by David Field
‘From whence came that suggestion?’ Elizabeth demanded sharply.
‘Kitchen talk only, Your Majesty. Actually, a little higher than the kitchen — some lowly clerk that Cecil keeps in his service, who travelled to Edinburgh with Cecil’s latest ferret and reported to my man on his return regarding the audience they had with Mary in Edinburgh.’
‘And why would Cecil’s clerk be reporting to your man?’ Elizabeth demanded, somewhat alarmed.
‘Perhaps “reporting” was too strong a word, Majesty. It seems that the two have become friendly while dining together in the Common Buttery and it came out in general conversation.’
‘Mind me to speak to Cecil regarding the loose tongue of his lowly bred clerk,’ Elizabeth replied.
‘Until you confided in me just then, Your Majesty, I had assumed that the reason for Leicester’s absence this evening and the occasion of my being honoured with a seat at your side, was that he was preparing to depart for Edinburgh. Or does Your Majesty intend to send him to face those rebellious Irish before he ascends the throne of Scotland? An alliance between Scotland and England would be most welcomed at this time, to defeat the rebellious Irish who have now crossed the sea to promote their outrageous demands in the west of that country.’
‘If that heralds a bid on your part to be commissioned to cross to Ireland with an army in my name, then save your breath, my Lord. I have already promised the Viscountess of Hereford that her husband shall be first considered for that honour.’
‘Was that at her request, or his, Your Majesty?’ Howard asked with a raised eyebrow.
‘It came from her, certainly, but surely she was simply passing on what he had authorised her to request?’ Howard inclined his head in an unspoken question and Elizabeth was hooked.
‘What means that silence, Norfolk — have I been deceived?’
‘Most certainly not, Majesty, in the sense that Lady Knollys without doubt wishes for her husband to be sent to Ireland. But one must ask why a wife would so eagerly seek, for her husband, an honour that might result in his death.’
‘She wishes him dead, say you?’ Elizabeth persisted, although horrified by what was being suggested.
‘Forgive me, Your Majesty — I speak too freely on occasions. But I remain ever mindful of your charge to your new Council, in your very first address to us, at Hatfield, when you commanded that we speak to you privily of any matter that might affect your throne.’
‘The Privy Councillor of whom Lettice Knollys is said to be enamoured — who is he?’
Howard bowed his head in the manner of one seeking absolution of sin. ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty, but even I dare not name him, given that he is so close to Your Majesty’s heart.’
‘Norfolk,’ Elizabeth demanded in a voice rising with panic, ‘I command you to tell me who has so engaged the heart of Lady Knollys that she has set about encompassing the death of her husband!’
‘I dare not, Your Majesty, in case I am mistaken, or misled by mere rumour. The gentleman in question is too close to the throne and so highly thought of by Your Majesty that he was recently ennobled.’
‘Leicester?’ Elizabeth all but screamed, then lowered her voice when she remembered the proximity of others. ‘You tell me that Robert Dudley is enamoured of Lady Knollys?’
‘Forgive me, Your Majesty — I may have been misinformed, or it may be that the lady’s affections are not returned, but I spoke only out of an awareness of my loyal duty to your royal person.’
XII
Elizabeth’s face was a mask of stern disapproval as the Audience Chamber doors were opened by two royal pages on her sharp command and in walked Robert Dudley with a broad smile. It faded instantly when two guards armed with halberds stepped out from where they had been waiting just inside the door and followed him down the carpet towards where the Queen sat on her throne on a raised platform. She was accompanied only by Blanche Parry, whose face clearly expressed her apprehension.
But Robert was not alone either. A few paces ahead of him walked a servant dressed in the bear and ragged staff livery that Robert and his brother Ambrose had adopted as a symbol of their descent from the Beauchamp Earls of Warwick.
‘Finally!’ Elizabeth announced loudly and sternly. ‘It seems that I have to order your arrest before you grace me with a response to my command that you attend Court. We shall begin, I think, with your explanation for ignoring my original command that you host the banquet to commemorate the Feast of St Thomas Aquinas. Then you might go on to justify — if you can — the five other occasions upon which you ignored my summons to attend Court.’
