Her Highness, the Traitor

by Susan Higginbotham

  He reached up and began tearing down the canopy of state under which Jane was dining, sobbing as the fine cloth came tumbling to the ground. Jane watched openmouthed as the Duchess of Suffolk began to weep. “So we are—I am—no longer queen?”

  “Yes, lass. It’s all over.” He swallowed. “The council has given orders. Your mother and I are to go to Suffolk Place and remain there until further notice—after I perform one duty. You are to stay in the Tower and await the pleasure of Queen Mary. None of us knows what that will be. The Earl of Arundel and my lord Paget are riding to Her Majesty at Framingham tonight.”

  “What of John?” I asked, breaking the silence that fell over the room. “What of my husband and his army? Has the council forgotten him?”

  “No, they have not. As we speak, the council is preparing a letter for the Duke of Northumberland, who is said to be at Cambridge, informing him that he must disband his forces and instructing him to await the queen’s orders. Signing it is the duty of which I spoke.”

  “We must warn John,” I said, pulling myself to my feet. “Come, Guildford! We cannot just let him wait to be captured.”

  “My lady—”

  I ignored Suffolk and ran out of the chamber, followed by Guildford. With the crowd still celebrating outside, leaving the Tower on foot or on horseback would be neither easy nor wise, but if I could go by water to one of our houses, I could take horse to Cambridge. It was a journey of over sixty miles, but I was a country girl by birth, who had learned to ride before I learned my letters, and I could cover that distance quickly if called upon. Or I could send one of our men ahead of me. Or—

  “Your Grace, you cannot pass.”

  I blinked at the large guard who was blocking my path to the water gate. “What do you mean? Let me through!”

  “I’m sorry, Your Grace. I can’t. Orders of the council.” Seeing my uncomprehending look, he added, “You are Queen Mary’s prisoner now.”

  32

  Frances Grey

  July 19, 1553

  Harry watched wearily as the Duchess of Northumberland and Guildford raced out of the hall where my daughter and I had been dining with her ladies. “She’ll not get far,” he said. “The guard has orders to take her into custody. Guildford, too.”

  “Why the Duchess of Northumberland?”

  “She can be a hostage if the duke tries to flee the country or starts trouble down at Cambridge. I wouldn’t give two pence to be in his shoes at the moment. He’s a dead man, if you ask me.”

  My food, served just moments before Harry had walked through the door, sat untouched in front of me. Now that the worst had happened, I found myself reacting with a strange numbness, almost as if I’d foreseen this happening all along. For horrid as this turn of events was, it was not entirely unexpected. The signs had been there: the coolness that had greeted Jane’s proclamation, the sullen silence of the crowd who had watched Northumberland leave the city with his army. Above all, there had been two more things: the people hated Northumberland, and they had loved Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon. No daughter of hers could ever be a bastard in their eyes.

  How blind King Edward had been not to see that—but then again, he was a dying boy. Northumberland, nearly fifty, had no such excuse for not anticipating the people’s reaction. It was he, I realized as my numbness began to give way to anger, who had brought this catastrophe upon England and upon our family. It was he, then, who should have to face the consequences. Not my daughter.

  The door opened, and Lady Anne Throckmorton, who had been serving in Jane’s stead as godmother at a christening near the Tower, started to kneel to Jane, then saw the cloth of estate lying waste on the floor. “Then it’s true what I heard?”

  “Yes,” Jane said.

  “Ah,” said Lady Throckmorton, “a sudden change.” She sat down and looked about. “Do you think they’ll be bringing us anything more to eat?”

  I pushed my plate toward her. “Here.”

  It soon became clear no more dinner courses were going to be brought to us that evening; the rhythms of royal life had ceased entirely. Even the musicians who normally played for us at dinner—most of them men who had served King Edward—were packing up their instruments and wandering off.

  Then two men from the Tower garrison arrived and walked over to Harry. After conferring in low tones, they approached Jane. The shorter of the two cleared his throat and said, “My lady, the council has ordered that you be confined until further notice.”

