Lady in Waiting: A Novel

by Susan Meissner

  “We have dressmakers here,” the woman said. “Send her home.”

  A voice from the top of the stairs called down to us. “I sent for her.”

  Jane.

  She looked pale. And older.

  The duchess frowned. “We have dressmakers here,” she repeated, this time to Jane.

  Jane began to descend the staircase. “Not like Lucy. Her designs are exceptional.”

  The duchess’s frown deepened. “But His Majesty saw to your trousseau. You’ve gowns you’ve not even worn yet.”

  “And all of them hang on me since my illness.”

  Jane arrived at the landing, and I fell to a curtsy. “My lady.”

  “Please escort Lucy to my chambers, Mrs. Ellen.” Jane’s voice was tired and unsure behind the authoritative words. She had indeed lost weight.

  Mrs. Ellen motioned to me to follow, and I curtsied to Jane and her mother-in-law, but both of them were looking only at each other.

  “If I might have a word.” The duchess showered Jane with fake politeness as I walked past them to follow Mrs. Ellen.

  The two women disappeared behind the closed doors, and I heard the beginning of their conversation. It began with the duchess’s demanding from Jane an explanation for bringing someone into the manor without her consent.

  I did not hear Jane’s muffled reply.

  Mrs. Ellen said nothing as we continued up the stairs and into a bedchamber decorated in rich tones of green and scarlet. She motioned me into a separate room, Jane’s dressing room, and closed the door.

  “My lady has been ill?” I asked, before she even turned around to face me.

  “Aye.”

  “Is she well now?”

  Mrs. Ellen lifted and lowered her shoulders. “As well as can be expected. The fever is gone. She is eating again.” She cocked her head as a look of sorrow washed over her. “And her husband’s … visits have resumed.”

  “Visits?” But I knew what she meant. “Has … Is my lady …?” But I could not finish. My face flushed crimson.

  “Yes, the marriage has been consummated.” Mrs. Ellen shook her head, and her eyes turned glassy. “Poor wee thing. It is not how it should be. Not how it should be.”

  Something akin to familial fidelity flared up within me. “Was he unkind to her? Did he hurt her?”

  Mrs. Ellen wiped her eyes. “Of course he hurt her.”

  “Is … Is that why she was ill?”

  “Her illness was a blessing from God to keep him away from her until she can accept what has befallen her. It was too much for the wee lass. She knew nothing of the way of men. Her mother told her nothing! If I had not prepared her …”

  She stopped. We heard movement on the other side of the door. The door opened and Jane stepped into the room. Again, I curtsied.

  “Ellen, would you give me a few moments with Lucy, please?” Jane asked.

  Mrs. Ellen admonished me with her eyes to please do whatever I could to cheer young Jane. “Of course,” she said. She left the room and closed the door behind her.

  We stood there for a moment, silent, both of us attempting to grasp how different it was now between us. I didn’t know my place. I didn’t know what I should do. What she would want me to do.

  She looked as sad as the day I met her, when she crumpled into my bosom, and I held her as she poured out her grief. I nearly expected her to do the same just then.

  But she turned from me, walked over to a bureau, opened it and withdrew a box I recognized from her bedroom at her parents’ house. She opened it, and I saw her take out Edward’s ring. Tears began to slide, unbidden, down my face as she walked back to me. I hadn’t the courage to even wipe them away.

  “I need for you to do something for me, Lucy.” Her voice was wracked with emotion that she was somehow able to keep in check. “I need you to keep this ring for me. Please.”

  “I cannot!” I breathed.

  “Yes, you can.”

  “My lady!”

  “Please keep it for me. It cannot stay here. Guildford will see it. His mother will see it. His father will see it. They will take it from me. I don’t want any of them to touch it. Especially his father. Especially not him.”

  The disgust on her face pained me. But still I persisted. “But if anyone finds me with it, they will think I stole it from you!”

  “Who will notice that it is missing? My parents have forgotten Edward even gave me this ring.”

