Three Maids for a Crown: A Novel of the Grey Sisters (2 page)

Yet if I was not within the Tower’s confines, on that bleak February twelfth 1554 during Cousin Mary’s reign, why can I remember every detail of the grim spectacle so vividly? The frostsheened walls of the London fortress where three generations of my forebears had come to await their coronations; the vast courtyard that my eldest sister Jane entered in royal glory on a hot day the previous July, forced to become England’s most reluctant queen.

Why do my lungs clot with the stink of perfumed bodies pressing close to the oak-hewn scaffold, the witnesses for the crown—a barrier of velvet and lace, doublets and gowns that tower above me, blocking my path as I scrabble to reach my sister?

Even now, twenty years later, I can feel my fingernails tear as I claw my way through the crowd. My cheeks burn, scoured raw by gold thread embroidery and scratched by the jewels stitched to the garments of Queen Mary’s courtiers.

But no one in the crowd takes heed of a nine-year-old child—even if she is the traitor Duke of Suffolk’s daughter. In the strange hush I am no more worthy of notice than the lieutenant’s three-legged dog. Not even those who will profit from my sister’s death indulge in an execution’s usual fair-day mood. No banter fills the green, none of the vicious excitement that ever boiled about an execution day, be it a hanging at one of the crossroads or Protestants burning alive on fiery stakes at Smithfield. People cluster together, whispering, averting their eyes from one another, the Catholics finger ave beads at their waists, and those of the new religion touch the gold crosses at their throats.

I pause, trying to catch my breath in the suffocating throng, and overhear a spindly noblewoman in a Lincoln green cloak murmur to the man beside her. “The Lady Jane is but sixteen. She is no older than our Anne.”

“No guiltier of treason, either, and everyone in England knows it. The Lady Jane was never more than a pawn. But pawns must be sacrificed. Queen Mary will do what she must to get herself a husband and an heir after all these years. She is far from young anymore.”

It was true. On Cousin Mary’s last birthday, when she was thirty-seven years old, I had given her the gift of a music box. She scarce looked at the trinket because she was so enchanted by the sight of her lady-in-waiting dandling a chubby babe. The queen’s face flooded with yearning. For love. Even at eight years old, I understood her desperate craving, perhaps because that same need has lodged with a barbed hook in my own breast.

In my memory, the gentleman blocking my path lifts one shoulder. “The Spanish king demands Lady Jane’s head as a wedding boon. They say he will not let Prince Philip sail for the wedding until Lady Jane Grey is dead. The bloody corpse of a highborn English maid is a fitting price to pay, since the king will be snatching the English throne for his son.”

The green cloak ripples as its owner shudders. “Imagine what Lady Jane must feel. To be innocent. Executed by your own cousin.”

Cousin
. My stomach still clenches at the hollow death knell in that word.
Cousin
. My cousin. Jane’s cousin. Mary Tudor, with her voice gruff as any man’s, her eyes fierce and staring, and a face deep-pocked by sadness. King Henry’s eldest daughter, scorned as a bastard, her will bludgeoned until it broke under her father’s hand. Mary, who draped Jane’s throat in pearls and rubies at Hunsdon House four Christmases before, who gave my pretty sister Kat the silky-eared spaniel she loved. Mary, who slowed her step to my uncertain gait, taking my hand when my impatient lady mother would have left me behind.

How could Cousin Mary have done what everyone said? Signed the death warrant that sent Jane to the block? In our bedchamber back at Dorset House, I had slapped Kat’s tear-streaked face when she insisted it was so.

No, Cousin Mary would never carry out the dreaded sentence, no matter what the Spanish king demanded. She was only pretending to acquiesce to Philip’s demand, to frighten Jane’s supporters into obedience. I was certain a royal messenger would ride in at the last moment, waving a royal pardon at the executioner. Everyone would heave sighs of relief, and then Cousin Mary would let Jane retire to our family estate of Bradgate Hall in Leicestershire. There Jane would be able to read her beloved books and study as many languages as she pleased and perhaps even learn how to be wife to the beautiful, spoiled boy our parents had forced her to wed. After all, Her Majesty the Queen, my kind, beloved cousin, had promised me Jane would be spared.

An elbow jabs me in the cheek, but the splinter-thin woman does not even glance down. “Look you, Arthur! The prisoner comes.”

Drums beat a dirge apace with my dread. My sister rises above the crowd as she mounts the stairs to the scaffold. If the messenger does not arrive at once, it will be too late. The winter-white coif of Brussels linen that our sister Kat stitched last Christmas bundles Jane’s red-gold hair away from her heart-shaped face. Freckles spatter her ashen cheeks and nose like flecks of blood. The severe black gown Jane wore to her trial enfolds her like the wings of Father’s falcon when it dives for the kill, Jane’s frame so small she looks like a child playing execution in some macabre game. In her hands she clutches a prayer book. Her lips silently shape the holy words that have comforted her so often. They do not comfort me.

I try to call out to her, but terror and guilt stop up my throat. I will Jane to look at me, but my sister is already beyond my reach, determined to block out the crowd, inhabit her own world, her old defense against our parents’ constant battering at her spirit. I wonder if she will finally know peace in heaven. But I do not want Jane in heaven. I want Jane here, where I can steal up silently and curl at her feet, rest my head against her knee. Sometimes, if she is deep in concentration, she does not mind it so very much.

