The Spymaster's Daughter

by Jeane Westin

  6. Mary, queen of Scots is portrayed in a mostly negative light in this novel. Have you read other books, or seen plays or movies, in which she comes across as a more appealing and sympathetic character?

  7. What do you think was really going on in Elizabeth’s relationship with the Earl of Essex?

  8. Elizabeth I is generally considered to be a great queen. How does her behavior in the novel support or undercut this idea? What qualities do you think a great ruler needs? Does a woman ruler need different qualities than a man?

  9. What do you think happens to Frances after the novel ends?

  10. Which actors would you choose to play the major characters in the movie version?

  11. How does the book compare to other Tudor-set novels you’ve read?

  READERS GUIDE

  On the night of her greatest triumph, England’s naval victory over the Spanish armada, Queen Elizabeth I suffered her most devastating loss: the death of her lifelong companion and lover, Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester. Overcome with grief, she locked herself in her room for days with Dudley’s last letter to her.

  This is the story of that great love….

  His Last Letter

  by

  Jeane Westin

  Available in paperback and ebook

  from New American Library.

  An excerpt follows…

  ELIZABETH

  September 1588

  Whitehall Palace, Westminster

  Bright explosions of fireworks arched over the Thames from Baynard’s Castle near the Strand to Billingsgate downriver, sending flashes of light through the tall open windows of Whitehall’s presence chamber. The shouts of Londoners could be heard as they wildly celebrated with gunpowder mixed with strong English ale. Their virgin queen Elizabeth’s glorious victory over Spain’s invincible armada had come in answer to her prayers.

  Trumpets and drums announced the queen’s approach from her privy chambers.

  Lord Treasurer William Cecil and the queen’s philosopher, Dr. John Dee, in court from his home in Mortlake, moved through the crowd of courtiers toward the chamber doors. Cecil produced a rare smile on his sober face. “I have seen Her Majesty in moments of triumph before, but none to match the glory of this victory, the jewel of her reign.”

  Dee nodded, his mouth scarcely visible within his full white beard that came to a point at his waist. “My lord, the victory was foretold in her stars…and in my lord the Earl of Leicester’s. It was inevitable.”

  “Good Doctor, although God commands the winds, perhaps Lord Howard and her majesty’s sea dogs, Hawkins, Drake and Frobisher, with their new naval guns and fast ships, aided the Almighty,” Cecil said in his slightly amused way, which showed a little of his disdain for Dee and all necromancers. Still, his gaze never left the chamber doors.

  Dee, in defense of his art, refused to yield. “I would have to cast the captains’ natal charts to determine what was written in their stars.”

  Before one could give further offense to the other, the huge double doors of the presence chamber opened and red-and-black-liveried yeoman guards entered, their tall pikes rigidly upright.

  Trumpeters and drummers marched in and stepped to the side, followed by a retinue of lords, ladies and gentlemen pensioners, and at last by the queen. Elizabeth paused for a moment just inside the chamber, dazzling in the torchlight from her jeweled scarlet slippers, past ropes of pearls looped about her white brocade gown, heavily embroidered with silver thread, to the great ruby-and-diamond crown glittering on her head. Her thoughts blazed through her eyes and were read by every courtier who knew her well: I will remember this day as the best of my life; my great triumph when Spain was no longer master of sea and land!

  She straightened her already near-rigid back, her corset allowing no real respite, nor did she want it. Although she loved her flowing gowns and dazzling jewels, her flower scents and the line of lovely ladies-in-waiting behind her, she never forgot that she was a queen before she was a woman.

  Elizabeth stopped near Cecil, who bowed, since he had her permission to stay on his feet and save his old knees. “My lord treasurer, today England takes its rightful place in the world.”

  “Your grace, it is a day your realm will remember and celebrate down the ages.”

