I left my bedchamber and went quietly to the adjoining room. There was no one there. Cautiously I opened the door which led to the ladies’ quarters. I paused and listened. I heard the sound of voices. Some of them were there.

I hesitated. Jane had said that they would try to prevent my leaving. I dared not wait too long or Mass would be over and the King gone. I should have to chance being seen. In any case, who were they to prevent my going where I wished? I was not their prisoner … or was I?

I glanced into the room. A group of them were seated at the far end. I did not have to pass them—just slip quietly to a door and out to the stairs.

I was half-way to it when one of the ladies looked up. She exclaimed with surprise and stood up. I saw that it was Margaret Morton.

“Your Majesty…” she began, but I took no notice and sped toward the door.

They were all on their feet now.

“Your Majesty, what is it you require?”

I did not answer. I was through the door and starting down the stairs.

“Your Majesty! Your Majesty!” They were coming after me. I knew they would try to stop my reaching the King, as Jane had warned me they would. I felt the hysteria rising in me. I must see him. I must. Everything depended on it. They were close to me now … not just one of them, but at least half a dozen.

“Where are you going?” I thought that was Katherine Tylney.

“Your Majesty! Come back. We are here to serve you.”

I thought: you are here to prevent my reaching the King.

I was in the gallery now. I ran as fast as I could. I was breathless … and they were very close to me. One of them reached out and caught my gown. I snatched it away. I had reached the chapel, but they were surrounding me.

I saw Katherine Tylney, Margaret Morton and Joan Bulmer among them. There was fear on their faces. They were as determined not to allow me to see the King as I was to see him. But I was one and they were so many.

They were all round me. They laid their hands on me.

“Leave me,” I commanded. “Leave me.”

They did not answer. They looked sly and triumphant as they pulled me away from the chapel door.

“Take your hands from me,” I cried.

“Your Majesty is unwell. We are going to look after you. Come … let us take you back to your apartment.”

I kept crying out to them to leave me, to take their hands from me, but they dragged me away, nearer and nearer to the stairs. I was sobbing, cursing them, screaming with fury. Perhaps he would hear. But perhaps he did not want to hear. I must make him look at me. Only my presence could do that.

I could hear that wild hysterical voice, and realized it was my own. I was bereft of all hope as they dragged me up the stairs. I was back in my chamber … in prison. I could hear them talking of me.

The Queen had had another of her mad turns.

I lay still while the wildness passed away. I felt limp, exhausted, saying to myself, I can never escape. It is coming to me as surely as it came to my cousin.

I was sunk in utter melancholy and despair.

The Journey to the Tower

IT WAS A FEW DAYS LATER that I heard I was to leave Hampton Court for Syon House.

Jane Rochford said that this might be a good omen. It meant that there were people who would be uneasy about my seeing the King. They had prevented me on one occasion, but what if I should succeed? What if he were to decide to take me back, as many people thought he might be inclined to do? How would all those who had worked against me fare then?

It was the sort of theory one welcomed when one was feeling desperate. I forgot that Jane was one who liked to build up a dramatic situation, to have a plan and attempt to discover devious ways of putting it into practice.

Common sense told me that, if the King really wanted me back, he would soon find some means of getting me. But in my present desperate state, it was comforting to grasp at any hope.

Jane was with me at Syon, a house on the north bank of the Thames near Richmond. It had been a nunnery suppressed by Henry in 1532, when the house had passed to the Crown.

How different it was from Hampton Court! Here indeed I felt a prisoner.

Perhaps I was thinking of poor Lady Margaret Douglas, who had recently been held here under restraint and had been sent away to Kenninghall to make way for me.

Margaret, too, seemed a person destined to fall in love with the wrong people. Perhaps she and I shared a weakness in that way. She had been in the Tower before on account of her attachment to my uncle, Lord Thomas Howard. She had been released from there to be sent to Syon House; then her lover had died and she was freed. Now she was in disgrace again, because of a liaison with another member of my family. This time it was my brother Charles, and she found herself a prisoner in Syon House until my coming, when she was moved to another place of confinement.

