Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (31 page)

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!”

t t t

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 exhaus-

tion, 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.

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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 the 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.”

t t t

“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.

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“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.”

t t t

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.”

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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…

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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.

t t t

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

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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.

“The tide,” whispered Sussex anxiously as they reached the barge at

last, “the tide is still unsuitable—”

“We dare not delay any longer,” snapped Winchester. “We leave at once.”

Elizabeth gathered from the indignant protests of the boatmen that

something was very wrong. The grey, rain-splattered river rushed by the