by Jane Caro
‘I am expressly forbidden to take that course, my lady. You are only excused from London if you die.’
It was on the tip of my tongue to say that perhaps that was the real purpose of their visit, to hasten my end. How convenient that would be for my sister and her Catholic councillors. ‘That may well be the case. My doctors tell me that I risk death if I travel, particularly in this inclement weather.’
‘We will take the journey by stages, Your Grace, and do all that we can to keep you comfortable. Your doctors may accompany you.’
I did not leave it there. I wrote beseeching letters that went unanswered, and grumbled loudly and to all who would listen about the cruelty and unreasonable nature of my sister’s demands. But it did no good. Within a day or two, we set out on the road to London.
As I could not ride a horse, they carried me in a litter and our progress was at walking pace only. The snow fell almost constantly as we plodded through the bleak, grey countryside. We passed few other travellers – most being far too sensible to leave their warm hearths in such weather. I shivered beneath my coif of sable; my poor ladies fared even worse, stumbling along on frozen horses, unable even to keep warm with a vigorous gallop. The men who carried me no doubt did their best, but I felt every stumble, every jolt and every slip as they picked their way across rutted, icy roads. My illness caused me to make water often and slowed our journey down further. Such was my weakness that my ladies had to carry me from the litter to whatever privacy they could find – hedgerows, frozen ditches, sometimes merely a screen formed by their own voluminous skirts. The constant pain and misery, plus the nagging ever-present fear of what exactly I would face when we arrived at our destination, made me poor company.
‘God’s breath!’ I roared at the men who carried me, when they stumbled for the umpteenth time. ‘Are you men or asses? You will kill me with your clumsiness.’ Such was my fear and my agony, that, sometimes, unable to bear another jolt or sickening slide, I leant out and struck the nearest bearer with my riding crop. They took their thrashing with the blank forbearance of the beasts of burden whose places they had taken. Their passivity made me feel worse, and many times I sobbed behind the curtains of my litter with cold and shame.
Every day, I longed for that day’s journey to end and yet, when we finally reached a lodging house and were able to thaw our frozen fingers and toes before a roaring fire, my tortures grew no better. My ladies and I were forced to share a bed and, though they replaced the bed linen with my own each and every night, still my flesh chafed with disgust as I lay beside them. My poor swollen body itched as if crawling with bed bugs and fleas and I searched myself obsessively for telltale bites and weals every morning. I slept little and, when I did sleep, woke screaming from dreams of headless ladies dancing the Volta in ball gowns. If I ate, I vomited everything up and if I managed to keep any food down, my innards gripped with pain and I added diarrhoea to the reasons for my roadside visits.
My agonies on that journey were great and our progress was excruciatingly slow. Rumours of my condition flew ahead of me like dark winged birds. Due to my swollen state, the favourite calumny was an old one: that I was carrying an illegitimate child. It did no good to deny such claims. I had to suffer them and hold my tongue, but I could and did strenuously deny imputations of conspiracy and treason.
On the eleventh day of our journey, we left the house of one Mr Cholmeley in Highgate and began our descent into London. The sights that met me on our arrival could not have formed a greater contrast with the last time I had entered the portals of the great metropolis, riding behind my triumphant sister as she claimed her throne. Now what I saw chilled me more thoroughly than the icy weather. We passed gallows in every corner of the city: in Bermondsey, Charing Cross and Hyde Park corner, and all the gates of London were festooned with traitors’ heads and corpses rotting slowly. So horrifying were they that I drew the curtains of the litter around me to hide the dreadful sights. Instead of cheering crowds, those Londoners we passed lowered their eyes and hurried away in silence.
When I finally arrived at Whitehall, I learnt that my poor cousin the little nun had been taken from her cell in the Tower ten days earlier, just after I had set out on my horrible journey, and executed, along with her foolish husband Guildford Dudley. I knew that my sister had intended to be merciful. She knew, as I did, that poor Lady Jane had not desired her throne, but had been used as a pawn. Despite my sister’s good intentions, Wyatt’s rebellion had sealed their fate. It was my fervent prayer that it had not also sealed mine.
