There had been talk of Pole as even a suitable and possible husband for Mary; the Pope, said various voices, might well be brought to consider a dispensation for such a union…
Suddenly, and in this crucial moment when she was face to face with her own bitterest and most implacable enemy on earth, Elizabeth felt a sharp pang of pity … for Mary…
All the world knew of Reginald Pole: a man of invincible integrity, of fragile health and retiring, scholarly habits; of gentleness and the spiritual courage of the gentle in heart…. Oh God, thought Elizabeth, what a difference might have been, for Mary and for England, if her embittered, warped, and twisted being had found solace in such a marriage…
Rome must inevitably rule in England as long as Mary is England’s Queen. But … if Pole had been the guide of her unhappy spirit, in place of the cold, handsome, golden-bearded Spaniard, her husband, and this evil wizard, her Bishop … Oh God, oh God, what an impossible dream …
She said, out of the silence:
“Why do you hate me, my lord bishop?”
Gardiner stiffened.
“The words you use are not seemly. They come from your unregenerate heart. I hate no one. I pity the lost souls of God,” he said with a stem lofty unction.
Elizabeth smiled faintly and bitterly. Pity … God’s truth! How these hypocrites wore the word out till it was threadbare. Lady Tyrwhitt … now the Bishop … and each of them hating her, and she knew it.
“Have you not then granted me the grace you said you gave me, when you accepted me into the Church of Rome?” she challenged him.
“I am fearful of my own soul,” Gardiner replied, “lest I am unable to put my finger on lies.”
“My lord, how?”
Gardiner stepped from the door and stood over her.
“I did administer the sacrament to you. But when you took it, what did you believe?”
“In Lord God Almighty and Jesus Christ,” she returned promptly.
Gardiner bent closer.
“But do you believe in the miracle of the church? Do you believe in the exchange of the very blood and body of our Lord for the wine and wafer? ”
“You spoke the words yourself, lord Bishop, as Christ did before you. Being His words, how should I not believe?” Gardiner straightened himself, locked his hands behind his long back.
“The devil is powerful!” he said.
“What, my lord?”
“The devil, I say, is powerful. To put such a mind in a body without a soul in it! … You twist and turn the teaching of the church until it has no meaning…
“May God have mercy on you, Elizabeth.”
He left the room. Once more she heard the bolt shot and the key turned.
Elizabeth pressed her hands to her forehead. She picked up the stone water jug which stood on the table, and found it empty. She took it in her hand, and went slowly to the small bedroom beyond.
It was a measure of the depths of her captivity. Never in her life had Elizabeth needed to fill a water pitcher…
There was a grating sound outside the door. It swung back on its heavy hinges, and a young lad, a warder’s assistant named Abel Cousins, stepped into the room and looked round with an oddly mixed air of eagerness and diffidence.
“My Lady Elizabeth,” he called in a lowered tone.
The man behind him slipped in. He was a tall, slender young man, with a dark beard trimmed to a modish point. It was a face of very fine modeling, both elegant and acute, the eyes swift, the lips firm, the long pointed nose and thin nostrils marking the thoroughbred. The stranger had an unmistakable air of sophistication and courtliness; and yet, anyone who had known Thomas Seymour would have seen something reminiscent of him—not a physical likeness; a lightning play of the daredevil across those finely cut features, a roving glint in the eyes…
“My lord,” Abel said quickly, “I think the Lady Elizabeth must be sleeping. The other jailer’s gone to dinner; if he conies back betimes I’ll knock upon the door. Then hide you till I open it up myself. He’s not friendly.”
He spoke, twisting his shoulders, turning his face away from the empty room.
“Face up, boy,” the young gallant said genially. “What— are you feared to see Her Grace?”
“I would I might have seen her in another place,” the boy muttered indistinctly.
“And so you may.” He slipped a coin into Abel’s fingers. “For your pains, good lad. And—lest you be tempted to let slip a word—remember I have friends can see to it that a loose lip be shut for good!”
“I’ve reasons more than that for keeping silent,” Abel said, and smiled widely and frankly at him.
“Good lad! Then, go.”
As the door rang shut, Elizabeth came from the other room carrying the pitcher in both hands. The light was dim and gray and the corners thick with shadow. The intruder flattened himself against the barred door and spoke as though soliloquizing: “Hide me, he said, if anyone come! … And where? Shall I make myself into a shadow of a wall, or flatten myself into a rug for the stones on your floor?”
The pitcher clanked and spilled as Elizabeth set it down.
“Stay where you are!” Her voice rang wildly.
“Good lady,” said the cool, musical voice with a chuckle in it, “I have bribed myself into this chamber with more gold than it takes to keep me in wine for a year! ”
“I know you not,” she said breathlessly. “Who let you in?”
“Your jailer—or your jailer’s boy—”
“Who are you?”
“Divest me of my beard, then, in your mind,” he suggested, smiling calmly.
“I cannot think we’ve ever met,” Elizabeth said, peering hard at him.
“I mistreated a horse for your whim, once,” he said.
“I never bid a man mistreat a horse!” Elizabeth exclaimed hotly.
“Oh, but you did! Your lack of manners did! And then you put the blame on me—I heard you do it, with my own ears. You said, ‘He rides his horse to a lather, and he has very bad manners.’ … And when Queen Katherine, God rest her sweet soul, bid me stay for dinner and rest my poor horse, you cried, ‘She thinks more of his horse than she does of me!”’
“No, no! it can’t be … oh, not—Rob Dudley!” Elizabeth gasped.
“Elizabeth,” Dudley said. And came forward, and knelt at her feet.
“Robert Dudley!” she repeated. “Northumberland’s son!”
He lifted her icy hand to his lips, then looked up at her, and said, “Sometimes our blood is our misfortune—to be born son to a father—or—sister to a Queen. …”
“You’re here in the Tower for treason,” Elizabeth breathed.
“There be those lodged here who are innocent of their accusing,” Dudley retorted.
“How do I know you are innocent?”
“You are here yourself,” he pointed out, and rose to his feet.
"Aye, so. I grant you that much. How did you know I was:” she asked curiously.
"Lady,” Dudley said, “there is not a lord nor a mouse lodged here who does not know it.”
Elizabeth sat down at the bare table and motioned him to a wooden stool.
‘Td say there was a strange communication between prisoners, if you are thus free to walk about from room to room.”
“I do assure you,” Dudley said dryly, “it is by no means free! …”
“Are you true to the Queen?” she asked.
“As true, I am sure, as you,” Dudley answered enigmatically.
“If you are true to her, and in her pay, it could be you were sent to kill me,” Elizabeth said wdth a shudder.
“I doubt she would trust such a service to one of my family,” Dudley reminded her. “Rather am I wary of some well-paid ruffian myself.”
“Why did you come here?” she insisted, still suspicious and uncertain.