by Susan Kay
She looked up at him with a white-lipped smile of urchin innocence.
“Yes,” she agreed quietly, “such a shame, isn’t it?—and velvet never washes. I expect she’ll have to have the whole thing refurbished.”
He suddenly saw there was absolutely no point in inquiring why she had not managed to lean over the side in time.
“Get her a bowl,” he said curtly, and turned away before anyone could surprise a rather disloyal smile on his heavy face.
They set out along the frozen lanes at a snail’s pace, with Howard stubbornly insisting they could travel no more than seven miles a day. It was an unheard-of pace, even in this weather, but he was more fond of his great-niece than he dared to admit, and was deaf to all protest from the Queen’s officers of deliberate delay.
The news of Lady Jane’s execution eventually reached them at Redburn, and Elizabeth was crushed into silence when she heard it. Behind the swaying curtains, her mind flew back to Chelsea, to those jealous days when Jane had first intruded on her gay life with Queen Katherine and the Admiral.
“If it please Your Grace, the Lord Admiral says you are to play with me.”
“Tell the Lord Admiral I don’t play with little girls.”
She wept for the cousin to whom she could have shown more kindness, and now, for the first time, she began to weep a little for herself. Of what use to struggle for delay and plan the best line of defence to the Council? If Mary could kill Jane, then there was nothing left to hope for.
An icy gale sprang up, swirling snow and sleet under the curtains of the swaying litter, and she huddled beneath her furs, her long fingers blue with cold. By the time they reached Highgate, the storm had become a blizzard and Elizabeth was too ill to care any more what waited at her journey’s end. She was only dimly aware of Howard carrying her upstairs to her bed and standing over her while Kat forced aqua vitae between her rigid lips.
“It’s barbarous,” Kat was sobbing wildly, “truly barbarous, my lord. She’s the King’s daughter and she’ll be dead before we reach the palace—is that what they want?”
Howard chafed Elizabeth’s cold hands and swore softly, for he too had begun to think it more than likely. Cardinal Wolsey had died on his way to the Tower and therefore spared Henry the unpleasant necessity of disposing of him. But Howard was damned if he’d hand his great-niece over to the Queen in her coffin, however convenient it might prove to the government. He stormed out of the room without a word and five minutes later the Queen’s doctors scuttled in, took one look at their patient, and hastily advised complete rest.
And so there was a whole week’s respite at Highgate while Renard spread the rumour across London that the swelling in her body had an excellent and obvious cause since she was no doubt with child again—whose child he neglected to say. Most assumed it was Courtenay’s; one or two pockets of opinion inclined towards Wyatt.
Elizabeth seethed with rage when she heard the rumours and on the morning of her departure insisted that her corset should be laced so tightly she could scarcely breathe. She dressed in white to proclaim her innocence, flung off the fur covers, and insisted the curtains of the litter should be drawn back so that the people who pressed to see the truth of that rumour would know it for the lie it was.
The London crowds who lined her way were silent and frightened and the gibbets which swung on every street corner were explanation enough for the mute eyes which followed her. The whole city was like a charnel-house.
“The most beautiful sights that can be seen in this town and indeed all over the country,” de Noailles had written home triumphantly, “are the gibbets on which hang some of the bravest and most gallant men that she had in her Kingdom. The prisons are full of the nobility and some of the most prominent people…” He was confident that prison would shortly contain the most prominent person of all—but not for long, not for long, eh? De Noailles was like a dog with two tails on the day Elizabeth was carried through the city gates, all displaying their fine array of heads and dismembered bodies like so much bunting. London stank with decaying flesh and Elizabeth stared ahead with unblinking eyes, swallowing hard, grimly determined not to disgrace herself before the watching crowds.
