I renounce him, I write. Let our marriage be annulled as if it never was. I will never see him again if you will just let him go.
Again, I sign myself Mary Grey, denying my love, denying my marriage, denying my very self. Again I wait for news.
I feel that I am a fool that I did not foresee what would happen next. William Cecil’s spies play with Lord Darnley as if he were a little lapdog like my sister’s pug Jo. They train him, they teach him tricks. First, they taunt his fragile manhood, saying that he is not truly a king if he obeys his wife, and now she is denying him the title of king. They swear that she depends not on him, the man set by God over her, but on her advisor, her secretary, David Rizzio. They hint that she obeys the Italian, that she prefers him to her young husband, even that she lies with him; perhaps the baby that she is carrying is his and no Stuart. They fuel his drunken corrupted young mind with fantasies of lust and betrayal, so that he bursts into her bedchamber with a loaded pistol that he points at her pregnant belly and demands that she give him Rizzio. Of course, Cecil and Elizabeth would not care if the gun went off and killed the baby and queen in one fortuitous accident. Darnley the pretty boy, with half a dozen companions, drags the queen’s secretary from her privy chamber as he screams for mercy, clutching at her gown, and they stab him to death on the queen’s private stair. A horrible death, a terrible plot. This is how Elizabeth and her advisor deal with grave political challenge. I should be glad that my sister and I are only imprisoned.
I hope that my brother-in-law, Ned Seymour, may be released. His jailer, Sir John Mason, who hated him so much, has died and the council cannot find a replacement. No one wants to be the guardian of a nobleman of England held without charge and without good reason. I ask Lady Hawtrey if her friend at court thinks that the queen is likely to send Ned to imprisonment with Katherine. It would transform her confinement to be with him. I hear every month that she is sinking deeper and deeper into loneliness and sorrow. Agnes says no—Elizabeth would not risk another Seymour son, another heir to her throne. But I think she must be wrong. Surely, Elizabeth, with such news coming from Scotland, must release Ned and then the rest of us? She must show the country that she supports the Protestant cause against the papist claimant.
For Queen Mary has strengthened her cause and twisted the plot all around. She has cleverly turned her husband, that weak boy Darnley, in a full circle. She has denied her fear and horror that he should attack her and kill her loyal advisor, and has pulled him from the drink-sodden embrace of his treacherous friends. Now he is all against them, and he denies that he had any part in the attack on his wife and her murdered advisor. Queen Mary herself rides out against the traitors and wins back the support of the Protestant lords of Scotland. She is quick and courageous and defeats her enemies and befriends others. Elizabeth, trying to keep her footing in this difficult dance, is now telling everyone that she is grieved by the terrible events in Scotland and fearful for her dear cousin’s safety. Publicly she urges Mary to take care, especially in her pregnancy.
Of course, this fools no one; but it makes everyone wonder if Mary Queen of Scots will dare to bring her victorious force south and invade us across the border. She has named Elizabeth as a bastard and a usurper. She has seen that Elizabeth is her enemy who gets her way by assassination and dark counsel. Queen Mary has learned her own strength. What will she do next?
I can’t help but wonder if she will march on England and the papists rise to greet her as a liberator and savior. And if she were to come, and if she were to win, would she free her other cousins? First, she would free her mother-in-law, Margaret Douglas, but then—why not Katherine and me? Would she, with a baby of her own, be merciful to my little nephews? I am breathless at the thought that it might be a papist queen who frees the sisters of Jane Grey. For sure, she could not be a worse cousin or queen to us than Elizabeth has been.
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
SUMMER 1566
Every day starts earlier and I watch the trees from my window show a haze of the lightest green that slowly grows to a vibrant spring bursting of leaves. When I walk in the garden, I wear a shawl around my shoulders instead of a heavy cape, and the birdsong is loud all around me. One morning I hear a cuckoo so loud and so distinctive that for a moment I am back at Bradgate and Katherine is pulling me by the hand and jumping over the furrows of a newly plowed field, saying, “Come! Come! Perhaps we will see him. A cuckoo is good luck.”
I have such a longing to be free in this season. I see the rabbits under the greening hedges and the hares loping through the mists of the bowling green in the early morning. I hear the foxes bark at night and the owls calling love songs from one high chimney pot to another. I am so conscious of my own youth and my own freshness in this young season of bursting life. I can’t sleep at night with desire for Thomas. We had so little time together, and yet my skin remembers every touch. I want to love my husband. I want to lie against his long bulk. I don’t care where we live, I don’t care if we are poor, I don’t care if we are disgraced. If I could be free with him, I would be happy.
And then I hear some good news, perhaps the start of joy for me, as slight and light as the greening trees which burst into leaf. Katherine’s jailer, Sir William Petre at Ingatestone, is too ill to keep her in his house any longer. Perhaps God has not forgotten us heirs. There is Ned without his jailer, and now Katherine, too. I really think it possible that my sister might come to me, or that we all might be released and kept under house arrest together. Surely, it would be cheaper and easier to hold us under house arrest in one house? I write to William Cecil saying that I should be so much happier if we might be imprisoned together. That, surely, it would be more convenient for Her Majesty if we were in one place, that my sister would need fewer attendants for I would care for her little boy, I would see that she ate, I would be company for her.
