In the early morning, while it is still cool, I can hear the tramp of many feet coming up the stairs to my rooms, which means a visit from Sir Richard, the new lieutenant of the Tower. I stand beside my tattered throne, Mr. Nozzle on my shoulder, Thomas in my arms, Teddy beside me, his hand in mine. Lucy stands behind me. I think we look more like a poor family of plague-struck beggars than the royal heirs of Elizabeth’s nightmares.
The door opens and Sir Richard comes in and bows. “Forgive me,” I say, “but the guards must stay outside. I am afraid of the plague.”
“Of course,” he says. He gestures to them and they step backwards. “I am glad to say that you need fear no more. You are to be released.”
I am so flooded with joy that I cannot hear him. “What?”
He nods. “Yes, my lady. You are to be released from the Tower. You can leave today. You can leave this morning.”
“Released?”
“Yes,” he confirms. “Thanks be to God—and to the mercy of our sovereign lady the queen.”
“God bless her,” I whisper. “I can go when I wish?”
“I have horses ready for you, and a wagon for your goods.”
I gesture at the chipped table and the tattered chairs. “I have nothing worth taking. Lucy can pack our clothes in a moment.”
He bows. “I will wait for your command,” he says. “You should go as soon as possible, before it gets too hot.”
“And the Earl of Hertford comes with me?” I ask as he reaches the door.
He bows again. “His lordship is released also.”
“God be praised,” I say. “I thank the merciful God for answering my prayer.”
We are packed and ready to travel within half an hour. I won’t allow anything to delay me. The well-worn furniture can come in the wagon behind us, along with a trunk of clothes. The linnets will come in their cage shrouded with a shawl, and Jo the pug with her heirs in a basket, a net tied on top so they are kept safe in the open wagon. Mr. Nozzle will go in his cage in the shade. I shall have Teddy before me on my saddle and the wet nurse will carry Thomas strapped before her. Lucy will ride pillion behind a guard, and if Teddy gets tired, she can take him in her arms.
I imagine us riding into Hanworth, the cleanliness of the house, the brightness of the sunshine, the sweetness of the air, with Ned’s mother, Lady Anne, on the front steps waiting to greet her grandson, a Tudor-Seymour boy, the heir to the throne of England.
Sir Richard is in the Tower yard with the loaded wagon and a guard. When they see me coming, they mount up and then I see my husband, Ned, coming under the arch of the stables, surrounded by his guards. He crosses the yard in four swift strides. Before anyone can stop him he takes my hands and kisses them, searching my face for my rising blush of desire, then he takes me into his arms and kisses me on the mouth. I feel a rush of love for him. I put my arms around him and press against him. Thank God we are reunited at last, and tonight we will sleep in the same bed. I could cry for relief, and thank God our worries are over.
His face is as radiant as mine. “My love,” he says. “We are spared the plague and reunited. Thank God.”
“We will never be parted again,” I promise him. “Swear it.”
“Never parted again,” he promises me.
“Now, you must see your boys before we set off.”
Teddy remembers his father, despite these long days of separation, and jumps towards him, his arms oustretched. Ned snatches up his son, and I see how small my boy is, when he is held in his tall father’s arms, against his broad chest. Teddy puts his arm around his father’s neck and holds his face against his cheek. Thomas gives the gummy beam that he shows to everyone, and waves a sticky hand.
“How handsome they are, how well they look! Who would have thought that we would have brought such bright blooms from this dark place?” Ned says. “Truly, it is a miracle.”
“It is,” I say. “And now we will start our married life with two boys, two sons and heirs, in your family house. We are going to Hanworth, aren’t we?”
“Yes. We have to thank my mother for this release. I know that she has been writing constantly to William Cecil about us. She will want us at home.”
The lieutenant comes to my side. “My lady, we have to go now if we are to make the journey without too much fatigue for the children. It’s going to be very hot later.”
“Of course,” I say. I take hold of Teddy’s plump little bottom, but he tightens his grip on his father and insists: “Teddy—Dada! Dada!”
“Will Teddy ride with me?” Ned asks. “I don’t think we’ll get him off me without a crowbar.”
“Do you want to ride with your dada, on his big horse?” I ask him.
