by Betty Younis
Despite her natural reticence, Anne began to catch Henrietta’s infectious mood.
“Jousting,” she said suddenly, looking at Henrietta with a gleeful grin.
Henrietta clapped her hands and began laughing.
“We would make mother, Papa and the queen engage in it – we will call it old peoples’ jousting.”
They both roared.
“No steeds, for they are too fast.”
“Um,” agreed Henrietta. “A stately walk is needed. Mules. If Cecil would loan us Augustus…”
“Perfect!” Anne continued the charade. “I shall write to him today, though I fear Augustus would not participate even if Cecil should send him along. What about lances?”
“No, they are too heavy,” said Henrietta. “Perhaps they could attempt to snatch their opponent’s hat as they mosey past. Like this.”
Henrietta playfully began slapping at Anne who promptly began slapping back. The raw silliness was grand, and each felt better as a result.
“Michael would like the sheer ridiculousness of it but he would likely do something much more dramatic. And something that would raise poor Jane’s spirits,” Anne said when they had both stopped laughing.
She thought for a moment and then snapped her fingers.
“I have it! Come with me!”
She ran around the corner of the manor towards the back of the estate, towards Jane’s small cottage. Anne was fleeter and Henrietta struggled to keep pace.
“What are you doing, auntie? Can you not slow down? I cannot breathe!”
She stopped and bent over double, then cast her eyes heavenward.
“Oh Michael, wait for me, for this nit, your sister, is killing me with running!”
“Hush!” floated back over the wind to her and she continued on.
Without waiting for an answer to Anne’s knock, they barged into Jane’s small abode. Jane was in bed, weeping. They ignored her tears.
“We are in need of a feast.” Anne explained.
Henrietta began dancing around the room.
“Indeed! And musicians! Our loved ones must be sad and missing us as well. Let us send them love and cheer so that they will not forget us in their new home. Let us show them how much we love them even yet.”
Anne nodded in agreement.
“Of course, the old people may not care for the idea.” Jane struck a note of realism as she sat up and wiped away her tears.
“Nonsense,” Henrietta assured her and reached for the bed covers.
She tore them back and ignored the appalled look on the pastry genius’ face.
“You are our own kin, through marriage or not, and Michael must be shown that, his mind must be put at ease! Come. We have work to do!”
They pulled and pushed Jane, laughing as they dressed her and grabbed her hands.
“And shall we tell the old ones?”
Henrietta laughed.
“No, the look of horror on their faces will be thanks enough.”
*****
When the threesome returned to the manor house proper, Elizabeth and Bess were in the library, speaking in low tones. They turned as the young women traipsed into the room.
“Bon Journo,” said Bess, tentatively. Elizabeth held her hand.
“I do not speak Italian. If you wish to communicate, you must do so in English.” Jane made a declarative statement and watched Bess matter-of-factly. Bess looked over at Elizabeth, then at her children, then at Jane. Suddenly, she shuddered as though throwing off a heavy load.
“Tea.” She spoke in a loud, clear and somber voice. “The queen and I would like some tea.”
The feast went as planned, though with no musicians. Quinn waxed poetic on the projects Michael had helped him with, Elizabeth told tales of her Dudley, and even Bess managed a laugh as Anne remembered Catherine and her love of all things bold and gold. Jane had prepared the favorite dishes of each of those who had passed, and as they sat in the grand dining hall, prayers both collective and individual went up to God for the well-being of those who had left them all too soon.
As Elizabeth departed that night, she and Bess hugged one another tightly, knowing that somehow their losses had strengthened their mutual bond.
The next day, Cecil sent a note of thanks to Coudenoure, and a mule.
Chapter Twenty-Five
It seemed that death had finally moved on, though the scars it left behind were sensitive ones. Some wounds were slow to heal, flaring up at odd moments when a gesture or word summoned a memory. Some were scarred over like a landscape scoured by glaciers in an earlier age. In a similar way, the spirits of those at Coudenoure had been flattened and changed by the terrible and relentless scourge which had passed over them.
