Elizabeth, Captive Princess

by Margaret Irwin

  Mrs Ashley looked sharply at her charge’s face, which was alight with sheer devilment. Too well she knew the signs of her wicked love of teasing.

  ‘Now what by all the imps of Satan does Your Grace intend now?’

  ‘Don’t blaspheme to me, woman!’ (This from her, thought Cat, and her pretty mouth full of the sailors’ oaths she learned from the Admiral!). ‘I intend nothing but pure religion.’

  ‘Which religion?’

  ‘Both. I am the white hope, not only of the new, but of the old.’

  And she halted the cortege to send back a messenger to ask the Queen to let her have some holy books of instruction in the Roman Church, also a rosary and some copes and chasubles to accustom her to the true faith at Ashridge, which, as she reminded her sister, had been a monastery dedicated to ‘the extirpation of ignorancy’.

  But Mary sent none of them, nor any reply. A dead dog had just been thrown into her Presence Chamber with a halter round its neck and a label saying that all Papist priests should be hanged.

  PART TWO

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  ‘There is no adventure nowadays,’ said Tom Wyatt. ‘England is growing smaller and smaller, a tight little island buttoning herself in, ever tighter. She used to be an empire, but now all her conquests in the fair land of France have shrunk to the single seaport of Calais. And, with it, the minds of Englishmen have shrunk. We are no longer part of Europe, no longer continental. We are growing insular, prejudiced, narrow-minded, we have forgotten how to travel. For centuries every generation of our young men, lords and peasants, used to go abroad, at first to the East to fight the dark heathen for the Holy Land – then, until lately, to the French wars. But both are over. I fought at Boulogne myself before old King Harry died, but nothing happens there now. Nothing happens anywhere for Englishmen, but internal squabbles as to whether an old maid or a young one shall sit on the throne. A New World has been discovered on the other side of the Western ocean, but what odds does that make to us, for all that it was an Englishman, Richard Ameryk, who gave it its name? Yet we’ve let the Spaniard get in first and take possession of its gold and pearl – while ‘‘Here I am in Kent and Christendom’’ as in my father’s poem! And we let old Harry’s fine new ships rot in their harbours while we sit at home and hug the fire. Throw another log on it, Ned – not that way – put it upright so that the flames will catch it.’

  His small son did as he was told, soberly, for he had asked for a tale of adventure and been fobbed off with a lecture about the world getting duller and duller, which he knew already as well as all the other boys at school – that there were no Crusades now, nor wars in France, and only old Davey on his seat on the village green to tell you how he’d gone North as a boy and seen all the Scots lords, their fine young King at their head, mown down like hay on Flodden Field.

  He looked reproachfully at the fair handsome young man whose small forked beard now no longer wagged up and down, whose eager eye no longer flashed in indignant animation, but rested once again on the broad page of manuscript in the book that lay open on his knee. Seeing it upside down from where he knelt on the hearthstone, young Ned saw the handwriting like the design on the damascened blade of a sword, strong as it was fine, like that sword, the magnificent unerring strokes going straight across the page without any slant. ‘There go the long l’s,’ thought young Ned, ‘and the swoop of the tailed y’s, and oh,’ he sighed, ‘I wish my grandfather had not written so much!’

  He pulled the ears of the old spaniel that lay sleeping with his nose thrust as near as possible to the burning logs, then swung backwards and forwards squatting on his heels, stared hopelessly up at the dripping grey windows with all their looped and scrolled latches of wrought iron fastened tight against the wild January weather, stared higher still at the plaster-work on the domed ceiling which depicted in bas-relief a man in a lion-skin carrying another man in nothing at all, stared further and further back at the other plaster pictures above and behind him, until he felt himself toppling over, but instead executed a backward somersault in solemn silence and left the hall to find a few of his nine brothers and sisters.

