Chapter 18
On the nineteenth of May, the exact day Anne Boleyn had been executed eighteen years before, a great number of armed guards filled the halls and courtyards of the Tower, alarming us not a little.
Bedingfield appeared and gave a peremptory command for Elizabeth to accompany him, her ladies to pack her things and follow.
Elizabeth paled until her brows stood out in fiery red lines. “Am I to have no trial, then? Is Jane’s scaffold waiting for me?”
“You are to be moved from the Tower,” Bedingfield said in his careful way. “I am to accompany you far from London, there to live in a house at her majesty’s pleasure.”
“It is a trick,” Elizabeth insisted. “You will take me out into the country, and your men will assassinate me there.”
“I assure you, Your Grace,” Bedingfield began.
His tone and manner were anything but reassuring, and Elizabeth turned her back on him and stalked away across her chamber.
I wondered if Mary would have the audacity to murder Elizabeth outright. She would not dare, I didn’t think. If assassins knifed Elizabeth in the night, all the world would know in the morning that Mary had ordered her death.
Elizabeth’s popularity had not waned during her sojourn in the Tower.
If Dudley’s information was to be believed, it had even increased.
Dudley regaled me with tales of men sentenced to the pillory for loudly declaring that Elizabeth was innocent, and of women and men alike voicing concerns about Elizabeth’s health.
A quiet assassination would only lead to more conspiracies to topple Mary. Dudley had also told me that Mary had again attempted to disinherit Elizabeth, but Mary’s council had strongly advised her against it. Unlike with her stubbornness over her upcoming marriage, she had capitulated.
The council’s hesitancy, I thought, was why we were now being hustled into a barge that moved upriver toward Richmond on this fine day in May.
For my part, I was relieved to have sunshine on my face and wind in my hair, no matter where we were going. Even the presence of Bedingfield’s men when we disembarked—a hundred of them, all armed—could not erase the feeling of freedom. I never wanted to see the Tower of London again.
That I was allowed to accompany Elizabeth at all had been difficult to finagle. Mary had wanted every one of Elizabeth’s ladies dismissed and replaced with Mary’s own, but she’d relented at the last minute and allowed Elizabeth to retain three women as well as three gentlemen.
Elizabeth had begged for me to accompany her on the journey itself, saying she had need of a seamstress who knew her well. Again, because of my mother’s marriage to a staunch Catholic, Mary agreed.
So, the rest of Elizabeth’s household was sent away with many tears, and she and I, with Bedingfield and his outriders, began the journey from Richmond, heading north and west.
The royal estate we reached after five days of traveling reeked of isolation and mildew.
Woodstock Manor in Oxfordshire was a huge place, rebuilt by Elizabeth’s grandfather, but now rundown, as neither Mary nor Edward had been inclined to reside there.
To reach it, we had to travel over a muddy causeway, which increased our feeling of seclusion.
Elizabeth surveyed the mess of the house in some dismay, then briskly inquired of Bedingfield if it were to be their last stopping place.
“Indeed, Your Grace,” Bedingfield told her in his mournful tones.
In the outside world of Oxfordshire, through which we had just traveled, spring had arrived, with lambs trotting after their mothers, flowers budding, fields greening. Here at Woodstock, the dark and forbidding air of winter still clung to the wood and stone buildings.
Elizabeth gave the house and outbuildings a grim glare and then demanded to be taken to her quarters.
“I love to dance.” Elizabeth threw her arms out and whirled in circles about the stone room.
I chuckled because I knew she did not mean in the literal sense.
We had settled into life at Woodstock. May had blended into a warm June then moved into hot July. Elizabeth walked the unkempt gardens, read and studied, played tunes on a virginals brought into her chamber at her request, and held her daily verbal fencing match with her jailor, Bedingfield.
I enjoyed watching her feint with him this way and that, and knew she quite despised him.
Bedingfield knew it, too. His hesitancy annoyed her, as did his mule-like stubbornness in writing almost daily to Mary for instruction and to note to her every word that left Elizabeth’s mouth.
Elizabeth was aware he’d never be swayed to her side, but at the same time, his obvious reluctance to upset her because she might become queen someday was irksome.
“He, like others, tries to play both sides,” she snarled to me in derision. “I would respect him much more if he were stern with me and meant it.”
