by G Lawrence
Sometimes I wholly abandoned my sex, claiming that as a prince I was removed from normal conventions of gender. At others, I played the part of the female to perfection. I enjoyed all aspects of this game. Often, I drove my people to distraction. I was talented at dissembling, so they had to guess what I was up to, and often failed. Keep them guessing might have been my unofficial motto, for it was what I employed to keep my court and country under tight control. I heeded my own counsel, and I understood what worked best for England, for often it worked best for me.
My attentions to Hatton made Robin jealous, which I welcomed. Although Robin and I had passed the days of our frantic, heated courtship, I wanted him reminded that I was still desirable to other men. Hatton made love to me with his eyes and with his dancing. I suspected the reason he remained unmarried was for my sake, although I knew he was hardly a saint, for he kept a mistress.
Robin would always get the lion’s share of my favours, but I had learned how to control my men now.
In the spring I had granted Hatton a lease of land in Northamptonshire, and he admitted himself more eager about building a house than for the land. “A man desires to build walls about himself, Majesty,” he had said. “So he might have a sense of place, of purpose. A place to set his hat, lie upon his bed and stare up at the ceiling he has put over his head, and say, ‘this… this is where I am meant to be.’”
“You do not feel you have that now?”
“I have always felt a little at sea, Majesty, since my parents died when I was six.”
I had smiled sadly. “You were made an orphan early, then, like me.”
“Indeed, madam, although of less illustrious parents.”
“Titles do not make a person worthy, Hatton. Nor does lack of them make one unworthy.”
“I thank you for saying that, Majesty. I have been led to believe my parents were good people.”
Inwardly, something buried deep inside me glanced up and arched an eyebrow. Could I say my parents were good people? I wondered.
My mother, I was sure, had gone to her death an innocent, at least of the crimes of which she was accused, but she had done much ill in her time. As for my father… part of me swelled with fierce, sharp, almost painful pride when I thought of him, but there was another part which remembered his eyes; that haunted look... My father had sent practically every friend he had ever loved to the block. His heart had become a graveyard where he had buried his soul along with his dreams and loves.
“Honour your parents, Hatton,” I had said, holding to the only truth I knew about parents. “They gave you life, a gift that can never be repaid.”
It had been advice as much for myself as for him.
“I honour them truly, Majesty,” he replied. “Although as a third son, they could not offer me much.”
“Although I was born a second daughter, Hatton, in my father’s eyes I was his third child. My brother and sister were set before me in the succession. Sorrow not, for having been born later than your siblings. Who knows, in these days of opportunity and glory, what a third child may become?”
Glancing at Hatton now, I liked what I saw. He would serve me well.
“I swear to serve you with loyalty and honour, my lady,” Hatton said, his dark blue eyes glimmering with pride.
“Do me proud, Hatton,” I said, looking up as Helena came forth with a message. The note told me that Roger Ascham, my old tutor, had come for our monthly appointment.
I adored Ascham. Ever since the days he had first become my tutor, we had been close. He was a teacher who believed in gentle treatment, and was an advocate of explaining where a child had gone wrong, rather than beating them senseless for any mistake. He believed education should be as interesting as possible, for both tutor and pupil, and upheld praise as more beneficial than shame as a tool for learning.
We read together, sometimes wiling away whole afternoons when Cecil could spare me. I read alone, too, taking an hour each day to remove myself from the clamour of court, seeking peace in my books. It was one of the few, true pleasures of my life.
“I must depart, Hatton,” I said, smiling. “But I hope you will ask for my hand at the next court dance. There are few I have ever seen who dance as well as you.”
“I merely take from your example, Majesty,” he said. “And try to keep up with the nimble feet of my elegant Queen.”
Laughing, I left to read with Ascham.
Reading is a solitary pastime, but I never felt less alone than when I was with a book. Books are minds; the physical repository of another’s thoughts. Reading is the way we find others, touch others, and know ourselves not alone.
In truth, many of my closest friends were books.
Books always have time for you. They are never too busy. They long to feel your hands upon their bindings, slipping over their pages. They do not argue back, or show off, but simply lay bare their thoughts and sit back, allowing you to make up your mind. I poured myself into books, and they into me. Somewhere in the middle, we became a miasma of persons. This is the only true meeting of minds; the only time a person may understand another, as they stand exposed, locked within the heart and soul of another, inside a book.
And the smell… Women have told me there is nothing as satisfying as the scent of a new-born babe. Perhaps this is so, for them, but for me there was nothing in the world like inhaling the scent of a book. The rich, sultry, deep smell of a book is like nothing else, calling up a thousand memories of comfort and peace.
And peace was often what I sought from them. When I lost my temper, which was often, I would retire to a side room to calm down, and the method I used was to read. Robin sometimes said he was more grateful than any man could express to the great authors of the past, for they had saved more than a few heads from rolling.
