“Who did you have in mind?”

“You might consider the Earl of Pembroke’s younger son for your Katherine.” Edward Herbert, the little boy I’d played with at Chelsea, was old enough for a betrothal, if not yet a marriage. Since his mother, Will’s sister Anne, had died the previous year, I did not hesitate to promote his interests.

“Why not the elder boy?” Jane asked.

“Lord Herbert is already promised to Lady Catherine Grey, Lady Jane’s younger sister.”

“Is he indeed?”

“Perhaps the Duke of Suffolk already has someone in mind for Lady Jane. It would be a pity if Gil lost the prize simply because you did not act quickly enough to secure it.”

“Both the Lady Jane and her mother will be escorting Princess Mary to Whitehall on the morrow,” Jane said thoughtfully. “I will have to take a closer look at the girl.”

She was pleased with what she saw. On the twenty-fifth of May, in the chapel at Durham House, the Lady Jane Grey married Lord Guildford Dudley, Lady Catherine Grey wed Will’s nephew, Henry Herbert, and little Katherine Dudley married not Edward Herbert, as I had proposed, nor Somerset’s son, Lord Hertford, but rather the Earl of Huntingdon’s heir, Lord Hastings. Northumberland wanted to expand his circle of marriage alliances.

If Will and I had been free to marry when first we loved and had had a child, our progeny might have taken vows on that day, too. I could not stop the thought, but I soon pushed aside any regrets. The union of these powerful evangelical families was a triumph for which I had been partly responsible. I set myself to enjoying the spectacle.

Lady Jane, Lady Catherine, and their parents had arrived by barge from Suffolk Place. Delicate as a flower, Lady Jane wore a gown of gold and silver brocade sewn with diamonds and pearls. Her reddish-blond hair was plaited with more pearls, strings of them. Her golden-haired sister, Lady Catherine, was prettier—it was said she resembled their grandmother, King Henry’s sister Mary, who had briefly been queen of France before she married Charles Brandon, Duke of Suffolk. It was Lady Jane, however, who had a quality about her that spoke of royalty. Although she was shorter and lacked her cousin’s vivid coloring, something in Lady Jane reminded me of Princess Elizabeth.

“The boy’s ill,” Will whispered to me. “He should not have been taken from his sickbed.”

I followed his gaze to young Lord Herbert, Will’s nephew. “The doctors said it was nothing to worry about,” I whispered back. But the fifteen-year-old looked as if he was about to keel over.

“They say the same about King Edward,” Will muttered.

I sent him a questioning look. His Grace had moved to Greenwich because the air there was more salubrious than in London, but I had not heard that he was seriously ill. I shivered, even though it was a mild day.

John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, had spared no expense to make the triple wedding memorable. He’d hired two teams of masquers to entertain, one male and one female. There were also jousts and games. The festivities lasted two full days. Afterward, the Lady Jane remained at Durham House with Gil and his mother. The Lady Catherine moved into Baynard’s Castle with Will’s nephew and his father, the Earl of Pembroke. I returned to Winchester House, exhausted but well pleased with the outcome of my first foray into matchmaking.

39

In early June, the king’s doctors told the Duke of Northumberland that fifteen-year-old King Edward was dying. They predicted that His Grace would not survive more than a few more months. Northumberland said nothing to anyone at first. He needed time to think, and to learn what the king’s wishes were. Only then did he confide in Will. The next day, Will brought the terrible news home to me at Winchester House.

“Under the terms of King Henry’s will and the Act of Succession of 1544, confirmed by the Treasons Act of 1547, Edward’s sister Mary will succeed him. That will be a disaster, both for England and for us.”

“What does Princess Mary have against you?” I asked, looking up from my embroidery to see that he’d begun to pace.

“I was responsible for limiting her right to hear Mass. She had been inviting all manner of people to attend church services with her, knowing full well that the Catholic Mass is illegal in England. It was only by the goodwill of King Edward that Her Grace was permitted to continue to practice her religion in private.”

“I suppose, then, that she will not keep you on the Privy Council.”

His laugh was short and bitter. “That place is not all I will lose. The first thing she will do as queen is restore Catholicism to England. She will reverse nearly twenty years of reforms.”

“Perhaps she will show tolerance.” I took another stitch, then set my needlework aside. “I have never heard that she is unkind.” Will’s sisters had spent time in Her Grace’s household and so had Geraldine. None of them had ever had a bad word to say about her. Even the Duchess of Somerset had remained on friendly terms with the princess, and that after the lord protector had instituted the most radical of religious reforms.

“She’ll want revenge, mark my words. Or her councilors will. She’ll release Stephen Gardiner from the Tower.”

I saw at once what that would mean. “He will not tolerate what he deems heresy.”

“And heretics who do not recant will burn.”

I remembered what Gardiner had done to Anne Askew and repressed a shudder. “Then we’ll recant. We’ll go back to hearing Mass in Latin. Statues and stained glass will reappear in churches. What difference do such trappings make? Given a choice between returning to the old faith and death, I choose life and so should you. Pretend to convert to Catholicism. Even if you do not continue to serve on the Privy Council, you’ll still be Marquess of Northampton. We will continue to have a place at court.”

Will raked one hand through his hair in exasperation. “Don’t you understand, Bess? There is more at stake here than religion.” He captured my face between his hands. “If Mary becomes queen and returns England to the Church of Rome, our marriage will be invalidated. I will still be married to Anne Bourchier.”

