She looks deeply shocked. ‘Silence! Madness does not excuse you! Go to your rooms!’
I really don’t know what has upset her – the certainty of my return to court, or the certainty of another queen.
‘I’m not mad to say the king will marry again,’ I say quietly, as I go. ‘I know his mind as well as I know my own. He cannot live without a woman far superior to him, a woman to humiliate. He cannot bear his impotence without a beautiful woman to blame. He cannot bear his own rot without a healthy body beside him.’
She claps her hands over her ears and shouts at her lady-in-waiting: ‘See Lady Rochford back to her room! I won’t hear this.’
I curtsey to her and smile at them all. ‘Good day,’ I say.
Russell House, London, January
1542
IRECEIVE NO NEWtranslation from my father in the new year, and I see that he does not set his hand to the machinery of court, not even when it is his daughter caught in the gears. Nothing from any of the Howards. Not so much as a ribbon from Mary Boleyn – ‘it’s Mrs Stafford now!’ – my sister-in-law. I conclude that I am cast off, declared mad, and quite forgotten. Dr Butts, the king’s own physician, comes to visit and asks me what season it is, and what time of day, if I am a married woman or a widow, if I know the King of England?
I laugh and tell him that it is cold winter, Tudor winter, and there will never be a May Day for Henry again. The summer will bring the Sweat – the disease that came in with the Tudors. The winter will bring floods – we have not had good weather since King Richard was ridden down into mud. I tell him that once I was a wife – does he not remember my wedding? But now I am a widow, my husband killed by the king. The king is Henry – I know this well enough, because I am a widow thanks to him. I know him better than anyone in England knows him. I was raised to serve him, swore to die for him, and everyone I love has been killed by him. He only spares me because I am mad – he has driven all his courtiers quite out of our wits, and I am the only one who knows this.
Dr Butts takes my hand and speaks very quietly and quickly, almost as if he were hiding what he is saying from my maid who stands at the door, and the guard who stands outside it and perhaps another watcher who is in my bedroom at the half-closed door, straining to hear. ‘Jane, I am trying to tell you something. Blink your eyes if you understand me.’
I am not such a fool. I stare at him with my eyes goggling wide.
‘There is a law come before the new session on parliament which will be passed and turned into law without even the king’s signature, just on his nod.’
I am as unblinking as an owl at dusk.
‘It says there is a new treason: no woman may marry the king if she has had a lover or a husband before.’
‘Katherine of Aragon, Anne Boleyn, Anne of Cleves, Katheryn Howard,’ I say – naming four of five queens, divorced by the king for that very reason. ‘He’ll find that inconvenient.’
‘It is to be applied retrospectively,’ he says urgently. ‘Do you understand? Backdated. Katheryn Howard will go on trial for marrying the king when she was betrothed to Francis Dereham. And she will be accused of foreseeing the king’s death with Thomas Culpeper.’
Finally, they understand the contradiction in accusing her of adultery. I smile in my pleasure at the logic. ‘It’s tyranny, of course. But at last, it makes sense.’
‘Listen,’ is all he says. ‘There is another clause to this new law. Anyone who is insane can now be interrogated – contrary to the previous law. Anyone insane can now be accused of a crime. Anyone insane can now be executed – contrary to the previous law. A madman can be executed even if he does not understand why.’ He looks into my face. ‘Or a madwoman.’
‘No, no, madness is a complete defence under the law,’ I tell him.
‘Not any more. The king has ordered the law to be changed. Madness is no defence. A madwoman can be executed.’
His words pierce my indifference. ‘He has changed the law on precontract, just to kill Kitty?’ I whisper. ‘He has changed the law on madness just to kill me?’
He nods.
‘He is determined that she shall die because she is young and pretty and preferred a young handsome man to him?’
He nods again.
‘And I am to die for knowing this?’
The spies strain their ears in the silence.
‘Will no one say “no” to him?’
The Tower of London, February
1542
IDO NOT NEEDto pretend to madness in the world we live in. We are ruled by a madman, and we are all so bereft of our wits that, having started by obeying him, we have gone on to do what he wants before he even asks for it, and now we are all as mad as him. When he was young, he was fair and handsome, and we admired him, loved him, and thought he would go on to do great things. Now that he is tyrant, we go on saying he is fair and handsome and we admire, love, and expect much of him. He threatens war with his neighbours, he destroys the Church, he rewrites laws, murders his friends, and destroys his wives, and we are as mad as March hares – we never ever say ‘no’.
