Elizabeth I

by Margaret George

  63

  LETTICE

  January 1599

  He had seemed well enough this morning. I had seen him sitting on his bench in his room, drinking warmed ale, hunched in his blanket. He had looked up as I passed and given a wistful smile.

  “Essex is off to Whitehall this morning to see the Queen,” I told him. “When he returns, we will know what his fate is to be.”

  “May his fate be good and Ireland’s bad,” Spenser said.

  It was bitterly cold, with a damp that deepened its sting. Just after Christmas London had been blanketed with snow, and now icy shreds of it clung to windowsills and steps and exposed tree roots. January 13, St. Hilary’s Day, by tradition the coldest day of the year, was trying to live up to its reputation. I wished with all my heart that Spenser could tolerate a fire in his room, for that was the only way to provide warmth.

  Robert had gone to face the Queen and finally speak directly about his commission. I had begged him to keep his head cool and his tongue under control. I could only pray that he would.

  I asked Frances to join me in my chamber, so we could sit and sew to calm our nerves. I hated needlework, but it was very soothing when the mind was jumpy. I did not see enough of Frances and scolded myself for that, but she was so easy to overlook. I was pleased that she was expecting again. Except for little Robert, born soon after their marriage, there had been no others. Perhaps he shunned her bed, but he owed her more children. She was having a difficult time with this pregnancy, and I assured her that that meant a trouble-free child.

  “A child who troubles you in the womb will never trouble you afterward,” I said. “Elizabeth Vernon, now, she had such an easy nine months, but the girl cries all night long, and also”—dare I say it?—“looks like a monkey.”

  In spite of herself, Frances giggled. “She does, doesn’t she?” she agreed. “And both her parents so pretty.”

  We spoke of other things, court gossip mainly, who was sleeping with whom, fashions, and so on. Mindless subjects to beguile the time. Frances surprised me with her keen interest in these things and her near-perfect recall of dates, names, and details. Perhaps she was not such a prig as I had thought her, or, like some overlooked people, she made it her business to revel in others’ doings. She was the daughter of a spymaster, after all.

  “I’ll ask Spenser to join us,” I said, after we had exhausted all pending liaisons and divorces. It was time to elevate the conversation.

  But when I went to his room, I found him sprawled on the floor, toppled from his bench. His cheek was pressed against the stone floor, the dry rushes partially covering his mouth. They did not move with his breath.

  Gently I turned his head and held my hand before his nostrils, but I felt nothing. His feathered hat was perched on a chair post; I hurriedly pulled a feather out and put it by his nose, but not a tendril of the feathers stirred. He was dead.

  I took his hand; it was cold, but then, it had been cold all along. The poor, poor wretch! How Robert would grieve.

  His death shocked me but did not surprise me. He had arrived a dead man, only going through the outward semblance of living.

  “Farewell, friend,” I whispered. “You leave us too soon.” He was only forty-six.

  In three days’ time there was to be a grand funeral for the man called England’s greatest living poet. He would be interred in the south transept of Westminster Abbey to lie beside our greatest poet, living or dead, Chaucer. Robert was paying all expenses. In the sorrow and busyness of preparing for the funeral, he had no time to speak of his interview with the Queen, other than to assure me it had gone well and he had been given nearly everything he had hoped for.

  January 16 was a nasty day, with spitting sleet and clouds hanging so low over London they nearly pressed on rooftops. Tiny sparkles of frost clung to fence tops and weather vanes. It was fortunate the coffin could be taken to Westminster Abbey on foot rather than having to use a funeral barge, for ice chunks were drifting on the Thames, remnants of the recent freeze.

  It was to be a poet’s funeral, as a soldier would have a military one. Instead of marchers, trumpets, and drums, he would be escorted to the grave by fellow writers. They had composed elegies and poems to be read at the graveside.

  The mourners took their places in the abbey. My allotted place was near the grave site; behind me I could see that the great nave was filling up. Spenser was revered by many more people than he had realized.

