Elizabeth turned her head swiftly. Her eyes were pinpoints. “If I live at all, where should I live, to be Queen?” she asked in a tone of polite interest.
“There be—places—safer than this,” Ashley faltered.
“She’s right, Bess,” Parry put in. “You know not which way the Queen will strike. You would be better off not to be here.”
Elizabeth transferred her look of mild inquiry, with lifted eyebrows, to his uneasy face.
“Where should I be, think you?”
It was at this moment that the maid, Amy, hurried in, a bundle under her arm.
“What do you want?” Elizabeth asked sharply.
“By your leave, Your Grace. Dame Ashley, I’ve found these things of the Lady Elizabeth’s wrapped up in the cedar chest in your chamber. What would you have me do with them? I am sorting the chest—”
“What things?” Elizabeth questioned.
“I’ll take them, Bess.” Ashley was flurried. “ ’Tis nothing. Give them to me, Amy—”
“No,” Elizabeth ordered. “Give them to me.”
With a scared, uncertain look, Amy handed the bundle to her. Elizabeth unknotted it, revealing a tight-folded cloak, plain dress, a pair of shoes, and in the middle, a small box. She pushed the garments to the floor in a heap and lifted the
lid of the little casket. She raised her eyes and the look that she gave Ashley was a blow across the face…
“My ring Kate gave me. And the gold chain Thomas brought me from her. Things you know I never move without …”
An instant of silence.
“Are we going on a journey? Are we? God damn you, Ashley! Damn the three of you! Where did you think to take me?”
She thrust the heap of clothes away with her foot and called to Amy, “Get out! Get out! Take those things and put them back where they belong—no, not the box, I’ll keep this myself, where I can watch it. Get out! ”
Amy fled. Elizabeth looked at each of the three silent faces in turn.
“My friends! My true and loyal friends! Well, speak! Where did you think to take me?”
Parry had moved unobtrusively to the window. Elizabeth shouted at his back, “Answer me, Thomas.”
He turned, looking from Dudley to Ashley with a hopeless lift of his bowed shoulders.
“Here comes Carew,” he said.
“Peter?” Elizabeth exclaimed. “Here? In daylight? Peter Carew … So! That’s it! France … God! how can you stand there and face me with such treachery in your hearts? France!”
“I’ll go below,” Parry muttered hastily.
“Stay here, Thomas,” Elizabeth ordered.
“Bess,” he entreated, “the place is alive with the Queen’s men. Carew is wanted by them—I must help him.”
“Let them take him, then,” she said through her teeth. “He knows how to come in, and when. This is your doing, all of you. You’ve picked a fine way to save me. Let him get up here by himself, as best he can.”
Carew came in before she had finished speaking. He was panting and spent as he looked quickly round the room. “Your Grace—Your Grace—I’ve news—”
“Is she dead?” Elizabeth ejected the question as though she fired a bullet.
Carew shook his head.
“What then?”
“I think she’s dying … and she sends for you … to kill you, and make sure of you before she … dies.” He got his breath. “She’ll have you there on God knows what pretext this time. For God’s sake, madam! there is a ship at Plymouth, ready to put off to France…
The other three, pressing closely about her, spoke at once: “Bess, you must listen!”
“Lady, indeed you must.”
“ ’Tis for your own sake, Bess…”
“Oh God!” Elizabeth broke out. “Where are those that love me? Where’s Francis Verney? Where is he? He never would be treacherous to me.”
She turned from the three mute faces to Carew.
“Do you know? Where is he, Peter?”
Carew, angered and exhausted, did not spare her.
“On Tower Hill. Beheaded there, for treason — as he would not have been, if he had been in France.”
She shook under the blows his terse words dealt her, and for an instant her eyes closed. Her voice came with painful effort, but clearly and steadily: ‘‘He would not go to France. I will not go.”
Dudley took a step toward her, his eyes blazing.
“We’ll take you whether you will or no.”
Elizabeth gave him a look of defiance.
“Do it, then. I see now what my friends are. If ever I am Queen, it will be less in spite of my enemies than in spite of my friends…”
Parry cried out, deeply hurt and resentful, “Bess, that is not true!”
“God’s blood!” she swore. “What do you think I’ve lived for, all these years? In and out of the Tower—in and out of favor with a madwoman who wants me dead! Think you I’ve learned to hate and fear, and judge the trickery of humankind, and weigh the balance, and find the niche to hide in, or the crack in the wall to crawl through, to put these talents to use, sitting and doing needlework in France?”
“There are men who—” Carew began when she paused for breath and control.
“Men! Armies! Ships! I care not. Mary Stuart’s in France! Think you I’ll let a Stuart race me to the throne of England?”
“The ship—” Carew began again.
“Sink it! Or keep it where it is—you may have need of it, you who love France better than England. I do not. My enemies are dear, and I would hate to leave them… Either they’ll cut off my head, here in England, or I’ll keep it on, here in England, until they put our crown upon it.”
There was silence in the room. Only their faces spoke… Dudley subsided, but Elizabeth, knowing she had won, could not resist one final thrust at the man who had hurt her most.
“Robert, there’s a ship at Plymouth. Heard you not? It may serve to carry you to France…”
“It can lie and rot there, if it has not you in it,” he returned steadily.
“Peter?”
“Nor me, without you,” Carew answered.
“Stay here with me,” she warned him, “and you may meet with Francis Verney sooner than you think. …”
Carew met her eyes unfalteringly.
“His company did ever entertain me. I can think of none better,” and he smiled.
Her eyes looked steadily into his.
“Thank you, Peter. I love you for that.”
Parry, from his habitual place at the window, announced resignedly, “Here they be—the Queen’s own guards…”
“How many? ” asked Elizabeth.
“An honorable escort, lady,” he answered in grim, hopeless jest that had its valor.
“As many, I hope, as she is used to send?” Elizabeth suggested in the same key.
“No, not so many,” Parry opined judicially. “But, by my faith, more richly turned out indeed.”
“Oh?” Elizabeth drawled brightly. “Does that raise up my worth as a prisoner or lower it, I wonder? Go down to them, Thomas. Bring them to me here. Say I await them. And so I do,” she ended to the others. “With something of a curious nature, too, to know with what infamous lie will come the summons.”
She turned to face the door. And the only sound in the room was the breathing of the people who stood in it, without a word or movement.
The door was opened, and it was Elizabeth’s kinsman, the Admiral and Chamberlain, Lord William Howard, who appeared, with three other gentlemen behind him. A flicker of surprise passed across her still white face at the sight of him. They all advanced silently, and knelt.
“Your Majesty,” Howard said.
The tension in the silent chamber cracked; still no one moved.
“What say you?” Elizabeth interposed calmly.
“The Queen, Your Majesty—the Queen is dead.”
Elizabeth went slowly to her chair, seated herself, patted her skirts into place and linked her hands calmly in her lap.
“I am sorry that you bring such news,” she observed.