The Lady of Misrule

by Suzannah Dunn

  Relief washed over me. ‘Well then,’ I said, ‘there you are: that’s what this is, all this—’ I flapped a hand, to sweep it all away. ‘It’s all just to scare you into recanting. All you have to do is recant.’

  ‘Elizabeth,’ and the look she gave me was kind, ‘she’s not sending Father Feckenham to save me, or not in any earthly way. She’s saving my soul, as she sees it. Doing her Christian duty: sending me to my maker, not to Hell. She’s preparing me, or giving me the chance to prepare myself. She’s doing it properly, that’s all.’

  This queen who was anxious to get things right.

  ‘But there’s a chance,’ I urged, ‘you know that. She’ll be looking for an excuse, any excuse, anything. If you recant, she has her excuse.’

  There was no arguing with that; instead, she looked almost shy. ‘But I’m not going to do that, am I.’

  ‘No’ – she’d misunderstand – ‘no, you just have to say it,’ as if I were explaining to a child, ‘you just say you’ve recanted. Just until you’re free and—’ Well, abroad, probably, if Guildford had his way. ‘Everyone’ll know that’s all it is.’ Everyone except the Queen, the earnest little lady who’d lifted Edward Courtenay off his knees into her arms as if he were still a boy: that lady would believe whatever she wanted to believe, and more than anything she’d want to believe that the Protestant pretender had returned to the fold.

  Gently she repeated, ‘But I’m not going to do that, am I.’

  I laughed because it was so absurd that she’d object; I laughed even as my throat was smarting. ‘But you have to, You just… do it.’ It really was as simple as that.

  She seemed about to join me, and got as far as a smile, although it stayed sad. ‘But I’d never do that,’ and there was a tenderness in it, this appeal to me. She whispered, ‘You know that.’

  Which was when it occurred to me: ‘What happens to Guildford?’

  ‘He goes earlier,’ she said, ‘before me.’

  Goes, and for a moment, in my mind’s eye, I saw him leaving through a gatehouse, loping away to what was at least a kind of freedom: there he went, with my blessing.

  ‘Up on the hill, though,’ she said, ‘not down here on the green like me.’

  And my heart got it before I did: my animal-heart, playing dead. Not that it fooled her; her gaze went right inside me to uncover it as it cowered there.

  ‘I’m sorry,’ she said, and she was, I could see she was, but if I kept very still then what she’d just said might somehow slide off me, roll away to become nothing and be gone. I should take a breath, I knew; I was aware of a pressing need to take a breath but I couldn’t do it with her watching, I couldn’t do anything with her eyes in mine, couldn’t even breathe. Speak, though, I was able to do, it seemed, because I heard myself: ‘Guildford’s done nothing wrong,’ and that was a fact, pure and simple, incontrovertible, shining there high in the air between us.

  She reflected, ‘Well, I’ve done nothing wrong.’

  I asked her, ‘Does he know?’ Did he know what they were threatening him with? She knew, now, but did he? There was a chance he didn’t, yet.

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘Last night?’ Had he, too, been told, last night?

  ‘Yes.’

  And how odd and how shaming it was that what hurt at least as much as anything I’d heard was that they’d been together, the two of them, when they’d been told.

  She was saying something about having to prepare. But no, I thought, because no one prepares for something that isn’t going to happen. ‘What are you doing?’ She’d gone to the table; the chamberpot forgotten – a ruse, as I’d suspected.

  ‘I’d like to write to my sisters.’ So normal, she made it sound, write to my sisters.

