“The letter?” she asked me, without turning her head.
“It’ll be public news within the day,” I said. “I am sorry to tell you, Lady Elizabeth, that your cousin Lady Jane Grey has been executed and her husband… and Lord Robert Dudley too.”
The hands she held out to the pageboy were perfectly steady, but I could see her eyes darken. “She has done it then,” she observed quietly. “The queen. She has found the courage to execute her own kin, her own cousin, a young woman she knew from childhood.” She looked at me, her hands as steady as the pageboy’s who patted at her fingers with the monogrammed linen. “The queen has found the power of the ax. No one will be able to sleep. Thank God I am innocent of any wrongdoing.”
I nodded but I hardly heard the words. I was thinking of Lord Robert going out to his death with his dark head held high.
She took her hands from the towel and turned from the table. “I am very tired,” she said to her cousin. “Too tired to travel any further today. I have to rest.”
“Lady Elizabeth, we have to go on,” he said.
She shook her head in absolute refusal. “I cannot,” she said simply. “I will rest now and we will leave early tomorrow.”
“As long as it is early,” he conceded. “At dawn, Your Ladyship.”
She gave him a smile that went no further than her lips. “Of course,” she said.
However she prolonged the journey it had to end, and ten days after we had first set off we arrived at the house of a private gentleman in High-gate, late in the evening.
I was housed with Lady Elizabeth’s ladies, and they were up at dawn preparing for her entry into London. As I saw the white linen and petticoats and the virginal white gown being brushed and pressed and carried into her chamber I remembered the day that she greeted her sister into the city of London, wearing the Tudor colors of white and green. Now she was driven snow, all in white, a martyr-bride. When the litter came to the door she was ready, there was no delaying when there was a crowd collecting to see her.
“You’ll want the curtains closed,” Lord Howard said gruffly to her.
“Keep them back,” she said at once. “The people can see me. They can see what condition I am in when I am forced out of my house for a fortnight’s journey in all weathers.”
“Ten days,” he said gruffly. “And could have been done in five.”
She did not deign to answer him, but lay back on her pillows and lifted her hand to indicate that he could go. I heard him swear briefly under his breath and then swing into the saddle of his horse. I pulled my horse up behind the litter and the little cavalcade turned out of the courtyard to the London road and into the city.
London was stinking of death. At every street corner there were gallows with a dreadful burden swinging from the cross-bar. If you peeped up you could see the dead man, face like a gargoyle, lips pulled back, eyes bulging, glaring down at you. When the wind blew, the stink from the corpses swept down the street and the bodies swayed back and forth, their coats flailing around them as if they were still alive and kicking for their life.
Elizabeth kept her eyes straight to the front and did not look left or right, but she sensed the dangling bodies at every corner; half of them were known to her, and all of them had died in a rebellion that they believed she had summoned. She was as pale as her white dress when she first got into the litter, but she was blanched like skimmed milk by the time we had ridden down King’s Street.
A few people called out to her: “God save Your Grace!” and she was recalled to herself and raised a weak hand to them with a piteous face. She looked like a martyr being dragged to her death and, under this avenue of gallows, no one could doubt her fear. This was Elizabeth’s rebellion and forty-five swinging corpses attested to the fact that it had failed. Now Elizabeth would have to face the justice that had executed them. No one could doubt she would die too.
At Whitehall they rolled the great gates wide for us at the first sight of our cavalcade walking slowly toward the palace. Elizabeth straightened up in the litter and looked toward the great steps of the palace. Queen Mary was not there to greet her sister, and neither was anyone of the court. She arrived to silent disgrace. A single gentleman-server was on the steps and he spoke to Lord Howard, not to the princess, as if they were her jailers.
Lord Howard came to the litter and put out his hand for her.
“An apartment has been prepared for you,” he said shortly. “You may choose two attendants to take with you.”
“My ladies must come with me,” she argued instantly. “I am not well.”
“The orders are two attendants and no more,” he said briefly. “Choose.”
The coldness of the voice that he had used with her on the journey was now barbed. We were in London, a hundred eyes and ears were on him. Lord Howard would be very certain that no one would see him show any kindness to his traitor cousin. “Choose.”
“Mrs. Ashley and…” Elizabeth looked around and her eye fell on me. I stepped back, as anxious as any other turncoat not to be linked with this doomed princess. But she knew through me she had a chance to reach the queen. “Mrs. Ashley and Hannah the Fool,” she said.
Lord Howard laughed. “Three fools together then,” he said under his breath and waved the gentleman to go ahead of the three of us into Elizabeth’s apartments.
I did not wait to see Elizabeth settled in her rooms before I sought out my fellow fool Will Somers. He was dozing in the great hall on one of the benches. Someone had draped a cloak over him as he slept, everyone loved Will.
I sat on the bench beside him, wondering if I might wake him.
Without opening his eyes he remarked: “A pair of fools we must be; parted for weeks and we don’t even speak,” and he sat bolt upright and hugged me around the shoulders.
“I thought you were asleep,” I said.
“I was fooling,” he said with dignity. “I have decided that a sleeping fool is funnier than one who is awake. Especially in this court.”
