Lady in Waiting: A Novel

by Susan Meissner

  I waited for her to speak, like always. After a long moment of silence, she did.

  “Every morning I wake up thinking surely I am back at Bradgate, and I’ve only been dreaming an outrageous charade that I am Queen.”

  “Sometimes I do too, Your Highness. Sometimes I think it must be a dream that my dear sweet Jane is my Queen. But it is a good dream, Your Highness. England is blessed of God to have you on the throne. I know that.”

  She looked past me then, her gaze on the world outside the panes. “I can feel it crumbling, like a house of sticks.” Jane spoke as if alone in the room. “I can feel it starting to collapse.”

  “What … what is crumbling, Your Highness?”

  Jane inhaled heavily and turned her gaze from the window. “My resolve.”

  “Your resolve?”

  “When my parents and Northumberland told me the King was dead and I was his chosen successor, I told them they were mistaken. Horribly mistaken. Princess Mary was the heir to the throne. They insisted the King wanted me to take his place, not Mary, not Elizabeth, not my mother. Me. The King wanted me to keep England from falling back under Catholic rule. ‘Only you can do this for England, Jane,’ they said to me. ‘Only you.’ I alone was to save England from mindless allegiance to creeds that do not embrace grace. I alone. God had put me here to save my country. And I believed it.”

  “Is it not true, Your Majesty?”

  Jane looked down at her folded hands in her lap. “I do not think now it was God that put me here, Lucy. I think I may have stepped ahead of him.”

  “But the King wrote in his will …”

  “What Northumberland told him to.”

  “Your Highness …”

  “Guildford wants me to name him King. Can you believe that? He wants me to petition Parliament to make him King. His mother expects it. Northumberland expects it.”

  “Oh, my lady!” A queer revulsion swept over me to think of it. Guildford as my King.

  “I refused, of course. I shall continue to refuse. He tried to leave the Tower. Guildford did. He wanted to go sulking back to his mother, because I won’t make him King. I had to have guards fetch him back. Can you imagine how terrible it would look if the Queen of England can’t even manage her own marriage?”

  “They … cannot make you, can they, Your Highness?”

  “No, Lucy. They cannot. There are things no one can make me do. I have finally realized that.” She said it like she had always had this privilege. I stared at her in awe.

  “There were moments, on the first day, and on the second, when I thought I would make my parents, Edward Seymour, even you, Lucy, proud of me. I imagined I might do some good with the power and influence that comes with the title of queen. But every hour since I agreed to this plan, there are forces mustering against me, within and without.”

  “Your Highness?”

  But she moved on. “Lucy, did you put the ring in a safe place?”

  “The ring is in my bureau drawer, Your Highness.”

  “Perhaps you should hide it away somewhere? And please tell no one it is mine. I would very much like to have it back one day. I do not know when that will be. But I am afraid for what the future holds. Would you do that for me?”

  Her voice sounded childlike and afraid for the first time since I had come into the room with her.

  “Of course, my lady.”

  She stood and I rose to my feet too. I bowed.

  “Thank you, Lucy. I am sorry I had to tell you to come on business for the royal wardrobe. I did not want anyone asking questions.”

  “I did start on a dress for you, my lady. It’s very soft velvet, the darkest of blues; it looks like the sky at midnight. Nearly black. With tiny pleats and tapered sleeves with cuttes of ebony satin.”

  Jane smiled. “Perhaps then we will see each other for a fitting in August after all?”

  “I will come whenever you call for me, my lady.”

  She leaned forward and kissed my cheek. “Pray for me, Lucy,” she breathed.

  “Always,” I whispered back.

  When I returned to Nicholas, he wore a troubled look on his face. He said nothing as we were led back to the coach nor as we stepped into it. It wasn’t until we were safely away that he leaned forward and took my hands.

  “You cannot come back here, Lucy. Princess Mary is gathering forces and support. I heard talk of it in the rooms beyond the chairs. I do not think the lords inside knew how far their voices carried. She has been named Queen in East Anglia and Devon, and several of Jane’s councilors tried to flee during the night. Princess Mary is said to be marching on London.”