Teddy lifts his beaming face from his father’s neck and nods. “Teddy—Dada. Hee-up.”
“Teddy can go before his father, and when he wants to rest he can be carried by Lucy as she rides pillion,” I suggest.
“Your lordship’s horse has cast a shoe,” the lieutenant says to Ned. “Farrier is shoeing him now. He’ll be a few minutes more. Best to let her ladyship start her journey so she can rest as she pleases. You’ll catch her up on the road; the wagon will be so slow.”
“Very well. Teddy can wait with me and we’ll catch you up. I’ll hold him steady,” Ned promises me. He kisses me again, over our little son’s head. I have a moment of rare joy when I embrace my husband and my elder son together, my hand on my husband’s shoulder, the other around my little boy.
“I’ll see you on the road.” I cup my hand around my son’s cheek. “Be a good boy for your dada and keep your hat on.”
“Yeth,” my boy says obediently, his grip tight on his father’s neck.
“He’s choking me.” My husband smiles. “Don’t fear he’ll fall off. He’s clinging on as if he was Mr. Nozzle.”
I kiss him again and then I climb on the mounting block and into my saddle. Everyone is mounted and waiting for me. I wave my hand to Ned and my son, and follow the guards out of the stable yard. “See you in a little while!” I call. “See you soon.”
The horses’ hooves clatter on the cobbles of the main gate. We ride under the arch of the gateway and, as the shadow falls on me, there is a deafening roar. Beyond the gateway, the lane is lined by the guards of the Tower and the bridge over the moat is massed with the Tower servants. As I ride past, the guards present arms and salute, as if I were a queen riding out to take my throne, and I emerge into the sunshine into a blast of cheering as the servants throw their hats in the air and the women curtsey and kiss their hands to me. I am free at last; I can smell it on the breeze and in the joy of the cry of the seagulls.
I smile and wave at the Tower servants, and then I see that beyond the bridge and the farthest gatehouse the citizens of London have somehow heard that we are free, and there are people being pushed back from the roadway by the guards, cheering, and even holding up roses for me.
I go through them all as if I were leading a royal procession. I am still fearful of the plague so I don’t stop to take any flowers, and besides, my guards, stern-faced, push their way through the crowd that parts before them. But the fishwives and the street sellers, apprentice girls and the spinsters and brewsters, all dressed in their rough work aprons, defy the guards and throw roses and leaves down before me so my horse walks on a trail of flowers and I know that the women of London are on my side.
We wind our way past Tower Hill and the scaffold that stands there, where my father ended his life, and I bow my head to his memory, and remember his hopeless struggle against Queen Mary. I think how glad he would be to see one daughter, at least, riding from the Tower to freedom, her baby beside her and her noble husband and heir following behind. It’s bitter for me to think of him, and the death that he brought on Jane, so I turn my head to the wet nurse as she rides pillion behind the guard with Thomas strapped against her, and I beckon her to ride beside me so that I can see my boy, and feel my hope for the future.
That’s when I notice that we are riding north instead of west, and I say to the officer riding ahead of me: “This isn’t the road to Hanworth.”
“No, my lady,” he says politely, reining his horse back. “I am so sorry. I didn’t realize you had not been told. My orders are to take you to Pirgo.”
“To my uncle?”
“Yes, Lady Hertford.”
I am so pleased at this. I will be far more comfortable with my uncle in his beautiful new house than at Ned’s home at Hanworth. His mother may have written to Cecil for her son, maybe she even persuaded the queen to release us, but I have had no good wishes from her, not even after I had given her two grandsons. I would far rather that we stay with my uncle in his family home than with her, as long as he has forgiven me for the deception I had to practice on him.
“Did he invite me?” I ask. “Did he send a message for me?”
The young man ducks his head. “I don’t know, your ladyship. My orders were to take you all to Pirgo, and see you safely there. I know no more.”
“And Ned knows to follow us? He thought we were going to Hanworth.”
“He knows where you are going, my lady.”
We ride for about two hours, through villages where the front doors are resolutely closed, past inns with bolted shutters. Nobody wants anything to do with travelers from London. Everyone on this road is fleeing from infection, and when we pass people walking, they press back against the hedge so that not even our horses brush them. They are as afraid of us as we are of them. I stare at them, trying to see if they have any signs of the plague on them, and the wet nurse gathers Thomas closer to her and pulls her shawl over his face.
