The Virgin Elizabeth

by Robin Maxwell

  “Where are they being taken?” Elizabeth demanded of the captain.

  “Tower of London,” he answered.

  “The Tower! Arrested and taken to the Tower?”

  “Not arrested, Princess. Detained for questioning is all.”

  Suddenly the remaining three soldiers arranged themselves around Elizabeth and she felt her heart leap to her throat.

  “Where are you taking her!” shrieked Kat, unable to disguise her terror.

  “Hatfield Hall,” said the captain, visibly relieved to have answered thusly.

  “Thank God,” muttered John Ashley as he took his wife in his arms and embraced her fiercely. Thomas and Blanche Parry too were locked in a final embrace as the guards began to pull their prisoners away.

  “I love you, Kat!” Elizabeth cried as the most important person in her world disappeared from her sight. “Take care, Parry!”

  But they were gone.

  There was only time for a wrap to be brought for Elizabeth and hasty preparations made for her things to be transported downriver to Hatfield before she too was hurried aboard a royal barge.

  Elizabeth never took her eyes from the dock of Crosby House where Blanche Parry and John Ashley stood waving, steadfast and pretending a confidence they could not, in this unreasonable circumstance, be feeling. For in matters of treason against the Crown, they knew, innocence was as useless as wings on a wagon. Elizabeth’s fate and the fates of her loved ones were, she realized, firmly within the hands of her enemies. What, she wondered, feeling herself succumb to black and utter hopelessness, was a fifteen-year-old girl, devoid of all friendly guidance or counsel, to do?

  We have done nothing wrong, Elizabeth said to herself silently. Nothing wrong. Perhaps, she prayed, as the barge made its way downriver that winters morning, if she repeated the phrase again and again, she would finally believe it was true.

  Chapter Twenty

  At least I am at Hatfield, thought Elizabeth as two soldiers escorted her down a long corridor. It was the slimmest of all consolations in her present miserable condition, but the house was one she knew well, having lived in it the better part of her infancy and childhood. She considered it her home.

  Now, feeling somewhat ridiculous and more than a little indignant to be so closely guarded, she was shown into the writing room and found herself confronted by a man who could be none other than her inquisitor. She experienced a thrill of alarm when she recognized him, for Lord Robert Tyrwhitt was husband to Queen Catherine’s stepdaughter, a woman who had doubtlessly watched the entire sordid affair between Elizabeth and Thomas Seymour unfold and destroy her beloved mistress.

  This will not go well for me, said Elizabeth to herself as she stood before the man. His face was round, his nose and lips bulbous. He was short, and she, being tall for her age and sex, found herself eye to eye with him. She thought briefly that this equality would be to her advantage, then remembered Kat saying short men tended to harshness as a way to compensate for their deficiency in size.

  “Princess,” he said tonelessly, and executed the most minimal bow permissible without obvious insult. She noticed that he appeared sharp and well rested, eyes twinkling with fervor for the coming task. She, in contrast, was fighting weariness, having spent the previous night riding alone through London, avoiding rape and harassment, being taken into custody by soldiers, and beginning the confinement of house arrest. She had been given less than an hour upon her arrival at Hatfield Hall to dress and gather her wits about her before this, the first interrogation.

  “My lord Tyrwhitt,” she intoned in a modulated voice she hoped sounded haughty.

  He fixed her with a cold stare. “As you are aware,” he began, “Thomas Seymour has been arrested for conspiring to overthrow the Crown.”

  Elizabeth winced at these words, hardly believing that they could be true.

  “We are in possession of intelligence that you and your closest personal servants, Katherine Ashley and Thomas Parry, conspired with the Admiral, without the consent of the Privy Council, to marry. Further, there is evidence that said armed rebellion, against Seymour’s brother the Protector and the King of England, was planned with the express purpose of enabling the Admiral — having married you — to place himself as your king and consort on the throne of England.”

  “Not true!” cried Elizabeth, having immediately lost her composure.

  “Furthermore,” Tyrwhitt powered on, ignoring the girls distress — indeed, perhaps encouraged by it — “this night past, the Lord High Admiral was seized as he attempted the kidnapping of your brother.”

