His Last Letter

by Jeane Westin

  “Kenilworth,” he said, his head nestled next to hers, his breath on her neck.

  She trembled slightly. “Kenilworth.” She repeated the word as if it were part of a sacred litany.

  CHAPTER 17

  KENILWORTH

  ELIZABETH

  July 9, 1575

  Kenilworth

  It was near the last of the day’slight when Queen Elizabeth motioned for her baggage train to stop behind her, not an easy thing when three hundred carts and several hundred courtiers on horseback followed. She didn’t doubt that some careless carter, slow to respond to shouted orders or asleep at the reins, plowed into the cart in front of him. She frowned. S’blood! If any of her furniture or her precious wardrobe were damaged, she would have the carter straddle a cart on his last drive to Tyburn!

  Most of her belongings and the entire government, plus many in the court, trailed her from castle to manor while on summer progress. This was the time she could show her regal self to her people, who might know her only by a portrait, or not even that, and incidentally lower the strain on her summer purse by bringing her court to her nobles’ manors.

  Behind them, Richmond Castle would be sweetened of all noxious odors left by her courtiers and servants. The scullery, scalding house and flesh kitchens in the lower levels alone took weeks to scrub, and the common jakes . . . She didn’t want to think about that work. And so she wouldn’t.

  She looked forward to ending her progress at Oatlands, her curiously built but restful hunting lodge, a series of attached cottages built to form a wall around an old castle keep and great hall. There she would spend the late summer shooting its abundant red deer. And perhaps some dozens of waterfowl to serve the lodge. That much meat, at least, she would not have to purchase, which she would not do, by Jesu.

  Lady Anne Warwick rode up behind the queen, asking: “Majesty, would you have me send to discover if there is damage behind us?”

  “Aye, Anne, but tell us on the morrow. We will not have our entrance to Kenilworth spoiled, since we have long looked to it as the best and last of these summer progress days.”

  “Your Grace, my husband says his brother, my lord Leicester, has abundant surprises prepared.”

  “Don’t tell us, Anne,” the queen said, smiling on her friend and chief lady-of-the-bedchamber. “A surprise known has no pleasure in it and we delight in astonishment. There is little enough in our life . . . unexpected.”

  Usually, foreknowledge was her choice. She did not like to be taken unawares with no prepared response . . . a habit of childhood and now of a lifetime. As a child in Henry VIII’s court, she had thought twice and thrice before acting or speaking. Around every corner lurked her father’s ill temper and another banishment from court. Every word of hers had consequences, a lesson she had learned early and well.

  Quickly, she snatched herself from old gloom. She had nothing to fear; she was going to her dear Robin. “Come, follow me!” she shouted.

  Several gentlemen of her personal guard wheeled their mounts at her command and she spurred onto a track leading to the Earl of Leicester’s Kenilworth, where she would stay for more than a fortnight while on progress through the country northeast of London. She had heard fantastical stories of the fete Leicester planned for her, but surely they were exaggerated, as were most such carried tales. Yet Rob, ever ingenious, always seemed to know the best revels to entertain her.

  At the thought of him, she felt a warmth that owed nothing to the summer heat, but everything to her sweet memories of his loyalty to her in everything. Annoyed, she pursed her lips. Pup. Pup. Loyal in almost everything with the exception of Douglass and that strumpet Lettice, who, gossips said, had come to him again as soon as her husband left for Ireland with the new title of Lord Marshal. But Lettice would not dare to be at Kenilworth.

  Elizabeth’s little troupe trotted along the forest cartway, cooler now under the trees, the sun splashing bright ribbons on her path. She began to hear music and smiled. Ah, sweet Robin meant his entertainments to start immediately.

  A wildly cavorting green man covered with leaves and twigs held together by moss jumped into her path, causing her horse to shy and rear.

  “No hurt! No hurt!” she cried, to stop her guard from attacking the man, who was sputtering out some poor poetry on his knees.

  “Majesty! Majesty!” One of her men tried to grab her reins, but she had the horse firmly under her control.

