Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,43
said sleepily, “Well, send him in, then,” and sat up. Quickly, I helped him adjust his nightcap to more statesmanlike effect.
“My lord—my lady—I apologize for coming at this bad time. But I did not think this could wait.” John nodded for him to keep talking, and Paulet continued, “Today I accompanied the Earl of Southampton and the Earl of Arundel to the Tower, to interrogate the Duke of Somerset, as you instructed. To several questions, he stated that he had acted by your advice and counsel.”
“No doubt he did, in some instances,” John said wearily. He coughed.
“After we left the duke, my lord, the Earl of Southampton said that you and he should both be found traitors, and that you were both worthy to die.”
I rose. “My lord!”
“Go on,” John said.
“The Earl of Arundel agreed. They talked a little more and decided that on the day the Duke of Somerset was executed, you would be arrested and put in his chambers at the Tower. Then you would soon be tried yourself, and, undoubtedly, executed.”
“Undoubtedly,” agreed John. “Is there more?”
“They talked of having the lady Mary made regent, my lord, but I didn’t get the sense that they had approached her. The long and short of it, they want Somerset dead, and you with them.”
“That information was worth disturbing my sickbed for,” said John calmly. He squeezed my trembling hand and smiled at Paulet. “I shall keep it in mind. But for now, my lord, I must get some sleep, or the Earl of Southampton won’t have to take the trouble of plotting against me.”
***
John slept that night; I didn’t. It was the Earl of Southampton—Thomas Wriothesley—who had interrogated Anne Askew, even turning the rack himself, it was said, when she was not forthcoming with the information Wriothesley sought. What he had sought was information that would link Catherine Parr herself, and some of her ladies as well, to what had then been regarded as heretical practices. I had been one of those women who stood in danger, for I had possessed books, passed around among us ladies-in-waiting and read aloud in the queen’s chambers, that were illegal then. Anne Askew’s brave silence in the face of torture had surely saved some of the rest of us from the flames.
Unable to get Anne Askew to implicate anyone, those who wished to see a return to the old religion had tried another tack—turning King Henry against the queen herself, even to the point of procuring an order for her arrest. It had failed miserably when the queen, advised of her enemies’ schemes, had groveled so humbly, and so cleverly, before the king, he had turned on the ones who had sought to destroy her. It would have been almost comical to see the king throwing the arrest warrant in Wriothesley’s own face, had we not been aware of how close Catherine might have come to sharing the fate of her predecessor: poor Katherine Howard.
And now Wriothesley had my husband in his sights. “Why would they want to execute you and the duke?” I demanded the next morning as soon as John awoke.
John shrugged and obediently swallowed the physic he had been given. “Terrible stuff. Simple, my dear. Wriothesley has held a grudge against Somerset since being deprived of his office as Lord Chancellor after the old king died. I stood with Somerset at that time, so he bears a grudge against me, as well. As for Arundel, he’s probably hoping for a restoration of the old religion—hence the lady Mary.”
“John, what shall you do?”
“Enjoy the Christmas festivities as much as I can in my state of health.”
“I don’t—”
“Wriothesley’s a fool. If he could only count, he’d know that there aren’t enough men of his stamp on the council to send Somerset to the block, or me either. I shall beat him at his own game, never you fear.” John looked at me straight on, and for the first time I saw real anger in his eyes. “And speaking of fear, I have never forgotten the fright he gave Queen Catherine, or you and the rest of her ladies. When I take him down, I promise you, you shall be there to see it.”
***
The Duke and Duchess of Somerset had their Christmas visit, and afterward went to hear a sermon at the Chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula—sitting on the same pew, the guards later told us, without so much as an inch between them, and gazing into each other’s eyes more than