Stricken, I could do no more than stare at him. He dropped his hands to my shoulders but held my gaze with his serious light brown eyes. “There may yet be a way to preserve what we have, both the Church of England and our marriage.”

“Tell me.”

He steered me to a long, padded bench with a low back. “It is King Edward’s idea, his wish. Months ago, in secret, His Grace composed what he called a device for the succession. He does not want either of his sisters to inherit.” Will snorted a laugh, but it had no humor in it. “In truth, he does not want any woman on the throne, but there’s no help for that.”

“After Mary and Elizabeth come the children and grandchildren of King Henry’s two sisters—all females,” I said slowly, remembering that Frances Brandon, Duchess of Suffolk, had three daughters and her late sister only one child, another girl. “Why not Princess Elizabeth then? She is sound in religion and she is King Edward’s half sister.”

“Is she? There has always been some doubt about her legitimacy.”

“One has only to look at her to see she’s a Tudor.”

“But King Henry executed her mother for adultery. The taint lingers. In any case, King Edward’s plan is to leave a will, as his father did, setting out the order of succession. He will disinherit both of his sisters because King Henry annulled his marriages to both their mothers, making Jane Seymour, who gave birth to Edward, Henry’s first true wife.”

I nodded, although I had difficulty following the logic of it all. “Who succeeds, then? The little queen of Scotland is descended from King Henry’s eldest sister.”

“King Henry passed over that line and King Edward wishes to do the same. His Grace’s first version of the device left the crown to ‘the Lady Frances’s heirs male’ and ‘for the lack of such issue to the Lady Jane’s heirs male.’”

“But Frances Brandon has no sons. And the Lady Jane has only just married.”

“I know.” Will’s voice was sharp, his manner agitated. He moved restlessly from window to table, pouring himself a cup of wine, then leaving it behind as he returned to my side. “The king soon realized that he would not live long enough to see any sons born to either woman, so he has made a change in the wording. The crown now goes ‘to the Lady Frances’s heirs male, if she have any such issue before my death’ and ‘to the Lady Jane and her heirs male’ by default.”

I stared at Will in shock. “To the Lady Jane and her—do you mean to say that His Grace has cut the Duchess of Suffolk out of the succession in favor of her eldest daughter?”

“Say rather in favor of her daughter and her daughter’s husband. No one really expects a woman to rule England.”

“I did not foresee this.” I stared down at my hands. They were clasped so tightly in my lap that my rings had left deep impressions in the adjoining fingers.

“Nor did any of us, not even Northumberland.”

“Guildford Dudley will be king.”

“Yes.”

A self-centered seventeen-year-old younger son would rule England. I felt slightly ill. It had been my suggestion that he wed the Lady Jane.

Still, it might all come right. Gil’s father would continue to be the power behind the throne. Perhaps very little would change, after all.

“A King Guildford is better than a Queen Mary,” I said, but my voice sounded uncertain even to my own ears.

“It is not as if we have a choice, Bess. We must support him or lose everything.”

“We will. Others will, too.” We were not the only ones who had much to lose. I managed a brave, bracing smile, but I prayed with all my heart that a miracle would occur and young King Edward would recover.

40

The tempest began with a downpour in the early evening of the sixth day of July. Before long, hailstones fell from the sky. They crashed against the windows that overlooked the Thames, peppering them so hard that cracks appeared in the expensive glass. The wind howled. My ladies lent their shrieks to the cacophony until I ordered them to be silent.

“It is only a storm,” I said, turning away from the disturbing sight.

My chief waiting gentlewoman, Mistress Crane—known as Birdie both for her sharp blade of a nose and her surname—let out a terrified shriek and pointed at the window behind me. “The hailstones have turned bloodred! It is an evil portent. Soon real blood will be spilled.”

Frowning, I looked for myself. It was true that the hail did have a pinkish tinge. “It is only light reflected from the setting sun,” I said, still striving for calm.

“But the storm clouds obscure the sun.”

A flash of lightning and the nearly simultaneous crack of thunder saved me the trouble of answering. I gave thanks that Winchester House had been built on a sturdy stone foundation. We would remain safe so long as we stayed within its walls, no matter how unnatural the weather. I was not quite ready to believe in omens, but I could feel the odd quality to the air. It made my skin prickle.

Cautiously, not quite certain I wanted to take a closer look, I approached the cracked window. The water in the Thames roiled and churned. It had swamped several wherries, caught halfway across the river when the storm hit. Passengers and boatmen alike clung to the overturned watercraft. Bigger vessels docked at the many wharves along the riverfront were likewise battered by the high winds and driving rain. The hail, at least, had passed, but the strip of ground below my window was littered with gray-white pebbles, some as big as tennis balls.

Lightning flashed again and I gasped as it struck one of the many church steeples in the city. The spire slowly tumbled to the street below. Now that, I thought, was a bad sign. My gaze shifted downriver, toward Greenwich. I could not see that far, but my thoughts continued on past London Bridge, past the Tower, straight to my husband and his deathwatch.

If nature rebelled at the loss of a king, then Edward was gone.

Superstitious nonsense, I told myself.

But what else could account for the devastation in front of my eyes? As I watched, a house on the opposite shore was swept away by the rising water. “A heavy rain at high tide always causes flash floods,” I murmured, but a shudder racked my body from head to toe.

The storm passed as abruptly as it had begun. When night fell, I lit every candle in my privy chamber and waited. I knew something momentous had happened, but it was nearly midnight before Will arrived home.