Bloody Tower Read online

  For my mother – always a tower of strength

  Contents

  Cover

  Title page

  London, England 1553

  2nd May 1553

  3rd May 1553

  5th May 1553

  7th May 1553

  8th May 1553

  9th May 1553

  10th May 1553

  11th May 1553

  14th May 1553

  16th May 1553

  Later

  18th May 1553

  Later

  22nd May 1553

  31st May 1553

  1st June 1553

  23rd June 1553

  25th June 1553

  7th July 1553

  8th July 1553

  9th July 1553

  10th July 1553

  Later

  11th July 1553

  Much later

  13th July 1553

  14th July 1553

  17th July 1553

  18th July 1553

  Later

  19th July 1553

  20th July 1553

  Later

  21st July 1553

  25th July 1553

  Later

  26th July 1553

  27th July 1553

  30th July 1553

  31st July 1553

  2nd August 1553

  3rd August 1553

  4th August 1553

  Later

  7th August 1553

  Later

  8th August 1553

  18th August 1553

  21st August 1553

  22nd August 1553

  28th August 1553

  31st August 1553

  7th September 1553

  14th September 1553

  27th September 1553

  29th September 1553

  30th September 1553

  1st October, 1553

  2nd October 1553

  15th October 1553

  10th November 1553

  14th November 1553

  17th November 1553

  Later

  25th December 1553, Christmas Day

  1st January 1554

  3rd January 1554

  14th January 1554

  27th January 1554

  Later

  2nd February 1554

  3rd February 1554

  Later

  4th February 1554

  6th February 1554

  7th February 1554

  8th February 1554

  9th February 1554

  10th February 1554

  11th February 1554

  12th February 1554

  Later

  13th February 1554

  14th February 1554

  17th February 1554

  23rd February 1554

  26th February 1554

  12th March 1554

  17th March 1554

  18th March 1554

  3rd April 1554

  18th April 1554

  21st April 1554

  30th April 1554

  3rd May 1554

  19th May 1554

  20th May 1554

  25th July 1554

  30th July 1554

  31st July 1554

  2nd August 1554

  29th January 1555

  20th March 1555

  Later

  24th April 1555

  27th August 1555

  18th October 1555

  26th October 1555

  26th March 1556

  28th April 1556

  31st December 1556

  7th April 1557

  7th June 1557

  1st January 1558

  7th September 1558

  26th October 1558

  15th November 1558

  18th November 1558

  21st November 1558

  5th December 1558

  14th January 1559, Coronation Day

  Historical note

  Timeline

  Photographs

  Picture acknowledgments

  My Story – a series

  Copyright

  London, England

  1553

  2nd May 1553

  This is my book. It was not always mine. Long ago, someone very important gave it to Father, and told him to give it to a lady. My mother can read a little, but cannot write, so he kept it for me. The paper is quite smooth and the colour of buttermilk, and my words are fairly neat and do not, I think, spoil it.

  Father says I am unique, and should write about myself. I thought about my life and why I am unique. I live in the greatest castle in England – the Tower of London. It is a palace and a fortress, but it is also a prison. Our house is within the Tower walls so I soon hear about everything that goes on! I am the only girl of my age here. Indeed, there is only one other person near my age, and that is Tom, funny Tom, from the Royal Menagerie by the Tower gates, where the King’s beasts are kept. Tom is almost fourteen and my best friend, but he stinks.

  3rd May 1553

  I had no time to write more yesterday. I was needed all day to help with the two little ones. Harry is teething and is cross and fretful. He bites everything he can reach, even me. Luckily, little Jack just smiles a lot, which is good for all of us! Mother is with child again and tires quickly. I told her I had begun to write my diary.

  “You would do well to forget such nonsense, and spend more time learning important things,” she said. “You cook like a farmer mixing compost.”

  Not true, but I did not say so, for fear of a sore head. Mother is quick with her hands when she is testy. Many times Father has had to prepare a salve for my bruises. It’s fortunate that he is the Tower physician. Fortunate for me, though not for him. Sometimes he returns from attending a prisoner, and will not speak for an hour, but locks himself away in his study to work alone on his medicines. I think he sees bad things in the cells and down in the dungeons. My older brother, William, is newly apprenticed to Father, and has promised to tell me what goes on. He will not, I know. He never does.

  5th May 1553

  I tried to slip out to see Tom before dinner, but Mother chose today to clean the floors and remake the beds. She is too large to do it herself so I had to help Sal, our maidservant. William was sent for fresh rushes, while Sal and I swept out the smelly ones. William’s share of the work was done then, so he went to help Father. While Sal spread new rushes over the floor, I took Harry and Jack to pick flower heads and herbs from our little garden to put with the rushes. They loved crawling around the floor mixing them all together. I got down on my hands and knees too, to put feverfew, tansy and some wormwood under the mattresses. I saved most for my own bed. My tiny room beneath the roof is quiet and all my own, but there are more lice and fleas up there than anywhere in the house, it seems, so I stuffed plenty of herbs beneath my mattress to keep them away. Anyway, I would rather sleep on my own with the lice than in the big bed with my small brothers. Sal sleeps on the truckle bed beside them and has to put up with Harry’s night-time yells.

