The Last Tudor

by Philippa Gregory

  William Cecil himself comes to the queen’s rooms, waits for me to come out to the privy chamber, and asks me to take a message in to the queen in her bed.

  I hesitate. “She is seeing no one,” I say. “And Blanche Parry is to be the first lady of the bedchamber.”

  He bends down so he can speak quietly in my ear. “It would be well that she heard this first from you,” he says, “since I cannot enter.”

  “I’m not your best choice for bad news,” I say reluctantly. I can feel a sense of dread in my belly, although I think there can be nothing wrong with my sister: William Cecil would not torture me like this if Katherine were ill. “What’s happening?”

  “Henry Stuart, Lord Darnley, has married the Queen of Scots,” Cecil says quietly. “Keep your voice down.”

  He does not need to warn me not to exclaim. I know how disastrous this is for England. I keep my expression blank as well. “Henry Stuart?”

  “Yes. And she has made him king.”

  Now my face is frozen like a mask. Mary Queen of Scots must be madly in love, or simply mad to give the crown and the throne to a youth who could be bought for a sovereign. I guess that she so wanted to be the wife of a king once more that she thought she would make one, choosing to ignore that Henry is a born courtier without any touch of the regal.

  William Cecil admires my stillness, and goes on: “She has put herself far beyond any possibility of succeeding to the English throne—a papist and now with a weak husband. She is no threat to us. We would never have accepted Dudley as a King of England coming in at her side; we certainly won’t have Darnley. We will not have a papist king and queen, and not even the French will support her, married to a man like him.”

  “It is her undoing,” I whisper. “She has thrown away her future for a boy.”

  “Yes,” Cecil confirms. “Clearly she has been persuaded that he and his father can defeat her enemies. Already they have persuaded her to raise an army to make war on her own people, on the Protestant lords: her own people of our religion. She has made herself into our enemy. So for England, there is only one possible heir left. Mary Queen of Scots is a declared enemy to our religion, Margaret Douglas is her mother-in-law, your sister is the sole remaining heir. The queen will see this now, so take her the news yourself, and stand before her while you tell her, so that she knows what a faithful family she has.”

  Elizabeth’s fury with her rival queen quickly replaces Elizabeth’s grief. She rises from her bed, orders a private funeral for Kat Ashley, and then storms into the Privy Council, demanding that they make war on the Scots.

  There is a rebellion in Scotland. The Scots queen’s half brother the Earl of Moray has turned against her. Though he welcomed her to Scotland and advised her earlier, he is a staunch Protestant and cannot stomach a papist queen with her papist jumped-up king. Although Elizabeth has no real interest in fighting for religion, she decides to support the bastard James Stewart, Earl of Moray, against his ordained queen and half sister. She sends him a fortune in gold to pay his followers and every messenger brings us news of his treason and demands for more help. The Privy Council ask each other, even ask us ladies, what the queen is doing, supporting a rebel against a crowned queen, sending money but not sending an army, doing enough to encourage him but not enough to ensure his victory. The French ambassador comes to court in a cold rage and says that if Elizabeth supports Protestant rebels against a legitimate half-French papist queen, they will intervene also . . . and all of a sudden, Elizabeth loses her heart for the Protestant cause and the bastard rebel; all of a sudden she remembers her loyalty to a fellow queen. To overthrow one woman in power is to threaten every woman in power. Suddenly, Elizabeth is an ally.

  Besides, all the news we have from Scotland is of the young queen’s triumph, and Elizabeth hates to be on the losing side. Queen Mary raises an army and she leads it herself; she pursues her half brother in a series of running battles and finally chases him over the border. From our garrison in Newcastle-upon-Tyne he begs for reinforcements, he limps south to London, a frightened man, and Elizabeth astounds him with a strong reprimand for disloyalty to his queen and half sister. Thomasina and I exchange one bland look as Elizabeth leaves Moray and the Protestant cause in Scotland in ruins, and the court baffled as to what she really wants.

  She does not surprise me. For there is no sense in how she treats me, or how she treats Katherine and her little boys. Elizabeth is driven by fear, and she takes sudden anxious decisions and then reverses them. Mary Queen of Scots will never be heir to England now, but still Elizabeth does not recognize my sister, as fearful of a powerless woman in captivity as she is by an armed rival on her border. She will not release my sister, who may die under house arrest, if she cannot be reunited with her husband and little boy. The court, the Privy Council, the queen’s allies, even her enemies look in vain for consistent strategy from Elizabeth. They do not see that it is spite not strategy that drives her against her cousins: my sister and Queen Mary. It is rivalry, not politics that persuades her. I know this, for all her cousins suffer from her spite and rivalry: me too.

  WHITEHALL PALACE, LONDON,

  SUMMER 1565

  I am lying in Thomas’s arms, listening to his steady breathing, watching the sky in the window opposite his bed slowly grow from dark to pale and then blush with the peach and pink of the rising sun. I don’t stir, I don’t want to wake him; I want this moment to never end. I feel a deep sense of peace and joy with this big man beside me, his arms around me, his breath warm on the back of my neck.

