His Last Letter

by Jeane Westin

  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 of 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, their 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.

  CHAPTER 1

  “COME KISS ME NOW”

  EARL OF LEICESTER

  Three years earlier

  August 1585

  Nonsuch Palace

  As he paced the queen’s outer chambers, Robert, the Earl of Leicester’s heart pounded in his ears with the hollow echo of surging surf. He turned at the long, narrow room’s end, avoiding Henry VIII’s enormous commanding portrait that Elizabeth carried everywhere, from castle to castle and on her summer progresses, in its own special cart, his hope trying to overcome doubt about how Elizabeth would receive him. He had been gone from court, lying with his wife, time enough for his enemies to whisper in Elizabeth’s ears, time enough for her imaginings to swamp her feelings. Had they changed from the love he had always known, the love she had always shown him?

  He remembered King Philip’s envoy, the Duke de Feria, saying within weeks of the queen’s ascension: “She gives orders and has her way as absolutely as her father did.” And so she had with him. Would she reject or welcome him today? She had forgiven him many times, as he had forgiven her. They had hurt with words as cleverly cruel children in a battle for dominance until both had been made miserable. Then tears and wretchedness had forced
them to forgive and fall into each other’s arms. He had been gone from her for less than a fortnight, but who had plied her ears with lies or unpalatable truth in those days?

  Only this woman could reduce a peer of England and a man of his natural confidence to such pitiful self-questioning. Even so, he hid amusement and a bit of jealousy for the queen’s tall, fine-looking gentleman usher in a gilt breastplate, noting that the man met all of Elizabeth’s requirements in the men she wanted to serve near her, requirements that perhaps he no longer met in full. He brushed aside that possibility. Despite all else, even his marriage to Elizabeth’s hated cousin Lettice, they had always been together in their hearts since childhood. That would never change, he was certain . . . almost, though who could be completely certain with the mercurial Elizabeth Tudor?

  Bowing low, the usher opened the huge doors to the queen’s privy chamber. “Good day, my lord,” he murmured before announcing the earl. “I pray God give comfort to you and your countess for your loss.”

  At that reminder, Robert didn’t trust his voice, but nodded his thanks and walked through the outer room accompanied from the hall by the sweet, clear voices of Elizabeth’s boy choristers singing William Byrd’s “John, Come Kiss Me Now.” Had she ordered that tune by her favorite composer as a sign to him? Had she finally forgiven him for marrying Lettice? No, he doubted she ever would quite forgive him for what she saw as a betrayal. But could a woman . . . could this woman . . . be forgiving enough to keep some part of their long love?

  Who could ever be certain? She was like some willful spirit, changing her mind on the turn of a phrase, especially changeable if he were not near her and his enemies filled her ears with doubts.

  Did all of Elizabeth’s affection die because a proud man could not live on his knees before her throne and not as a husband sitting beside her? Did she still not understand that a man of his spirit must be a man in every way? His heart continued to pound against his black velvet doublet, lifting his device of bear and double ragged staff with each beat, though doubt was still at battle with the greeting he hoped to receive. He had dressed carefully in the new longer breeches and he wore the Garter of that Order on his left thigh with the gold dirk and rapier that were important to the ceremonial dress. She had so honored him and he would not allow her to forget it.

  The queen motioned him forward toward the throne and he strode all the way through the room hung with black wall cloth of stars and moon. He bowed three times as he went even though they were alone. No ladies-of-the-bedchamber or yeoman guards stood ready to serve . . . to gossip about what they overheard through the palace and to foreign ambassadors who were always thirsty for secrets and willing to pay for news of what favor Her Majesty showed the Earl of Leicester. He walked the last open space swiftly and arrived at the dais where she sat one step above him. Always that one step separated them. He knelt and bowed his head, her true man still. He wanted her to know that would never change. She must know that.

  “My good Earl of Leicester,” the queen said in her presence chamber voice, only a shade huskier, giving him her hand to kiss after removing her glove . . . a signal honor. He took her hand, finding her skin smooth and warm, but not as warm as his lips, which burned a kiss into her flesh. He held her hand overlong and at last she pulled away from his grasp, stood and motioned for him to rise.

  She stepped from her throne and she was as she had always been, tall and straight, her beautiful hands with their long, white fingers held gracefully before her. Her striking eyes, blue shot through with dark flashes, surrounded by the white lead and alum Mask of Youth that she had made the fashion covering her face and neck. Yet she was always to him as he had ever known her from their childhood: her fair face, the pale eyebrows and lashes giving her a startled look that drew every gaze to her, wondering what would come next. He stretched both hands to her. My own Bess.

  “Rob,” she breathed, and he knew what that soft whisper had once invited. When she was a young queen and at last free to follow her heart, he would have taken her into his arms and kissed her sweet and yielding lips, her throat, her fluttering eyelids . . . her breasts. At court masques, he would have lifted her high over his head to prove that his ability at lavolte was with him always. She would have kicked her feet in protest and commanded, sounding like her father, King Henry VIII, to be set upon the floor, but with desire caught in her throat and her body yielding to his hands.

