Her Highness, the Traitor

7

Jane Dudley

April 1548 to September 1548





Thomas Seymour patted the Queen of England as if she were a particularly fine heifer. “Well, Lady Warwick? Do you think the mouse will crawl nicely out of its hole?”

“I do indeed,” I said as the queen gave a strained smile and my son Robert, who had decided I needed a manly escort to Chelsea, looked slightly ill. The couple’s wards, the lady Elizabeth and the lady Jane, tittered.

To everyone’s shock, the queen had announced her pregnancy a few weeks earlier. Now in her mid-thirties, she’d never quickened with child before, although Seymour was her fourth husband. Catherine had been miserable for the past few weeks, her early pregnancy sickness exacerbated by her having conceived for the first time at such a comparatively advanced age, but she had come out of her worst time and now had a healthy glow to her.

The queen took me by the arm. “Would you walk in the garden with me, my lady?” She smiled at her husband and at my Robert. “You can entertain the ladies Elizabeth and Jane. There are maternal matters I wish to discuss with Lady Warwick.”

I let the queen lead me away toward some rose bushes, the flowers just a few weeks from bloom. The men, I saw, had paired off also: Thomas Seymour with the lady Elizabeth, Robert with Lady Jane. I suspected my Robert was not entirely happy about this situation. “I hope Your Grace is not overly concerned about this pregnancy?” I eyed the queen as appraisingly as Seymour had earlier. “There are risks, as you hardly need me to tell you, but you are not delicate look—”

“No, it is not that. For that I will trust in the Lord.” The queen looked over her shoulder, but we were well out of sight of the others. “It is my husband and the lady Elizabeth who concern me. Tom is flirting outrageously with the girl, and I know not what to do.”

“Flirting? A man married to a queen, flirting with a princess of the blood?”

Catherine nodded grimly. “At first it was mere pleasantry, I thought. Tom is not the sort of man who can let a pretty girl go unnoticed—I knew that when I married him. But lately, his behavior has been most unseemly. He comes bare legged into her chamber, surprises her in bed—even pats her on her buttocks. It is all quite open, mind you. Her whole household is aware of it.”

“Does he do the same with the lady Jane?”

“No, not at all. He is very kind to her, very friendly—but no more. But then, he hopes to match her with the king. It would not do to demean her. And she is very young, too.”

“Has he done more with the lady Elizabeth than flirt, do you think?”

“I don’t believe he is lying with the girl, and I don’t believe he will try. That would be too much even for Tom.”

“Does she resist his advances?”

“Not in the least. I believe she was taken aback at first, but now I believe she looks forward to them, from the way she giggles. The lady Elizabeth has the strangest giggle, by the way. Almost like a neigh. I never heard it until Tom started his antics with her.” She sighed. “I quite expected this from King Henry. Sooner or later, I thought, some pretty young girl would make her way into my household, and he would be after her. He did no such thing, though; he must have had his fill of young girls with Katherine Howard. But I never expected this treatment from Tom Seymour, who professed to love me so!” The queen broke off a sprig that was beginning to bloom and twisted it in her hands.

“There is no need to think that he no longer loves you, Catherine. Men sometimes act foolish when their wives are expecting a child,” I offered gently. “Even loving husbands.”

Catherine snorted. “What would you know about such matters? Your husband is notoriously faithful to you. My brother once tried to entice him into visiting one of the finest brothels in Southwark. There was no harm in a little paid pleasure, he said, and it would only improve the enjoyment of the marital bed. Your husband was horrified at the very idea.”

I had never heard this story, and I paused a moment to savor it. “Well, I am lucky. Most other men have their lapses. Have you considered sending the lady Elizabeth away?”

“Yes, but it would surely cause talk. And I am half afraid Tom would follow her.”

“Follow her? You saw him today. He is looking forward to his coming child. Why would he sacrifice that for a fourteen-year-old chit?” I patted the queen on her arm. “He is anxious about the babe, that is all, and this is his foolish way of putting his mind off it, I’ll wager. Let him have his horseplay for a few months. It will all be over soon, and you will be a proud mother, and he, a doting father.”

“Perhaps you are right.”

“Of course I am right! Now let us speak of happier matters. Where are you going to spend your confinement?”