  “Stop your shouting, man!” she ordered in full voice.

  The green man, kneeling in the dirt, continued to sputter his poetic tribute, but he was so unnerved he couldn’t remember his lines in their right order, tying his tongue in several knots as leaves drifted from his costume.

  Elizabeth threw back her head and laughed. “Very appealing, Sir Wild Man,” she said, and put out her hand to calm him. “We are well pleased, but beg you, recite no more.”

  She rode on, not stifling her laughter. She’d give the man her mirth if not a commission to publish his elegy.

  She emerged from the path near a great lake. The mere, fed by several springs, surrounded two sides of Kenilworth, which was much enlarged since she had last seen it. Robin was indeed a great builder. This old castle dating from Plantagenet days was now an imposing modern, fortified country manor. She heard the rumble of carts and many hooves beating the earth behind her as her great train began to arrive and was ushered by Kenilworth servants to a tent village raised in an adjoining field.

  Robin, magnificent in green-and-gold slashed velvet doublet and trunks with matching embroidered hosen, walked across a great columned bridge and bowed to her. “Welcome, Your Grace, to Kenilworth. I delight in seeing you in my humble country home.”

  “My Eyes,” Elizabeth said, smiling. Humbleness was no part of this manor, or of this man. Indeed, here was a man, she thought, to make all other men ashamed to own their sex. At forty-two, he had that still-handsome lift and confident turn of his head, the same as the cocksure boy she first loved so hopelessly during her brother’s reign and next loved in the Tower. And now needed the strength to resist loving.

  She slipped her hand onto his and put out her arms to be lifted from the sidesaddle. He grasped her waist as she held to his shoulders, but he did not whirl her about as in the lavolte, somewhat to her disappointment.

  Elizabeth gestured to Kenilworth. “Robin, you make wonders here.”

  “The wonders are waiting for you, my ageless queen. I have enough spectacles ready for a lifetime, all given to you in the coming days. For the rest of your long and healthy life, for which I hourly pray, you will compare all your delights to these and find them inadequate.”

  “You are very sure of your delights, my lord,” she teased.

  “Would you have me otherwise?” he whispered, bending to kiss both palms of her gloved hands. She felt the pressure of his lips, but missed their warmth, always missed it when she could have had it forever. She brought herself back sharply from such dangerous reveries. In this place with this man, dreaming must be strictly controlled. She had once again resumed her intermittent monthly flux, for which her doctors could give her no reason. Fertile again, childbirth, a danger for any woman her age, was a possibility. Though she continued marriage negotiations with this prince or that one, she would always be a celebrated virgin queen who would remain without children . . . and immortal.

  Yet she took his proffered arm as a Lady of the Lake on a torchlit island came floating into view, declaiming in a loud voice that King Arthur had sent her to welcome the queen.

  “The great king, your ancestor,” Robin shouted in her ear, having supervised her genealogy leading back to Adam. He raised his arm and the fireworks and cannon began their flashing, thundering welcome.

  The bridge shook on its pillars and Elizabeth grasped his arm tighter. “My lord,” she said, “this is a greater display than I have ever seen.”

  “Majesty, I have imported Italian fireworks makers for your pleasure . . . pleasure I plan to increa
se for you daily.”

  “You sent so far?”

  He tightened his grip. “For you . . . to the ends of the world.”

  His voice ended on an up note as if he left much unsaid. She looked at his face and it held the questioning eyes of a lover. He was courting her again. Still. And she loved him for it. Robin meant to tempt her to him and knew all the ways that drew her woman’s body . . . was born knowing these ways. Unable to stop her mouth, she smiled, showing him how she loved his efforts. “My lord, you have outdone even your past triumphs.” Jesu, let him be satisfied with that much.

  With a flourish, he led her through the tall gatehouse into a large entry court. “Majesty, I have planned a fete that all England will learn of and in all time hereafter remember forever how I honored you.” He bowed his head and, serious now, led her into the enormous courtyard with radiating sand paths, geometric gardens and fountains splashing everywhere, one with great fish swimming in its lower pool.

