The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory
“Yes,” I say brokenly, and we kneel together to pray the Pater Noster in English, the prayer that Jesus taught us Himself, where we all are told that God is “Our Father.” I have a Father in heaven even if I don’t have one on earth. Brother Feckenham prays in Latin, I speak the words in English. I don’t doubt that I am heard. I don’t doubt that he is heard, too.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 10, 1554
They charge my father and he will stand trial for his part in the plot. It was a big, treasonous conspiracy, and it might well have succeeded. They were going to put Elizabeth on the throne and marry her to Edward Courtenay, our Plantagenet cousin, one of our family and one of our faith. Elizabeth denies all knowledge of this, of course. For a girl so well educated she manages to be impressively ignorant when it suits her. But this conspiracy means that our cousin Queen Mary must regard all her kinswomen as a threat. Elizabeth, me, Katherine, even little Mary, Margaret Douglas, and Mary of Scots in France—any one of us could be named as Queen of England in preference to her. We all have an equally good claim; we are all suspect.
I am so anguished that it is a relief when there is a tap on the door and John Feckenham comes in, his big red face creased in a tentative smile, his fair eyebrows upraised as if he is afraid that he is not welcome.
“You can come in,” I say ungraciously. I take a breath and give my prepared speech: “Since I have been granted these days of life to talk with you, though I do so little lament my heavy case that I account it more a manifest declaration of God’s favor towards me than ever He showed me at any time before.”
“You have prepared,” he says, recognizing at once the opening words for a debate, and he puts his books down on the table, and seats himself, as if he knows that wrestling with my soul will be hard work for a misguided heretic like him.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 11, 1554
My lady mother and Katherine are allowed to visit Father; and Katherine leaves our father and mother to be alone together—as they always want to be—and comes to my room.
She does not know what to say to me, and I have nothing to say to her. We sit in awkward silence. She cries a little, stifling her sobs in the sleeve of her gown. While she is sitting so close, gazing at me with her tear-filled eyes, I cannot study, write, or pray. I cannot even hear my own thoughts. I am just gripped in a whirl of her regrets and fear and grief. It is like being churned in a butter tub; I feel myself going rancid. I don’t want to spend my last day like this. I want to write an account of John Feckenham’s discussion with me, of my triumph over his wrong thinking. I want to prepare my speech for the scaffold. I want to think; I don’t want to feel.
We can hear the noise of the carts bringing the wood to build the scaffold and the workers shouting for their tools, and guiding the carts to the green. At every rumble of the wood being tipped on the paving stones, at every rasp of the saws and tapping of a hammer, Katherine flinches, her pretty face white as skimmed milk, her eyes the color of ink.
“I will die for my faith,” I say to her suddenly.
“You will die because Father joined a rebellion against the crowned queen,” she bursts out. “It wasn’t even for you!”
“That may be what they say,” I reply steadily. “But the queen has turned her back on those who believe in the true way to God, broken her promise that people might worship according to their conscience, and is throwing the country under the command of the Bishop of Rome and the hidalgos of Spain. So she has turned against me because of my faith and that is why I shall die.”
Katherine claps her hands over her ears. “I won’t listen to treason.”
“You never listen to anything.”
“Father has lost us everything,” she says. “We are all destroyed.”
“Worldly goods,” I say. “They mean nothing to me.”
“Bradgate! Bradgate doesn’t mean nothing to you! So why say so? Our home!”
“You should turn your mind to Our Father’s house in heaven.”
“Jane,” she implores me, “tell me one kind word, one sisterly word before I say good-bye!”
“I can’t,” I say simply. “I have to keep my mind on my journey and my joyful destination.”
“Will you see Guildford before he dies? He’s asked to see you. Your husband? Will you be together for one last time? He wants to say good-bye.”
Impatiently, I shake my head at her morbid sentiment. “I can’t! I can’t! I will see no one but Brother Feckenham.”
“A Benedictine monk!” she squeaks. “Why would you see him and not Guildford?”
“Because Brother Feckenham knows I am a martyr,” I flash. “Of all of you, only he and the queen understand that I am dying for my faith. That is why I will only see him. That is why he will come with me to the scaffold.”
“If you would just admit that this is not about your faith, this is nothing to do with your faith—it’s only about Father’s rebellion for Elizabeth—then you wouldn’t have to die at all!”
“That is why I won’t talk with you, or Guildford,” I say in a sudden storm of unsaintly temper. “I won’t listen to anyone who wants me to see this as a muddle by a fool, which leads to the death of his daughter, a pawn. Yes! Father should have rescued me; but instead he rode out for another pawn and his failure has condemned me to death!” I am swept with rage and sorrow. I have raised my voice, I am shouting at her, panting. I feel that I have to claw myself back to peace, to calmness. This is why I cannot argue about worldly things with worldly people. This is why I cannot bear to see her, to see any of them. This is why I have to think and not feel.
She looks at me with her mouth open and her eyes wide. “He has ruined us,” she whispers.
“I’m not going to die thinking about that,” I hiss at her. “I am a martyr for my faith, not for a foolish accident. I will never die, and my father will never die either. We will meet in heaven.”
