by Susan Kay
“The same duty that tied you to me?”
Her thin shoulders were shaking with sobs. There was nothing for it but to get on the bed beside her and speak a few soft words of comfort.
“It distresses me that you should doubt my motives,” he said at length in a pained tone. “Don’t you trust me, Mary?”
“Oh, yes.” She buried her ravaged face in his doublet. “Of course I trust you, my love.”
“Then you will show that trust by obliging me in this matter.”
She clung to him in terror; she had heard the threatening note in his voice. He was bored and homesick; it would take very little to drive him away.
“You will write to Bedingfield soon?” he prompted.
“Yes,” she said hopelessly against his shoulder, “I will write at once.”
So he had turned the key in the lock and opened the prison door. In spite of his satisfaction he felt a moment of real apprehension.
He was not entirely sure what he was releasing upon the world.
Much suspected of me
Nothing proved can be
Quoth Elizabeth, prisoner
That crude little phrase, etched on her window with a diamond ring, was Elizabeth’s defiant farewell to her imprisonment at Woodstock.
On a blustery April day, when early flowers were struggling in the hedgerows, she rode away from the gatehouse with a retinue of servants. It was more than fifteen months since she had been on horseback.
A teasing wind billowed out the ladies’ skirts and flung petulant bursts of rain in their faces. Bedingfield would not budge above a clumsy canter, and Elizabeth, feyed by the squallish weather, resisted a crazy impulse to take off across the fields and frighten the life out of him. She had grown curiously fond of him, but oh, what a bore he was with his endless authority.
Christ, if I am ever Queen no man in this world will ever say “must” to me again…
To the left of the muddy road lay a large house and along the track a well-dressed young man was running to meet them.
Elizabeth thought rapidly. The wind had already blown the sable hood down her back. When Bedingfield’s attention was diverted, she lifted her hand to her head and removed the central pin which held her heavy hair in place.
The next gust of wind brought a mass of loose curls tumbling wildly about her face. She cursed loudly and reined to a halt; when Bedingfield glanced round in alarm she gave him a helpless shrug and in that moment the young man drew abreast of her horse.
“Your Grace! We had word you would pass this way today. May I offer you the shelter of my own poor house in this abominable weather?”
She gave him that smile and held her hands out to be lifted from the saddle.
“Sir,” she said gaily, “if you were to offer me the shelter of a pig-sty I would be grateful.”
“Madam! I can’t possibly allow this!” Bedingfield had leaned over to take her arm aggressively. Anxious, blustering, he was quite unable to deal with the slightest change in plans and also most uncomfortably aware that she was not to be trusted with any young man of unknown loyalty.
She rounded on him furiously.
“Why, in God’s name?”
“Madam—my instructions—”
“I know your instructions. I have them by heart if you remember, but I don’t recall any item that says I shall sit under a hedge to do up my hair simply because you refuse to countenance a simple act of chivalry.”
“I repeat, madam—I cannot permit you to enter this gentleman’s house.”
She stared at him stonily. “You should be ashamed to call yourself a knight!”
She jumped down from her horse without assistance and swept across the road to sit down under the hedge in question. Two of her women hurried over to her and began to do battle with her hair. Bedingfield was left holding her horse’s bridle and staring at the young man in embarrassed silence.
Presently she came back, with the sable hood jammed on her head and her green riding habit covered with mud.
“Well,” she demanded coldly, “are you satisfied now?”
Clumsily he lifted her into the saddle and groped for her gloved hand.
“Your Grace knows I bear you no ill will. To receive discharge from this service without offence to the Queen would be the joyfullest tidings that ever came to me, as our Lord Almighty knows.”
She laughed outright as she looked down on him.
“Oh yes, I know how dearly you would love to be rid of me, Sir Henry. And, who knows, it may be sooner than you think, if I’ve misread the reason for this summons, after all.”
As she slipped her reins out of his quivering hand, she was amused by his horrified glance. Clearly he had not considered the possibility that he might be taking her to her death.
She rather hoped that Mary had not considered it either.
When they arrived at Hampton Court she was hustled in the back way so that none should see her and was packed off at once to the Gatehouse, once more the disgraced prisoner, almost the poor relation. The doors were locked upon her and for more than a fortnight she paced her rooms like a caged lioness. Oh, what a fool she had been to raise her hopes; nothing was changed. She had two heated confrontations with Gardiner and then the dreadful silence closed in again, leaving her to imagine the worst.
She lost track of time and the days began to merge into each other in endless tedium; even Woodstock had been better than this isolated limbo. Outside her window she could hear the laughter of the courtiers who came and went into the palace, but she had no part in their world. It was as though she had ceased to exist.
And then, at ten o’clock on a cold spring evening when she had just begun to go to bed, the door opened to admit Susan Clarencieux, Mary’s Mistress of the Robes. Behind her came Bedingfield, grey-faced with fright.
“Madam, you are commanded to wait upon Her Majesty at once.”
Elizabeth stood up. Her women had removed her coif and brushed out her hair which now hung to her waist.
