Just a Girl (11 page)

My vain hope was that my absence from court would lead to a corresponding absence from my sister's mind. If I could not be thought of kindly, I did not wish to be thought of at all. The heir to the throne could not simply slink away, however. Before I departed, protocol (and wisdom) demanded that I seek an audience with the Queen to reassure her of my loyalty and to try and remind her of the intimacy we had enjoyed such a short time ago. I was afraid of Mary, and my fear of her grew
all the while. I know now, however, that she was equally afraid of me.

She granted my request for audience, but the moment I found myself in her presence, I knew that any attempt to rekindle favour was doomed to fail. She smiled at me, right enough, and stood and raised me to my feet as I bowed low before her on her throne, but her eyes glittered with distaste as she looked at me, and she was straining to smile. From girlhood, my poor sister had always found it hard to lie convincingly. Her heart sat always upon her face, a fatal characteristic for those who must practise statecraft. ‘Lady Elizabeth,' she said, ‘I hear you are to leave us.'

‘Aye, Your Majesty, I have affairs to attend to.'

‘Indeed, 'tis a pity you have no husband to take care of such masculine business for you. I await impatiently the day when I can share my burdens with a member of the stronger sex.'

‘Your Majesty knows well my thoughts on one day having a husband.'

‘Aye, Elizabeth, but they are surely only the coy dissembling of an unmarried woman, said to mislead the listener into believing that you have chosen your virginal state. But I do not wish to parry words with you, my lady. You asked to see me and so you do. You know what calls there are upon my time, so what did you wish to speak to me about?'

‘Nothing of import, Your Majesty, merely as sister to sister to say farewell and to give you my good wishes for your forthcoming nuptials.'

‘Commendable, very commendable, I daresay.'

I ignored her undisguised scepticism and ploughed hopelessly on. ‘And to reassure Your Majesty that I intend to continue with my instruction in the articles of the Catholic faith, when I am away from court and earnestly desire to understand the errors of my ways and convert with a full and open heart, as I know Your Majesty equally desires me to do.'

‘So you say, sister, so you say, and I commend your studies and leave your conversion to God's good grace and your own conscience. You will attend mass, regularly?'

‘Of course, Your Majesty.'

‘Of course, it is the law.'

‘Not just because it is the law – because you wish it and because I wish it also.'

‘Well said, Elizabeth, but then you have always been adept at saying things well.'

‘They are not mere words, Your Majesty, however well put. I can understand your caution, for there are words spoken at court that contain not one iota of truth. Indeed, those who are my enemies speak some of those empty words; they speak words that impugn my loyalty and my intentions. They tell stories about me
that have no basis in fact and I fear that when I have left the court, they will feel even freer to tell such stories, because I will not be here to naysay them.'

‘Do you think me such a fool, Elizabeth, that I do not know whose words to believe and whose words to doubt?'

‘I do not think you a fool at all, madam, but I am afraid of what you may be led to think of me.'

‘If you are what you say you are, Elizabeth, then you have nothing to fear. God knows the secrets of your heart and He will not forsake you if you are as innocent as you claim.'

‘Indeed, madam, then I have nothing to fear.'

‘I am glad of it. Here, let us not quarrel.' She signalled to the ladies behind her and a parcel was handed forward. ‘I have brought you this as a symbol of my affection for you.' She passed it over to me and

I unwrapped it. Inside was a rich coif of sable. It was beautiful and it made me smile.

‘Ah, madam,' I said, ‘you have always seen that I am well apparelled. For as long as I have had memory, that is my recollection of you.' I was trying to remind her of the Elizabeth she had once known: the small girl whose skirt was too short, whose kirtle was too tight and whose white and skinny wrists hung down far below the unravelling lace of her sleeves.

‘You have less need of my help, these days, it seems,
and now have many friends of your own. They look to you, perhaps, in ways they should not.'

My hopes sank. ‘I have some friends, it is true, but none as dear to me as you.'

‘Well, dear or not, I can dally here no longer. So farewell, Elizabeth. I wish you a safe journey and commend your soul and your conduct to God.' With that she would have turned to go, but I managed to delay her for one more moment.