  But no, No, you don’t go writing to your sisters, and anyway, to say what? She couldn’t write to her sisters, meek and mild and studious, because she had to be going to find Mr Partridge and—

  Mr Partridge, who’d dragged her from her bed in the middle of the night to show her her own, signed death warrant? Well, perhaps not him, but someone. There’d be others she could go to for help, and anyway, Mr Partridge was no one, a nobody when all was said and done, just an official scurrying around following orders. Jane knew lords, she probably knew every last lord in England, knew them personally, had stayed as a guest in their houses, been rowed around in barges between their houses and actually, come to think of it – and why hadn’t I, until now? – she knew the Queen, she was the Queen’s second cousin. She should request to see the Queen, and as soon as the Queen saw her—

  Gently, she admonished, ‘This doesn’t help.’ My resistance, she meant, my refusal to countenance the threat: it was me who was letting her down, in her view; me, and not the mealy-mouthed bastards who’d have her believe she was about to die. ‘I need to prepare.’ Her eyes searched mine, concerned for me that I couldn’t grasp something so fundamental: ‘This is what I’ve always wanted; all my life, this is what I’ve wanted.’ And there was a suggestion of a smile: ‘It’s just come a little earlier than I’d expected.’

  ‘No—’

  ‘No, listen,’ and she took a step towards me, to impress upon me, ‘I want this,’ and there she was in front of me, her bones still with the business of growing to do, not yet at full stretch but folded in on themselves like nascent wings, sappy at the core with a little further to go in their mineral trickle, their testing and teasing of their muscular bindings.

  But don’t you see? This is a lie, this is a trick, this is how it’s done, this is how they get you to walk out there and offer yourself up as if it were your own idea.

  ‘And imagine,’ she said, ‘just imagine the love, where I’m going.’

  But couldn’t she see there was love enough for her here? Why couldn’t she see that? Anyway, wasn’t she forgetting something, someone? ‘And Guildford?’ Because did she really think he’d be over there in his room enthusing like this to William? He was only roped into this madness because of her.

  ‘Guildford was fine,’ she said airily: last night, she meant; fine to be told what they claimed lay in store for him.

  How dared she, because that wasn’t true and she knew it. Look me in the eye and say that. Guildford was for staying alive and fighting it out, and he was only here in the Tower because of her. She liked to pretend otherwise but we needed to face it: he was here because he was her husband. And to make it worse, her husband in name only. Guildford had no wish to die for any cause. To fight for one, yes, or at least argue for it, but not to die. You stay and fight – if, admittedly, from abroad initially: that was Guildford’s view. You play them at their own game, if at first from a distance. There was work to be done, was what he believed. Jane should remember what he’d said of the princess’s saving her own skin, no bad thing, and hadn’t he once said to her, You’re no use to anyone if you’re dead. I was going to say it, crass though it was: ‘That letter to Dr Harding, you couldn’t have written that if you were dead,’ and indeed, she’d been so very alive, then, writing that letter. She’d been so utterly herself, she’d been the best of herself, busy doing what she’d spent her whole life preparing herself to do. I’d stake my own life on there having been no emotional appeals in that letter, but instead points, one after the other, dozens, perhaps hundreds of them, and I wouldn’t mind betting that each and every one of them had been won.

  ‘But I’ve written it.’ She was puzzled. ‘It’s done.’

  I despaired, ‘But there are more people than Dr Harding in the world!’

  Again she almost smiled because, ‘I can’t write them all a letter, can I.’

  But she’d get herself martyred instead? No, no, This is not you, she was not someone for grand gestures, she was a nitpicker, a pourer of cold water, and Listen, missy: if you go, the world won’t miss you. Couldn’t she see it? A Jane-sized, Jane-shaped hole in the world would achieve nothing. No one would remember her. No one much remembered her even now, a mistake-queen manhandled on to the thr
one and then just as quickly off it again. The Duke of Northumberland, yes, people would remember him, incomparable ruler of England, but Jane? She was just a girl, and before long, if not already, people would forget precisely which girl: one of the Grey sisters, someone’s sister, someone’s second cousin.

  ‘This is my test of faith,’ she was telling me, ‘here, now; today, tonight, tomorrow, and –’ that familiar lift of her chin ‘– I think I can do it.’

  But anyway, it didn’t matter, none of it mattered because nothing was going to happen and everyone knew it, even Mr Partridge. He knew that nothing would come of it, he knew it would blow over, and I wondered what on earth he’d been playing at, getting her up in the night, getting her and Guildford together. She asked me where I was going and I told her, ‘To get someone,’ although I didn’t yet know who. I just needed to get started, get myself through the doorway and down the stairs and see who I came across.

