Elizabeth I

by Margaret George

  “Even the skies hold back their anger for you,” said Sir Thomas.

  “Or release it on cue, as they did for the Armada,” said Admiral Charles.

  “It was an English wind,” agreed Raleigh.

  The rain having blown itself out to sea, the next day was fair. Sir Thomas had planned an outdoor fete, so it was hurriedly arranged, lest the weather prove fickle. The country theme continued, with long tables set up in the adjoining meadow and servers dressed as shepherds and dairymaids pouring local ale and syllabub from crockery pitchers and presenting bowls of possets, curds, and clotted cream for fresh-picked strawberries. An enormous warden-pear pie was carried out, its pastry emitting steam, and hastily carved up. Afterward there would be dancing for the young people under the trees and games for the higher ranking. The central amusement was a huge cut-glass tub brought in by a man costumed as a mariner, who announced, “In order to fish, one needs calm waters. These our gracious Queen has provided for us—security, quiet, and bounty.” He placed the tub on the table and withdrew. Twenty or so red ribbons trailed over the side, and the ladies were to take a ribbon and pull their prize “fish” from the depths of the tub. Each prize had a verse that miraculously addressed the concerns of its mistress.

  Eurwen, being the youngest, was most excited about the prize, while the novelty of the stunt had worn thin with more experienced women. She extracted a jeweled hair comb and a verse that proclaimed her fortune did not lie with a dark-eyed man.

  “How dark do you think his eyes should be to exclude him?” she asked anxiously.

  “At least as dark as coal,” I assured her. “They should be so black you cannot see the pupils.” That left in most of the men she was likely to encounter.

  Catherine, Helena, and the rest pulled their prizes out and dutifully examined them. I extracted a pair of delicate rose-colored gloves that fit me perfectly. The verse attached to them merely proclaimed that I was prudent and had many admirers.

  “A whole world full of them!” said Sir Thomas, peering over my shoulder.

  “Indeed, Your Majesty has become a sort of eighth wonder,” said Raleigh. “Forget the pyramids and the hanging gardens.”

  “Are you saying I am as old as those things?”

  “No, but you are as mighty as they. Besides, they have all vanished but the pyramids. Where lives the man who can stroll through the hanging gardens? Can a sailor still be guided by the lighthouse of Alexandria? No. But you will survive longer than they have.”

  Perhaps in memory. Long ago I had stated that my only desire was “to do some act that would make my fame spread abroad in my lifetime, and, after, occasion memorial forever.” It had been one of those offhand comments that, later, I realized was more revealing than I had meant it to be.

  “I shall choke on my clotted cream if these flatteries continue,” I said.

  “I have another gift for Your Majesty.” I turned to see John Donne standing behind my chair. “It addresses this subject.” He looked around furtively and withdrew a paper from his doublet.

  “Thank you, John.” Just then I saw Sir Thomas glowering at him, and before I could open the paper, John scurried away.

  It was entitled “The Autumnal,” and it began, “No spring nor summer beauty hath such grace, / as I have seen in one autumnal face.”

  I jerked my head up. He had dared to say it, dared to say what everyone pretended was not true. But the phrase “one autumnal face” ... What a harmonious sound. And was it really so frightening? Did we not celebrate autumn? My eyes darted down the page. “Here, where still evening is; not noon, nor night” ... “If we love ... transitory things, which soon decay, age must be loveliest at the latest day. / But name not winter faces, whose skin’s slack, lank, as an unthrift’s purse ...” He had not called me a winter face but an autumnal one. He differentiated between them—one desirable, the other pitiable.

  Sir Thomas gently tugged at the paper. “Do not read anything he writes,” he said. “He has proved an untrustworthy man. I mean to dismiss him after this visit.”

  “Why, Thomas, what do you mean?” He had seemed diligent and intelligent.

  “A climber, a man who does not know his place! He has abused my trust and eloped with the niece of my late wife—a woman far above him in station. If he sought to make his fortune that way, he is sorely disappointed. Our families have cut them both off. And he will lose his position. Let the lovers stew on that!”

