Elizabeth’s irritable rivalry turns to fear when Queen Mary announces that she is the rightful Queen of England. The question of who should be named as heir to Elizabeth is suddenly made irrelevant as Queen Mary declares Elizabeth to be a usurper. She has the support of the new pope, Pius V, to make such a claim, and so all of Europe turns against Elizabeth. The Spanish support Queen Mary for her faith; the French support her for family reasons; and half of England would rise for her if she came over the border at the head of a papist army. She could lead a holy war into the heart of England and win the throne by right and with the blessing of the papist Church. Of course, all I think, as I am allowed into the icy garden for a short half-hour walk, is that my offense and Katherine’s offense are diminished even more in comparison with the declaration of war from Queen Mary. But I know that the announcement will have plunged Elizabeth into jealous terror. She will not be able to think of anything else. She will not speak of anyone else. She will have mercy for no one.
I write to William Cecil, reminding him that Katherine and I have done nothing to further our claim to be Elizabeth’s heirs, that we will never claim our rights. That we are Protestants, coreligionists to him and to the queen, that if she is threatened by papist cousins, she can turn to us for our friendship; she can show everyone that she supports our shared religion. We can stand beside her, before the court. We can support her claim to the throne in the country. At the very end, I write that I beg him—if nothing else—to allow Thomas Keyes a bigger cell and permission to walk outside.
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.