I wept when they brought me the news of Lady Jane’s death. What good had her wise head done her, if it could not even find a way to stay firmly attached to her shoulders? I began to rub my own neck ruefully. It prickled strangely – perhaps a symptom of my continuing illness; perhaps an ill omen. I grew superstitious, terrified that my neck sensed what was soon to come. My skin burned and crawled, my hands and feet were icy, no matter how much I toasted them before a great fire. Worse, I was separated from most of my attendants, and lodged in a part of the palace that I could not leave without passing the guard. I may not have been called prisoner, but imprisoned was how I felt.
Those other prisoners, the conspirators, were racked and daily I waited to hear that one of them had given their interrogators the name they wanted – mine. There was some talk of a letter of mine that had found its way into the French ambassador’s despatch bag, and accusations that I had sent my servant Sir William St Loe as intermediary with Thomas Wyatt, an accusation that good man stoutly denied. Lord Russell said he had delivered letters to me from Wyatt, but they could find no evidence to prove such a claim. It was the implacable Stephen Gardiner, Mary’s lord chancellor, who pushed hardest to have me indicted as traitor, but the rest of the council were not so quick to assume I was guilty. Then the rumours of further imprisonments and executions came to an abrupt halt and my requests for further news were met with shrugs. An eerie silence had descended and I waited with apprehension for some announcement of my fate, but I heard nothing. The anticlimax was terrible. Had my suffering been for nought? Had we travelled all this way only to be sent back whence we came? For days and days, we waited and, despite the anxiety, my illness began to pass, my dropsy left me and, though still wracked with aching limbs, my body and face returned to their former size.
I hoped the waiting was a good sign. Perhaps it indicated how hard it was for them to build a case against me, and, perhaps, how reluctant Mary was to believe the worst. As I learnt later, most of her councillors wanted to see me confined in some nobleman’s house in the country – a fate I myself would have preferred – but no such nobleman could be found to so confine me. In the end, Bishop Gardiner persuaded them to send me to the place I dreaded most: the Tower.
I had longed for a resolution and when it came it was no real surprise. Yet hearing the sentence passed upon me was more frightening than I had anticipated. They told me on the 16th of March that I was going to the Tower and on the morning of the 17th, my old adversary the Marquess of Winchester, accompanied by the Earl of Sussex, arrived to take me hence.
‘Please, my lords,’ I begged, falling to my knees, ‘please allow me to write to my sister and request an audience with her so I may clear my name of the foul and base imputations that my enemies have cast upon it.’
‘It is of no use, my lady. The queen herself has sent us to take you from here to imprisonment.’ Winchester had never been my friend, since he had accompanied Sir Roger Tyrwhit and been one of my interrogators in my time of peril over Thomas Seymour. He had failed to best me then, but I could see he was determined to best me now. The Marquess was, in many ways, a consummate politician. After all, he had managed the tricky transition from being Protestant Edward’s man to Catholic Mary’s without any trouble. Perhaps he felt he had already burnt his bridges with me, or perhaps his antipathy was more personal – I know not. But, given that I remained only a heartbeat from
the throne, Sussex’s demeanour was both wiser and more compassionate.
His response to Winchester’s bullying was to narrow his eyes and look at me carefully. I hoped he understood that I might be queen myself one day, and that it would therefore be better not to make an unnecessary enemy. Uncertainty and tension inevitably affect the relationship of monarch and heir and exact a price from those who surround them.
‘Don’t be so hasty, Winchester,’ he said. ‘It can do no harm to allow the Lady Elizabeth to write such an appeal.’
‘Humph,’ snorted his companion, ‘nor no good neither.’ But he acquiesced, and someone fetched paper and pen.
How my poor mind raced as I stared at that blank parchment. I knew I had to choose my words cautiously, yet write in a voice that my sister would recognise as my own. I put down my pen and rubbed the back of my neck. It tingled like the devil and a shiver ran down my spine. Then I began and the words flowed out of me, like a river or my life’s blood.