  “Yes, that is what Father told me.”

  “You may take two ladies of your choosing with you, and three manservants will be appointed to wait on you.” He looked around. “The other ladies are free to leave, but I would advise not doing so until the morning. The crowd is boisterous.”

  “I’ll go with you, my lady,” said Elizabeth Tilney, Jane’s companion since childhood. Ursula Ellen, a widow who had served Jane for the past several years, echoed, “Please, my lady, allow me to serve you also.”

  “Then it is settled,” Jane said. “Where do we stay?”

  “The second floor of Master Partridge’s house, my lady, overlooking the Green. It is comfortable and airy, and you will have ample space.”

  “Then let us go there now,” Jane said. “I am tired.”

  Jane took leave of Harry, after which he disappeared from the room—going off, I suspected, to weep in private. I then took my daughter in my arms, “When I can, I will beg Queen Mary to show mercy to you,” I said in a low voice. “She and I were friendly in the past, and I hope that I can appeal to that friendship. In the meantime, the best thing you can do is to write to her, explaining what has happened. Do not denigrate her religion, whatever you do. Write as her young and penitent cousin. And it would do no harm to let her know your fears about poisoning.”

  “But I have no proof.”

  “That should not stop you from telling the queen about your suspicions. Present them as such, and let her decide.”

  Jane nodded.

  I was on the verge of breaking into tears. How could I leave my daughter a prisoner in the Tower? But I could do more for her outside the Tower than inside it, I knew. Besides, Mary would be merciful to her sixteen-year-old cousin. She knew where the blame should lie, and if perchance she did not, I would make sure she did.

  33

  Jane Dudley

  July 19, 1553, to July 28, 1553

  I am not a good prisoner; I found that out in the few days I spent in the Tower. I had been allowed to take all of the normal accoutrements of my life—my needlework, my prayer book, even a lute—with me, but all of these things sat unused in a corner, because I could not bend my mind to occupy myself with any mundane tasks. Instead, I paced up and down the room, then sat staring out of my window, and then when I tired of that, paced again.

  Guildford was lodged in the Bell Tower; Jane, in the home of Nathaniel Partridge, one of the Tower jailers. I was in an almost identical house next to hers. My daughters and Jerome—all crying in terror, even Mary—had been taken to stay with Bridget, a widowed half sister of John.

  My jailers had not been communicative at first, but an enameled ring had bought me the information that on July 20, John, hearing that the council had deserted Jane’s cause—and him—had walked to the marketplace at Cambridge and proclaimed Mary queen, even smiling and tossing his cap in the air as the occasion required. Then the Earl of Arundel—the whoreson who had said a tearful good-bye to him a week before—had come on Queen Mary’s orders to arrest him. My husband had fallen on his knees and begged Arundel to show him mercy, reminding him he had acted in everything with the consent of the council.

  “My lord, you should have sought for mercy sooner,” the earl had replied.

  And now my husband was on his way to the Tower. He would get here before Queen Mary, I supposed; she was coming from F
ramingham, where she had mustered her troops. Mary was proceeding to London in majestic slowness, allowing people to flock from everywhere to join her entourage as it approached the capital. John, and the rest of us, would have to wait until she arrived to learn our fates.

  There were two groups of prisoners at the Tower: the old ones and the new. Young Edward Courtenay, then only a lad of twelve, had been put here in 1538 by King Henry, who had been convinced at the time the boy’s family was conspiring against him. Though no one had seen fit to let him out, his mother had been allowed to send in tutors for him, so he had grown into a well-educated young man, but one with no companions of his own age or degree. Recently he had found a new friend in Stephen Gardiner, the Bishop of Winchester, imprisoned in King Edward’s time for his refusal to support the king’s religious changes. With Mary’s arrival impending, they were considered almost as good as free, so I often saw them walking around Tower Green, talking earnestly, their guards at a respectful distance. The Duchess of Somerset, of course, was still here, with her mother to keep her company. Her steward, Francis Newdigate, frequently stopped by, bringing her news of her children and, the guards joked, trying to fill the duke’s shoes. Bringing up the quartet of important prisoners was Thomas Howard, the old Duke of Norfolk, who would have been executed had not King Henry died on the very day he was set to go to the scaffold. He was about eighty and was said to have survived this long purely out of spite. Norfolk, too, had been allowed great freedom after Mary’s triumph and could often be seen sitting in the garden, smiling as if mentally counting all those he had outlived.

