Elizabeth I

by Margaret George

  “But hardly participating, either,” I said. “I would not envy that.” God knew I had plunged fully into the life surrounding me.

  Peering down the long corridor of the new century, I knew that whoever followed me would inherit the problems I had failed to solve.

  But already I could feel, like the delicate stirring of air in a sealed room, the longing for change in my people.

  “The gloomy look again,” said Raleigh. “Come, we must dance and chase that melancholy away.”

  I got through it. All the masques, the recitals, the master of misrule’s uproarious Twelfth Night, even a comedy about courtly people hiding in the forest. It was yet another offering by that busy fellow, Shakespeare, who played a rustic in it. He must do nothing but write, or else he wrote very fast. Although I laughed and nodded, I paid little attention, putting on as good an act as the actors themselves.

  Now at last it was over. The carts carrying the theatrical costumes and props rumbled away; the courtiers returned to their homes; the servants stripped the greens and the banners from the Great Hall, and we faced January with no adornments, no shields.

  We crept along through the dreary, cold month, this year an especially dismal one. The weather, like a wayward child, swung back and forth between freezing sleet and drifts of snow and warmer spells that melted the ice and sent melancholy drips from every eave and down chimneys to make fires smolder and sizzle. I visited Westminster Abbey on the date of my father’s death and made a melancholy circuit around the chapels, paying homage to the tombs of kings and nobles, my guards following me at a discreet distance. In the winter the building never really got light, but by early afternoon even that was fading and most of the illumination came from the candles and torches. In spite of constant roof repairs, I could hear dripping water everywhere and see puddles on the flagstones.

  Westminster Abbey: home of our national triumphs, our coronations, and our thanksgiving celebrations, guardian of the past. Once a year I came and walked through my family’s chapel at the far end of the nave. My grandfather Henry VII had torn down the old Lady Chapel to build his new mausoleum, and it was a graceful and soaring work of stone. He lay inside a magnificent fenced tomb, shockingly modern when it was first constructed, of Italian design. He had, uncharacteristically, spent a fortune on it. Now his effigy lay serenely on top of his tomb, beside his wife’s, content with his expenditure.

  My brother and sister lay nearby; Edward’s grave was at the foot of his grandfather’s. My sister’s effigy rested upon her hearse in the north aisle. Her funeral was the last time the old Latin requiem Mass, which had rung out in the cathedral for centuries, had been heard. I walked slowly by it, looking at her shadowed face. It was a good likeness, her mouth clamped tight as it was when she was standing her ground—which had been most of the time.

  The dank and the dripping made me shiver. So this was the best we could offer the eminent for their resting places? I left the chapel and made my way down the aisles past the other side chapels that were full of tombs and markers.

  In the Chapel of St. Nicholas, closest to the royal chapel, lay Elizabeth Cecil, in an alabaster altar tomb with a black marble top adorned with poems written by her widower, Robert. She had died shortly before his father, Burghley. I had been so preoccupied with my own grief in losing my cousins Hunsdon and Knollys that I had failed to notice Robert’s loss. I felt a sudden rush of understanding of what my little principal secretary was enduring—an early widowerhood, the loss of his father, which could not be compensated for by offices and honors. He had never mentioned it, never sought to bring it to my attention.

  Almost across from it was the Chapel of St. John the Baptist, where that dear man Hunsdon rested. His family was busy erecting a monument that seemed to go all the way to the ceiling.

  As I proceeded down the aisle, reaching the arm of the north transept, I turned to visit the Chapel of St. Andrew, right by the north entrance. Not to be outdone by the Careys, the Norris family was erecting a monument that would soar twenty-five feet and be festooned with figures kneeling and praying. Marjorie would be amused by its pretensions, no doubt. I could almost hear her ringing laugh if she beheld it.