And more economical, I write winningly. For we could share our fires and our servants. I ask him if he will request it of Her Majesty, and also that Thomas Keyes might be released to live with his children in Kent. I will undertake to never see him, and he will promise never to see me. But it is worse than bearbaiting to keep a great man like Thomas in a cramped cell. It is not Christian charity. You would not keep a big ox in a small pen like this. He has done nothing but love me, and he would never have spoken if I had not encouraged him.
I receive one of Sir William Cecil’s rare replies. He writes that my sister Katherine is to go into the keeping of another loyal courtier dug up from obscurity, almost in the grave from old age: Sir John Wentworth who lives at Gosfield Hall. She will live in the west wing, she will be served by her ladies. Her son Thomas, who has never known life out of imprisonment, who has never seen an open sky in all his three years, will remain with her.
As for Mr. Keyes, he is to be allowed to walk in the yard and stretch out his long legs, William Cecil writes with a glimmer of his old humor. The queen is disposed to show him mercy, and there are many who urge forgiveness for you and Lady Katherine in these troubling times. I am foremost.
I am not quite sure what especially Cecil means by “troubling times,” since these are the only times we have known since his protégé came to the throne, but in June I hear that the worst thing for Elizabeth has finally happened: the Scots queen Mary has given birth. Even worse for Elizabeth, who urged Mary’s husband to fire a gun into her belly, the young woman has survived the birth. Worse still, it is a healthy baby. And worst of all for Elizabeth: it is a boy. The papist cousin, just like the Protestant cousin, has a healthy son and heir to the throne of England. Elizabeth, thirty-two years old, unmarried, unloved, now has two cousins with boys in the cradle. She cannot deny them all.
What she does, of course, is what she always does. She runs away and pretends that it is not happening. The Chequers cook is friends with a royal groom and we hear all about the fine celebrations at Kenilworth, when Robert Dudley throws his fortune at the feet of his queen and most elusive lover. Apparentl
y, there is a whole new wing of rooms built just for her visit, and masques and hunts and a specially commissioned play and fireworks. After his disappointment of Candlemas he is throwing himself into another attempt at wooing. This year he has left court in a rage or in despair twice, and both times she has humbled herself to beg for his return. It is clear to everyone that she cannot live without him. He must be wondering if it is clear to her.
I sit in my tiny room and I think of Elizabeth my cousin watching fireworks reflected in the great lake at Kenilworth, and I try to damp down the bitterness of my rage. I am not a melancholy prisoner like my sister Katherine, I do not give myself up to grief. I cannot forgive Elizabeth for her insane treatment of us. I think of her as a malicious madwoman, and when I write one of my regular letters pleading for forgiveness, promising my undying loyalty, I am lying like all of her courtiers. She has made a court of liars, and I am the worst.
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
AUTUMN 1566
I hear that, once again, she keeps Robert Dudley uncertain; but this is just as I predicted. I believe he will always be on the threshold of marriage with her and never be able to jump over. I believe that she will never marry anyone. I swore it years ago, I would swear it now. She will always hold him close enough to ruin his life, but never close enough to ruin hers. She returns to London from Kenilworth, and now she has to call a parliament. She needs funds. She is spending a fortune causing trouble in Scotland: spying and rebellion never come cheap. But parliament will not grant her money without a promise about the succession. They see that they have the chance to dictate to her. The Protestant parliament wants only one heir—my sister Katherine, with her Seymour son to come after her.
One day, when I am walking in the garden and admiring the blazing colors in the trees of the parkland, and the whirl of golden leaves around my feet, I see a square of white on the path before me. I pick it up in a moment and unfold it.
Your friends will speak for you and your sister. Neither of you is forgotten. England knows its heirs.
I tuck it in my pocket and when I get back to my room I burn it in the empty grate and mash the ashes with a poker. I find I am smiling. Perhaps soon I will be able to walk across a room that is wider than twelve feet. I will walk in a garden and out through the garden gate. Perhaps next spring I will hear a lucky cuckoo in Bradgate Park.
My unwilling host comes to me in my little room. He is wearing riding breeches and boots, a warm cape over his arm, a hat in his hand; he is not shamefaced, he is beaming. He bows low to me as I am seated on my single chair before the open window. At once, I am as alert as a deer scenting the wind for the smell of hunting hounds. What is happening now?
“You see, I am going away. I am going to London,” he says.
I nod, keeping my expression calm and interested while my thoughts whirl.
“I beg of you to stay quietly in my house while I am gone,” he says. “If you were to take advantage of my absence to attempt to leave, the queen’s displeasure would fall very heavily on me and on my wife. I dare not face it. You understand.”
“I have nowhere to go, and no one to meet; and I would not expose you or my sister to such trouble,” I promise him. “I don’t doubt that the queen would punish my sister and my nephews if I were to escape.”
He bows again. “Besides, I hope to return with good news for you and Lady Hertford, your royal sister,” he says.
I note that he gives Katherine her royal recognition and her married title. “Oh, really?”
