Elizabeth, Captive Princess

by Margaret Irwin

  The Queen’s father also tried to be conciliatory. ‘You are the best soldier in the Kingdom, you have reminded us of it often enough. You have put down three rebellions – why not a fourth? At Norwich and Dussendale you bound all hesitating officers to swear to conquer or die by the knightly ceremony of kissing each other’s swords before the fight. So even you believed, so short a time ago, in the motive power of chivalry, despite the great guns. Believe in it now. Ride out and make them conquer or die, as I should have no power to do, who have never been a soldier. All the Council are agreed that that is the best course.’

  ‘To hell with the Council! What are they but my creatures? They’re eager to see my back, are they? Why? That they may act against me the better behind it?’

  ‘Such suspicions are unworthy of Your Grace. I shall be here to guard your interests – and my daughter. What should you, the Captain General of all the royal forces, have to fear from enemies in the field?’

  ‘More from friends at home,’ muttered the Duke.

  Queen Jane woke with a cry. ‘I hear thunder!’ She had always been terrified of storms, the thunder was the wrath of God speaking, the lightning His eye, ‘Thou God seest me.’

  Kind Lady Throckmorton came to her bedside. ‘No, Madam, it is no storm. It is only the carts of artillery leaving the Tower to accompany the great army into Cambridge.’

  ‘My father shall not go with them, I have said it. I am the Queen.’

  ‘Yes, Madam, yes. No, Madam, no. Your father is even now persuading the Duke.’

  ‘The Duke! The Duke has been King for years. He shall not be now. I am Queen.’

  ‘Yes, Madam, yes.’

  At the sound of voices the Duke’s wife and son Guildford came unannounced into the bedchamber. The Duchess wanted to know why Queen Jane refused to consummate the marriage, to recognise her husband’s title as King Guildford, refused even to let him sit at meals with her at the royal high table. It made it so marked.

  The Duchess would have no more of it. In future her son must share the new Queen’s bed, crown and table.

  The new Queen sat up very small and childish between the heavy curtains. Guildford in his long white bedgown, looking like an uneasy chorister, told her that he did not want to go to bed with her – there were plenty of other women who wanted it of him. But he was King and he needed a son.

  Jane, clasping her hands tight under the counterpane, replied, ‘The Crown is not a plaything for boys and girls. If the Crown were my concern solely, which it is not, I should be pleased to make my husband a Duke. I would not consent to make him King.’

  There was a storm at that. The Duchess, her nerves worn to breaking point by the agitation and tension of the last few days, raged up and down the room, telling Jane she was an unnatural little monster, a changeling with no human feelings, to be so unkind to her son whom everybody else had always loved. Could Jane not see that he was as good and clever as he was handsome? Whom, pray, did she want for a husband – the Emperor, or the King of France? Or some musty old scholar with his nose in his books?

  Jane was stung by this last into an answer. ‘I don’t want any husband. I didn’t want to be Queen. But as I am, I will do my duty as one. I will not put an upstart on the throne of England. And now I am going to sleep.’

  She lay down and pulled the sheet over her face.

  ‘Upstart!’ shouted Guildford, advancing threateningly to the bed. ‘Upstart did you say?’

  But there was no stir under the sheet. Guildford suddenly sat down on the edge of the bed and began to cry.

  His fond mother could not believe that this would not soften the hard-hearted bride, she herself had never been able to refuse anything to Guildford when he cried.

  ‘Perhaps if we leave you alone together now—’ she murmured encouragingly to him.

  The sheet was suddenly pulled down again. ‘I’ve got spots all over my chest,’ said Jane firmly; ‘it’s probably measles and catching, or perhaps you have poisoned me.’

  The Duchess had already snatched her son from the bed. ‘Come away, my poor boy, come with me. I’ll not leave you with an ungrateful wife.’

  He went with her.

  ‘I can’t sleep now,’ said Jane. ‘Is Cheke still up?’

  ‘Yes, Madam,’ said Lady Throckmorton, ‘he is with my husband and Mr Cecil.’

  ‘Bring him here, and tell him to bring pen and ink.’

