I call the Privy Council together and I tell them that I am locking the gates of the Tower every evening at dusk and I expect every lord of the council to be inside. I expect all the ladies to attend me, my sisters too, my mother and my mother-in-law, my husband as well. They have put me on the throne in the Tower, and beside the throne and inside the Tower they will have to stay with me. Only if we stand together, with the saints in heaven, will we triumph, as John Dudley marches towards Lady Mary like the devil claiming his own.
William Herbert slinks back into my presence chamber, before midnight. I stay up late, my mother and my mother-in-law, Lady Dudley, with me. Even Guildford is with us, sober for once. Herbert’s son, still pale and sickly, comes in the room behind him, Katherine my sister half a step behind her young husband.
“You have to stay here, my lord,” I say abruptly. “We need you here in case there is news. We may need to call a council at any time.”
He bows to me but he says nothing. He has no defense.
“And I expect my sister’s companionship,” I say. “You may not take her away without my permission.”
I cannot stop myself glancing at my mother to see if she agrees with me. She nods; even Lady Dudley makes a little gesture of agreement. Everyone knows that we have to stick together.
“Nobody may leave,” Guildford says, as if I have not already made that clear. “It is my father’s wish.”
We have to work together, we cannot appear disunited. We are the soldiers of God—we have to march in step—so the council meet, and we all agree that they shall write to Lord Richard Rich, who swore for me, but has now vanished, and remind him that he must stay loyal. The counties of Norfolk are wavering, the East is becoming uncertain. They are afraid that the sailors on ships in port will declare for Mary. They hold the meeting, they send the letter, but later in the morning Katherine comes to my rooms and pulls at my sleeve while I am writing, making me blot the paper.
“Look what you made me do! What is it?” I ask her.
“We’re leaving,” she says in a tiny whisper. “I have to go right now. My father-in-law says so.” She shows me her pet monkey in the crook of her arm. “I have to put Mr. Nozzle in his cage. He has to come, too.”
“You can’t go. I told him, I told them all. You were there, you heard it. You all have to stay.”
“I know you told them,” she says. “That is why I have come to you, now.”
I look at her. For the first time in our lives I look at her and see her not as a slightly irritating younger sister, part of the familiar landscape of Bradgate, like a pale rose in the garden that I pass every day, but a real girl, real as me, a young woman, suffering as I am suffering. I look at her white face and her dark emotional eyes and the strain that she is showing, and I feel no sympathy but much irritation.
“What’s the matter with you? Why are you looking like a wet May Day?”
“They’re all coming with us,” she says miserably. “Lots of them, anyway. Your council—the Privy Council—they’re coming with us to Baynard’s Castle. They have agreed with my father-in-law, William Herbert, to meet there. They are leaving you and going with him. I am sorry, Jane. I can’t stop them . . .” She trails off with a little shrug. Obviously, she can’t stop the lords of the land doing as they think fit. “I did say that they should not . . .” she begins feebly.
“But I commanded them to stay here! What do they think they are going to do at your house?”
“I am afraid that they’re going to proclaim Lady Mary.”
I just look at her, aghast. “What?”
She looks back at me. “I have to go, too,” she says.
Obviously, she has to obey her young husband and his all-powerful father.
“You can’t.”
“Can we ask someone?”
She is so ridiculous. “Ask who? Ask them what?”
“What we should do? Could we send a message and ask Roger Ascham?”
“The scholar? What do you think he could do? Now that my Privy Council is running away with your father-in-law, and proclaiming a papist as queen?”
“I don’t know,” she snivels.
Of course she doesn’t. She never knows anything.
“Father has to tell them,” she says in a whisper. “The Privy Council. Father must tell them not to come to Baynard’s Castle and turn against you. I can’t.”
“Well, tell him to tell them! Fetch him here now!”
“He won’t. I already asked. Our lady mother won’t.”
We are silent for a moment, more like sisters than we have ever been before, united in apprehension as it dawns on me that the right thing does not always happen, that the saints do not always march unstoppably to heaven, that the godly do not necessarily triumph, that the two of us have no more authority than little Mary. The monkey, Mr. Nozzle, pulls her handkerchief from her pocket and presses it into her hand.
“What about me?” I ask.
I see for the first time that there are tears in her eyes. “I don’t suppose you could come, too?” she says. “Come to Baynard’s Castle with everybody?” She gives a gulp. “Say you’re sorry to Lady Mary? That it was a mistake? Come with me?”
“Don’t be stupid,” I say harshly.
“If you and I were to say it was all a mistake? If I were to back you up and say you didn’t mean it? That they made you?”
I see her tighten her hold on the jacket of her pet monkey, as if he might give witness, too.
“Impossible.”
She shakes her head. “I didn’t think you could,” she says, and hands me her damp handkerchief and goes without another word from the room.
I look around me. Now I see that some of my ladies are missing and now I realize they have been absent since prayers this morning. My rooms are thinning out; people are deserting me.
“You are none of you to leave here,” I say harshly, and the heads bob up, as if they are all planning to run away from the Tower as soon as I am out of the room. This is infidelity, this is false faith. I think that women are especially inclined to dishonor. I hate them for it, but I can do nothing against them now. I cannot imagine how they can live with themselves, how they can pray. God will repay them for infidelity to me, His daughter. The mills of God grind slow; but they grind exceeding fine, as these great ladies and their dishonest husbands will learn.
We process to dinner as usual. Guildford sits beside me on a lower chair, the golden cloth of estate extending over me. I look around the hall—there is no buzz of conversation, nobody seems to have any appetite. I could almost shrug. They all wanted this—why would they regret their own actions? Surely, they know that this world is a vale of tears and we are all miserable sinners?
The great door at the end of the hall opens, and my father comes in, walking stiffly as if his knees are sore. I look up but he does not smile at me. He moves towards me; the conversations die away and the room falls silent as he comes on.
He stands before me, his mouth working, but still he says nothing. I have never seen him like this before, I have a cold sense of dread that something terrible is about to happen. “Father?” I ask. Then suddenly, he reaches up and gets hold of a corner of the cloth of estate and tugs so hard at it that the posts that hold it steady over my chair fall sideways like cut timber, with a clatter, and the awning rips.
“Father!” I exclaim, and he rounds on me.
“This place does not belong to you. You must submit to fortune,” he says suddenly.
“What?”
“You must put off your royal robes and be content to live a private life.”
“What?” I say again, but I am playing for time now. I guess that we have lost, and he has chosen this strange behavior—more like a masque than a father speaking to his beloved daughter—so that it can be reported that he took down the cloth of estate with his own hands. Or perhaps words fail him; they don’t fail me; they never fail me. “I much more willingly put them off than I put them on,” I say. “Out of obedience to you and my mother I have grievously sinned.”