Quinn was quieter in the years following the deaths of Michael and Catherine. Initially, it had been hard for him to grasp that Michael, his only son, would not be coming home again. He knew of other families whose sons had engaged with the Spanish during Gravelines. Their boys had come home – why had Michael not returned? Try as he might, he could not stop himself from straying into this line of thought over and over – why Michael? Eventually, he made his peace with his own grief, but never with the random nature of Michael’s death.
He had spent his life studying nature, seeking out the underlying unity which brought pattern and form to all things. In mathematics he found the eternal, divine proportion, with pi in all things from roses to acorns. And that quest had taught him that very few things are random: the bird’s sweet tune in the spring called out his desire for a mate; the flower’s scent was not for him, but for the Fibonacci number and pi. Anne translated the work for him. So with all that pattern and assurance why Michael?
Michael had been his best friend as well as his son. He had understood the magic of numbers and was likewise fascinated. His granddaughter Henrietta understood them too, almost viscerally, but was not so interested.
All things came easily to Henrietta but none seemed to capture her. Even as a young child, she had realized her own restlessness but could not identify it as such. She only knew that once she had learned something she had to move on, for it seemed that no subject had the complexity or depth to hold her firmly in its grasp. Now, as an adult, she sometimes wondered if this refusal to be captivated was due to a lack of complexity in the subjects she studied or to a lack of willingness on her part to slow down and see what lay beneath. The question had a personal and very practical point as well. Would she ever be able to find someone with enough depth, enough hidden layers to be discovered over the years, who might be able hold onto her and her love? She felt that if such a man existed, she could love him and follow him to the ends of the earth. Otherwise, as frequently happened, she despaired that like her auntie Anne she would remain unmarried for life. For Henrietta’s other quality was an inability to compromise. She would have to love someone completely or not at all, for her there was no in-between. She had never known her mother, and Michael’s death had not had the same numbing effect on her that it had on the other family members, not because she did not feel, but because she was better at letting go and getting on with the business of the living. It was not age which dictated this attitude but her nature.
Of all of them, Bess continued through the years to wear her loss the hardest. Now that Terrence and his kind had long since died out, done in by climate, children and possibly too many weddings, Bess had commandeered his old kingdom – formerly known as cook’s glass house – and hired a botanical man to grow flowers for her, even in the deepest cold of winter. She could be seen most days gathering small bouquets from the glass house, taking them out to the burial grounds and placing them gently on the graves of Catherine and Michael. Quinn could often be seen standing by her side. Together, hand in hand, in grief as in joy.
The rest of Bess’ day would be spent in her studio. There were two dozen projects she had started since the death of her children, each of them abandoned for reasons she knew not consciously but only suspected. She c
ould not bring herself to finish anything. Each time she came close to an end, she thought of Michael and Catherine, their lives unfinished. And so she moved on to the next piece of stone. Then the next. And the next.
It was some years before she began to realize that, despite her best efforts, her children’s faces were fading from her conscious mind – it was only in her dreams that they remained in sharp focus as they were in life. Bess determined to memorialize them in stone before they were gone forever. Like shades among the Greeks begging to be forgotten not, they haunted her now, and she found new purpose and healing as she worked most days to finish their busts, carved from the purest white marble she could find. Upon hearing of her project, Elizabeth had asked for one of Dudley as well.
The years passed on, and Elizabeth found herself more and more dependent on Coudenoure. And upon the young Earl of Essex, Robert Devereux, known to all as simply Essex.
He had come to court even before the death of Mary, making quite a splash with his charming good looks. He had a quick wit, and ambition which was quicker yet. It did not hurt that Robert Dudley was his stepfather. Dudley, older then and beyond the jealousy which might have marked a lesser man’s acknowledgement of a younger man’s favor, did not oppose him. He and Elizabeth had spent their lives together, and there was now simply no more room in their relationship for such petty and insecure emotions. They were as they had always been, and always would be. Dudley had quickly moved to a higher post, that of Lord Stewardship, so that Essex could fill his old post, that of Master of the Horse.
