Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (32 page)

barge as they swerved towards London Bridge and there was a sudden cry

as they struck a whirlpool which rocked all the occupants to the floor.

Soaked with dirty water, Elizabeth was flung into Sussex’s arms for a

moment as the barge struck against the bridge supports, while the rotting

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heads impaled on spikes above glared down upon them sightlessly. And

when at last the bargemen had regained control, they were washed up at

the grim portal of Traitor’s Gate, bumping against the landing steps that

were submerged with black water.

Soaked to the skin, with her hair hanging loose down her back in

damp snarling curls, she stood at Traitor’s Gate filled with such rage that

she felt she could fell old Winchester with one blow. How dared they half

drown her in their haste!

“I will not be landed here,” she cried furiously. “I’ll be over my shoes

in water.”

“Madam, you have no choice,” grunted Winchester. He had hurried

back in annoyance to discover she was making more trouble, but

suddenly found himself so horrified by her appearance—so like a proud

but bedraggled tawny cat—that he pulled off his own cloak and flung it

round her shoulders.

But she was in a blazing temper and blind to all chivalry. She dashed

off his cloak and stepped into the icy water, her voice ringing through the

rain with a shout of defiance.

“Here lands as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs.

Before you, oh God, I speak it, having no other friend but you alone.”

“If that is so, then so much the better for you,” sneered the Marquis

who had already regretted that unaccountable act. He bent down, fished

his cloak out of the filthy water, and shook it out angrily.

She turned from him and looked beyond him to the rows and rows of

guards and officials. There was an angry laugh in her voice now.

“What—all these harnessed men for one weak woman?”

Her scornful gaze swept their ranks and to the fury of the Lord

Lieutenant, Bridges, the men began to fall to their knees murmuring,

“God save Your Grace,” and there was absolutely nothing he could do

to prevent it.

The rage died in her eyes then and suddenly she looked up, seeming

to see the Tower for the first time. Somewhere within that beautiful

stone fortress what was left of her mother’s headless body lay buried in an

arrow chest, picked clean by countless maggots. The sound of the river

had lapped in her dreams for seventeen years, waiting to sweep her home

to this moment of reunion with her mother’s blood.

She sank down upon the streaming stones and bowed her head. No

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force in this world would make her enter that place, no, not if they chose

to kill her on this very spot.

There was a moment of horrified silence, during which all the men

exchanged uneasy glances, for none of them had been prepared for this.

After a minute, the Lord Lieutenant came forward uncomfortably and

knelt beside her.

“Madam, you had best come in,” he said anxiously, uncertain what the

effect upon his men would be if they were obliged to resort to physical

force, “for here you sit unwholesomely.”

“Better sit here than in a worse place,” she muttered darkly, tracing

one long finger across the wet stone.

Little rivulets of water were running past her, soaking into her gown,

and her mind like a boat gently slipping its mooring rope drifted with

them, aimless, thoughtless, towards oblivion. If, in that critical moment,

they had dared to lay hands upon her and drag her inside the fortress, they

would have found it necessary to restrain her in chains.

But no one dared. The rain hammered down and as she floated swiftly

and painlessly to the very brink of insanity, one of her young men serv-

ants began to weep noisily.

Slowly, incredulously, she raised her head and looked round:

Cornwallis, her gentleman usher, a shy, sensitive young man, who

blushed and was overcome with stupid confusion every time she had

cause to address him.

“Stop it!” she ordered, getting to her feet and giving him a gentle poke

in the ribs. “Stop it, do you hear? I’m not in such a plight that I need to

be wept over yet.”

“No, madam,” he mumbled and little knew what service he had just

rendered to her. She was in command of herself once more, able to give

her hand to Sussex and sweep haughtily into the fortress, even to smile

graciously when the Earl whispered brokenly, “Madam, I am sorry I ever

lived to see this day.”

At length she stood in a bare, semi-circular, stone chamber, listening

to the turning of the key in the outer door.

“See her doors are locked straightly at all times,” said Winchester’s

nervous voice, addressing the guards.

There was a sudden angry jangling of heavy keys in the lock and

Winchester’s voice became a whine of protest.

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“My lord of Sussex. They
must
be locked—for safety’s sake.”

“There’s nothing in our orders that says anything about locked doors,”

retorted Sussex heatedly. “You talk of safety? Then let us take heed that

we do not go beyond our commission. She was our king’s daughter and

is the prince next in blood. By God, let us deal with her now that we do

not have to answer for our dealings hereafter.”

Winchester was silent.

And Elizabeth’s door remained unlocked.

t t t

The outer world had ceased to exist for her; there was nothing to do

except embroider quietly with her women before a petulant fire and wait

for the daily interrogations from the Council. Once they brought her

face to face with the prisoner, James Croft, hoping the sight of her would

loosen his stubborn tongue.

He stood for a moment staring at her white face, then fell on his knees

at her feet and declared her innocent.

“I have been marvellously tossed and examined touching Your

Highness, but I take God to record I know nothing of the crime which

is laid to your charge. If they bring me to trial, madam, I will take my

death upon that oath.”

Her hand went out in helpless rage to the broken wretch at her feet

and she wondered how many they would have to torture before they

found one willing to testify against her. She wanted to say she would

pray for him, but that could be twisted, misunderstood, and so she said

nothing; but her eyes were soft with compassion.

