Part 9 (2/2)

Then it was Kate's turn-”The beautiful one.”

Then mine-”The beastly little one.”

Jane watched us climb into a gilded chariot where a discreet crimson-carpeted step had been supplied to put me at an equal height with Kate. It was with glad and excited hearts that we waved gaily back at Jane as the trumpets sounded and the long, winding procession headed out the Tower gates to progress slowly through the city to Westminster Abbey. We blew kisses back to her, hoping to convey to her that soon, very soon, all would be well, we had the Queen's word upon it, and she would soon be free, to live quietly with her beloved books and Guildford and perhaps-how Kate and I hoped!-learn to embrace the joys of being young, beautiful, and to taste and savour the fruits of love. We still believed that love was possible between Jane and Guildford; if Jane would only stop fighting desire as though it were a demon sent to tempt and torment her.

But we didn't know then that Senor Renard was holding Prince Philip, the dazzling golden Spanish bridegroom, out, tantalizing, before Queen Mary, dangling the man whose portrait our royal cousin had fallen in love with like a carrot before a donkey's nose, trying to compel her to condemn Jane, making it so that Mary must choose between Jane's life and the love she had always longed for. But in those days our cousin was still clinging strong to clemency, wringing her hands, and crying, ”I cannot find it in my heart to put my unfortunate kinswoman to death.” Vainly she tried to a.s.sure Amba.s.sador Renard that ”every requisite precaution will be taken before I set the Lady Jane at liberty.” But by these a.s.surances he would not be placated, and Mary's dream of marriage with her gold-bearded Spanish prince seemed to drift further and further away, until, I think, she too began to see that Jane stood between her and the most incredible, fierce desire she had ever known.

Jane was still a prisoner the bl.u.s.tery October day when she turned sixteen. We were afraid she would think that we had forgotten her, so we wanted to do something special to let her know that even though our bodies were apart we, her loving and devoted sisters, were always there with her in spirit. Through Mrs. Ellen, we sent her a rich plum cake and a beautiful but, by court standards, plain, new gown of the more modest cut Jane favoured. It was made of velvet of that most delicate hue of blue known as milk-and-water with its modest square-cut bodice edged with luminous moonstones. Mrs. Ellen ignored Jane's protests and dressed her in it and brushed and crowned the red-kissed brown waves of her hair with a delicate pearl chaplet. With the connivance of Mr. and Mrs. Partridge and Sir John Bridges, we arranged that Jane be encouraged to walk in the walled garden after supper and enjoy the breeze off the river.

How Kate and I relished imagining the scene that followed! Kate pleaded a headache and to be excused from her duties that night, and I was allowed to stay with her, and we lay side by side on our bed, imagining Guildford Dudley clad head to toe in s.h.i.+ning white stealing up behind Jane and gently cupping his hand over her mouth so she would not scream. With his own body, he would press her against the side of Master Partridge's house, letting her feel his desire, and there, in the shadows of the weeping willow tree, sheltered by the lilac bush, lift her skirts and make sweet love to her. Even when the rain began to fall and the lightning flashed across the darkened sky, Kate and I imagined them clinging all the closer, feeling the full scorching heat of their pa.s.sion in the chill of the autumn rain.

But Jane always knew how to spoil a good dream. The next day Mrs. Ellen told us that, after their pa.s.sion had been spent and Jane had pushed Guildford into a mud puddle, she rushed into the Partridges' kitchen, soaked to the skin, breathless, and bedraggled, and frantically sought lemon juice and vinegar. She had made a great mess, which she did not tarry to clean up, attempting to pour both into a wine bottle, then bolted up the stairs to her bedchamber, ripped off her sodden clothes, and flung herself naked upon the bed. She spread her legs wide, and, with a rage-fuelled brutality akin to rape, shoved the long, slender neck of the bottle inside her cunny, thrusting her hips high as she poured its tart, stinging contents inside her.

When Mrs. Ellen tried to intervene, fearing that Jane would do herself an injury, Jane snarled like a mad dog and slapped her hands away, shouting, ”Leave me be!” and Mrs. Ellen quietly withdrew to sit upon a stool in the corner. Later, when Jane lay curled upon her side and wept because the mixture stung and burned her inside, and she ached from the bruising force of the bottle she had thrust into her secret centre, she rejected all Mrs. Ellen's attempts to comfort her and ordered her to get out.

”Leave me be! Leave me be!” she sobbed to the rhythm of Mrs. Ellen's softly retreating footsteps.

