Elizabeth I

by Margaret George

  In no time he was knocking upon the door, and I admitted him. Quickly I told him about Raleigh. He shook his head. “I questioned him on this very matter,” he said. “You have seen my report. The man lied at every turn. If I may say so, Your Majesty, that is why he is so widely disliked, in spite of his looks and cleverness. Dishonesty stains his other virtues.” He laughed, his little rounded shoulders shaking. “Now it makes sense,” he said. “Some of the sayings I have heard. One, that he has been too inward with one of Her Majesty’s maids.”

  “Clumsy wit,” I said.

  “The other, that ‘all is alarm and confusion at the discovery of the discoverer, and not indeed of a new continent but of a new incontinent.’ ”

  Now I laughed. “Clever,” I admitted. I was still feeling cross, but it was subsiding. “Swisser Swatter must needs learn to control himself in the Tower.”

  Robert hooted. “You have heard that?”

  “I do have a gown with eyes and ears on it,” I reminded him.

  But they did not hear and see everything, as they used to. I would have to try harder. This was, ultimately, of no matter. But what else might I overlook that was?

  It was night. The usual gathering of card players and gossips filled the privy chamber; I could hear them from my own bedchamber but declined to go out there. They were all discussing the abrupt departure of Bess, I had no doubt. So many must have known of her marriage and the reason for it and only wondered how long the brazen game could go on before I became aware of it.

  Catherine dragged a small chest across the floor to where I sat. The others had already gone to bed, and only a few candles were left burning in the chamber.

  “In her haste, she forgot this,” said Catherine, running her hands over the carvings on the rounded, ribbed lid. The initials “E.T.” shone gold beneath the handle.

  E.T. My initials. How amusing. Telling myself that I had the right to open it—as abandoned property, after all—I raised the lid and peeked in. A jumble of ribbons, pomades, and handkerchiefs greeted me. There was nothing of value here, which was a relief. I pulled a lacy handkerchief out and almost choked on the perfume. It was lily, a scent I dislike as it reminds me of death, in spite of its Easter association.

  Catherine withdrew and left me to examine the contents of the chest in privacy. How well she knew me. What a treasure to have a friend who averted her eyes from my faults and opened them only to the good in me.

  I felt beneath the rumpled mash of items and found some folded sheets of paper. Knowing I should not read them but unable to keep from it, I settled myself back and held the first paper up to the dim light.

  It was a poem. Walter, along with everyone else at court, wrote poetry. He had presented me with many poems, usually heavy with allegorical and classical allusions. I was Diana, chaste huntress; I was Cynthia, radiant goddess of the moon, whom shepherds adored. What else had he called me? Athena, wise above all mortals, strong protectress of my realm. That exhausted the store of virgin goddesses, except for Hestia, but the imagery of a hearth-loving goddess did not fit me.

  The ink was dark enough to read even in the poor light.

  Her eyes he would should be of light,

  A violet breath and lips of jelly,

  Her hair not black not over-bright,

  And of the softest down her belly.

  The paper was shaking in my hands. I kept rereading the words, unable to believe what I was seeing. Violet breath ... I had never been that close to her. As for the down and the belly ... I gave a shudder. Vulgar.

  No one ever had, or ever would, write such words to me. First, because my majesty would not permit such license, and second, because my person did not conjure them up.

  I took out Leicester’s last letter to me and reread its cozy, familiar greetings. Pardon your poor old servant ... my gracious lady ... ease of her late pain ... happy preservation . . . I humbly kiss your foot ...

  Foot. Not lips of jelly.

  I returned the papers to the chests—hers to the ribbed one, mine to my little bedside box.

  I looked down at my slender but now veined fingers, with the coronation ring unchanged since that day I had first put it on. Its gold was not dimmed, its design only a little worn with the years. I had never removed it; it had been with me through every day of my reign. It guarded me, keeping me apart from all other women. Without it, what verses might I have received, what hot whispered vows in the night? Whose wife might I have been?

