Her Highness, the Traitor

9

Jane Dudley

December 1548





At the Christmas masque at Whitehall, the king visibly stifled a yawn, his third such effort in an hour. For the sake of the masquers, I hoped it was the lateness of the hour and not the quality of the entertainment that was afflicting the king so.

Yet I suspected that even had this been the grandest of masques at the most splendid of courts, it would not have been enough, for there was something very odd about the court this Christmas. All of the men, including my husband, seemed distracted, and tones were hushed. It reminded me, now that I thought of it, of the days a dozen years before, just before Anne Boleyn and her supposed lovers had been clapped into the Tower. The same wary glances, the same conferences in corners, the same desperate jollity as everyone tried to pretend nothing was amiss.

I turned my eyes from the masquers and toward the dais where the king sat, flanked by the Duke and Duchess of Somerset. Despite his grand clothing, only a trifle less splendid than the king’s, the duke had a weary, strained look about him. The duchess—resplendent in jewels I recognized as the late queen’s—was patting his hand in a tender way that reminded me why I sometimes liked her.

As I gazed toward the duke and duchess, I felt a pair of eyes on me. But no, they were not fixed upon me; rather, they were staring in precisely the same direction. They were those of Thomas Seymour.

***

The masque over, it was time for dancing—starting with a galliard, which my own generation wisely left for the younger among us to enjoy. The king promptly arose and led out the Protector’s eldest daughter, Anne, while one of his companions, nineteen-year-old Henry Sidney, partnered my daughter Mary. While I watched the latter pair attentively, noting they seemed more interested in each other than in the dance, Thomas Seymour pushed forward, Lady Jane Grey in tow. For a moment, I thought they might join the dance as a couple themselves—a shocking breach of etiquette for the Admiral, who had been widowed but a few months—but instead, my eldest son claimed Jane Grey, and the dance began as Thomas Seymour stood with the rest of the spectators.

The Duke and Duchess of Somerset had joined the throng and stood there hand in hand, watching their own daughter dance with the king. Then the duke walked over to his brother and took his hand with a smile that seemed genuine, if wary. “I am glad to see you here this Christmas, my brother. Is this a portent of a better year between us to come?”

“You say ‘I,’ Brother, not ‘we.’ Are you slipping?”

I could not help but smile at this, for John, too, had commented on the alacrity with which the Protector had taken to using the royal “we” in his letters. Somerset said in an injured tone, “I use ‘we’ in correspondence, as befits my position. I do not use it elsewhere.”

Thomas Seymour snorted. “Well, I have come here to see my nephew the king. I cannot see him in private. I must make do at public occasions like this one.”

“I have never prevented you from seeing the king,” Somerset said. “I have asked only that you see him when he is at leisure to receive visitors and that you refrain from giving him the presents of money that you have brought him in the past. He has plenty in hand.”

“Yes, and you have plenty of my late wife’s jewels in yours. Or on your wife’s person, I should say.”

Somerset’s hand went to his left hip, where he would have worn his sword had this not been a feast. With obvious difficulty in controlling his temper, he said, “We have been through this. The jewels became the Crown’s upon the king’s death, and even if there was the slightest bit of doubt, which there is not, they certainly became the Crown’s upon the death of the queen. Until the king marries, the Duchess of Somerset has every right to wear them. It is fitting, as my wife, that she do so. She graces them by placing them on her person.”

“Indeed,” said Seymour. “I see that your daughter is wearing some of them, too. Have your youngest children some tucked inside their cradles, as well?”

“I will not have you speak of my daught—”

The music stopped, and Somerset flushed as heads turned to see why he had raised his voice. The king released his partner with a bow that made her beam and run to her mother to recount her triumph. Young Anne Seymour had barely left the king when Thomas Seymour, the queen’s jewels forgotten, swiftly disengaged the lady Jane from my son and propelled her firmly in the king’s direction. “Your Majesty, might my young ward be allowed to demonstrate the tutelage of her dancing master?”

The king smiled down at Lady Jane. She was a small girl; the Protector’s gangly daughter, by contrast, was slightly taller than her royal partner. “Why, we shall be honored.”

