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Elizabeth was no longer staring at the papers. She was looking straight before her and her eyes were empty as blind eyes. Out of a full minute’s silence she said, '‘No.” And the word was a knell, tolling in the silence.
“These, then, are their true and valid words?” Tyrwhitt pressed her exultantly. “And the signatures not false?”
She turned upon him so suddenly and so swiftly that the papers dropped from his fingers.
“The signatures are true. But I am not ignorant of the means whereby such words and such signing of names may be obtained. I have heard of the rack. And other things …”
Lady Tyrwhitt rustled across the floor.
“Lady—” there was a change to smooth persuasion—“add your own name. Confess now, freely. Here is no compulsion —nor any such matters as you speak of… Thus may Your Grace claim leniency and love—forgiveness for transgressions done in ignorance.”
“I have nothing to say, save to my brother, face to face,” Elizabeth said. “My love and duty are to him and to none other.”
“We’re wearied of that note,” the woman said sharply. “It’s too late to sing it.”
Sir Robert cleared his throat, after his ugly habit before any momentous pronouncement.
“This is not all the news that came today—”
“ ’Twill serve!” Elizabeth said softly.
“I am sorry,” Tyrwhitt went on with smooth and measured emphasis, “your great nobility of nature hath made you suffer
so. and to no purpose. To no purpose, Your Grace. He’s dead----”
“Your lover’s dead,” his wife echoed, and now her voice was the voice of a common shrew brawling across a Thames-side gutter…
“Dead on the scaffold, his head severed from his body.”
Silence … Elizabeth only looked at them. Infuriated, Tyrwhitt picked up one of the fallen papers.
“Here’s what is written: ‘And do you communicate to the Lady Elizabeth's Grace that this day, for reasons of high treason against the King, Lord Thomas Seymour died upon the scaffold, his head being severed from his body' "
Lady Tyrwhitt licked her lips and nodded her head. The hideous words, repeated, hung in the silence. Still Elizabeth sat upright and motionless on her stiff chair as on a throne. Her eyes went past the man and woman as though they were not in her presence.
“Can you say nothing to that?” Tyrwhitt demanded.
“Nothing?” his lady echoed.
He bent forward from the hips, peering insolently and very cruelly into that frozen white face.
“He’s dead!” he crowed. “Lord Thomas Seymour’s dead! Do you say nothing?”
Then she spoke, clearly, articulating every syllable.
“This day died a man of great wit, and little wisdom. …”
They stared at her; at each other. On Elizabeth’s mouth there was a faint, ironic smile, a wrung grimace … a terrible look, if they could have read it aright. Before that twisted smile which was branded on her flesh by agony, be-
fore those crystal-clear, deliberate words, they felt, in defeat, a creeping chill terror… They moved slowly out of the room, their eyes looking backward, distended as though they looked at a ghost.
And Elizabeth rose, stiffly, slowly, and went to the door and drove the bolt home. Even in such a moment, she did it noiselessly. And turned, leaning against the door, her arms spread wide against the panels.
“This day died a man of great wit and little wisdom? she repeated aloud.
She sank to her knees in a swelling and spreading of silk, and sank lower yet, till she lay on the ground.
“Tom … Tom … Tom . .
Now darkness closed down on Elizabeth, deeper than any night. Tom was dead! And since nothing was to be spared this girl, someone saw to it that she learned exactly how he died—struck thrice by the executioner’s axe, in clumsiness and panic, held down as he wrestled in pain and fury, and so, at last dispatched. Bishop Latimer, preaching, ranting, before the King, in a manner which belonged rather to John Knox, declared that the Lord Admiral “died very dangerously, irksomely, and horribly… These were the words which flamed across her sleepless nights in sheet lightning. That was the picture before her eyes.
And it was enough to turn her reason. But Elizabeth, writhing in agony of heart and mind, would not give way.
She was forsaken. Tom and sweet Kate had forsaken her in death. Ashley and Parry had forsaken her in panic. She had prayed for wit to defeat her enemies: and her wit had not been sufficient.
It was a darkness indeed! But it was not the darkness of oblivion. Cold, harsh and bitter as it may have seemed, it was 153
a darkness of winter, in which unseen growth and miracles of life take place beneath the ground.
In one quick, bitter sweep, the child whose voice had run through Chelsea in a hoyden’s carefree joy of life was stilled. Words that had been spoken with utter disregard for import became measured, only uttered after close inspection for what could be twisted out of them. In the brief time between her banishment from Chelsea, and Tom Seymour’s death, Elizabeth had grown up. And more than that—in the four dark years that followed, she was learning the true fruits of the tempestuous combat with the powers that held the reins at court. Now for the first time in her life she was learning the true strength of her own brilliant mind, sharp wit, and comprehension. She was learning that an open battle may be lost in a minute, while a battle waged in silence, under cover, in waiting, may always have a chance of being won.
The detested Tyrwhitts still controlled her household. She had no friends at court. If their eyes turned on her, it could mean only one thing—danger! She drew in those sharp Tudor horns. She subdued her colors; like the wise animals in time of danger, she melted into the surrounding landscape. She went underground … and waited.
At court, the scandalmongers, appeased for the time being with the death of Tom, let her alone. As for the man who had set the seal on Tom’s death warrant, his elder brother, Edward—Protector Somerset—this man was finding his own fate closing in.
When all was said and done, the political murder of brother by brother was not a deed easily to be put out of mind. It may be that, sick in spirit, he relaxed the screw on Elizabeth, in a vague attempt to make some amends for his own act of fratricide. At any rate, he sent throughout the country the proclamation which she had entreated, clearing her name as to being with child by the dead man.
The scandal of Tom Seymour and Elizabeth faded into the background against events that were drawing Somerset into the whirlpool of destruction.
There had always been war between himself and that second power in the Council—John Dudley, Earl of Warwick. But it was not a war of personal ambition only. In these two men was bound up the whole of the strife that was tearing England to pieces, while poor, small Edward Tudor, a sickly boy, held in his small hands a scepter which meant less than nothing.
All the old feudal system that had held sway in England was falling to a tattered ruin. Peasants whose flocks had grazed on open lands were being shut out more and more, as greedy nobles took into their own hands territories that had been public. The very means of subsistence for the yeomanry was being fenced off—mile after mile. And it was John Dudley, Earl of Warwick, who pushed the law of enclosure on until the uprisings of the afflicted shook England to the core.
The Lord Protector’s protestations were as air against Warwick’s headlong plunge to power. Under Warwick, the Council made mincemeat of his laborious reforms. In the one last fine fight he made for the stricken people, Somerset brought down upon himself his own ruin. Seven short months after Tom had mounted the scaffold, he himself entered the Tower of London, his place on the Council usurped by Warwick, who now had added to his titles the one that was to echo down the history of England with that dreaded rolling sound —Northumberland!