Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I

by Sandra Byrd

  Her Majesty drew me aside before William and I left to tell me that she had settled some rents upon me as a wedding gift, the incomes befitting my new rank.

  • • •

  William and I left court that evening and returned to his London estate. He’d had the bedchamber prepared with new linens and though the fire was fresh and warm, the servants were not to be seen. I bathed in perfumed water and when I returned, he awaited. He looked younger, though I did not tell him that, and I was pleased to see him so joyous. I felt neither the fear that some women speak of on their wedding nights nor a burst of passion that could not be contained. I felt fondness, and affection, and satisfaction that what we had longed and planned for had finally, happily, come to pass. If anything, he, older and already twice married, seemed more hesitant than I.

  I patted the seat beside me to welcome him close. We talked for some time and drank some wine, and then afterward we tenderly, quietly consummated our marriage. As he had been toward me from the first moment he made my acquaintance, he was gentle and thoughtful and treated me with care bordering on adoration. I treated him with affection and respect, and prayed I would always do so.

  Afterward, I lay next to him, noticing that the small hairs upon his skin were like tiny, curled wisps of smoke. I reached over and put my hand upon his chest, which seemed to please him.

  “It has been a long time since I have had the touch of a woman I love,” William said. “Perhaps until it is restored, one does not realize how one yearns for that touch.”

  I drew the coverlet around me and looked upon him. “I felt warmed by your touch, too,” I said. “I have, of late, begun to think about that as regards Her Majesty.”

  He looked at me. “What do you mean?”

  “She is the queen, and it is nigh on impossible to touch her. The times I have reached out to her, for a quick embrace or to ask for the kiss of a sister, the ladies of the court seemed taken aback. And yet, she has no mother to embrace her, no sisters, no husband, no children. Does she, too, not crave human touch?”

  “I would think that to be true,” he agreed. “I’d not thought of it.”

  “It’s one reason why she dances so much, so often, I’ll wager,” I said. “Perhaps that’s also why she enjoys ointments, salves, and the ministrations of a caring hand.”

  He reached over then and took my hands in his own caring ones and we fell asleep in harmony.

  • • •

  We stayed at his London home so I could attend to the queen, still, on a daily basis. When I was not waiting upon her we hawked, played chess, danced, and read Italian poetry and plays. As the summer grew hotter and the days longer, William’s energy level grew shorter and his gout more pronounced. It troubled me.

  The first weeks of our marriage, the nights passed quietly as we shared a bed. But soon, William began to awaken in the middle of the night.

  “What is it?” I asked, shivering in darkness lit only by the moon.

  “It’s an ache in my feet, that’s all,” he said. But his face was white with pain.

  “Can I help? I have some ointment that might assist.” I opened the lacquered case in which I kept my preparations and chose one with mint in it, which would speed the medicine through the skin. I rubbed it into his foot, but that seemed to cause him greater pain. “It feels both burning hot and as if my foot was held in cold water,” he said. He pulled his foot away, and I used a clean linen to wipe off what remained of the salve.

  He lay back down in the bed and turned about like a bird on a spit. I could not sleep, knowing him to be in pain, so I spent much of the night trying to bring him relief. The next day he told me that he was having his manservant prepare another chamber. “I shan’t keep you awake all night,” he said. When I protested, he held up his hand and indicated that he was going to sleep elsewhere until he felt well.

  He did not return to sleep with me all summer. In October came an invitation from Lord Robert to attend a week at Warwick in which he meant to entertain the queen and her closest courtiers.

  “We can decline,” I told William, waving for a servant to bring more warm compresses to lay upon his legs. “The queen surely understands that you have been unwell.”

  “No, we must attend,” he said. “I have spent so little time at court already.”

  “But you can hardly walk,” I protested.

  “I shall arrange for that.”

  We packed several trunks, loaded upon litters, and William traveled in the litter rather than ride. I rode alongside him so his pride would not be wounded by my riding horseback. We took the journey slowly and arrived in late October. Although I was able to attend most of the festivities, including a play in which Lord Robert himself starred for the queen’s pleasure, William was unable to leave his room and I returned to check on him at every free moment.