I write to my father. I always knew he would never die and now I am setting off on a journey, and I don’t doubt that I will see him at journey’s end.
The Lord comfort Your Grace . . . and though it has pleased God to take away two of your children, my husband and myself, yet think not, I most humbly beseech Your Grace, that you have lost them, but trust that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life. And I for my part, as I have honored Your Grace in this life, will pray for you in another life.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
MONDAY, FEBRUARY 12, 1554
Two of my ladies, Mrs. Ellen and Elizabeth Tylney, stand with me at the window, waiting for the news that my husband of eight and a half months is dead. They pull me away from the window, laying hold of my arms, my shoulders, as if I am a child, as if I should not see the truth. The lieutenant of the Tower, John Brydges, stands at the door, his face stern, trying to feel nothing.
“I can watch.” I shrug them off. “I have no fear of death.” I want them to know that even in the valley of the shadow of death I am quite without fear. I want them to note it.
God supports me, but I am still horribly shocked when the cart goes by my window, rattling back from the scaffold at Tower Hill. I knew he had been beheaded, but I had not thought that the body would be a head shorter than I remembered him. His actual head has been tumbled into a basket beside the bloodstained body. It is pitiful, it is like a butcher’s shambles where the animals are beautiful beasts no longer but only sliced, skinned parts. There is the only man I ever had in my bed, and who was to me such a threat, such a potency. There he is, cut up, like a banned book with chapters ripped out. His body is headless, it looks so odd. They have dropped his handsome face into a basket and tossed his corpse into bloodstained straw. This is a horror I was not prepared for. I always thought of death as the shining shore, never as a butchered beast, the stiffening of a familiar body, pieces of a boy in a dirty cart.
“Guildford,” I whisper, almost to remind myself that it is him and not some trick
The executioner, robed in black, with a high black hood making his faceless head grotesquely tall, walks heavy-footed, behind the tailgate. The cart goes to the chapel, the executioner goes to stand beside the newly built scaffold on the green, his hands folded over his axe, his head bowed. With a start, I realize that he is here, not as part of Guildford’s procession, but for another purpose altogether. He has come to behead me. Although I thought I was prepared, this gives me a heart-stopping jolt. My time has come. However unjust—really, however illogical and contradictory—I, too, will be diminished, reduced, beheaded.
I pause to write in the prayer book for John Brydges. I write at length, lost in this last moment. I am myself. Words never die. I think: In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and God was the Word. I think that I understand this: my body will die but my words will live. The bloody wreckage of Guildford’s body has shaken me—but I still cling to the words that never die. My teacher and mentor Kateryn Parr understood this. She faced death without fear. I will do so, too.
“Forasmuch as you have desired so simple a woman to write in so worthy a book, good Master Lieutenant,” I begin.
I do so like “Forasmuch.” I think it has genuine dignity. I write a paragraph, and then another, and then I sign my name, and Brother Feckenham looks at me and says gently: “You can write no more. It is time.”
I am ready. I have to be ready. There is nothing more to write. I have written a description of my discussions with Brother Feckenham, I have written to the queen, to my father, to Katherine. Now, finally, I write a farewell and I have finished my work. I am in my black gown and I have my prayer book in my hands, open.
“I am ready,” I say, and I note the pitiful cringing that makes me want to say: “Wait! Just wait a moment! Something else I must do! One moment, one second, one heartbeat more . . .”
John Feckenham leads the way and I hold my prayer book—my English prayer book—before me, and I try to read from it as we go down the narrow stairs, through the little garden, out of the garden gate and slowly towards the scaffold on the green. Of course, I can’t really see the words as we walk down the stairs, or down the garden path: nobody could. But once again it shows everyone that I am walking to the scaffold with a prayer book before me. Kateryn Parr the queen wrote these prayers, translated them from the Latin. Here I am, going to the scaffold with this evidence of my righteousness in my hand. This is our work. I am prepared to die for it. I will die with it in my hands.
The ladies behind me sob and sob in strangled gulping weeping. I hope that everyone can see that I am not crying like them. I hope that everyone can see that I am praying as I walk, my book before me, my whole presence deeply devout, showing that I am certain of resurrection. We all climb the ladder to the scaffold and assemble on the platform. There are very few people come to watch me be martyred. I am surprised how few. I speak to them.
I was afraid my voice would tremble but I do not tremble. I pray for mercy and I tell everyone, clearly, that I will be saved by the mercy of God—not by prayers from a priest, not by paid Masses in a chantry. I ask people to pray for me while I am alive, I mean them to understand that I don’t need prayers after my death for I will go directly to heaven. “No purgatory,” I want to add, but everyone knows that is what I mean.
I read the Miserere in English, for God can understand English and it is superstition to think that He has to be addressed in Latin. John Feckenham follows me, speaking the words in Latin, and I think how beautiful the language is, and how sweet it sounds today, chiming and interweaving with the English words in the damp misty air with the seagulls calling over the river. I remember that I am only sixteen and I will never see the river again. I can’t believe I will never see the hills of Bradgate again, or the paths where Katherine and I used to walk under the trees, or my old pony in the field, or the caged old bear in the pit. The prayer lasts an oddly long time, a timeless time, and I am surprised when it ends and I have to give things: my gloves and my handkerchief, my prayer book. The ladies have to prepare me for this, my final royal appearance. They take off my hood, my black hood trimmed with jet, and my collar. Suddenly, the time is racing past when there were things that I wanted to say, that I wanted to make sure that I saw before this moment. I am sure there are last words that I should say, memories that I should recall. It’s all happening too fast now.