He glances behind to make sure that there is no one lingering beside the open door. I close the window and turn to him. At once we are conspirators, guarding against spies.
“I am called to parliament,” he says. “We are going to insist that the queen names her heir. Only parliament can raise taxes for her, and we can stipulate the conditions. For once we are all agreed, we have not been divided by advisors from court, and we are united with the House of Lords. We will insist that she name her heir, and that her heir be Lady Hertford and her son.”
I could leap up and clap my hands; but I sit like the princess I am and I incline my head. “I am glad to hear it,” is all I say.
“When you are released”—he says “when,” he does not say “if”—“I hope you will tell your sister, Lady Hertford, that I have been as good a host to you as I was allowed to be.”
“I will tell her that,” I say fairly. “And I will tell her that you went to London when you were called and that you spared no effort to join with the others to persuade the queen to name my sister as her heir.”
He bows as low as to a member of the royal family.
“And,” I add, “I would be very obliged if you would visit Mr. Thomas Keyes in the Fleet Prison and insist that he is released.”
“I will raise it with my fellow members of parliament,” he promises. “Of course, no man should be held without charge.” He waits in case I have any other instructions. “Should I speak to anyone at court on your behalf?”
I smile at him. I am not going to name my friends or my few kinswomen. I will incriminate no one. “Let it all be done in the open,” I say. “Speak of me and of my sister to everyone.”
In my guardian’s absence I am allowed to walk and sit in the garden. I study and I write, I read my Bible and I draw. I even attempt some frescoes on the walls of my room, remembering the carvings of the Dudley boys’ in the stone chimney breast made by the Tower all that long time ago. I think that if Katherine and I are released, and she is named as heir and we are restored to our home, then this long painful story of family disloyalty and loss of love will be ended and the innocent children will be freed. I think of the little nephews and I pray that they will both grow up in their father’s beautiful house, under the care of both their parents, knowing themselves to be rightful heirs to the throne, certain to take their place. I think Katherine will be a good Queen of England: she will not usurp her powers or use spies and torture to get her way. Her boy who comes after her will be an honorable Protestant king, a Seymour Tudor king like my poor cousin King Edward.
After a week Lady Hawtrey receives a letter from her husband and brings it to me in my little room. She taps on the door and comes in when I call “Enter!”
“My husband has sent a letter from London to tell me how they go on,” she says, curtseying very low. “I thought that you would want to know the news.”
“I do,” I say. “Please sit down.”
She takes a stool by the fireside and I stay in my dining chair so our heads are level. She unfolds the letter and looks through it.
“He says that the House of Commons has joined with the House of Lords to remonstrate with the queen and that there have been angry scenes,” she says. “Both Houses are determined that Lady Katherine shall be named as the queen’s heir. The Privy Council agrees with parliament. The queen has quarreled with the Duke of Norfolk, with Robert Dudley, and the Earl of Pembroke.”
I listen intently. These are the queen’s key advisors and friends; the Earl of Pembroke was Katherine’s former father-in-law. I would never have thought he would have risked disagreeing with the queen over Katherine. None of these men stands to gain anything from the recognition of Katherine. Elizabeth has to see that they are doing this for the good of the country. Nor would any one of them speak against the queen unless they were certain of success.
“Now she has forbidden them to come to her presence chamber,” Lady Hawtrey reads. She looks up at me. “That’s extraordinary, isn’t it?”
“Yes,” I say tersely.
“She summoned thirty men from the House of Commons and would not allow the Speaker to come to her,” Lady Hawtrey reads. “My husband says that she shouted at them.”
I turn my head to hide a smile. I imagine the provincial members of parliament were terrified before the queen, who could arrest them without warning, and hold them without trial. But they didn’t weaken. They insisted on their right to advise her, and their advice was that
she must marry and get an heir, and name one now.
Lady Hawtrey takes up the last page. “He’s coming home,” she says. “He says the work is finished. He says they are victorious.”
“She named Katherine?” I whisper disbelievingly. It is the only outcome open to Elizabeth if the Houses have stood, united, against her. “She has named her?”
Lady Hawtrey folds the letter and hands it to me. “See for yourself. She has sworn it. They have granted her the subsidy, and she has promised that they shall decide on her heir.”
She looks at me. “They have won her to agreement,” she says. “Did you think that they would?”
I give a trembly little laugh. “I did not dare to hope, all I could do was pray for it. They have been courageous and she has been persuaded to do the right thing at last.”
She shakes her head in wonderment. “She is an extraordinary woman, she is answerable to no one.”
“She is answerable to God,” I say steadily. “And He will ask her for Katherine, and for her boys, Teddy and Thomas, for her husband, Ned, even for Margaret Douglas and her little boy Charles, and for me and Thomas Keyes. The God who promised us that not a sparrow falls will ask the Queen of England where her cousins are tonight.”
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
WINTER 1566
Queen Mary of Scotland has collapsed and is mortally ill in her troubled kingdom after an attack of the spleen. She has been unconscious for hours; they are warming her cold body. God knows what will happen. Her son and heir is still a little baby—if she should die, there will be nobody to defend him. They say that her last words were asking Elizabeth to be his Protector.