I read the Miserere in English, for God can understand English and it is superstition to think that He has to be addressed in Latin. John Feckenham follows me, speaking the words in Latin, and I think how beautiful the language is, and how sweet it sounds today, chiming and interweaving with the English words in the damp misty air with the seagulls calling over the river. I remember that I am only sixteen and I will never see the river again. I can’t believe I will never see the hills of Bradgate again, or the paths where Katherine and I used to walk under the trees, or my old pony in the field, or the caged old bear in the pit. The prayer lasts an oddly long time, a timeless time, and I am surprised when it ends and I have to give things: my gloves and my handkerchief, my prayer book. The ladies have to prepare me for this, my final royal appearance. They take off my hood, my black hood trimmed with jet, and my collar. Suddenly, the time is racing past when there were things that I wanted to say, that I wanted to make sure that I saw before this moment. I am sure there are last words that I should say, memories that I should recall. It’s all happening too fast now.
I kneel. I can hear Brother Feckenham’s steady voice. They put on the blindfold before I have had my last glimpse of the seagulls. I meant to look at the clouds, I meant to be sure of my last glance of the sky. Suddenly, I know fear and I am in the white blankness of a daylight blindfold.
“What shall I do? Where is it?” I scream in a panic, and then someone guides my hands to the block and its solid square roughness tells me that my destiny is inexorable. This is the material world indeed; this is the most material thing I will ever touch. I realize it is the last thing I will ever touch. I grip the block, I even feel the grain of the wood. I have to put my head down on it. I note that the blindfold is wet with my tears, soft and hot against my closed eyelids. I must be crying and crying. But at least no one can see, and whatever happens next, I know that it is not death, for I will never die.
BOOK II
KATHERINE
BAYNARD’S CASTLE,
LONDON, SPRING 1554
I have sent you, good sister Katherine, a book, which although it be not outwardly trimmed with gold, yet inwardly it is more worth than precious stones. It is the book, dear sister, of the laws of the Lord: It is His Testament and Last Will, which He bequeathed unto us wretches, which shall lead you to the path of eternal joy, and if you, with a good mind, read it, and with an earnest desire follow it, it shall bring you to an immortal and everlasting life.
It will teach you to live and learn you to die . . . win you more than you should have gained by the possession of your woeful father’s lands . . . such riches as neither the covetous shall withdraw from you, neither the thief shall steal, neither let the moth corrupt . . .
And as touching my death, rejoice as I do and consider that I shall be delivered of this corruption and put on incorruption, for as I am assured that I shall for losing of a mortal life, find an immortal felicity.
Farewell, good sister, put only your trust in God, who only must uphold you,
Your loving sister,
Jane Duddley
I read, with growing disbelief, this sermon—the only goodbye from my older sister that I will ever get. I read it again, only this time I am furious. I really don’t know what she thinks I am going to do with this miserable letter. I don’t know what good she thinks it will do me. I have to say that if it was me about to die, I wouldn’t write such a letter to little Mary. What a thing to write! How would it ever comfort her? I read and reread it though my eyes are so sore from crying that I can’t see her careful clerkly hand. Nothing is crossed out, nothing is blotted. She did not cry over writing as I am crying over reading it. She did not desperately scrawl it in a passion to say good-bye to me, her little sister who looks up to her and loves her so much. She wasn’t anxious to tell me that she loves me, that she is thinking of me, that she is heartbroken that we won’t grow up together. We will never now be ladies at court giggling over our admirers; we will never be learned old ladies reading to our children. She thought through these elegant paragraphs and wrote them as they came to her, with refined scholarship, without hesitation. And all about God. God! As usual.
Of course, as soon as I have read it and reread it, I know exactly what I am going to do with it. Not ball it up and hurl it into the fire, in a rage of grief, which was my first impulse. I am going to do what she wanted me to do. She didn’t even have to tell me; she knew that I would know. She didn’t have to spoil her holy detachment with a practical instruction. I know what she wants without her saying. I am to send this letter, this coldhearted unsisterly letter, to her so-called important friends in Switzerland and they will print it and get it published and send it out to everyone. And everyone will read it and say what a wonderful letter of piety, what a saint the girl was, what wise advice to her little sister, how certain it is that her faith has taken her to heaven. How lucky we all are to have been blessed with her presence.
Then everyone will admire Jane and quote this damned letter forever. They will print it in England and Germany and Switzerland as part of the wonderful scholarship of Jane Grey, proof that she was an exceptional young woman whose memory will go on and on, whose life will be a sermon to the young. And if anyone thinks of me at all, they will think that I am a very stupid frivolous girl to be the recipient of the last letter of a martyr. If Mary Magdalene had arrived at the empty tomb on Easter morning and failed to notice the gardener who was the risen Christ, and so ruined the miracle of Easter for everyone forever, I would be her: the secondary player in the greatest scene, who completely fails in her part. If Mary Magdalene tripped over a rock and hopped about clutching her toe—that would be me. Everyone is going to remember Jane the saint. Nobody is going to think twice about me—the stupid sister who received her last great letter. Nobody will think that I wanted and deserved a last letter, a proper letter, a personal letter. And no one will give a second thought to our little sister Mary, who doesn’t even get a miserable sermon.
If Jane were not dead, I would be really furious with her about this. “Learn you to die”! What a thing to write to a sister who has always loved her! If she were alive, I would go to the Tower right now and knock off her black hood and pull her hair for writing such a heartless letter to her little sister, for writing to me—to me!—that I should be glad that we have lost all our money, that I should be glad that we have lost our home, that I should be glad to have a Bible rather than jewels. As if I would ever rather have an old Bible than my lovely home, a Bible instead of Bradgate! As if anyone would! As if I don’t love jewels and pretty things and prize them above everything else in the world! As if she doesn’t know this, as if she hasn’t laughed at me for my silly vanity a hundred times!
And then I remember, with a gulp of horror like ice in my belly, that her hood is off her head already, and her head is off her body, and if I pulled her plait, then her head would swing like a ball on a rope in my hand, and I find I am screaming and I put my hands over my panting mouth until I choke down my retching sobs.