  The ease with which she closed the distance between us was like a dangled rope, a mere flick at the top but a sweeping turn below so that in one movement she’d come for me, taken my hands into her own, drawn me to the window, sat me down and crouched at my feet. She said, ‘There are things I need to do before tomorrow. I need to write to my sisters – not much – and I need to pray.’

  And I understood: no distraction, which was what I would be if I were running in and out of the room, fetching and Consulting people. I understood it even if I wasn’t quite ready to concede it.

  ‘And there’s something I need to ask of you,’ but she relinquished my hands, returning them to my lap, and withdrew to the table to shuffle books, which was, I knew, how she summoned up courage. She didn’t look at me when she said, ‘Please don’t go and see Guildford,’ and I hadn’t known until then that that was what I was going to do. Because yes, of course that was what I was going to do: go to Guildford, as soon as possible, and I knew I’d manage it with a bribe of some kind or perhaps just good old pleading and, under the circumstances, I’d be granted what I wanted, which was no more than a minute or a couple of minutes in a stairwell or on a wall, or at a door or a window. Anywhere, anywhere would do because I just needed to see him. All I needed was a minute of him.

  ‘Because,’ she said, still avoiding my eyes, ‘you have to be strong for me, and if you’ve seen him, you won’t be.’

  But of course I would; what was she talking about? Her entreaty was a hand at my throat but I could still slip free, I could just say what she wanted me to say and sidle from her clutch and she’d know nothing, be none the wiser, because when was she ever? But now her eyes did come for mine and she said, ‘I can’t do this without you,’ which stopped me dead in my slip-sliding. Had I been able to take a breath, I might’ve said, You can’t ask this of me. But of course she could.

  She could ask anything of me. She could only ask.

  *

  Something I did manage to do for her, that night, was lay the coverlet over her when she fell asleep on the floor beside the bed. She hadn’t come to bed, she’d intended to stay praying and perhaps she could’ve prayed in the other room but force of habit, perhaps, kept her at the bedside. As for me, I’d only got into bed because, as the night deepened, I hadn’t known where else to be or what else to do. I couldn’t think how else to get through all the hours that were stretching ahead and also it would have been unbearably cold to have been anywhere else. So I’d got under the coverlet just to keep warm, but, unbelievably, I must have succumbed, because then it was later and I was aware that something had changed. Jane’s side of the bed was still unoccupied but elsewhere, somewhere in the silence, something had altered. Edging across the mattress to dare a peek through the hangings, I found her hunched on the floor, lifeless. If I left her there like that, she’d freeze – she was probably already half frozen – but she was too heavy for me to lift and, anyway, if I were to try, I’d wake her and she’d go back to praying and surely it was kinder to leave her to sleep. I slid from the bed, drawing the coverlet in my wake, and softly arranged it over her. Then I dressed in my warmest clothes and went through to the main room to open the shutters. There was no light in Guildford’s window or leaking around his shutters but that didn’t necessarily mean he was asleep, because there was no light in mine either.

  I had no need of any light. That night held no terror for me. Jane was right, perhaps, that she had to prepare for the worst, but I didn’t. I didn’t believe it, and the reason I didn’t was that it couldn’t be true. The Queen, upriver, would be awake too, I didn’t doubt that. You and me both, Your Majesty. I would spend the rest of that night held firm against what Jane regarded as inevitable. This was a vigil and there was no one better than me to keep it, the girl who got reprieves. If my time in the Tower had taught me anything, it was how to hold my nerve.

  Jane was praying again by five, when I checked; and not long afterwards Goose had the audacity to bring the breakfast tray, its dollop of jam like a severed tongue. She entered the room with none of her usual rumpus, as if she were a normal servant, although a normal servant would have offered up some kind of greeting and she said nothing. Why had she come so early? Outside, the various night-lights had burned away but morning lights had yet to be lit. I wondered aloud, ‘Should Jane get dressed?’ Because how far were we supposed to play along with this charade?

