The Last Tudor

by Philippa Gregory

  Dear Wife,

  I have spoken to Archbishop Parker (who I know is a good man) about our business, and asked him if it is not true that in a marriage no man should put us asunder. He is going to be a means to the queen for mercy and ask that I be permitted to live with my wife. I would go anywhere to be with you, I would join you in any captivity and hope to make your prison a little easier for you as the thought of you did for me. I will be your faithful and constant husband in deed as in thought, TK

  It has to be good news for me that Thomas Howard, the queen’s kinsman, is released from the Tower without charge, and stays in London under house arrest. If he, a second cousin, guilty of betrothing himself to an enemy queen, can be released, if she can be returned to Scotland, then there is no sense in keeping me imprisoned.

  “I have asked for your release,” Sir Thomas says to me stiffly when he comes to the door of my privy chamber to pay a courtesy visit. “I am assured that you will be released next year.”

  I write to Thomas:

  Dear Husband, I have had so many promises of freedom that I have learned to trust nothing, but if I can come to you, I will do so. I pray for you every day and I think of you with such great love. I am so happy that you are free and my only wish is to be with you and be a good mother to your children. Your constant and loving wife MK

  I sign myself “MK” for “Mary Keyes.” I do not deny my love for him nor my marriage to him, and I kiss the fold of the paper and then melt the sealing wax and drip it into the spot and imprint my family seal. He will know to lift the seal and take the kiss.

  GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

  LONDON, SPRING 1571

  Sir Thomas is beside himself with excitement and his bad-tempered wife at last has some joy in her life. Elizabeth is coming to visit the merchants’ hall and the shops that he has built, and then she will dine in his house. Extraordinarily, they will serve my cousin the queen a banquet in the rooms below mine, but I am not to be present. Though I am in the house at her command, I am not to be seen.

  “Not see her?” I ask flatly. For a moment I had thought that I would simply join her train of ladies as they entered and she would use this visit to bring me back into royal service without an apology for my arrest, without comment. Elizabeth is so strange in her ways and so cold of heart that I thought her quite capable of taking me back to court without another word spoken.

  “No,” Lady Gresham says crossly. “I asked my husband to explain to Lord Burghley that it would be better if you were not in our house at all, for fear of embarrassment, but he says that you shall stay in your room and that there is no embarrassment for anyone.”

  “Lord Burghley?” I ask.

  “Sir William Cecil’s new title.”

  I nod. I see my old friend is rewarded for his unending enmity to the Scots queen.

  “You are to stay in your rooms,” she confirms.

  “As you have said.”

  “And make no noise.”

  I widen my eyes at her rudeness. “I did not intend to dance,” I say. “Or sing.”

  “You are not to try to attract her attention,” she stipulates.

  “My dear Lady Gresham,” I say, speaking down to her, though the top of my hood reaches her armpit, “I have spent my life trying to avoid the attention of my cousin the queen, I am not likely to bellow out to her when she is attending a banquet in your house. I only hope that you can do everything as she prefers. You have not been much at court, I think? Being a city wife, as you are? And not noble?”

  She gives a muted shriek of fury and rushes from the room, leaving me laughing. Tormenting Lady Gresham is my principal entertainment. And a royal visit will give me much scope.

  In fact it goes off perfectly well. Elizabeth eats her dinner in the Greshams’ banqueting hall and watches a play that praises her majesty and her greatness. Then she walks around Sir Thomas’s great folly of his merchants’ hall. The merchants do not gather here, as they do at the Bourse in Bruges. The goldsmiths and jewelers and sellers of goods have not moved into his little shops, preferring their traditional stalls or the front rooms of their houses on the busy city streets. Sir Thomas has begged all his tenants to bring all their stock for the queen to see, and he gives her gifts at every shop. Elizabeth laps up the presents and the flattery like a fat ginger cat, and calls for a herald to announce that hereafter the hall will be called the Royal Exchange, and Sir Thomas will finally make money here and his grasshopper emblem can hop all over London.