  The late King’s tutor, grave, handsome and austere, entered the royal bedchamber, and stood before his former pupil in her grand new bedgown. So lately, it seemed, he had been teaching Greek prose to her and her cousin Edward; so lately had he been telling a story to those two children, only nine years old, on the stormy winter’s night old King Harry died; and so little change was there since that night, seven years ago, in this slight childish figure and small determined face that awaited him.

  ‘Cheke,’ said Jane (neither she nor Edward had ever been able to call him by his new title, Sir John), ‘do you believe that it is right that I should be Queen?’

  ‘Madam, how else should right be done? Only by you and through you can the Church of England continue, and the Prayer Book of King Edward of blessed memory. Your accession to the throne is not a thing conceived in a corner, nor brought to birth in a night. It was planned before you were born, long years ago, by King Henry the Eighth himself, when he disinherited his daughters, both the Lady Mary and the Lady Elizabeth, then a toddling infant, as bastards. Years later he restored their rights to the succession by Parliament, but provided that if they and King Edward died childless the Crown should go to the issue of his sisters, of whom the younger, Mary Rose, was your grandmother.’

  ‘But – King Henry’s daughters are then true heirs to the Crown. And they have not died—’ she bit off the last word, ‘yet.’

  ‘Heirs to the Crown – by their father’s ruling. But what King Harry did without question, his son surely had the right to do, and with far more reason. King Edward’s will and testament has merely restated that early one of his father’s, and removed the Ladies Mary and Elizabeth once again from the succession.’

  There was one enormous gap in this lucid exposition; it gaped too wide for the transparent honesty of Jane’s logic. ‘My grandmother, the Princess Mary Rose, was the younger of King Harry’s sisters. The elder, Margaret, would bear first claim to the throne, and her granddaughter is the child Mary, Queen of Scots.’

  ‘That is true, Madam – but it is unthinkable. As soon as she is old enough the little Queen of Scots will be married to the Dauphin; she will become Queen of France as well as Scotland. For her to reign here would amount to a conquest of England by France, and still worse, by the Romish Church.’

  ‘But – it is her right—’

  ‘Her right would be England’s wrong.’

  ‘How can right be wrong and truth unthinkable?’

  Cheke all but groaned. Jane was his best pupil, but it was impossible to explain compromise to her. ‘This is true, and right,’ he told her firmly, ‘that King Edward has declared you his cousin to be his rightful heir; so that you might preserve the New Religion pure and undefiled by Popery and the heathenish superstition of the Mass.’

  ‘Cheke, do you remember his laughing when you told us the story of St George and the Dragon?’

  ‘Yes, Madam, but he was then a very little boy.’

  ‘Well, later on he removed St George from the Order of the Garter. Why?’

  ‘Perhaps he thought it an old-fashioned mummery.’

  ‘But some old-fashioned mummeries – only some, I say – may be good. Cheke, do you think my cousin King Edward was always right?’

  ‘Madam, King Edward of blessed memory has died while still a boy. It is not given to any man, let alone a boy, to be always right.’

  There was a long silence, broken at last by a long, long sigh.

  ‘I see,’ said Jane, ‘he may have been right to make me Queen – and he may not. But we must abide by it. You think he was rig
ht, and so does Mr Ascham, and if you both do, then so must Mr Aylmer, who loves you both more than any men in the University of Cambridge, which is to say the best minds in England. I wish he were here too with us, but I will try to act as though he were. Take your pen now and write.’

  ‘To whom, gracious Lady?’

  ‘To the Lord Lieutenant of Surrey, who is doubtful on this matter.’ She pulled a scribbled note from under her pillow. ‘Tell him this: “We are entered into our rightful possession of this Kingdom, by the last will of our dearest cousin King Edward as rightful Queen of his realm. We have accordingly set forth our proclamation to all our loving subjects, not only to defend our just title, but also to assist us to disturb, repel and resist the feigned and untrue claim of Lady Mary, bastard daughter to our great-uncle Henry the Eighth of famous memory.”’

  ‘No,’ said Mr Cecil, ‘I won’t copy the letter. I won’t write “bastard”.’

  ‘Then,’ said Cheke, ‘His Grace the Duke of Northumberland will write it himself.’

  ‘Then let him.’

