The House of Dudley by Joanne Paul

Author:Joanne Paul [Paul, Joanne]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781405937207
Publisher: Penguin Random House UK
Published: 2022-04-07T00:00:00+00:00

16

Hide thee from the bear

Catherine Grey was desperate. Nothing else would have brought her, shrouded in darkness and silence, to Robert Dudley’s bedside that night.1 It was August, and the weather had been a mix of oppressive heat and fierce storms.2 The moon, had she been able to see it, was directly above the rooftops of Ipswich, a waning crescent, barely more than a sliver. The dark night was her ally.

Hiding had become an art born of necessity for Catherine. She had worked hard to conceal her growing bump under loose-flowing gowns and resisted the urge to put a hand to calm or cradle the baby inside while others, including the queen and entire court, were watching. Eight months she had hidden not just the facts but also the effects of her pregnancy: the nausea, fatigue and pain. Darkness was on her side, but time was not, and soon all her efforts at concealment would be for nothing.

She had also successfully disguised her emotions. Catherine Grey was carrying the child of the man she loved but had lost. Though secretly married, the only witness was her husband’s sister, who had died unexpectedly at the age of nineteen. A few weeks later Catherine’s secret husband had left for the French court, from which letters to his wife were scarce and unsafe. Secrecy was of the utmost importance. Not just because of her husband’s identity, though it did bring with it some complications. Catherine Grey – now secretly Catherine Seymour – was carrying the child of Edward Seymour, the Earl of Hertford. He was the son of the former Lord Protector, the executed Edward Seymour, Duke of Somerset, erstwhile friend-cum-enemy of the Dudley family. Young Seymour had once been cousin to the king, his aunt being Queen Jane, mother to Edward VI. This line, however, had ended, and his children were of no import to the succession.

It was Catherine herself who bore the vital royal blood, blood that had begun to pump in the veins of the child she carried. This blood was also why she approached Robert Dudley’s chamber by the weak light of a waning August moon. Robert was Catherine’s brother-in-law. Catherine, just a child at the time, had been married at the same ceremony which had also witnessed the marriage of her sister and two of Robert’s siblings, including her elder sister, Jane, to Robert’s younger brother, Guildford. Of course, this had been an ill-fated union, and Catherine’s own marriage to Henry Herbert, son of the Earl of Pembroke, had been dissolved in the aftermath of the triumph of Mary I over Jane Grey Dudley. With her elder sister dead, Catherine was now the heir to that line, drawn from her grandmother, Mary, the daughter of Henry VII. Henry VIII’s will had stated clearly that, should his children all die without legitimate issue, and two had already done so, the Crown would skip the stronger claims of his elder sister’s line, now represented in the person of the Queen of Scots, and instead proceed through the issue of Mary, manifest in Catherine and, now, her child.

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