I look at Mary and say: “Where is everyone? Why have we come here?”
“I don’t know,” she says; but now I am certain she is lying.
She goes to the door and opens it to listen. From the distant kitchen we can hear the clatter of pans and the sound of voices, but the great rooms that open off the huge hall are silent. Mary closes the door and looks at me, as if wondering what she should do with me. I wrap my cloak tighter round my thin frame and look back at her.
“Your eyes are huge,” she says irrelevantly. “Don’t be so frightened. You have to be brave.”
“I’m not frightened,” I lie.
“You look like a doe at bay.”
My faith should support me as strongly now as it does when I am safe in my bed at Bradgate. I know that God is with me. “O Lord my God, I cried unto thee, and thou hast healed me,” I say quietly.
“Oh, for heaven’s sake,” Mary says impatiently. “You’ve just come for dinner with your father-in-law!” She drags a stool to the massive fireplace. After a moment’s hesitation I copy her and we sit like a pair of old gossips on either side, and she throws on some kindling and a little log. It gives out no heat but a flickering light that drives the dark shadows to the corners.
“Is it about the king?” I whisper.
“Yes,” she says.
“Has he named me as queen?”
She compresses her lips as if to keep the words in her mouth.
“Will it be . . . soon?”
She nods, as if it is too terrible to say, and we sit in silence after that and then the door is opened and a manservant comes in, wearing the Dudley livery. “His Grace wishes to see you in the great hall,” he says.
Mary and I follow him down the stairs, he throws open the double doors, and we go into the brightly lit room. At once I am dazzled by candles and firelight; the room is crowded with the great men of the kingdom and their unending trains of hangers-on. There is a blaze of wealth from jewels on the hats, and the thick gold chains sprawling over a dozen broad chests, fat as pouter pigeons. I recognize half a dozen of them. My sister Katherine’s sickly husband is missing, but his father, William Herbert, is here; his brother-in-law, William Parr, Marquess of Northampton, is standing beside him. Francis Hastings and Henry FitzAlan are talking together in a huddle but fall silent when they see us. We walk into the sudden hush of the room and my father-in-law, John Dudley, nods at Mary as if to thank her for a service, and then, one after another, they all pull their hats from their heads and stand in silence. I look around, half expecting that the king has come in behind me, or perhaps Princess Mary. But then John Dudley himself, the Duke of Northumberland, greatest man in the council, sweeps off his pearl-encrusted hat and bows very low to me. “The king is dead,” he says. “God save his immortal soul. He named you as his heir. You are queen, God bless and keep Your Majesty.”
I look at him blank-faced, and I think, stupidly, that this must all be a dream: the evening sail on the river, the silent house at the end of the long journey, the cold hearth, and now these great men looking at me as if I should know what to do, while they pin a treasonous title on me.
“What?” is all I say. “What?”
“You are queen,” John Dudley repeats. He looks around the room. “God save the queen!”
“God save the queen!” they all bellow, their mouths wide open, their faces suddenly flushed, as if shouting all together can make a thing true.
“What?” I say again. I think I will wake up in a moment and this will seem ridiculous. I will be in my bed at Chelsea. Perhaps I will tell Guildford of my terrible dream and he will laugh.
“Fetch my wife,” John Dudley says quietly to the man at the door, and we wait in awkward silence. Nobody meets my gaze but everyone is looking at me. I keep thinking: what do they want me to do? I say a little prayer: “Holy Father, tell me what to do. Send me a sign.” Then my mother-in-law, Lady Dudley, comes in and my mother is with her. This should comfort me but seeing those two rivalrous enemies united in a sudden determination frightens me worse than before. Elizabeth Parr comes in too and stands beside her husband the Marquess of Northampton, and her face is bright and hard.
My mother takes my cold hands in an unkind grip. “Jane, the king my cousin is dead,” she says loudly, as if announcing her royal blood to the room.
“Edward dead?”
“Yes, and he named you as the new queen.” She can’t stop herself from adding: “Through my right.”
“Poor Edward! Oh! Edward!” I say. “Was it peaceful for him at the end? Was it his illness? Did he have a preacher with him?”
“Doesn’t matter,” my mother-in-law says, wasting no time on the soul of my cousin. “He named you as queen.”
I look into her determined face. “I can’t be,” I say simply.
“You are,” my mother repeats. “At the end, he named our line. You inherit through me.”
“But what about Princess Mary?”
“She was named as a bastard by her own father in his will, and besides, we will never accept a papist queen,” Lady Dudley interrupts. “Never.”
“Princess Elizabeth?” I whisper.
This time, neither of them troubles to reply. I don’t even name Mary Queen of Scots, though her claim is as good as ours.
“I can’t do it,” I whisper to Lady Dudley, and I look askance at the room filled with men. “I really can’t.”
“You have to.”
One by one the councillors drop to their knees till they are all at the height of my shoulders and I feel as if I am besieged by determined gnomes, no taller than my little sister.
“Don’t!” I say miserably. “My lords, I beg you, don’t.” I can feel the tears running down my face, for my poor cousin, dead so young, and for me, alone in this terrible room with these terrifying men on their knees, and these women who will not help me. “Don’t, I can’t do it.”
As if I have said nothing, as if they are deaf to a refusal, they crowd closer on their knees. It is nightmarish. They rise; they come one after another to bow low and kiss my hand. I would pull my hands away, but my mother supports me with an arm around my back and a grip on my armpit. Lady Dudley holds my hand outstretched so that these great strange men can press their fleshy lips on my clenched fist. I am choking on my sobs, the tears pouring down my face, but no one remarks on it. “I can’t,” I wail. “It is Princess Mary who must inherit. Not me.”
I twist in their hold. I think they will drag me to the scaffold. I defied my cousin Mary once when I insulted her faith. I dare not do it again. To claim the throne is an act of treason, punishable by death. I dare not do it. I will not do it.
The doors of the great hall open and my father and Guildford come in together. “Father!” I cry out, as if to my savior. “Tell them that I cannot be queen!”
He comes to my side and I feel the intense relief of a rescued child. I think that he will save me from this misery and tell them all that it cannot be. But he too bows low to me, as he has never done before, and then he says in his sternest voice: “Jane, you were named queen by our late beloved king. It was his right to name you; it is your duty to accept the inheritance he has given you. It is your God-given duty.”
I give a little scream. “No! No! No, Father! No!”
My mother tightens her grip on my shoulders and gives me a little shake. “Be quiet,” she snaps in an undertone. “You were born for this. You should be glad.”
“How can I?” I choke on my sobs. “I can’t! I can’t!”
Wildly, I look around the stern faces for anyone who might understand and take my part. Guildford comes close to me and takes my hand. “Be brave,” he says. “This is a great opportunity for us. This is wonderful. I am so proud of you.”
I look at him blankly, as if he were speaking Russian. What does he mean? What is he saying? He gives his pretty-child smile and then releases me and moves towards his mother. No one cares that I refuse, nobody hears that I will not take the throne. They will crown me with or without my consent. I am like a trapped hare with one foot in a snare. I can twist and turn, I can scream, but nothing will save me.