  Mother cannot believe I wish to sleep here. “That room is little more than a garret,” she says, “and fit only for a servant.” Ha! There is something I am keeping to myself. Although Mother can climb the ladder up to my room, she is too big to get right in through the hole in the floor!

  7th May 1553

  I told Tom about my book. He asked what it is called, and I said, “The Diary of Tilly Middleton.” He wanted to know if I would put him in it. “It is only for interesting things,” I said, but I was sorry afterwards that I had teased him, because he refused to show me the new lioness, which had come by ship from Africa. So? Who cares?

  King Edward is ill, Father says. It seems to me he always is. It must be hard to be king when you are so young. What
pleasure can he have? Kings have to talk all day with dull council men. Edward is not yet sixteen, and has ruled since he was nine. He’s extremely serious, they say, and well educated, speaking Latin and French, and some Greek, Italian and Spanish, too. That is a lot of learning. His father, King Henry VIII, was a frightening man, it seems to me. Six wives! Two divorced, two beheaded, one died and the last, Queen Katherine Parr, outlived him. Father admired Katherine Parr. He met her twice, and found her a clever, educated woman. He wanted his daughter to be like her, and that is why I have been well taught. I do not know that I am as clever, but I am not stupid, though William says otherwise.

  8th May 1553

  Tom showed me the lioness today. I knew he would. She is large and angry, and does not have a mane like the male lion. She has been kept in her travelling cage for too long, and is stiff in the legs. Tom is afraid of her. I am, too. The menagerie is only separated from the main Tower entrance by a bridge over the moat, so the Tower guards are all that is between those wild animals and me. Master Worsley, Keeper of the Royal Menagerie, visited today, so I could not stay long. If he saw me, he would tell Father and I would be in trouble for being there at all.

  Tom says there will be many visitors tomorrow, wishing to see the lioness. He is pleased, because they will bring meat for the animals, and that saves him work. If they bring a small animal, dead or alive, they are admitted free.

  I kept my skirt lifted off the floor so it would not trail in the dung. Mother sniffed when I came home, but said nothing other than, “Where have you been, you lazy creature? Take Jack and Harry out from under my feet.”

  So I took them to chase the ravens on Tower Green.

  Father says the King is so ill he may not live. He has heard from the Royal physician that Edward could be dead by June. The poor boy has dreadful fits of the cough, and his spittle is sometimes green and sometimes black and sometimes pink – probably blood. I am sure my father could cure him. He cured a man whose foot was crushed by the new coin-press in the Royal Mint. Well, he did not cure his toes – they were mashed up like when a horse treads on a worm – but the man did live.

  9th May 1553

  Rain battered the roof all night and kept me awake. I spent much time thinking about poor King Edward. He has no child, and no younger brother, so if he dies, William says, the crown will go to his older sister, Mary. I asked Father if that is so, and he said it’s true – it must go to one of the King’s half-sisters – Princess Mary or Princess Elizabeth. . .

  The Princess Elizabeth! I have not thought of her lately, yet I used to think of her often, and especially on September 7th, for we share a birthday. When I was little, I used to call her my princess! She is seven years older than me, and in her twentieth year. Sometimes I wish I was a princess myself. Elizabeth must have beautiful clothes and fine food and sleep in a silken bed, and walk in scented gardens. Then I remember that her mother’s head was chopped off when she was only three. And now she is to lose her brother, Edward. I would not be a princess for all the riches in the world, if it meant losing my family – even William.

  When my work in the house was done, I crossed the moat, left the Tower and strolled down to the river to watch the boats. Tom saw me go past the Lion Tower, where the menagerie is, and followed me. I smelt him before I saw him. When I told him we might soon have Queen Mary instead of King Edward, he made a face, “Master Worsley said that, too. He thinks there will be much trouble, because Princess Mary is a Catholic.”

  I will have to find out more.

  10th May 1553

  Two of Father’s friends sat with him yesterday evening, drinking wine. Mother and I were by the window, listening. As far as I can make out, there was a time when all of England was Catholic, and the Pope was head of the Church. Then King Henry VIII wished to divorce Princess Mary’s mother, Catherine of Aragon, but the Pope said no. Henry sounds a fearsome man, because it seemed he would do anything to get his way. He decided that the Pope was no longer head of the Church in England, he, Henry, was! He declared that his marriage was unlawful and divorced Catherine. And since the marriage was not lawful, he said, Princess Mary was legally a bastard, which means she was born out of wedlock. Henry immediately married Anne Boleyn, who eventually gave birth to the Princess Elizabeth. Queen Anne behaved dreadfully badly, it is said, and she was beheaded – on Tower Green, right in the middle of my Tower of London. I could see the very spot from my room, except that I do not have a window, only a very little hole in the roof, directly above my mattress.