With Seymour and Jane’s father, the Marquis of Dorset, beaming nearby, I watched as the king and the lady Jane danced together. I had expected such a studious young lady would have no interest in such frivolity, but I was quite wrong. Jane danced beautifully, though she seemed to be enjoying the music more than the dance itself. As for the king, his father had been a fine dancer in his youth, and Edward evidently took after him in this respect. I turned to the Somersets, who were talking together unintelligibly but obviously angrily. “They make a pretty pair, don’t they?”

“Lovely,” said the Protector. He put his hand on my husband’s shoulder. “Let us talk,” he said quietly.

***

By midnight, the king himself had begun nodding off in his chair, and the Protector gave the signal he be escorted to his bed. The rest of us, some more sober than others, straggled to our chambers.

John would have kissed me and rolled over to sleep, but I would not let him. “What on earth did the Protector have to discuss with you, on Christmas day? Why does the man look so miserable? Why is everyone acting so strangely?”

My husband gave half a smile. “Can I choose which question to answer, or must I answer all at once?”

“You can answer any one of them, because I suspect that they all have the same answer.”

“You would suspect right.” John lay on his back, staring up at the canopy. “The Admiral is becoming truly dangerous. It is not just that he wants to marry the king to that lady Jane Grey, which would be harmless enough, as the king can’t be forced to marry any girl he doesn’t wish to marry. The Admiral aspires to marry the lady Elizabeth.”

My first foolish thought was my son Robert would be furious at that. Then I realized the deeper implications. “Marry the girl who’s second in line to the throne?”

“Yes. He seems to find no incongruity in the idea at all.”

I winced. “I knew he had flirted with her outrageously while the queen was alive; Catherine told me so. But I thought there was no harm in it, so I said nothing.”

“How could you have thought there was harm in it? After all, the queen was living and was getting ready to bear Seymour a child. He couldn’t exactly put her aside. In any case, that’s not the worst of it. The worst is that I, and several others, believe, on good information, that he intends to take both the king and Elizabeth into his custody and imprison and perhaps kill the Protector.”

“John?”

“I don’t believe Seymour is entirely sane where the Protector is concerned. I’ll freely admit that Somerset has his faults, but he’s never held any ill will toward the Admiral. He was kindness itself to Seymour when the queen died. But Seymour has convinced himself that the Protector has some grand scheme to alienate him from the king and to ruin him. The more he speaks against the Protector, the less the Protector is inclined to let him near the king, and then the more the Admiral speaks against the Protector. And so it grows worse and worse.”

“Has someone tried to speak to the Admiral?”

“Many have tried to reason with him. I have myself. I couldn’t make any headway; I’m too close to his brother, so he thinks I have sinister designs against him, as well. But no one else has succeeded either.”

It was fortunate, I thought, that poor Jane Seymour had not lived to see her brothers fighting for control over her son. “What is the Protector going to do? I suppose that is what you were talking about tonight?”

“He would rather not do anything. Paget wrote him a letter this very day, complaining that he was trying too hard to please all men and has not been firm in upholding the laws. And those are against ordinary men, not his own brother. But he can’t tolerate this much longer. Something will have to be done.” John put his arm around me. “I cannot tell you how I long for the day when the king is old enough to rule on his own.”

“What does the poor boy think of all this?”

“Somerset has tried to shield him from it. Unfortunately, that also means trying to shield him from Seymour, and you know how charming Seymour can be when he cares to exert himself. Somerset can’t compete with that; he’s never had the gift of speaking to young boys. So the king’s unhappy with the Protector because he wants to visit with his favorite uncle.” John shook his head. “It’s a thankless job, being Protector. I wouldn’t have it. Sometimes I wonder whether Somerset regrets having taken it on.”

“You are friends. Why don’t you ask him?”

John sighed. “I could have a year ago. Now I can’t. This discussion we had tonight—it was like a king speaking to a councilor, not two old friends who fought together. I was the one he told when he discovered his first wife had been unfaithful to him. I was the one he told when he became engaged to his present wife; he was excited as a boy. All that’s changed now. He has subjects, not friends. One doesn’t confide in mere subjects.”

“Maybe when the king comes out of his minority and Somerset is back to being another advisor, he will be more like his former self.”

“Maybe.” John wrapped his arm around me tighter, and I pressed my lips to his. He smiled in the darkness. “Shall we make it a merry Christmas for two people, at least?”