Jane addresses the crowd, but I am too stricken to hear what she says. She presses her prayer book into the hands of the lieutenant of the Tower, Sir John Bridges. The man who was first her jailer, then her friend. His hands shake as he gives Jane a white silk cloth, and she ties it across her eyes, blotting out the last sunlight she will ever see. My sister kneels upon the straw, then reaches out with fingers spread, searching for the block. She cannot find the waxed oak surface. “Where is it?” she cries in distress, groping at nothing but air. “What am I to do?”

Jane, forever trying to be perfect, failing now when the most powerful nobles in England are watching. I know she can hear our lady mother’s scathing voice in her head, damning her for shaming the noble house of Suffolk.

A kind hand reaches out to Jane, guides her. Dr. Feckenham, Queen Mary’s own confessor, who tried to convert Jane from her Protestant beliefs. Hope fills me. Will he offer Jane the queen’s pardon? No. He only guides Jane’s fingers to the wooden block with its two half-moons carved out for her chin and shoulders, leaving a narrow, raised ridge in the center where her throat must rest. The hard surface that the ax blade will bite into after it cleaves my sister’s neck. Jane grasps the wooden block and sighs in relief. I know she is picturing heaven. I am in hell. Kat was right—no messenger is coming to Jane’s rescue. The queen has broken her promise, bent to the will of the powerful men around her. I crumple to the ground, weeping, too far away for Jane to hear me. Events of the past year whirl in my head.

“Forgive me.” The words burn my throat as the ax slashes in a terrible arc.

I sob into air now thick and sweet, metallic-tasting with my sister’s blood. “This is my fault, Jane. This is all my fault.”

I believed it then. Believe it still. Yet in some ways Jane’s destiny was forged the day the midwife laid her into the heavy-carved cradle with its royal crest, our parents scowling down at her with disappointment. Our destinies were sealed thus as well, Kat and I, each in our turn. Our lord father said so the night when I first sensed the darkness tightening its noose about our throats.

I should have believed him.

Chapter One

M
ARY
8
YEARS OLD
S
UFFOLK
H
OUSE
, L
ONDON
M
AY
24, 1553

pying on the devil was a dangerous prospect, but if the whispers were true, he had visited me before. I limped through Suffolk House like a gargoyle brought to life, clutching my dark bed gown under my chin so I might blend into shadow. At any moment the guards might demand to know why the youngest daughter of the Duke of Suffolk wandered alone past midnight. Yet I had learned early that people avoided looking at me if they could. They shrank away as if deformity could be catching, like sweating sickness or plague.

They were wise to be wary. I overheard more than anyone suspected, and I sensed what could not be seen, only felt in that ticklish place inside my head. Of late the voices in that secret spot shrilled that something wicked had come to steal my sister Jane away.

I peered around a corner, saw a guard stationed outside my destination. I ducked behind a heavy chest, but a moment later the man’s soft snore sounded. I slipped past. Most of Suffolk House slept—exhausted from the preparations for the greatest wedding England had seen since the dead king Henry took the last of his six wives. Or so my mother claimed. But I could not rest. From the nursery window I had seen the devil ride through the gates, the bear and ragged staff on his banner visible in the light of the torches his guards carried. I knew where he was bound. I had heard my father ordering servants to lay his dice upon the gaming table in his privy chamber. I would hide in the chamber. Tonight I would see the devil’s face.

I slipped through Father’s door, then stole into the space between the wall and the tapestry of blind Saint Lucy holding her eyeballs upon a plate. I could see the table clearly from there, though I hoped no one would be able to see me. What would happen if my father discovered me? He would beat me. But I had to help Jane if I could.

The tramp of boots sounded in the hall, and I caught my breath. The guard must have wakened. My father did not reprimand him before entering with his guest.

The stranger sank into Father’s best chair, his shoulders weighted with gold chains of office. Dark hair fell about a harsh face. His eyes seemed as if they could cut stone.

From the time I could remember, I heard people whispering that Satan had twisted me into a hunchbacked dwarf. Now he was coming to steal Jane away.

For two weeks my eldest sister wept into her bolster at night. Jane, only fifteen, who cried when her lessons were over and kind Dr. Aylmer sent her back to our parents. Jane, who loved me and never lied.

“They have sold me to the devil, Mary.” Her words scraped into my memory. I trembled to think how dark the wickedness must be to make Jane defy our parents’ will. I still winced every time I recalled the hiss of the willow branch as our mother cut bloody stripes into Jane’s back. The beating had gone on until I feared it would kill Jane, and Kat, who could not bear cruelty of any kind, had flung herself at our sister, pleading. “Give way! You will have to do what they command in the end.”

Mother boasted that her stern hand had bent Jane to her will. I knew better. Jane had given in because what Kat—at almost thirteen years old—said was true. Even the humblest of fathers had the right to beat a daughter until she followed his command. Our father, the great Duke of Suffolk, wished his eldest to marry the devil’s son come morning. The lord chancellor of England was determined on the match too. As chancellor, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, held the reins of government instead of the boy king. Dudley was the most hated man in England. The devil …

Father leaned across the table, his voice low. “Our plans may come to nothing, Northumberland. Even you—the most powerful man in England—cannot hold back death. The wedding must be accomplished, and you must have time to convince His Majesty to—”