by Jane Caro
I did not believe I would survive when first I entered this place. My skin prickled and burned with apprehension, my innards churned and my bowels loosened. I held myself so stiffly and in such a constant state of readiness that my extremities, my hands and my feet, were constantly plagued by pins and needles. It mattered not how often I stretched them, or changed their position. They were so tight and so tense that they tingled. I could not sleep or cry. I could only pace, up and down, up and down, up and down. I now know why they describe the afflicted as wringing their hands. That is what we do, to rid ourselves of the life force dammed up inside us. It knows itself to be in great peril and would, if it could, fight for its liberty. So it was with me for the first few weeks of my incarceration. I was not permitted to leave my apartments and although I tried to sew, to chatter with my ladies and to read, my thoughts were as skittish as my hands. I ate but little, and when my ladies discovered that the officers of my household who brought the food to feed us in our prison had to hand those provisions to rough and anonymous soldiers, I ate even less. Most of my day, I paced – twenty steps in one direction and twenty in the other, stopping on every occasion I heard signs of life beneath my window, to peer out and see whether my time had yet come.
When Bishop Gardiner entered my cell during those first agonising days – the same Bishop Gardiner who had so lately dwelt as prisoner within these very walls – I could not but reflect on how quickly men’s and women’s fortunes can rise and fall, and on how dizzying is the journey. Though I knew he had not come to haul me to my scaffold or to slip a dagger between my ribs, I was afraid. He had come to pit his wits against mine, to see if he could drag a confession from me or, failing that, force an indiscretion that would see my head on the block. He had been a Catholic victim of my brother’s Protestant reign and it seemed he thirsted to make me a victim in his stead. Though, to be fair, he no doubt understood better than most that my sister’s slender mortality was all that stood between him and a return to his former prison. In the name of my sister, it was as much his own skin he was protecting as hers. Hence, of course, his zeal in her service. There are men serving me now who remind me of Stephen Gardiner and they are of great value.
I met his stern gaze and acknowledged his greeting, but my pent-up energy rose like a volcano within me, so hot and fierce that I had to breathe deeply before I spoke to control it. I saw no sympathy in his eyes or fellow feeling; no recognition that he had ever stood as I stood now, a prisoner, friendless and alone. He had been a prisoner of conscience, but I felt my case was worse. I was a prisoner of birth. Heat was not what I needed; instead I needed the cold precision of steel if I was to thrust and parry successfully with this wily old swordsman. But heat was all I had – such a surfeit of it, indeed, that Kat told me my face was flushed bright pink throughout the interrogation.
Once the courtesies were over, we stood there – my interrogators, my attendants and I – for a moment or two in silence. Who was to begin this interview and how would they begin it? I was in a fever of anticipation, though my face was set in its calm mask, when the wily Bishop surprised me by moving directly to the question of my planned removal to Donnington Castle. How I silently cursed my supposed friends who had suggested such a strategy without as much as a by-your-leave. Out of fear I claimed I could not even remember owning a castle of that name. No sooner had the words left my lips than I recognised their folly. If I could have snatched them back, I would have. I quickly recalled my ownership of such a castle and then proceeded to regain my memory about some discussion between Sir James Crofts and officers of my household about a change of scenery.
‘But, my lord Bishop, what is that to the purpose?’ I said to Gardiner. ‘Surely I have a perfect right to visit my own houses?’ Even to my own ears, my protests sounded feeble and, for an agonising moment, I was engulfed by the paralysing terror that the bloody history of this place engenders. I felt sweat start up on my forehead and a tremor begin in my extremities. My breath began to come in pants and my gorge rose within me, as if the contents of my stomach, meagre though they were, would escape from their internal prison at any moment. I began to feel faint and put my hand up to my forehead. I may have swayed, because Kat quickly pushed a stool across and gestured for me to sit upon it. Even my interrogators took a protective step towards me and one of them, the Earl of Arundel, suddenly fell to his knees.
