Elizabeth I

by Margaret George

  “Well, you’ve got what you want,” he said suddenly.

  I did not know to what he referred. “Is that so?”

  “I mean the counterattack against Spain. My grandson will distinguish himself and be happy at last.”

  “The command is split between him and the lord admiral,” I reminded him. “And then there’s Raleigh with one squadron, eager to prove himself again. It will not be easy.”

  “Nothing ever is,” he said. “Surely you did not think otherwise?”

  “Father—how have you lived all these years without Mother, as a bachelor? Has it been difficult?” That was what I wanted to talk about, not the Cádiz expedition.

  “Didn’t I just say that nothing is easy? I don’t hold with Catholics, but Thomas More was right when he said we mustn’t expect to get to heaven on feather beds.”

  Yes. Of course. He had his religion to sustain him. And now he was looking at me, disappointed. I had betrayed myself in asking the question. “Laetitia, if you could just understand the consolations of true faith, you would find that contentment you’ve always searched for. You were an unruly child, but I know that was because you were missing the most important thing in life. We brought you up in the faith, but ... God has no spiritual grandchildren. Faith is not handed down; it must be grasped by your own hand. Just as Jacob had to wrestle with God himself in order to know him. It wasn’t any good just being Abraham’s grandson.”

  He had now lost my attention. My ears and mind closed. I didn’t care about Abraham or Jacob. I never had. I never would. Those stories that sustained him meant nothing to me. I preferred the popular history plays that showed real people in recent times making decisions, and where those decisions led. That was immediate; that described my own world.

  “Your own grandson, my son, seems to have a strong tie to God.” One of his many sides that surfaced every so often was that of a religious devotee, given to fasting and extravagant displays of contrition. It did not last long.

  “Seems to have? ‘Seems’ is a lukewarm word. It means one can’t detect it.” He shook his head, then made his way over to the bench, where he sank down gratefully.

  “Father, we cannot see into another’s soul,” I said, sounding pious.

  “True, but we can get a good idea from the outside reflection. Still, that’s what she says. She’ll make no windows into men’s souls. Would have been better if she had!”

  “You weren’t so pleased when her sister did,” I reminded him. “It meant you had to leave the country.”

  He sighed. “Yes. But whenever the Lord leads you somewhere, it is a blessing. I got to meet Peter Martyr and correspond with Calvin himself. Me, Francis Knollys!” He turned to me and took my hands. “Laetitia, I hope you are well. I mean, in your heart. I see that you are over fifty now. That time of life for a woman can be difficult, if she does not accept her ... her station.”

  He meant I was getting old and I must recognize that and not make a fool of myself trying to overcome it. It would always win.

  “Why, Father, I am only the age you were when you were just starting to serve under the new Queen. Life was beginning for you!”

  “That was a unique occurrence,” he said. “Do not think it can be repeated. No, you should look inward and be prepared, as we all must be—”

  I was looking inward, too much so. I patted his arm, then stood up. “I’ll come again soon. I want to see those flowers bloom.”

  He had lived so long. He had so much wisdom. Why could he not impart it, not even a little bit of it?

  Shakespeare was fifty years younger, but he seemed to have thought more deeply about such things. All my father could do was cast his thoughts in a rigid religious template. Perhaps I was only using Shakespeare’s body as a means to learn how to think. That was an unsettling idea.

  39

  ELIZABETH

  July 1596

  Death. Death. So many deaths! I had barely come weeping from the bedside of Francis Knollys when I was summoned to that of Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon. And before that, the dread news of the deaths of Francis Drake and John Hawkins. I felt as if I had taken body blow after body blow. Knollys and Carey not only were strong supporting pillars of my council but were dear to me. I did not think I could bear their loss, strange as it sounds, after losing so many others. But this was different—they were not only my most trustworthy servants but also dear kinsmen.

