“We can be together?” I don’t care if we spend the rest of our lives in the Tower if we can sleep in each other’s arms and he can see his son.
“It’s not how I hoped we would live, but it is the best we can do for now,” he says. “And still I have hopes. Elizabeth cannot defy all her advisors, and William Cecil and Robert Dudley know that we are innocent of everything but love. They are our friends. They want a Protestant heir to the throne, and we have him. They will work against Mary Queen of Scots; they will never accept her. I don’t despair, my love.”
“Nor do I,” I say, my courage leaping up at his words. “I don’t despair. I will never despair if I can be with you.”
THE TOWER, LONDON,
SUMMER 1562
Against all the odds, against the royal malice, we are happy. Ned’s mother sends him his rents and fees from his lands and interests, and so he is a wealthy prisoner. He bribes the guards and orders whatever we want. He comes to my rooms every evening and we dine together, play with our baby, and make love. The daytime becomes a time of waiting, when I study, care for our child, and write letters to my friends at court. Sir Edward, the lieutenant of the Tower, allows me to walk in his garden and I take the baby with me and put him down on a shawl on the sun-warmed grass so that he can kick his feet and watch the seagulls circling in the blue sky above him.
The night is when my real life begins, when the guard quietly admits Ned to my room, and we talk and read together. He watches me feed our son, swaddle him on his board, and hand him to the maid for the night, and then we dine well on delicacies that his mother has sent from Hanworth and treats delivered to the Tower for free, gifts from the people of London.
Every day Ned or I have a note or a letter from someone promising their support if we appeal against our sentence. Some of them promise that if we escape we shall find a haven. One or two even offer to raise an army and free us. All of them we burn at once, and never even speak of them. Elizabeth has ruled that we are sinners: she must not invent any worse crime to pin on us. We will not give her any excuse for a trial for treason.
But in any case, she is not attending to us this summer. Perhaps she thinks she has done all she can to ruin us and has turned her attention to other quarrels. She has arrested her dearest friend and lady-in-waiting Kat Ashley for recommending the suit of Prince Erik of Sweden. Elizabeth is more offended now by Kat recommending marriage than she was when Kat warned her that she was seen as a whore. Who can predict what will alert Elizabeth’s fears? Nobody knows what she will do next. She has become so frightened and so cruel that she has imprisoned her own beloved governess, the woman whom she says was like a mother to her.
“On what charge?” I demand of Ned.
“No charge,” he replies. “There is no charge. Elizabeth does not live within her own law. Kat Ashley is arrested on a whim. God knows what will become of her. Perhaps Elizabeth will name her crime, or perhaps she will be held for a few days and then released and restored to favor. Maybe Elizabeth will order our release in the same letter.”
There are several of us, held for no reason, charged with nothing, victims of Elizabeth’s jealousy or fears. My cousin Margaret Douglas is suffering interrogation, accused in a dozen muddled reports of spies, kept under close house arrest. Her husband, Matthew Stuart, Earl of Lennox, is held here, somewhere in the Tower. We have never even seen him, either walking on the roofs or even looking out of a window. I am afraid that he is kept alone, and I know that he will fail under that sort of treatment. He has never been a favorite of the queen and his wife is a rival heir. He has not the spirit to survive the enmity of Elizabeth. Their son Henry Stuart is also too fragile to face her; it is as well for him that he has escaped to France. The court is buzzing with gossip that Cousin Margaret hired necromancers and soothsayers, that she has predicted Elizabeth’s death, that she urged Mary Queen of Scots to marry Henry Stuart and unite England and Scotland under his rule—
“What?” I interrupt Ned. “How does Elizabeth tolerate this? If Margaret has done all this, why is she kept at Sheen, as if she were guilty of some minor rudeness, while we are under lock and key in here, for doing so much less?”
