Her Highness, the Traitor

by Susan Higginbotham

  “Perhaps he is ill. Poor man, having to miss his son’s wedding.”

  The Duchess of Suffolk was about to snort a reply when a quiet voice said, “My husband is ill, my ladies. He regrets his absence keenly, but his health has been so uncertain these past few months, I begged him to keep to his bed.”

  I stared at the Countess of Warwick before I caught myself. Though not unpleasing in her appearance, she could not be called anything but ordinary looking, but today, dressed elegantly in wrought velvet, she looked almost pretty and a couple of inches taller. She almost showed up the Duchess of Somerset herself. Was her transformation a temporary one due to her son’s wedding, or was this a consequence of her husband’s elevation? “I am sorry that your husband was not able to come,” I managed.

  “Well, we have Robert’s wedding tomorrow. I hope he will be able to attend that.” The countess smiled as we glanced in the direction of a handsome, tall young man who was strolling arm in arm with a very pretty blonde of whom no one in London appeared to know anything but her name. Harry and the rest of our household (including me, I am ashamed to admit) had amused ourselves on the barge, trying to figure out her possible origins. “A love match,” the countess said simply. “It happens.”

  “I daresay your husband will make the best of it,” said the Duchess of Suffolk. Even I recognized the acid in her voice.

  Jane Dudley heard it, too, but chose not to let it spoil her good humor. “Yes, as a matter of fact he has. He will establish Robert in Norfolk, though of course I imagine he and Amy will be spending much of their time in London.” She glanced around. “Ah, the Duchess of Somerset. I must speak to her about the musicians.”

  “My, that little woman creeps up on one,” muttered the Duchess of Suffolk after the Countess of Warwick had hurried away. “I wonder if the Earl of Warwick is absent because he doesn’t share his wife’s enthusiasm for this match with Somerset’s girl? They say it was chiefly the work of the countess and the Duchess of Somerset. Who, I see, has not lost a single pearl as the result of her husband’s ill fortune.”

  “Katherine! I thought you and the Duchess of Somerset were friends.”

  “Oh, we are, but there’s no denying that Anne Seymour likes her jewels. And look at her! Six months gone, I’d say. It looks as if that visit she paid to her husband on Christmas Day bore fruit.”

  I stole a look at my daughters to see if they had caught any of the Duchess of Suffolk’s cheerfully malicious commentary, but Kate was talking to Katherine’s two sons, who were my younger half brothers. Mary was admiring the brightly dressed courtiers and the foreign dignitaries who had been invited to witness this bonding between the two old friends turned enemies turned friends again. Jane, too, was eying everyone’s clothing, but not in the way I might have hoped. “Peacocks,” she said dourly.

  “Peacocks?” I looked around for the exotic birds.

  “These ladies, Mother. Look at them! Why, some of them are even painted. The Countess of Warwick certainly was.”

  “She could use the help,” said the Duchess of Suffolk with a smirk. “But I would hardly say she looked like the Whore of Babylon, my dear girl. A spot of color to the cheeks or to the lips is a harmless thing, especially for a celebration. You must amend your opinions, child, to accommodate us mere mortals, or you will never get on in the world.”

  “That is what I tell her,” I said.

  Jane thrust out her lower, unpainted lip in a gesture I alternatingly found endearing and irritating. “John Aylmer says that it is vulgar and ungodly.”

  “I really wonder sometimes why we keep that man,” I said. “He finds everything vulgar and ungodly. I marvel how he puts up with us.”

  “No doubt through the stipend your husband pays him,” said the Duchess of Suffolk. She winked at me.

  “Master Aylmer was not speaking of Your Grace or my lady mother,” Jane said. “Nor was I.”

  “Well, good,” said the duchess. “I should hate to displease you, my dear.”

  It was a rare thing to have an adult ally in my skirmishes with Jane, especially one as clever as Katherine. I would have been content to go on some more in this vein, but the sound of trumpets announced the approach of the king’s barge.

  Edward stepped out, smiling at the assembled company. He was ruddier than he had been the last time I had seen him, for the Earl of Warwick, believing his knightly upbringing had been neglected, had arranged his schedule to give him more time for outdoor pursuits. This put me in mind of King Henry, my late uncle, especially when the young king looked around and frowned. “Where is my lord Warwick?”

  The Countess of Warwick stepped forward. “Your Majesty, I am to blame. He removed to Hatfield for the sweet air, and I begged him to remain there, as his health has been so uncertain.”

  “We fear the Earl of Warwick has been exerting himself too much on our behalf. It is a pity that he must miss his son’s wedding.”

  “I am pledged to tell him all about it.” The countess smiled. “Though it is true, Your Majesty, that he wants none of the details that we women savor, so it will be a quick telling.”

  “Do give him our best wishes, my lady.”

  “I will, Your Majesty.”

  “We miss him,” said the king softly. He turned to the Duke of Somerset, who had been standing near his duchess, just far enough apart from the rest of the council to look a little awkward. Somerset and the king had dined together recently, Harry had told me, but it had been a rather stiff, formal affair. “Your Grace.”

  Somerset’s face brightened. “My dear nephew, I am grateful you can honor my daughter’s wedding with your presence.”

