Her Highness, the Traitor (16 page)

She picked up the little book—a nondescript almanac. Written in Somerset’s careful handwriting was:

Fear of the Lord is the beginning of wisdom

Put thy trust in the Lord with all thy heart

Be not wise in thine own conceit, but fear the Lord and flee from evil

From the Tower, the day before my death

E. Somerset

On the verge of tears again, I cleared my throat. “Anne, I will do my best to see that you are freed soon. Or at least sent to live with one of your sisters-in-law, or your mother, where you will have people who can ease your grief and offer you comfort. I shall talk to my hus—”

“Your husband!” Anne pushed my arm away and stood. “How dare you mention that devil to me? He was the one who brought my dear husband to this, with all of his plots.”

“He did not! Your husband was plotting against mine, and you know it.”

“Only after your husband poisoned the king’s mind against my husband. My Edward loved the king. He was the apple of his eye. He used that very phrase! But first Thomas Seymour sought to tear them apart, and then your beast of a husband did. They ruined everything.” Anne balled her hands into fists. “He sent you here, didn’t he, you vixen? To taunt me, or was it to spy upon me? Did the two of you hope I would betray some secret? Well, I’ll give you your money’s worth. I want your husband dead for what he did to mine, and I’ll have you dead, too, if they let me out of here. Is that enough for you?”

I backed into a corner. “You don’t mean what you’re saying, Anne. You have undergone a great shock. I know in a day or so you will think better of it.”

“Don’t mean it? By God, I’ll strangle you here, you bitch!”

She grabbed me by the throat, evading her ladies’ efforts to stop her, and shook me while I screamed for the guards and tried to shake her off me. Finally they prized her away. She stared at me in pure hatred as they dragged her back. “I curse you,” she said. “I curse the entire house of the Dudleys. May you suffer what I have suffered today!”

“You had best go, my lady. She’s wild.”

I needed no persuasion. I picked up my skirts and stumbled down the staircase, Anne’s curses and screams ringing in my ears.

***

“She threatened you?” John stared at me.

I’d not wanted to tell John about my encounter with the duchess, but my manner when I returned to Ely Place had been too agitated to escape the notice of my household, someone in which had sent for John. I had been too shaken to formulate a lie when John arrived in my chamber, where I had been put to bed with a warm brick next to my feet. “She is half-mad with grief over her husband, John.”

“And what’s this?” John’s hands found the marks of Anne’s fingers on my neck. “Christ! Did she attack you?”

“She did not know what she was doing.”

“By God, the bitch should hang for this!”

“No!” I sprang out of bed and sank to my knees. “Please don’t harm her,” I begged, looking up at John. “There has been so much death. Please! Promise me.” My voice reached a higher pitch. “Promise.” I turned my head and started sobbing.

John lifted me up and helped me back into bed. “I will not harm her. I promise.”

“Oh, thank you, John.”

“But I’ll be damned if I ever let her see the outside of the Tower. She can rot there.”

I made no argument.

John sat in bed next to me, stroking my hair as I calmed down. “Jane, you should not have gone to the execution. It could have been dangerous for you.”

“I know. I am sorry.”

“He died bravely, I suppose?”

“Yes. Very bravely.”

“One day I will ask you for the details. Not today.”

I nodded as John went on talking. “There were good reasons not to go. One was that I might appear to be gloating. The other one was that the crowd might riot if they saw me. But the real reason is that I am a coward. I could not bear to see him die. He was the first true friend I had as a young man.”

I took John’s hand. “England will be more at peace for this, John. We will move past this. We have to.” I hesitated. “Did you see the king today?”

“Yes. I asked for his forgiveness. He frowned and said, ‘What else could you do, my lord?’” John rose and kissed me on the cheek. “I must go back to Westminster. There’s business to do before Parliament opens tomorrow. You sleep, and stay out of trouble.” He headed toward the chamber door, then turned with a slight smile. “Did you know where they buried Somerset?”

“In the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, of course.”

“Yes, but do you know who he lies between?” I shook my head. “Anne Boleyn and Katherine Howard. If those aren’t an odd threesome, I don’t know what is.”

With the court festivities of Christmas over, the girls and I returned to Bradgate. I was glad to be there, for despite all of the determined gaiety, London was a gloomy place that January, the impending fate of the Duke of Somerset casting a pall over everything.

