It is a long ordeal, though the midwife says it is quick for a first child and that she has sat with women who have endured this for days. I try to stop my ears to her gloomy predictions and her terrible stories of deaths in childbirth and stillborn babies, and my lady-in-waiting interrupts her to say: “But her ladyship is doing very well!”
“Lady Katherine is doing as well as she can,” the old witch concurs.
I gasp as one of the pains ends, and I correct her: “Lady Hertford,” I insist. “I am the Countess of Hertford.”
“Whatever you say, my lady,” she says, her gaze sliding away from mine, and this makes me wonder again if someone is trying to prove that our marriage did not take place at all and she has been ordered not to address me by my married name.
I cannot think, my mind is so fogged with pain and fear as I walk up and down through the pains and then lie on the bed for a rest. I feel as if I am splitting open, a terrible sensation, as if I am being quartered without benefit of hanging. I think of Jane, going to her death only a stone’s throw from this window, and I think of the agony that she must have felt when the axe came down, and I think perhaps I am dying in the Tower like my sister did, like my father did, and that all I can hope for, at the end of this agony, is that I will see them in heaven.
The midwife, who has been watching me walk and then pause to lean on a chair and groan through my pain, suddenly puts her spindle away and says: “It’s coming now. Best get ready.”
“What am I to do?” I demand wildly. “What happens now?”
She laughs shortly. “You should have thought to ask that before, Lady Katherine,” she says.
“Lady Hertford,” I hiss, claiming my married title with what might be my last breath. “I am the wife of the Earl of Hertford.”
Roughly, she pushes me to my hands and knees and, like a laboring mare, I groan and push as she commands and rest as she orders, and then I feel the strangest sensation, a slither and a wriggle, and she says: “God bless you and help you, you have a boy.”
My baby, Viscount Beauchamp, is to be called Edward for his father and his forefathers. He can trace his line back to Edward III and beyond. Royal on both sides, his birth should be greeted with celebrations, with the salute of cannon and announcements all around Christendom, but they put me into my bed, and tuck him in beside me, and nobody even visits. They take him to be baptized in the chapel of the Tower, and my poor little boy is christened in the font that stands over the tombs of his family. It is as if the mortuary of traitors at the Tower of London is our family chapel. His aunt is buried below the font, and his grandfather Grey. His grandfather Seymour is buried there, too. He is not even baptized by a minister, but by Sir Edward, the lieutenant of the Tower, his jailer, because the godforsaken Supreme Governor of the Church of England, Elizabeth, will not allow an ordained minister into the prison to bless the soul of her newborn cousin. This makes me cry. This is so low. She is so low. To forbid a priest to bless an innocent baby. She is below lowness.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
WINTER 1561–62
I cannot be unhappy with my baby cooing in his cradle and smiling when he sees me. He is more amusing than any pet; he is quite enchanting. Even Mr. Nozzle sees that a prince has come among us, and serves him with the same delighted surprise that my ladies show when they run to fetch a scrap of cloth to lay on my shoulder when he gives a little belch after his feed, or hold his waving hands and tiny plump feet when I unstrap his swaddling bands.
I feed him myself, as though I were a peasant girl, and I laugh to think that Elizabeth, in her tyranny, has given me the greatest joy I have ever known. If I had given birth to the little viscount in a royal palace, where his birth merits, he would have been out of my hands the moment he was born, and I should have lived apart from him. He would have been kept in a royal nursery and I should have been with the court—wherever it happened to be, even if I had to be away from him for weeks. He would have been raised to be a stranger to me and his first smile would have been to his wet nurse. But since I am imprisoned and he—as innocent as me—is incarcerated too, we are like little birds in a cage, singing and preening together, as happy as my linnets.
He nestles against me at night, he sleeps in my arms. I learn to wake and listen to his quiet rapid breathing. Sometimes he lies so still that I put my ear to his tiny button nose to convince myself that he is alive and well, and that in the morning he will open his eyes, as blue as speedwell, and smile at me.
They tell me he is a good baby. Indeed, he never cries. But they tell me that I spoil him, by picking him up as soon as he stirs, by carrying him with me from one room to another, by holding him on my lap when I read or write, putting him to my plump breasts as soon as he pummels his little face into my bodice. The milk springs easily; the love comes, too. This is a happiness that I never dreamed could be. I did not know that it was possible to love a child so much that his birth is a delight and his life is a miracle, and nothing, nothing will ever make me regret him.
We call him Teddy. I put a blue ribbon from my window every morning so that his father, when he looks down from his own window, shall see that his son is well. I wish he could see what a handsome boy he is going to be. I wish he could see how the two of us, just as Janey promised, have made a baby of exquisite beauty. He has my fair hair and dainty features; he has Ned’s long lean body. He is fit to be a prince. Of course, he is a prince. He is Elizabeth’s heir and the next in line for the throne of England, whether she acknowledges him or not.
There were no Christmas gifts for this little boy from the court that he will command. Only Mary visits me, bringing a little music box that I recognize from the great receiving room at Hampton Court.
“I stole it,” she says frankly, winding it up and setting it before Teddy, who pays no attention at all.
“Mary!”
“I don’t consider her to be the owner of the royal treasures,” she says bluntly. “They’re more yours than hers. If you are to be overlooked as the heir for having a child out of wedlock, why should I serve a queen that everyone knows is a Dudley whore? Born of the Boleyn whore?”
At once, I glance to the door, but there is no waiting spy today.
“Exactly, nobody has come with me but Thomas Keyes, the sergeant porter, who was good enough to walk with me. He’s waiting downstairs.”
“He’s not listening?” I ask nervously.
“He does not spy on me. He is a true friend,” she says. She climbs up into one of the tatty chairs and shakes her head. “It’s all changed again. There’s no spy on me. They don’t care what you say anymore. They accept that you acted in love and there is no plot to discover. They’ve given up questioning and they have released all the prisoners but you and Ned.”
I am so pleased, I clasp my hands together. “They accept my marriage? We are to be released?”
“No, I think the plan is to deny it, and shame you.”
The disappointment is no surprise. I think I had known this was coming when they changed the questioning last year. But with a son in my arms and my husband under the same roof, I hardly care what people say about me. I know the truth, and I know what Ned is to me and I to him, and God knows. Who cares what Elizabeth says? As soon as we are free we can remarry and who will care then?
“Will they deny our marriage and then will she let us go?”