The Fallen Queen Part 10

But Pembroke lied, as I knew he would, and showed himself once again to be a cruel and evil man. He never spoke one word espousing mercy for Jane. Instead, he joined the others, his voice amongst the loudest, calling for her death. He used and soiled my sister, then parroted the Spanish amba.s.sador-Jane was a traitor and must die as traitors do. The head that presumed to wear a stolen crown must be taken, Pembroke said, and called it justice.

When Kate came back to me at c.o.c.k's crow, sorely used and tearstained, her s.h.i.+ft torn and b.l.o.o.d.y, moving as though each step hurt her, I wordlessly opened my arms and let my shoulder soak up the tears that followed.

"When he held, kissed, and caressed me, and when he ... loved me," her voice wavered uncertainly, and she nibbled her lower lip as she looked up at me with her tear-bright eyes, "though I know 'loved' is not the right word for it, he excited and repulsed me as no other man ever has. I detested and desired, loved and hated him, all at the same time. The feelings were all a jumbled red-hot ma.s.s in my mind, and whenever I tried to sort them out and make sense of it all I got burned, so I stopped trying, like a drowning person who stops fighting and just lies back and starts floating, drifting along wherever the current carries them. I wanted to stay, yet I wanted to go, to draw him close and hold him near, yet to bite and kick, scratch like a h.e.l.lcat and fight my way free of him, and of me, because I didn't like myself when I lay with him. But at the same time I was me, and I knew I couldn't escape myself; I am what I am, and there's no good fighting it. All I could do was kiss, caress, and cling. I was wholly in his power, because I wanted to be even though I didn't; I was myself, yet not myself. Oh, Mary, for the first time, I think I understand what it was like for Jane with Guildford! And he hurt me, Pembroke hurt me, I knew he would, I didn't want him to, and yet I did, and I knew it must the first time, it is like that for every maid, yet I welcomed it, I invited it, and he hurt me. Oh, Mary, it was both agony and bliss!" Her voice broke in anguish, and she fell to weeping in my arms again, clinging to me as though only I could save her.

What did you expect? You played with fire and got burned, a little voice inside my head said. But my mouth never moved except to kiss the bright curls as I held Kate close and willed the pain to leave her, to soak into me, along with her tears. I could bear it. There were many things I could have said to my sister, but I hadn't the heart to actually say them; all I could do was hold her, and hold her again when she realized Pembroke's treachery and duplicity. Jane was doomed, and he had helped decree it, just as he had helped thrust an unwanted crown upon her. People are always apt to forget that which they do not wish to remember. They always see themselves in the light that flatters and favours them most and try to ensure that others do also. That is why I have never trusted memoirs, not even those writ by saints.

10.

Though we loathed to go abroad that chilly morning of February 12, we had to, it was a mission of mercy our hearts could never say no to. Though we had begged, pleaded, wept, and humbled ourselves as we never had before, our royal cousin refused to allow us one last hour with Jane; even when we fell sobbing on our knees before her and pleaded for time enough for just one kiss, one embrace, to say good-bye, the answer remained the same-no! Cousin Mary turned her crimson velvet back on our tears and said when we were older we would understand, that she did this for our own sake, to spare us even greater pain. When Kate persisted, she held up her hand and said, "I will hear no more. Leave me now," and dismissed us. But she later sent a message saying that we might, if we wished, go and give what comfort we could to Guildford. He was in a state of terrible agitation because Jane had refused to see him when Cousin Mary offered to let husband and wife spend their last night on earth together. So Kate and I put on our furs and set out for the Tower.

Guildford spent his final morning in a flood of tears, bewailing his misfortune, and that Jane would not be with him on his last walk. "We should have taken it together," he sobbed into Kate's lap, while I knelt and stroked his back, as we both tried our best to comfort him in the absence of our-I must say it!-selfish sister.

Jane had sent word through Sir John Bridges that "if our meeting could have been a means of consolation to our souls I would have been happy to see Guildford, but as our meeting would only increase our misery and pain, it is better to put it off for the time being, as we will meet shortly elsewhere, and live bound by indissoluble ties."