  His father, Sir Thomas Wyatt, continued to look through the writings of his father, Sir Thomas Wyatt. He meant to have them printed, particularly the poems. His father had had no time to attend to such trifling business, a diplomat, ambassador to France and Rome and Spain, courtier at King Henry’s Court, soldier at one time and commander of a man-of-war at another, Steward of Maidstone, and Knight of the Shire for Kent. And Sir Thomas Wyatt the younger was even more of a man of action than his father; he had been described as ‘a born soldier’ in dispatches to King Henry before he was twenty-three. Yet as be turned these pages of beautifully designed handwriting, while the wind rattled the new glass panes and flung handfuls of sharp rain and sleet against them like pebbles flung by a rude boy, the conviction slowly grew on him that his father would be remembered chiefly, not for his brilliant public life, but for his poems; and for the belief in most men’s minds that he had been Nan Bullen’s first lover before she met King Henry and her doom.

  There was a poem his father had never written, but that his father’s sister Margaret had often told him, how on the night before the 1st of May, when Nan had been just on three years Queen, she was beset by unknown terrors, and, unable to sleep, had risen and wandered about the garden; and there, in the first white light of dawn and the shrill bird-song, Margaret her lady-in-waiting had found the Queen standing under an apple tree in full blossom, a ghost within a cloud. ‘The Duke of Norfolk has come to see Your Grace,’ Margaret had said, and in a whisper the Queen answered, ‘He has come to arrest me.’

  But no poem did he ever write of that tragic Maying, only a guarded sonnet on the chances ‘most unhappy, that me betide in May.’ He never wrote directly of Nan Bullen, though again and again between these lines of verse Tom Wyatt could see the young Queen he had gazed at as a schoolboy, the quick hands and pointed face and dark eyes where the flashing laughter was often chased by the startled look in the eyes of a deer.

  ‘They flee from me that sometimes did me seek

  With naked foot, stalking in my chamber.

  I have seen them gentle, tame and meek,

  That now are wild and do not remember

  That sometime they put themselves in danger

  To take bread at my hand.’

  Who were ‘they,’ and why did that same image of a deer haunt his father’s poems – a deer in a diamond collar where,

  ‘in letters plain,

  There is written her fair neck round about,

  ‘Noli me tangere,’ for Caesar’s I am,

  And wild for to hold, though I seem tame.’

  ‘Noli me tangere’ – but had he never touched her, before Caesar put his mighty foot in the stirrup and ‘list her hunt’ – to the kill? King Harry had killed Nan Bullen whom he had made his Queen, and with her five tall handsome young men, the finest of them her own brother, accused as her lovers.

  Wyatt, the poet, also arrested, had been set free. Had she then never sought him in his chamber ‘with naked foot’? Never come to him

  ‘In thin array, after a pleasant guise,

  When her loose gown from her shoulders did fall,

  And she me caught in her arms long and small,

  Therewith all sweetly did me kiss

  And softly said, ‘Dear Heart, how like you this?’

  It was no dream; I lay broad waking:—’

  Tom Wyatt closed the book with a bang.

  He would read no further, peer no longer into his father’s secrets. That last magnificent line, in the open-eyed wonder invoked by its slow-paced monosyllables, had brought back too vivid a picture of his father’s finely carved head bent lovingly to his lute as he sang the words. He had never spoken of their hidden meaning, only of their purpose, written in English ‘for Britain’s gain,’ to rescue their native tongue from the dull drudgery that had beset its verse ever since the splendo
ur of old Chaucer two hundred years before. ‘These modern poets, pedants rather, think only Latin or French worthy of their lyre, but I’ll show them!’ And well he had, for he had adopted the very same formulas of the Latin poets that were in fashion on the Continent and shown that a plain Englishman could use them as well as or better than any foreign poet.

  He had given the world an English Wyatt for their Italian Petrarch, had proudly turned his back upon proud Spain, ‘for I with spur and sail go seek the Thames,’ to sing in praise of London and

  ‘My King, my country, alone for whom I live.’

  And with that trumpet-call of his father’s ringing in his mind, Tom Wyatt sprang up and began to stride up and down the room.

