The Last Tudor

by Philippa Gregory

  My stepgrandmother sends me one letter with a Christmas gift of a gold cup and tells me the news. She writes carefully, so that no spy can claim that she is conspiring with me.

  I have happy news of Ned Seymour, the Earl of Hertford, she writes, avoiding reiterating any claim that he is my brother-in-law. He has been released from imprisonment and is able to live freely at his home in Wiltshire, Wulf Hall. His sons, Teddy and Thomas, remain with their grandmother at Hanworth, but they can write to their father, and they may write and receive letters from you. I know this will give you great joy.

  I pause in my reading and think of my little nephews, Katherine’s sons, and of their father still parted from them, but able at least to write to each other. Truly, Elizabeth has become a monstrously powerful queen. We are all placed only where she will allow us to be.

  My stepgrandmother makes it clear that the inquiry that was to examine the treason of Mary Queen of Scots’ wicked half brother has been turned around completely. Lord Moray has supplied the inquiry with a casket of letters that are said to prove that the queen was her husband’s murderer, and Bothwell’s adulterous lover. It is not the treasonous half brother but the queen herself who is on trial—as Elizabeth swore she would never be.

  The letters do not all appear to be in her true handwriting, my stepgrandmother tactfully explains. So some people doubt they are hers.

  I am very sure of this. I imagine that William Cecil’s spies are cutting and copying letters like good children bent over their schoolbooks in a frenzy of forgery. But in any case, Elizabeth lacks the courage to come to a definite conclusion and we enter the new year with the Scots queen and me in confinement in our separate prisons, me at Grimsthorpe, she at Bolton Castle, dressed in her royal finery, which she insisted was sent on from Lochleven, both of us hoping for our freedom with the spring.

  She does more than hope: she writes to Philip II of Spain, claiming that she is being held, without cause, by Elizabeth. This may gain her freedom, but will certainly win her the absolute enmity of William Cecil and all Protestants. Unlike her, I have no one to write to. My only royal kinswoman is my only enemy: Elizabeth.

  GRIMSTHORPE CASTLE,

  LINCOLNSHIRE, SPRING 1569

  I can hardly believe that the day has come, but it is spring, the land is unlocked from winter, the streams are running alongside the lane, and both my imprisoned cousin Mary Queen of Scots and I are to be freed. The season that has always called to me in the singing birds is the season that will see me walk free. Queen Mary is to return to Scotland and take up her throne. The inquiry against her has collapsed, and Elizabeth knows she cannot keep her royal cousin locked up with no good reason. She is not even going to keep me locked up, and I don’t have Philip II and the Catholic kings advocating for me. It is as if Elizabeth has looked into the horror that she was making, seen the road she was walking. If she proved the case against her cousin Mary, she would have had to execute her. If she continued to imprison me indefinitely, what is it but a death sentence? Changeable, fearful, Elizabeth turns from persecuting her heirs to setting us free in the hope that Mary in Edinburgh and I far away will trouble her less than when she holds us captive.

  “You are to go to Sir Thomas Gresham,” my stepgrandmother says. “I shall miss you, my dear, but I shall be glad to know that you are staying in London, and when there is next a vacancy at court, you will become a lady-in-waiting. You will return to your former place.”

  “She thinks that I will return to serve her?” I ask incredulously.

  My stepgrandmother laughs. “You will. It is the best way to demonstrate that you are no danger to her, you are no rival. Remember her own sister imprisoned her and then called her to court. She thinks she can do the same with you.”

  “But I will be free?”

  “You will be free.”

  I take her hands. “I will never forget that you took me in,” I tell her.

  “That was nothing,” she says wryly. “Don’t forget that I took the damned monkey, too.”

  GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

  LONDON, SUMMER 1569

  I ride to London through the richest lands of England. On either side of the track the hayfields have been freshly mown, and I can smell the dizzying smell of green hay. On the hills beyond the fields the sheep are flocking with their fat lambs under the careless supervision of the shepherd boys. In the water meadows beside the river the cows are grazing on the lush grass, and when we ride past them in the evening we see the girls going out with their pails on yokes, carrying their milking stools.

  I am so happy to be on horseback that I don’t want the journey to end, but before long we go through the Bishopsgate and there is the beautiful large house built by Sir Thomas, using the fortune he has earned by advising my family, the Tudors, how to do business. It was Sir Thomas who warned the queen that she must recall the bad currency and issue good, it was Sir Thomas who lived at Antwerp and guarded the interests of the English merchants against our greatest trading partner, and it was Sir Thomas who advised the building of a great hall in London where merchants could meet and exchange news, confirm the licenses and monopolies, and buy into each other’s companies.

  We draw up outside his handsome London house, almost a palace in size, and his servants in his livery throw open the double doors and I walk in. There is no one there to greet me but the steward of his household, who bows to me and offers to show me to my rooms.

  “Where is Sir Thomas?” I ask, stripping off my riding gloves and handing them to my lady-in-waiting. “And Lady Gresham?”

  “Sir Thomas is ill, he has taken to his chamber, and Lady Gresham has gone out,” he says, clearly embarrassed at their neglect of their duty and their lack of respect to me.

