Raven Queen (16 page)

This morning, the Queen summoned me to her Presence Chamber. It is many weeks since I have seen her and she has changed. I know already that she has decided to marry King Philip of Spain and unite two Catholic countries, but I do not know how much love has softened her.

She tells me that she has decided at last: she will free Jane.

“The trial was only for show,” she explains. “I had to prove to the people that their new Queen was made of stern stuff. Now they have forgotten all about it.”

I tremble. “And Guildford?”

“The marriage will be annulled.” She smiles. “
You
should have told me how you felt about my little cousin, Ned, not Doctor Feckenham. I would have understood.”

I kneel and kiss her hand and thank her all muddled up together.

“I think we have just lost a priest.” She laughs kindly. “But I am so happy that I want everybody to be happy.”

“May I tell her, Your Grace?”

She frowns and I take a deep breath as she replies,
“Si, pequenito. Si.
”

Snow softens the winter bleakness as I arrive at the Tower. Everything is white, glinting in the frost, mingling earth with sky, silencing all sound.

They have given us fifteen minutes together in the Queen’s garden. As I wait for the guards to bring her, I watch a raven huddling on the oak, half-hidden by a creeping mist. Snowflakes swirl around his head, sticking to his feathers, softening the branches even more.

She is dressed in black, pearls at her neck, a hooded cloak. I swirl her round until my head is giddy. “You will have to wait for your paradise. Queen Mary has forgiven you!”

Her frown deepens. “For what, Ned? A life with Guildford! I would rather die!”

My heart turns over with love for her. “The Queen is annulling your marriage to Guildford. You will be free, Jane.”

She stands still with shock. “So we shall both have what we want,” she whispers. “I shall be free of the Dudleys. You can be free in a Catholic England. Who would have thought it, Ned? God has finally answered our prayers.”

A hissing like the sound of angry geese forces us to turn round and look up. High on the roof of the Beauchamp Tower stand the Dudley brothers, mingling with the ravens already perching there. Each wears the black of mourning like snow spattered feathers ruffled by the frosty wind.

We turn our backs to them.

The clock on the White Tower chimes once and the guards come to claim her. Jane clings to me. “When will they let me leave?”

“Shush…do not think about that now. Soon.”

“Where will I go?”

“Across the sea! With me!”

“Imagine not seeing any land! What if I am seasick?” She holds me once more. “I am nearer to my dreams of freedom than I have ever been, Ned. They will not slip away from me this time.”

I kiss her. “No, I shall not let them. You shall live the life you want. Until I see you again, may God go with you.”

“And with you,” she replies.

They take her in. I stand there until the next chime, until the snow hides her footprints as if she has never been there.

Whispers reached me through the January mists, through cracks in the walls, through gaps in the tapestries, forcing me to look across the river, hoping that the men I could see were the ghosts of my imagination and not Protestant plotters. There were many Protestants who did not want Mary on the throne of England. I had always feared they would rise against her and put me back on the throne.

Now I faced my fear. Thomas Wyatt’s men, arrived from Kent to overthrow Mary, thronged the banks of the frozen Thames, unable to cross London Bridge because the Queen had ordered four houses in the centre to be destroyed.

Some of the men tottered onto the ice, confident until they were half-across and it creaked and cracked, plunging them to the river bed, already ice-blue. The men behind them scrambled back to the bank. Then, with great weariness, they trudged away, towards Richmond, to another bridge.

Worry furrowed Ellie’s face like a winter field. She knew my misery and had matched it with her own as she heard me weep, heard me tear at my skin with my nails.

That evening, a single halo circled the moon. Always a sign of a storm, Ellie warned. The sky over the Tower deepened to orange and the ravens fell silent. All night long, hailstones drummed on the glass and the wind howled, and as soon as it was light, I ran to the oak tree. It was still standing proud and straight, but at its crown was a gaping hole. I fell to my knees on the muddy ground and wept.

The raven made his way carefully through the debris. I held out my hand, hardly breathing, and it came to me, its feathers lustrous in the rain, its beak open to drink in the droplets.

“Be off with you, devil bird!” The raven flew off and I looked up to see a tall man in the mist. I thought it was John Dudley’s ghost and in a sense it was, because Guildford loomed in front of me.

“What do you want?” I asked.

I did not know that he was capable of such anger. The words spilled from his bloodless lips like berries from the raven’s beak. “Innocent Lady Jane, misunderstood and badly treated, weeping in her tower for her loss of freedom, Lady Jane who never wanted to be Queen…” He stopped for breath. “Oh you are clever, My Lady, far cleverer than I am. You are on a par with my father. You are two of a kind. But you have put us both in danger now. I curse the Greys and the day I ever met them!” His anger astonished me. Then he cried, making no effort to wipe away his tears and they splattered to the ground.

“What have I done, Guildford? Tell me!” I moved closer and I smelt his fear.

“No! You tell me!” He spat in his rage.