We tried in vain to make him see the message of hope hidden in Jane's words, but Guildford only shook his head and wept all the more, wretched and inconsolable, in our arms, afraid to die alone, with no one to hold his hand and take that final walk with him.

"I don't want to die!" he sobbed. Desperately, he implored us to find a blond beggar to die in his stead and then go away with him to Italy where he could do what he had always wanted to do-sing!

But it was just a frantic fantasy, one last grasp at a dream that all of us knew could never be.

Though not bound to us by blood, Guildford was the only brother we ever had-all the sons our lady-mother ever bore died before they had scarcely drawn breath-so we did what we could for him. We calmed and bathed him with chamomile and lavender, and then we dressed him. Though some might have objected to two maidens handling a young man so intimately, Guildford was like a little frightened child beneath our hands, and it was all entirely innocent; his nakedness stirred nothing save sorrow that one so young and fair was about to die at only seventeen.

Kate chose for him an elegant, black velvet doublet slashed with cinnamon satin and black silk hose and gently made sure the lace-trimmed collar of his white lawn s.h.i.+rt was laid open wide, to leave his pale neck bare and vulnerable for the axe. As he sat, docile as a child in his chair, sipping his chamomile tea, Kate, her nimble fingers always so clever with coiffures, arranged the gilded curls of Guildford Dudley for the very last time, and as I watched, I plucked at the dyed russet plume on his black velvet cap to give it a jaunty curl before I gave it to him.

"Thank you, Mary." Trying so hard to be brave, Guildford smiled at me. "It is very cold outside and my head is very beautiful; it would be frightful if I caught cold in it," he said, and set it on his head at a rakish tilt, and I caught the self-mocking twinkle in his gooseberry green eyes for one last time.

When it was time for us to go and Sir John Bridges was at the door, Guildford suddenly cried, "Wait!" He gathered up Fluff from where he lay curled and sleeping on the bed, held him close to his heart for a long moment, and kissed and caressed the sleek, silky white head, then came and laid him gently in Kate's arms. "Please take care of him for me. He likes a bowl of cream every morning for his breakfast," he added, his voice breaking, just like our hearts.

With tears in her eyes, Kate promised that Fluff would be spoiled, "like a king among cats," and we embraced Guildford one last time, and then we parted before the tears could drown us all.

We wept all the way back to Greenwich Palace, where we must hasten into our russet and black liveries to attend the Queen, and when we climbed out of the hired barge, we left the cus.h.i.+ons sodden with our tears.

In our room, Kate gave Fluff a saucer of milk, kneeling down on the floor beside him, stroking, petting, kissing, and making much of him while he regally lapped it up. We helped each other change into our liveries, then we walked the floor, back and forth, tensely waiting, watching the clock, knowing that, all too soon, our sister's soul would depart this earth. A maidservant came, sent as an act of kindness from the Queen, and brought us a late breakfast since she knew we had not had any and did not want to see us faint and light-headed when we came to her. But neither of us wanted it, though we hadn't the heart to refuse and send it back to the kitchen lest our royal cousin think us ungrateful and disdainful of the gesture.

The kitchen wench was just departing when Kate suddenly ran across the room and jerked her back inside. "I want your clothes!" she said. I watched in astonishment as my sister, who had always had a maid or me to help her, wrenched off her gown, not caring what she tore, until she was down to her s.h.i.+ft and stays. She left her petticoats pooled on the floor and ordered the trembling and astonished girl, "Strip!" Fearing that Kate had lost her mind and might do her some injury, the girl nervously complied.

As she struggled into the girl's plain buff-hued homespun gown, Kate kicked her torn and discarded livery at her and ordered her to put it on, as she could not walk the palace corridors without decent cover, and fetch something for me to wear. "Anything! A sack will do, if that's all you can find. Hurry!" she cried when the girl dithered and wept about my size and said she did not know what to do. "Run, d.a.m.n you!" Kate stamped her foot to speed her on her way, then turned and quickly shucked off my gown. As it rose over my head, I heard tearing and popping and knew our liveries would require much labor before we could wear them again, if we even could.

