Elizabeth, Captive Princess

by Margaret Irwin

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  ‘SIR,

  If it were not too much trouble for you, and if you were to find it convenient to do so without the knowledge of your colleagues, I would willingly speak with you in private this evening. Nevertheless I remit my request to your prudence and discretion.

  Written in haste, as it well appears, this morning of October, Your good friend MARY.’

  What a note, thought Renard, for a Queen to write to one of her ambassadors! This meant another secret interview, creeping at midnight, slipping through back doors ‘muffled in a cloak,’ for that she fondly believed to be sufficient disguise, to be shut up alone for a long feminine heart-to-heart talk with a girl grown old, who had never learnt to be a woman.

  Yet Mary’s naivety had served him well. He had only had to leave it to her to play into his hands, to angle openly for the Emperor’s proposal of marriage for his son Prince Philip, to ask him guileless questions to which he knew all the answers.

  It was true that Philip was betrothed to the Princess of Portugal, but this was already being broken off. It was untrue that he loved her.

  It was true that Philip was a mere couple of years or so older than Courtenay, but then he was grave and wise in judgment; he had the steadfast safety of middle age and the vigour of youth.

  It was quite true that Philip was of an austere and handsome dignity, as she would see for herself when Signor Titian’s portrait arrived – only she must be sure to look at it from a little distance, as was necessary with all his pictures (perhaps also with Philip).

  It was quite untrue what the French ambassador, de Noailles, had brutally declared, that once she were married to Philip she would probably not see him for more than about a fortnight in all their wedded life; Philip was devoted to Spain, but he would make England his second home; Philip would be Emperor of the World, but he would never dream of making England a mere province.

  It was true that his master’s family had a motto, ‘The Hapsburgs do not need to fight; instead, they marry’; but that did not mean a conquest of England, only a peaceful alliance.

  He had a complicated course to steer, but the Queen was making it unexpectedly easy.

  He saw through all her fears as to whether Philip were too young and experienced, and she too old and innocent – Philip too ardent, she too cold (Cold? these chaste old maids? God, he could pity Philip!) – saw through her, through and through, he told himself, smiling with complacent pity, to the last frantic strivings of her frustrated womanhood to clutch a lover to her before it was too late.

  Now in this secret midnight interview he must be sympathetic, tactful, but above all firm, gentling this nervous mare with a soothing hand so as not to start and shy at every obstacle in the road. But, lord! thought he, carefully trimming bits of greyish fluff from the drooping moustaches and thin fringe of beard that edged his face and ended in two little tufts (that fellow never shaved him properly, always removed the brown and left the grey), what man could ever do that? The Queen was utterly incapable of holding to the same course for two minutes together, so irresolute was she, weak, vacillating; her nerve must have been permanently broken by her terrible father’s treatment of her as a girl. Yet she had shown unswerving courage all through Dudley’s rebellion; no weak woman had held that course. Must it always need a major crisis of war to knock a spark of sense as well as a great heart into her?

  It seemed so, for he found Mary in a distracted state of fidgets, pacing up and down the room that was so like a chapel with the lamp burning always in front of her prie-dieu in the alcove. She had evidently been starting to do half a dozen things at once. Sewing had been taken up and flung down again in the corner. Letters strewed the table, including a few lines of one in her own writing; a couple of books lay open beside them.

  ‘You see me,’ she said with a tremulous smile, ‘making an act of sacrifice. They say the vanity of an author is worse than that of any woman. Yet to be fair I cannot condemn Protestant works and make exception of my own. Bishop Gardiner says that it would be wise to suppress the Paraphrases of St John that I helped to translate from Erasmus some years ago, to be read in the churches as a companion volume to the new Bible in English.’

  ‘I had no idea that Your Majesty was a Protestant author!’

  ‘Only a translator, but in company with the Protestants Udal and Cox. Archbishop Cranmer thought my work the best exposition of the Gospels,’ she added with wistful pride. ‘But Bishop Gardiner was always against their use for the common people, and now I am recalling them from publication to be destroyed. “Reform” has hardened into heresy. The Church is a beleaguered city that must guard her gates and allow no compromise. No doubt it was presumption on my part to think I could serve her by my halting translations. So let them go. Compromise is the devil’s weapon.’