  73

  It was strictly forbidden for anyone to predict my death or speculate about the succession, or even to discuss it in public. But it was on everyone’s mind. I alone could break the rule and dare to probe my future, and it was for the good of my people that I must do so. I myself would rather not know. But ignorance is unforgivable and negligent in a ruler.

  My old adviser and astrologer John Dee was back in London for a brief visit from Manchester. I asked him to see me.

  He had noticeably aged. His shiny, dark eyes were still vital, but they stared out from a weathered, lined face, and his beard was white as a summer cloud.

  He scrutinized me likewise. “Your Majesty is looking well, it pleases me to see. The years sit lightly upon you.”

  I laughed. “Quite the contrary. They weigh upon me, especially since we have entered a new century.” I gripped his arm, a thin stick under his satin sleeve. “I am afraid, John. This time to come does not feel friendly to me.” I held up my hands. “I know I must die in it. I will not outlive it. I shall not be Thomas Parr, who has seen three centuries—born in the 1400s, lived through the 1500s, and I pray he is still alive to see this 1600. But that is not given to anyone but him. And I am not sure I could bear the weight of a crown for all those years.”

  “So ... I gather that is what I am here for? To part the curtain of the future for you?”

  “Yes. I would rather glimpse what lurks there, no matter how threatening. So set up your equipment. I will wait. We will not be disturbed.”

  “Very well.” He shuffled over to a little trunk he had brought. How slow his movements were. When we have not seen someone in a long time, all the changes are exaggerated. He extracted his mirror, his scrying glass, his charts.

  “I need a table,” he said.

  I called for one.

  He carefully spread out the implements of his trade, then leaned forward and said gently, “If Your Majesty is ready, we may begin.”

  Was I ready? I gripped my hands together and said, “Let us begin, then.”

  First he consulted meticulously with his astrological chart. Then he asked that the curtains be drawn so he could see the reflections in the mirror and the glass better. Muttering, he bent over them, squinting his eyes and moving the candlestick farther away. There were long silences as he seemed to hear other voices, see invisible beings. I almost held my breath but I could not wait long enough.

  The moments ticked by, stretching out as I waited—first boringly, then nervously, and finally agonizingly. Why did he not speak? What was he seeing? I dared not speak and literally break the spell.

  At length he covered his scrying glass with a black velvet cloth and put his convex mirror into a satin bag with embroidered symbols on it. He sank down on the cushioned bench that had been provided for him. His shoulders slumped as if an intolerable weight had been draped across them.

  “Tell me! Do not spare me!” I cried, breaking the silence.

  He raised his eyes to me, and the tortured look in them almost stilled my heart. “It has come at last,” he finally said.

  “What? What has come at last?”

  “The last battle. The one that has been waiting for you.”

  “The last battle?”

  “The supreme test,” he said.

  “But ... the Armada? Was that not the supreme test? Did it not come during 1588, the year foretold as the annus mirabilis, the year of prodigies and wonders?”

  “That was not it,” he said apologetically. “Would that it were.”

  “Is Spain invading again? Is that it? Was the Armada year of 1588 but a rehearsal?”

  “No. Spain will not come again, at least not in a form that is threatening.”

  “Ireland? Will the Irish unite under The O’Neill and invade us?”

&
nbsp; “No. Ireland will be vanquished.”

  “France? Will France turn on us, revert to being our old enemy?”

  “No,” he said.

  “What, then?” I cried. “I have named all our enemies. Is it another plague? Or religious convulsion?”

  “None of those things, but you are getting closer.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “You are now naming enemies that are already on our soil and can undermine us.”

  “Oh, John, torment me no longer! Name the thing!”

  “Civil war,” he said. “One Englishman against another.”

  The War of the Roses. The succession! “After my death—there will be fighting about who inherits the crown?”

  “No. Not that. The crown will pass peacefully.”

  “Enough riddles! Speak plain!”

