The Fallen Queen (29 page)

“Come, Guildford!” she said, holding the dressing gown out for him to slip his arms into, then kneeling to slide his feet into the slippers as though he were a little child. “I, your loving mother, cannot permit you to share the bed of such an ungrateful, undutiful wife who denies you the kingship that you deserve, and, as her husband, is your right!”

“Yes, Mother.” Guildford nodded dutifully.

“You selfish girl,” she continued to berate Jane as Kate, Mrs. Ellen, and I rushed out, in our night robes and caps with our hair hanging down in braids, from the adjoining room where Jane had asked us to stay the night. She had felt unwell after dinner and feared her fever was returning and wanted us near in the hope that our presence would deter a scene such as this one. “Don’t you know that you owe your crown to us?” the Duchess demanded. “If it had not been for my husband, you would not be queen at all! We have given you the most precious jewel of our family—Guildford! How can you be so ungrateful? To deny him the Crown! Look at him! If any man deserves a crown, it’s Guildford!”

“A bright, shiny gold one with emeralds to accentuate my eyes,” Guildford interjected. “I want
everyone
to say King Guildford is the brightest coin in the realm! And I want my profile minted on all the coins too! Well, all the
gold
ones,” he amended. “You can have the silver ones, Jane, since after all, you are queen.”

“Is there no end to your vanity?” Jane glared hard at him, then turned back to the Duchess and said frostily, “The Crown is not a plaything for boys and girls. When I look at Guildford, I see a man behaving like a petulant child who has been denied a toy he covets.”

The Duchess looked angry enough to strike Jane, but somehow she held back, and instead spun on her heel and marched out, calling, “Come, Guildford!”

“Yes, Mother!” Guildford called, then turned back to Jane. “I will not be a duke, I will be king! If you are queen, it only stands to reason that I am king!” Then he impulsively flung wide his dressing gown, exposing his body in full, naked glory one last time before Jane’s wide-open, astonished eyes, to remind her what she would be missing. “Don’t look to have me again,” he said cattily, closing his robe and knotting the sash tight, “unless I am crowned king. Only then will this jewel again be yours!” With a toss of his golden curls, and his perfect nose haughty high in the air, he followed his mother out the door and down the torch-lit corridor to the bedchamber she had ordered prepared for him.

Fluttering her hand over her heart, Kate sank down onto the foot of Jane’s bed. “Oh my!” She shook her head again as if to clear it of the vision of Guildford’s nakedness. “Jane, if I weren’t already married … if I didn’t love Berry so much … Oh, Jane! I would swap husbands with you in a heartbeat! Guildford is so very …”

“Vain, arrogant, childish, petulant, absurd, vapid, conceited, insufferable, ignorant, and empty-headed!” Jane unleashed a furious rush of words. “He’s the worst kind of fool—the kind who thinks he isn’t one! I hate him! If it were up to me, I would say, ‘Take him!’ but you’re my sister, Kate, and I love you, and I wouldn’t wish Guildford Dudley on my worst enemy! A knife in the eye is almost preferable to spending even one hour with him!”

“Well … yes”—Kate nodded slowly—“but he’s
so
good-looking! Everyone has faults, Jane; can’t you find it in your heart to be a little more tolerant and forgiving and try to regard his flaws as charming little foibles? After all, he’s
so
good-looking!”

“No!”
Jane said adamantly, lying back down and pounding her pillow hard. “I wanted my sisters here to comfort me, not to lecture me! Everyone is against me! No one cares about me and what I want and how I feel,” she cried, and promptly burst into tears, and both Kate and I had to rush to comfort her while Mrs. Ellen went to prepare a soothing draught that would ease her into a quiet sleep.

For the rest of their marriage, Jane and Guildford would sleep apart no matter how hard Kate and I tried to bring them back together. Their hot pride consigned them each to a cold and lonely bed.

The days rolled slowly past, and I watched my sister’s eyes grow dark shadowed and purple brown, mottled bruises blossom on her bare arms where she kept pinching herself in a vain attempt to wake herself up from the nightmare her life had become.