Even in the comfort of my home at Bradgate—my husband’s inheritance, but a house I had come to love as my own—I was despondent after the duke’s death, not so much for the duke but for the sake of his eldest son, Edward, Earl of Hertford. I had met him at court a time or two and had found him to be a charming yet serious-minded young man, who might be particularly suitable for Jane as a husband. Indeed, after the Thomas Seymour debacle, Harry, anxious to make amends with Somerset, had suggested Jane might marry Hertford, but the negotiations had been desultory at best and had died out altogether when Harry aligned himself with Northumberland. Now the Earl of Hertford, son of a traitor, was worth little as a husband, unless the council chose to restore him to his father’s forfeited estates. But I was sorry not only for the loss of the young man as a potential match for Jane, but also for his own bereavement.

Jane did not give any indication of what she thought about the loss of her potential suitor, and I did not ask her. Since I had overheard the conversation she had had with Ascham the previous summer, my manner to her had been more distant and cool. I no longer lost my temper with her, but I no longer asked the sort of questions about her studies that had always made her roll her eyes at me. My manner at times toward her had been so astringent, I had seen her blink in puzzlement, which I am ashamed to admit gave me a certain petty satisfaction. When Aylmer, distressed at the pleasure Jane had taken in decking herself out in fine robes and curling her hair for the visit of Mary of Guise, asked that his mentor in Zurich, Heinrich Bullinger, address a few words to Jane about the manner of dress suitable for a young lady professing godliness, I did not even protest that Jane hardly needed such instruction. Even when the lady Elizabeth was named—much to Jane’s annoyance—as an example to be followed, I kept my counsel. “Master Aylmer knows best about these things, and you must follow his advice,” I said sweetly.

“But he is telling me I spend too much time with my music, and you have always encouraged me to spend more time on it!”

I had, not only because I loved music, but also because it was something I could understand. “He knows best,” I repeated. “Not me.”

***

In early February, John Aylmer hurried into my chamber. It was about the time of the week that he usually reported on my daughters’ studies, and in which I tried to formulate intelligent questions, so I at first thought nothing of it when he was announced. Then I saw his face. “My lady, the lady Jane is acting very strange. I have never seen her thus.”

I asked no questions, but followed him to the chamber where Jane had her lessons. She was in her usual place, surrounded by books, pen, and parchment, but she was slumped over her desk listlessly. “I don’t want to study,” she said, lifting her head at my approach. “I’m tired.”

Her sulky voice was slurred. For a moment, I thought she might have smuggled some of our wine to her room and drunk it undiluted, as my sister Eleanor and I had once done in our youth on a mutual dare. But no. There was no smell of wine, and John Aylmer had been at university; he would know the effects of drink when he saw them. I looked at Jane more closely. She was perspiring, though the February day was a particularly bitter one. Suddenly fear clawed at my heart. “Don’t you feel well?”

“I told you, I’m tired.” Jane suddenly pulled off her French hood, revealing her fine auburn hair. She rose, unsteady on her feet. “I’m going to bed.”

“No, you are not.”

John Aylmer stared at me. “My lady!”

“She cannot go to bed. She has the sweat. If she sleeps within the next few hours, she will die like my brothers did.” I grabbed Jane, who had actually started to unfasten her gown, totally indifferent to the presence of a man in the room. “Stop that! You shall not go to bed. You must study. I insist.”

“But Mother…”

“Go inform the household that my daughter has the sweat,” I told Aylmer. “See if my other daughters are ill. If they are not, make sure they go nowhere near Jane and me, and make sure that their ladies watch them closely for any signs of the illness. And have a physician sent for,” I added. But physicians were next to useless against the sweat, I knew. “Then come back and help me keep my daughter awake.” I shook Jane, whose eyes were shutting. “Read to me.”

“I want to sleep.”

“Read to me. I care not what you read. Just read it.” I glared down at my daughter, grateful for my advantage in height. “Read, or I will take a switch to you.”

Jane picked up a book—I recognized it as Plato—and stumbled her way through its pages, half reading, half crying with frustration. When Aylmer came back, she looked to him for rescue but got none. When her voice grew hoarse, he hauled her to her feet and walked her in circles around the room, then sat her down after a while of this and ordered her to write out a translation of what she was reading. All this time, she was sweating and having the utmost difficulty catching her breath.

For a couple of hours, we kept up this parody of a normal day’s study, until the physician arrived to confirm what I had guessed for myself. He allowed Jane to take to her bed, but bade me to continue to keep her awake and to make her sweat even more. Obediently, I swaddled Jane as tightly as a newborn babe in layers of blankets, ordered that the servants who had bravely ventured into the sickroom stoke the fire, and poked and prodded Jane every time she showed an inclination to shut her eyes.

Late in the evening, Jane begged to use the chamber pot. The physician nodded in satisfaction as she did so. “Copious urination. A good sign.”

Settling back in bed, Jane glared at him as he studied her prodigious output. “I wish you would go away.”

