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For my sister
BOOK I
JANE
BRADGATE HOUSE, GROBY, LEICESTERSHIRE, SPRING 1550
I love my father because I know that he will never die. Neither will I. We are chosen by God and we walk in His ways, and we never swerve from them. We don’t have to earn our place in heaven by bribing God with acts or Masses. We don’t have to eat bread and pretend it is flesh, drink wine and call it blood. We know that is folly for the ignorant and a trap for papist fools. This knowledge is our pride and glory. We understand, as more and more do in these days: we have been saved once and for all. We have no fear, for we will never die.
True, my father is worldly: sinfully worldly. I wish he would let me wrestle with his soul, but he laughs and says, “Go away, Jane, and write to our friends the Swiss reformers. I owe them a letter—you can write for me.”
It is wrong of him to avoid holy discourse, but this is only the sin of inattention—I know he is heart and soul for the true religion. Also, I must remember that he is my father and I owe obedience to my father and mother—whatever my private opinion of them. God, who sees all, will be the judge of them. And God has seen my father and forgiven him already; my father is saved through faith.
I fear my mother will not be saved from the fires of hell, and my sister Katherine, who is three years younger than me, a child of nine years old, is almost certainly going to die and never rise again. She is unbelievably silly. If I were a superstitious fool, I would really think she is possessed; she is quite beyond hope. My baby sister, Mary, was born into original sin and cannot grow out of it. She is quite tiny. She is as pretty as a little miniature version of our sister, Katherine, tiny as a doll. My lady mother would have sent her away as a baby to be raised far from us, and spare us the shame, but my father had too much compassion for his last stunted child, and so she lives with us. She is not an idiot—she does her lessons well, she is a clever little girl—but she has no sense of the grace of God; she is not one of the elect like Father and me. One like her—whose growth has been blighted by Satan—should be particularly fervent for salvation. I suppose a five-year-old is a little young to renounce the world—but I was studying Latin when I was four, and Our Lord was the same age as I am now when He went to the Temple and preached to the wise men. If you do not learn the ways of the Lord when you are in the cradle, when will you make a start?
I have studied since I was a child. I am most probably the most learned young person in the whole country, raised in the reformed religion, the favorite of the great scholar and queen Kateryn Parr. I am probably the greatest young scholar in Europe, certainly the most educated girl. I don’t consider my cousin Princess Elizabeth a true student, for many are called but few are chosen. Poor Elizabeth shows no signs of being chosen, and her studies are very worldly. She wants to be seen as clever, she wants to please her tutors and exhibit herself. Even I have to take care that I do not fall into the sin of pride, though my mother says, rudely, that my principal care should be that I do not fall into being completely ridiculous. But when I explain to her that she is in a state of sin, she takes me by the ear and threatens to beat me. I would gladly take a beating for my faith, just as the saint Anne Askew did, but I think it more pleasing to God to apologize, curtsey, and sit down at the dinner table. Besides, there is a pie of pears with burnt cream for dinner, which is my favorite.
It really is not easy to be a shining light in Bradgate. It is a worldly house and we are a big household. It is a great building, a brick-built house as red as Hampton Court, with a gatehouse that looms as large as that palace and set among the huge forest of Charnwood. We have every right to royal magnificence. My mother is the daughter of Princess Mary, who was Queen of France, the favorite sister of King Henry VIII, so my mother is heir to the throne of England after the late king’s children, my cousins the princesses, Mary and Elizabeth, who are heirs to their younger brother, King Edward. This makes us the most important family in England, and we never forget it. We keep a houseful of retainers, more than three hundred, to serve the five of us; we own a stable filled with beautiful horses and the parkland all around the house, and farms and villages, rivers and lakes at the very heart of England. We have our own bear for baiting, kept caged in the stables, our own bear pit, our own cock-fighting ring. Our house is one of the biggest in the Middle Lands; we have a great hall with a musicians’ gallery at one end and a royal dais at the other. The most beautiful countryside in England is ours. I have been brought up to know that all this land belongs to me, just as we belong to England.
Of course, between my lady mother and the throne are the three royal children: Edward, the king, who is only twelve like me, and so he rules with a lord president, and then his older sisters Princess Mary and Princess Elizabeth. Sometimes people don’t count the two princesses as heirs, since they were both named bastards and denied by their own father. They would not even be included in the royal family but for the Christian kindness of my teacher Kateryn Parr, who brought them to court and had them acknowledged. Even worse, Princess Mary (God forgive her) is a declared and open papist and heretic, and though I am bound to love her as a cousin, it is a horror to me to be in her house, where she keeps the hours of the liturgy as if she is living in a convent and not in a reformed kingdom, for all England is Protestant now under King Edward.
I don’t speak of Princess Elizabeth. I never do. I saw more than enough of her when we both lived with Queen Kateryn and her young husband, Thomas Seymour. All I will say is that Elizabeth should be ashamed of herself and she will have to answer to God for what she did. I saw it. I was there during the chasing and the tickling and the romping with her own stepmother’s husband. She led Thomas Seymour—a great man—on to imprudence and then to his death. She was guilty of lust and adultery—in her heart if not in his bed. She is as guilty of his death as if she named him as a treasonous plotter and led him to the scaffold. She willed him to think of himself as her lover and her husband, and the two of them as heirs to the throne. She may not have said so much: she did not have to say so much. I saw how she was with him and I know what she made him do.
