Elizabeth I

by Margaret George

  All told, he wrote over twenty letters. That he was in pain I believed, and regretted it. But what sort of pain? Was it the pain of public embarrassment or the pain of being denied the things he felt were his due? Or the fear of financial ruin? He owed huge amounts of money, all advanced to him on the security of his income from the sweet wines. While he had been imprisoned he had been out of his creditors’ reach, but now that he was a free man he was at their mercy. But he had had his chance to enjoy the wine license, and now the time for that was past. England needed the money more than he did.

  Francis Bacon, perhaps feeling guilty for his part in the hearing, pleaded for him and commented on his eloquent appeals. I merely said that I had been touched by them until I saw that they were just ploys to get his hands on the sweet wine license again.

  “He warbles like a nightingale, but his song is only to trick me, Master Francis,” I said.

  “He is destitute,” said Francis.

  “I forgave him the debt of ten thousand pounds he owed the Crown when it was obvious he couldn’t repay it. He should be grateful for that,” I said. “I never forgave any other man’s debt.”

  “Desperate men seek desperate remedies,” he said.

  I looked at him. His smooth brown eyes gave nothing away. “Is that a threat? And does it come from you or from him?”

  “It is merely an observation, Your Majesty. There are certain animals that will not attack unless they have exhausted all other means. Some snakes are that way—they must be provoked and cornered before they strike. But their poison is deadly.”

  “He has missed his opportunity. If he had meant to strike, he should have done it when he had an army at his back. Now he has not the means.” But even as I said it so certainly, I knew assassination did not require an army, just someone close at hand. “I know he has been in correspondence with James in Scotland,” I said.

  Francis’s face registered his surprise. “He has?”

  “Don’t pretend you didn’t know. If I do, so do you. He wanted James to send an ambassador here, along with troops, and set him free. Then, I suppose, he planned to ingratiate himself with James, having exhausted my bounty and my goodwill. Of course, I would have to have been removed first.”

  Now Francis looked truly horrified. “I am sure—I am sure he had no such thing in mind.”

  “Then why did he ask Lord Mountjoy to proclaim his case and then return from Ireland with troops to back him up?”

  “I know nothing of this.” His expression told me he was telling the truth. His falling-out with Essex was permanent, then, and he was barred from his confidence.

  “Mountjoy has tasted his own success now and is not tempted to give it up to bolster his old friend. Away from England and the soft, subtle wheedlings of Essex and the strident ones of his mistress, he has become his own man. A man just as selfish and ambitious as any other. His way to power does not lie in being subservient to Essex but in bringing home peace—what was the phrase?—broached on his sword. Mountjoy is no fool. I always liked him.”

  “This is all very ugly,” said Francis.

  “This is what court is behind the masques and sonnets,” I said. “I wonder that you did not write an essay about it.”

  “Even I did not comprehend the venality of it,” he said. “But I will remedy that.”

  “No one will believe you,” I said. “Generation after generation of young people will have to learn this lesson firsthand.” I sighed. “Look you, Francis, I have not given up all hope that Essex might be redeemed. But first he must accept his situation and not seek to evade it. For once corruption has set in, in any entity, if it is fed, it grows. It must be purged out. Hence, I will not feed him with more corrupting income.”

  “I bow to your wisdom, Your Majesty,” he said.

  “Don’t mock me, Francis.”

  “I do not. Perhaps you see what I cannot. I see only a broken man pursued by angry creditors. You see danger. You cannot afford to be wrong; I can.”

  “You understand my position.”

  “But you must understand his. He is not evil but an Icarus—he has flown recklessly too near the sun, melting his waxen wings, hurling him to earth.”

  “His life lends itself to such poetic interpretations. That may be his lasting legacy.”

  To fill Marjorie’s empty place, Catherine’s younger sister Philadelphia came to court. She had served me in the past and I welcomed her back. She was very different from Catherine, having spent about half of her life on the Scottish borders, where her father and then her husband commanded the western marches. They were the Barons Scrope of Bolton, whose castle had first housed Mary Queen of Scots. Philadelphia had taken on some of the rough talk and mannerisms of the north, but I always found them refreshing after the simpering niceties of court talk.

