by Anne Carsley
Mary Tudor’s sandy brows had come together, and the light eyes had gone opaque as she seemed to sway. The gruff voice was surprisingly soft as she said, “You preserved us for this realm, Lady Redenter. I would that you had wed Lord Attenwood; he is my bastion of the north against France, against heretic plotters, and one I can trust, a worthy husband for one such as you.” She shook her head at the girl’s shudder. “I know you will not reconsider, but I ask that you remain at court for at least another month. There are matters . . Her words had trailed away. “For my sake?”
Julian had agreed; there was no reason not to. But now the ominous warning that Charles had given her came back to warn her. She would have sworn that the queen had affection for her, but who knew the will of the great? She wished now that she had gone; the queen would have given way if she had wept, surely.
Outwardly Julian had much. New gowns and jewels and slippers, a room to herself, a new maid who was quiet and efficient but totally reserved, special wine ordered by the queen herself; everything and nothing. She had asked for Nan but was told she left the queen’s service. Attenwood did not come up again in conversation, and the young blond man had not appeared again. Her days were as ashes, and her dreams were filled with Charles Varland. Once she had questioned Ortega, who gracefully remarked that Varland was a lucky man that she was even remotely interested but that he himself knew nothing. “It is a long way to Cornwall, my dear. My interest is in the queen and the court.” He would say no more.
The musicians began to play the zarabanda now as they had each night since the celebrations had begun. Always Julian and,Ortega danced it together, and she threw herself into it with gay abandon. Tonight she had dressed for the approval in his eyes and for the figure she could cut before those who had scorned her. Her hair was braided high and threaded with sapphires to form a coronet around her shapely head. A collar of pearls and diamonds encircled her long throat. Her gown was green with underskirts of watered blue silk, the bodice a cunning mixture of the two colors and cut low enough to reveal the thrusting white breasts. Her sleeves were long and flowing but fell back to show the smooth arms. She wore white satin slippers with pearl buckles that flashed as she moved in the dance. Excitement and Ortega’s words had caused the flush to mount to her cheeks so that she bloomed. She knew herself fair this night, and as always in such moments, her eyes lifted in the search for the man she knew would never walk the court of Queen Mary again.
The dance was frenzied and wild now, all the propriety of the court momentarily laid by. The castanets made their own rhythm, and this was lifted higher by the stamping feet of the few dancers. Julian gave herself to it but spared a moment to wonder at the several men standing in the doorway to the great hall. Their faces were stern and their clothing sober in contrast to the brilliance of the courtiers. Messengers? But the queen retired early these nights. Then Ortega’s hand caught hers in their own special movements and she forgot all else. Activity, she had found, was a good panacea.
Suddenly the tramp of feet broke through the music, and it died away. Ortega’s eyes glittered into Julian’s as he stepped back. She stood frozen as the leader of the men she had seen at the door came up to her. Two others came to stand beside her. The courtiers backed away against the walls so that Julian stood alone in the light of the massed candles and banners overhead.
“Lady Julian Redenter, I arrest you in the name of Her Majesty the Queen. You will come with us immediately and as you are.” The man seemed to be made of oak, for he had that unyielding quality.
“On what charge?” Julian heard her own voice ring clearly and wondered at her own calm. “Where do you take me?”
“The charge is treason, madam, and you go to the Tower of London, there to remain at Her Majesty’s pleasure.” He touched her arm and she jerked away.
“Who makes this charge? It is without basis.” Julian turned to look at Ortega, who shrugged and nodded at the men. Then she knew that she had been fortunate in saying little to him about her true feelings and that Charles had been right all along. “Is this your hand, Diego?” Her lip curled and her brilliant eyes flashed.
“You are overwrought, Lady Redenter. There is nothing to fear if you are true to Her Majesty as I hope will indeed be the case.” The comrade of the past days was gone, and she saw the flames of the Inquisition in his eyes.
Julian stepped forward and drew her nails down the side of his smooth face in a quick gesture that wrung a cry of pain from him. The blood gushed up and with it his fury.
“Take her! Why do you stand there? Obey!”
Julian said, “My faith is in my innocence.” And then, because she knew that she had nothing to lose and possibly already stood in peril of her life, added, “It could be any one of you who stand there watching and deem yourselves safe. Beware the false friend!”
The guards encircled her then, and she walked from the palace, head high, in all her shimmering beauty, into that captivity from which few returned safely, into the very shadow of death.
That shadow sharpened all her senses, yet gave her the feeling of standing apart to watch another girl helped onto a plain barge, given a dark cloak against the autumnal chill, taken down the dark river and the perilous landing, then the walk on endless winding stairs to a cold cell. It was interesting, she thought, that in the space of a few hours one could fall so rapidly from the edges of favor to the very pits. Interesting, nay. Fascinating! She began to shake, and with that physical reaction the detachment left her and terror took over.
She sank down on the icy floor and recalled all the bloody history of this place, some so recent that the blood might still be fresh. Queens, princes of the land, commoners, all had suffered here. Why should it be less for her? The queen had believed Isabella’s words and had only waited for her own reasons to act on them. “Ah, God, why did I not go with Charles while I could?” Her hands twisted together and rose to her face. She knew that she would not be able to bear torment any more than Isabella had. What would she say? Thank God she knew no names, no locations, nothing.
