Her Highness, the Traitor

by Susan Higginbotham

  “She told my boy Robert once that she didn’t want to get married.” I smiled reminiscently. “They have known each other since they were young, you know. Robert says she was quite determined.”

  “Bah! A girl of that age is too young to know her own mind about anything. But it may turn into a self-fulfilling prophecy, if she’s not more carefully guarded. The lady Elizabeth already has the stigma of being that Anne Boleyn’s daughter.”

  Try as hard as she might, Anne, as sister-in-law to the queen who had supplanted that Anne Boleyn, could not help but sound rather smug.

  ***

  I saw Anne Seymour off, feeling guilty as I watched her barge, only a shade less grand than the king’s, pull away. Our husbands had been friends since 1523, when as young men they had served together in France under Charles Brandon, so it had been natural when Edward Seymour married Anne as his second wife that the two of us would spend time together. He was very fond of her, for good reason: his first wife, pretty but ill suited temperamentally to her solemn husband, had been an adulteress. He had had her put away in a house of religion, after which she had had the decency to die and leave him free to take another wife.

  The attractive Anne, bearing his children almost yearly and loyally supporting his career, had been the balm he needed after the hurt and shame of having been cuckolded. But even in the early days of their marriage, Anne, with the smidgen of royal blood she had through her mother, had been prone to give herself airs, and when her sister-in-law Jane became Henry VIII’s third queen, it had well and truly turned her head. Yet she had good points: I just had to make an effort to remind myself of them.

  Robert, who at fifteen was the third of my five living sons, entered my chamber and looked around. Then he called back, “It’s safe! The duchess is gone. Come on in!”

  “Really,” I protested as my children ambled in, trailed by their uncle Jerome, “you should not speak of the Duchess of Somerset in that manner. She is a faithful wife, a loving mother, a pious woman, a—”

  “Battle-axe,” said Robert. “They should have left the Duke of Somerset here and sent her to Scotland. The Scots would turn tail.”

  “Robert!”

  “Did she tell you about the Great Barge Incident?”

  “Yes,” I admitted.

  “The lady Elizabeth told me what she said to poor Kat Astley.” Robert turned to his brothers, ten-year-old Guildford and nine-year-old Hal, and to his thirteen-year-old sister, Mary. Only my youngest child, Katheryn, napping in her nursery, was not here for the fun. He pitched his voice high. “‘An outrage, Mistress Astley, an outrage! Do you want a princess of the blood to marry a mere knight? For this is surely what will happen if you let her run around so!’ Poor Kat Astley was prostrated for a day after the duchess’s visit.”

  “She means well.”

  “What were you doing visiting the lady Elizabeth?” asked Hal.

  “What’s the harm? She just likes seeing someone now and then besides her ladies and the queen and the Marquis of Dorset’s daughter. Now that is a frightening little miss, by the by. Deadly earnest. Knows at least three languages, they say, and can’t laugh at a joke in any of them. I pity the man who marries her. He’ll probably have to translate a passage from the Greek before he’s allowed in the lady’s bedchamber. At least the lady Mary wasn’t there.”

  “Do the lady Mary,” my own daughter begged.

  Robert crossed himself, dropped to his knees, and lowered his voice to a growl. “Ave Maria, gratia plena, Dominus tecum—Oh, Jesu, my knees are sore!”

  “Robert!” I protested, though not without first admiring the accuracy of the imitation. “I cannot have you treating the king’s sister with such disrespect, even in the privacy of our home.”

  I could not be too angry at Robert, however, for I knew he spoke in part to distract me from my worry. Three years before, my husband and my son Henry had set off for war in France; there, my handsome, high-spirited boy, knighted just weeks before, had fallen ill and died during the siege of Boulogne. I had lost five other children to illnesses in early childhood, and I grieved for them still, but with them I’d had time to prepare for their deaths, to clasp them in my arms and offer them what comfort I could, to say good-bye. With Henry, I’d had to hear the news from a messenger, bringing what I had hoped at first was an ordinary letter from my husband. When my husband returned from France by himself a few weeks later, strained and grieving, I’d had to relive my misery again. Three years later, I now had to fear for the safety of my sons Jack and Ambrose in Scotland, not to mention that of my husband, for he was not a man to spare himself in battle. If there was fighting, they would be in the thick of it.

