Her Highness, the Traitor

30

Frances Grey

July 10, 1553, to July 12, 1553





The day after accepting the crown, my daughter held her first council meeting, and asked me to join her. The Duchess of Northumberland was in the same room at the time, and naturally took this as an invitation to her own self, as well.

The meeting had just started when an elderly man, his quick breathing indicating he had been riding hard, entered the room. I recognized him from my visits to Mary as Thomas Hungate, one of her servants. Hungate did not kneel when he saw Jane, but handed Northumberland a letter. “From the lady Mary, who is at Kenninghall.”

The council appeared to have quite forgotten about Mary. Northumberland gave Hungate a killing frown, but broke the seal. “This is the main point of it,” he announced after scanning it. “‘Wherefore, my lords, we require you and charge you, for that our allegiance which you owe to God and us, that, for your honor and the surety of your persons, you employ yourselves and forthwith upon receipt hereof cause our right and title to the Crown and government of this realm to be proclaimed in our City of London and such other places as to your wisdoms shall seem good and as to this case appertaineth, not failing thereof, as our very trust is in you.’”

“Good Lord,” murmured the Duchess of Northumberland. “She intends to fight for the crown.”

Northumberland tossed the letter aside and fixed his eyes upon Hungate. “We, as Queen Jane’s loyal councilors, will compose an answer, but you will not deliver it, my lord. It was unwise for you to throw yourself away upon this embassy. For your impertinence, the council must lodge you at the Tower until your mistress is in safe custody.”

“Aye, lodge me there if you will, Your Grace, but it will not stop my mistress. The crown is rightly hers as King Henry’s eldest daughter, and the people know it. They will fight to defend my good and gracious lady.”

Northumberland beckoned to the men standing guard by the council door. “Take him away to the Tower,” he commanded.

“No matter, Your Grace. I shall see you and your fellows there soon enough when my lady is in her rightful place. Mark me well.” He turned to his guards. “You have your orders. Take me to the Tower, where I shall await the lady Mary’s coming in majesty.”

He strode out, practically dragging the guards, who were backing out of Jane’s presence as her rank demanded, in his wake. The Duchess of Northumberland stared at their departing figures and suddenly began to cry.

So did I. The man had sounded so unnervingly sure of himself…

“I think, Your Majesty, that it was a mistake to have the duchesses at the council meeting,” Harry said. He rose and offered each of us a hand. “They take these idle threats too much in earnest. Come, ladies. I believe the queen will excuse you.”

In the oversized chair that was serving as a makeshift throne, Jane nodded. “You are excused.”

***

Despite the disquiet occasioned by Mary’s letter, servants had scurried about all morning, making the Tower ready for my daughter’s arrival. At two that afternoon, the royal barge—fitted out nearly as magnificently as it had been in my uncle Henry’s time—docked at the royal stairs at the Tower.

Nothing Jane owned was splendid enough for the occasion, so some of Catherine Parr’s robes, long in storage, had been brought out for Jane and hastily altered to better fit her youthful figure. I bore my daughter’s lengthy train as we processed toward the Lion Gate, a clutch of spectators standing by. Harry, Northumberland, and the other councilors had gone to the Tower earlier that day and awaited Jane at the gate, on their knees.

A boom, made even more startling by the silence of the spectators, caused me to almost drop the train I was carrying. “Just a salute from the guns, Mother,” whispered Kate, walking close by. “Don’t be frightened.”

Yet I should have been; it was the last time my girl would ever walk beyond the walls of the Tower as a free woman.

***

That afternoon, Jane, pen in hand, sat at a desk in the Tower’s royal lodgings. Unused since King Edward had been crowned six years before, they had been hastily put in order but still looked slightly seedy. Beside her was a stack of letters ordering officials of each of England’s counties to resist the usurper, Mary. Each letter bore the signature “Jane the Quene” in upright letters with an exuberant tail to the “Q.”

As Jane added yet another letter to the pile and started on the next, the Marquis of Winchester, William Paulet, entered the room. With him was a procession of servants bearing velvet-covered caskets. “The royal jewels, Your Majesty,” Winchester said to Jane. “There are more elsewhere, but these are what came immediately to hand.”

Jane might be a queen, but she was girl enough to squeal at the jewels that were handed to her, one by one, for her inspection. There was a muffler of black velvet, hung with chains of gold and garnished with pearls, rubies, and diamonds. There was a clock engraved with a crowned rose and the motto Dieu et mon droit. There was a brooch, showing a lady coming out of a cloud. There was a gold toothpick shaped like a fish.