Elizabeth had first noticed young Essex years earlier and had remarked in passing upon his uncanny resemblance in manner and attitude to that of Dudley. Obviously, the older man had taught him well. And while Elizabeth knew that physical resemblances always struck a chord with her (she need look no further than Constance, Anne and even Henrietta with her remarkable Tudor looks to recognize this idiosyncratic quirk), she now found pleasure in the non-physical purely behavioral similarities between Essex and Dudley. Whether it was practiced artifice on the part of Essex, she did not know, but she enjoyed the common verbal means of expression they shared, using words in similarly odd ways unique to them. And then there was their manner of rolling their eyes at the most inopportune moments, causing her to break out in laughter when laughter was not appreciated, or standing with one leg forward, as though ready to move off on a mere second’s notice. Such continuity between generations not only amused her, but gave Essex a place in her heart.
He was tall for his age, and uncommonly handsome, like his stepfather, and like his stepfather he was headstrong and willful, but he covered his obstinacy with a grace and charm that Elizabeth found delightful. Essex openly flirted with her, playing with remarkable consistency the eternal court-role of the lovesick swain. When reminded of their considerable age difference, some thirty-five years or so, he simply guffawed and remarked upon how much she might teach him should she be willing. It was all so overt and stimulating. Early on, his light banter and humor had taken her back to her youth with Dudley. How young they had been! She saw in him what Dudley had been for her and loved it all for that reason alone. As time went on, however, she had to acknowledge to herself at least that Essex was not half the man that Dudley was.
Dudley, too, had flirted with her, had plied her with charm and guile. But Dudley had also known his place. There was no question but that he owed his position, indeed his life, to his Queen Elizabeth. Behind his ambition and her vanity there had been a mutual respect, born of their deep knowledge of one another. They had sparred intellectually since childhood, knew each other’s Achilles’ heels, knew of the touch-points in the other that might evince either anger or fear. They had built upon this, and upon their deep natural love for one another, and their relationship had an easy but nevertheless hierarchical rigidity which neither violated.
Elizabeth’s world for better or worse had been predictable. She knew her enemies, she knew her friends, and she knew which of her ministers she could trust. In moments of doubt or confusion, Burghley was there, Walsingham guarded her back, Dudley was her comfort. But suddenly, the passing of so many years became apparent and it felt to her that they had passed not in a slow progression of time but somehow all at once. She now felt caught out in the storm with no shelter. Her generation had passed on and she was left alone among strangers in her own world. With the end of Mary and with Spain effectively hobbled by the destruction of its armada, she herself now felt lost.
After all, what happens, in the end, when you finally vanquish your mortal enemies? When you put them away with no mercy and no quarter given? Does peace flow out upon you like a mighty river when it finally reaches the eternal sea bathing you – in what? Forgiveness? And what if you have lived with those enemies your entire life? They were, after all, your demons, your life lived in their shadows, their darkness, your world revolving around them and their machinations, their schemes inhabiting even the darkest, most fearful corners of your own mind. What then? Do you rise up in glory and joy as you smite them? And what then? Does happiness fill their place in your universe? Does it pervade your world even as they did?
Elizabeth did not find it so.
And what happened if there were no one to understand? If you awoke in your glory to find yourself alone in this new world of strangers who called your name and spoke your language and yet knew you not. What then? Who to tell of your exploits, who to laugh with as you recalled those very enemies whom you had vanquished? Who would stand with you as a witness to your own life? To your own love? To whom would you confess your own sins? To whom? To the strangers among whom you now lived?
Elizabeth did not know. But she understood finally that old age consisted of this.