“Disrespect to one’s elders,” the physician said. “An even better sign.”

Jane turned her glare on me as I tried to wrap her blankets around her again. “Would you stop that, Mother?”

I nervously touched Jane’s forehead. It was cool. The physician followed suit and gave another nod of approval. “I believe the crisis is over, my lady. If the lady Jane continues as she is for another hour or so, she may sleep.”

***

When the physician at last consented for Jane to sleep, I watched her nervously, expecting every breath to be her last. But she grew visibly better as she slumbered through the night, and when the sun rose, she looked almost her usual self, except that after waking she was content to loll back against her pillows and doze some more. Her condition was so promising, I, too, could sleep for the first time in four-and-twenty hours, leaving Jane under the eye of our servants. When I returned to her side, Jane was sitting up against her pillows, sipping ale and staring at what she had written when her tutor and I had kept her awake. “I wrote this? It’s barely coherent, complete nonsense.”

“I will have to take your word for it, because it all looks like nonsense to me.”

“Little Mary could have done better.”

“You were very ill.”

Jane looked up at me with eyes that were mercifully clear and bright again, if weary. Then she lowered her gaze. “The physician told me that you kept me awake,” she said to her paper.

“They say it is dangerous to sleep when one has the sweat.”

“He said that you probably saved my life.”

“The Lord saved your life. I did only what he enabled me to remember was necessary.”

Jane raised her eyes back to me and gave me a rare smile. “Thank you, Mother.”

“There is no need to thank me for doing what I desired most as your mother.”

Jane said nothing, and I did not want to break this happy moment by speaking further, and possibly saying the wrong thing. My daughter had lived, and lived to smile at me. That was enough.

In early April, the king gave all of England a terrible fright: he fell ill of the measles and the smallpox. Some cruel people said it was God’s wrath, punishing him for allowing the death of Somerset; others openly wondered whether the lady Mary would soon become queen. But the king soon shook off the illness. By St. George’s Day, there was almost no sign he had been ill, except for a few stray pocks on his face.

With the king well mended, John and I traveled to Otford Palace in Kent, to spend a few days relaxing in the country before John went to the North on the king’s business. With us were our children and their spouses. Even those who served the king, like my older sons and Henry Sidney, had obtained a few days’ leave. There was more than enough room for us. Otford had once been the palace of the Archbishops of Canterbury, one of whom, William Wareham, had built a palace there to rival Cardinal Wolsey’s Hampton Court. So successful had he been that some years later, King Henry had taken a fancy to Otford, and the current archbishop, Thomas Cranmer, had obligingly, and sensibly, given him the palace. Recently, King Edward had given it to John. I could not walk around the vast expanse of Otford without thinking of my childhood home of Halden, also in Kent but a world away from the grandeur here.

“Is it true that you’re to marry the Earl of Cumberland’s daughter?” Robert asked Guildford one evening as we had settled in what once had been the archbishop’s private quarters.

“Father wants me to,” Guildford said gloomily.

“Most men wouldn’t complain about marrying an earl’s only child,” John said dryly. “Particularly men who are fourth sons.”

“But the girl’s never been out of Yorkshire!” Guildford said. “I hear that her father’s practically a recluse there.”

“There’s a romantic story about that,” said Mary. “Do you want to hear it?”

“Oh, please!” said Katheryn.

“His father built a tower and a gallery just to welcome his wife, the lady Eleanor,” Mary said. “She was the younger sister of the lady Frances, you know. The earl fell passionately in love with her.”

“‘Passionately!’” mimicked Hal. He gave a mock bow when Mary glared at him. “Go on, Sister.”

“He fell
passionately
in love with her,” continued Mary. “But then she fell ill and died. The earl was heartbroken. He would not eat or take drink, and finally he fell so ill that he was given up for dead. He was actually laid out for burial, when his men saw signs of life in him and managed to revive him. But he was so weak after that, he could drink only milk from a woman’s breast.”

“Ugh,” said Hal.

“I hope he paid the lady well,” said Robert. He nudged Ambrose. “What sort of annuity do you think that would rate?”

“Depends on how handsome the earl is,” Ambrose said.

Mary raised her voice. “After a few weeks of that, he recovered, but he has never ceased to grieve for the lady Eleanor, whom they say was as fair as her mother, the French queen. His daughter is very dear to him, as her only child, and they say he is reluctant to see her married.”

“Thank God for that,” said Guildford. “Perhaps I won’t satisfy his tastes.”

“He has an excellent library,” Mary offered consolingly.

“If he does consent, I’ll most likely have to live at Skipton Castle with them, among the sheep,” Guildford said. “And the girl probably speaks with a northern accent.”

