The Last Tudor

by Philippa Gregory

  In scraps and words, the gossip comes from London and goes on beyond us—all over the kingdom. Though Elizabeth the queen is apparently willing and prepared to marry for the sake of the country, though she has convinced the Holy Roman Emperor that she will take his brother, the council is divided and, using their uncertainty as her shield, Elizabeth hides her determination to live and die a single woman. Her cousin Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, says that there can be no danger to the kingdom but much benefit in marrying such a great prince, and his faith is no obstacle. The archduke has made such offers, and given such promises, that we can live with the queen’s husband as a papist who receives Mass in private. Not so, says the rest of the council: Francis Knollys, that staunch Protestant; Robert Dudley, that staunch Dudleyist. The Protestant lords Sir William Herbert, the Earl of Pembroke, and Sir William Parr, the Marquess of Northampton, join together to warn the queen that the country cannot tolerate a papist husband, will not drink the health of a half-papist baby in the cradle. Robert Dudley suggests that a foreign suitor is unattractive, too. Someone tells the queen that he is ugly, that all Habsburgs have terribly weak chins; does she want to marry a man who looks like a squirrel?

  Just before Christmas, Elizabeth sends to the Holy Roman Emperor and finally says that she cannot marry his brother the archduke Charles. Of course, the entire Habsburg family is hugely offended, and all of papist Christendom sees England as stubbornly and persistently heretical. It would have been better for us all if she had never gone through the charade of pretending that she was willing. Now they see us as perfidious. The French, who are persecuting every Protestant in their realm, are particularly bitter, and Elizabeth is without an heir once more, except for the deposed Queen Mary in her prison and my poor sister, in hers. We are back where we always seem to be—playing with the inheritance of the kingdom so that Elizabeth can remain free to love Robert Dudley.

  GREENWICH PALACE,

  SPRING 1568

  Sir Owen Hopton, Katherine’s new jailer, writes to William Cecil begging him to send a London physician into Suffolk. My sister, weaker every day from starving herself, is now desperately ill.

  Dr. Symondes has been sent to see the Lady, Cecil writes diplomatically, leaving it unclear who has taken the expensive decision to send the best doctor in London to my sister. But this is not his first visit and he is not optimistic. We should pray for her soul.

  “I have to go to her,” I say to my stepgrandmother. “You must write to Cecil and ask for permission for me to be at her side. He will not refuse. He will know she cannot die alone. I have to go.”

  She is pale with anxiety. “I know. I know. I will write to him, you can write yourself, too, and we will send it at once.”

  “Can I start without permission? Can I go now?”

  She clasps her hands together. “We dare not,” she says. “If the queen should hear that I let you leave my house without permission, you would be taken from me, and who knows where they would put you then?”

  “She’s dying!” I say flatly. “Am I not allowed to say good-bye to my dying sister? The last of my family?”

  She thrusts a sheet of paper at me. “Write,” she says tersely. “And we will leave as soon as we are allowed.”

  We don’t get permission. We get a bundle of papers forwarded to us by William Cecil’s office. On the top he has written a note in a steady hand. I am afraid that even if you had set out at once, you would have been too late. Lady Katherine is dead.

  I look at my stepgrandmother as if I cannot believe that such news should be told me in such brevity. Not one word of sympathy, not one word to recognize the tragedy of the loss of a young woman, aged only twenty-seven. My sister. My beautiful, funny, loving, royal sister.

  My lady grandmother unties the ribbon around the papers and says: “It is an account of her last hours. God bless her, the pretty child. Shall I read it to you?”

  I climb on to the window seat of her privy chamber. “Please do,” I say dully. I wonder that I don’t cry, and then I realize that I have spent my life in the shadow of the scaffold. I never expected any of us to survive Tudor rule. My lady grandmother smooths the paper on her knee and clears her throat. “It says that she prepared to die as the household begged her to fight for her life. She wasn’t alone, Mary—Lady Hopton was with her and told her that with God’s favor she would live. But she said it was not God’s will that she should live any longer, and that His will should be done and not hers.”

