The Last Tudor by Philippa Gregory
Sir Edward, for all that he is Elizabeth’s jailer and spy, cannot hide that he is moved. “Well, you can keep them,” he says, finally handing them over.
“Thank you,” I say. I hold them to my lips. “These are the most precious flowers I have ever had in my life. Will you tell him how glad I am to have them from him, and how happy I am that we are together again, even if it is here in prison, where both our fathers were once imprisoned? Will you tell him that I love him still and that I don’t regret—that I will never regret—that he loved me and married me? Tell him that I pray every day that we will be together again as husband and wife, as we planned to be.”
He shakes his head. “I’ll tell him that you like the flowers,” he says. “I can’t remember the rest.”
“You could write it down,” I say, laughing at us both. “You write down everything else I ever say or do. Why not this?”
Ned’s flowers bloom, tucked in the ribbon at my wide waist. I put them in my hair, I put a bud under my pillow and I press the last one in the pages of the Bible at the Song of Solomon, the psalm about love. I have forgiven him as if he never went away. I have forgiven him for this perilous place. I love him. His judgment is good. He is my husband and we have done nothing wrong.
Mary comes to me again.
“Are you sure it is wise to come?” I say, bending over my broad belly to kiss her cheek.
“I come with permission, they want me to talk with you in the hope that you will say something incriminating,” Mary says without resentment, indicating a woman servant who curtseys and stands by the door, listening to everything that we say.
“But how did you get here?”
“I walked. Mr. Thomas Keyes, the queen’s sergeant porter, walked with us. He’s waiting downstairs to take me back.”
I take no notice of the queen’s spy. Everyone in the Tower reports on me anyway; I never say a word that is not noted. I am interrogated every day, and they even listen to my prayers. They can listen all they like, all they will hear is that I love my husband, and so I should.
“Is Her Majesty in good health? I pray for her good health,” I say.
“I am sorry to say that she is not,” Mary replies. “She is very tired and very weary. She cannot eat. I think she is very distressed by her fears about a conspiracy. She is convinced there has been a mighty conspiracy against her. And the Scots ambassador has come to London to press her to name their queen, Mary, as her heir—instead of you. Of course, that would be a terrible mistake. She is feeling beset.”
I bow my head. “She must do as she sees fit,” I say demurely. “But our line, from the king’s sister, named as the king’s heir, born in England and of the reformed religion, has the greatest claim.”
“She must do as she wishes,” Mary agrees. “But she said to the Scots ambassador that naming her heir was like setting her winding sheet before her eyes. She said princes cannot like their own children.”
Mary meets my gaze with her most limpid look. I mouth the words “Quite mad!” and she nods in agreement.
“I wish I could beg her pardon and reassure her that she has nothing to fear from me,” I say for the benefit of the listening woman. We all know that no one could say anything that would cure Elizabeth of suspicion and fear. “I did a hasty act for love. She should see me as a fool perhaps, but not as her enemy.”
“She doubts everyone,” Mary says. “She has imprisoned all the Seymours, and even our poor stepfather, Adrian, who is not responsible for us, and had no idea what you were doing at court. She is even afraid that William Cecil knew of your marriage and encouraged it.”
I am genuinely amazed that she would doubt the man who has advised her from girlhood. “She should be sure that William Cecil never thinks of anyone but her. Of course he didn’t know of it. Would he have sent Ned away from me and thrown me into despair if he had sponsored our wedding and wanted us to conceive a child?”
“That’s what I said,” Mary says, nodding to the waiting woman as if to invite her to report on all of this. “And she knows that I knew nothing about it either.”
“It was secret,” I say simply. “We wanted a secret wedding, so no one knew but Janey. I tell them over and over again.”
“Weary work,” my sister observes. “Do they ask you every day?”
“Every single day they come in and I have to stand before them and they ask me over and over what we did and how we met and who knew.”
“They make you stand?”
I give her a wry smile. “They may not torture a lady of the nobility but they can certainly give me pains. At least I have a midwife who comes to me now, and she says that there is nothing wrong.”
“Does she say when the baby will come?”
“She doesn’t know exactly. Nobody knows. She thinks it will be soon.”
The woman at the door stirs and Mary says: “I am not allowed to stay too long. I am only permitted to come and see that you are well, and that you have everything you need.”
“I need to see my husband,” I tell her. “I need to see the queen.”
Mary makes a little pout and shrugs her shoulders. We both know this is said for the benefit of the spy. Mary is allowed to bring me some apples, but not my freedom.
“I will come again next week.” She bobs up from the stool and looks around at my pets. “Does someone walk the puppies? There is a terrible smell.”
“There’s hardly any smell,” I say. “Anyway, it’s the moat. And I hope that the lieutenant will let me out in the garden and then I can take them all out. If he does not let me live in comfort, he will have to endure the smell.”
