“Not at all,” I say steadily.
“The French ambassador?” she suggests. “For I hear on all sides that you are discontented at court, and I must say, I do not know how I might please you. Nor,” she says, savoring her spiteful joke, “why I should please you, given that it was your sister who took my throne.”
It is her speaking of Jane that makes me forget myself. I feel a flare of rage, as hot and as passionate as my earlier rush of desire. I will not have this red-headed usurper insulting my sister. “You need not strive to please me,” I spit. “And I am only a little late.”
She could leave it at that; she has bigger things to worry about than my pertness. But her plucked brows arch high in surprise at my reply. “You are quite right for once: I have no obligation to be good to you,” she says nastily. “For sure, you are no good lady to me. What do you bring to my service? You are late and rude, your mother is ill and always absent, and your sister half-size. I don’t have full measure of a lady-in-waiting from any of the three of you. Or should I say two and a half?”
My anger flares out of control at her joking about my little sister. “You need do nothing for me. Nothing could compare with what you do for the Dudleys! For sure, you bend over backwards for him,” I say loudly and slowly, straight into her pale face, her rouged cheeks, her eyes widened with horror.
There is a little scream from Bess St. Loe, and I see Robert Dudley scowl. Mary’s hands are clapped over her mouth, her eyes wide above them. Elizabeth herself says nothing, but the hand that grips her fan is shaking as she fights to get herself under control. She does not look at Robert Dudley, at this insult to the two of them; but she glances up at William Cecil, who inclines his head as if he would whisper in her ear. He need say nothing: she knows that if she responds to me with anger she might as well pin my words on the door of Saint Paul’s: everyone will hear what I have said. Cecil mutters urgently, telling her to ignore me, pass off my outburst as a joke.
She opens her rouged lips and she laughs loudly, like a cawing crow. “You are merry, Lady Katherine,” she says, and rises up from her throne and walks the length of the presence chamber and speaks to someone else, someone of no importance, as if she would run away from me and my righteous disdain.
I sense Ned at my side, even before I turn my face and see him. His eyes are bright with pride. “Vivat!” he says. “Vivat regina!”
I am in terrible disgrace for insulting Elizabeth. No lady-in-waiting dares to be seen with me, and the Spanish ambassador bows to me in public but avoids me in private. I think that no one pays any attention to me at all but Ned, my beloved Ned. But if he loves me, I don’t care that I am neglected by everyone.
Elizabeth is in the darkest of bad tempers, hagridden by thoughts of our cousin Mary Queen of Scots inheriting the great throne of France with her powerful kinsmen to back her claim on England. Nobody dares to speak to approach her, only Robert Dudley can distract her from her fears.
“You take care,” my little sister, Mary, says, affecting the wisdom of a woman two feet taller than she is. “You can’t afford to offend the queen. There’s only one woman at court who can speak honestly to her. There’s only one woman at court who can reprimand her.”
I laugh. “D’you mean Kat Ashley’s great remonstrance?”
Mary’s ready smile beams at me. “Lord, I wish you had seen it,” she says. “It was as good as a masque. Mrs. Ashley on her knees begging the queen not to favor Robert Dudley so openly, swearing that she would lose her reputation, reminding her that he is married and that she should not be constantly in his company, and Elizabeth, saying that if she loved Sir Robert, she didn’t know who could stop her.”
“But what did you all say?” I demand. “You ladies.” This scene took place in Elizabeth’s bedroom when she was dressing. Kat Ashley, her former governess, is the only woman brave enough to tell Elizabeth that the country thinks she is a complete whore and Robert Dudley an ambitious adulterer. My sister was lucky enough to be spectator to this scene. She was holding Elizabeth’s gold-tipped laces, waiting to lace her shoes, when Kat went down on her knees to beg the queen not to behave like a whore.
“We all said nothing, because we’re not brave fools like Kat Ashley,” Mary says stoutly. “I’m not reckless with a temper like you. You think I’m going to tell the Queen of England not to chase after the man she loves? You think I’m going to stand up to her like you did?”
