The Last Tudor

by Philippa Gregory

  He does not ask her why. That he does not challenge her tells me that he knows what is wrong with Elizabeth, that he shares her guilt. He merely bows and sends a message to the stables. As he turns his head to tell his groom, I see his glance go past the groom and past me to a man who stands waiting in the doorway. It is one of Robert Dudley’s servants, and he comes forward, his face very grave, and kneels before Dudley.

  I am trembling as I stand behind the queen, as if I too am expecting bad news. The queen and Sir Robert face the man together. Their hands are close, and I think she would like to cling to him. The man hands over a letter and tells Robert Dudley, so quietly that no one but Dudley and the queen and I can hear, that he is sorry to bring bad news: Lady Dudley is dead.

  The queen goes so pale that she is almost yellow. I think she is going to faint. She stands as stiff as the giant sergeant porter at the palace gates. She is speechless. I find myself reeling too—I did not think that she could do such a thing. I would never have thought it of Robert Dudley.

  She staggers as if her knees have gone from under her. I step forward and take her arm. “Your Majesty?” I whisper. “Shall I get you a glass of small ale?”

  She looks at me unseeing, and I flinch from the blankness of her suspicious glare. I think perhaps this is the face of a murderer. God spare me from her black look. I glance across the room and notice that Ned, who came in behind Dudley’s servant, is watching the two of them as well. He smiles tentatively at me, his handsome face a little puzzled, and I look away. I cannot tell him what I know. At this, of all moments, he has failed me.

  Robert puts his mouth to the queen’s ear and whispers to her. She nods and turns stiffly, goes out to the presence chamber and stands, one hand on her throne for support. I wait for Robert to bow to her and then turn to the court and announce the death of his wife, but he says nothing. The queen says nothing either. They look at each other, a long gaze of terrible complicity as William Cecil watches quietly from the back of the room. I have a horrible sense that there is a script to this play, but I don’t know it.

  I hardly know how we get through the day. Still the death of Lady Dudley is not announced. They serve breakfast and dinner; the court plays games and listens to music. In the evening there is some clowning and everyone who does not know the terrible secret laughs heartily and applauds. Elizabeth walks through it all like a little doll driven only by will. Her face is expressionless; she says nothing. I follow behind her. I feel as if the world is ending all around me and I have lost the only man I could trust.

  It is not until the next day, three full days since Elizabeth first told the Spanish ambassador that Amy Dudley was dead of a canker, that the news is released. Elizabeth sits on her throne in the chapel posed in that sacred space with the honored banners of the knights of the garter hanging from the walls, and announces, loud enough for everyone to hear, that sadly, Amy Dudley has died. Those few people who had heard only that she was heartbroken at being abandoned by her husband, or complaining of ill health, gasp at the news of her death. Only Mary and I, and presumably William Cecil and the Spanish ambassador, must wonder why it has taken them so long to make the announcement.

  Elizabeth exchanges a glance with Cecil that shows, in their carefully expressionless faces, that they are fully prepared for this. She inclines her head to listen to her lover. Her face is like stone. Dudley finishes speaking, bows, and steps backwards, away from the queen, his head down, as if he is grieving for his abandoned wife.

  “We are very sorry for your loss,” Elizabeth says regally. “The court will go into mourning for Lady Dudley.”

  A little gesture of her ringed hand tells everyone that they may talk, and there is a buzz of chatter, far more excitement than sorrow. Few people knew Amy Dudley: Robert, like other favored husbands, always made sure that his wife was kept from court. Now he is free, suddenly, amazingly free. People approach Robert, offering their condolences but really congratulating him on his extraordinary good luck. That an unloved wife should die at such a moment! No one doubts that he is the new king consort. Everyone assumes that they will marry at once. Ned comes towards me. Behind him, I see Cecil and Dudley and Elizabeth, heads together, like plotters. Robert Dudley looks sick, the other two blankly determined.

  “What luck for Dudley!” Ned says. “They are certain to marry now.”

  “They are,” I say, but he does not hear the emphasis.