Nightmare walked before her and took visible form during that long night. The relief that tears could bring did not come; her eyes were dry and hot. She started at the rustling of her skirts and tried to laugh at being afraid of rats when you faced fire or the ax. She shivered and burned and tried to pray, but there was nothing to hear her. Laughter bubbled up and she fought it back. One could go mad this way. People had been left in prison for years and lived; would she be one of them?
In the end, in the long darkness that held her, in the tunnel of her own anguish, it was the face of Charles that comforted her. The memory of their brief sharing remained with her and was a small bastion against the horror of this prison and all that it meant. When exhaustion finally left her limp and unconscious, the dream that came was not of blood and the shining axes that might make up reality. She dreamed of the meadows of Redeswan, a golden mare, and a dark man who rode beside her into the mists of morning.
When Julian awoke and shifted from her cramped position on the cold stones, she saw that some faint light was filtering down from some irregularly spaced blocks in the wall high above. Her prison was a narrow space with a small trestle bed and dirty blanket and one broken stool. The door had another smaller one below it and she guessed, again from tales that she had heard, that food and water were passed in and wastes taken out through this. The prisoner never saw his captors unless they willed it. She felt that she was entombed, walled away from life. Numbly she sat down on the bed and stretched her sore muscles. Waiting was all she had left.
There was a clatter at the small door and a bucket was pushed through. She stared for a second, expecting something else to follow, but the opening was closing. Julian leaped up and threw herself at the space. One hand jerked an earring loose, and she thrust the jewel out into the unknown.
“I have others. Others, do you hear? Tell your masters I wish to talk. Summon them. I will pay.”
A hard hand slap
ped at hers, then the door was abruptly closed. She still held the jewel in her fingers. She knew herself abysmally foolish to have offered it, but the very fact that it was not taken told her that she was to be forgotten. Rare was the Tower prisoner who was not given the opportunity to buy himself more comfort than the old prison allowed. It was stranger still that the jewels had not been taken when she entered; they were lesser ones the queen had allowed her to use and were given back each day to the lady-in-waiting who was charged with keeping them.
She went quite mad then as she threw herself on the bed and began to weep the hard tears of the desperate. Her fists slammed against stone and her fingernails broke. Her hair tumbled over her face, and she threw the glittering jewels from her so that they rattled like peas on the floor. The pain and loss of a lifetime mingled with a fear so acute that she strangled with it. When the tears ceased she cried aloud until her voice was nearly gone and her body shook as if with an ague. There was to be no unconsciousness for Julian Redenter, only the awareness of her long despair.
The thin light faded, the cell grew dark and cold, but Julian lay face downward in her misery, feeling the absence of all hope. She had been told once that this was hell itself; Lady Gwendolyn had had her own agonies, but she at least had some freedom of movement. Julian’s mind swung over the misfortunes of her family and her preoccupation with them and then her own predicament; she pondered and reshaped events until her mind was as raw as her eyes. Why? Why? The single word etched itself on the walls around her, and she almost hoped that she could go mad.
She had tried to eat the hard bread and thin gruel, but her stomach rebelled. When the stupor came it was welcome, but even there the core of her mind and will remained sharp. Her attempts at prayer were clumsy and futile; her cries for death equally so. She took the food and ate enough to live. In the end it was sufficient.
Julian was never to know when the determination to fight was reborn in her. It might have been the time that she wondered if she were in a true dungeon or one of the cells aboveground and actually cared which. Or it might have been the returning thought that death in a torpor was not the way of the Redenters; and her proud name was all that was truly hers in this narrowed world. It might have been only that her healthy mind and spirit had fallen as far as they could and must revive or flicker out. Whatever the reason, Julian ate all that was given her one day, drank some of the water, washed in the rest, and wondered what she looked like.
From that time on she refused to let herself think of what the future might hold or the painful aspects of the past. She forced herself to walk up and down until her legs trembled. She swung her arms back and forth, practiced the movements of fencing, performed the court dances and those of her own invention, even ran in the short spaces of the cell as her strength grew. In the endless time that seemed to go on forever, Julian told herself stories and turned them back into Latin and French, created characters and spoke their lines for them, sang nonsense songs and ballads, recalled every story and poem that she had ever read or been told.
The once lovely dress was now grimy and stiff, her hair hung in dank coils, and her hands were still lacerated from the terror that overcame her in the dark reaches of the nights and she hammered again on the enclosing walls. She had no control over her dreams, and they followed her into death and the pits of hell to the return of the light that meant another endless period of waking. If Julian sometimes wondered why she did not simply give up, she pushed the thought away and struggled on, not in bravery but in refusal to submit.
