by Susan Kay
“I’m sorry, madam. I shall have to report the matter.”
“Surely that’s not necessary. You can see well enough what has happened. Have you no children of your own?”
He lowered his eyes. “I have five, madam—and another on the way. That’s why—” he faltered.
“Why you can’t afford to risk your place.” She smiled suddenly. “Yes—I understand. Do whatever you feel is necessary.”
Immeasurably relieved, he bowed and hurried away with the keys. The other two children crowded round Elizabeth, jealous of the sudden prominence of one they only permitted to tag along on sufferance.
“Cry-baby,” mocked Henry, as Elizabeth took out her own handkerchief to wipe Katherine’s face. “They were the wrong keys anyway. Yow!” His voice shot up an octave in pained surprise as Elizabeth’s hard hand came down sharply on the back of his head.
“You nasty little turd!” she said furiously. “If you don’t say you’re sorry for that I’ll turn you inside out!”
He took a halting step backwards, with one hand to his ear, and looked at his fairytale princess with wary respect.
“How do you turn someone inside out?” piped Susanna.
Elizabeth glanced ominously at the silent boy.
“Watch very closely and I’ll show you how it’s done.”
The children scattered before her challenge and Henry ran for his life. Elizabeth cut off his retreat to the gate, chased him round the flowerbeds, and finally cornered him against the high stone wall, where his belligerence crumpled into screams of delighted terror.
“Don’t—oh, please don’t! I’m sorry, Katherine, I’m sorry, I’m sorry—”
He flung his arms around Elizabeth’s waist and buried his face in the stomacher of her gown. She held him close until the quivering sobs died away, then sat on the grass in a puff of dull green skirts and pulled him down beside her. She kissed the top of his tumbled hair and looked down on him with quiet amusement.
“I didn’t frighten you, did I?”
“Oh no!” he lied on a hasty gulp. “Not one bit.”
“That’s what I thought. So that’s all right then, isn’t it?”
“Yes.” He was watching her long hair flying out like copper snakes in the breeze and Elizabeth studied him calmly; there was nothing in her manner to suggest the sudden panic which had seized her. The guard would take those keys to the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower, who in his turn would lay the matter before the Council. And if everything that had taken place in this garden was suddenly subjected to close scrutiny, it might be that her life and Robin Dudley’s lay unbelievably in the hands of a five-year-old boy.
A boy, moreover, whose ear was still brilliant red from her ill-considered blow.
“Harry,” she said softly, “will you do something for me—something secret, like a knight of the Round Table?”
“A real secret?” he breathed. “Something the others don’t know about?”
She nodded. “Just you and me. Our own very special secret about the flowers you bring me.”
“But Lord Robert sends the flowers.”
Mentally she cringed, and had to force herself to smile nonchalantly.
“If anyone should ask you questions, you must say nothing about Lord Robert. Nothing at all. It’s very important, Harry—will you promise me?”
“Can we swear a pact?”
She laughed with relief. “If you like.”
And so they sat in the cool April sunlight, spitting on palms and pressing thumbs, while the Lord Lieutenant watched from a window above and absently fingered the keys in his hand.
* * *
Henry Martin stood in a narrow, ill-lit room surrounded by the bearded faces of men who ruled his father’s life. They did not threaten to turn him inside out, but they were looking at him as though they would dearly like to do it.
“Come here,” said the Lord Lieutenant and Henry came, not very willingly.
“Do you know what a lie is, young man?” inquired the mighty master of this domain.
“Oh yes, sir. A lie is a very wicked thing.”
“Just so,” agreed the gentleman severely. “So you will not tell lies to us, will you, Henry?”
“No, sir.”
The Lord Lieutenant glanced along the row of faces and back to the boy before him.
“You visited the Lady Elizabeth and took her flowers. We would like to know what was in those posies, my boy.”
“Well—” Henry considered a moment. “They were mostly bluebells and just a few of those tall—”
The Lord Lieutenant coughed. “Did anyone give you a letter to put in with the flowers?”
“No, sir!” The small face was quite genuinely baffled now; the ring of elderly gentlemen congealed into a tightly knit whispering group and then re-formed around him once more.
“Have you ever visited a prisoner called Edward Courtenay ?”
“No, sir.”
“Sir Thomas Wyatt?”
“No, sir.”
More muttering and mumbling followed, only splinters of which were audible to the boy.
“Gardiner’s furious—who allowed it to take place?”
“The prison’s crammed to bursting point—can’t have eyes everywhere you know—and besides it’s obviously been innocent enough—”
“Aye, innocent this time, thank God—there’ll not be a next.”
The Lord Lieutenant swung round at last to the boy’s father.
“You, sir! You’re responsible for all this trouble. You will keep your crafty knave at home in future—and you, my boy, you are not to see the Princess again, do you understand?”
“Yes, sir.” The voice was obedient, but the face was fiercely mutinous as he walked out of the room with his father’s hand on his shoulder.
Henry’s parents took the Lord Lieutenant’s rebuke very seriously and it was three days before the little boy was allowed to set foot outside their apartments on the sound promise of a good whipping if he dared to disobey.
