Her Highness, the Traitor

by Susan Higginbotham

  Jane smiled, for the first time since she had entered our family, in wholehearted approval.

  ***

  Guildford, Hal, and the Clintons were still recovering when John, who had been with the king at Greenwich during this gastric mayhem, summoned me to his chamber and locked the door when I arrived. “It is time to tell you,” he said. “Some days ago, I called the king’s physicians together and asked for their opinion of whether the king would recover.”

  I did not need to hear any more; the answer was in John’s face and voice. “And they said he would not?”

  “Yes. They said he has three months. At best.”

  I felt the tears come to my own eyes. King Henry might have justified his actions with other explanations, and might have even believed them, but anyone who had lived through his reign knew it was the desire for a living son that had caused him to thrust aside Catherine of Aragon so cruelly, then to send Anne Boleyn to the block. Many more had died as the result of the turmoil caused by these queens’ failure to provide the king a male heir. And now this son, this much-loved and much-protected son, for whose birth so much blood had been shed, was dying, with no one but women in line for his throne. You could say one thing for the Lord: he did love his irony. “There is no hope?”

  “I told the physicians not to slacken their efforts and not to cease praying for the king’s life, and I have promised them a hundred crowns a month in fees. They have every incentive to hope. I have tried myself. But I do not think there is any.” John’s voice faltered. Then he said, in a voice so low as to be almost unintelligible, “The king wants to see us together tomorrow morning.”

  “Why, what could he want with me?”

  “He prefers to tell you in person,” John said. He rose. “The king’s condition is a secret, for now, at least in theory. In practice, every ambassador in London is aware of it and is convinced I am poisoning him. In addition, of course, to scheming to marry myself and Jack to either the lady Mary or the lady Elizabeth. One thing I can’t complain of is being accused of idleness.”

  “John—”

  “I don’t care, in truth. What does it matter what they say of me, with the king dying? He has become almost a son to me.”

  “Maybe there is hope, John. You mustn’t lose faith.”

  John shook his head. “You won’t say that when you see him.”

  ***

  The king remained at Greenwich, which was both the healthiest place for him to be and the necessary place for him to be, as he was too ill to travel safely. Courtiers had once flirted in its halls and done more than that in some of its secluded places, but no one who stayed here now was idle or cheerful. Everyone went around his business quietly and diligently.

  I was no stranger to death in all of its manifestations, having watched five of my children die young of various illnesses, but my first glimpse of the king made me gasp even as I knelt before him. Whatever sins King Henry had committed, they would have been punished tenfold had he been fated to see his son as he looked now. Edward had managed to sit up to receive guests, and the nightcap and night shirt he wore were of rich material, but they could not hide that his face was bloated and pasty or that he needed the help of two of the gentlemen of the privy chamber, Thomas Wroth and my son-in-law Henry Sidney, to stay upright. His feet, which I glimpsed as I knelt, were swollen to twice their normal size. “Rise, my lady.” He glanced at me as I desperately swiped at my cheek. “Don’t cry.”

  “I am sorry, Your Majesty. I am trying hard not to. It is just—”

  “I have come to terms with my fate,” the king said. With a start, I realized Edward was not using the royal “we,” a clear sign of the affection he bore my husband. “We all must die, and I sooner than later. That is why I have called you here. Some time ago, I drew up a devise for the succession, excluding my sisters. It is my understanding that the Duke of Northumberland told you of it, so there is no need to explain the particulars.”

  “Yes, Your Majesty.”

  “It will not work. There is no time to wait for the lady Jane to bear a child, and even if there was, there is no certainty that she will have a boy. The lady Katherine Grey is probably too young to conceive, as is the lady Mary Grey, and the lady Margaret Clifford is not even married yet. Therefore, I have made a change.”

  The king nodded to John, who led me to a table and indicated a parchment lying atop it. I can still see that bit of parchment in my mind today and marvel at how insignificant the change the king had made appeared on paper: the striking out of a letter and the insertion of two words that transformed “the lady Jane’s heirs male” to “the lady Jane and her heirs male.” It was such an unassuming-looking change that it only slowly dawned on me what the king had done. He had made my new daughter-in-law his successor. No Englishwoman had ever ruled in her own right: the one who had tried centuries before, the Empress Matilda, had unleashed years of civil war. And Matilda had been a mature woman: the lady Jane was a girl who had just turned sixteen and who had never been bred to rule.

  Openmouthed, I turned to the king. “There is no other way,” he said simply. “I love my sister Mary, but she will take the nation back to the Pope. And she is of questionable legitimacy, as is my sister Elizabeth. Besides, the lady Mary and I have been in dispute about the Mass. It is my fear that if she were to come to the throne, my friends would suffer for it, most particularly the Duke of Northumberland. That I would not have for the world.”

  “No, Your Majesty,” I mumbled.

  “As your lord husband and I have been discussing, tomorrow I shall call my justices before me and order them to put this in proper form. When that is done, I shall summon Parliament to ratify what has been written. All will be in order, provided that the Lord grants me sufficient time.”

  Looking at the king, I could think only that this proviso was far from certain.

