The Last Tudor

by Philippa Gregory

  “I’m to be married? Oh, God be praised! Thank God! At last! To who? To who?”

  “Whom,” I say coldly.

  “Oh, who cares? Whom should care? Whom am I marrying? Tell me!”

  “Henry Lord Herbert,” I say shortly. “The Earl of Pembroke’s son.”

  She blushes red as a rose. “Oh! So handsome!” she breathes. “And he’s young, our age, not some old heap of bones.” She has a pretty small bird clinging to her finger, and she lifts it to her face and kisses its beak. “I am to be married!” she tells it. “And to a handsome young lord!” The bird cheeps as if it understands her, and she puts it on her shoulder where it spreads its tail for balance and puts its head on one side to look at me, as bright-eyed as my sister.

  “Yes,” I say levelly. “He’s perfectly pleasing.”

  “And he’s godly,” she says to cheer me. “He’s Kateryn Parr’s nephew. Surely, you must like him.”

  “Actually, I do.”

  “How happy we shall be!” She gives a little twirl on the spot as if her feet have to dance for joy. The little bird flaps and clings on. “And I shall be a countess!”

  “Yes,” I say dryly. “And his father will be locked down hard into an alliance with our father and with John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland.”

  She doesn’t think about this, the three most powerful men in the country, the three leaders of the reformed faith, coming together and marrying their children to each other to provide against betrayal. Trusting each other so little, so faithless in their shared faith that they barter their children to confirm their agreement, like Abraham taking Isaac up the mountain with wood and a knife to burn him for God.

  “Oh, but who are you to marry?” She pauses in her self-absorbed jig. “Who do they have for you? Are they staying with Seymour?” She gasps. “Oh! Not the king? Tell me! Tell me you’re not going to marry the king and be Queen Jane?”

  I shake my head, glancing towards the door. “Hush. This is all because the king is so ill. Their greatest hope is that they can show him that one of us has a son, so that he can make that boy his heir. They want us both to marry at once, get with child, and show him the boy as his heir.”

  “I could be the mother of the King of England?” she yelps. “Me? Not you? If I get a boy before you do?”

  “Perhaps.”

  She clasps her hands and laughs with delight. “So who are you to marry?”

  “Guildford Dudley,” I say shortly.

  My sister skids to a standstill. “Not Ned Seymour after all? They’re switching horses? You’re to have the young Dudley boy?”

  “Yes.”

  “The tall fair one?”

  “Yes, of course.”

  “The mummy’s boy?”

  “Yes, Guildford.”

  “Well, that’s a comedown,” she crows. “You won’t like that! The second to youngest son of a new-made duke? You won’t get your ducal strawberry leaves off him!”

  My hand itches to slap her silly face. “It’s not a question of like or dislike,” I say steadily. “It is my father’s wish to ally with the Lord President of the council. It is Father’s determination that we shall be wedded and bedded so he can show the king his heirs to bring up in the reformed religion. Even little Mary is to be betrothed—to Arthur Grey, the son of the Baron of Wilton.”

  She gives a scream. “The baron with the scarred face? The ugly one?”

  “Yes.”

  “But Mary’s only eight! And Arthur must be twenty!”

  “He’s seventeen,” I say grimly. “But in any case, Mary is far too young to be married, and she’s too small. If she does not grow, how could she give birth? She has that twist in her spine; I don’t think she could birth a child. It’s all completely wrong. She is too small, and you are too young, and I am promised before God to Ned Seymour. Our parents gave our word. I don’t see how any of these weddings can go ahead. I don’t believe it can be God’s will. You must join with me and speak against them.”

  “Not me!” she says smartly. “I’m not defying our lady mother. If I can have Mr. Nozzle with me, I’ll stand behind you as you argue; but I can’t face up to her on my own.”

  “So that they don’t marry you to a stranger! So they don’t marry you while you’re still a child,” I exclaim.

