Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I

by Sandra Byrd

  “It has been long since you have spoken Swedish to me. What say you?”

  “From the Song of Solomon,” I said. “ ‘His mouth is most sweet: yea, he is altogether lovely. This is my beloved, and this is my friend.’ ”

  • • •

  “Come, Helena.” The queen beckoned me forward. “You seem weary.”

  I looked at her pointedly; it was not that she did not care for her ladies; we all knew that she well loved us. But it was true that I was not accustomed to her asking after my well-being. I wondered if her instincts, sharp as a broken shell, had picked up on the shift in my mood.

  “I should like a few days’ leave, Majesty,” I said. “I wish to travel to Salisbury.”

  “Salisbury?” she asked, surprised. “Yes, of course, but whatever for?”

  “My cousin Sofia is to be married to a young Welsh squire. We’re to meet some from the Pembrokes’ household at Wilton and she will travel with them to Wales.”

  The queen softened and sat back in her large chair. “A marriage? Are there congratulations to be offered? It seems hastily arranged.”

  “My cousin was corresponding with my husband,” I said bluntly.

  The queen leaned forward again, shocked. “Surely not Sir Thomas! He did not involve himself in an unchivalrous manner?”

  “Nay, Majesty, despite her vigorous efforts otherwise.”

  She eased again. “Well then, a young and lovely cousin who favors you and desires the man you’ve chosen for your own. What shall we do? Have her thrown into the Tower?”

  I smiled, appreciating that these many years after her Robin had married Lettice she was able to jest about it, though the “she-wolf” had never been forgiven. I now understood her torment in a most personal manner.

  “Do not tempt me, my lady!” I teased back. “I shall return in but a few days.”

  “See that you do, my good lady marquess,” the queen said wistfully. “I shall miss your companionship while you are gone. I cannot do without you.”

  And yet, she must do without me. My heart and mind filled with foreboding, and while my back was firm, my knees were not.

  I left Sofia at Wilton, in good hands, and then rode out to Langford with some of my household’s men and six craftsmen I had hired in London.

  We came upon the ruins, and I indicated that I wanted them to begin to make some part of the house habitable.

  “A kitchen, of course, and the privies. The hall and some chambers, and the library.” I had counted the cost before leaving London, using some of the money we’d earned on Drake’s last journey as well as many of my own rents I had been saving. I had not told Thomas. It was to be a gift for him after the war. Our living area would not be grand; it would be small, a yolk of life surrounded by ruins, but it would be ours. I took one of the stones with me; they were unique, pinkish brown.

  I made my way back to London before the fleet sailed, and sent the rock to Thomas. He would know it had come from Langford, and though he did not know what I was about, he would understand that I was sending him a bit of our home.

  He had a messenger deliver a gift to me, a gold salamander brooch with a ruby eye. The queen spied me wearing it and smiled. Salamanders were the gift of lovers, designed for heat.

  But lovers come in tamer varieties, too, and that spring and summer the queen dined often, and alone, with Lord Robert. There was nothing improper between them, of this I was sure, as I was still on constant attendance. But when the heat between them had withdrawn, it left a warm field of affection and companionship. Lettice Knollys was never at court, but rumor had it that she was sharp with Lord Robert. I knew not if that were true, but I heard its opposite, merriment and pleasure from the queen’s dining chamber and I saw Lord Robert and her, many a night, heads down over a chess game.

  Watching them together, wondering what might have been had they married, put me in mind of a chess move—the willful sacrifice of a queen made to strengthen the realm’s overall position. Each day she paced her chambers waiting for word from her men on the coasts. When the missives arrived, she read them, quickly, and fired back instructions.

  Lord Howard of Effingham had letters sent to the coastal towns, instructing them to arm themselves and prepare for battle. Walsingham had certain information that the Spanish were preparing to attack within months. They had 138 ships prepared, many more than the 61 that the queen had in her fleet. But their ships were bloated, oceangoing vessels, heavy and self-important like the Spanish king, whereas the English fleet was made up of galleons that were made for piracy: sleek and sharp and able to quickly respond and redirect when necessary, like our queen. More important, they carried two thousand cannons, more than twice the number that the Spanish carried, a gift that her father, King Henry, fascinated by artillery, had bequeathed to his daughter. I couldn’t help but think he would be proud to see her, in her red-haired glory, facing the Spanish head-on.

  Too, there was a certain wry satisfaction in the fact that many of the newer cannons had been made by melting down bells from confiscated Catholic church property. The pope, the queen’s declared enemy, had financed some of her firepower.

  The last day of May, her lord admiral set out with his fleet for Spain but was driven back by strong winds. “We have danced as lustily as the most gallant dancers in court,” Howard wrote to Walsingham, who conveyed it to the queen. Walsingham set down the letter. “But he is eager to get back to sea as soon as possible.”

  “Tell him to wait,” the queen said, pacing in her Presence Chamber.

  “Wait, Majesty?” Walsingham looked worried. “Why?”

  “We have . . . a premonition,” she said. “We have a deep concern that the Spanish shall outmaneuver him and make for our shores.”

