by Jeane Westin
“Lady . . . Katherine,” the Lord Lieutenant began haltingly, “the queen has ordered that you be sent to your mother’s distant kin in Somerset . . . you alone.”
“Alone!” Kate jerked erect, her newborn losing his nipple and complaining robustly for a two-day-old babe. “You cannot do this. What is my wrong?” she said, knowing in her heart that her fault was being everything that Elizabeth was not. “Am I not to have a trial? Be judged by my peers?” she asked, seeking some different answer, any different answer. “And what of Ned?”
“He is to go to Eltham . . . with his two sons.”
The bright picture in her imagination faded to gray. The heartless verdict threw her to her knees, clutching at both her babes. “Noooo! I beg you . . . for mercy. . . .” Her scream was ripped from a heart unloved for so long, a heart that had finally come to know every kind of love a woman could know, a heart that could not bear the thought of a return to cold emptiness.
“The queen has judged you,” the Lord Lieutenant said, his face as impassive as the stone walls. “Indeed, I have lost my commission and must lodge in this cell after you with all my family. We will pay a high price for disobeying Her Majesty’s law.”
“I am most heartily sorry, my lord, but . . .”
Sybil came forward and took the frightened young Edward into her arms, cooing softly into his ear while he reached his arms back for his mother.
Kate clung to the settle and dragged herself to her feet, finding steel in flesh and bone, her newborn again trying to find her nipple. Her voice shaking, her body jerking as if she had the falling sickness, she grasped at reason and sought any delay. “I will write to Her Majesty. I am but two days from the birthing stool, and I cannot believe she would take my nursing babes. Jesu, no sin is worth such punishment. Elizabeth is a woman. . . . She cannot . . .”
The Lord Lieutenant motioned the guards forward and a young woman appeared from behind them.
“No . . . no, I will not let you have them!” Kate howled the words until they filled the cavernous chamber, her hands clasped tight about Thomas William.
But the Lord Lieutenant’s wife came on grimly with the guards at her side and they pried Kate’s newborn from her desperate arms, handing him to the wet nurse.
Kate’s legs buckled under her and she fell to her knees, putting her hands together in prayer, willing her heart to continue its beating. Scarcely breathing, she raised her white face to the Lord Lieutenant. “You cannot . . . You are a father. . . . The queen is no mother—”
“I warn you, do not speak treason, my lady. You have your life.”
“My life! What life?” she choked, her lips unwieldy, barely forming intelligible sounds. “Let me go to my husband . . . please, my lord.”
The Lord Lieutenant motioned two guards forward and they pinned Kate’s arms to her side, then lifted her up, holding her sagging body.
The Lord Lieutenant’s face softened. “I beg your forgiveness for these harsh measures, my lady,” he said, and added, “Have courage.” He motioned to the guards’ captain, who ordered the yeomen to take her out. They half carried the struggling Kate to the stairs. She screamed, near madness, reaching back to the hated prison cell, now a haven from a far worse terror. She tried to plead further, but her throat closed against the words. At the bottom of the staircase, regaining speech, she shrieked again: “Ned, help! They are taking me. . . .” Her voice rang through Beauchamp Tower and was absorbed by the unyielding stones.
Sybil’s words reached her from above. “Kate . . . I will care for your babes, then come to you.”
A carriage waited below, torches lit front and back. Heavy black clouds hung above her, rain blowing slantwise into her face. Her gown and cloak were quickly sodden.
She clung to the carriage door, moaning incoherently. Two guards pried her hands free and threw her inside, sitting opposite to hold the doors against escape.
She managed to grab the strap keeping the carriage window up and tore it free. “Ned!” she screamed as it dropped open, lifting her face toward the tower that held him. She heard no answering call over the wind, driving rain and horses’ hooves striking the cobbles of London’s streets, heading west. She collapsed into a corner, staring without seeing, her arms crossed in front of her as if they yet held a child.