  The king nodded a little distantly, then turned back abruptly to the Countess of Warwick. “Perhaps we can send the earl our physician?”

  Behind the king, the Duchess of Somerset opened her mouth, then shut it again as her husband sent her a glance.

  ***

  “It’s been like that since January, my friends in high places tell me,” the Duchess of Suffolk said later in her chamber at Sheen, where the two of us had gone to freshen up after the ceremony. The Duchess of Somerset and the Countess of Warwick had joined each other in weeping sentimental tears over the marriage of their offspring, though not, as Jane had snidely observed, so many tears that they affected their carefully painted faces. The Duke of Somerset had given a rather long speech alluding to his own happy marriage and, rather irrelevantly, it was thought, to the spiritual growth he had experienced in prison. The young Earl of Hertford had said something to Kate that had sent them both into silent giggles during the finest part of the speech, and Will Somers, the elderly fool who had previously served King Henry, had protested that Somerset had spent more time making the speech than he had in the Tower. “The king would trail after Warwick like a dog after a master, if he were allowed to. To the earl’s credit, he doesn’t exploit it—much, though I dare say he enjoys it. I can’t say I ever thought of Warwick as being a brilliant man, but he appears to be the only person in England who has had the sense to figure out that the king wants to be treated as a king, not like a little boy.”

  “I do feel sorry for the Pro—Somerset, I mean. The king hardly spoke to him just now, and I think the Countess of Warwick or the earl’s brother Andrew must have prompted him to do that much.”

  “It’ll sort itself out. Mind you, I’m not saying how it will sort itself out, or whether anyone will be the better off for it. But tell me, Frances. You are friendly with the lady Mary. Was she not invited? Or did she choose not to come?”

  “She was invited,” I said uneasily. “I suppose she chose not to come.”

  The lady Mary had refused the king’s invitation to visit his court the previous Christmas, although the lady Elizabeth had arrived and had had great fun playing hoodman blind with Robert Dudley over New Year’s. I could still hear Harry fu
ming about her absence, which he and much of the rest of the king’s council had regarded as a personal affront. “She’s got this absurd idea in her head, such that it is, that if she comes to see the king, he will lock her into the Tower for hearing Mass. Doesn’t it occur to her that if that was what he wanted to do, he could simply send men to arrest her?”

  The Duchess of Suffolk followed the line of thought Harry had been arguing in my head. “Why she has to be so stubborn is beyond me. The council allows her to hear Mass, which is more than it really should be doing, in my opinion. All they ask is that she not allow half of the countryside to hear Mass with her. It seems quite reasonable.”

  “Her religion means a great deal to her. It was what helped her through those days when King Henry was ridding himself of her mother.”

  Katherine gave me an odd look. “Sometimes, Frances, I wonder if you don’t have Papist sympathies yourself. Though I suppose Harry Grey would have thrown you out of your house long before if you did.”

  “It is not that. It is simply that my mother and the lady Mary’s mother were friends, and we have been, too, of sorts. And she has been kind to my daughters.” I looked out the window to where the servants were putting the finishing touches to the hall, made entirely of boughs, where we ladies were to dine with the king. “I shall go see her after these weddings, I believe. After all, she is my cousin.”

  ***

  “The goose was the idea of Amy’s family,” said the Countess of Warwick ruefully the next day. Suspended between two posts, the poor creature was squawking in terror as a group of young men took turns at trying to decapitate it. The king and most of the men were watching this display with a certain enjoyment, but the countess had her fingers half over her eyes, and the Duchess of Somerset, putting her hands on her belly significantly, had declared herself ill and demanded that the duke take her to their chamber. The countess turned to her fourth son, standing nearby. “Guildford, you are good with your sword. For God’s sake, go there and put that poor thing out of its misery this very instant.”

  “It’s not my turn.”

  “Make it your turn. Tell them I ordered you to, as the mother of the groom!”

  Guildford, a tall young man who was about thirteen, nodded and went to do his mother’s bidding. In one swift stroke, the goose’s head was severed from its body.

  “Thank the Lord,” said the Countess of Warwick. “Such folly men engage in.” She turned to my eldest daughter as Guildford ambled back. “They tell me you are remarkably skilled in languages, my lady.”

  “I speak several, my lady,” Jane said without a great deal of modesty.

  “I speak only French, and little enough of that,” the countess said. “It was not fashionable when I was young for ladies to learn more than that, unless they were very great indeed. But all of our children are learning French and Italian, and our sons know the ancient languages, as well. Or at least some of them do.” The countess looked at Guildford indulgently. “You would put Guildford to shame in Greek, my lady, but he speaks Italian quite well. Don’t you?”

  Guildford dutifully said something in that language to Jane, who responded in kind. Though I could not understand a word either was saying, or judge how well they were saying it, I sensed the conversation was a forced one. When another lady claimed the countess’s attention and steered her away, Jane abruptly switched to English. “Is your mother tipsy?”

  “Of course not,” Guildford said huffily. He smiled, a gesture that revealed him to be easily the most handsome of the five Dudley sons. “She is naturally retiring, you know, and at affairs like this she becomes ill at ease and starts to babble, especially with my father not here. And the goose did upset her.”

