Elizabeth held her breath.
“… if now you would simply confess your crimes and any secret understandings about your marriage with Thomas Seymour, then all the evil and shame brought down upon you in this last year would surely be blamed on your servants.”
“There were no crimes!” Elizabeth shouted. “No ‘secret understandings’!” Her face had gone quite red and she found that, without knowing it, she had risen from her chair. Heat radiated from her body. If she had had an iota less control of herself she would have reached out and throttled the fat-necked Tyrwhitt.
“Sit down, Princess,” he ordered her.
“I think I prefer to stand,” she announced defiantly.
“Did you know,” he said with a distinct touch of glee, “that there are rumors about London and the countryside too, that you are lodged in the Tower, pregnant with Thomas Seymour’s child?”
The words shattered Elizabeth, silenced her. Her backbone seemed to melt.
“All of the King's subjects believe his sister is … well…”
Elizabeth was past appreciating Tyrwhitt's restraint from finishing that damning sentence. She found she was quickly losing her strength and purpose and resolve. Her mind scattered and she groped for something to say, anything that would mollify her inquisitor, keep him from again speaking such ghastly words as he had just spoken.
“I did once have a conversation with Thomas Parry, perhaps in May or even June …”
“Yes?” Tyrwhitt motioned with a finger for the scribe to take careful note.
“He did ask me whether, if the Council gave consent,” Elizabeth said slowly, “I would consider marrying the Admiral.”
Tyrwhitt smiled triumphantly. His techniques were working. Her will was beginning to crumble. “And what was your answer?” he demanded.
“My answer? My answer … Lord Tyrwhitt, I am feeling suddenly unwell. May I be excused?”
“Certainly, Princess.” Her interrogator seemed pleased with the progress they were finally making. He would let her go now and entice more out of the girl later.
When the guards entered to take charge of the prisoner, Tyrwhitt surprisingly waved them away. He went to the open door and beckoned to someone. Lady Browne, a plump middle-aged lady, swept into the writing room and awaited her orders from Lord Tyrwhitt.
“Will you escort Princess Elizabeth to her rooms,” he said, sounding kind and utterly reasonable. “She’s feeling ill.”
“Of course, my lord.” Lady Browne turned to Elizabeth. “Would you like to hold my arm, Highness?”
“Yes, please,” said Elizabeth, and without a backward glance allowed herself to be led from the room.
The two women were silent until they began climbing the stairs and were well out of Tyrwhitt’s earshot. Still, Lady Browne whispered.
“I have news of Mistress Ashley.”
Elizabeth whirled to face the lady, who wore a kindly expression.
“I know you fear she’s in a stinking dungeon, but she is not. Her lodgings in the Tower are clean and safe, and she has not been tortured.”
“Oh, Lady Browne!” Elizabeth wished to throw her arms around the woman but restrained herself, for such an outburst of affection by the disgraced Princess would only mean trouble for the individual upon whom it was lavished.
“Tell me,” Elizabeth said instead, whispering softly, “what have you heard of my … pregnancy? You know, of course, that the rumor is false.”
“Yes, I know, Highness. But the lie is indeed spreading. A woman, an old midwife, was taken into custody. She told the story of how she was hired, and blindfolded, taken on the river to a house — whether great or humble she could not tell — and made to do her work on a fair young lady of about fourteen. The baby was born alive but then, as she tells it, miserably destroyed.” Lady Browne was clearly shaken by the repeating of such sinister gossip. “As the midwife had heard of your ‘condition,’ and because of the secrecy of the proceedings and the age of her patient, she surmised the young woman who gave birth might have been yourself.”
“And this story is circulating in London?” asked Elizabeth, horrified.
“And in the countryside, too. Oh, dear Princess,” whispered Lady Browne sincerely, “I wish you only the best. And to that end I recommend you bare your soul to Lord Tyrwhitt. If you do not, I fear it will go badly for you and your servants.”
