The barge at last shot from under the bridge, the speed sending us toward calmer waters. We passed Billingsgate, and all too soon the crenellations of the Tower drew close.
The boatmen guided the craft out of the current to the landings, they being the only ones happy to reach our journey’s end. The barge bumped stone, the relieved boatmen throwing ropes to those waiting above to tie us fast.
Sussex immediately sprang ashore, as did Paulet, the elderly man hunched against the rain.
Elizabeth’s face was carved in icy anger. When one of her gentleman ushers climbed out and reached a hand down to help her to shore, Elizabeth remained under the canopy, folded her arms, and sat still.
The man gazed down at her, troubled, the rain streaking his beard and matting his hair to his head. “Your Grace, we must go in,” he said tremulously.
Elizabeth set her jaw and remained under the canvas. Paulet scowled and slid a fold of his cloak over his nose, as though irritated that his appointed task might result in a bad cold. He was nearly seventy, far too elderly for capers in the rain.
Sussex regarded her impatiently. “Your Grace, if you do not leave the boat, I must give the guards instruction to lift you out. I do not wish to do so, as I do not wish anyone to lay hands on your person.”
Elizabeth did not answer. She glared at Sussex with all the fury she could muster, letting it spill beyond him onto Paulet. Then, without a word to either of us ladies, she scrambled to her feet and launched herself up onto the stone wharf.
“Here landeth as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed here,” Elizabeth stated. She then sat herself down on the stone steps, full in the rain, and folded her arms again.
I climbed out of the boat, my body cold and stiff. It was a black day, quite literally. The rain pelted from dark clouds, and the afternoon didn’t seem likely to be any brighter than the morning.
I expected Sussex to growl at Elizabeth to move, but he stood very quietly, waiting for her to choose what to do.
Hedging his bets, I thought once more. The other councilors, including Paulet, copied his stance. Only the gentleman usher, who was one of Elizabeth’s own men, seemed distressed.
“Your Grace, you must not sit here in the rain,” he said, anguished. He was nearly as elderly as Paulet, with a wife, children, and six granddaughters. I knew him as a gentle person, and now his kind eyes leaked tears. “Please, Your Grace, this is a bad place.”
“Better here than a worse place,” Elizabeth countered.
Her gentleman continued to quietly weep. Elizabeth gazed at him in exasperation, then she sighed and nodded.
Perhaps she took pity on the poor man—I could not tell. Elizabeth could be impatient with even the kindest people, and then she could turn around, soften her heart, and do everything in the world for them.
Elizabeth held out her hand for me, and I and the gentleman usher helped her to her feet. She swirled her cloak about herself in a dramatic fashion and ordered Sussex to proceed. Behind us, Paulet sneezed.
We walked along cold, flooded paths that skirted the ancient stone walls, our way lined with yeomen of the guard. A few pulled off their hats as she passed.
“God save Your Grace,” one said to her.
Elizabeth acknowledged him with a gracious nod.
The accommodations we were escorted to were bleak, though not the rat-infested dungeons I’d feared. It was bad enough—plain rooms that held small hearth fires, but nonetheless dreary.
The two ladies Elizabeth had been allowed to retain would be prisoners with her. We’d not be permitted to leave the Tower, in the event that we’d conspire with outsiders to rescue her. Mary had sent several of her own gentlewomen to watch over Elizabeth and keep an eye on me and Mistress Norwich.
Mary’s ladies waited in the long chamber that was to be Elizabeth’s, standing like jailers near a bed hung with heavy curtains.
Elizabeth glanced around the spartan room, not in despair but with haughty annoyance.
“Did Jane Grey stay here?” she demanded of Sussex.
“No, Your Grace. She did not.”
Colby had told me that at first, Jane had been allowed to live in the comfortable accommodations where she’d been originally housed with her mother, before she’d been moved to the half-timbered Lieutenant’s lodging. From the windows of Elizabeth’s chamber, I glimpsed a corner of Tower Green, where Jane had met her death.
Elizabeth refused to look out of the windows. “You may leave us,” she said to Sussex, a royal personage dismissing him.
She turned from that retreating gentleman so she would not have to watch him refuse to bow to her.
Elizabeth flinched slightly when the heavy door of the outer chamber closed, and the key turned in the lock, but I was the only one who noticed.
