Nine Days a Queen: The Short Life and Reign of Lady Jane Grey (12 page)

I was aware of Guildford standing beside me, resplendent in his best court clothes, his responses to the vows, but I felt nothing for him. I knew this should have been the happiest of days for me. But it was not. I was miserable.

Afterward there was feasting, masques, and jousting in the true royal manner. I kept looking for King Edward, hoping he might manage to come at the last moment. And all the while thinking' of him as already dead.

I dreaded being alone with Guildford as wife to husband. But then the only good thing to happen that day happened.

It was decided by Northumberland, who was

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running the whole affair, that my sister and I should not yet live with our husbands.

"That way he can still have the marriages annulled if need be," Guildford Dudley said jokingly. Was he disappointed? I think not. No more than I was.

So I went to Chelsea Manor because it now belonged to Northumberland. Catherine went to Pembroke House.

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SIXTEEN

S

o I was back again at Chelsea Manor, where I'd spent so many happy hours with Katharine and Sir Thomas and Elizabeth. Impossible to believe I was back here. I wandered about the place, touching things. Many of Katharine's possessions were still here, her books, her clothing, her bedhangings, even her pillows. I felt her presence all around me, eerie and ghostlike. Everything had her touch on it.

My nurse and Mrs. Tilney, as well as other members of my household, were with me, but my parents were not. I was weary beyond thinking and couldn't wait to get out of my wedding attire and go to bed. I slept in Katharine's bed, in her room. I drifted off as if I never had a care in the

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world, with Pourquoi at my feet.

To keep sane I stayed with my schedule. Up early, prayers, breakfast, studies, then in the afternoon my dancing lessons and some time for my music. I could ride if I wished. But still, I felt both the haunted and the ghost. Katharine's bedchamber was now mine, and I had to rearrange it in order to make it my own.

There were the same fish in the goldfish pond. Sir Thomas had named them and he used to feed them. And now they came to the surface. There was the rose arbor we'd all sat under on warm afternoons to watch the boats go by on the river.

There was the spot Katharine had caught Elizabeth in her husband's arms. There we'd run with the dogs and tossed a ball.

In my free time I wandered. I read. I embroidered. I became lonely for callers. I think I would have welcomed even Guildford, but he did not come. He was home with his mother.

And then one day, one of my ladies, Eleanor, who'd been to court to see her sister who was ill, came back with news.

"Northumberland says King Edward is

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walking in his galleries," she said. "That he is playing at quoits."

"Don't believe it," my nurse said. "I heard he is very ill."

"My sister says gossip has it that Northumberland has written to both Mary and Elizabeth, asking them to come to London, and they won't go," Eleanor reported.

"But why does he want them both in London?" I asked.

"Because Edward is dying is why," Mrs. Tilney advised. "He wouldn't ask them if Edward were well."

"Then why won't they go?" Eleanor tried to reason.

"Because they're afraid Northumberland will imprison them," she answered.

"And make whom Queen?" I asked.

"Mayhap no Queen. Mayhap he has plans to make one of his sons king," she jested. "Mayhap Guildford." And she laughed.

But I did not consider it a jest. Northumberland was capable of anything.

The days of that spring and early summer went

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on. I felt out of sorts at Chelsea Manor. I tried to concentrate on my studies, but my mind would not be put to the task.

And then one day a rider came up to the postern gate and dismounted. He had no servant, and he was not dressed in the glitter of the court.

He asked for me at the gate, and at first I thought he was just a messenger from home.

"I am John Banister," he introduced himself, "a student doctor attached to the royal household. All the doctors have been dismissed."

My heart fell. "Is the king dying, then?"

"Yes, he is dying." The young man was thin of face, and tall, and already looked like a doctor. I invited him to sit in my parlor and ordered some wine for him.

"I promised him I'd come to see you," Banister said. "I went first to Bradgate, but your father directed me here. He sends his best wishes."

"And Edward? What of Edward?" I begged. "What word does he have for me?"

He sipped his wine. "To be brave," he said.

"Brave? Why? Why must needs I be brave?"

He shook his head. "He doesn't sleep unless

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he is filled with drugs," he said quietly. "He brings up black sputum when he coughs. His feet are swollen."

I shivered.

"Northumberland sent us away and put a female quack in our place. She says she can cure him. And she gives him daily portions of a medicine that I know contains arsenic."

"Arsenic! That alone will kill him!"

He shook his head no. "In small doses, it is keeping him alive, though he be in pain."

"Why? Why make him suffer?"

"Northumberland needs time with him yet. He is buying time. When I bade him good-bye, Edward begged me to stop and see you and tell you he is bearing up and thinks of you often, and must make his will, and wishes you to know he has faith that you will do the right thing when the time comes."

"The right thing?" I was crying already. "What does he want me to do? Did he say?"

