Then to Penshurst where they had lived with the Earl and Countess of Leicester, who had been kind to them but forced to obey the instructions of the Parliament and treat the two children, not as the son and daughter of a King, but as other children of the household. Henry had not cared; it was Elizabeth who had suffered so cruelly.
And then, when she had heard she was to go to Carisbrooke, she had been stricken with horror. Henry had tried to comfort her. “It is near the sea, Elizabeth. It is very beautiful, they tell me.”
“Near the sea!” she had cried. “Very beautiful! He was there. There he lived and suffered before they took him away to murder him. Every room is a room in which he has lived … and waited for them to come for him. He will have watched from the ramparts … walked in the courtyards. Are you blind, Henry? Are you quite callous? Are you completely without sensibility? We are going to our father’s prison. One of the last places he was in before he was murdered. I would rather die … than go to Carisbrooke.”
And so she grew paler every day. She begged that she might not be sent to Carisbrooke, but all her entreaties were in vain. “Send them to Carisbrooke!” said the Protector, and the Protector ruled England.
“Perhaps we shall escape as James did … as Henriette did,” Henry whispered to her as they rode along.
“You may, Henry. You must!”
She knew she herself never would. She looked to Carisbrooke Castle as the place whither she would go to die.
If she died, pondered Henry, what of one poor little boy, fatherless and alone, cut off from his family?
Mr. Lovel rode up to him and tried to banish his melancholy. Did he not think this island was beautiful? He doubted not that the little boy would enjoy more freedom than he had in Kent. “For, Master Harry, this is an island and the water separates us from England.” Henry was ready to be beguiled; but Elizabeth just stared straight ahead, seeming unaware of the tears which ran down her face.
Then Mr. Lovel began to talk of Carisbrooke, which he said was a British camp at the time when the Romans came to Britain. The land surrounding the castle was then covered with thick yew trees, for the Celtic word “Caerbroc” meant “the town of yew trees.”
Mr. Lovel discoursed pleasantly of the Castle of Carisbrooke, which had faced the winds and storms of the Channel for so many hundreds of years; he told of Fitz-Osborne, the Norman who held the castle on condition that he defended it and the surrounding lands against all enemies, so that it was called The Honor of Carisbrooke. He told of Montacute, Earl of Salisbury, who had left his mark upon it in the reign of the second Richard, and of Lord Woodville who, years later, had enlarged the place. But Mr. Lovel could not continue with the Castle’s history for the simple reason that it had played a part in the tragedy of Henry’s father. So he came to an abrupt stop and spoke of other things.
Thus it had often been, Henry remembered. There were frequently those sudden terminations of conversation. It was as though people said: “Ah, now we are coming near to dangerous ground; we are approaching that terrible thing of which this little boy knows nothing.”
At last they reached the Castle, and Henry lifted his eyes to the Keep, high on its artificial mound; the ramparts, the barbican and the battlements seemed impregnable as they looked down in arrogance at the cosier Priory. The walls of the fortress were in the shape of a pentagon with five bastions of defense. The little party crossed the fosse and in a short time were in the Castle Yard, where Henry saw the well with a great wheel turned by a donkey in the same way that a dog labored in a turnspit.
The servants came out to see them; they did not bow or kiss their hands. They merely nudged each other and made such remarks as: “Oh, ’tis Mistress Elizabeth and Master Harry come to Carisbrooke.”
Elizabeth looked past them as though they did not exist, but Henry gave them a forlorn smile, for he understood, since Mr. Lovel had told him, that these people did not wish to be disrespectful to the son and daughter of the King; they had to remember that there was now no King and therefore no Prince and Princess; they were all citizens of the Commonwealth, and the Isle of Wight was a part of Cromwell’s England.
He dismounted and walked beside Elizabeth who looked small and frail in the big hall of the Castle; the mourning clothes, which she had refused to lay aside since the death of her father, hung loosely on her form. She would not eat the food which had been prepared for them. Henry tried not to eat, but he was so hungry, and Mr. Lovel pointed out that he could not help Elizabeth by joining in her fast. And very soon Elizabeth retired to her bed and, when she was there, she asked that she might speak to her brother before she slept.
Henry was frightened more than ever when he looked at the pale face of his sister.
“Henry,” she said, “I feel I shall not live long. I should not want to … in this prison. The happiest thing that could happen to me—since our enemies will not let me join our sister Mary in Holland—would be to join our father in Heaven.”
“You must not talk thus,” said Henry.
“Death is preferable to the lives we lead now, Henry. They are a dishonor to a line of Kings.”
“One day my brother will come to England and drive the Beast Cromwell away.”
Elizabeth turned her face to the wall. “I fear our brother lacks the strength of our father, Henry.”
“Charles … !” stammered the boy. “But Charles is now the King. All loyal subjects proclaim him such.”
“Our brother is not as our father was, Henry. I fear he will never live as our father lived.”
“Would it not be better so, dear Elizabeth, since our father’s way of life led him to the scaffold?”
“Our father’s way of life! How can you say such things! It was not our father’s way of life which led him there; it was the wickedness of his enemies. Father was a saint and martyr.”
“Then,” said the little boy gravely, “since our brother is not a saint he will not die as a martyr.”
“It is better to die or live in exile than to do that which is unkingly.”
“But our brother would not do that which is unkingly.”
“He is in Scotland now. He has joined the Covenanters. He has made himself a pawn for the Scots for the sake of a kingdom. But you are too young to understand. I would have lived in poverty and exile … yes, I would have been a button-maker, rather than have betrayed our father.”
Henry could not help being glad that his brother was not like his father. He personally knew little of Charles, but he had heard much of him. He had seen the smiles which came on to people’s faces when they spoke of him. He had his own picture of Charles—a brother as tall as his father had been, with always a song on his lips and a shrug of the shoulders for trouble. Henry had always thought it would be rather wonderful to be with such a brother. He did not believe he would take him on his knee and talk of solemn promises. Charles was jaunty, a sinner of some sort, yet people loved him; he might not be good, as his father and Elizabeth were good, but he would be a happy person to be with.
Elizabeth put a thin hand on his wrist. “Henry, your thoughts stray. You do not give your mind to what I am saying. Here we are in this terrible place; here, in this room, our father may have paced up and down thinking of us all … our mother and brothers and sisters—all scattered, all exiles from the land we were born to rule! Henry, I cannot live in this Castle, I cannot endure these great rooms, these stone walls and … the spirit of our father. I cannot endure it.”
“Elizabeth, perhaps we could escape.”