  It was hot. July had been brutal, with a sun seemingly bent on withering and drying everything under it, alternating with torrential rains. For the third year, there would be a bad harvest. The river stank; its foul odor permeated all the riverside palaces and homes. Inside my bedchamber it smelled like rotten fish. I found myself pacing, fanning myself, tears forcing themselves upon me at unexpected moments. Sitting on my desk was a coconut Drake had brought me long ago, which I had had mounted in a gold stand. This time he had brought nothing. He had never returned, dying of dysentery on his ship Defiance off Central America. He had done none of the things he set out to do. He had not taken any Spanish treasure or towns, and he had not carried out his lifelong dream of capturing Panama City on the isthmus. Instead, his party had been ignominiously ambushed and beaten back. He had lost his magic touch and must, tragically, have been aware of it. On his last night he had asked to be dressed in his armor so he could meet God like a soldier. He heaved himself up so that he would not die in bed, defiant to the end, like the name of his ship.

  He was buried at sea off the coast of Panama, in the warm blue waters where he had made his name. They brought back his drum and presented it to me. It was sitting on a cabinet. I would give it to his widow. It was red, utterly silent, never to sound an alarm again, although some claimed that Drake had vowed that if England was in trouble and needed him, someone should beat the drum to summon him and he would descend from heaven and defend us.

  We mourned him, but the news overjoyed the Spanish, and they danced and celebrated knowing that El Draque would never trouble them again. Oh, the fleet on its way, I prayed, would be so infused with his spirit that the old sea dog would smile upon it and the Spanish swear that he commanded one of the warships.

  His fellow captain and cousin Sir John Hawkins had succumbed before Drake and was likewise buried at sea. A sad and feeble ending their expedition had been, after so many glories.

  And now Knollys was going, lying weakly in bed, mumbling Scriptures. He was surrounded by his many children and grandchildren. But his most illustrious one, Essex, was far away. The rest tried to comfort him, and I bent over his pillow, too, encouraging him to rally. But his years were too many for him, and they weighed him down and were carrying him off. I did not see Lettice among those clustered around. Perhaps they warned her when I was coming. But in truth, I would not have cared. And I could not begrudge her mourning her father—even though she had never mourned her husbands. I had not been allowed to be present at my father’s deathbed, nor be anywhere around him. Instead, I had heard the news from a distance.

  Knollys had been declining for years, but it was a slow withdrawal, so it was hard to notice. He was the oldest of my active councillors, having been born only two years after my father had come to the throne. Like Old Parr, he had witnessed the change of many guards, the rise and fall of so many. Were they passing like shadows now across a wall as he lay on his back in that upper chamber? The young Henry VIII; the joyous Anne Boleyn with her motto “The Most Happy”; the placid Anne of Cleves, whom he had met and escorted to London; his ward and fatally charming prisoner Mary Queen of Scots. He had witnessed a parade of religious creeds as well. As a fervent reformer, he had never come home to his new Jerusalem, although he was going to it now. I persisted in holding back the flood of the Puritanism he championed, and he would die with unfulfilled yearning for its triumph.

  Opening his eyes, he fastened them on me, lifted his arm, and tugged weakly on my sleeve. I leaned far down to hear his whisper.

  “What is it, old friend, old cousin?” I
murmured.

  He gave a slow, rattling laugh. “I have some words of good counsel for you,” he wheezed.

  “You have ever given me good counsel, Francis, and I treasure your wisdom.”

  “The first is—eighty-five years goes by very fast. But they are not all equal years. So if you are planning something for your eighties, look to do it now!” He laughed again, softly because he had no strength. “And the next is—beware of Robert, my grandson. Remember that he is descended from Richard, Earl of Cambridge, who turned traitor to Henry V. Remember also that you are descended from King Arthur, who was betrayed by a beautiful young man, Mordred. I have watched him grow up. We called the Scots Queen the Bosom Serpent, but I warn you, this boy also is a serpent you should not take to your bosom.”

  His wits were wandering. Nothing else would cause him to slander his own grandson so. “I can manage him,” I assured him. “My father and I have controlled more difficult subjects than Robert Devereux.”

