Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,23

to Harry’s arms. He ruffled her hair. “Tell me about the queen, lass. I know it must have been dreadful. Wasn’t it?”

“It was. At first everything went so well. I didn’t see the poor little baby being born; the queen said I was too young. But it didn’t take that long, and I saw the queen soon afterward. She looked so happy, and the Admiral was so proud. He said he had the finest baby girl in all of England.”

Harry said, “Well, he was wrong about that, because I had the finest baby girl in all of England, but we can make some allowances. Go on, child.”

“Everyone thought the queen was going to be well, and then suddenly she fell ill. The Admiral said later the very same thing happened to his sister Queen Jane. She became feverish and started to rant—accusing him of treating her badly, of not allowing her to be alone with her own physician, so many foolish things she never would have said if she had been in her right mind, for he was never unkind to her. Anyway, he lay in bed beside her and tried to ease her, and toward the end, she did become calm. She dictated her will and left him everything. She said she wished her possessions were a thousand times more in value than they were. And then she started to fade away, almost, and in a few hours, she died.”

Jane put her handkerchief to her eyes, and Harry patted her back. “She is in heaven, Jane.”

“Oh, I know,” said Jane. “But I miss her, and I feel so sorry for the poor Admiral. He was crying—even when he shut himself away, we could hear him. I think he loved the queen dearly. I never saw them have an argument—well, only once. It was right before the lady Elizabeth left. They were shouting at each other—I don’t know about what. But later, the Admiral came to me and told me that he was sorry I’d overheard that, but that I shouldn’t worry, all married people fought once in a while, and that they usually made it up. And I think they did make it up after the lady Elizabeth left. The Admiral had the cooks make the queen’s favorite foods, and he sent for anything that she wanted that he couldn’t supply. He ordered magnificent things for the baby’s chamber. When he had to leave, he sent letters to her every day.” Jane brightened. “The queen did have a very nice funeral, though. Doctor Coverdale preached the sermon in English and said that the offering was not for the dead, but for the poor.”

Harry nodded approvingly.

***

In a few days, it was as if Jane had never left us. She approved thoroughly of our stripped-down chapel—I still found myself walking in there and thinking a thief had been to Bradgate—and she took it upon herself to improve her younger sister Kate, who was not entirely grateful for the attention.

Jane had been back at Bradgate for several weeks when a messenger delivered a letter from the Admiral. Unlike the tear-laden missive he had last sent us, this was written in a clerk’s trim hand and came straight to the point. So grieved by the queen’s death that he had had little regard for his own doings, and believing his household would have to be broken up, he had sent our daughter home, but now he had reviewed the situation and felt he could retain the queen’s household. Therefore, he was able to take Jane back into his care, and what was more, his mother would treat her as her own daughter. As soon as he could manage it, he would come to talk to Harry and me in person.

I frowned at the letter. Tom Seymour was planning to retain all of the women who had waited on the queen, plus a hundred and twenty gentleman and yeomen. How on earth could he keep up such a household, with no queen to justify it? Even I could see the impossibility of it all.

Katherine Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, my childhood companion who had become my stepmother, was paying us a visit at Bradgate that day. “So, what does Tom Seymour want?”

“He wants us to send Jane back to stay with him.”

“So soon? I saw him at his brother’s house a couple of weeks ago, and he could hardly hear the queen’s name without weeping. Or maybe it was just the company of Somerset and