  “My lord,” the queen announced in full voice, as much for her gathered court as for Cecil, “Philip of Spain claimed all shipping lanes from east to west.” She tossed her head and laughed. “Now he knows that the seas are no longer a Spanish pond!”

  Rough shouts and approving laughter spread throughout the chamber as Elizabeth moved on down the double line of uncovered and kneeling courtiers, who shouted, “Huzzah! Huzzah!” At the foot of her canopied throne, she saw Sir Walter Raleigh waiting. He was not on his knees. The handsome rogue took unusual liberties even for a man who thought himself a favorite of his sovereign…and who had from his elegant boots to his perfect face every bit the look of a favorite. Robin never makes such a mistake; he observes all court protocol, bless him.

  Raleigh, not to have his achievements forgotten for a moment, took his pipe and lit it, drawing every lady’s gaze. It was said that he was growing rich on the tobacco he had brought back from the New World. Perhaps she should consider a tax.

  “Sir Walter, we have seen many men turn gold into smoke, but you have managed to turn smoke into gold.”

  The jibe was greeted by polite laughter, enough to reward the queen and yet not offend a rising courtier. She watched him brave it all with ease. He needed a small reprisal. “Are you then so much a hero after your voyage to Virginia that you need not be on your knees to your sovereign?”

  “Majesty, forgive me,” said Sir Walter Raleigh, choking on his weed a little before falling to his knees as Elizabeth mounted the dais to sit on her canopied throne. “Each burst of victorious light from the city brings added beauty to your perfect face and I am dazzled.”

  She laughed at his very pretty excess, admiring his quick recovery from her rebuke. Planned or not, she believed him. What courtier was not a little in love with Elizabeth Tudor? Still, she knew she could not play this game of courtly love with her usual zest. Not on this day. Today she was in love with her country. England was her husband, the people her children, and she had given them their greatest victory since Agincourt.

  Sir Walter, sensing her heart’s distance, stepped down and bowed low so that she could see the perfect dark waves in his hair and how at the bottom of his tanned sailor’s neck his hair curled up—probably pomaded to do so—in the arrogant way of a handsome young man who was determined to heat every woman he saw. And almost certainly succeeding with most. And perhaps, at times, with me.

  Elizabeth could not help but erupt into gleeful laughter at her own private entertaining thoughts, since she had seen many handsome young men determined to catch her eye and favor—perhaps a grant of land or a better title—though she gave the ever-watchful court another reason for her obvious delight. A loud burst of gunpowder and flash of light brought her to her feet, her fist raised in victory imitating the Greek goddess of war, Pallas Athena. She regretted not wearing the breastplate and gorget she had worn at Tilbury last month.

  The court cheered. “Down with all Spanish papists! Up with our good Queen Elizabeth!”

  Raleigh raised his voice and it rang through the large chamber above all others. “Majesty, it seems your loyal English people would sink Philip’s armada…a second time!” He bowed with a flourish of his hand, no longer callused from the sea, but soft as any courtier’s.

  “Nay, Sir Walter, we think that King Philip’s fleet, his ‘Great Enterprise of England,’ is already well sunk, or soon will be in the storms off the Irish coast. He must be content to creep about inside his Escorial palace and hide from us. We did more than singe his beard in the channel. We left him hairless as a babe!”

  The court erupted into laughter and Elizabeth knew that her every word would soon be repeated in the streets of London and shouted back at
her when she rode down Cheapside on her way to St. Paul’s for the service of thanksgiving. Even more, one foreign ambassador or another, seeking to curry Philip’s favor, would report every word to him, probably sending the Spanish king to his knees again to beg God to strike Elizabeth down. But God was listening to her and not to Philip. She shook with silent laughter.

  Raleigh bowed again, undefeated as always. “Madam,” he said, his hand over his heart, “my only regret is that my lord Leicester could not be here to witness this celebration. He left court two weeks ago to take the waters at Cornbury. I long for news of his recovery. A man of his years cannot be too careful.”

  The chamber hushed.

