Treason in Trust

by G Lawrence

  We had word not long after that my latter suspicion was correct. The Ottomans were building again, but the battle had opened up trade routes which previously had been inaccessible to England.

  “If God was Catholic on the day of the battle,” I said. “He has not forgotten His Protestant people. This brings opportunity for England.”

  *

  At the end of October, Cecil released details of the conspiracy. Titled, Saltuem in Christo, his tract was in the form of a letter, supposedly leaked by accident into the public sphere.

  Cecil’s tract laid bare the charges against Mary: she was responsible for the northern rebellion and had conspired to marry Norfolk; she had meant to take London and bring foreign troops into England for the purpose of conquest; Ross was her instrument, and Norfolk her ally; she had conspired to make herself Queen and have her son kidnapped from his lawful guardians in Scotland.

  It was a paper of fire… searing to touch. It had the desired effect. Mary was loathed in England and I was worshipped.

  My people became feral with wrath when they read it, and it was talked of everywhere. Overnight, I became more loved than I had ever been. I was their Sweet Bess, set upon by unworthy men and one nefarious, unnatural woman, but I had risen from near death to living glory.

  As I rode from one palace to another in London, people turned out to shout praise for me. Maids carrying bread to bake houses set their baskets down and clapped their hands as I passed. Students of the Inns of Court, young men training in the law, turned out in droves from their seat near Whitehall to cheer for me. Old men lined the street, telling tales of my courage. Women ceased to tend to captive rabbit warrens within their yards, and flocked to cheer for me, and servants making for the Little Conduit near the back gate of St Paul’s with leather gourds lifted their hands in salute. Laundresses, carrying clothes to wash houses or the river, waved garments in the air like flags as I passed, adding their voices to those crying blessings upon me.

  Everywhere I went I was cheered, as Norfolk was utterly defamed. His popularity died a suddenly, ungainly death as mine rose, as though his loss fed me, making me stronger.

  In some ways, although I had faced war, assassination, death and disgrace before, this had been the truest test of my reign. I had not emerged unscathed. People I had trusted, or had wanted to, had betrayed me. I would bear scars within my heart. They joined others, wounds healed after death and loss, betrayal and anger. No one saw them, but they were there; silver-pink whirls inside me, aching against the raw flesh of my soul.

  Yet scars are not wounds, I reminded myself. Scars do not bleed, they do not weep… they ache, but they will not take life. We all bear them; histories, memories… moments of pain bound inside our flesh, reminding us of what we have endured and lost. Yet scars cannot kill. They hold not that power. They simply remind us of what might have been.

  I had suffered loss, had endured the foundations of my security shaken, and I had built upon crumbling ruins of grief, making myself stronger than before.

  But I had begun to yearn for more. As a youth, survival was all I thought I might have, but as a woman, mature in wit and years, I was starting to think I would like life, rather than mere survival.

  But if there is one truth a Tudor knows, and always resents, it is that the world does not alter to your liking.

  I sat at my window that October, thinking of all that had happened, and I took heart. Some men had worked against me, but there were many others who had not, would not, and would defend me to the end.

  In my people, I placed my trust.

  They were the last guard standing about my heart. When I stretched a trembling hand into the darkness, they were there, reaching back for me.

  Chapter Fifty-Three

  Richmond Palace

  February 1603

  We all have a need to belong.

  It is the only thing holding back the aching maw of lonely darkness within. It is why we fight to protect our homes, families, and friends, why we join factions, faiths and groups. We long for liberty, yet sacrifice a part of ourselves to others, so we may feel, even for a brief moment, that we are not alone.

  Loneliness is the search for connection, for a link to others, to God, to the infinite power of the mind and universe.

  That is why I knew, even then, my loneliness was complete, never to be resolved, for I, unlike others, had chosen to be alone. In my quest for freedom I had abandoned intimacy. Without intimacy, I would always stand alone.

  There were some who came close, Robin, Blanche, Catherine, Kat, Cecil, Hatton… some who dared to attempt the feat of bridging the gulf I had opened between my soul and those of others, but never could they truly reach me. By virtue of position, I would always stand apart, always stand alone. A part of me would always be solitary.

  There were things I would never know… the touch of skin against mine, the warmth of breath against my neck in the darkness, the sensation of feeling another inside my body, the caress of a child whom I had borne, upon my hand.

  Sometimes I could pretend, but more often I stood, an ocean of people about me, and knew myself utterly alone. My soul was an empty house, where I walked with but my thoughts, footsteps echoing as my only company, my heartbeat sounding in the echoing gulf.

  O, loneliness… O restless aching, ineffable need that can never be satisfied! This want, this raging, silent yearning for something to come and fill the maw within.

  There is only one element as strong as loneliness; love.

  We all seek it, yet we know it cannot banish loneliness, only hold it at bay. Battles are fought, yet the endless war rages on. Love holds back loneliness, makes it less oppressive, less powerful, yet it is always there; a silent reminder that the only soul we can truly know, is our own.