  “Where are these supporters coming from?” I asked him. “I don’t understand any of this! I thought England was decidedly Reformed!”

  “It appears the people are decidedly feeble; they follow whatever creed keeps them on the winning side.”

  “Is … Jane not on the winning side, Nicholas?” Dread for her, for all of us enveloped me.

  He did not answer me.

  Four days later, on the nineteenth of July, Mary Tudor, with thousands upon thousands supporting her, acceded to the throne. Jane’s councilors, one by one, abandoned her. Bells pealed across London when Mary finally arrived in London the third of August. And everywhere she passed by, the crowds cried out, “God save the Queen.”

  My dear Jane had reigned for just nine days.

  Thirty

  I learned, before Princess Mary arrived in London, that my Lady Jane had remained in the Tower when Dudley’s scheme finally and fully disintegrated around her. On the ninth day of Jane’s reign, when Mary’s claim to the throne was made official across England, Jane was taken from the royal apartments in the Tower to a very different kind of room. She was put under arrest, as was Guildford, John Dudley, her father, and many others. The Tower which had been her palace was now her prison, and she was to be charged with crimes against the Crown.

  Nicholas was at once worried for her. He told me it was by the new Queen’s command that Jane was imprisoned in the Tower, albeit in a nicely appointed room.

  “But she did not want to be Queen!” I told him. It was an angrily hot morning in mid-August, and we had just finished preparing his classroom for the imminent return of his students.

  “She may not have wanted it, but she did not refuse it,” Nicholas replied.

  “But the King named her his successor! The Council approved it!”

  “Parliament did not, dearest. And, yes, King Edward named her his successor, but the King is dead. A dead monarch cannot issue orders. His will had only been in place two weeks before he died. Parliament never saw it.”

  “But Mary is fond of Jane. They are cousins! You should see the dress she sent her two Christmases past. It was extravagantly beautiful.”

  “Then we must hope and pray Mary is lenient. That she sees what all of us see. That Jane was leverage to Northumberland and she was coerced to accept a plan she did not devise.”

  This initially set me at ease. Of course the Queen would see that Jane had been used by powerful men and was guilty only of youthful naiveté. It was only a formality that she remained in the Tower.

  But on the eighteenth of August, John Dudley and five others were tried, convicted of treason, and sentenced to die.

  Four days later, John Dudley, the mastermind of Jane’s dreadful circumstances, was executed at the Tower. It was said that he converted to Catholicism in the hours before he lost his head, and that the imprisoned Lady Jane watched him walk to the scaffold from the windows of her room after the formerly staunch Reformist celebrated the Mass. It was also said that Edward Seymour was in attendance. I could only imagine what terrible emotions roiled about in that young man’s head and heart as he watched John Dudley be dispatched to the Judge of all souls. And it pained me to think that if Jane saw John Dudley walking to the ax, surely she saw her beloved Edward standing in the crowd of spectators.

  I could neither sleep nor eat in the days that followe
d. I wanted badly to visit Jane, but I knew that was impossible. Visitors to high-ranking prisoners in the Tower needed permission from the Privy Council. I was no one to them. I could only pray for Jane, which I did, asking God to be merciful to her.

  With the swiftness of John Dudley’s trial and execution, I expected to hear any day that Jane had been pardoned. Her father had been pardoned, and he had far more to do with Dudley’s plans than Jane did. But day after day went by, and there was no news on the streets of anyone leaving the Tower.

  Instead, Queen Mary set about beginning her design to return England to Catholicism, as Dudley, arrogant though he was, said she would. Her first act was to ban the printing and preaching of all treatises that did not have the court’s approval, and she forbade any disparagement of the Catholic faith. By September, talk in the streets was that the Queen, who was thirty-seven years old when she ascended the throne, was seeking a marriage with Prince Philip of Spain, a Catholic. This caused much uproar, though why it did surprised me. What did her Council or anyone else think she would do in the matter of her own marriage? Marry a Reformer?

