“I beg you,” she said, her voice quivering, “I am Lady Clancarty, the wife of the earl who has just been arrested. Is he here? I pray you tell me?”
The two men at the wicket exchanged significant glances, and the elder looked down at her again in open pity.
“He was committed about twenty minutes ago, madam,” he replied kindly.
“Twenty minutes? O Sir Edward, twenty minutes ago, and I might have seen him!” and she wept bitterly.
She drew a ring from her finger, a costly jewel, and pressed it upon the soldier.
“I pray you let me enter too!” she cried, “I would only share his prison. See, I have no weapons—nothing! I cannot set him free—I only want to share his fate!”
The sergeant waved aside her jewel.
“Nay,” he said firmly, “bribes I may not take. Truly, madam, if I could let you see your husband I would do it, but I dare not.”
Mackie urged him then, using the name of the Duke of Devonshire, though he had felt from the first that without a permit she could never be admitted. Lady Clancarty would not give way so readily; she struggled with her grief and commanded her voice again, going closer to the wicket and laying her hands upon it—that famous wicket which had closed behind so many prisoners; on Anne Boleyn and Lady Jane Grey, on Sir Thomas More and Cranmer and on the Duke of Norfolk; the wicket stained with a long history of terror and despair—was clasped now by Lady Betty’s slender fingers, and she prayed for admittance—a new prayer, indeed, at the Traitor’s Gate.
“You will let me in,” she said; “I must speak with the captain of the guard! I am the daughter of the Earl of Sunderland. I demand this much—to see the captain of the guard.”