Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,113

you once it’s finished. I don’t want you to see me behe—like that.”

“I promise I will not come.” But what did one do while one’s husband was being executed? Read? Sew? Practice the virginals? Perhaps I could consult the Duchess of Somerset. I pushed back the nervous laughter that was beginning to overtake me; if I started laughing in such an insane manner, I might never stop.

“Sit in your garden where it’s pretty, you and my girls, when the time comes near. It is the picture I will hold in my mind. It will be a comfort to me.”

“Very well. I will sit there.” To calm myself, I looked around the chamber. Hanging on a clothes rack next to the bed were a light gray gown and a matching doublet—the clothes John would wear tomorrow.

Like a good husband, John asked, “Do they meet with your approval?”

“Yes.”

“Good.” John was silent for a while, stroking my hair. Finally he said, “I requested that the Duke of Somerset’s sons come here today, to see me take the Mass. I asked them for their forgiveness for executing their father.”

“But he plotted against you.”

“I know. But his death has gnawed at my conscience nonetheless. It eased it a little, speaking to them. Of course, they probably won’t forgive me, any more than Katheryn will forgive Queen Mary. But at least I tried.”

“And you have really embraced the old religion?”

“Yes. It wasn’t that way at first. I renounced my Protestant faith in the hopes of saving our sons. And it has, at least one of them. Jack won’t die with me tomorrow as I had feared. But it has brought me comfort since then. After all, so much has gone ill with England under the new.” He touched my cheek. “I don’t expect you to embrace the old religion straightaway. These things take time. But I hope someday you will.”

I was silent. New religion, old religion were the same to me now; they shared the same cruel God, who was taking away from me the man I loved better than anything else on earth. Or maybe there was no cruel God. The wicked thought that there might be none at all was one I was trying very hard not to let push its way into my mind. But I would not distress my husband in his last hours of his life with my newfound doubts. “I will try.”

“That is all I can ask.” He reached into a drawer and pulled out an inexpensive rosary. “Everything I have here will go to the Crown, but the queen won’t mind if I give you this.”

I wound it around my wrist before John locked me into another embrace. We stood there for a while, whispering loving words to each other through our tears. Then John said, “The girls will be getting weary up there, and the guards might think we’ve gotten up to something. We’d best call them back.”

“Yes.” But I did not move until John gently disengaged me and knocked at the chamber door as a signal to his guards.

The girls silently came in, and John kissed and embraced each of them in turn. Then he turned, for the last time, to me.

“Good-bye, Mouse,” he said and kissed my lips. “God keep you.”

The guards pressed around us and hurried us downstairs to our waiting boat. It was a mercy, I suppose, that they did not allow me to turn and look backward, for the last sight I had of my John was his smiling face as he bid me farewell.

36

Frances Grey

August 22, 1553

When the day appointed for the Duke of Northumberland’s execution came round, Harry insisted we should be there. It was necessary, he said, to show our loyalty to the queen so she would prove more sympathetic toward our imprisoned daughter. “And to us, as well, my dear! We are not exactly basking in royal favor at the moment.” So on August 22, we rode to Tower Hill, leaving kindhearted Kate and squeamish Mary at our house at Sheen, a former priory. I wished I could have found an excuse to stay there with them.

Over days of interrogation, Northumberland had denied poisoning the king. There was nothing, he had said repeatedly, he had wanted more than to see the king live to an old age. The old woman had been a desperate measure to cure the king, who had consented to her ministrations when all else failed. Asked whether he had poisoned Harry, he had snorted with