But—no—I do not judge. I will not judge. I never judge. That is for God. I have to retain a modest thought, an averted gaze, and compassion as from one sinner to another. And I am certain that God won’t think of her either, when she is in the fires of hell, praying too late for her unchastity, disloyalty, and ambition. God and I will pity her, and leave her to her infinite punishment.
At any rate, since Princess Mary and Elizabeth were both declared illegitimate, and are both clearly unsuited for the throne, these half sisters to King Edward have less of a legal claim than the daughter of King Henry’s favorite sister, Queen Mary, which is to say: my mother.
And this is the very reason, the very reason, why it is so important that she study the reformed faith and put aside brilliant adornment. She should avoid feasts and drinking, she should dance only with the most chaste ladies of her household and not ride around the country on that great horse of hers all day, hunting whatever is in season as if she were some sort of hungry beast of the field. The great woods around our house echo with her hunting horns, the meadows are flushed for game. Dogs die in the bear pit, heifers are slaughtered outside the flesh ki
tchen. I am so afraid that she is lustful (the Tudors are terribly lustful), I know that she is proud (all the Tudors are born tyrants), and anyone can see that she is extravagant and loves worldly show.
I should reprimand her, but when I say to my tutor that I am nerving myself to tell my mother that she is guilty at the very least of pride, wrath, gluttony, lust, and greed, he says nervously to me, “Lady Jane, truly: better not,” and I know that he is afraid of her, as is everyone—even my father. This only goes to show that she is guilty of unwomanly ambition, as well as everything else.
I would be as fearful as all the weakly others, but I am borne up by my faith. I really am. This is not easy if you follow the reformed faith. Courage is easy for papists—each fool has a dozen objects to instruct and encourage him: the icons in the church, the glass in the windows, the nuns, the priest, the choir, the incense, the heady taste of wine, which they convince themselves tastes salty of blood. But all these are vanity and emptiness. I know that I am borne up by faith because I go down on my knees in a cool white chapel in silence, and then I hear the voice of God speaking to me alone, gently like a loving father. I read my Bible for myself, nobody reads it to me, and then I hear the Word of God. I pray for wisdom and when I speak I know it is in the words of the Bible. I am His handmaiden and His mouthpiece—and that is why it is so very wrong for my mother to shout, “For the love of God, take that long face out of here, and go hunting before I chase you out of the library myself!”
Very wrong. I pray that God will forgive her, as I do. But I know He will not forget the insult to me, His handmaiden; and neither will I. I take a horse from the stables but I do not go hunting. Instead, I ride with my sister Katherine, a groom following behind us. We can ride all day in any direction and never leave our lands. We canter through meadows and skirt fields where the oats are growing, green and thick; we splash through fords and let the horses drink the clear water. We are children of the royal family of England, happiest in the English countryside, blessed in our inheritance.
Today, for some reason, my mother is all smiles and I have been told to wear my new dress, a gown of deep red velvet, which came from London last week, with a rich black hood and sleeves, as we have honored guests for dinner. I ask our lord chamberlain who is coming, and he says it is the former lord protector, Edward Seymour the Duke of Somerset. He was in the Tower for treason and now he is released, and returning to the Privy Council. These are the dangerous times that we live in.
“And he’s bringing his son,” says the chamberlain, and he dares to wink at me, as if I am some lighthearted girl who would be foolishly excited by the news.
“Oh, how exciting!” says my lighthearted sister Katherine.
I give a patient sigh and say that I will be reading in my bedroom until it is time for me to dress for dinner. If I close the door between my bedroom and our privy chamber, it may be that Katherine takes the hint and stays out.
Not so.
Within a moment there is a tap on the linenfold-panel door, and she puts her fair head into my private room and says: “Oh! Are you studying?” As if I ever do anything else.
“Certainly, that was my intention when I closed my door.”
She is deaf to irony. “What do you think the Duke of Somerset is coming here for?” she asks, tripping into the room without any invitation. Mary trails in behind her, as if my rooms are a royal presence chamber and anyone can get past the sergeant porter if they have good enough clothes.
“Are you bringing that disgusting monkey in here?” I cut across her as I see him riding on her shoulder.
She looks shocked. “Of course I am. Mr. Nozzle goes with me everywhere. Except when I visit the poor bear. He is afraid of the poor bear.”
“Well, he can’t come in here and spoil my papers.”
“He will not. He will sit on my lap. He is a very good Mr. Nozzle.”
“Take him out.”
“I won’t.”
“Take him out, I command it.”
“You can’t make me.”
“I am the oldest and these are my rooms . . .”
“I am the prettiest and I am visiting you from politeness . . .”
We scowl at each other. She shows me his silver chain that goes around his scrawny black neck. “Jane, please! I will hold him tight,” she promises me.