  “How strange that the queen said that she was dead before Robert announced it to the court,” Janey says, joining us. “You heard her, didn’t you, Katherine? She said that she was sick of a canker, but then the poor woman goes and falls downstairs.”

  “Did she?” Ned asks.

  “I heard Cecil say something very different.” Mary joins us and speaks so quietly that we all have to bend to hear her.

  “What did Cecil say?” Janey asks Ned.

  “Ned didn’t hear, for he was walking with Frances Mewtas and not with us. He had eyes only for her,” I say sharply. “I was walking with Mary. Ned did not choose to be with me.”

  Janey looks from my pale face to his. “Katherine, we have been friends with the Mewtas family for ages. Frances’s mother served our kinswoman Queen Jane Seymour. She’s a good friend to us both.”

  I hunch my shoulder. “Oh, I am sure. But why would Ned dance with her, and walk with her, and disappear all evening with her when I needed him? When I needed him so badly.”

  “I did not!” he says indignantly. “I danced with her as the dance master commanded me to do. You did the same with your partner.”

  “I didn’t walk with him after, and give him small ale, and spend the next evening hidden away somewhere with him. I didn’t run after him and make a fool of myself, and of me,” I say, getting confused in my indignation. “God knows what is happening here. I think the court has gone mad, and you were nowhere to be found. I didn’t forget all the promises I made. I was not dishonorable.”

  The color drains from his face and his eyes go dark with rage. “Neither was I. You do me wrong, madam.”

  It is him calling me “madam” as if we were old and heartless that makes me turn on him. “How could you, Ned? After all you have said to me! After all you have promised. And I was trapped on the dais beside the queen, and I looked and looked for you . . . I couldn’t see you, and I couldn’t find you, and I was stuck there and didn’t even see you before we had to withdraw.” To my own embarrassment I can hear my voice quavering and then I openly cry, in the middle of the court, where anyone can see me.

  Mary comes to my side at once, puts her hand around my waist, and the two of us face the Seymours as if they are our enemies.

  “Accuse me!” He is white and furious. “Accuse me as you will. I have done nothing, and you should trust a man who is ready to risk everything for you.”

  “You risk nothing!” I cry at him. “It is I who have turned down the Spanish, and turned down the Scots, so I am trapped here with the queen, swearing that I will marry no one! God knows what she can do, what she is capable of, God knows what she has done to a rival. And I’ve done all this for you; you’ve done nothing for me. You’re such a liar!”

  “He’s not a liar,” Janey says quickly. “Unsay it, Katherine.”

  “He is, if she says so!” Mary says with instant loyalty.

  “Ask Frances what he has said to her!” I spit at Janey. “Frances Mewtas, your great friend. Ask her what lies he tells her—if she is to be your sister-in-law! For I will never be.”

  I fling myself away from the two of them and run to the ladies’ rooms, dropping a curtsey to the throne as I go. I will have to say I am ill and that is why I left without permission. I will have to go to bed. I long to go to my bed and cry all day.

  My little sister, Mary, tells everyone that I am sick from eating undercooked apples and that the best thing for me is to be left alone. She comes to me in my private room off the ladies’ chambers, and behind her comes a servant with a plate of meat from the
kitchen and some bread from the bakery.

  “I can’t eat,” I say, raising my head from the pillow.

  “I know,” she says. “This is all for me. But you can have a little if you want.”

  She hauls herself up into a chair beside the bed and passes me a glass of wine and water. “Have you broken with Ned?” she asks. “He’s going round court with a face like a pig’s bottom.”

  “Don’t be so vulgar.” I take a sip. “Mother would have smacked you.”

  “And our sister, Jane, would have closed her eyes and prayed for patience.” Mary chuckles. “But it’s how he looks. I cannot lie.” She breaks off a little piece of manchet bread and passes it to me. I nibble on it.

  “He is courting Frances Mewtas,” I say. “I know he is. I think my heart is broken.”