  “I cannot see quite clearly enough to speak plain. There will be a battle, Englishman against Englishman. A battle not over who wears the crown but over whether there should be a crown at all. And before that, a rebellion against you. Mordred will arm, will challenge you. And as Arthur’s heir, you must withstand him. That is your supreme test. There will be a great battle, and the outcome—I cannot see it here. The glass went murky, the mirror clouded. It was as if to say, It has not been decided yet.”

  “Camelot must die,” I said. “That is the story. It was too perfect to last. And so it went down in rebellion, disillusionment, and perfidy. Arthur was betrayed, and by those he loved and trusted most—Lancelot and Guinevere.”

  “It was not Lancelot who led the battle against him, but Mordred.”

  “But it was the betrayal of Lancelot that set it all in motion, that ruined the fellowship and code of the Round Table.”

  “Something always sets it in motion,” he said. “In the Garden, it was the serpent. In Camelot, Lancelot. Here”—he paused—“you must identify it. But I daresay you recognize it.”

  Yes. I recognized it. “Must there be a true battle, or can it be staved off?”

  “There will be an actual battle. What I see is not a symbol but an actual clash of arms.”

  How could that be? Essex was under arrest. But what of his followers? They gathered in his courtyard, milling and shouting. “And you cannot see who will prevail?”

  “No, Your Majesty.”

  “Or do you see it and wish to spare me the knowledge that I will be defeated?”

  “No, I honestly do not see it. Just the noise and smoke of battle.”

  “Who, then, do you see wearing the crown when the civil war starts?” Perhaps that was a way of finding out the winner.

  “No one I recognize. A man.”

  “Not James?”

  “No. Not James.”

  “His son, then?”

  “Unfortunately he does not wear a sign, and I cannot recognize him. He has most likely not been born yet.”

  “Oh, God! Is there no end to this?” A cry wrung from my heart.

  “What do you mean, Your Majesty?”

  “I mean, will the crown never be safe and reside in peace?”

  “Nothing is safe,” he said. “But your rule will be remembered as Camelot, a golden age for England.”

  “Golden, and lost,” I said. “I would rather have iron and endurance.”

  “That is what makes you a great monarch,” he said. “You are not dazzled easily. If at all.”

  “Oh, I appreciate the value of what shines and scintillates. I have made shrewd use of it. But I am not deceived as to its essence, and its worth. There needs to be iron underneath.”

  “I have grieved you,” he said.

  “How can the truth grieve me? The truth is the truth.”

  “The truth can be ugly.”

  “Not as ugly as the Gorgon. She need not turn us to stone, render us unable to move. I shall be prepared. I shall watch for the arrival of Mordred. Now I know he is coming.”

  After he left, I sank down on my chair. Was I ready for this? There had been no battle for the crown since my grandfather met Richard on Bosworth Field. That was over a hundred years ago. But no one had forgotten it. The fence around Henry’s tomb in Westminster, which I had just seen, showed the lost crown in the bush, waiting for him to retrieve it. Recent secret correspondence about the succession—captured by Robert Cecil—speculated on who might inherit my crown and said it was not likely to fall into a bush for want of claimants.

  No one had forgotten what was presumed to be the last battle. But now Dee saw that it was not so; it was only the penultimate one.

  74

  LETTICE

  March 1600

  The winter was unrelenting, gripping us in mastiff’s teeth, tearing our cheeks and hands with piercing cold and icy wind. In spite of gloves and creams, I quite forgot that my hands were not rough, red, and scaly in their natural state. We continued to huddle in Essex House, conserving our fuel, lighting so few candles that it was perpetual night inside. Only when Will came to rehearse did I bring out all the lights, pretending that we lived this way all the time. But he did not come often, and the rest of the time we lived in gloom. Will was in high demand that season, performing for the Queen at Christmas, polishing several new plays, and struggling with his Hamlet drama. Perhaps that was how he kept moving forward. He was even embroiled in some lawsuits and quarrels among his acting company. They lost the leading man who played buffoonish comic parts, and his replacement called for a different type of script. An acting company is never stable, so it seems. A bit like court.

