C. Gortner: The Tudor Conspiracy

I had to agree. Sitting in his cramped parlor above the Griffin, after having nearly drowned in a sewer, I had to doubt my own experience. The tunnel had been suffocating, a nightmarish labyrinth. I must have lost my reason. It seemed utterly improbable that Sybilla could have plunged into the Thames and not died instantly. Mary had told me she had paid the price, but I had not thought to ask if her body had been recovered. I was glad I hadn’t. It was better if I never knew. I had to believe she was dead. I didn’t want to consider what I would do if I found out otherwise. The hunt for her would destroy my existence.

“I must be at the Tower tomorrow,” I said at length. “I have to see it.”

He turned to the door as Nan came trudging back up the stairs.

“Then we will,” he said.

* * *

The next morning, he located old garb for me that had belonged to the dead uncle: a shirt, an itchy doublet that smelled faintly of lavender and more strongly of mold, mended hose, an oversized cap that flapped about my ears, and shoes too big for my feet. The dead uncle had been larger than me, I thought absently as I dressed, glancing at my contused arms, the purpling bruises on my torso, and the aching shoulder wound wrapped in a bandage; that, and I had lost too much weight. Shelton unearthed a worn belt from the clothes press to keep everything more or less in place. My other clothes were ruined. Nan had painstakingly tried to salvage them, but the taint of sewage was ineradicable, and I told her to give up. My boots could be salvaged, with care and loads of fat rubbed into the leather to restore its pliancy, after they dried out. I was most concerned for my sword, but while I slept Shelton had wiped away the moisture and filth and polished it to a bright hue.

We set out to an early morning that felt like spring, the sun breaking through the clouds in brilliant shafts that soaked into the frigid land. As we walked toward the Tower wharf on the west side of the fortress, I heard chirping in a beech tree and looked up, startled. A robin sat on bare twined limbs, where tiny buds were already visible-a welcome reminder that even this winter must pass, although it was hard to think that spring would find Elizabeth, Kate, and Mistresses Ashley and Parry behind prison walls.

It was a small crowd, not at all what I’d expect when a princess is sent into captivity. Today was Palm Sunday, Shelton told me, to my surprise, and official proclamations from the palace plastered on every wall encouraged the city’s denizens to attend worship in the old tradition.

“Must be deliberate,” Shelton said in my ear. “They don’t want too many to see her going into the same place where her mother died. The people love her. They’re starting to realize she truly is their last hope.”

I stood with him among the handful who’d gathered on the side of the Tower entrance, the roars of the caged lions in the menagerie seeming to herald Elizabeth’s arrival. At first, I thought she’d be brought by barge into the Tower via a water gate, but Shelton reminded me the tide ran too low at this early hour. They’d bring her to the wharf, as close as they could get, but she’d have to walk inside on her own two feet.

So it was that, hidden among curious onlookers, I saw her disembark from her barge and stand, utterly still, a hand at her brow as she gazed up at the looming bastion. She wore a black cloak, the hood drawn over her head, but as the guards cordoning the walkway shifted more tightly together and an audible murmur rose from the spectators, she cast back the hood to show her face.

She was very pale, yet appeared outwardly composed, escorted by five somber lords toward the same gateway through which I’d entered the Tower. Close behind her were Mistresses Parry and Ashley, holding bags stuffed with belongings, and a well-formed yeoman in the Tudor livery, carrying the traveling chest filled with her treasured books. My heart wrenched when Kate hastened from the barge to the princess’s side, the last to disembark; as she joined Elizabeth, her hand dropped surreptitiously to clutch the princess’s. Elizabeth turned nervously to her, as if Kate had murmured words of encouragement, and then redirected her gaze outward to the watching crowd.

“God keep Your Grace!” shouted a goodwife. As her shrill encouragement faded into the morning air, others lifted chorus, as if they’d been rehearsed: a fervent cry of good wishes that brought Elizabeth to a standstill. The lords, among whom I espied the tall, white-bearded figure of Lord Howard, exchanged concerned looks. Did they actually fear an impromptu rescue?

Elizabeth was looking directly at us, her eyes like black punctures in her pinched face; she could not acknowledge the greeting. Under suspicion of treason, about to enter the very place from which few ever emerged, she mustn’t risk the accusation that she’d incited the mob. Yet even from a distance I could see how those cries moved her, how she gazed at us with heartrending intensity, as if she sought to engrave this sight in her memory as a talisman to carry with her during the ordeal yet to come. Her fear ebbed away; in its place, for the briefest of moments, like a glimpse of spring on a bare tree, she showed the strength that made her undeniably a Tudor.

I started to push forward, elbowing those around me. The people in front of me grumbled. Shelton chopped his hands at them; they took one look at his mutilated face and quickly shifted aside. All of a sudden, I found myself pressed against the barricade, peering past the row of guards. Howard had urged the princess forward. She took a step away from him, resisting. I yanked off my cap, heedless of the consequences, waving it as high above my head as I could. Everyone around me followed suit, whipping off their headgear-a flotilla of caps and veils and bonnets, swaying in the air like crude flags.

Elizabeth lifted her chin, searching; her gaze found me, wagging my cap as though everything in the world depended on it. For a fleeting second, our eyes met. They held.

She smiled.

* * *

We returned in silence to the Griffin. I couldn’t speak. I had stood there and felt tears slip down my cheeks as they led her under the gateway. Metallic hatred almost choked me; all I could think of was that Robert Dudley had finally won. They were together at last, locked in a web of his making. What his lust for her, and the power she represented, had failed to accomplish, his treachery had.

I wished him the worst. I hoped the queen took his head next.

She wouldn’t, though. She had told me as much. For now at least, the killing was done.

Mary Tudor had a wedding to plan.

Eventually Shelton broke the quiet. “Try not to worry, lad. If anyone can survive the Tower, it’s her. She’s old Henry’s daughter, that one. She won’t break easily.”

I swallowed. It was the height of irony that Elizabeth must now rely on the goodwill of a prince she’d never met, a stranger come to wed her sister-and all because of the revelations of his double agent, a woman of vengeful mystery who would forever haunt my dreams.

“What now?” Shelton asked. I hesitated. I hadn’t considered it. Since my arrival at court, I’d lived day by day, often hour by hour, never looking too far ahead. My future now stretched before me; exiled from court, with Peregrine gone, Elizabeth and Kate imprisoned, and my world in chaos, somehow I had to find a way to live. I had to prepare myself for the day when fate turned again in our favor.

“My horse and hers, and her dog, Urian,” I said. “They’re in the stables at Whitehall. I can’t leave them there. But if I go back, I’ll certainly be arrested. Even if I could get in unnoticed, I’ve nothing to bribe the grooms with.”

“Leave it to me. You forget I was the earl’s jack-of-all-trades. I can’t count the number of times I saw to Courtenay’s horse because he’d passed out in some den. Nan and I have some coin saved, too, enough to rescue the beasts.”