  Instead, I was England’s. The only husband who would not grow old, fail, or desert me.

  23

  February 1593

  I fingered the jewel-encrusted miniature skull on its gold chain. Should I wear it today? Would it ward off the plague? I needed to attend the opening speech of Parliament; the official procession had been canceled due to the plague spreading in London, and I would go directly to the Parliament chambers by way of barge. Still, there would be crowds outside, not to mention the crowd in Parliament itself. No, it seemed popish and reeked of superstition. I left it off.

  Essex had presented it to me just after I appointed him to the Privy Council. He was exuberantly grateful, making wild promises of his service. In truth, I had relented and named him a councillor despite his clumsy performance in France; since his return he had impressed me with his assiduous team of information gatherers at Essex House, headed by the Bacon brothers. Francis I already knew. There was not a cleverer man in England. His portrait painter had lamented, “If only one could paint his mind!” and written it in Latin around the miniature. Anthony was said to be equally intelligent but tormented by bad health—gout, stones, and failing eyesight. “A gentleman of impotent feet but a nimble head,” someone described him.

  Essex, turning his energy from foreign battlefields to domestic politics, procured election to Commons for at least eight of his followers. And besides Francis Bacon, his stepfather, Sir Christopher Blount, represented Staffordshire county. Was he was building up a party?

  The surface of the river was dull pewter under the gray skies of February as my barge made its way to Parliament. Lent had not yet begun; this year Easter came late. But the bleakness and austerity of the weather called to mind fasting and rough shirts. Since I intended to ask for money, I dressed plainly, fitting the mood.

  A crowd was waiting at the landing, their pinched faces and chapped, blotched cheeks showing the ravages of winter. How we all longed for an end to it. I smiled and waved to them, accepted their little notes and gifts, then hurried inside. The plague lurked in crowds.

  The Speaker escorted me into the chamber. I had not called a parliament in four years. The subsidy the one of 1589 had granted me had just run out. The Crown was in desperate need of money. They must grant me more.

  The members rose in respect, and the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal bade them be seated while he gave the opening oration. I took the throne beside him and listened.

  Quickly he listed the urgencies before us. They could be summed up in one word: Spain.

  Far from crawling back into his kennel after the ignominious defeat of his Armada, Philip had been emboldened by it. He had quickly rebuilt it, modeling his new ships on ours, so that his navy was twice as strong now as it had been in 1588, and of a more advanced design. He directly harried the Protestant world in France and the Netherlands. In Scotland, he intrigued with certain lords to land twenty-five thousand troops this coming summer, and the same thing in Ireland, attempting to gain a toehold in neighboring countries where he could launch an attack on us. In addition, he stirred up trouble in Germany and Poland, to cut off our trade with them. It was imperative that we have the means to counter him in his plans to conquer France, England, and Ireland.

  “It is stunning that the revenues of England are now defending five countries!” the Lord Keeper cried. He pointed out that I had had to sell Crown lands to meet expenses, despite my ongoing frugality.

  “In building, our Queen has consumed little or nothing,” he said. “In
her pleasures, not much. As for her apparel, it is royal and princely, as required for a sovereign, but not excessive. Her household expenses, being a solitary ruler, are small, yes, less than in any other king’s time. In the past, Her Majesty, despite hardship in doing so, has always repaid her debts.”

  This was true. I had built no palaces and could not even afford to convert the temporary banqueting house at Whitehall into a permanent pavilion, something much remarked upon by foreign visitors. I had no consort’s lodgings, nor children’s, to support.

  “And there is more!” he said. “When Her Majesty came to the throne, it was mired deep in debt. The navy had rotted. But she discharged the debt, and now she is able to match on sea any prince in Europe, which the Spaniards found out when they came to invade us.” A purr of pride rumbled through the room. “She has compassed the world with her ships, whereby this land is made famous throughout all places!” The purr rose. “I trust that every good subject, seeing it concerns his own good and the preservation of his estate, will grant a generous subsidy. They are less than half that granted to her father, King Henry VIII.”