And there was the small crown, with ten large pearls, surrounded by pointed diamonds, set on points of gold. It was covered with rubies, diamonds, and emeralds, so many I lost count, and an enormous sapphire. “Having been a child yourself at the time, Your Majesty may not recall that three crowns were used during King Edward’s coronation—the crown of Edward the Confessor, the imperial crown, and a crown made personally for the king,” Winchester said. “This is the latter crown. As it was made to suit the king when he was a lad, it is more comfortable than the others. Would Your Majesty like to see if it suits you?”

Jane shrank back, no doubt thinking, like me, that the crown of a king who died at age sixteen could only be unlucky. “No. It was made for a child. We should prefer our own crown.”

“So it shall be. I shall order that one be made.” Jane nodded her approval, and the marquis hesitated. “Does Your Majesty wish that one should be made for Your Majesty’s husband, as well?”

The Duchess of Northumberland, who had been seemingly lost in admiration of the clock, turned around sharply.

“We have not decided on this matter,” Jane said.

“It is something that Your Majesty ought to decide,” said the Duchess of Northumberland.

“So we shall,” Jane said. “Send our husband to us.”

***

I heard no more about the matter of Guildford’s crown until the next afternoon when the Duchess of Northumberland stomped into my daughter’s presence chamber, her small figure trembling with rage. Remembering just in time to kneel to my daughter, she sprang up when ordered. “What is the meaning of this, Your Majesty?”

“You must explain yourself.”

“I should hardly think an explanation is warranted. My son tells me that Your Majesty and he agreed that he should be made king, provided that Parliament consented. And then, barely a half hour after he left your presence, you sent the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke to him with the message that Your Majesty would make him a duke, but never king. That is outrageous! You cannot tell my son one thing at one hour, and then another at the other.”

“How dare you tell us what we can or cannot do?”

“It is Your Majesty’s duty as a wife to honor and respect her husband, queen or no queen! It is but right that he be crowned, at least as Your Majesty’s consort.”

Guildford Dudley hastened in, followed by his brother Hal Dudley and by his feeble-minded uncle Jerome, a harmless sort who was more or less treated as the Dudleys’ pet. I had heard various members of the family explain Guildford’s new status to him, but none seemed to have succeeded in making him grasp it. “Mother!” Guildford protested. “You promised that you would not interfere.”

“How can I stop myself from interfering when you have been treated so shabbily by this girl?”

I stepped forward. “How dare you speak of your queen so?”

“I dare because she is ungrateful and unnatural! My husband is working day and night to carry out the king’s devise, and she is barely civil to him—much less my son. It is perfectly reasonable that he be king. Instead, she tries to fob him off with a mere dukedom. Duke of Clarence, indeed!”

“Drowned in a barrel of malmsey,” offered Jerome, clearly proud of having acquired this piece of historical knowledge. Everyone turned to glare at him, so, thoroughly abashed, he scurried away.

“Hal, go after your uncle and tell him that no one is angry with him,” the Duchess of Northumberland said tiredly.

“Your son will be lucky to get a dukedom, if you continue to speak to the queen in this insolent manner,” I said.

“Indeed? Well, I tell you this, madam, my son and I are going back to Sion. If you wish to conceive an heir, Queen Jane, you will have to do so by immaculate conception. Until you treat him more equitably, he will not be sleeping with you. Come along, Guildford.” She tugged at his arm, though Guildford was easily a foot taller than she. “Come!”

“You cannot leave our presence like this,” Jane said.

“We can, and we will. Come along!”

Guildford reluctantly obeyed.

“You can’t let him go to Sion, whatever that insolent little woman says,” I said. “There will be scandal.”

“I will send the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke after him,” Jane said. “Now leave me.”

“Jane—”

“Leave us, we said!”

Meekly, I backed out of the chamber.

***

It was not the Earls of Arundel and Pembroke who led a sheepish-looking Guildford Dudley back to Jane’s chamber later that evening, but Harry. “A little row this afternoon, I hear,” he commented when he came to my own chamber in the Tower later that evening.

“To put it mildly. That Dudley woman must be put in her place. And that son of hers, always harping on being made king!”

“He’s not a bad sort.”

I turned to stare at him. “You are standing up for him?”

