“I am only young,” I tell my sister Katherine, who comes to visit me without invitation, “but I would not forsake my faith for love of life! But his life was sweet, he longed to keep it, you may say—”
“No, I wouldn’t say that—”
“So he might have thought the sacrifice of his soul was worth the while, you will say—”
“Honestly, I wouldn’t—”
“He did not care what it cost him. Indeed, the reason is good; for he that would have lived in chains to have had life—”
She is breathless with trying to interrupt me. “I wouldn’t say any of that!” she protests. “But I can understand why a husband and a father of such handsome boys would not want to leave them, would swear to anything to keep his life.”
“God says whoever denies Him before men, He will also deny them in His Father’s kingdom,” I say flatly.
“But when the queen forgives you, you will have to pray with her,” Katherine reminds me. “I do it already. I sit behind her and I copy everything she does. Honestly, Jane, it makes no difference to me. Up and down and bowing and crossing oneself. Why does it matter? You would not declare against the Mass, surely? You would do all that they ask of you, you would bow when they raise the Host—”
“It is pig swill. The Host, as you now call it, is pig swill,” I say flatly, and she claps her palms over her face and looks at me earnestly, through her fingers.
“Jane . . .” she whispers.
“What?”
“You will talk yourself to the scaffold.”
“I will never deny the Lord my God,” I say grandly.
“Jane . . .” she says again.
“What?”
“I don’t want to lose you.”
I am diverted by the moving bulge in the pocket of her cape. “What have you got there?”
“Ribbon the kitten. I brought him. I thought you might want him for company.”
She hauls out of her pocket the white kitten with blue eyes. He opens his mouth in a tiny pink yawn and lolls a miniature rosy tongue. He has sharp little teeth and his paws are limp with sleep.
“I don’t want a kitten,” I say.
She looks ridiculously disappointed. “Wouldn’t he be company for you? I am sure he is not at all heretical.”
“Don’t be stupid.”
THE TOWER, LONDON,
NOVEMBER 1553
It is the command of this so-called gracious queen that us prisoners who denied her heresies and follow the risen Lord shall walk just like He did before the people. I know that it is she who is shamed by this masque, not me. I don’t fear being tried for treason, I am glad of it. I can give testament from the dock, I can be a Daniel coming to judgment. I am ready. I am to be tried with the handful of other remaining prisoners at London’s Guildhall, as public a disgrace as she can contrive. She does not realize that, for me, this is holy. I am honored to walk from the Tower to Guildhall to my trial. I am no more shamed than Jesus was carrying His cross. She thinks she will expose me to abuse from the crowd; but this will be my martyrdom. I am glad to do it.
The streets from the Tower to Guildhall are lined with guards; our procession of prisoners is led by the executioner’s axe, followed by Archbishop Thomas Cranmer, the godly priest who gave us the English prayer book, and who translated the psalms with my dear Queen Kateryn. He has been in the Tower since he opposed the queen introducing the papist Mass. He was my tutor with Queen Kateryn, I know him well; I have every faith that if he is following the axe, the Lord is going before it. I am proud to come behind such a good man. I would follow him to the gates of heaven.
But unfortunately, I am not walking in his footsteps, for immediately behind him comes my husband, Guildford, pale and clearly frightened, and only then me, escorted by two of my ladies-in-waiting. Behind us come two other Dudleys: Ambrose and Henry. At least they look dignified and even defiant.
I wear a black gown, a black hood trimmed with jet, and a black furred cape. I carry an open prayer book in my hands and I read it as I walk, though the small print jiggles before my eyes, and, to tell the truth, I can see nothing. It doesn’t matter; I know the prayers off by heart. The point is that I am carrying it, that I appear to be reading it, anyone looking at me can see that I depend on the Word of God, as spoken by His Son, as written in His testament, as translated by Queen Kateryn and me. I do not depend on the mumblings of a priest or the long service in Latin that greets me at Guildhall. I am redeemed by my faith in the Word, not by the crossings and the dippings and the fancy robes and the censing that goes on before the judges come in and cross themselves and whisper “Amen” and do everything they can to show that this is papist against reformer, lies against truth, heresy against God, sheep against goats, them against me.
The trial is nothing but a recital of nonsense from men who know perfectly well what happened, but dare not say it now, to those who know it just as well but whose future depends on denying it. Everyone lies. I am not invited to speak, only to make a confession. There is no chance for me to explain the power of the Word of God.
The judges, who are as guilty as the accused, condemn all the men to die by being dragged to their place of execution and there hanged, and then being cut down, their bellies opened and their entrails drawn out, and then their arms and legs cut off. This is hanging, drawing, and quartering, and it is exactly like a crucifixion. It will take place on Tower Hill, which they should rename Calvary. I listen to the verdict and I don’t even tremble because I simply cannot believe it. Queen Kateryn’s dearest friend and mentor to be eviscerated for heresy? It was Thomas Cranmer who gave extreme unction to the dying King Henry. He wrote the Book of Common Prayer. How can he be a heretic? How can his friend’s daughter disembowel him?
As for me, my position is worse and equally contradictory. They sentence me to death by either the axe, like a traitor, or fire, like a heretic, on Tower Green. I listen to the lies they say and the deaths they threaten, and I am stony-faced. Anne Askew, a common woman, was burnt to death at the stake at Smithfield for our faith. Do they think that Our Redeemer, who supported her, will fail me? Do they think I don’t dare martyrdom as she did? I dare it—will they?
I have faith. I think they will pass sentence but delay and delay, and when everyone is quiet and has forgotten all about us, they will release us all to our homes: Thomas Cranmer, the Dudley boys, me. The death sentence is a threat to frighten others into silence and submission. It is not my doom. I will wait, I will study, I will not fear. The time will pass, and I will be released to my home at Bradgate and I will sit at my desk beneath the open window and hear the birds in the trees and smell the scent of hay on the summer winds, and Katherine and Mary and I will play hide-and-seek in the woods.
“I am not afraid,” I explain to Katherine.
“Then you’re mad!”
I take her hands, which pluck at her gown, at the basket that she has perched on her knees, filled with fruit, jiggling it as if it were a baby, the nephew that she will never have from me.
“I am not afraid, because I know that this life is just a vale of tears through which we pass,” I tell her impressively. “Blessed are ye men whose strength is in ye, in whose heart are your ways. Which going through the vale of misery, use it for a well and the pools are filled with water.”