Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,134

last hours better for me.”

I thought of Harry watching as our daughter died. He was right: there had been no greater punishment he could have undergone than that. “I will, Harry.”

“Thank you.” Harry smiled at me. In his relief at being forgiven, he looked almost boyish again.

Master Stokes had also been right; it would have haunted me forever if I had not bothered to come to say good-bye. “I’m glad I came here.”

“So am I.” Harry kissed me, more gently than passionately, and then led me to the door, where Master Stokes stood outside, talking with the guards. “Take care of her, Stokes.”

“I will, Your Grace.”

Harry gave me a knowing, almost mischievous look, and raised his hand in farewell.

***

“The duke bore his execution bravely,” Master Stokes reported to me the next day. “He was steadfast in his Protestant faith to the end, even though the queen sent a priest to accompany him. He made a short speech, very dignified.” An odd look came across his face.

“What is it? You are not hiding something?”

“No. Well, there was a moment just before he climbed the scaffold, he tried to keep the priest from following him. They got into a shoving match.”

Yes, that was my Harry.

“And at the end, just before the duke took off his gown and doublet, a man popped up on the scaffold and asked, ‘My lord, how should I get the money that you owe me?’ How he managed to get up there, I have no idea. The duke didn’t lose his temper. He just said, ‘Good fellow, trouble me not now, but go to my officers.’ He was a good man, Your Grace, and deserved a happier fate. I shall miss him.”

So, I realized when I prepared to climb into my empty bed that evening, would I. Instead of settling into bed, I dropped to my knees and, breaking my promise to Harry, prayed for his soul.

It couldn’t hurt. And if he was already in heaven and didn’t need my prayers, he surely wouldn’t hold a grudge against me for offering them anyway.

43

Jane Dudley

February 1554 to June 1554

For a day after Guildford’s death, I lay in my bed, utterly undone by the cruelty of this world. What was the point of going on? But after a day of weeping, I knew this self-pity could avail me nothing. I had four sons left on Earth. It was up to me to get them set free.

And so, a few days after Guildford’s remains were buried in an unmarked grave at the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula, I was back haunting the court.

It was hardly a promising place to be. In London, one could not turn a corner without running into a hanging corpse; the air was so rank with the smell of rotting traitors, no one went out without a pomander clutched to his or her nose. The lady Elizabeth, pale and ill, had been forcibly brought to Whitehall. Suspected of complicity in the Wyatt rebellion, she remained shut off from her sister. Rumors flew that she would soon follow Lady Jane to Tower Green, where the scaffold remained. Wyatt, in captivity, was being questioned daily, but so far had refused to implicate the lady Elizabeth, even, it was said, under torture.

In the midst of all that uncertainty, my daughter Mary and her husband, Henry Sidney, came from Penshurst. With them was Katheryn, who had been staying with Mary since John’s death. I had hoped that the change of scene might do her good. “Is Guildford really dead?” she asked as soon as she dismounted from her horse and embraced me.

“Yes, my child. He is with your father now. We will meet them both again, never fear.”

“That is what Lord Hastings said.” Katheryn sniffled.

“Lord Hastings wrote to you?”

“Yes, Mama, the most beautiful letter. It was very kind, and he sent me a pair of sweet gloves, too.” Katheryn extended her hands proudly.

“They’re lovely,” I said, sniffing the fine perfume emanating from the gloves. I, too, had had a letter, this one from Lord Hastings’s father, the Earl of Huntingdon. Although he had not broken off the betrothal, it was plain he held no great enthusiasm for it. He would leave the matter, he wrote me coolly, for his son to decide when he was a little older. Or, I had surmised, until a better prospect came along, which it was bound to do if the earl continued to rise in Mary’s favor. And if Reginald Pole, the cardinal who