  Chapter Fifty-Four

  Greenwich Palace and Westminster Abbey

  Winter 1571

  Winter came early. Rain turned to freezing mists, creeping through my parks like the soft-fallen caress of ghosts. Snow began to fall in the early hours and carried on all day. Sometimes, glancing up from my desk as flickering candles burned low and dim, their light playing upon gold ornamentation and the patterned tiles of the hearth, I would see snowflakes fluttering against the diamond window panes, as though they wished to enter the palace.

  The coldness of the world reflected that of my heart. Much had happened, and there was much left to deal with. There was a raging question within me, to which I had no answer.

  I threw myself into work, poring over Cecil’s evidence time and time again, but I found no answer. I prayed, but there was nothing but silence from the Almighty Father. I understood. This was my task.

  My Council was full of “what ifs”… What if Alba had sent troops? What if Spain had committed men? What if Catholics had risen? What if, what if…

  All possibilities, all that could have gone wrong, were high in everyone’s mind, bringing England’s isolation into clear focus. We needed allies. My sense of loneliness was compounded by the notion that England, like me, stood alone; one island, floating amidst a sea of Catholic nations and peoples.

  In December, Sir Thomas Smith was sent to France to aid Walsingham, who was ill. Together they would test the ever-heaving waters of politics.

  Smith was a veteran ambassador. He and Walsingham would work on the formation of the defensive league. Smith maintained the best option still was marriage, and I was less than pleased to hear he had made some unflattering remarks about me. “The more hairy she is before, the more bald she is behind,” he apparently said to Cecil before he left.

  It was a reference to my hair. Each time I was pressured, my hair resumed its wish, begun when Amy Dudley died, to part company with my head. Wigs concealed most of my troubles, but my loss saddened me beyond measure. I was no conventional beauty, but my hair had been one of my glories. When one is blessed with spare beauty, each part of it is precious.

  I pretended to know nothing of Smith’s unflattering comments, and it
soon became obvious to Smith that Walsingham was correct; the marriage was not about to happen. Smith witnessed the Medici snake weeping, trying to wheedle her son into marriage, but Anjou stood firm. He had no wish to marry me, not with Poland on his horizons.

  “Efforts to gain me a husband see me ill-used,” I said to my women. “Perhaps my people will understand, when they hear of this, why I prefer to remain a maiden.”

  Unable to make her favourite son marry me, Catherine de Medici made a swift about-turn. In place of Anjou, she offered his younger brother, Hercules-François, the Duc of Alençon.

  Alençon was even younger than Anjou, being seventeen years old.

  “I wonder, at times, if I may be offered a babe in a woman’s belly next,” I said to Blanche.

  “There may be advantages, my lady,” she said with an entirely straight face. “All men wail and howl like babies when they fail to get their way. At least with an actual babe, you could send him to his nursemaid.”

  I chuckled as she removed my wig and started to rub olive oil into my dry and itchy scalp. “And if he tried to take my throne, I could send him to be spanked,” I added.

  “Indeed, Majesty. It may be a boon to take a husband so young.”

  “They say Alençon is short, was sickly as a child, which surely was only yesterday, and is marked by the pox,” I said. “Some say smallpox and others say it is pox of a more heated nature.”

  “You have others to turn to if you wish to see a pretty face.” Finished with my legs, Blanche went to the table to prepare the soot and salt compound I used to clean my teeth. Once this had been rubbed into them, my ladies would sweeten my breath with a mixture of white wine and vinegar boiled with honey, rubbed into the teeth with a linen cloth.

  As I watched Blanche measure out the soot and salt, I went on. “But this one I would have to see each night, in bed.”

  “But he is known for being less concerned about religion.”

  “That is true,” I said. “But I have no intention to wed a child and become the laughing stock of Europe.”

  Smith and Walsingham supported the match because Alençon was a known Huguenot sympathiser. He was moderate, flexible, and sensible, they wrote. He was also not likely to ascend to the throne of France, having two brothers ahead of him in the succession, and would therefore be able to remain in England for his lifetime. They also said he was clearly more likely to father children, although on what basis this claim was made, I never found out. I suspect it had to do with Anjou’s femininity. The same had been said of Darnley; that he was not man enough to make a child. Clearly, since he had fathered King James, this was a fiction, but men do love to maintain myths.

  “Although I have little experience of the condition, Majesty,” said Tomasina. “I always thought women carried babies… am I at fault?”

  “No indeed.”

  “Then clearly femininity is no bar to the creation of squalling offspring.”

  “You attempt to wield logic, Tomasina,” I said, laughing. “Yet much men say keeps no company with reason.”

  I wondered, too, if this declaration of Alençon’s ability to procreate meant he had bastards in France, despite his tender age… which suggested the marks upon his face might well come from a pox of a carnal nature.