Elizabeth sent for Lord Dudley the next night, very late. He had dressed with extra care for that invitation, which he had known all the day would come, when she could wait no longer to assure herself that she still owned his heart. He entered the secret passage behind his room, which opened into her linen closet, stepping out into her bedchamber, kneeling three times before he reached her standing alone by the hearth.
His irony was not lost on her.
“Rise, my lord earl,” she said softly.
“Your little dog is unable to rise even at your command, Majesty.”
“Stop it!” she said, kneeling before him, the fire backlighting her hair, which he was certain her ladies had brushed one thousand times to give her such a shining halo.
“Then how would you have me, Bess?” He kept his voice very light, without any shade of meaning or feeling. “Shall I roll over and play dead for you?” He began to twist his body.
“Stop it!” The words were strangled. “What do you want of me; what must I say, Robin, to stop this mockery?”
“Nothing.” He had not known he could so drain a word of caring.
“Please . . .” She kissed his lips, which grew more firm against her soft, trembling pressure.
But he would not yield to please her. He could not. She had cut his heart into unfeeling pieces. “Let me go, Bess. Let me marry another and live a man’s full life.”
“I cannot . . . I will not marry the grand duke, nor the prince of Denmark, nor a French prince, nor yet a Spanish king. England is my husband and its people my children, Robin. I can marry no man, but I can love . . . I can love you.”
She kissed him again. And again her salt tears touched his lips.
Now he was struggling against himself. Firm, he thought. Stay firm. How could his manhood give in to a few kisses after what Bess had done to humiliate him before all?
She took his hands in hers and pressed them against her damp cheeks. To Robin, her hands were warm, alive, strong.
“Know you this, sweet Robin: If I were free to marry, I would marry you, only you . . . but I am not free.”
“Bess, then I must be liberated.”
“No, my love,” she whispered, and he saw the torment in her face, “you will never be free of me, as I will never be free of you.”
He took her kiss then, holding her slender, shaking body against his fiercely, knowing he was trapped in his desire as much as ever Edward or Kate, maybe a hundred times more. He would not be removed from sight and sound of Elizabeth, but must each day of his life live with her close and forever not his.
Part Two
LAST LOVES
CHAPTER NINE
“To be a king and wear a crown is a thing more glorious to them that see it, than it is pleasant to them that bear it.”
—Elizabeth Regina
Twelfth Night
January 6, 1599
Mary Rogers wanted to push aside the enormous ermine-trimmed hat on the courtier in front of her. No matter how she moved her head, he blocked her clear view of Elizabeth, the queen Mary had waited all her life to see. Her hand was half raised when she remembered Lady Katherine Grey’s repeated warning: “Child, the queen prefers her ladies docile as well as decorative. You are quite pretty enough, but that impatience of yours will not gain you a place with Her Majesty’s ladies. Learn to wait . . . as I have.” Mary could even hear her sad, sweet voice add for this occasion, “Mary, it won’t do to begin your first day in court showing a temper in the Royal Chapel.”
Mary lowered her right hand and held it tight with her left hand. She had dreamed since she was a child of being one of the queen’s ladies, and she would not spoil the slight chance she might ha
ve now with one hasty act. Her rank and connection were too unimposing to gain automatic admittance to royal service, though any connection was better than none. Her family had cared for Lady Grey until her death, but the queen had never shown gratitude for their service, and Mary’s grandfather had warned her against expecting any. Service to the Crown was counted an honor, though sometimes a costly one, as the queen was not known for paying her bills.
Mary congratulated herself on thinking twice before acting, an unusual sequence for her, she had to admit, and a comfort. She was learning. She leaned close to her grandfather’s ear. “Sir, please . . . may we move closer so that I can better see the queen?”
Her grandfather took a deep breath. “Mary, it cost me a gold mark to bribe the usher for this standing room in the Royal Chapel. Now quiet yourself, I beg you. You will see Her Majesty closer at the audience to follow.” He lowered his voice, but she thought he said, “You will soon see more than you may want.”
