She is right, of course. And as if to emphasize the importance of the Dudley family, I am to stay at their great London palace, Durham House, and my wedding is to be held here. It is to be a joint wedding, there will be three brides: me, my sister Katherine, and the Dudley girl, Katherine, who is marrying Henry Hastings, the eighteen-year-old son of the Earl of Huntingdon. My little sister Mary is to be publicly betrothed, but her wedding and bedding will wait until she is older. Everyone seems very pleased about this, though they must see, as I do, that these are the great men of England signing an alliance in the blood of their children. I wonder if I am the only person who prays to God to tell me why these three men should need to be so sure of one another. What danger do they think they will face if they don’t lock each other into marriage? Why do we all six have to be married at once in the same ceremony? My sister Katherine thinks it will be to her advantage as she is undoubtedly the prettiest of us three brides. That is her only concern.
Clothes from the royal wardrobe arrive daily, jewels from the royal treasury are loaned to us, precious stones are given. My cousin the king is too sick to attend the wedding, but he sends us bolts of cloth: black silver cloth of tissue embossed with roses, purple and white tissue, cloth of gold and cloth of silver, a trimming for my hood of thirteen table diamonds, seventeen great pearls, a girdle of gold. The tiltyard is painted and hung with flags: there is to be a tournament. Everyone in London who has so much as a knighthood will come to the great dinner that the cooks prepare days in advance. There will be dozens of courses, the fountain in the central courtyard will flow with wine, hundreds will sit down to dinner in their finest clothes and eat scores of dishes, thousands will watch them. I will be at the center of attention, a Tudor heir, dressed as richly as a princess, marrying a Dudley boy.
“This is heaven,” Katherine says, holding a scarf of violet silk against her flushed face.
“No, it is not,” I tell her. “And it is heresy to say so.”
“It’s as good as Easter,” Mary says, her speech muffled by the pastry that she is cramming into her mouth.
“It’s nothing to do with you,” I say. “You are to be betrothed, but not to marry. There’s no excuse for gluttony, and stand up straight.”
Obediently, she straightens her back as Katherine twirls around, draped in cloth of silver, as we wait for the dressmakers. The groom of the royal wardrobe has sent more great bolts of velvet and silk, and Katherine already has some priceless lace draped over her head like a veil. “There’s no excuse for vanity either,” I say sourly.
“I am half in love with him already,” Katherine bubbles. “He came to give me a gold chain yesterday, and he pressed my hand when he left. What d’you think he meant?”
“My mother pressed my hand too,” I say, showing her the bruises on my wrists. “She tells me that is love, as well.”
“It is motherly love,” Katherine asserts.
Mary looks solemnly at the marks. Our mother, our nurses, our governesses, and our father have all beaten each of us, at one time or another. Only my tutor John Aylmer has had authority over me but never used a rod. I tell him that is why I love learning.
“It’s the best thing that could happen to us.” Mary parrots what she has been told. “It puts us in line for the throne.”
“It’s hardly the best thing for you,” I tell her. “You can’t give birth to the King of England.”
She flushes a little. “I am a girl like any other,” she says. “My heart is as big as yours, and I don’t doubt I will grow tall.”
Mary’s staunch courage always makes me melt. I hold out my arms to her and we hug. “Anyway, we can’t disobey them,” I say over her fair head.
“Don’t you love him? Even a little?” Katherine breathes.
“I will love him when we are married,” I say coldly. “I will have to love him then, for I will have promised before God to do so.”
My sisters are disappointed in the wedding service: they hoped it would be in Latin and filled with ceremonial and incomprehensible oaths, noisy with music and trumpets, drowned in regalia, drenched with holy water, and choking with incense. Instead, it has the simple honesty of my religion and I am deeply glad that the Dudleys are a godly family who turned to the reformed religion as soon as the king gave his people the Bible and the preachers spread the word. The purity of our wedding is a living reproach to the papist Princess Mary, who pointedly does not attend—neither the ceremony nor the two days of lavish celebrations that follow. Our cousin Margaret Douglas is not invited either. She is in Scotland, visiting the Nobody that she calls her father. Since John Dudley himself gave her a license to leave the kingdom I imagine that he wanted her out of the way.
I am not dressed plainly, as a Protestant should dress, despite my declared wishes. I wear royal purple with an overgown of gold brocade embroidered with diamonds and pearls. They spread my chestnut hair over my shoulders, and it hangs down below my waist. It is the last time I will wear it loose as a maiden. I am by far the grandest bride and Katherine, with her golden hair and her gown of cloth of silver, is by far the most beautiful. But I don’t begrudge her joy in her dress and her looks. If she had any sense, she would know it is just worldly show.