He hung around outside the garden, kicking a stone in apparent indifference, and then, seeing no-one was watching, he sidled over to the garden gate and pushed it hard. It was locked now, but through the chinks in the wood he could see her walking, alone except for her guards. He hammered on the gate and yelled her name and a minute later he heard her low, breathless voice on the other side.
“What happened, Harry—tell me quickly.”
“I can’t come any more. I can bring you no more flowers.” He stopped shouting and his voice became a whisper she could only just hear. “I didn’t tell, Madam Elizabeth—I didn’t tell.”
Through the gaps in the wooden gate she watched him flee down the path and felt an absurd pricking at the back of her eyes. She never saw any of them again. The children were gone and with them the dragons and the dreams; life was real once more and threatening to prove terrifyingly short.
News came that Mary had collapsed with what might well prove to be a fatal illness, and Gardiner, knowing how little he would have to hope for if Elizabeth came to the throne now, at last took the desperate gamble which had been at the back of his mind for a few weeks.
Hard on the news of the Queen’s illness, came the death warrant for Elizabeth’s immediate execution.
* * *
The Lord Lieutenant of the Tower sat close to the fire in the stone hearth and stared at the death warrant which had been delivered with strict instructions to act at once and in secret.
The warrant had been signed by Gardiner for the Queen in her indisposition; Gardiner, the head of the Council, the most powerful man in England; Gardiner who must be very sure of the Queen’s secret desires to dare this.
The Lord Lieutenant buried his face in his hands and told himself that no one could blame him for acting on the authority of this document.
Indeed, refusal to act upon this direct command would very likely cost him his post—and Gardiner would see to it that he got no other. So he must go to her now and tell her that she must die tomorrow, die secretly and shamefully without trial or legal warrant.
He rose slowly with the document in his hand and stared out of the window to the place where so short a time ago the Lady Jane’s scaffold had stood. It would take several hours to build a new one and he would have to give the order immediately if it was to be done in time. He wondered, with idle curiosity, how she would go to that death and with the memory of that scene at Traitor’s Gate still fresh in his mind, he imagined she was likely to kick up quite a fuss. It was always unpleasant when they had to be dragged and held down, much better when they behaved with calm dignity, in a decent manner—and oddly enough most of them did when it came to it. Guildford Dudley had been a blubbering wreck, but he had found courage at the last moment, while his young wife had conducted the whole business like a lesson in deportment. Only once, when they had tied the blindfold around her eyes, had Jane groped for the block in a wild panic, crying, “Where is it? Where is it?”
Bridges had watched it all without a flicker of emotion for it was a familiar part of his job and he was not a sentimental man; proprietors of the slaughterhouse seldom are. He turned calmly to the door, and there he paused and remembered the Queen, so notoriously sentimental, so very unpredictable. And suddenly his vision was clear and true. He saw Gardiner smoothly disclaiming all knowledge of the warrant in question, once the deed had been safely executed.
“Bridges exceeded his authority and anticipated your order…oh, yes, madam, I quite agree…a gross dereliction of duty…an outrage. And I’m afraid I must suggest, for the sake of Your Majesty’s good name…”
Bridges cut off his vision, like a man snapping shut the pages of a book; he knew damn well what Gardiner would suggest to the Queen!
His desk was only a step away; he took up his pen and inked it firmly. Let Gardiner find himself another scapegoat.
Disgrace was unpleasant, but it was infinitely preferable to the hangman’s noose at Tyburn. He wrote at once to the Bishop, regretting his inability to act on so great a matter without the direct authority of the Queen.
* * *
“…It is not only difficult, but well nigh impossible to foresee what the English may do, whose natural character is inconsistent, faithless and treasonable; a character they have always exhibited and which the whole course of their actions and of their history has proved to be just.”
Simon Renard had written his general curse against the perfidy of the English several months earlier and by April he had very little cause to change his opinion. Wyatt had gone to his death as last, exonerating Elizabeth from all part in his rebellion, and the people had danced in the streets in spite of all the efforts to suppress the information. The entire city was racked once more with religious agitators, opposition to the Spanish match, and fierce popular support of the imprisoned princess. Renard wrote home glumly that the whole Council was split from top to bottom, with quarrels and ill-will becoming so public that several councillors, out of spite, no longer attended the meetings. The Queen was powerless to control the divisions.
“She spends her days shouting at the Council but with no results.”
No results, stalemate, impotent futility—they were crumbling bricks upon which Mary seemed to have built her entire life. She had martyred herself for her mother’s sake during her father’s reign and martyred herself for her faith during her brother’s, with nothing to show for it. “Nothing” was the keynote of her whole existence; even her marriage hung in meaningless limbo. Legally she was now Philip’s wife, but Renard still insisted that the Prince of Spain could not set foot in England while London remained in such turmoil. And his advice was constant: remove Elizabeth!
But it was no longer so simple. Elizabeth’s image had taken root in the popular imagination with wart-like tenacity; to execute her now would be to kill all hope of reconciling England to Philip. Gardiner’s attempt Mary had allowed to pass unpunished, and the halfheartedness of her rebuke had only emphasised her bitter disappointment at the failure.
