In the Shadow of the Crown - By Jean Plaidy Page 0,192

voice from Heaven should denounce my marriage.

What should we do with her? She was a simple girl, I said, no doubt led astray by others—this servant Drake for one. A weaver of Redcross Street was mentioned, and there was a clergyman from St. Botolph's Church in Aldersgate also. I could see how the girl had been tempted, and I did not want her to be severely punished. It was enough that the people should know that she was a fraud.

She was taken to Paul's Cross where she made a public confession. This she was more than willing to do, feeling—and rightly so—that she had escaped lightly. After confessing to the trick she had played on the unsuspecting public, she knelt and asked God's forgiveness, and mine, for her wickedness.

She was sent to prison for a while and afterward released.

But the disquiet continued all through the months that followed. There was even dissension among the Council. Some of them, Gardiner and my good Rochester among them, who wanted a return to the Catholic religion but not to go back to Rome, believed that the interests of the country were best served with the monarch as Head of the Church. Paget, on the other hand, wanted a complete return to religion as it had been before my father had interfered with it. Then there was of course the Protestant element.

In addition to all this was the problem created by my sister. She was still in the Tower, and that worried me. Paget, among others, had often told me that while she lived I was unsafe and that the best gift I could have was her head severed from her shoulders.

Such talk did not please me. I could never forget that she was my sister. I remembered so well the bright little girl with the reddish curls and the shining eyes, so eager to miss nothing. How did she feel…a prisoner in the Tower? I doubted she was treated harshly. She would make friends of the jailers if necessary. She would always make friends of people who could be useful to her, and in view of her closeness to the throne, people would be wary of offending her.

I remembered her protestations of affection when we last met and her plea that I should always listen to her before judging her. I had not done that. I had refused to see her and had been prevailed upon to send her to the Tower.

I discussed her with Susan. I knew that to speak of her to Gardiner or Renard would only arouse their indignation against her, though I could tell them again and again that nothing had actually been proved against her. Wyatt himself had exonerated her, but they would never believe in her innocence.

But I believed in it, and as I felt toward her as a sister, I was sure she felt the same toward me.

I said to Susan, “I cannot be entirely at peace while she is in the Tower. She is a princess, my father's daughter, my own sister. How I wish that we could be friends!”

“Your Majesty should be wary of her,” said Susan.

“I know. I know. But she is my sister. It is for that reason I do not care to think of her as a prisoner in the Tower.”

“Perhaps she will marry.”

“Ah, if only she would marry abroad!”

It was an idea which persisted to haunt my mind.

I discussed it with the Council. Many of them thought she would be safer dead, but marriage did seem a way of disposing of her.

I said, “I will see my sister. Emmanuel Philibert, Duke of Savoy and Prince of Piedmont, would be pleased to marry her, I am sure. He would be a good match for her. She would then leave the country; people here would not see her and therefore not consider her as a rallying-point for rebellion.”

The more I thought of the idea, the more plausible it seemed. Emmanuel Philibert was one of those who had been chosen for me long ago, and I had forgotten now the reason why the match was put aside. There had been so many such cases.

So Elizabeth left the Tower and came by barge to Richmond, where the Court was at that time.

I sent for her.

She looked a little pale; her sojourn in the Tower had had its effect on her. It was natural that it should. How could she have known from one day to the next when she might be taken out to