“Then why does she not understand that I had to marry for love?” I ask. “If she is in love so deep that she would risk her kingdom? Why does she not sympathize with me?”
Mary shakes her head at the plaintive tone in my voice. “Because she’s not like you,” she declares. “You don’t understand her. Everyone thinks she’s a woman blown about by passion, that her heart comes first. But she’s not. She’s a woman who feels her passions but is not shifted by them. She’s determined and she’s selfish. She’ll never give Robert Dudley up, but she’ll never marry him either. She loves the throne more than him. He still thinks she will be unable to resist him, but I think he’s wrong. He’ll find he has the very worst of the bargain: always close to Elizabeth, but never on the throne.”
“You make her sound like a tyrant,” I whisper.
Mary raises her arched eyebrow. “She’s a Tudor,” she says. “They’re all tyrants.”
I gasp and put my hand to my belly, where I have felt a great heave. I bend over, panting with pain.
Mary is instantly alert. She jumps down from the chair and reaches up to put her hand on my bent back. “What is it? What is it?”
“Something moving,” I gasp, waiting in case the pain comes again. I straighten up. “Dear God, a terrible spasm.”
“Is the baby coming? Is it due?”
“How am I to know when it is due?” I say wildly. “I can’t see a wise woman or a physician.” I can feel the sensation coming on again, and this time I hold the arms of the old throne and pant like a dog as the pain rises and falls. “No, I remember this,” I say when I can get my breath back. “It’s coming now.”
“What can I do?” Mary rolls up her sleeves and looks around the room.
“Nothing! You must do nothing!” I am well enough to know that Mary must not be found here, assisting at the birth of yet another heir to the throne of England. “You must go, and say nothing about it.”
“I can’t leave you here like this!”
“At once! And don’t say anything about it.” I am holding my belly tightly in my hands, as if I would delay the remorseless movement of the baby and the irresistible rhythm of the pains. “Go, Mary! As soon as you are safely away I will send my maid to the lieutenant and he will get me a midwife. But you can’t know of the birth. You’ll have to wait with the court for news and then act surprised.”
She almost dances on the spot in frustration. “How can I leave you? My own sister? Without help? Here? Where Jane . . . where Jane . . .”
“To keep yourself safe,” I gasp. The pain is coming again. I feel the sweat stand out on my face, all over my belly. “I care for your safety so much. I swear I do. Go, Mary, and pray for me in secret.”
I am bent over the chair, so she stretches up on tiptoes and kisses my face. “God bless you and keep you,” she whispers passionately. “I’ve gone. Call your maid at once. Send me news without fail.”
She tiptoes from the room and the guard lets her out and shoots the bolts behind her. I wait for a few moments, riding another wave of pain, and then I shout: “Lucy! Come to me!”
There is complete uproar. The rooms are stripped for a childbirth and the Tower guards go running around the city looking for a midwife who can come at once, and a wet nurse in milk. The Tower servants drag in a daybed to my bedroom and tie a rope to the posts of my bed for me to pull in my labor, while I stride up and down the rooms and clutch the back of a chair when my pains come. They are coming quickly now; I can hardly recover between them. The dogs are everywhere underfoot, and Mr. Nozzle sits on the top of the wooden shutter and watches me with concern in his twinkly brown eyes. I send a message to Ned, and when I glance out of my window as I walk back and forth, trying to ease the constant ache in my back, I see that his scarf has been replaced at his windowsill. He is flying the Seymour standard and I laugh aloud at his joy, and have to steady myself by bracing against the wall.
My lady-in-waiting, Mrs. Rother, comes in, white as her linen, and a fat red-faced woman follows her. “My lady,” Mrs. Rother says. “I had no idea! If you had told me, we could have prepared. This is the best midwife we could find in a hurry.”
“Don’t mind me!” the woman objects, speaking in the sharp accent of a Londoner born and bred.
“I don’t mind,” I assure her. “I hope you will care for me and my baby. This is my second birth.”
She holds my hands in her comforting meaty grip as the servants behind me make up the daybed with clean linen, and bring in jugs of hot water, clouts and sheets, and linen torn up into swaddling cloths.
Lucy holds Teddy on her hip. “Should I take him out?” she asks nervously. “And shouldn’t the dogs go out?”
I am suddenly overcome with tiredness. “Yes. Put everything to rights,” I say to Mrs. Rother and Lucy. “I want to lie down.”
They guide me to the daybed and let me rest between my pains. “Tell my lord that I am well,” I whisper to Lucy. “Tell him I am merry.”
The baby is born that evening, a beautiful boy, just as I prayed. They pack my bleeding parts with moss and tie my breasts up with linen and let me lie in the tattered big bed. They have found a wet nurse and she sits beside me and feeds him. We show him to Teddy, who points and says, “Hee!” as if to tell the baby to gee up. But Ned is not allowed to come to me.
The lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward, whispers through the half-open door from the presence chamber, “I have sent your news to the court, Lady Hertford. I am afraid that they will be most surprised.”
“Thank you,” I say, leaning back on the pillows. I am dizzy from drinking the mulled birthing ale. I know that the court will be more than surprised. Those who want a secure Protestant succession will be delighted—that’s almost everyone. Those who measure my claim will see that it is redoubled. Only Elizabeth will begrudge me this beautiful baby and resent my happiness. We will have to wait and see what she will do in her revenge.
She moves swiftly and spitefully. The lieutenant of the Tower, Sir Edward, is locked in his own dungeon, and Ned is commanded to appear before the Star Chamber to answer charges of deflowering a virgin of the blood royal in the queen’s house, breaking prison, and ravishing one of the blood royal for a second time.
As he leaves the Tower to face his accusers I drape the Seymour standard over my windowsill, so that he can see that his babies and his wife are well, that we honor our name and that we will never deny it.
Of course, he does not deny us. But I don’t know what he says, nor how he bears his interrogation, till I get an unsigned note from Mary, written in unrecognizable script.
The Privy Council announced that you are the heir on the very day that they got news that you were with child. There was uproar, but it proves your marriage and strengthens your claim. Ned did well before the Star Chamber and swore that you were man and wife. He’s to be fined a greater sum than anyone could pay—and stay in prison indefinitely. The people of London are calling for your release, singing ballads and comparing you with our sister Jane. They demand the freedom of your sons, they are calling the boys the new blessed princes in the Tower. Send me news of your health and the babies. Burn this.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
SUMMER 1563