  ‘Proud Spain’ had been the nightmare of his boyhood, when his father bad been imprisoned by the Inquisition. He had escaped, to be honoured later in a diplomatic mission to Spain from whence he had written many affectionate letters full of good advice to his schoolboy son. But the earlier horror of the boy’s anxiety, lying awake night after night to wonder – and picture – what tortures his adored father might even then be enduring, had ever since haunted his mind.

  Spain was the evil spider of the world, spreading her web over the vast circumference of the globe, to ensnare all free men. Now the net was stretching over England. If Queen Mary were so besotted as to persist in taking Philip of Spain for her husband, she would be putting her country in chains.

  Was this the moment, then, to think of escape? It was a boy’s, a coward’s way to dream of adventure on the high seas, to think with longing of the three ships he had watched this summer sail down the Thames under Sir Edward Challoner, sail out across the ocean to discover a new North-East passage through the Arctic to Cathay, sail out away from England and all her internal worries and restrictions, her eternal new regulations regarding the new religion and whether fish days should be held on Wednesday and Friday (religious and therefore superstitious) or on Thursday and Saturday (economic and therefore sound) – all to be reversed in a few short months under the new return to the old religion.

  No true Englishman could now afford to seek escape to a freer life across the world. If England were in peril of conquest by a foreign foe, under the insidious mask of a peaceful royal marriage, then she would need all her sons, she would need him.

  He had laid his plans against it, together with his neighbours at home and his friends at Court. The next move was in their hands, and not merely those of his friends. The Council were presenting the Queen with a public petition, headed by Gardiner, her staunchest ally, but staunchly against her in this. Wyatt himself could do no more until he knew its result.

  If that were failure – well, then he was prepared for what he must do.

  Liberty was not to be sought abroad, but here ‘in Kent and Christendom’ where till now

  ‘No man doth mark where I do ride or go,

  In lusty lees my liberty to take’

  – liberty to hunt and hawk, ‘and in foul weather at my book to sit,’ as he had just been doing; liberty to finish building the house his father had begun and replace with clear glass the draughty wicker-work that still filled some of the windows to save expense; liberty to bring up his sons in the faith that they should have the liberty to choose; liberty from the subtly encroaching spies who cast their webs abroad from the dark centre of a foreign power, and ensnared men’s minds before they enslaved their bodies.

  ‘It’s the hares!’ he exclaimed aloud. He had shot them, the cook had baked them in a pie, and so he had eaten them at dinner along with a fine brawn and some salted mutton ham, though hares were known to nourish melancholy. He’d soon stop worrying about England for a bit if only the weather would clear up and he could get out with his gun or cross-bow – and shoot more hares.

  But the rain was rattling so loud it sounded like horses’ hoofs on the cobbles in the courtyard.

  It was horses’ hoofs.

  There came a loud knocking on the door. Tom Wyatt sprang towards it. A tall young man entered, muffled up to the eyes in a dripping cloak which he dropped to the floor in a wet heap as the servant left them, and stood dramatically disclosed. Wyatt looked curiously at the fair hair ruffled up from a high-bred, finely cut face, whose ancestors had done all they could for it without much help from its present owner.

  ‘The Council have drawn blank,’ were the stranger’s first words. ‘The Queen is furious with the whole pack of ’em. They say she’s sworn to have Philip of Spain or no one.’ And then, as Wyatt led him to the fire, ‘You know who I am, the Earl of Devonshire.’

  Yes, Wyatt had known it, though be had never met young Courtenay, and he seemed much younger than his twenty-five years. But time stood still with lives in retirement; prisoners, like nuns, were apt to look young until suddenly they looked old.

  ‘Earl of D-d-dampshire,’ the young man corrected, shivering as he spread his long blue hands to the fire, shaking his wet gloves that sent little spitting showers on to the blazing logs. ‘That’s de Noailles’ version of the name. And how true at this moment! He’s told me to come to you now all else has failed. Poor old Gardiner, he did his best, beetled his shaggy eyebrows like a bull about to charge and spoke out like a true Englishman – trust a Gardiner to call a spade a spade!’ He crowed with mirth and finished at a gulp the wine just handed to him (not the first he had had on this ride, thought Wyatt), then suddenly looked solemn and shook his head. ‘But she spoke out too – how they roared at each other! Says she’ll take away his office as Chancellor. She’ll do it too. Told him her father was the only man who could manage him, and so would she. Said she’d as much right to choose her own husband as any of her subjects, but that’s not right, you know, not for Kings and Queens. We can’t choose. Look at me – not bad-looking, hey? and “a man may not marry his grandmother,” yet I was willing to sacrifice myself to a skinny old maid for the sake of England.’