  “But … what about Mrs. Ellen?”

  She smiled ruefully. “Do you honestly think dear Ellen will tell Northumberland the ring Edward Seymour gave me has gone missing? Please do this for me, Lucy. You are the only one I can trust.”

  “But, Jane.” I had not realized I had said her name out loud until a second after I said it. Mortification swept over me.

  A tender smile had replaced the rueful one. “You’ve never called me that before.”

  “I am so dreadfully sorry, my lady. Please forgive me!”

  Her smile grew wider. “I can only forgive you under one condition.”

  She held out her hand.

  I hesitated.

  “Take it and all is forgiven,” she whispered. Desperation shone in her eyes along with tears she refused to release.

  I held out my hand, and she pressed the ring into it.

  “What shall I do with it?” I murmured.

  “Keep it for me,” she whispered, each word punctuated with emotion.

  “For how long?”

  “As long as you must.”

  I could not help it any longer. I pulled her into my embrace. “I shall keep it safe for you.”

  Her small frame began to quake in my arms. Measured sobs leaked from her, though I sensed she fought to rein them in.

  “You are strong. You are brave,” I soothed.

  “Oh, Lucy! Sometimes I think they are trying to poison me!”

  I stroked her back, hiding my shock at her words with silence. Surely she was overwrought.

  “There are meetings here, other lords, councilors, people I don’t know, and they whisper about me. They watch me and whisper.”

  “My lady …”

  “The duke! He says things behind closed doors that he thinks I cannot hear. He says things like, ‘It’s just a matter of time,’ and, ‘Everything is in place,’ and, ‘She shall bend to the will of her sovereign; that is her nature.’ That is what he is saying, Lucy! What can he possibly mean?”

  “Sh, my lady. I do not know. ’Tis most likely nothing that has to do with you.” Her ramblings made no sense to me. I would have wondered if she was still feverish except she felt cool in my arms.

  “There are moments when I cannot bear it anymore!”

  “And then those moments become moments when you can,” I said gently. “You are brave and strong. God will protect you.”

  “I feel so very weak.” She eased her body away from me, a sure sign of strength. I told her so.

  She smiled then, tiny but genuine. “I miss having you near me.”

  “I miss you too. You’ve been my only companion for so long!”

  Her countenance turned wistful. “But now you have Nicholas.”

  I sought no words in response. How could I tell her how wonderful it was being married to Nicholas? I couldn’t.

  But I didn’t have to. She knew.

  “I wonder if I will ever know that kind of happiness,” she said. “I wonder if I will ever be able to choose my destiny like you have done.”

  I looked at her ring in my hand. “You chose to entrust me with this,” I said softly.

  She smiled and nodded. “Yes. That’s a start, isn’t it? Hide it away, now.”

  I slipped the ring into my sewing bag.

  “You must go,” she said. “Guildford will be returning soon.”

  “What about the dress you wanted me to make? What if I am asked about the dress?”

  “I commission you to make any sort of dress for me you please, Lucy. I don’t care what it looks l
ike. Ellen will see to it that you have whatever fabric you need. Is that all right?”

  “Of course.”

  “Thank you, dear Lucy. For coming. For doing this for me.”

  “You are most welcome, my lady.”

  “Perhaps you will come see me before the end of July for a fitting?” she said, the traces of tears and fears now safely tucked away somewhere. A wisp of hope replaced the cloak of sadness.

  I told her it would be my utmost pleasure to come back for a fitting. And she seemed to revel in the thought that she had something to look forward to in the coming days.

  But I did not see Jane at Syon House in July.

  Instead, to my absolute astonishment, I saw her in London less than a fortnight later, paraded down the banks of the Thames, accompanied by Guildford, soldiers, cannons, banners, and the Duke of Northumberland.

  His Majesty, the ailing King Edward, had died.

  And in his will, which he had rewritten just before his death, he had named as his successor, his cousin, Lady Jane Dudley.

  The new Queen of England.

