Legacy

by Susan Kay

  “Would you hang a man for making me laugh?”

  “The man was drunk in my employ! Madam, do you have any idea what it cost to build that dolphin?”

  “What dolphin?”

  He had pulled up short, on the verge of an angry retort, when he saw her smiling.

  “Well,” he muttered, laying her hand on his arm, “you can’t expect me to be best pleased. Not when I can see Hatton and the rest sniggering like schoolboys—”

  Elizabeth laughed. “If Hatton had paid for that dolphin wouldn’t you have sniggered too?”

  Leicester smiled faintly and conceded the point—it had suddenly dawned on him that this trivial incident had put her in a remarkably good mood; it might be that honest Harry had not failed him after all.

  The Queen’s attendants had dispersed discreetly to the pleasure ground beneath the terrace, leaving Elizabeth alone with her host. The parapet was dotted with stone effigies of Leicester’s crest—the white bear—and she stood looking down over the gardens, idly patting the cold head of one of them. She felt suddenly relaxed and happy, as though all the tension of these last troubled years was flowing out of her on this balmy evening. Beyond this haven of peace, the outer world of documents and treason seemed strangely unimportant. Sometimes it was good to forget reality…

  “It’s so beautiful here,” she remarked after a moment. “You should not make me too comfortable, Rob—I may outstay my welcome.”

  “Impossible, madam.” He came to stand beside her. “If I entertained you for eternity it would seem too short a time.”

  “To serve you is Heaven, to lack you is more than Hell’s torment,” she mocked.

  Leicester glanced at her jealously.

  “I suppose Hatton said that to you!”

  Elizabeth shook her head. “He wrote it. I imagine some would say it reads rather better in reverse.”

  He said, with a sudden catch in his voice, “Don’t count me among them! I despise the man, but I envy his gift with words. I would I could have put it half so well.”

  There had been a time when she regularly showed him her love letters from Hatton and they had laughed at the man’s extravagant sentiments—until the moment it occurred to Leicester that she might be doing exactly the same with his own correspondence. He had promptly declared the practice obscene and since then he had seen no more of Hatton’s letters—or anyone else’s.

  But tonight he was warmed by that little touch of self-deprecation in her voice and sufficiently encouraged by the expansiveness of her mood to take one final throw at the dice.

  Moving closer, he covered her hand with his own where it lay on the white stone bear.

  He said softly, “For sixteen years I have begged you to marry me, Elizabeth. Now I lay my heart and my possessions at your feet and ask you for the last time to be my wife.”

  She stood very still and he scarcely dared to breathe, feeling her spirit leap suddenly towards him. Below them jets of water rose and fell in an octagonal fountain of white marble. A faint breeze carried the scent of strawberries and roses to her, as she listened to the sleepy flutterings of the aviary and the soft, steady spray of the fountain. For one moment the temptation to unite herself with the author of all this homage was irresistible and she admired the skill and cunning with which he had baited this trap. Leaning a little on his arm, she looked up into his face and answered him gently, without mockery.

  “Then for the last time my answer must be no. You can stop the clocks, my love, but you can’t turn them back. It’s too late for us, Robin—sometimes I think it always was. Outside your fairytale the real world still exists and calls you a murderer. If I married you even now it would destroy us both.”

  He slammed his clenched fist against the stone bear in an agony of bitter disappointment.

  “For Christ’s sake—must I spend the rest of my life answering for a crime I didn’t commit? I was not responsible for Amy’s death.”

  “I know.” It was the first time she had ever admitted that to him and he was staggered.

  “How long have you known that?” he asked sharply.

  “It doesn’t matter.”

  “It does to me! How long?”

  “Since the verdict of the inquest.”

  “And all this time you’ve let me believe—” He broke off, seeing suddenly how he had been used. What a dance she had led him, what a cruel dance! “Sometimes I think you have no heart at all, madam!” he muttered.

  “You’re wrong, Robin—my heart knows its place, that’s all. Look—you have cut your hand.”