In her bedchamber, clad only in her shift—now the plainest garment she was allowed to wear—Jane would stand and stare at the many ornate clocks that the courtiers had, most curiously, given her as gifts. There were clocks of gold, clocks of silver, many beautifully enamelled, and yet more clocks made of ebony, ivory, exquisitely painted porcelain, jade, carved stone, honey-hued oak, and gleaming, dark, varnished cherry. They sat on every suitable surface, covering every table and lined up in neat rows upon the mantels of the great stone fireplaces that warmed Jane’s rooms. Her fingers would reach out and move the gilded hands around the ivory faces.

“If I were superstitious, I would take the gift of so many clocks as an omen that, for me, time is running out,” she said, although she was only fifteen.

The illness that had beset her in the early days of her marriage had returned; her skin had begun to peel and itch again and her hair to fall from her scalp; she burned with a persistent fever, and her stomach ached both outside and within as though a great, taut knot were lodged there and rejected all nourishment, and her bowels became once again watery and impulsive. She took to her bed, growing weaker as she refused to eat, insisting that it was all the work of Northumberland, he was having her food laced with a slow-acting poison and the only way she could save her life was to continue to deny Guildford the Crown, for the moment she relented and consented her life would be over, stolen by a killing dose.

Though neither of us liked Northumberland, or doubted he would have any qualms about poisoning anyone who stood in his way, Kate and I were certain this was not true. This belief was born only of Jane’s fear, and we tried to allay her suspicions by acting as her food tasters. But even though neither of us ever showed the slightest sign of sickness, still her fears would not perish. And the more Jane refused to eat, the sicker, and weaker, she became, turning away even from her beloved books, and only lifting her head to sign, without bothering to read, the papers the men from the Council laid before her. It was only when Kate began to bring her food prepared, under her strict supervision, from the kitchen at Baynard’s Castle that Jane began to rally. Within a few days, she was able to leave her bed and sit at the head of the Council table again.

She began to make an effort, saying if she must be queen, then she would be one who made a
real
difference. She banged her fists and slapped her palms down on the Council table and spoke heatedly about using her power to break the yoke of Rome, to smash idolatry, the veneration of the Virgin Mary, and the whole panoply of Papist saints, of freeing the people from the shackles of popish rituals and Catholic ceremonies that dazzled the eyes and duped the soul, and with their insistence on Latin that only the educated could understand, deafened the majority to the
true
word of God. She vowed to let God’s light shine clear, pure, bright, and true, not doused and diffused through the rosy stained glass of Catholicism, and to make a brave new world where people didn’t pander to superstitions and worship the baker’s bread, plaster saints, and jewelled crucifixes, or try to buy their way into heaven by purchasing indulgences. She said her reign must be for the greater good, that God, in His infinite wisdom, must have chosen her to be England’s and the Reformed Faith’s champion, as our cousin Mary, if she became queen, would most surely deliver England as a bridal gift to Spain and bring the Inquisition to these shores, and this might even lead to the very name of England being obliterated.

She also spoke about giving her royal patronage, monies, and aid to various charities in London to benefit poor widows and orphans and the deserving poor—by which she meant the Protestant poor or those willing to forsake Rome and embrace the Reformed Faith—and of sponsoring schools to nurture and encourage a love of learning in both boys and girls, and of doing something to remedy the debased currency that made English coins a joke throughout Europe where it was derisively referred to as “fairy money” as the coins themselves weren’t worth the values stamped on them. Jane said and planned so much. But no one was really listening, except Guildford, who chimed in, “And don’t forget clothing the naked, that’s really important, oh and feeding the hungry, and giving drink to the thirsty of course, but, by all means, cover the naked first, Jane!”

The men on the Council let Jane talk but took their orders from Northumberland. The truth was, they only supported Jane’s queenship out of cowardice and fear, because Northumberland had threatened and intimidated them, and they feared what he might do to them and their families if they opposed him. All of them, along with most of the nobility, had profited well by embracing the Reformed Religion. The spoils and plunder of the religious houses had made them all very rich. They had acquired wealth, lands, and the former monasteries and abbeys that stood on them, which they had either demolished to build anew or converted into lavish homes for themselves, and all the gold and silver plate that formerly adorned the altars now filled their cupboards, and precious jewels that had decorated shrines and reliquaries now adorned their persons. Thus they now lived in fear of the ascension of Mary, the punishments, reprisals, and loss that would surely follow as she endeavoured to restore the religion she considered the only true one. Surely this included returning all properties she regarded as stolen, and the monks and nuns who had been beggared by the dissolution would be rich once more, while England’s nobles would be considerably poorer, and once again the tithes would flow into the Pope’s coffers, and the greedy cardinals would descend like a flock of avaricious red birds upon England again.

