Elizabeth, Captive Princess

by Margaret Irwin

But as Wyatt did not answer nor cease his steady tramp up and down the room, Courtenay drank again and took another pull at his thoughts. If he could not count on de Noailles nor yet Elizabeth to carry things through for him, what should he do? Cut adrift from it all? It might be best.

  ‘I’m in Kent now,’ he said, ‘it’s not far from Greenwich. I think I’ll ride on to the Palace and try the great horses King Edward left there.’

  That pulled up Wyatt. ‘Why?’ he asked blankly.

  ‘I need practice. It doesn’t do to have a Prince who can only ride a palfrey. It’s the worst thing the Tower’s done for me. I’ve been saying for days I must get down there,’ he added, elaborately off-hand.

  Wyatt puzzled over it, then suddenly saw. ‘You mean to slip away in the darkness of the night on a ship to France!’

  ‘Why not? I’d be among friends there. The French King said so. I’m sick of all these schemes, I only want to be free.’

  ‘Go, and be damned to you!’ was the answer Wyatt longed to give. But to have him babbling of their plans to Henri II would be as bad a danger as any. France would work against Spain, but she would work against England too.

  ‘I wouldn’t go if I could be sure of my backing here,’ Courtenay continued on a faint note of reproach. ‘They said I could count on you at any rate. You will come in with us, won’t you? They say you are heart and soul against Spain.’

  Yes, that still held. The one thing that mattered now was to prevent Philip taking possession of the country. Wyatt found himself giving his marching orders as though to a subordinate. ‘Nothing can be done yet, and above all,’ he said sternly, ‘nothing said. The signal for revolt against Spain must be the moment that Spanish troops land on our shores – and not a day earlier. But when that happens I can answer for every true Kentish man to rise and resist them. Sir James Croft can do the same for the Welsh Borders. And you, my lord, should go down at once, on your own account, to your estates in Devon and Cornwall – to show them that they can trust you,’ he added, not without a suspicion of irony. It would, in any case, get him safely out of the way from his friends the enemies: the ambassador, de Noailles, on the one side, with his doubtful promises of French support, and, on the other, Bishop Gardiner.

  ‘Do you still see much of Gardiner?’ he asked abruptly.

  ‘Oh well, you know, we were friends in the Tower, it was a small world there, one was glad of anyone, and the old boy can be quite good company for all he’s a bishop, full of good stories in spite of his appetite for work.’ Courtenay had seemed surprised by the sudden question, but with his usual eagerness to please was hurriedly explaining the answer. ‘He would see to my education, looked on himself as my tutor, worse luck, and my father too. I still call him “father”,’ he added on a note of boyish sentiment that filled Wyatt with foreboding.

  ‘And confide in him as one?’

  ‘Oh no, not really. But I have to be grateful to the old man,’ he added virtuously. ‘And besides, he is all against this marriage of the Queen’s.’

  ‘But not against the Queen. Go to Devon, my lord. For God’s sake,’ he urged, leaning forward and trying to hold those restless glancing eyes with his steady gaze, ‘go down to Devon.’

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  Now she had gone into winter quarters, Elizabeth told herself, like a squirrel burrowing into its lair to conserve its life and energies for the spring, and indeed she looked very like a squirrel as she cuddled Mary’s furs round her in the privacy of her room, her bright eyes peering out from them at the snow-clouds marching over the Chiltern Hills beyond her window. Winter had closed in on her, but she was safe and snug here at Ashridge, she had gone to earth, or if it were not quite as good as that, she had burrowed into a cave in the rocks where she would be safe – but only just as long as the tide did not rise and flow in on her.

  She could build her own pleasures better than at Court, removed from the daily fear of a royal snub, as much danger as disgrace. She read Italian and French romances, and with her tutors the Greek plays that had become the rage at Cambridge, and of course she must not forget to keep up her Latin also, since it was the one common language of diplomacy that held Europe together – though somehow it had acquired a musty monkish flavour from its long usage in the old Church and had none of the excitement of discovery to be felt in reading Greek. She composed verses, and tunes to sing them to on her lute or the virginals, and she liked still better to compose ballets to dance to her own tunes.