  “All it takes is one,” he whispers. “One failure to be vigilant.”

  “Do not trouble yourself with these cares,” I said, wiping his brow, which was sweaty and yet cold. “You have borne them long enough.”

  One of his daughters brought a wet cloth to soothe his face. I knew I should leave them. I looked down at him, saying farewell in my mind. His eyes were already closed.

  He died a few days later, surrounded by all his kin—such a crowd of them they could not all fit into the chamber, I was told. He had been the father of twelve children, and most of them were still living. He was to be buried in his family tomb at Rotherfield Greys in Oxfordshire. So, on a scorching July day, his funeral carriage rumbled away and he left London forever.

  But I had little time to mourn, for then Henry Carey took to his sickbed as well. Unlike Knollys, he had been vigorous until he was suddenly felled. True, his hair was white and his bulk more clumsy, but his oaths and appetites were robust as ever. It was as though a ruthless knight had unseated him in the joust, sending him flying through the air and crashing onto the ground.

  There was no one to comfort me, as the one who could have—Catherine—was crushed. Her husband, Charles, was away on the Cádiz mission. Of course, she had her old mother, her brothers and sisters—Carey, too, had had many children, some dozen of them, not counting the natural ones. But Catherine felt his loss keenly, perhaps more so than her siblings. Her sweet and gentle heart was always open, and therefore easily touched.

  Hunsdon lived not in a simple house like Knollys but in Somerset House, a grand mansion between Arundel House and Durham House on the river. His chamber smelled worse than mine because the sickbed odors mixed with the river stench, and his attendants tried to mask both with burning herbs. The result was enough to make you sick even if you entered the chamber healthy.

  He was propped up in a luxurious carved bed with light summer hangings—so thin they floated and let most of the light in. His hair was whiter than the linen pillows he lay against, and his ruddy face had turned white, too. He was having difficulty breathing; with each intake of breath his chest rumbled.

  He cracked one eye open and peered at me. “A Queen at my bedside,” he said. “That’s an achievement of sorts. But my family can’t frame it.”

  “Here’s something they can frame,” I said. I motioned to the servant who had accompanied me to open a small trunk he had brought. Inside lay the robes and patent creating him an earl, which I had hastily had made for him. I spread them out on the foot of his bed. “My dear cousin, I create you an earl—the Earl of Wiltshire.”

  He grunted, in that way I knew so well. I expected an oath to follow. But he merely shook his head. “Ma’am, as you did not count me worthy of this honor in life, then I shall not count myself worthy of it in death.”

  “What?” I said. I had not expected that.

  “Just what I said. Earlier it would have been welcome, but now’tis too late.”

  So if you are planning something for your eighties, look to do it now. Knollys was right. Deathbed wisdom. Was he also right about the second thing he had said? “I am sorry, dear cousin. You were always worthy. It was I who did not see.”

  “Sometimes, yes, you have blinded yourself,” he said. “Seldom about people. Usually about money or defense. And that, dear Queen, is not a subject for deathbeds. I should be praying. Fetch me a priest. Or at least someone to read to me!”

  “I will take that duty,” I said. “Will someone bring me a Bible?”

  Catherine, her hand trembling, placed her own Psalter in my hand.

  I took it, found it already marked for Psalm 90. I began reading, slowly, the words as much to me as to him.

  “For a thousand years in thy sight are but as yesterday when it is past, and as a watch in the night.

  Thou carriest them away as with a flood; they are as a sleep: in the morning they are like grass which groweth up.

  In the morning it flourisheth, and groweth up; in the evening it is cut down, and withereth.

  We spend our years as a tale that is told.

  The days of our years are threescore years and ten; and if by reason of strength they be fourscore years, yet is their strength labor and sorrow; for it is soon cut off, and we fly away.”

  I gave a violent shudder, and saw Hunsdon eyeing me. “You are worse than a priest. Read me something good, or leave me.”