  “You are not very poetic, Sir Thomas. And here your new wife is a sponsor of literary efforts. I wonder that she does not take the young lovers’ part.”

  “Marriage is not a matter of love but of necessity and common sense,” he said. Spoken like a man who had lost two wives—both dearly loved—to death, and now barred the door against further loss. It was not only Pharaoh who hardened his heart. And it was not only a face that made someone autumnal.

  “Think before you punish him,” I said. “Remember your own youth.”

  That night the rains returned, driving sheets that made it hard to see out the windows. The steady sound of it, beating as if on bronze, drummed into our ears.

  “It does not bode well for the rest of the Progress,” I said to Catherine and Helena as we prepared for bed. “Perhaps we should give it up. It is hard enough to house a royal Progress, but in foul weather it is too great a strain.”

  “It’s July,” said Catherine. “And did it not rain on the fifteenth? St. Swithin’s Day?”

  “I believe you are right,” said Helena. “I knew it then. I knew we were in trouble.”

  “We should cut our travels short and return home,” I said.

  Catherine stood closer to me. “My dear, I want to suggest another, private Progress later in the year. Do you remember, we were going to visit Hever?”

  “Yes. We talked about it. We had never been there, for all that our mother and grandmother were born there. Thank you for reminding me. We should not delay, but go before winter.”

  “There is another who should join us, who belongs there.” Her round face, usually so placid, looked solemn. “You know who that is.”

  Yes. Lettice. I nodded.

  “She is as close to Hever and the Boleyns as we are.”

  I closed my eyes. The she-wolf. Wife of my despair, mother of my sorrow. But my cousin. Autumn. Was it time? Was it time for all that to be over? I had told Sir Thomas, “Think before you punish him. Remember your own youth.” Was I bound to obey my own orders? We did not have forever, and Leicester and Essex were as vanished as the hanging gardens. Soon we would follow them. “Very well,” I finally said. “You issue the invitation.” I could not bring myself to do it, but I could let our mutual cousin speak for me.

  After several more days of incessant rain, we took our leave of Harefield. Sir Thomas presented me with a multicolored cloak to represent a rainbow. “From St. Swithin,” he joked. “For there can be no rainbow without his rain.”

  91

  After I gave Catherine my order—or my blessing—for her to tender the invitation to Lettice, I did not refer to it again. We returned to Greenwich and I busied myself with the usual duties of the realm. Feeling more energetic than I had in ages, I went hunting after a ten-mile ride, causing much comment at court. I announced that I felt better than I had in twelve years. I went to bed feeling I did not need to rest at all.

  But when I awoke, oh, what a change. My legs ached and my knees felt as though they were encased in a brace that would not bend. As for my arms, I must have strained my shoulders, for they stung when I reached up. Catherine, who had long since given up vigorous hunting, inquired timidly if I felt as well upon arising as I had upon taking to my bed the night before.

  “Never better!” I said stoutly. “In fact, I think I shall take a long walk this morning. I cannot get enough fresh air.” Then I forced myself out to walk briskly through the orchard and up the rising hill behind the palace in full view of strolling courtiers, who remarked how vigorous Her Majesty was this mornin
g. Appearing so was my aim.

  The park, its big oaks framing both sides of the walk, rose to a goodly height. Resolutely I trudged on, not wanting to stop, but my legs were burning. I was puzzled by the extent to which the ride yesterday had affected me, causing aches and pains all over.

  Reaching the summit, I could look down at the river, see the many palace buildings huddled on the shore, and just see London upstream on the other side. Workshops, businesses, and homes all humming, creating the products and commerce that made the city prosperous. And this year, our improved harvest should end the poverty in the countryside; 1602 had been a good year. Why had I feared the new century?

  Invigorated, and the stiffness and aches disappearing from my limbs, I returned to the palace.