  “And you are to be freed,” Lady Gresham says, poking her disagreeable face through the door of my privy chamber at the end of the day. She is flushed with triumph and wine. “Sir Thomas asked the queen and she said that you could leave us.”

  “I shall be glad to go,” I say, keeping my voice steady before this unattractive bearer of good news, a most unlikely herald angel. “Am I to join my husband?”

  “I don’t know,” she says, unable to taunt me with a refusal. “But you are definitely leaving.”

  GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

  LONDON, AUTUMN 1571

  I wait for the order to pack my books and put Mr. Nozzle into his traveling cage, but none comes. Then I learn that William Cecil has been busy with other matters. He has uncovered a great plot to capture Elizabeth the queen. Thomas Howard is accused of working with Spain to raise an army to put Mary on the throne in her place. The court is in an uproar of fear, and nobody is going to release another heir, another Mary, even if it is only me, and everyone knows I have done nothing. Thomas Howard is returned to the Tower, the guards are reinforced at my aunt Bess’s house, and once again Elizabeth has three cousins in captivity.

  I write to Thomas:

  I thought I was to come to you, but it is delayed. I pray that it is nothing more than a delay. I am with you every day in my heart and my prayers. Your loving and constant wife, MK

  I have no reply from him, but this does not trouble me for perhaps he has not yet had my letter, or cannot get a secret note to me. I am sitting at the window overlooking the London street when I see the doctor arriving and being admitted in the front door below my window. I have not complained of any ill health, and so I wonder who has summoned him and if Lady Gresham has poisoned with bile.

  Sir Thomas himself opens the door and Dr. Smith comes into the room. So he has come to visit me. I get to my feet, filled with unease. If this is my freedom, why have they sent my physician? Why do they both look so grave?

  I don’t wait for him to be announced or for him to make his bow. “Please tell me,” I say quickly. “Please tell me at once whatever it is you have come to tell me. Please tell me at once.”

  The two men exchange a look, and, at that, I know that I have lost the love of my life.

  “Is it Thomas?” I ask.

  “Yes, my lady,” says the doctor quietly. “I am sorry to tell you that he is dead.”

  “My husband?” I say. “My Thomas, Thomas Keyes? The queen’s sergeant porter, the biggest man at court? Who married me?”

  I keep thinking, there is bound to be a mistake. My Thomas could not survive the Fleet in winter, get himself back to Kent, write that he will come to me, and then fail and die before we are reunited. It is not possible that our love story, such an odd unlikely story, could end so unhappily. I keep thinking, it is another Thomas, not my Thomas who stands as tall as a tree with his shoulders back and his kind eyes scanning everyone who comes to his gate.

  “Yes, my lady,” the doctor says again. “I am afraid that he is dead.”

  OSTERLEY PARK, MIDDLESEX,

  SPRING 1572

  Later, a long time later, they told me that I collapsed at the words, that I went white and they thought that I would never open my eyes. I did not speak and they thought that the news had killed me. When I did wake in my bed, I asked if it was true and when they told me, “Yes, yes, Thomas Keyes is dead,” I closed my eyes again and turned my back on the room. Facing the wall, I waited for death to come to me. It seemed to me
then that I had lost everyone that I had ever loved, and everyone who belonged to me, that my life was pointless, a waste of time, that it served only to anger the queen more, that she has become a monster, the Moldwarp like her father, a great beast that lives in the bowels of England and devours her brightest children.

  That Elizabeth’s malice should have broken the heart of the greatest man in England, that great man with that great spirit, does not prove her power but it shows the strength of evil when a woman thinks of nothing but herself. Elizabeth is empowered by her vanity. Anyone who suggests to her that another woman is preferable must die. Any man that prefers another woman to her must be exiled. Even someone like Thomas, who loyally served her and whose preference fell on a little woman who came no higher than his broad leather belt, even Thomas could not be suffered to live happily once he looked away from Elizabeth to someone else—to me.

  They move me to Osterley Park, Sir Thomas Gresham’s country house, as if they are moving a corpse. They think that I will die on my own in the country and that all the inconvenience will be over. And this is my silent wish. It must be God’s will and I am not going to blaspheme Him by killing myself; but I don’t eat and I don’t speak. I lie with my eyes closed and the pillow beneath my head is always damp as the tears constantly seep from under my closed eyelids as I cry for my husband, Thomas, whether I am awake or asleep.