“Yes. Jane can be a tall order for a boy, my dear, especially one who’s not used to the ways of women, as I wager young Guildford is not. So this evening, I have played peacemaker. Someone had to, I must say.”

“You have not persuaded her to make him king.”

“No. I persuaded them to consummate their marriage. That’s right, my dear, consummate it.”

“But they have been sleeping together!”

“Yes, and that’s all they’ve been doing—lying side by side. At least King Henry got as far as kissing Anne of Cleves; these two haven’t done even that.” Harry snorted. “It’s our Jane who has been stalling, I fear. Guildford’s been too ashamed to mention it to his own family—considering the way his mother acted today, I can see why—and he didn’t want to force her. So that was step one: making Jane understand that she had to act as a proper wife to him. Step two was making Guildford understand that he has to stop nagging Jane about being king. He’s not even of royal blood, and the people have to accept Jane on the throne before they accept him as king. A dukedom’s a sensible start, and she’s agreed to let him dine at a separate table, to assuage his pride. He’s a reasonable enough lad when handled well.” Harry rose. “The Duchess of Northumberland and you I shall leave to your own devices, my dear. One man can’t work miracles.”

I frowned as Harry suddenly grabbed his side. “Harry, you look ill.”

“I do believe I am, my dear. The stone is part of it, I think. I had a fainting fit the other day, as a matter of fact. I didn’t want to concern Jane with it.”

“You must go to Suffolk Place and rest.”

“Maybe after a day or so. First, let us get through this night. If Jane reneges on her promise to Guildford, it’s going to be a long one.”

***

The next day, Guildford did appear more at ease, being served at a separate table and being addressed as “Your Grace.” Jane herself seemed less skittish than she had been since her marriage, and even bestowed a royal smile upon Guildford’s uncle Jerome when he timidly presented her with a red rose from the Tower garden. The Duchess of Northumberland and I managed to sit side by side without incident.

Jane and Guildford’s marital relations, however, were not the chief concern at the Tower on July 12: the council was preoccupied with choosing a commander to lead the forces against Mary. They chose Harry.

“I don’t like Father being chosen for this,” Jane said later that afternoon when only the two of us were present, Jane having waved off her attendants. “He’s been looking ill, don’t you think?”

“He complained of feeling poorly only last night.”

“And he has so little experience in these matters.”

“That is true.”

“And I would be left here with the Duke of Northumberland. I don’t trust him, Mother, or his odious wife.” She pointed to her hair. “Look. It’s falling out in clumps.”

I pulled gently on an auburn lock. Sure enough, a few strands of hair did come out in my hand.

“It’s even worse when Mistress Ellen brushes it at night.” Jane lowered her voice. “Nothing was wrong with my hair until I came here. I think Northumberland is trying to poison me. Or perhaps his duchess is.”

There could be other reasons Jane’s hair was falling out, I knew. Still, I thought of Mary telling me years before that she did not trust Northumberland. How far had King Edward been influenced by the duke in changing the succession? And what of the old woman I had seen in the dying king’s chambers? Northumberland, the son of a traitor, was an ambitious man. He had successfully brought down Somerset. Might he have hastened the death of the king? Especially since the talk about Guildford becoming king had begun, it was a thought I could not repress, no matter how respectfully Northumberland treated my daughter and no matter how adoringly his duchess gazed upon him. “Now that you are queen, you should have someone taste your food for you. Everything. If Northumberland is doing you no harm, he will see no harm in it.”

Jane nodded.

“But if you don’t want your father to leave you—and I would feel better myself if he did not—you need to tell the council. You need not voice your suspicions about Northumberland or your worries about your father’s military experience. Simply demand that he stay here with you because of his health.”

“Then I will,” Jane said. “Tonight.” She hesitated. “Last night, I consummated my marriage. I had been putting it off.”

“So I heard.”

“Will I know soon whether I am with child?”

I smiled to think how little my brilliant daughter knew of such ordinary matters. Some things could not be found in books. “Probably not until you miss a monthly course, perhaps even two. Of course, you cannot pin your hopes on just one encounter. You must keep lying with him.”

“Well, I know that much,” Jane said huffily. “It wasn’t so horrid, really. At least he didn’t ask me afterward if he could be king.” She hesitated again. “It’s good to have you here with me, Mother. Will you stay with me at court?”

“Indeed I will, until you no longer think you need me here.”

For once in her life, my daughter looked entirely humble. “I don’t think that will ever happen.”