The days are very long, and my room is hot and stuffy. I play with the puppies and I whistle to the linnets, let them fly around the room and call them back to my hand. Mr. Nozzle scrabbles painfully at the foot of the stone walls but then scampers up the chairs and takes a flying leap from one carved back to another. He jumps on the wall hanging and holds with one tiny black hand and then springs into my arms.
“And what will you make of a baby?” I ask him. “You must be kind and not pinch him.”
I listen for Ned, and sometimes I hear his footsteps on the floor. He sends me little gifts and every morning and night he taps with his heel to send his love. They do not allow him to send me anything written, and they still question us both every day. I hear them troop up the stairs to his room and back down again after an hour. I think they are hoping to prove that we conspired together against the queen, but by the end of the month the lords whom Cecil sent to question us seem to be as tired of their interrogation as I am. Without colluding, we tell the same story—the simple truth, and they have to believe that it was a marriage for love, that we had no thought that the queen would see us as anything but two young lovers incapable of resisting each other. Indeed, that was obvious to everyone from the beginning. Only the fearful Elizabeth thought it must be a conspiracy. Only the coldhearted Elizabeth would look for an explanation when everyone else would see springtime and youthful desire and thoughtlessness.
THE TOWER, LONDON,
AUTUMN 1561
I notice the questions change. No longer are they asking who knew of our plans, who were our friends at court, how often did I meet the Spanish ambassador? Now they are on another tack. They are starting to concentrate on who was present at the betrothal, who witnessed the wedding. They ask about servants; who prepared the cold meats that Ned had in his bedroom? Who served the wine? Who was the minister? They ask about Janey.
“So he was not known to you, this so-called minister?” Sir Edward asks me. The panel of three men have allowed me to sit as I complained that I am weary and near to my time, and it is late in the evening.
“As I said when you first asked me.”
“He was not attached to a church?”
“I don’t think so. Janey ran out and fetched him.”
“Fetched him from where?”
It sounds so unlikely when they question me like this. “I do
The man at the end of the table raises his head. “Where did she get the ten pounds from?”
“I don’t know!” I say impatiently. “Perhaps it was her own money, perhaps Ned gave it to her.”
“How d’you know he was a minister of the Church at all?” Sir Edward asks portentously.
“Because he wore a furred gown like a minister from Switzerland?” I suggest impertinently. “Because he came with Janey when she asked for a minister? Because he brought a Bible and read the marriage service? Because he said that he was? How else? Should I have asked him for a copy of his degree? Why would I doubt him? Why would you doubt him now?”
They exchange looks; they are uncomfortable, and it makes me certain that someone has told them to pursue this new line of questions against their own wishes.
“And the ring?”
Proudly, I extend my hand to show them on the third finger of my left hand is Ned’s pointed diamond that he gave me for our betrothal and his wedding ring with the five links. I wore them on a chain around my neck from our wedding day, now I have them on my finger. “His rings,” I say. “I have never been without them since my wedding day.” I press them to my lips.
Their grim expressions become more downcast. “And the earl’s written proposal, and his will before he left for France when he names you as his wife?” Sir Edward says.
He knows I do not have these. We all know that my papers are missing. My fool of a maid thinks that she took my box of papers to the treasure house with the other things that I wanted kept safely in London when I was on progress with the queen. But when she went to look for it, it was missing, and then I was arrested and now nobody can find it.
“I had it with my other papers,” I say. “If I could just go to my rooms, I am sure I could find it.”
“Your rooms have been searched,” he says, as if I am some kind of criminal. “And your boxes in the treasure house have been searched. Nobody can find any papers to prove that you were married.”
I make a gesture at my straining belly. “I think it is obvious to anyone that I am married.”
Sir Edward clears his throat. “The marriage could be invalid,” he says awkwardly. “If it was not performed by a proper minister. The earl and his sister could have tricked you into a false marriage with a pretend minister and you are no more married than . . .” He breaks off as if he cannot think of an example of a famously deflowered spinster—though I wager it is the queen who pops into his mind.
“Sir Edward, you mistake your position,” I say quietly. “Of course I am married. I am Lady Seymour, the Countess of Hertford, and you should remember that I am of blood royal. Nobody may question my word.”
He ducks his head; these are difficult interrogations for him as well as me. “I beg your pardon, I meant only that we have no evidence.”
“I need no evidence because I was there,” I insist. “My friend Janey would never have tricked me in such a way. Why would she do such a thing when she wanted us married? Her brother is my true husband. He would never have betrayed me. Why should he do so? He wanted to marry me in honor, for love. That is what we did. Ask him yourself.”
“We do ask him,” the last man at the table says, looking up from his notes. “But he is the only other person we can ask. You had no witness but his sister and she is dead, and we can’t find this minister of yours, and we have no evidence in writing.”