‘Your Grace speaks the truth,’ he said, looking directly at me. ‘And certainly we are very sorry that we have so troubled you about such vain matters.’ I smiled wanly at him and lowered myself gently onto my stool. Female weakness had its uses. His gesture was what I needed, my panic subsided and as I drank the water another had offered me, I was aware that, thanks to Arundel, the interview had suddenly taken an unexpected direction. I saw the chance God had given me to regain control of myself. So I took it.
‘My lords, you do question me very narrowly,’ I said. ‘But I am sure you shall not do more to me than God hath appointed; so may God forgive you all.’
Half an hour later, when my interrogators left my cell, they bore the faces of men who had come away with less than they had wanted. I was exhausted; the effort of maintaining control was almost too much to bear, but I also felt more positive stirrings. Although they had told me nothing directly, the interview had made one thing very clear. The cruel caresses of the rack had not worked. The conspirators and that traitor Wyatt, who resided in some much fouler corner of this same prison, had not accused me any further or brought forth any previously unheard evidence. The case against me was weak; otherwise they would have had me to trial.
They executed foolish Wyatt in April, as the crocuses blossomed on the Tower lawn and the birds built their nests in the eaves. I had taken to sitting by the open casement with the warmth of the spring sun on my face. From that vantage point I could not see or hear Wyatt’s final moments, but I was soon informed that from the scaffold he had declared my complete innocence. My attendants told me that his words were quickly spread about the city to general rejoicing. Good Sir Thomas, if you had lived I would have rewarded you. They say your father loved my mother once, and I secretly treasure the poems you wrote about her and my father. I like to think it was in her honour that you so staunchly protected me. Whatever your reasons, I am heartily grateful. The news of the reaction of the people of London also gave me cause to hope. Their good opinion was my only strength: the queen and her councillors would kill me at their peril.
Within days of Wyatt’s death, I could feel the shackles that held me loosening a little. I was allowed to take the air in the Tower garden every day and enjoy the sweet sun and the slow unfurling of the flowers. I was not permitted to pick any to cheer my dreary apartments, but Tom, the small son of the keeper of the wardrobe, began to greet me each morning with a charmingly ragged posy. Soon a bonny little girl not above four joined him daily with her own ragged gift.
‘What is your name?’ I asked the first time she approached, prodded along by her proud father, who was one of my gaolers. She was silent and stared at me with round eyes, until he prodded her again.
‘Susannah,’ she said in a voice so low I could hardly hear it.
‘And did you pick these yourself?’
‘Aye, Your Majesty.’
‘Nay, not “Your Majesty”,’ I said, hastily glancing around to see if any had heard.
None had heard but her father. ‘Nay, not yet, at any rate,’ he said to me, equally low.
‘“My Lady Elizabeth” will do very well, young Susannah,’ I said to the girl, as I accepted her flowers. No sooner had I done so than her thumb flew to her little mouth, where it stayed, as she gazed upon me from under her long dark lashes.
‘Will you visit me again, tomorrow?’ I asked and she nodded, holding her father’s hand by this time, but still sucking earnestly upon her thumb.
For nigh on a fortnight, it was my pleasure to walk the garden with the two children’s
latest bunches of jonquil and primrose, crocus and daffodil in one hand, and Susannah’s somewhat soggy fist in the other. Sometimes Tom brought a ball with him and we threw it around a circle; sometimes we hitched our skirts and played hide and seek, or I tied a kerchief about the children’s eyes and we played blind man’s buff. My time as a gilded prisoner was beginning to pass more pleasantly, particularly as the sounds of our games now brought a fellow prisoner to his window to watch us and I was able to wave and smile up to him, and enjoy the feeling of his eyes upon me. Poor Robin Dudley and his remaining brothers still languished in the Tower, in the cell that he had once shared with his ambitious but overreaching father, the lord protector, and his poor foolish brother, Lady Jane Grey’s husband, Guildford. They had lost their respective heads months ago. As I tossed the ball back and forth I could not help reflecting on the sad pass all of us had come to, only a few short years since we had gathered at the wedding of Robin and Amy Robsart. Despite their peripheral involvement in the treason of their father, Robin and his kin remained prisoners and were, by most, forgotten.