Books were expensive, but one of the benefits of being a queen is that one can demand loans of precious items from one’s subjects. I would rather have owned them, but permanent loan was as good as ownership. No man was fool enough to demand books back from me.
“What do you have for me today, Ascham?” I asked as I entered the chamber. Outside, the weather was warm and the sun bright, but little of its rays made their way into the chamber. Candles had been lit and placed upon twin writing desks set out for my old tutor and me.
“Seneca, Majesty,” he said, a merry smile upon his lips, for he knew how I loved Seneca’s writings. Cecil carried about Cicero’s De Officiis as though it were the Holy Bible, but I adored Seneca. A stoic philosopher, advisor to the ill-fated Nero, Seneca had searched for ethical perfection, advocated moderation, and conducted such a calm, controlled suicide that he was always remembered for it. He thought death should be faced, mortality confronted, and a balance of life struck between the active and the thoughtful… all thoughts I could see worth in.
“I greet the book with pleasure,” I said.
“As Hippolyte always will,” was his answer.
Hippolyte was Ascham’s pet name for me, one only used in private. I had a few pet names bestowed on me by my people, Good Bess was the one most commonly used. I am sure my enemies had many more which were less flattering. Ascham did not use the name before others, and as long as that was understood, I allowed this little intimacy.
He had granted it to me for the tale of Hippolyte and Phaedra. Hippolyte was slain for rejecting the sexual attentions of Phaedra, his stepmother, but Aphrodite brought him back to life and he devoted his life to chastity and hunting. Since I, too, was dedicated to chastity, Ascham thought it fitting.
Ascham was not the only man I studied with. I had always thought that the person who surrenders the schoolroom once childhood has departed is a fool. The true scholar knows their task in gathering wisdom will never be done, and rushes to accept that fate with open arms. How could any person ever learn too much? My notions were not universal. There were plenty who thought I learnt too much. A fashion for educating daughters had been born in my father’s time, but not everyone had follow
ed it. There were plenty of men who thought that a woman learning anything was perilous, probably because they feared that if women became wise, they would lose their power over them. Such men protested I would damage my health by reading so much. It was an excuse; control dressed up to make it more acceptable by wearing the guise of concern.
It is easier to hold power, especially when one is feeble-minded, if those you wield power over are ignorant. I do not say stupid, as many women who were cursed with fathers and husbands who did not hold with them reading, writing, or doing anything useful, were not weak of mind, only of resources and opportunities.
Ignorance, in those one seeks to rule, maintains the fiction they are incapable and require masters. That was why I was criticised for reading. Some men feared my intelligence and sought to limit it. Fortunately, being Queen, I could ignore them. Other women were not so lucky.
With Ascham I studied Latin and Greek, classics, and old favourites, but with another I studied new thought… some of it potentially dangerous.
Dr John Dee, the alchemist and philosopher, was the other man I studied with. Dee, once a student of the Louvian and a Catholic priest, had worked for Cecil and me during my sister’s reign, burrowing into the household of the wicked Bishop Bonner, and working to protect our friends from persecution. Since I came to the throne, he had publicly surrendered the Catholic faith, although I knew he, like me, retained some of its beliefs, such as the conviction the presence of Christ was within the Eucharistic wine and bread, even though I believed it was more a spiritual possession, than an actual one.
Dee had spent time abroad, largely buying as many books as his purse could afford, often to the detriment of his belly, and studying new thought. He had fully abandoned his Catholic vows when he married some years ago, and surrendered oaths of celibacy for the joys of family.
We had been working together for some time, studying his work the Monas. At first, the scholarship had been beyond me, but Dee was a good teacher. He said he enjoyed teaching me, for he found he understood his work better for having to explain it to another.
The Monas centred on the idea that astronomical symbols were the remnants of a lost language. The Monas attempted to test Dee’s idea by looking for structure within the symbols themselves. Dee was searching for the key that would unlock the universe, showing how it was united. The idea of a central unity, where all was one, appealed to me. One might call it the search for the mind of God. If such a thing could be uncovered, how might it aid the torn and tortured world of men?
Plenty of people did not like Dee or his work. Scholars at Oxford had dismissed the Monas, calling it unworthy, but I suspect that had more to do with the fact Dee had turned down a teaching post in favour of his own studies. For all their wisdom, some establishments supposed to encourage original thought do not do so. New thought scares some, for they understand it not, or are jealous of the one who does. I supported and upheld universities, but was more than aware that, at times, they could hold learning back.
Dee kept a house at Mortlake, a name which caused many to suspect him, since it contained the word death. His village was well positioned for trade, being close to the main river, and grew costly asparagus in fields nearby. The lake, or more accurately, swamp, near his house held legends of monstrous fish but now it was nothing more than a seeping dark pool. Yet monstrous fish were not the only legend of Mortlake. Dee was fast becoming one himself.
