Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,111

now; if a Mass would save John, I would hear four a day. Six! We would be better Papists than the Pope himself, which given what I had heard about the present Pope wouldn’t be all that hard.

“I can’t say, Your Grace. It may be that it is only postponed. Please don’t hope for too much.”

“Queen Mary would surely not bring my husband into her church only to destroy him,” I said stubbornly. “If nothing else, it would be a waste.”

***

In front of a crowd of clergy, royal and city officials, courtiers, and prisoners, John had renounced the Protestant faith and heard the Mass. It was an enormous triumph for the queen: her brother’s chief minister admitting King Edward had been wrong about the religion he held so dear. But John Rogers had been right to caution me. Whether John was Protestant or Catholic, it mattered not in the end, for late that afternoon, as I knelt praying that my husband might be spared, a message came from Lord Paget that John’s execution had been rescheduled for the next morning.

I was sitting in my chamber, weeping next to the clock that had once been John’s, when Maudlyn Flower came. “Please dry your eyes, Your Grace, and hurry. The queen has allowed you and your daughters to see the duke. Her men are waiting for you.”

***

As my daughters and I entered the Tower late on Monday evening, the place where my husband awaited death was bustling with life. Royal servants were scurrying about, trying to finish the day’s business before night fell. How could the world be going on so normally, when the man I loved best was to die?

Beside me, Katheryn faltered as we came closer to the Garden Tower. “Will he be in chains? Will they have”—she swallowed—“tortured him?”

I cursed myself for not having realized the mental torment my daughter must have been suffering all of these days; I had hardly seen the poor child, leaving her to the care of her attendant, Mistress Blount. “The queen does not do that to people, Katheryn. He will look just as he always looks, and he will be very glad to see you.”

As soon as we entered, Katheryn ran forward and flung herself, sobbing, at John. He backed onto a window seat and took her into his lap, where she wept against his chest while Mary and I struggled to keep our composure. “Child, you must try to be brave for your mother,” John said at last, his own voice shaking. “She will need you to be so in the days to come.”

“I hate the queen! Mama has been begging to see her—has been begging everyone to urge her to spare you. The queen will not listen. I hate her! I hope she dies!”

“Katheryn!” Mary wrung her hands.

“Katheryn, you must not say that.” John managed a stern look. “I have wronged her. I made a great mistake, and she is within her rights to punish me. She has been more merciful than many would have been under the circumstances. Don’t grow bitter and angry over this. It helps nothing and could only make things worse. You will promise me never to say something foolish like that again?”

“Yes, Father,” Katheryn mumbled. “But I still don’t like her.”

“Well, that is understandable, I suppose, under the circumstances.” He brushed my daughter’s cheek with the back of his hand and settled her more comfortably against him. “When I was younger than you are, my father was executed, too, you know. I thought I would never be happy again, but I was. I went to live with your mother, for one thing. So you see? There will be hard days for you, but they will not last forever.” He turned to Mary and with his free hand drew her closer to him. “I was angry when you ran off with young Sidney, you know.”

“Oh, Father, I meant no disrespect.”

“I know. And you chose well—better than I might have chosen for you. He is a good man. I am glad to know you will be in his care.” John smiled at my daughters. “I have had six sons grow to manhood, but only two daughters grow to womanhood,” he said. “That has always made the two of you doubly precious to me.”

I walked to the other side of John’s chamber as John and the girls talked quietly. After a little while, John called the guards. “Take them to the chamber upstairs for a short while, please. I