***

Despite Thomas Seymour’s folly, I could not help but feel rather smug as I rode in my barge toward home, for it was true John had never been unfaithful to me. It could be no great credit to my own charms, for I knew well I was not beautiful—not even pretty. Though my figure was tidy for a woman who had borne thirteen children, the most that could be said about my face was it was pleasant. On my best days, I could just manage something approaching prettiness, and that was only with the assistance of two ladies, the best tailor and hoodmaker in London, and a little bit of art.

I smiled, ignoring the sights and sounds of the busy Thames as my barge lumbered along. My looks, or lack thereof, had never kept John from my bed; indeed, we had anticipated our wedding day, though naturally this was not a fact I had advertised to my sons and daughters, particularly my daughters. It was the Castle of Loyalty tournament that had been our downfall, so to speak. Over Christmas of 1524, when King Henry’s court was a more cheerful place than it became later, sixteen young men, including John, had proposed to defend their castle against all comers. The king had responded with enthusiasm, and soon after New Year’s of 1525, a team of workmen had dutifully built a mock castle, with a mount on which stood a unicorn. Standing on each of the castle’s turrets was a lady, who was expected to clasp her handkerchief to her heart at appropriate moments and in general look romantic and worried at the same time. It was a drawn-out tournament that took place over a series of days, so instead of the same four ladies sighing upon the turrets day after day, different ladies were used on each occasion.

Having just recently been appointed as one of the first of Queen Catherine’s maidens, I was a newcomer to court, and not one of its ornaments. My father, however, was master of the armory, who helped arrange the king’s tournaments. He had said a word to the right people, and so I had been chosen as one of the ladies of the castle.

I had never been dressed so thinly in my life. We were supposed to look like damsels from King Arthur’s court, which must have been a chilly place. I wore simply a flowing tunic with an under tunic, with a hooded mantle to keep the cold off. The garments clung, which was not a bad thing, as I had a pretty figure, but the idea of the entire court seeing just how pretty was so daunting to me that at the feast afterward, I was slipping away when a slender hand pulled me back. “Where are you going?”

Anne Boleyn was about nine years my senior, and whatever people said about her afterward, she was never anything but kind to me. Perhaps because I was so much younger than she, and such a novice at court, she had taken a liking to me. It was Anne who had helped me arrange my costume after putting on her own robes in a careless, jaded manner that reminded all of us she had spent time in the splendid courts of Burgundy and France, where grand spectacles were the order of the day.

“To change,” I said.

“Change? What on earth for?”

“I feel naked.”

“You look fine. It’s a costume; everyone expects it. And what are you going to put on? That terrible gable headdress that you had on earlier, I wager.”

“I had it made for me in Kent. It’s almost new.”

“It should have stayed in Kent. It’s not a style that suits anyone under thirty, don’t you see? You should wear a French hood. Your hair is your greatest beauty; it should be displayed as it is now.”

In my distress at my clinging costume, I had forgotten about my dark brown, hip-length hair, which was bared for all of the court to see. “But—”

“It’s too late, anyway. Who is that young man staring at you?”

“Sir John Dudley.” He’d been knighted by Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk, while serving in France just over a year before. “He is my father’s ward. I am to marry him.”

“Have you known him long?”

“Since I was three. We were raised together. We are almost like brother and sister.”

Anne snorted. “My brother assuredly does not look at me the way that Sir John is looking at you.” She raised her chin. “Get Sir John over here. Do this.” She tilted her head slightly and sent a signal with her eyes.

I obeyed. My version of this was a poor one, but it actually did bring John over. I had not seen him in a number of months, as I was a recent arrival at court, and he had been there for some time now. At the tournament, he had just been another knight in armor; now that he was in his ordinary clothes, I saw he had grown lean and muscular. I felt the stirring of a feeling I did not fully understand, except to know it was not sisterly.

Men’s eyes usually lingered upon Anne; John’s did not. Instead, he nodded to her politely and turned to me, barely acknowledging her departure as someone claimed her for the dance that was just beginning. “Jane?” he said as ladies and gentleman milled around and jostled us. “You’re beautiful.”

“It’s just the dress.”

“No. It’s you. Let’s dance.”

This was odd, indeed. John was a passable dancer, but he had never been an enthusiastic one. I obeyed him without comment, however, and we joined the pavane.

