the Queen.
Mary was enraged. This, she cried, was a ruse of her sister’s. Did not my lord Sussex realize that she had duped him into missing the tide for that day?
The next day was Palm Sunday and there was nothing to prevent her going to the Tower.
She had not been taken on the midnight tide because it was feared that in the darkness a rescue might be possible.
As she walked to the barge she murmured: “The Lord’s Will be done. I must be content seeing this is the Queen’s pleasure!” Then she turned to the men who walked beside her and cried out in sudden anger: “It is an astonishing thing that you who call yourselves noblemen and gentlemen should suffer me, a Princess and daughter of the great King Henry, to be led to captivity, the Lord knoweth where, for I do not.”
They watched her furtively. How could they be sure what she would do? They—stalwart soldiers and statesmen—were afraid of this slender young girl.
The barge sped quickly along the river, while the Londoners were at Church, that they might not see her pass by and show her that sympathy which they had never failed to give her. Quickly they came to the Tower—that great gray home of torment, of failure and despair.
She saw that they were taking her to the Traitor’s Gate, and this seemed to her a terrible omen.
“I will not be landed there!” she cried.
It was raining and she lifted her face that she might feel the rain upon it, for when would she again be at liberty to feel its softness? How gentle it is! she thought. How kind in this cruel world!
“Your Grace …” urged Sussex.
“Must I then land here … at the Traitor’s Gate? Look! You have misjudged the tide. How can I step into the water?”
Sussex put his cloak about her shoulders to protect her from the rain. In sudden pettishness she threw it off and stepped out. The water came above her shoe, but she did not heed it. She cried in a ringing voice: “Here lands as true a subject, being prisoner, as ever landed at these stairs. Before Thee, oh God, I speak it, having no other friend but Thee alone.”
As she passed on, many of the warders came out to see her, and some of them brought their children with them. The sight of these small wondering faces calmed the Princess. She smiled wanly at them, and one little boy came forward on his own account and, kneeling before her, said in a high piping voice: “Last night I prayed God to preserve Your Grace, and I shall do so again.”
She laid her hand on his head. “So I have one friend in this sorry place,” she said. “I thank you, my child.”
Then several of the warders cried out: “May God preserve Your Grace.”
She smiled and sat down on one of the damp stones, looking at them almost tenderly.
The Lieutenant of the Tower came to her and begged her to rise. “For, Madam,” he said, “you sit unwholesomely.”
“Better sit here than in a worse place,” she retorted, “for God, not I, knows whither you bring me.”
But she rose and allowed herself, with those few women who had been permitted to accompany her, to be led into the Tower.
The Earl of Sussex still walked beside her. “Your Grace,” he murmured, “you will understand that I like not this task which has been put upon me. Rest assured that I shall do everything in my power to ease your stay in this place.”
“My lord,” she answered softly, “I forget not your kindness to me.”
She was conducted to the apartments prepared for her—the most heavily guarded in the Tower; and as her weeping ladies gathered about her, she felt her courage return.
So it had come—that which she had so often dreaded. Her thoughts were not of the trials which lay ahead but of her conduct during her journey to this place. Had any seen that when they had brought her through the Traitor’s Gate she had almost swooned? She fervently hoped that none had witnessed that display of fear.
Now she felt so calm that she was able to soothe her women. “What happens now is in the hands of God,” she consoled them. “And if they should send me to the block, I will have no English axe to sever my head from my body; I shall insist on a sword from France.”
They knew then that she was remembering her mother,