  “What?” Elizabeth went suddenly numb with shock. Her ears began ringing in her head. “Kidnap Edward?”

  “These and other crimes against the State, Princess,” he continued, “constitute high treason. It is my duty here today,” Tyrwhitt said, his voice rising to a crescendo, “and in all of the days that shall follow, to learn the part that you and your servants played in this appalling conspiracy!”

  Much to Tyrwhitt’s pleasure, Elizabeth burst into tears. She covered her face with her hands and, with knees shaking, allowed him to help her onto a stool that had been placed in the center of the room. There he watched her with a sour expression as she slowly regained possession of her senses.

  “It would be wise,” he began again, “if, as we progress in our ‘conversations,’ you consider your honor and the peril that might ensue, for you are but your brothers subject, and together with your beloved retainers” — he paused for the effect this would and did have — “vulnerable to the fullest extent of prosecution that English law allows.”

  “Neither I nor my servants,” Elizabeth began, sniffing back her tears, “conspired for my marriage to Thomas Seymour.” She swallowed hard and continued in a quavering voice, “Nor did we have knowledge of his rebellion or his kidnapping of my brother the King.”

  “This, then, is your stance?” queried Tyrwhitt in a sarcastic tone.

  “’Tis no ‘stance,’ my lord Tyrwhitt. ‘Tis the whole truth of it.”

  “When I first spoke of Thomas Seymour’s planned revolt, your face registered no shock at the statement whatsoever, as it clearly did when I mentioned the attempted abduction of King Edward. Why is that, Princess? Had you or your servants foreknowledge of this rebellion?”

  “No!” she cried, feeling the ground fall away under her feet. This man was clever, and he was determined to have Elizabeth incriminate herself, and Kat and Parry, in treasonous plots that could see them all executed.

  “I repeat,” she said, using the only tactic she could conceive, “no one in my household had any knowledge of the plots you have described.”

  Tyrwhitt gazed at Elizabeth with a look of withering contempt. “I believed you a more intelligent person than such a simpleton’s answer indicates.”

  Elizabeth reeled with the insult but was speechless, unable to summon the words of righteous indignation that would have rescued her from this humiliation.

  “That will be all for today,” Tyrwhitt announced dismissively. “We will begin again tomorrow morning.”

  “What news have you of Kat Ashley and Master Parry?” Elizabeth asked pleadingly.

  “No news. They are in the Tower, as you already know, and if I am not mistaken, their interrogator is Lord Rich.”

  “Dear God,” was all Elizabeth could manage at the sound of Richard Rich’s name, for the Lord Chancellor was well known as the crudest inquisitor and torturer in all of England.

  “I suggest,” continued Tyrwhitt, “that you consider your answers very carefully, for the consequences —”

  “I know the consequences, my lord Tyrwhitt,” said Elizabeth, rising to her feet.

  “Yes, of course you do.” His tone was condescending. “They are the same ones your mother suffered for her many indiscretions.” He smiled almost pleasantly, taking great pleasure in the Princess’s humbling. “Sleep well.”

  She had wished to have the last word in this meeting, if only to say
, “Good day, my lord,” but Elizabeth found that her throat was choked, as if a hand were gripping it tightly, and therefore was forced to turn in silence and be led away by two soldiers like a common criminal.

  Grateful to be lodged in her old rooms, Elizabeth lay abed exhausted but unable to sleep. First and foremost she agonized over Kat, no doubt lying in a dark, filthy, and rat-infested dungeon. Of no royal blood, there was no reason that Kat should be treated with any but the harshest of measures. Elizabeth squirmed and cringed between her clean sheets, imagining the horrors her nurse might even now be enduring. But worse still was the fear that Kat’s loyalty to her charge and her silence on all incriminating matters would lead to the woman’s torture. Kat tortured! Elizabeth sat up in bed, unable to lie still with so ghastly an image before her. It was not unheard of for women to be placed on the rack, have their limbs torn from their sockets… . And poor Parry. A man, so better able to withstand indignity and torment, but he deserved such treatment no more than Kat did.