Mary drew back. Her grandfather Sir William Rogers had been making similar veiled warnings since they left Somersetshire. At first she had thought it his usual rough kindness, since her hopes of serving the queen were impossibly high. Still, since reaching Whitehall she had thought his tone sharp. “Surely, sir,” she whispered, though whispering, too, was not a part of her nature, “Elizabeth is high in God’s favor to have been queen of this isle for over forty years.” The man in front of her was jostled by others and moved aside so that Mary was able to gaze full on the glittering sovereign. “Why, sir,” Mary continued, keeping her excited voice low, “she is older than you in years and yet so young.” Having blurted the words, she bit her lower lip, silently admitting she needed more diplomatic skills.
Sir William Rogers shrugged. “Mary, Her Majesty will put on years as you approach her.”
She smiled to herself. Her grandfather was jealous of the queen’s ageless beauty, a queen just as Lady Katherine had described her to a very young child long ago standing at her knee, eyes wide. When Lady Katherine was not in chapel at her prayers, sitting up with a sick cottager or helping the village midwife with a difficult delivery, Mary had begged to hear that lady tell one of her countless stories of the magical court with its masques and plays and grand tournaments. The child had heard of all the thrilling palaces and intrigues, and knew all the ladies of the bedchamber’s duties by heart.
And now this same faerie queen was in front of her, a dazzling crown atop her red-gold hair, her gown heavy with jewels, her long-fingered white hands held before her in devout prayer. A queen over all queens, without flaw and above doubt.
Mary’s eyes misted as she remembered how Lady Katherine’s memories had flowed to a child at her knee for all her first ten years, and how that lady had insisted on her love for the queen, though the queen had banished Katherine for life from court, husband and sons. Mary would remember always how Katherine toiled late into the night by candlelight, her red hair streaked with white, writing . . . begging the queen to allow her to return to her husband, the earl. Word had finally come from William Cecil, Lord Burleigh, that the queen refused to read a word and that Sir William was commanded to cease forwarding the letters of a traitor on pain of arrest.
With the brutal honesty of a child, Mary had reported to that lady, “I heard Grandfather say the queen will never have you back.”
Tears had flowed from Katherine’s dark blue eyes, and Mary had regretted her words, as if she had told a lie. “We love you. Stay with us, my lady,” she’d begged, urgently plucking at Kate’s sleeve. “Are you not content here? Why do you want to leave?”
“Mary,” Kate had said softly, always showing Mary great patience, “to be without my Ned and babes, though they are older boys now, is a kind of living death. Someday Her Majesty will forgive me. She must.” Katherine’s shaking hands had tightened until the knuckles turned white on her black gown. She always wore black in perpetual mourning.
“Lady, my grandfather said you were banished because you wanted to be heir to the queen?”
Katherine had shaken her head, her still lovely face angry for the first time. Mary had begun to cry, and the lady had swept her into her arms, comforting her, though Mary struggled at ten years, no longer a babe. Perhaps being an heir was a secret she was too young to know, or the poor old lady had forgotten.
Each evening Lady Katherine fell again to writing about her day to the man she called her husband, though Grandfather returned her letters the next day unopened on orders from the queen’s council. Still, she wrote again the next night.
Despite all, Lady Katherine had spoken often and loudly of her love for Elizabeth. Maybe Katherine’s words were truth, or, having barely escaped a traitor’s death, she dared not speak treason even to a loving child, lest someone hear.
Forcing her thoughts away from Lady Katherine back to the present spectacle in the Royal Chapel, Mary feasted on her view of the sovereign. She sat bejeweled and sparkling like the summer sun, though a winter storm blew outside Whitehall, battering the old palace, its gardens and bare orchard. Her Majesty’s back was as straight as a yeoman guard’s, and she was as tall seated on her throne chair as some men standing. No, this queen could never be old. There was time yet to serve her, to be close to the greatest ruler on God’s earth, a heady thought for a motherless girl.