  October came and with it a cracking end to the oppressive summer heat. Jane had turned sixteen as autumn began. But there was no pardon.

  Finally, on the thirteenth of November, my Lady Jane and five others, including Guildford and the Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, were taken before the court to face charges of treason. In my heart I knew Jane was innocent and that the Queen surely must also know this. I reasoned with myself that it was just a requirement, this trial. Surely at the trial she would be pardoned, like her father had been.

  When the news came that Jane and the others had been found guilty and sentenced to death, I fell to my knees in shock and fear. Nicholas had to bear me up and take me to our rooms where he consoled me as best he could.

  “A death warrant was not signed,” he said. “The Queen signed no death warrant!”

  And indeed no warrant had been signed, but we soon learned the new Spanish ambassador was pressing the Queen to have young Jane executed. In his view, Jane posed a conceivable threat, since there was no small outcry to the Queen’s plans to marry a Catholic.

  I wished to send letters of encouragement to Jane, but Nicholas would not allow me to put myself in a position so dangerous, that of being a confidante to a convicted traitor to the Crown. He assured me that was why Jane sent no letters to me.

  We spent the Christmas holidays with my parents. We celebrated as best we could, not knowing what would befall us in the days and months to come. I had ever known only the Reformist way of devotion to God, as had Nicholas. My family was understanding of my compassion for Lady Jane, but they exercised caution. Uncertain days lay ahead.

  She’s just a young girl, I wanted to tell them. But I was smart enough to know this had never been about Jane’s age or her sex. It was her position that men had lusted after. And now others feared that position.

  We returned to London in the first days of the new year. I schooled myself to remain optimistic.

  But in late January, in a senseless uprising designed to thwart the Queen’s plans to marry the Spanish prince, Jane’s father led a revolt in Leicestershire, proclaiming Jane as rightful Queen of England. A warrant was issued for Henry Grey’s arrest, and his little band of supporters quickly dissolved. He was captured, arrested, and imprisoned.

  I knew the moment this news reached us, that Jane’s father had sealed her fate with his selfishness. As long as Jane lived, a plot for the Queen’s overthrow could quickly be assembled. He had proven that. The death warrant for Jane was signed soon after.

  I took to my room when news of the warrant reached me. I was drained of prayers. I could only kneel and sway in silent supplication for Jane.

  Four days after the warrant was issued, I received the third and final letter from Jane. The letter was not actually from my lady, it was from Mrs. Ellen, and was sent to me by way of a servant of Mr. Partridge, her gaoler. Mrs. Ellen wrote:

  Lucy Staverton

  Seamstress

  Whitechapel School

  Dear Mrs. Staverton,

  Lady Jane Dudley requests the dress she commissioned you to sew for her be brought to her at the Tower. You may bring it to the living quarters of the Tower gaoler, Mr. Partridge. The servant who has brought you this letter shall accompany you.

  Kindest Regards,

  Ellen MacIlvray

  Nicholas was hesitant but gave in to my pleadings on the condition that he would accompany me. I had to see her.

  The dress had been finished for months, and I had kept it in a trunk, not knowing what else to do with it. As I drew it out to bring to Jane, my breath caught in my throat. The gown looked blacker than ever before. In the gray light of early February, all traces of blue had been swallowed as if by pitch.

  The quickest of thoughts entered my mind, and I shooed it away not a second later. I could not even for a moment dwell on whether Jane asked for this dress to wear to her execution.

  Mrs. Ellen was there to meet us at the gates of the Tower. She would not look into my eyes when I came near her. With her were two guards who searched the folds of the dress and my sewing bag for items I suppose I could’ve smuggled to aid in an escape. The dress and bag were handed back to me.

  “Good of you to come, Mrs. Staverton,” Mrs. Ellen’s voice was emotionless, as if I had come to merely mend a torn hem for a visiting gentlewoman from the Continent.