  “Perhaps it would suit you better if I cut my throat!” he said bitterly.

  She sighed, took the little lace handkerchief from the golden girdle at her waist, and dabbed his grazed knuckles with it. He submitted to her ministration like a sulky little boy and she was gently amused by him.

  “Oh, Robin, did you really expect me to fall into your arms because of a few fairy lanterns?”

  “I don’t know,” he said wearily. “I just hoped, as I always hope, so perhaps I am the fool you appear to count me, after all. I suppose that is your last word on the subject—you don’t want me to ask again, do you?”

  She lowered her eyes demurely.

  “You can ask as often as you like, if only you agree not to fall about in a rage when ever I refuse.”

  In spite of his angry disappointment, he had to smile faintly at that. Vain as a peacock and so inherently sure of her damned power over them all that it was impossible to protest against that vanity. It was part of the unique audacity that set her apart from the rest of her sex.

  He put his hand on the back of her waist and drew her closer into the warm shelter of his own body. She did not draw away.

  “At least promise me one thing, that you will think no more of Alençon,” he begged.

  “I can’t give you that promise, Robin—not with Europe so unsettled—but if ever I should be forced to marry anyone but you, then it will only be for policy and nothing will change between us.”

  “You expect your husband to accept me?” he said incredulously.

  “He’ll do as I tell him if he wants a quiet life. Does that satisfy you?”

  “No,” he said ungraciously. “But then that’s of no consequence, is it? I’ve no choice in the matter. You will do exactly as you please and it is your right for you are the Queen and I am merely your humble servant. Parallel lines, madam—how right you were all those years ago. We shall never meet now.”

  They went back inside the castle and spoke no more on the matter. The extravaganza at Kenilworth served no active purpose other than to put him deeply into debt; the marriage negotiations continued and with each month that passed Alençon loomed larger and more menacing on the horizon.

  Despair attended the ultimate death of Leicester’s last hope and made him an easy victim of Lettice’s machinations. When the Earl of Essex died in Ireland during an outbreak of dysentery, she brought a mental battering-ram against her lover’s defences.

  And in September of 1578 Robin married her at Wanstead with the deepest secrecy—and resignation.

  Chapter 6

  So you have finally given her up! I always wondered just how long it would take before you conceded defeat.”

  Burghley placed a heavily bandaged foot on a low stool and slowly sipped the tankard of mulled ale which Leicester, suddenly remarkably solicitous of his comfort, had offered him. “And I suppose the meaning of all your pathetic letters grovelling for my friendship is that you hope I won’t seek opportunities to tell the Queen what you have done—is that not so, my lord?”

  Leicester tugged uncomfortably at his beard and avoided the Lord Treasurer’s frosty blue eyes.

  “I knew you would find out, so it seemed best to confess it to you. You are the only man who would dare to tell her.”

  Burghley smi
led coldly and shifted his painful foot on its cushion. “My dear Leicester, you grossly overestimate my courage. The Greeks used to execute messengers who brought bad news—I’ve no mind to provoke Her Majesty into reviving the custom.”

  “Now you exaggerate.” Leicester turned away, gnawing anxiously on a fine golden toothpick. “She has so many men I doubt if she’d have time to notice my domestic arrangements. It’s hardly likely to break her heart, is it?”

  Burghley stared at him steadily and balanced the tankard on the arm of his chair.

  “Forgive me—is that not exactly what you desire? I understand the lady in question has been your mistress for some considerable time. What possessed you to marry her now, knowing what it will mean if the Queen finds out?”

  “Why the devil shouldn’t I marry?” Leicester burst out in peevish self-defence. “Why shouldn’t I get myself a legitimate son to carry on my father’s name? You’ve seen the way she treats me, it must have given you enough delight in the past. She has no feeling for me—no feeling at all—”

  “If you believe that, Leicester, then you really are the fool I always took you for.”

  Leicester sank on to a hearth stool and flung the toothpick away with an angry gesture.