  She could do all of them very prettily for she had inherited her father’s turn for composing verses and music, and playing it, and her mother’s for dancing to it. In the ice- or snow- or rain-bound solitude of the old monastery built on the site of the Black Prince’s hunting-box, she could practise her charms and talents, let her hair curl into crisp ringlets, try on the jewels and gay dresses she dared not wear in public.

  She could even have her picture painted in the dress she had worn as Diana at her private masquerade. (The Dutch artist on giving her the brawny neck and arms of an athletic huntress!) It was a daring dress for the current fashion, and you might have taken her for a Bacchante or wild Maenad until you noticed the small pearl crescent of the moon goddess crowning her cunningly dishevelled curls. Her face too was off guard, for the only time she was ever to let it so appear, giving full rein to the imprisoned freedom and daring of her spirit.

  But Elizabeth was not left entirely free from the outside world. Her worst trouble from it was one that should have delighted her particular vanity, for it was due to proposals of marriage. The Prince of Piedmont’s offer was still being urged on her, almost with threats; and the Prince of Denmark, who had been so eager to marry her a few years ago, was now renewing his offer privately and must not be offended, nor encouraged.

  Another proposal, even more embarrassing than matrimony, was continually reaching her through de Noailles from the King of France, in cipher, assuring her of a warm welcome at his Court, where he and his wife, Catherine de Medici, would be delighted to treat her as their own daughter. ‘And what can we say about that?’ demanded her secretary, Mr Parry.

  ‘That he has one too many extra daughters already,’ answered Elizabeth viciously. His only reason for offering her a home would be to remove her as a future rival to his other ‘extra daughter,’ Mary, the child Queen of Scots – and ‘a long home it would be,’ she said, ‘whether in prison or the grave.’

  ‘But we must not say that,’ said Parry, smiling discreetly so as not to reveal the loss of a back tooth.

  ‘Oh no, we dare not offend him, we must be very grateful and polite and never let him know that we see through him. God’s death, if I could but once shout the truth out loud and shame the devil!’

  Instead she called the fiddlers and lutist to play the tune she had made up the night before and tried her dance to it while she thought out her answers. No time was better for that than while she practised the intricate manoeuvres of the dance measures she had invented, threading them with hand and foot while her busy mind, soothed by the rhythm of the music and of her swaying supple body, spun its own casuistic subtleties.

  Two steps to the left and slide, two to the right and glide, here hold out your hand to your partner – which partner? Edward Courtenay danced well, a graceful lad, had had good masters in the Tower, but there was no magic in his movements to call out the music of one’s own; he was Narcissus dancing with his own shadow. Robin Dudley danced well, he was bold and gay, ‘Hey, Robin, jolly Robin!’ as the country song sang. But there had once been a partner more gay and bold whose touch had thrilled her more nearly, who had swept her off her feet and danced her to his death, and all but hers.

  Dancing here alone in the firelight, while the shadows deepened in the corners of the room, and the short winter’s day faded against the chequered window-panes, she felt that she was dancing with a ghost. The ring of a mighty laugh that she had not heard for five years echoed through her mind, shattering the discreet tinkling of the music; a
smouldering log flared up and glinted on the bright tapestry, but for an instant she thought it was on the towering gold-laced figure of the Lord Admiral, Tom Seymour, whose magnificent head had been struck from his shoulders for making love to the Princess Elizabeth when she was all but a child.

  She could dance no more alone – and what use had it been? She had not thought out a thing more than ‘Your most Christian Majesty has shown the kindness of a loving father to an unhappy daughter.’

  She turned towards the window where the little group of musicians sat to catch the last of the light, three shadows whose faces were dim white as they turned towards the darkening room.

  ‘One of you come and take this movement with me – I cannot work it out alone.’

  The lute-player sprang up first, and as he came towards her down the long room she noticed that he was strange to her, a tall fine-looking man with a short fair beard.