‘I have never practised, counselled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person in any way, or dangerous to the state by any means,’ I wrote and, further, I begged her to let me see her and state my case, sister to sister. ‘I have heard in my time of many cast away for want of coming to the presence of their prince; and in late days I heard my Lord Somerset say that if his brother had been permitted to speak with him, he had never suffered.’ As I wrote of poor, foolish Thomas Seymour and his failure to appeal to his brother Edward when accused of treason, it was Queen Katharine Howard’s desperate screams that rang in my ears. They echoed there just as they had when she was dragged the full extent of the Long Gallery. ‘Though these persons are not to be compared to Your Majesty, yet I pray to God as evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other.’ Conscious of the impatient tutting and sighing of Winchester, I vented my spleen against that devil Wyatt. ‘As for the traitor Wyatt, he might peradventure have written me a letter, but on my faith, I have never received any from him. And as for the letter sent to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally if ever I sent him word, message, token or letter, by any means. And to this truth I will stand till my death.’ With that I had said all I could think to say and not before time because, by now, even Sussex had joined his harsher companion in his desire to depart and convey me to that evil place. Yet when I looked back at my missive, I had left fully three quarters of my paper empty. Foolish, foolish jade, I chided myself, aware that the empty space was an open invitation for enemies to write incriminating words in my name. Yet I could think of no further sensible words to write. My eloquence had run dry.
‘Come now, my lady,’ said Winchester. ‘Your pen is idle. Let us depart.’
‘Grant me a moment, my lord – but a moment.’
‘No, my lady,’ he said brusquely and, with his hand on his sword, he stepped towards me. I had no option then but to take up my pen and cross the empty sheet with close-hatched lines, so none could add words that were not of my making. When it was done, I stood and faced my guards.
‘Now, my lords, I am ready for whatever fate has in store.’ Brave words, perhaps; brave lies. I was no more ready than any other poor soul who had made the fateful trip before me.
I received no reply to my letter. Indeed, I was told later that my sister did not even read it – merely waved it away, complaining that Sussex and Winchester had failed to expedite their task quickly enough. And, in truth, the time it had taken to write my desperate words had bought me one more night outside the dreadful prison – the tide had turned by the time we arrived at the Thames, and I had to be lodged another night in Whitehall.
The next morning dawned doleful and grey and within an hour the heavens opened and the rain poured down unrelenting. While others were at their Palm Sunday worship, I was to be conveyed on the barge by my gaolers, accompanied by the handful of my attendants still allowed me. The barge was but flimsily protected from the elements and within minutes we were all soaked to the skin, shivering beneath the chill spring rains. Not just the weather, but the river itself seemed to be my enemy that day. The barge rocked sickeningly on its muddy waters, but at first I did not notice. In contrast with my frantic mood the previous day, I now walked passively towards my fate and sat quietly where they put me on the barge. I felt blank, dazed, as if I slept still and was being transported to my prison in a dream.
Unblinking, I stared at the swirling brown water, fascinated by the creamy froth left behind by the oars as they rose and fell. My mind returned to the ancient stories of the River Styx and the journey of dead souls into Hades. I began to feel as if I were already dead and had left my body behind on the other side of the river, back in the corridors of Whitehall, where I was falsely mourned by all who saw it and no sooner buried than forgotten. My corporeal presence, myself, my warm breath, my thumping heart, my life – all seemed to me at that moment as insubstantial and fleeting as that froth. It came, made its pattern on the surface of the river, then it went, as would I – as would we all.
But my strange calm was shattered as I found myself shooting rapidly upwards, looking down upon Sussex and Winchester, who clung precariously to the railing. The threat of imminent death brought me back to life and instinctively I grabbed the side of the boat and clung on for what I once again recognised as dear life. Slowly I made sense of what was going on around me. As we had traversed the always-dangerous rapids by London Bridge, made still more predatory by the rising waters, the craft had tipped up on its end and threatened to throw us all overboard. In their terror, my servants screamed and clung to me, and I only held my nerve by force of will. When the boat, thanks to the skills and strength of our oarsmen, had righted itself and the danger had passed, I recovered myself enough to reprimand my guardians. ‘My lords, methinks your charge is to see me imprisoned, not drowned.’