“I do not know what has happened, Guildford, and that is the truth. If you know, tell me, I beg you.”

My words calmed him. “Your father is being brought to the Tower as a prisoner.” I steadied myself against the oak. “Whilst Wyatt was marching on our city gates, he was in Leicestershire – raising an army…to overthrow Queen Mary, along with Wyatt. He wanted to proclaim you Queen again.” His lips curved into a sneer. “You may as well lie down over that oak branch now and let them chop off your head.”

I did not remember how long I stayed there, only that Ellie came to me and draped a cloak around my shoulders. “My father has betrayed me a second time,” I muttered. She rubbed my hands and feet, gave me hot milk and honey, pinched my cheeks to bring back the blood.

But I was lifeless.

I learned later that when he failed to raise an army, my father ran away and hid in a hollow tree where hunting dogs sniffed him out.

He had truly lost his head. And now I could lose mine. Terror consumed me.

“Soon my life will hang by a thread,” I whispered to Ellie. “How many blows of the axe will it take to kill me?”

I cannot sleep for all the commotion. Cutting, sawing, hammering. There are gallows everywhere for Wyatt’s men, stark against the winter sky – even in the churchyards.

London is loud with the dead and dying.

Hangings punctuate the day like the chimes of a clock. Some call to God, some cry for their mothers and some curse, but death comes to them anyway and their bodies stiffen, frosted within the hour like sweetmeats, their eyes glazed like berries.

Bodies sway in the breeze as far as I can see. A leg, an arm, a face, touching and turning in a deadly dance, their clothes fluttering like the last leaves.

I can never forget that I was almost one of them the year before last.

I have heard it all. Thomas Wyatt is in the Tower. Jane’s father is in the Tower. Jane is… I cannot even think it.

The Queen is in the chapel and I wait until she turns to leave. Then I stretch out on the floor and clutch the hem of her dress. “Forgive her, Your Grace. Her father is a vain ambitious man. She did not know what he was doing.” I look up at her. “And you, Your Grace. You are her cousin. Families do not desert each other in times of trouble.”

She looks back at me with desperate eyes. “You are still such a child, Ned. Do you not know that the most dangerous enemy is your own family? They can hate you as suddenly as they can love you.” She smiles, her eyes vacant as she looks down at me. “And the cruellest thing of all, Ned, is that Jane will not forsake her faith for love of life. You shall not see each other in the life after death.”

I open my mouth to scream. But I have to stop myself. There is no going back now. I know that. I have to ask her one last favour.

She nods, eyes brimming with tears, and walks away.

The clock strikes midnight. The twelfth day of February in the year of our Lord, 1554. It has come at last. My death day.

Beauty comes to the Tower on moonlit nights such as this. The white-washed walls shine and the moat sparkles. The moon is full, lighting up the oak scaffold. They have killed a living oak for me and its pale wood will be stained with my blood. I shudder to think that it will be spilled for all the world to see. I shudder to think that they will hold up my head and call me a traitor.

I was right. Wife. Queen. It has brought me to my knees, though not in prayer.

A visitor came to me last night.

Dear Doctor Aylmer.

He knelt before me, kissing my hands, his cheeks glistening. When he rose to his feet, I saw that his eyes had dulled as if he no longer wanted to wonder at the world. I threw myself into his arms.

“How can the Queen do this to you, Jane? How can she kill
you,
her own cousin?”

“How can she
not
do it?” I reply. “She has to protect her kingdom from fools like my father – and me. Through no fault of my own, I am her greatest threat. She has no choice and I forgive her for it. In her eyes, I am a traitor. But what hurts me most is my mother. She begs daily for my father’s life, but not for mine.” My heart lurched. “You are not a prisoner here, too?”

“No! But I am too outspoken to live under a Catholic Queen. I am going to Zurich to join Ulmis and Bullinger.”

“They forgot me,” I said.

He embraced me tightly and spoke the words that Socrates uttered just before he took poison. “
I pray that the removal from this world will be a happy one. That is my prayer. So may it be
.”

I touched his wet cheeks. “
I have heard that one should die in silence
,” I continued. “
Come now, calm yourself and have strength
.”

I went to my little table, pulled open the drawer and took out sheets of writing paper. “I have written everything down. One day, I may be just a sentence in a history book. I want everybody to know the truth about what has happened to me.”

He put out his hand to take them, but I shook my head. “Wait until my story ends. When it does, I shall entrust them to Mistress Ellen.”

Doctor Aylmer pulled his hood across his face and left me as quietly as he had come.

There is much to be done, for dying is a busy occupation. I write to my father first. Although I am angry, I forgive him, for he has surely brought about his own death and we do not want to quarrel about it in heaven.

I delay writing to Catherine. I cannot bear to say goodbye to her. I leave her my prayer book and I write on the blank pages at the back:
I have sent you, dear sister, a book. It will teach you how to live and how to die. By losing my life, I shall find eternal happiness. We shall meet in heaven when it pleases God to call you.