Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,123
lately. Besides, with a daughter languishing in the Tower—though Jane was well fed and well supplied with comfortable furnishings and her beloved books and paper—neither of us had the heart to go to Leicestershire as if nothing were amiss.
As Christmas drew near, Harry’s brothers paid us their accustomed visits, along with several men who had not visited us much before: Sir Peter Carew, Sir James Croft, and Sir Thomas Wyatt. They were more soldiers than scholars, not Harry’s usual choice of companion, I thought. But as they were congenial and well bred, and their presence was a distraction, I welcomed them to Sheen.
As we played cards a few days before the anniversary of our Lord’s birth and the men enjoyed the wide varieties of wine we had on hand, the subject, despite my best efforts to the contrary, soon turned to the queen’s marriage. “Any news of the Spanish invasion?” asked Thomas Grey, Harry’s younger brother.
“Nothing you haven’t heard,” said Harry. “Probably the Spaniards are arguing over who’s going to get which part of England once Philip coaxes the queen into handing it over.”
“Oh, Harry,” I said. “Really.”
“My wife lives in a state of happy illusion,” Harry said, picking up a card. His voice was slurred. “She believes that the queen is going to keep Philip in his place, and that England won’t be handed over to the Pope.”
“I believe the queen will exercise common sense and not alienate the people.”
Thomas Wyatt smiled at me. He was a handsome man in his early thirties, the son of the poet who had narrowly escaped being accused of adultery with Anne Boleyn. “We can hope.”
“I think we should give her a chance to do what is right for England,” I said. Perhaps I had had a cup of wine too much myself, for I added, “After all, Harry has pledged to support her marriage.”
Thomas Grey turned to his brother. “Is that true, Harry? I wouldn’t have thought it of you.”
Harry shrugged. “It could be worse. The queen’s husband could be one of the savages the Spaniards bring over from Africa.”
“No,” said Thomas. “It would be better. She could teach him how to worship that bread of hers, and dress him up and put a crown on his head, and then she could leave the governing of England to Englishmen, while the savage begets a child upon her—or tries. That might be a bit much, even for a savage.”
“This is abominable,” I said, pronouncing the word too carefully. I rose. “How can you speak of the queen so? She has been merciful to our daughter. We owe her gratitude, not vile jokes like these.”
“Now, Fan, let us have our fun,” said Harry as I turned to stare. To call me “Fan” in front of men I hardly knew, he had to be well and truly drunk. “God knows we won’t be having it for long, once the queen takes all that’s ours back and gives it to the monasteries. Not once she milks us to pay for Spain’s wars and puts us at war with the French. Not once she sacrifices England so that she can find a little pleasure between her leg—”
As regally as I could with my head beginning to ache, I swept from the room.
***
Late the next afternoon, Harry, looking so hung over I might have felt sorry for him were he not my husband, appeared in my chamber. “Have you got anything else vile to say?” I asked.
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean—oh, I don’t know what to say. Just read this letter. I received it yesterday before my brothers and the rest came.”
I stared at the familiar handwriting, confident and upright as ever despite the fact that the author was imprisoned in the Tower. “Jane wrote this?”
“Yes. It’s a fair copy of a letter she sent to Harding when she heard of his apostasy.”
Thomas Harding was one of our former chaplains. Like a number of other clergy, he had abandoned his Protestant faith when Mary came to the throne. “How did she hear of that?” Though we wrote to our daughter from time to time, we—or at least I—carefully avoided any topics that might offend the queen. I thus spent a great deal of time writing about the weather, my plans for my garden, and Kate’s pets, all subjects I knew thoroughly bored Jane but at least would not send her to the scaffold.
Harry shrugged. “We have friends in the Tower guard. But read the letter.”