  She glances at me, to see if I am finding this unbearable. I know that I look calm; I feel nothing but an icy despair.

  “Early in the morning, just as it was getting light, she sent for Sir Owen Hopton and asked him to take some messages for her. She begged the queen to forgive her for marrying without permission, she said, Be good unto my children and not impute my fault to them.” My stepgrandmother glances up at me again. I nod for her to go on.

  “She asked for the queen to be good to Lord Hertford, her husband, and said: I know this my death will be heavy news for him. She asked for him to be freed, and sent him her betrothal ring, a pointed diamond, and a wedding ring with five links.”

  “I remember it,” I interrupt. “She showed it to me. She always kept it with her.”

  “She has given it back to him and a mourning ring as well.” My lady stepgrandmother’s voice is choked. “Poor girl. Poor sweet lovely girl. What a tragedy! It says here that she prayed him to be—even as I have been unto him a true and faithful wife, that he will be a loving and natural father to my children. It says here that she commissioned the mourning ring with her portrait months ago—she must have known she was dying. She had it engraved for him.”

  I am hunched up now, on the seat, my face to my knees, crouched like a hurt child, my hands over my eyes. I would almost put them over my ears so I cannot hear my sister’s last loving words. I feel as if I am sinking down into the deeps of loss. “What does it say?” I ask. “What does the ring say?”

  “While I lived—yours.”

  “Is that all?” I ask. I think I must have arrived at the very ocean bed of sorrow. It is as if the deeps have closed over my own head.

  “It says that they rang the bells for her and the villagers prayed for her recovery.”

  “Did she say anything for me?”

  “She said: Farewell, Good Sister.”

  I hear the words that Jane said to Katherine, that Katherine now says to me. But I have no one to bless. Now that Katherine has gone there is no sister for me. I am an orphan alone.

  “Then she said, Lord Jesus receive my spirit, and she closed her eyes with her own hands and she left us.”

  “I don’t know how to bear this,” I say quietly. I push myself to the edge of the seat and I drop down to the floor. “I really don’t know how to bear it.”

  My lady grandmother takes my hands but does not crush me in her arms. She knows that the grief I feel is far, far beyond the reach of any easy comfort. “The Lord gave, and the Lord hath taken away; the Lord hath done His pleasure, now blessed be the name of the Lord,” she tells me.

  Of course, our cousin the queen gives Katherine a magnificent funeral. How she does love a funeral, especially family! Katherine is buried in the village church at Yoxford, far from her home, far from the resting place of her mother, far from her husband’s family chapel; but Elizabeth orders the court into mourning and manages to paint into an expression of grief on her false face. Seventy-seven official mourners attend from court, along with a herald and court servants; Katherine’s arms are displayed in the chapel on banners, pennons, and banderoles. Everything that can exalt a Tudor princess is done for her. Katherine in death is recognized and honored, as in life she was persecuted and ignored.

  Elizabeth does not allow me to attend. Of course not. She only loves her heirs when they predecease her. The last thing she wants is someone pointing out that if Katherine was a Tudor princess then her little sister is one too—and the last of the line. The last thing she wants
is a live cousin, especially when she is ostentatiously mourning a conveniently dead one. My stepgrandmother is allowed to say the farewell to Katherine in death that she was forbidden in life, and she goes and comes back very somber and says that it is a tragedy of her life that she has to bury children.

  I stay in my room in a fury of grief. I can hardly breathe from grief at the loss of my sister and my hatred for the queen. I hardly eat: the household has to persuade me to take something once a day at least. I think it would matter not at all if I were to die for I could not say good-bye to my sister nor can I care for her children. I cannot be with my husband nor care for his children. Elizabeth has made me as lonely as she is, an only child as she is, an orphan as she is. I think her heart must be as small as mine, her imagination stunted to the age when her mother died and nobody knew who she was. I may be small but I am not—as she is—deathly petty.

