Elizabeth of Bohemia

by David Elias

  “This does not sound like you.”

  “I see what all this is doing to you. It is hard for me to watch.”

  “I suppose I have always been a figure more worthy of your pity than your love.”

  “If I admit to neither, will you allow that I am in earnest?”

  “Perhaps I can mount another campaign.”

  “The cost is too great.”

  “And what is the cost that I have lost my crown and failed to regain it? That my wife and children live in want and ridicule.”

  “We shall find a way to get through.” I placed a hand on his chest. “Things will get better.”

  “You misuse me with these unconvincing assurances.”

  “I am content, I tell you.”

  “You gave me thirteen children. And what did I give you?”

  “I would not have those same children in danger of losing their father, if he will not leave off this self-recrimination.”

  “Well deserved though it is.”

  “Listen to me. If I have not loved you as you might have hoped, it is only because it was never in my power to do so. But you must not think I am disappointed in you. You have been a good husband, a good father, and now you must get better that you may continue to be so.”

  “Your honesty, as ever, shakes me from my complacency. You’re right. This despondence accomplishes nothing. I must find a way to free myself of it and see to my family.”

  It was soon after this Frederick began to recover his strength, day by day, until at length he was able to resume his daily activities. He seemed to regain his enjoyment of life and things might have been alright after all, just as I had assured him, but for that cursed hound of tragedy which ever nipped and bit at my heels even to the very last.

  ***

  The day came when Frederick was feeling well enough to embark on a trip to the Zuydersee with our eldest son, Henry. They would take in the sights, in particular the spectacle of the many captured Spanish galleons moored upon the Sea of Haarlem. Watching them make their plans, I was glad to see the two of them engaged so amiably in each other’s company. I had little interest in spending time fussing over my children, and preferred their company after they had matured into young men and women, but if there was some vague spark of resentment on Henry’s part that his mother had not taken a greater interest in him as a youngster, he rose above it and was as loving toward me as I could have expected under the circumstances. And what a fine young man he was turning into! He was intelligent beyond his years, keenly insightful and curious, and like my own brother Henry, had about him an intensity of emotion, as that he might love and hate with equal fervour some aspect of the world or another, and thirst for knowledge of anything he could get his hands on.

  Henry had just celebrated his fifteenth birthday and the trip was meant to be something of a present to him. The departure was unremarkable and I expected to see them back in a week or so. I busied myself with the usual pursuits that took up my days, most often concerning those interactions and overtures that might serve to bring much-needed money into the household and allow me to maintain a decent standard of living. I didn’t want to burden Frederick now that he was feeling better, but I was far from resigned to a life in exile and continued to explore every possible avenue that might lead to some progress in getting us back to Prague. I spent my days in letter writing, in planning and consultation, my evenings entertaining and making overtures and solicitations to those who might take an interest in our predicament or have some means to help us. Of course they always wanted something in return.

  I was busy one morning with correspondence, a chore that required my attention almost daily and which I found tedious but necessary. The letters had by nature to be couched in language loquacious yet utterly bereft of genuine feeling, to contain scarcely anything of real interest save the one overriding request at last given expression to, though even then it should not seem so. The forthcoming replies promised to be of equal verbosity, their contents stuffed to bursting with florid prose but little information, the entire exercise an elaborate web spun of power and need, entreaty and privilege, best navigated with cautious equanimity. Noblemen and lords, landowners and statesmen, scholars and clergy all played their part. The fact of the matter was that we were being kept, and that those who kept us had needs be assuaged. The trick was to hint at the possibility of an alliance, to solicit funds, request a favour, without ever actually saying so. It was really a very sophisticated form of begging. But how else could I hope to see to my children’s education, not to mention some semblance of opulence that I might live in the manner to which I was accustomed?

  I was absorbed one morning in the duties of this disagreeable correspondence when I looked up from my desk to see Frederick standing in the doorway with a look on his face that sent me into terrible dread. I had no idea how long he’d been there or why he had not bothered to announce himself. He appeared to be fighting some unseen force that kept him from entering the room.

  I put down my quill and turned to him. “Frederick, what are you doing standing there?”

  He stayed in the doorway, unable to make himself move.

  “Come in, come in. Is everything alright? You’re as pale as a ghost. Have you taken ill again? Is that what brought you back so soon?”

  He took a few tentative steps into the room and stopped. I rose from my chair and went to him. “What is it?” He was clearly in great anguish. “What’s the matter? Where’s Henry?”

