Queen's Pleasure

by Brandy Purdy

  I was so absorbed in my thoughts that I did not realize Dr. Biancospino had come to stand behind me until I saw his face reflected in the glass behind me.

  “If you choose to have the surgery, to fight and maybe even win, and defy Death, you will still be beautiful,” he said, “and any man who thinks otherwise is a shallow fool.”

  “Thank you,” I said quietly as the tears dripped down my face. I wanted to believe, I wanted to hope, but I couldn’t. I just couldn’t do it! But I didn’t want to disappoint dear Dr. Biancospino. “I ... I need time to think,” I said. “I am so very tired, I just want to lie down and rest for a while, and later ... later I will think on all that you have said to me and ... and then decide.”

  He turned me ’round to look at him, and his eyes burned into mine, and I felt the fire of his soul trying to will me to live, to fight for my life, even at the cost of my breast. He raised his hand and caressed my tear-dampened cheek.

  “Believe!” he whispered urgently. “Believe!”

  He took me by the hand and led me to my bed. Gently, he turned me ’round and unlaced my pink gown, carefully easing it, and my petticoats, down over my hips to pool ’round my feet like an open flower. I was surprised that he didn’t call for Pirto but chose to attend me himself, as though he had doffed the cap of physician and donned that of a lady’s maid instead, but I said nothing, and, as I had always done before, trusted myself in his confident, capable hands. He held my hand as I stepped out of my skirts, and when I sat down on the bed, he knelt before me and removed my pink slippers and turned up the hem of my shift, up above my knees, to untie the pink silken bows of my garters and roll down my stockings. He plucked out the pins that held my hood in place, and then he helped me to lie down, lifting my cold feet as I lay my head upon the pillows. He covered me and came to sit on the side of the bed, gazing down at me silently, never saying a word, just looking at me, stroking my hair, smoothing it over the pillows in waves of shining gold. Then he turned away and busied himself with the medicines on the table by my bed. He poured some wine into a goblet and added the familiar bitter white powder, that harbinger of strange dreams, derived from a pretty red poppy. Oh, how much I loved it for dulling the pain and, at the same time, hated it for the way it muddled my mind and made it feel heavy and befuddled upon waking, laboriously trying to separate reality from the realm of dreams. This time he added more of the powder, to make it stronger, to give me a deeper and longer rest, and I was glad. I wanted and needed it. I reached for the goblet and drank it down, almost greedily, never minding the burn and bitter aftertaste, then fell back against the pillows and shut my eyes.

  He sat with me a little longer, stroking my hair, as my eyelids grew heavy and I started drifting off toward sleep and went, like a woman in love, into the arms of Morpheus. Was that the name of the god of sleep? It seemed a century ago that I had read the book of mythology to try to better myself for Robert. And it didn’t really matter anymore; regardless of his name, the god of slumber I had found was both a cruel and tender lover, who, in league with the medicine, liked to play games with my mind and leave me hopelessly befuddled and afraid that I was losing my mind. But this day, I was too tired to care. Let them have their fun, let the god of sleep and the white powder play, as long as I got to sleep.

  Dr. Biancospino bent and pressed a chaste kiss onto my brow. “Believe!” he whispered again, and then he left me.

  I slept long and deeply, dreams barely rippling, like a gentle breeze blowing upon the calm waters of my rest, so slight that I could not remember or be disturbed by them.

  Morpheus, or whatever his name was, was kind that afternoon, but sometime late in the night I was roused by a persistent hammering that sounded as if it were coming from right outside my door. But I felt as if my head had been glued to my pillow, and my body to the mattress. I just could not rouse myself or even call out to Pirto. Surely no one was making repairs at this late hour? Surely no loose paneling or floorboard could be so urgent that it could not wait until day? It must have been midnight, the witching hour, or even later. And then it stopped, and I thought no more about it until the pressing need of my body to be relieved forced me from my bed. After I had availed myself of the chamber pot, before I climbed back into bed, I remembered the curious hammering and went and opened my door to look out.

  My scream shattered the peace of what was left of the night, for there, nailed onto my bedchamber door, was a dried, wrinkled, and red sheep’s heart impaled with several sprigs of hawthorn, and, beside it, a small clay figure of a woman, with a nail driven through the middle of her chest, pinning her tiny body to the wooden door, and a lone hawthorn sprig piercing her left breast. A lock of golden hair was stuck to her head, and a bit of stained and bloody bandage formed a skirt around her hips to tell me who it was meant to be—me! I slid to the floor in a dead faint, dimly aware of numerous people in nightclothes with concerned and alarmed faces clustering around me, leaning over me with lighted candlesticks in their hands.