Robert replied, almost casually, ‘I was in Plymouth, Your Majesty.’
‘For six weeks?’ Elizabeth said petulantly. ‘I had messengers wearing the track bare between here and Kew, but all they could glean from your Steward was that you were “absent on the Queen’s business”. Since I have no recollection of commissioning you with anything other than your attendance here at Whitehall, what manner of business do you claim to have been engaged upon? And why in Plymouth?’
‘If Your Majesty would permit,’ Robert replied, unconcerned, as he nodded towards the servant a few paces ahead of him. ‘Matthew, please open the casket, in order that Her Majesty may view its contents without the need to bend forward.’
Matthew did as instructed and the lid of the casket opened backwards to reveal the fact that inside it was an impressive store of gold coins.
‘Ten thousand pounds, Your Majesty,’ Robert announced proudly. ‘The return on your original speculation of one tenth of that amount in the voyage of Master Hawkins. I was obliged to wait for three weeks in Plymouth while his small fleet was delayed by adverse winds, hence my protracted stay in a poxy inn that I could only recommend for further use as a prison chamber for unwanted visitors to our shores. I had left two days before the banquet, in the belief that Hawkins would be returning three days thereafter and I was anxious to secure Your Majesty’s due from the first sales of sugar, hence my early departure, which in the event proved to be far too early.’
Elizabeth’s face had softened from the moment that the casket had been opened and there was almost the hint of a smile as she looked back down the carpet, then gestured with her hand for the guards to step to the side, leaving Robert on his own.
‘Does this Master Hawkins intend to make further voyages?’ she asked.
Robert nodded. ‘He will set sail again next week, Your Majesty, although this time he does not seem to lack those with the necessary finance to act as his sponsors. Perhaps next time, although there is a more general matter that I would seek to raise with you, regarding broader explorations of the oceans. Perhaps in more intimate company?’
Elizabeth nodded, waved the guards out of the chamber, called for the pages at the door to bring wine and wafers, dismissed Blanche Parry from her presence and gestured Robert into the seat thereby vacated. Robert dismissed his servant, then walked onto the dais, stooped, leaned forward and kissed Elizabeth’s hand.
‘I’ve missed you, my love,’ he murmured.
‘That’s not all you’ve missed,’ Elizabeth replied tartly. ‘Thanks to your inaction regarding the advantageous marriage I arranged for you, the Scots Queen has now married another English noble.’
‘I had already heard,’ Robert nodded. ‘Some empty vessel from the northern realm. “Lord Darnley”, if I remember correctly. What did he have to recommend him, pray?’
‘You mean other than the fact that he was willing to marry her?’ came the sarcastic reply that he deserved. ‘For all the interest you showed, she might have been the daughter of a tanner or a fishmonger.’
‘Have I not always assured you that there is only one woman I would marry?’ Robert responded as he reached for her hand, only to see it hastily withdrawn into her lap.
‘So you have no interest in any other woman?’ Elizabeth asked innocently.
Robert shook his head. ‘No-one other than your beautiful self, as I have sought
to assure you all these years.’
Elizabeth blushed, but was clearly not fully convinced. ‘During your unexplained absence, I was advised that one of my Ladies had conceived a passion for you,’ she pouted.
Robert smirked. ‘I cannot be held responsible if another lady finds me more pleasing a prospect than you do, Lillibet. Perhaps you should accept my hand while it is still unengaged.’
‘Do not refer to your Queen by the name she was given by her first nursemaid,’ Elizabeth rebuked him. ‘And how may I be reassured that you have not returned the interest shown in you by Lettice Knollys?’
A look of alarm flitted across Robert’s face, to be hastily replaced by one of outrage. ‘Who has been filling your ears with such falsehood, pray?’
‘The man who replaced you as host at the banquet of St Thomas Aquinas, who has ever served me well.’
‘Norfolk?’ Robert demanded with a look of disdain. ‘He also serves himself well, if my information be correct. This piece of wet cloth who has married the Scots Queen is a northern noble, is he not? How can you be sure that it was not Norfolk who brought that about? He has ever sought to oppose my interests.’