  Mary raises her perfectly arched eyebrows. “You couldn’t have married him anyway,” she says. “You’d never have got permission. And there’s terrible news from Oxford. It turns out that Lady Dudley was not sick at all. She fell down the stairs and broke her neck. And worse than that, there’s to be an inquest!”

  “She’s not sick? But everyone said . . . And the queen said . . .”

  “Fell downstairs and broke her neck,” Mary repeats.

  “My God! But what can an inquest do?”

  “It can discover what happened. Because people are saying that she did not fall down the stairs but someone pushed her!” Mary says through a mouthful of bread and meat. “And so Sir Robert has to withdraw from court, and go into mourning on his own. He’s going to his house at Kew, and Elizabeth is prowling round her rooms like a hungry wolf. She can’t go to see him; she can’t even write to him. He’s suspected of murder; she can’t be connected. She doesn’t go out and has almost imprisoned herself in her rooms. The court dines without her. Nobody knows what to do. And he—he is halfway to ruin. Everyone is saying that he murdered his wife to marry Elizabeth, and some people are saying that she knew.”

  I am enormously cheered at the thought of Elizabeth losing Robert Dudley, just as I am parted from Ned. “She did know! At any rate, she knew that Amy Dudley was going to die! But who is saying that it was Elizabeth?”

  “The Spanish ambassador himself!” Mary reminds me. “And he had it from Cecil. He has told everyone. She will never be able to see Dudley again. Everyone says she knew that he was going to kill his wife. And if they find him guilty of murder, they will execute him, and serve him right.”

  “They’ll never behead Robert Dudley!” I say bitterly. “She’ll never let them. Not him. Not her favorite.”

  “It doesn’t matter who he is, if he killed his wife,” Mary declares. “Not even Elizabeth is above the law of the land. If the Oxfordshire inquest names him as a murderer, then she can’t pardon him. And besides, he’s hardly the first of that family to be beheaded.” She sees my face as I think of our sister, who signed herself “Jane Duddley.” She puts out her hand. “I didn’t mean her. I never think of Jane as a Dudley.”

  I shake my head at the sudden vivid thought of my sister and the spoiled Dudley boy. “They’re none of them any good,” I say spitefully. “But Robert was the best of them.”

  Once again, Ned and I are estranged. I had thought he would come to me at once and beg my pardon, but he does not. I am miserable without him, but I cannot bring myself to apologize when I am not at fault. I see him walking with Frances Mewtas and dancing with her, and each time my jealousy and unhappiness are renewed. I am determined to punish him for his infidelity, but I think that no one is in pain but me.

  The court is subdued and uneasy. It seems as if nobody is happy as the days get shorter and the leaves turn color, and the summer, which seemed as if it would last forever, drains away a little more every day. The blue fades from the sky and the clouds go gray and a cold wind gets up and blows down the Thames valley.

  Elizabeth is lost without Robert Dudley, who is still away from court, skulking at his pretty house at Kew, wearing full black and shamed to the ground. He is waiting, as we all are, for the results from the Abingdon coroner and the judgment of the inquest jury. He may get back to court—he is a Dudley, after all: they bounce back after anything but beheading—but he can never marry the queen now. Even if the jury rules that his wife was killed by an accidental fall, everyone believes that he has packed the jury. It does not really matter if this is true or not. It is his reputation that is on trial, and that is as dead as his poor wife. The struggle for the queen is over. Not even Robert Dudley can imagine that he will ever be accepted as a suitable advisor or courtier by the country, the Privy Council, or even the queen herself. He has disqualified himself by the crime that he thought would advance his cause to the throne.

  William Cecil is quietly victorious in the absence of his old rival. He manages to be at once regretful and dominant: the queen must marry a Protestant prince, Robert Dudley is infamed by the death of his wife. The queen, who was so besotted, is like a heartbroken widow without the man she loves. But her determination to survive as queen holds her tight as a vise. She says not one word of Robert, and her pinched little face is constantly turned towards Cecil, her head cocked for his discreet counsel, and she does exactly what he tells her. Nobody doubts that she will marry as he thinks best, since her attempt to marry for love has ended in death and disgrace.