  My husband’s brother Andrew was fighting for England, too; of the three Dudley brothers, only Jerome was at home. I smiled at Jerome, who as usual was sitting on his favorite stool, enjoying the hubbub around him without taking part in it. He had been very young when his father, Edmund Dudley, was executed, so young that Edmund had had hopes he could train for the priesthood. But it had become apparent in another year or so he would not have a career in the Church or any place else, for his mind would never be more than that of a young child. He had been a docile lad who had grown into a sweet-tempered man, and as he liked company better than anything and was no trouble, John had brought him from his lodgings in the country to live with us at Ely Place.

  “Please let Robert do the lady Mary again, at least,” begged Guildford.

  “Please,” echoed Jerome in his voice that always startled me, so much like John’s as it was.

  I sighed. “Oh, very well. But only if he does the Duchess of Somerset again, too.”

  ***

  “You are here to see the king, my lady?”

  I nodded at Thomas Seymour, coming out of the king’s outer chambers at Hampton Court just as I was coming into them. “Yes. He summoned me. I hope nothing is wrong in Scotland.”

  “Not that I know of,” Seymour said lazily. “Ned’s alive and well, as far as I know.”

  “And my husband and sons? Have you any news of them?”

  “No, but I imagine Ned would have told even me if there were any cause for concern. I daresay the king will tell you what you need to know.” Seymour bowed and hurried away.

  “He could have been more forthcoming, don’t you think?” I asked my companion— Maudlyn Flower, one of the gentlewomen who served me. “But I suppose nothing can be so very wrong.”

  King Edward awaited me in the chair where he received visitors, his feet dangling well above the floor. I dropped a curtsey. “Perhaps you have seen our uncle, my lady?”

  Though I am a short woman, it was still necessary for me to take care when I arose that I did not look down at the king. “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “He brought us some money,” said Edward cheerfully. “He’s always bringing us money. But did he tell you the news?”

  I bit my lip. “No, Your Majesty. I hope things are well with us in Scotland?”

  “We had a victory!” the king announced. He slid off his chair and waved me over to a map lying on a table. “Here, at a place called Musselburgh. We killed ten thousand Scots. My lord of Warwick was ambushed before the battle,” he added.

  I froze.

  “But he escaped,” the king assured me quickly. “Oh, I would have told you immediately if he had not! He charged at one of them—Dandy Carr—and chased him for twelve score at spear point. He would have run Carr’s horse straight through if his horse had been just a little slower. They must have very fast horses there.”

  “My lord was not hurt, then.”

  “No, no. The battle was joined the next day. See, my lady?”

  I gazed at the map as the king recounted the battle with boyish gusto, my mind focusing only on the news that my John was safe.

  Only when I was on my knees in
my chapel, giving thanks for my husband’s safety, did it occur to me to wonder why Thomas Seymour was giving the king money.

  6

  Frances Grey

  December 1547

  I know you’re taking me into the chapel, Harry,” I protested, adjusting my blindfold. “There are those two steps. Where else could I be?”

  “Patience, my dear, patience.” Harry led me forward a step or two, and I brushed against something that could only be a chapel pew. “There!”

  Harry untied my blindfold, and I stared around me.

  While I had been visiting friends, Bradgate’s chapel had been completely whitewashed. The images of saints that decorated the walls had been obliterated; the altar had been stripped of its finery. “Well? How do you like it?”

  “It’s bare,” was all I could manage.

  “Well, of course it’s bare,” Harry said reasonably. “All of that frippery gets in between us and the Lord.”

