“It is the will of Her Majesty that you should prepare to leave for the Tower this day.”
An impulse came to her to throw herself upon her knees and plead with these men. Instead she stood still, looking haughtily at them.
“I beg of you, my lords,” she said, “either to plead my case before the Queen or to ask her graciously to permit me to see her.”
Gardiner answered: “The Queen’s orders are that you shall prepare to leave at once.”
The Earl of Sussex was moved by her youth, her courage, and her desperate plight. He said: “If it be in my power to persuade the Queen to grant you an audience, I will do so.”
They left her then, and when they had gone she collapsed upon a stool. She covered her face with her hands and whispered: “So did my mother go to the Tower … never to return.”
All that night she waited for a summons from the Queen. Her servants told her that the gardens surrounding the palace were being patrolled by guards; they were in the palace itself, for it was greatly feared that there might be some plot for her escape.
The next day the Earl of Sussex came to her to tell her that she must leave at once, for a barge was prepared and the tide would not wait. She wrote a note to the Queen and pleaded so earnestly with Sussex to take it to her that he was deeply moved.
“My lord Earl,” she implored, “I beg of you to take it now.”
He hesitated, but he could not resist her pleading and he took the letter to the Queen.
Mary was enraged. This, she cried, was a ruse of her sister’s. Did not my lord Sussex realize that she had duped him into missing the tide for that day?
The next day was Palm Sunday and there was nothing to prevent her going to the Tower.
She had not been taken on the midnight tide because it was feared that in the darkness a rescue might be possible.
As she walked to the barge she murmured: “The Lord’s Will be done. I must be content seeing this is the Queen’s pleasure!” Then she turned to the men who walked beside her and cried out in sudden anger: “It is an astonishing thing that you who call yourselves noblemen and gentlemen should suffer me, a Princess and daughter of the great King Henry, to be led to captivity, the Lord knoweth where, for I do not.”
They watched her furtively. How could they be sure what she would do? They—stalwart soldiers and statesmen—were afraid of this slender young girl.
The barge sped quickly along the river, while the Londoners were at Church, that they might not see her pass by and show her that sympathy which they had never failed to give her. Quickly they came to the Tower—that great gray home of torment, of failure and despair.
She saw that they were taking her to the Traitor’s Gate, and this seemed to her a terrible omen.
“I will not be landed there!” she cried.
It was raining and she lifted her face that she might feel the rain upon it, for when would she again be at liberty to feel its softness? How gentle it is! she thought. How kind in this cruel world!
“Your Grace …” urged Sussex.
“Must I then land here … at the Traitor’s Gate? Look! You have misjudged the tide. How can I step into the water?”
Sussex put his cloak about her shoulders to protect her from the rain. In sudden pettishness she threw it off and stepped out. The water came above her shoe, but she did not heed it. She cried in a ringing voice: “Here lands as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs. Before Thee, oh God, I speak it, having no other friend but Thee alone.”
As she passed on, many of the warders came out to see her, and some of them brought their children with them. The sight of these small wondering faces calmed the Princess. She smiled wanly at them, and one little boy came forward on his own account and, kneeling before her, said in a high piping voice: “Last night I prayed God to preserve Your Grace, and I shall do so again.”
She laid her hand on his head. “So I have one friend in this sorry place,” she said. “I thank you, my child.”
Then several of the warders cried out: “May God preserve Your Grace.”
She smiled and sat down on one of the damp stones, looking at them almost tenderly.
The Lieutenant of the Tower came to her and begged her to rise. “For, Madam,” he said, “you sit unwholesomely.”
“Better sit here than in a worse place,” she retorted, “for God, not I, knows whither you bring me.”
But she rose and allowed herself, with those few women who had been permitted to accompany her, to be led into the Tower.
The Earl of Sussex still walked beside her. “Your Grace,” he murmured, “you will understand that I like not this task which has been put upon me. Rest assured that I shall do everything in my power to ease your stay in this place.”
“My lord,” she answered softly, “I forget not your kindness to me.”
She was conducted to the apartments prepared for her—the most heavily guarded in the Tower; and as her weeping ladies gathered about her, she felt her courage return.
So it had come—that which she had so often dreaded. Her thoughts were not of the trials which lay ahead but of her conduct during her journey to this place. Had any seen that when they had brought her through the Traitor’s Gate she had almost swooned? She fervently hoped that none had witnessed that display of fear.
Now she felt so calm that she was able to soothe her women. “What happens now is in the hands of God,” she consoled them. “And if they should send me to the block, I will have no English axe to sever my head from my body; I shall insist on a sword from France.”
They knew then that she was remembering her mother, and they wept more wildly; but she sat erect, her tawny head high, while she calmly looked into a future which might bring her a crown or a sword from France.
THREE
Robert was pacing up and down his cell. He had been excited since that rainy Palm Sunday when he had heard, from the warder who brought his meals, that there was a most distinguished prisoner not very far from him.
How long had he to live? he wondered. Young Guildford had gone, alas! It was a sobering thought. Guildford and he had spent so much of their lives together. Father … Guildford … Who next?
When the threat of death hung over a man for so long, there were times when he forgot about it. It was some months since he had walked from the Guildhall back to the Tower, aware of the axe with its edge turned toward him. When his cell door had been locked upon him and he was alone with those two servants, whom, because of his rank, he was allowed to have with him, he had felt nothing but bleak and utter despair; he had almost longed to be summoned for that last walk. But such as Robert Dudley did not despair for long. He had been born lucky. Was he not Fortune’s darling? Had she not shielded him when she had made him commit the seemingly foolhardly act of marrying Amy? If he had not done so, it would have been Robert, not Guildford, who had walked to the scaffold to be beheaded with the Lady Jane Grey, since his father would most certainly have married him to that most tragic young lady. The more he thought of it, the more convinced he became that he was preserved for some glorious destiny.
It was Easter time, always a season for hope.
The warder came in to bring his food, and with him he brought his small son. The little boy, not quite four years old, begged that he might accompany his father when he visited Lord Robert. The child would stand gravely surveying the prisoner, and although he said nothing, his eyes scarcely left Robert’s face.
Robert was amused. He could see in the child’s eyes the same admiration and sympathy which had shone in those of the women who had stood in the street to watch him on his journey from Guildhall to the Tower.