  “Then you had better take me to my rooms and tell Lady Gresham that she may attend on me as soon as she returns,” I say sharply.

  I follow him up the great staircase and he leads me past several big double doors to a single door, set in the corner of the building. He opens it. I go in. It is not a box as I endured at Chequers, but it is not a great handsome room to match the imposing house. It is a privy chamber without a presence chamber, and it is clear that I am not to live here as a princess with my own little court.

  Beyond it is a bedroom with a good-sized bed and an oriel window over the noisy street below so that I can watch like a nosy merchant’s wife and see Sir Thomas’s tradesmen coming and going, and the clerks going into their counting houses.

  “We were told it would not be for long,” the steward says apologetically. “We were told that you are going to court.”

  “I believe so, and this will do for the time being, if you have nothing better,” I say coolly. “Please show my lady-in-waiting and my maids to their rooms. And you may bring some wine and water and something to eat. You may serve it in the chamber outside, my privy chamber.”

  He bows himself out and I look around me. It is pleasant enough—God knows, it is a thousand times better than the Tower—and it is good enough until I get back to court.

  The happiest, best thing that might happen to me has occurred: a great good in itself, and a harbinger of happiness to come. I cannot even think of it without wanting to drop to my knees and thank God for mercy. My husband, my beloved husband Thomas Keyes, has survived the cold and the hunger and the cramped quarters of the worst prison in England, and finally been released. I get the news in a note from him, himself, the first I have received since we were parted with one kiss, with our farewell kiss. This is the first note that he has ever written me. I know that he is no great scholar and it is not easy for him to express himself in writing, so I treasure the scrap of paper and the careful script. This is better than a poem, better than a ballad, these are the true words of an honest man, my honest man.

  I am to go to Sandgate Castle in my home county of Kent where I was once captain so I know it is a snug billet and I am glad with all my heart to be freed. I pray for you and for your freedom daily and that you
will wish to come to me, who loves you as much as I did the day I first saw you when you were a little poppet not ten years old on a horse too big for you. Come when you can—I will be waiting for you. For I am and will always be your loving and constant husband TK

  I cannot bring myself to burn this, though I have burned every other letter I have received. I put it in the French Bible that belonged to Katherine, where Ned Hertford wrote the birth dates of his sons, my nephews, in the flyleaf. I slide it between the pages and I look at it every day.

  My first act is to write to my stepgrandmother at court and ask her to speak to the queen about when I am to wait on her.

  I don’t complain of my rooms but I was happier with you. And besides, Sir Thomas is half blind from studying his profit-and-loss ledgers, and lame from an old injury, and his wife is quite hateful. It’s not a cheerful household. I don’t want to stay here any longer than I have to. Clearly, they don’t want me. They have no children of their own and the place is as tenderhearted as the mint where he spends most of his time.

  I may not like my lodgings but at least they are a change of scene and a sign that I am on my way back to freedom. In this I am luckier than Mary Queen of Scots, who is not on her way to Scotland after all—her half brother has reneged on his promise to accept her return and the Protestant lords don’t trust her either. She will stay on with my aunt Bess at Wingfield Manor until her return can be agreed. She is in a most beautiful house and she will be richly served, but I don’t envy her. Like me, she is in a halfway house, within sight of freedom but, somehow, not quite free. We both have to wait on the rise of Elizabeth’s compassion, and that is rarely in full flood tide.

  GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

  LONDON, SUMMER 1569

  The court is on progress when the most extraordinary news reaches us in London. It seems that our cousin Mary Queen of Scots has outwitted her host, my aunt Bess, and offended, just as Katherine offended, just as I offended. Absurdly, though married to the missing Earl of Bothwell, she has promised herself in marriage and—if that were not dreadful enough for the spinster queen—her choice has fallen on a great English nobleman. Everyone says that she is betrothed to marry Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk—Elizabeth’s kinsman from the Boleyn side—and he has fled from Elizabeth’s court and nobody knows where he has gone.

  Sir Thomas dashes out of his house first thing in the morning and does not come back till midnight. Nothing is more hateful to merchants than uncertainty, and if Elizabeth has to send an army against her mother’s own family, the Howards, then she will have to fight most of Norfolk, and it is impossible to predict how it will end. It will be the Cousins’ Wars all over again. It will be a war as bad as those in France—a war of religion. It will be two queens fighting over the future of England. It will be a disaster for my country and for my sisters’ throne.

  Elizabeth abandons her summertime progress and rushes the whole court to Windsor Castle to prepare for a siege. She has spent her life in terror, waiting for this one event; and now she has brought it on herself. She has always feared that her heir would marry a mighty subject and together they would turn on her, and now she thinks that Thomas Howard will raise the whole of the east of the country against the court, and the Northern lords will call out their hardened forces to rescue the Queen of Scots. Both regions are known papist; neither region loves the Tudors.

  I can hear the bands of citizens and apprentice boys training to defend London. And I swing my window open to look out and see them parading up and down with broom handles over their shoulders in place of pikes.