Remove Elizabeth, said Renard—if not from the world then certainly from the capital. And so a new prison and a new gaoler were chosen—the place Woodstock Palace, a broken-down hunting lodge barely fit for human habitation, the guardian Sir Henry Bedingfield. The very name alone would be sufficient to strike fear into her sister’s heart, for Bedingfield’s father had had custody of Katherine of Aragon at Kimbolton Castle, presiding over her dispirited and neglected death within those walls. A fitting choice, thought Mary. Elizabeth’s notorious charm would make no inroads on Sir Henry’s loyalty. He was a stickler for rules and regulations; wooden, humourless, incorruptible—and old, too old to care for natural curls and a pretty smile. Bedingfield was safe from her wiles.
Mary sat alone in her bedchamber, staring darkly into the flickering red fire. She knew what Renard expected of her now, once Elizabeth was quietly out of the public gaze. She knew too that it would be easy to arrange. There were poisons that killed slowly, evincing the symptoms of recognised illnesses. If Elizabeth were to die quietly, privately, at Woodstock, after a decent interval of time, who could point a finger at the Queen who had already saved her from execution, against the advice of her own chief ministers?
Bedingfield was loyal—a devoted Catholic. She had only to give the word and it would be done. It would be done; and how many problems it would solve. The Protestant opposition, bereft of its figurehead, would fall into disarray. The next claimant to the throne was Mary Stuart and the malcontents of England were unlikely to champion a French Catholic against their reigning monarch. Remove Elizabeth and the seething unrest would wither away into sullen resignation to the status quo. And there were times—dark soul-searching nights like this—when Mary knew she was capable of giving that order.
Kill her! whispered a cold serpent of fear in Mary’s head. Kill her before Philip sets eyes upon her! She is possessed—I know it is so. How else could she seduce good men from their allegiance—men like Sussex and Arundel who were her sworn enemies? She will take Philip from me, as her mother stole my father. So kill her, kill her soon, before she has the chance. It will be no sin to do it, it will not be murder but—exorcism. I shall set her soul free and when we meet again in eternal life, she will thank me for it—my little sister—the child I once loved…
She got up stiffly and went to kneel at her prie-dieu, praying for guidance until the velvet cushion was wet with her tears. Was it God’s will that she should kill her father’s child—or was it her own, born of a jealousy that placed her on the same level as the woman she hated?
“Murder is always murder,” said Katherine of Aragon’s voice, pure and true above the whispering darkness in her mind. And it was so, she knew it was. Murder could not be dressed up in a cloak of respectability, and motives could not be hidden from God who would one day judge her, as she was already judging herself. She could not imperil her immortal soul by sinking to murder.
A gleam of light stole through the casement and played upon the benevolent stone smile of the Virgin. It was morning and Mary had not slept again, but the shadow on her soul had lifted a little. There was an alternative. Marriage would remove Elizabeth from England almost as effectively as death. The Duke of Savoy had sued for her hand more than once and as a Spanish vassal would control her more surely than any gaoler.
It was the best solution, the only solution.
Mary left the prie-dieu for her desk and there wrote out the order that would release her sister from the Tower.
* * *
When Sir Henry Bedingfield with a hundred men at arms, all dressed in blue, approached the Tower and surrounded the Princess’s apartments, Elizabeth, who had been informed of nothing, jumped to the very reasonable assumption that they had arrived to escort her to execu
tion.
“But they’ll have to wait,” she muttered savagely. “Oh yes, I’ll make them wait until they send me the sword of a French executioner! Where is the Lord Lieutenant of the Tower? Say I demand to see him at once.”
He found her waiting for him in the window-seat, clasping her hands firmly in her lap so that he should not have the pleasure of watching them tremble.
“Has the Lady Jane’s scaffold been removed?” she asked bluntly.
“Yes, madam. Why do you ask?”
She laughed shortly and pointed to the window.
“Do you tell me all those armed men are not for me after all?”
“For you certainly, madam, but there’s no cause for alarm I assure you. You are to leave the Tower.”
“Leave!” She stared at him with open disbelief. “Never tell me I am to be set at liberty!”
“No, madam.” He shifted his weight to the other foot, a little uncomfortable to see the colour flood into her pinched face. “My orders are to consign you to the charge of Sir Henry Bedingfield.”
“And what are his orders, do you know?” Her voice was sharp with sudden anxiety; she was beginning to sense the possibility of even greater danger.
“You are to be conveyed to Woodstock, madam.”
She nodded absently, as though his words had just confirmed her private suspicion.
“So—” she whispered, “it is to be murder after all.”
The Lord Lieutenant stiffened indignantly.
“Madam, Sir Henry is an honest and courageous gentleman who will do you no harm. He is a true knight.”
“Yes. My sister’s!” She stood up suddenly and fixed him with a piercing glance. “Can you deny that if murder were secretly committed to his charge his conscience would be too dainty to execute it?”
Beneath her steely gaze Bridges lowered his own eyes to the floor.
“Madam—as to that—”
“You cannot say, of course, how could you?”
He looked up and found she was smiling.
“May my next gaoler be as courteous as you, sir. I thank you for your gentle care of me.”