There is dancing and jousting; two companies of masquers: one of men and one of women; there are players and musicians. The Dudleys invite all of their household to attend, and throw open the gates of their great house so that everyone in London can come and see our magnificence. The whole thing goes on forever and is spoiled only by a disaster with the food. Some dish was bad and it left many guests vomiting with sickness and others voiding themselves. Many who overate and drank too much on the first day have to send their excuses and not come on the second. Lady Dudley, my new mother-in-law, is completely mortified that she had to spend half the day groaning in her chamber over her churning bowels. I do not think that it was a sign, for God speaks through His Holy Word—and not through stars or sweats or gales. But I do think that it is a powerful reproach to my mother and father that my wedding should turn the guests’ stomachs—just as it sickens me.
We are a mismatched band. My stunted sister Mary’s promised husband, Arthur Grey of Wilton, towers above her. He is a young man already and thinks himself his father’s companion and fellow. He is far too old to be a playmate to Mary; she is far too young to be a wife to him. Of course she is too small to be wedded and bedded, and I think she will never be able to lie with a man and bear a child with her spine that was twisted at birth. Of course, Arthur Grey must secretly despise her. I thank God that they will live apart for some years and that she is to stay at home with our mother. I imagine they will get the marriage dissolved before she has to go to her husband.
My new sister-in-law, Katherine Dudley, is a vain thing. They have given her to Henry Hastings, a highly educated scholar and courtier. He looks at his little bride bobbing up and down with a patient smile that will soon wear thin. My sister Katherine’s husband, Henry Lord Herbert, the young son of the Earl of Pembroke, never says one word to anyone throughout the whole two days. He is as white as a corpse and so sick that he can hardly stand. They say that they dragged him from his deathbed though he swore he could not walk to the altar. He is only fifteen years old. I hope that he does not make my sister a widow before she is a wife. Certainly, they cannot consummate the marriage while she is so young and he is so ill, so she is spared the ordeal that they force on me. These three unions that cannot be consummated only make me feel worse. I am the only girl who has to be both a bride and a wife, in deed as well as in name.
“I don’t see why you have such a long face,” Katherine, my foolish sister, says. “You knew that if you were married you’d have to be fully married. It would be just the same for me if he were not ill.”
“And me,” Mary says.
“It wouldn’t be the same for you,” I say to Mary.
“I don’t see why not,” she says stubbornly.
I am too exhausted to argue with her. “And you’re too young,” I say to Katherine.
“No, I’m not,” she says. “And anyway, you certainly aren’t.” She gives a little tweak to the kerchief I wear over my hair to indicate that I am now a married woman. “Come on, you’re to be first to go to your wedding chamber. Lucky you.”
I feel unfairly forced, as my mother and new mother-in-law and all their ladies appear at the door and then come with me to the bridal chamber, watch as my ladies undress me, and then abruptly leave me with my new husband.
It is not that he is unpleasant, not in any way. He is a handsome young man, fair and with a pleasing open face and bright blue eyes. He is far taller than I am. The top of my head does not even reach to his shoulder, and I have to crane my neck to look up at him, but for all his height he is light on his feet—a good dancer, they say—and he rides, hunts, jousts, just as he should. He has been raised in a godly household and is well read. If we were not married, I could say nothing against him but that he looks to his mother for every single thing. The big baby looks at her before he even opens his mouth, before he sits or stands.
He is not my choice, he would not be my choice, and I am afraid that I am not free in the sight of God to marry him. But since we are married I can say nothing against him at all. A godly wife is obedient. He has been put over me as Adam was put over Eve. I shall have to be obedient to him, whatever I think of his judgment.
Our wedding night is as awkward and as painful as I expected. I don’t even think it would have been any better if I had married Edward Seymour, though he might have been more confident than Guildford and perhaps would not have made me feel quite such a fool for not knowing what has to be done. The difficulty is that none of my books tells me anything about love, except in the most abstract sense. None of my books says anything about the pain, except the pain of sin. None of them warns me that the worst of it is the misery of having a total stranger struggling to do something to me—neither of us knowing exactly how it should be done, and when it goes all wrong, blaming me. I didn’t even know that anything was wrong except that at first it hurt and then it was disgusting. He is not inspired by desire or affection, and neither am I. I wait till he falls asleep and then I get up and pray for strength to bear this, as I have to bear everything else in this vale of misery, in the place which He hath set.
Finally, the guests say their farewells, Katherine goes to her new family home at Baynard’s Castle to put her pale husband back in his sickbed, and nurse him like a mother, since his own mother is dead. My father and mother go home to Suffolk Place with little Mary; but I am left in a strange house, with the servants clearing up the mess of a two-day feast, with my mother-in-law locked in her chamber, and my new husband sulky and silent now that she is not here to tell him what to say or do.
In the morning I am allowed to go home to my family but only to Suffolk Place. I am pining for the summer fields of Bradgate, but I have to stay in London.
“My lady mother says you can go home if you want to,” my young husband says ungraciously. “But she says I have to dine with you the day after tomorrow and spend the night at your house.”
