by Sandra Byrd
“Frigga is stately, majestic. She loves to dress in fine gowns and has exquisite taste in clothing and in her jewels. She inspires awe, both fear and love in those around her. But she is the goddess of the heavens, sometimes garbed in swan white, and sometimes deepest black, depending on her quickly changing moods.”
He nodded his understanding. “Yes, yes, my love, ’tis apt. At least her clothing gives the standers-by a bit of a warning.”
I smiled at that before continuing. “She’s served by a number of maidens,” I said, “but she’s closest to her sister, Freya. Freya always helps Frigga as she prepares for the day, assisting with her ointments and cosmetics. She has charge over her jewels and golden shoes. She sometimes quietly advises Frigga on how to assist the mortals who apply to her for aid.”
He rolled over. “And I suppose you, my love, are Freya?”
I smiled. “Elizabeth has many ladies who help her and whom she loves well. But only one of us is a Swede, so perhaps I may be as Freya to her.”
He kissed me and then said quietly, “You’ve grown up, my love, as has your picture of our mistress, which is meet. Better to love the flesh-and-blood woman and not the taled goddess.” He paused. “Do you think she has given me new tasks and undertakings for my sake, or for yours?”
This was the first in a series of questions, and years, I suspected, where I would have to intercede with my queen for my husband, or the other way round. “Both,” I said. “She awarded Hurst Castle to you and the chancery before she knew we were in love, is that not true?”
He nodded, happy.
That New Year’s, the queen received us both warmly. She gave me a gift of forty-two ounces of gilded silver, and Thomas, eight. The difference was certainly to be expected, but I could see it unsettled him.
• • •
Having reconciled herself to my own forthcoming child, the queen sent me to represent her at the christening of a courtier’s child in February, a child to whom she’d promised to stand as godmother. As I was well ranked, I was welcomed as her deputy, and as I wouldn’t attend, by custom, the christening of my own children, I was pleased to participate. ’Twas always a delight to present expensive gifts, too, especially when they hadn’t been purchased from my own purse!
I knew the birth of babes reminded her of her own barrenness; she’d spoken of it to me. My gowns covered my growing child, and though I knew she was pleased for me, it was also a bit of ash in her eye. What made it worse were the whispers round court that her Robin was planning to marry her cousin Lettice some months hence, when her two years of widowhood were complete. She may see and say nothing, but she certainly heard all.
My Lord Sussex and other courtiers were with the queen and me one evening as we gambled. Suddenly, the conversation turned serious. Sussex was pressing the suit of the Duke d’Anjou again. Lord Robert, to no one’s surprise, was against it.
“Majesty,” Sussex said. “It is natural for us to wish for an heir from your own self. How glorious! How magnificent! How natural!”
At that, his sister and my friend Mary Radcliffe snickered. “Yes, brother, do tell, it is natural. I know it’s been said that spinsters like myself are supposed to be paired up with apes in Hell; as for me, I shall take my chances on if that be true or not. For one thing is certain, to be partnered here on earth would be to assure such a husband!”
Sussex blushed; only his virgin sister could get away with that stinging rebuke. We ladies hid our smiles behind our hands, and the queen quickly raised her white feather fan to hide her smile as well, rattling the long chain upon which it was clasped to her girdle.
“That’s not what I mean,” Sussex said.
“The people won’t have it,” Lord Robert declared, raising his voice.
“You mean you won’t have it, Leicester, and your opinion in this matter concerns me not in the least!” Sussex shouted.
“Her Majesty will not partner herself with a French fop!” Lord Robert retorted.
Sussex looked Lord Robert up and down, noting his fine purple attire. “Nor an English one, apparently.”
“Gentlemen,” the queen said quietly. “I shall consider all you’ve said. And now, if you don’t mind, I wish to play cards. Who will gamble against me this night?”
A cadre of her men agreed, and I thought, in cards and in life, it was the fool who gambled against Elizabeth.
