He will be favoring his family’s candidate: Henry Hastings, who married the Dudley girl in the round of weddings that saw Jane and me married off to reinforce Dudley power. Even now, eight years after Jane’s death, the old Dudley plot for the throne rolls on like a great watermill wheel incapable of stopping, that turns one wheel and then another and then the great grinding stone that shakes the whole building. The plot is set in motion, the water flows, the mill wheel turns; but nobody will support Dudley.
Nobody will openly support Mary Queen of Scots. She is a papist and her kinsmen are making war on Huguenot Protestants and mustering to fight English soldiers in Le Havre. Overnight she has become England’s enemy, and she will never recover her reputation as a ruler who will tolerate our religion. Very few people favor Margaret Douglas. For all that she is of the royal family she is widely known as a papist, imprisoned for the most diabolical of crimes. Nobody would accept such a woman as Queen of England. There is no one else of blood royal and of the reformed religion but me. No one else whose line was named by the king’s will. I shall wear my sister’s crown.
All day I hear this, like plainsong, in my head, as I play with Teddy in the garden and help him to stand and let him jump on my lap. All day I hear over and over again: “I shall wear my sister’s crown, I shall fulfill her dream. I shall complete the task that Jane started and there will be rejoicing in heaven.”
At dinnertime I send my lady-in-waiting to wait on my husband. I send a basket of peaches by way of a gift, and she takes them to his dinner table. She comes back to me, her lips compressed as if she is holding in a secret.
“My lady, I have a message.”
“What is it?” I hear in my head: I shall wear my sister’s crown, I shall fulfill her dream.
“My lord said to tell you—thank God—that the queen has recovered. She has come out of her swoon and the spots have broken on her skin. He said God be praised she is better.”
“God be praised,” I repeat loudly. “Our prayers have been answered. God bless her.”
I turn and go into the house, leaving Teddy with the maid, though he calls after me and raises his arms to be lifted up. I cannot let anyone see the bitterness in my face. She has recovered, that false kinswoman, that evil queen. She has recovered and I am still here in prison and no one is going to come and set me free. Nobody is coming to crown me today.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
WINTER 1562
Elizabeth recovers as if the devil himself was nursing her with satanic tenderness. Jane’s sister-in-law, who was Mary Dudley, nearly dies taking the pox from Elizabeth, and loses her famous beauty. I have no pity for her. It was she who took Jane by barge to Syon on the night that they made her queen. It was an ill-advised journey: and now Jane is dead and Mary will spend the rest of her life hiding her scarred face from the world, as if Dudley ambition has blasted their daughter’s beauty.
The queen has recovered, but the country is in turmoil. Everyone knows that she was near death and no heir named, and now word is rapidly spreading, from the great houses of London into the streets, that she tried to make a traitor’s son, a traitor’s grandson, into the Protector of the kingdom. Our queen tried to make her lover into a tyrant like Richard III. People are horrified that she would fail in her duty by dying without naming an heir, and then betray her country to a favorite. People speak of other royal favorites and the danger of an unsteady king. Ned gets a stream of messages from his friends and my supporters who are guests at private dinners held in secret by the reformist lords, who swear that an heir must be named to the throne of England, and it must be me.
“William Cecil is determined that you shall be named as heir,” Ned promises me. “He says that no one has a better claim, either by religion or inheritance, that Elizabeth knows this, that everyone knows this. He says that you must be released. Everyone agrees.”
“Then why are we still here?” I ask.
We are seated together in my room, enfolded in the shabby chair that once served as Jane’s throne. We are both half-undressed, warm from the bed, wrapped in a rug before the fire, sated with kissing and touching.
“I have to say that I’ve been in worse places.” He gathers me closely to him.
“I would spend every evening of my life with you like this,” I say, “but not under lock and key. Elizabeth has freed Margaret Douglas and her husband, the Earl of Lennox. Why not us?”
“They’re not freed,” he corrects me. “He’s been released to live with her, but they’re still under arrest. Elizabeth had to let him go to his wife because he cannot bear imprisonment.”
“I cannot bear imprisonment!” I exclaim. “Perhaps she will let us go to live under house arrest. We could ask for it, if they will not agree to free us completely. I could have my baby under your roof at Hanworth.”
“When we are freed, I will never come back here again. Only once a year to lay a flower on the tombs of our family,” Ned promises.
“Not even for my coronation? It is the tradition.”
“We will make a new tradition,” he says. “I am not having my son inside these walls again.” Gently, he touches my rounded belly. “Neither of them.”
“I like Windsor Castle best,” I say sleepily.
“Hampton Court,” Ned rules. “And perhaps we shall build a new castle.”
“A new palace,” I correct him. “We won’t need a castle. The country will be at peace. We can build beautiful palaces and houses and live as a royal family among our people.”
“A godly peace at last,” he says.
“Amen.” I pause for a moment, thinking of a new beautiful palace that we might call Seymour Court. “It will happen, won’t it?” I ask. “For we have had so many hopes and so much trouble.”
He considers. “Really, I think this time that it has to. She truly has no other credible heir, and this time she has gone too far even for her friends and advisors.”
THE TOWER, LONDON,
WINTER 1562
Ned and I have a prisoners’ Christmas with gifts brought in from the city, and green boughs from the governor’s garden. We eat like princes. The people of London leave presents at the gateway of the Tower every day: food and little fairings. I am so touched that they send gifts for Teddy. A London silversmith sends him a spoon with our family crest of angel wings engraved on the handle; a toymaker sends him a wooden hobbyhorse. He is most excited by this, though he does not yet have the skill to walk with it held between his legs. Instead, he pushes it before him wherever he goes and commands me to say “Gee up.” All he can say is “Hee!” and his father complains that his first words should be “à Seymour!”
We dine alone, each in our own room, but Ned comes to my rooms as soon as the dishes have been cleared from his table and his servants have gone for the night. The guard lets him in and we go to bed for Christmas kisses. There has been no lovemaking since my belly grew big, but I rub my face against his naked chest and he strips me naked so that he can stroke the proud curve of my belly.
“Does it not hurt the child, strapping so tight?” he asks.
“I don’t think so,” I say. “I hid Teddy till the last months.”
“I am so glad to be with you this time.” He buries his face in my warm breasts. “I must be the happiest man ever held in these walls.”
I chuckle. “No carving in the stone? No counting of the days?”
“I pray for our release,” he says seriously. “And I think it will come soon. The queen has to call a parliament if she wants money for her army in France. And the parliament will not grant her funds unless she names her successor. They have her trapped. All the lords of the Privy Council have been meeting privately ever since Twelfth Night, and the strongest voices have been raised for you to be named as her heir.”
I breathe a sigh. “They admit that we are married?”
“They always knew it,” he assures me. “They just did not dare to deny her before. And in any case, they have made us both swear to our marriage before the Archbishop of Canterbury, who recorded that for the Queen of England. The Archbishop of Canterbury has heard our wedding vows. We could hardly be more married. Nobody can deny it now.”