The young man who stood stupefied and gauche before her did not see all these things, fortunately, or he would have been likely to be struck blind… What he did see was a picture of shimmering brilliance enough to dazzle him. Elizabeth’s vivid hair was caught up in a small cap of pearls, and she had chosen for this joyful day a gown of the color of apple blossom shot with silver.
“Well?” she smiled at him. “What would you?”
“I—I came from the Queen, Your Grace,” he stammered. “Queen Mary bids me say she will be with you anon.”
“And only she herself can bring me greater joy than these your words! What is your name?” she asked him winningly.
She would have asked it in any case; it was part of her graceful royal courtesy to ask and to remember names. But in the fountain-fullness of her heart today, it really had importance, the name of this young bringer of glad tidings, and her question conveyed as much.
The young man grew red with pleasure.
“Francis Verney, Your Grace.”
“Oh!” Elizabeth almost sang. “Is not this a day for England, Francis Verney?”
“For England, and for Englishmen, my lady!”
“Aye!” she said, and went out to the balcony again and looked into the blue sky. “It is as though the very battlements that have oppressed the people fly now their banners! They have been robbed, forced into war, denied their God, and denied their rightful Queen — and they have risen, each little man, and cried aloud for Mary—no traitor, usurper, nor oppressor, but their predestined ruler after Edward! Their Queen! The people have done this! Think on it, Francis Verney — ” she spoke to him across her shoulder with one of her swift deerlike movements—“and know England… Look you, come here—what men are those—there, nay, over there, in the green hose and jerkins?”
“Your sister’s men, lady.”
“Without their armor?” Elizabeth exclaimed.
“There is no need for armor now.” Verney’s voice shook with a dazed laugh. “We have proclaimed her Queen!”
“Oh what a day for those with Tudor blood in them!” she cried exultantly. “What fools they were, these little men who thought to snatch up our crown when our good brother died, and set it on another head than hers who is King Henry’s daughter… Poor Jane Grey! And where has it brought her?”
“To the Tower,” Francis Verney answered, literally enough, for his head was reeling and he did not recognize the question as purely rhetorical.
“Aye, she is there. But Mary will not punish her. Jane had no say in the matter, the poor moppet! ”
The pensive look which had come into Elizabeth’s face vanished. A gleam of jagged lightning seemed to flash across it under Verney’s baffled and fascinated eyes.
“But for those who sought to place her on our throne,” she enunciated through her teeth, “theirs are heads I will not weep to see lopped off.”
“There’ll be no weeping for them, lady,” Verney assured her with the same shaken and breathless laugh in his voice. There was nothing to laugh about, but he was in a state of mind when he was ready to bray without reason.
“Aye, you are loyal,” she said with approval. “God bless you all!”
“God bless you too, my lady.”
“Why, so He has,” she returned buoyantly, “for have I not come into mine own right, too?”
“The sun,” Verney uttered, “has crowned you with a particular crown of your own.”
“Why, what a pretty speech, Francis Verney!” Elizabeth said, her eyes twinkling with amusement. “You’ll grace the Court at Whitehall! ”
“It shall grace me by letting me be there, so that you be there, too,” the young man answered breathlessly, with a sheepish smile, floundering deeper every minute.
A voice was heard calling “Verney, are you there? Did you find her, Verney?” Sir Thomas Wyatt came in, a man of about thirty with a fair beard and a high color. Elizabeth held out both hands to him with a cry of welcome.
“Thomas Wyatt! Oh, God be praised to see you! It is like being born again, this meeting with old friends — and finding new ones,” she added with a smiling look for Verney.
“Most gracious lady! ” Wyatt said with emotion, “how full my heart is today.”
His face was working. He had an unusually expressive face, where the color fluctuated and the eyes distended and started with every change of feeling. An excitable face …
“Do you sing songs, as your father did in my father’s day?” Elizabeth was asking him gaily, but with a shimmer of unwonted tears on her lashes. “For you must teach me one to take the fullness from mine, lest it burst. … I had thought hearts broke with grief, but now I know they come as quickly to it through great joy!”
She threw her arms wide and walked down the room with her old boyish stride, on fire with an exaltation that was almost an ecstasy.
“Christ’s blood! What a falling away of chains there is today! To be—to walk—to say out my own thoughts, and dissemble not before any living creature—oh God! that any rightful Princess to the throne should be forced by traitors to hide and take refuge and tremble, and pray for her life, and lay suit to God for that which is her own! …”
Wyatt had left the door open behind him. While Elizabeth was speaking, Mary herself stood on the threshold with the slight, dapper figure of Sir William Cecil obscured by her spreading robe. She stood watching Elizabeth, a quiet smile touching her lips.
“Well,” Elizabeth ended on a ringing peal of triumph, “this day is witness that England knows her Queen!”
A movement of the two men in the room as they went to their knees brought her head round. She stood for an instant, transfixed, hesitating, uncertain. Mary held out her arms, her
right face broken and quivering, and Elizabeth ran to her. They held one another fast.
“Mary—Mary—Mary! God bless you! …” In the same breath Elizabeth recollected herself, slid to her knees. “Your Majesty! …”
“Bess! You will make me weep too!” Mary exclaimed shakenly. “And there must be no more tears… Come, stand up, and take your place beside me.”
She looked approvingly, affectionately, at the girl as Elizabeth rose with a rustle of her skirts, looking exceedingly young in her gown of the color of dawn and dew. Mary, in superb and trailing sapphire velvet, her wide sleeves furred with ermine to the elbow, saw again the child she had loved…
“Cecil,” she commanded, turning to him, “mark down for the procession—Elizabeth shall ride beside me into London.”
“Cecil!” Elizabeth exclaimed joyously. “Oh, now I know how well-walled-in we are by loyalty! Here is a man who’s true if ever there was one! ”
Mary dealt him a cool, level look.
“Aye. True indeed—to those in power. No matter, Cecil,” she amended quickly and with an abrupt touch of kindliness, “I am satisfied now with your good protestations … so you have learned who’s Queen.”
“Your Majesty,” Cecil said in his own quiet and imperturbable manner, and knelt to her.
“Come, come,” Mary said brusquely and heartily, “leave ceremony now, and fear you not, any of you. Be assured in your hearts. Queen Mary bears no man ill who does love God and England. We will now see the triumphing of right, and honor done where virtue has her due.”
“Long live the Queen!” Elizabeth called clearly and happily. And the little company sank to its knees once more.
Mary flushed like an embarrassed, pleased girl. The ready tears sprang to her eyes, she smiled, the difficult smile which came to her sunless face so rarely, and which was more moving than tears.
“Gentlemen,” her deep voice boomed, “let it be known abroad, Elizabeth has my love. Honor done her is honor done to me. Remember it! ”
“ ’Twould be a hard thing to forget, Your Majesty,” the irrepressible Vemey burst out, “to honor one as beautiful as she.”