  ‘Yet, Madam, are you free from compromise in the most crucial question of your reign? I speak of your sister, the Lady Elizabeth.’

  Mary swerved like a startled horse. ‘Why do you speak of her? Have I to be for ever considering my attitude to my sister?’

  ‘You gave many people, Madam, the opportunity to consider it, when you so pointedly transferred the precedence from her to the Duchess of Suffolk the night before last. It places the whole Succession in question, by publicly proclaiming her bastardy.’

  Mary was trembling from head to foot, and to Renard’s alarm the ready tears began to flow down her cheeks. ‘Is she indeed even my father’s bastard?’ she cried in a shaking voice. ‘I do not know what to think of her. I do not know who she is. My father’s child – or of one of the Night Crow’s lovers? What proof have I that Elizabeth is connected with me in blood?’

  ‘Then you deny her the Succession?’

  ‘My conscience denies it. Illegitimate, heretical, unscrupulous, she would ruin this country as her mother did before her. How could I then leave it in her charge with a clear conscience?’

  Mary’s conscience was final, Renard knew that. He wanted to make his next point, but she would go on about Elizabeth.

  ‘I do not know what she is in any way; she is a mask, not a human face. She was twenty last month, yet she is as old as the Sphinx and as inscrutable. She has pretended to be wax in my hands, to plead ignorance of the true religion; asks for books and learned priests to instruct her; is willing, she says, to go to Mass, though she invents one pretext after another to avoid it when the time comes; yet when I expound religion to her she will listen to me by the hour together – “marvellous meek”, that is her reputation.’

  Renard felt, not for the first time, a certain sympathy with the girl he was so relentlessly seeking to destroy.

  ‘Is she then proving herself a docile pupil, anxious to learn the truth?’

  Mary looked blankly at him through her tears with the candid gaze of a bewildered, disillusioned girl.

  ‘How can she be so docile if she were true? Has she no loyalty to the religion in which she was brought up? It is my belief she doesn’t care a fig for it, nor for anything that may work against her interests. I might respect her if she were a heretic, but she is even worse – a hypocrite. She pretends to obedience, to loyalty, even to affection for me – when all the time I know she is hating me, hating – as indeed she must,’ she added ingenuously, ‘for she must know how I hate her.’

  ‘It does not necessarily follow,’ said Renard. ‘I should much doubt that her feelings for you are as strong as Your Majesty’s for her. Nor have they ever had the same reason – insulted, ill-treated as you were for her sake by her mother and the King, her—’ he hastily corrected himself, ‘your father.’

  ‘I will not bear her ill-will for that. She was a helpless child.’

  Renard, twirling his tufts of beard into sharp points, murmured that these conscientious scruples should not be allowed to affect the real issue. The one thing that mattered in her relations with Elizabeth was for her to decide what to do with her.

  ‘You can’t have it both ways,’ he said; ‘
hate her if you will, distrust her, disclaim her as any relative of yours, but do not leave her at large to make capital of all this against you. If she does not, others will. As long as people are satisfied that she is your heir it will keep them pacified—’

  ‘In the hope of my early death,’ she interrupted ruefully. ‘That indeed is very likely. I told the Council four years ago that I should not have long to live. I have still less reason now to alter that view.’

  ‘Madam, you have every reason to alter it. You were ill because you were unhappy.’

  ‘And am now.’

  ‘Then stir yourself to action. Let your heart guide you to happiness and health – and a new heir. Make up your mind as to the course you mean to follow. You distrust Elizabeth; very well, then, place her under arrest in the Tower.’

  ‘But she has done nothing to justify it.’

  Renard groaned. ‘Circumstances justify it, Madam. The need for safety, not only for yourself, but for one whose safety I hope will be even more dear to you. How can Prince Philip come to a country that is seething with discontent which may break out at any moment into plots to reinstate the Princess in the Succession – and perhaps on the throne? You must remove this danger from him. Her death is the only safe course.’