  “Oh, I can marry Herbert,” she assures me. “I’m not too young. That can go ahead. I don’t object to it. The rest of you can refuse if you want, but I want to be married.”

  “None of us can marry anyone,” I rule.

  There is a silence; she pouts at me. “Oh, Jane, don’t spoil everything! Oh, please don’t!” She clasps my hands, and the bird cheeps encouragingly.

  “I’m going to pray on it. I have to listen to God.”

  “But what if God agrees with you?” she wails. “When does He ever want anything nice for us?”

  “Then I will have to tell Father that I have doubts.”

  He does not see me alone: that in itself warns me that I will not get a hearing. He fears my eloquence: “Oh, for pity’s sake don’t let her go on and on,” my mother always says.

  I go into the royal presence chamber like a Daniel going in to the lions. Edward the king is not in his court. He is behind the closed doors of the privy chamber, or he may even have retreated to the room behind that—his study and his bedroom. Out here, the court goes about its business as if there is nothing wrong. The Marquess of Northampton, William Parr, and his wife, Elizabeth, nod at me with a peculiar smile, as if they know all about everything—which they probably do. I sketch a little curtsey and feel even more uneasy.

  My mother and my father are playing cards with Sir William Cavendish and his wife, Elizabeth, my mother’s good friend our aunt Bess. The table is in the window bay so they have some privacy in the bustling room. My parents look up as I come through the crowd of people. I notice that people make way for me. The news of my betrothal to the son of the Lord President must have spread already, and my importance has grown with the news. Everyone shows respect to the Dudleys. They may be a new family, but clearly they have the knack of taking power and holding it.

  “Deuce,” my mother says, putting down a card, and makes an absentminded gesture of blessing over my head with her free hand as I curtsey to her.

  Aunt Bess gives me a warm smile. I am a favorite of hers and she understands that a young woman has to find her own way in the world by her own lights.

  “I have a queen,” my father says, showing his hand.

  My mother laughs. “And perhaps queens count, after all!” She turns to me, pleasantly enough. “What is it, Jane? Come to take a hand? Are you staking your necklace?”

  “Don’t tease her,” my father intervenes hastily, as I open my mouth to abjure the sin of gambling. “What is it, child, what do you want?”

  “I would speak with you.” I look at my mother. “Privately.”

  “You can speak here,” she rules. “Come closer.”

  Tactfully, Sir William and his lady rise up and stand a little to one side, her ladyship still holding her cards so that she can return to the sinful game without a moment’s delay. My father signs to the musicians to play and half a dozen ladies form up to dance. At once the men bow and join them, and in the noise of the dance nobody can hear me when I say: “My lord father, lady mother, I believe that I cannot be betrothed to Guildford Dudley. I have prayed on it, and I am certain.”

  “Whyever not?” my mother asks. She is so little distracted from her game that she looks at her cards and slides a few crowns across the table to the pile in the middle with only half her mind on me.

  Lady Bess shakes her head, as if she thinks that my mother should attend to me.

  “I am precontracted,” I say firmly.

  My father glances up at my pale face. “No, you’re not.”

  “I believe I am,” I say. “We all said that I should marry Ned Seymour. We made a verbal promise.”

  “Nothing in writing,” my mother remarks. To my fathe
r she says: “I raise you another crown. I told you she would be like this.”

  “A word is as binding as a letter.” I speak to my father, whose word, as a reformed Christian, must be his oath. “We made an agreement. You made an agreement. Ned spoke to me, as his father said he should: I assented.”

  “Did you promise?” my mother inquires, suddenly interested. “Did you give your word to him? Did you say ‘I will’?”

  “I said ‘quite.’ ”

  She laughs out loud and my father gets up from the table, takes my hand, tucks it in the crook of his elbow, and leads me away from my mother and from the dancers. “Now listen here,” he says gently. “There was talk of a betrothal and we agreed that it might take place. But everyone knew it depended on Seymour’s return to power. None of my girls will be married except to the advantage of the family.