Kate was gathering up the wild riot of her flaming curls with such haste it was as though they burned her hands and thrusting them inside the maid's linen cap when the girl returned clutching a rough-woven sack that, by the dusting it left on the floor and my skin, must have contained flour. Kate ran to her sewing basket and quickly cut a hole in the bottom for my head and two on the sides for me to stick my arms through, then thrust it over my head and helped me wiggle into it. Then, seizing up the maid's ap.r.o.n and knotting it around her waist and stumbling into her oversized wooden clogs, she grabbed my hand and rushed me out the door, even as I one-handedly struggled to remove the jewel-tipped pins from my hair and unloose the ropes of pearls plaited into it. These I left lying on the floor like a child's discarded toys.

We flew down the water stairs, heedless of the slickness that put our necks and bones in peril, and, for the second time that morning, spilled into a barge. Kate flung a handful of coins at the bargeman and bade him row to the Tower as though his very life depended on it.

"Kate, what are you thinking?" I cried. "This is madness! We are due to attend the Queen; she will surely punish us!"

"I don't care!" Kate said defiantly, and turned and shouted for the bargeman to row faster. "We must be there for Jane, Mary. We cannot let her die alone!"

Hearing Kate say it gave me all the courage I needed.

"For Jane." I nodded and reached out to hold Kate's hand.

We almost didn't make it. We were too late for Guildford; he had already been dead almost an hour. His head and body, wrapped in a bloodstained sheet, had already been carted back from Tower Hill. We would hear later that Guildford had, at the last moment, found his courage, and as he knelt before the block, he declared that he would die "doing what I love best, and, this time, no one shall stop me! Lord." He turned his gooseberry green eyes heavenward. "Here is my voice; I shall send it soaring high to heaven to meet Your angels as they come to carry my soul home to You!" He flung wide his arms, closed his eyes, and threw back his head, and unleashed a loud and joyful voice that pathetically endeavoured to climb all the way to heaven. Wincing, as the crowd cried, "Lord, have mercy on our ears!" the startled executioner s.n.a.t.c.hed up his axe and lopped Guildford's glorious golden head off in a single stroke.

We would later learn that Jane had stood by her window and watched his lonely last walk to Tower Hill. Guildford stared straight ahead and never paused or even once looked up as he pa.s.sed beneath her window. She was still there afterward to witness the return of his bloodied corpse in the cart, catching a glimpse of golden curls peeking from the folds of the winding sheet. Then the tears Guildford had once predicted came, and Jane sobbed out again and again "Guildford! Guildford!" and fell weeping into Mrs. Ellen's arms, m.u.f.fling her sobs against that good lady's black velvet shoulder. "The ante-repast is not so bitter that you have tasted, and that I shall soon taste, as to make my flesh tremble," she said in a tearful rush and then, raising her head, swallowing back her tears, continued. "But that is nothing, Guildford, to the feast you and I shall this day partake of together in Paradise." Then she went and knelt down beside her bed and prayed that G.o.d help her find the courage to bravely endure her final hour. "Lord, Thou G.o.d and Father of my life, hear this poor and desolate woman, and arm me, I beseech Thee, with Thy armour that I may stand fast, gird me with verity and the breastplate of righteousness."

"Hurry, Mary, hurry! Jane needs us! We have to be there for her! We cannot let her die alone! We cannot!" With a strength I feared would wrench my arm from its socket, Kate pulled and dragged me through the crowd, heedless of the legs I banged into and the toes I trampled. She determinedly shoved and elbowed her way through, as the drums beat and the Tower chapel's bells tolled, taking me with her, all the way up to the very front, close enough to reach out and touch the scaffold.

Wearing the same black velvet gown and hood she had worn to her trial, with her head bent over her precious prayer book, our sister was already mounting the thirteen steps of the black-draped scaffold.

As she stepped onto the straw-covered planks, Jane hesitated a moment, taking a step back, toward the rea.s.suring black-robed presence of Dr. f.e.c.kenham, while Mrs. Ellen and Mrs. Tylney, nigh blinded by their tears, hovered anxiously behind, waiting to divest her of her cloak and headdress and make sure the pins holding up her hair were secure so it would not fall down and impede the axe and thus prolong Jane's agony.