  Slowly, with the look of a patient, sorrowful, and at this moment rather beautiful mule, Mary shook her head.

  ‘Not for anyone in the world could I again be brought to do what my heart tells me is wrong. I did it once as a young girl; I betrayed my mother’s memory. Under pressure from my father, I acknowledged that I was illegitimate, that he acted rightly in divorcing my mother.’

  ‘You were a prisoner, you could have done nothing else.’

  ‘I could have died. It seems now so simple a thing to have done; but I didn’t. I did as he willed me. He gave me a thousand crowns, and Thomas Cromwell, the infamous minister to his pleasures, gave me a horse. These were my rewards.’ Her laugh had a harsh and terrible sound. ‘No, there was another; my father showed me affection as he had not done since I was a little girl. That counted with me more than the fear of death, for which I have longed many times.’ She beat her hands together. ‘It is done, it is done, and it cannot be undone. At least I will never do it again. I will never again betray my conscience.’

  It was a great pity, thought the ambassador, that women would always remember. The past had passed, let it pass.

  He firmly brought her back to the present. ‘Then, Madam, you must dissemble your hate for Elizabeth. If you will not put her out of harm’s way, do not at least make her the centre for disaffection, her own and others’. Continue to encourage her conversion, even if you do not believe in it; give her some few toys, tokens of friendship.’

  ‘She has just demanded leave to retire from the Court.’

  Renard was not surprised, after the open blow at her position. He remarked that Elizabeth’s caution was no less than her pride would make her want to get out of the way.

  Mary laughed bitterly at the word ‘caution.’ Elizabeth’s demand had been bold to the point of defiance, she said; it was more like a command.

  ‘Might be as well to grant it all the same,’ Renard considered, ‘it would get her out of mischief. But she’ll never be that until she is out of England. If she is not to be’ – he coughed back beheaded – ‘imprisoned, at least she can be married.’

  ‘To Courtenay?’

  ‘Impossible! And she appears to like his company – as do most women. Is there any serious danger, or is it mere coquetry?’

  ‘Everything she does is coquetry,’ Mary cried. ‘She flirts with every man she meets – and with policy – with religion – with danger, with life and death itself. In that, as in all else, she is the daughter of her mother, who laughed even on the scaffold. Ann Bullen was a savage, many thought her a witch. Her daughter, for all the modest mask she puts on at times, is the same. Nothing is sacred to her, not even her own soul – least of all a man’s heart.’

  These women! thought Renard. Could nothing keep them to the point?

  Quick as always to feel displeasure, Mary flushed with shame at her outburst and made an effort to speak dispassionately. ‘Their marriage is what everyone in the country seems to want – and de Noailles too – I suppose as a consolation prize for Courtenay!’

  ‘For him to prize you from your throne, rather!’

  Could she really not see that de Noailles, having failed to marry Courtenay to Mary so as to keep her from the Spanish alliance, would now try to marry him to Elizabeth so as to destroy her?

  He told Mary firmly that the only possible match for Elizabeth was some useful satellite of Spain. ‘The Prince of Piedmont, now, would be a convenient match.’

  ‘Oh yes, we make plans for her! Do you think any of them will make any odds?’

  She flung open a window and pointed across the dark courtyard to where a window opened a square of golden light; music and laughter and the merry sound of voices and dancing feet came pulsing out into the quiet night. Alone in the sleeping palace the Lady Elizabeth’s apartments were alight and awake with young life.

  Renard gasped at this boldness, opening his fringed mouth in an indignant round. Had she taken no warning from her public disgrace of her imminent danger? ‘I heard – but could scarcely believe – that she had flown into a royal rage and openly defied Your Majesty. She must be mad!’

  ‘We both have tempers,’ said Mary uncomfortably. She nearly said ‘we get it from our father’ before she remembered that she had denied him to Elizabeth.

  He made an impatient gestate at the excuse. ‘I presume that Your Majesty confined her to her apartments?’

