Before she left the room, Betty Carew approached the unhappy woman; the young girl’s generous heart beat high and her dark eyes sparkled with anger. She saw here only a repetition of the blow that had smitten Catherine of Arragon.
“Madam,” she said in a low voice, “if it be your wish, I will go with you to the Tower; I would not leave you now!”
The queen was deeply touched; she took a ring from her finger and placed it in Betty’s hand.
“Nay, Mistress Carew,” she said gently, “I also can be generous; thou art young, go in peace. Mary Wyatt and my other maids may presently come to me; now I am the king’s prisoner. Farewell, fair girl, I pray thy beauty may not bring thee to so evil a case.”
CHAPTER XX
IN THE APPLE ORCHARD
My Lady Crabtree hurried Mistress Betty from Greenwich. At sunset of that fateful day, the two went by water to Deptford. The barge glided gently along the placid river; the soft spring air was full of fragrance and the banks of the Thames on either hand were clad in a mantle of varied green, while above the blue sky was flecked with rosy clouds. Betty and old Madam sat in the center of the boat, and the young girl was silent and manifestly unhappy. After casting one or two of her eagle glances at the beautiful, downcast face, Lady Crabtree accosted her with her accustomed frankness.
“What ails you, wench?” she asked sharply; “you had no love for this queen when you were sent to her, and now you pull as long a face as ever you did for the Lady Catherine.”
“I had only condemnation for her when I went first to Greenwich,” Betty answered, “nor do I love her as does poor Mary Wyatt, and a few of the others also; but it seems a cowardly thing to leave her now—it hurts me to seem a time-server.”
“Tush!” retorted the old woman, calmly, “the queen cares naught for you. Nor would they let you go if you would. They took her to the Tower without even giving her time to change her farthingale,—like men it is to do it so,—and I hear that the king’s grace will have her aunt, Lady Boleyn, and Mrs. Cousins, whom she hates, attend her. Doubtless they will strive to wring some confession from her, poor thing!”
“She is charged with high treason, so Mary Wyatt told me, weeping,” Betty said; “but the whole matter has been conducted so secretly that the unhappy lady knows not the charges.”