  Robert recovered from his bad attack of flux, slowly gaining back strength. So I was told. I was not allowed to see him, and neither was Frances, in spite of her pleas. His brush with death had intensified his religious mania, and now he spent hours in prayer and ecstasies, just as he had once spent hours choosing clothes and drinking. He did nothing in moderation. The Queen, meanwhile, seemed to have stashed him at York House and quite forgotten him, carrying on one of her diplomatic endeavors with visiting Dutch envoys.

  Then, suddenly, as was her wont, she issued orders that Sir Egerton was to be relieved of his duty as Robert’s keeper, returning Robert to Essex House under the supervision of Sir Richard Berkeley. He was still forbidden to leave his house and not permitted visitors. We were all to vacate, immediately, and find other quarters.

  “Where does she expect us to go?” I asked Frances. “I have no other lodging in London.”

  “She wants us out of London, I daresay,” said Frances. “We can move to Barn Elms. It is not so far out of the city.”

  “Or go to Wanstead. But that is even farther.” Forget Drayton Bassett! I might as well be in Cádiz there.

  “Charles Blount has a house in the city,” said Christopher. “It isn’t grand, but at least it’s within the city walls. He’s in Ireland, after all. Since Penelope is living there, how can she deny her mother and family a place?”

  “Very easily. She can say there’s no room. And there probably isn’t.”

  “Better a small house with some furniture than a big one that’s bare,” said Christopher.

  “My, that sounds biblical,” I said. I said it lightly, but lately Christopher had been carrying a rosary tucked in his sleeve. I was warning him that I had seen. “So, will we invite ourselves to move in with Penelope?”

  “We have no choice, if we want to stay in London. Do we?” asked Christopher.

  “Yes!” said Frances. “We must be near Robert!”

  It had come, inevitably, that moment when appeals are made to one’s children. I was in need now. And these, my children, would now have to bear my helplessness and my supplications.

  Penelope lived in the northwestern part of the city, in a large house alongside the wall between Cripplegate and Aldersgate. It was a relatively quiet area, protected from street noise and traffic by its large walled garden.

  “Penelope!” I called, rapping quickly on the thick wood door. The others lined up behind me, well-dressed beggars.

  She herself open
ed the door, smiling. “My displaced clan gathers,” she said. “A pity it is for this reason that you come under my roof.”

  Did she mean it was a pity that her scandalous liaison with Charles Blount meant that they entertained few official visitors, or that it was a pity we were in this plight? Both, perhaps. “It is long overdue,” I said, stepping in and motioning to the others to follow. In came Frances; her elder daughter, Elizabeth; nine-year-old Robert; the nurse, clutching the new baby; and Christopher, ill at ease at having to ask for charity.

  “I welcome you,” said Penelope. “It has been lonely here since Charles went to Ireland. Elizabeth Vernon went to live with her husband at Drury House. Of course, a house full of children is never quiet, but they are hardly true company.”

  Since she now had nine children, ranging in age from thirteen to the crib, she knew whereof she spoke. Children filled one space while leaving others empty. “You are as fertile as the orchards of Normandy,” I said. “And as perpetually lovely. No matter how many years an apple tree has borne fruit, its blossoms every spring rival the youngest trees. And so do you, my daughter.”

  I was proud of her, as confounded by her beauty as everyone else.

  She looked impatient, annoyed at having her most noticeable feature remarked upon yet again. “Come, I’ll show you your rooms.”

  The house was larger inside than it looked. The downstairs rooms stretched long and narrow back toward the private garden, light flooding in from the side windows; upstairs there were many chambers, some of them spacious and others snug under slanting eaves. It had an air of sunny contentment. Lord Rich’s house was grander, but Penelope had lived in it without any contentment at all. I put my things down on the bed with a clean feeling of relief to be in a simple, ordered place, a place with no memories.

  That night at dinner we spoke in hushed voices. All the children had finally been settled in their beds.