Her Highness, the Traitor

8

Frances Grey

September 1548 to October 1548





Just a day after the terrible news arrived that Queen Catherine had died of childbed fever, a messenger rode up with a letter from Tom Seymour, written in his own hand. It was tear stained and barely coherent. His aged mother would be taking charge of his baby girl, and the Protector had invited him to stay with him at Sion House so he would not have to face his sorrow alone. Our Jane had been chief mourner at the queen’s funeral and had done her duty with much gravity and honor. Which brought him to his main point: with the queen gone, he could no longer maintain our daughter in his household. The very sight of the girl for whom his dear wife had had so much affection was too much for him to bear. In fact, Seymour said in a postscript, our daughter was on her way to Bradgate now.

I had barely had time to make my daughter’s chambers ready for her, when I heard Jane was just a mile or so off. Not long afterward, my girl stood before me. She was dressed in mourning for the queen, which made her look older than her eleven years, and I could see she was beginning to develop a hint of a bosom.

Jane allowed me to embrace her. “I was very sorry to hear of the queen’s death,” I said. “I know she was very fond of you.”

“She was very kind to me. I shall miss her.”

“When you are ready, we can talk more of—”

“Jane! Come here, my girl!”

Jane rushed to Harry’s arms. He ruffled her hair. “Tell me about the queen, lass. I know it must have been dreadful. Wasn’t it?”

“It was. At first everything went so well. I didn’t see the poor little baby being born; the queen said I was too young. But it didn’t take that long, and I saw the queen soon afterward. She looked so happy, and the Admiral was so proud. He said he had the finest baby girl in all of England.”

Harry said, “Well, he was wrong about that, because I had the finest baby girl in all of England, but we can make some allowances. Go on, child.”

“Everyone thought the queen was going to be well, and then suddenly she fell ill. The Admiral said later the very same thing happened to his sister Queen Jane. She became feverish and started to rant—accusing him of treating her badly, of not allowing her to be alone with her own physician, so many foolish things she never would have said if she had been in her right mind, for he was never unkind to her. Anyway, he lay in bed beside her and tried to ease her, and toward the end, she did become calm. She dictated her will and left him everything. She said she wished her possessions were a thousand times more in value than they were. And then she started to fade away, almost, and in a few hours, she died.”

Jane put her handkerchief to her eyes, and Harry patted her back. “She is in heaven, Jane.”

“Oh, I know,” said Jane. “But I miss her, and I feel so sorry for the poor Admiral. He was crying—even when he shut himself away, we could hear him. I think he loved the queen dearly. I never saw them have an argument—well, only once. It was right before the lady Elizabeth left. They were shouting at each other—I don’t know about what. But later, the Admiral came to me and told me that he was sorry I’d overheard that, but that I shouldn’t worry, all married people fought once in a while, and that they usually made it up. And I think they did make it up after the lady Elizabeth left. The Admiral had the cooks make the queen’s favorite foods, and he sent for anything that she wanted that he couldn’t supply. He ordered magnificent things for the baby’s chamber. When he had to leave, he sent letters to her every day.” Jane brightened. “The queen did have a very nice funeral, though. Doctor Coverdale preached the sermon in English and said that the offering was not for the dead, but for the poor.”

Harry nodded approvingly.

***

In a few days, it was as if Jane had never left us. She approved thoroughly of our stripped-down chapel—I still found myself walking in there and thinking a thief had been to Bradgate—and she took it upon herself to improve her younger sister Kate, who was not entirely grateful for the attention.

Jane had been back at Bradgate for several weeks when a messenger delivered a letter from the Admiral. Unlike the tear-laden missive he had last sent us, this was written in a clerk’s trim hand and came straight to the point. So grieved by the queen’s death that he had had little regard for his own doings, and believing his household would have to be broken up, he had sent our daughter home, but now he had reviewed the situation and felt he could retain the queen’s household. Therefore, he was able to take Jane back into his care, and what was more, his mother would treat her as her own daughter. As soon as he could manage it, he would come to talk to Harry and me in person.

I frowned at the letter. Tom Seymour was planning to retain all of the women who had waited on the queen, plus a hundred and twenty gentleman and yeomen. How on earth could he keep up such a household, with no queen to justify it? Even I could see the impossibility of it all.

Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, my childhood companion who had become my stepmother, was paying us a visit at Bradgate that day. “So, what does Tom Seymour want?”

“He wants us to send Jane back to stay with him.”

“So soon? I saw him at his brother’s house a couple of weeks ago, and he could hardly hear the queen’s name without weeping. Or maybe it was just the company of Somerset and his duchess. I declare, I shall be heartbroken if my two boys end up rubbing along as miserably as those two brothers do. I told Somerset that he really ought to give his brother a little more power, to keep him sweet.”

“You told the Lord Protector that?”