  ‘No rush, they’re running late.’ She was expressionless; I couldn’t tell what she made of any of it. ‘There’s fog.’

  Glancing back at the window, I saw it coalesced there in the darkness, and realised I wouldn’t have seen any light even if there had been one.

  When Goose had coaxed us a fire and gone, Jane looked through and spoke as if we hadn’t been separated by a night.

  ‘I need to get dressed.’

  The praying looked to have been hard work, and I couldn’t have despised the Queen more at that moment for putting Jane through this protracted pretence.

  Glancing at the table, she asked, ‘Has Goose taken the letters?’

  Goose?

  I turned to the table; the letters to her sisters were gone.

  I followed her back into the bedroom and saw she’d already chosen her clothes, not that it had taken much doing because, with the exception of one small garment, she’d be dressing exactly as she had for her trial. Various items of black velvet were splayed on the bed but instead of the jet-jewelled headdress was a coif, a scrap of linen in which to tie up her hair. Why did you let her dress like this? Well, this time, Guildford wouldn’t be seeing it. He goes earlier. His reprieve would come sometime before hers. He might have even already had it, he might already be free.

  I helped her to dress and neither of us spoke because there was nothing to say (except, perhaps, Goose? Really, honestly, Goose?) and anyway we were too tired. The coif, I left to her: that coif, I felt, was taking it too far and I’d play no part in it. So, she herself was the one to secure her hair off her neck. Then she wanted to be left again to pray.

  Back in the main room, someone was knocking at the door: Mr Partridge. He didn’t seem to be delivering any reprieve. I’d never imagined he could look so depleted – not our usually jaunty, cock-eyed Mr Partridge – and I panicked that he had bad news of his wife but he was quick past me through the doorway and looking for Jane. He smelled as if he’d slept in his clothes; he too, then, I guessed, had been staying ready for news. I wondered if he knew about Goose and the letters. I summoned Jane for him and he made a rushed job of the appropriate courtesies before saying why he’d come: Guildford was asking to see her.

  And so there it was and there we were, after all that time, the shut-away months of winter and illness, and the siege and yesterday’s priest and the long, cold night before this morning’s coif with its silky, insinuating tapes and its revelation of a small mole at the nape of her neck. There we were, about to go to see Guildford, to troop out there – somewhere, anywhere – just as we’d always done, so that there would be him and William and Jane and me, just as we’d alwa
ys been, and together we’d be able to make some sense of what was going on, of how far it was likely to go and what would happen to us and when.

  Or if not the two of us, then me: I was going to go down the stairs to see Guildford and there would be nothing to it, just down and through the door and then perhaps a joke about Mass, and the relief was dizzying but Jane and Mr Partridge weren’t staring at me because I’d begun to cry but because they wanted an answer. Jane was looking to me for our answer and there was absolutely nothing else in that look of hers but why would there be? She’d said her piece and although she hadn’t said much, she couldn’t have been clearer. She was wrong, though: you have to be strong for me, and if you’ve seen him, you won’t be, but she’d seen how strong I could be and anyway no one needed to be strong because nothing was going to happen. We would be walking away from here and going our separate ways and it was that as much as anything that had started me crying.

  But Guildford was going earlier and there was fog. A messenger was coming with the reprieve but what if he lost his way or his horse took fright? What if Guildford had to go as far as Tower Hill before that messenger arrived? There would be hundreds, possibly even thousands of people up there. I’d be back for Jane, and I’d be strong for her – of course I would – and together we’d see this through to her own reprieve, but first she had to let me go to Guildford even if I couldn’t think what it was that I wanted to say to him, couldn’t remember because it’d been too long and anyway this wasn’t the time,

  Please, Jane, don’t ask this of me, not this: to give up, for her sake, the chance to see Guildford which – whatever happened – would probably be my last. Because had she forgotten how I’d come here in some other girl’s dress? I’d come here as a good Catholic girl volunteering to be her companion when really I was a ducker and diver, following my nose, keeping to corners, taking what I could get and believing in nothing and no one. That’s who I am and you know it. I am no good to anyone. You know lam not the girl to do this for you.