Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,131

happened unto me for my sins; and yet I thank God of his goodness that he hath thus given me a time and respite to repent. And now, good people, while I am alive, I pray you to assist me with your prayers.

“She knelt and said the fifty-first Psalm, with Feckenham helping,” said Elizabeth Tilney. “Then she rose and thanked him for keeping her company. She said that during the last three days she had been more bored by him than frightened by the shadow of death. Then she said that she hoped God would reward him for his efforts.”

I blinked. My daughter had made a joke on the scaffold?

“She gave Thomas Bridges her prayer book, then handed me her gloves and handkerchief,” Elizabeth continued. She still clutched the gloves. Mistress Ellen was stroking the snow-white handkerchief, embroidered crookedly JG. “The executioner offered to help her untie her gown, but she gave him a look and had us ladies do it. Then she forgave her executioner and—and begged him to be quick. He promised her that he would, and he also promised her when she asked that he would not take her head before she lay down.

“The only time she lost her composure was when she put on the blindfold and couldn’t see where to put her head. She fumbled around the block. None of us thought to help her—it was as if we would be sending her to her death. So someone finally stepped forward, and she tossed her beautiful hair in front of her, to bare her neck, and said, ‘Lord, into my hands I commend my spirit.’ And the headsman was quick.”

“Everyone on Tower Green was weeping,” Master Stokes said. “There were no cheers.” He paused to give me time to weep, but I reached a point beyond tears. “The lieutenant gave me some things,” he continued. “Another handkerchief of your sister’s for you, Lady Mary, and this for you, Lady Katherine.”

Mary sniffled into the handkerchief while Kate stared gloomily at the New Testament in Greek Master Stokes handed her.

“There is a letter written in it to you, Lady Katherine,” Adrian said. He handed another little book to me. “And there is one written inside here for you, Your Grace.”

Late that night, I read my letter. Jane’s letter to Kate has since been published. It was an exhortation to the godly life, kindly meant but perhaps misaddressed to a pretty young woman who wanted only to marry a kind young man and have his children. Mine never has been published and never will be, for it was of little interest to the greater world, only of immeasurable consolation to me. It told me my daughter loved me and she would pray for me in the next world to have the courage to face the trials to come. On that bleak February night, this was what I needed to hear. I wear that book on my girdle today, and when I need heart, I only have to open the book and hold it before my eyes. It will be placed in my hands when I am laid in my grave.

***

On the same day Jane died, gallows rose ominously everywhere around London. Even they would not hold all of the men who would die for their part in Wyatt’s rebellion; some would be hanged in their own doorways.

Harry’s trial came five days later. I did not go; my heart was too bitter against him. It was not only that I held him responsible for Jane’s death, by far the worst of his sins: he had wreaked other destruction, as well. With his treason, all the worse after he had been forgiven for his role in the events of last summer, he had blighted my other daughters’ futures. What men of substance would want to marry them now?

And he had blighted my life, too. Bradgate, where my baby son and daughter lay at rest, was forfeit to the Crown: never would I be able to visit their graves. So were the rest of Harry’s lands. For the time being, I had a home at Sheen, but that was bound to be taken from me any day. I would soon be like the Duchess of Northumberland, who I had heard was living on the queen’s sufferance at Chelsea and selling her plate to keep her increasingly small household fed.

All this, when I had pleaded on my knees for Harry to abandon Wyatt’s cause and make his peace with the queen. Why,