  ‘Heard the news? Mary set out at nightfall and rode through the darkness all night with only half a dozen men of her household. They took the Newmarket road for Yarmouth, so she’s aiming at the Netherlands after all.’

  ‘Your news is stale as old fish. She went on to Hengrave Hall, covered sixty miles without stopping, and the last part of them in disguise, riding pillion behind a servant. She has guts.’

  ‘She’s no wits.’

  ‘My Lord Duke of Northumberland, I bear a message from the Imperial ambassador.’

  ‘I’ll stand no more threats from him, and so you can tell him. Let the Emperor send but one troop of his foreign swine here and he’ll knit all true Englishmen together. Besides, two can play at that game. If Mary sends to the Emperor for help I’ll send to the King of France – and offer Calais as bribe. Tell the Fox that.’

  ‘Yes, Your Grace. But it’s no threat that Simon Renard sends. The Lady Mary has appealed to him again, in desperation. She sees destruction hanging over her unless she receives help from her cousin the Emperor.’

  ‘Well, will she receive it?’

  ‘Your Grace, Monsieur Renard considers it wiser not to forward her message to his Imperial Master.’

  ‘You coming to this farewell dinner too, my lord? Are all the rest of the Council?’

  ‘Most, I fancy. We’ve got our way in getting Dudley to lead this expedition instead of Suffolk. So now the Duke’s taking this chance to tell us all to be good boys in his absence.’ Pembroke’s loud laugh made Sir Thomas Cheyne glance round nervously as they went up the stairs to the banqueting hall.

  ‘Pooh, man, I can afford a family joke, we’re blood brothers now, with my boy Hal marrying his girl. Heard the latest of Mary? She’s raised the Royal Standard as Queen of England and Ireland, and where d’you think? At Framlingham Castle.’

  ‘Hmm, at Framlingham, is she? That’s a strong fortress, my cousin old Norfolk built it for wear and tear, it was his chief pride.’

  ‘Your cousin, hey? Never knew that. Well, anyway, much good his chief pride’s done him, imprisoned in the Tower all these years! Or will do Mary. It might stand a siege, but they’ll soon smoke her out like the doe rabbit she is.’

  Sir Thomas Cheyne, Warden of the Cinque Ports, looked sideways at the Earl of Pembroke, wondering if he were quite as confident as he sounded. He had more money and power than any other of Dudley’s noble supporters. It would be extremely useful to discover just exactly what was his private opinion of the situation. But that was just what one could not do while mewed up in the Tower with eavesdroppers at every corner. If only they could slip out even for an hour or two across the river to Cheyne’s house in Chelsea or to Barnard’s Castle, that splendid London house of Pembroke’s. But it was impossible for the moment, and they even considered it wiser, simultaneously and silently, to separate on the stairs instead of entering the banqueting hall together.

  The Duke greeted his guests with a rather defiant geniality, reminded them with urgency that they had to send more troops after him as soon as they had collected them, to catch up with him at Newmarket, and jollied them to keep faith with him in the manner of a huntsman cracking the whip over his hounds.

  ‘You’ve heard what her best friends think of her chances? The Papist ambassadors are trailing round dolefully “deploring her rashness in proclaiming herself Queen”! They neither answer her appeals for help nor forward them to the Emperor, the one ally she has – had, rather – in the world. But he knows as well as his servants that Mary can’t win. They said it themselves – and why? Because of her religion. That touches not only your consciences, all of you, but your pockets. She’d demand the Church lands and revenues to be given back, and which of you would care to do that, my friends?’

  They seemed to find this rather tactless. There was a murmur that the heathenish abomination of the Mass was sufficient cause against Mary. But he only cracked the whip still louder.

  ‘Don’t you leave us, your friends, tangled in the briars and betray us! Two can play at that game; remember, I have just as much chance to betray you, as you me.’

  Somehow this did not ring quite in tune with the chivalrous commander who had set his followers to kiss each other’s swords before a battle. He remembered that he should be setting out, not on a wild fling for his and his family’s fortunes, but on a crusade for the only true religion.

  ‘This is in God’s cause,’ he said, ‘for the preferment of His word – what the devil is that?’

