Nine Days a Queen: The Short Life and Reign of Lady Jane Grey (3 page)

"Stand away, sir." I tried to sound brave.

"Oh!" He held up a hand, palm outward and stepped back. "Never would I offend the new little lamb who's been brought to court. I know your father well, lass. Never fear. You have nothing to fear, if you have a vigilant and reverent respect, and eye, for His Majesty. Do you?"

"I shall serve him well," I said.

"Yes, then mayhap you will let me see what you have in your hand?"

It was the Lutheran tract Katharine had given me. "It is my own, sir, not for sharing." He knew what it was, to be sure. Now he would prove I was a troublemaker. I trembled thinking what he would do with that information.

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He took it. "You are a believer, then?"

"I was being polite to Katharine."

"Yes. The King indulges her too much. You know that the New Religion is frowned upon by His Majesty, do you not?"

"He still considers himself Catholic, though he believes not in many aspects of the church anymore. He is the head of his own church here in England." I recited that which I'd been taught by my tutor.

He handed the tract back to me "You can serve His Majesty well by telling me how far Katharine goes with Martin Luther's madness. That is how you can serve your King."

"You mean spy on Katharine?"

The hand came forth again, this time to my chin, and two fingers touched my neck. "Let us say 'protect' Katharine. From herself. I would speak to her about her readings, her beliefs, but it is not my place to do so. If you keep me informed, I can monitor how far this goes. I am sure right now it is just trifling on her part, would you say?"

"I would say, yes," I responded.

"If you keep me informed, a good report will

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go back to your parents. If not"--and he shrugged beneath the black robe--"well, then, they will be disappointed in you."

So' he, too, knew how my parents treated me! That they would beat me if a bad report went home. I felt a sense of dread. Already the intrigues of the court were being woven around me.

I said nothing. I was trembling. At my feet the spaniel was trembling. I liked this man not, yet I knew I must have continued dealings with him. I must protect Katharine yet not endanger myself. How to do this?

When I again looked up, he was gone.

Disappeared, as if he had never been.

I was shaking so much, I turned and ran back to Katharine's apartments, knocked on the door and was let in by Lady Jane Lisle.

"What is it?" Katharine saw my distress immediately.

Not thinking, I rushed into her arms. And she embraced me. "Dear child, what has frightened you?"

I told her. Wriothesley. "That old fool," she said. "He must have been in here, hiding behind the tapestries."

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"But he has the ear of the King," I wailed.

"So do I, dear. Don't let him frighten you. I'm sorry if I got you in trouble."

"Does he have the right to listen in other people's rooms?"

"I have enemies, Jane," she told me. "Wriothesley would catch me in treason. I am loyal to the King in all things, even his religion. I am allowed to read, aren't I?"

"Oh, madam." I hugged her again.

She made as if to take the tract from me, but I held on to it fast. "No, I won't let Wriothesley tell me what to read either," I said.

"Hide it well in your rooms, then."

I promised her I would. Then I took my spaniel and went to my apartments to try to sleep. But I could not, and I lay for a long time in my bed, my spaniel next to me. What a comfort he was. He seemed to know that I had troubles, and I fell asleep finally with my hand on his head.

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FIVE

E

lizabeth, Edward, and Mary went to their homes the next day, but I stayed on.

For a year.

I was to accompany the Queen everywhere, and since she was often in the company of the King, so was I. Unlike the other ladies-in-waiting, I did not make her bed or comb her hair or help her dress. I was to hold her hand when she walked. Admire the flowers in the knot garden with her. Play post-and-pillar, prisoner's base, and shuttlecock, or bowls, tennis, quoits, or chess on the game table in her room that the King had commissioned for her, and which was inlaid with pearls.

The King was kind to me--kinder than my

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own father had been--and so I paid little heed to the stories I heard of how he had burned monasteries, imprisoned monks, razed churches if they preached against him, and burned heretics at the stake. Instead I listened to stories about how he had made the court of England a place where intellectuals gathered, where artists, songsters, and poets came from all over the world. How he advanced the study of astronomy, and betimes made his own remedies for himself and others who were ill. How he refurbished his father's dull palaces into places of beauty. How his court now rivaled those of France and Italy.

Anyway, I had all I could do to mind my own affairs.

I named my spaniel Pourquoi at the suggestion of Katharine. Christmas came and I helped with the festivities. We oversaw the hanging of holly and evergreen. We even went downstairs to the enormous kitchens to give sketches of the sugared confections we wanted for the feast. The King was fond of festivities and tradition, especially Christmas. On New Year's Day we gave gifts.

Katharine gave the King a clock-salt, which

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was a clock and a salt shaker combined. It also had an hourglass, two sundials, and a compass. The King loved things that ticked and buzzed and told him the hour. Elizabeth gave Katharine a 117-page translation of some poem from French to English. Of course, Katharine loved that. I gave her the skin of an orange, intact, stuffed inside with vials of her favorite perfume. The King gave gifts to everyone, even the lowliest of workers in his palace. And then, in the cold of the New Year, suddenly things did not go well for him.