Poor Lady Margaret! She must often wish she had not been born royal. It seemed unfair that she should be imprisoned for falling in love and wanting to marry the brother of the woman the King had chosen for his Queen. If Lady Margaret could not expect reasonable consideration, could I?

It was at Syon House that I heard the most alarming news of all. Jane brought it to me. It was the first time since the disaster that I had seen Jane so anxious.

She gasped: “Thomas Culpepper has been arrested.”

I thought I was going to faint. This was indeed disaster. I had hoped by some means to get word to him, to beg him to slip out of the country—but I had been unable to do so.

“What does it mean?” I asked Jane.

“That someone has betrayed him.”

“Who? Who?”

“It must be one of the women … those who were with us during the journey, the ladies of the bedchamber.”

“So they knew!”

“They cannot be sure, but they will know that he came to your bedchamber by night, maybe.”

I covered my face with my hands. I wanted to shut out everything … the memory of my cousin … the terrible fate which could befall us. We had been in acute danger before, but now there was no hope. If the King knew that I had been unfaithful to him, that would be the end … the end of Thomas and of me. He might forgive what had happened before our marriage, but never what had happened after.

A terrible understanding came to me. What if, during those nights, I had conceived a child? Yes, indeed, I was guilty of treason.

What had these women known? What had they seen? With all this talk about the lewd life I had led before my marriage, they would be ready to believe the worst.

Would they question Thomas? Without a doubt they would. Would they do to him what they had done to Derham … and Damport? No, I could not endure that. His beautiful body, to be broken on the rack … as Derham’s had been.

I did not know what to do, which way to turn. This was the worst thing that had happened. I could not bear to think of Thomas in the hands of those cruel men. Oh, why had he not left the country? Why had he not seen what was coming? He should have been aware of what was coming … more so than I. Oh, why had he stayed to meet this cruel fate?

There was no comfort anywhere. Even Jane had changed. I had never seen her like this before. Gone was the plotter, the schemer, the one who reveled in drama. Whichever way she turned, she saw herself at the center of the tragedy.

Who was it who had arranged the meeting with Thomas Culpepper, who had cleared the way, kept the women out of sight, as far as possible? Who had connived and contrived? Jane, of course.

She was caught up in this, guilty of making the way easy for the Queen, which was an act of treachery toward the King—one which might involve the future heir to the throne.

Jane was with me in this trouble.

I saw the terror in her eyes. She could not comfort me, because she could not comfort herself.

We sat side by side, staring ahead of us. If this were proved against us, it would be the end of me … and possibly Jane, too.


* * *

We waited for news.

They would put him on the rack, as they had poor Derham. Would he tell of those nights when the King had been absent and we had given ourselves up to our passion? Would they force the truth from him?

It would be the end.

Jane was by turns sunk in melancholy or almost demented. She feared death greatly. Did not we all?

She said: “I think perhaps this is what I expected would happen to me one day. Ever since those two went to the block, I have been haunted by them. I mean your cousins—Anne and George. I helped them there. She was destined for the block, but George … oh, not George. It was cruel. It was wicked. I did not believe they were guilty … either of them. A charge of that could never have been brought against them. There will be those who say that Elizabeth is a bastard. How could that be? You only have to look at her to see who her father is. Anne had to go because she was in the way. She had no son and the King was tired of her. He wanted Jane Seymour. I am not to blame for her death. It only hurt her reputation. But George … my husband. I loved him, Katherine. He was the most charming man I ever knew. And they chose him for my husband. How could he have cared for me? In a way he was in love with his brilliant sister. Not in love perhaps, but he loved her as he loved no one else. How could he be expected to feel anything but contempt for his far-from-exciting wife?”

“Jane, he loved you as a wife.”