“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 prick 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 assert 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 ax 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 shiver, 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 favorite 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 passed 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 ax heads were turned to point toward Jane and Guildford, and the silent masses fell back with pitying and horrified gasps, some even daring to softly mutter “God 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 repetition 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 gratitude instead of rudeness and hostility. Every time I looked back and remembered Jane’s behavior 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 God!” and a golden Spanish prince, handsome, lusty, 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 passionate 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 passion, to ensure the succession. But no one would be deceived. They would only see a lust-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 nobles 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 shining armor 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 trimming 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 passing 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 God 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 reveled 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 bi
ting 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 cushions 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 snatches 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 passed. 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 smoldering passion. And when she heard rumors—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 ambassador’s assurances that this was naught but false and malicious gossip could make her dry her eyes and smile again.
Senor Renard was urgently endeavoring 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 Whore” 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 rivaled 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 reveling in her favor, 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, traveling 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 balls 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 endeavored 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 behavior. 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 ax 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 swo
llen-eyed, with a plan to send her own chaplain, the kindly Dr. Feckenham, 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, God 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. Feckenham 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. Feckenham.
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 Mass, 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,” Feckenham most dolefully concluded.
“Not unless God turn your heart,” Jane woefully answered, for in Feckenham 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.
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