  I awoke hours later in my bed. Everyone tried to tell me that it had just been an evil dream, a nightmare, and that I should think no more about it, but even though they had been removed, I knew what I had seen—dark omens, the signs of black magic, a death spell, nailed to my door. If cancer and poison couldn’t kill me quickly enough, then someone was determined to frighten the life out of me. And when, later that day, I thought I caught a glimpse of the dark-cloaked figure of Richard Verney walking in the park, deep in conversation with Mr. Forster, I was certain I knew who it was. Mrs. Forster tried to tell me that he had merely come on an errand for my husband, to deliver some papers to Mr. Forster, who, as my husband’s treasurer, managed all his accounts, as well as a purse of gold for my own expenses, and that he had already gone away again, but I refused to believe it was an innocent errand rather than an evil one. Richard Verney was my husband’s creature, his most devoted minion, and he had already tried to take my life twice, first by poison and then by hiring Red Jack. Only my departure from Compton Verney had saved me, but now ... now I knew that he and his evil, murderous intentions had followed me to Cumnor.

  My anger almost gave me the courage to send for Dr. Biancospino and agree to the operation, to let myself be strapped to the table right at that moment and sacrifice my breast, to try to save my life just to spite my would-be murderers, to keep Robert, the assassin of all my dreams, from having his come true. But my courage faltered, and then it fell and plummeted to the depths and shattered when it hit the bottom the day I received the book of poisons in a parcel sent from London, authored by Dr. Kristofer Biancospino, with the telltale red hair stuck inside that told me that my enemy, the Queen, had sent it.

  I was always a creature of feelings, prey to my own emotions, not cold and calculating and precise, and they knew it, and so I played right into their hands and did exactly what they meant for me to do. I let Fear take hold of me and dance me ’round fast until I was senseless and dizzy with it, overwhelmed and unable to think clearly. Thus I let her accomplish what she aimed to do—plant the seed of mistrust and make me turn my back on Dr. Biancospino, shun and send away the man who might have been my savior.

  31

  Elizabeth

  The Queen’s Summer Progress

  May–September 1560

  When we departed for the Summer Progress, few, if any, of my court were in a tranquil state of mind. There is always an air of excitement and expectancy that hangs about a Progress, but this year there was a strong undercurrent of tension and alertness rippling through the great, snaking procession, making it seem more like an electric eel than a snake as it slowly undulated along the long, dusty, winding roads. Trouble was brewing in Scotland, and many of our men lay strewn, dead and broken, on the field of battle in a war I had never wanted but that the men about me had insisted must be fought, though my inner instincts cried out for peace. Because of this, and other factors, this summer I had chosen not to stray too far from London. And to further complicate m
atters, the passionate Prince Eric had written vaguely but vehemently that he was determined to come woo me in person, sailing to me in a ship filled with gold to lay this fortune, along with his love, at my feet, to pile it there before me piece by piece with his own hands, and no one could say for certain, not even his ambassadors, whether this was merely sweet lover’s talk or if word might come at any moment that his ship had docked. And the weather was dismal, so cold, rainy, and foul, it was hard to believe this was indeed summer. I heard more than one of my courtiers grumble, and most aptly too, that he would rather sit in the hot and close confines of the noisy, busy kitchen than in the drafty Great Hall, which was far too large to ever heat sufficiently.

  And Robert! He was like a man possessed! A whirlwind of infectious, frenetic energy that I found contagious; from rising to retiring it was a constant, unending race to see which one of us would weary first. But he was also drunk on the wine of power and glutted on the feast of folly. Incessantly he hinted and wheedled and pestered me to elevate him to the peerage; he had his heart and mind set on an earldom. He seemed hell-bent on making himself even more hated and appeared to take a peculiar pleasure in being the most detested man in England. Already he wore a vest of chain mail beneath his shirt, and his death was spoken of by many as an event they looked forward to with infinite delight, but these threats seemed only to feed his vanity and pride as seeds for the peacock. And when he rode out as my champion in one of the many tournaments he arranged, he wore a coat embroidered with a tall white obelisk entwined with ivy and blazoned with the words You standing, I will flourish. It was clear to everyone what he meant: as long as I ruled, he looked to reign supreme as the highest in my favor and, in time, perhaps as more. It was no secret that he longed to be King and thought himself the man amongst all my suitors most worthy of it. When I told him, “Never!” it was as though he didn’t even hear me; his arrogance and vanity rendered him deaf to common sense and reason. He went about behaving like a little boy leaping up and swooping down to catch butterflies, just for the pleasure of pulling their beautiful wings off and leaving them to die maimed and ugly. And I found myself trying ever harder to ignore the qualities that tarnished the allure of this man, whom I had known and loved almost all my life. I was torn. I was being maddeningly contradictory, and I knew it. He was irresistible, yet at times all I wanted to do was resist and put him from me, banish him from my life, though at the back of my mind the nagging thought tugged that if I did, the words would scarcely be out of my mouth before I was issuing orders contradicting them and calling him back to me. He was just too much fun. As for Amy, we never spoke of her.