  There were a dozen questions running through my mind, but this brief conversation had clearly exhausted Edward, and it was apparent I would soon be dismissed. John could give me the answers to most of my questions, but there was one I had to ask the king himself. “I don’t understand. Why did Your Majesty call me here?”

  “So that if any man dare question what I have told you today, you will know the truth. Some will say that this devise is of your husband’s procuring, to put Lord Guildford on the throne through the lady Jane. It was not. The idea was mine. I will fight for it with my dying breath.”

  He started coughing. A foul smell began to fill the chamber. “Go, please,” Edward managed.

  Followed by John, I backed out of the chamber hastily.

  ***

  “Does the lady Jane know of this? Do her parents?”

  “Not yet. Once the judges get it ready, it will be more widely known.”

  “And the lady Mary? The lady Elizabeth?”

  “They will know in due time.”

  “There are no plans to—” I could not finish my sentence.

  “Harm them? Confine them? No. They shall be married to men we can trust. At least, that is what we are hoping for.”

  “What if they do not go along? What if the emperor comes to the lady Mary’s aid and decides to restore her to the succession?”

  “When has the emperor ever helped Mary?”

  “When she tried to flee the country.”

  “Yes, and what did she do? Panicked, and lost her chance. She’ll be happy as long as she has her Mass. If she has a husband and a Mass, all the better.” John saw the skeptical expression on my face. “Mouse,” he said gently, “you worry too much. The king has time. The physicians tell him so. Parliament will meet, and the king’s devise will have the force of law. The lady Mary won’t resist, particularly if a sweetener is thrown in. The same with the lady Elizabeth.”

  I shook my head. There seemed to be far too many “ifs” in th
is plan, conceived by a dying lad of sixteen. Nor did the prospect of the crown passing to my slip of a daughter-in-law, who had never been brought up to such a task, fill me with confidence. “But the lady Jane can’t even properly run a household,” I blurted. “Just in that brief time at Chelsea, Guildford said, she drove the servants mad, telling them one thing one moment and countermanding it an hour later. She’s an intelligent girl, but she hasn’t an ounce of common sense.”

  “She will learn it, as all rulers must. She will have councilors, remember.” John took my hand. “The truth is, you don’t like this idea. Neither do I. It goes against King Henry’s wishes—more than that, it goes against the law, until Parliament ratifies it. But if I must choose between obeying a dead king and a living king, I must choose the living one.”

  “Even when what the living king wants is folly?”

  “Is it folly to keep the lady Mary from turning the clock back? Is it folly to prevent bastards from ascending to the throne?”

  “I suppose we shall find out,” I said. I stared out the window toward the direction of Suffolk Place, where our unsuspecting daughter-in-law was no doubt settling down with a passage of Greek for the evening. “In the meantime, I shall redouble my prayers for the king.”

  28

  Frances Grey

  June 1553

  You should see the Duchess of Northumberland look at her husband,” Jane said on the last day of her visit to us at Suffolk Place. “I call it the Lord and Master look, as if the man was Richard I and Henry V put together. She worships him. It’s sickening.”

  I tried to recall what I had said that had set Jane upon her favorite topic as of late: the various shortcomings of the Northumberland household. It probably didn’t matter, as it took little to get her started.

  “They had dancing the other night, and dancing makes some old war injury of his ache, so of course she doesn’t dance either,” Jane continued happily. “Instead, she just stands beside him, clutching his hand as if the two were courting instead of man and wife. I even saw them kissing that evening in a corner, like a couple of peasants at the fair. You’d never guess they were a duke and duchess, but of course they were never meant to be, were they? Thank goodness you and Father don’t carry on in such an undignified manner.”

  Jane paused for breath, but only for a moment. Had losing her virginity made her so voluble, or was it the irresistible need to complain about her new relations? “They’re all like that, too—all the Dudley children and their spouses. All giving each other the same adoring looks, all stopping by every other day to sup with the duke and the duchess when they could be at their own homes. Except for the Countess of Warwick, of course. She doesn’t like them, either. She and I have become good friends.”

  “Do you like Guildford at all?” Kate asked. Hearing that Jane had come to stay with us while Guildford recovered from eating a bad salad, she had decided to visit, too.

  “He’s bearable,” Jane said. “At least he treats me with respect. He brought me a book before he fell ill, which was a far sight better than that talking parrot the duke gave to the duchess as a gift before I joined the family. It squawked ‘Sweet Jane’ the other day, and I was mortified until I realized it was referring to the duchess. It pays her little compliments all day long—a tiny green courtier with feathers. But don’t get me started on that parrot; I could go on forever.”

  Jane sighed as Kate and I walked her to her waiting barge and waved farewell to her. Not an hour had passed when a servant arrived, wearing the royal livery. “Your Grace, the king has asked that you come to see him immediately. My lord Suffolk is with His Majesty and adds his request to the king’s.”

  What on earth could the king want with me? I rose. “I will be ready straightaway.”

  ***

  Not only my husband stood beside the king, but the Duke of Northumberland and his duchess. It was her presence that made me realize something truly extraordinary was going on.