  The rest of us—the new arrivals—had no such privileges, only our windows out of which to stare. I had not seen Guildford since he and I had been taken into custody, though I had spotted Lady Jane walking to her new lodgings under guard. Since then, I had watched as a servant of the Duchess of Suffolk bore a teetering stack of books to Partridge’s lodgings. There was no doubt as to how the lady Jane was passing her time.

  Around three o’clock on July 25—I had been allowed to keep the dial that hung from my girdle—I heard a rumbling sound mingled with shouts, too far away for me to understand what was being said. Then, as the sound grew louder, I made out the word “Traitor!”

  I ran down the winding stairs as fast as I dared and banged on my jailor’s door. He opened it with a sigh. “What is it?”

  “The prisoners are coming? Is that what I hear outside?”

  “Yes.” The jailor sighed again. “Where they’re going to put them all is anyone’s guess.”

  “Will you let me talk to my husband? Just for a short while?”

  “Your Grace—”

  “For pity’s sake! I do not know what will happen to either of us. It may be the last—” My voice choked. “I beg you, on your honor as a gentleman, just let me tell him that I love him. Everyone else has betrayed him.”

  “Very well. But don’t think that means I’m going to let you out every time your heart desires.”

  “I won’t ask again,” I promised. “And I will stand right by you.”

  “Another thing. The crowd out there’s been baying for the duke’s blood. He might not be in good case when you see him.”

  I nodded and let him escort me outside, where the din from the crowd nearby had grown even louder. Finally, the Tower gate was flung open. Through the press of armed men remaining outside the gate rode the traitor: the Earl of Arundel, bringing in his captives.

  Close behind him, mounted on his favorite horse, was John, cloakless and with his cap clutched in his hand. I clapped my hand to my mouth as I saw just how many prisoners there were and who they were—my sons Jack, Ambrose, and Hal; my brother-in-law Andrew; Kathryn’s father-in-law, the Earl of Huntingdon; and her husband, Lord Hastings, to name only the ones most important to me. All were covered in filth, but none worse than John, who also bore a large, fresh bruise on his face.

  While the prisoners waited silently on their horses and the cries outside grew faint and scattered, Arundel spoke at length to the constable, who gestured at various buildings. At last, John was allowed to dismount under the eye of two armed guards. He did so slowly, as if in pain. The Order of the Garter, which he had worn proudly beneath his knee for ten years, had been stripped from him.

  Forgetting my promise to my jailer, I pushed my way toward John. Without a word, he took me in his arms as the guards, openmouthed, retreated. “Forgive me,” he said as we huddled together. “I have cost us everything.”

  “There is nothing to forgive,” I whispered. “Nothing.”

  Beside us, my youngest son, Hal, whose face was already wet with tears, began to weep afresh. “They’ve even got our mother,” he said. “Our mother.”

  John stepped back. “It’s true? You are a prisoner, too?”

  “Yes, and Guildford and Jane.”

  Jack dismounted, trembling with anger. Never in my life had I seen him such. Shaking his fist, he leaned in Arundel’s direction. “Why don’t you go off and arrest my little sister Katheryn, you sorry turncoat, you Judas? Or are you afraid her kitten might scratch you?”

  “Jack,” said Ambrose, as a guard yanked Jack backward. “This isn’t helping anything.”

  “I don’t give a damn whether it helps anything or not! He gave his oath to Father, and what did he do? Ran to Mary—”

  “Queen Mary,” said Arundel.