Inside the Tower, rumours reached us that the people were rallying around our cousin Mary, “the one true queen.” Already she had amassed an army thirty thousand strong. Whenever I looked out the window, I saw the frantic preparations to mount a defence against her. The Tower teemed with armed men, and carts rolled in and out piled high with weaponry, ammunition, and other supplies to feed and equip an army. But Jane didn’t know any of this; she had taken to her bed again, simmering with fever and trying to escape a life she didn’t want into the sweet oblivion of sleep.

As soon as Jane was proclaimed Queen, Northumberland had sent his son Robert out, riding proud and arrogant, confident that he could never be defeated, at the head of an army of five hundred men to capture Princess Mary, but she eluded him. So it was imperative that someone else, someone more experienced, go, and bring her back to the Tower, a captive in chains. Northumberland wanted to send Father and had persuaded the Council that this was the wisest course. Northumberland knew that he was the glue holding this fragile reign together, and without him to threaten, domineer, and intimidate the Council their instinct for self-preservation would assert itself and they would flee to throw themselves on the mercy of Mary, even if they must forfeit their church spoils to save their lives.

Northumberland sent word, asking that Jane rise and receive the Council as they had business of the utmost importance to discuss with her; business that could not wait even one more day.

Mrs. Ellen and Mrs. Tylney tenderly raised her from her sickbed and covered her nightshift with a robe of ermine-bordered crimson velvet. They led her to sit in a gilded chair and bathed her face and hands with rosewater, while Kate brushed her hair. I brought a golden circlet for her head, but Jane mutely pushed it away. At a nod from Mrs. Ellen, I ran to let in the Council, but at the door I suddenly looked back. What a woebegone little figure she was! Sitting there, her bare toes barely brushing the floor, pale-faced and wretched, her eyes deep-sunken and dark-circled yet bloodshot and rimmed in red from weeping. Impulsively, I ran back and fetched a footstool and knelt to set her little white feet upon it. Only then did I open the door.

They strode in and, after kneeling to show their respect, stood around my sister’s chair like a flock of blackbirds, solemn-faced in their long black robes. All except Guildford, who was the last to arrive, sauntering in, a vision in gold-decked rose satin with Fluff purring in his arms. After bowing curtly to Jane and dutifully kissing her limp, fever-damp hand, he went to sit on the window seat and amuse himself by dangling a string for Fluff to bat his paws at, appearing utterly indifferent to what the Council had to say.

When Northumberland told Jane that Father must leave, to lead her army and fight for her throne, Jane fell to weeping, insisting that “no,
we
”—for the first and only time I heard her invoke the royal
we
—“have need of him here! He must tarry here in our company!”

She sat there hunched in her chair, looking
so
small in that voluminous red robe, shuddering and sobbing, I thought assuredly those black-robed men were moved by pity. Father forced his way through their black-robed ranks and gathered Jane in his arms, holding her tight, as her shuddering gradually subsided, and her sobs turned to hiccups, assuring her that he would not go, that he would never leave her.

He drew his trusty comfit box from his doublet and gave Jane a piece of candied ginger to suck, and then he turned to address the Council. “Gentlemen,” he announced, “I shall tarry here as my daughter desires and my Queen commands!”

They huddled together, voices rising high then dropping low, and thus it was decided that Northumberland should be the one to go. But it was not pity that moved them, it was just another one of those games that powerful men play, a canny manoeuvre to get Northumberland out of the way, to break his hold and set them free. No one cared what became of Jane.

Finally they bowed and, in solemn silence, filed out, with only Northumberland lingering long enough to glower at Jane and say, “You will regret this.” But Jane, slumped weakly in her chair, seemed not to hear. And then he too was gone.