in it. “Here is a good marriage for you, my darling; the best marriage that you could make. Now let me see, who is this husband I have here for you? He has a golden beard and he is handsome … how handsome! I believe he is connected with the sea …” Then Elizabeth would burst into laughter, and call Kat a fraud, and ask what the Admiral had given her to make her say that. They would laugh and giggle, abandoning the cards to talk of him.
She believed she had toyed with the idea. Yet had she seriously intended marriage with him? Already at that time her thoughts had soared high above him. Her brother Edward sickly, her sister Mary not very young and delicate too—and then … herself.
Was she glad that the Council would not agree to her marriage with the Admiral? When she had been asked if she would marry him her answer had been characteristic of her: “When the time comes and the Council shall give its consent, then shall I do as God puts into my mind.”
And would she have eventually married Thomas? At that time he could flatter so charmingly; he could plead so passionately.
Dear Thomas! He always talked too much. Great power had been his through his charm and beauty, and power was such a potent drug; it went to the head; it soothed the fears; it played tricks with a man’s vision until he was twice the size he was in actuality. Thomas had boasted that he had ten thousand men ready to serve him, that he had persuaded the master of the Bristol mint to coin large sums of money which should be used in his service; he would marry Elizabeth and then … all would see what they should see.
And so Thomas was taken to the Tower on a charge of high treason.
What a time of terror when Kat Ashley and Parry the cofferer were also taken to the Tower, and she herself kept prisoner at Hatfield with guards outside her door, not allowed to venture out into the grounds without an escort! How apprehensive she had been for Thomas! How she had dreaded what Kat and Parry would say in the hands of the questioners!
And what had they said? How could she blame them? She did not. In fact she longed for the day when her dearest Kat would be restored to her. How could she have expected such as her dear tittle-tattling Kat or Parry to keep quiet? They were born gossips, both of them.
Soon the whole country was tattling. Out came the story—every little secret, every little scene, magnified, colored, so that a little innocent flirting became an orgy of lust.
She flushed at the memory, but even so she began to laugh. Oh, why was not Kat here that they might chat together! She herself loved a gossip. She wished now to talk of Northumberland, and Jane Grey, and weak Guildford Dudley on whose head, Elizabeth doubted not, Northumberland would do his best to cram a crown. What fun it would have been during this “illness” to take the cards and to find a tall dark man—Lord Robert Dudley this time, as once they had found an Admiral—and for Kat to purse her lips, put her head on one side and mutter in that serious voice which could send Elizabeth into fits of laughter: “I think I see a handsome young man. He is about Your Grace’s age … and he comes out of the past …”
But how foolish to think of Kat, who had been taken from her, and of Robert Dudley, that foolish boy who had married a country girl!
Yet … how pleasant! And it was necessary to think pleasant and frivolous thoughts when at any moment life might become deadly serious and dangerous.
But now her thoughts had gone to the saddest moment of her life when they had come to her to tell her that Thomas was dead—her beautiful Thomas. She had been surrounded by spies; she had known they were watching her, trying to trip her, and she knew that every word, every look, would be noted and reported. Lady Tyrwhit (how she hated that woman whom they had given her in place of Kat!) had had her sly eyes on her, always watching, hoping that there would be some betrayal of feeling to report to her master the Protector, that false brother of dear Thomas.
She had faced them, calmly and courageously. Yes,