  That evening, sitting quietly in the privy chamber with my ladies, I leaned over to Catherine, whose head was bent over her reading.

  “Have you written the letter?” I asked in a low voice, not to be overheard by the others.

  She nodded. “Yes, dear Cousin.”

  “Have you had answer?”

  “Yes, while you were out walking. It came from Wanstead, where she has retired.”

  “Let me see it.”

  Obediently Catherine rose and went to her little chest, drawing out an envelope, its seal broken. Wordlessly she handed it to me.

  Lettice would beg to be excused. Lady Essex—Lady Leicester—Mistress Blount—would plead ill health, or a conversion to perpetual prayer. And I would not have to see her, would not have to act on my impulse to settle all unresolved matters in my life. The urge to do so, brought on by a combination of sentiment and fear of time running out, had dissipated. Did I not feel better than I had in twelve years? That changed everything.

  I opened it and read, “Lettice Knollys is grateful to accept Her Majesty’s gracious invitation to visit their ancestral castle together. May God have her in his keeping until the day we meet there.” Lettice Knollys, her girlhood name by which I had first known her. She was laying the rest aside, like an old gown. Was it a ploy?

  But I was weary of trying always to interpret the motives of others, when knowing my own was difficult enough. She had said yes. She would come. We would meet in the courtyard where our ancestors had played together as children. I would try to look out through young eyes, when the world was fresh and unspoiled.

  We set out on a bright October day. St. Swithin’s rains were long past, but their legacy was a deep greenness lingering long past its time in meadows and grass. Fruits had swelled, drinking up the bounty, and this year’s apples were bigger than tennis balls, pears were the size of a burgher’s purse, blackberries in the brambles, sweet, glistening globes. Hever Castle was thirty miles south from London toward Kent and equally far from the south coast. It lay in a blessed, protected part of the country.

  There were hundreds, no, thousands, of little castles and moated manor houses in the land. There was really nothing remarkable or unusual about Hever Castle. My mother was born here; my father pursued her here in the heat of his ardor. After his failed fourth marriage to Anne of Cleves, he gave it to her, but she never lived here. She preferred being closer to London. At her death it was purchased by a wealthy Catholic family, the Waldegraves.

  “She will meet us here?” I asked Catherine, for the fifth time.

  “Yes. She said it was easier for her to travel directly from Wanstead, it being on the east side of London.”

  Like me, she was obviously nervous about the meeting and had, sensibly, shortened her time with us by traveling there on her own.

  “When did she plan to arrive?”

  “She said the sixteenth.”

  It was only the fourteenth. We would have time to explore Hever by ourselves first. Just as well.

  “Look! There it is!” Catherine sat up straight and pointed to a structure in the distance. The sun hit the moat so that I saw only a sharp, shining rectangle. What it framed was not visible.

  I felt my heart rise. My father used to blow his hunting horn from this crest, to let everyone know he was almost there. I felt apprehension as I approached. I did not know what would happen next.

  We rode slowly down into the dale, crossing the little bridge over the river Eden, and as we did so, the reflection of the moat shifted to reveal the stones of the castle glowing honey colored, shimmering on its tiny man-made island. It beckoned, promising beauty and secrets within.

  “I think we have found Astolat,” murmured Catherine. “Is the Lily Maid inside?”

  It did look as I had always imagined an Arthurian castle would—small, contained, exquisitely lovely, with a high keep where a maiden could look out and see her knight below. “I do not think your grandmother Mary or my mother qualifies as a lily maid,” I said with a laugh, and the spell was broken. Inside these walls had lived two very human girls, neither of them pining away for lost loves.

  We clattered across the heavy wooden drawbridge, our attendants following. Ahead loomed the great gate with its triple portcullis, raised now but with teeth gleaming.

  Sir Charles Waldegrave, the present owner, stood at the entrance to welcome us. He was a tall man, as grave as his name. He bowed low, lower than was necessary. He led our horses through the thick gate into the courtyard.