At Whitehall, the Lord Chamberlain hurried her to an obscure suite of rooms and separated her from most of her household, who were told to find lodgings in the city. She demanded to see the Queen and was told that was impossible; she would be denied all visitors and an armed guard would stand outside her chambers day and night. The rooms, which were cold and damp, had clearly not been in use for a long time and her few remaining servants fell to unpacking her belongings and lighting a fire. They put her to bed and she fell immediately into sleep, to be woken a little over an hour later by a resounding crash overhead. The noise was repeated at roughly ten-second intervals and sounded for all the world like heavy metal pots being flung around in the room above.
“God’s soul, Kat, what the hell is that?”
Kat went to inquire from the guards and came back looking grim.
“Apparently Your Grace is lodged beneath the Countess of Lennox’s apartments. The room above is a kitchen.”
Elizabeth stared at her, seemed about to flare up into one of her sudden rages, then suddenly sighed with tired resignation, and lay back on her pillows.
“Oh well,” she muttered, “I don’t suppose it can go on for long.”
But it did. Lady Lennox’s household were evidently insatiable eaters and her servants appeared to work in shifts. In desperation, Elizabeth sent a request that the activity should cease, and the racket was promptly doubled. By midnight she lay rigid with tension, bracing herself against the next crash, and her eyes were misty with unshed tears. She wanted to scream, but knew that once she had begun she would not be able to stop; and she would not give her tormentor that much satisfaction.
“How can she be so cruel?” whispered Markham dully from the side of the bed.
Elizabeth laughed shortly. “You don’t know the Countess of Lennox if you can ask that.”
“But she’s your cousin!”
“Just so.” Elizabeth’s voice was grim. “And if the Council should make a swift end of me, she and her pretty son, Darnley, will be a good step closer to the throne. It’s in her interests, you see, making sure I get no rest. Exhausted prisoners make mistakes—and one mistake is all they need now to take my head.” Suddenly she clenched her fists and bit savagely at her pillow. “If I get out of this alive, I’ll settle with that bitch one day, and her precious son! When I am Queen, you bitch-whelped Darnleys…oh God, when I am Queen…take care!”
* * *
Elizabeth clung to her sanity through a month of sleepless torture, while the Council collected its evidence against her. Lennox’s tactics, coupled with her illness and the endless weeks of waiting, shook her nerves beyond repair, but whenever her mind grew numb with exhaustion, she whipped it mercilessly into a frenzy of activity. Latin, Greek, mathematical formulae—she used her formidable education like a stone, sharpening her wits against it, honing it to a razor’s edge. When they came at last to interrogate her, the day after Wyatt had been sentenced to death, she was ready for them. She sat on a low stool with her hands demurely folded on her lap and stared squarely at the ten hostile men who faced her across the plain table.
Gardiner had primed them well and questions fired at her from all sides in quick succession, but she would not be panicked or stampeded into hasty answers. They could not budge her from her story, whatever angle they attacked it from. She had done nothing; she knew nothing.
Gardiner got to his feet in excitement. He thought he had found the first chink in her armour.
“Madam, you overplay your innocence—Wyatt himself admits he wrote to you—can you deny it?”
Slowly she raised her eyes to his in cool challenge “Where is my reply, my lord?”
A low mutter ran through t
he assembled councillors, like a rustle of wind through a field of corn, but Gardiner stilled it with a furious look.
“Wyatt will testify that he received a verbal reply,” he said quickly, aware, even as he said it, that that would not do, and seeing the faint curl of her lips which showed she knew it too. As he glared down at the ashen face beneath him, he took spiteful comfort from the black shadows under her eyes, like the smudge of two thumbprints on alabaster. In poor health himself, the long interrogation was taking its toll upon him and he could not believe that this sick, friendless girl was still defying them all.
“Madam,” he said grimly, “your only hope is to confess your fault and seek the Queen’s pardon.” But she had heard that tune before and knew it for the cruel trick that it was.
“Pardon is for the guilty, my lord,” she replied calmly. “I cannot be forgiven for a crime I have not committed.”