When the sun is overhead, beating down on us, it is too hot to ride on. The commander of the guard suggests that we stop and rest in the shade of thick woodland. The wet nurse takes Thomas and feeds him, and the rest of us dine on bread and cold meat and small ale. We have brought everything from the Tower kitchens; I have to pray that the food is not infected.
“I need to rest,” I say. I think that if Ned left shortly after us he will catch up now and I will be able to doze with him in the shade of the trees, and for the first time in our lives we will be able to be together without deception. I will sleep in his arms and wake to his smile.
“Make sure that someone watches out for my husband, his lordship, on the road,” I caution the commander of our guard.
“I have sentries posted,” he says. “And he will see your standard from the road.”
They spread carpets and shawls on the forest floor, and I bundle my riding cape under my head. I lie down and close my eyes, thinking that I will rest for a moment and that soon I will hear the sound of Ned and his guards riding towards us. I smile sleepily, thinking how excited Teddy will be at being on a great courser, riding with his father, outside the walls of the Tower, for the first time in his life. I think of his tight grip on his father’s neck and the tenderness that Ned showed when he held him close.
And then I sleep. I am so relieved to be out of the plague-stricken city that my worries slide away from me. It is the first sleep that I have had in freedom in two long years, and I think the air is sweeter when it does not blow through bars. I dream of being with Ned and the children in a house that is neither Hanworth nor Pirgo, and I think it is a foreseeing and that we are going to live happily together in our own house, the palace that we said we would build when I am queen. I sleep until Mrs. Farelow, the wet nurse, gently touches my shoulder and wakes me, and I know that it is not a dream, that I am free.
“We should be getting on,” she says.
I smile and sit up. “Is Ned here yet?”
“No,” she says. “Not yet. But it is a little cooler.”
There are a few scattered clouds over the burning disc of the sun and a cool breeze from off the hills. “Thank God,” I say. I look at the wet nurse. “Did he feed well? Can we go on?”
“Oh yes, your ladyship,” she says, getting to her feet. “Do you want him?”
I take my beloved baby boy into my arms and he beams to see me. “I can almost feel that he is heavier than this morning,” I say to her. “He is feeding well.”
“A proper London trencherman,” she says approvingly.
The guards bring up the horse, and the commander has to lift me into the saddle. I think that Ned will lift me down at Pirgo—he will surely have caught up with us by then—and I take up the reins and we ride forward.
It is pearly evening twilight by the time we ride up through the parkland to the big gabled palace of Pirgo. My uncle comes out of the great front door to greet us, his household, servants, retainers, and companions lined up on the steps. It is a welcoming greeting, but he is not smiling; he looks anxious.
“My lord uncle!” I so hope he has forgiven me for lying to his face; surely, he will see that I could do nothing else.
He lifts me down from my horse and he kisses me kindly enough, as he always did. I gesture to the wet nurse and to Thomas. “And this is your newest kinsman. His royal brother, the viscount, Lord Beauchamp, is coming behind us with his father. I am surprised they have not joined us, but his horse cast a shoe as we were leaving and they had to come later.”
He only glances at my baby and then returns his attention to me. “You’d better come inside” is all he says.
He tucks my hand in his arm and leads me through the great double doors at the front of the house into a grand presence hall. His wife is nowhere to be seen, which is odd, as I would have expected her to greet me. After all, I am a countess, and now the declared heir to the throne of England.
“Where is Lady Grey?” I ask a little stiffly.
He looks harassed. “She sends her courtesies and she will come to you later. Come in, come in, your ladyship.”
He leads me upstairs and through an impressive presence chamber, then a second smaller room, and finally to a privy chamber with a good-sized bedchamber behind it. I know these rooms: they are the second-best rooms. Elizabeth stayed here in a better suite. I think I will insist on the best rooms, but before I can speak, he closes the door and presses me into a chair.
“What is it?” I ask him. I have a sense of growing dread that I cannot name. He is usually so confident, and yet he looks uncertain as to what he should say. He tends to be pompous, yet now he seems to be at a loss. “My lord uncle, is there something wrong?”
“Did they tell you that Lord Hertford is coming here?” he asks.