  He grew steadily worse until the day came in which he was unable to respond to my questions or touch. I spoke to him soothingly, although I grew overwrought inside. Lord Robert sent his physician, but he could not help. And so, on October 28, my husband passed from my arms into the arms of God. We had been married but five months.

  I did not leave his side until Anne Dudley quietly eased me away.

  His body was prepared and laid out and I returned to him. I gently rubbed oil of rosemary, for remembrance, upon his face. “Thank you, William. You cared for me like a father, a teacher, and finally a husband. You found me as Elin, Wolf’s daughter, and left me as Helena, Marchioness of Northampton.” I bent down and kissed his cheek and then the coffin lid was closed, my girlhood carried away with him.

  After the funeral, which by custom I did not attend, Her Majesty dismissed all but a few maids and pages and called me to her. “Are you well, Helena?” It was the first time she had ever used my first name.

  “I am as well as can be expected, Your Majesty,” I said. “Thank you for your many kindnesses.”

  “As William died with no issue, his estates reverted to the crown. Rest assured we shall ensure that you receive your portion and rents from Northampton’s properties and everything that is now due you.”

  “Now due me, Majesty?”

  “My good lady marquess, as the highest-ranking lady in the land you shall carry our train, you shall take precedence after ourselves and enjoy a host of other duties and privileges, including attending upon our person more often.” At this she smiled, and for the first time in days I smiled back. I now understood why she was happy for herself as well as for William and me when we married, and it gladdened me; I was now of sufficient rank to be a close friend. It put me in mind of the evening when William told me that the queen had raised Lord Robert to earl so he was of a sufficiently marriageable rank. “Blanche can assist you in understanding,” the queen finished.

  I curtseyed and thanked her again.

  She stood up and said, “And now, I’ve promised Robin that I shall best him at chess.”

  And then a thought crossed my mind and I reflected misery once more. A tear slipped down the side of my face and I wiped it away quickly and then curtseyed, face tilted downward, to hide my further sorrow.

  “What is it?” the queen asked, bidding me rise.

  “William and I often played chess. I shall miss that.”

  She rested a hand on my shoulder, tarried for a moment more, and then took her leave.

  I would return to court a marchioness, foreigner or not.

  NINE

  Years of Our Lord 1572, 1573

  The Palace of Whitehall

  On Progress

  Kenilworth Castle

  January: Year of Our Lord 1574

  The Palace of Whitehall

  The year before had been one of mixed joy and sorrow for me, and it had been for the queen as well. Whilst I’d been celebrating my marriage, the queen had been informed of yet another plot to murder her, leaving her throne open for Mary, Queen of Scots, and her secretly proposed husband, the Duke of Norfolk, he who had promised to meddle no more in M
ary’s marriage.

  One night at cards, Lord Ambrose Dudley, Lord Robert’s brother, explained to us what had transpired. “The queen received a warning from the Grand Duke of Tuscany that a man named Ridolfi was working with Mary’s ambassador to the English court, John Lesley, to overthrow Elizabeth and place Mary on the English throne.”

  “Isn’t he the same man who commissioned that pamphlet some years back calling for the ‘restoration’ of Mary to the English throne?” Anne Dudley asked her husband.

  He nodded. “Yes, in spite of Her Majesty’s kind treatment of him and his mistress. In any case,” he continued, “books and letters directly connected Lesley to Mary’s involvement in the plot, and he divulged more when threatened with torture, including the use of papal money that was sent to the Marians in Scotland. Further investigation showed that Norfolk had been sending money to Mary’s supporters in Scotland, too.”

  I couldn’t believe how foolish Norfolk had been. Did he not think that he would be discovered, though he always was? Or did he not care? The plan was, of course, revealed, and Norfolk was arrested and tried by his peers. He was found guilty, and yet the queen was reluctant to sign his death warrant. To the frustration of her government, she’d signed—and rescinded—the execution warrants twice.