“He’s not free to love,” I say primly. “And neither is she. There’s the difference between them and me and Ned. She is a queen who should marry for her country, and he is a man already married—and there is me and Ned, young and free and both noble.”
“You’re never talking of marriage with Ned?” Mary demands.
I go down on my knees to her, so that our faces are level. “Oh, Mary, I am,” I whisper. “I am! I promise you that I am.”
HAMPTON COURT PALACE,
OCTOBER 1559
Ned is high above me, mounted on his handsome horse, dressed in dark blue velvet, his jacket embroidered with darker blue thread, his bonnet of velvet trimmed with navy ribbon. I stand at his horse’s head, Mr. Nozzle balancing on my shoulder, and look up at him.
“How is the horse?” I say, and we both laugh at the thought of my awkwardness with him, only months ago, and now our confident joy.
He is going to the Charterhouse at Sheen, to ask my mother for permission for us to marry. “Don’t forget to remind her that Elizabeth can have no objection,” I say to him. “Don’t forget to tell her that I am old enough to know my own mind.”
“I’ll tell her,” he assures me. “There can be no reason for your mother to refuse. It is what she and your father wanted for your sister. If I was good enough for Jane, I must be good enough for you. Both our families have risen high and been brought low, and now you have no great dowry and are not favored by the queen. But anyway, it does not matter to me.”
“I should not be brought low,” I say irritably. “I am not brought low in the eyes of others. The Spanish ambassador said that there is no heir to Elizabeth but me. And anyway, I am on the rise again. She is so furious with our cousin Margaret Douglas for sending her son Henry to the coronation in France that she is ready to forgive me for being rude to her.”
Ned gives me a smile and my heart turns over. “It doesn’t matter who Elizabeth likes and dislikes. We are royal kin and so she should give her permission. You are her cousin and a Tudor, I am a Seymour. She cannot refuse our wedding.”
It will take him an hour to get to Sheen. I fuss over his saddle, the girth, the stirrup leathers, like a wife. “Be careful on the way!” I say, though I know he has men in his livery riding with him. There is no danger for him. There are many threats against the life of Elizabeth, but the rest of us, the royal family, are beloved. Everyone remembers that Queen Jane, who died so tragically giving birth to King Edward, was a good English Seymour. And my family, the Greys, are loved for our Queen Jane. The ordinary people speak of her as a saint. It is only Elizabeth who likes to pretend that Jane was never crowned queen. It is only Elizabeth who wants to pretend that she is the last Tudor.
“I’ll be back the day after tomorrow,” he says. “And I shall call you my wife within the month.”
I wave good-bye and I don’t care who sees me standing, watching him go. I don’t doubt him, I don’t doubt that my mother will give permission in a moment. She has always liked him, and the Seymours are a great family. His mother has reluctantly allowed our marriage on the condition that my mother speaks to Elizabeth. There should be nothing to stand in our way.
CHARTERHOUSE, SHEEN,
OCTOBER 1559
My mother is ill—she is much troubled by her spleen (I have to say, this is not surprising in a woman with such an evil temper). But as soon as she has heard Ned’s mission she orders me and Mary to join her and her husband, Mr. Stokes, and Ned at Sheen. She says I must tell her myself if I want Ned as my husband. She receives me in her presence chamb
er like the daughter of a queen that she is. Mary walks behind me like a miniature lady-in-waiting.
It is as formal as a betrothal. I tell my mother: “I am very willing to love my lord of Hertford,” and she rises from her chair, comes to me, smiles, puts my hand in his, and says that she would be glad to see me settled and well married.
Adrian Stokes, standing deferentially behind her, is no nobleman but a good sensible man, and he advises us, too. We all agree that Elizabeth the queen will have to be handled carefully. This summer she has been besotted with Robert Dudley and had no time for anyone else, but if I am asking to marry the cousin of the late king, she will turn her attention to me and observe me with more care. She is as prickly over her prestige as any bastard, and as fearful for her title as any usurper. We must never, never indicate that we know that we are better bred and more entitled to the throne than she. We have to hope that she overlooks the fact that I, a Tudor heir, want to marry Ned, a Seymour, a royal relation.