‘May I crave Your Majesty's indulgence for one final request?'

She turned back to me, but made no attempt to disguise her impatience. ‘What now, my lady?'

‘My chapel at Hatfield is bereft of the symbols of the true faith, Your Majesty, and I am unpleasantly conscious of its inadequacy. Could you not send me such ornaments as you deem appropriate for the worship of the Lord God?'

‘I will arrange for the appropriate objects to be sent.' Impatient to be gone, she nodded. ‘Farewell, Elizabeth. Watch those whom you make your friends. I will pray for you.'

The audience on which I had pinned such hopes had been a failure. That afternoon, I left court for Ashridge.

In my absence, the dark clouds around the Spanish marriage gathered apace. The people grumbled, the nobility swore and cursed and some did worse. A group of conspirators began to plan an insurrection and saw fit to drag my name into their plot. Full glad I was that I had retired to Ashridge, where I hoped to keep my head low and avoid the worst of the queen's suspicions. Nevertheless, news reached me daily: whisperings and rumours of rebellion, miracles and witchcraft flew across the countryside. I listened to every story, discounting most, but aware that, wholly against my will, I was being dragged into a perilous vortex not of my own making. Marooned in the country as I was, my fears and feelings of powerlessness grew so intense that I fell ill. I fulminated against the foolish arrogance of those who claimed to plot in my name, cursing them to Kat, to Master Parry, the men who brought me news from
court – any who would listen – but to no avail. It would never be my way to scheme against an anointed queen, I told them, yet I could do nothing. If I protested against the rumours that circulated about me, I merely cast more suspicion on myself. If I said nothing, it was seen as tacit approval. In my desperation, my arms and legs began to ache from morning to night. My sister's fears of my charms outshining hers were soon unnecessary, as the fever of my mind caused my whole body to bloat with dropsy and I lay miserable and helpless as a whale on my sickbed. Whatever the queen and the court thought of my loyalty, they could not deny the legitimacy of my illness.

But the conspirators, base fools that they were, refused to leave me to my sufferings and urged me to go to Donnington Castle, beyond the reach of my sister. Before I had a chance to refuse, both because I was too ill to go anywhere and because such an act would have condemned me utterly as a traitor, I received a message from Mary warning me not to go and ordering me to come to London for my own protection. I cursed her excellent spies. Now, no matter how much I assured her I had never intended to go to Donnington and had given no support to those planning the uprising, she would never believe me. My only comfort was that I was too ill to travel. I stayed where I was.

The uprising failed, as I knew it would. The
conspirators were eager, but the country was not with them. The people had too recently restored my sister to her rightful throne and, regardless of her Spanish marriage, they had no intention of seeing her unseated so soon. The leader of the conspiracy, Thomas Wyatt, was arrested and a deputation of councillors was despatched to bring me to London. I greeted them in my sickbed and could see they were shocked by my appearance as I struggled to sit up. ‘As you can see, my lords, I am in no state to travel anywhere.'

‘Forgive us, my lady, but our orders are to convey you to London, no matter how indisposed you may be. There are matters of great importance that you must answer.'

‘Put the matters to me and I shall answer them here.'

‘I am expressly forbidden to take that course, my lady. You are only excused from London if you die.'

It was on the tip of my tongue to say that perhaps that was the real purpose of their visit, to hasten my end. How convenient that would be for my sister and her Catholic councillors. ‘That may well be the case. My doctors tell me that I risk death if I travel, particularly in this inclement weather.'

‘We will take the journey by stages, Your Grace, and do all that we can to keep you comfortable. Your doctors may accompany you.'

I did not leave it there. I wrote beseeching letters that
went unanswered, and grumbled loudly and to all who would listen about the cruelty and unreasonable nature of my sister's demands. But it did no good. Within a day or two, we set out on the road to London.

