44

Elizabeth

The burnings continued as Mary’s heart burned for Philip. The great men of the Protestant Church, Latimer, Ridley, and even gentle, soft-spoken Cranmer, who had been my mother’s friend and my father’s instrument, all went to the stake and martyrdom, dying heroically with courageous words that would never be forgotten.

Whilst Ridley suffered the full horror of burning at the hands of an inept executioner and died screaming in agony, Latimer seemed to glory in it. With a beatific, saintly smile, he washed his hands and bathed in the flames, calling out encouragingly to his friend, “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day, by God’s grace, light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out!”

Fear and the false promises of Mary’s heretic-hunting lackeys had persuaded the sensitive Cranmer to embrace Catholicism to save his life, but he had not counted on Mary. She could never forget or forgive the role Cranmer had played in the divorce drama of our parents’ lives, and she gladly signed his death warrant.

As he walked to the stake, Cranmer repented his cowardice and reaffirmed his faith, asking the crowd to forgive him for fearing the flames and in consequence trying to save his life. Proud to die a Protestant, he boldly thrust his right hand into the flames, loudly proclaiming that since it had signed his recantation it should be the first part of his body to suffer the flames.

Mary haunted the halls of her palaces, a gaunt, white-faced, skeleton-thin, walking wraith, caring for nothing but the persecution of Protestants and the return of Philip. She left her court to its own devices, and neglected affairs of government, while she fasted and prayed and spent long sleepless nights straining her weak, bloodshot eyes by candlelight writing love letters that were almost as lengthy as books to her beloved until the shadows encroached on her vision and her sight, always poor, worsened and dimmed, but still she kept writing. She thought if she kept trying, her devotion would be rewarded, and she would eventually find the right words, like a magical charm, that would bring Philip back to her.

She was too blind to see that he simply did not care. His father, the Emperor, was ailing badly and on the verge of retiring to a monastery. Philip was about to come into his inheritance. He would rule Spain and the Low Countries, and it was expected that he make a tour of the lands he was to govern, to stake his claim and win his people’s loyalty and respect. He didn’t need Mary, or, for the moment, at least, England, either, with the adulation of his new subjects and the welcoming fetes and festivities, and the beautiful women who threw themselves at his feet, to distract and occupy him, and it broke Mary’s heart to find herself unloved and unwanted by the one she loved and wanted most.

My sister had so much love to give, I am sorry she never found anyone truly worthy enough to receive it. That, I think, is the greatest tragedy of love, that those who love and long to be loved are not always loved in return, that the warm love that fills a human heart is sometimes left to curdle and dry up or turn bitter and sour for lack of anyone to give it to, or else it is lavished in vain upon someone who does not want or even deserve it.