The Lady Elizabeth (60 page)

“Good,” said Elizabeth, much recovered now, and determined to stress to Mary how unfairly she had been treated. When paper, pen, and ink were set before her, her words flowed passionately across the pages, pouring out her grievances in detail and giving voice to her anger and frustration. When the letter was finished, Sir Henry took one glance and flung it on the table.

“You cannot send this, madam!” he protested. “The Queen is certain to be offended.”

“
I
am offended,” she cried, “at being treated like a traitor, without trial or condemnation!”

“Nevertheless, you cannot send this as it is. I insist you tone it down.”

He was implacable, so she had no choice but to rewrite the letter. Sir Henry read it and nodded approvingly.

“That is much better,” he said, and went off to find his sealing wax. As soon as he had gone, Elizabeth quickly substituted her earlier version, folded in exactly the same way. When Sir Henry returned, he sealed and stamped it without another thought.

Bedingfield stood before her, his face tragic.

“I cannot understand it,” he said plaintively. “I have received a reprimand from the council for allowing you to send such a disrespectful and rude letter to the Queen. I cannot understand it. I read your letter…”

“You did, Sir Henry,” Elizabeth said sweetly. “And I had rewritten it at your behest.”

“Now, if it had been your earlier version,” he said, “I could have understood it. But there we are. You are forbidden to write to Her Majesty again.”

“I am very sorry for it,” Elizabeth said, not minding too much, for she had said what she wanted to say to Mary, and felt better for it; surely it was Mary’s pricking conscience that had goaded her to anger? “I suppose I may write still to the council?”

“Oh, no,” said Sir Henry hurriedly. “I’m sure they mean that you are forbidden to write to the Queen
and
the council.”

“Does it say that?” Elizabeth asked, nodding at the missive in his hands.

Bedingfield hurriedly scanned it. “No, it only mentions the Queen, but, of course, it must apply to the council too.”

“That is just your assumption!” she accused him angrily. “You cannot prevent me from writing to the council without specific instructions. I will be cut off from the world if you do that. Why, it would leave me in a worse case than the lowest prisoner in Newgate!”

“I am sorry, madam, but I must keep to the spirit, rather than the letter, of my orders,” Sir Henry insisted.

“Then I see I must continue in this life without all worldly hope, wholly resting in the truth of my cause!” Elizabeth stormed, bursting into passionate weeping. Incapable of dealing with her when she was in such a state, Sir Henry made a hasty exit, leaving Blanche Parry to comfort her mistress.

“I have some good news, madam,” Bedingfield said meekly four days later. “The Queen herself has clarified matters. You may write to the council whenever you wish.”

“I am glad of it. I knew you were mistaken,” Elizabeth told him. She hoped her outburst had done some good. The Queen
must
be convinced of her innocence; otherwise, she would have kept her in the Tower. Or was Mary
still
keeping her confined in the hope that some new evidence against her would come to light? If that were so, she might be here forever…she
had
to plead her cause!

She wrote to the council that morning, begging for an audience with the Queen. She dared to hope that this time her request would be granted. But days went by with no response.

“The council is busy just now,” Bedingfield told her. “There are but days to go until the Queen’s wedding. They have much to occupy them.”

“Is the Prince of Spain here in England?” Elizabeth asked curiously. Half of her was pleased for Mary, that she had at last found a husband; the other, less loyal, part of her feared that Philip would quickly sire an heir on her sister, and so deprive her, Elizabeth, of her place in the succession. She did not know how she would bear that.

“He is expected any day,” Sir Henry told her. “He might even have arrived by now.”

More time went by. Still no answer. Elizabeth began to fret.

“They have all gone to Winchester for the wedding,” Bedingfield informed her. “I daresay you will receive a reply when they return to London.”

“Don’t tell me that the council will transact no business in Winchester!” Elizabeth countered. “Or are they all busy making floral garlands for the bridemaids?”

What she really wanted was a chance to speak to Mary while the Queen was still in a euphoric mood over her marriage; that way, she might be more tenderly inclined to lenience and compassion. But the twenty-fifth of July, the date appointed for the royal wedding, came and went, and still, days later, there was no letter from the council.

Elizabeth grew sullen and resentful in her anxiety. She came to believe that this Philip, this Catholic Spaniard, this known friend to the dreaded Inquisition, had further poisoned Mary’s mind against her. What else was she to think?

She went to Mass. She had long taken care to attend regularly, hoping that it would go well for her with the Queen as a result, but now, when prayers were asked by the chaplain for Queen Mary and King Philip, she could not bring her lips to form the words. Bedingfield saw it and reported her omission to the council. Another black mark against her.

Mary lay in bed, watching the summer moonlight streaming through the open casement. Beside her, Philip—her Philip, her darling, her joy—was breathing evenly. This marriage had certainly brought its manifold political advantages, but to her personally, privately, more than she had ever dreamed of. Her young, personable husband was courtesy itself, in bed and out of it, and paid her the most considerate attentions. He had been gentle with her on their wedding night, endlessly patient with her inexperience and maidenly modesty. The pain had been great, but she had borne it with queenly fortitude, and now, after several weeks, she found that paying the marriage debt was much easier. She was even beginning to enjoy it a little, although of course she could not tell Philip that; what happened in the marriage bed was never referred to by either of them. Her part, as she understood it, was to lie still, submit to his attentions, and pray for an heir. She was managing, she thought, rather well. Just let her get pregnant, and then that constant thorn in her side, her sister Elizabeth—if she was her sister, of course—could go hang herself.