  Walsingham did as he was told and sent the letter, but Lord Howard wrote back immediately and said, “I must and will obey; and am glad there be such at court as are able to judge what is fitter for us to do than we here; but by my instructions which I had, I did think it otherwise.”

  The queen, able to discern and follow sound counsel, backed off and told her lord admiral that he should do as he saw best.

  By the middle of July the Spanish had made it to the English coastal waters. Due to strong winds and the hand of God, most said, the English fleet was able to slip past and surround them, the winds at their back.

  Thomas and Essex were in Dover and rode hard back to court to apprise the queen. Things were at a tense but anticipatory standoff.

  “Our men danced on the shore as the Spanish came into sight,” Thomas said.

  “And Drake finished his game of bowls before boarding his ship,” Essex finished with not a little admiration. But board Drake did, and at the beating of his drum, his crew and the others mustered for battle.

  Lord Robert begged the queen to come to inspect her troops at Tilbury. “You shall, dear lady, behold as goodly, as loyal, and as able men as any Christian prince can show you.”

  Walsingham disagreed and begged the queen not to go, fearful for her safety. Those of us who knew her well could see that the idea of riding out to war with Lord Robert was something she was unlikely to pass by.

  Her Robin promised that he would guarantee her person to be as safe as it would be at St. James’s Palace, and staked his life upon it.

  “We agree!” she said. Before she left, she wrote to Lord Howard and asked how things progressed.

  “Their force is wonderful great and strong,” he replied, “and yet we pluck their feathers little by little.”

  Thomas, who had ridden nearly the entire shoreline to prepare the towns for battle, reported that bonfires had been lit all along the coast to spread news of the armada’s sighting.

  “It’s the English way,” he said. Seventeen thousand men had been readied in the southeast. I imagined that the Spanish, approaching the realm and seeing those bonfires, may have thought that they had misjudged the strength or determination of the little isle.

  I helped the queen pa
ck her trunks before she left, in August, to Tilbury. Although she was fifty-four years old, she wore a silver breastplate over her white velvet dress, and held a truncheon in her hand.

  “A truncheon instead of a scepter, Majesty?” I asked.

  “Each in its own time is required for rule,” she answered. She rehearsed her speech in front of us ladies.

  “My loving people,” she began. “We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects, and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down my life for my God and for my kingdom and for my people, my honor, and my blood, even in the dust.”

  I wanted nothing more than to mount a horse and ride alongside her.

  Lord Howard ordered some of his ship’s hulks to be laden with pitch and gunpowder, then set afire and sailed into the Spanish fleet anchoring at Calais. The fleet, once ablaze, became disoriented and panicked. The Spanish then headed north, taking a more dangerous and roundabout way home. In the end, only half of the armada made it safely back to Spain. The great crusade to which the pope and several Catholic nations had contributed ended in humiliation at the hand of a brave queen and her Catholic admiral.

  The war was won, and England rejoiced, but the queen’s Robin was unwell. I saw him as they returned to court; he was said to have been ill since the eve they dined together in his tent after the queen’s speech at Tilbury.

  She worried on his behalf. When they returned to Whitehall, I thought he looked ill unto death. Selfishly, I wondered, should he die, could I find the courage to leave her, too?

  TWENTY-THREE

  Summer and Autumn: Year of Our Lord 1588

  The Palace of Whitehall

  Lord Robert was heavier than I’d ever seen him—perhaps because he could no longer ride and hunt often due to pain in his legs and back. His face was reddened though he drank but little wine any longer, and after the briefest exertion his breath came in short puffs and bursts like a woman giving birth, which took him ever longer to recover from.

  He’d been commander in chief of the home forces, but now that there was no longer a need for land defense, his own defenses buckled some. I noted that he had difficulty standing while reviewing the troops at Whitehall, at the end of August, and after he and the queen applauded as Essex tilted against the Earl of Cumberland, he left for Buxton, at the queen’s command, to take the healing waters. As soon as he was gone, she was sore vexed.

  I think she knew.

  Perhaps she’d long known, which is why they’d spent so much time together over the summer, dining together, riding together, and meeting Spain together.

  Shortly after Lord Robert left the queen, she asked me to fetch a pouch made of cloth of gold and bring it to her. I did, and when everyone had left her bedchamber save myself, Anne Dudley, and a few maids of honor, the queen went to her chessboard and put the ivory king and queen into the pouch and then drew the strings closed and kissed it.

  “Call Master Tracy,” she instructed me, and I sent for someone to fetch the young messenger.

  “Please ride hard to deliver these to the Earl of Leicester,” the queen commanded him.

  Tracy, no fool, did as he was told. Within a few days, he returned to the queen with a letter. She opened it up as soon as it arrived, excusing herself from her councilors who waited, with the post-Spain business of the realm, for the queen to sort out her affections.

  I judged her not. Shall governance of the heart always submit to governance of a kingdom?

  She instructed me to ask her apothecary to blend something to be sent to Woodstock for Lord Robert, and then she returned to the council.

  I fell to temptation and read the bottom part of the letter, which she had left on her writing table. I told myself I wanted to know what his symptoms were so I could better instruct the apothecary.