There were plenty who regarded Dee as a wizard. Children ran screaming with delighted fear from him, and old men gathered in ale houses to mutter darkly, spinning tales of his gifts of prophesy. A great deal of it was nonsense of course, but his interesting collections of many strange objects, and vast library containing books written in foreign languages, made men suspicious.
Not me, however. He brought books to me, and sent them to court. Works such as Johannes de Burgho’s Treatise on Magic, Aristotle’s Secretum Secretorum, Ramon Lull’s Liber Experiementorum, and texts by Copernicus, Boethius, Ptolemy, and Norton all came to my hands through Dee. His mother’s old cottage had become one of Europe’s greatest libraries, and Dee made a reading room so scholars could come and leaf through his collection. There were works on all subjects; alchemy, philosophy, mathematics, dreams, portents, chastity, the study of tides, the moon, weather and women.
He was famous for his ability to locate any book within a minute. Dee was a rabid organiser. He knew where everything was in his library; the mark of the best librarian, for what use is all the knowledge in the world, if one cannot find what one seeks?
Dee made his living from tutoring, interpreting dreams, making astrological readings, and being consulted about medicine. He was not a rich man, but every penny he earned went back into his library. To Dee, eating was less important than feeding his mind. My support ensured that members of the court went to him for various services, although sometimes he failed to charge, especially if the official was on government business.
He had presented me with copies of his other works too, and we studied them together. Interested in alchemy, he had offered up a notion that he might study this with my support, and I had agreed. Although I had experienced spare reward from this art in the past, I was willing to trust Dee. He knew a man called Grudius, a poet who had served King Charles, the father of Phillip of Spain, who had a good understanding of the art of alchemy, and was willing to share it. With my coffers always in peril, the notion of finding a way to craft gold from base metals was welcome. Yet it was more than riches that attracted me to Dee.
He understood there was a world beyond that which we saw; a mystical balance in the universe. Since I had been chosen by God to rule England, I wanted a higher understanding of the spiritual means by which I had been chosen, and Dee, to my mind, was my key to understand this.
Some thought Dee a heretic, or a sorcerer wielding the dark arts. Witchcraft was illegal for harmful purposes, but only if someone was shown guilty of raising wicked spirits or causing the death of another. If harmful witchcraft was proven, death by hanging was the punishment. If, however, the attempt had only brought about injury or the death of cattle, the witch was sent to prison for one year. My magistrates were cautious about sending men, or more usually women, to death for witchcraft, and more often than not they were sent to prison rather than hanged. Dee’s detractors misunderstood his work, and thought he was attempting to conjure evil spirits, or the Devil. He was trying to do neither. There were plenty of cunning men and women in England who used magic to do good, such as healing, finding lost items, or bringing about love, and Dee, although his ambitions went higher, into alchemy and communication with angels, was one of them.
Some people fear everything they do not understand. The trick to master this terror is to come to understand that which we do not, and release fear in doing so. But some will not attempt this.
I protected men like Dee, for even if I did not understand all their work, I saw there was worth in it. Perhaps one day, a scholar in the future would look back with as much reverence for Dee as I and many others held for Seneca.
After my afternoon of reading with Ascham was done, I went back to my rooms. “Where is Lady Knollys?” I asked as Helena came to take my jewels rather than my Carey cousin.
“Taken ill, Majesty,” said Helena.
“Is she alright?” It was rare that Catherine would fail in her duties, even if unwell.
“She has a fever, Majesty,” said Helena. “Mistress Parry scolded her into bed.”
I chuckled. Blanche was hard to disobey. “Send something hearty to her for dinner,” I said. “And keep me informed.”
“Of course, Majesty.”
I frowned. My doctors did not like me going to members of my household when they were ill, but I often disobeyed. I had been in reasonably good health for a long time, no more subject to painful monthly courses, wandering fevers, or other trials sent to plague me.
Helena saw what I was thinking and shook her head. “Majesty, Lady Knollys said
that if you looked as though you might go to her, we were to say that Mistress Parry will be at her door.” The young beauty grinned. “You will not pass, Majesty. Not with Mistress Parry guarding the entrance like a she-wolf.”
I laughed. “Shall I tell Blanche what you say, Helena?”
She smiled wider. “I said as much to her myself, Majesty. I am not one to hide my admiration.”
“You admire wolves, then?”
“Not wolves, Majesty,” she said. “But she-wolves, I do indeed. I hope to become one myself, one day, like Mistress Parry, and you.”
Laughing heartily as I clipped her shoulder softly with my hand, I wandered into the adjoining chamber, and tried to set worry from my mind. Blanche will care for Catherine, I thought. Even Death Himself would not dare set foot in that room with Mistress Parry present.
Chapter Eleven