“Now?” she whispered stupidly. “Now?”
Across the room her eyes met Bedingfield’s and saw them mirror her thought.
Queens don’t give audiences at ten o’clock at night. I am going to my death and he knows it.
Bedingfield shuffled across the room to take her cloak from the arms of a trembling maid. Wordlessly he wrapped it around her shoulders, fastened the clasp, and pulled the hood over her head exactly as though she were a small child.
“Come, Your Grace.” His gruff voice was hoarse as he took her hand and began to guide her forward. In the doorway she glanced back at her terrified attendants and asked them to pray for her, since she could not tell whether she would see any of them again. Bedingfield, she noticed, made no protest to that, but his hand on hers tightened its pressure. She was suddenly very glad of him.
It was pitch black and cold as she followed torch bearers over the gardens to the foot of the staircase which led to the Queen’s lodgings. A guard stepped forward and gestured to Sir Henry.
“You are to remain here, sir, with the rest of Her Grace’s attendants.”
So it was to be a dagger in the dark, after all! But why bring her all the way to court to do it and how would they explain it to the people?
She glanced at Bedingfield’s face and saw there were tears glistening in the eyes of that stern, upright figure. He feared the worst and so did she, and hardship made odd allies. She reached out and squeezed his thick arm, then turned and went alone into the darkness.
Breathlessly she mounted the stairway, spinning round at the sound of footsteps behind her. Susan Clarencieux was mounting the steps in her wake and motioning her through the door ahead, so perhaps after all she was not to be murdered. But it was still a full minute before she found the courage to step over the threshold into Mary’s bedchamber.
&n
bsp; The Queen was hunched against her pillows and her distended figure was obvious beneath the coverlet. At the far end of the room stood a tapestry screen and Elizabeth, who did not recall it, wondered whether this interview would be heard by Mary’s ears alone. Where was Philip after all this time? Why had he not chosen to show himself? She glanced again at the silent screen and wondered.
At the foot of the bed she fell on her knees and let the hood fall back to reveal her loose hair.
“Madam, I am your true and loyal servant whatever reports have said of me.”
Silence. Mary’s short-sighted eyes peered down at her, sliding over her white face and away again. She did not offer her hand for the formal kiss and her voice was grim.
“You will not confess your fault, I see. Pray God your tale is true.”
“If not I will look for neither favour nor pardon from Your Majesty’s hands.”
That answer, though mildly made, seemed to anger Mary. As her face creased into a frown and she twisted the bedclothes over the swollen mound of her stomach, Elizabeth found her eyes drawn irresistibly to that visible evidence of her own danger, the unborn child which was the living symbol of her own destruction. Once that child was born her position would be hopeless; she would be lucky even to be offered exile…
“So,” said the Queen darkly, “you have been wrongfully punished then.”
Elizabeth bowed her head hastily.
“I must not say so to Your Majesty.”
“But you will to others!” snapped the deadly little voice from the bed. “Is that not so, sister?”
It was useless. This interview, like the last, was sliding away from her, and every word she spoke increased the Queen’s hostility. She said at last in a voice only just above a whisper, “I most humbly beseech Your Majesty to have a good opinion of me.”
Oddly enough that childish request seemed to touch Mary in spite of herself. She gestured irritably for the girl to get off her knees and waved her hand as though dismissing the whole sordid business. She seemed suddenly too weary to continue the conversation.
“You may be speaking the truth—God knows!” she muttered and then repeated in Spanish, “Dios sabe!”
Elizabeth whirled round instinctively to look at the screen and a moment later a small, sombrely dressed young man stepped out and stopped to look at her. He bowed and walked towards her, his pale eyes fixed on hers. She knew who he was; she also knew that she should curtsey, but she remained defiantly standing. For a moment he stood gazing at her, as though he expected the sheer force of his presence to force her to her knees; their bright, fair heads were exactly level. There was a long, long moment of silence before he realised she would not submit, and then he spoke for the first time.
“You are welcome to court, my sister.” He held out his hand and drew her close to kiss her formally on the lips as befitted the greeting of a sister-in-law.
And when he released her, having prolonged the moment just a second or two longer than was strictly necessary, Mary saw that his eyes were smiling at last.
* * *
Across the brilliant green English countryside they galloped ahead of their attendants, hunting, hawking, spending the long spring days in idle companionship. In the light evenings they danced and raised their wine goblets to each other beneath smiling eyes and slowly, inexorably, relentlessly Philip found himself falling in love against his will and against all the promptings of both conscience and common sense.
Years later, he reflected bitterly that it had been inevitable. He had been as vulnerable as a puppy to her charm, miserable, disillusioned, frustrated. And she had set out to catch him like an angler with a fish, until at last there he was, hooked and helpless on the end of her line, labouring under the incredible delusion that their feelings were mutual.
He had never meant it to happen. He had intended to observe her closely for treasonous intent, sound her religious beliefs, and finally see her married safely to his vassal, the Duke of Savoy. He had tried to prepare himself and be armed against her wiles, for Renard had warned him darkly that “she has a spirit full of incantation.”