  We sat in the queen’s chamber some days later, the late sun filtering through the windows of Westminster Palace, watching barges sail up and down the Thames. I did my lacework, other women read, and some worked a needle to linen. Although I sat closest to the queen, carried her train, and had substantial grants of my own, none except Anne Dudley treated me with warmth beyond respect. I’d heard the word Dane muttered when I entered the room.

  “What are you working, Helena?” the queen asked me, nodding toward my needle.

  “I’m making the edge of a linen, Majesty. Would you like a turn with my needle?” I jested. We had indeed grown closer and the queen had given me liberties, within reason, since I’d become a marchioness.

  She batted at me. All knew she was disinclined toward needlework.

  “I’ve heard that your cousin Mary of Scots excels at needlework,” I said, not looking up. “I’ve been told that she not only plies her own needle but that she fashions her own designs.”

  “Perhaps she, and other needleworkers, should spend yet more time in productive yield,” the queen answered tartly before turning back to her lettering, terminating the conversation. I knew that I had reraised an issue in her sharp mind, though. At Norfolk’s trial, there was much hard evidence, letters and communications and such, but there were also hints of treason of a more feminine kind. Norfolk was found to be wearing an engagement ring sent to him by Mary, and also in his possession was a pillow cover in which she’d embroidered a hand clipping off a barren vine—Elizabeth—so that a more fruitful one, Mary, may flourish. Underneath she’d sewn the motto “Virtue flourishes by wounding.” Perhaps that safe pillow he’d sought?

  And yet the queen was ill disposed to believe that Mary had plotted treasonously against her. Perhaps because she had so few Tudor family members, she wanted to believe Mary when she called the queen “my dear sister.” There were none so blind as those who would not see. I thought back on my sister, dallying with my fiancé. I hadn’t wanted to believe that she would seek her own good at my expense. But she had. Our queen was, perhaps, vulnerable to that very human, harmful desire to believe the best in others for far too long.

  The queen did not alter her daily routine in response to the threats from within and without. She rode, she hunted, she walked, and she entertained without fear. In May, the French came to ratify the Treaty of Blois and she played the virginals herself to entertain them. I stood nearby, though she played from memory and had no need of a page turner. It did not escape my notice, nor anyone in the rooms, I’m sure, that the virginals had been decorated with a falcon and a tree stump, a mute remembrance of her mother’s badge.

  The music she’d chosen to play was wistful and slow compared with the lively volta we’d danced the night before. For those who listened, she foreshadowed. Comfortable with her new French treaty, she shortly thereafter issued the death warrant for Norfolk. This time, she did not rescind it.

  I recalled a line I’d read in a book of poetry found in Her Majesty’s library. It had been penned by Henry Howard, Norfolk’s father, himself executed for treason some years before his son followed him to the scaffold: “Content thyself with thine estate, / Neither wish death, nor fear his might.”

  Lord Robert came to the queen’s chambers late on June 2 to report to her. She dismissed all but a few who stayed for support.

  “He wore black satin,” he began, and I hid a smile that Lord Robert would notice what the condemned man wore, “and spoke well and nobly to the crowd. He recalled that ‘through great clemency of Her Majesty, it has been strange to see a nobleman suffer in this place. It is my fortune to be the first, and I pray God that I may be the last.’ ”

  How readily one may be raised in this realm and how quickly the ennobled may fall.

  Would that Norfolk’s prayer come to pass, that his noble death would be the first and last in uneasy years. He was a pawn wishing to be promoted to king, and minor pieces are oft sacrificed early in a game. The game, though, is always between the two most powerful pieces, queens.

  Both could not win. One can never predict, however, if a given game shall go to the bold or to the prudent.