  It was the servants bringing in the first course. The Duke’s nerves were on edge to start at so obvious an interruption. The Earl of Arundel, a family connection, boldly took the chance to tell him that there was no need for him to distrust them, for they were all in it together, ‘and which of us can now wipe his hands clean of it?’

  ‘I pray God it be so,’ said the Duke. ‘Let us go to dinner.’

  And so they sat down.

  And so they got up and went into the courtyard, where Sir John Gates, the Captain of the King’s Guard, was waiting for them with all his men. The Duke and his sons mounted their horses to ride at their head. The Earl of Arundel came out for a final leave-taking, and standing at the Duke’s stirrup he said how he wished he were going with him, ‘to spend my blood, even at your foot,’ said he, patting the stirrup and looking up with the wistful brown eyes of a faithful spaniel.

  The Duke’s youngest son, Harry, still a schoolboy, rode with them, and let a halloa out of him from sheer high spirits as they trotted through the little huddled streets of Shoreditch. ‘Faugh! but it’s good to be clear of the Tower air – not that there is any, for it’s thick with river mist and foul stink!’

  ‘It’s thicker with fair speech,’ said his eldest brother sourly. ‘Must you crow in the street like a half-fledged cockerel?’

  Harry went pink and he drew himself up in the saddle to look as tall as he could. Curse old Jack, cross again! But Jack was thinking of Arundel, who four years ago had helped Dudley oust the Protector, Ned Seymour, and then found himself in the Tower for his pains and had to buy himself out with £1500.

  ‘He’s small reason to be so devoted to you, sir, after all you’ve lifted from him!’

  ‘Who? What? Oh, Fitzalan! He’s a safe dog, never fear, knows his master. Besides, he’s one of the family.’

  The Duke was turning his head this way and that, looking at the crowds of people who were peering over each other’s shoulders in the low doorways, craning their necks out of the tiny windows, running, jostling each other up the narrow lanes, pressing each other closer and closer to the horses till they were all but under their hoofs. It was the sight he had seen every time he rode out for many years past, the Cockney crowds pushing and pressing to see the Great Duke go riding by – but never as now.

  For all those dense crowds were silent. No cheer was raised, no cry for largesse; the people muttered and whispered together, but passed no word to him. They we
re not hostile, scarcely sullen even, but so alien was he in his isolation, they might have come to stare upon a ghost.

  He could bear the ill-ease no longer. He said, ‘The people press to see us, but not a voice among them cries “God speed!”’

  ‘What do the people matter?’ said Ambrose.

  His father shrugged himself free of the surrounding silence. ‘Not one jot,’ he replied. ‘Mary can’t win.’

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  They rode north and east through flat fields and fens that were a shimmer of corn or reeds and here and there the sudden gleam of water in the marshlands under the hot unchanging sunshine. Always he seemed to have been riding through this golden dazzle – towards what mirage?

  He was not used to such fancies, but the heat, the wide still landscape, made him feel he was riding in a dream. The few grey stone castles that he passed looked impalpable as shadows, the woods a blue mist that smudged the horizon and wavered in the heat-haze but never seemed near enough to cast their grateful shade on him and his troops. Always the thick white dust of the rutted cart-tracks choked their throats, and the trees by the wayside were shrouded in it, white as ghosts.

  Over the pale countryside came the sound of bells pealing – pealing for Queen Mary or Queen Jane, they never knew which. Often they would ride into a town or village where the Mayor or beadle had just read out and posted up the Proclamation of Queen Mary and ordered the bells to ring for her; then at the coming of the Duke and his army he would tear it down, stick up Queen Jane’s and read that; and the bells would ring afresh for her; and after they had passed, would stick up Queen Mary’s yet again and ring for her once more:

  ‘Long live Queen Jane,

  Will Jane long reign?’

  ‘Long live Queen Mary,

  All things contrary.’

  There were no reinforcements to meet him at Newmarket; he could hear no news of them. He was carrying out a zigzag course to Cambridge, to raise the country as he went, before marching on to Framlingham. Some noblemen came to join him, but with disappointingly small forces; they complained that many of their own tenants had refused to follow their lords and masters against Mary. Nerves and tempers were taut as overstrung fiddle-strings in this white-hot suspense.