To wait for rescue, knowing that your heavenly and earthly fathers have not forgotten their faithful daughter, is to be on the brink of adventure. It illuminates my days and makes my prayers passionate and hopeful rather than apologetic, waiting for a pardon. I knew, I always knew for a certainty, that the people of England, having been free to read, free to think, and free to pray directly to their Savior, would never return to the slavery of the mind and soul of the papist Church. I always knew that they would rise up against the Antichrist as soon as it was clear to them that their faith was being betrayed. It was a matter of time, it was a matter of faith. I must wait and be patient, as He is patient.
And more than this: I could have warned Queen Mary that any husband would want to take the crown—for this is just what happened to me. This is just what Guildford did as soon as they proclaimed me queen. Our cousin the eleven-year-old Mary Queen of Scots in France will find that her promised husband will usurp her power, too, as soon as he is old enough. God has placed husbands over their wives. They will claim their place even though the wife is a queen and should be set over them. Queen Mary may be old enough to be my mother but I feel that I could tell her: this is what men do. They marry a woman who is their superior and at once they envy her position, and at once they usurp her. This is why there have never been ruling queens in this country, only regents when the king is away. This is why there are no duchesses on the Privy Council. If a man wins an honor, it is his; if a woman wins it, then it belongs to her husband. This is why the queen executed John Dudley, but spared me. She read what I wrote; she saw that the throne was inherited by me but claimed by him for his son. She knew at once that I might be true but Guildford covetous. I could have warned her that any husband would steal her power and that the English people will never accept a Spanish king. She is not eight months into her reign and already she has destroyed herself. I am sorry for her, but I have no regret that my father is arming against her.
So must it be; so may die all heretics.
I wait for the hour of my rescue, but it does not come. I wait for Katherine to come and tell me what is happening, but she does not visit me either. Suddenly, I am not allowed to walk in the garden or on the flat roofs of the Tower buildings, but nobody will tell me why. The days are dark, with mist off the river and lowering clouds. I don’t want to walk in the garden anyway, I tell Mrs. Partridge. There is nothing growing at this time of year, the trees are bare of leaves, the green itself is a patch of mud. There is no need for anyone to forbid me. I am imprisoned by wintry weather, not by the will of the queen. Mrs. Partridge compresses her lips and says nothing.
From somewhere in the City I can hear the noise of men shouting and the rattle of handguns going off. Without doubt it is my father, coming for me at the head of his army. My books are tidy on my table, my papers tied together, I am ready to go.
“What is happening?” I ask Mrs. Partridge quietly.
She crosses herself, as if it were a natural gesture to ward off ill luck.
“God forgive you!” I say at once at the terrible gesture. “What ridiculous waving about are you doing? What good do you think that would do anybody? Why not clap your hands to scare away Satan while you’re at it?”
She looks me directly in the eye. “I pray for you” is all she replies, and she goes from my rooms.
“What is happening?” I shout. But she closes the door behind her.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 8, 1554
I have a visitor, John Feckenham, whose idolatry is proclaimed by his long cream-colored woolen robe, tied at the waist with a leather thong, and a white hood that he pushes back from his square flushed face. A Benedictine monk, come to visit me, poor fool.
He catches his breath from the climb up the stairs to my rooms. “Steep,” he manages, gasping, and then ducks his head in a bow. “Lady Dudley, I’ve come to talk with you, if you’ll have me.” He has a strong accent, like a butcher or a dairyman, nothing like the refined accent of my Cambridge-educated tutors. It makes me smile, as if the cowman was preaching.
“I have no need of guidance from a blind man in darkness,” I say quietly.
“I have weighty news for you.” Indeed, he looks quite bowed down with whatever he has to tell me. I think of my father, on his way to me now, at the head of his army, and I know a clutch of fear in my tender belly. I hope that nothing has gone wrong. But surely, if something had gone wrong, they would not send a strange heretical priest to tell me? A fat heretical priest with a round face and an uncouth accent? It is to insult me.
“Who has told you to give me this news?” I ask. “Who burdened you, a heavy man, with such weighty news?”
He sighs again, as if he is sad as well as blown. “I’m not here to chop logic with you,” he says. “The council commanded me to give you the news and the queen herself has ordered me to free you from the superstition in which you have grown up.”
“To free me from the superstition in which I have grown up?” I repeat coldly.
“Yes.”
“How long do you have?” I force a laugh.
“Not long,” he says very quietly. “They have confirmed your sentence of death. I am so sorry. You are to be beheaded tomorrow. We don’t have long at all, Lady Dudley.”
I feel as if I am struck dead by the very words. I can’t breathe; my belly, always quivering with flux, goes suddenly still. I dare say that my heart ceases to beat. “What? What did you say?”
“I am truly sorry, my child,” he says gently.
I look into his broad flushed face. “What?”
“You and your husband, Guildford Dudley, are to be executed. Tomorrow.”
I see that he has tears in his eyes. The tears, and his awkwardness, his flushed face, his stertorous breathing, convince me more than his words.
“When did you say? When?”
“Tomorrow,” he says quietly. “May I talk with you about your immortal soul?”
“Oh, it’s too late for that,” I say. I cannot think straight; there is a noise in my ears and I realize it is the rapid thudding of my heart. “Oh, there’s not enough time to attend to so many things. I did not think . . . I did not think . . .” In truth, I did not think that the queen my cousin would turn vulture; but I see that her false religion has driven her mad, as it does so many.
“I could ask them to give me more time to wrestle with your soul,” he says hopefully. “If I could tell them that we were talking. If I could assure them that you might repent.”
“Yes,” I say. “All right.” Even a day may give my father time to get to me. I must stay alive so that he can rescue me. Every day he comes closer, I know it. He will not fail me; I must not fail him. Even now he may be fighting a battle south of the river. I must be here when he crosses the bridge.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 1554
John Feckenham comes at dawn, as he promised, carrying with him his box of tricks of bread and wine and goblet and stole, candles and incense and all the furniture and toys that he can bring out to confuse the unwary like a village mountebank making merry for silly children. I look at his wooden box and I look at his honest face.
“I am not going to change my religion to save my neck,” I say. “I am thinking about my soul.”
“I, too,” he says gently. “And the queen has given us three days to talk of holy things.”
“I always liked to study and debate.”
“Then talk to me now,” he says. “Explain to me what you understand by these sacred words . . . Take ye, and eat ye, this is my body, which is broken for you. This do in the remembrance of me.”
I nearly laugh. “Do you not think I have been disputing the meaning of this almost all my life?”
“I know it,” he says steadily. “I know you were raised in error, my poor sister.”
“I am not your sister,” I correct him. “I have two sisters only. If there was a brother, I would not be here now.”
I can hear the clatter of a guard at the Lion Gate and the noise of many men coming into the Tower. I hear the shout to stand, and the noise of men allocating cells. I know that I look startled. “I’d like to see . . .”