  We followed her silently into the massive structure of stone and mortar.

  I had never set foot inside the Tower before, nor had Nicholas, and I was glad that he was with me as we made our way to Mr. Partridge’s apartments. The expanse of the Tower was foreboding in the hushed bleakness of midwinter, and I wished for even a smattering of bluebells in the cracks of the stones, but there was not a spot of color anywhere in the dreariness. Our breaths puffed away from our bodies like little ghosts, spinning away as if eager to disappear into the shadows.

  When we entered a second courtyard, Nicholas took my arm and whispered to me to close my eyes, that he would guide me. I knew without him telling me that were I to open my eyes, I would see the platform where John Dudley had been executed, where others had been executed, where others still would be. I scrunched my eyes shut, buried my face in the folds of the dress, and leaned into my husband.

  Soon Nicholas whispered to me that I could open my eyes, and I saw that we were entering a building. We climbed two sets of stairs to a hallway. Nicholas was bade to sit on a bench just outside the gaoler’s rooms.

  “Ten minutes,” one of the guards said to me as I was let in.

  He did not follow me inside.

  I walked in behind Mrs. Ellen into a comfortable room where a cheery fire blazed in the grate. Jane was seated at a writing table, dressed in a gown of dove gray with just a bit of french lace at the throat and wrists. Her lovely brown hair was pulled away from her face in a lacy net, decorated with a single strand of pearls. She rose and came to me, and I fell to a curtsy, unable to speak. The dress in my arms nearly fell to the floor.

  “Lucy,” she said, her voice soft and sad.

  I could not rise to my feet. Jane reached for my arms and pulled me to stand. Tears had already begun to slide down my cheeks, and they fell like raindrops onto the dress. She clasped her hands on to the fabric.

  “Take this, please, Ellen.”

  The gown was now out of my hands, and I felt myself begin to shake. The first words out of my mouth were an anguished cry for her forgiveness.

  “There is nothing to forgive, Lucy. Come sit with me.”

  She led me back to the writing table and to a chair opposite the one she had been sitting in. I reached into my sewing bag and groped for a scrap of lawn to wipe my eyes.

  “I am so sorry, my lady,” I muttered. “I wish I were stronger. I should not be weeping.”

  Jane merely inhaled gently. “Do not be sorry. Not today. I don’t want sorrow today.”

  I blotted at the t
ears and begged God to brace my heart. When I finally looked up at her, she was sitting there, with her hands in her lap, waiting for me.

  “Surely there will be a pardon,” I whispered.

  Her answer was quick. “No, Lucy. I do not think so. My cousin the Queen has sent her confessor here these many days to win my pardon with my conversion to Catholicism. But as I am not persuaded, I daresay she has given up on me.”

  “My lady?” She answered me so quickly, I barely understood the implication of her answer.

  “If I were to recant my faith as a Reformist, the Queen would have a tidy excuse to pardon me. Her councilors do not want her to. And she certainly can’t if I do not recant.”

  “She would spare your life if you … if you converted?” I could not keep the edge of repugnance from stretching across my face. And the moment it did, I knew Jane would never reduce her deepest beliefs to political posturing. I sank deeper into my chair as the truth closed in around me. Jane was doomed.

  “Perhaps she would not spare me anyway,” Jane went on, toneless. “My father-in-law certainly denied his convictions to no gain. But then, he never was a man of conviction, was he, Lucy? He was a man of ambition. Very different, those two things. At least to him.”

  “Oh, my lady!”

  Several long seconds of strained silence hung between us.

  “My life would mean nothing, nothing, if I were false about that which matters most to me,” she finally said. “If I am to die for anything noble, should it not be for that which I hold most dear and most true?”

  I did not answer her.

  She leaned across the table and grasped my hands. “Lucy, just think of it!” Her voice was animated and childlike. “I have been given a second chance to make a grand choice. It was my arrogance that let me think I could be Queen. I should have refused. But now I have a second chance to choose. I can choose. Do you see how marvelous this is? I can choose.”