  The Queen would not come, but she never attended funerals. She had not attended Sir Philip Sidney’s or Lord Burghley’s. Apparently nothing would induce her to make an exception. Perhaps by her age she had lost so many people she could stomach no reminders of it.

  If possible, the gray stones of the abbey seemed to squeeze the cold out of the air and concentrate it. It was colder inside than out, and I could hear dripping of Stygian water from a column behind the altar. All around me, effigies of long-dead knights and ladies slept on their tomb tops as if on pallets.

  From down the nave, the long doors were pulled open and the procession entered. The coffin began to make its way down the aisle. Even the pallbearers were writers. I recognized the florid, beefy face of Ben Jonson and the lordly ones of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. George Chapman was there, and on the other side, the last one on the right, was Will Shakespeare. As he passed, he happened to look right at me. I was unable to look away; then he passed, and all I saw was the back of his black hat.

  The pallbearers were followed by columns of other writers. I recognized Nicholas Breton and Henry Constable—who had written sonnets to my granddaughter, but really to her mother, Penelope—Michael Drayton, John Donne (Egerton’s young secretary, who dabbled in verse), Thomas Dekker, and Thomas Campion. But there were many others I did not know. Slowly, swaying as they walked, the black double line made its way to where the coffin now rested on a bier. The stone floor had been opened to create a grave. Beside it, Chaucer’s gravestone had not been disturbed, and his vault was not visible. So Spenser and he would lie side by side, but their coffins would not touch. The coffin was lowered into the grave.

  “Here we consign to the earth the remains of Sir Edmund Spenser,” intoned the priest. But rather than proceeding to the usual funeral service, he said, “His fellows will present their eulogies.”

  The first one merely said, “Here lies the prince of poets in his time, whose divine spirit needs no other witness than the works which he left behind him.”

  Another stepped forward and said, “Here next to Chaucer, Spenser lies; to whom in genius next he was, as now in tomb.”

  Another, his face indistinguishable beneath his black hood, said, “Whilst thou did live, lived English poetry; which fears now thou art dead, that she shall die.”

  I heard a clicking sound, followed by a soft thud. As each man spoke, he threw his scroll with its verse into the grave, followed by his pen. It was a parallel ceremony to the traditional one in which servants of the Crown throw away and break their white rods of office when the sovereign dies.

  Now the famous poets took their turn reciting hastily composed eulogies. Most, as one would expect, were forgettable. The ones that were not may have been written at some other time, lying fallow and awaiting their public voice.

  Young John Donne stepped forward and recited, in a strong voice that carried well, “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so....” The poem then went on to reach a conclusion that death itself must die.

  But words are not facts. Spenser lay dead, and nothing could change that.

  Will stepped up. His eulogy would doubtless be high-flown and awash in classical references. But no. He said, “In death, simple is best. A song suffices. A baby needs a lullaby and a dead man needs a sweet melody, to offset the odor of decay.” He cleared his throat. “Hear me, Edmund.”

  “Fear no more the heat o’ the sun,

  Nor the furious winter’s rages;

  Thou thy wor
ldly task has done,

  Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages.

  Golden lads and girls all must,

  As chimney-sweepers, come to dust.”

  He ended with

  “Quiet consummation have,

  And renowned be thy grave.”

  Then he tossed the poem into the grave and threw his pen after it.

  Following him, Thomas Campion fumbled with several sheets of paper, finally selecting one to read.

  “The man of life upright,

  Whose guileless heart is free

  From all dishonest deeds

  Or thought of vanity:

  Good thoughts his only friends,

  His wealth a well-spent age,

  The earth his somber inn

  And quiet pilgrimage.”

  The earth his somber inn. I did not want a somber inn; I wanted a banquet hall. The earth offered too many riches to turn my back on them.

  The tomb was closed, the earth thrown onto the coffin and the pile of pens and parchment. Spenser was gone.