  There is a sharp little tap-tap on the door, and I am instantly alert and frightened. Nobody knows that I am here; I must not be found here. I raise myself up in the bed and at once Thomas is on his feet and out of bed. He sleeps like a sentry—he is always ready to wake. He moves like a big cat, silent on his broad feet, and I snatch up the sheet and hold it across my nakedness and jump down from the high bed. I step back into the room, so that I cannot be seen from the doorway. Thomas pulls on his breeches, glances to see that I am hidden, nods at me to stay quiet and still and speaks to the bolted door. “Who goes there?”

  “It’s Thomasina, the queen’s dwarf!” comes the urgent hiss. “Open up, Thomas Keyes, you great fool.”

  He hides a smile and unbolts the door, barring it with his arm. She does not have to duck her head to slip into the room and she sees me. “I knew you would be here,” she says breathlessly. “It’s true then. You’re married. You’d better get dressed and come at once. She knows.”

  I gape at her. “How?”

  She shakes her little head. “I don’t know. She asked for you the moment she woke this morning, God knows why, and then they found you were not in your bed.”

  “I can make something up.” Frantically I pull on my gown, Thomas ties my laces. “I can say I was visiting a sick friend.”

  “Here, let me,” Thomasina says, pushing him aside. “Great lummox. I must go. You can’t be found with two of us in your room, Thomas Keyes! That would be a scandal indeed!”

  For the first time ever, I don’t correct her. I don’t say there are not two of us here, there is one princess and one dwarf, we are not two of the same thing. I don’t pause in cramming my feet into my little shoes, and tucking my stockings in the pocket of my cape. She has come to warn me because she believes in our sisterhood, one little woman helping another in a dangerous world. I won’t deny my affinity with her again. She has been a friend to me now, and a sister.

  “Who told her?” I demand. I fold up my long hair and cram my hood on top. Thomasina is quick and skilled with a couple of pins.

  “One of the maids,” she said. “She didn’t dare do otherwise. She just said you weren’t in your bed. Not where you are. But we’ve all known that you two were courting for months. Are you married?”

  “Yes.”

  “Without permission from the queen?”

  “There’s no law against it,” I say pedantically. “There was a law but it was repeal
ed.”

  She laughs at me. “The queen doesn’t need a law to express her displeasure,” she says. “Ask Margaret Douglas. Ask your sister. God help you.”

  She dives out of the door. “Hurry up!” I hear her call and the patter of her feet down the stairs.

  Thomas shrugs on his billowing shirt and reaches for his livery jacket. “What should we do?” he asks me. “Shall I come with you to the queen?”

  “No. You can’t come anyway if she’s in her bedchamber.”

  “I have served her loyally since she came to the throne,” he remarks. “She knows that I am faithful.”

  I compress my lips on my opinion of Elizabeth’s regard for her faithful servants. Ask Robert Dudley what rewards there are for serving her faithfully, ask William Cecil. “I’ll remind her of that, if she says anything,” I promise him.

  I reach up on tiptoes and he bends down for a kiss. It is not a kiss for luck or a quick peck. He puts his arms around me and he holds me closely. He kisses me with passion, as if we may never kiss again. “I love you,” he says quietly. “Come to me at the gate as soon as you can, to tell me that things are well with you. Or send me a message that all is well.”

  I show him a brave smile. “I shall come as soon as I can,” I say. “Wait for me. Wait for me.”

  I go at a run to the queen’s presence chamber. Already it is filling up with petitioners and visitors who hope to catch her fleeting attention as she walks through to chapel. Half of them will be asking for clemency or pardon for men or women arrested for heresy or treason or suspicion. The prisons are crowded with suspects, the court crowded with their families. The Privy Council believe that the papists will rise against Elizabeth in support of Mary Queen of Scots. They believe that my cousin Margaret Douglas was conspiring with France and Spain to put her papist son and a papist queen on the throne. It has become a fearful country, a suspicious country, and now I am afraid and under suspicion too.

  I go through the crowds to the door of her privy chamber. People make way for me—they know that I am one of the Grey girls. I see glances of pity from people whose own lives are so endangered that they have come to court for help. People under the shadow of the scaffold are pitying me. There are two guards on the doors to Elizabeth’s privy chamber. They swing open the doors for me and I go in.

  Most of the queen’s ladies and some of her maids-in-waiting are already in attendance, and clearly they are all talking about me. A terrible silence falls as I walk into the room and look around at these women who have been my companions and friends for eleven years. Nobody says a word.

  “Where is Blanche Parry?” I ask. She is the new first lady of the bedchamber; she will know how much trouble I am facing. Lady Clinton nods her head towards the closed door.

  “She’s with Her Majesty. She is much displeased.”

  There is a ripple of talk, but no one speaks directly to me. It is as if they dare not address me for fear of the contamination of treason. Nobody wants to be known as my particular friend, though almost all of them have been proud to call themselves my friend at one time or another.

  “Is it true? Are you married, Lady Mary?” one of the younger maids blurts out, and curtseys and colors red to her ears. “Begging your pardon,” she whispers.