  Two weeks only? It seems longer. But how dare Raleigh? Elizabeth was tempted to slap his perfect face for giving Robin his sly backhand, but such a cocksure court rival needed different handling. She would have him take care of his words, but not beaten down. Still, there was bitter reproof in her face that she did not bother to remove. He must learn that Elizabeth was the only person in the realm who could challenge Robert, Earl of Leicester, not a lowborn sailor from Devonshire…no matter how a queen might favor his too-handsome face, well-turned calf and artful love poetry.

  She waved Sir Walter away, giving him the back of her hand in curt dismissal. “Your love and care for the earl are well-known to us, Sir Walter.”

  Immediately, she signed for the musicians in the gallery above to begin playing to cover her own dismay. “Let us have one of my father’s galliards. ‘Time to Pass with Goodly Sport,’ if you remember it.” She and Robin had danced it for Henry when they were yet youngsters in the palace school. Whirling about with Robin at Greenwich Palace in front of her father’s throne was like yesterday in her mind and always would be.

  How could she have reveled for an hour, even for a minute, while Robin was sick these many weeks with his old fever? He had suffered a recurrence in the swampy land around Tilbury in July and August, while waiting to lead her faithful troops against the Spanish armies if they landed at the mouth of the Thames. Everyone had thought they would wait to make an assault on London and try to capture England’s queen alive. They had planned to take her to Pope Sixtus to be tried for heresy. Ha! God had other plans for His anointed Elizabeth. He had sent a great storm to douse the heretic’s fire that Rome would have lit for her.

  The queen tapped her foot to the galliard. How she had danced it with her sweet Robin, who now even in his middle years was still the most manly, most well-favored man, never to age in her eyes and heart. The world may have seen them change, but they had never changed to each other. She was sure of that. Robin was the one man in her world of whom she could be in no doubt. Always.

  Cecil stepped forward again, unusually merry. Would he be smiling if he knew what she planned? What she hugged to herself? She wanted to see his face when she announced that she would name Robin Lord Lieutenant of England and grant him the title of duke, ranking him above every other peer; indeed, he would rank next to her as sovereign. In spirit, he would be her heir.

  Cecil bowed. “Majesty, it does my heart good to see you so triumphant.”

  “My thanks, Spirit,” she said, using the nickname she had given him on her first day as queen. She turned her gaze from him. If he thought to read what she was thinking, he would be confounded.

  She had told no one of her plans, especially not Cecil, who would most certainly disapprove, perhaps threaten to resign again. Such power for Robin would gall her lord treasurer, all her council, and the rest of the country’s peers. Sir Walter would be most unhappy, having expected a peerage for himself. She would give him a manor in his native Devon with enough sheep and wool to ease his pain.

  “Play another galliard, master lutenist,” she called to the gallery. “We command that there be no gloom here this day. Let us be lively and dance so that King Philip will hear we held revels as the last of his defeated, starving sailors and soldiers struggled toward home, their ships broken by good English shot and God’s gales, heaven and earth against him.”

  Drums, pipes and guitars accompanied the sound of the court’s laughter, as she saw Dr. John Dee weave his slow way among the dancing couples and bow, his long beard tucked neatly into the belt of his doctor’s robe. Why do old men grow huge beards as if to proclaim a manhood that has long since fled?

  “What news of Lord Leicester to explain the melancholy I see behind Your Majesty’s joy?” he asked, keeping his voice confidential.

  “Do you look in my face as into your scrying glass, good doctor?” she answered softly. “There is no news, though I have sent to know.”

  “No news explains melancholy, Majesty,” he said, his breath blowing the long hairs of his mustache that drooped over his lips. “And yet Sir Walter is here for your merriment.”

  The queen frowned. “Good Dr. Dee, you are a man of travel and learning. You talk to spirits and angels and yet you cannot see to Rycote and tell me when the Earl of Leicester will return.”