“And kills and skins her own supper each night,” said Robert.

“And has a tail,” added Hal.

“Look on the bright side,” Jack advised. “If all she’s seen are the northern men, you’ll probably look to her like King David.”

“The negotiations are not far along at all,” said John, who had been enjoying this banter thoroughly. “There will be plenty of time to civilize the young lady before your wedding, should her father and I reach an agreement.”

“Just don’t drink the milk at Skipton Castle,” Hal advised. “God only knows where it comes from.”

I decided it was time to take this conversation to a higher level. “Perhaps we might have some music,” I suggested. I looked at Ambrose’s wife, who played the lute beautifully. “Maybe you can play for us?”

Nan, who was always glad to perform, obliged, and soon all of my daughters and daughters-in-law were singing, even the Countess of Warwick. Her scratchy little voice was not exactly melodious, but thanks largely to the kindnesses of the other ladies in my family and Jack, she had become a little more amiable lately, so I listened and forced myself not to wince when she hit a high note. Besides, I had a surprise planned. When the singing was done, I held out a book to Anne. “I obtained this the other day, Anne. I thought you might want to read it to us, as we have not heard it.”

Anne stared at the book. It was of her own authorship, a collection of verses she and two of her younger sisters had written to commemorate the death of the learned Marguerite of Navarre. It had been published in Paris two years before. “How did you get a copy of this?”

“Jack gave it to me. Will you read it? The French verses,” I added hastily. “I do not know Latin, and I would like to understand what is being read.”

Anne hesitated, but the vanity of authorship proved uppermost, as I had hoped, and she stood to read us her and her sisters’ production. I wondered at the beginning, when her voice faltered when reading of Marguerite’s death, whether I might have been opening a wound, but she quickly regained her composure and read with a feeling that touched me.

Begin to bear in your hand the honor of the victorious palm branch, both because you won and because you were strong.

By this time you are standing before the stronghold of the throne; now you are adoring the Might of God; you shout greetings to the One Alone who sits in the stronghold.

You are holding in your hand true offerings, a casket of real incense and simple prayers not without understanding.

Now a Divine One joined to the celestial choir, you will not fear thirst or hunger, cold or heat.

“That was beautiful,” said Mary before I could speak. “I wish I could do as well as you and your sisters, Anne, and I am older than you.”

Anne blushed and looked pleased. That night, for the first time since her marriage to our son, she let me give her a good-night kiss on her cheek as we made our way to our various bedchambers.

***

I fell asleep that night in the arms of my husband. Late, late that night, a scream awakened me from a pleasant dream. “What is it?” I said, blinking as John and I untangled ourselves to sit up and stare around. Then the first thought of a loyal courtier came to mind. “The king? Is the king ill?”

My door slammed open without a knock. “My lady—my lord—forgive me. The lord Ambrose’s lady is dreadfully ill.”

Throwing on just enough clothing to hide our nakedness, we rushed to Nan’s chamber, where Ambrose sat clutching his wife in his arms. She was shivering and covered with sweat. As we came in, she glanced at us vaguely, as if not quite understanding who we were. “She was fine earlier tonight. We even…” Ambrose’s voice trailed off. “Her illness came on just a short time ago.”

John’s physician pushed into the chamber and pried Nan out of Ambrose’s arms. After examining her, he told us what we had all suspected: our daughter-in-law most likely had the sweat. John promptly gave orders that the rest of the household be kept far away from Nan’s rooms, which was a simple matter, given the size of Otford.

For the rest of the night and day, we attended on Nan. To John’s fury, in our absence, one of Nan’s waiting women allowed her to rise to sit upon the close stool, which brought on a fainting fit, and, we thought, certain death. She quickly revived, however, and by midmorning seemed to be past the most serious part of her illness. But by noon, she was markedly worse. Finally, at six in the evening, she breathed her last in Ambrose’s arms.

Every now and then, I felt an ache for the old religion, for the practice of saying prayers for the dead. I felt it now as I saw this lovely young woman, who less than four-and-twenty hours ago had been strumming her lute and laughing at my sons’ jokes, lying motionless and cold on her bed. Superstition such prayers might have been, perhaps, but—

I touched Ambrose’s shaking shoulder. “
Now
a
Divine
One
joined
to
the
celestial
choir, you will not fear thirst or hunger, cold or heat,
” I recited softly.

Ambrose nodded dumbly, my words small comfort to him. Then Robert—who like the rest of my children had been barred from the sickroom—walked in and knelt beside his brother. “Come with me,” he said after a while, and gently led Ambrose away.

A few days later, we left Otford Palace, never to return. The next spring, John exchanged it for other land. It was too large to keep up properly, he explained to the king.