Jane handed her prayer book to Sir John Bridges, to whom she had promised it as a remembrance, and in a timid, tremulous little voice courageously, and correctly, a.s.serted, "If my faults deserve punishment, my youth at least and my imprudence were worthy of excuse. G.o.d and posterity will show me more favour."

Then she let her ladies do what they must, shying fearfully away from the tall, muscular-armed, black-hooded executioner as he knelt and gently asked her forgiveness. Forcing herself to be brave, Jane gave it and laid the traditional coin in his palm. As he motioned her toward the block, Jane, like a teary-eyed little girl craving rea.s.surance, asked, "You will not take it off until I lay me down?" He answered most kindly, "No, my lady."

Her eyes rising to watch the ravens circling overhead, her voice faltering, cracking, and halting, rising high then dropping low, Jane addressed her last words to the crowd.

"Good people, I am come hither to die, and by a law I am condemned to the same. The fact, indeed, against the Queen's Highness was unlawful and the consenting thereto by me, but touching the procurement and desire thereof by me or on my behalf, I do wash my hands thereof in innocence, before G.o.d and the face of you, good Christian people, this day." She paused and wrung her hands as though she were indeed was.h.i.+ng them. "I pray you all, good Christian people, to bear me witness that I die a true Christian woman, and that I look to be saved by none other means, but only by the mercy of G.o.d, in the merits of the blood of His only son, Jesus Christ. I confess when I did know the word of G.o.d, I neglected the same, loved myself and the world, and therefore this plague or punishment is happily and worthily happened unto me for my sins. Yet I thank G.o.d of His goodness that He hath given me a time and respite to repent. And now, good Christian people, while I am alive, I pray you to a.s.sist me with your prayers."

When I looked around me, as many bowed their heads and dropped to their knees on the snow-crusted earth, I saw there was nary a dry eye in sight.

Upon the scaffold, Jane turned and looked uncertainly to Dr. f.e.c.kenham. "Should I say the Miserere psalm?" she asked. At his nod, she knelt, still facing the crowd, and after a moment he did too, and their two voices, hers softly speaking English, and his sonorous Latin, blended together in the recitation of the "Miserere mei, Deus" as his hand reached out to hold hers.

Have mercy upon me, O G.o.d, according to thy loving kindness: according unto the mult.i.tude of thy tender mercies blot out my transgressions.

Wash me thoroughly from mine iniquity, and cleanse me from my sin.

For I acknowledge my transgressions: and my sin is ever before me.

Against thee, thee only, have I sinned, and done this evil in thy sight: that thou mightest be justified when thou speakest, and be clear when thou judgest.

Behold, I was shapen in iniquity; and in sin did my mother conceive me.

Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts: and in the hidden part thou shalt make me to know wisdom.

Purge me with hyssop, and I shall be clean: wash me, and I shall be whiter than snow.

Make me to hear joy and gladness; that the bones which thou hast broken may rejoice.

Hide thy face from my sins, and blot out all mine iniquities.

Create in me a clean heart, O G.o.d; and renew a right spirit within me.

Cast me not away from thy presence; and take not thy holy spirit from me.

Restore unto me the joy of thy salvation; and uphold me with thy free spirit.

Then will I teach transgressors thy ways; and sinners shall be converted unto thee.

Deliver me from blood guiltiness, O G.o.d, thou G.o.d of my salvation; and my tongue shall sing aloud of thy righteousness.

O Lord, open thou my lips; and my mouth shall shew forth thy praise.

For thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it: thou delightest not in burnt offerings.

The sacrifices of G.o.d are a broken spirit: a broken and a contrite heart, O G.o.d, thou wilt not despise.

Do good in thy good pleasure unto Zion: build thou the walls of Jerusalem.

Then shalt thou be pleased with the sacrifices of righteousness, with burnt offering and with whole burnt offering: then shall they offer bullocks upon thine altar.