  I don’t have to answer her, but I am not going to deny it now. I am never going to deny my marriage or the man I love. Part of me thinks—but this is quite absurd! I have one sister executed for claiming the throne, and one sister imprisoned for falling in love—and here am I, with a ring in my pocket and a private marriage, neither claiming the throne nor marrying a noble.

  “Is she very angry?” I ask.

  Someone makes a little whistle like calling up a storm.

  “Am I to go in?”

  “You’re to wait here,” Lady Clinton says. “She’ll send for you.”

  “I’ll go to my room and change my hood,” I say. Nobody says that I may not go and so I go out through the doors again, through the presence chamber and the furtive glances, and up the narrow stairs to my rooms. My maid, white-faced, brushes my hair and pins my hood without saying a word. I don’t speak to her.

  When I go back to the privy chamber, someone has called William Cecil and he is standing in the window bay talking to my stepgrandmother, Catherine Brandon, and Blanche Parry. Everyone else is waiting at a polite distance, straining their ears to hear, not daring to step closer. When I come into the chamber, Sir William looks up and sees me. He gives me a weary smile and I go across the room and look up at him. My lady stepgrandmother stands behind me, as if she would advocate for me.

  “Now here’s a to-do,” Sir William says gently, and I think—thank God, at last someone who knows that this is a marriage for love, that means nothing except to us who love each other. It will offend the queen since all love but her own heartless playacting offends the queen. But here is a sensible man who knows that it is of no importance in the greater world.

  “I am sorry that I did not ask permission,” I say quietly.

  “You are married?” he confirms.

  “Yes, to Mr. Thomas Keyes.”

  A suspicion of a smile crosses the old statesman’s face. “I think he must be the biggest gentleman of the court and you the smallest lady.”

  “John Dee would say that we were the opposites that make the whole,” I observe.

  “The offense is very great,” Sir William says, nodding to the closed chamber door.

  “The offense is very small. Her Majesty may take great offense, but there is no cause.”

  He bows his head at my correction.

  “Am I to go in? I can explain it was nothing but a private matter.”

  “I would take her in . . .” my lady stepgrandmother offers.

  Blanche shakes her head. “She won’t see you,” she says shortly. “She is very angry, Lady Mary. This, on top of everything else . . .”

  “This is nothing,” I say staunchly. “And everything else—if you mean my sister’s marriage to a young nobleman—was no ground for offense either. The marriage of Mary Queen of Scots is a matter of national importance but nothing to do with us. My sister and I were acting as private individuals.” I look around at the other ladies of the bedchamber. “Are none of us ever to marry?”

  William Cecil clears his throat. “You’re to go to Windsor,” he says. “While Her Majesty makes inquiry.”

  “I will speak for you,” my lady stepgrandmother says.

  “Inquiry into what?” I demand. “There was a marriage, held in private. There were witnesses. His family was there, a maid was witness for me. There was a priest who will attest that the wedding was valid. You need hold no inquiry to know everything. I will tell you everything. Mr. Keyes will tell you everything.”

  William Cecil looks tired. “Perhaps. But Her Majesty wishes you to go to Windsor while she holds an inquiry.”

  I take his hand and look up at him. “Sir William, you tell us that there is a plot by the Spanish to finance the Queen of Scots. The Queen of Scots has married the heir to the throne of Scotland, and defeated the Protestants who were rebelling against her. Is this the time for you and the Privy Council to worry about me?”

  “Little me?” he suggests with a smile.

  “I could not be a smaller person at court. The affairs of my heart could not be of less importance.”

  “She insists,” he says gently. “Pack your things.”

  I would go straight to Thomas at the gate, but two ladies go with me to my rooms to help me to pack my books, my papers, my clothes, and jewels. Then when I am ready to leave, there are two guards at the door and they take me down the privy stair to the watergate. I look for Thomas at the great gate of the palace, but he is not there and his deputy on duty does not look up so I cannot gesture. The room above the watergate where we lived together as man and wife shows no lights at the windows; the shutters are closed. Either he is in there, under arrest in darkness, or they have taken him somewhere else already.

&n
bsp; “I want to see my husband, Thomas Keyes,” I say to the guardsman beside me. “I insist.”

  “My orders are that you will go by barge to Windsor,” he says.

  “The sergeant porter,” I remind him. “Of military rank and unimpeachable honor. I insist that you let me see him.”

  He bobs his head down towards me. “They’ve taken him into the city,” he says, very quietly. “He’s already gone, my lady.”

  WINDSOR CASTLE,

  SUMMER 1565

  I am kept in three good rooms overlooking the upper ward of Windsor Castle. The outer door is locked at night but during the day there is a guard set outside and he will walk with me if I want to go out to the royal garden. I am allowed to walk anywhere inside the castle walls but I am not allowed out. The rooms are spacious and I have my two ladies-in-waiting and three maids. These are better rooms than Katherine had in the house of the lieutenant of the Tower, and more freedom than Jane had there. I am so glad not to be held in the Tower—that would be unbearable. I could not tread the same track as my imprisoned sister, I could not wake to see the green where my martyred sister was killed. At least this is better than that.