Lady in Waiting: A Novel (34 page)

“Lucy,” she said, her voice soft and sad.

I could not rise to my feet. Jane reached for my arms and pulled me to stand. Tears had already begun to slide down my cheeks, and they fell like raindrops onto the dress. She clasped her hands on to the fabric.

“Take this, please, Ellen.”

The gown was now out of my hands, and I felt myself begin to shake. The first words out of my mouth were an anguished cry for her forgiveness.

“There is nothing to forgive, Lucy. Come sit with me.”

She led me back to the writing table and to a chair opposite the one she had been sitting in. I reached into my sewing bag and groped for a scrap of lawn to wipe my eyes.

“I am so sorry, my lady,” I muttered. “I wish I were stronger. I should not be weeping.”

Jane merely inhaled gently. “Do not be sorry. Not today. I don’t want sorrow today.”

I blotted at the tears and begged God to brace my heart. When I finally looked up at her, she was sitting there, with her hands in her lap, waiting for me.

“Surely there will be a pardon,” I whispered.

Her answer was quick. “No, Lucy. I do not think so. My cousin the Queen has sent her confessor here these many days to win my pardon with my conversion to Catholicism. But as I am not persuaded, I daresay she has given up on me.”

“My lady?” She answered me so quickly, I barely understood the implication of her answer.

“If I were to recant my faith as a Reformist, the Queen would have a tidy excuse to pardon me. Her councilors do not want her to. And she certainly can’t if I do not recant.”

“She would spare your life if you … if you converted?” I could not
keep the edge of repugnance from stretching across my face. And the moment it did, I knew Jane would never reduce her deepest beliefs to political posturing. I sank deeper into my chair as the truth closed in around me. Jane was doomed.

“Perhaps she would not spare me anyway,” Jane went on, toneless. “My father-in-law certainly denied his convictions to no gain. But then, he never was a man of conviction, was he, Lucy? He was a man of ambition. Very different, those two things. At least to him.”

“Oh, my lady!”

Several long seconds of strained silence hung between us.

“My life would mean nothing,
nothing
, if I were false about that which matters most to me,” she finally said. “If I am to die for anything noble, should it not be for that which I hold most dear and most true?”

I did not answer her.

She leaned across the table and grasped my hands. “Lucy, just think of it!” Her voice was animated and childlike. “I have been given a second chance to make a grand choice. It was my arrogance that let me think I could be Queen. I should have refused. But now I have a second chance to choose. I can choose. Do you see how marvelous this is?
I can choose.”

My tears had begun to fall again. Jane squeezed my hands, willing me to rejoice with her, that the decision that would define her life—more than the one she made to accept the crown—awaited her, and she alone could make it.

“Is this why you made me bring that dress?” I rasped, looking at the dress in Mrs. Ellen’s hands and hating it just a little.

“’Tis a beautiful dress, for a beautiful day. And you made it for me. I am not afraid to die, Lucy.”

I jerked my head up, appalled.

“I did not say I was not afraid of the ax,” she said. “I am frightened to my core of the ax. But I am not afraid to die. I can die like this.”

I began to weep, and Jane pulled me close. We reversed the roles we had played the day I met her. She stroked my hair and whispered to me that all would be well.

“You have been a true friend, Lucy. I am grateful to God for having known you.”

“And I, you.”

“What about Edward’s ring?” I whispered a moment later.

“I want you to keep it hidden for now. Someday, perhaps, you may find a way to give it back to Edward. If you cannot, do not fret. If he marries another, do not give it back to him. Keep it, then, Lucy. You keep it. To remind yourself to thank God every morning that you have Nicholas and he has you.”

The guard opened the door and announced it was time for me to leave. I kissed Jane’s cheek.

“You are so brave, my lady,” I murmured.

“Call me Jane,” she whispered. For the first time since I arrived, her eyes glistened. “Pray for me, Lucy!”

“Always, Jane. Always.”

My friend Jane was taken from this life at the Tower of London on the twelfth of February 1554 at nine o’clock in the morning. She was sixteen.

I did not attend her beautiful day.

T
he ring rested on the acquisitions table under the warm glow of a gooseneck lamp. Wilson stared at it, with his chin resting comfortably in one hand. A bit of breakfast was glued to his blue hibiscus shirt, and he frowned. Stacy gazed at the ring with a look of restless hope on her face, her head slightly cocked in the pose of one who has chosen to imagine what others won’t. I knew what they were thinking.

Wilson didn’t think the ring belonged to Jane Grey.

Stacy wanted to believe it did.

And I stood in between them.