  I listened as the king explained with a heartbreaking calmness that he was dying, a statement corroborated by his frail appearance. I listened as he told me what everyone now knows, of his decision to disinherit his sisters. Then he told me my girl was to be the reigning queen of England.

  Harry looked at me proudly as I heard the words that made my knees begin to shake under my gown. I barely knew the lady Elizabeth, many years my junior, but I had known the lady Mary almost since we were both infants. And now my daughter was to supplant her! “She cannot be queen, Your Majesty,” I said. “Not a reigning queen. She knows nothing of how to rule a kingdom.”

  “Our grandfather Henry VII was not brought up to rule, either,” Edward said. “He gained his throne only because of the cruel murder of the young Edward V by Richard III, and yet he left England healthy and prosperous. Our own father was a second son, yet he made all of England quake before him.”

  “But they were men.”

  “The king is aware of that, my dear,” Harry put in.

  “I beg Your Majesty’s pardon,” I said. “I am simply stunned by this. I have never looked to see my daughter rule.”

  “It does your ladyship honor that you are humble enough to question your daughter’s ability to rule England,” said Edward tiredly. “But she will have men to guide her, wise men like her father and the Duke of Northumberland.”

  I looked at the Duke and Duchess of Northumberland, who stood by the king with their heads bowed respectfully. How far had they influenced what the king was saying now?

  Edward continued, “Her sex hinders her no more than would that of the lady Mary, and she is of a godly persuasion, unlike our sister Mary. It is our wish that this be carried out, and the process has started already. The justices are drawing up the necessary documents for signature.”

  “And my daughter knows nothing of this?”

  “Not yet. It is our wish that she not be told until we are satisfied that everything is in place. We would not distress her until her smooth accession is assured.”

  If my daughter could rule the kingdom, could not she be taxed with the responsibility of knowing about it beforehand? But I said nothing. Instead, I knelt and kissed Edward’s hand. Like the rest of his extremities, it was pale and swollen. “Your Majesty does us incomparable honor.”

  “Our cousin is a learned and wise young woman,” Edward said sadly. “She will carry out our legacy and strengthen our religion. We know it.”

  I took my leave of the king soon afterward, my mind so abuzz with the news I had just been told that, at first, I did not see the crone making her way to the chamber I was leaving. She saw me, though, and kicked a quick curtsey in acknowledgment of my rank. It was then I realized what an unlikely figure she was at Greenwich Palace. She looked as if she ought to be selling charms or potions in Southwark. “Who are you?”

  “Madge they call me, my lady—Your Grace,” the crone corrected herself, nodding to herself in approval at guessing my rank. “I’ve come to dose the king.”

  “On whose orders?”

  “On the Duke of Northumberland’s orders, Your Grace. I come here every day. Reckon I’ve been doing it for a week or so.”

  “What are you giving him?”

  “Healing potions, Your Grace, of my own recipe. Mind you, the physicians don’t set much store by them. But the great folk, when they give up on the physicians, they call Madge, and then when my work does the trick, they praise God and slip me my fee on the sly. That’s the way it’s been, and that’s the way it’ll always be. I don’t care. I’m never slack of work.” The crone smiled, showing a handsome set of teeth.

  “Are your potions helping him?”

  “Not hurting him, at least,” Madge admitted. “’Tis too soon to tell. Sometimes it’s too late for even me. I won’t lie to you. That’s not how I work. I will tell you this—if I can’t bring him through, there’s no on
e who can.”

  29

  Jane Dudley

  June 1553 to July 9, 1553

  Over the next few days, life went on as usual in my household, as I obeyed the king’s wish and did not tell the lady Jane of the king’s plans. It was not a difficult matter keeping the secret from Jane, for knowing she was to be queen would surely puff up the girl more than ever. It was Guildford I longed to tell.

  It could not be kept a secret for long, I foresaw. The justices had protested when the king had ordered them to give proper legal form to his devise. So sharp had their opposition been that John, straining under the impossible role in which he had been placed, had thrown off his doublet in front of the entire council and threatened to fight in his shirt any man who dared to defy the king. Calming himself, he had instead gone and spoken to the king, who summoned the recalcitrant justices to his side the next day. Then Edward himself had demanded, in a fury that had left him prostrate afterward, that the justices and the council carry out his wishes. Nearly all of the justices and the councilors had then engaged themselves, in writing, to carry out the king’s wishes.

  Several days later, the justices produced the document, bearing the king’s great seal, which made Lady Jane Grey the heir to the throne. A hundred and two men signed it—the Archbishop of Canterbury, the Bishop of Ely, dukes, earls, viscounts, barons, knights, lawyers, the Lord Mayor and aldermen of London.

  They signed the document, and when it suited their convenience, most of the cowards forswore it.

  ***

  The council had summoned Parliament to meet in September—the quickest this could be done, as elections would have to be held—but few believed the king would live to see it. By the latter part of June, he spent most of his time flat on his back, gasping for breath. John had even brought in a wise woman to save the king, with his permission, but she seemed only to make him worse, and was soon dismissed.