I kneel. I can hear Brother Feckenham’s steady voice. They put on the blindfold before I have had my last glimpse of the seagulls. I meant to look at the clouds, I meant to be sure of my last glance of the sky. Suddenly, I know fear and I am in the white blankness of a daylight blindfold.
“What shall I do? Where is it?” I scream in a panic, and then someone guides my hands to the block and its solid square roughness tells me that my destiny is inexorable. This is the material world indeed; this is the most material thing I will ever touch. I realize it is the last thing I will ever touch. I grip the block, I even feel the grain of the wood. I have to put my head down on it. I note that the blindfold is wet with my tears, soft and hot against my closed eyelids. I must be crying and crying. But at least no one can see, and whatever happens next, I know that it is not death, for I will never die.
BOOK II
KATHERINE
BAYNARD’S CASTLE,
LONDON, SPRING 1554
I have sent you, good sister Katherine, a book, which although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is more worth than precious stones. It is the book, dear sister, of the laws of the Lord: It is His Testament and Last Will, which He bequeathed unto us wretches, which shall lead you to the path of eternal joy, and if you, with a good mind, read it, and with an earnest desire follow it, it shall bring you to an immortal and everlasting life.
It will teach you to live and learn you to die . . . win you more than you should have gained by the possession of your woeful father’s lands . . . such riches as neither the covetous shall withdraw from you, neither the thief shall steal, neither let the moth corrupt . . .
And as touching my death, rejoice as I do and consider that I shall be delivered of this corruption and put on incorruption, for as I am assured that I shall for losing of a mortal life, find an immortal felicity.
Farewell, good sister, put only your trust in God, who only must uphold you,
Your loving sister,
Jane Duddley
I read, with growing disbelief, this sermon—the only goodbye from my older sister that I will ever get. I read it again, only this time I am furious. I really don’t know what she thinks I am going to do with this miserable letter. I don’t know what good she thinks it will do me. I have to say that if it was me about to die, I wouldn’t write such a letter to little Mary. What a thing to write! How would it ever comfort her? I read and reread it though my eyes are so sore from crying that I can’t see her careful clerkly hand. Nothing is crossed out, nothing is blotted. She did not cry over writing as I am crying over reading it. She did not desperately scrawl it in a passion to say good-bye to me, her little sister who looks up to her and loves her so much. She wasn’t anxious to tell me that she loves me, that she is thinking of me, that she is heartbroken that we won’t grow up together. We will never now be ladies at court giggling over our admirers; we will never be learned old ladies reading to our children. She thought through these elegant paragraphs and wrote them as they came to her, with refined scholarship, without hesitation. And all about God. God! As usual.
Of course, as soon as I have read it and reread it, I know exactly what I am going to do with it. Not ball it up and hurl it into the fire, in a rage of grief, which was my first impulse. I am going to do what she wanted me to do. She didn’t even have to tell me; she knew that I would know. She didn’t have to spoil her holy detachment with a practical instruction. I know what she wants without her saying. I am to send this letter, this coldhearted unsisterly letter, to her so-called important friends in Switzerland and they will print it and g
Then everyone will admire Jane and quote this damned letter forever. They will print it in England and Germany and Switzerland as part of the wonderful scholarship of Jane Grey, proof that she was an exceptional young woman whose memory will go on and on, whose life will be a sermon to the young. And if anyone thinks of me at all, they will think that I am a very stupid frivolous girl to be the recipient of the last letter of a martyr. If Mary Magdalene had arrived at the empty tomb on Easter morning and failed to notice the gardener who was the risen Christ, and so ruined the miracle of Easter for everyone forever, I would be her: the secondary player in the greatest scene, who completely fails in her part. If Mary Magdalene tripped over a rock and hopped about clutching her toe—that would be me. Everyone is going to remember Jane the saint. Nobody is going to think twice about me—the stupid sister who received her last great letter. Nobody will think that I wanted and deserved a last letter, a proper letter, a personal letter. And no one will give a second thought to our little sister Mary, who doesn’t even get a miserable sermon.
If Jane were not dead, I would be really furious with her about this. “Learn you to die”! What a thing to write to a sister who has always loved her! If she were alive, I would go to the Tower right now and knock off her black hood and pull her hair for writing such a heartless letter to her little sister, for writing to me—to me!—that I should be glad that we have lost all our money, that I should be glad that we have lost our home, that I should be glad to have a Bible rather than jewels. As if I would ever rather have an old Bible than my lovely home, a Bible instead of Bradgate! As if anyone would! As if I don’t love jewels and pretty things and prize them above everything else in the world! As if she doesn’t know this, as if she hasn’t laughed at me for my silly vanity a hundred times!