“They should be punished with fire,” she’d said fiercely the day after Philip had gone. “It is God’s will. The flames will free their souls.”
The men in this room wanted her stopped, and they were willing to pay any price to do it.
Chapter 21
I did my duty throughout Christmas and Epiphany to keep Elizabeth informed of what went on in and outside of Hatfield.
We never wrote or spoke a word that could be misconstrued or used in evidence, as I was able to convey the information to her in our code. I sewed what she needed to learn, and she read it in silence.
When Thomas Wyatt’s rebellion had come precariously close to costing Elizabeth her life, I’d been angry with the gentlemen who had put her into such a position.
This time, things were different. Two years ago, Mary had simply wanted to marry whom she pleased, even if her choice of bridegroom was not popular. Now, she burned people alive because they clung to their beliefs.
I did not truly understand the full horror of it all until early in 1556 when I had cause to travel to London. My route brought me near Smithfield on a day when several burnings took place.
Two women and a man, the women fairly young, the man elderly, were being led to three pyres. The day was cold and misty, damp under leaden skies.
“Shopkeeper’s daughters,” a woman said near me as I strove to view the scene over heads around me. “And their old uncle.” She lowered her voice. “A shame to see it.”
The woman took in my fine clothes, fur-lined cloak, and the servants waiting for me, who gazed in as much shock as I did at what was transpiring. The woman I spoke to was middle class, and she was aware that most wealthy gentlewomen served Mary in some capacity or other.
“A shame, I agree,” I said, then added, “I am with the princess.”
The woman’s grim countenance lightened. “Blessings be on her, I say. The blessings of God be upon her.” The woman then abruptly closed her mouth and moved from me, as though she feared she’d said too much.
In the center of the cleared space, the two women were being bound to their biers, the man openly weeping. I tried to turn away, to flee the sight, but the dense crowd hemmed me in.
The number of people between me and the pyres prevented me, mercifully, from seeing everything, but I could still hear and smell. Torches were lit and thrust into the wood, but the damp had got into the pyres and the sticks scorched and smoldered. Before long, the girls began shouting and pleading.
“The wood’s too wet,” a man near me shouted. He swore. “It’s too wet to burn ’em quick.”
The cries of the girls turned to screams. I heard nothing from the elderly man, but I glimpsed him standing in the midst of smoke and smoldering wood, tears running down his black face, his hair singed and gone.
“Fan the flames,” one of the young women cried. “Good people, I beg of you.”
Several people pushed forward, trying to help them end their lives quickly, but the guards shoved them back. I desperately scrambled away, squeezing between people who openly wept or shouted for others to help the victims. The smell of slowly burning flesh pursued me as I fled, as did the girls’ pathetic screams.
“Stopped. It must be stopped.” Tears ran down my face, and I growled the words between clenched teeth. I’d become separated from my servants, and passers-by stared at me as though I were a madwoman, but I did not care.
I scuttled from one side of London to the other without realizing it, my skirts dragging in mud and filth, my shoes ruined.
Anguish and anger dogged me every step of the way. The thought of Mary sitting in her palace, watching the river for any sign of Philip’s return and feeling sorry for herself, infuriated me beyond reason.
“Stopped. It must be stopped.” I babbled the litany over and over, my tears unceasing.
I’d reached Somerset House, my feet somehow taking me where I needed to go. Aunt Kat came hurrying downstairs when I stumbled in through the front entrance and caught me in her arms.
“It must be stopped,” I sobbed into her shoulder.
“’Twill be, love.” Aunt Kat stroked my hair as she’d done when I’d been a young lass, and let me cry. “That is why we work so hard, my dear. To stop her and her foul bridegroom. We will win through.”
I did not very well see how we could win anything. It was fine and good for men to sit around tables and make vague plans, but I began to itch for something tangible to do, though I was not certain what.
Aunt Kat and the others had not been idle, however. Aunt Kat had collected pamphlets against Mary, which she distributed to all she could. Lord Robert Dudley, though living mostly at Norfolk now that he’d been released from the Tower, still attended Mary’s court from time to time, and had many chats with his old friend Colby. Colby, in turn, passed on plenty of information to us about Mary.
Lord Robert even went so far as to sell land from one of his properties and smuggle the money to Elizabeth, for raising an army. Elizabeth accepted it and thanked him sweetly.
In March, the Archbishop of Canterbury, Thomas Cranmer, was condemned to burn. During his imprisonment, he’d signed six statements recanting his conversion to the reformed faith and affirming his loyalty to the Pope. But then Cranmer, who’d made it possible for Henry to divorce Mary’s mother and wed Elizabeth’s, did the remarkable.