  “And now everything has changed. Seymour is dead, his wife still imprisoned for treason, and his son has lost his inheritance. There is no value in any connection with them. You can see for yourself, a clever girl like you, this place is run by John Dudley. The king is not going to make old bones. It’s sad but we have to face it. He’s going to leave his throne to whichever cousin of the reformed religion has a son to take his place. One of you will get a son, and she will be queen regent until her boy is of age, and then the boy will take the throne. D’you see?”

  “What about Elizabeth?” I ask, although it goes against the grain with me to put her forward. “She’s of the reformed religion. She’s next of kin.”

  “Not her. There are no plans for her to marry, and certainly, she wouldn’t be allowed to choose a husband for herself, not after that business with Thomas Seymour. I think she has shown us all that she is very far from being a wise virgin.” My father allows himself a little chuckle. “It’s a Tudor boy we want; a girl is no good for us. The king—God bless him—hopes to live long enough to see his heir christened in a reformed church. We didn’t expect this, we didn’t prepare for this, but he isn’t well, and he wants this settled now. You can do that for him. It would be godly work to ease his troubled conscience. You marry Guildford Dudley, take to childbed, and the king knows that he is getting two young people, raised in the reformed Church, with two experienced fathers to advise them, and a boy in the cradle to come after him on the throne. D’you see?”

  “He is so ill?” I cannot believe it.

  “At any rate, he wants to know who will come after him, if he dies before he can marry and get his own son.”

  “The baby would be his heir?”

  “If he doesn’t have a son of his own.”

  This seems like a distant prospect. “But I gave my word,” I say. “You gave yours. To Ned Seymour.”

  “Forget it,” he advises me briefly. “Edward Seymour is dead, and his boy Ned is with a guardian who will dispose of him as he thinks fit. Not another word about it. You have to be an obedient daughter, Jane, or you will be made to obey.”

  My mother, bored of waiting, strides to his side.

  I screw up my courage. “Please forgive me,” I say to them both. “But I have prayed on this, and I believe that I cannot marry anyone without being released from my promise to the former Earl of Hertford. I gave my word to you and you gave yours to the Seymours. There were no vows, but God sees and hears all. I cannot simply pretend that I never said it.” Near to tears at my own defiance, I look from my hesitant beloved father to my flint-faced mother.

  “You can’t refuse us,” my mother says flatly, “because we are your parents, and we will make you.”

  DURHAM HOUSE, LONDON,

  MAY 1553

  She is right, of course. And as if to emphasize the importance of the Dudley family, I am to stay at their great London palace, Durham House, and my wedding is to be held here. It is to be a joint wedding, there will be three brides: me, my sister Katherine, and the Dudley girl, Katherine, who is marrying Henry Hastings, the eighteen-year-old son of the Earl of Huntingdon. My little sister Mary is to be publicly betrothed, but her wedding and bedding will wait until she is older. Everyone seems very pleased about this, though they must see, as I do, that these are the great men of England signing an alliance in the blood of their children. I wonder if I am the only person who prays to God to tell me why these three men should need to be so sure of one another. What danger do they think they will face if they don’t lock each other into marriage? Why do we all six have to be married at once in the same ceremony? My sister Katherine thinks it will be to her advantage as she is undoubtedly the prettiest of us three brides. That is her only concern.

  Clothes from the royal wardrobe arrive daily, jewels from the royal treasury are loaned to us, precious stones are given. My cousin the king is too sick to attend the wedding, but he sends us bolts of cloth: black silver cloth of tissue embossed with roses, purple and white tissue, cloth of gold and cloth of silver, a trimming for my hood of thirteen table diamonds, seventeen great pearls, a girdle of gold. The tiltyard is painted and hung with flags: there is to be a tournament. Everyone in London who has so much as a knighthood will come to the great dinner that the cooks prepare days in advance. There will be dozens of courses, the fountain in the central courtyard will flow with wine, hundreds will sit down to dinner in their finest clothes and eat scores of dishes, thousands will watch them. I will be at the center of attention, a Tudor heir, dressed as richly as a princess, marrying a Dudley boy.

