Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,11

look, knowing as she did that one was the same as the other to me. “Cicero.”

Harry, standing next to me, nodded approvingly, and I knew if he had been alone, my daughter would have elaborated. Sparing me the embarrassment of asking who Cicero was, he said, “We have news for you, Jane. You are to go live in Sir Thomas Seymour’s household.”

“It will be a great opportunity for you, and you will be able to visit us regularly,” I put in. “I think you’ll like it there.”

“When am I to leave?”

Even Harry seemed nonplussed by my daughter’s matter-of-factness. “Why, as soon as it can all be arranged, I suppose. Sir Thomas stands ready to receive you at any time.”

“Might I bring my books?”

“Yes.” My second daughter, Kate, would have asked whether she could bring her pets.

“Then I shall write him and thank him for his gracious invitation,” Jane said, as usual anticipating me.

***

My daughter had seemed perfectly content as we parted from her at Seymour Place. In the days after our parting, it was I who paced the halls at Dorset House, wondering how the absence of one quiet girl could make them seem so empty.

3

Jane Dudley

May 1547

With the old king buried and the new king crowned, Queen Catherine moved from court to her dower house at Chelsea, to which I was invited toward the end of May. As my servants escorted me off my barge, newly painted with the bear and ragged staff of Warwick, and through the gate, I looked around appreciatively. The queen’s gardeners had applied all of their arts, and nature had done the rest; this place smelled like Eden before the Fall.

Catherine Parr stopped me short from kneeling to her when I was shown into her chamber. “There’s no need of that here at Chelsea,” she said, allowing me to salute her on the cheek instead. “Why, look at you! Being a countess agrees with you, I think.”

I smiled. “And I believe the air at Chelsea agrees with you, Your Grace,” I said, thinking it might be the queen’s widowed state that agreed with her instead. In the last year or so of King Henry’s reign, when poor Anne Askew had been roasted alive and the religious conservatives had tried their best to alienate the king from the queen, she had looked tense and wary, even when the attempt failed and Henry had showered her with gifts.

“It is pleasant here indeed.” Catherine hesitated then put her hand on my shoulder. “My lady, I have a secret I wish to confide in you. I trust you, and I know you can keep one very well.” The queen smiled a little archly at me. “As you did when the king lay dead.”

“Your Grace, I beg your forgiveness. My husband—”

“There is no need to do so. You are right to be loyal to him. And that is why I am telling you a secret that you can share with him. Tom Seymour and I have married.”

“Married?” I squeaked in a manner suitable to my nickname of old.

“We married at my sister’s chapel at Baynard’s Castle just a few days before. Well, my lady? Are not congratulations in order?”

“Indeed they are,” I managed. The queen, married after just four months of widowhood! And in a secret ceremony! “I suppose the king doesn’t know?”

“No, and neither does the Protector nor that shrew he has for a wife.” The queen’s eyes narrowed. “Do you know what that—that hell is doing? She has encouraged her husband to keep my jewels, the jewels the late king willed to me, on the ground that they are the Crown’s! I’ve no doubt she wants them for her own skinny neck.” Catherine glowered, then recalled herself. “No, I have not told them, and I shall not. Only my sister and her husband and the priest who married us and a couple of my ladies know. We want to secure the king’s approval for the match.”

“A little late for that,” I ventured.

Catherine shrugged. “We can always have a public ceremony.”

“How long have you been courting?” I could not resist asking.

“Since just days after the king’s funeral. Have I shocked you?”

“Yes,” I admitted. “But I understand the temptation.”

“No, you probably don’t, having known your husband since you were three, and having been married to him since you were sixteen.” Queen Catherine was beginning to melt away before my eyes, and I was seeing Lady Latimer as I had known her years before, when she was newly arrived in