“I shall hold him for you!” Mary offers, so now I have the two of them clamoring to hold the monkey, who should not be in my rooms anyway.
“Oh, just go!” I say irritably. “Both of you.”
But instead Katherine turns and hauls Mary up into a chair where the child sits, no bigger than a doll, smiling at me with all the charm in the world.
“Sit straight,” Katherine reminds her, and Mary puts back her shoulders and sits up tall.
“No! Just go!”
“I will, as soon as I have asked you this question.” Katherine is happy because she is getting her own way as usual. She is ridiculously pretty, and about as sensible as Mr. Nozzle.
“Very well,” I say sternly. “Ask your question, and then go.”
She takes a breath. “Why do you think the Duke of Somerset is coming here?”
“I have no idea.”
“Because I know. So why don’t you? I thought you were supposed to be so very, very clever?”
“I don’t want to know,” I say simply.
“I can tell you. All you know is stuff in books.”
“Stuff in books,” I repeat the words of an ignorant child. “Indeed. I do know ‘stuff in books’ but if I wanted to know worldly news, I would ask my father, who would tell me the truth. I would not go round eavesdropping on my parents and listening to servants’ gossip.”
She jumps up on my big wooden bed as if she is planning to stay until dinnertime, and then props herself up against the pillow as if she is going to sleep here. The monkey makes himself comfortable beside her, and runs his skinny little fingers through his own silky fur.
“Does he have fleas?”
“Oh, yes,” she says indifferently. “But not lice.”
“Then get him off my bed!”
In reply, she gathers him onto her lap. “Don’t fuss, because it is so exciting. They’re coming for your betrothal!” she announces. “There! I thought that would make you jump.”
I am jumping so little that I keep one steady finger in the book to mark my place. “And where d’you get that from?”
“Everyone knows,” she says, which means that it is servants’ gossip, as I predicted. “Oh, you’re so lucky! I think Ned Seymour is the most handsome young man in the world.”
“Yes, but you like anything in hose.”
“He has such kind eyes.”
“Certainly he has eyes, but they do not have the power of emotion, only of sight.”
“And a lovely smile.”
“I imagine that he smiles like anyone else, but I have not bothered to look.”
“And he rides beautifully and he has beautiful clothes and he is the son of the most powerful man in England. There is no greater family than the Seymours. No one richer. They are wealthier than us. They are even closer to the throne than us.”
I think, but I don’t say, that the greatness of the family was no protection for Thomas Seymour, who was beheaded just a year ago because of Elizabeth, and not even his older brother could save him. Then the brother, the lord protector himself, was disgraced, and is now trying to scrabble back into power.
“The handsome son of the lord protector,” she breathes.
As usual, she is in a muddle. “He’s not lord protector anymore; his post has been abolished,” I correct her. “The council is run by the lord president, John Dudley. If you want an alliance with the coming men, it’s the Dudleys.”
“Well, he’s still the king’s uncle, and Ned is still Earl of Hertford.”
“Edward Seymour,” I correct her.
“Edward or Ned! Who cares?”
“And does everyone say that I am to be betr
othed to him?” I ask.
“Yes,” she says simply. “And when you’re married, you’ll have to go away again. I shall miss you. Although all you ever do is complain that I am stupid, it’s much nicer when you’re here. I missed you when you lived with Queen Kateryn. Honestly, I was quite glad when she died—though very sorry for her, of course—because I hoped you’d come home to stay.”
“Don’t go, Jane,” Mary suddenly wails, following hardly any of this.
Despite knowing that the Bible says that a disciple must leave his house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, for the sake of the gospel, I am rather touched by this. “If I am called to a great place in the world I will have to go,” I tell her. “Our cousin King Edward has a godly court, and I should be happy to live there, and if God calls me to a great place in the world, then I will be a model for those who look up to me. And when your turn comes, I will show you how to behave if you will do exactly as I tell you. Actually, I’ll miss you too, and little Mary, if I have to go.”
“Will you miss Mr. Nozzle?” Katherine asks hopefully, crawling down the bed and lifting him towards me so his sad little face is close to mine.
Gently, I push her hands away. “No.”
“Well, when my turn comes to be married, I hope he’s as handsome as Ned Seymour,” she says. “And I shouldn’t mind being the Countess of Hertford, either.”
I realize that this will be my new name and title, and when Ned’s father dies, Ned will become Duke of Somerset and I shall be a duchess. “God’s will be done,” I say, thinking of the strawberry leaves of a duchess’s coronet, and the heavy softness of ermine on my collar. “For you as well as me.”
“Amen,” she says dreamily, as if she is still thinking of Ned Seymour’s smile. “Oh, Amen.”
“I very much doubt that God will make you a duchess,” I point out.
She looks at me, her blue eyes wide, her skin, pale like mine, now flushed rosy. “Oh, pray it for me,” she says trustingly. “You can get me a duke if you pray for me, Jane. You know you’re so godly, you can surely get God to give me a duke. Ask Him for a handsome one.”