It seemed that all who had served her long and well had disappeared now. She no longer awoke to Cecil and his endless fretting about her morning routine. He no longer wheedled and whined to force her attentions upon this matter of state or that one. With the vanquishing of England’s two mortal enemies he had called seen fit to retire, sensing that times were changing and that his work was done. But Elizabeth had no such luxury, for sovereigns must always remain for the final act, regardless of their personal will and desire. Strange, she thought. She could order the death of those around her and those far away, she could command ships and men and even the occasional battle, but she could not order her own retirement, nor could she order her own sought-after peace. William Cecil had finally departed and now lived at Burghley House, his fanciful home in the country where he devoted himself entirely to books and heraldry. He had at last been able to choose peace and quiet over life at Elizabeth’s court. She did not blame him. His son had stepped forward and assumed his father’s role. And indeed, Robert Cecil was an excellent minister. But he did not know her and she was not interested in knowing him particularly. She felt she had seen it all and done it all – so what would be the point?
John Dee, her seer and friend, had also left her court far behind. He had immigrated to Poland and now chose a madman’s schemes as his guiding principle. She smiled when she thought of him and his esoteric wisdom, always mixed with incredible folly but also with incredible intelligence. He, too, was gone now and she found herself living a half-life among people she barely knew. They did as they were told, but brought her heart no joy.
But then there was Essex. And there was Coudenoure. She put up with the Earl’s growing ambitions, his unhooded hubris, his near insults, all for the sake of company. But unlike Dudley, Essex did not seem to entirely understand the bargain – she was the queen, he her suitor. Time and again he ignored the ritual which had to be observed in order for the relationship to work. Time and again he overstepped the boundary between royalty and courtier. Time and again – until finally Elizabeth could ignore it no longer.
Chapter Twenty-Six
Winter 1600
“He had a simple mission, Bess. As Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, all he had to do was destroy the Earl of Tyrone, that vicio
us little man who would see my rule over Ireland put to an end.”
Elizabeth had appeared on the royal barge that morning at the Thames dock of Coudenoure. Her court was progressing to Whitehall, and on impulse she had ordered that her own barge stop while the others continued on. She had not visited her favorite estate in two months, an unusual state of affairs, for it was now once again the place where she routinely chose to go to refresh herself and to reflect. On occasion, she still preferred the old litter style of transport, and she used it now as she stepped from her barge onto Bess and Quinn’s estate. Elizabeth batted away the footmen’s attempts to assist her into the litter, and walked on a ways before allowing their help.
Coudenoure. The place seemed as unchanged as time itself. A new dock had been built at her own insistence, but the old one remained beside it untouched. She looked at it now, remembering the days when Bess’ children were tiny and sent their model ships down river to defeat what dragons as may have been found. She was not in an unhappy mood, merely a reflective one, and the memories of those days made her smile. The path to the manor drive was kept clipped and tidy for the queen’s visits, and she walked along in silence for a moment, well ahead of the small party which had stayed behind with her. The way become slippery with frost and dead undergrowth and she finally entered the litter as they approached the main drive of Quinn and Bess’ home.
All was as it ever had been, and she enjoyed the unchanging, timelessness of the place. Her courtiers might come and go; Spain might threaten or recede; her own will might change or refine with age. All this was true, but Coudenoure, like a tiny isolated jewel, continued to shine with constancy. The children of the estate had long ago commandeered the signal station built during the time of the Spanish threat. Even these many years later it stood upon the ridge which separated the royal lands of Greenwich Palace from those of Coudenoure. Their games of pirate, of kidnapped maidens and daring swordsmen, played out upon the ridge and the Thames below. Time and again, assaults were made upon the ridge to rescue whomever had been captured in that particular day’s scenario. Frequently, the adults of the estate sat in the grand meadow which surrounded the gardens and main house proper and watched in amusement as first this ragged band with its homemade flag, now that, assaulted the hilltop where the unworthy villains de jour held this maid or that queen captive . England was always victorious, and usually around mealtime.