  The days get shorter and my bedroom is dark as night from three in the afternoon, and then slowly, slowly the golden light starts to come back to the white walls and I can hear birdsong outside the window in the morning and the skies lighten earlier and earlier and I think that my husband, my beloved husband, would never advise me to give up. He loved me when I was a little girl on too big a horse. He loved my courage; he loved my unbeatable spirit. Perhaps I can find that courage and that spirit once again, for love of him.

  And I think, if nothing else, I can deny Elizabeth the victory of the death of all her cousins. I think of Mary Queen of Scots, awaiting her return to Scotland, determined to get back to her country and her son. I think of Thomas, Duke of Norfolk, preparing his own defense in the Tower of London. I think of my cousin Margaret Douglas, now widowed since her husband was killed in a brawl in Scotland, never stopping her demand for justice, never ceasing to claim the throne for her Scots grandson, and I think I am damned if I am going to spare Elizabeth the problem of dealing with three surviving heirs. I am damned if I am going to oblige Elizabeth by the silent exit of yet another rival. I am Jane Grey’s sister—they are calling her the first Protestant martyr—I am not going to slip away in silence; she did not. “Learn you to die!” does not mean lie down like Jo the pug, with your paw over your nose, and give up. “Learn you to die!” means consider how your death is meaningful, as your life is meaningful.

  So, at the end of the long silent period of mourning I get up because I love my husband and I will live the rest of my life to prove it, and because I despise Elizabeth and I shall live the rest of my life to inconvenience her. When spring comes, I get up. It is as simple as that. I rise up and I do my hair, which is showing silver in the gold as befits a widow, and I order black cloth from Sir Thomas’s shops in London, and argue with Lady Gresham as to how much material I need to make a gown of mourning black. I want it richly folded, and beautifully made. Then I hear that her stupid stupid husband (for the man is a fool, for all that he knows about business) has gone to William Cecil to ask if I may indeed dress as a widow. As if it matters to him, as if it matters to them! As if it should matter to a queen that a widow should wear black for the love of her life. As if a queen should stoop so low as to worry about the black petticoats of the smallest of her subjects, as if anyone should deny me my black gown when I carry the greatest of loves in my heart.

  I win my gown of black and I win my freedom. I am allowed to walk in the gardens at Osterley and even take a horse and ride through the parkland. Mr. Nozzle likes Thomas Gresham’s orchard and when the early fruits come into season is often to be found browsing on raspberries or early cherries. He takes his pick of the crop, and I have to suspect that he takes an especial pleasure in annoying our host. More than once when Sir Thomas has sent from London demanding his hothouse peaches, informing the household that he is giving an important dinner to significant guests, we find that Mr. Nozzle has been ahead of him. He knows how to unlock the door to the hothouse, and goes in first and eats the best of the fruit. Sometimes he takes only a little nibble from each. I would think Sir Thomas might admire Mr. Nozzle’s method of driving up value; but he does not.

  I write to William Cecil and say that since it is now recognized that my marriage was valid, I should like to live where my husband lived, at Sandgate in Kent, and raise his children from his first marriage as my own. They are now orphans and I am a widow; it would be a service to the parish and a joy to me if I could be given their care.

  He takes a long time to reply, but I know he has many other things to trouble him. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, has stood trial with a host of accusations against him but only one that rings true—and it is the most damning. He preferred Queen Mary to Queen Elizabeth, he planned to marry the beautiful younger woman, and the queen will see him die for that. He knew there was a plot to free the Scots queen and he may have forwarded some money. He did little else. He did not join the plot, he submitted himself to the queen and begged her pardon. She did not accept the excuse that he is promised to the Scots queen in marriage, that he owes her his support. That is the last defense in the world to proffer to a woman like Elizabeth, who cannot tolerate any attention being paid to another woman. So Thomas Howard has stood his trial and been found guilty, and the queen can choose to pardon him, or not. In the meantime he waits in the Tower of London, as my sister Jane waited, as Katherine waited, as I wait here at Osterley, to hear the queen’s pleasure.