“Why?” I asked warily.
“Nobody laughs at my jests,” he said. “So I tried to see if they would laugh at my silence. And since they prefer a silent fool, they will love a sleeping fool. And if I am asleep I will not know if they are laughing or not. So I can comfort myself that I am very amusing. I dream of my wit and then I wake up laughing. It’s a witty thought, is it not?”
“Very,” I said.
He turned to me. “The princess has come, has she?”
I nodded.
“Ill?”
“Very. Truly ill, I think.”
“The queen could offer her an instant cure for all pain. She has become a surgeon, she specializes in amputations.”
“Please God it does not come to that,” I said quickly. “But Will, tell me — did Robert Dudley make a good death? Was it quick?”
“Still alive,” he said. “Against all the odds.”
I felt my heart turn over. “Dear God, they told me he was beheaded.”
“Steady,” Will said. “Here, put your head between your knees.”
From a long way off I heard his voice ask me:
“Better now? Swoony little maid?”
I straightened up.
“Blushing now,” Will observed. “Soon be out of breeches with the blood flowing this fast, my little maid.”
“You are sure he is alive? I thought he was dead. They told me he was dead.”
“He should be dead, God knows. He’s seen his father and his brother and his poor sister-in-law all taken out and executed underneath his window and yet he’s still there,” Will said. “Perhaps his hair is white with shock but his head’s still on his shoulders.”
“He’s alive?” I could still hardly believe it. “You’re sure?”
“For the moment.”
“Could I visit him without trouble?”
He laughed. “The Dudleys always bring trouble,” he said.
“I mean without being suspected.”
He
shook his head. “This is a court gone dark,” he said sadly. “Nobody can do anything without being suspected. That is why I sleep. I cannot be accused of plotting in my sleep. I have an innocent sleep. I take care not to dream.”
“I just want to see him,” I said. I could not keep the longing from my voice. “Just to see him and know that he is alive and will stay alive.”
“He is like any man,” Will said fairly. “Mortal. I can assure you that he is alive today. But I can’t tell you for how long. That will have to satisfy you.”
Spring 1554
In the days that followed I went between the queen’s apartments and Lady Elizabeth’s, but in neither place could I be comfortable. The queen was tight-lipped and determined. She knew that Elizabeth must die for treason, and yet she could not bear to send the girl to the Tower. The council examined the princess and were certain that she had known everything of the plot, that she had masterminded one half of it, that she would have held Ashridge to the north for the rebels while they took London from the south, and that — and this was the worst — that she had summoned help from France for the rebellion. It was thanks to the loyalty of London that the queen was on the throne and the princess under arrest and not the other way around.
Though everyone urged it on her, the queen was reluctant to try Elizabeth with a charge of treason, because of the uproar it would create in the country. She had been dismayed by the numbers who had come out for Elizabeth’s rebellion, no one could predict how many might come out to save her life. A further thirty men were marched home to Kent to be hanged in their own towns and villages but there could be no doubt that there would be hundreds ready to take their place if they thought that the Protestant princess was to be sent to the scaffold.
And worse than that: Queen Mary could not force her own determination. She had hoped that Elizabeth would come to court a penitent, and they could have reconciled. She had hoped that Elizabeth would have learned that Mary was stronger than her, that she could command the city even if Elizabeth could summon half of Kent. But Elizabeth would not confess, would not beg her sister for mercy. Prideful and unyielding, she continued to swear that she was innocent of anything, and Mary could not bear to see her with the lies on her lips. Hour after hour the queen knelt before her prie-dieu, her chin on her hands, her eyes fixed on the crucifix, praying for guidance as to what she should do with her treacherous sister.
“She would have beheaded you in minutes,” Jane Dormer said bluntly when the queen rose from her knees and walked to the fireside, leaning her head against the stone chimney breast and looking into the flames. “She would have had your head off your shoulders the moment she put the crown on her own. She would not have cared if you were guilty of envy or rebellion. She would have killed you for simply being the heir.”
“She is my sister,” Mary replied. “I taught her to walk. I held her hands while she stumbled. Am I now to send her to hell?”
Jane Dormer shrugged her disagreement, and picked up her sewing.
“I shall pray for guidance,” the queen said quietly. “I must find a way to live with Elizabeth.”
The cold days turned warmer in March and the skies grew pale earlier in the mornings and later at night. The court stayed on tiptoe, watching to see what would happen to the princess. She was examined almost daily by the councillors but the queen would not see her face to face. “I cannot,” she said shortly, and I knew then that she was nerving herself to send Elizabeth to trial, and from there it would be a short walk to the scaffold.
They had enough evidence to hang her three times over but still the queen waited. Just before Easter I was glad to get a letter from my father asking me if I could absent myself from court for a week and come to the shop. He said he was unwell and needed someone to open and close the shutters for him, but I was not to worry, it was just a passing fever and Daniel came every day.
I was a little irritated at the thought of Daniel in constant attendance, but I took the letter to the queen and when she gave me leave, packed a spare pair of breeches and a new clean linen shirt, and made my way to the princess’s apartment.
