skilled in languages, my lady.”

“I speak several, my lady,” Jane said without a great deal of modesty.

“I speak only French, and little enough of that,” the countess said. “It was not fashionable when I was young for ladies to learn more than that, unless they were very great indeed. But all of our children are learning French and Italian, and our sons know the ancient languages, as well. Or at least some of them do.” The countess looked at Guildford indulgently. “You would put Guildford to shame in Greek, my lady, but he speaks Italian quite well. Don’t you?”

Guildford dutifully said something in that language to Jane, who responded in kind. Though I could not understand a word either was saying, or judge how well they were saying it, I sensed the conversation was a forced one. When another lady claimed the countess’s attention and steered her away, Jane abruptly switched to English. “Is your mother tipsy?”