When I heard about it later, I sighed and shook my head and felt the salty p.r.i.c.k of tears stab my eyes. There was a battle betwixt angels and demons raging inside my sister, so heated, confused, crowded, and clouded by smoke and writhing, warring bodies, sometimes it was impossible to tell good from bad, friend from foe, or who would triumph in the end. I loved my sister, but I despaired of ever understanding her. Why must she fight against herself and push away any who would love and comfort her? Why did she relish the role of victim and stage her life for sacrifice? Why did she reject pleasure and choose pain time and again?

These questions I can ask, but never answer, and I wonder sometimes if Jane even could. Perhaps the truths were too deeply buried to ever be unearthed. Some things are not meant for the plain light of day and prefer to dwell in darkness; some things are better left hidden no matter how much curiosity needles us.

9.

On a bitterly cold November morning, Kate and I huddled together in our furs and stood amongst a great crowd on a busy London street to watch Jane and Guildford walk to the Guildhall in London, where they were to stand trial. We tried not to be afraid. Everyone said it was just a formality. Proper form must be observed, and since Jane had technically committed treason, albeit most unwillingly and under duress, she must still be condemned, but everyone knew the Queen intended to a.s.sert her royal prerogative and issue a pardon.

Though the people stood and stared, and did naught to shatter the peace of that bitingly cold morning, a number of halberdiers in uniforms as bright as blood splashed on the snow surrounded the prisoners, each man walking with the gleaming head of his new-polished axe turned out to show that the accused had not yet been condemned. We tried to catch Jane's eye, but she kept her head bent over the black velvet prayer book she held open before her, her lips moving silently over the words I hoped would give her enough comfort to see her through the coming ordeal. She wore stark, unadorned, black velvet, with an equally plain hood with a black silk veil fluttering in back. Mrs. Ellen and Mrs. Tylney, also clad in austere black, followed a few steps behind. Mrs. Ellen held a black velvet cloak lined and collared with fur over her arm, and when she saw Jane s.h.i.+ver, she unfolded it and started to step forward.

But Guildford, walking beside Jane, a vision in black velvet slashed with white satin and festooned with pearls, with a gay bouquet of pinks, violets, and his favourite yellow gillyflowers cut from silk to brighten the winter gloom pinned festively to his feathered hat, fell back a step and took it from her. He moved behind Jane and most tenderly draped it around her thin, trembling shoulders. But Jane never even looked up, much less glanced back, and I sincerely doubt she uttered even one word of thanks. Guildford, with a sorrowful expression, let his hands fall from where they had lingered on her shoulders and fell back in step beside her.

Kate and I clung together and waited, our eyes never once leaving the doors of the Guildhall. I don't think even a half hour pa.s.sed before they opened again and the procession emerged to make the return journey to the Tower. Although we knew what to expect, it was still like a hard slap that left us reeling. This time the axe heads were turned to point toward Jane and Guildford, and the silent ma.s.ses fell back with pitying and horrified gasps, some even daring to softly mutter ”G.o.d save you!” to the condemned. Kate clutched my hand hard. ”It's just for form's sake, it's just for form's sake,” she kept repeating, as though by sheer repet.i.tion she could convince herself, and me.

Why should it not be true? After all, we had no reason to doubt our royal cousin. Though, in truth, I would have felt much better if, during the times we had spent with her, Jane had responded with a loving sweetness and sincere grat.i.tude instead of rudeness and hostility. Every time I looked back and remembered Jane's behaviour at Beaulieu that Christmas I felt sick to my very soul. I could still hear Jane taking Mary's lady-in-waiting to task for curtsying to the Host, quipping about the baker making Christ, and noisily breaking wind while Cousin Mary regaled us with stories of the saints' lives. Deep down a part of me feared, though Cousin Mary would deny it and try to bury it beneath layers of politeness, that Jane had indeed turned our kinswoman into a secret enemy. If it came down to a choice between a sulky girl who turned her back on priests and farted when told how the pious and worthy virgin Saint Lucy had plucked out her own eyes when her pagan betrothed admired them and cried, ”Here, take them! Now leave me to G.o.d!” and a golden Spanish prince, handsome, l.u.s.ty, and devout, we all knew who our royal cousin would choose. I had seen the way her eyes devoured his portrait; it was the same way Father looked at plates of marzipan and Guildford Dudley, and our lady-mother regarded Adrian Stokes, the same hungry intensity, subtle and slow-burning, biding its time, trying to be patient while waiting to burst into pa.s.sionate flame.