  He rumbled on about other matters, then called upon anyone who wished to speak. Suddenly an older man rose in the back. “I am Peter Wentworth, representative of Barnstable.”

  Not him! The fiery Puritan who had steadfastly opposed me in matters of religion, trying to force the Church of England to abolish priests, vestments, and music. But he could not be silenced now. The Keeper nodded.

  “Besides the Spaniard, we have another enemy to address once and for all in this parliament. I mean the chaos that will descend upon us if Her Majesty does not settle the succession. We must frame it as a law and have her name the one to follow her.”

  The unmentionable topic, the one I had succeeded in silencing in the years since Parliament had ordered me to marry. How dare he?

  The Keeper said, “Sir—”

  “I have addressed these concerns in my pamphlet ‘A Pithy Exhortation to Her Majesty for Establishing her Successor to the Crown.’ ” He waved a dark leather-bound book in his right hand. “I have presented it, yet I receive no answer!”

  “Sir, this is not meet—”

  “We have free speech here in Commons! I must present—”

  “This is not the proper time; we are not framing law.”

  I stared at him, hoping by my stern gaze to silence him. But Puritans are not silenced by looks, not even from their Queen. Let the irritating man speak, then.

  “Exercise that privilege of free speech, sir,” I ordered him. “You may proceed.”

  He looked startled; now that he was told to speak, he stuttered. “I—I—” He thumbed the pages of the book.

  “No, no book,” I said. “You must speak from your own head and heart.”

  “Very well! You know I have urged this since 1562, when Your Majesty was smitten with the smallpox and we saw that if our captain perished, there was no one to take the wheel of the ship. Many, many shared my fear! But you did nothing to assuage that fear. After the Queen of Scots was ... removed ... I wrote my ‘Pithy Exhortation,’ urging you to act. Now, Parliament must act in your stead since you will not. Parliament must draft a law regarding the succession.”

  I felt the brush of heat spreading across the back of my neck like the palm of an overwarm hand. Dr. Lopez’s herbs had helped quiet the attacks, like a flash of fire that crackled and struck, but had not altogether ended them. My collar grew damp, and the plain gown I was wearing suddenly felt like a hair shirt indeed.

  “Parliament does not have that power,” I said.

  “Parliament determined the succession that brought Your Majesty to the throne,” he said.

  Now my face felt as if it were before a smithy’s furnace. Parliament had passed a law of succession, but only according to my father’s wishes—wishes that he changed quite often. I had been in, then out, then in the succession again. I did not care to be reminded of that.

  “In compliance with the will of Henry VIII,” I said.

  Wentworth now whirled around and addressed his fellow parliamentarians, while not exactly turning his back on me. “History tells us what happens in a kingdom with no clear heir,” he cried. “Each age is different; each age has its own particular horrors. Now, for us, should our gracious Queen die and no successor be known, fierce competition will break out for the crown. The realm will fracture into many pieces, making us easy prey for Spain.” He raised his eyes to heaven. “Farmers will be slain in the field, children murdered in every town, women ravished, towns burned, and religion laid in the dust!”

  “You paint a vivid picture,” was all I said.

  “Remember Rehoboam, Solomon’s son! He lost his father’s kingdom; it split in half. The eyes of all England are upon you!” he cried to me.

  “Yes, they always are, and have been since my birth,” I said calmly. There was a reassuring laugh from the chambers.

  “My true and unfeigned love for you forces me to tell you, our most dear and natural sovereign, that if Your Majesty does not settle the succession in your lifetime, I greatly fear that you shall then have such a troubled soul and conscience, yea, ten thousand hells in your soul, when you die, as die you most certainly will—your noble person shall lie upon the earth unburied, a doleful spectacle to the world—”

  “Representative Wentworth needs air,” I said, motioning to the guards. “Remove him so that he may catch his breath.”

  “You shall leave behind you such a name of infamy—” He was hustled from the chamber, leaving a wake of silence.