Within days, the queen had signaled her approval for the negotiations to begin again between herself, at forty-four years of age, and Anjou, a man of but twenty-three who had, apparently, a novice’s poverty of looks but a prince’s riches in charm. She insisted in dressing again in the French fashion, which she much preferred anyway, perhaps as a token of affection to her mother.
Was it the rumors of Robin and Lettice that had made her turn aside from her declaration to me that she would remain married only to her realm? Or was it her realm that she was thinking to protect by aligning herself with France against Spain? A French husband would be a powerful antidote to the Scots’ poison for her throne. In any case, I had learned to watch what she did, not what she said. Walsingham, too, was against the marriage. He was perhaps the most formidable foe any of the queen’s enemies had, slithering as he did through country and court.
“I suspect Walsingham of fomenting public opposition to the French marriage,” Thomas told me one night after he’d returned from a mission to the north for the queen. He loved when we could share a meal together in private, so I’d had one specially prepared and delivered to our quarters.
“Surely not!” I said. “That would border on treason.”
“That’s not how he would view it,” he said. “But I am remiss to speak of matters of the realm. I’m more interested in the matters of my own hearth. How comes our child?”
“She comes soon,” I said. “I sense her shifting within me.”
“Her?” he noted with surprise.
“I’m certain it’s a girl,” I answered him. “Her Majesty has already agreed to stand as godmother and to allow us to name her Elizabeth, if that be all right with you.”
I retired to Blackfriars with our own servants the middle week of May, and I didn’t have to wait long until our insistent, red-haired daughter pushed herself out into the world. For nigh on twelve hours I cried out into a rag that I’d moistened with the helpful lady’s bedstraw until the midwife held her, bloody and wailing, in the air in front of me.
“A daughter, my lady. Will your husband be disappointed?” she asked me.
I shrugged. Truly, I did not know. I’d been afraid to ask. The babe wailed for nigh on an hour and I could do nothing to stop her. But when she was cleaned and wrapped and Thomas brought in, he took her in his arms and she settled right away.
“You know how to charm the young ladies,” I teased him as he bent over to kiss my sweaty brow.
“Seems I do,” he agreed, and smiled back at me. “But I’m only interested in young, beautiful ones who favor you.” I looked at them together and I knew that no matter what we’d risked to marry, it had all been worth it. Nothing and no one would separate us now.
FOURTEEN
Years of Our Lord 1578, 1579, 1580
Blackfriars
The Palace of Whitehall
Hampton Court Palace
Our daughter was christened on June 4 at St. Dunstan’s in the West by the very man who had married us not a year before. The queen gave us a double bowl of gilded silver in which the child was baptized, and then rejoined us at our small home to celebrate. I could not say for certain, but I think Thomas was slightly disconcerted by the size of our home because he brought up the topic of the ramshackle manor at Langford several times over the course of the evening. The queen, gracious as always, told him she felt perfectly at home right where she was.
I had not yet been churched after my daughter’s birth, and therefore had not yet reappeared in public, when the queen left for Progress. She made a special trip to Blackfriars to see me and to ensure that I w
ould join her midway.
“Yes, Majesty, of course. Perhaps I should oversee the effort to secure more sugar to be brought midway through the Progress.”
She feigned annoyance. “Are you saying that we are as a poor-quality wine, and can only be tolerated when well sugared?”
I laughed aloud, which she, like anyone who posits a jest, enjoyed. “No, no, Majesty. All know that you care not at all for the oysters, veal, mutton, anchovies, and eggs that are certain to be served to you as long as your confectionary course is well stocked.”
She smirked. “I shall see you shortly and in fine health, my good lady marquess.”
I settled back on my bed after she left, content that our friendship had been fully restored.
• • •
We were near the end of Progress, in August, when Sussex wrote again to the queen. One could not fault the man for his earnest devotion, and the queen credited that and much love to him, but he did not know when to leave a topic lie.
“Mary,” the queen asked. “Would you please read to us the letter from your brother while I am gowned and my hair done?”
Mary nodded and Catherine Carey, the Countess of Nottingham, assisted Her Majesty into her gown.