As I could not ride a horse, they carried me in a litter and our progress was at walking pace only. The snow fell almost constantly as we plodded through the bleak, grey countryside. We passed few other travellers – most being far too sensible to leave their warm hearths in such weather. I shivered beneath my coif of sable; my poor ladies fared even worse, stumbling along on frozen horses, unable even to keep warm with a vigorous gallop. The men who carried me no doubt did their best, but I felt every stumble, every jolt and every slip as they picked their way across rutted, icy roads. My illness caused me to make water often and slowed our journey down further. Such was my weakness that my ladies had to carry me from the litter to whatever privacy they could find – hedgerows, frozen ditches, sometimes merely a screen formed by their own voluminous skirts. The constant pain and misery, plus the nagging ever-present fear of what exactly I would face when we arrived at our destination, made me poor company.

‘God's breath!' I roared at the men who carried me, when they stumbled for the umpteenth time. ‘Are you men or asses? You will kill me with your clumsiness.' Such was my fear and my agony, that, sometimes,
unable to bear another jolt or sickening slide, I leant out and struck the nearest bearer with my riding crop. They took their thrashing with the blank forbearance of the beasts of burden whose places they had taken. Their passivity made me feel worse, and many times I sobbed behind the curtains of my litter with cold and shame.

Every day, I longed for that day's journey to end and yet, when we finally reached a lodging house and were able to thaw our frozen fingers and toes before a roaring fire, my tortures grew no better. My ladies and I were forced to share a bed and, though they replaced the bed linen with my own each and every night, still my flesh chafed with disgust as I lay beside them. My poor swollen body itched as if crawling with bed bugs and fleas and I searched myself obsessively for telltale bites and weals every morning. I slept little and, when I did sleep, woke screaming from dreams of headless ladies dancing the Volta in ball gowns. If I ate, I vomited everything up and if I managed to keep any food down, my innards gripped with pain and I added diarrhoea to the reasons for my roadside visits.

My agonies on that journey were great and our progress was excruciatingly slow. Rumours of my condition flew ahead of me like dark winged birds. Due to my swollen state, the favourite calumny was an old one: that I was carrying an illegitimate child. It did no good to deny such claims. I had to suffer them and
hold my tongue, but I could and did strenuously deny imputations of conspiracy and treason.

On the eleventh day of our journey, we left the house of one Mr Cholmeley in Highgate and began our descent into London. The sights that met me on our arrival could not have formed a greater contrast with the last time I had entered the portals of the great metropolis, riding behind my triumphant sister as she claimed her throne. Now what I saw chilled me more thoroughly than the icy weather. We passed gallows in every corner of the city: in Bermondsey, Charing Cross and Hyde Park corner, and all the gates of London were festooned with traitors' heads and corpses rotting slowly. So horrifying were they that I drew the curtains of the litter around me to hide the dreadful sights. Instead of cheering crowds, those Londoners we passed lowered their eyes and hurried away in silence.

When I finally arrived at Whitehall, I learnt that my poor cousin the little nun had been taken from her cell in the Tower ten days earlier, just after I had set out on my horrible journey, and executed, along with her foolish husband Guildford Dudley. I knew that my sister had intended to be merciful. She knew, as I did, that poor Lady Jane had not desired her throne, but had been used as a pawn. Despite my sister's good intentions, Wyatt's rebellion had sealed their fate. It was my fervent prayer that it had not also sealed mine.

I wept when they brought me the news of Lady Jane's death. What good had her wise head done her, if it could not even find a way to stay firmly attached to her shoulders? I began to rub my own neck ruefully. It prickled strangely – perhaps a symptom of my continuing illness; perhaps an ill omen. I grew superstitious, terrified that my neck sensed what was soon to come. My skin burned and crawled, my hands and feet were icy, no matter how much I toasted them before a great fire. Worse, I was separated from most of my attendants, and lodged in a part of the palace that I could not leave without passing the guard. I may not have been called prisoner, but imprisoned was how I felt.

Those other prisoners, the conspirators, were racked and daily I waited to hear that one of them had given their interrogators the name they wanted – mine. There was some talk of a letter of mine that had found its way into the French ambassador's despatch bag, and accusations that I had sent my servant Sir William St Loe as intermediary with Thomas Wyatt, an accusation that good man stoutly denied. Lord Russell said he had delivered letters to me from Wyatt, but they could find no evidence to prove such a claim. It was the implacable Stephen Gardiner, Mary's lord chancellor, who pushed hardest to have me indicted as traitor, but the rest of the council were not so quick to assume I was guilty. Then
the rumours of further imprisonments and executions came to an abrupt halt and my requests for further news were met with shrugs. An eerie silence had descended and I waited with apprehension for some announcement of my fate, but I heard nothing. The anticlimax was terrible. Had my suffering been for nought? Had we travelled all this way only to be sent back whence we came? For days and days, we waited and, despite the anxiety, my illness began to pass, my dropsy left me and, though still wracked with aching limbs, my body and face returned to their former size.