  “Ran to Mary and hid his head in her skirts and begged her forgiveness, then came to Cambridge—”

  “Take them away,” said Arundel. “The Earl of Warwick to the Beauchamp Tower, Lord Ambrose and Lord Henry to Coldharbour. The duke goes to the Garden Tower.”

  “You could lodge him with me,” I suggested.

  “No.”

  John squeezed my hand tenderly as the guards moved in to take him away. “For mercy’s sake, my lord, can’t you let my lady go free? None of this business was her idea.”

  “We’ll see,” Arundel said, looking at me but not into my eyes. He glanced at my own jailer, who had come to stand beside me. “In the meantime, my lady, I have no idea how you got here, but I will thank you to go back where you belong.”

  ***

  Later, I heard four thousand men had been enlisted to keep order as John and the rest of the prisoners came to London, jeered at by the crowds who watched them pass and who pelted them with objects of various sorts all the way. Before entering London through Bishopsgate, Arundel, presumably not wanting the embarrassment of having his captive stoned to death, had ordered John to make himself less conspicuous by taking off his scarlet cloak, but that had not stopped the London mob from screaming vitriol at him, nor from waving the handkerchiefs stained with Somerset’s blood that so many had treasured as relics.

  The mob was more subdued the next day when a new group of prisoners arrived, among them my son Robert, the Marquis of Northampton, and the Bishop of London. Now all of my sons were in prison.

  Their captivity meant that a couple of hours after Robert had disappeared into the Bell Tower with Guildford, a knock came on my own chamber door. “Your Grace, now that your husband and sons are safely in custody, the council has ordered that you be freed. The crown has taken possession of Sion and Durham House, but you may stay at Durham House until other arrangements have been made.”

  I did not much like the sound of that.

  Attending me at the Tower were three ladies, a gentleman, and a groom. As the groom went to see to our horses and the others packed my belongings, I went outside and paced around, hoping to catch a glimpse of John or my sons at their windows before I left.

  “It appears that your stay here has been a short one.”

  I turned to see the Duchess of Somerset. Now that I saw her face-to-face, I found her hair was graying in spots, and she had a line between her eyes that had not been there before, but she was otherwise dressed well, if
plainly. She even carried a pair of gloves. “Yes,” I said. “They are releasing me.”

  “Edward wanted to marry our son to that girl. It is providential for our family that he did not succeed.”

  “Yes.”

  “Being shut up for a week seems to have damaged your conversational powers. I daresay if you had been here as long as I have been, you would be completely dumb.”

  “I did try to influence John to release you, Anne. Your mother can attest to that.”

  “Yes, she has mentioned it. She was disappointed, but I was not. I expected nothing different from John Dudley after what he did to my husband.”

  “Anne, we have been through this! Your husband was not an innocent man.”

  “And yours is? Subverting King Henry’s will to please the fancy of a sixteen-year-old boy is not guiltless behavior to me. But his judges will decide that. The biter may be bit.”

  The attendants emerged from my lodgings, my coffers of belongings in their hands. “I must leave now.”

  “Don’t let me detain you, then.” Anne Seymour turned away, then turned back to look at me. “I trust you will send my daughter back to me when I am free? With her husband in the Tower and you in reduced circumstances, it can hardly be pleasant for her.”

  “If she wishes, I will gladly let her go to you.”

  “Good,” the duchess said. “It may be necessary to seek an annulment. I am sorry, as I believe your son has been good to her, but one has to be practical about these things.”

  “Yes,” I said. “One does.”

  ***

  At Durham Place, I found I had plenty of company: even though John had not even gone to trial yet, the Crown had already begun to seize his goods, and the house was full of royal servants, meticulously writing down anything of value John and I owned. No place—not even my own bedchamber—was exempt from their relentless inventorying: my sleeves, my cushions, even my parrot were duly counted. They conducted themselves politely enough, but the sight of them standing in John’s wardrobe, patiently counting every shirt I had made for him, was hard to bear. Even harder was the knowledge that men were already inquiring about their chances of receiving John’s choicest possessions, secure in the knowledge he would never be freed to reclaim them—or worse.