When I returned to my own apartment, still hot and short of breath from the intensity of our games, I sometimes wondered if that was to be my fate also, to live on in this dreary place for months, for years perhaps, until few remembered my existence. As a prisoner I was too dangerous to execute, but too dangerous to set free. Whether such gloomy thoughts assailed me because of the contrast between my sweet hour in the fresh air and the cold reality of the thick stone walls that all too quickly then entombed me, I do not know, but my daily respite was not vouchsafed me for long.
One day, when I went down into the garden, Robin Dudley and I contrived to speak to one another and pass the time right pleasantly. He leant out of his open window and called encouragement to Tom and Susannah, as each blindfolded in turn, they tried to catch me or one of my ladies, while we dodged their small hands about the garden – laughing with delight at the children’s pleasure and our own relief at the exercise.
‘The Lady Elizabeth is behind you,’ he cried, as Tom spun round on his heels and I darted to one side – but not too quickly. I remembered how my brother Edward disliked being bested at such games, and I slowed down so that Tom could grasp the edge of my gown and make it my turn to be the blind man.
‘Where are your helpful instructions now, my lord?’ I shouted merrily, as I lurched about sightless behind my blindfold, arms outstretched to find my victim.
‘You need no help from me,’ he said. ‘After all, you are famous for peeking.’ I stopped in my tracks and pulled off my blindfold. Arms akimbo, I prepared to defend my honour.
‘No longer, my lord,’ I declared, ‘now that I have learnt to look fortune full in the face.’ I caught little Susannah and tickled her to forestall any protests at the end of our game.
‘Yes, there is no place better than this one for learning such a skill.’
‘Any news of your fate, good my lord?’ I asked in a different tone, walking across the garden to a point nearest his high window.
‘None, my lady. Sometimes I fear we have been forgotten here, so my brothers and I pass the time by carving our names and our family crest into the soft stone of our chamber. When they discover our forgotten skeletons, there will be some clue as to who we once were.’
‘Do not speak so, my lord. You are not forgotten; they merely wish that thinking so will increase your agony.’
‘And agony it is, relieved only by the few short moments when I can watch my old friend and princess play so prettily in the garden, taking me back to better days and lovelier places.’
‘It is agony that will pass, my lord. It requires but patience and faith in God.’ Would that I had been able to take my own advice. My patience was soon to be even more sorely tested.
No doubt there were spies everywhere in the Tower, only too eager to report that I had managed to have conversation with Robin Dudley. It was hard to believe that anyone could find much to object to in my games with the keeper’s children, but that was the means by which they managed to tighten their hold on me. The next day I was prevented from taking my usual hours of exercise and accused of receiving messages within the ragged posies the children presented to me daily. When I protested that they were welcome to search the flowers for any such communications, they told me the very flowers themselves could serve as coded messages.
‘What?’ I said to my gaolers. ‘Crocuses for escape tonight and daisies for there’s-a-horse-by-the-south-wall?’ But my attempts at scorn did no good; none is as powerless as the prisoner, none as dependent on other’s whims and fancies, whether for good or ill. No more did Kat, Mistress Sands, Blanche or I venture outside to play; no longer could I blow kisses to sweet Robin’s window or plait daisy chains and sing songs with little Tom and Susannah. All I could do was sit and fret about my future or lack thereof, while engaging in a desultory struggle with my embroidery. The only fresh air I received was by way of my small windows and I heard nothing further of poor Robin and his brothers. I knew not whether they still languished in the Tower, or breathed once again the sweet air of freedom.