“Thank you,” said Elizabeth. “Thank you for your kind words, Lady Browne.” They had reached Elizabeth's door, where two soldiers stood guard. The women exchanged a final desperate look, for only those of their sex knew the grave weakness of feminine circumstance.
“Rest well, my dear.”
The door was opened for her and Elizabeth stepped into her room. When the door closed behind her she fell on the bed and gave herself up to weeping, and praying that somehow she might be struck dead, and that Jesus would come and take her soul up and away to Heaven.
Chapter Twenty-Three
“I will see my brother!” shouted Thomas Seymour through his cell door for perhaps the thirtieth time that morning.
With each and every demand, his guard’s response had changed, from a deferential “Your message will be taken posthaste, my lord” to a placating “I shall see to it” to an irritated and sarcastic “Anything you say, Admiral.”
The demand to see his brother was, in fact, the only thing Thomas Seymour could on this, his third day of incarceration in the Tower, think to say. All of his raging and threatening, his shouts of abuse at his jailers and cries to Heaven at the unfairness and illegality of his arrest, had fallen on deaf ears. They were treating him — him, the High Admiral of the Navy and uncle of the King of England —-like a common criminal. If he could just see and speak with the Protector, there was nothing that could not be explained away. All would be restored to normality. All would be forgiven, as it was between brothers.
“When will my message be delivered to the Protector?” Seymour hissed through the door.
This time the jailer did not even bother to reply. He would be sorry, this arrogant fellow, when Seymour was a free man again. No one realized that his arrest had been meant only to frighten him. A slap on the wrist for attempting to override the Protector’s control. They had played this game endlessly as children, first in fisticuffs and wrestling when they were young boys, later in complicated mock battles with wooden swords in the forest behind Wolfe Hall. Edward was the eldest and for many years the tallest, but once Thomas had grown, his shoulders had broadened and his muscles hardened, and the contrasts had evened out. Then the battles had become those of wit as well as might. Edward's capacity was in brilliant planning and execution of his intricate schemes, though he was oftentimes foiled by Thomas’s instinctual maneuvering and reckless bravery. But always at the end of the day the two had walked back to their father s house arm in arm and laughing at their days contests. It was true that in recent years, as the stakes had risen and moved into court and Council, competition had become more bitter and acrimonious, and with Edward’s marriage to that detestable shrew, much of the fun of their lifelong rivalry had died a painful death. Still, they were tied irrevocably by blood, as they were also tied to the King.
No harm could come to himself, of this Thomas was sure.
“I will see my brother!” he shouted.
This time, to his surprise, the heavy wooden door creaked on its rusted hinges and opened.
Finally, he thought, Edward has decided my punishment has been sufficient. Thomas rose from his cot and assumed a posture that was at once respectfully attentive and altogether arrogant. He could not let his brother know that he had suffered from this imprisonment. He would make a jest of it. Arm in arm and laughing they would walk from this cell, Thomas glaring at the jailers who had made his incarceration so unpleasant. Once free, he would take stock and perhaps this time move more carefully with his plans, trust no one but himself.
But the man who walked though the cell door was not Edward at all. Thoma
s recognized him as John Billings, a lower secretary of the Privy Council. Perhaps, thought Seymour, his belly suddenly gripped as though by a tightening hand, the whole Council is coming in after the secretary. I shall have to face all of my enemies at once, here in this humiliating circumstance. But now the jailer was closing the door behind Billings. No one else was coming in to see him after all.
“My lord,” said Billings in the monotonous voice that had always irritated Thomas in Council meetings.
“Where are the others?” demanded Seymour.
“The ‘others,’ my lord?”
“The Council. If my brother has not visited me, then I assume the Privy Council will come in his stead.”
“I have come from the Council,” said Billings. “I alone.”
Seymour's look of derision was so transparent that the secretary flinched visibly with the insult. He composed himself quickly, however, as though drawing strength from his purpose. Indeed, a moment later that purpose was revealed as he removed a rolled parchment from his pouch and unfurled a long document onto Seymour's table.