  Elizabeth’s only comfort — if it could be called that — was that the three of them were equally responsible for their current predicament. If it were simply her own infatuation and rash behavior with the Admiral that had landed them in so much trouble, she could never have lived with herself. But Kat had promoted Elizabeth’s affair with Thomas, and Parry had as well. She wondered at their motives, if they had not somehow perceived some glory or riches in it for themselves. Perhaps Parry, she mused, but certainly not Kat. Kat had simply adored the Admiral, wished for Elizabeth a passion that she herself, in her marriage to staid and upright John Ashley, did not possess.

  Kat and Elizabeth were kin. She must find a way to deliver her out of harm’s way!

  Tomorrow, thought Elizabeth, her own interrogation would certainly prove more aggressive than today’s. Robert Tyrwhitt was ruthlessly determined to trick her, confuse her, break her spirit. If he had his way, Elizabeth would seal Kat’s and Parry’s fate even more quickly.

  Oh, how has it come to this! Elizabeth silently cried. She jumped down from her bed, moved to the window, and threw it open. Unfazed by the bitter night air, she gazed out at Hatfield’s great wood, now shrouded in darkness. Such terrible calamity, and all derived from a single source. Like the Egyptian sun, thought Elizabeth suddenly, Thomas Seymour was, to those around him, a source of light and heat and worship — indeed, a source of life. All were drawn to his power, believed they could not survive without his love. And all would ultimately perish in his final blaze of glory.

  But surely he had loved her, she insisted to herself. What she had felt in his arms for those few moments in the boathouse had certainly been genuine. She’d felt the hardness between his legs. She had inspired that. And if she had, she suddenly wondered, what then? Was such arousal not the same condition stimulated by a prostitute? Is that what she was? A whore? Had her good name and reputation been sullied forever, the lives of her precious friends imperiled for nothing more than common carnal desire?

  Frustration, remorse, and loathing for herself arose in Elizabeth’s throat like some poisonous bile, but there could be no relief from it. She must swallow it again and again, for she had earned it, this foul reward for her acts of dishonesty, betrayal, and lust. She closed the window slowly and climbed back into bed. Indeed, thought Elizabeth, she deserved the misery. All of it, and much, much more.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Robin Dudley regarded his father with abject disbelief. Standing before the man he had adored, even idolized, he beheld now an underhanded deceiver, one who would, to further his objectives, use base trickery on his own son. But under the angry gaze of his boy, John Dudley was sanguine and altogether unruffled.

  “It was something that had to be done,” he said. “’Twas imperative that Thomas Seymour be brought down. You know that as well as 1.

  “But Elizabeth — you knew she would be implicated. You let me — you led me to help destroy her!”

  “She is not yet destroyed, Robert.”

  “Not yet destroyed! She is under house arrest. Her servants are jailed in the Tower. They are accused of plotting treason with Seymour!”

  “Elizabeth was a very foolish girl. She wished to marry, against the Councils wishes, an extremely dangerous man. The Admiral surprised even his most vehement detractors with his attempt to kidnap the King. Heaven only knows what he had planned for the boy. I have no way of knowing what was in Elizabeth’s mind, and neither do you. She may have been planning to marry Seymour secretly. Perhaps then he would have murdered the King, risen up with his army, disposed of Princess Mary, and taken the throne with Elizabeth by force.”

  “You may think that of Seymour, Father, but surely you cannot believe such things of Elizabeth. She’s just a girl infatuated with” — Robin was growing more and more agitated — “that monster, but she was not to blame. She doesn’t deserve the fate of a traitor. And what of her servants? Kat Ashley has been a mother to Elizabeth, and now she resides in England's most fearsome prison, interrogated by Richard Rich! And all because I spied for you. You tricked me, Father. Used me. How could you do it?”

  “How?” said John Dudley, his eyes narrowing and his voice growing chilly. “Very easily, Robert. You see, I place the future good of England before the good of Princess Elizabeth.”