  “This is heaven,” Katherine says, holding a scarf of violet silk against her flushed face.

  “No, it is not,” I tell her. “And it is heresy to say so.”

  “It’s as good as Easter,” Mary says, her speech muffled by the pastry that she is cramming into her mouth.

  “It’s nothing to do with you,” I say. “You are to be betrothed, but not to marry. There’s no excuse for gluttony, and stand up straight.”

  Obediently, she straightens her back as Katherine twirls around, draped in cloth of silver, as we wait for the dressmakers. The groom of the royal wardrobe has sent more great bolts of velvet and silk, and Katherine already has some priceless lace draped over her head like a veil. “There’s no excuse for vanity either,” I say sourly.

  “I am half in love with him already,” Katherine bubbles. “He came to give me a gold chain yesterday, and he pressed my hand when he left. What d’you think he meant?”

  “My mother pressed my hand too,” I say, showing her the bruises on my wrists. “She tells me that is love, as well.”

  “It is motherly love,” Katherine asserts.

  Mary looks solemnly at the marks. Our mother, our nurses, our governesses, and our father have all beaten each of us, at one time or another. Only my tutor John Aylmer has had authority over me but never used a rod. I tell him that is why I love learning.

  “It’s the best thing that could happen to us.” Mary parrots what she has been told. “It puts us in line for the throne.”

  “It’s hardly the best thing for you,” I tell her. “You can’t give birth to the King of England.”

  She flushes a little. “I am a girl like any other,” she says. “My heart is as big as yours, and I don’t doubt I will grow tall.”

  Mary’s staunch courage always makes me melt. I hold out my arms to her and we hug. “Anyway, we can’t disobey them,” I say over her fair head.

  “Don’t you love him? Even a little?” Katherine breathes.

  “I will love him when we are married,” I say coldly. “I will have to love him then, for I will have promised before God to do so.”

  My sisters are disappointed in the wedding service: they hoped it would be in Latin and filled with ceremonial and incomprehensible oaths, noisy with music and trumpets, drowned in regalia, drenched with holy water, and choking with incense. Instead, it has the simple honesty of my religion and I am deeply glad that the Dudleys are a godly family who turned to the reformed religion as soon as the king gave his people the Bible and the preachers spread the word. The purity of our wedding is a li
ving reproach to the papist Princess Mary, who pointedly does not attend—neither the ceremony nor the two days of lavish celebrations that follow. Our cousin Margaret Douglas is not invited either. She is in Scotland, visiting the Nobody that she calls her father. Since John Dudley himself gave her a license to leave the kingdom I imagine that he wanted her out of the way.

  I am not dressed plainly, as a Protestant should dress, despite my declared wishes. I wear royal purple with an overgown of gold brocade embroidered with diamonds and pearls. They spread my chestnut hair over my shoulders, and it hangs down below my waist. It is the last time I will wear it loose as a maiden. I am by far the grandest bride and Katherine, with her golden hair and her gown of cloth of silver, is by far the most beautiful. But I don’t begrudge her joy in her dress and her looks. If she had any sense, she would know it is just worldly show.

  There is dancing and jousting; two companies of masquers: one of men and one of women; there are players and musicians. The Dudleys invite all of their household to attend, and throw open the gates of their great house so that everyone in London can come and see our magnificence. The whole thing goes on forever and is spoiled only by a disaster with the food. Some dish was bad and it left many guests vomiting with sickness and others voiding themselves. Many who overate and drank too much on the first day have to send their excuses and not come on the second. Lady Dudley, my new mother-in-law, is completely mortified that she had to spend half the day groaning in her chamber over her churning bowels. I do not think that it was a sign, for God speaks through His Holy Word—and not through stars or sweats or gales. But I do think that it is a powerful reproach to my mother and father that my wedding should turn the guests’ stomachs—just as it sickens me.