The arrogant assertion blotted his vision with red spots of rage. His face was livid as he pointed a finger at her and suddenly roared, “You! You are of equal guilt with the traitor Wyatt!”
“Prove it,” she countered softly. “Bring me to trial in open court and prove your case. Only then will it be time for you to give me advice.”
* * *
“She must go to the Tower, my lords!” Gardiner’s voice splintered the tense silence of the room and immediately the orderly air of the council chamber erupted into violent uproar. Above the shouting and pounding of fists upon the table came one indignant cry which voiced the feeling of many present.
“Good God, my lord, what evidence justifies so violent a measure?”
For a long time the quarrel raged to and fro in a bitter debate, until at last Gardiner got to his feet and banged on the table for silence. When it had descended, he glared balefully down their ranks.
“May I ask instead if any of you noble gentlemen would care to take charge of the lady in question?”
Even her staunchest supporters gawked at him in horrified disbelief. No one dared to be responsible for so notorious a lady and no one took up Gardiner’s sarcastic offer. He glanced down the table with a little smile of satisfaction and re-seated himself in quiet triumph.
“Then I perceive, gentlemen,” he said sardonically, “that we are in unanimous agreement at last.”
* * *
The Tower!
All the waiting, all the suffering, all those smooth clever answers for nothing. One hundred soldiers, their torches flickering in the darkness, paced the gardens beneath her window; and tomorrow they would take her away and shut her in “that place,” unless the Queen personally intervened.
All that night she sat and waited in vain for a summons from her sister. Early the next morning, the door opened at last and she started up from her stool; the Earl of Sussex and the Marquis of Winchester stood there, with their hats in their hands.
“My lords?”
“Madam,” announced Sussex gravely, “the barge is ready and the tide is right. You must come at once for the tide waits for no man.”
She stared wildly at Winchester’s blank face, and found it a carved mask of hostility, immovable as stone. To plead with him would be wasted breath. Instinctively she scanned Sussex’s stolid features, a huge weathered face framed by a shock of grey hair and grizzled beard. His nose and lips had an uncompromising line, but his eyes were a soft grey glimmer that might just mean pity. She reached out and laid her hand on his sleeve.
“My lord, let me see the Queen. Let me speak with her.”
But it was Winchester who answered, brisk, half angry.
“Out of the question, madam. Her Majesty refuses to see you under any circumstances.”
“Then let me write to her.”
“There is no time.” It was Winchester still, tugging his beard. “Totally inconvenient, and in my opinion,” he sniffed officiously, “it would do you more harm than good.”
Sussex remained silent, staring at her, and she saw his grey eyes were in agony now. Those eyes were her only hope and lifting her own she assaulted him with the full force of her charm.
“A few words only.” Her voice was a soft throb of appeal, a siren’s whisper which smote him to the heart. “I beg you, sir.”
The eyes capitulated, body and soul; his voice roared out suddenly. “Get her pen and ink. By God, I say she shall write.”
Winchester gasped. “My lord, are you aware—”
“Fully aware. I’ll answer to the Queen for it.” He went down on his knees and kissed her hand. “I’ll take your letter with my own hand, madam.” He had his reward; she smiled at him and said she would never forget. As he left her to write her letter in peace, he felt that smile would burn against his eyelids for the rest of his life.
She took her pen and began to write frantically, not a letter—there was no opening salutation—but a plain statement of her innocence and her loyalty, the first lines of which were a hammer blow to Mary’s conscience, the only part of her sister’s heart she now had any hope of touching.
If ever any did try this old saying “that a King’s word was more than another man’s oath” I most humbly beseech Your Majesty to verify it in me and to remember your last promise and my last demand, that I be not condemned without answer…which it seems I now am…
Beneath her window the soldiers tramped steadily, beating a tattoo in her mind. The Tower! The Tower! The Tower!
…To this present hour I protest before God whatsoever malice may devise, that I never practised, concealed nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person or dangerous to the state…Let conscience move Your Highness to take some better way with me.