“If they prove the necromancy charge against her, they could burn her for a witch,” he says soberly. “I don’t begrudge her Sheen, if they are building such a case against her. They can take her from the Charterhouse at Sheen to Smithfield without even a trial if they prove she has used a witch to predict the death of the queen.”
The baby is in my arms, suckling and sleeping. He stirs as I tighten my grip on him. “Could Elizabeth really bring herself to kill her own cousin?” I ask him very quietly. “Could she bring herself to do such a thing?”
He shakes his head. He does not know what she might do. We none of us know what she might do.
“I have news for you,” I say, breaking the silence. “I have something to tell you tonight. I hope it will make you happy.”
He serves me some early strawberries, a gift from a nameless friend, from the fields of Kent.
“Tell me.”
“I have missed my course and I think I am with child.” I try to smile but my lips are trembling. I am so afraid that he will be angry, that this will bring us into more trouble. But he drops his spoon, comes around the table, kneels at my side, and takes me in his arms. This time his joy is unalloyed. He holds me, and little Teddy, in one warm embrace.
“This is the best news, the best news I could hear,” he says. “To think that you are so well and so fertile, and I am so strong that we should conceive a child inside this terrible place that has seen so much death. Thanks be to God who has brought light out of darkness! It’s like a miracle. It’s like pushing back death itself to make a baby inside the prison walls.”
“You are really happy?” I confirm.
“God be my witness! Yes! This is wonderful news.”
“Shall we tell Sir Edward?”
“No,” he decides. “We’ll tell no one. We’ll keep it a secret like you did before. Can you hide it from your maid? From your ladies?”
“If I stay as slim as I did before, then nobody will know until the last months,” I say. “I hardly showed at all before.”
“Let’s choose when and where we tell,” he says. “This is a powerful secret that you hold; let’s save it to use as best we can. Oh, my love, I am so glad. Do you feel well? Do you think it is another boy?”
I laugh. “Another heir for Elizabeth? Do you think she will be pleased to have another little royal kinsman?”
His smile hardens. “I think she cannot go on denying our sons, and if we have two that makes the point twice over.”
“And if we have a girl?”
He takes my hand and kisses it. “Then we will call her Katherine-Jane for her beautiful mother and her sainted aunt, and God bless all three of you, my daughter, her mother and her aunt, all wrongfully imprisoned here.”
THE TOWER, LONDON,
SUMMER 1562
It gets hotter in the city and I am afraid of the plague. There is always illness in the summer, this is why the court goes on progress—so that the palaces can be cleaned and Elizabeth can hurry her barren body far away from any sickness. This is the first year that I have spent in London in summertime, and the stink from the river and from the moat around the Tower fills me with dread. You don’t need to be a great physician to recognize the smell of disease. London smells of death, and I am afraid to breathe the air.
Elizabeth’s childhood friend and lady-in-waiting Kat Ashley is moved from the Tower for her safety. She is still in disgrace but Elizabeth won’t let her beloved Kat be in the least danger. But we are left here to take our chances with the pestilential mists from the drains and the river. She leaves my baby here—where she knows there is disease.
“Should I write to William Cecil and ask him to move us?” I ask Ned one evening.
He has the baby in his arms and is singing him a little poem of his own making. The baby is cooing wit
h pleasure, as if he understood the rhyming words, his dark blue eyes fixed on his father’s loving face.
“Not till we have news from court,” he says, glancing up at me. “There are great changes happening and they will affect us. The queen was trying to make an alliance with the Queen of Scots, but in France there has been a terrible attack on the reformers. The Protestants are in open rebellion against the ruling Guise family, and they are appealing to Elizabeth for her help. She was planning to meet with Queen Mary, but now I think she cannot. Not even Elizabeth has the gall to publicly befriend a woman whose family are executing her Protestants. When Elizabeth comes back to London in the autumn, the preachers and parliament will force her to agree that she cannot ally with France when they are stained with the blood of our faith. It is Mary of Scotland’s own kinsmen, the Guise family, who have put men and women of our Church to the sword in a merciless killing. Elizabeth cannot take England into an alliance with a daughter of Guise. Nobody would ever accept it.”
