Chapter 10
In the middle of a sticky midsummer night, as I neared my twentieth year, I sat in Aunt Kat’s chamber working on a velvet brocade, blue as the sky. The fabric’s embossed pattern depicted flowers exploding from a vine that grew from golden vases.
I saw in the cloth great beauty and regality, but behind my usual obsession, I was uneasy. I sewed the gown for Elizabeth’s next journey to court, but whether that would be to visit her sickly brother or to attend her sister Mary’s coronation, I could not say. Either event troubled me.
When a manservant banged into the chamber, I jumped, the fabric sliding to the floor. I quickly caught up handfuls of it, praying it hadn’t been soiled.
This particular young man, whose name was Tom, was in the employ of Master Parry, who tarried in London.
Tom should have gone straight to Elizabeth’s chamber if he came with news of importance, but perhaps he’d felt safer confronting Aunt Kat and me rather than facing the uncertain temperament of Elizabeth.
“Disaster, Mistress Ashley,” Tom said breathlessly, his eyes alight, his pockmarked face holding too much excitement for his ominous words. “The king is dead.”
Aunt Kat scrambled to her feet so abruptly that she upset a small table with a candle burning upon it. I rescued the candle before it could set her skirt alight and placed it and its holder on a shelf. I sat down again, righting the table.
Aunt Kat hurried to the door and slipped the bolt across it, then she closed the shutter against the night, though the July weather was close, the room, stifling.
She resumed her place on her bench and bade Tom stand before her. “Now, tell me,” Aunt Kat commanded. “No embellishments, mind. I want the entire truth of what happened.”
I leaned in to listen. Young Tom, flattered at our attention, burst into his tale.
“I heard from a servant outside the king’s bedchamber that his majesty vomited black bile and coughed horrible spittle from his lungs before he died in grave weakness.”
I felt a pang of pity for poor Edward, only sixteen. He’d been led first by Somerset, then the Duke of Northumberland, and hadn’t had much chance to be a king in truth. Somerset and Northumberland had given away his lands, spent his money, and let him die.
Tom hadn’t finished. “The high lords of the king’s chamber do not want news of his death to come out yet. They are seeking the king’s sisters—Mary-Mary of the Popery and …” He broke off, feeling Aunt Kat’s eyes hard upon him. “His other sister.”
“But if His Grace the king is dead, then Mary is queen,” I said, too agitated to keep my silence. “Mary must know by now. If not, she must be told.”
“Nay, for neither sister will be queen now.” Tom bounced on his toes, reveling in his role as the bearer of bad tidings. “Bastards they be, by royal decree.”
Aunt Kat surged from her seat again and caught Tom’s ear in a tight pinch. He yelped, but he was no match for Aunt Kat.
“You’re wrong, boy,” she declared. “Mary is queen, and after her will be Elizabeth. That was Henry’s desire, by his legal will. If Edward decided to change the succession, Parliament would have been called—and we’d have heard the uproar all the way to Hatfield.”
Tom winced until Aunt Kat released him. “No Parliament but the king’s bedchamber,” he said gleefully, rubbing his ear. “We have a new queen. All hail Queen Jane, long may she reign.”
My mouth went dry. “You must have heard a falsehood. A rumor started by idle servants with nothing better to do.”
Tom grinned, enjoying us hanging on his every word.
“’Tis no lie, Mistress Rousell. The grand Northumberland has married his own son to Lady Jane, the king’s cousin, and made her queen of all England.
The king himself struck his sisters from the list and commanded that the words Jane Grey and her heirs male be written instead. Then he died.”
Aunt Kat and I gazed at each other, dumbfounded.
“He cannot have,” Aunt Kat said when she found her voice again. “’Tis unthinkable.”
I did not understand much about politics, but I recognized hole-in-corner dealings when I heard them.
The king could not change the succession without approval from Parliament, but the Duke of Northumberland, sweet Robin’s father, was a cagey gentleman who could twist events, and even a person’s mind, to suit his own needs.
He’d let Somerset be condemned on false charges and made himself duke without pausing to draw a breath.
“What will happen?” I asked, half to myself. “Will Mary stand for being ousted by Northumberland? Her will is as strong as Henry’s ever was, for all I’ve seen.”
Aunt Kat and I leaned to our informant once more, but alas, he’d run dry of information.