  “Your Grace, only God sees all. I see only the little he allows me to see in my magical glass.”

  His face was somber, but Elizabeth’s voice nearly shook with anger. “Jesu, good doctor, tell me what is the little that you do see.”

  She had her answer in the next moment, though it was an answer that came not from Dr. Dee, or from an angel in heaven, but from hell.

  A gentleman pensioner walked toward her holding up a dusty lad, his thin legs unsteady, nearly staggering from fatigue.

  A message from Robin at last. Elizabeth sighed with relief, eagerly motioning the boy forward. “Young Tracey,” she called aloud down the length of the hall, “what news from my lord Leicester?”

  Cecil took the lad’s arm and led him to the throne, where the boy dropped to his knees in both exhaustion and courtesy, breathing hard.

  “What news of my lord Leicester’s health, lad?” The words crowded past a full throat, her heart beginning to beat faster.

  “Majesty, I am sent to tell you that—”

  He took a shuddering breath and, Jesu help her, she yelled at the used-up boy. “Tell us what!”

  “The Earl of Leicester is dead, Majesty, these two days gone.”

  She opened her mouth to shout down his lie, but at that moment came a great boom of cannon from the Tower and what the queen howled was neither heard nor understood by anyone in the presence chamber, least by herself. It was a cry of denial from the deepest well of her heart.

  Cecil hastened forward and offered his arm. “Majesty, please you, come at once out of this crowd into a private place.”

  She said something, but it was lost in a swift-moving red pain that filled her and became a sound…a name….Robin…my long love. How could I have forgotten you for a moment, even in my greatest triumph, our greatest triumph?

  “Majesty, you should come away to your chambers. I would not have the court see you thus. A queen does not—”

  “Does not!” she shrieked at her faithful advisor of thirty years and more. “Does not feel agony, does not…” She lost the words spilling from her heart, if she had ever had words instead of shrieks of disbelief. It could not be. Not Robin. He had promised never to leave her.

  Cecil took her arm and spoke on determinedly: “A queen does not allow her subjects to see her shaken so.”

  She had no more strength to dispute him; she could scarcely lift her legs, though she stumbled into the hall from the presence chamber, her gown weighted with heavy embroidery and pearls suddenly pressing her down, her arms almost too weak to hold on to Cecil’s arm so that, with the aid of his cane, he must hold them both upright. Her body was empty as death.

  “And yet,” she croaked, “my people know I am a woman born with a woman’s heart.”

  “You are a queen first, Majesty. That is what you have always been from the cradle and must remain until…”

  “I die. Oh, God above, let me go to Robin.” It was a howl that rang through the hall, bringing her yeoman guards to greater attention, t
heir pikes trembling, for what they did not know.

  “Majesty,” Cecil said as they reached the privy chamber doors, “you must go on. Lord Leicester would hav—”

  She turned to rage at him. “What do you know of what Robin wanted? He wanted life…life with me, beside me. I could not give him more than a little…what I could, but never enough….” Now she shook and sagged once more toward the floor.

  “Majesty,” Cecil urged, his tone reminding her of herself just enough to keep her from a faint.

  Once inside the anterooms, Cecil beat on the doors to the royal apartment, loudly calling for her ladies of the bedchamber.

  The doors opened on the large privy bedchamber and she could see the flashing victory explosions from London City through her mullioned windows and the fire in her fireplace that burned day and night in this damp old palace beside the Thames. She saw the arras tapestries that covered her walls and the intricate Flemish lace on her bed bolsters. She feared madness. I can see only things. I have no sense of myself. I can’t think. I can no more believe.

  She croaked a question as her ladies helped her to her bed and bent to her. “Did you know, my lord Cecil?” she cried.

  “No, Majesty. Not for a certainty. I have this for you from young Tracey.”

  He held a letter in front of her eyes so that she could read. It was Robin’s handwriting, shaky, scrawled in his illness with fading strength.

  His last letter.