I could perform all of the intricate steps without thinking about them, which was fortunate, because John and I never took our eyes off each other. The odd feeling I had when I’d looked at John earlier was spreading throughout my entire body. I could not imagine how it was not visible to the entire company. When the dance was over and we had made our obeisances to each other and to the king and queen, John took my hand and we hastened, without a word, outside the great hall and into a dark corner, where we came instantly into each other’s arms and kissed until we were breathless.

“Do you want to go back to the feast?” John whispered at last.

“No.”

John said nothing more, but took me by my hand and led me off. I knew instinctively where he was taking me, and I did not care. His chamber was not in the palace itself, but in some outbuildings built to handle the excess of courtiers. The twists and turns and flights of stairs we had to take to reach our destination did nothing to dilute our passion; indeed, once in a while we would stop our progress at a particularly inviting dark spot and kiss again. At last, John stopped in front of a door, turned a key, and guided me inside. It was the tiniest of chambers, just large enough to hold a stand and a narrow bed. There was nowhere to sit but on the bed, and after we had sat there and kissed a while, there was nothing for us to do but lie upon it and kiss some more. Nothing, once we lay down and the only thing that stood between John and me were two flimsy layers of cloth, for him to do but to strip me bare of them and then, at my soft urgings, to take my maidenhead.

I blame the dress completely.

The next day, John had a word with my father, and a month later, we were married. No one could have suspected, as we exchanged our vows and as the guests watched us shyly settle into our marriage bed after the priest blessed it, that we’d already consummated our relationship. No one, that is, except for Anne Boleyn, who had winked at me as I crept back in the direction of the maidens’ chamber late that night.

I had winked back.

***

“Mother, are you listening to me?”

I blinked my way back from the twenty-three-year excursion into the past my thoughts had been taking. “No,” I admitted.

“Well, it’s about the lady Elizabeth. She hardly said a word to me, and we’ve been friends for years.”

“Yes, she seemed rather taken up by the Admiral.” I decided not to tell my son about the conversation I’d had with Catherine Parr. It was bad enough having the queen upset while she was great with child, and Thomas Seymour running around Chelsea bare-legged, without Robert deciding he had to uphold the lady Elizabeth’s honor. I envisioned him traveling down to Chelsea, sword in hand, while Thomas Seymour ran around in his nightshirt, and despite myself, I snickered at the sight my thoughts were presenting to me.

“It’s not amusing. She’s hanging on every word the Admiral says, as if he weren’t thirty years her senior. It’s disgusting.”

“I am sure she is merely being polite, as one should be to one’s elders.”

Robert ignored the pointed tone in which I’d spoken the last part of my remark. “Even that little lady Jane goggles at the man. So does Kat Astley, for that matter, and she’s married, for God’s sake. You’d think the three of them had been shut up in a nunnery for twenty years, the way they act.”

“He is an inveterate charmer, that is all. Don’t worry so.”

Three weeks later, Queen Catherine caught Thomas Seymour with the lady Elizabeth in his arms. Her reaction could be felt all the way up the Thames to Greenwich. Elizabeth was sent in haste—or as much in haste as a princess and her entourage could be sent off—to Cheshunt, where Kat Astley’s married sister lived.

I visited the queen at her manor at Hanworth, near Richmond, a couple of weeks later. The queen and Lady Jane were hard at work sewing baby things, while Thomas Seymour bustled around preparing for the queen’s move to Sudeley Castle, where she would spend her confinement. The queen and Seymour seemed their old selves; even when they railed about the still-ongoing battle with the Protector and his duchess about the queen’s jewels, they did so with a happy sense of mutuality. The Admiral beamed at the lady Jane paternally from time to time and effusively praised her stitches (which hardly deserved it, Jane not being much of a needlewoman), but otherwise kept his charm well within the bounds of propriety. The lady Elizabeth, the queen told me in private, had written a contrite letter expressing her gratitude for their friendship, as well as a friendly but entirely decorous letter to Seymour himself. I left Hanworth content in the thought that all had worked out and that I and the rest of Catherine’s friends would soon be hearing of the queen’s safe delivery.

In September, we got the good news: Catherine had given birth to a girl, Mary, at the end of August. Then, just a few days later, another message arrived. The queen was dead.