Elizabeth, Captive Princess

by Margaret Irwin

  The whole quartette shared those, and drew their heads together again in the pool of candlelight over the table, Harington’s thick greying hair at the same level as Isabella’s brown curls; Robin’s close-cropped head, as glossy as a blackbird’s wing, bending close over the gleaming gossamer of the Princess’s hair.

  Isabella was too shy to speak of her practical problems (she had not brought enough clothes to the Tower and this had somehow grown much more important since she was meeting Sir John), but Sir John told them how he had spent close on £1000 to date in his efforts to pull strings that would hoist him out of prison and, since bribes and flattery had failed, had in desperation written an impudent lampoon in verse on Bishop Gardiner, which he had just despatched to him.

  You never knew with Gardiner, if it made him laugh it might win his release, Harington thought, and Elizabeth agreed. ‘He hates me, but my father liked him. At least he does not want to bring back the Pope over us, though he would rather have England a Roman Catholic country than not Catholic at all.’

  ‘A Spanish Catholic country is what it looks like being,’ said Robin.

  ‘Not if the country can prevent it,’ said Harington. ‘Nor does she want the Pope.’

  ‘She doesn’t know what she wants,’ growled Robin, whose family had been badly let down by the country’s change of mood.

  ‘She’s not a she,’ said Elizabeth, ‘the country’s a young giant, a crack-brained one if you will, determined to launch out in new ways into the future – it’s not going to be tied and bound and told to go back and be good by an equally crack-brained old maid, equally determined to cling to the past.’ She leaned forward and tapped Harington over the knuckles with a spoon. ‘Speak up, Jack, are you going to give up the home my father made for you out of a monastery?’

  Harington hastily put his hand under the table. ‘Not I, Madam! Nor will any honourable Member who swears in Parliament to follow the Queen back to Popery, but will stick to that far more sacred thing, his Property. But I’ll stick to the Protestant faith too.’

  Isabella and Robin also protested their Protestantism. Elizabeth had an exasperated sense of their all doing so by way of protesting their loyalty to her.

  ‘Never mind about your religion,’ she said to Robin, ‘that is to say, your politics, Tell me how it is you have £2, 3s. 4d. a week for your food.’

  ‘Government grant,’ he answered complacently. ‘But it’s fourpence less than for my eldest brother, Jack – do they think he eats a pennyworth a week more for each extra year of his age?’

  He was also allowed 13s. 4d. for each of his two servants, and as much again for firewood, coal and candles.

  Elizabeth fumed, ‘The Government does that for all of you – declared and condemned rebels as you are! while I, on whom they can fasten nothing, have to supply my table at my own cost for myself and my servants – no, spare your sighs, Markham, everyone knows you eat like a sparrow, or Sir John would say a sylph. But may the devil fly away with all the rest of ’em!’

  Servant worries – they plunged into them together with gusto as another thing to share. Robin’s servants were a low lot who stole from him and levied blackmail on his friends when they got the chance; Elizabeth’s a high and mighty lot who turned up their noses at the ‘common rascal soldier in the Tower’ and objected to any food for the Princess passing through such base hands, though she swore at them that she would rather eat like a scullion than starve like an Empress, and the vice-chamberlain threatened that ‘if they frowned or shrugged at him he would set them where they should see neither sun nor moon.’ But he was induced to settle the squabble more profitably to himself, by giving them permission to cook and serve the royal meals and getting a full share of them; so that he now boasted that ‘he fared of the best and Her Grace paid for it!’

  And paid heavily, for in decency she could not be served by less than two of her yeomen of the chamber, two of the robes, two of her pantry, two of her kitchen, one of her buttery, one of her cellar and one of her larder. But she was often at her wits’ end how to pay, for there were continual delays and hitches in getting her money through to her.

  All this she now poured out to Robin, who insisted that he would help her by lending money from his estates; it put her on a very homely, intimate footing with him.

  It also put her on a footing with Amy, the agent for his finances, which she did not so much like. Such a silly insipid name, and sentimental – Aimée – the Beloved! Was she, by this splendid young man? ‘You are married,’ she said in accusation.