But no armour of Spanish dignity was proof against her; she cut through his defences like a knife through butter, effortlessly, casually, as though she were not even trying. He might have been any other handsome young man in her company, rather than the omnipotent heir to half the world. When she spoke to him it was as an equal, occasionally, he suspected through her teasing, as a superior. Her speech was littered with lies and insincerities; he tried to cling to his doubts and suspicions of her, but she laughed them away. And no one—man or woman—had ever laughed at Philip before. In all the dark formal years in Spain, years of duty and discipline governed by a rigid code of etiquette, he had never met a woman like Elizabeth. In all the hard cruel decades which followed he never met her like again. A few brief weeks he was held fascinated, like a wild animal dazzled by a bright light, weeks which later seemed to exist in a vacuum and hung in his bitter memory like a locket, which from time to time he would take out and examine with slow disbelief and wonder—did it really happen? Sometimes it seemed to him that he spent the rest of his life in penance for it.
They had told him she was clever; on close acquaintance, he found her brilliant and was intimidated by the formidable list of her accomplishments. He considered it a personal affront that any woman should be fluent in six languages.
“Is there anything you cannot do?” he asked her at length, stung to a jealous awareness of inferiority.
She smiled demurely.
“I can’t swim, Your Highness.”
“If you ever learn,” he said softly, “I shall kill you for it.”
His command of English was still uncertain. It was quite possible he had misused the word. But as she stared into his steady eyes she knew he meant exactly what he said and was amused by the knowledge. After that, she went out of her way to flaunt her talents and her charm. And all through that spring, while he deliberately engineered occasions on which he might be alone with her, he was swept off his course like a helpless twig on the restless tide of her energy.
“No, we shall not hunt today,” he said as he followed her to the window one dark morning. “Can’t you see it’s raining?”
She looked out of the glass and laughed and said in her faultless Spanish, “That’s not rain—it’s only a fine drizzle that will soon lift. In England Your Highness must learn to call such weather fine and be glad of it.”
Must!
He stared at her. It was more than twenty years since anyone of lesser rank had used that word to him. Her audacity amazed him.
“You are so restless,” he complained suddenly. “You dance and ride and shoot as though you may never be free to do these things again. If you continue to live each day as though it was your last—”
She swung round from the window and smiled at him. “I shall burn out like a firework before I am thirty, no? But that is no new thought—I hear it from my governess quite regularly.”
Again he was shaken by her daring. To speak so lightly of burning with Gardiner’s Heresy Bill now the law of the land—was she mad?
“Your governess is optimistic,” he said severely. “In my opinion you may be exceedingly fortunate to reach twenty-two.”
“That doesn’t give me long, does it, my brother?”
Her eyes slanted a direct challenge that made him take her roughly by the hand and lead her to the virginals. This way she had of playing with her own danger excited his physical desire. And it alarmed him.
“Sit,” he commanded, “and play for me.”
She made a deep mocking curtsey and seated herself at the instrument. He felt vaguely relieved to see her still at last, for somehow he knew that if she went on talking and laughing and weaving her slender body around the room, he would not be answerable for what he might do to her. When she lost herse
lf in the music she would forget to tease and tantalise.
There was nothing to disturb his ears now except the tinkling notes, nothing to disturb his eyes except those extraordinary fingers, mesmeric as snakes, moving lightly across the keyboard and lulling him gently into a trance-like state of contentment. He sat and watched them until the failing light forced her to stop; then he leaned over and took her hands in his, lifting them alternately to his sensual lips.
“You have beautiful hands,” he mused, turning them over in his grasp and staring at them with an odd intensity, “such long fingers—almost too perfect to be human.”
She waited patiently. After a moment she frowned.
“Is that all? I rather hoped you would go on to say they matched my face.”
His pale skin turned furiously red.
“Madam,” he muttered, suddenly gauche as a boy, “your face is beyond compare.”
“So is a vulture’s!” She gave him a wicked smile. “Oh—you are not accustomed to paying compliments, are you, my brother?”
“I am not accustomed to being asked for them,” he retorted drily. “In my country no lady would dream of such brazen talk.”
She laughed and sat back on her stool, watching him.
“But this is not your country,” she said softly, “and I am not a lady—surely the Queen has told you that.”
He looked away for a moment.
“Certainly she has told me that you are not to be trusted—as indeed has one other.”
“What other? Come, Your Highness, you may safely tell me—was it Renard? What did he say of me?”
“That—” Philip hesitated. “That you have a spirit full of incantation and are greatly to be feared.”
A cold shiver touched Elizabeth’s spine. As an accusation of witchcraft it could hardly be more plain, and superstition ran deep in Philip. Suddenly his preoccupation with her hands took on an ominous meaning.
Too perfect to be human—
Not since the day they took her to the Tower had she been so terrified, and yet she knew instinctively that to show fear before this man would be the worst thing she could possibly do. He would relish it and believe at the same time that it betrayed her guilty conscience.