  As befitted the patron of the burial, Robert was to provide the funeral feast at Essex House. Tables had been set up in the hall, laden with the requisite funeral meats, cakes, and drink. We had also provided warm ale and wine to offset the cold that had crept into everyone’s bones in the unheated abbey. The hall’s huge stone fireplace did its best to banish winter from the room, but only those standing directly in front of it would benefit from the heat.

  Everyone but the Queen was here. It gave me great pleasure to realize that although I was barred from court, court had come to me. Even Robert’s political adversaries from the Privy Council were present: Cecil, Raleigh, Admiral Howard, Cobham. All were united in their tribute to Spenser this day, overlooking all other allegiances. Egerton was here with his secretary Donne, who was reaping praise for his “Death” poem; old Lord Buckhurst, leaning on his cane, was eager to talk to the young poets; George Carey, young Hunsdon, ambled about—although in his sixties he was young only in comparison with his long-lived father.

  The room was becoming so full that the heat rose and we did not need a fireplace. It also sounded very noisy to me. I have noticed that following a funeral people tend to speak louder than usual, to eat more, and to become drunker, as if the specter of death can be thrown off his scent that way, like a baffled hound.

  “I had a better line,” a voice spoke into my ear. “But it was only a line, and not a poem.”

  It was Will. He had laid aside his black mourning cloak and now was wearing everyday clothes. I looked at him, seeing merely a man in his midthirties, a man with a pleasant face. How does a lover revert to being an acquaintance? It had happened. It happened because I did not dwell on, did not conjure up, any memories of him in any other setting. They were as interred as Spenser.

  “What was that line? I need to hear it, as death frightens me so.” An acquaintance who was once more occupies a peculiar place in which no confession is out of bounds. Normal reticence is exempt.

  “It struck me that death is like a stern officer of the law,” he said. “My line is ‘This fell sergeant, death, is strict in his arrest.’”

  At first it seemed simple, obvious. Then I thought about each of its words. “Sergeant”: An officer of the law, carrying out a superior’s orders. “Fell”: Evil, vile. “Strict”: Following orders with no leeway. “Arrest”: A double meaning. Arrest meant “stop.” It also meant taking someone into custody. Suddenly I pictured a sanctimonious, uniformed lackey strong-arming those he oversaw, with no appeal.

  Yes, that was what death was. A stern arresting officer. But there was no judge, no prison, no fine, no law. He himself subsumed them all.

  I grasped my neck. “You almost make me feel his hand on me.”

  “Death is all about us,” he said. “We just don’t see him.”

  “Your words help me to do so,” I said. “Death will always have a face, and a uniform, for me from now on.”

  “I hope you recognize him. He may not oblige by dressing that way. Remember, the French swordsman who dispatched Anne Boleyn tricked her into looking in the wrong direction, so she did not see the sword coming.” He shook himself as if to cast off death. “But to speak of life: I hear that my Lord Essex will be leading the army into Ireland. May all go well.”

  “I thank you,” I said. “His fortune rests in the outcome. But tell me, what of your theater? I heard it had been dismantled because of a property dispute.”

  “You heard correctly. We took the timbers away to reassemble them in Southwark, beyond the jurisdiction of the city.”

  “Down with the bear pits and the cockfights,” I said.

  “There are other theaters there,” he answered, a bit testily. “It provides for people’s pleasures. Something has to. Desires do not vanish because authorities would find it more convenient if they did.”

  As we spoke, I found my guard against him dissolving and old memories flooding in. The sound of his voice; the very naturalness in standing next to him and talking to him—they shifted the ground under me.

  “What is your next play?” I primly asked.

  “I hate that question,” he said. “In fact, I despise it.”

  “I’m sorry,” I said contritely. “It was merely—”

  “A polite question, asked unthinkingly. Everyone does it. We all have rote polite questions flung at us. I did the same, asking you about Essex and Ireland. Then our task becomes to parry those questions. Someday, perhaps, we will be strong enough not to ask them in the first place and brave enough to refuse to answer.”

