I was housed with Lady Elizabeth’s ladies, and they were up at dawn preparing for her entry into London. As I saw the white linen and petticoats and the virginal white gown being brushed and pressed and carried into her chamber I remembered the day that she greeted her sister into the city of London, wearing the Tudor colours of white and green. Now she was driven snow, all in white, a martyr-bride. When the litter came to the door she was ready, there was no delaying when there was a crowd collecting to see her.

‘You’ll want the curtains closed,’ Lord Howard said gruffly to her.

‘Keep them back,’ she said at once. ‘The people can see me. They can see what condition I am in when I am forced out of my house for a fortnight’s journey in all weathers.’

‘Ten days,’ he said gruffly. ‘And could have been done in five.’

She did not deign to answer him, but lay back on her pillows and lifted her hand to indicate that he could go. I heard him swear briefly under his breath and then swing into the saddle of his horse. I pulled my horse up behind the litter and the little cavalcade turned out of the courtyard to the London road and into the city.

* * *

London was stinking of death. At every street corner there were gallows with a dreadful burden swinging from the cross-bar. If you peeped up you could see the dead man, face like a gargoyle, lips pulled back, eyes bulging, glaring down at you. When the wind blew, the stink from the corpses swept down the street and the bodies swayed back and forth, their coats flailing around them as if they were still alive and kicking for their life.

Elizabeth kept her eyes straight to the front and did not look left or right, but she sensed the dangling bodies at every corner; half of them were known to her, and all of them had died in a rebellion that they believed she had summoned. She was as pale as her white dress when she first got into the litter, but she was blanched like skimmed milk by the time we had ridden down King’s Street.

A few people called out to her: ‘God save Your Grace!’ and she was recalled to herself and raised a weak hand to them with a piteous face. She looked like a martyr being dragged to her death and, under this avenue of gallows, no-one could doubt her fear. This was Elizabeth’s rebellion and forty-five swinging corpses attested to the fact that it had failed. Now Elizabeth would have to face the justice that had executed them. No-one could doubt she would die too.

At Whitehall they rolled the great gates wide for us at the first sight of our cavalcade walking slowly towards the palace. Elizabeth straightened up in the litter and looked towards the great steps of the palace. Queen Mary was not there to greet her sister, and neither was anyone of the court. She arrived to silent disgrace. A single gentleman-server was on the steps and he spoke to Lord Howard, not to the princess, as if they were her gaolers.