“ ‘To marry Anjou, who is a most noble and worthy partner to yourself,’ ” she read, “ ‘would be to secure an heir from your own body, which is precious to all in your kingdom. It will also assist you as you seek to gainsay the Spanish and their continued attacks against the Protestants in the Netherlands.’ ”
The queen nodded for Mary to continue.
“ ‘You shall have a husband as a defender of all your causes present.’ ” None of us dared smile, but the thought of twenty-three-year-old Anjou protecting Elizabeth was one that, in another venue, would have brought loud, merry mirth.
“Well, then, it’s settled,” the queen said. “I’m to be married!”
I did not know if she jested, and by the discomfort in the room I suspected no one else did, either.
“There is more, Majesty,” Mary said. “Shall I continue?”
“Yes, please do.”
“ ‘There are, of course, a few disadvantages. Your own mislike of marriage, and the general mislike which Englishmen have to be governed by a stranger.’ ” He went on to convey that a popular pamphlet had begun to circulate in London, declaring, with admiration and affection, that Elizabeth was “a prince of no mingled blood, of Spaniard or stranger, but born mere English here amongst us.”
The queen did not dismiss pamphleteers; she knew they spoke truth she was unlikely to hear in the gilded galleries of Whitehall.
Within a month of our return to court, the palace hummed with the news that Lord Robert had married his mistress, Lettice Knollys Devereux, at his house in Wanstead, two years after her husband Essex died, and three years after the queen had told him, with finality, that she would not marry him. Lettice’s father, Sir Francis Knollys, was the unshakable witness. None dared tell the queen, and who wanted to be within arm’s or ear’s reach when she learned of it? And yet she would certainly find out.
The queen had sent Thomas abroad, to the Netherlands, as an emissary, and I sat companionably sewing by the fire with Mary Radcliffe one November night.
“My brother . . . ,” she started.
“What is it?” I asked, handing a fresh needle to her. We both loved him well but knew his occasional intemperance of speech.
“He told the French ambassador of Lord Robert’s marriage.”
I set down my work. “I know he loves Lord Robert not, but the queen?” I marveled.
She nodded. “He believes it to be in Her Majesty’s best interests,” she said with a sigh. “Of course with Simier coming from France at the new year, well, it shan’t be long till the queen hears of it. And we’ll all be here as witnesses.”
New Year’s was the one time of year when all courtiers were expected to be present at court unless they were ill unto death or delivering a child. That meant Lettice would have to be there, too.
• • •
As I was to take charge and then manage all gifts presented to Her Majesty, I was near her elbow and throne each New Year’s, and therefore was close at hand when Lettice presented her gift to the queen at the beginning of 1579. The air between them was always disturbed, as they liked one another not, but as Lettice came forward and presented Elizabeth with a great chain of gold and amber with a small diamond, I detected no thunder in the clouds surrounding Frigga, so perhaps she did not yet know.
Elizabeth took the gift in hand and thanked her cousin graciously. “How does your family?” she asked.
Lettice looked perhaps a bit surprised. “My children are well, Majesty,” she answered smoothly. She held her gaze equal with the queen, whereas most of us made sure our gaze was tipped slightly floorward. “My young earl studies well, and my daughters are thinking ahead toward marriage.”
“Ah, yes, marriage,” the queen answered. “We will take an especial interest in assuring that they marry in security, so please make certain we hear of their plans from their guardian, Lord Huntingdon, as soon as a possibility may be raised.”
For those who cared to listen, there was a warning.
That year, as in many others, the queen received many gifts of gowns, fabrics, and other expensive clothing. Anne Dudley and I looked at one another with pleased satisfaction for the young maids of honor who would also benefit from this largesse. When the queen had to pay less for her own clothing, she presented more to her ladies and maids, many of whom served at their own expense, throughout the following year. Lady Mary Radcliffe, with little money of her own, almost always received a valuable piece or two of the queen’s gifted jewelry.