Our royal cousin was fortunate, as only a queen can be, that she could always justify her choice by claiming Jane was a liability, a life that had to be sacrificed for the greater good, and that her marriage to Philip was an act of duty, not of pa.s.sion, to ensure the succession. But no one would be deceived. They would only see a l.u.s.t-mad old maid hankering to lift her petticoats for a golden-haired lad eleven years her junior, and they would all laugh and gossip and whisper and mock, but none of them would rush to be Jane's champion either; the n.o.bles at court cared only for themselves, and Jane's so-called friends, all the bookish scholars safely away in Protestant-friendly Switzerland and the Low Countries, were not knights in s.h.i.+ning armour ready to ride out and rescue the lady-fair. And Jane was, in the end, worth more to them as a martyr-a young and beautiful martyr.

But Jane seemed oblivious to it all and displayed no concern; not even the faintest flicker of emotion flitted across her pale face. She never once lifted her head from her prayer book, and Guildford, walking beside her, stared blindly straight ahead, moving like one in a trance. Then, all of a sudden it seemed to strike him, like a blow coming out of the dark, and he staggered and stood still a moment, then fell back to walk several steps behind Jane and hung his head to try to hide the tears now pouring down his face. I remember the teardrop pearls tr.i.m.m.i.n.g his beautiful, black velvet hat fell forward, and it looked like even his hat was weeping too for beautiful, doomed Guildford Dudley, and the white plume that crowned it quaking, like a shaking fist, out of sheer fury at the unfairness of it all.

A lady in a rabbit fur cloak standing near us shook her head and sighed at the woebegone sight pa.s.sing mute and dazed before us-”How can they be so unkind to someone so beautiful?”-speaking words that Guildford himself might have uttered when the verdict was read. Both my sister and her unwanted husband had been condemned ”to be burned or beheaded at the Queen's pleasure.”

Kate knelt down, despite the snow that soaked through her skirts and chilled her knees, and hugged me so tight I thought she would squeeze all the breath out of me. We clung together, two sad little girls, fourteen and nine, swathed in rabbit fur, but ice-cold inside, and wept, feeling the hot tears turn to ice upon our wind-chapped cheeks.

In the days and weeks that followed, Jane could not rest; lit from within by the fire of fever, tormented by long, slow-dragging days and so many sleepless nights, she would nervously walk the floor, pacing back and forth, wall to wall, constantly reciting, as if to instill herself with courage: ”Be constant, be constant: fear not any pain, Christ hath redeemed thee, and Heaven is thy gain.” She had begun to fear that G.o.d was testing her with this imprisonment and was terrified that she would fail. No longer could she find forgetfulness and solace in her beloved books; she was too consumed with worry about what would become of her.

While we danced and revelled through the Twelve Days of Christmas and the New Year, Jane sat by the fire and stared at Mr. Partridge's Yule log, wondering if ”to be burned or beheaded at the Queen's pleasure” would be her fate in the new year of 1554.

When she walked out into the biting winter air, Jane stubbornly refused to look up at the wall walk of the Beauchamp Tower, where Guildford was allowed to take his daily exercise. He would stand there and watch the river traffic, no doubt remembering the days when he had glided in grand style along the Thames reclining on the velvet cus.h.i.+ons of his family's barge. He would stand and stare at London Bridge, where the heads of traitors were impaled on metal spikes and picked down to pearly bone by the ravenous ravens before their bare skulls were hurled into the river to make room for more. No doubt he wondered if his and Jane's heads would soon join them. Sometimes he watched Jane, gazing down at her, as though willing her to look up and wave at him. But she never did.

I always wished she had. One smile, one wave would have meant so much. Though they were kept in separate quarters, they were together, as prisoners condemned to die, yet they were alone because Jane willed it.

The New Year brought disaster instead of the peace I knew Queen Mary craved. The country was as unquiet, fearful, and restless as Jane's own feverish, fear-racked mind. People feared the coming of Philip. They were afraid he would bring the Spanish Inquisition with him as a bridal gift and that we would all lose ourselves under the red cloak of Spain. The Queen was so besotted with the prince of her dreams, giddy as a girl, she would sing and hum s.n.a.t.c.hes of songs throughout the day and sit for hours gazing lovingly at his portrait. Time and again she would declare, ”I shall love him perfectly and never give him cause to be jealous!” never knowing how cruelly others mocked her for it, laughing behind her back, and how so many guffaws quickly became coughs as she pa.s.sed. The idea that our aging, spinster queen could ever give a man as handsome as Prince Philip, and eleven years younger than herself, cause to be jealous, was utterly absurd. To Prince Philip, this was a marriage of state, yet in her heart our royal cousin had transformed it into one of smouldering pa.s.sion. And when she heard rumours-as those cruel-minded mockers made certain she did-of his exotic and alluring mistresses and baseborn children, she made herself sick weeping, and only the Spanish amba.s.sador's a.s.surances that this was naught but false and malicious gossip could make her dry her eyes and smile again.

