I shake my head, glancing towards the door. “Hush. This is all because the king is so ill. Their greatest hope is that they can show him that one of us has a son, so that he can make that boy his heir. They want us both to marry at once, get with child, and show him the boy as his heir.”
“I could be the mother of the King of England?” she yelps. “Me? Not you? If I get a boy before you do?”
“Perhaps.”
She clasps her hands and laughs with delight. “So who are you to marry?”
“Guildford Dudley,” I say shortly.
My sister skids to a standstill. “Not Ned Seymour after all? They’re switching horses? You’re to have the young Dudley boy?”
“Yes.”
“The tall fair one?”
“Yes, of course.”
“The mummy’s boy?”
“Yes, Guildford.”
“Well, that’s a comedown,” she crows. “You won’t like that! The second to youngest son of a new-made duke? You won’t get your ducal strawberry leaves off him!”
My hand itches to slap her silly face. “It’s not a question of like or dislike,” I say steadily. “It is my father’s wish to ally with the Lord President of the council. It is Father’s determination that we shall be wedded and bedded so he can show the king his heirs to bring up in the reformed religion. Even little Mary is to be betrothed—to Arthur Grey, the son of the Baron of Wilton.”
She gives a scream. “The baron with the scarred face? The ugly one?”
“Yes.”
“But Mary’s only eight! And Arthur must be twenty!”
“He’s seventeen,” I say grimly. “But in any case, Mary is far too young to be married, and she’s too small. If she does not grow, how could she give birth? She has that twist in her spine; I don’t think she could birth a child. It’s all completely wrong. She is too small, and you are too young, and I am promised before God to Ned Seymour. Our parents gave our word. I don’t see how any of these weddings can go ahead. I don’t believe it can be God’s will. You must join with me and speak against them.”
“Not me!” she says smartly. “I’m not defying our lady mother. If I can have Mr. Nozzle with me, I’ll stand behind you as you argue; but I can’t face up to her on my own.”
“So that they don’t marry you to a stranger! So they don’t marry you while you’re still a child,” I exclaim.
“Oh, I can marry Herbert,” she assures me. “I’m not too young. That can go ahead. I don’t object to it. The rest of you can refuse if you want, but I want to be married.”
“None of us can marry anyone,” I rule.
There is a silence; she pouts at me. “Oh, Jane, don’t spoil everything! Oh, please don’t!” She clasps my hands, and the bird cheeps encouragingly.
“I’m going to pray on it. I have to listen to God.”
“But what if God agrees with you?” she wails. “When does He ever want anything nice for us?”
“Then I will have to tell Father that I have doubts.”
He does not see me alone: that in itself warns me that I will not get a hearing. He fears my eloquence: “Oh, for pity’s sake don’t let her go on and on,” my mother always says.
I go into the royal presence chamber like a Daniel going in to the lions. Edward the king is not in his court. He is behind the closed doors of the privy chamber, or he may even have retreated to the room behind that—his study and his bedroom. Out here, the court goes about its business as if there is nothing wrong. The Marquess of Northampton, William Parr, and his wife, Elizabeth, nod at me with a peculiar smile, as if they know all about everything—which they probably do. I sketch a little curtsey and feel even more uneasy.
My mother and my father are playing cards with Sir William Cavendish and his wife, Elizabeth, my mother’s good friend our aunt Bess. The table is in the window bay so they have some privacy in the bustling room. My parents look up as I come through the crowd of people. I notice that people make way for me. The news of my betrothal to the son of the Lord President must have spread already, and my importance has grown with the news. Everyone shows respect to the Dudleys. They may be a new family, but clearly they have the knack of taking power and holding it.
“Deuce,” my mother says, putting down a card, and makes an absentminded gesture of blessing over my head with her free hand as I curtsey to her.
Aunt Bess gives me a warm smile. I am a favorite of hers and she understands that a young woman has to find her own way in the world by her own lights.
“I have a queen,” my father says, showing his hand.
My mother laughs. “And perhaps queens count, after all!” She turns to me, pleasantly enough. “What is it, Jane? Come to take a hand? Are you staking your necklace?”
“Don’t tease her,” my father intervenes hastily, as I open my mouth to abjure the sin of gambling. “What is it, child, what do you want?”
“I would speak with you.” I look at my mother. “Privately.”
“You can speak here,” she rules. “Come closer.”
Tactfully, Sir William and his lady rise up and stand a little to one side, her ladyship still holding her cards so that she can return to the sinful game without a moment’s delay. My father signs to the musicians to play and half a dozen ladies form up to dance. At once the men bow and join them, and in the noise of the dance nobody can hear me when I say: “My lord father, lady mother, I believe that I cannot be betrothed to Guildford Dudley. I have prayed on it, and I am certain.”
“Whyever not?” my mother asks. She is so little distracted from her game that she looks at her cards and slides a few crowns across the table to the pile in the middle with only half her mind on me.
Lady Bess shakes her head, as if she thinks that my mother should attend to me.
“I am precontracted,” I say firmly.
My father glances up at my pale face. “No, you’re not.”
“I believe I am,” I say. “We all said that I should marry Ned Seymour. We made a verbal promise.”
“Nothing in writing,” my mother remarks. To my father she says: “I raise you another crown. I told you she would be like this.”
“A word is as binding as a letter.” I speak to my father, whose word, as a reformed Christian, must be his oath. “We made an agreement. You made an agreement. Ned spoke to me, as his father said he should: I assented.”
“Did you promise?” my mother inquires, suddenly interested. “Did you give your word to him? Did you say ‘I will’?”
“I said ‘quite.’ ”
She laughs out loud and my father gets up from the table, takes my hand, tucks it in the crook of his elbow, and leads me away from my mother and from the dancers. “Now listen here,” he says gently. “There was talk of a betrothal and we agreed that it might take place. But everyone knew it depended on Seymour’s return to power. None of my girls will be married except to the advantage of the family.
“And now everything has changed. Seymour is dead, his wife still imprisoned for treason, and his son has lost his inheritance. There is no value in any connection with them. You can see for yourself, a clever girl like you, this place is run by John Dudley. The king is not going to make old bones. It’s sad but we have to face it. He’s going to leave his throne to whichever cousin of the reformed religion has a son to take his place. One of you will get a son, and she will be queen regent until her boy is of age, and then the boy will take the throne. D’you see?”
“What about Elizabeth?” I ask, although it goes against the grain with me to put her forward. “She’s of the reformed religion. She’s next of kin.”
“Not her. There are no plans for her to marry, and certainly, she wouldn’t be allowed to choose a husband for herself, not after that business with Thomas Seymour. I think she has shown us all that she is very far from being a wise virgin.” My father allows himself a little chuckle. “It’s a Tudor boy we want; a girl is no good for us. The king—God bless him—hopes to live long enough to see his heir christened in a reformed church. We didn’t expect this, we didn’t prepare for this, but he isn’t well, and he wants this settled now. You can do that for him. It would be godly work to ease his troubled conscience. You marry Guildford Dudley, take to childbed, and the king knows that he is getting two young people, raised in the reformed Church, with two experienced fathers to advise them, and a boy in the cradle to come after him on the throne. D’you see?”