  Twenty-Nine

  It is always a gray day when an English monarch dies. Edward the Sixth passed from this life to the next, riddled with consumption of his lungs, and his subjects did not know of his death for nearly three days. His demise was not altogether a surprise, though certainly no one wished him dead. He had long been ill; King Edward was just fifteen, the same age as my Lady Jane, and he hadn’t ruled long enough to allow us to see the kind of man he would have been.

  When the news hit the streets of London that His Majesty had died and that his appointed successor was to be Lady Jane Grey Dudley, the response was nothing short of stunned silence. Jane was no stranger to the people of London and certainly not to the lords and ladies of the court, but she was no princess either. As fourth in the line to the throne, no one dared dream she’d reign in their lifetime.

  My own heart nearly stopped beating when news reached the school of the King’s death and Jane’s succession. I begged Nicholas to tell me how this could be. It made no sense to me.

  From all that I had already told him, Nicholas reasoned that John Dudley surely had a hand in convincing the King to rewrite his will so that Jane would succeed him and that he probably did so for two reasons. First, it was well known John Dudley and the Privy Council did not want a Catholic on the throne, and Princess Mary, King Edward’s much older half sister, was devoutly so. England had been free of Rome’s traditions and power for twenty-four years. The Church of England wasn’t perfect, but the liturgical reforms that had birthed it had not come without sacrifice. I didn’t wish to see more blood shed in the name of Christianity either. And most of England did not want to return to Catholic rule.

  To effectively write Mary out of the line of succession, however, the King and his councilors had to somehow alter Parliament’s Statute of Succession and make the case that His Majesty’s half sister was the illegitimate issue of an annulled marriage, and therefore an unbefitting successor. Princess Elizabeth, a devout Reformer, would have been a more ideal successor, but she was the daughter of a queen who’d been beheaded for adultery. If Mary was to be bypassed, Elizabeth had to be also. Next in line was Frances Brandon Grey, Jane’s mother. Here is where Nicholas surmised that John Dudley’s plan began to take shape. Frances Grey was beyond the age of childbearing, and she had no sons. Her daughter Jane, however, was young, healthy, of childbearing age. And an impassioned Reformer.

  Dudley surely told Jane’s parents back in late April that he had a plan in place to put their daughter on the throne and that part of that plan included Frances deferring to Jane as the successor as well as securing the marriage of Jane to Dudley’s son. That would explain the hasty betrothal, the quick wedding, and even Jane’s overheard whispered conversations in the Dudley household after her marriage.

  John Dudley had known for months that the King was dying.

  There was a second reason Dudley counseled His Majesty to rewrite his will. With Jane on the throne, and his son as her husband, little stood in John Dudley’s way in terms of power and influence. With this plan he would effectively keep papal influences out of the affairs of the Crown, and he’d have a son sitting at the right hand of the Queen of England. And one day there would be a Dudley heir on the throne.

  Everything Nicholas supposed made sense to me. And I knew Jane had been used in the most appalling of ways.

  “Poor Jane!” I lamented.

  Nicholas said it would behoove us to pray for her. And for our country. The days and weeks ahead would not be without incident.

  I asked him what he meant, and he said it is never a trouble-free transition when a monarch dies without an heir.

  On the tenth day of July, Nicholas and I left the quiet school grounds—all the lads had gone home for the summer holiday—and took a carriage to watch Jane’s processional on the banks of the Thames. Jane was escorted from Syon House to the White Tower by barge, and the riverbanks were teeming with men and women of all ages and stations curious to see the young lady whom King Edward had chosen to succeed him.

  The crowds were quiet, subdued. There were no joyous shouts or happy music to accompany the procession. I could barely see Jane as she made her way from the barge to the steps of the Tower, flanked as she was on all sides by the powerful men who had orchestrated this strange turn of events. She walked with difficulty, wearing a richly appointed gown I did not recognize. At one point I saw that her feet had been shod with thick wooden clogs to make her appear taller.