  The next psalm, 91, was more suitable.

  “He shall call upon me, and I will answer him: I will be with him in trouble; I will deliver him, and honor him.

  With long life shall I satisfy him, and show him my salvation.”

  “That’s better,” he grunted. “Even a long life is not long enough. But he’s kept his bargain as well as he can, since we cannot live forever.”

  The door creaked open and his soon-to-be widow tiptoed in. She was a little, wraithlike old woman, delicate as a result of having borne so many children and ethereal in contrast to her husband’s earthiness. She embraced Catherine, bowed to me, then glided over to her husband. Behind her was their oldest son, George, of the sleepy eyes and amorous disposition that ran in all the Boleyns. He would soon be Baron Hunsdon in his father’s place. He joined his mother by the bedside. It was time for me to leave the family to themselves. I bent over and touched his forehead, knowing it was the last time those wise, skeptical eyes would look back at me. “Farewell,” was all I could say, “faithful friend and servant.”

  Farewell to the man who as a boy had lived with my mother, one of the few still living who had known her; farewell to the man who had guarded my realm so well.

  I gave him a full state funeral in Westminster Abbey. I did not attend, but it was all described to me. All the trappings were there—a black-hung hearse, trumpeters, standard-bearers, and officials in mourning cloaks—although the streets were oddly empty as the procession wound its way from Somerset House down the Strand. The heat, the debilitation, the still-stinking river had driven many away to their country estates. Those still in town attended, of course, but their ranks were thin, especially with so many away on the Cádiz venture.

  The Cecils, father and son, were there, the elder making his way painstakingly to his seat, leaning on his tiny son, almost toppling him over from the side. It was obvious that before long old Cecil would come here again, but this time he would not be walking. The Bacons were there, and pointedly did not sit near the Cecils. John Dee and the young Wizard Earl, his protégé, attended. So did my distant cousin Thomas Sackville, Lord Buckhurst, who had the unpleasant nickname of “Lord Fillsack” because he was thought avaricious.

  The coffin bore only the arms of a baron; he could have gone to his grave as an earl but, stubborn to the end, had had the robe and patent taken away so he would not even have to look at them and be tempted.

  Archbishop Whitgift performed the service, and the coffin was then borne to the chapel of St. John the Baptist, where Hunsdon had already had his monument and tomb set up. Following the coffin the players of th
e Lord Chamberlain’s Men walked in, swaying double file, carrying copies of their plays to place in the tomb of their patron. A Midsummer Night’s Dream would be in the pile, to molder in the darkness of the tomb. I hoped it might live on in performance, for it belonged in the open air it celebrated so vividly.

  The funerals over, the work closets of Knollys and Hunsdon cleared and empty, I felt alone in work as well as in person. I tried to keep this mood from Catherine and be a strong presence for her; Marjorie’s crisp, forthright sense of reason provided a needed balance as well.

  All was not gone, all had not slipped away into the dark, I kept reminding myself. All the more reason to treasure them while they were still here. Old William Cecil was fading, but I insisted he continue working for me, as if that would miraculously preserve him. Or was it to preserve me? When my ladies were gone and I was alone, I held up the mirror to my face in the gentle light from a northern window and saw what my portraits did not allow to be depicted. The face alone, shorn of its softening frame of hair, or hat, or jewels, was lined, with sharp folds on either side of my nose and my mouth. My lips, always thin, had small constrictions around the edges, as if they were straining to shut. My teeth—I tried not to show them. I had learned a way of smiling that more or less kept them covered. I had always had fair skin; it was still light, but its color was flat. Pink had to be supplied from a rouge pot, not from blood pulsing just beneath.

  I was in my Grand Climacteric, my sixty-third year. It was supposedly fraught with peril. When I reached my actual sixty-third birthday in the autumn and thus began my sixty-fourth year, I would have survived a dangerous passage. I could not expect my face not to reflect that. Nor would I wish to be young again. But to be old! No!