  She took to pestering me to restore Essex, or at least grant him the sweet wine license so he could repay his debts.

  “What a charming advocate he has,” I said. “He is fortunate in that way. But you don’t know him as I do. He is not broken yet. To rule an unruly horse, you must deprive him of his provender.”

  “But if he appears at the Accession Day tilts, will you look gently upon him?” she asked.

  There had been rumors that he was planning a spectacular reappearance at the tilts, since they were not technically at court. Icarus would soar again, or try to. “I will certainly look upon him. In what manner I cannot say.”

  How like him it would be to swoop down at the tournament and act as if nothing had changed.

  The day, November 17, drew near. We had had a warm, dry autumn, and the weather held, to everyone’s relief. I received many letters and gifts of congratulation on my forty-second anniversary of accession. The French king sent a public letter of praise, along with two horses. The estates of the Netherlands sent a dark, carved cabinet with ivory insets. We had just won a joint victory over the Spanish at Nieuport, and the end of the seemingly endless war was in sight. Sixteen hundred had been a good year after all.

  The court was swarming with visitors for the celebration. I had decided to order a new gown for the occasion, something that would seem more martial than usual. I wanted the bodice to imitate the decorated breastplates of ancient Rome, with the pattern outlined in beads and pearls. The theme of the tilts would be victory.

  A few days beforehand I received another letter from Essex. He congratulated me on the day and begged once again to be forgiven. “I sometimes think of jousting in the tiltyard and then I remember what it would be to come into that presence, out of which both by your own voice I was commanded, and by your own hands thrust out,” he hinted, inviting me to respond with an invitation. I did not.

  It was the last letter he wrote me.

  76

  LETTICE

  November 1600

  I walked between the lines of clothes flapping, drying in the brisk November wind. Since our return to Essex House, I had had to take on many of the former staff’s duties. We simply could not afford to have all the servants back. This particular chore I did not mind. I liked feeling the stiff cleanliness of the linens and the shirts; it reminded me of my time in Holland when I had been in charge of that task for the family. Everyone in Holland seemed to wash all the time; the billowing laundry on a thousand lines mirrored the sails on their boats constantly plying the harbor. The sharp, fresh smell of the clothes as I pulled them off the line made me feel clean as well.

  I tried not to think of other things, just pluck the laundry off and fold it into a large basket. There is a balm in mindless tasks. So from dawn to night I tried to keep my mind from wandering to our plight. That, of course, was impossible.

  Hoisting the basket up onto one shoulder, I made my way back into the house. I was on the river side, where I heard no street noises, just the sound of the Thames flowing past. Inside the house I would scurry into the laundry quarters to deposit my basket. Thank God I did not have to iron. I had not the skill. We sent the ruffs out to be
professionally starched and ironed, but the rest was done here.

  As I came back through the main room, I saw Robert sitting in a thronelike chair, gripping its arms and looking morose. Christopher was hunched on a stool beside him, speaking in a low voice directly into his ear.

  “A fine day,” I said, attempting to sound cheerful.

  They looked up, annoyed to be interrupted. “Yes, fine,” Robert muttered. He was still thin from his ordeal; his strength had been broken. A spindly hand extended from his sleeve, fretfully peeling an apple.

  “It is November 16,” said Christopher. “We wait.”

  “Oh, Robert.” My heart, which I had thought completely numb, was stabbed with pain for him. “It is too late for you to go, even if you heard from her. You have no costume, no pageant car, no presentation shield.”

  “If I heard, I could create something overnight. If I heard—”

  “You must shut that window and stop watching out of it.”

  “He has crawled, humiliated himself, and been ground underfoot. I agree with you—if he is to be a man, he must stop.” Christopher looked disgusted, scowling at Robert as he dropped the peeling knife. Christopher grabbed it up and with one swipe, cut the peel off. “Here.” He thrust the apple back at Robert.