  “She looks afraid,” I whispered to Nicholas.

  Ahead of us a man in a merchant’s cape turned to another man. “She’s not even the daughter of a king.”

  “Watch your tongue!” the other man rasped.

  “Princess Mary’s the rightful heir!”

  “Hush! I’ll not be listening to this. You’ll have us both hanging by ropes!”

  “It’s not right what Northumberland has done. He’ll not succeed. Mark my words.”

  The second man shook his head and moved away from the merchant and his treasonous diatribe.

  I reached for Nicholas’s arm, and he led me away, back to our carriage and our quiet rooms at the school.

  Over the next two days, the news on the street and in the pubs was that John Dudley had attempted to abduct and imprison Princess Mary before she learned of the King’s death and Jane’s succession. The plan was thwarted, however. Mary escaped the snare Dudley had set, and from a secret hiding place, she had written the Privy Council promising clemency if they renounced their actions of the last few days and swore allegiance to her, their rightful sovereign.

  On the fifteenth day of July, I received my second letter from Jane.

  To the esteemed Mrs. Staverton,

  Her Grace, Queen Jane of England, requests your presence at the Tower on a matter of the royal wardrobe.

  A coach will bring you to Her Majesty at half-past noon today, Saturday, 15 July.

  I handed the note to Nicholas, speechless.

  “I don’t want you to go,” he said, his eyes never leaving the parchment, the heavy black ink or the rich royal seal.

  “Nicholas! How can I not? She is the Queen!”

  “She is a pawn in a very dangerous game. I do not want you part of it.”

  He handed the letter back to me.

  “But how can I refuse?” I asked.

  Nicholas looked away, his brow crinkled in thought. “I shall come with you. I will ride in the coach, and I will accompany you inside the Tower. I will wait for you outside the room where you meet her. That is how it must be.”

  “But what if her guards do not allow you to come with me?”

  “Let them arrest us both, Lucy. If Jane wishes to see you, she will no doubt pardon us for insisting on my escorting you. You know her better than I. Do you think she will punish you, of all people?”

  I did not think she would. But Nicholas’s fear alarmed me.

  When th
e coach came for me, I told the footman that Mr. Staverton would escort me. And I said the same to the guards who attended us when we arrived at the Tower. And though they frowned with displeasure, they did not forbid Nicholas to accompany me inside.

  Nicholas was made to sit along a row of chairs upholstered in green velvet. Other lords and ladies were milling about, and they stared at him. He was not one of them, and they knew it. He looked after me as I was led away from him. I turned once, and he dipped his head toward me, an unmistakable gesture that he would be waiting for me when I returned.

  I was taken past other rooms where men and women scurried about, dizzily attending to matters like ants defending a hill of dirt. I recognized no one. We made our way to private apartments, and then the attendant escorting me turned to a woman whose back was to me.

  “Mrs. Staverton is here,” the attendant said to her.

  She turned and I was relieved to see Mrs. Ellen.

  “Lucy,” she said, almost a whisper. “Come with me.”

  I followed her into a room decorated in rich tones of Tudor green and white and gilded with gold. At a far window, in a gown of creamy pink, Jane stood, much like she stood the day I met her at Sudeley Castle. Alone. Silent. Yearning for the world outside the glass.

  She turned and I fell to my knees.

  “Your Highness,” I said.

  I heard Jane say Ellen’s name, and Mrs. Ellen silently left us, closing the door behind her.

  I was alone with the Queen.

  She came to me, then reached for my hands and bid me wordlessly to stand.

  I rose unsteadily.

  “I am so glad you came,” she said.

  I laughed. “It’s not as if I could refuse, Your Highness.”

  She smiled too, but it seemed to lack any form. “So. About that fitting.”

  “We can try for August instead, Your Highness,” I quipped.

  Her smile seemed to gain weight for a moment and then just as quickly deflated. “Quite. Come sit with me, Lucy.”

  She led me to a long couch upholstered in heavy brocade fabric, and we sat.