  “There’s been an accident.”

  “He’s been hurt. Not badly, I trust? Take me to him. Where is he?”

  “Gone.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Lost.”

  “But how?”

  “Drowned.”

  Frederick steadied himself against the back of a nearby chair, sagged down into it, head down while I stood before him in disbelief, and seeing the pitiable state of ruin my husband was in, went over to place a hand gently on his shoulder. He brought his own hand up to cover mine, and we stayed that way for a long time, as parents will who have lost a child. There was nothing more to say just then. What use to fling a few pitiable and empty words at such tortured grief? It would not be conquered by a mountain of them. No recourse but to suffer. Frederick couldn’t tell me what happened, couldn’t seem to get another word out, only sat with his head down, shoulders shaking as silent tears fell upon his lap. The scale of that loss could hardly be measured, stretched far beyond mourning.

  For my part I fought the temptation to turn inward, to wonder how it was that time and again those within my circle of affection seemed destined to die. Better to leave off conjecture as to what manner of curse, conceived by whom, and for what purpose, made me the common element in all of these tragedies. I told myself I no more deserved to be thought of as such than they deserved to die. And yet I had a nagging sense I might have done something to bring them about. Perhaps it might be better to pursue a life such as that of Sophia, up on the mountain above Heidelberg, live alone and put an end to so much suffering.

  Perhaps I was meant to consider myself the beneficiary of all this loss and take some lesson from it. But it was surely the height of selfishness to think that way! Would the Heavenly Father deem it just that one among us should be punished with death merely to teach another? Our son Henry had no more deserved to die than to live. Neither was warranted but the fates made it so. Better, I thought, to become inured to grief, grow derisive and scornful of life if it be naught but a celebration of death.

  ***

  It was only later that I learned what had transpired to take my eldest son’s life. Frederick would not talk about it, though I could see that it was eating him up inside. I sought out Captain Hume soon after and demanded whether he knew of the circumstances, and if so that he relate them to me, reminded him that he had done as much years earlier at my brother Henry’s passi
ng, and that he must offer them up in every detail.

  “Husband and son made their way to Haarlem,” the Captain began. “There they boarded a yacht, the better to be allowed a closer look, and had just made their way out of the harbour when they were struck by another, much larger vessel. Their craft being capsized, the situation soon became one of every man for himself. A number of ships came immediately to the aid of those stranded in the water but the rescue was made more difficult by the weather, as it is so often in January, when the seas are rough. Your husband was fortunate to be pulled from the water by some nearby sailors, but no sooner had he been hauled up into the rescue boat than your son called out to him, and he turned to see him struggling that he might remain afloat amid the waves. Your husband shouted for the men to row toward him as quickly as possible, but even as they did so your son uttered one last plea for help before he slipped beneath the surface of the waves, and did not reappear.”

  “Did Frederick relate all of this to you?”

  “Not a single word or utterance from him of these particulars, but I learned them from those who had witnessed the disaster first-hand.”

  “I have heard some too, though I know not hearsay from fact. They say he made a last utterance.”

  “Your husband? I’m afraid I know naught of such.”

  “You know I meant my son, Captain.”

  “He was a fine young man, as good a one as any mother could have hoped for, admirable for those same qualities as were so generous in your dear lost brother, of whom he reminded me daily.”

  “You know something of these last words.”

  “I grant as much.”

  “I would hear them.”

  “He called out as any man would who lived yet in hope of being rescued.”

  “Say them.”

  “Madam, I would not.”

  “Say the words.”

  “He was heard to call out ‘Save me, Father,’ and again, ‘Save me.’”

  What father could have hoped to escape the greedy clutches of guilt brought about by such an utterance, to feel it grip him even in the paralysis of his grief? If the unspoken canon decree that every mother nurture her son with love, the corollary must insist that every father rescue him from danger. Captain Hume revealed to me more than once how oft he had heard a young man upon the battlefield, at the moment of his dying, call out for his mother. And yet to think how my own dear brother Henry called out for me to no avail, condemned at the last to receive no help.

  ***

  Though he never said so, Frederick thought it better if he had drowned instead of his son, and I might have done more to banish the thought from his troubled mind, but it was impossible to talk about any of it. Whatever words one of us might utter, no matter how carefully chosen, they brought only more pain. My lame attempts at comfort might just as well have condemned, and so by degrees I watched him lose what remained of his spirits, forced to live when death was surely more favourable. An ever louder silence echoed through the halls and rooms of our waking and in our sleeping thundered above us through the night.