The pen scratched on, ran dry and as she leaned forward to ink it, she heard the screech of fiddles and the gay babble of voices, she was once more sitting beside a great fireplace staring up into the haggard face of the man who had killed her lover. Against her conscious will, the painful memory poured out across the page.
I have heard in my time of many cast away for want of coming to the Presence of their Prince and in late days I heard my Lord Somerset say that if his brother had been suffered to speak with him he would never have died. But the persuasions made to him were so great that he was brought to believe he could not live safely if the Admiral lived…
She stared down hopelessly at the words. Why had she written that when after all it could serve no purpose other than to remind her sister that she might well have been a whore, like her mother before her. If she crossed it out, Mary would only wonder what she had tried to hide and there was no time to start again. She turned the page. Panic sent her words wavering drunkenly across the sheet; crossings out, omissions and frantic insertions began to litter her final paragraph.
…and for the copy of my letter sent to the French King, I pray God confound me eternally if ever I sent word, token or letter by any means and to this, my truth, I will stand to my death.
My death. The finality of that last phrase wiped her mind utterly blank. Almost two-thirds of the page was still empty, open to the forger’s pen. There must be something else she could say, but her mind, exhausted by the effort, crawled away into a dark corner and refused to play any more, like a sulky child. She scrawled slanting lines down the page, signed her name frantically and looked up to find the Earl of Sussex looking down at her. He was staring at those lines and his face, slowly flushing with dark colour, wore an expression of real pain.
“Forgive me,” she whispered as he reached over for the paper. “No, wait—I’ve thought of something more.”
There was a momentary tussle as she snatched the paper back and a huge blot half obliterated her signature at the foot. Over the top of it she scribbled quickly:
I most humbly crave but one word of answer from yourself.
* * *
She did not receive it.
Mary’s response to Elizabeth’
s letter knocked all the breath out of Sussex’s stolid body.
“You, sir, are travelling on the wrong path!” she screamed, and her rage held an undercurrent of half-demented jealousy. Sussex, one of her own staunchest supporters, was another helpless victim to the deadly lure of that witch’s daughter; no man was safe in Elizabeth’s presence, no man!
“You would never have dared do such a thing in my father’s time,” she roared. “Would to God he were alive again for a month to deal with you.”
Privately, Sussex saw precious little need for that. The great Henry himself could hardly have demoralised him more than this ferocious little woman in the grip of her father’s murderous rage. Both he and Winchester were very relieved to get out of her presence suffering nothing worse than disgrace.
“I hope you’re satisfied, you damned fool,” muttered Winchester. “I thought a man of your age would have had more sense than to let himself be taken in by a pair of pretty eyes.”
Sussex was strangely preoccupied.
“Yes,” he said vaguely, “it was the eyes that snared me—have you ever seen any quite like them?”
“No, I haven’t,” Winchester replied shortly, “and you can think yourself lucky it was only a letter and not your precious prisoner that you took to the Queen. In her present mood I swear she’d have killed her. For God’s sake, get a hold on yourself, man, and remember where your loyalties are supposed to lie. You can’t afford another show of partisanship.”
Sussex sighed. “We can’t leave now, we’ve missed the tide.”
“Which is no doubt what the young lady intended in the first place. Another night in the palace—another chance of a rescue. By God, we’ll need to keep our men vigilant tonight. I don’t suppose I need to tell you that if she escapes you and I will pay for it with our heads—we’d better double her guard.”
Next day it was Palm Sunday and rain was sluicing down steadily, misting the palace gardens with a grey cobweb curtain. While all good Londoners were in church, receiving their palms, Elizabeth was hurried down the lawn at Whitehall to the waiting barge. She noticed the Earl of Sussex staring straight ahead as though he was afraid to look at her. She cried out that she marvelled the nobility of the realm would suffer her to be led into captivity, but still he would not look at her.
