Read Online Nine Days a Queen: The Short Life and Reign of Lady Jane Grey by Ann Rinaldi - Free Book Online

inside Chelsea Manor all was warm and comfortable and safe when the horseman rode up that day.
    There was a rattling at the front door. A manservant went to open it, and in they stepped,
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    men who said they came in the name of King Edward.
    I hear the words still. "Sir Thomas, you are under arrest for treason and murder." The words were like cannonballs hurled into our quietude that day, but Sir Thomas only laughed, called for his cloak, and kissed his mother, who was walking around the men folding and unfolding her hands and crying.
    "Don't cry, Mother. I'll be back before nightfall."
    "Not likely," one of the men said.
    "Not from the Tower," another put in.
    I was trembling. What was all this about. Murder? Treason? My cousin Edward had ordered this? Or was this the work of the Lord Protector, Sir Thomas's own brother? I thought again of the rumor spoken by the stableboy.
    I looked at him. "Sir Thomas," I said.
    But he was giving some instructions to his mother.
    "Sir Thomas," I said again, and he looked at me then, but he did not say any soft words, or comforting ones, or even gallant ones.
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    "Take care of my mother," he admonished me.

    So he
    never
    had forgiven me, never, for my telling Katharine the things I told her. And I knew, as I watched him go Out the door, that he never would.

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    ELEVEN

    O
    ur days of anguish became a week, then two. Lady Seymour was distraught. She had no hope and kept talking about how her son Edward, the Protector, had always wanted his brother Sir Thomas out of the way. "I saw my daughter Jane wed King Henry and die when she gave birth to the boy king," she said continually. "I am grandmother to the boy king who has signed an arrest warrant for Sir Thomas, his favorite uncle. And I should have hope?"

    "Why has the little king done this?" she would ask me. "Why?"
    Why, indeed? I longed to go and see him, but could not leave the distraught Lady Seymour.
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    Then help arrived in the person of Sir Henry, come for a visit.
    He stayed two days, and his presence in the house was like a breath of spring air.
    He came, he said, to see his mother again, to comfort her, to try to make inquiries about why Sir Thomas was being held. "They aren't giving him a trial,'' he said. "There's mischief afoot. It turns out my brother was mustering an army to overcome Sir Edward as Protector," he told his mother. "That's the treason part of it."
    "The murder part" he spoke of was the rumor that took on a life of its own and became people's truth. "They are saying that he poisoned Katharine."

    There,
    I thought,
    there is the reason the King signed his arrest warrant.
    Young Edward had always loved Katharine. He considered her his second mother. Either that, or Edward, his Protector, had convinced him to sign the warrant. Oh, had the young King changed so much since I last saw him? Or was he unduly influenced? I must find out!

    Sir Henry and his mother talked and planned. He would go to Sir Edward, the Lord
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    Protector, he said. As the eldest brother he'd give him a piece of his mind. What did he mean by sending men around to arrest their brother in front of their mother like that?
    When I saw him making ready for the trip, I begged to go. "Take me, Sir Henry. I can talk to the King. We are friends."
    He was a kindly man of medium height and no dash or flair like Sir Thomas, but his kindness was real. And his eyes knew things I wished Sir Thomas's eyes had known.
    "His brother will put Thomas to death," was all Lady Seymour would say.
    "No brother will ever put another to death," Henry tried to reassure us.
    But I don't think he believed it.
    "The people don't like it," Henry told me, "that Sir Thomas was arrested in front of his mother and his ward, a slip of a girl. You can get away with so much as a nobleman. But the people mark what you do. Even King Henry kept his eye on the feelings of the people. They rise up if they don't like something, and they don't like these doings with Tom."
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