“If she gives up her alliance with Mary, then there is no one to be her heir but Margaret or me,” I observe.
“And his little lordship here,” his father says. “If you will be so good as to pass your right to him. Lord Beauchamp is the next man in line. See how sternly he looks at me? He’s going to make a great king.”
“She has named him as a bastard,” I say with steady resentment.
“Everyone knows it is a lie,” his father, my husband, says. “I don’t even consider it.”
THE TOWER, LONDON,
SUMMER 1562
The court returns to the palace at Hampton Court in the late summer and decides, reluctantly, that England must defend the reformers of France. Elizabeth despairs of an alliance with Mary Queen of Scots and screws up her courage to order the reinforcement of Le Havre to protect the Huguenot Protestants from the Guise army. Everyone expects Robert Dudley to command the English force, and there is much muttering of favoritism when the queen insists he stay at home and sends his brother Ambrose in his place. Robert Dudley is too precious for her to risk, even in the sacred cause of a war to defend the country’s religion.
This war could be the saving of us. Elizabeth is almost certain to release Ned to command a troop.
“The Earl of Lennox would be very glad to be released too,” Sir Edward, my jailer, confides in me. “Poor gentleman, he does not have the temperament to tolerate confinement.”
“I should think nobody enjoys it,” I say irritably.
“He complains very much at your husband’s freedom, and that you can meet. He misses his own wife, Lady Margaret, very much. He weeps for loneliness in his room at night.”
“Then he should not have conspired against the queen,” I say primly.
“If he did so.”
“Yes, of course. But what is wrong with him?”
The lieutenant leans towards me, as if anyone can hear him but Mr. Nozzle on my shoulder and Teddy in my arms.
“He is quite distracted, poor gentleman. He scrabbles at the door and cries for his wife. He says that the walls are closing in on him and begs me to open the windows.”
“He is going mad?” I ask.
“He’s not right,” Sir Edward confirms. “Some people cannot stand it, you know. And not all prisoners live as merrily as you and his lordship.”
“We’re very grateful,” I say. It is true. We are as happy as the linnets in their cage, my husband, his baby, and me. And now I have the added joy of knowing that there is a new baby on the way as well.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
AUTUMN 1562
I wait for a visit from my little sister, Mary, with increasing confidence that she will come and tell me that we are to be released, but she does not come. She sends me a note to say that they are still at Hampton Court and the queen has taken to her bed with some illness; the physicians have been called, but nobody knows what is wrong with her.
“No, it is worse than that, she is fatally ill,” Ned whispers, coming to my room early, kissing his son and handing him back to the maid. “Come here,” he says, drawing me to the window seat where we can talk privately. Mr. Nozzle leaps up and sits solemnly between us.
“Fatally ill? I thought she was just dropsical again?”
“I have friends at court who send me the news. It’s serious, very serious. Kitty, the queen has taken smallpox. It is true: smallpox, and she is unconscious. Right now, she cannot speak or move. For all we know, she may have already died. She may be dead right now. The Privy Council is in emergency meeting. I am getting messages all the time. They are trying to choose a successor if Elizabeth dies.”
“If she dies?” I choke on the words. She has been such a curse and a blight on my life that I can hardly imagine a world without her. “Dies? Elizabeth might die?”
“Yes! Don’t you hear me? She could die. It seems unthinkable, but it is more than likely. She has the smallpox, and she is not strong. She has taken to her bed and her fever is rising. The Privy Council has been summoned. They have to choose an heir if she will not speak. She is dumb with fever, she is wandering in her mind. They are calling for Henry Hastings, they are calling for Mary Queen of Scots or for Margaret Douglas.” He pauses; he smiles at me, his eyes are bright. “But mostly, of course, they are calling for you.”
I take a breath. I think of the day that Jane was offered the crown and knew that she had to take it.