“Then you will have to take my word, and the word of the Earl of Hertford,” I say proudly. “And that should be enough for anyone in England. A marriage between two people in the sight of God is good enough for God and the law. You know as well as I do. We didn’t even need a minister to make a true marriage, we chose to have one come in and read the marriage service, but it would have been a legal marriage if we had said our vows to each other before God. We didn’t need a witness, God saw that it was a good marriage. That’s what we did. That is good enough for me, and it must be good enough for you, and for whoever has told you to question me like this.”
I am so tired by this exchange that when they are gone, trooping down the stairs and complaining to each other that they are getting nowhere, I lie down on my bed and I sleep till the early hours of the morning. My lady-in-waiting serves me with some bread and meat and small ale for my breakfast, and some plums, but I cannot eat anything. I feel restless and walk from one side of the room to another, looking out at the river and over the green. The baby has gone very still and—I am certain—sunk lower in my belly so I feel even more bulky and awkward.
I am puzzled by this new questioning. I wonder if they have decided to try to disprove my marriage, since they cannot prove a conspiracy. But what good would it do them to shame me? And who would ever believe such a thing of a young man so prickly about his honor as Ned? Who would believe that a young woman, sister of the sainted Jane, would not be married by a Protestant preacher?
Then, suddenly, as I look out over the river and the wheeling gulls, there is a sensation as if my bowels have turned over, a sensation so strong that I think I am about to die. I cling to a chair back and gasp out in pain. The agony is too much even for me to scream. My lady darts forward and then jumps back as there is a cascade of red water on the stone floor. Mr. Nozzle leaps for a tapestry and swarms up it, the puppies dash into their box and whimper. Ribbon the cat sniffs at it and walks away, shaking a paw.
“My God, the baby is coming!” my lady says. “Your waters have broken and you are not even in confinement!”
The pain goes as suddenly as it came, and I could almost laugh at the thought that being locked in the Tower is not adequate confinement. Of course, I should be in a darkened room with two midwives with me, two ladies to serve me, a couple of maids, a wet nurse and rockers waiting to take the baby, a husband pacing between chapel and his dinner. Of course everything is wrong. But nothing is going to stop this baby coming.
“Tell the lieutenant of the Tower to send for the midwife, and see that someone tells the Earl of Hertford,” I say. I want to cry for sheer terror that I have to face this ordeal without my mother or my sister or any kindly loving woman. “Tell him to pray for me and our child.”
She hammers on the door and it takes forever before we hear the slow steps of the guard mounting the stairs. “Let me out! I have to see Sir Edward!” she screams to his murmured query through the thick door. “The baby is coming!”
I manage to get to the corner where there is a plain crucifix on the wall and the open Bible before it. I manage to kneel and pray. I manage to wait as the pain comes again, and pray for the safety of the baby and myself, and I pray that the midwife comes soon, for God knows we need one person who knows what she is doing here.
As the midwife bangs the outer door and rushes up the stairs, I hear above me my husband, my true love Ned, hammer on his locked door. “What’s happening? What’s happening?” I can hear him bellow, even through the thick wood of my own door.
“Ned! Ned! Our baby is coming!” I scream upwards at the beamed ceiling. Mr. Nozzle dives for my unmade bed and puts his head under the pillow. I hear Ned’s footsteps quickly cross the floor and then he shouts, muffled, as if he is pressing his lips to the stone floor of his cell, desperate for his words to reach me.
I can’t hear what he says—his floor is quarried stone, cold and thick. But I don’t need to hear him. I know he loves me, I know he will be in painful anxiety until I can send him a message that I am well and his baby thrives. And as the midwife rushes in and the door is slammed shut and bolted behind her, I find a little happiness in knowing that as I endure my pains down here, Ned is only one floor above, on his knees, his face pressed to his stone floor, listening for his baby’s first cry, praying for me, his wife.
It is a long ordeal, though the midwife says it is quick for a first child and that she has sat with women who
“Lady Katherine is doing as well as she can,” the old witch concurs.
I gasp as one of the pains ends, and I correct her: “Lady Hertford,” I insist. “I am the Countess of Hertford.”
“Whatever you say, my lady,” she says, her gaze sliding away from mine, and this makes me wonder again if someone is trying to prove that our marriage did not take place at all and she has been ordered not to address me by my married name.
I cannot think, my mind is so fogged with pain and fear as I walk up and down through the pains and then lie on the bed for a rest. I feel as if I am splitting open, a terrible sensation, as if I am being quartered without benefit of hanging. I think of Jane, going to her death only a stone’s throw from this window, and I think of the agony that she must have felt when the axe came down, and I think perhaps I am dying in the Tower like my sister did, like my father did, and that all I can hope for, at the end of this agony, is that I will see them in heaven.
The midwife, who has been watching me walk and then pause to lean on a chair and groan through my pain, suddenly puts her spindle away and says: “It’s coming now. Best get ready.”
“What am I to do?” I demand wildly. “What happens now?”
She laughs shortly. “You should have thought to ask that before, Lady Katherine,” she says.