‘You opposed your own interests, in not marrying Mary when you had the opportunity,’ Elizabeth reminded him. ‘As for Lord Darnley, he is higher born than you by many leagues, since his mother is my cousin the Countess of Lennox. Should he and Mary have progeny, they will have a claim on both crowns and you did not serve me well by spurning her hand.’
‘Even if I did it for love of you?’ Robert asked as he reached out for a hand that remained firmly in Elizabeth’s lap.
‘If you truly love me, pray tell me more of how the fortunes of State may be enriched by your sailor friend Hawkins,’ Elizabeth insisted. ‘This is what you wished to discuss privily, was it not and not your empty promises of love and devotion?’
‘They are not empty!’ Robert protested. ‘You did me wrong to tempt me with small favours in our youth and more recently, only to deny me your hand in marriage while I live a chaste life in your perpetual service.’
‘Enough, Robert!’ Elizabeth insisted. ‘Tell me more of Hawkins and his ventures.’
‘It is more his cousin, a man named Francis Drake,’ Robert explained. ‘I believe I may already have made mention of him and his ambitions to sail around the entire globe. He is convinced that by sailing west, beyond the Americas, he may continue to discover new lands that may yield their riches to England, thereby stealing a match on those arrogant Spaniards who believe that they rule the ocean. But he requires finance and would be greatly reassured and honoured if Your Majesty would be the first to donate to his cause. By this means, of course, any glory and prestige that he may enjoy will also be that of England and its beautiful Queen.’
‘Enough of the false and empty flattery, Robert. I would meet this man Drake when he has returned from his latest venture with Hawkins. Do you seek him out on his return and bring him to me. In the meantime, you are to remain here at Court until I say otherwise. And I shall ensure that Lady Knollys is not afforded any further opportunity to gaze upon what could, were it not for your stupidity, have become the King of Scotland. At least the man who now occupies that role can create no problems for England.’
However, the man in question was posing considerable problems for Mary as she sought to grapple with the issues arising from the growing Protestant clamour inside the nation of which she had made her handsome but dissolute husband the joint ruler. His only comfort to her, for a brief while anyway, was in the royal bed, which he lost no time in dominating with his seemingly endless sexual demands, even when it was confirmed that Mary was pregnant with their first child. When they disagreed on whether or not congress between them should continue, Darnley’s reaction was to strike her hard across the face and storm out on a drinking spree that lasted the best part of a week.
When Darnley’s outrageous behaviour became the talk of the Palace, Mary turned for advice to her trusted Private Secretary David Rizzio, on whom she became more dependent after the birth of her son James. Convinced that his wife was seeking sexual satisfaction with the hunch-backed little Italian, Darnley overpowered the guard to the chamber in which Mary and Rizzio were taking supper, dragging Rizzio out into the corridor, and stabbing him to death.
The murder of Rizzio at the hand of Darnley made him the most hated man in the entire country, even among ardent Catholics, who resented and deplored his treatment of their Queen. Mary came to rely more and more on the guidance and support of one of her leading Catholic nobles, James Hepburn, Earl of Bothwell.
Darnley was ill with smallpox and resting on medical orders in his house at Kirk O’Field when the house was blown apart by gunpowder barrels installed under his bedchamber. His body was later discovered in the garden, in circumstances that suggested that he had been strangled when he sought to escape from the wreckage. While few mourned his passing, such an outrage could not be allowed to go unpunished, and suspicion fell on Bothwell, not least because of his close association with Mary.
Mary was taken by Bothwell to his Borders castle at Dunbar, where she rewarded him with the titles of Duke of Orkney and Marquess of Fife, and a further three days after that they were married in accordance with Protestant rites that did nothing to calm the ire of even Mary’s Protestant subjects. Within a month the Scottish Parliament signed a petition demanding Mary’s abdication in favour of her infant son James and when she defied them and prepared for battle at Carberry Hill, on the eastern outskirts of Edinburgh, Bothwell fled the battlefield and eventually died in a Danish prison.