  Elizabeth could not take her eyes from such a display, knowing it must have cost Leicester dear. She had been right that he was trying to woo her, not just with this overwhelming attention, but with his fortune. Yet why should it not come back to her, since she had bestowed it?

  Robin bent to her. “It is near full dark now and I have a hunt planned for early on the morrow after Sunday prayers. Would you like to see the new wing and chambers I had built for you in the Italian manner?”

  Elizabeth starred at him. A whole wing! “What riches have you spent, Robin?”

  “All I have, I give for you,” he said, his dark eyes flashing in the torchlight.

  Did he love her so much, or still hope to be king . . . to buy a throne, by Christ and all His saints? But she could not hold such a loveless thought for long. This was a fairyland of love and he had made it for her.

  He whispered, perhaps reading her mind as he too often did: “It came from you and now goes back to you transformed from gold into moonlight, from silver into stars . . . by my love. Come, Bess,” he added, slightly pulling on her hand, holding it high and yet tenderly as if it were the most fragile thing he had ever held.

  Up a wide stair into a wider gallery, she passed bowing gentlemen and ladies. The Sidneys, especially young Philip, already a poet of some distinction, she recognized with pleasure. Others with not so much pleasure . . . Lady Douglass Sheffield and her own cousin Lettice, Countess of Essex. Why, Robin? Do you have them here to remind me that other women love you? Before she could gather her outrage, Lettice pushed forward a beautiful young boy.

  “My son, Majesty, Robert, Earl of Essex.”

  Elizabeth bent to the lad, her heart seized by his beauty and the still-soft curves of his face. “You may kiss me, my pretty young lord,” she said, offering her cheek to him.

  The boy drew back sharply, alarm clear in his eyes.

  Robin murmured, “The lad is o’erwhelmed at the honor.”

  “He is but eight years, Majesty,” Lettice murmured.

  Elizabeth walked on. “We see your two paramours are here for your entertainment,” she said aloud, not caring who heard, her body rigid with the anger of such betrayal and the boy’s refusal of the honor she bestowed.

  “Nay, Bess,” he whispered urgently. “I love, have loved and will love only you. All the gentles and nobility from the near countryside gather to honor their queen as is their duty. Lady Essex lives just a few leagues distant at Chartley, the estate you gave her on her marriage.”

  She knew he was reminding her of her own folly, but for once, she was not angered by an unhappy truth, nodding once to show she heard and was already tired of this subject.

  He spoke urgently into her ear. “I see no lady here but you, recognize no lady but you. I have built all of this for you and no other.” His words vibrated with his desire to make her believe him.

  And she did.

  The queen in her quickly stepped forward, silent, fearing he would draw from her all her welling affection in front of the gathering. Her head half believed him against every gossip; her heart fully accepted his words as true. Of necessity she had been a good judge of men from a very early age and could smell the sharp odor of deceit no matter what the distraction of gifts or handsome faces and forms behind them. Or, she admitted, she had such skills with all men, but perhaps not with Robin.

  At the end of the gallery, servants threw open huge doors and Leicester led her into chambers flooded with rising starlight and the setting sunlight through ceiling-to-floor glass windows set with rubies and emeralds shimmering in candlelight. Almost dancing, he turned her about on rich velvet woven Turkey carpets, fine enough to hang on her palace walls. He guided her into her adjoining bedchamber with like windows bringing in bursts of fireworks to light up a soaring ceiling of tracery stone.

  Laughing, Elizabeth ran to the windows, then whirled on Leicester, not pleased. “But, my lord, I cannot see a garden from my windows. What good are these windows if I cannot view fountains and flowers all the day and night?”

  He did not hesitate. “I will remedy my oversight. You are my queen and your wish is everything to me.”

  “Robin!” she exclaimed, laughing. “Your speech is ever extravagant. But now I would rest from my journey. You may leave me . . . but not to go far.”