Then she stood and, in a rare display of kindness, turned back to help the old man rise. Impulsively, she bent and kissed his cheek and whispered, "I pray to G.o.d that He abundantly reward you for your kindness to me."

Turning hurriedly away, as though she feared she must move fast lest her courage falter and cowardice well up to take its fragile place, she faced the block and fell to her knees in the straw. She motioned urgently for Mrs. Ellen to quickly bring forth the blindfold and bind her eyes to blot out the world she was about to leave. Just before her eyes were covered, she gazed once more, fearfully, at the headsman and implored, "I pray you dispatch me quickly!" To which he nodded. "Aye, my lady."

But Jane had misjudged the distance between herself and the block, and when, blindfolded, she moved to lay her head down, she found only empty air. This nigh chased her courage away. Her hands rose, frantically groping before her. "Where is it? Where is it?" she sobbed plaintively.

It was such a sad and pitiful sight. Everyone felt sorry for her. But no one dared move. And then history records that "one of the standers-by took pity," but I can tell you that it was my brave Kate, unrecognized in her serving woman's disguise, with the fire of her hair doused and hidden by a borrowed linen cap, who broke from the crowd and clattered up the wooden steps in her clunky, c.u.mbersome clogs. She laid a comforting hand on Jane's shoulder, letting it linger there one long and loving moment. Those watching never knew they were witnessing two sisters saying farewell. Then, moving swiftly, Kate gently guided Jane's hands and helped her lay her head down on the hard, scarred wooden block that had seen so many deaths.

"We love you, Jane," Kate afterward told me she had whispered.

Jane had whispered back, "Don't cry for me, Kate; by losing this mortal life, I gain an immortal one!"

Swallowing down her tears, Kate clattered back down again, and while her back was yet turned, Jane cried bravely, "Lord, into Thy hands I commend my spirit!" and the axe fell with a great thud, cutting through Jane's skin and bones to bury its blade in the wood.

I was watching Kate's face, not the scaffold, when the axe fell. She shut her eyes, but the tears seeped out. She breathed deeply, shakily exhaled, and whispered, "Fare thee well, my dear Jane!" Then she squared her shoulders, opened her eyes, took my hand, and began swiftly pulling me back through the crowd, away from the scaffold. "Don't look back, don't look back," she kept saying until the words lost all meaning.

I didn't. So neither of us saw, though we heard, when the executioner held our sister's head aloft by her hair and spoke the traditional words, "So perish all the Queen's enemies! Behold the head of a traitor!" Behind us we heard the crowd marvelling that so vast a quant.i.ty of blood had come out of one little girl.

Jane was gone, but she would live on, and posterity would indeed favour her. Almost overnight it seemed poems, ballads, and pictures celebrating her courage and faith, her youth and beauty, were sprouting up like weeds, recited and sold on every street corner. She had captured the public's imagination and become a tragic heroine. Had she been a toothless, grey-haired hag of fifty, instead of sixteen and beautiful, it might all have been a different story, but there's something about that scene that fascinates and t.i.tillates, that excites and ignites, stirs the blood and kindles l.u.s.t-the blindfolded beauty kneeling there, neck and shoulders bare and white as snow, as a sacrifice to the spinster queen's l.u.s.t for a golden Spanish prince, and the fountain of blood gus.h.i.+ng out of that frail, slender neck to stain the pure white snow, like the red blossoms of a maiden's blood on the sheets of her bridal bed. That is how the world, and posterity, will remember my sister.

Mrs. Ellen, who had faithfully remained to tend Jane's corpse, came to the palace that night and brought us each a long, wavy lock she had cut from Jane's head before she tenderly wrapped our sister's poor, broken body in a sheet and laid her, beside Guildford, in the musty, dusty crypt of St. Peter ad Vincula, the Tower's sad and b.l.o.o.d.y chapel, where Anne Boleyn and other condemned traitors lay entombed. Later I would have Kate sit, hang her head low, with her hair falling like red gold rain around her face, and snip from the nape of her neck a long strand. She would do the same for me. I would braid and weave them together, forming a pair of roses, one for each of us to keep and cherish, comprised of three shades of hair cut from the heads of three sisters-"the brilliant one," "the beautiful one," and "the beastly little one"-skeins of ruddy chestnut, fiery, blazing copper, and ebony harbouring a secret scarlet, together forever, bound and united, divided not even by Death's cruel scythe.