Everyone agrees that my mother must write to Elizabeth the queen and ask for permission and then go to court to persuade Elizabeth in person. Jointly, the five of us compose a courtly letter. We write:
The Earl of Hertford doth bear goodwill to my daughter the Lady Katherine, and I do humbly beseech the Queen’s Highness to be a good and gracious lady unto her and that it may please Her Majesty to assent to her marriage to the said earl.
I say—but what if she says no? She is spiteful enough to say no. And Ned takes my hand and promises me: “If she says no, we will marry in secret and she can say no to the wind.”
So the letter is drafted with Mary acting as clerk, and my mother is to copy it out fair in her best hand, but before she can do so, she takes to her bed and says she cannot go to court while she is so bloated and so sick, she certainly cannot bear to see Elizabeth when she is not in her best looks, we will have to wait until she is better.
“So what happens now?” I demand of Ned.
“I’ll go back to court myself and prepare for the letter,” he promises me. “I have friends; we are a family with influence. I can ask people to speak for us to the queen. We have my mother’s permission and yours. We don’t need anything more.”
WINDSOR CASTLE,
AUTUMN 1559
Ned and I return to court separately, so that no one knows we have been conspiring together, and then we hesitate. It feels impossible to break into Elizabeth’s whispered conversations with Robert Dudley and make her attend to our affairs. There is a queue of people before us: foreign ambassadors proposing marriage, William Cecil with handfuls of bills for her to sign, trying to persuade her to support the Protestant Scots lords who are arming against their French regent. Now Elizabeth is to be named as Supreme Governor of the Church, even though she is a woman. I think of what my sister Jane would have done with that chance to save the soul of the country, and save the Scots from papistry, and it is a bitter thought. At any rate, the queen has no time for Ned and me, and we cannot find a chance to interrupt.
The court is a place of nervous gossip. Elizabeth is so anxious about the French and the Scots that she cannot let Robert Dudley out of her sight; but still she entertains Sir William Pickering as a suitor, and speaks every day of the archduke Ferdinand as if she intends to marry him. It feels as if everyone, from the blackbirds in the apple-heavy orchards to the queen in her chamber, is with their mate. Ned and I are only one of very many couples kissing in shaded doorways.
The Scots Protestant lords rise up against the regent Mary of Guise and defeat her. They call on Elizabeth for help, and of course she dares to do nothing. If Jane were Queen of England, she would have sent a righteous army. But though William Cecil argues till he is exhausted in the Privy Council and the queen’s rooms, Elizabeth does not dare to send more than a secret fleet of ships to supply the Scots lords.
While everyone is arguing whether this is enough, or if the queen should send an army, Ned and I slip away and pursue our secret love affair, safely hidden from the queen and from her advisors, and known only to his sister Janey and my little sister Mary. The two of them conspire for us: Janey invites me to her rooms when Ned is there; Mary stands watch when we meet on the pier at the river or in the autumn woods of Hampton Court. We ride together, following behind the queen and her lover, as the leaves whirl down in gold and bronze all around us. We walk behind them, a careful pace apart from each other, the pug Jo trotting along behind us, while they walk whispering, arm in arm. Elizabeth clings to Robert Dudley during this new crisis. Clearly, she does not dare to do her duty by the people of her faith. Clearly, only Robert Dudley can give her confidence to defy William Cecil’s advice. I simply don’t care about it. I am in love, all I want is the rare alignment of the early stars on the autumn nights which will tell me that the queen is in a good mood and my mother is well enough to come to court to ask for permission for me to marry.