  ‘Indeed you would hardly know it.’

  ‘Indeed I hardly know her. Tell me of her.’

  ‘She is safe, as we are not. Yet she is afraid of everything – as we are not.’

  ‘Afraid of what?’ asked Elizabeth, rising and going over to the fire, where she stood and poked the logs with her toe, less for the warmth than for the pleasure of seeing the leaping flames sparkle on her jewelled shoes. Some of the flames burned ice-blue and green from salt; the logs must be driftwood that had floated on the open sea.

  The candlelit quartette round the table had dissolved into shadowed duets, Elizabeth and Robin standing by the fire while Harington had moved judiciously with his partner to the window-seat at the end of the room and, picking up the lute in his turn, began to improvise a tune for his sonnet to Isabella.

  ‘Afraid of what?’ repeated Elizabeth softly, absent-mindedly, as she looked at the blue flames and thought of ice-mountains a mile high floating slowly towards a ship no bigger than a nutshell beside them, and the figures of men like ants going up and down the rigging, vainly trying to steer her free.

  ‘Afraid of ill-health,’ he answered. ‘Of her servants. Of company. Of solitude.’

  ‘She must live in a dream,’ said Elizabeth; she forgot Amy and her eyes grew bright, staring at the fire. ‘Only danger is real and difficulty. Yet we live to make our lives safe – and those of others. That is what I will live to do for my country – if I live to win to it.’ (But at this moment she knew she would.) ‘She shall never go to war if I can prevent it. I will fight my own people to keep them from fighting, for as long as can be. Never fight, until it is unsafe not to fight, unsafe for our souls as well as our bodies. Then fight for their safety – but when it is won, remember that safety itself is unsafe. For what is safety? It is a sleepy thing. It does not make one happy. It does not remind one that it is good to be alive. Life is taken for granted, so it is no longer a surprise. It grows dull and monotonous, one lives as a tree or a cabbage or a cow in the straw of the byre. Our forefathers scorned ‘‘a straw death.’’ A straw life is worse.’

  Her face looked beautiful at this moment with the firelight leaping up on it, and her talk of danger inflamed him, for he felt her to be dangerous as well as beautiful. To love her would be a wild adventure. He longed to essay it, as a young knight might long to prove his manhood in some desperate action. What a trophy her love would be! Yet how difficult to begin to make it when she talked thus, like one young man with another.

  He had brought over the wine flagon and their glasses to a little stool, and now held hers out to her.

  ‘You think too much. Don’t think. Drink.’

  She motioned it away. ‘I don’t want any more.’

  ‘It will make you let go of yourself.’

  ‘The last thing I wish, or dare.’

  ‘You’ve nothing to fear from me.’

  ‘I am not sure.’

  ‘It would warm your eyes,’ he said, trying to laugh, for her cold glance made him shiver. Her careless gaiety with him had masked an icy self-control that would always give her the whip-hand over others. But God’s blood! could she not hold rule and yet be human?

  ‘Your father was the greatest King England ever had, and he drank deep, God rest his soul!’

  ‘It did not rest his mind. It was observed that he frequently held quite different opinions after dinner from those he had expressed before. No, I fear drink as I fear dea
th – who came nearest to catching me in a jug of brandy posset drunk by a faithful friend.’

  But she did not tell him how Cat Ashley had once betrayed her. He said almost casually, ‘Do you fear death much?’

  ‘Lying awake at night, yes.’

  ‘If I were with you then, you should not fear it. Our love would kill death.’

  It had come so simply, inevitably, that instead of excitement a hush fell on both their spirits, stilling the quick stir of antagonism roused by their dispute over the wine. He was still holding out her glass and looking at each other, they did not notice that it had tilted and was spilling over the floor.

  ‘Stay with me here,’ he whispered, ‘if only for an hour or two. Harington will take back that little brown mouse and I will tell them we are following.’