  “She has a damn peculiar way of showing her love then!”

  “So for that matter have you.” Burghley looked at him shrewdly. “Oh, you don’t deceive me, Leicester—I know how deeply you love the Queen. God knows, over the years I have come to consider it your only saving grace. You at least can boast of her cruelty—yet better men than you have loved her and left no mark at all on her heart. You may spare a little pity for Hatton, who finds himself physically unable to take a mistress while she lives—yes, he told me that once. And how he will end I do not care to think, for a man must take his comfort somewhere. So you see, my friend—you are not alone in your affliction.”

  “That is a great comfort,” said Leicester bitterly. “I believe she collects men’s souls and locks them in that casket by her bed—mine, Hatton’s, countless others—all neatly labelled and preserved in vinegar like specimens in a laboratory, meaningless trophies, souvenirs of a past conquest. The moment you’re conquered she loses interest, leaves you caught in her web like a fly, struggling to remember where you left your manhood. What she’s searching for God only knows, but she’s never found it yet.”

  Cecil looked away into the fire.

  “It may be safer if she never does,” he said darkly.

  Leicester’s eyes were suddenly alight with curiosity. He leaned forward to fill Burghley’s tankard again.

  “Well,” he said slowly, “I’ve been in her power for a long time, ever since I was a child. She hooked me young and I need her, like some men need opium. I know how she snares the rest, but you—now, you’re the riddle. Perhaps you’re the key to her whole mystery. A devoted husband, viceless some would say.” Leicester’s lips curled maliciously. “Only you and I—we know better, don’t we, Sweet William? You’re the coldest, shrewdest, most ruthless devil I’ve ever met. So tell me, man to man, all differences aside—what’s the secret of her hold over you?”

  Cecil gave him a thin-lipped smile. His eyes were suddenly veiled.

  “It was you who once spoke of witchcraft,” he said coolly, and got abruptly to his feet. He had no desire to continue this conversation any further. It smacked of the confessional and a great deal more that he assured himself he did not hold with.

  Leicester rose with him, snubbed and uneasy once more, sensing he had offended Burghley.

  “I didn’t mean to pry. Every man to the Devil his own way—as the Queen would say.”

  Burghley laughed suddenly and Leicester’s head jerked up at the dry, rasping sound, so utterly alien to this humourless man.

  “My lord?” he said cautiously.

  Burghley shook his head slowly.

  “I am not entirely the humourless bore you think me, Leicester—I can smile at irony like the next man.”

  “Irony?”

  “You and I and the Queen. I never thought I should live to say this, my lord, but you have your uses. She’s a great deal easier to work with when she’s happy—and you have made her happy, I grant you that. But that won’t save you if she ever finds out about your marriage. Should that day dawn, I for one pray I shall not be in the same palace. And as for you, my lord—well, I rather think you will wish you were not in the same world.”

  * * *

  Europe was in ferment. In the Netherlands the Dutch Protestants waged eternal war against their Spanish overlord, while vague talk of “the Enterprise of England” loomed now big, now small, according to Philip’s doubts and fears and hesitancy—and the state of his exchequer. There were anxious moments for him when the French crown passed to Henri of Anjou and the power of Mary Stuart’s Guise relatives threatened to become supreme once more. The new King’s brother, Alençon, became heir to the French throne and his position as a confirmed troublemaker in France took on consequence. It was soon evident that the King of France would be thankful to see the back of him, preferably by packing him off to England…

  Having fanned Philip’s unease by her overtures to France, Elizabeth swung the see-saw of negotiations back to Spain. Her treasury was swollen by the spoils taken from Spanish ships by English pirates, and Philip would dearly have loved to snub her. But the terms of the treaty she offered, with its promise of trade, was irresistible to him in his straitened means and after a brief struggle with his finer feelings, he agreed to sign it. Elizabeth was complacent. Nominally at peace with Spain, she continued to lend secret aid to the Dutch rebels, in her customary underhand manner, anxious to keep Philip’s attention on his own territories. She flatly refused to come out in the open as the acknowledged leader of the Protestant world, knowing that such an action would plunge her into war within six months. She could accomplish a great deal more, at a fraction of the expense, by skulking in the shadows, her dealings shamelessly unfettered by scruples; she had become a past master at the diplomatic knee in the groin.