  He acknowledged her words and meaning with a warm smile. “Everything is here collected as you would wish it, my queen. Your watered wine is on the side table. Your bitter ale will be there for your morning thirst. If there is anything I have forgotten for your pleasure, you have but to command it.”

  Elizabeth laughed like a child with a new toy house. He knelt and kissed her hand, looking up to her face. “I mean it, Bess. . . . Anything and I will cause it to happen.”

  He backed from the room while her ladies were exclaiming over the richness of the fabrics on the floor and on the elaborately carved bed. The overhead tapestry, embroidered with the Leicester emblem of double ragged staff and bear, read, Droit et loyal. A tapestry with the same design covered the chairs with an elegance even a queen did not expect.

  Later, as she lay alone on woven silk sheets, she read the words over and over again. Just and loyal. She believed Robin had been loyal to her except in his need to bed willing women. She pulled the tester tight against the lace nightcap tied around her chin and turned over, making the disturbing words above her disappear. She turned her face to allow any tears to fall into the bolster and be lost, undetected. She had long ago accepted that she could not keep him from satisfying the natural needs of a man with other, all too eager women. Men were not like queens with the will to deny their urges. If men were seen to do so, they would be laughed at, even thought to prefer one of the pretty boys frequenting Cock Lane in Smithfield. Though she’d been furious that Robin went to other women, she could not forever deny him what she would not give. Could not give . . . at least not forever, as he wanted. She had tried to keep him for herself, as any woman would, but in that she had not succeeded. Perhaps she had not wanted to succeed. Such success created an obligation for a woman, especially for a queen.

  “Oh, sweet Jesu,” she murmured, and she didn’t know if she said a prayer or a curse.

  She was awakened the next morn with sun streaming through her jeweled windows and her ladies running to her. “Majesty,” said Anne, “please come and see . . . please.”

  Having slept well for once, Elizabeth did not want to rise early, but finally could not resist the astonished cries. “Anne, what is amiss . . . ? Please you, my morning robe.”

  She walked to the windows, wrapping her satin-soft robe tight around herself, her ladies parting so that she could look out.

  “Isn’t it amazing, Majesty?”

  Elizabeth took firm hold of her mouth, which wanted to drop open, but finding the effort too much for an early morning, she let it drop. Spread below under her window was a garden of gravel walks, arches with flowering vines and a center fountain. Robin, covered in dirt, but the more handsome for it, stood with his foot on
the lower fountain bowl looking up at her. He bowed, sweeping his workman’s hat from his head, and placed a hand on his heart. And her heart.

  Robin had done this to fulfill her wish. She was awed. She was delighted. She waved a greeting.

  Anne at her ear whispered: “Majesty, how could he have worked this magic during one night?”

  “Discover the tale of it for me. Quickly, Anne, question the porters.”

  Elizabeth turned again to look down on him, seated now at his ease on the lower bowl, trailing his hand in the water, motioning her to come down and just escaping a drenching from the water being spewed from the fountain. She laughed, her heart as easy in her breast as it had ever been. He had done this for her. Performed a miracle. Had he summoned witches or ancient gods? Hercules?

  Anne rushed in, talking as she came. “Majesty, most amazing news. Lord Leicester stayed up the night through, calling in all his servants and men from villages around, more than a hundred in number, to make the garden. It is said he offered a gold mark to each man who worked quickly and silently and instant dismissal and three days in the stocks to a man who made a single sound.”

  Elizabeth looked down again at a garden that appeared as if it had grown there since Eden’s time. “The fruit trees? The fountain? The flowered borders and paths?”

  “Aye, Majesty. All.”

  Anne saw what the queen saw, shaking her head in disbelief. “It is a tale that will be told everywhere and put any other man to shame before his dear wife or sweetheart.”

  “Or both, if not the same.” Elizabeth’s eyes were wicked before she squinted, being shortsighted, to look at her friend. “What do you think, my lady?”

  Anne was pulled sharply from her reveries. “My apologies, Your Majesty. The magic ruled my tongue and gave voice to my thoughts for, alas, my own dear husband would never think of such a thing.”