  She gave no sign in answer; her eyes were inscrutable. He hurried on in a low urgent voice, ‘Give me one hour of life, one golden hour, and death may take all the rest if he will – and maybe he will not. We’ll make Fate our spaniel – spurn her, and she will fawn on us.’

  ‘And maybe she will not. I’ll not lose the rest of my life for the sake of an hour with you, my sweet Robin. Your love may last an hour, or your lifetime, but I want to live—’ and in a gasp she added, ‘as long as England shall last.’

  ‘Oh Queen, live for ever!’ he laughed, ‘and if you take me for your lover, why should that prevent it?’

  ‘It would have only one degree less danger than to take Courtenay.’

  ‘Did you ever wish to?’ he asked quickly. She shook her head, without coquetry, then saw the wine dripping on the floor and gave a high strained laugh. He put down the glass in annoyance and recovered himself by mocking her. ‘That is because you would not drink it – a waste of good wine! And love is the wine of life – will you waste that too?’

  But she had turned away, and he saw, unbelievingly, that she was not listening to him. She called to Isabella, who rose with meek reluctance. They muffled their cloaks round them so as to be unrecognizable, and Harington said it would be safer if Isabella and he went in front to guard against any possible encounter.

  They slid through the door, Robin stepped quickly after them with Elizabeth beside him, and closed it in her face. She dashed forward to open it again, but he flung his arms round her and beat savage kisses down on her hair and face, searching for her lips. Suddenly she raised her head and gave them to him in a hungering kiss. They clung together, swayed, fell back upon the long hearth-seat. He had her now to do with as he wished, and he since last July had been a monk.

  Her eyes in the shadow beneath him had softened to a pale gleam of desire; they opened wide upon him in wonder that was all joy, but even in that instant a change flashed into them, she seemed to be looking up, not at him but at someone behind him. A cold fear shot across him even as he bent over her, blotting out that look with his kisses, and surely he had conquered it, for her body leaped towards him, answering his passion with as fierce a flame.

  Yet as he held her, too close to see her, he felt her spirit escaping him; he was having to fight for her, who had just now been his perfect conquest; his arms enclosed an empty shell, she was no longer there. Desperately he tried to force her back into that wild moment of surrender, and now he was having to fight her body as well as her spirit, a losing fight, for this was not how he wished to take her, and his strength was of no avail against her mind.

  ‘Why do you turn from me?’ he cried. ‘You were mine this moment, all mine, and now—’

  ‘You are not the only man here.’

  ‘Have you gone mad? What are you looking at?’

  Was it the Admiral she saw behind his shoulder? He dared not ask her, but she guessed his thought. ‘Yes,’ she said, ‘I see him – but not with my waking eyes.’

  ‘You have gone cold – cold as ice. You were like a flame just now. Oh, come back to me, my leaping flame, come back and let me love you, bring you such joy as you have never dreamed of.’

  ‘No, no, love brings terror, agony, endless suspicion – not a soul one can trust – all spies, a thousand listening, whispering spies opening a thousand little secret spy-holes to peer into one’s very soul and whisper about it and mutter all together and then shout foul charges, proclaim them through the land and howl, howl for blood.’

  She was shivering uncontrollably as in an ague, she pressed her hands to her head, which swam in sick revulsion as the past came whirling back upon her. At fifteen she had been betrayed unwittingly by her closest friend; had demanded to come to Court to show she was not with child, had insisted on it being proclaimed by Parliament through the whole country; had been watched month after month by enemies wearing the guise of guardians and servants, so that even when she heard of her lover’s execution she had had to force herself to speak quite coolly, without emotion; the icebergs had closed in on her soul while it ran like an ant up and down the rigging to seek escape. Was she to go through all that again?

  ‘Never, never!’ she cried. ‘Give myself to you here in the Tower, where he was done to death, horribly, savagely, for me?’

  ‘As I would die for you! As men will always long to die for you. Life or death, I’d take them both from your hands, and you’d make them glorious.’