  I think I will not even get out of bed until my lady stepgrandmother taps on my door and says: “We have a visitor. Will you not come out to my presence chamber, and see who has come to see you?”

  “Who?” I ask sulkily, not stirring from the pillow.

  She puts her head around the door with a little smile, the first I have seen for a month. “Sir Owen Hopton, Katherine’s keeper, has come to see you. He took Katherine’s boy Thomas Seymour to join his brother and grandmother at Hanworth. He took her wedding rings and messages to Ned Seymour. And now he has come to see you.”

  I throw back the covers and jump down from the bed. My maid comes in behind my grandmother with my little gown and sleeves and hood. “Ask him to wait, I am coming,” I say.

  My lady grandmother leaves me to hurry into my clothes and follow her into her presence chamber. A tall weary man is standing before her, his cap in one hand and a wineglass in another. On the floor near the door is a box and a tall muffled cage. He puts down the wine and the cap and bows as I come in, his hand on his heart.

  “Lady Mary,” he says. “It is an honor.”

  I recoil as he kneels to me as if I were a queen. “Please get up,” I say.

  “I am so sorry for the news I bring,” he says, getting to his feet but stooping so that he can see my face. “I learned to love and revere your sister in the short time that my house was blessed with her presence. Both my wife and I were very grieved at her death. We would have done anything for her. Anything.”

  I see that I have to put my own grief aside to answer him. The death of a princess is not the same as a private loss. “I understand,” I say. “I know you could have done nothing to save her.”

  “We did everything we could,” he says. “We made sure that she could eat. She had no appetite but we served her from our own kitchens, though there was no money provided for her delicacies.”

  The thought of Elizabeth’s vindictive penny-pinching sets my teeth on edge but I smile up at him. “I am very sure that she found a kind final home with you,” I say. “And if I should ever come to happier times myself, I will not forget that you were kind to my sister.”

  He shakes his head. “No, I seek no reward,” he says. “I didn’t come for thanks. To know her was to know a great lady. It was a privilege.”

  It is a bitter joke to think what Katherine would make of her ascent to greatness. There is no one but her who would share the sour wit with me. I can only nod.

  “I have brought you some of her things,” he says. “Her husband, the Earl of Hertford, said that I should bring you some of her books, a Bible and some grammars. The earl said you should have the Italian grammar that was dedicated by the author himself to your oldest sister, Lady Jane Grey.”

  “Thank you,” I say.

  “And I brought you this,” he says a little more shyly. I see my lady stepgrandmother’s gaze go to the cage at the back of the room.

  “Not the monkey!” she says.

  For the first time in weeks I feel that I could laugh, however inappropriate the occasion. While everyone will remember the tragedy of my sister, I will also remember her silliness and her charm. That her executor should make his sorrowful way around England with a box of books and a caged pet is so typical of the young woman, who was such a mixture of grand passion and funny whims.

  “What do you have for me?”

  “It is the monkey,” he says, with one eye on my lady stepgrandmother, who audibly says: “Absolutely not!”

  “We really can’t keep it ourselves, and the Duchess of Somerset said that she would not have it at Hanworth.”

  “And I won’t have it here!” my grandmother insists.

  He pulls the cover off the cage and there is Mr. Nozzle, sad-faced as always, seated in a corner, like a little pagan god, shivering at the cold welcome. I swear that when he sees me he recognizes me and comes hopefully to the door, making a little gesture with his black-tipped fingers as if to turn a key.

  “There now, he knows you. He hasn’t wanted to come out since his mistress died,” Sir Owen says encouragingly. “He’s been pining for her like a Christian.”

  “Nonsense,” comes from my stepgrandmother’s great chair, but she does not forbid me opening the cage and Mr. Nozzle—an older and I think sadder Mr. Nozzle—comes out with a bound and jumps into my arms.