The gist of the matter was that Edward was dead, and he’d named Jane Grey as queen at Northumberland’s instigation. Northumberland had married one of his sons—Guilford, it must be, as Robert was still married to Amy—to Jane.
Now Northumberland wanted to put his hands on Mary, before she could rightly protest her abrupt removal from the succession.
Aunt Kat and I exchanged another glance, understanding the lay of the land. If Northumberland sought to secure Mary before news of the king’s death leaked out, he’d want to secure Elizabeth as well.
Aunt Kat’s eyes met mine, and together we looked at Tom Messenger.
He never knew his danger. Aunt Kat grabbed one arm and I the other. Tom was too surprised to object, and I swear the ridiculous youth thought we meant to thank him for our news by smothering him with embraces.
Tom laughed in modest protest as we pulled him to the storage cupboard behind the fireplace. His laughter cut off when we tossed him in then slammed the door shut. Aunt Kat locked the door, and I helped her drag a large chest in front of it.
Tom yelled when he discovered the trick and pounded on the door in outrage.
I plopped down on the chest. “Shush yourself,” I called through the wood. “’Tis only for a day or so. You’ll be fed.”
I understood, as Aunt Kat did, that no one in the world could know the truth just yet. Unless Tom had invented the story to make himself important—which I doubted he’d have the wits to—danger now cloaked the house.
Jane, innocent little Jane, Elizabeth’s schoolroom companion who’d stitched with us when we were tiny girls, and whom Catherine Parr had nurtured in her own home, was suddenly queen.
Grandniece to Henry and granddaughter of his sister Mary, Jane had a claim to the throne, but not as direct a one as Mary and Elizabeth.
Northumberland, being no fool, would realize he had to control Mary and Elizabeth before he could proclaim Jane as monarch. The daughters of Great Harry would not meekly step aside and let Northumberland’s new daughter-in-law assume the throne.
And so, Northumberland would hunt Mary and Elizabeth and bring them to heel, and possibly to the block.
My blood chilled, and Aunt Kat’s face was ashen. “It must not happen,” she said in a hushed voice. “It will not happen. We will not let it happen.”
I agreed most heartily. We put our heads together and began to scheme.
Elizabeth’s reaction to the news when Aunt Kat broke it was predictable. She waited, tense, while Aunt Kat explained what the servant had said, turning to me to confirm it.
Once Kat finished speaking, Elizabeth lifted a pretty glass ball from a table and hurled it hard through the window. Sunlight glittered on the sphere as it arced out to the gardens followed by splinters of the windowpane.
“He cannot,” Elizabeth snarled. “He cannot. Where is Mary? Does he already have my sister?”
“We do not know,” I answered, my voice shaky. “We do not know if Her Grace Mary has even heard the news.”
“Discover whether she has,” Elizabeth commanded. “I want to know everything. I cannot simply sit here and wait for bloody Northumberland to decide what he will do with me—”
She broke off in a scream of rage, and a rain of books, papers, pens, and pots of ink crashed to the floor. Aunt Kat and I, the only ladies in the chamber with her, scuttled away from Elizabeth until her tantrum wound to its close.
Elizabeth abruptly put her hand to her head and cried out in frustrated pain. One of the headaches that she’d fallen prey to more and more had come upon her.
“I hate the silence.” Elizabeth lay in bed the next afternoon, her face pasty, the continuing headache so severe that she could eat nothing and drink little.
Her fury had worn into cold anger, and her eyes held the calculation of a cornered fox.
“I can send no messages and receive none. I must pretend ignorance. I can only wait and wonder.”
“And plan.” I had my feet on a hassock as I stitched again on the blue velvet. “We must decide what to do should the worst come.”
The manservant, Tom, was still locked in Aunt Kat’s chamber.
We’d brought him breakfast this morning, and he’d tried to overpower us when we opened the door.
Aunt Kat, who was quite strong, managed with my assistance to shove him back into the cupboard.
Tom had kept hold of the bread and cheese we’d given him, but we feared opening the door again.
So, he remained inside, fed but complaining.
“The worst,” Elizabeth repeated bitterly, raising her head the slightest bit.
“You mean my death. I will face the worst with dignity, but I will do everything in my power to keep it from happening. Damn Northumberland.” She winced and eased herself back to the pillows.
“Thank heavens Robin married himself off to that stick, Amy.”
“You believe he’d have been the one chosen to marry Jane?” I asked in curiosity.