  “You are right,” said Robert, turning the apple over and over as if he did not know what to do with it. “I always hated the tilts anyway. The expense. The time wasted coming up with a theme. To hell with them. All I want is the renewal of the sweet wines license. Now that she’s insulted me, she can turn around and give that to me. Perhaps that is why she has been so publicly unkind.”

  “You are a dreamer, Robert. You always have been. She’s unkind because she’s a mean woman and enjoys it,” said Christopher.

  “She’s more complicated than that,” I said. “Our best course is to keep silent.”

  “I have no choice. I cannot write her again.”

  “Damn right you cannot!” said Christopher.

  Just then Robert’s steward, Gelli Meyrick, appeared. He was scowling, as usual. He was intensely loyal but a hothead. “Why are you cowering indoors like a crone?” he said. Close behind him was Henry Cuffe, the scholarly secretary for foreign correspondence. He knelt and delivered a letter to Robert, who took it with trembling hands.

  “Well?” demanded Christopher and Gelli.

  “I shall open it in private,” said Robert, pressing it against his chest.

  “Don’t you trust us?” they asked.

  “I am entitled to read a private letter in privacy!” said Robert, rising and drawing his robe around him. He stalked off to his bedchamber.

  I turned hopefully to Cuffe. If no invitation came from nearby, at least our foreign allies remembered our existence. “Can you tell me—” I began.

  “I am sorry,” he said. “I am not at liberty to tell you anything about the letter.”

  “It had a royal seal on it,” said Gelli. “We are not fools. It is not from France, nor from Sweden, nor Russia. Where else but Scotland?”

  “About time,” grunted Christopher. “After Robert has had his little show of independence, he’ll let us read it. Perhaps—perhaps—”

  “Don’t even say it,” I warned him. The whole dalliance with James VI seemed pointless to me. It was so obvious that James would do nothing to jeopardize his standing with Elizabeth, and certainly not for a disgraced courtier. Yes, James was growing impatient, but Robert could not help his case.

  I left them. Increasingly I was preferring the company of Frances and the grandchildren to these frustrated, petulant men. The siege of ill fortune had transformed her into a creature who showed sparks of fire. She had allowed the marriage of her daughter to Roger Manners, the Earl of Rutland, to go forward, but only because the headstrong girl fancied herself in love with him.

  “It is very difficult to argue with a fifteen-year-old,” I had agreed with her. It did not get any easier, I thought, but I did not tell her that. Penelope and Dorothy had hardly become docile and passive as the years passed.

  “Perhaps I’ll have another daughter to replace her,” said Frances as we had commiserated over unmanageable daughters. That was her way of announcing that she and Robert were expecting again. They had consoled each other, then, in the ancient way after he had been allowed his freedom.

  I was pleased to hear it. I trotted out the old phrase “Just as long as it is healthy—”

  “Oh, yes, I am feeling quite well,” she said. “God forgive me, I know it is selfish, but it has been my delight to have Robert home and not roaming.”

  Little Rob, his namesake, was nine now but seemed to prefer indoor pursuits to outdoor ones. Perhaps he would become a scholar or a church-man. I would not be sad to see the end of the martial ambitions of the Devereux men. Rob, with his mop of golden curls, was a dreamy boy who liked making up stories. He was the same age my Robert had been when his father died and he inherited the title of earl. Perhaps he would have the privilege of pursuing the things that suited his nature best, rather than being forced to make his way prematurely in the world.

  Frances had laid aside her black clothes when Robert was freed but still dressed plainly. Since we were not invited anywhere, the lack of means to buy fancy clothes was not obvious. We passed the afternoon in quiet conversation, sipping heated wine and nibbling on little cakes. We both pretended we would have it no other way.