  “Such pastimes are foolish and idle,” Jane said. “Like hunting for pleasure.”

  “I like hunting for pleasure,” admitted Guildford, who had suddenly acquired the look of a trapped deer himself. “It is good exercise, and it helps with the art of war. Of course, it might not help all that much, as the deer isn’t shooting a crossbow,” he acknowledged. “But I am sorry, my ladies, I must go. My brother is waving to me.”

  “He seems a pleasant young man,” I commented after Guildford had left us.

  “A ninny,” said Jane. “Deer not shooting a crossbow!”

  “He was trying to be amusing, Jane.”

  “And his Italian conversation is commonplace. Do you know what he said to me?”

  I shook my head.

  “He said that my dress was very pretty and that the color suited me. And then he asked me if I would dance with him later today!”

  “Really, Jane, the poor young man was only trying to make gallant conversation. It can’t be as easy for men as women think it should be, in English or Italian.”

  “He could have saved himself the trouble and not made such conversation at all.”

  “I hope you did not refuse to dance with him. That would have been quite rude.”

  “No, I agreed. Though I am not looking forward to it.” Jane gazed over to where Guildford was talking with his brothers. “Perhaps I could get sick, like the Earl of Warwick.”

  ***

  When I wrote to Mary, asking to visit her on my way to Bradgate, I received a strangely noncommittal response, to my distress. Had I angered my cousin in some way? I wrote back to that effect and was told I had not offended in any way and to come as soon as I wanted.

  “Perhaps she is ill,” I told Harry.

  “Perhaps,” said Harry without a great deal of concern. “Don’t let her trap you into attending her Mass this time.” He winked at my guilty look. “Oh, you can’t fool me, my dear. I know she inveigled you into going the last time you visited her. Jane told me.”

  ***

  Mary, it turned out, had moved for the summer to Woodham Walter in Essex, which was not on our way to Bradgate, so I sent the girls on to Leicestershire with a suitable entourage and went to Woodham Walter by myself. Jane, for one, put up no argument about being deprived of a visit to the lady Mary.

  Woodham Walter, about two miles from the sea, was an attractive manor, but it was small for a person of Mary’s station—the sort of place one might use for a few days while en route to somewhere else. It seemed odd to be there for over a month, as Mary apparently had been, but as I drew closer to the manor, I found that the air that blew in from the sea felt good across my cheeks. Perhaps that was the appeal for Mary.

  I was shown to Mary’s private chamber just moments after I came through the manor gates. To my surprise, she dismissed her ladies and servants as soon as I knelt to her. When they had all cleared the room, she said, “Rise. Why are you here?”

  I started. Never had Mary greeted me so rudely. “To visit you, my lady.”

  “You have not been sent here by my brother’s council?”

  “The council? Why on earth would they send me to your ladyship?”

  “Your husband is a member, and a favored one from what I hear.”

  “My husband trusts me with the management of the household and the management of my younger daughters. Nothing more. He certainly would not send me on the council’s business. Nor would anyone else on the council.”

  “You are truly not here at the council’s bidding?”

  “Mary, what is this? Our mothers loved each other. We played together as children. As adults we have been friends—or so I thought until now. I came here only because I heard that you had refused to come to the weddings, and I thought you might be ill or troubled.”

  Mary stared into my eyes. But I was as much a Tudor as she, and I met her gaze without flinching. Finally, she lowered her gaze. “Perhaps I am wrong. So you will swear that you have not been sent by the Earl of Warwick and his crew?”

  “The Earl of Warwick?”

  “You were at his sons’ weddings.”

&nb
sp; “So was almost anyone else of any consequence. Mary, I should not have to swear to anything. When have I ever given you reason not to trust me? I came here solely out of friendship. No one sent me. No one so much as gave me a message for you. Except for Harry and our household, I doubt if anyone knows that I am here, or would care if he or she did.” I fiddled with the gloves I held in my hand. “I have overstayed my visit. With your permission, I shall be gone within the hour.”

  Mary shook her head. “No, stay. I have wronged you.” She stared past me toward the window. “But I cannot help it. Everything has been poisoned for me. I trust almost no one in England now.”

  “Why?”

  “How can I? They have tried to deprive me of the one thing that matters most to me, my religion.”

  I hesitated, then got up my courage. “Harry says that they have only asked you not to hear the Mass. Forgive me, but couldn’t you conform like so many others do, and make your life so much easier?”

  “Conform?” Mary put her hands behind her back and began to pace around the room. “You and I are cousins, Frances, yet so different. You speak of conforming as easily as you might talk of replacing a French hood with an English one. As if these differences between my faith and the new one were mere trivialities.”

  I dared not utter the thought I sometimes had, which was that they were. “Still, couldn’t you ease your conscience by saying you acted under duress, as you did when you agreed with King Henry that your mother’s marriage was unlawful?”

  A look of pain crossed Mary’s face. “That is the most shameful thing I have done in all of my life. I still regret it.”

  “You were young and dependent on your father. What else could you have done? It did bring you happiness, did it not?”