  I turned my eyes again to the blank wall on my left. It had borne an image of the Virgin, commissioned by Harry’s grandfather, the first Marquis of Dorset, when he built Bradgate Hall in the last century. He must have found the best workman in Leicestershire for the task; perhaps he’d even chosen someone from London. Probably he’d come in regularly to check the progress of the work. His children and grandchildren had gazed at it countless times over the years as they squirmed in chapel; some had seen it when they were married or when their own children were christened here. And now with a brush stroke it had vanished, to be replaced by blankness. Bradgate was Harry’s ancestral home, not mine, but I felt as if I had been robbed of something. “It shall take some getting used to.”

  “Better sooner than later, when abolishing idolatry and superstition is concerned. And this is only the beginning.” Harry looked around our stark chapel with satisfaction. “It’s a new world, my dear. Our Jane will be so pleased when she sees it.”

  “No doubt she will.”

  “Oh, and I hate to have you go away so soon, but you’ve an invitation, and I suppose it must be accepted. It’s from the lady Mary. No doubt you’ll get your share of images at her place.”

  ***

  The lady Mary and I were first cousins, and close in age; aged one-and-thirty that autumn of 1547, she was only a year or so my senior. She was, in fact, my godmother, though of course being a mere babe herself at the time, she had christened me by proxy. When she was small, I had been brought to the princess’s household to play with her from time to time. Even when the failure of her mother, Catherine of Aragon, to give the king a living son had combined with the dark eyes of Anne Boleyn to turn the king against his queen, I’d still been able to visit my cousin occasionally. Then the king had married Anne, just a few months before my own wedding to Harry, and my poor cousin Mary had become more and more estranged from her father the king.

  Harry might scoff about Mary’s fondness for the old religion, but it was her faith that had pulled her through those horrid years. Without it, she never would have had the courage to face up to her father the king when he tried to get her to recognize the validity of his marriage to Anne. Goodness knows, he had frightened me enough—and he had never been anything but a kindly uncle to me. He had even pinched my cheek at my wedding and told me what a beautiful bride I was. That was more, I reflected, than what my husband had done.

  At Hunsdon, I was just in time for Mass. Mary held at least two a day, sometimes four. Mary gave me a disapproving look afterward; I’d stumbled on some of the responses and had coughed when the incense grew particularly strong. “I hear that your household has ceased to hear the Mass.”

  “Yes.” I considered mentioning Harry’s other changes but thought better of it.

  “The Protector has ceased to hear it also, as well as the Earl of Warwick. And the queen herself has joined the apostasy. I suppose I could have expected no less of her, however, after that marriage of hers. I just hope she does not corrupt my sister. But I must say that I am disappointed to hear that you have joined that crew. Your father would not have approved.”

  I wondered if he truly would have cared; one theology had been much the same as another to Father, as long as it didn’t interfere with a good day’s hunting. “I have no choice, my lady. It was my husband’s decision.”

  Mary looked wistful. I wondered now, with her father dead, whether she would at last find a husband. It was odd, not to mention a little sad, to see a king’s daughter past thirty and still unwed. She looked around at her little band of ladies, who had followed us from the chapel. “Well, shall we play cards?”

  We walked into a chamber where a series of card tables, all neatly laid with cards and counters, awaited us. Susan Clarencius and Eleanor Kempe, who had served Mary for years, joined us. “How is the lady Jane?” Susan asked after we had played a round or two, Mary handily winning.

  I found it much easier to speak of my daughter than to her. “She is faring very well in Queen Catherine’s household. She has not written recently, but when she did, she seemed quite happy. The queen is a stimulating companion, and the lady Elizabeth is quite learned herself, of course.”

  Mary’s face clouded. She and her younger half sister were not very close; indeed, Mary had been known to wonder aloud whether Elizabeth might have been the by-blow of one of Anne Boleyn’s supposed lovers. I bit my lip and added hastily, “Of course, my Jane spends far more time with the queen than with the lady Elizabeth. They share only a few lessons, being several years apart. There is some gossip, though.” I looked at the queen for her approval, received it, and went on. “The Protector and the queen are still quarreling over the queen’s jewels, and now the Protector’s wife is in the middle of it all.”

