'I am not glad at all to see you at this time of night,' she replied; and went on to say that 'she feared her weakness to be so great that she should not be able to travel and to endure the journey without peril of life, and therefore desired some longer respite until she had recovered her strength.
In this matter neither Howard her great-uncle, nor her old friend Wendy the doctor, agreed with her. It is true that anxiety for herself, if not sorrow for the fate of lady Jane Grey, about whom she seems to have cared nothing, had thrown her into some sort of fever, but it was quite plain that there was nothing to prevent her undertaking the short journey. In order, however, that no risks might be run the thirty-three miles that lay between Ashridge and Westminster were divided into five stages, and every night she was to sleep in some gentleman's house. A week later she started in a litter, and when, several days after, she entered Aldgate, the curtains were thrown back at her bidding, so that the people, who had always loved her, might be touched by the sight of her thin pale face. But well or ill, when the moment came in which courage was needed, Elizabeth was always herself, and her bows and smiles betrayed no fear as, dressed in white, she was carried through the city, with an escort of scarlet-coated gentlemen riding in front.
Rooms were given her in Whitehall, and here she hoped to see the queen, and be able to convince her of the innocence she so loudly proclaimed to everyone. But to her great disappointment and secret terror, Mary refused her an interview, and ordered her to be taken at once to the palace of Westminster and placed in an apartment which had no entrance except through the guard-room. A certain number of personal attendants were allowed her, and through them she heard with dismay that Courtenay had been lodged in the Tower, and every day was examined for some time as to his share in Wyatt's conspiracy.
For three weeks Elizabeth waited, not knowing exactly how much the council knew, but remembering, with dread, two notes which she had written with her own hand to Wyatt. She guessed truly that all the weight of Spain would be thrown in the balance against her, for the emperor Charles V. had neither forgotten nor forgiven the divorce of his aunt, and, besides, his son Philip was already betrothed to the queen.
At last, one Saturday, ten members of the council visited her, and told her that a barge was in waiting at the stairs, which would take her to the Tower. Elizabeth received the news without flinching, though she felt as if the nails were being knocked into her coffin, but begged permission to finish a letter to the queen which she had just begun. This the council could not well refuse; but the princess made her letter so very long that the tide ran out too far for her to embark, and as Sunday was a day when no work was done, her gaolers were obliged to wait until Monday.
On Monday, however, even Elizabeth could invent no more pretexts for delay, and entered her barge with as good a grace as might be. But when the rowers shipped their oars at the Traitors' Gate, she objected that it was no entrance for her, who was innocent.
'You have no choice,' said one of the lords who was with her, and stooped to lay his cloak as a carpet on the muddy steps. With an angry gesture Elizabeth dashed it aside, and sat down on a wet stone, as if she intended to sit there for ever. The lieutenant of the Tower, who was awaiting his prisoner at the top, prayed her to come in out of the rain and cold, which at last she consented to do, and was conducted by him to her prison, a room that led only into the lieutenant's own house on one side, and a narrow outside gallery on the other, used by the prisoners for air and exercise. Here Elizabeth's suitor, sir Thomas Seymour, had been lodged before his execution, and here Arabella Stuart would be confined, in years that were yet to come.
For two months Elizabeth's imprisonment lasted, though the extreme strictness with which she was kept was afterwards relaxed, and she was suffered to walk in a little garden under a strong escort, and to receive flowers from the children belonging to the servants about the Tower, with whom she had made friends. At first she had, like Courtenay, constantly to undergo examinations as to her guilt, but she somehow managed to gain over the earl of Arundel, hitherto one of her most bitter enemies, and henceforth she had no warmer partisan. She seems to have answered the questions put to her with her usual cleverness, as the Spanish ambassador writes that though 'they had enough matter against Courtenay to make his punishment certain, they had not yet been able to obtain matter sufficient for Elizabeth's conviction,' partly owing to the fact that several witnesses were in hiding.
It was in May that the queen sent an unexpected summons to Elizabeth that she was to join her at Richmond, where she was passing the Whitsun holidays; and how beautiful the flowers and trees must have looked in the eyes of the prisoner, accustomed for so many weeks to nothing but the walls of the Tower, with the bitter memories they contained! She did not stay there long, however, for the queen, irritated at Elizabeth's firm refusal to marry the prince of Savoy, sent her in a few days to the castle of Woodstock, with sir Henry Bedingfield as her gaoler.
On the road, according to the old chroniclers, she more than once tried her favourite trick of gaining time by delaying her arrival. At one place where she was to spend the night she was anxious to have a match at chess with her host, and another day she declared that her clothes and hair had suffered so much from a storm that she must positively enter a house they were passing in order to set them straight. But Bedingfield was not easy to dupe, and politely insisted on continuing their way.