  • • •

  That summer, as always, the queen took the court on Progress. Cecil bemoaned the cost of moving the queen’s carts all summer. The rest of us bemoaned not only the inconvenience of traipsing about the country with those hundreds of carts and litters but the lack of rooms for us courtiers, then required to crowd together like rabbits in warrens. But the queen would meet her people and have a summer of, mostly, an abatement from work. ’Twas hard to begrudge her that, and we enjoyed partaking of the lavish hospitality offered at each stop as well.

  Things came to a fiery head, twice, in Warwick, however. Early in our stay a firework display was put on for her pleasure; unfortunately, balls of flame and hissing squibs fell into the nearby village, burning to the ground the simple house of a country man and his wife, who just escaped with their lives. The next morning, the queen had them brought to her.

  They were still filthy with soot and smelled badly of spoiled meat; it was to Her Majesty’s credit that she did not breathe into her pomander as she bid them come near. “My good man, we have heard that great damage was done to your home last eve,” she began. Her voice was always quieter when dealing with commoners, gentling their nerves.

  The man, kneeling before her, said, “Yes, Your Majesty. I’m sorry ta say that the house is done gone, and my bed and boots with it.”

  “And you, my good woman, are you well?” the queen kindly asked the woman beside him.

  “Yes, yes, ma’am,” she stammered out. She could not meet the queen’s eye.

  The queen turned toward me. “My good lady marquess, would you be so kind as to take up a collection among the court for this couple? We should like to see their house rebuilt and relardered before we return to London.”

  “Certainly, Your Highness,” I said. I set out to take a collection, and when I returned to the queen she was dictating a letter to her secretary. I stayed well in the background, repinning a brooch to my gown.

  The queen stamped her ring into the hot wax seal and said to her secretary, “Please see that this letter gets to Mr. Thomas Gorges, who will deliver it to the Queen of Scots for me.”

  I dropped my brooch on the floor and the queen turned to me. “Are you well, Marchioness?”

  “Yes, madam,” I said, keeping my eye upon my brooch, not daring to meet her sharp gaze, as I knew she would see more in me if I did.

  That week came an apocalypse, news delivered while we were out hunting with the queen. A messenger raced ahead to where the queen and Lord Robert rode in the lead. Within minutes, she had signaled all to stop
. The hunt was being canceled and we were to return to Warwick Castle to mourn. The French king, perhaps at the urging of his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, had authorized the assassination of some high-placed Protestants gathered in France for the wedding of Protestant Henry of Navarre to the French princess Margaret. Somehow, the French people had whipped themselves into a bloodthirsty mob and, in the end, murdered tens of thousands of common-born Protestant citizens.

  It would not be inaccurate to say that the event turned many in court, and country, further against the Catholic faith and those practicing it.

  That night, Eleanor Brydges and I worked together sorting through Her Majesty’s ribbons. When Eleanor bent forward, I saw a beaded necklace tucked under her dress. Rosary beads. Outlawed Rosary beads . . . worn only by recusants, whose loyalties, of course, were now suspect.

  “I see you wear something dear to your heart,” I said quietly, not meeting her eye. “Rosary beads?”

  “No!” she denied, tucking the necklace firmly under her neckline. Seeking to defuse the situation, I pulled out my own necklace, the locket of my mother and me. “I have shown this to but few, but I’d like to show it to you.” She had been a constant, if not particularly warm, friend since I arrived at court.

  “Lovely,” she said, then turned away. “What do you think of the French matter?” she asked, quickly changing the conversation.

  I shook my head. “There has long been talk, on and off, of the queen marrying with the Duke d’Anjou.” He, too, was a son of Catherine de’ Medici. “All wish for Her Majesty to be married, but I question whether any could accept him now. Perhaps it will have to be an Englishman who provides our heir after all!” I finished merrily. I wanted nothing more than for the queen to be happily married, and in the end, I felt that could be achieved only with Lord Robert.

  Eleanor did not comment. Maybe she was deep in thought about her own marriage, as she had just become engaged to a man we knew little about, Mr. George Giffard. I did not take mind of it. One thing everyone at court agreed upon was that the queen needed a successor and an heir.