  They say that the Duke of Norfolk will march on Windsor, they say that the Northern lords will march on my aunt Bess’s house and take her guest from her by force. Aunt Bess and her husband, the Earl of Shrewsbury, who were so proud of hosting a queen, have to bundle her from Wingfield Manor to Tutbury Castle and prepare the place for a siege. England is breaking into two camps again—as it did before—and Elizabeth’s long game of playing one religion against another, one ally against another, one cousin against another, has collapsed into panic.

  The Northern lords are riding under a banner that shows the five wounds of Christ. They are making this a holy war and every papist in England will support them. This is a new Pilgrimage of Grace like the one that nearly overthrew the old king Henry VIII, and the treasonous Northern parishes are ringing the bells backwards in every church to signify that they are rising for the old religion and the young Scots queen.

  My poor aunt Bess! I have news of her from my host, Sir Thomas, who speaks to me briefly as he meets me, walking through the great hall to go into the garden. He tells me that she is fleeing south, riding hard with a little force, trying to get away from the advancing Northern army, which is sweeping down through England. Aunt Bess is ordered to get Queen Mary behind the walls of Coventry Castle before the Northern lords capture her and her household and massacre them all. Elizabeth has mustered an army from among the London merchants and apprentice boys, Sir Thomas has sent his own men and they are marching north, but they will be able to do nothing if every village is against them and every church is holding a Mass and declaring itself for the freedom of Mary Queen of Scots. They are almost certain to arrive too late. Elizabeth’s Council of the North is pinned down in York, surrounded by the forces of the Northern lords. And still there is no news of the army from Norfolk and Thomas Howard at the head of it who could be marching to Coventry to save his bride or marching on London to claim her throne.

  GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

  LONDON, WINTER 1569

  Sir Thomas tells me that there is a Spanish armada armed and waiting to sail from the Spanish Netherlands, coming to reinforce the army of the North and release Mary Queen of Scots. He says that it will be possible to make peace with the Spanish—they will probably settle for the return of Queen Mary to her Scots throne, and the declaration of her as Elizabeth’s heir—but the Northern lords may not settle so easily.

  “You think that the Duke of Norfolk and the Spanish and the Northern lords can be made to betray each other?” I ask.

  He makes a face, a moneylender’s, gold merchant’s face of judging one risk against another. “Betrayal is always possible,” is all he says. “It’s all we’ve got left.”

  Elizabeth is lucky, Elizabeth always was lucky, and now fortune smiles on her again. Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, is the first to break—he submits to her authority. He does not raise an army but he surrenders to her, and for his reward she arrests him and sends him to the Tower. The Spanish don’t sail because they doubt the Northern army will march with them; the Northern army give up and go back to their own cold hills because without the Spanish they dare not challenge Elizabeth; and Elizabeth, who did nothing but hide behind the stout walls of Windsor Castle, comes triumphantly to London and proclaims herself the God-given victor.

  GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

  LONDON, SPRING 1570

  My poor aunt Bess has lost her fourth husband, everyone says. But not this time to death, leaving her a handsome inheritance: she has lost her earl to love, to scandalous adulterous love, for everyone says that he is in love with my cousin Mary Queen of Scots and that is why he failed to guard her, or warn of the uprising.

  There is enough in this to make Elizabeth hate him for admiring Mary, and to hate poor Aunt Bess—blaming her for the irresistible attraction of the beautiful queen. Bess falls from royal favor, which she has worked all her life to win. Even worse for Aunt Bess, she and her unhappy husband cannot live in her lovely house (I remember her writing to me of her many houses) because they have to keep the Scots queen under close guard and she is to be locked up in the dismal and damp Tutbury Castle. Mary is miserably imprisoned, and Aunt Bess is imprisoned with her, just as I am imprisoned in the handsome house at Bishopsgate and my unwilling hosts are imprisoned with me.

  But there is no predicting anything. My host, Sir Thomas, tells me that changeable times are bad for the value of currency and no
w he does not know what a shilling is worth against a sou. When I ask him what has happened now, he tells me that Lord Moray—the queen’s faithless half brother and Regent of Scotland—has been shot dead and now the Scots lords are calling for the return of the Queen of Scots. Last summer they would not have her when Elizabeth was going to return her, now they want her back but Elizabeth has learned to fear her. Instead of the rightful queen, Elizabeth sends my cousin Margaret Douglas’s husband, the Earl of Lennox, to be regent.

  Even I can see this is unlikely to be a popular choice; is he really going to bring peace to a divided country? Is he going to greet his hated daughter-in-law when she returns to her kingdom? Is he going to do anything but pursue the Scots lords that he accuses of murdering his son and so start their battles all over again?

  GRESHAM HOUSE, BISHOPSGATE,

  LONDON, SUMMER 1570

  I hold in my hands that rare and precious thing, a letter from my husband, Thomas. It has come to me in my clean linen, so someone has bribed a laundress to get this one page to me. It is good paper—he must have gone to the clerks at Sandgate Castle and bought a sheet—and he writes a clear steady hand, not a scholarly style, but one that could be easily read by anyone, good for sending a brief order to a gatekeeper beyond hailing distance.

  My love, I am far beyond hailing distance. But I hear you. God knows I will always, always listen for you.