  So Princess Mary is of the old religion, a Catholic, and Princess Elizabeth is of the new one – a Protestant.

  But I’m confused. If Mary is a bastard, surely she cannot become queen? Oh, my head spins with it all. I shall forget it. Nothing princesses or queens do affects me. I say my prayers, and we all worship God in the way the men of the church order us to. Surely it does not matter whether our church is Catholic or Protestant. After all, God is God and no queen can change that.

  The Royal family do not stay here at the Tower, as they used to. Not since they cut off Anne Boleyn’s head. King Edward came for a few weeks, just before his coronation, when I was about five, and I remember seeing him walking with his dogs on Tower Green. He looked very serious, and did not notice me.

  I wonder if Mary will stay here before her coronation, too, once Edward is dead. I will ask Mother tomorrow, when we go to buy linen for the new baby.

  11th May 1553

  I have been in my garret for almost the whole day, with a huge pile of mending, a fat candle, one lump of bread and a cup of ale. Mother says I am a wicked girl to talk of the King’s death, and William says I am stupid and deserve to be punished. I protested that Father had spoken of it, and discovered that my crime was to have spoken of it in the market place. Even Father would not dare talk loosely outside our home, they said.

  How was I to know it is treason to talk of the King’s death? How was I to know I could be put to death for doing so? Nobody told me. My candle is flickering and I can barely see to write. I am very hungry, and cannot stop crying.

  14th May 1553

  I have had nothing to write about for days, because I have not been allowed out of the house, except to feed the hens and weed the garden. Today is Sunday, so they had to let me out to go to church. I must not break that law, too. And if I have broken the law about speaking of the King’s death, then I believe many men do. There was much whispering on Tower Green outside our chapel, St Peter’s, today. I walked behind a group of Yeoman Warders and heard one talk about some of the prisoners being freed when “it” happens. I know exactly what “it” is. They mean that men imprisoned by Edward might be freed after the King dies, as long as they have not displeased Princess Mary.

  I know that if I were anyone close to Mary at the moment, I would be busy being very pleasing to her!

  16th May 1553

  I have been so dreadfully bored today. All the time I was helping Sal make the bread, I was trying to work out how to get out of this place. It has been almost a week now. I am going mad and feel I want to burst. If I speak I am wrong, and if I do not speak I am told I am a sullen brat. I am glad of my diary. In this I can say what I want. Oh, what now?

  Later

  It is the strangest thing and I am so intrigued. When I wrote those last words, I was angry at being disturbed simply to change Harry’s linen (he dirties himself about a hundred times a day, it seems) and threw down my diary. Just now, I picked it up and found the spine bent, so that the book stayed open at some blank pages. As I tried to straighten it, I felt something beneath one of the pages. I looked and found, wedged tightly into where the pages join, a tiny folded paper, sealed with wax, and on it is some writing. There is an E followed by an L, but I cannot read the rest. The ink is smudged. I must think about this.

  18th May 1553

  At last, I am allowed out! I was sent into the city to collect a package for Father
from the apothecary. It was wonderful to be among the crowds, and to see some life instead of being stuck in the house. The Tower, with all its goings-on, is quiet compared to the city, where everyone seems to shout all the time! The air was warm and still, and I could hear the roars of people at the bear-baiting pit on the other side of the river. I am glad I could not hear the roars of the bears, poor creatures.

  A woman on a donkey shouted, “Here, lass,” and threw me an apple from the basket she carried. I jumped and caught it, shouting my thanks to her, but when I looked, I saw it was rotten. She rode off, cackling with laughter, and I felt like throwing it at her. Instead I saved it to throw at someone in the pillory. Some thief or pickpocket is always locked up there for people to laugh and jeer at.

  My arms were full of packages on the way home, so when a great crowd of boys came by, chasing some sort of ball, I jumped back out of the way into a convenient doorway. I wish I had not, because the door suddenly opened and a huge man sent me flying with one shove of his great belly. My foot slipped in a heap of fresh dog mess and down I tumbled. My hand went right in it. That was all right – I rinsed it in a puddle, but my skirt! I knew Mother would be angry, because we washed it only two weeks ago.

  She was more than angry.

  “Where have you been all this time?” she cried.

  “Walking . . . the apothecary was slow. . .” I began, but she took one look at my stained skirt, screwed her nose up, and shouted, “You have been in the menagerie with that dung-boy!” I protested that I had not.

  “I can smell him,” she shouted, and boxed my ears. They still burn. Life is not fair.