I and her maids put her to bed where Elizabeth remained, ill and unable to rise, for the next several days.
Chapter 8
Tyrwhitt tried, every day that Elizabeth was well enough to leave her bed and meet with him, to make her say what he wanted her to.
He never succeeded. With the precision of an expert swordsman, Elizabeth evaded his every question about Seymour and his plots. She constantly brought Tyrwhitt back to the fact that she firmly intended to obey her father’s last wishes, which had been that she’d never marry without the advice and permission of Edward’s council.
Whatever Seymour’s plans had been, Elizabeth implied without blatantly stating it, she’d had no intention of participating in them herself. She held herself apart, aloof.
I understood as I watched these interviews that Elizabeth had fallen out of love with Seymour as thoroughly as I had. When once her eyes would brighten at the mention of his name, she now spoke no word in his defense nor made any sign of protest about his arrest.
She had finished with him. Elizabeth could not stop what happened to him now, and so she strove to remove herself from the incident.
Tyrwhitt, faced with Elizabeth’s coolness and her iron will, seemed amazed by her. The only human feeling she had, I heard him mutter to his wife, was for her governess, Mistress Ashley.
“They must have collaborated on a story,” I also heard him say to Lady Tyrwhitt. “They sing the same tune, the three of them.”
“She will have counseled them,” his wife answered darkly. “The princess, I mean.”
“She is a child, for heaven’s sake,” Tyrwhitt retorted. “God’s grace, she is but a girl, for all her haughty ways. I will wager it was Parry who advised her.” He sighed. “Though Denny and Paulet swore that they never allowed Mistress Ashley or Master Parry speak to Elizabeth after their arrest. I do not know how they managed it, but they must have.”
I turned away from them, a smile on my lips.
A piece of gossip came to us soon after that, which brought Elizabeth out of her cold aloofness and sent her into a towering fury.
“It is untrue,” Elizabeth exclaimed hotly to Tyrwhitt when he, torn between embarrassment and smugness, shared this news in her chamber. “As you can see.”
She spread her arms, showing her slender figure hugged by a close-fitting blue satin bodice coming to a point over a skirt of the same color.
I’d heard the whispers myself before Tyrwhitt brought them to light and had made certain that the gown denounced the slander.
Tyrwhitt flinched at Elizabeth’s outburst. “It is rumor only, Your Grace,” he said hastily. “No one will believe it.”
“Of course they will believe it,” Elizabeth shouted. “Here I am, shut away from the world, unable to refute the tales. Take me to court and let me show myself. ’Twill be easy to make a mockery of the story that I am heavy with the Admiral’s child and locked in the Tower if I am seen in my brother’s company.”
“I cannot allow you to leave Hatfield,” Tyrwhitt said miserably.
Elizabeth whirled and abruptly swept all books and papers on her table to the floor.
Tyrwhitt jumped, but secretly I was pleased to see Elizabeth in a fine rage. The coldness into which she’d retreated in the last several days had unnerved me. I was used to her hot tempers—her icy control was new.
“Then I will write to His Grace Somerset.” It was all Elizabeth could do to give the Lord Protector the honorific. “And ask him myself.”
“My lady … ”
Elizabeth sent Tyrwhitt a freezing glare. “My reputation is at stake, Sir Robert. The people of England shall not be laughing at me, or pitying the princess who has fallen so low. I have not fallen, and these slanders are insulting. How dare the Lord Protector allow them to persist?”
I could guess how he dared—it would be in Somerset’s interest to paint Elizabeth as a whore and Seymour as a whoremonger. He’d state that the two had readied themselves to take over the kingdom, easily stopped by Somerset, of course.
Elizabeth won this round and wrote her letter: Master Tyrwhitt and others have told me that there goeth rumors abroad which be greatly both against mine honor and honesty … which be these: that I am in the Tower and with child by my Lord Admiral. My lord, these are shameful slanders … I shall most heartily desire your lordship that I may come to the court after your first determination, that I may show myself there as I am.
I heard reports that when Somerset received this letter, dutifully delivered by Tyrwhitt, he turned nearly green with fury.
Somerset’s wife had snarled at the impudence of Elizabeth, she who’d behaved so wantonly, nearly committing adultery with her own stepfather. What right had Elizabeth to write so peremptorily to Somerset, the first lord of the land, while Elizabeth was one step from being condemned as a traitor?
Somerset, it was said, ground his teeth before writing a curt and severe reply.
Thus began the battle of wits between Elizabeth and the Lord Protector of England.