  “I would know how my gracious lady does, and what ease of her late pains she finds; being the chiefest thing in the world I do pray for, for her to have good health and long life. I have partaken of the medicines you had prepared for me, and find it helps more than any other thing that has been given to me.” He finished, “With the continuance of my prayers for your Majesty’s preservation, I humbly kiss your foot . . . P.S. even as I had written this much, I received your Majesty’s token by young Tracy.”

  I wondered what went through his heart and mind, after he’d sent this back with Tracy, when in private he opened the golden pouch with the king and queen nestled together, inside.

  Word returned to court that Lord Robert had stopped at Cornbury Park to rest, his fever having grown stronger, his ague more pronounced, and a deep cough setting in. Being with the queen at the marshes at Tilbury had certainly done his heart good, but his health mayhap suffered ill for it.

  On September 4 came word that Robin, having loved Elizabeth for forty-seven of his fifty-five years, had died. He had been an able horseman, a defender of church reform, a noted linguist, and a wise counselor all the years of her reign. But mainly, he had been her love.

  Upon hearing the news, the queen burst into tears and withdrew to her bedchamber and locked the doors to the world outside her, with the exception of a maid who assisted her with a portable privy. Within a day she let Blanche in, and Blanche, perhaps, coaxed her into letting Mary Radcliffe in with food after three days. Mary invited myself and Anne Dudley in a day later.

  I worked hard not to show my shock at how she looked. Her skin was taut and for the first time I saw that it hung in small pouches below her black eyes, which were swollen and dull. The lines on her forehead and above her lip folded into pronounced wrinkles, and she set off an air of hopelessness.

  “Come now, I’ve brought some ointments and oils to soothe,” I said, though I knew the touch of loving hands would work better wonders.

  “Thank you, Marchioness,” she said, using my formal title. She often referred to her ladies, even beloved ones, formally when she sought to maintain her composure. There was no shrieking, or outburst, and perhaps this concerned me most of all.

  I rubbed her shoulders and her neck and her head and her hands, one by one, as she switched Lord Robert’s last letter to her from one hand to the other, never letting go of it entirely.

  “We didn’t respond to this letter,” she mourned.

  “Did he receive your token?” I asked, feigning ignorance of the letter’s contents.

  “Yes.” She nodded. “He indicated that he did.”

  “Then he needed no answer, Elizabeth,” I said, using her name for the first time in twenty-three years of friendship and service. “The heart needs no words to understand what has been long unspoken but understood.”

  She held my hand then, for but a moment more.

  “You will rise from these ashes,” I said.

  She nodded. She knew she must. Her country waited to rejoice with her over the defeat of Spain.

  Before I left her chamber that afternoon I personally replaced the linens on her bed, ensuring that they were scented with soothing oils. As I gathered up the older ones I noticed small, soft haystacks of red and red-gray hairs upon them, the sum of those which had fallen out over the previous few nights.

  • • •

  A month later, I knelt at the Royal Chapel and recited “A Prayer for Men to Say Entering into Battle,” written by William’s sister Queen Kateryn Parr. I had asked Mary Radcliffe to see that the other ladies and maids left the queen and myself alone as I spoke with her after the noon meal. Mary, true to her word, did as I’d asked.

  I approached the queen as she sat at her writing table, preparing, I supposed, for the
victory celebrations that would be held across the realm and, in particular, at her Accession Day festivities. France was no longer a threat; congenial James seemed ready to please the woman he assumed, right likely, would pass her crown to him upon her death. Spain was licking its wounds. Queen and crown had prevailed.

  She looked at me as I entered and the other ladies followed Mary, which drew the queen’s attention.

  “I have an important matter to discuss with you,” I said.

  “Yes, proceed,” she said abruptly. She did not like surprises, and Mary’s clearing the others from the room alerted her that this would be an unusual audience.

  “I need to retire to my home, to take my leave,” I said. “To Langford.”

  “Yes, yes,” she said, gesturing at my filled-out gown. “In anticipation of the baby. We understand this. But Langford? ’Tis crumbling, and so far away when Sheen is near at hand.”

  “My husband prefers Langford, Majesty, though he does not yet have the means to finish it. After the baby is born, I wish to remain with my husband. And my children.”

  She put down her quill. “Remain? For some weeks? Through the new year?”

  I knelt before her. “I wish to retire from constant service.”

  She stood then, towering over me. “One does not retire from service. We shall never retire from service. Our Lord never retired from service. We have never had a lady leave our service, and we shan’t have it now!”

  “I would yet walk into the lions’ den for you, and I bear you all manner of love. But you must understand that my husband desires me to wait upon him, as well. Your realm is secure. My house is not.”

  “We thought you sent your cousin to Wales.”

  “I did,” I said. “But that does not mean I am not still needed.”

  “We need you,” she said, looking weary again. “Especially at this time!”

  I hoped that I had not toppled her from the unsteady balance she had only recently regained after Lord Robert’s death. “I understand your grief, Majesty, but your kingdom and responsibilities are grand in scope, and constant. Although Lord Robert’s loss was great, I fear that for a queen, these challenges shall never cease. You are well able to meet them, though, if I may dare say.”