  His pitted skin, apparently, was “no matter in a man”, Smith declared. Mary Sidney, deformed since her encounter with smallpox, wore a veil at all times, but men, apparently, could not be rendered ugly by scars as women could.

  Alençon’s Medici mother added that Alençon was growing a beard, which would conceal the worst of his affliction. But will it rid his body of the pox? I thought. No one seemed to consider that unwholesome possibility, and no growth of hair could conceal the fact that he was very short… diminutive, some claimed.

  “I hear the Duc is the same height as me,” said Cecil, trying to nudge me into enthusiasm.

  “Say rather the height of your grandson,” I said dryly.

  “Walsingham supports it.”

  “Walsingham would. He would accept anything if it provided a chance to support others of our faith.” I tossed my head. “Neither you or Walsingham would have to marry this pocket-sized, pox-marked baby, Cecil. I would, so allow me to decide whether I could stand such a fate or not.”

  Seeing fear growing in his eyes, I waved a hand. “Go ahead with negotiations. Send word to France I will consider it, but also tell them I feel I have been ill-used. The insults Anjou has tossed my way have not been forgotten, and now they think to send any wandering prince of France as his replacement. I would rather they showed friendship by agreeing to this league before we discuss marriage any further.”

  The French responded with genial understanding, and the treaty got underway in earnest. I was sure I could keep this affair going for some time, offering hope, but never a sure answer.

  “The Queen dances from the altar as another takes to it,” Tomasina said one morning as we gathered to watch a marriage procession at Westminster Abbey.

  “Shush,” I said, clipping her shoulder with my hand. “This is a serious occasion.”

  “Is there such a thing?” My fool sounded astonished. “Surely there is mirth in all things… only more when people try to contain it.”

  I hushed her again as the procession came into view. The Earl of Oxford, handsome as the Devil in blue velvet and golden cloth, and his new wife, Anne, Cecil’s daughter, enchanting in a gown of crimson and silver, went to the altar that day.

  “Do you like your son-in-law more now the ceremony is done?” I asked Cecil as we milled in the great hall at Westminster Palace.

  “He is growing on me,” he said. “I admit, Majesty, I surrendered to the wishes of my daughter, for she adores him.”

  “It is a good match, old friend,” I said. “And they seem affectionate.”

  “If he mistreats her, I will take his head,” Cecil grumbled.

  “Baron Burghley would become Queen,” Tomasina jeered. She eyed Cecil with an appraising glance and pursed lips. “You will need a better gown, good Master Cecil, if you are to become our Queen.” Cecil chuckled and my fool went on. “And you will have to command with more mastery. When the Queen takes a head, she strikes fast and merry.”

  About me, people laughed. Inside, my heart shivered.

  Chapter Fifty-Five

  Greenwich Palace

  Winter 1571 -1572

  As I struggled with my conscience, a man called Kenelm Berney was arrested. Part of a rather disorganised scheme to murder Cecil and depose me, Berney disclosed much. He and his friends, with the help of de Spes, had conspired to free Norfolk. They had intended to send a rope bridge to Norfolk, hidden in his daily delivery of bedding and rush mats for the walls and floor of his prison. Once Norfolk was free, Berney said, his allies and de Spes would assassinate Cecil and me, placing Mary on my throne.

  “Get de Spes out of my country,” I growled that night.

  De Spes was hustled out of London on the 26th of December, and taken to Hawkins, who saw him off from Dover. I sent a letter with him for Phillip. “We can no more endure him to continue than a person that would secretly seek to inflame our realm with fire brands, and hereupon have given him order to depart.”

  De Spes’ expulsion was deeply embarrassing for Spain, and Philip protested. I wrote to inform him it was justly deserved, and he had done the same to my ambassador, for much lesser diplomatic crimes.

  With one betrayer gone, there were more to take care of.

  Norfolk denied that he knew anything of this plot to free him, and I accepted his protestations as honest. Berney and his friend Mather were executed not long after, but not before they had done their best to harm my reputation.

  Berney and Mather claimed I was a woman of scandal, who bedded all men at court, and called for them to be highly scented so I might lie with them in lascivious pleasure.

  It was true I liked my courtiers to smell nice. Ill scents assaulted me and I would not stand rank breath, odor
ous armpits, or whiffy skin close to me. If they could not wash often, as I did, my men could at least wear enough perfume to conceal noxious body odours. But I was not doing such a thing in order to use them as my personal harem.

  It was not the first time lies had been spread about me. The fact I would not marry led many to think the reason was that a husband might uncover my nightly adventures with thousands of young bucks. If I did not wish to marry, there must be a reason, people thought. It could not simply be that I wanted to remain free. Disaffected people wanted to defame me, and knew the oldest, most effective method was to brand me a whore. Call a woman’s moral reputation into question, and you can get anyone to believe anything of her. She must be guilty of other depravities, of having no mind, no worth and no virtue.