Mrs. Ellen also brought us Jane's treasured Greek Testament. After she had gone, we found, written inside the cover, upon the blank pages, a letter addressed to Kate. I was a little hurt. Was there nothing for me? I flipped to the back, hoping to find a message for me on the last blank pages, but there was nothing.

"Maybe there's something here for both of us?" Kate suggested as I gave the book back to her and we sat, side by side, on the fireside settle and she read it aloud.

I have here sent you, good sister Katherine, a book the which, although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is worth more than precious stones. It is the book, dear sister, of the law of the Lord. It is His Testament and Last Will, which he bequeathed unto us wretches, which shall lead you to the path of eternal joy. And if you, with a good mind, read it, and with an earnest desire follow it, it shall bring you to an immortal and everlasting life.

It shall teach you to live and learn you to die. It will win you more than you should have gained by the possession of your woeful father's lands. Within these covers are such riches as neither the covetous shall withdraw from you, neither the thief steal, nor the moth corrupt.

Trust not the tenderness of your age shall lengthen your days, for as soon, if G.o.d will, goes the young as the old. Wherefore labour always to learn to die. Defy the world, deny the Devil, and despise the flesh, and delight yourself only in the Lord. Be penitent for your sins and yet despair not. Be strong in faith and yet presume not and desire with Saint Paul to be dissolved and to be with Christ, with whom even in death there is life.

Rejoice in Christ as I trust I do and seeing that you have the name of a Christian, as near as you can follow in the steps of your master, Christ, and take up your cross. Lay your sins on His back and always embrace Him. And touching my death, rejoice as I do, good sister, that I shall be delivered of this corruption, and put on incorruption, for I am a.s.sured that I shall for losing of a mortal life win an immortal life.

Pray G.o.d grant you and send you of His grace to live in His fear and then to die in the true Christian faith from which in G.o.d's name I exhort you that you never swerve neither for hope of life nor for fear of death. If you will deny His truth to lengthen your life, G.o.d will deny you and yet shorten your days. And if you will cleave to Him, He will prolong your days to your comfort and His glory to which glory G.o.d bring me now and you hereafter when it shall please Him to call you.

Farewell good sister, put your only trust in G.o.d who alone can help you. Amen.

Your loving sister, Jane Kate flung the book to the floor and threw herself into my arms.

We clung together and wept, both of us surprised to discover that we had any tears left.

"I would rather my brains rattled around in my head like seeds in a gourd than live a scholar and die a martyr!" Kate cried. "I want to live, Mary, to love and be loved! I must embrace the flesh; I cannot despise it, no more than I could ever follow in Jane's footsteps!"

As I retrieved the book, I noticed the ribbon tucked inside that Jane had used to mark her place. It was a broad glossy bloodred satin ribbon. I drew it out and beheld the words For my sister Mary embroidered across the top, and beneath it, also in neatly st.i.tched gilt letters that seemed to s.h.i.+mmer and dance in the firelight, these five verses: Death will give pain to the body for its sins, but the soul will be justified before G.o.d.

There is a time to be born and a time to die; and the day of our death is better than the day of our birth.

Live to die, that by death you may gain eternal life.

If my faults deserve punishment, my youth at least and my imprudence were worthy of excuse. G.o.d and posterity will show me greater favour.

Peace I leave with you, my peace I give unto you: not as the world giveth, give I unto you. Let not your heart be troubled, neither let it be afraid.

She had not forgotten me after all. Every time I read a book and needed to mark my place, Jane would be right there with me.

Then, long before we were done weeping, while our eyes and faces were yet red and tear-swollen, it was Father's turn to lay his head upon the block and die. We could not be there for him. Though our royal cousin, to our surprise, never said a word about our disobedience the day Jane died, the night before Father's execution we were summoned to sleep upon a pallet at the foot of her bed, as two of her ladies-in-waiting always did, and she kept us close all the morrow, reading aloud to her and embroidering until the deed was done. But afterward we were allowed to go into his cell and claim his personal possessions.