“What is this?” asked Thomas warily, the invisible hand once again clenching his guts.
Billings read, “ ‘A Summary of the Articles of High Treason objected to Lord Seymour, High Admiral of England.’”
“High treason?”
“Yes, my lord. On three-and-thirty counts.”
Thomas sat and pulled the candle close to the document and he quickly began to read. He was charged with endeavoring to get into his own hands the government of the King, of intending to control the King’s marriage, of bribing certain members of the Privy Chamber, and threatening to make the blackest Parliament ever known in England.
By God’s precious soul, he thought, Wriothesley and Clinton have spoken out against me. And Dorset. He was one I held as a friend.
He went on reading, disbelief growing into fear. They accused him of prejudicing the King against the Protector, and of plotting to take the King “into his custody.” He had paused on that article to read it again, and Billings, peering over his shoulder, added, “Your man, Fowler, informed us that you said how easy it would be to steal the King away, for the palace was so inadequately guarded.”
“I said that, meaning only that better precautions should have been taken.”
Billings shrugged, for the excuse was ridiculous in light of Seymour’s later actions.
Thomas continued reading. He was accused of having ten thousand available men and sufficient money to support an insurrection. Of endeavoring to make a clandestine marriage with the Princess Elizabeth. Of having married Queen Catherine scandalously soon after the death of the King.
“Idiots!” he cried aloud when he’d read that last.
“I will tell my lords of the Council what you think of them,” said Billings with an imperiousness that was growing with Thomas Seymour’s discomfiture.
“You tell them,” said Seymour, “that they can stick their summary of my ‘treasonous’ crimes one by one up their hairy bungholes!”
“I think you’d best finish your reading, my lord,” said Billings coolly.
This he did. Articles 23 and 24 addressed his dealings with Sherrington and the embezzlement from the Royal Mint.
“Sherrington,” Thomas muttered contemptuously
“Indeed, Master Sherrington confessed all his crimes in the Tower and implicated yourself.”
“Bastard,” Thomas said to himself and continued reading.
Articles 25 to 31 spoke of his aiding and abetting pirates and profiting from their activities. Damn right, thought Thomas, feeling suddenly rebellious. He had made the most of his position as Admiral. It was the only post his high and mighty brother had deigned to give him when he’d stolen the reins of government from Henry’s council of sixteen regents. What if Edward had sent him out with specific orders to capture Black Jack Thompson? Any man in his right mind would have taken advantage of the position, as others naturally took profits from grants and leases.
Seymour pushed back his chair and stood up, his face red and seething. “How dare they use such things to accuse me of treason!” he roared.
“How they dare, my lord, I do not know,” replied Billings calmly, “but that they have is a fact.”
“You tell my brother I must see him,” Seymour threatened, towering over the smaller man.
“I shall tell him, my lord.” Billings sidestepped the Admiral, rolled the document up again, and placed it in his pouch. He turned and knocked on the cell door. Momentarily the jailer came and unlocked it. “The princess Elizabeth is under house arrest for her part in this,” said Billings as an afterthought, “and several of her servants are housed here in the Tower with you.” The expression on Seymour’s face did not change perceptibly with this intelligence. “And the young King is mourning the loss of his favorite hound.”
“God blast His Majesty’s bloody hound!” thundered Thomas, hurling himself at the door.
Safely on the other side, Billings called through it, “Good day, my lord!”
Seymour pounded the cell door in a violent fury. He could hear the jailer and Billings sharing a laugh. They were laughing at him!
Thomas sat heavily on his cot, weighed down as though the thirty-three articles of treason had been hung like a too-heavy mantle about his shoulders. He could imagine the Privy Council sitting round their long table to draw up the document — his enemies gathered like vultures over a feast of carrion.
What would be his fate? Catherine was dead. Princess Elizabeth, herself in jeopardy, was of no use to him. The King and his brother, God damn their souls to Hell’s eternity, had abandoned him in his time of greatest need.