  ‘Since when have you entered my service?’ she asked as the fiddlers struck up the tune again and she led him into the measure of the dance.

  ‘All your life, Madam,’ he answered low.

  Heavens, the man was another secret agent, and this another trap! She froze with fear and anger, was about to call out, but his hand tightened on hers. ‘Wait, Madam, till I have told you. You are in danger—’

  ‘From you! If you give me any message from Courtenay or de Noailles I shall expose you here on the spot.’

  ‘I bear no message. I have news you must hear. Dance on, Madam, and I will tell you. The fiddlers cannot hear us.’

  He spoke with such calm authority that she obeyed, pretending to show him the movements of the dance while his low rapid voice told her, ‘The case is desperate. You must get away from here. Courtenay has betrayed all to Gardiner, and Gardiner to the Queen.’

  ‘And what has that to do with me?’

  Her whisper was cold as death. Her lithe quick figure danced in and out of the firelight, the hair a-shimmer, but the face a still shadow. Could nothing quicken her into life, not even the fear of losing it? He spoke with angrier urgency.

  ‘They will seize the chance to strike at you. Gardiner will have your head if he can. Leave this place and go to Donnington – it is further from London, it is a strong house. Fortify it well, man it against attack, and do not leave it on whatever summons, above all do not go to London.’

  ‘Who are you?’

  ‘Thomas Wyatt, Your Grace.’

  ‘I knew it. God’s death, did I not say I would take no letter from you?’

  ‘So I had to come in person.’

  ‘And bribe my servants!’

  ‘Your lute-player is well known to me – I have told him all that was necessary. The case is altered. We must strike at once, within the next three days. Suffolk has already left the Court.’

  ‘Suffolk again! He will declare his daughter as Queen Jane while the West cry “Courtenay!” and the rest “Elizabeth!”’

  ‘But all will cry “Down with Spain!” Philip’s landing was to be the signal, it would have shown we were against him, not the Queen. But now we cannot wait. You will not join us?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘Then you have two days to move your household, with all the guards you can muster, and secure yourself in Donnington. Will you go tomorrow?’

  ‘No.’

  ‘When?’

  ‘Never.’

  ‘You will not save your life?’

  ‘By all the means I have – if any. But to admit that I am in the conspiracy – that I know of it even – I will not do that.’

  ‘The rising is not to place you on the throne – only to secure your succession to it.’

  ‘You may shout that to the troops, but no one will believe it, least of all Mary. She too is Tudor. She’ll not take her throne on terms. Nor will I fight against her on it – or what peace should I have in my own reign if I had rebelled against my Sovereign?’

  ‘What will you do then?’

  ‘Nothing. I wish that you would too. Your plan has miscarried. Let it go.’

  ‘It must go forward. At least say you wish me well.’

  She was looking at him at last as a person, a man, as they moved towards each other in the dance, and a faint smile slowly lightened her shadowed face. ‘My mother’s daughter could surely say no less to your father’s son.’

  He took her hand to lead her forward in the final movement – and said in time to the last notes of the music that fell clear and precise as drops of water:

  ‘I promise you

  And you promise me

  To be as true

  As I will be.’

  ‘So – nearly so – my father wrote – was it to your mother?’

  ‘If it were, then absit omen! But I will never show you “a double heart”.’

  ‘Nor I you, my Lady Elizabeth, God give me grace!’

  Hand in hand they paced in the stately measure of the pavane down the hall, out of the firelight into the shadows. The music died on the air. Their dance was finished.

  That was on the 22nd of January, the day after Courtenay had sobbed out his confession to Gardiner, having first obtained a promise from him that whatever happened he should not be beheaded.

  On the 25th, Wyatt marched on London at the head of his Kentishmen.

  On the 26th, Elizabeth received a politely urgent invitation from the Queen to come to Court and avoid the dangers resulting from ‘an unnatural rebellion’ induced by certain ‘malicious and seditious minds.’ But the most disturbing thing in the letter was the mention of Donnington, ‘whither, as we understand, you are minded shortly to remove’!