Upon his desk, amidst drawings of cakes, candies, pies, pyramids of fruit, and great, fantastical marzipan and spun sugar subtleties with copious notes below mouthwateringly describing them all, we found a crumpled, tear-stained letter. It was from Jane, written the last night of her life.

Father, Although it hath pleased G.o.d to hasten my death by you, by whom my life should rather have been lengthened; yet I can so patiently take it, as I yield G.o.d more hearty thanks for shortening my woeful days, than if all the world had been given into my possession, with life lengthened at my own will. Albeit I am well a.s.sured of your impatient dolours, redoubled manifold ways, both in bewailing your own woe, and especially, as I am informed, my unfortunate state. Yet, my dear father, if I may without offence rejoice in my own mishaps, herein I may account myself blessed, that was.h.i.+ng my hands with the innocency of my fact, my guiltless blood may cry out before the Lord, "Mercy, to the innocent!"

And yet, though I must needs acknowledge, that being constrained, and, as you know well enough, continually a.s.sayed; yet, in taking the Crown upon me, I seemed to consent, and therein grievously offended the Queen and her laws; yet do I a.s.suredly trust, that this my offence toward G.o.d is so much the less, in that being in so royal estate as I was, my enforced honour never blended with mine innocent heart.

Thus, good father, I have opened unto you the state in which I presently stand, my death at hand, although to you it may seem woeful, yet to me there is nothing more welcome than from this vale of misery to aspire to that heavenly throne of all joy and pleasure, with Christ our Saviour, in whose steadfast faith (if it be lawful for the daughter so to write to the father) the Lord that hitherto hath strengthened you, so continue to keep you, that at last we may meet in Heaven with the Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. Amen. I am, Your Obedient Daughter Until Death, Jane I thought it was rather harsh-even if it was true. And Father was such a sensitive man, a great overgrown boy really, no wonder it had made him weep. Yea, it was true that he should not have sought the Crown again on Jane's behalf, in a rebellion she knew nothing about, and would have wanted no part in if she had, and by doing so he had sealed her doom and his own. Yet seeing her letter, stained with Father's tears, made me cry. Oh, Jane, how could you? Father must have felt she was pouring salt into his wounds!

Yet, perhaps her thoughts had travelled the same lines. Perhaps Jane had regretted her harshness. After she sent him this letter, Father asked his gaoler to take her the pretty prayer book bound in gilt-embellished yellow leather Guildford had inscribed and given him, before the tragic power play that had turned our world upside down, and ask his daughter to please write some words of comfort inside it and send it back to him with all speed.

As Kate and I stood peering down at the book as it lay open in my hands, I could not help but wonder what Jane had thought when she opened it and read Guildford's own elegantly writ inscription.

Your loving and obedient son wisheth unto Your Grace long life in this world, with as much joy and comfort as I wish myself, and in the world to come, joy everlasting.

Your most humble son to his death, Guildford Dudley But did it really matter anymore what Guildford and Father had been to each other, and who was to blame, and for what? The time for cattiness, cruel reminders, blame, and malice had pa.s.sed. Like the obedient daughter she had been brought up to be, Jane dipped her quill and wrote beneath her husband's words: The Lord comfort Your Grace and that in His word wherein all creatures only are to be comforted. And though it hath pleased G.o.d to take two of your children, yet think not, I most humbly beseech Your Grace, that you have lost them. But trust that we, by leaving this mortal life, have won an immortal life. And I, as for my part, as I have honoured Your Grace in this life, will pray for you in another life.

Your Grace's humble daughter, Jane Dudley Was the Dudley, I wondered, her subtle way of reminding him that, despite what mad, foolish folly they might have shared, whether carnal or innocent infatuation, Guildford was really hers?

"Poor Father." I turned to see Kate standing beside the bed cradling his dear old blue and rose comfit box against her breast. Tenderly, she lifted the lid.

"Look, Mary!" She held it out for me to see. "He left it for us."