“He’s not free to love,” I say primly. “And neither is she. There’s the difference between them and me and Ned. She is a queen who should marry for her country, and he is a man already married—and there is me and Ned, young and free and both noble.”
“You’re never talking of marriage with Ned?” Mary demands.
I go down on my knees to her, so that our faces are level. “Oh, Mary, I am,” I whisper. “I am! I promise you that I am.”
HAMPTON COURT PALACE,
OCTOBER 1559
Ned is high above me, mounted on his handsome horse, dressed in dark blue velvet, his jacket embroidered with darker blue thread, his bonnet of velvet trimmed with navy ribbon. I stand at his horse’s head, Mr. Nozzle balancing on my shoulder, and look up at him.
“How is the horse?” I say, and we both laugh at the thought of my awkwardness with him, only months ago, and now our confident joy.
He is going to the Charterhouse at Sheen, to ask my mother for permission for us to marry. “Don’t forget to remind her that Elizabeth can have no objection,” I say to him. “Don’t forget to tell her that I am old enough to know my own mind.”
“I’ll tell her,” he assures me. “There can be no reason for your mother to refuse. It is what she and your father wanted for your sister. If I was good enough for Jane, I must be good enough for you. Both our families have risen high and been brought low, and now you have no great dowry and are not favored by the queen. But anyway, it does not matter to me.”
“I should not be brought low,” I say irritably. “I am not brought low in the eyes of others. The Spanish ambassador said that there is no heir to Elizabeth but me. And anyway, I am on the rise again. She is so furious with our cousin Margaret Douglas for sending her son Henry to the coronation in France that she is ready to forgive me for being rude to her.”
Ned gives me a smile and my heart turns over. “It doesn’t matter who Elizabeth likes and dislikes. We are royal kin and so she should give her permission. You are her cousin and a Tudor, I am a Seymour. She cannot refuse our wedding.”
It will take him an hour to get to Sheen. I fuss over his saddle, the girth, the stirrup leathers, like a wife. “Be careful on the way!” I say, though I know he has men in his livery riding with him. There is no danger for him. There are many threats against the life of Elizabeth, but the rest of us, the royal family, are beloved. Everyone remembers that Queen Jane, who died so tragically giving birth to King Edward, was a good English Seymour. And my family, the Greys, are loved for our Queen Jane. The ordinary people speak of her as a saint. It is only Elizabeth who likes to pretend that Jane was never crowned queen. It is only Elizabeth who wants to pretend that she is the last Tudor.
“I’ll be back the day after tomorrow,” he says. “And I shall call you my wife within the month.”
I wave good-bye and I don’t care who sees me standing, watching him go. I don’t doubt him, I don’t doubt that my mother will give permission in a moment. She has always liked him, and the Seymours are a great family. His mother has reluctantly allowed our marriage on the condition that my mother speaks to Elizabeth. There should be nothing to stand in our way.
CHARTERHOUSE, SHEEN,
OCTOBER 1559
My mother is ill—she is much troubled by her spleen (I have to say, this is not surprising in a woman with such an evil temper). But as soon as she has heard Ned’s mission she orders me and Mary to join her and her husband, Mr. Stokes, and Ned at Sheen. She says I must tell her myself if I want Ned as my husband. She receives me in her presence chamber like the daughter of a queen that she is. Mary walks behind me like a miniature lady-in-waiting.
It is as formal as a betrothal. I tell my mother: “I am very willing to love my lord of Hertford,” and she rises from her chair, comes to me, smiles, puts my hand in his, and says that she would be glad to see me settled and well married.
Adrian Stokes, standing deferentially behind her, is no nobleman but a good sensible man, and he advises us, too. We all agree that Elizabeth the queen will have to be handled carefully. This summer she has been besotted with Robert Dudley and had no time for anyone else, but if I am asking to marry the cousin of the late king, she will turn her attention to me and observe me with more care. She is as prickly over her prestige as any bastard, and as fearful for her title as any usurper. We must never, never indicate that we know that we are better bred and more entitled to the throne than she. We have to hope that she overlooks the fact that I, a Tudor heir, want to marry Ned, a Seymour, a royal relation.
Everyone agrees that my mother must write to Elizabeth the queen and ask for permission and then go to court to persuade Elizabeth in person. Jointly, the five of us compose a courtly letter. We write:
The Earl of Hertford doth bear goodwill to my daughter the Lady Katherine, and I do humbly beseech the Queen’s Highness to be a good and gracious lady unto her and that it may please Her Majesty to assent to her marriage to the said earl.
I say—but what if she says no? She is spiteful enough to say no. And Ned takes my hand and promises me: “If she says no, we will marry in secret and she can say no to the wind.”
So the letter is drafted with Mary acting as clerk, and my mother is to copy it out fair in her best hand, but before she can do so, she takes to her bed and says she cannot go to court while she is so bloated and so sick, she certainly cannot bear to see Elizabeth when she is not in her best looks, we will have to wait until she is better.
“So what happens now?” I demand of Ned.
“I’ll go back to court myself and prepare for the letter,” he promises me. “I have friends; we are a family with influence. I can ask people to speak for us to the queen. We have my mother’s permission and yours. We don’t need anything more.”
WINDSOR CASTLE,
AUTUMN 1559
Ned and I return to court separately, so that no one knows we have been conspiring together, and then we hesitate. It feels impossible to break into Elizabeth’s whispered conversations with Robert Dudley and make her attend to our affairs. There is a queue of people before us: foreign ambassadors proposing marriage, William Cecil with handfuls of bills for her to sign, trying to persuade her to support the Protestant Scots lords who are arming against their French regent. Now Elizabeth is to be named as Supreme Governor of the Church, even though she is a woman. I think of what my sister Jane would have done with that chance to save the soul of the country, and save the Scots from papistry, and it is a bitter thought. At any rate, the queen has no time for Ned and me, and we cannot find a chance to interrupt.
The court is a place of nervous gossip. Elizabeth is so anxious about the French and the Scots that she cannot let Robert Dudley out of her sight; but still she entertains Sir William Pickering as a suitor, and speaks every day of the archduke Ferdinand as if she intends to marry him. It feels as if everyone, from the blackbirds in the apple-heavy orchards to the queen in her chamber, is with their mate. Ned and I are only one of very many couples kissing in shaded doorways.
The Scots Protestant lords rise up against the regent Mary of Guise and defeat her. They call on Elizabeth for help, and of course she dares to do nothing. If Jane were Queen of England, she would have sent a righteous army. But though William Cecil argues till he is exhausted in the Privy Council and the queen’s rooms, Elizabeth does not dare to send more than a secret fleet of ships to supply the Scots lords.