Next to her, Philip was pretending to be asleep. He was praying that his dried-up spinster of a wife would soon be with child, so that he could in conscience abstain from her bed and perhaps, if he could contrive it, get back to Spain for a while. He hated it here in England, and he knew he was hated in return. As for his bride, he had done everything his father had exhorted him to, had shown every attention, even though he had had to shut his eyes and gird his unwilling loins when it came to storming that virginal fortress; he had gotten through it by thinking of his beautiful mistress in faraway Madrid.

Well, the thing was done now; he had gotten used to his innocent, loving, submissive wife. One woman was much the same in bed as another, after all—except that this one thought it proper to lie rigid and unmoving while he was laboring away at his duty. Fortunately there were ladies aplenty at the English court, many of them willing…It had not taken him long to stray from the marriage bed. Still, he was there most nights, doing his best to get an heir, swallowing his distaste. This marriage might be made in Heaven as far as the future of the English Church and other political considerations went, but the price he was paying personally was dear in the extreme. To be frank, he thought, it would take God Himself to drink this cup. Dear Lord, I beseech You, let her conceive soon, he prayed fervently.

“I shall write to the council again,” Elizabeth declared in August, when the Queen had been married for a month.

“Wait awhile longer,” Bedingfield counseled.

“No, this waiting is intolerable to me,” she defied him.

“I cannot permit it,” he told her.

“God’s blood!” she flared. “Their lordships would smile in their sleeves if they learned how scrupulous you are! I beg of you, please, write to the council for me. Make suit to their honors to be a means to the Queen’s Majesty for me and to consider my woeful case, for I have not received the comforting reply to my request that I had hoped for.”

“Very well, I will write,” Bedingfield groaned, capitulating.

“And while you are about it,” Elizabeth said, quickly recovering her composure, “ask them to make suit to the Queen, for very pity, to consider my long imprisonment—it is five months now, mark you—and either to have me charged with my supposed offense, so that I can answer for my conduct, or grant me liberty to come into her presence. Believe me, Sir Henry, I would not ask those things unless I knew myself to be clear before God.”

Sir Henry was used by now to Elizabeth’s extravagant declarations, but the honest man in him had come to suspect that they were the fruit of frustrated innocence rather than the bravado of a villainess. To be plain, he wished she
could
convince the Queen of her innocence, for he was heartily weary of his responsibilities and would be happy to see the back of his troublesome charge.

“If the Queen will not consent to see me,” Elizabeth was saying, “then I ask that a deputation of councillors be allowed to visit me, so that I can protest my innocence to them, and not think myself utterly desolate of all refuge in the world.”

“I think I can remember all that,” said Sir Henry resignedly. “I’ll write to them now.”

It was nigh on September before Elizabeth received a response, in the form of a letter from Mary herself to Bedingfield.

“The Queen has spoken at last,” Sir Henry informed her. “An audience is out of the question. To be plain, she feels your complaints are somewhat strange. You may make of that what you will, of course, but she says you need not fear you have been forgotten, and that she is not unmindful of your cause.”

“I know what game she is playing,” Elizabeth said slowly. “She is waiting until she is with child before she decides what to do with me. I will be less of a threat to her then.”

“Remember that it is the Queen’s Highness of whom you speak,” Sir Henry reproved. “You should show more respect. To my poor understanding, this is a hopeful letter, and may presage better things for you.”

“I wish I could believe you,” Elizabeth said doubtfully. “All I know is that I am cooped up here interminably, with no end to it in sight, no hope of liberty. My only pleasure is in my books, and many of those you have banned.” She glared at him. “Perhaps if I could have a copy of Saint Paul’s Epistles—even if you won’t allow me my English Bible?”

“The Epistles you may have,” he told her, “but the English Bible never. The government is now proceeding more harshly against the reformed religion than ever before. Not only would possession of such a book be wrong, it would be mightily dangerous. If I were you, my lady, I should forget I ever owned a copy.”

True to his word, he soon afterward brought her a copy of St. Paul’s Epistles in Latin. Reading them brought her some comfort, and she spent many hours making translations into various languages, then laid down her pen, wondering why she was doing this. Her life—nay, her youth itself—was being wasted; she could be enjoying herself, living it to the full, adorning courts and charming young gentlemen. Instead, she was immured here at Woodstock, shut up like St. Barbara in her tower.

Dejectedly, she turned back to her book, seeking comfort from it, and after a time, wrote in the flyleaf:
August. I walk many times into the pleasant fields of the Holy Scriptures, where I pluck up the goodly herbs of sentences, so that, having tasted their sweetness, I may the less perceive the bitterness of this miserable life.
Then she lay down her head on her arms and wept hot tears of self-pity.

“Great news, my lady!” Sir Henry announced one morning late in September. “The Queen’s Majesty is with child! England is to have an heir.”

Elizabeth was aghast. She had not for a moment seriously envisaged Mary becoming pregnant. She was too old, too ailing, was she not? She herself had thought her place in the succession sure, unassailable; she had taken it for granted and looked forward to the day when she might, by God’s will, be crowned Queen and given the safekeeping of her realm and all her people—for already, she thought of them as hers. But she had been wrong on both counts. Was this not God’s will too, this promise of an heir born of the Queen’s body? And if He in His mercy saw fit to send Mary a son, what future was there for her, Elizabeth? A life in confinement, or lived under constant suspicion? Marriage to some safe gentleman or minor prince, followed by a yearly succession of children? She was utterly dismayed at either prospect. She saw, suddenly and very clearly, that the only safe place for her in the future was on the throne.