“Aye, when the babe is born!” Mary repeated the words with a piteous, dead hopelessness.
Elizabeth’s voice strengthened. She spoke with a forced brightness, in an ordinary tone.
“ ’Tis not unusual for a first babe to be late!”
“Aye—but two months,” Mary groaned deeply. “That’s a long time. … Two months the doctors erred on. They said he should be born in June, and this is August.”
She lifted her head.
“But the pains come! They’ve started twice — and I am with child. ’Tis not an easy thing to be a Queen, and be with child. Do I not carry him well?”
“Excellent well, Your Majesty,” Elizabeth answered.
“I have seen those at this stage are blown up like a full-rigged ship,” Mary said with satisfaction, “and can scarce manage their weight across a room. My babe lies close within me.
A heartbreaking softness stole into the last words. In the same instant, it vanished. Mary’s eyes lit with a strange sly gleam and her deep voice rose unnaturally high.
“Elizabeth! It is a good thing to carry a babe and know him to be heir to England. Think you not so?”
“I know you have great joy in it, Your Majesty,” Elizabeth said.
“And you—do you have joy in it?”
“Even as yourself, Your Majesty.”
“You lie!” Mary screamed shrilly. “You lie, you smiling bitch! Look at her, Gardiner—see how she smiles and lies. Now she’s afraid to smile… Come here.”
Elizabeth moved forward with frozen limbs and knelt before her. Mary gave a high shrieking peal of laughter.
“I do believe that in her heart she still hopes to be Queen! Do you?”
Elizabeth knelt, with her eyes determinedly fixed on Mary’s face above her own. She could not speak. Her throat was closed.
“Answer me! Do you still hope to be Queen? Speak!” Mary screamed, and struck the girl across the mouth, so that she dropped back on her heels.
“So! You dare not speak! … This throne is mine, and Philip’s, and our babe’s. Look you—see you this ring upon my hand?” She thrust her hand before Elizabeth’s face. “My marriage ring. Look well, and let the image of it burn on your eyes forever. For while I live, in my love of Philip, God and England—I am Queen. While I do live, this ring shall never leave my finger. And only when I die will it leave me, to go
to this small one within me. Keep that within your heart, along with all the hopes of your succession!”
The frenzy guttered and sank. In its place a bewildered misery closed visibly over her head. She cried out, “Why do the pains not start? … They started twice before, and stopped. Why do they not start now? God knows, I’m ready!”
“Your Majesty,” Gardiner’s voice was heard for the first time since Mary had come face to face with Elizabeth. The girl still sat, watching every change of Mary’s tormented face, listening to the gamut of her voice, rooted, not daring to move. Gardiner stood, as he had stood all the while, a tall shadow behind the Queen’s chair. Both Mary and Elizabeth started as he spoke. The one in her frenzy, the other in her rigid horror, had forgotten that he was in the room.
“Your Majesty, when last the pains began, Elizabeth was here.”
Mary turned her head from him and fixed Elizabeth with a stare.
“You were! You were! And they did stop. You, who do hate my babe. You hope he’ll die—”
“Mary—” Elizabeth whispered.
“Witch! ” Mary spat the word at her. “That’s what you are —a witch. And so you should be punished. You have practiced witchcraft against me and my babe… God! if I thought it was you, I’d tear the heart out of your flesh myself—”
“Mary,” Elizabeth said, clear and steadily, “be not so violent—for the babe's sweet sake. …”
Mary sank deeper into her chair, sagging suddenly.
“My babe!” she echoed in a mutter. “Yes, yes, that’s true. My babe!
“Bishop, be gone — and get her from this place.”
“To where, Your Majesty?” Gardiner asked.
“Anywhere — anywhere—so you do make a prison of it and keep her watched.”
She half rose, stumbled, pressed a hand to her side.
“Help me to my room.”
“I’ll call your women,” Gardiner said quickly.
“No!” Mary lifted her voice. “No women! No one—no one — above all, no women! They whisper—” She was moving slowly, waveringly, to the door, and sobbing in anguish as she went. “Then if they do not … I can hear them … smile! Oh God, why do the pains not start? Why do the pains not start? ”
Gardiner advanced, drew her arm through his, and led her away. Her terrible sobs could be heard in the gallery, ebbing as they went.
Elizabeth crumpled, falling with her face against the cushions of Mary’s chair.
“Mary …” She spoke muffled by the velvet, her hands gripping the carved arms. “Mary … Oh God, deliver her … and me … and me…
Though Mary herself at last came to recognize the truth of her own self-deception—that there was to be no child—the health of her heart and of her mind was broken. Still, she lived on, in hopes of Philip’s return. When he did come, her joy was momentarily untempered by the fact that he had
come at Charles’s command—to ask for ships, men and arms for Spain’s war with France. He needed only to ask to be given them—despite the murmurings of the people, despite the advice of her own Council, Mary could deny him nothing.
She might not have been so quick to concede to his wishes had she known that as soon as he had what he came for he would leave England. This time, she had seen him for the last time. Did she have some premonition? Was this the reason she followed him to the very shores of Dover, and stood weeping as his ship put out?
From that moment on, there was no rest for her. The ill-fated English intervention in this war of Charles’s cost them Calais, and brought upon Queen Mary’s head the eternal blame for that loss. Some said she went completely mad then. She would walk ceaselessly up and down. She would speak when no one was with her. She would not answer those who spoke to her. She would stop suddenly and sit down upon the door, and gaze into God only knows what scene before her.
And those around her grew to fear her slightest move. She seemed to find her only relief in the persecutions that earned her the ill-fated name “Bloody Mary.” … What she had hoped to do for her beloved church she defeated in her very persecutions, making martyrs out of those she hoped to disgrace.
Her health was failing, and England again watched — and waited — and looked to the one remaining Tudor. Yet watching and waiting were not enough. Fear of the dying Queen was everywhere. No one knew which way she would leap in her broken-hearted revenge against a fate that had dealt so harshly with her.
Up and down the country, and outside of it, there were those who would have risked anything to assure themselves of Elizabeth. Plots—hidden, secret, unknown—were hatched in darkness, by those too eager, or too afraid to wait.
But Elizabeth would have none of them. No word of treason was allowed to be spoken in her presence. She too feared, but above all she feared for the loss of truth—of lawful, true succession. And so she kept to herself, alone, watched, guarded by the Queen’s men, playing always the game that she had come to know so well—the fine diplomatist’s game of doing nothing, of waiting for the next move from the enemy.
She was at Hatfield, and with her those she had come to love the best of all—her own beloved Ashley, her own dear Parry, standing between her and the guards the Queen had set about her. With her too, was Rob—Robert Dudley—free at long last from the Tower, but not unwatched for all that.
It was a cold day in November. That the Queen was ill was common knowledge. But she had been ill before. And no word that came from London could be believed by those who kept watch here. Elizabeth prayed only for the moment that she might keep to Hatfield, and not be summoned back to the side of a mad Queen who hated her. Yet the need to know what was happening there was a torment she did not know if she could bear.