  ‘And its Crown, my lord.’

  ‘Why, yes, it’s crowns that count. Else I’d have plumped earlier for that sly minx her sister, as I’ve now come to do, thank God, or rather Venus, which is her votary saint, I’ll swear. Between her and me and the bedpost, we’ll get the Crown yet.’

  Looking at his high fair brow with the damp gold curls plastered on it and his startled blue eyes flickering with excited pleasure like those of a schoolboy out on an adventure, Wyatt thought, ‘If this lad has one spark of true courage in him we are bound to win,’ and then in the same breath, ‘but why the devil did he start drinking before he ever got here, or had even seen me for the first time?’

  Aloud he said, ‘Has Your Lordship won her consent, then, to marry you?’

  ‘Elizabeth consent? Don’t you know her better than that? She’s a lady, a Court lady. She doesn’t say yes and she doesn’t say no. But I know a better answer. Surprise her when she’s out riding at Ashridge, marry her by force and carry her off down to Devon.’

  Wyatt gave a short, rather savage laugh. ‘I fancy it’s you who’d be surprised, my lord!’

  ‘Oh, she’s wild as a cat of the woods! But I know she likes me.’ He preened himself like a wet peacock. ‘Rape,’ he murmured in the tone of a bemused boy, day-dreaming of lust, ‘could anyone make sure of that one without it? I fancy the Lord Admiral found you couldn’t, he could have told us how he’d handled her.’

  Wyatt struck sharply across these nauseous fancies. ‘Did de Noailles suggest this?’

  ‘Well, he may have said it first – what odds? He’s written to his master the French King that all that’s needed is for us to marry and go together to the West and the whole country will rise for us to a man. They say in Devon that if Philip of Spain lands there he’ll get as well barked at as ever man was. They say in Cornwall, “We ought not to have a woman bear the sword,” and then they say, “If a woman bear the sword, my Lady Elizabeth ought to have it first!”’

  Again he gave that odd little high crow that sounded more scared than pleased. ‘And look at this letter fro
m the Mayor and Aldermen of Plymouth – they beg me to come and take them under my protection against the “outlandish men” from Spain – look at it! They’ll put the town in my hands and whatever garrison I place there, “being resolved not to receive the Prince of Spain nor obey his commands in any way.” So there it is – and Croft has promised to answer for the Welsh Borders, and you for the men of Kent—’

  ‘Wait, my lord. What garrison do you propose to place in Plymouth?’

  ‘De Noailles’. He’s sworn to conduct us, Elizabeth and me, down to the West, with French troops and money and even the French fleet to stand by in case of need.’

  ‘French troops fighting Spanish on English soil! And a captured Princess for support! Such an action would mean utter ruin to you both. Fight for yourself, my lord!’

  Courtenay blinked. ‘Without de Noailles – or Elizabeth?’ he stammered.

  Wyatt was walking up and down to quiet the sudden astonished rage that had risen in him. He was thinking of the girl he had watched riding like a white flame through the smoky sunset city last summer; thinking of the delighted murmurs around him in the crowd greeting her, rather than the Queen, as ‘true Tudor’ and ‘old Harry’s own.’ The people were already welcoming that fiery spirit as their leader. But in alliance with this weathercock? He could not welcome that last at all.

  And Courtenay’s anxious stare, following him like a dog’s, seemed to perceive it, for when he spoke again his voice was quite different, it had a shy, dreamy appeal.

  ‘Have you noticed how bright her eyes are? That is because they have stared at danger since she was a child, and never withdrawn their gaze. Those long slow grey hours in the Tower, she knows nothing of them – only of bright life, and blood-stained death.’