I get a brief unsigned note in reply saying that my sister and her little boy are well at Ingatestone, her elder son is with his grandmother at Hanworth, her husband still imprisoned in London. My husband, Thomas Keyes, is in the Fleet Prison. The anonymous author of the note says that the queen will be approached to release us all into more generous keeping—especially Thomas Keyes, who is very confined. The matter will be put before the queen “as soon as is convenient.”
I sit in my little room with the note in my hand for a long time before I come to my senses and thrust it into the embers of the fire. I understand that the queen is still in such a vile mood that nobody dare suggest anything to her, not even William Cecil. I know something else—which I knew already—that she has no kindness or generosity to me or to my sister. And now I know that Thomas is suffering for me. I wonder exactly what the writer means by “very confined.” I am afraid that they have put Thomas into a small room. There are cellars in the Fleet Prison that are low and damp. The rats run across the floor. Have they put my handsome big-boned husband in a cage?
He will be shamed, I know, to be imprisoned in the Fleet Prison—the common jail for criminals, forgers, and drunkards. When Sir William comes the next day, before the serving of my poor dinner, I ask him if he has any news of Thomas Keyes.
I recognize his anxious look now. His gaze goes to the floor, his face folds into lines of worry, he touches his silvery gray hair. “I have no news, I have only heard gossip,” he starts.
“Please tell me,” I say. I can feel a pain extending from my belly to the back of my throat and I realize this is grief and longing. I love Thomas and I have been his undoing. I never thought that I would wish that we had not married, but I will learn to wish it, if he is suffering for my sake.
“Please tell me everything you know, Sir William.”
“They have put him in the Fleet Prison,” he says. “But at least winter is coming and the plague season is past us.”
So the letter is true, as I knew it was. Thomas’s prison is on the River Fleet, the dirtiest river in London. It will be damp and bitterly cold in winter. Prisoners have to pay for their own firewood, for blankets for their bed. If Thomas’s family do not send him money and food, he will starve. He’s not a young man; he will get sick, held in close confinement there.
“They have given him a very small cell,” Sir William says very quietly. He glances around my little room, the small space either side of the bed, the table and chair tucked into the corner, the small high window and the cramped interior. “Of course, he is a very big man.”
I think of Thomas as I first saw him, standing tall before the great gate of Whitehall Palace, his thumbs tucked in his shining leather belt, his broad shoulders set square, his towering presence, his grace. For a big man he is light on his feet, a quick thinker. I remember how he smiles when he sees me, how he drops to one knee to talk to me.
“How small is his room?” I can’t imagine what Sir William is telling me. “How small exactly?”
He clears his throat. “He can’t stand up in it,” he says reluctantly. “He has to bow over. And he is too long for it as well. He can’t lie in his bed stretched out. He has to fold up.”
I remember Thomas, his feet sticking out of the foot of his bed. He is nearly seven feet tall. They have not imprisoned him; they are crushing him.
“He will be in pain,” I say flatly.
“And they don’t feed him,” he says, shamefaced. “He is hunting game and little birds with a slingshot from his cell window so that he has meat to eat.”
I put my hand to my mouth to hold back a retch. “It is a death sentence,” I say quietly.
Sir William nods. “I am so sorry, my lady.”
So, she has won. I will deny my marriage and beg her for pardon like a slave. She can have me as her court dwarf, as her eunuch. If she will release Thomas before he is crippled, I will agree never to see him again, and never mention his name. I write to William Cecil a letter in which I humble myself to the ground. I beg for forgiveness as if I am a sinner of the most vicious disposition. I say I would rather die than displease her. I sign my maiden name, my old name, Mary Grey. I do not mention Thomas. I show that he is nothing to me, that I have forgotten him, that our marriage never was. And then I have to wait. I have to wait to see if she is generous in total victory, though she has never been generous before.
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
WINTER 1565
Agnes Hawtrey has no great kindness for me, since my keep comes out of her housekeeping, and her neighbors who visit her for Christmas cheer may not meet me. She gains nothing from having me in her house; she cannot even exhibit me. But since I am the only person other than her old aunt and cousin who would appreciate the gossip that she hears from London, she has to come to me, for she is bursting to speak.
“I have to tell you,” she says. “I have to tell someone—though you must never tell my lord, nor anyone, that I have spoken with you about the queen.”
“I won’t hear anything treasonous,” I say quickly. “I cannot listen.”
“This isn’t treason and it’s general knowledge,” she says quickly. “Lord Robert Dudley has proposed marriage to the queen and she has agreed to marry him at Candlemas!”
“No!” I say. “You must have heard it wrong. I would have sworn she would never marry him, nor anyone.”
“She will! She will! They are to marry at Candlemas.”
“Where did you hear this?” I am still skeptical.
“It’s widely known,” she says. “Sir William told me himself, but I also had it from a friend of mine who has a cousin in service to the Duke of Norfolk, who swore that the marriage must never take place but cannot prevent it. Oh!” She suddenly starts as the thought comes to her. “What about you? If she marries, will she release you?”
“There is no reason why she should not release me now,” I say. “I am hardly a rival to her for Lord Robert’s affections. But certainly, if she is married and if she were to have a son, there would be even less reason to keep me confined or my sister. If she marries, perhaps she will allow her ladies-in-waiting to marry, too.”
“What a wedding it will be!” she exclaims. “Surely, she will have a pardon for prisoners for her wedding.”
“Candlemas,” I say, thinking of Thomas, cramped in his cold cell, lying on the damp floor, starved. “That’s not till February.”
CHEQUERS, BUCKINGHAMSHIRE,
SPRING 1566
There is no Christmas feasting for me at Chequers. I am afraid that there is no joy for my sister at Ingatestone, nor for her husband in London at Sir John Mason’s house. Perhaps Teddy at Hanworth gets a fairing from his grandmother for Christmas, perhaps a gingerbread man; but he will know by now that he will never get a Christmas blessing from his mother or father. I know that my husband, Thomas, will be desperately cold and starved. As the weather grows colder and it snows in January I think of him, bent over his little window, peering out to see if he can catch a sparrow for the morsel of meat on its little bones. I expect he traps and eats rats. I think of him sitting over a tiny fire of kindling and trying to get warm. I think of him hunched in his bed at night, and the strange agony of never being able to stretch out, standing all day with his shoulders bowed, sleeping with his legs folded up.