Mary herself was taken prisoner by the rebel Protestant lords and consigned to a gloomy damp existence in an island prison in Loch Leven, near Kinross.
News of all these momentous events was conveyed south to Cecil by Thomas Randolph, who had been sent back north, at Elizabeth’s request, following the marriage of Mary to Darnley. Cecil soon came to realise, to his horror, that Elizabeth was reluctant to chide Mary, or to make any overt gesture of support for Mary’s Protestant enemies in Scotland, because of any precedent it might set for one monarch to consort in the downfall of another. For all the assurance he had striven to give Elizabeth, and for all his hard work in securing her grip on the crown, his Queen seemed to be haunted by the events of her formative years, in which she had been tossed first one way and then another, by her vengeful and resentful older sister.
Cecil’s full attention was demanded when news reached the English Court that Mary Stuart, as she was now generally known, had escaped her island prison and made a final stand against her Scottish opponents at Langside, south of Glasgow. Following a humiliating second defeat, Mary fled south to Carlisle, where she threw herself on the mercy of her English cousin Elizabeth, who immediately summoned Cecil to her side.
‘What am I to do, Cecil?’ Elizabeth asked, in the same tone of naive desperation that she had employed on that first day at Hatfield. However, her wily old Secretary of State had seen the change in her during the intervening decade and the almost vicious mood swings of which she was capable if thwarted, and he trod carefully.
‘The woman is a threat to your throne, Your Majesty, and some might say a disgrace to royalty.’
‘Explain yourself, Cecil,’ Elizabeth replied with irritation in her voice. ‘She is accused of wicked deeds, for certain, but how do we know that those accusations are true? I myself, to judge by alehouse rudery, go to it with every noble at Court and yet I am innocent of such behaviour. And how can she threaten my throne when she is secure inside the walls of Carlisle Castle?’
Cecil sighed inwardly and resigned himself to explaining matters as if to a small child, while maintaining an air of respectful deference. ‘As to the latter, she is a Catholic princess of the Tudor line and as such could act as a rallying point for those who cannot accept the changes in our religious observances. As long as she remains alive, there will be those who would seek to engage her in plots against your throne.’
‘We should put her to death, say you?’ Elizabeth demanded, horrified.
Cecil shook his head. ‘Not at this stage anyway, Majesty. She has as yet demonstrated no desire to challenge your right to sit on the throne of England and indeed it is to be hers after your demise, is it not? Forgive me for raising the issue, Your Majesty, but Mary is ten years your junior and even should Your Majesty lead the long and healthy life for which we all pray daily —’
‘Dispense with the mealy-mouthed nonsense, Cecil, since your point is well made. But my offer to bequeath her the crown of England was on condition that she marry Robert Dudley. Not only did she not do that, but she married some dissolute oaf who was himself a disgrace to the royal lines from which he was descended, and one has to question whether his son — the young Prince James — is fit to rule England when his turn comes.’
‘Which brings us conveniently to my second point, Your Majesty,’ Cecil deftly persisted. ‘By her actions, Mary Stuart has dragged the image of royalty through the dirt. She married a wastrel, she had him murdered, then she married his murderer, with whom, rumour has it, she had already been engaging in adulterous carnal behaviour. This is hardly the public face that one would wish a scion of the Tudor line to display. Again forgive me, but might not her scandalous actions in some way reflect on the character of her English cousin?’
‘Have a care, Cecil,’ Elizabeth muttered threateningly. ‘Out of respect for your good offices I will assume that you meant to give me wise counsel, but do you mean to imply that I might be deemed capable of such deplorable actions?’
‘Far from it, Majesty, since I know you so well. But as you have had cause to learn to your considerable distress, there are those who would seek any opportunity to spread scandalous rumours abroad regarding your own private life.’
‘I do not have a private life, Cecil. But that does not, of course, prevent those ill disposed towards me from inventing one for me. And so I ask you this — should we take all these vile slanders against my royal cousin at their face value and therefore assume that they are true, or should we investigate them first, before condemning the woman without any opportunity to examine the facts? That has been my fate and I would not wish it upon anyone else, particularly not a fellow Tudor.’