  When Philip’s bastard brother, that romantic young knight-errant, Don John of Austria, descended on the Netherlands to crush opposition, she rapidly disgorged £20,000 in aid for the Dutch. She had no patience with religious warfare and had scandalised Philip’s envoy by pointedly inquiring why the King of Spain could not allow his subjects “to go to the Devil their own way.” But she knew Don John’s intention was to use the Netherlands as a springboard to launch the “Enterprise of England.” She dared not allow him to install himself safely there—equally, she dared not risk open war. Secret aid was as much as she was prepared to hazard.

  When Don John’s troops began to flatten resistance, Elizabeth’s Council panicked and demanded immediate intervention and open war. Against the war fever she hung back, ignoring their bleating that only a miracle would save her if she did not act decisively now, gambling on her personal knowledge of Philip’s character. He was on the brink of bankruptcy, jealous and suspicious of his heroic half-brother’s loyalty, starving his troops of money and reinforcements. Philip did not seek war with England at the moment and she was not going to hand it to him on a golden platter of armed intervention.

  The policy of inaction horrified the Council, and even Burghley, who did not lack for cool nerves, began to wonder if she had pushed her luck too far at last. It seemed that nothing in this world would prevent the Spaniards overrunning the Netherlands and invading England.

  And then she got her miracle. Unsupported, Don John’s venture floundered, crumbled, and ended with his dispirited death, some said of a broken heart at his half-brother’s treatment of him.

  “God deals most lovingly with Her Majesty in taking away her enemies,” remarked Walsingham with awe.

  This uneasy belief that it was not healthy to be an enemy of the English Queen was finding followers all over Europe. Men said such luck was beyond
the boundaries of pure coincidence; many remembered that her mother had been accused of witchcraft, and strange rumours were afloat.

  Now the Spanish embassy in London, closed for the past eight years since the expulsion of its ambassador after the Ridolfi Plot, was reopened by that very thin olive branch of peace, Don Bernadino de Mendoza. And Elizabeth believed she had discovered the perfect solution to her dilemma in the Netherlands.

  She extended a thin hand, almost transparent in the sunlight, and bent her long fingers to examine their scarlet talons, flexing them gently like claws.

  “A cat’s-paw,” she murmured, more to her hand than to Burghley who stood watching her—“that’s what we need now to stir the troubled marshes of the Netherlands and hold Philip at bay. I think Alençon will do very nicely, don’t you?”

  “We have yet to persuade him to undertake the mission.”

  “Don’t fret, my friend, I know how to handle little pockmarked donkeys.” She held out her hand—that very marriageable hand—and smiled at it tenderly. “This is the thing that will hold him until he has served our purpose—this,” her smile deepened, “or to be more precise—the promise of this. This hand has served me as faithfully as you, my Spirit, for over twenty years. It is about to enjoy one long and very satisfying last performance before I ring the curtain down for good on its charade.”

  Burghley stooped to kiss that hand with a faint quiver of emotion. It was true that no one had played the marriage game with greater skill or more profit than Elizabeth. Over and over again he had seen her do it, balance Europe on the slender promise of her hand, and it honestly amazed him that after twenty years the fish were still gullible enough to swallow the bait. He could not deny the remarkable success of her methods, but he was too upright and correct to admire them wholeheartedly for they smacked of brothel principles and offended his image of her as an incomparable deity. If only she were not so brazenly amoral about the business, so full of cheap political tricks, hawking her body and her crown to the highest bidder as shamelessly as any whore who walked the London streets. For though she might be a goddess, she was not a lady and somewhere, between his respect and his love, there hovered a small niggle of regret for her lack.