Senor Renard was urgently endeavouring to persuade her that Jane must die. He was also fanning the flames of Mary's fear and suspicion of her own half sister, Elizabeth. ”Elizabeth is greatly to be feared,” he cautioned, ”for she has a power of enchantment; she has inherited her mother Anne Boleyn's sorcery”-knowing full well that just the mention of Anne Boleyn's name was enough to rekindle all our royal cousin's most deeply embedded grievances, reminding her that she had been the loved and adored princess until the woman she always called ”The Great Wh.o.r.e” came along and ousted both Mary and her venerable mother, the pious and devout Catherine of Aragon, from Henry VIII's fickle affections.

Trouble was brewing, and you could sense it, even smell it, in the air. Thus it came as no surprise that in the county of Kent, a fine-figured, auburn-bearded man called Thomas Wyatt the Younger, the son of the poet who had at one time rivalled Henry VIII for the love of Anne Boleyn, began to raise an army, inciting others to join him. He intended that they should march on London, hoping with this show of might and force to dissuade Queen Mary from marrying Prince Philip. Wyatt would always afterward insist his sole aim had been to show Her Majesty that her people loved her but feared the threat of foreign domination that came hand in glove with the marriage. But some whispered that there was more to it-a secret scheme to wrest Mary from the throne and replace her with Princess Elizabeth, or Jane.

Then misfortune came to darken our doorstep once again. Our lady-mother was in London with the Queen, basking and revelling in her favour, flaunting her new jewels and gaudy velvets, gambling and making merry, and riding out with the royal hunt or alone with Master Stokes for a brisk, vigorous canter every chance she got, thus she failed to be properly vigilant where Father was concerned. If ever a man needed an alert and watchful wife it was Father. Left to his own devices in the country with his horses and hounds and recipe books filled with sweet things he was always pestering the cook to make, he was in a most vulnerable state when the charismatic Wyatt came calling. Father fell under the man's wicked spell and foolishly, nay idiotically, agreed to join him provided that, if Queen Mary failed to see reason, Jane would be restored to the throne as England's queen.

But the people loved Queen Mary more than they hated Spanish Philip. She made a rousing speech at the Guildhall that made the Londoners fall in love with her all over again. And when Wyatt came, the people closed their doors and hid from him. He was, in the end-though there were a few tense moments when we feared all would be lost-soundly defeated and taken in chains to the Tower.

After it was all over, rotting corpses hung from gibbets on every street corner, and dangled from the trees and London Bridge, which had more heads displayed on it than anyone could ever remember seeing before. London was an ugly, stinking place we longed to run away from, but we could not forsake our sister. Sometimes it seemed as though ugly, leering corpses had risen from their graves to take over the city and frighten the wits out of the living. Whenever we went out, travelling between whichever royal palace the court was in residence at and Suffolk House, where our lady-mother presided grandly over bountiful banquets and the gambling tables, Kate and I clutched pomander b.a.l.l.s stuffed with oranges and cloves to our noses, but it did little good; there was just no escaping the stench of death.

Father never even made it to London. Five miles outside of Coventry, his men deserted him. He fled alone, in hasty panic, lamenting that our lady-mother was not there to do his thinking for him. He made his way to Astley Park, one of his Suffolk estates. There, hunted like prey himself, pursued by packs of barking hounds, he panicked, and, as he ran across the Great Park, through the sticky, slurping mud that sucked off his boots and dense curtains of relentlessly pounding rain, cast off all his clothes and, running in a zigzag motion, flung them far and wide. He hurled himself to the ground and rolled in the mud, thoroughly coating himself, ”like a roast in spicy batter” he would say after, hoping to erase his scent and fool the dogs. Then he ran, clutching his beloved comfit box against his pounding heart, pausing only to try to paste some fallen leaves around his loins with mud for modesty's sake. As his pursuers gained on him, he sought a hiding place and endeavoured to cram his great, dough-soft body inside a hollow tree, in which he became hopelessly, and most uncomfortably, and indecently, stuck. ”It seemed like such a good idea at the time,” he would afterward say when attempting to justify his outlandish behaviour. As the hounds brayed, held back by their keeper, and the soldiers stood about laughing, woodsmen were summoned with saws and axes to carefully extricate our cold and miserable father from the tree's embrace. He emerged pale as a ghost, a broken and defeated man who realized he had been a fool to try to make a deal with the Devil, like the greedy man in that old story his tutor used to tell him as a lad who had sold his soul for a sack of gold only to discover upon opening it that it contained only chestnuts. Father was doomed. His mud-caked body covered once again with his cast-off clothes, he was led in chains back to London.

