“I live like a performing bear on a chain,” Elizabeth said with a dry bitterness. “Led from place to place, back and forth — and jerked by the chain wherever it be.”
“God’s precious soul!” Ashley remonstrated. “What’s amiss with being here? The Court’s no merry place these days, and not much safer than the Tower! We’re surer of our necks here than in town, that I do know! ”
“I wonder,” Elizabeth said.
In another room, Parry was giving certain instructions to the young lad, Abel Cousins, who was now of Elizabeth’s household.
“… See that you go unobserved. The road from here to London is hot with the Queen’s men. We cannot have you stopped and questioned, but we must know if the Queen is truly ill.”
“You can trust me, sir. I know the back lanes,” Abel answered.
“We had one once who knew them well enough to play fox with the Queen’s whole army,” Parry said. “Would God he were here now.”
“Trust me, sir, as you’d trust him,” the boy urged.
Parry sighed heavily.
“Well, go and get us the truth of how the Queen does. Now go, and quickly.”
Parry waited until Abel was to be heard clattering downstairs before he turned to Robert Dudley, who sat in the window watching the scene with his usual air of detached indifference, and with intentness deep in his fine, dark eyes.
“I would know why we hear nothing of Verney.”
“If I ride to London myself, now, I can be back tonight,” Dudley suggested.
“And have Bess tear the house about our ears at finding you
gone? No, for God’s sake stay here. I cannot face another scene with her and no man here to help me out. Where is she now?”
“Above, in her chamber.”
“You should be with her,” Parry told him reproachfully. As the good cofferer aged, the younger people about him were more and more, in his eyes, the children he had known, regardless of their rank and standing.
“She sent a plate at my head when I got up from dinner,” Dudley observed dryly.
“Did she eat dinner?” Parry’s anxiety was for Elizabeth, not for Dudley’s handsome head.
“Not a mouthful.”
“She will fall ill again,” Parry prophesied with gloomy certainty. “Where is Ashley?”
“Watching her, from a window.”
“Is there nothing more we can do here?” Parry quavered. “This waiting goes hard with more than Elizabeth.”
“All’s done that can be. All we need now is Carew and his ship. ’Tis ready, that we know.”
“Aye, but where? Where?” Parry inquired breaking into an agitated shuffle from window to door.
“Sit down, Thomas,” Dudley bade him. “We cannot walk to France. Spare your legs.”
“I would we had Elizabeth there now. I’ll not sleep again till we have the seas between her and Mary.”
“It will be done,” Dudley soothed him with unusual patience. “Ashley has some small things put together in a bundle
and hidden. Elizabeth will not know of it till we have her aboard and weigh anchor.”
“If she suspects that we intend to spirit her to France out of harm’s way, God help us, we shall need it,” Parry said.
“If it comes to that, I’ll put a gag in her mouth myself, and tie her up and carry her.” Dudley spoke lightly, keeping his temper, keeping his head, as the old man’s anxiety rose higher.
Parry rubbed the back of his head, standing his thinning hair on end.
“I would William Cecil were here. She has listened to him.”
“No one must know of it, Thomas. I know not who’s to be trusted.”
“You can set those words to a tune and sing a song of them,” Parry returned with a bitterness that was not usual with him. “I know not, at times, whether I trust my own face in a mirror.”
“If this is how we feel, what must it be with her?” Dudley mused, his lightness changed in a twinkling and the truth of his heart in his tone.
Parry’s eyes softened.
“I’ll take her tempers and her moods and love her with ’em.
… What these past years have been for her would unseat the reason of a saint. And saint, Bess is not …” he finished with feeling.
Dudley laughed.
“No, she’s a woman. Were there more like her, I’d say they were made of stronger stuff than saints.”
“Ashley!” Parry exclaimed as Ashley came in. “How is it with her?”
“Still walking up and down upstairs. She has not slept nor eaten. I cannot reason with her more. Lord Robert, you are the only one can talk with her.”
“But is he man enough to try?” Parry suggested with a faint chuckle. “Go to it, Robert. There are no plates above stairs…”
But Elizabeth herself was suddenly in the room. She came in like a sleepwalker, looking straight before her and at none of them, and there was silence as she went to a chair and seated herself. At last Elizabeth broke the silence.
“You make a lot of noise, you three!”
“Bess,” Ashley pleaded, “come to your bed and lay you down and rest.”
“You do gather here most freely,” Elizabeth said, ignoring her. “Where has my honorable keeper gone?”
“To London,” Parry answered.
“Well, his covey of jailers have not. They sit out there in the trees and swing their feet.” Her voice sharpened and rose tensely. “Would I could hang them there by the neck… Rob, I liked the Tower better than this. I knew more of what went on there. Has there been no word?”
She looked at each of them in turn. No one spoke.
“Oh, speak not all at once, I cannot hear myself think in this thunder of news… Where’s Francis Verney? He’d get me news if any man could.” She moved restlessly, her fingers tapping the arm of the chair. “Belike this illness of hers is most wondrous fabricated. Belike she thinks herself brought to bed of a babe again.”
Dudley laughed.
“With Philip gone this year and a half?”
“You’ve no idea how miraculously she could contrive in the conceiving of a Prince!” Elizabeth retorted.
“Bess,” he said seriously and urgently, “let me ride to London?”
“You?” She gazed at him.
“I can be back tonight.”
“Aye, surely,” Elizabeth conceded, “I will let you go—” “There, that’s more like it!” Dudley got to his feet.
“So you may be in London when they arrest me,” she went on, “and swear you never were here with me.”
Dudley returned her piercing stare, his face reddening. “Have you lost your mind too? God befriend you if you trust no man of us who have stood with you, Elizabeth!”
Her frozen gaze wavered, fell. She stretched out a hand to him.
“Rob, I’m half mad with waiting, and you know it. Go not to London—not you! not you! You can find out nothing more than we here, sitting still and waiting. If I must sit still, then for God’s sake let it be with you three.”
Ashley choked on a sob, and covered her face. Elizabeth turned on her.
“Oh, for God’s sake, why do you weep? What’s the matter with you?”
“Bess,” Ashley mumbled, wiping her eyes, “we cannot sit here and wait.”
“We will sit here and wait. How long, think you, can a woman be mad, and go on living, and die not?”
“What if she send for you?” Ashley returned fearfully.
“I will not go. I will not meet with her again.”
“If she’s dying and knows it, she’ll have your life first. She’ll never let you live to be Queen—in England.”