Wilson coughed. “It just doesn’t seem likely, Jane. Not likely at all.”

“Just because it’s not likely doesn’t mean it’s not possible,” Stacy said.

I sipped my coffee, my fourth cup of the morning, and then set the cup down on the table. “I was awake half the night thinking you are right, Wilson. And I was awake the other half thinking
you
are right.” This I said to Stacy.

“Well, it’s of course amusing to suppose it could be hers,” Wilson said. “That’s why I called you. But Eric and I read the same online biography as you, Jane. There’s no mention that there was a betrothal ring given to Jane Grey by anyone.”

“Doesn’t mean one wasn’t given to her,” Stacy interjected. “Just that no one mentioned it.”

I picked the ring up and turned it in my hands, studying its old
stones. “I read several other articles on the Web last night. Dozens, actually. No one mentions a ring like this.”

There were only three men recorded as Lady Jane Grey’s betrothal hopefuls. King Edward the Sixth—and nothing ever came of those discussions; the Duke of Somerset’s son Edward Seymour—and that arrangement was never official; and Guildford Dudley, the man she married less than a month after their engagement was announced.

“Well, maybe Guildford gave her the ring,” Stacy offered.

“Maybe. But their marriage was so quickly arranged. Several accounts suggest that she didn’t even like him. Why would he give her a ring with that kind of inscription?”

“Maybe Guildford loved
her,”
Stacy said, after a moment’s thought. “Maybe no one else knew. Maybe he loved her in secret.”

“But why should it be a secret? He married her. And if he did give her this ring, it wouldn’t have been in secret.”

The three of us stared at the ring in my hand

“If Guildford gave it to her because he loved her, then how did it end up stuffed inside the binding of a prayer book?” I mused, not expecting either one of them to answer me.

“My point exactly.” Wilson folded his arms across his loudly patterned shirt. “If it’s Lady Jane Grey’s ring and Guildford Dudley gave it to her, then it would have been in her possession when she was arrested. If her jewels were seized from her, the ring would have likely been taken.”

“But maybe they let her keep it since it wasn’t a Crown jewel?” Stacy suggested. “It was her ring, after all. Hey! Maybe … maybe she wore it the day of her execution, and one of the men who buried her body took it.”

“And how did it end up in a prayer book, then?” Wilson asked.

“And why?” I set the ring back down.

“You see? Those are things you can never know.” Wilson took a sip of his coffee.

“I still wish it was her ring. Such a sad story. I’d like to think there was someone who loved her,” Stacy murmured.

“Well, you can think whatever you want. You just won’t be able to prove it to anyone.” Wilson stepped back from the table.

“It’s hers.” The words fell from my lips almost of their own volition, surprising even me. But the minute I decided the ring was Jane Grey’s, I believed it.

“But you can’t know that for sure,” Wilson was quick to respond.

“It’s not about what I know. I just have this … hunch.”

“I do too!” Stacy echoed. But I was pretty sure she believed it because it made for a good story. It was different with me. I couldn’t quite put my finger on how it was different, but I knew it had nothing to do with wanting to improve the details of Jane Grey’s sad legacy.

Wilson walked away, lecturing me that hunches only matter in police work and horse races.

“What are you going to do now?” Stacy asked.

I slid the ring onto my pinkie. “Somebody, somewhere has to know more about Jane Grey than people who write articles for the Internet. I need to find those people.”

“I’ll help. I can ask at NYU. Someone in the history department might know of an expert somewhere. Or maybe there’s a book you can get at the library or a bookstore.”

“I already looked!” Wilson called out from ten feet away. “There’s no book about Jane Grey’s personal life written at the academic level. It’s all speculation by nonscholars.”

Stacy turned to him. “Does it have to be at an academic level?”

“It does if you wish to believe it.”

“And hey,” Stacy continued, “her personal life was her public life.”

“Nothing. At. The. Academic. Level.” Wilson punctuated every word with force. “There’s a huge difference between conjecture and fact, Jane.”
Wilson shuffled off to turn on the floor lights. It was almost time to open.

“Don’t let it ruin your day, Wilson,” I said as my phone began to vibrate in my pocket, and I reached for it.

“Don’t let it ruin yours!” he called over his shoulder.

I looked at the tiny screen on my phone. Connor.

Finally returning my call.

Connor had called Brad after I left New Hampshire to ask him if we had talked. Brad had decided to drive up to Dartmouth and tell Connor the truth about why he had to get out of New York City, that it was more than just needing a break from Manhattan and me. They met at a coffee shop, and Brad told him about the affair that wasn’t an affair.