Jane, who had heard the confusion and panic in the city, the distant din and chaos of Wyatt's rebellion, but not known the cause of it as neither Master Partridge nor Sir John Bridges had the heart to tell her, sat at her window and watched Father's sad arrival. She turned to Master Partridge and demanded to know the reason for his arrest. At his honestly given answer, she sank down on her knees, hugging herself and weeping silently, all hope gone, knowing that our royal cousin would not dare let her live now. Mary could no longer afford to be merciful. The only freedom Jane would ever have would come when the headsman's axe set her soul free.

That same day, our royal cousin signed the death warrants for Jane, Guildford, and Father. Afterward she closeted herself alone, weeping, in her private chapel, with a miniature of Jane in one hand and one of Prince Philip in the other. She emerged hours later, puffy-faced and swollen-eyed, with a plan to send her own chaplain, the kindly Dr. f.e.c.kenham, to try to convert Jane. What a feather that would be for the cap of Catholicism-to convert one of their most fervent and fanatical opponents! And, with Mary soon to be married, and, G.o.d willing, a mother, and Jane no longer a heretic, but a good Catholic, it would soon be safe to release her into a life of quiet seclusion. Dr. f.e.c.kenham was well chosen; he was not a sour-faced, grim, and pedantic priest, but a smiling, jovial man, the very soul of kindness, and, having been imprisoned for his faith during King Edward's reign, he could sympathize and well understand Jane's predicament.

But Jane was ever wont to turn her back and stick up her nose at Cousin Mary's kindness.

”I am ready to receive death patiently and in whatever manner pleaseth the Queen,” she icily informed Dr. f.e.c.kenham.

Yet the scholar in her could not resist his challenge, one last opportunity to show off her much touted brilliance, and dispute with him on various theological points upon which their faiths diverged. To the tune of the hammers wielded by the workmen building her scaffold on Tower Green, they debated the number and nature of the sacraments and the miracle of the Ma.s.s, the mystical moment when the bread and wine became the body and blood of Jesus Christ. But Jane would not be moved, not even to save her life; to her, her soul was more important, and she would rather die for what she saw as the truth than live a lie.

”Well, my lady, I see we shall never agree,” f.e.c.kenham most dolefully concluded.

”Not unless G.o.d turn your heart,” Jane woefully answered, for in f.e.c.kenham she had seen that not all Catholic priests were the devils she imagined them. Here was a man, a kind, fatherly man, whose faith was as sincere, devout, and strong as her own, and even though he had failed to sway and change her, he would not abandon her, but would, as a friend, if she would allow it, stand by her to the very end. And for this great kindness, with tears in her eyes, Jane thanked him.

When f.e.c.kenham bade her farewell, leaving her to prepare to face death upon the morrow, she laid her hand upon his sleeve and spoke, regretfully, of Guildford. ”He is innocent and only obeyed his father in all things as all children are brought up to do.”

Then she turned her back on him and went and knelt beside her bed to pray.

Jane would never know the sacrifice Kate made to try to save her. Afterward, we would both try to forget, to pretend it never happened. When the Earl of Pembroke, her former father-in-law, cut off Wyatt's advance, Queen Mary rewarded him with a diamond ring from her own finger. He knelt at her feet and, with tears s.h.i.+mmering on his proud, patrician face, slipped it onto his smallest finger, the only one it would fit, and vowed he would wear and cherish it until the day he died.

Afterward, I saw the Spanish amba.s.sador draw him aside. Little and unnoticed, I heard their urgently exchanged words-the Spaniard's evil serpent's tongue urging Pembroke to persuade Queen Mary, who was wont to let kins.h.i.+p and sentimentality sway her, that Jane must die, she could not be allowed to live, it was too dangerous.

I made the mistake of telling Kate. That night, when the clocks struck midnight, Kate, her hair rippling down her back like a curtain of flame and clad in her sheerest lawn s.h.i.+ft edged with Spanish blackwork embroidery, silently covered herself in a cloak of black velvet, drew up the hood to hide her face in shadows, and went to him. I begged her not to go, but without a word, she gently but firmly pushed me away. She gave herself, she surrendered her virginity, that most precious gift a woman can give but once, to a man who had already hurt and wronged her, to try to save our sister's life. He was the most powerful and influential man at court, the richest earl in England; only his word stood a chance of outweighing the Spanish amba.s.sador's, and if he spoke up for Jane his words might be enough to tip the balance in her favour, to our royal cousin's natural tendency toward clemency. Pembroke promised, but he exacted a price-Kate must give herself to him; only then would he speak for Jane.

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