He asks the same questions over and over again while Mr. Nozzle paws at the stone walls and tears miserably at the frayed edge of the tapestry, swinging dolefully on the dangling hem as if it were a bell rope and he were tolling a mourning bell.
Over and over again I tell Sir Edward that we were two young people in love, the witness was Janey, that no one else knew except perhaps the servants and, of course, the minister, and he writes it all down very carefully and says that the minister will be sought out and that I must hope that his story confirms mine. I say that my box of papers, which proves everything I say, is in the royal jewel house, and they will find it if they will but look for it. I say that I already told all this to Robert Dudley, and the lieutenant says that this has been noted. He asks what I told Bess St. Loe, and I stammer, remembering the dark that followed the sudden blowing out of the candle.
“Bess St. Loe?” I repeat, feebly.
“She has been arrested for questioning,” he says heavily. “Indeed, I have interrogated her myself for her part in this conspiracy.”
“Good God, is she in here too?”
He nods. “Under suspicion of treasonous conspiracy with you.”
“Sir Edward! That is so wrong! All I did was tell her that I was with child and beg her to help me for she had been a friend of my mother! God knows, there was no conspiracy. She cried out that I should never have come to her and ordered me from her room. She would not even speak to me in my trouble.”
He writes this down, very slowly, word for word. I have to bite my lip on my impatience. “Sir Edward, I do promise you, this is just a story about love and perhaps folly, but when I see Ned—”
“The Earl of Hertford is on his way from France,” he tells me.
My knees suddenly weaken and I feel behind me for the chair, and I sink down. “I must sit,” I whisper. I am breathless at the thought of seeing him again. I forget that we are in such trouble. I can only think that he is coming home to me. “He’s coming home?”
“He’s ordered home for questioning.”
“Ask him anything!” I say triumphantly. “He will say the same as me.”
“I will be asking him,” he says, dour as ever. “For he is coming here. He is under arrest, too.”
They bring Ned in at dusk, under cover of darkness, and I can hear the heavy boots on the pavement below my window. There are many prisoners walking with him surrounded by guards, a woman with her head bowed and crying, clinging to the arm of another man, someone dawdling and protesting at the back, a man with his arm laid across someone’s shoulder. There must be about a dozen of them, arrested all together.
At first I don’t understand who these people are. Then I realize with growing horror that Elizabeth has ordered the arrest of Ned and his servants; his brother; his sister-in-law; my stepfather, Adrian Stokes; my servants; ladies from the queen’s bedchamber; Bess St. Loe’s servants: everyone who ever knew me has been arrested for questioning. The queen is pursuing us as her father pursued the Pole family—down to the last little boy. The treasure house has been searched for my box of papers, my rooms have been stripped out and searched. Ned’s boxes from France have been confiscated and his house in London searched from cellar to attic. With all the power of her huge spy system, Elizabeth has launched a massive operation to root out a widespread conspiracy. Cecil’s spies are looking for a connection between supporters of my sister Jane, allies of Spain, enemies of Elizabeth, and anyone who would prefer a legitimate heir on the throne to a declared bastard. The queen has convinced herself that there is a plot, organized by the Protestants in England and the Spanish abroad, designed to put me on the throne of England and prevent Mary Queen of Scots from ever becoming queen and handing the country to her French family.
The guards around Ned pause at the gate of the lieutenant’s house and then enter, disappearing from my view. I think they are bringing him into my rooms, to live with me, and I rush to the door as if I could throw it open, and then I remember I am locked in and step back from it. I pull at my flowing gown; I am so afraid he will find my broad belly a shock. He loved the narrow curve of my waist—will he find me ugly in these last days of my pregnancy? I pat my hair, I straighten my hood. I go to sit in my chair and then I stand up again, by the fireplace. I could almost beat down the door in my impatience to see him.
Then I hear the terrible sound of them climbing the stone stairs that go past my rooms. They go past my door, they don’t stop to come in, they go on up to the rooms on the floor above. I cry out in disappointment and I run to the door and press my face against it, trying to distinguish Ned’s footstep, trying to recognize his breathing. I hear the door above mine open, I hear them go in, and the clatter as men drop bags, scrape the heavy wooden chairs on the stone-flagged floor, and then the slam of the door and the grate of the key in the lock and the noise of their feet on the stairs as they descend.
He is above me. If he stamped with his heel on the floor, I would hear him. If I screamed at the top of my voice, he would hear me. I stand for long minutes, my face tilted up to the ceiling, the puppies whimpering as if they are longing for him too, hoping to hear a word from my husband, home at last.
Every day now I have strange cramps and my belly stands out so firmly that I think the baby must be coming. “I cannot go on like this,” I say desperately to Sir Edward. “Do you want me to die in childbirth like Jane Seymour?”
He looks anxious. “If you would only confess,” he says. “If you would confess, then I could get you sent to your uncle, or to Hanworth, and the midwives could come.”
“I can’t confess to what I have not done,” I say. I am crying for pain and self-pity. I am in a truly impossible situation, for who can ever prove to a Tudor queen that she is not in danger? All the Tudor monarchs think that they are in mortal danger, often without cause. King Henry saw imaginary enemies everywhere, and killed good friends and advisors from his fear.
“I married a nobleman for true love. I insist that I see my husband. You must at least tell him that I am here, on the floor below him, and that I am near my time.”
There is a tap on the door. Of course, my heart leaps as if it could be Ned: suddenly freed and coming to save me. Sir Edward looks at me suspiciously.
“You are expecting a message?” he asks.
“I am expecting nothing. I am hoping for mercy.”
He nods to the guard who stands by the door and he unbolts it and swings it open. It is one of the lieutenant’s servants. “What d’you want, Jeffrey?” he asks abruptly.
The man bows. He is holding a posy of late roses, red roses. “These for the young lady,” he says. “From the Earl of Hertford.”
They are a deep red, Lancaster red. Nobody at the Tudor court would ever offer a white rose. I put out my hand and Sir Edward fussily shakes them in case a note drops out. Then he takes the posy apart looking for a message, and asks me what red roses mean to me; if they are a signal. I say that they mean that Ned is thinking of me, imprisoned just one floor below him. We are under the same roof again, as we have not been for months. He knows now that I was with child when he left me, and how I have suffered in his absence. He is telling me that he loves me. “That’s all,” I say. “He is a poet. Flowers are like words to him. Red roses tell me that he loves me still. Red roses are for true love.”
Sir Edward, for all that he is Elizabeth’s jailer and spy, cannot hide that he is moved. “Well, you can keep them,” he says, finally handing them over.