  I am back in favor, but I can’t say it is a very merry place to be. Elizabeth is sick with silent longing for the man she loves; I, one pace behind her, am yearning for Ned. I almost want to tell her that I understand her pain, that I am feeling the same. But then I remember that it is her fault that Ned and I are parted. We are not doomed by sin, we were free to marry. It is her fault that I am so unhappy. One word from her would restore me to the only man I will ever love. But she will not say that word. She will never say it. She wants everyone to be as lonely and bereft as herself.

  WINDSOR CASTLE,

  OCTOBER 1560

  It gets colder and there is no more boating on the river for pleasure. The court is to return to London. Amy Dudley’s death is named as an accident. Robert Dudley, his month of mourning concluded, his name as clear as it will ever be, is allowed back to court. Elizabeth, with the eyes of the world on her and on her lover, knowing that everyone believes him to be a murderer, greets him very quietly, and Robert Dudley joins the court with uncharacteristic gravity.

  They have to be together, they cannot help themselves; everyone can see that. But there will be no talk of marriage ever again: William Cecil has seen to that. It was he who spread the rumors that Dudley would kill his wife, and it was he who told everyone that the country would never bear a Dudley as king. It doesn’t really matter if either of these things is true or false: the whole of Christendom believes it, and Elizabeth and Dudley stoop under the shared burden of their shame.

  My cousin Margaret Douglas, the poor woman—ugly, old, and papist—is summoned to court during this gloomy time. She is not here to be honored, but to be watched. Elizabeth, despairing of getting any truth from the long interrogations of Margaret’s crazed advisors—a double spy, a soothsayer, a turncoat priest—has decided to keep a close eye on her at court. They know that Margaret has approached the French Queen of Scots, but they don’t know what she has offered.

  At once, all the issues of precedence begin all over again as the woman, a known papist, who should really be humbled by her disgrace, tries to push in front of me, the Protestant heir. I am so unhappy at the loss of Ned I really can’t make myself care enough to push back. It is a relief when Margaret is allowed to return to her home in Yorkshire, still suspected, still papist, still old and ugly of course.

  I decide that I will write to Ned and tell him that when the court returns to London and falls into the routine of city life, I don’t wish to see him. I know this is meaningless: we cannot help but see each other, we are attending the same queen, we are serving at the same court. We will see each other every day.

  “But I don’t wish to dance with you, or hav
e you lift me to my horse, or attend me to chapel, or single me out in any way at all,” I write stiffly. I drop a tear on the page and I blot it with my sleeve so that he cannot see that I am crying over this. “I wish you every happiness with Frances. I myself will never marry. I have been deeply disappointed in love.”

  I think this is tremendously dignified. I enclose in the letter the precious poem that he wrote for me. I won’t ever forget it. I know every line. I have carried it in a linen pouch next to my heart as if it were an amulet against despair. But now I think I will send it back to him and let him be sure that I am releasing him from all his promises of love, from our hopeful betrothal, from being Troilus and Criseyde. I send a messenger with the package to Ned’s London house in Cannon Row and I tell him not to wait for a reply. There can be no reply.

  The very next day we are walking back from chapel when Janey comes to my side with a letter sealed with the Hertford seal. “I have this from Ned,” she says awkwardly. “His messenger brought it at dawn. I think he was up all night writing to you. He commands me to give it to you at once. Please be my friend again. Please read this.”

  “What’s that?” asks my little sister Mary, from under my elbow, bright-eyed with interest.

  “I don’t know,” I say, but I can feel myself blushing with delight. It must be courtship. Courtship again. A man doesn’t stay up all night writing a letter to accept his rejection and send the reply at dawn. He must love me. He must want me back. He must be trying to persuade me.

  “Is it Ned?” Mary asks. She pulls my hand down so that she can see the seal. “O-ho.”

  “O-ho yourself,” I say. I step aside from the procession, which is following the queen to the great hall for breakfast.

  “You can’t be late,” Mary warns me. “She’s sour as crab apples this morning.”