April melted into May and I remained a prisoner. My fear had dwindled to a kind of sullen restlessness. Sometimes I stared at the confines of my apartment for hours on end and such enforced idleness took its toll on all of us. My ladies began to squabble and bicker among themselves – Kat Ashley allowing her jealousy of Elizabeth Sands to find fault where there was none, and disrespect behind every utterance. I stilled their waspish tongues when I had the energy, but heard their furious muttering continue as soon as I went from one room in our apartment to another. We had begun to fall into a lethargic and aimless routine, with each day identical in every way to every other. Even my ladies’ arguments were endlessly repetitive, right up until what turned out to be the very last day we spent as prisoners in the Tower.
‘Here, Mistress Ashley, I have mended the linen as you requested,’ Elizabeth Sands said.
‘Aye.’ Kat peered at the stitching. ‘And with such great clumsy stitches as would more befit a peasant woman than the daughter of a king.’
‘My stitches are as they should be. I have always found praise as a needlewoman.’
‘That’s as may be – with the low knights and country squires you are used to attending.’ This said with a snort that a horse could envy.
‘Kat–’ At this point, I attempted to be gentle, yet admonishing. But even this was too much for her in our current extremity. Immediately she burst into tears.
‘Aye,’ she said, sniffing where she had just snorted. ‘And you take her part, as if it were she, not I who has shared your troubles all these years, since you were no more than a baby. Do you forget that this is not my first stay in this fearful place?’ She reminded us of her previous incarceration at least once a day and usually more often. I put my arms about her and attempted to hush her tears.
‘Now, now, Kat. I well know what I owe you and I well know all that you have suffered on my account – including your time in the Tower.’
‘Aye,’ she said, her tears drying rapidly, ‘and not in surroundings as salubrious as these, let me tell you. I lay in filthy straw, with water running down the walls and the cries from the torture chamber ringing in my ears, and for what? For loyalty to my mistress, that was all, for being as good a servant as I was trained to be. A good servant, Mistress Sands,’ she said, peering from out of my embrace at her rival. ‘A servant who knows how to make dainty stitches in delicate linen, so her mending is well nigh invisible.’
Then freeing herself from my arms entirely, she picked up my poor shift and with one fierce tug, rent poor Elizabeth’s careful stitching apart, creating another, deeper, tear in the fabric. Then she flung it back in the other woman’s face. ‘There, do it again, you slattern, and do it better!’ At this poor Elizabeth lost her composure and began to shriek, clasping my shift to her face in a vain attempt to muff
le her distress. I was about to turn my back on the pair of them, when I heard a great hullabaloo outside our window.
‘Hush, hush!’ I said. ‘What causes this commotion?’ I scurried over and saw, to my horror, great phalanxes of soldiers clattering through the gates – more soldiers than we had seen in this place since my sister’s triumphant ride into London to claim her crown. Led by a knight on horseback, they flooded into the courtyard, rank after rank of them, numbering well nigh one hundred.
‘Is this it, then?’ I whispered to myself, as my ladies gathered around me, their squabble forgotten. I could only imagine they brought so many armed men because they feared they might need to control the populace at my execution. Kat and Elizabeth burst into fresh tears at the sight of this army and threw their arms about each other for support. Unable to move or speak, I stood rooted to the spot. The nerves on the back of my neck began to tingle once more and a cruel hand took an icy grip on my vitals.
‘What means this?’ I said as soon as I regained the power of speech, but no one could answer me.
Then we heard the noise of a key turning in the lock and my gaoler entered, but I did not immediately look away from the strange knight below. Was this my executioner? Please God, I prayed, let him be a French swordsman as severed the neck of my mother and not some clumsy butcher of an axeman. ‘Who is it that has arrived below?’ I said. ‘Why does he bring so many armed men?’ Then, unable to contain myself, I dropped my voice lower still and, on the verge of tears, said, ‘And, please, good gaoler, tell me whether the Lady Jane’s scaffold is taken away or no?’
They would need a scaffold ready built, you see, if they were to behead me that day and I had heard none of the telltale sawing and hammering that usually accompanies such a grim task. If there was no scaffold, there could be no execution, or so I hoped. My gaoler instantly grasped my meaning.