Her Highness, the Traitor - By Susan Higginbotham Page 0,88
my first glimpse of the king made me gasp even as I knelt before him. Whatever sins King Henry had committed, they would have been punished tenfold had he been fated to see his son as he looked now. Edward had managed to sit up to receive guests, and the nightcap and night shirt he wore were of rich material, but they could not hide that his face was bloated and pasty or that he needed the help of two of the gentlemen of the privy chamber, Thomas Wroth and my son-in-law Henry Sidney, to stay upright. His feet, which I glimpsed as I knelt, were swollen to twice their normal size. “Rise, my lady.” He glanced at me as I desperately swiped at my cheek. “Don’t cry.”
“I am sorry, Your Majesty. I am trying hard not to. It is just—”
“I have come to terms with my fate,” the king said. With a start, I realized Edward was not using the royal “we,” a clear sign of the affection he bore my husband. “We all must die, and I sooner than later. That is why I have called you here. Some time ago, I drew up a devise for the succession, excluding my sisters. It is my understanding that the Duke of Northumberland told you of it, so there is no need to explain the particulars.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“It will not work. There is no time to wait for the lady Jane to bear a child, and even if there was, there is no certainty that she will have a boy. The lady Katherine Grey is probably too young to conceive, as is the lady Mary Grey, and the lady Margaret Clifford is not even married yet. Therefore, I have made a change.”
The king nodded to John, who led me to a table and indicated a parchment lying atop it. I can still see that bit of parchment in my mind today and marvel at how insignificant the change the king had made appeared on paper: the striking out of a letter and the insertion of two words that transformed “the lady Jane’s heirs male” to “the lady Jane and her heirs male.” It was such an unassuming-looking change that it only slowly dawned on me what the king had done. He had made my new daughter-in-law his successor. No Englishwoman had ever ruled in her own right: the one who had tried centuries before, the Empress Matilda, had unleashed years of civil war. And Matilda had been a mature woman: the lady Jane was a girl who had just turned sixteen and who had never been bred to rule.
Openmouthed, I turned to the king. “There is no other way,” he said simply. “I love my sister Mary, but she will take the nation back to the Pope. And she is of questionable legitimacy, as is my sister Elizabeth. Besides, the lady Mary and I have been in dispute about the Mass. It is my fear that if she were to come to the throne, my friends would suffer for it, most particularly the Duke of Northumberland. That I would not have for the world.”
“No, Your Majesty,” I mumbled.
“As your lord husband and I have been discussing, tomorrow I shall call my justices before me and order them to put this in proper form. When that is done, I shall summon Parliament to ratify what has been written. All will be in order, provided that the Lord grants me sufficient time.”
Looking at the king, I could think only that this proviso was far from certain.
There were a dozen questions running through my mind, but this brief conversation had clearly exhausted Edward, and it was apparent I would soon be dismissed. John could give me the answers to most of my questions, but there was one I had to ask the king himself. “I don’t understand. Why did Your Majesty call me here?”
“So that if any man dare question what I have told you today, you will know the truth. Some will say that this devise is of your husband’s procuring, to put Lord Guildford on the throne through the lady Jane. It was not. The idea was mine. I will fight for it with my dying breath.”
He started coughing. A foul smell began to fill the chamber. “Go, please,” Edward managed.
Followed by John, I backed out of the chamber hastily.
***
“Does the lady Jane know of this? Do her parents?”
“Not yet. Once the judges get it ready, it will be more widely