It was tasty gossip . .. and that is all that can be said for it. But at the time, it helped to weight a balance of life and death for Elizabeth.
Lady Tyrwhitt chose a pious role. She plied her prisoner with texts and sermons and virtuous harangues, she sang hymns… She compiled a small manual of prayers and meditations for Elizabeth’s use … and to gild the pill, had a golden cover made for it. Elizabeth thanked her courteously, her long-lidded eyes meekly lowered, her tapered fingers touching the little gleaming volume.
They were losing patience, Sir Robert and his lady. There was a day when Tyrwhitt, riffling a pile of official papers from the Council, burst out, “God’s blood! Will they never cease the procession of couriers? Day, night, noon! Sending to rouse me from my bed when I sleep, and all for what? Questions and more questions. I’ve run the gamut of all questions any man could ask! Let them come down and question her themselves and see what riddles they make out of her answers.”
“Let them come down and take her to the Tower!” his wife said between her prominent teeth. “She’d speak fast enough at sight of the rack.”
“Well, they’ve got Ashley there, and Thomas Parry, all these weeks. They sing the same note all three. God! When we know a thing is true, cannot we crack them? Never a dif-
ference, never a flaw, no chink! She does not show by a sign she so much as thinks of his plight. If we had one sigh—one breath!—'Would serve, ’twould be enough to do her in! But her only tears were at first, and for disdainful anger that you and I should be set over her—”
A knocking at the door hammered through his words. “Who’s there?” Tyrwhitt called.
“Letters from London, sir.”
Tyrwhitt threw the door open angrily.
“God! Can you not leave me in peace? Must they wear out every horse in England peppering the roads with one of you every few miles? Give them to me.”
He snatched the letters from the courier’s hand and threw them on the table.
“Lie there, you pieces of fine penmanship, designed to kill a man or unseat his reason. I’ve had enough!”
“Sir—” the young courier said, breathing hard and heavily after a furious ride. “I was bid to tell you—they’re urgent.” “They’re all urgent,” Tyrwhitt retorted in a peevish whine. “I am sick of them. A pox on you and your fellow riders. I would you were stricken down in the saddle, all of you. Let them come down here themselves—I’ll give them urgency!” Lady Tyrwhitt had opened the packet and was rapidly scanning the papers. She interposed excitedly, “Robert, peace!”
“Think you I’ll give you peace to read the stuff 1 know is there?” he shouted irritably.
“Not this! Not this! You have not seen what this is!” “Well? What is in it? Give it here—”
“Read!” she said in diabolical glee, and pointed to a page.
“No!” Tyrwhitt exclaimed, his own face clearing.
“And this … and this . . she urged him. “Read, Robert, read!”
“1 do, woman, I do… Where are the signatures? Ah … So! … So! We have her now!”
“Face her with this,” Lady Tyrwhitt exulted, “and we will have her in very truth.”
“Go, get her. Go, go, bring her here.” Tyrwhitt was still reading avidly. He chuckled. “Now, we shall see.”
He was devouring the papers.
“Ha! … And this! … This is the thing she’ll never face us down with. This breaks her—the rack could do no more than this. …”
He sat down suddenly on a tapestry stool, put his hands on his spread knees, and beamed at the astonished courier.
“Boy!” said Robert Tyrwhitt jovially, “you are a good boy! This day you’ve brought me news worth all the rest strung together. What’s here is all! … Get you below, tell them I said to feast you well, and give you to drink. Before you’re done, I’ll have you to horse again, riding back with such an answer you are like to be made knight for the bearing of it. Go! Get you gone, good lad, and sup well!”
The young courier, who had had his head bitten off a few minutes earlier, bent a knee awkwardly and went out, his eyes popping. Below stairs, he was heard to inquire curiously whether Sir Robert Tyrwhitt were “given to humors of the brain? …”
Tyrwhitt got up, stretched, laughed to himself.
“And now, Your Grace—Your great lady’s Grace! Now is the time I’ve waited for, all these weeks. And it is mine.” Elizabeth came in, followed by Lady Tyrwhitt whose face was alert with satisfaction. The girl bore herself erect as usual, her head held high, but her young face was drawn with exhaustion, the features sharpened, the eyes circled.
“You wished to see me, Sir Robert?”
“Aye. Sit down, Your Grace,” Tyrwhitt said with an air of considerate concern. “I fear you are not strong? These have been heavy weeks for you — as for us all.”
The circled eyes had flashed for an instant at the insolence which invited her to be at ease in her own house. Elizabeth said quickly, “You have word from London?”
“You seem anxious for it,” Tyrwhitt said with sarcasm. “Though such letters can have brought you small pleasure hitherto!”
“I would the Duke of Somerset would answer my letters and let me go there,” Elizabeth answered.
“Well,” Tyrwhitt drawled, “we have word from London.” “From him?”
“Aye—enclosing matters of some import.”
“Let me have them,” Elizabeth said peremptorily. Her nostrils quivered and her long hands clenched in the folds of her skirt.
“In good time—”
“If they concern me, let me have them.”
Lady Tyrwhitt tittered.
“They concern you, lady, never fear.”
“Then read them to me.”
“Aye, aye, I’ll read them,” Tyrwhitt assured her. “Here, then. These are your cofferer’s words, the words of Thomas Parry. 7 do remember that the Admiral loved her Grace too well) and had done so a good while; and that the Queen was jealous of her and him in so much that one time the Queen, suspecting the often access of the Admiral to the Lady Elizabeth's Grace, came suddenly upon them when they were alone, he having her in his arms. And this was the cause why she was sent from the Queen' "
Elizabeth wetted her dry lips. The mutter which came from them was almost inaudible: a suffocated sound, wrung from her and quenched in the same instant. But even Tyrwhitt could not translate it into a sound of fear. It was an explosion of anger… He was afterward to say that the words were “False wretch!”
“Hold—there’s more—more,” he said smirking. “ If the King's Majesty that dead is had lived a little longer, my lady would have married with Lord Thomas' And there is more still, and all to the point.”
“And much from Dame Ashley too,” Lady Tyrwhitt shrilled. “A pretty picture of your life at Chelsea.”
Elizabeth spoke hoarsely: “The signatures. I would see the signatures. Let me see where they have signed their names.”
“By your leave,” Tyrwhitt said, bending over her shoulder, “I will still hold the paper.”
“Hold it to the light—to the light,” she said feverishly.
“Do you fear forgery, lady?” Tyrwhitt asked with a condescending smile. “Here is none. You know their writing and their signature. Think you they have been tampered with?”