“No, no,” I contradict him. “We were to leave the Tower together this morning. He was only delayed because they were shoeing his horse. He is coming behind us and he is bringing Teddy—our son, little Lord Beauchamp. Teddy insisted on riding with his father. He will take him up before him on his saddlebow. I expect they are taking so long because Teddy wants to hold the reins.”
Again, he hesitates, and then he takes both my hands in a cold grip and says: “My dear Katherine, I am deeply sorry to tell you that your troubles are not over. You are not released, and Lord Hertford is not free either. You are not to be housed together. He is being taken to Hanworth, where his lady mother will be responsible for his imprisonment, and you have been sent here, where I have been ordered to keep you a prisoner.”
I am so astounded by this that I can say nothing. I just look at my uncle and I feel my jaw drop open. “No,” I say simply.
He is unblinking. “I am afraid so.”
“But she freed me, at everyone’s request, so that I could leave the city because of the plague!”
Neither of us needs to say who “she” is.
“No, she did not. She was persuaded by the whole of the court that you could not be left in the Tower in such danger, but she has not pardoned you, nor forgiven you, and she has certainly not freed you. You are to be kept here, by me, as much a prisoner as if you were still in the Tower in the charge of the guards. I have orders that you are to see and communicate with no one but the servants of my household and they are to prevent you from leaving.” He pauses. “Or even going outside.”
“Uncle, you cannot have agreed to this? To be my jailer?”
He looks at me helplessly. “Would it have been better to refuse, and leave you to die of the plague in the Tower?”
“You are imprisoning me? Your own niece?”
“What else can I do if she orders it? Would it be better if she put me in the Tower with you?”
“And Ned? My husband?”
“His mother has promised to keep him within two rooms of her house. He is not pardoned or forgiven either. His own mother is guarding him.”
“My son!” I say in a rush of panic. “Oh my God! Uncle! Our little boy, Teddy. I let him ride with Ned thinking they were following. Where is Teddy? Is he coming here? Are they sending him here to me?”
My uncle, pale with his own distress, shakes his head. “He’s to live with his father and grandmother at Hanworth,” he says.
“Not with me?” I whisper.
“No.”
“No!” I scream. I run to the door and wrench at the handle, but as it turns and the door does not open, I know that my own uncle’s servants have already locked me in. I hammer with both my hands on the wooden panels. “Let me out! I must have my son! I must have my son!”
I spin round and I snatch at my uncle’s arm. He fends me off, his face white.
“Uncle, you have to make them send Teddy to me,” I gabble at him. “He is not even two years old! He has never been away from me. He’s not like a royal boy who has spent his life with servants: we have never been parted! I am his only companion, I have mothered him night and day. He will die without me! I can’t be parted from him.”
“You have your baby,” he says feebly.
“I have two children!” I insist. “I bore two children, I must have two children! You cannot take one from me. You cannot allow her to take my son from me! It will be the death of me; it is worse than death to me. I have to have my boy.”
He presses me down into the wooden chair again. “Be still, be calm. I will write to William Cecil. He remains your friend. The Privy Council are working for your freedom: this might be a matter of only days. Everyone knows that you are the heir by right, by blood, and named so by the Privy Council. Everyone knows that you cannot be kept imprisoned indefinitely.”
I am silent, and he watches me as I twist round in the seat, hiding from his anxious gaze, and put my face against the wooden back of the chair. “She has taken my husband from me and now she takes my son?” I whisper brokenly. “Why would she save me from death, if she makes my life worse than death? I have to be with my boy. He’s only little—he’s not yet two years old. He has to be with me. I have to have him with me. How will he manage without me? Who will put him to bed?”
I raise my head and I look at my uncle’s face, twisted with his distress.
“Oh God,” I exclaim. “He will think I have abandoned him. He will think that I have left him. His little heart will break. He has to be with me. I cannot live without him. I swear to you, I will die if he is taken from me.”
“I know,” my uncle says. “Perhaps she will relent. Certainly, she must relent.”
I raise my head. “This is beyond cruel,” I say. “I would rather have died in the Tower of plague than lose my son.”
“I know.”
PIRGO PALACE, ESSEX,
AUTUMN 1563
My uncle and I are writing a petition to the queen. He comes to me every day and we make little touches to it. She is a scholar; she likes fine writing. She is not the student that my sister Jane was, but a well-turned phrase will always catch her attention.
We send a first draft to William Cecil to look over, and it comes back to us with his comments scribbled in the margins, and we rewrite it again. It has to be perfect. It has to convince her that I am truly sorry for marrying without permission. It has to persuade her—without being at all argumentative—that I maintain that I am married to my lord, and that our two babies are legitimate heirs. It has to assure her that—though I am my mother’s heir and the great-granddaughter of Henry VII—I will never challenge Elizabeth during her lifetime, nor claim the throne at her death without her authorization. If it were possible to assure her that she would never lose her looks, never age and never die, we would add a paragraph to swear to that, too.
I have to somehow convince her that I am the complete opposite of herself. She is so vain she cannot conceive someone to be unlike her. She can only imagine a world in her image. But I am completely different. I let my heart rule my head, while she is always calculating. I have married for love, while she is selling the man she loves into marriage with Mary Queen of Scots. I have two beautiful baby boys, and she is barren. And the biggest difference between us is that I don’t want the throne of England, I don’t even want to be named heir at this price—and it is all she ever wanted since her childhood when she was named bastard and excluded from our direct line of succession, and it is all she cares about now.
I dare not presume, Most Gracious Sovereign, to crave pardon for my disobedient and rash matching of myself without Your Highness’s consent; I only most humbly sue unto Your Highness to continue your merciful nature towards me. I acknowledge myself a most unworthy creature to feel so much of your gracious favor as I have done. My justly felt misery and continual grief doth teach me daily more and more the greatness of my fault, and your princely pity increaseth my sorrow that I have so forgotten my duty towards Your Majesty. This is my great torment of mind. May it therefore please Your Excellent Majesty to license me to be a most lowly suitor unto Your Highness to extend towards my miserable state Your Majesty’s further favor and accustomed mercy, which upon my knees in all humble wise I crave, with my daily prayers to God to long continue and preserve Your Majesty’s reign over us. From Pirgo the vi of November 1563. Your Majesty’s most humble, bounden, and obedient servant.