It grew colder in the cell and more of her time was spent in activity to keep warm. Her sleeping time was sporadic, for chills woke her often, and her hands or feet would be numb even in that short time. The nightmares now were not of fire or the ax; they were of freezing to death and growing ill in her prison without anyone to see or care. There was no way to keep track of time, but she marked the comings and goings of the light with one of the pins that had held her hair, using it to scrape the painful litany of time on the stone beside her bed. As well as she could tell, it had been well over a month since she had come to her own decision to struggle. Estimate that she had been overcome by the terror of her plight for four or five other days, and that told her that it was now full winter. Would she survive it? She could not look ahead. This minute, this now, was all that was bearable.
She had been conscious of her beauty; now she was aware only of her long hair in terms of warmth. Clothes had mattered, but their value here was as covering for her chilled flesh. Mind and intellect at one time were supreme; here thought was held at bay. Her passion for Charles Varland had ruled in the outer world, but the cravings of the flesh melted down to the stone that enclosed her. Julian herself was being stripped down to the essentials.
One morning she sat huddled in the blanket and the old cloak at the edge of the thin spear of light. It was very cold, and her breath hung on the air. She dreaded the first few minutes of activity but knew that this was the only way to gain any warmth. Her head was bent in the crook of her arm, and the cloth around her head muffled sounds as she braved herself for those swift movements that began the day for her.
Suddenly there was a clatter at the door and it was thrown back so that it rattled hard against the wall. A harsh voice cried, “Is this the way the prisoner is preserved? By the saints, it is freezing in here! Bring that brazier in and hurry up about it!”
Julian jerked her head up to see a barrel-chested man in a furred short coat berating two guards who stood in front of him. She could not at first take in the fact that something was happening; she had been alone too long. Then guile caught at her, and she made her face dull, her eyes blank in the torpor of the abandoned. Behind it her brain watched and awaited opportunity.
The guard came in with the smoking brazier that gave off welcome warmth. He placed it near Julian, and she had to fight not to strain toward it. The barrel-chested man came so close that she saw the red veins in his heavy face and the anxiety in his little eyes. He touched her hands, and she drew them slowly away.
“Madam? Madam? Do you understand me?” His normal voice might have been a shout, but now he tried to be soothing.
“I hear.” She made her words slurring and let her lips tremble.
“Food is being brought. Wine, also. I must talk to you.”
“I hear.”
He jumped up and bellowed for the guard, who came running. He lowered his voice, but she could hear every word. “Bring the other things in. Be quick about it! She must be ready for the holy questioners, and you know who will be blamed if her senses are gone!”
Julian kept her face still and her body in the huddled pose, but the fear that she had fought back rose again. The time of her ordeal was at last upon her.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Julian drank of the cup of soup that the serving man held to her mouth and felt its restorative warmth even as she wondered how long she could maintain this pose. The barrel-chested man stamped back and forth in the corridor outside, muttering imprecations and berating the guards, who dared not speak. She withdrew her mind to rejoice temporarily in the feel of the coarse clean cloth against her newly sponged skin, and the heavy cloak resting over her shoulders added more heat. The wine she had been given made her light-headed and shivery.
“Madam, are you able to speak now?” He came to her again, and this time she smelled the fear on him. Little beads of sweat shimmered on his forehead.
She swung the blank gaze on him and beyond as a long shadow paused in the doorway before entering. It lifted a long hand which grew skeletal in the flicker of the candles. All sound ceased so that she heard only the slap of his sandals as he approached. “He” and “it” twisted together in her mind, and she would not have been surprised to see a bony skull look out at her.
“Julian Redenter, you stand accused both of heresy and of liaison with the dark powers. There is also a charge of treason. The penalty for these is death, and the manner of it can be both hideous a
nd horrifying. The Church can be merciful if you do cast yourself upon her, naming those implicated with you and outlining the details of the plots in which you indulged, explaining the blandishments of the demons who came to you.”
Julian let her blank gaze grow more so. Father Sebastino’s gaunt face drew in and his eyes dominated it. His fingers rubbed together and he licked dry lips. The guards were staring ahead; they saw many such scenes and could predict the outcome of all this.
“Cromp, come here!” The barrel-chested man rushed up to babble explanations and apologies which ceased as the priest made an impatient gesture. “Has she been ill-treated? Starved? Why is she this way?”
Cromp cried, “She has been left strictly alone, lord priest. I vow it. Nothing has been done to disturb her senses! Perhaps they were weak to begin with after the way of woman.”
Julian felt a tiny trickle of triumph; it seemed that her subterfuge was gaining ground, but she had no idea what she intended. The import of the charges might not have been realized in all their fearful aspects; it was as though the priest had talked of another person whom she barely knew.
“Or too clever! Such women as this are dangerous! Think you, Cromp, that in addition to plotting against the life of the queen for riches, she has reportedly startled sleepers from their nightly repose so that they woke in fear at a time when the Devil may more easily take souls! And in her belongings there has been found a talisman of bound sticks from the hawthorn tree, that symbol of the witch by means of which she can work her evil spells! Not content there, this woman has consorted with the outlaw, Varland, who may even have plotted against the life of the king who counted him friend. Are you not horrified, Cromp?”
Father Sebastino fixed his glittering eyes on the man, who cringed and babbled agreement. Julian felt her control slipping and knew that he had penetrated her guise. Her fate was being outlined for her; the flames of Isabella’s pyre rose high in the bleak cell.