  And it is now, when Thomas Howard is found guilty of treason for proposing to marry her, when Bess’s husband is despised for falling in love with her, that suddenly, the reputation of Mary Queen of Scots is destroyed. The Privy Council allows the full release of her letters, the famous letters of the silver gilt casket—forged and fictitious. William Cecil has been busy and the papers, which were once so secret that they could not even be shown to royal advisors, are now published so cheaply that every spit boy and kitchen girl in London can buy a copy and read that Queen Mary is no rightful queen, for she whored with Bothwell and blew up her husband with a bombard.

  Shocked by this, and frightened by Cecil’s many other warnings, the parliament calls for Mary to be accused and executed. Still the unwanted, ruinous guest of my aunt Bess, the Scots queen has to wait to see what Elizabeth will do. My guess is that Elizabeth will hold all her cousins—all of us—indefinitely, until Mary’s beauty is worn out, until Thomas’s loyal army forgets him, until they die of heartbreak. But she cannot diminish me: I am already small. She cannot break my heart: it is buried with my husband, Thomas Keyes.

  When I finally hear from Cecil, he refuses my request. The queen does not wish for me to return to normal life yet. I am not allowed to care for my stepchildren; I am not allowed to raise Thomas’s children as he asked me to do. But she need not think that I will quietly die to oblige her. Not for this, not for anything.

  ST. BOTOLPH’S-WITHOUT-ALDGATE,

  LONDON, SPRING 1573

  And finally . . . I have won. It is as simple and as beautiful as that. I have outlived Elizabeth’s malice, and survived her jealousy.

  I saw her leave my beloved sister to die of the plague, and then leave her to die of despair. I saw her put my baby nephews in the way of disease and neglect. I saw her execute her cousin Thomas Howard and imprison her cousin a queen—and who would think that you could imprison a Queen of Scots and a royal kinswoman of France? But I have seen Elizabeth do all this. And finally, I have seen her ill will towards me wear out from overuse. It is not me who tires of it and gives up, it is Elizabeth. Finally, she releases me.

  First, she all
ows me to stay with my stepfather, Adrian Stokes, at Beaumanor, so I return to my family home. Then, as if weary of her long years of persecution, she sets me free, and promises to restore my allowance. There is no more sense to freeing me than there was to arresting me. I am no danger to her now, I was no danger before. It is nothing but royal whim.

  But I don’t care, I don’t call for justice, nor do I complain that she could have released me seven years ago, she need never have arrested my beloved husband, she could have released Katherine, she need not have died. I know that we are Elizabeth’s fear and her folly. But I don’t complain. She pays me an allowance, she sets me free. I can afford to live on my own, and I kiss my stepfather and his new wife and her enchanting children, and I buy myself a house and set myself up as a householder of London, as proud and as free as Lady Gresham, but far happier.

  The city of London is beautiful in springtime. It is the best of all times. The villages that press against the city walls are bright with white snowdrops and festive with yellow Lenten lilies that bob in the wind. Mr. Nozzle, aging now, knows that we have come to our own home at last, and spends his day on a red velvet cushion on a high-backed chair in the hall where he can keep an eye on the comings and goings of my little household, like a little sergeant porter. I give him a thick embroidered leather belt and a coat of Tudor green in memory of the queen’s sergeant porter, whom I will never forget.

  I see my husband’s children, as I promised him that I would. His daughter, Jane Merrick, is a frequent visitor, and she asks me to be godmother to her daughter that she names Mary for me. I have other visitors. I have friends from my old days at court, the bridesmaids at my wedding, and Blanche Parry, first lady of the bedchamber, comes from time to time to talk of the old days. If I want to return to serve Elizabeth, I know that Blanche will speak for me, and I could hug myself with joy at the thought that I will consider this. My proper place is at court, but my dislike of Elizabeth is so strong that I may prefer exile outside it. I don’t know yet. I shall decide. I have the freedom to choose.