  It was up to me to break the silence, change the mood. Yet I was awash in sweat, and not from the prickling heat of my neck. Lie unburied ... die most certainly you shall ... I cleared my throat. “His words are wilder than Christopher Marlowe’s Tamburlaine, and I wonder he does not go on the stage.”

  That was what was needed. A peal of laughter rang throughout the chamber, and I had dodged the succession question once again. I would settle it my way, and in my own time.

  The Parliament continued to meet all through Lent, paralleling the dreary weather of the season and the labored, penitential readings for services. Archbishop Whitgift loved Lent; it allowed him to indulge in his Old Church proclivities. Late dawns and early dusks called for flickering altar candles. Searching one’s conscience lent itself to confession and abstention; fasting purified the soul. The time-honored wheel of the church year turned slowly, and the six weeks of Lent could seem very long indeed, depending on the privations one embraced.

  There were no plays, few court festivities, no music, and no wedding solemnizations. The courtiers put away their gaudy clothes, and many returned to their homes in the country.

  Though Puritans rejected the church year, holding a liturgical calendar to be popish, they seemed to keep Lent all year and wish the country would keep it along with them. Fortunately, political setbacks had curbed their power lately, and so their challenge to my government, and the threat of some sort of Calvinist-type reformed religion being imposed upon us was allayed.

  I found solace in the old forms, although I did not flaunt them. I had, after all, grown up with them, and they were comfortingly familiar to me. I liked the whispered “Remember man you are dust and unto dust you shall return,” followed by the flattened thumb smearing ashes on my forehead; I did not flinch from examining the list of transgressions I might have committed—lack of charity, lack of compassion, vanities, and self-delusion. In private I wore the memento mori that Essex had given me, sometimes drawing it out of my bosom and staring at the hollow eye sockets. When I looked in the mirror, my white face and the dark shadows of my eyes traced the same anatomy. The skull beneath my powdered cheeks was all too clear.

  Death was very much on my mind, as this Lent plague still raged about us. Many had died in London, and the sound of the bells and the low, mournful cries of “Bring out your dead” did not abate. I sent what food and goods I could to help the survivors, but there was little a
nyone could do to stop the ravages. I ordered the theaters closed, as well as the concerts at the Royal Exchange, to keep crowds down and try to slow the spread of sickness.

  “Queens have died young and fair,” a poet said. I was no longer young, and Wentworth had just loudly reminded me I must die. I would die. Someone would sit on the throne after me. Who was that someone to be?

  There were those who thought I could not bear the thought of death, seeking to avoid all mention of it, as if that would keep it at bay. But they were wrong about my motives. What I wished to keep at bay was attention turning to my successor and bypassing me. As soon as I named him, I would be creating an alternative government, someone to whom disgruntled persons could turn for redress. I would be rendering myself obsolete. I had said it plainly: “Think you I will set my winding-sheet before my eye?” From that, people thought it was the shroud I shunned, not being dead politically before my time.

  It would have to be James VI of Scotland. We all knew that. But I would not formally name him. He was the only possible claimant who met England’s needs. All the other candidates were either foreign, or Catholic, or more distant relatives. Since it was so obvious it would be James, why could they not stop harassing me about it?

  I was not overly impressed with James, but he was the best to hand. As a thrifty monarch, I had nonetheless felt it a good investment to put James on an allowance, subject to his good behavior. As a result, he raised barely a murmur when his mother was executed.

  James was said to be odd, but how could he be otherwise with such a mother and such a father? It was a miracle he was not insane. If he had a penchant for pedantry and favorites, it was a small price to pay for what he had been through. I hoped my people would welcome him ... sometime in the far distant future.

  Robert Cecil brought me reports of Parliament’s debates. He sat in Commons, his father in Lords. Essex likewise sat in Lords, his retainers in Commons. I was shocked beyond words to learn that Francis Bacon, Essex’s man in Commons, had objected to the subsidy to fight the Spanish, speaking out loudly against granting it in the time period we requested it.