"No, but when I left, he reminded me to tell you how sorry he is that he missed your wedding. And how sorry he is that he had to sign the death warrant for Edward Seymour. But

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that it is 'what kings must do.'"

Edward "sorry" because he missed my wedding! He was dying! Possibly being slowly poisoned, in pain, having to make his will at fifteen, and sorry he missed my wedding. Oh, Edward, the only dear true friend I had in the world.

The young doctor had to leave. He would not stay for a repast. The day was waning and he wanted to be in London this night. I bade him good-bye and watched from the gate as he rode away. The afternoon sun was strong, but I felt, for all the turmoil inside me, that it should be dark and forboding.

My next visitor was the Duchess of Northumberland, wife of Northumberland, and my mother-in-law.

This was an imperious woman, even more imperious than my own mother. I hoped never to have to go up against her. She came with a whole retinue of ladies-in-waiting and servants, and my household scurried about to make her comfortable. She demanded wine. She demanded we be left alone to talk.

The woman had given birth to thirteen

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children, seven of whom lived. It was said of Northumberland's household that his wife and children were affectionate and loyal.

How would anyone dare be anything else with such parents as the Duchess and Northumberland? I wondered.

"I have come to tell you, Lady Jane," she said imperiously, "if God should call the King to His mercy, it will be needful for you to go immediately to the Tower."

"Why?" I felt a chill.

"Because His Majesty has made you heir to his realm."

Heir? I couldn't believe it. When had this happened? How could this be? I followed her from the room. My head was spinning. The sun shone down outside. She smiled at me in satisfaction, as if to say,

See what wonders come about because you

bave wed my son?

I did not believe her. Not for a minute. She was taunting me. She did not like me, this woman. Considered me not worthy of Guildford.

"Guildford, of course, must take himself there too," she added. And then: "He misses you.

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He pines for you, Jane. My darling boy."

I wondered what she was plotting. Anything for Guildford, of course. But how much power did they have? I shivered, not wishing to know the answer. But not for a minute did I believe her. I saw her out, wondering what her real motive had been for coming.

By July second we heard, from a friend of Mrs. Tilney's who'd been at court, that King Edward was begging God to take him.

We heard that Northumberland was preventing both Mary and Elizabeth from seeing their dying brother.

The summer quiet lay about Chelsea Manor, like the calm before a storm. Sometimes I went outside and walked along the riverbank just to hear the sound of the gulls flying overhead. Their cry echoed something lost and wandering in my soul.

I felt as if the world were standing still, as if this were my last chance to look around and enjoy it before plunging into an abyss. I felt like a prisoner here, and yet I knew I was safe. I thought of all the good people I'd known. I

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wondered what Queen Katharine and Sir Thomas would have to say about all that was happening.

Northumberland was in charge, running the kingdom. I had the feeling he was moving people around on a chessboard. I could see him, grinning, leaning over it.

On the eighth of July rumor ran through the countryside that Edward VI had died.

Our milkmaids had it before we did. Rumor travels swiftly, faster than sound, faster than the wind and the tides.

I knew it this time not to be rumor, though. When the common people had such intelligence, you could be sure it was true. I waited for something to happen. And very soon it did.

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SEVENTEEN

T

he first I knew that something was truly amiss was when a rider came through the countryside crying the fact that Princess Mary was gone. That she had retreated to Norfolk, dressed as a boy, to board a ship and flee the country.

The rider was not from Northumberland or the palace. He wore nobody's colors. He just had news and was spreading it for his own ends, accepting coins of the realm, and meat and drink, for his trouble and enjoying himself immeasurably.

Sometimes when ordinary folk got hold of rumor they did this. Carried it through the countryside. People were hungry for news.

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"She stayed the night at Sawson Hall near Cambridge," the man told us. "It's the manor house of John Huddlestone, a Catholic gentleman. He received her gladly, 'tis said, had mass said in his house for her. In the morning after they rode off, some Protestants in Cambridge set fire to the house, thinking she was still inside. It is said that Mary saw it from a hilltop and told John Huddlestone that when she was Queen she would build him an even better house."

"Why is she fleeing if she hopes to be Queen?" Mrs. Tilney asked. We stood in the courtyard, in the sun.

"It is said that Northumberland ordered three important Catholic prisoners in the Tower to be executed this day, lest they take up the banner and support Mary."

"But she is supposed to be Queen," I put in.

The messenger shrugged and gulped his brew, seeing that we were growing impatient with him. "I must be off. It is all the news I have this day. Perhaps I'll be back tomorrow."

The next day he did come back. Mrs. Tilney sent me out alone, not wishing to be subject, as she

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said to "more lies."

"A fleet of seven great warships now wait off the eastern coast, in the event that Mary tries to flee the country," he told us. "Northumberland cannot have her bringing in supporters from another country to help her with her pretensions to the crown."

"But she is not pretending," I said.

A number of servants who had gathered around nodded in agreement with me.