If Mary’s slippered feet had not been freezing from the cold stones of the chapel apse, she could scarce have believed she was here in the queen’s . . . well, if not exactly in her company, near it . . . her long-held dream come wonderfully true. Almost.
After two hours of sermons and carols, Mary, her temper tried well past its former limits, groaned and shifted her feet, now sore as well as cold. She looked high into the chapel arches to search for the Garter Knight banner of her father, who had met a hero’s death fighting the Spanish, leaving her an orphan. She found the banner hanging in the pale winter light near a stained-glass window depicting England’s glorious victory over the armada. Her family had a rightful place at this court, paid for with her father’s life. She would give no less to honor his memory and name.
Mary’s starched ruff itched, but people pressed in so close she dared not raise her hand to scratch her neck, lest it come in contact with some embarrassing body part not her own. She must get used to such finery. At home they had dressed plainly. But in the court any evidence of Puritan leanings would draw the wrath of a queen who clung to her father’s high church and insisted on the compliance of her subjects. Though Elizabeth had said she did not make windows into men’s souls, she did demand they mirror her beliefs. That knowledge had given Mary her first hope: She could pretend to be submissive and unassuming, while remaining herself. Such behavior would not be easy. This church service had already shown her how vigilant she must be.
She sagged on her grandfather’s arm. Would the Epiphany sermon never end? Her ears were numb from the preacher’s drone, and she felt ready to protest as he suddenly switched from Matthew to Old Testament prophecy. But there was no need.
The queen stood, shaking her fist toward the altar. “Stick to your text, sir, stick to your text!”
The sermon ended abruptly with the shortest prayer Mary had ever heard. She beamed. She herself might have only diluted Tudor blood, but she had a queen’s temper and took delight in Elizabeth, who could be wholly herself. It was endearing.
Her Majesty descended to the altar, leaving there traditional gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The sweet voices of boy choristers caroled. The queen departed and the chapel emptied of courtiers, trailing in a long train after their sovereign, who set a quick pace.
Mary and her grandfather fell into their place in procession among the other visiting knights behind the queen’s ladies, her council and the peers of the realm. Mary murmured her latest tidbit of royal gossip. “She still rides to the hunt, you know.”
“So I hear.” Her grandfather took her arm. “My dear girl, I think me that you are doomed to great disappointment if you continue in
this dream of yours. You must aim lower than the queen’s privy chamber. Since Mistress Ashley, her childhood nurse, died, the queen’s attendants have had higher station than a much-removed cousin, the granddaughter of a country knight.”
“And the daughter of a Garter Knight hero against Spain’s armada,” she corrected, adding, “And she chose you, Grandfather, to guard the lady Grey when she was released from the Tower. Surely Her Majesty remembers your great service to her, since she invited us here for Christmas.”
“Not enough to pay my costs. I believe Her Majesty may think that an invitation to court is reward enough.”
Her grandfather smiled—at least, Mary thought it was a smile—and they walked on, emerging into the grand presence chamber, which was draped with fresh boughs of fragrant pine, the walls painted and gilded where they were not covered with rich-colored tapestries.
A throng of courtiers crowded nearer the queen, who sat on her throne under a golden dome, watching from behind her fan.
Mary had never seen so many perfumed gentry dressed in cloth and colors new to her, all in the latest fashions from France and, she suspected, some of their own devising. The grand ladies in their glittering white-and-silver gowns and jewels did not outshine the gentlemen, who wore exaggerated wide-shouldered doublets and overstuffed breeches to their knees, each meant to provide the appearance of a spectacularly muscled body that God had never actually given them. Some had dyed their beribboned beards red and yellow and wore diamond earrings and jeweled swords, adding to their general gaudiness. Some had ruffs so high they could not turn their heads. It looked for all the world like a tournament of clothes where each had to best the others.
Mary snapped her mouth shut lest she laugh at these strutting peacocks, or look shocked by each new parading gentleman more outrageous than the last. And above all this fantastic court sat Elizabeth, more alive than all these preening cocks, her eyes fierce, fathomless and challenging.