  There was little space in the courtyard; it had shrunk when modern apartments, hugging the old defensive walls, had been built. Half-timbered structures ringed the courtyard, making it look like a narrow London street.

  I stood a moment, looking. Could I have been here once before? It felt familiar. But even as I thought it, the memory slid away and was gone.

  “It is my honor to welcome you,” Charles was saying. “How long has it been since you have visited this family seat?”

  “Once when I was very young I saw it from the outside, but that’s all,” said Catherine. “I was born after it left the family. But it lingered long in our imaginations.”

  “I may have come here once,” I told him, “but how and when I cannot tell you.” Had I seen Mary Boleyn here? Had she brought me here to see my grandparents? They had died not long after my mother. Was that why it was vague to me?

  “If stones could recount their stories ...” He smiled. “Let me show you to your quarters. I warn you, for all that Hever housed a queen, it was before she was queen, so it is not very queenly....”

  “You need not apologize, Sir Charles,” I assured him.

  He housed us on the second floor, in the west wing, overlooking the orchard and, beyond that, meadows. It was cozy, embracing. We settled ourselves. Our attendants would be housed beyond the moat in outlying buildings. We were alone—or as alone as a queen and her cousin could ever be. The tidy folded blankets and stand with its ewer and pitcher saw to our needs in the simplest manner. A plain candlestick sat on a polished table.

  I walked about the room, taking its measure.

  Something in my mother’s spirit had wanted to soar beyond this homely comfort and security, to seek adventure. It was not her parents who had driven her, but she herself.

  And Mary, her sister, progenitor of Catherine and Lettice? She may have danced and bedded with kings, but she had been content with an untitled soldier in the end. She had escaped ignominy but also immortal fame.

  The choice of Achilles: Go to Troy, have a brief life but eternal fame; stay home, have a long, safe, uneventful life but be forgotten. My mother and Achilles had chosen the brief but stirring life. When she was born, no one noted it, and no one was sure of the exact date today. When she died, the whole world knew. I would have made the same choice.

  “Thank you, Mother,” I murmured. “Thank you for your courage.”

  We passed a restful night. There was still another day before Lettice would join us. We explored the house and asked Sir Charles for the records. And all the while the shadows of former owners dogged our footsteps, doubles that followed us about.

  “Lettice will arrive tomorrow,” said Catherine as we readied for sleep.

 
“I know,” I said.

  “Are you ready to greet her?”

  As ready as my father had been when he rode to Hever, I supposed. “Yes,” I answered her. I blew out the candle and pulled the bed-curtains shut.

  92

  I slept more soundly than I had thought possible behind these old walls. I was untroubled by ghosts or dreams and awoke just before dawn, when any specters would have vanished.

  I thought of meeting Lettice after such a long time. Had I ever liked her, my younger cousin? We had once been close. I had known her as a child, her blazing red hair a tie between us, her spirit and daring still more of one. She was more like me than my half-sister Mary, whom at that time I was trying to soothe and reassure. Lettice did not have to do so; her parents left England rather than submit to the reintroduced Catholicism. As heir to the throne, I did not have that luxury. I had to stay here and survive.

  When it was safe to return, the Knollyses did so. Lettice was fifteen then. The girl who came to court to serve as my maid of honor was no longer the winsome child who had gone to Protestant Europe; now she was sensual and sly. She spent her time at court trying to captivate men, and soon she was married to Walter Devereux, the future Earl of Essex. Had she been like most others, that would have been the last of her.

  But she was not like all the others.

  I needed to see her, this creature whom my Robert Dudley had once held so dear, this renegade cousin who nonetheless mirrored me in so many ways. And together we needed to touch the base from which we both sprang, and which would explain much. That was why I had come.

  While waiting, Catherine and I crossed the drawbridge to stroll in the gardens outside. The water came up to the very edge of the walls, making the castle appear to float. On firm ground beyond the moat, there was an orchard and a formal garden, with flower beds and box borders and a worn sundial in its center.