When at last it became clear that he was lost, beyond all hope of salvation, Thomas Seymour, High Admiral of the King’s Navy, put his head in his hands and wept like a child.
Chapter Twenty-Four
Elizabeth had endured more than a week of long and tedious interrogations at Lord Tyrwhitt's hands, he attempting to wrest from her lips a confession of complicity in Thomas Seymours marriage plans, or knowledge of his rebellion. As the time passed the Princess found herself weakened, for she was running low on tidbits that might appease him but give him no fuel to fire his case against Kat, Parry, and herself. Tyrwhitt, she thought as she lay abed waiting for sleep, was as sharp and ferocious a lawyer as he could be, with perfect memory, flawless logic, and unflagging ruthlessness. Her tears had no effect on him, and when his demeanor softened and he became kind, Elizabeth had learned, this was the time of greatest danger, for a trap was surely being laid for her.
She was tired, so tired, and had never in all her life felt so alone. She tried to recall her lessons with Grindal and Ascham, call up the Socratic and Platonic wisdom she had studied so assiduously. All of her requests to be allowed her Greek texts, so that she could ease her mind with translations, had been ignored. She felt herself sinking deeper and deeper into an abyss from which there was no escape, with only a death as horrible and ignominious as her mother's to end it.
More and more the idea had preyed on her mind that the people of England were thinking ill of her, and this troubled her no end. Why, she wondered, did she have such a care for the men and women of town and country? They were poor and common and powerless. They had no say in the running of England, for the men in Parliament who were said to represent them truly voted as they pleased. Why then did Elizabeth burn with humiliation at the thought of their disapproval of her? Was it simply the cruelty of the gossip that was even now in the lowliest country taverns being repeated and spread like a virulent infection? Or was it the comparison with King Henry's whore, the traitor Anne Boleyn?
All of this, together with the awful shame of having dragged her loved ones down to such depths with her, made the days almost unendurable and her nights marathons of guilty ruminations and sleeplessness.
Then, like a taper being lit in a darkened chamber, an idea burst upon Elizabeth's mind. It came from nowhere in parti
cular but seemed, if not brilliant, then at least feasible. Perhaps it might in some way help her. She rose from the bed and, throwing her robe round her shoulders and sliding into her slippers, she moved silently to the writing table and lit several candles. The moment she sat down and placed the quill in the inkpot and nib to parchment, the ideas began to flow freely from her mind into her fingertips. She had never been so thankful that her penmanship was flawless, for such a correspondence as this must impress its reader with the perfection of its style and grammar as well its content.
My Lord Protector, I appreciate your great gentleness and good will towards me in this time of urgency, and understand your counsel as an earnest friend that I should declare what I know in this matter.
The Protector, if not his wife, had shown Elizabeth due respect in the past, and he was indeed the highest authority in England whom she might personally petition. She wrote on meticulously, declaring all she could without incriminating Kat or Parry or herself, reiterating those items she had shared with Tyrwhitt — things that she perceived sounded far more believable in writing than they had as spoken answers under her inquisitor's evil eye. She “confessed” that Thomas had offered herself use of Seymour House when in London, and that the Admiral had on several occasions inquired as to the state of her patents and her household expenses, perhaps with an eye to their future together. Never, however, had she consented to plans of marriage with Seymour or anyone else without the Council’s consent.
Elizabeth looked up from her writing. She had filled an entire page but had not yet begun to convey the most important thoughts for which she had begun this exercise. She carefully blotted the first page with a half-round blotter and set it aside, drawing another sheet of parchment in front of her. She dipped the quill tip into her inkpot and, taking a deep breath to fortify her, continued writing.
Master Tyrwhitt and others have told me that there are many rumors abroad that besmirch my honor and honesty, the worst of which is that I am in the Tower and with child by My Lord Admiral. This is a shameful slander against my name and also therefore against my brother the Kings Majesty. I heartily desire, Your Lordship, that I may be allowed to come to the Court so that all there may see me as I am.
Virgin Page 23