  “But Elizabeth is England!” Robin blurted, even before he knew what he was saying. The moment the words were out, he knew how ridiculous they had sounded. His father regarded him with what Robin supposed was disappointment, even pity.

  “Your Elizabeth,” John Dudley began, “is no more than a minor princess. When King Edward comes of age he will sire heirs to the throne. Sons, daughters. They will take precedence over Elizabeth, and their children after them. If perchance Edward dies without issue, Mary is next in line for the succession, distasteful a thought as that may be. You can be assured she will marry — probably a Spaniard — and die trying to birth a gaggle of Papist brats. Each of them will take precedence over Elizabeth, who, if you remember, was not so long ago considered just another of Henrys bastards. Your friend is quite unimportant in the greater scheme of things, and you would do well to forget her. She is doomed, can you not see that? If not to execution or life imprisonment for her complicity in treason, then to a life of relative obscurity. With her reputation sullied so severely, the best she can hope for is marriage to a lesser foreign prince, never setting foot in England again. But you, son, your whole life is ahead of you. You have privilege, rank, close access to the royal family. You are one of the Kings favorite companions! And what of your betrothed? I see you and Amy Robsart enjoying as large and happy a family as your mother and I have had. Rejoice, Robert! You’ve a brilliant future.”

  But Robin Dudley felt anything but celebratory. He was nauseated with remorse and shame for the dishonor and threat of torture and death he had brought down on Elizabeth and her loved ones, and seething with bitterness toward the one who had led him astray.

  He said simply, “I had thought more of you than this, my lord, much more.” Then without asking leave to go, Robin Dudley turned his back on his father and left his presence. He knew he must find a way to see Elizabeth again and right the terrible wrong he had done her.

  And he would never, ever trust his father again.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Tell me about this letter,” instructed Lord Tyrwhitt as he paced before Elizabeth, now seated, back straight, on the stool in the center of the interrogation room.

  “It was one that Kat Ashley had written to the Admiral.”

  “When?”

  “I do not remember precisely.”

  “An estimate. Last spring, summer, autumn?”

  “Do you wish to hear what I have to say about the letter?” asked Elizabeth, trying to stifle the choler that was threatening to destroy the equanimity with which she had so far conducted herself this morning. She had decided to feed her inquisitor tidbits of information that he might find interesting but that were not, in fact
, damaging.

  “What was said in this letter, Princess?” he asked, relenting momentarily about the date on which it had been written.

  “In it, Kat Ashley suggested to the Admiral that he should not come to my residence … ‘For fear of suspicion.’ I believe that was the phrase that was used.”

  Indeed, Elizabeth was terrified that Kat’s letter might somehow come to light and cause no end of trouble.

  “For fear of suspicion,” Tyrwhitt repeated. “That suggests —”

  “I know what it suggests to you, my lord Tyrwhitt,” Elizabeth interrupted. “In fact, I have brought it to your attention to let you know that I chastised Kat Ashley roundly for using such a phrase, for by using it she was acknowledging that suspicion about myself and the Admiral even existed in the minds of others. Wrongly acknowledging. So, you see, the reference in the letter implied no guilt.”

  “Your chastisement of Kat Ashley proves nothing, Princess, except that even then you feared exposure for your secret meetings with Seymour.”

  “There were no secret meetings!”

  “So you say. And were there no conversations between you and your servants about the feasibility of your marriage with Seymour?”

  Elizabeth hesitated. This was dangerous ground, but she had decided to give Tyrwhitt another small piece of gristle upon which to chew.

  “There were times,” she began, “that the subject arose, but Mistress Ashley was always careful to advise me, in the most responsible fashion possible, that marriage with anyone, including Thomas Seymour, was not to be considered without the consent of the Council.”

  “You call Katherine Ashley responsible?” Tyrwhitt was no doubt recalling the tales his wife had brought home to him of Elizabeth’s reckless behavior at Chelsea House. A responsible lady would never have allowed such goings-on. “I am here to tell you, Princess, that Katherine Ashley and her ‘familiar,’ Thomas Parry —”