“Now he is worse. His doctors say that he will not survive the summer.”
“The summer?” This is impossibly soon. I thought that he might live long enough to marry and have a child. I had no idea that they were saying that we might lose him within the year. “God save His Grace,” I whisper, shocked. “I did not know. But how can it be? I thought he was only—”
“That’s not important,” she cuts me off. “What matters most is his will.”
Actually, what matters most is his eternal soul. But I cannot tell her that now.
“He has changed it,” she says. There is a ring of triumph in her voice. “Changed it, and all of the council have sworn to the changes.” She glances up at Guildford as he smiles down at her. “Your father has seen to it,” she says. “He is prepared for everything.” She turns back to me. “The king has excluded his half sisters from the succession,” she says briskly, ignoring my gasp of surprise.
I get to my feet, as if I must stand to find the courage to argue with her. “That cannot be,” I say slowly. I know that Princess Mary is the next in line; whatever I may think of her religion there is no denying her right. Heirs cannot be named at random. The throne is not to be given away. My cousin the king knows this, the country knows this. Whatever my father says it cannot be that the king could choose his heir. There is no Tudor boy. He cannot prefer one cousin over another.
“It will be,” Lady Dudley says. “And she will know it for a fact when he dies.”
I am suddenly afraid that this is treason. Surely, it is treason to speak of the death of the king; surely, it is treason to speak against the princesses?
“I think I had better go home,” I say.
“You’ll stay here,” she raps out. “This is no time for you to run to your mother.”
Scornfully, I look at her son, who clearly never has to run to his mother for he is always under her wing.
“You have to be here so that my husband can fetch you to the Tower,” she explains.
I gasp. The last man fetched to the Tower by her husband ended with his head on the block: Edward Seymour.
“No, you fool,” she says irritably. “You will have to go to the Tower on the death of the king. You will have to be seen at the Tower. My husband will want to keep you safe.”
It is simply too incredible, and too ridiculous for me to consider. I know that my father and my mother will never allow me to be taken to the Tower by John Dudley.
“I’m going home,” I say firmly, and I walk to the door. I will not be part of this. My barge is waiting for me at the pier, my ladies are waiting for me in the gallery. Nobody can stop me going home to my mother with the news that the Dudleys have run mad, that they think that they can change the succession, and that they want to take me to the Tower.
“Stop her,” Guildford’s mother orders him.
He steps forward and takes hold of my wrist. I round on him. “You let me go!” I spit, and he flinches back as if Katherine’s kitten had suddenly turned on him and scratched his face.
I don’t wait for a second chance. I dive out of the room and take to my heels. I run through the palace, I clatter across the gangplank. “Cast off!” I say breathlessly, and then I laugh because I am free.
SUFFOLK PLACE, LONDON,
JUNE 1553
I see that my mother is in a state of fury before I have even entered the room or have a chance to tell her that I am mistreated by Lady Dudley. She is striding up and down her privy chamber, my father sitting at the table, silently watching her, his fingers steepled together, his expression guarded. She whirls around as I come in and then she sees my white face.
“They’ve told you, then.”
“Lady Dudley told me,” I say quietly. “But I don’t understand. I came away at once, Father.”
“Tell her!” my mother commands him. “Tell her what John Dudley has done and you have all agreed!”
“It became clear to the king and to us all that he will not live to have children of his own,” my father says heavily. “His doctors doubt that he will even live to see your son born.”
“And with Princess Mary and Elizabeth set aside, then I am the next heir,” my mother asserts loudly.
“The doctors say weeks, not even months.”
“Blessed God! So soon?” I murmur.
“I should inherit in weeks, not even months!” my mother squawks.
“But the king was determined to get to a male heir, as soon as possible,” my father continues, overriding her grunt of protest. “And so he wanted to pass over your mother—for the good of the country—to the next generation, to you and your sisters—and to the generation after that: your son, Jane.”
“But you said—”
“So he has named you as queen, and any son that you have will be king after you. He can’t name a boy as yet unborn, so he names you.”
“And the whole council, including your father, have signed to this!” my mother exclaims. “Excluding me! Casting me aside! And they expect me to agree! They go to the king and sign away my right!”
“I don’t see what else we could do,” my father says patiently. “I put your case very strongly, but it was the solution of the king’s own devising to get us to a king within a generation.”
“It puts John Dudley’s grandson on the throne!” my mother explodes with anger. “That is why he has brought the council round to the king’s wishes! John Dudley planned this from the very beginning: Jane crowned queen in my place, and Guildford Dudley beside her, and that tribe of Dudley brothers become royal dukes! Whereas I—the daughter of the Queen of France, the niece of the King of England—am passed over. And you tell me I must agree to it!”
Quietly my father regards her. “Nobody is denying your royal blood,” he says. “It is that which brought the king to Jane in the first place. Your right passes to her, and you become My Lady the Queen’s Mother, the greatest woman at court after her.”
“I shall have to pray on this,” I tell him. “It cannot be right. The king has sisters.”
“The king prayed on it, we all did,” he says. “God told him that it was the only way to get a Tudor boy on the throne.”
“And I am to have him?” I ask, thinking of Guildford’s painful fumblings. “I am to conceive a Tudor heir, and give birth to a Tudor boy where five wives could not?”
“If it is God’s will,” my father reminds me. “And you will be head of the Church of England. Think of that, Jane. Think of that.”
I go to pray. My little sister Mary finds me in the chapel, on my knees, gazing blankly at the white wall behind the bare table of the altar. All around us like ghosts are the shadowy outlines of the paintings of the saints showing through the limewashed walls, frescoes that were bright and inspiring when the chapel was first built and people needed such toys because they had no Bible and were not allowed to pray directly to God. I must do anything to save my country from slipping back into those times, enslaved to a distant pope, with a papist queen preaching lies to an ignorant people.
“The Duchess of Northumberland, your mother-in-law, has sent for you,” Mary whispers. She stands beside me as I kneel and her head is the same height as mine. “Sent one of her ladies-in-waiting to tell our lady mother that you have to go home to them at once. She said that you were disobedient and that it would be the undoing of all of us if you are not to hand when they need you.”
I look up but, stubbornly, I don’t move. “I won’t go.”
“Our mother said that you would not go, she said that you could stay here, and Lady Dudley said in that case she would keep Guildford at her home, and you would be known for a disobedient and estranged wife.”
I look blankly at my little sister. “I have to obey my husband. I swore to be his wife,” I say miserably.
Mary’s eyes are huge in her pale face. “That’s what Mother said.”
“She insists I go back?”
“You have to go.” Mary nods. “Mother says it is her wish.”
I rise to my feet. I feel as weary as my cousin the king, fighting for his life while everyone quarrels about his legacy. “I’ll go then,” I say. “God knows what is going to happen next.”