“All my books are there,” I say, trying to excuse myself. “I need to go home to study.”
“My lady mother says that you may.”
I don’t ask him if they expect me to return soon. I think it better not to know. Perhaps I will be able to spin out a visit to our London house till the summer, and then if the king goes on progress, John Dudley and his sons may attend without their wives, and I may be able to go to Bradgate. The thought that I might get there, to ride in the woods and to see the harvest come in, to walk under a strawberry moon and take a boat out on the lake, is the only thing that keeps me at peace through the first days of my marriage. That, and my books, of course. I can always open a book and hide myself in that inner, private world.
The idea that I would want to go to Bradgate, that I would seek my mother as a refuge from a home even less kindly than hers, makes me understand for the first time what God said to Eve: I will increase thy sorrow, when thou art with child: with pain shalt thou bear thy children, and thy lust shall pertain unto your husband, and he shall rule thee. Truly, it is a sorrow to be a woman; and Eve shows us that to be a wife is even worse.
It is agreed between Lady Dudley and my mother that I can live with my parents at Suffolk Place, as long as I visit the Dudleys regularly and dine with them often. The first weeks of my marriage are spent like this. But Lady Dudley breaks this arrangement by coming into the privy chamber before dinner, as Guildford and I are sitting in awkward silence, and saying: “Now you must send for your clothes and all your things, Jane. You are to stay tonight and you must stay after. You will live here now.”
I rise and curtsey to her. “I thought I was to go home,” I say. “My mother is expecting me home tonight.”
She shakes her head. “It is all to be changed. My lord has written to me that you must be here. You have to stay here with us. We have to be ready.”
Guildford, on his feet at the first sight of his mother, kneels to her, and she rests her hand in blessing on his curly head. “We have to be ready? He’s worse?” he asks eagerly.
I look from the woman to her kneeling son. “Who’s worse?”
She gives an irritated little tut at my ignorance. “Leave us,” she says to the ladies who have come in with her. “Sit down, Jane. Guildford, sweet son, you come here to me.”
He stands behind her, like Mr. Nozzle clinging to Katherine, watching my face as his mother tells me: “The king, God bless him, is worse. You knew at least that he was ill?”
“Of course I knew that. I often sit with him.”
“Now he is worse. His doctors say that he will not survive the summer.”
“The summer?” This is impossibly soon. I thought that he might live long enough to marry and have a child. I had no idea that they were saying that we might lose him within the year. “God save His Grace,” I whisper, shocked. “I did not know. But how can it be? I thought he was only—”
“That’s not important,” she cuts me off. “What matters most is his will.”
Actually, what matters most is his eternal soul. But I cannot tell her that now.
“He has changed it,” she says. There is a ring of triumph in her voice. “Changed it, and all of the council have sworn to the changes.” She glances up at Guildford as he smiles down at her. “Your father has seen to it,” she says. “He is prepared for everything.” She turns back to me. “The king has excluded his half sisters from the succession,” she says briskly, ignoring my gasp of surprise.
I get to my feet, as if I must stand to find the courage to argue with her. “That cannot be,” I say slowly. I know that Princess Mary is the next in line; whatever I may think of her religion there is no denying her right. Heirs cannot be named at random. The throne is not to be given away. My cousin the king knows this, the country knows this. Whatever my father says it cannot be that the king could choose his heir. There is no Tudor boy. He cannot prefer one cousin over another.
“It will be,” Lady Dudley says. “And she will know it for a fact when he dies.”
I am suddenly afraid that this is treason. Surely, it is treason to speak of the death of the king; surely, it is treason to speak against the princesses?
“I think I had better go home,” I say.
“You’ll stay here,” she raps out. “This is no time for you to run to your mother.”
Scornfully, I look at her son, who clearly never has to run to his mother for he is always under her wing.
“You have to be here so that my husband can fetch you to the Tower,” she explains.
I gasp. The last man fetched to the Tower by her husband ended with his head on the block: Edward Seymour.
“No, you fool,” she says irritably. “You will have to go to the Tower on the death of the king. You will have to be seen at the Tower. My husband will want to keep you safe.”
It is simply too incredible, and too ridiculous for me to consider. I know that my father and my mother will never allow me to be taken to the Tower by John Dudley.
“I’m going home,” I say firmly, and I walk to the door. I will not be part of this. My barge is waiting for me at the pier, my ladies are waiting for me in the gallery. Nobody can stop me going home to my mother with the news that the Dudleys have run mad, that they think that they can change the succession, and that they want to take me to the Tower.
“Stop her,” Guildford’s mother orders him.
He steps forward and takes hold of my wrist. I round on him. “You let me go!” I spit, and he flinches back as if Katherine’s kitten had suddenly turned on him and scratched his face.
I don’t wait for a second chance. I dive out of the room and take to my heels. I run through the palace, I clatter across the gangplank. “Cast off!” I say breathlessly, and then I laugh because I am free.