“Oh, I tell everyone everything, you know that, Frances. Not that everyone listens. Somerset didn’t, anyway. But at least I got the cold stare instead of the blank look, so I knew he heard me at least. Maybe one day he’ll actually remember what I said and act on it, thinking of course it was his own brilliant idea.” Katherine snorted. “Mind you, I like Somerset; he’s a kind man in that remote way of his. I trust him, which is more than I can say for his brother Tom.”

“Harry trusts Tom Seymour.”

“Do you?”

“I don’t know what to think. Harry—”

“Why did the Lord give you a brain if not to think? Really, Frances! You’ve more common sense in your little finger than what’s in the whole of Harry Grey. It’s high time you realized that. So what do you think?”

“I was going to tell you, if you’d allowed me to speak. I believe Harry is still keen on marrying Jane to the king, although he hasn’t said as much to me lately.”

“Of course not. When does he consult you, and bring common sense into the picture?”

“He consults me. It is not quite as bad as you say.”

“Certainly he consults you. On what to serve your guests and where to lodge them, no doubt, and no more. And you allow it, even though I’ll wager this household would fall apart in days were its managing left up to your Harry.”

“It’s easy for you to say how married people should get on together,” I snapped. “You are, after all, a widow, and I don’t recall you having things entirely your way when Father was alive.”

“No, but I was making inroads. But do go on.”

“It’s not that I trust or mistrust the Admiral anyway—it is Jane. She took a very high opinion of herself in the queen’s household. She has great gifts, I know, but she has become almost arrogant. She treats my poor Kate as if she were the household fool instead of her younger sister, and me—well, she has never had much to say to me, you know, but now she is almost insolent. Even Harry noticed.”

“If Harry Grey noticed something amiss about his darling, she must need a good boxing on the ears, Frances. Give it to her. I would, if my lads were acting so.”

“I fear that if I send her back to Tom Seymour—particularly without the queen—she will take an even higher opinion of herself.”

“Quite possibly.” Katherine snorted. “You ought to send her to the Duchess of Somerset.”

***

To my surprise, Harry was also reluctant to return Jane to Seymour’s care. He wrote a long letter to the Admiral, explaining that Jane needed to be under my guidance. “As I do think she ought to be, my dear, because she has been a bit pert as of late, one can’t deny it. But there are other reasons, too, of course.”

“Which are?”

“Quite frankly, I don’t think the Admiral’s the right man to entrust Jane’s education to. Why, they say even the queen became more frivolous in his company in those last few months. She might lose interest in her studies.”

“Nothing could turn Jane from her books.” My tone held a conviction so firm that even my stepmother would have been impressed.

“Well, perhaps you’re right, my dear. Perhaps you are. But I’ll not chance it. Seymour has asked to visit and will no doubt try to persuade us, but we must stand firm.”

That was easier said than done.

After a further exchange of letters, in which even Jane herself joined, Tom Seymour arrived at Bradgate in October. He was accompanied by Sir William Sharington, who ran the mint in Bristol. My husband entertained Seymour, while I entertained Sharington.

They must have rehearsed for their conversations with us. To every objection I raised, Sharington had a rejoinder that made me feel utterly unreasonable for having entertained it, and Harry fared no better with Seymour. Forgotten was the fact that the king had not shown the slightest inclination to marry our girl; Seymour was still laboring to bring it about. All he needed was time and more access to the king. Harry had debts? They would all be taken care of by Seymour, who offered to loan him two thousand pounds. Jane was still but young to be pledged in marriage? The Protector’s girls were even younger, and had I not heard they were fine scholars? If we let our daughter languish at Bradgate, there was every chance the Protector would marry one of them to the king. Would I want to attend that royal wedding, knowing my gifted young daughter should have been standing in the bride’s place? What of my daughter’s feelings? There was no young lady more suitable to be Edward’s queen. Why, if I let such a chance slide by her, I might as well marry her to a mere knight’s younger son this very afternoon and be done with it.

If I was the well of common sense Katherine claimed, the well had run dry by the time I came out of our interview. “My lord, your lady has expressed her willingness to return the lady Jane to you,” Sharington announced triumphantly as we emerged from our conference.

“Then I cannot but agree,” Harry said. I surmised from his dazed look, he had survived Seymour’s bombardment no better than I had survived Sharington’s.

Yet the misgivings we could not entirely suppress might have won out had not Seymour begged to pay his respects to Jane herself. “My lord Admiral!” she said, arising from the table where she had been working. There was no mistaking her genuine delight. “I hope you are doing well, as is your baby girl?”

“Little Mary is thriving, and I am as well as can be expected, but my household has been empty without its ward, Jane. It is not the same. I have been attempting to persuade your parents to have you come back to me. My work is done; I can only hope they say yes. Won’t you put in a good word on my behalf?”

“I very much enjoyed staying with you, my lord.” She looked up at him, and at us, in a fetching way that she could have inherited only from my own mother. “I should be most pleased to return—if my lord father and lady mother consent, of course.”

Harry and I looked at each other and at Jane, and we knew we could do nothing else. A week later, we watched as Jane once again left Bradgate.