Within weeks the d’Anjous’ envoy, Simier, arrived at court. He was light of heart and step and had pretty words and tokens for all of us. As master of the duke’s wardrobe as well as his “chief darling,” he was authorized to speak freely on behalf of his master. After a year of tension, fear, and dull wit, I must say that whether or not one was in favor of the marriage, it was a pleasant diversion to have Simier at court.
“My master,” he said to Her Majesty, “he is so very far away in France, and yet his heart, Majesty, is right here with you. May I send him a word, and perhaps a token, of your affection, something you yourself have touched?”
The queen, always engaged by courtly flirtation and wit, smiled and agreed. “A portrait of ourself?” she suggested.
“Non, non, madame, that will not do. Of course, he has already seen of your beauty. But perhaps something that you have kissed and cherished and held dear?”
I was finishing the lace detail on one of the queen’s handkerchiefs and I raised it slightly. She glanced at me and nodded. I finished off the edge and brought it to her. “Our perfume?” she said to me. I went to the lacquered box—which was now securely locked—and took out a crystal vial of the vanilla and rose scent she now favored.
“Majesty?” I held it out toward her and she unstoppered it, sprinkled the new handkerchief with a few spare drops and then kissed the linen before handing it over to Simier.
“Oui, oui, c’est parfait!” he exclaimed, bowing. And then, before any could stop him, he dashed into the next room, which was the queen’s private bedchamber.
Alarmed, two of the men stationed at the door moved forward, but the queen lifted her hand to stop them. Within a minute, Simier came out with one of her lace bed caps in his hand.
“Monsieur Simier, what is the meaning of this?” she asked.
“I am sure that my master would like to have something not only close to your heart but close to your bed!” he insisted.
At that the queen laughed, pleased, I was certain, to be found attractive and desirable by a man twenty years younger than she. And perhaps, the jesting and acting were leavening in a court that often felt weighty and wearying.
Soon she had nicknamed Simier her “monkey.” I looked at Mary Radcliffe, wondering, perhaps, if the queen was
recalling the fable of virgins being forced to marry apes in Hell. Mary held back what seemed to be a tart retort as she responded to my glance, so I knew it was on her mind, too.
“May I always be numbered among your beasts!” Simier responded with diplomatic aplomb.
The courting soon turned to negotiations, however, and the forecast was not quite so bright. I heard Simier and Her Majesty discussing d’Anjou’s terms, much more pointed than his compliments, as I was tending to her jewels with Mary.
“He must be crowned king immediately after the marriage,” Simier insisted. “And he needs a generous allowance, as befits his position, paid annually throughout his life and which will be irrevocable.”
The queen grew quiet before answering in flawless French that she would speak to her council on the matter.
Although Sussex and Cecil were strongly for the marriage, even they would not agree to those terms. Her other councilors, including Lord Robert and Walsingham, were strongly against it. Philip Sidney represented most Englishmen when he said the proposal would be unacceptable to her people regardless of the terms because d’Anjou was the “son of the Jezebel of our age,” Catherine de’ Medici.
The next Sunday the queen was forced to march out of the service given by her own minister, in her own chapel, who proclaimed, “Marriages with foreigners would only result in ruin to the country.”
Thomas was back from his travels and greatly desired my companionship, but the queen was on edge and required it, too. That eve, before she retired, I rubbed her neck and shoulders with ointment of rose and valerian. By the time I returned to our chamber, having purposed to rub his shoulders as well, he was fast asleep.
I sat there, herbs nearby for a few moments, then quietly put them away. I slipped on my sleeping gown and, while he stirred some, he did not wake when I joined him in bed. I ran my hands over the back of his neck, craving his touch and, finding none, offering mine instead.
• • •
In September of that year John Stubbs published The Discovery of a Gaping Gulf, Whereunto England Is Like to Be Swallowed by Another French Marriage, If the Lord Forbid Not the Banns by Letting Her Majesty See the Sin and Punishment Thereof. Stubbs was rare in that he spoke for the common man but was also educated, in his case, at Trinity College, Cambridge.
