First she wanted a volume of Cicero, and then a Latin version of the Psalms, and then an English Bible, and then leave to write to the Queen (whom she teased in her turn so that Mary said she would ‘have no more of her disguised and colourable letters’), and then leave to write to the Council, and then that Bedingfeld should act as her secretary, which was awkward when she insisted on his writing to them that she was worse treated than a prisoner in the Tower, and on second thoughts, worse treated than the worst prisoner in Newgate.
Bedingfeld’s bull-dog tenacity on his conscience was strained to breaking-point. He could never make out what ‘this great lady’ was at, or would be at next; nor what all her rather shady friends were at, when they stayed near by for weeks together down at the local inn at the sign of the Bull – Parry and young Verney and hosts of others whose business was never properly explained.
Yet Elizabeth knew only too well the danger she was in: that English councillors were advising the Queen that ‘there would be no more peace for England till the Lady Elizabeth’s head were smitten from her shoulders’ – and by how much the more must her Spanish counsellors now be urging it? Renard had always wanted her death; and surely the new young husband, whose every wish Mary longed slavishly to obey, must now be doing the same. How then was she still alive?
There came a day when she thought she would not have to ask this much longer, for the King and Queen sent for her to be brought to them, still a prisoner, at Hampton Court. She was lodged at the Gate House on the river at a little distance from the Palace, and for some days heard no more. Then one night late, when she had begun to go to bed, there came a summons for her to go at once to the Queen’s chamber in the Palace.
To get such a command at this hour of night, without any warning, must mean only one thing, and it was plain that Sir Henry Bedingfeld thought so too; his plump cheeks had gone a bluish-grey above his bushy beard, and his round eyes looked at her in rueful astonishment.
‘It looks,’ she said coolly, ‘as though your disagreeable duties as jailor will soon be over.’
To her amazement he sank slowly, heavily upon his knees. ‘Your Grace,’ he begged, ‘do not give me that harsh name. I have, rather, been your guardian, if you did but know – and more than once from secret murder.’
‘I know that. Get up and spare your gout, man. I wish all my foes were as true friends as yourself.’
He seized and kissed her hand and she felt his tears upon it. ‘God’s death, but I must be in a bad way!’ she said, trying to laugh, and then to her horror found she was crying too, and shaking so much that as he rose he put his bulky arm round her for support.
Then he led her through the thick darkness of the gardens with the torches of their attendants flickering now on the black running river below, now on the tall trunks, the forked branches of the waiting trees. Torchlight, firelight, burning, wood and faggot light, this would be the light of a sacrificial pyre. Two or three weeks ago the burnings for heresy had begun. She wished she had not asked for that English Bible.
Now they were going through the Palace courtyards, and the light struck up on to the red brick arches that had once been crowned with her mother’s initials intertwined with King Henry’s, and then her initial had been erased to make way for others. And now they passed the great stairway to the Chapel where another wife of her father’s had been dragged shrieking from him to her death. They said you could still hear those shrieks sometimes at night even now. She might well hear their warning tonight.
But no sound came through the darkness but their own footsteps (would later years hear those too?), and now they were inside the Palace and going up to the Queen’s apartments. And now she was in the Queen’s own room, and the Queen sat huddled on a low seat at the end of it, alone. So her chief enemy was still hidden. Would she never see him?
The Queen spoke and went on speaking, and, as always, asking questions, but Elizabeth could not tear her thoughts away from the invisible figure that stood behind all these words, the prince of Mary’s every thought and action. What he willed, that would Mary do. What then did he will towards herself?
Mary was now commanding, now almost imploring her to confess her guilty share in the plots against her. Elizabeth denied it. ‘Then,’ said the Queen, ‘you must think that you have been wrongfully imprisoned.’
She could not collect her wits against these snares. Something was distracting her, some sense that what she or Mary said was not the important thing in this interview, that there was some other mightier power to be placated. She ceased to protest her loyalty, her orthodoxy; she fell silent listening, she did not know for what, and suddenly she exclaimed in a voice ringing and vibrant as a girl’s pleading with a lover, ‘Oh, I beseech you to have a good opinion of me!’
There was a faint rustle somewhere in the room. Elizabeth started and looked around her, but the Queen paid no attention, she continued to accuse and question, and now Elizabeth spoke in answer, but not to her sister. Someone else was listening to her, she knew it, and all her future depended on the impression she might make on this unknown audience. What she said might matter little, might not be fully understood; but how she said it mattered above all. Her voice could be beautiful as the throbbing of a lute, young, eager, passionate, and she made it so now.
The Queen grew uneasy, she tried to check her sister, though she had before been urging her to speak; she walked restlessly about the room, moving near to a gilded leather screen in a corner. She said on a forcedly kindly note, ‘You may be speaking truth – God knows! Quien sabe!’ she added loudly, striking her hands together.
Why should she speak in Spanish? It must be a signal – the signal for her death? Elizabeth’s control broke. She cried out, ‘Someone is there behind the screen!’
A young man stepped out from behind it, with such majesty that instead of eavesdropping he might have been a god now choosing to manifest himself to human eyes. The candlelight flowed over his smooth fair head and pale golden beard, making his black velvet dress a glistening shadow. He was slight and small, but no one would have dared to notice it. He said in slow and careful English, ‘It was the Queen’s wish that I should hear you, Madam, before I met you. It is the wish of both of us that you should attend our Court. You are our dear sister, no longer prisoner.’
He bowed low, and she, forcing herself to conquer her trembling, sank to the ground in a deep curtsy, her bright head bowed till it all but touched her knee. Then as she rose, so slowly, with such exquisite balance, her downcast white eyelids rose also, with no timid fluttering but as slowly and steadfastly as her now upright body.
Their bared eyes met like swords at the salute before a duel.
A duel, both knew it, had begun between them, though whether of love, or of enmity and hate, or of all these, they knew nothing; only that from this moment a link of fierce passion would bind them together, inexorable, inescapable, till death alone should sever it.
It was to last for nearly half a century.
About the Author
MARGARET IRWIN (1889–1969) was a master of historical fiction, blending meticulous research with real storytelling flair to create some of the twentieth century’s best-loved and most widely acclaimed novels, including The Galliard and Young Bess.
By Margaret Irwin
The Galliard
Young Bess
Elizabeth, Captive Princess
Elizabeth and the Prince of Spain
If you enjoyed Elizabeth, Captive Princess,
look out for the next book in Margaret Irwin’s
Elizabeth trilogy …
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ELIZABETH AND THE PRINCE OF SPAIN
Philip, Prince of Spain, the unwilling bridegroom of Queen Mary, has been warned about the Queen’s half-sister, the young Elizabeth. According to all report
s, she is a heretic, a rebel and a potential enemy, and has ‘a spirit full of enchantment’. An alluring description and one that immediately intrigues, rather than deters, the foreign prince.
Accused of treachery by Mary and under threat of death, Elizabeth’s life hangs in the balance. Only Philip, idolised by his ageing wife and able to sway her decisions, holds the power to save the courageous young princess. And so Elizabeth must advance warily towards her destiny, running the gauntlet between Bloody Mary’s jealousy and Philip’s uneasy ardour.
Copyright
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First published in Great Britain in 1948.
This ebook edition published by Allison & Busby in 2013.
Copyright © 1999 by THE ESTATE OF MARGARET IRWIN
The moral right of the author is hereby asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means without the prior written permission of the publisher, nor be otherwise circulated in any form of binding or cover other than that in which it is published and without a similar condition being imposed on the subsequent buyer.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 978–0–7490–1257–1
Elizabeth, Captive Princess Page 26