“I have been given leave to go to my home, to my father,” I said as I knelt before her.
There was a clatter from the room above. The royal cousin Lady Margaret Douglas’s kitchen had been moved over Elizabeth’s bedroom, and they had not been asked to work quietly. Judging from the noise, they had been given extra pans just to bang together. Lady Margaret, a sourfaced Tudor, would have a strong claim to the throne if Elizabeth were to die and she had every reason to drive the princess into irritable exhaustion.
Elizabeth flinched at the crash. “Going? When will you return?” she asked.
“Within the week, your ladyship.”
She nodded and to my surprise I saw that her mouth was working, as if she were about to cry. “Do you have to go, Hannah?” she asked in a small voice.
“I do,” I said. “He is ill, he has a fever. I have to go to him.”
She turned away and brushed her eyes with the back of her hand. “Good God, I am weak as a child losing a nursemaid!”
“What’s the matter?” I asked. I had never seen her so low. I had seen her swollen and sick on her bed and yet even then I had seen her eyes gleam with bright cunning. “What is it?”
“I am frozen to my very bones with fear,” Elizabeth said. “I tell you, Hannah, if fear is cold and darkness I am living in the wastes of the Russias. No one sees me but to interrogate me, no one touches me but to position me for questioning. No one smiles at me, they stare as if they would see my heart. My only friends in the whole world have been exiled, imprisoned or beheaded. I am only twenty years old and I am utterly alone. I am only a young woman and yet I have no one’s love and care. No one comes near me but Kat and you, and now you tell me you are leaving.”
“I have to see my father,” I said. “But I’ll come back as soon as he is well.”
The face she turned to me was not that of the defiant princess, the hated Protestant enemy at this passionately Catholic court. The face she turned to me was that of a young woman, alone with no mother or father, and no friends. A young woman trying to find the courage to face a death that must come soon. “You will come back to me, Hannah? I have become accustomed to you. And I have no one about me but you and Kat. I ask it of you as a friend, not a princess. You will come back?”
“Yes,” I promised. I took her hand. She had not exaggerated about feeling cold, she was as icy as if she were dead already. “I swear I will come back.”
Her clammy fingers returned my grip. “You will think me a coward, perhaps,” she said. “But I swear to you, Hannah, that I cannot keep up my courage without a friendly face by me. And I think soon I shall need all the courage I can summon. Come back to me, please. Come back quick.”
My father’s shop had the shutters up though it was only early in the afternoon. I quickened my step as I turned down the street and I felt for the first time a fear clutch at my heart at the thought that he was a mortal man, just like Robert Dudley, and that none of us could say how long we would live.
Daniel was putting the bolt on the last shutter and he turned around at the rapid sound of my footsteps.
“Good,” he said shortly. “Come inside.”
I put my hand on his arm. “Daniel, is he very ill?”
He covered my hand briefly with his own. “Come inside.”
I went into the shop. The counter was bare of books, the printing room quiet. I went up the rickety stairs at the rear of the shop and looked toward the little truckle bed in the corner of the room, fearing that I would see him there, too ill to stand.
The bed was heaped with papers and a small pile of clothes. My father was standing before it. I recognized at once the signs of packing for a long journey.
“Oh, no,” I said.
My father turned to me. “It’s time for us to go,” he said. “Did they give you permission to come away for a week?”
“Yes,
” I said. “But they expect me back. I came running down here in terror that you were ill.”
“That gives us a week,” he said, disregarding my complaint. “More than enough time to get to France.”
“Not again,” I said flatly. “You said we were to stay in England.”
“It’s not safe,” Daniel insisted, coming into the room behind me. “The queen’s marriage is to go ahead, and Prince Philip of Spain will bring in the Inquisition. Already the gallows are up on the street corners, and there is an informer in every village. We cannot stay here.”
“You said we would be English.” I appealed past him to my father. “And the gallows are for traitors, not for heretics.”
“She will hang traitors today and heretics tomorrow,” Daniel said firmly. “She has discovered that the only way to make herself safe on the throne is through blood. She executed her own cousin, she will execute her own sister. Can you doubt that she would hesitate for a moment to hang you?”
I shook my head. “She is not executing Elizabeth, she is struggling to show her mercy. It is not about Elizabeth’s religion, it is about her obedience. And we are obedient subjects. And she is fond of me.”
Daniel took my hand and led me to the bed, which was covered with rolls of manuscript. “See these? Every one is now a forbidden book,” he said. “These are your father’s fortune, they are your dowry. When your father came to England these were his library, his great collection, now they would serve only as evidence against him. What are we to do with them? Burn them before they burn us?”
“Keep them safe for better times,” I said, incurably the daughter of a librarian.
He shook his head. “There is nowhere safe for them, and there is nowhere safe for their owner in a country ruled by Spain. We have to go away and take them with us.”
“But where do we have to go now?” I cried. It was the wail of a child who has been too long traveling.
“Venice,” he said shortly. “France, then Italy, and then Venice. I shall study at Padua, your father will be able to open a print shop in Venice, and we will be safe there. The Italians have a love of learning, the city is filled with scholars. Your father can buy and sell texts again.”