  One always imagines that the days that change one’s life must be marked with something extraordinary in nature—storms and lightning, darkness at noon, and so on. In truth they are indistinguishable from any other, which is one reason we feel mocked, as if the world is telling us we are inconsequential. The day that we got word of the Queen’s decision about the sweet wines was a dull November day, cold but not overly so, drizzling but not pouring. She did not even deliver the verdict to us but let it trickle to Essex House by general gossip. The man delivering cabbages and onions to our kitchen said to the cook, “Pity about the sweet wines.” She asked him what he meant and he said, “That the Queen is keeping them for herself. I heard it at the market.”

  Later a blacksmith confirmed it, having heard it on the street. Then, with darkness already falling, a bulletin from court, from Secretary John Herbert. He informed us of various decisions taken that week, regulations for the distribution of grain, a change in the day the swans were to be marked, increased fines for garbage in the city, and then, oh yes, Her Majesty was reserving the revenues of the duty on sweet wines for the Crown, as she wished to spare her loyal and beloved subjects any further taxation. I kept staring at the paper, rereading it, seeing words but rejecting their meaning. It could not be. But it was. The words remained on the page, not fading or changing no matter how many times I read them.

  We were ruined. Ruined. We could not survive. We owed more than we could ever repay now. They would take us to Marshalsea Prison as debtors, and there we would die. I stumbled into my room and groped for a candle; suddenly I was afraid to sit in the dark.

  Oh, there’ll be dark enough in that cell, my terrified mind shouted. But you’ll want it dark, so you can’t see the filth and the rats in the straw. I was shaking all over. Until that moment, I had not known I had trusted the Queen to show mercy at the last minute, had never really allowed myself to live in any other alternative. “Oh, my God,” I whispered. I was beyond tears, beyond any remedy to relieve the shock and fear.

  “Damn her to hell and flames!” Christopher was standing in the doorway, a bottle in his right hand. He raised it and drank directly from it in long slurps. “Curse her evil bones!” He was drunk. He slouched into the room and knelt down beside me. “What’re ya sitting here in the dark for?” His breath stank of ale. He was no help; was there no help anywhere?

  “I’m afraid, Christopher,” I said. “The darkness seemed kinder than the light.”

  He grabbed my sleeve. “Sittin’ here like a snivelin’ coward, that’s not my wife. Here, have some.” He thrust the bottle up to
my mouth, but I turned away.

  “You oughta be happy. It’s all out in the open now. We donna have to pretend. She’s our enemy, that’s that.”

  Who was this coarse, simplistic stranger? When had he replaced my Christopher? “No, she’s not our enemy,” I said. “She is merely looking out for herself.” I paused. “I doubt—I doubt we are even enough in her mind for her to call us enemies. We are negligible now, no one who needs to be considered.” I was back where I had been as a child in exile, a nobody. But no, our family was important enough we had to go into exile. That meant something.

  His only response was to take a swig of the liquor.

  “Money, it’s only money that matters,” I said. “Blood, service, bravery, loyalty—without money, they don’t matter.” What good Robert’s noble lineage and small amount of royal blood? The rats at Marshalsea would not heed them.

  “You just now see that? Even a child knows that.” He found another candle to help the feeble one I had lit, and suddenly the light was doubled. “Maybe it isn’t her,” he said. “Maybe her mind has been poisoned.”

  “Don’t console yourself with that delusion,” I said. “A weak king or queen can be the pawn of bad counselors and advisers, but this one is a pawn of no one. Never has been.” Oh, she had been clever and self-possessed ever since I had known her, outwitting those in power with ease even as a young princess. I wished I had shared that trait. Instead, I saw now, I had been a good schemer but a poor strategist, unable to plan for contingencies. But what good did it do me to recognize that now? It was too late to help and only served to deepen my despair.

  “We’ll see,” he said ominously. Then he reeled out of the room.

  How long I sat there I do not know. I heard the street cries dying down as curfew was rung and the night deepened. Finally my shaking stopped. I should go to Robert. No, I should leave him his privacy. I should not barge in on him and Frances. Stumbling toward my bed, I lay down to obliterate the day and wake to another.