I hoped the waiting was a good sign. Perhaps it indicated how hard it was for them to build a case against me, and, perhaps, how reluctant Mary was to believe the worst. As I learnt later, most of her councillors wanted to see me confined in some nobleman's house in the country – a fate I myself would have preferred – but no such nobleman could be found to so confine me. In the end, Bishop Gardiner persuaded them to send me to the place I dreaded most: the Tower.

I had longed for a resolution and when it came it was no real surprise. Yet hearing the sentence passed upon me was more frightening than I had anticipated. They told me on the 16th of March that I was going to the Tower and on the morning of the 17th, my old adversary the Marquess of Winchester, accompanied by the Earl of Sussex, arrived to take me hence.

‘Please, my lords,' I begged, falling to my knees, ‘please allow me to write to my sister and request an audience with her so I may clear my name of the foul and base imputations that my enemies have cast upon it.'

‘It is of no use, my lady. The queen herself has sent us to take you from here to imprisonment.' Winchester had never been my friend, since he had accompanied Sir Roger Tyrwhit and been one of my interrogators in my time of peril over Thomas Seymour. He had failed to best me then, but I could see he was determined to best me now. The Marquess was, in many ways, a consummate politician. After all, he had managed the tricky transition from being Protestant Edward's man to Catholic Mary's without any trouble. Perhaps he felt he had already burnt his bridges with me, or perhaps his antipathy was more personal – I know not. But, given that I remained only a heartbeat from the throne, Sussex's demeanour was both wiser and more compassionate.

His response to Winchester's bullying was to narrow his eyes and look at me carefully. I hoped he understood that I might be queen myself one day, and that it would therefore be better not to make an unnecessary enemy. Uncertainty and tension inevitably affect the relationship of monarch and heir and exact a price from those who surround them.

‘Don't be so hasty, Winchester,' he said. ‘It can do
no harm to allow the Lady Elizabeth to write such an appeal.'

‘Humph,'
snorted his companion, ‘nor no good neither.' But he acquiesced, and someone fetched paper and pen.

How my poor mind raced as I stared at that blank parchment. I knew I had to choose my words cautiously, yet write in a voice that my sister would recognise as my own. I put down my pen and rubbed the back of my neck. It tingled like the devil and a shiver ran down my spine. Then I began and the words flowed out of me, like a river or my life's blood.

‘I have never practised, counselled, nor consented to anything that might be prejudicial to your person in any way, or dangerous to the state by any means,' I wrote and, further, I begged her to let me see her and state my case, sister to sister. ‘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 permitted to speak with him, he had never suffered.' As I wrote of poor, foolish Thomas Seymour and his failure to appeal to his brother Edward when accused of treason, it was Queen Katharine Howard's desperate screams that rang in my ears. They echoed there just as they had when she was dragged the full extent of the Long Gallery. ‘Though these persons are
not to be compared to Your Majesty, yet I pray to God as evil persuasions persuade not one sister against the other.' Conscious of the impatient tutting and sighing of Winchester, I vented my spleen against that devil Wyatt. ‘As for the traitor Wyatt, he might peradventure have written me a letter, but on my faith, I have never received any from him. And as for the letter sent to the French king, I pray God confound me eternally if ever I sent him word, message, token or letter, by any means. And to this truth I will stand till my death.' With that I had said all I could think to say and not before time because, by now, even Sussex had joined his harsher companion in his desire to depart and convey me to that evil place. Yet when I looked back at my missive, I had left fully three quarters of my paper empty. Foolish, foolish jade, I chided myself, aware that the empty space was an open invitation for enemies to write incriminating words in my name. Yet I could think of no further sensible words to write. My eloquence had run dry.