  “I will keep him if I may?” I turn to her.

  “You girls!” she says, as if Jane and Katherine and I are still children together, begging for unsuitable pets.

  “Please!” I say, and I hear Katherine’s voice in mine. “Please, he will be no trouble, I promise.” I remember a sunny day in Jane’s bedroom and Katherine refusing to put him out of the door, and lying about his lice.

  “Well, keep him,” she says indulgently. “But he is not to tear things, or make a mess in my rooms.”

  “I will keep him clean and tidy,” I promise her. I can feel him take tight hold of my thumb in his little hand, as if we are shaking on an agreement. “She did love him so very much.”

  “She had a loving heart,” Sir Owen remarks. “She had a very loving heart.”

  Someone has trimmed his little jacket with black ribbon so he is in mourning for the young woman who loved him. His sorrowful eyes look at me, and I tuck him into the crook of my arm.

  “What of her cat and dog?”

  His downcast face droops farther. “The cat is old now, and lives in our stable yard. They’re not loyal, you know. I didn’t think to catch him and bring him.”

  “No,” my stepgrandmother says hastily. “Indeed no. We don’t need another cat.”

  “And the little pug, Jo . . .” he hesitates.

  “You’ve never brought her, too?”

  “Alas, I couldn’t,” he says.

  “Why?” I ask, but I think I know.

  “She was at the bed all through Lady Katherine’s last days. She never left her side, she never ate. It was a little miracle. Her ladyship said that she should have her meat put down on the floor of her bedchamber. She noticed her little dog; she did not forget her, even while she was preparing herself for God.”

  “Go on,” I say.

  “She slept on the foot of her bed, and when her ladyship closed her eyes with her own hand, she made a little noise, like a whimper, and laid her head down on her ladyship’s feet.”

  My stepgrandmother clears her throat, as if she cannot bear this mawkish scene.

  “Truly?” I ask.

  “Truly,” Sir Owen says. “We had to take the body, you understand, and embalm it and seal it in lead. It was all done as a princess should be buried, you know.”

  I know. Who should know better than me?

  “The little dog followed the body like the first of mourners, and we were all too tender to push her away, to be honest with you. We didn’t mean any disrespect, not to the Lady Katherine, God knows. But she always let her little dog run after her everywhere, and so we let her follow, even though her mistress was gone.

  “On the day of the funeral, there was a beautiful hearse, very dignified, covered with black and cloth of gold, as is fi
tting, and the herald went before and seventy-seven mourners from the court came behind, and my household and many many local people, and gentry from far afield. Her ladyship was there, too; everything was done beautifully.” He bows to my stepgrandmother. “Everyone followed the hearse to the chapel, and the little dog followed, too, though nobody noticed her at the time, what with the banners and the herald and the honor from the court and everything. I wouldn’t have allowed it, if I had noticed, but, to tell you the truth, I was as grieved as if she had been my own daughter—not to be disrespectful—I never forgot her estate. But she was the most beautiful lady I have ever served. I don’t expect to see her like again.”

  “Yes, yes,” my stepgrandmother says.

  “She was laid to rest in the chapel and a handsome stone put on her grave, and the banners and the pennants all displayed around, and then everyone went home after they had said their prayers and blessed her. Nobody prayed for her soul,” he specifies, one eye on my staunchly Protestant kinswoman. “We all know there’s no purgatory now. But we all prayed that she should be in heaven and free from pain, and then we all went home.

  “But the little dog didn’t come home with us. She stayed in the chapel on her own, funny little thing. And nobody, not even the stable lad who took such a fancy to her, could get her away. We offered her a bit of bread to come, and even meat. She wouldn’t eat anything. We tied a bit of string round her neck and pulled her away, but she slipped her collar and went back to the chapel to sleep on the tombstone, so we let her. She closed her eyes and she put her nose under her paw as if she was grieving. And in the morning, poor little thing, she was still and cold, as if she chose not to live without her mistress.”