“Would you listen to him?” I asked with curiosity.
“Of course not,” Elizabeth answered, and we broke into peals of laughter.
Our laughter was always strained, however.
Elizabeth worried constantly that she’d been brought to Woodstock to be murdered, far from prying eyes.
We learned from messages Colby was able to smuggle to us that Mary’s advisors had strongly warned her against such an act.
However, such advisors could die or be dismissed and replaced with those who told Mary what she wanted to hear, so we did not rest easy.
I and the two other ladies of Elizabeth’s household allowed to attend her had been deemed “safe” by Mary.
Aunt Kat was under house arrest far from us.
Mistress Sandes had been summarily packed off, and she’d fled to the Continent, along with others who were considered to have too much influence on Elizabeth.
But while Elizabeth’s former ladies and gentlemen might decry the country’s return to the old religion, they could do nothing to prevent it.
Mary had already made Parliament obedient on the subject, although the wealthy men in that body who’d eagerly scooped up the monastic lands doled out by King Henry balked at returning them.
Accept the Catholic faith?—Yes, if we must. Return our lands and wealth to monasteries?—A fervent no.
Mary did not always get her way.
In mid-July, one of Elizabeth’s loyal gentlemen took me aside in the privy garden and told me that Colby would wait for me at a woodcutter’s hut not far from the grounds.
“How am I to get away?” I whispered, mindful of one of Mary’s ladies approaching.
“You will know when to go,” the gentleman answered. “Linger in this garden tomorrow when Her Grace finishes her afternoon walk.”
Mary’s lady, a tall woman with a beaked nose, swooped down on us and informed me that there was mending to do. She gave Elizabeth’s gentleman a severe look, which he returned blandly.
All the next day Elizabeth was in foul temper.
A few days before, she’d at last gained permission to write directly to Mary and had received a reply that morning.
In summary, Mary’s letter stated that Elizabeth was ungrateful for the bounty her queen had bestowed upon her, and that she should be more humble.
Furthermore, Elizabeth was not to write again.
Elizabeth fumed, and our garden walk was swift as she strode out her anger.
I continued to ponder how I’d escape the grounds to meet Colby. Elizabeth’s few gentlemen were allowed to come and go to the nearby village, but we ladies were prisoners with her.
I loitered, as instructed, in the garden after Elizabeth and her ladies had stormed back into the house, with the excuse that I wanted to study the flowers, with an eye to designing a gown in a fabric that would reflect them.
Also, I claimed to need more air—not entirely feigned.
I found the house stagnant. Though young Edward had caused some repairs and reinforcements to be made during his reign, it still needed much work.
This palace, of all the monarchs’ homes, was the farthest from London and therefore easy to neglect.
Stories had it that Henry the Second had built a bower on the palace grounds for his mistress, the Faire Rosamund, a legendary beauty.
Their love had blossomed here, Henry besotted.
I had to imagine that the house had been much more sumptuous then than it was now.
I also wondered what Henry’s wife, the formidable Queen Eleanor, had thought of the arrangement.
As I studied flowers that covered a hedge in a riot of color, I heard a commotion at the gate of the outer courtyard. I skirted the house toward the disturbance, taking care not to be noticed by Bedingfield’s guards.
A young man who looked familiar stood in the courtyard, surrounded by armed men. A red-faced Bedingfield interrogated him at the top of his voice.
“Books,” he shouted. “What business have you to bring Her Grace books? There will be messages in them I’ll wager.”
“Indeed, no,” the young man replied haughtily.
I recognized him then as the son of Thomas Parry’s wife by her first husband.
Young John Fortescue was presently reading at one of the colleges at nearby Oxford and must have been sent here by Master Parry.
“They are tomes my stepfather thought Her Grace would want. Her Grace is a learned woman.”
Bedingfield stared at Fortescue in grave suspicion, then turned to his guards. “Search the books, and search him, for any messages.”
The guards did not look happy to dip their thick fingers into the books, grumbling as they did as they were bid. Mr. Fortescue complained about having to turn his clothes inside out like a common thief, but he had to obey.
While Bedingfield’s attention was thus occupied, I slipped back to the garden and out a small gate that had been left unbolted for me.