  He would have lowered her slowly down the length of himself as he had done so long ago at many masques, in full view of the shocked court, when they were young and unable to keep their heat from showing, daring a scandal, caring little for what was said everywhere.

  This time the moment passed swiftly, for they were no longer young and he was not free as, in truth, she had never been, married to her realm as she had forever declared, each assertion a wound to his heart and his manhood.

  “Rob,” she said again in her low voice.

  At the sound of his name he knelt at once, showing her his neck in obedience. “Bess, my love.” For his boldness, she could call her guards or order him to the Tower, which was what she had wanted to do when she’d discovered his marriage to her hated cousin Lettice. She was the queen of England and he had betrayed her love, committed treason in her mind.

  But instead of calling for her guards, the queen sat down on the step to her throne.

  He sat next to her, but without touching her voluminous white gown heavy with seed pearls, her oversleeves showing rubies and diamonds embroidered with the serpent sign of wisdom.

  “Marriage to that She-Wolf has tamed you,” she said, leaning away from him at remembrance of his wife, her eyes clouding, whether at a loving memory like his own or anger, he did not want to know. “Nor did it get you the heir you wanted.” Her voice was a bit proud and vengeful, and he thought cruel, as she could be. “An empty bargain, I think, my lord.”

  He stared above her head with still-unspent heartache.

  “Oh!” Her hand was again warm on his. “Rob . . . forgive me. At times, when I am a woman and forgetful of my crown and even my honor . . .”

  “You are jealous?” he asked, though he hoped his smile took away any sting from an accusation that women did not like to hear.

  “Nonsense . . .” Her voice trailed away, and then, coming as close to an apology as she ever came, she whispered, “I truly grieve for you and your little son.”

  He heard a catch in her voice and almost believed her. Yes, he did believe her. Her temper had always been quick, and she had been unable to restrain it at times because she looked for so much from him . . . too much from any man. Yet her face told him what he wanted to know and his chest ached with the knowledge: She still needed him beside her. Needed him! Not one of her old favorites like Kit Hatton, Tom Heneage, or her new favorite, Raleigh, but her Robin, always.

  Still, he dared not confess that her grief for the loss of his son was welcome, since Lettice seemed to feel so little for their little lost boy, Robert, his Noble Imp, dead at age four of a strange and sudden fever. All of Lettice’s love had been transferred to her older boy, the Earl of Essex, who carried the Devereux name of her first marriage. Now she would insist that he be named heir to the Earl of Leicester, too, and she would have her way as she did in all but one thing: She wanted to be received at court again, but would never be as long as he could stop it. When he was with Elizabeth, he was all her man and no husband to Lettice . . . and he would keep it that way. Oh, on some public occasions he would plead with the queen to accept his wife, but only to keep the appearance of a loving husband and save Bess from gossip.

  The queen’s hand tightened on his and, Jesu help him, his grief came pouring out. “All my hopes, Bess—” He gulped down an unmanly sob, which he could not allow her to hear. “All swept away in a few short hours. How my little Imp suffered . . . the best doctors and all my pleading prayers could not save him.” He turned his face from hers, fearing tears might start.

  “Rob, are you il
l?” The old, deep concern was in her voice.

  He shook his head.

  “You look spent and weary. I will have my apothecary make up my own special herbal potion for you. Take it twice a day.” She moved closer and cradled his head against her breast. “Sweet Robin . . .”

  The endearing name of their youth had come easily to her lips. He raised his head reluctantly from her only softness and looked full into her face. Did she love him still, as they had loved then? His breath quickened: as they had loved for one night at Rycote?

  Her eyes narrowed as she returned his gaze. What did she see? The lines radiating like a web from his eyes?

  “Have you been eating too well?” she said, probably remembering the youthful waist he no longer had. “Taking too much meat and sweet puddings . . . and not taking exercise as you promised me?” She laughed and repeated an old joke between them: “Remember you must eat only the wing of a wren for dinner and the little leg for supper.”

  He had to smile and thought he and Bess were like a long-married husband and wife where finally all former faults become dear. He knew that he and Lettice would never be so; her faults were beyond loving, though he had to bear some blame for them. What beautiful woman could bear to be unloved, to have been wanted only because she looked like the woman her husband really loved? It had made Lettice scheming and cold. Yet how could he rightly censure her?

  He tightened his hold on the hand Bess kept in his. Did she comfort him as a grieving father, or as the man she still loved? Did she see him as he had once been, or as a man with silver in his hair and beard? He could not ask and risk a distressing answer.

  They sat that way at the foot of her throne chair for a quiet time and the pressure in his chest was relieved. “I’m at ease here with you, Bess. Your potion is at work before I swallow it.”