  And how, in God’s, or Satan’s name, did she understand that? Elizabeth demanded of herself, but could find no answer, except that she was beset with spies and most probably with potential assassins. ‘Look over your shoulder and you’ll see Death waiting for you,’ – who had said that? Was it the Admiral, laughing despite of death – or Sir Thomas Wyatt the poet who had loved her mother and so narrowly escaped death on the scaffold for her? The fishermen had a superstition that if a life were saved from the sea, then it had to be paid for with another. Was it the same with the scaffold? Did it now wait for another Sir Thomas Wyatt?

  She refused the invitation of her most dear sister. It was the old pretext, she did not feel well enough. But this time it became more and more true. The waiting game she had forced on herself was more terrifying than any daring action. She did, it is true, set an armed guard round her house both inside and out, but this was because Suffolk was known to be on the march not far off and, as he had proclaimed his daughter Jane as Queen, there was very real danger that he would attack Elizabeth as well as Mary. She took care to announce this publicly as the reason for putting her house in a state of defence, but knew well that her enemies would only interpret it as an act of rebellion against the Queen, and do their best to make her believe in it as such. ‘Elizabeth and Courtenay,’ those two names were being proclaimed everywhere as the true instigators of the rebellion, and its true motive to supplant Mary with them as King and Queen.

  On that same day, the 26th of January, the report came flying from London that all the gates of the City were being watched ‘in harness’ because Sir Thomas Wyatt and Sir George Harper and Sir Hare Isley and Mr Rudston and Mr Knyvett and divers other gentlemen and commons were up, and already held Rochester Castle and its bridge.

  But Elizabeth was not ‘up.’ She went to bed, as she had done in the high summer weather at King Edward’s death, to watch the icy rain shoot down in grey sheets outside her windows, and shiver with fear and cold. Nothing could warm her, however huge the logs they piled on the fire and however many hot bricks wrapped in flannel were placed in the bed and quilts of goosefeathers on top of it. All the nerves in her head throbbed with pain, she had tooth-ache and swellings in her jaw and neck, and her body swelled too, probably with nervous indigestion and wind, though Mrs Ashley warned her not to mention this symptom, as her enemies were sure to say again she
was with child. They did.

  She woke at night crying that she had been dancing with a ghost – ‘his hand turned cold in mine,’ she cried. She had this dream more than once.

  She heard that 15,000 Kentishmen had gathered round Wyatt’s standard, furnished with arms and ammunition by the Venetian ambassador, and were encamped in the fields bordering the highway from Dover to London, harassing the Flemish and Spanish merchants from the coast. A generous leader, he had given all his followers good leave to depart if they willed going on to London.

  ‘But why haven’t they started for London?’ asked Elizabeth.

  She heard how the Duke of Norfolk had marched against the rebels at the head of the City bands in their white coats, quickly grey with rain, and was urging the Warden of the Cinque Ports with his troops in Sheppey to ‘come in on Wyatt’s backside.’ But the Warden complained of ‘the weather being so terrible yet no man can stir by water or well by land.’ The Duke’s Whitecoats were deserting. Wyatt besieged and stormed Cooling Castle in six hours, and its owner, his uncle Lord Cobham, sent a frantic letter subscribed:

  ‘To the Queen’s most

  excellent majesty

  haste haste

  post

  haste

  with all diligence possible

  for the life

  for the life.’

  The household at Ashridge was wild with excitement. Lord Cobham’s sons had all gone over to Wyatt, they saw what their cousin could do, since he could take the massive fortress of Cooling, with its moat and inner and outer wards and drum towers forty feet high and walls six feet thick, all in six hours.

  ‘Six hours wasted,’ said Elizabeth.

  Then Mrs Ashley came running into her room with news that Wyatt’s army was at Southwark, only just across the river from the Tower, and the Queen not even fortressed there but in her Palace of Whitehall, with only 200 archers for guard. She had ridden to Guildhall and appealed herself to the citizens, ordered all the London bridges to be cut to keep him out, but it could make no odds.