“I mind that Carew!” Elizabeth said when she heard, and
her eyes sparkled. “Ay, my father liked him well. Dark as a gypsy he was, with a roaring laugh and a singing voice like a missel thrush. I was a little girl then, but I’ve not forgot him.”
In London, Northumberland’s plans were toppling like a palace built of cardboard. The Tower had been manned and weaponed, but the doors were breaking open and a number of lordly prisoners were making their escape and mustering against the Duke and the helpless child he had set on the throne.
The one thing he must have, he had not—the person of Mary, for whom the acclaim of the people was growing louder, louder, till nothing must do but he himself set forth to capture her. Ahead of him, he sent another of his hapless sons—young Robert—who could have no say in the matter.
The countryside was flocking to Mary. On village greens, in innyards, proclamations proclaiming Jane as Queen were put up — and within minutes, torn down again. With the deep pride in rightful royalty felt by all England, the voices grew — for Mary — always Mary—Mary—Mary Tudor, Queen of England.
But even while Northumberland was making this last desperate attempt on Mary’s life, the other lords of the Council gave in, discarded Jane, and set out to meet the Lord Mayor at Paul’s Cross, and proclaim Mary Queen.
It was surely the smallest company ever to proclaim a Queen, but that did not matter. For the populace of London flooded the narrow streets like a tidal wave, and roared Mary’s name louder than any fanfare.
Through the summer night, London held revel. Every
steeple rang with a carillon of bells, bonfires soared and streamed to the stars, the people danced and shouted and feasted in the streets.
A modern writer gave to that age the splendid name of “the tireless dawn.” For in it, the world was righting itself again for England. The truth was coming into its own. And also, in it, one of the first to scuttle back into the Tower where poor Jane waited — as ironic a prisoner as this world has ever known—was her own father—Duke of Suffolk. With his own hands he tore down the royal trappings that surrounded her, rolling them up and hastening out of the rooms with “Such are not for you, mistress,” and left her, alone—to wait what strange turn fate might have in store for her now.
At Cambridge, Northumberland himself listened to the rolling tide for Mary, and at last recognized the inevitable. He went out into the market place, tore down the proclamation for “Queen” Jane, and shouted Mary’s name aloud. But his voice made no mark in the wave of sound already ringing for her.
Next day he was arrested, and as he rode to the Tower, prisoner, traitor, already condemned, he learned the true temper of the people. For as he passed, they rose up against him, hurled stones, and would have torn him to pieces, had it not been for the protection of the men who escorted him—to save him for a death more fitting for a traitor. Behind him rose his son Robert, caught up in the deadly machine that was to cause so many deaths and ignominious imprisonments. The false rule was done. The Tudor succession was on its way.
„ In the country, Elizabeth stood by the window of her bed-
chamber and pushed it open to draw a long deep breath of warm turf, humid with dew, of dense leaves stirring in a tremulous night wind. She laughed, and stretched her arms wide.
“Ashley — Ashley—I know what Lazarus must have felt when he came forth from the tomb!”
“God pardon you! What wild words are these?” Ashley scolded. “Come to your bed, and sleep. Will you take an herb posset to quiet you?”
Elizabeth threw an arm round her neck.
“Dare to bring me one, and I’ll throw it in your face! Sleep? Before God, I shall sleep! This night of nights!”
She dived between the curtains in her white shift and snuggled into the big bed like a child.
“Poor Jane,” she said suddenly, in a shattering yawn of tension utterly relaxed. “She sleeps in another part of the Tower, this night. I pray she is not afraid, poor girl.”
Ashley snorted.
“But she need not be,” Elizabeth said confidently and drowsily. “Naught was her doing. And Mary will bear that in mind. No harm will come to Jane…”
And now darkness was folded back and all the world was
a summer’s day. In a royal manor house at Wanstead in the county of Essex, less than ten miles from London, Elizabeth waited to greet the sister who was Queen. Mary had appointed to meet her there on her own royal progress from Norfolk to the City.
An upper room at Wanstead had the unusual feature of a wide stone balcony overlooking the great courtyard, and here, in the glittering morning, stood Elizabeth gazing down at the scene of stir and movement below.
She was a figure of sheer radiance, standing there. When the nine days and nights of ever-increasing tension came to their sudden end, and life no longer crouched at the edge of a bottomless abyss, she slept like a baby, as she told Ashley she would sleep. And woke to new life. Release, exultation, pulsed through every vein in her slim body. The winged hours were a very ecstasy of living for Elizabeth, now.
A trumpet was ringing out below, and she leaned on the sun-warmed stone of the balustrade to watch the figures
tramping across the courtyard at the summons. She did not hear anyone come into the room behind her, nor see the young man in court dress of crimson and white who stood hesitating. At last he spoke, diffidently, awkwardly: “Madam Elizabeth—”
Elizabeth turned. The boy’s candid face lit with amazement and his beardless lips uttered a gasp. She smiled. Her blood was running free again after the deadly years of caution and bitter restraint. It was good to see dumbfounded admiration in the eyes of a very young man—even if they were somewhat fishlike eyes. It was power—of a sort. And highly exciting.
Elizabeth was never strictly beautiful, in spite of all the adulation which has made her into the legendary Gloriana. A foreign ambassador was to describe her in her earliest twenties as ua lady of great elegance … though her face may be called pleasing rather than beautiful… Her eyes, but above all, her hands, which she takes care not to conceal, are of a superior beauty”
In brief: a fiery redhead with a skin of new milk, the exquisite finish of high breeding, and hands like the perfect hands of a Chinese goddess in blonde de chine porcelain. But no written word remains which even attempts to portray the charm, the magic, the enchantment, which she shed and which bound men to her for life, and into death. That supple wand of a young body sheathed a colossal personality and a brain like a many-faceted diamond. Add to this endowment a woman’s inevitable delight in playing with hearts as she would play with a pack of cards, and a warmth of heart which, to the few who were privileged to see it, opened a vision of heaven, and you have, in Elizabeth of England, a woman whose fascination has never been surpassed. Her own court playwright of later years, one Will Shakespeare, immortalized Cleopatra, the Serpent of Old Nile. A contemporary French poet called Mary of Scotland “la grande SorciereT Elizabeth stood alone above all others…