Gardiner, enraged by this dismal failure, returned to the subject of

Donnington. Could she deny there had been talk among her household

of moving there?

“What if there was!” she snapped, turning on him suddenly. “May I

not go to my own house whenever I choose?”

Evidently the logic of that was too much for the elderly Earl of Arundel

who, likewise, went down on his knees before her and declared, “Your

Grace speaks the truth and we are very sorry to have troubled you.”

We
! It was unbelievable. From the corner of her eye Elizabeth

saw Gardiner’s face suffuse with purple fury and his lips contort into

a twisted line. She lowered her eyes demurely, held out her hand to

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Arundel, and said on a maddening note of ineffable sweetness, “May

God forgive you all.”

James Croft’s dirty shivering form was instantly bundled out of the

room and Gardiner, barely able to speak, all but threw the rest of the

Council after him. When the door had slammed, Elizabeth found she had

begun to shake with wild laughter.

Gardiner stormed away to inform Renard that as long as Elizabeth

lived he had no hope of seeing the kingdom in peace.

“A reasonable conclusion,” said the Ambassador testily. “I’m surprised

it took so long for you to reach it.”

He was truly astonished at the laxity with which the English govern-

ment conducted its affairs. Mary assured him that fresh proof against the

Princess was arriving every day, but he saw little evidence of it. And now

that Lord William Howard had taken up his great-niece’s cause in good

earnest, it began to look as though they might actually be forced to let

the young bitch go. “Unless—” said Gardiner; and let the sentence hang

significantly.
Unless
…

t t t

April had touched the Tower garden with little riots of spring flowers and

a blustery wind. Tucked in the shelter of the high wall, three children

knelt on the gravel path beside Elizabeth and watched as she traced her

name with a stick.

“Do you always write it like that, Madam Elizabeth?” Henry Martin

was a sturdy, opinionated five-year-old. “With all those twirls and loops?”

“Every time.”

“But it takes you so long.”

“I know—that’s why I hate writing letters and have a secretary.”

Henry sighed. “I wish I had a secretary.”

She tapped him playfully on the tip of his nose with the stick.

“Even if you had one it would still be necessary to add your signa-

ture. A signature is a unique part of yourself, it tells people things

about you.”

“Like whether you are full of loops and twirls?”

She laughed and would not answer.

“Do dragons have singy-tunes too?” demanded Susanna suddenly.

“Oh yes,” said Elizabeth cheerfully. “They all write in a fine Italian

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script. Some of them even write books. I knew one once, his name was

Remnarc—Remnarc the Coward.”

They settled around her avidly in the pale April sunlight while she

drew Archbishop Cranmer for them, making him a timorous weedy little

dragon cowering in a dark cave for fear of burning himself with his own

flames. And burn he might in good earnest, she thought dispassionately,

if Gardiner had his way and Cranmer’s
Book of Common Prayer
became an

outlawed heresy.

She liked her dragons; they were fuel for her starved imagination,

by-products of a frivolity which had surprised her. And if the children

missed the finer points of her malicious characterisations, it hardly seemed

to matter. They loved the simple adventures and the subtle innuendo was

her own private delight.

A week is a long time in the Tower; this one had transformed her

life. It was her first experience of children, her first real opportunity to

discover how infinitely preferable their company was to that of adults.

And her first discovery of her own unique affinity with the infant mind.

It had cost her very little conscious effort to make these children worship

her. They were only Tower brats, offspring of the officials who lived and

worked here, but they were suddenly the centre of her world, bringing

her gaiety and hope; and—inadvertently—contact with a fellow prisoner.

It was little Henry Martin who began it all, a lively, chatty child

welcomed in more than one dull cell by the more respectable inmates.

When he began to arrive daily in the garden with a posy of flowers,

Elizabeth was touched and amused, but hardly suspicious. Then one day

she unloosened the bundle of stems and found a tiny pellet of paper

concealed there.

It was not a letter, just a short list of names which she instantly recog-

nised as her dragons’
alter egos,
accredited with an impertinent postscript.

“
Not very subtle
!
Robin Dudley
.”

The blood rushed into her cheeks with a sharp mingling of anger,

alarm, and pleasure. She tackled Henry next morning with some care, but

it was soon evident he knew nothing about the note. Certainly he had

been often to visit Lord Robert and repeated her stories.

“…he said Trebor the Brave was the best.”

“
Oh
!” she exclaimed and put her hands up to her burning cheeks.

“Did you have to tell him that one?”

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Susan Kay

Henry looked bewildered.

“But it was a good story, Madam Elizabeth—I liked it best too.”

Oh, what was the use? She looked at her latest posy, lying in splendid

isolation where she had left it under a bush. It contained another stupid

note, she knew it did, and suddenly she didn’t care about the risk. Not

since her disastrous love affair with the Admiral had she felt such wildly

happy anticipation. She was young, she was still alive, and this long,

breathless moment, stolen from Time’s bleak march, had made her curi-

ously reckless.

Her guard was coughing discreetly, delicately attempting to indicate

that her hour of exercise had ended some time ago. The children danced

around him, protesting vigorously.

“Aw, Will—five more minutes.”

“Five and twenty you’ve had already,” he grumbled. “Your Grace—if

you please now.”

She clapped her hands and the children ran to her; one by one she

hugged them and swung them round in the air until they squealed with

glee. She watched them sidle out through the gate, then ran up the stairs