  Willfully and rebelliously turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to the rumors that branded me wild and wanton, I tossed my hair and told Cecil to deal with the Scottish situation himself, and I flounced off to play and amuse myself with Robert, to spend almost every waking hour riding and hunting with him, picnicking and dancing with him beneath the trees or the stars at open-air banquets. I was in such a strange state of mind that summer! Looking back on it, that Elizabeth sometimes seems a stranger even to me. I no longer trusted Robert. I was furious with him over Amy, I despised and deplored his ambitions, and I would never marry him—nothing on this earth or in Heaven could ever induce me to make him my husband—but I couldn’t shake or break his hold over me. He was quite simply the most fun and exciting man I ever knew. I still wanted him, but only in my own way, not his. It was only when his way was also mine that we agreed; when we differed, it was like thunder and lightning, clashing and crashing. And often, in cruel little ways, always publicly, so there would be many witnesses, I would put him in his place. One day when I saw him coming, a delighted smile spreading across his face, as he strode across the lawn of one of the country houses we stopped at, to join me where I sat picnicking with my court beneath the trees, I smiled and waved at him and trilled merrily, “Ah, there you are!” I moved my full skirts aside and patted the warm green grass beside me. “I cannot live without seeing you every day!” I watched Robert’s smile broaden. “You are like my little dog”—I paused to allow my courtiers to gasp and snigger as the smile fell from Robert’s face—“as soon as he is seen anywhere, people know that I am coming, and when you are seen, they say I am not far off.” And though Robert grumbled and glowered at being compared to a dog, I laughed and gave a playful yank to the Order of the Garter that he wore about his throat, saying, “Just like a jeweled leash!” I smiled. “All of my dogs wear such pretty collars!” And all the rest of the day I made a great show of dropping things—my fan, my gloves, my handkerchief, even surreptitiously pulling the pins from my hat so that it would be blown from my head and go skipping on the breeze across the wide emerald lawn—so that “my gallant puppy” might fetch them for me, and each time he returned be rewarded with a pat on the head and a “Good boy!”—a morsel of praise or a sweetmeat to nibble from my fingers, which I hastily snatched back, lest he nip them in his anger. And by the time I retired that night, the highest man in the land was feeling very low indeed.

  And still I flirted shamelessly with Arundel, Pickering, and my dear Gooseberry. And when the eldest statesman in the land, Sir William Paulet, who at five years past eighty had served my father, brother, and sister before me, entertained us at his house in Winchester, I kept him constantly at my side, kissing and patting his withered cheeks and clinging to his arm, many times lamenting how I wished that he was not so old, for “I would have him to be my husband before any other man in England, for he is pliable like a willow rather than mighty as an oak, and I care for him most deeply!” Oh, how Robert fumed at that; he banged his fist down into a plate of salad, jarring all the tableware around him and upsetting a goblet of wine into his sister’s lap. I cried out in mock alarm for my physician, and when he raced to my side, directed him to attend Lord Robert. “His face is so red, I fear he is about to succumb to apoplexy! Look at the way the veins in his temples pulse!”

  I was selfish, though I would not admit that to anyone but myself. I was young still, and after so many years of fighting for my life, of being a prisoner of fear or behind locked doors, I just wanted to be free. I told myself I had done all that was possible for Amy, that she was comforted and well cared for, and I cast off my cares to have fun with the only man who could keep up with me. Or maybe those are all just excuses designed to try to cloak, conceal, and justify the fascination and allure that held me in thrall to Robert Dudley.

  Everyone tried to make me see reason. Sometimes I retaliated by sending the men off to Scotland, including the most prominent and powerful of Robert’s enemies, the Duke of Norfolk. I even dispatched Cecil to sue for peace. I didn’t want to hear; I chose to stop my ears and blind my eyes to Robin’s faults and follies. I wanted to kick Reason out of my life and just have fun. In moments of solitude and quiet, when I forced myself to face the truth—as a result, I tried to avoid too many quiet moments that might open the door to such honest introspection—I knew that there would not be many more summers like this; indeed, this might even be the last one. I was a woman nearly seven years past twenty. Many thought I had dallied overlong in eschewing the marriage bed and began to believe I would indeed die an old maid, a crotchety, sharp, and sour as a crabapple virgin, and though several still ran after me, some of my suitors had already given up, admitted defeat, and married elsewhere.

  Before he departed for Scotland, Cecil warned me, “Madame, if you are foolish enough to marry Robert Dudley, it will be your undoing. One night you shall go to bed as Queen Elizabeth and wake up plain Lady Elizabeth the next morning! By courting Robert Dudley, you are courting disaster!” he shouted after me.

  But I didn’t listen. Instead, I shouted: “Since this is your war, Cecil, you can finish it; don’t come back until you have achieved peace!”

  He was back by July, having seemingly accomplished the impossible, but I was too proud to even tender my thanks; instead, I retreated to Kew, where Robert hosted a grand banquet for all my court. As w
e fed each other bites of the fat quails, re-dressed after roasting in their proud heads and plumage, stuffed to bursting with apples and chestnuts, and presiding over a nest filled with their own pickled eggs, we sat apart from the other guests, in the perfumed rose garden, lounging upon plump rose silk cushions, tantalizing veiled from their inquisitive eyes by sheer rose-colored curtains fringed with Venetian gold, through which all could see our shadowed forms embracing. Robert presented me with an enormous deep blue sapphire that had once belonged to my father, which he had had cut into the shape of a heart and ringed by peerless white diamonds. “Here is my heart,” he said as he offered it to me in a blue velvet box. “Let this jewel stand as surety for my eternal, undying love, and the depth of its blue as testament to the depth of my devotion, bluer than the bluest sea, deeper than the deepest ocean.”