Perhaps only William Cecil, the queen’s long-standing advisor, sees our secret courtship, and I imagine that he approves. He is a quiet man who misses nothing. Now and then he gives me a little smile or has a polite word with me as we pass in the gallery, or our horses happen to be alongside each other, when the court is riding out. He is a staunch believer in the reformed religion, and he knows that I was raised in the same faith as my sister Jane and I would never choose any other. His scholarly Protestant wife, Mildred, loved Jane, and I think he looks for my sister in me. His strong faith inspires him to urge the Privy Council and the queen to support the Protestant lords of Scotland and free that kingdom from the Pope as well. I know he favors me as the Protestant heir, and he speaks for me to the queen’s advisors, if not to her. He would never accept my cousin Margaret Douglas, who is half papist and in disgrace anyway, and never, ever Mary Queen of France, where her mother’s family, the Guises, are persecuting those of our faith with the utmost cruelty.
WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,
NOVEMBER 1559
It is Janey who is with me when the messenger comes from my stepfather, Adrian Stokes, to tell me that my mother is terribly ill, and not likely to last many more days, and Mary and I must come at once, and it is Janey who holds my hands tightly while I blink a few reluctant tears from my eyes and think that now I will have to go into mourning and wear black, and go to the dreary Charterhouse and stay there, when everyone else is in the finery of the Christmas feast.
“You’ll have to tell your sister,” Janey says.
Mary sleeps in the maids’ dormitory, and I go to find her. They get up as late as they can and I can hear the noise of them romping even through the thick wooden door. The mistress of maids should really keep them closer: the maids are supposed to learn how to behave at court, not to racket about like urchins and flick each other with their bed linen as they are doing now, to judge from the shrieks and screams of laughter.
I tap on the paneled door and walk in. Mary is jumping on the bed, splashing nearby girls with her washing jug clutched in her hand. One of the girls is threatening to throw a bowl of cold slops, and they are all chasing each other on and off the beds, pulling at the bed curtains and screaming for mercy. It looks tremendous fun. If I were not so old, so grown up, almost betrothed, I would be tempted to join in. But anyway, I am here to deliver sad news.
“Mary!” I shout over the noise, and I beckon her to the door.
She bounces down from the bed and comes over, her cheeks rosy, her dark eyes bright. She is such a tiny little thing, no taller than a child, I cannot believe she is fourteen years old. She should have been betrothed long before now. Soon, she will have no mother to make arrangements for her. But anyway I don’t know who would marry her. She is of royal descent, but in the court of Elizabeth that is only a disadvantage.
I put my hand on her thin shoulder and bend down to speak in her ear. “Come out, Mary. I have bad news for you.”
She throws a cloak over her nightgown and follows me to the gallery outside the maids’ room. Their screams of laughter are muffled when Janey c
loses the door and stands a little away from us.
I realize I don’t know what I should say. This is a girl who has lost her family before she is a woman grown: her sister and her father to the axe, and now her mother is dying. “Mary, I am very sorry. I am come to tell you that our mother is dying. Adrian Stokes has written to me. We have to go to Sheen at once.”
She does not respond. I bend down lower to look into her pretty little face.
“Mary, you knew that she was ill?”
“Yes, of course I knew. I am short, I am not an idiot.”
“I will be a good sister to you,” I say awkwardly. “We two are all that are left now.”
“And I will be a good sister to you,” she promises grandly, as if her little influence could ever be of any benefit to me. “We must never be parted.”
She is so sweet that I bend down and kiss her. “I am going to marry soon,” I tell her. “And when I have a house of my own, you shall live with me, Mary.”
She smiles at that. “Until I marry, of course,” she says, the funny little thing.
CHARTERHOUSE, SHEEN,
WINTER 1559–60
At last Elizabeth pays my family the recognition that we deserve. She celebrates my mother in death in a way that she never would do in life. She gives my mother a grand funeral, a royal funeral at Westminster Abbey, with dozens of mourners and the court in black, and shields inscribed with my mother’s name and royal titles. Mary and I, in black velvet, are chief mourners. As her coffin lies in state, the Clarenceux Herald bellows that it has pleased God to summon: “the most noble and excellent prince the Lady Frances, late Duchess of Suffolk.” If she had not been dead already, my mother would have died of joy at being named officially royal, and by Elizabeth’s herald.