When we were at last safely docked, a new mood took hold of me. I was afraid, yes, but I was also angry and sullen. I would not go quietly or easily into unjust imprisonment. How I behaved in these moments would be discussed and analysed endlessly. If I was to end my days here, either soon or after many weary years of imprisonment, I wanted my last public moments to be more memorable than those of the froth on the river. We had arrived at the Tower’s Privy Stairs and everyone else had hastened from the craft, impatient to discharge their duty, and get out of the rain, then warm and dry themselves before some fire, with a tankard of mulled ale, no doubt, as a reward for an irksome task well done. I stayed where I was, with the cold rain dripping down my nose, off the ends of my eyelashes and down the back of my neck. My poor gentleman usher was the first to notice that I had not followed the others.
‘My lady! My lady!’ he called, turning to step back onto the barge. His tone alerted the others to my immobility and they all turned to look at me. Folding my arms and pouting like a recalcitrant child, I surveyed them.
‘Enough of this maidish buffoonery!’ snapped Winchester. ‘You will leave this boat, madam, and enter this place, if I have to come and hoist you out like any common baggage.’ There was a gasp from the others who surrounded him as he used such language to the old king’s daughter, but I reacted not at all, except, perhaps to lift my chin a little higher. It was not just my dignity that I was determined to maintain – a task made hard enough by the steadily dripping rain. My legs were trembling so and I was not sure that I could support my weight if I stood. I could not rid myself of the thought that what I was seeing and feeling now, my poor mother had also felt and seen before me. The cold rain running down my neck reminded me uncomfortably of the blood that oozed from hers in my dream. Winchester moved towards me impatiently, but Sussex barred his way with a hand.
‘Good madam,’ he said, ‘come in out of the rain. We will not misuse you. We well know that you are the king our master’s daughter, and therefore let us use such dealing as we may answer for hereafter – for fair and just dealing is always answerable.’ At the mur
mur of assent that followed his wise words, from all lips but Winchester’s, my legs regained some of their strength and I climbed from the boat onto the dreadful steps.
‘Here landeth as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs,’ I said and suddenly I was once again overwhelmed by thoughts of my mother – another true subject. I found I could not proceed and sat down on the slippery flagstones. My fear was so intense it seemed unsafe to stand and safer by far to sit, to keep low. I would even have crawled into a corner to protect my back from further outrageous fortune. Winchester exploded with fury at this action.
‘Enough of these dramatics, madam.’
‘Come in out of the weather, madam, do not sit so in the rain,’ begged the lieutenant of the Tower.
‘It is better sitting here than in a worse place,’ I said and at this my poor gentleman usher burst into loud sobs and I realised that many present pitied me, but I did not wish to be pitied. ‘Do not cry, good fellow,’ I said to him gently. Then I turned to the assembled lords, officials and guards. ‘I know my truth to be such that no man will have cause to weep for me.’ And with that, I gained the strength to march into the Tower.
My hand is stiff from the effort of pouring these words onto paper. Yet, how strangely comforting it is to sit here, once more within the thick and ancient walls of the Tower, and look back on those times of mortal peril – to recall my own terror, safe in the knowledge that, at least for now, I am as powerful a queen as my sister then was and this Tower is for my protection, not my punishment. It is important to set these words down now; it is important I do not forget the lessons taught me by those who have gone before. Most of all, it is important I never take my safety for granted, never become so enamoured of my own status that I forget what it was to be suspected, interrogated and to live, minute by minute, in fear of my own life. My mother forgot, so did poor Katharine Howard, John Dudley and my sister. My father did not, and nor did Queen Catherine Parr. Let them be my models now. It is the art of survival that matters most for monarchs.