  “I’ll have nothing said against the Duchess of Somerset,” Mary said coldly. “She is a woman of virtue and a friend of mine.”

  “Indeed,” I said, suddenly wishing myself back at Bradgate with its bare altars.

  7

  Jane Dudley

  April 1548 to September 1548

  Thomas Seymour patted the Queen of England as if she were a particularly fine heifer. “Well, Lady Warwick? Do you think the mouse will crawl nicely out of its hole?”

  “I do indeed,” I said as the queen gave a strained smile and my son Robert, who had decided I needed a manly escort to Chelsea, looked slightly ill. The couple’s wards, the lady Elizabeth and the lady Jane, tittered.

  To everyone’s shock, the queen had announced her pregnancy a few weeks earlier. Now in her mid-thirties, she’d never quickened with child before, although Seymour was her fourth husband. Catherine had been miserable for the past few weeks, her early pregnancy sickness exacerbated by her having conceived for the first time at such a comparatively advanced age, but she had come out of her worst time and now had a healthy glow to her.

  The queen took me by the arm. “Would you walk in the garden with me, my lady?” She smiled at her husband and at my Robert. “You can entertain the ladies Elizabeth and Jane. There are maternal matters I wish to discuss with Lady Warwick.”

  I let the queen lead me away toward some rose bushes, the flowers just a few weeks from bloom. The men, I saw, had paired off also: Thomas Seymour with the lady Elizabeth, Robert with Lady Jane. I suspected my Robert was not entirely happy about this situation. “I hope Your Grace is not overly concerned about this pregnancy?” I eyed the queen as appraisingly as Seymour had earlier. “There are risks, as you hardly need me to tell you, but you are not delicate look—”

  “No, it is not that. For that I will trust in the Lord.” The queen looked over her shoulder, but we were well out of sight of the others. “It is my husband and the lady Elizabeth who concern me. Tom is flirting outrageously with the girl, and I know not what to do.”

  “Flirting? A man married to a queen, flirting with a princess of the blood?”

  Catherine nodded gr
imly. “At first it was mere pleasantry, I thought. Tom is not the sort of man who can let a pretty girl go unnoticed—I knew that when I married him. But lately, his behavior has been most unseemly. He comes bare legged into her chamber, surprises her in bed—even pats her on her buttocks. It is all quite open, mind you. Her whole household is aware of it.”

  “Does he do the same with the lady Jane?”

  “No, not at all. He is very kind to her, very friendly—but no more. But then, he hopes to match her with the king. It would not do to demean her. And she is very young, too.”

  “Has he done more with the lady Elizabeth than flirt, do you think?”

  “I don’t believe he is lying with the girl, and I don’t believe he will try. That would be too much even for Tom.”

  “Does she resist his advances?”

  “Not in the least. I believe she was taken aback at first, but now I believe she looks forward to them, from the way she giggles. The lady Elizabeth has the strangest giggle, by the way. Almost like a neigh. I never heard it until Tom started his antics with her.” She sighed. “I quite expected this from King Henry. Sooner or later, I thought, some pretty young girl would make her way into my household, and he would be after her. He did no such thing, though; he must have had his fill of young girls with Katherine Howard. But I never expected this treatment from Tom Seymour, who professed to love me so!” The queen broke off a sprig that was beginning to bloom and twisted it in her hands.

  “There is no need to think that he no longer loves you, Catherine. Men sometimes act foolish when their wives are expecting a child,” I offered gently. “Even loving husbands.”

  Catherine snorted. “What would you know about such matters? Your husband is notoriously faithful to you. My brother once tried to entice him into visiting one of the finest brothels in Southwark. There was no harm in a little paid pleasure, he said, and it would only improve the enjoyment of the marital bed. Your husband was horrified at the very idea.”