  He tried to woo her again, to coax and crush down her resistance, but it was no use. A dead man won that fight.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Nothing was the same next day in the little garden. Nobody was there, no children were playing in it, and nobody came through the garden door. Mrs Coldeburn made no pretext to leave, and Elizabeth dared not ask her if she felt cold and would like to fetch a cloak, she dared not ask her anything, she made a little perfunctory conversation about the weather, about the prospects of this new Northern sea route – how odd that one never finds what one seeks! Ameryk and Columbus were looking for Cathay and discovered the New Indies, and so was the Edward Bonaventure, and found Muscovy.

  ‘Truly the world is fall of surprises,’ remarked Mrs Coldeburn. Her tone was very dry. Elizabeth thought it safer to say nothing; she walked up and down in silence; her hour of exercise seemed to last a day, so pulsing and long-drawn-out was her suspense.

  Next day and the next, nothing happened, but on the fourth, just as she was turning to go in again, she heard a shrill childish voice calling, ‘Madam – Madam Elizabeth!’

  It came from the door that led to the residences of the officers of the Tower, through which the children had come. She ran to it and tried to open it, but it was locked. ‘What is it, Henry?’ she cried. ‘What has happened?’

  ‘I can bring you no more flowers,’ he called back through the keyhole.

  ‘Why are you locked out? What is the matter?’

  ‘No – more – flowers—’ Henry repeated in a loud wail as a woman’s footsteps came running on the other side of the door. There was the sound of a scolding, a scuffle, a yell of rage from Henry, a slip, and it was plain that he was being borne away protesting.

  There was nothing for Elizabeth to do but to go indoors with all her questions unanswered. Isabella knew nothing and was incoherent with anxiety about Sir John Harington.

  The silence thickened. The garden remained still and empty. There were no longer any children playing in it, no more visits nor messages from Robin Dudley, no more flowers.

  Elizabeth’s heart seemed to have stopped dead during these endless spring days of cold sunshine and east wind and harsh light evenings and the shrill mockery of birds singing, free to mate and fly where they willed. Poets were heartless fools to write of spring as a season of hope and joy; its brightness was cruel as a sword’s. And all the time she walked in silence or tried to read or embroider (she was allowed no pens nor paper with which to write) the question thumped within her – ‘Am I to go through that again?’

  At last she heard reports of what had happened, through her servants who brought food for her household into the Tower. Gardiner had got wind of her meetings with the children – and with a
nyone else? No, only the children, but the Chancellor was fully alive to the danger of conspirators of three to five years old. Why should Henry Martin carry flowers to the Princess whom he had never seen, unless suborned to do it by some traitor who had grasped this means of sending notes to her concealed in the bouquets?

  The child was closely questioned but gave nothing away. He was promised sweets and a painted hobby-horse, he was threatened with a whipping. Neither could move him from his statement that he had wanted to see the Princess for himself to see if her hair were like a waistcoat, and it wasn’t, and now might he have the hobby-horse? But he was only given more threats of punishment if he tried to see the Princess again – which, however, had so little edict that he ran straight from his ordeal to the garden door to tell his new friend he could no longer come to her.

  Gardiner, still hot on the scent of the flowers, suspected that old fool Arundel, who had lost his head so completely over the Princess that he too was now committed to the Tower. He drew blank there, and then thought that of course it must be that young fool Courtenay. But that ungallant lad swore hotly that he never wished to have anything to do with the Princess again and would fly England rather than marry an icicle and a firebrand combined, who brought trouble to everyone. Look at Wyatt! Easy enough to do so now his head was stuck high over Traitors’ Gate!

  Wyatt, executed at last, had made a speech on the scaffold declaring both Elizabeth and Courtenay – a surprising, even cynical addition – free of any complicity in his rising. Weakened by long torture, he yet made his statement of their innocence defiantly, carelessly, as though half amused by the uproar it would cause.

  For the Londoners rioted with joy at the exoneration of the Princess, they trooped through the streets shouting defiance to the Government, telling them to deliver their darling from the power of the dog – or, as some said, of the bitch.

  They lit bonfires and danced round them and drank healths to ‘the young one – the red-haired one – Old Harry’s own!’