“Me,” I say flatly. I think of Jane and the terrible danger of ambition, I think of the temptation of the crown and the prospects for my son.
“Henry VIII’s will names your mother’s line after Elizabeth,” he says steadily. “Not Margaret Douglas’s mother, not the Scots line; your mother, and then you. Elizabeth said that inheritance should follow the natural order, but the Privy Council is not going to make Mary Queen of Scots, half a Guise, the Queen of England when we are at war with France and her family. The old king Henry’s will named your line. King Edward’s will named Jane and then you. There is only one Tudor Protestant successor. It’s you. Everything points to you.”
I think. I take a breath and think of my son, and the baby that should be born a prince. My imprisonment has sharpened my ambition. I will not suffer for being an heir and not claim my throne. “I am ready,” I say, though my voice trembles a little. “I am ready. I can wear my sister’s crown.”
He exhales as if he is relieved that I know my duty to my country, that I am prepared to take my place on the throne. “Elizabeth could be dead right now, and they could be bringing you the crown. They could be on the barge from Hampton Court and coming down with the tide.”
“Coming to me here, in the Tower?”
“Here in the Tower.”
I think how terribly unlucky it would be to start my reign where Jane started and ended hers. And then I think what a trivial stupid thought this is. I should be preparing my speech for when they come to tell me that Elizabeth is dead. “Could there be a war?” I demand. “If I took the throne, would the papists rise against me?”
He frowns. “Almost certainly not. They would have no support. Mary Queen of Scots can’t invade us while France is in uproar, and her family cannot send French troops to support her. Margaret Douglas writes a war of letters but has no army and no support in the country. She is under arrest herself and her husband is crying at the bars on his window, no help to her. Henry Hastings is from the old royal family and has no support. There is no one else. This must be your time. This must be the very time for you.” He nods to the maid’s closed door. “And for him. The heir apparent.”
There is a quiet tap on the door and I leap to my feet, knocking the table and spilling the wine. “Is it now?” I ask. I can feel my heart hammering and I think of the baby, safe and silent in my belly, and his brother just next door. I think that we are the new royal family and they may be bringing me the crown.
Ned crosses the room in three strides and opens the door. The guard is there, another man with him. “A messenger, my lord,” the gua
rd says respectfully. “Said he had to see you.”
“You did right to bring him to me,” Ned says easily. The guard steps back and the messenger comes into the room.
I cannot take my eyes from the scroll in his hand. Perhaps it has the royal seal, perhaps it is the Privy Council informing me of the death of Elizabeth and telling me that they are on their way.
Ned holds out a peremptory hand. The messenger gives him the scroll. It is a short scrawled message. “Says I am to trust you,” Ned says to the man. “What’s the news?”
“The queen has named Robert Dudley.”
“What?” Ned’s exclamation is so loud, his shock is so great, that I hear Teddy wail in the maid’s room and she opens the door and peeps out.
“Nothing! Nothing!” I command, waving her back to the baby. I turn to the messenger. “You must be mistaken. That cannot be.”
“Named him as Protector of the Realm, and the Privy Council have sworn to support him.”
Ned and I exchange incredulous looks.
“It’s not possible,” I whisper.
“What does your master say?” Ned demands.
The man grins. “Says that they won’t argue with a dying woman but that your wife should be ready.” He turns to me and makes the deep bow for a royal. “Says it can’t be long. Nobody would support a Dudley, and nobody will have another Protector. The queen is out of her mind with fever. By naming Robert Dudley, she has given the Privy Council the right to crown who they please. She is beyond reason; they cannot reason with her. Nobody will ever give the crown to him. The queen has denied her own line, she is a traitor to her own throne. Everyone knows it has to be Lady Hertford.” He bows to me again.
Ned nods, thinking fast. “Nothing to be done until the queen has gone, God bless her,” he says. “Any move we make can only be then. We are her loyal subjects as long as she draws breath. We will pray for her recovery.”