The First Elizabeth (Elizabeth I) (House of Tudor Book 9) by Lozania Prole

Author:Lozania Prole [Prole, Lozania]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Elizabeth I, Catherine Parr, Elizabeth the First, Robin Dudley, Robert Dudley, Anne of Cleves, Catherine Howard, Anne Boleyn, British Royal Family, Royal History, royal marriages, Tudors, Tower of London, Greenwich Palace, Hatfield House
Publisher: Wyndham Books (Tudor Historical)
Published: 2022-12-05T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Ten

THE PRISONER

The Queen of Scots was in flight.

She was no longer veneered with the burnish that the French court had given to her, no longer marked with the great glory of queenship, but was a weary woman, her whole body aching with exhaustion, yet driven on, for she was forced to ride sixty miles a day to escape.

The battle which she had believed would hold so much promise for her, had done nothing; the loyalists had been swept away, and how she had not been taken prisoner again, she would never know. She did not even dare to think. Now, with a small band of the faithful she was riding desperately to the coast from which she hoped to escape to England, to throw herself on her cousin’s mercy.

They rode as much under shelter as they could, for none must see them. There was a price on their heads! At night she made her bed on the hard unyielding earth, well knowing that if those who were pursuing her through the glens overtook her, she would die here on this very ground for the sins that she had committed.

She had now no thought of Riccio; no memory of young Darnley to whom she had given a carved gold ring as a pledge. She could only think of the desperate exhaustion which overtook her, and of her eyes straining the horizon, staring helplessly for the first signs of the coast wherein lay safety.

So she reached the Solway Firth.

The boat was waiting for her, and as she boarded it, a young soldier who had ridden with her removed his plaidie and placed it about her thin shoulders. She turned to him, her face translucent, her eyes unseeing, and scarce knowing what she did, but her stiff lips murmured ‘Thank you’, then she looked away. She had never thought that a woman could suffer so much.

The fishing-boat smelt of brine. A cold wind blew on her cheeks, and she was bruised from the crudeness of this terrible ride; now she was hungry and thirsty too. An old sailor, pitying her fatigue, offered her a salted fish, but she turned her unhappy face away. Then the men began to row, and she could hear the sound of the oars, like giant feathers, stirring the water. The shore of Scotland was fading into a grey mist, and she would never see it again.

At that moment she did not care.

On Sunday, May the 16th, she landed at Workington in Cumberland, wearing the same tattered dress in which she had made the entire journey, and which hung in rags about her. Her shoes were so broken that when she tried to walk she hobbled, for stones penetrated them. Rumour of her approach had preceded her, and Northumberland met her, escorting her to Carlisle with all possible speed, where she held court.

She was virtually a prisoner.

When she heard the news of the Queen of Scots’s arrival in her country, Elizabeth returned to London and there she could not sleep for anguish.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.