I am given permission to go ahead of the royal progress and return to London. Nobody says why, but I take it as a favor won for me by Robert Dudley, though he says nothing and the queen is as lighthearted as if he had not spoken. I go at once to the royal treasury rooms to find the tokens that Henry Herbert gave me as his pledge, but the box where I keep my precious papers—Ned’s betrothal to me, his beloved will, and the Herbert love letters—is not where I left it.
“You took them with you!” my maid says. “Because you said they were precious to you. So you took them on progress.”
“But I wrote to Tabitha to find them here, and she said they were missing. They weren’t with me. We didn’t take them.”
She looks puzzled. “I am sure that I packed them. Are all your jewels safe?”
“My jewels are nothing to do with it!” I exclaim. “I clearly remember telling you to take the box of papers to the groom of the wardrobe and have them stored in the jewel house for me.”
“Oh, that box!” she says, her face suddenly clearing. “Yes, I took that for you.”
“Well, go and find it then. Why would you not fetch it at once?” Suddenly exhausted, I sink down to my bed and then there is a clattering knock on my door. I jump to my feet and open it myself. Outside is a captain of the yeomen of the guard and a couple of yeomen behind him.
“Lady Katherine Grey,” he says.
“Obviously,” I say sharply. “Who asks for me?”
“You are under arrest,” he says. “You are commanded to come with me to the Tower of London.”
“What?” I simply can’t understand what he is saying.
“You are under arrest. You are to come with me to the Tower. You may bring three women to serve you. They are to follow behind us with whatever goods and clothes you require.”
“What?”
He steps inside the room without answering me and he bows, his outstretched arm indicating that I should go out through the open door. My baby turns in my belly under the hard stomacher. I go where the captain indicates. He puts his hand in the small of my back and I flinch away. I cannot bear to be touched. I don’t want him putting his heavy hand anywhere near my belly, where my baby suddenly kicks out and makes me give a little gasp.
“This way,” he says, thinking I am about to cry out. “And no disturbance, if you please.”
I am very far from making any disturbance, I am blindly obedient, stunned like a heifer hammered between the eyes as it walks down the shambles towards the butcher. My ladies are gathered like a flock of startled hens at the doorway to my presence chamber, eyeing me in horror as if I were taken with the plague and they want to draw back their skirts for fear of infection; but I hardly see them at all. I am blinded by my own shock.
“The Tower?” I say to myself, but there is no meaning in the words for me.
The captain goes ahead of me, and his men come behind. It is like a scene in a masque. I follow him. I don’t know what else I can do. But I really don’t know what is happening.
“I have to have my linnets,” I say suddenly. “And my little dog. And I have a cat, and I have a monkey, a very valuable animal.”
“Your ladies will bring them,” he says solemnly, glancing over his shoulder to make sure that I am keeping up. I follow in his footsteps and he leads me out of the palace, through the privy gardens, and towards the river. I look around in case there is anyone I know who would take a message for me, but who would take a message? And, in any case, what would it say?
“Is this about the Spanish?” I ask. “For I have not spoken with them, and I have told William Cecil everything that they have ever said to me.”
We go in silence through the gate to the pier. The queen’s sergeant porter, Thomas Keyes, is on duty. He holds open the gate for us and he bows low from his enormous height to me. “My lady,” he says respectfully.
“Mr. Keyes,” I say helplessly.
The captain leads the way to the pier, and there is a barge at the steps, without livery. He puts out his hand to help me down the steps and I go carefully, conscious of my big belly and my weight tipping me forward. I walk up the gangplank and take my seat at the rear of the barge. An awning shades me from the afternoon sun and from anyone watching from the palace. I wonder wildly if William Cecil has fallen into disgrace, just as King Henry’s advisors used to fall, and if it is a mistake to mention his name. “I report to Robert Dudley also,” I say. “I never fail in my loyalty to the queen, and to her faith.”
“My orders were to escort you. I don’t know any more,” the captain says.
The crew cast off and raise their oars and then when the barge is pushed from the pier they dip them, all at the same time, in the water. The hortator beats one strike of the drum and they all pull together and the barge leaps forward, making me rock in my seat. Again and again the drum pounds softly and the barge rocks me to its beat. The sun on the water is dazzling, the baby is heavy in my belly. I am terribly afraid, and I don’t know what I should fear. I wish that Ned were here. I wish with all my heart that Ned were here.
For once in my life, I have nothing to say, not a scream of protest, not even a flood of tears, not one word. I am so shocked I am struck dumb. Where Elizabeth sank down onto the steps at the watergate and wept in self-pity and made sure her words were recorded, I am silent. I disembark from the barge, I take the outstretched hand to help me up the steps. I go quietly, like a frightened child, to wherever they lead me, up the stone steps and through the garden gate into the front door of the lieutenant’s house, the mansion house of the busy little walled village that includes both mint and armory, treasure house and palace, prison, and place of execution.
They help me up the narrow staircase to a good-sized bedchamber at the front of the house, and when I sink into a chair, they go out and close the door quietly. Then I hear the key turning in the lock. It is not a long terrible grating sound—it is an oiled lock that has been used often. I am only another prisoner.
THE LIEUTENANT’S HOUSE,
THE TOWER, LONDON, SUMMER 1561
When I get up in the morning and look through the leaded panes of the small window, I can see the green where they built the scaffold and beheaded my sister. If I squint to the left, I can see the chapel where they buried her severed head beside her slight truncated body. I sleep in the bed that was hers when she was queen, I cry into her pillows. I sit in her old chair. The tapestries that hang on the walls are those that hung in her bedroom.
On the other side of the Tower grounds, past the White Tower and out of sight, are the stables where she put her hand on our father’s rein and begged him not to leave her. I can hear the clang of the gate that opened for him on that day. This is the place of my sister’s crowning, betrayal, and death. My father is buried here, too. This is where Elizabeth, with extraordinary cruelty, has chosen to imprison me.
She took her time like the heartless automaton that she is. She smiled at me on progress, she waved to the crowds along the route. She favored me before the Spanish and the French ambassadors. She said nothing, not even to Robert Dudley when he told her the news that triggered her jealous hatred. She gave everyone—even me—to understand that I was still an heir, just as I was before he confessed to her, that I am her cousin, her lady-in-waiting, a favorite, a girl she regards as her daughter. Actually, she behaved as if he had said nothing, that she had heard nothing. It was as if no confession had ever been made, and Bess St. Loe and Robert Dudley said nothing either.