“Yes, of course. He is riding behind us,” I reply.
“I don’t think so. I have had word that you are to be housed here alone.”
“No, no,” I contradict him. “We were to leave the Tower together this morning. He was only delayed because they were shoeing his horse. He is coming behind us and he is bringing Teddy—our son, little Lord Beauchamp. Teddy insisted on riding with his father. He will take him up before him on his saddlebow. I expect they are taking so long because Teddy wants to hold the reins.”
Again, he hesitates, and then he takes both my hands in a cold grip and says: “My dear Katherine, I am deeply sorry to tell you that your troubles are not over. You are not released, and Lord Hertford is not free either. You are not to be housed together. He is being taken to Hanworth, where his lady mother will be responsible for his imprisonment, and you have been sent here, where I have been ordered to keep you a prisoner.”
I am so astounded by this that I can say nothing. I just look at my uncle and I feel my jaw drop open. “No,” I say simply.
He is unblinking. “I am afraid so.”
“But she freed me, at everyone’s request, so that I could leave the city because of the plague!”
Neither of us needs to say who “she” is.
“No, she did not. She was persuaded by the whole of the court that you could not be left in the Tower in such danger, but she has not pardoned you, nor forgiven you, and she has certainly not freed you. You are to be kept here, by me, as much a prisoner as if you were still in the Tower in the charge of the guards. I have orders that you are to see and communicate with no one but the servants of my household and they are to prevent you from leaving.” He pauses. “Or even going outside.”
“Uncle, you cannot have agreed to this? To be my jailer?”
He looks at me helplessly. “Would it have been better to refuse, and leave you to die of the plague in the Tower?”
“You are imprisoning me? Your own niece?”
“What else can I do if she orders it? Would it be better if she put me in the Tower with you?”
“And Ned? My husband?”
“His mother has promised to keep him within two rooms of her house. He is not pardoned or forgiven either. His own mother is guarding him.”
“My son!” I say in a rush of panic. “Oh my God! Uncle! Our little boy, Teddy. I let him ride with Ned thinking they were following. Where is Teddy? Is he coming here? Are they sending him here to me?”
My uncle, pale with his own distress, shakes his head. “He’s to live with his father and grandmother at Hanworth,” he says.
“Not with me?” I whisper.
“No.”
“No!” I scream. I run to the door and wrench at the handle, but as it turns and the door does not open, I know that my own uncle’s servants have already locked me in. I hammer with both my hands on the wooden panels. “Let me out! I must have my son! I must have my son!”
I spin round and I snatch at my uncle’s arm. He fends me off, his face white.
“Uncle, you have to make them send Teddy to me,” I gabble at him. “He is not even two years old! He has never been away from me. He’s not like a royal boy who has spent his life with servants: we have never been parted! I am his only companion, I have mothered him night and day. He will die without me! I can’t be parted from him.”
“You have your baby,” he says feebly.
“I have two children!” I insist. “I bore two children, I must have two children! You cannot take one from me. You cannot allow her to take my son from me! It will be the death of me; it is worse than death to me. I have to have my boy.”
He presses me down into the wooden chair again. “Be still, be calm. I will write to William Cecil. He remains your friend. The Privy Council are working for your freedom: this might be a matter of only days. Everyone knows that you are the heir by right, by blood, and named so by the Privy Council. Everyone knows that you cannot be kept imprisoned indefinitely.”
I am silent, and he watches me as I twist round in the seat, hiding from his anxious gaze, and put my face against the wooden back of the chair. “She has taken my husband from me and now she takes my son?” I whisper brokenly. “Why would she save me from death, if she makes my life worse than death? I have to be with my boy. He’s only little—he’s not yet two years old. He has to be with me. I have to have him with me. How will he manage without me? Who will put him to bed?”
I raise my head and I look at my uncle’s face, twisted with his distress.
“Oh God,” I exclaim. “He will think I have abandoned him. He will think that I have left him. His little heart will break. He has to be with me. I cannot live without him. I swear to you, I will die if he is taken from me.”
“I know,” my uncle says. “Perhaps she will relent. Certainly, she must relent.”
I raise my head. “This is beyond cruel,” I say. “I would rather have died in the Tower of plague than lose my son.”
“I know.”