  ‘No,’ she answered drily. ‘She herself has refused to leave them since the night before last. She has never been to see me, though she knows I am ill – always am in the autumn,’ she added tearfully. Amazing woman, she seemed really hurt that Elizabeth should not have concerned herself at this moment with her fits of weeping and palpitations of the heart.

  ‘If she has disobeyed you, Your Majesty has full occasion to put her under arrest.’

  ‘And half the Court, the younger half? For they are all disobeying me. I forbade anyone to visit her, but all the young men and some of the young women have been thronging to her, some of them staying with her all day long, making merry with her, as you can hear. My friends were delighted in her discomfiture, but she has managed to discomfort me instead, set up what is practically a rival court here in my own Palace, and a much livelier one. What can I do? Imprison all these gay young people and brand myself a jealous old maid? An old maid,’ she repeated softly as though the words were echoing back to her.

  She slammed the window to, and Renard, obeying her gesture, pulled forward the curtain, shutting the sombre room into itself again, but gave a last lingering glance through its heavy folds at the shining open window that framed the rival court. They must be having a masquerade; he could see fantastic head-dresses bobbing to and fro in the dance, and a wild dishevelled figure swung laughing away from it to the window where he could see her clearly, a Bacchante or Maenad of the woods, he thought, his pulse quickening at sight of the rounded arms and shoulders, the neck bare right down to the milky curves of the young breasts. A loose mop of fiery curls tossed light as gossamer round her excited face, which now he saw suddenly unbelievingly, to be Elizabeth’s.

  He swung round to tell the Queen of this singular metamorphosis of the decorous young lady reputed so ‘marvellous meek’. But something in the tired patient little figure of the Queen checked him. He would not tease her further with the contrast of her flamboyant, possibly disreputable young sister, now that she had forgotten her.

  For Mary was waiting to ask him something, peering up at him with her intent, short-sighted gaze that had now turned shy and wondering, evidently longing for him to reassure her.

  ‘You said—’ she began tentatively in a gruff voice like a bashful schoolboy, ‘you spoke of the possibility of another heir. God has already
worked a miracle for me. May He not complete His work by yet another miracle?’

  ‘Why should it be a miracle, Madam? Many women older than you have borne a child for the first time. Your ill-health will vanish like snow in the sun, once you have known happiness.’

  ‘You think I should know it with Prince Philip? He is much younger. He has loved, he has married other women. If he wants passion he will be disappointed in me. I am…’ she hesitated, ‘of that age – of that age you know of. I have never given way to thoughts of love. I have never even taken a fancy to any man. Give me your hand. Will you pledge your word on it that all you have told me about Prince Philip – his even temper, his balanced judgment, his kindly nature – is indeed true? Tell me again what you think of his character.’

  ‘Madam,’ said Renard solemnly, ‘it is too wonderful to be human.’

  She gripped his hand tighter and said, ‘It is well!’

  There was a silence that was rather uncomfortable for Renard, hardened politician as he was.

  The thin hand that clutched him was that of the English Alliance; he would not think of it as a woman’s; he would not think of other women; he would not think of Philip’s first wife, the little bride of sixteen, whom Philip, barely a year older, had gone in disguise to look on for the first time, waiting among the noisy jostling crowds in the streets of Badajoz to gaze with them on a small figure in a silver dress under a tower of black hair. He had straightway fallen passionately in love with her; within a year she had borne him his son Don Carlos, and died of it.

  No, he would not think of her; nor of Philip’s devoted mistress, Doña Isobel, who had borne him several fine children; nor of his latest affianced bride, the Princess of Portugal, who was his cousin and talked his own language, figuratively as well as actually. Least of all would he think of the slender supple white hand with the rosy pointed fingernails of the young woman who danced and sang and held her laughing court out there on the other side of the dark Palace, a frivolous, perhaps an abandoned young woman, who was now the greatest danger Philip had to face in England, but who might come to be – who knows – a closer ally than this ailing, failing woman whose clutch might soon be loosed in death. If she should die in childbed—