  I felt whipped by a schoolmaster. “I shall cease to be polite, then. If you wish to tell me what you are working on, I would be pleased to hear, so I may anticipate it. Otherwise, I shall wait and see it when it appears in the theater and be surprised.”

  “It’s no surprise,” he said. “I promised at the end of Henry IV, Part II that I would continue the story into the reign of Henry V.”

  “I haven’t seen Henry IV.”

  “Pity.”

  “For you or for me?”

  “Both. For me, that I cannot talk to you about it. And for you, because I hope you would have enjoyed it.”

  I did not want to talk about his plays. I could talk about them to anyone. I wanted to know what he was doing, where he was living, whether his two children still survived, whether he returned to Stratford often. He seemed different, more disillusioned, more focused on his livelihood. Playfulness had abandoned him, leaving a wary man in its wake.

  Christopher joined us, putting an end to whatever might have grown in our pause, our silence. “I think Southampton is about to be let out of Fleet Prison,” he said jubilantly. “I know you will be the first to welcome him.”

  “I shall be standing at the door,” said Will.

  “By the way, what are you working on now?” asked Christopher.

  The end of March, but the days were warm like summer. The army was ready, and Robert would leave London and head north for Chester, where the troops would be ferried across to Ireland. I was immensely proud of him, and so worried as well that I would have kept him at Essex House forever, being outfitted, gathering supplies, planning his campaign. Christopher was going too, and I had the same pride and fear for him, with this difference: His fate was only personal, affecting his family, whereas Robert’s was political, affecting not only his family but also the court and the entire realm.

  There was a ceremonial gathering at the top of the Strand, and then Robert rode out on his great bay, followed by the nobility and gentry serving under him. The day was clear and the sky as blue as summer. How tall and fair he looked in the saddle! He swept his hat off as throngs of people cried, “God save your lordship!” and “God speed!” and “To the honor of England!” The crowds followed the army for four miles, cheering all the way—or so I was told. Frances and I had returned to Essex House after Frances had held his seven-year-old namesake up to see his father, telling him, “There goes your
father, to save Ireland!”

  We had not been inside long when the sky darkened, as if a witch had ordered the sunshine to be masked. Rumbles of thunder rolled over the city. Then the heavens opened, spewing out rain and hail, but only at Islington, just as Robert and Christopher and the army had reached that spot. Of course, people immediately took it for an omen—a bad one.

  “He will start out fair but end in darkness and water,” they muttered.

  Looking out the window at the darkness that gave no rain for us, I reminded myself—over and over—of the reasons why Robert had accepted this task. He had put them, very succinctly, in a letter to Southampton.

  “Into Ireland I go. The Queen has irrevocably decreed it. The council passionately urges it. And I am tied in my own reputation.”

  And now he was gone, for fair or ill, and Christopher with him. Having just been released from prison, Southampton would follow shortly.

  Of the quartet of friends, only Will stayed in London. True to his promise, he finished his play about Henry V and, to my surprise and delight, put a reference to Robert in it, equating him with the great warrior king. The opening chorus said, “Were now the general of our gracious empress, as in good time he may, from Ireland coming, bringing rebellion broached on his sword...” Whenever audiences heard that, they cheered. All the nation’s hopes were bound up in Robert.

  64

  ELIZABETH

  March 1599

  I watched from Whitehall as Essex and his troops paraded past, glowing in their distinctive tawny liveries. If looks could win a war, then the Irish did not stand a chance. There was no doubt about it: He could muster a following. Men who would never have gone to Ireland joined him, partly drawn by the promise of rewards he was known to be (too) generous with, and partly to share in the glory they believed he was sure to reap. Row upon row of them passed down the Strand, heads high and plumes waving, before turning to head north out of the city and on to Chester. The sun hit the silver trappings on their saddles and ornamental bridles, and the biblical phrase “terrible as an army with banners” came to mind.