In January he lost fourteen captains to the French in a skirmish at Saint-Étienne, France. In February he was laid up with a fever, and Katharine had to nurse him. When he got out of bed, he played at cards. And lost.

In what spare time she had, the Queen was writing a new devotional work, but it was more Protestant than the King liked, so it would not be published.

Sir Wriothesley, who had been lying low, still wanted to convict Katharine of treason. He wanted her out of the way for his own ends.

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Lent came early. And Wriothesley came to action. He arrested a famous court preacher for heresy, had the man tortured, and under questioning, the man gave names. Among those names were several courtiers and a woman from Lincolnshire named Anne Askew.

She was a friend of the Queen.

They put her on the rack, but she refused to name names. The King gave permission and she was burned at the stake, though Katharine begged for her life.

The Queen was furious. And frightened. It was an early encounter for me with what lay beneath the beautiful trappings at court, although I had always secretly feared them. And there would be more to come.

I was with both the King and Queen the day they argued, not over Anne Askew, but over a fine point of religion. They often had lively discourse between them. The King could not abide anyone who was dull, who could not play verbal tennis with him. But when did you stop and when did you go on? The lesson was to be learned, apparently, by each one on his or her own.

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I was embroidering a pillow slip. We were in the privy garden on that fine day in May. Katharine was so busy making her theological point that she forgot the King did not wish to be bested. Ever. And when she left, he sulked.

"Nothing much to my comfort in mine old days to be taught by my wife," he grumbled to Wriothesley.

"Methinks, sire, that she might be harboring views of which thou would not approve," I heard Wriothesley say as I gathered my things and left.

"Examine the books in her closet," I heard the King say. And from the corner of my eye, I saw Wriothesley fair dance out of the privy garden to his task.

I could not tell Katharine. I could not get to her before he got to her apartments.

Still, I like to think that when the time finally came, that fall, I saved Katharine's life.

I was walking in the lower gallery of the palace when one of my ladies found the paper. The King's summer Progress, in which he traveled throughout his kingdom, was over. Outside a fierce rain was falling, more sleet than rain,

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pelting the windows, making one glad to be inside where there were cheery fires. I was headed to my room to do some reading.

The paper was apparently hidden just behind a tapestry. My lady found it and brought it to me, and I read it.

It was written by Wriothesley. And it was

a warrant for Katharine's arrest so she could be questioned.

I ran with it to her chambers.

"Katharine, Katharine!" I burst in, not bothering to knock. She was at her beautiful oaken desk, writing. She was laboring over a new devotional work comparing the King to Moses.

"What is it, Jane? You look terrible. Is the King ill?"

"No. I found this. It's ..." I could not bring myself to say the words, but thrust the paper at her. She read it and held it to her bosom.

"Wriothesley. He hopes to accuse me of treason!" And she moaned and stood, near to fainting, then fell on her bed, crying.

Nothing I nor any of her ladies could do, could stop her. She clutched that terrible paper and cried and moaned and screamed in a very un-Katharine-like manner. "Someone do something,"

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one of her ladies said. "Do something, Jane. You're close to the King. Go and tell him what a state she is in."

I was afraid, but I went. All the way down the hall I could hear Katharine's screams, as if she were already fed to some wolves. I ran past stained-glass windows against which hail rapped like icy fingers at my heart.

How had this paper come to be? It could only be if the King had allowed it. And if he had allowed it, what would he say to me when I approached him now?

I went straight to his privy chamber, where I knew he was eating alone this day.

Outside stood two men-at-arms. "I must see the King," I told them.

They knew me, of course. I did have some clout, after all. The door was opened and I was announced.

The King looked up from his food, napkin in hand. The table was covered with an embroidered damask cloth and spread with all kinds of fare. Bottles of wine glistened. Silver dishes gleamed and his gentlemen and grooms stood by. I smelled venison, game pies, stuffed oranges. I

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had never been in the royal apartments before and I hesitated and gasped.

Velvet cloths covered tables, windows, and walls. The windows here were clear, but in front of them hung ornamental birdcages that housed canaries and parrots. The oaken floors shone. And there were clocks all around, carved with roses and pomegranates, a clock that charted how the sea did flow and ebb, one that showed all die days of the year with planets. There were no scented rushes underfoot here, but velvet and woolen rugs.

But it was the huge, snarling steel andirons in the fireplace that caught my eye.

They bore the initials of the King. And Anne Boleyn.

"What is it?" the King asked. "What is that commotion?"

You could hear Katharine screaming from here. I knew that in a moment I would either be scolded and banished from court, never to return again, or embraced. One could never tell with the King. Would he roar and order me out? Order Katharine arrested immediately?

"Sire." I fell on my knees before him. "The

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commotion is Her Majesty, sire. She is in dire distress."

"Is she ill, then?"

"No, sire, she... she..."

"Out with it!" Now he did roar and I trembled.