  Frederick kept mulling over various scenarios, posing hypothetical questions, subjecting himself to repeated anguish. Why hadn’t he hired a bigger boat? Why hadn’t they waited until the seas were calmer? Why hadn’t he tried harder to wrestle himself free of the men who held him back when he tried to jump in and save his drowning son? The list was endless. For my part I threw myself even harder into the work at hand, seeking out such benefactors as would make available the best possible education for my remaining children, exploring every avenue of entreaty that might bring some money into the household. But the gloom of recrimination hung over Frederick like a poisonous stinking fog, and he was never the same again.

  By November of that year he had fallen gravely ill. The official diagnosis was pestilential fever, known as the sweating sickness, and of course they had to send for an eminent physician of the time, in this instance a Dutchman man by the name of Peter Spina, who was brought in to administer a bout of remedies. I myself sought out one or two of the medical texts I had once taken such a keen interest in, but which of late held little interest for me and had been relegated to the more obscure corners of my library shelves. As it was a great many of them had been lost over the years, having failed to make the journey to Heidelberg, fewer still to Prague and on to The Hague, so that what remained was hardly a proper collection. Nevertheless, and much to my surprise, I managed to dig up a volume in which the disease Frederick was diagnosed with had been written about by a Dr. Thomas Forestier in 1485, penned in language decorous and utterly bereft of meaningful information:

  “The exterior is calm in this fever, the interior excited . . . the heat in the pestilent fever many times does not appear excessive to the doctor, nor the heat of the sweat itself particularly high . . . But it is on account of the ill-natured, fetid, corrupt, putrid, and loathsome vapors close to the region of the heart and of the lungs whereby the panting of the breath magnifies and increases and restricts of itself . . .” And so on. Rubbish!

  It was clear to me that though my husband did indeed exhibit the symptoms of a fever his affliction stemmed from more than this. His weakness and lethargy were due to nothing so much as being consumed from the inside out. Guilt was the affliction, remorse the disease. It was only a matter of days before the fever would take him and death announce itself uninvited and unwelcome yet again upon my doorstep.

  I came to stand at his bedside one evening, pleased to find him animated and eager for my company, a marked improvement from my last visit.

  “Elizabeth.” He sat up and leaned forward. “I’m so glad you came.” Though he had a renewed vigour about him, there was something in his eyes that gave me pause.

  “I’m glad to see you feeling so much better,” I said. “I looked in on you earlier and you seemed less than eager to see me.”

  “There’s something I need to ask you.”

  “Of course, what is it?”

  “You must answer honestly.”

  “As ever I have done.”

  “I have no reason to doubt you. And yet I fear to hear the answer.” He looked at me intently, searched my eyes with his. “Have I been a good husband to you?”

  “As good as a wife might hope for — nay, better.”

  “Truly?”

  “You have been kind and generous, and made little in the way of demands.”

  “If only I could have made you happy. I know it was too much to expect, but I very much wanted to.”

  “It was neither in your power nor mine to grant as much.”

  “You must have felt cheated.”

  “It was none of your doing.”

  “I have brought us misfortune and grief.”

  “I tell you in all honesty it was my ambition led us here. And as for the other, that was an accident, nothing more.”

  “This is not how I wanted to leave you.”

  He fell into a calm silence then, eyes closed, his breathing even and relaxed, as though he were falling into peaceful slumber.

  “Sleep now,” I said, “and recover your strength.”

  I sat a while longer, thinking him to be gaining valuable and restorative rest, until I noticed his breathing become shallower, then more so by degrees, as though he were indeed taking his leave at a slow and easy pace, until at length he slipped into utter stillness. I had by then seen all manner of dying, but that furtive departure left me breathless and weeping, my tears borne of mystery and sorrow.

  ***

  I mourned him as best I could. If I seemed disaffected it was only that I desired to be truthful. I did not fall into frailty and misgiving as I had seen other wives do, wringing their hands and wondering whatever should become of them. I had to a large extent been steering the course of my life for some time by then, and the loss of my husband tended less to collapse than to disr
uption and inconvenience. How else to describe what is required of a wife after the burial of her husband? I did not begrudge my duties, but as with any funeral it was of greatest benefit to those farthest removed from its darker implications.

  I had learned to carry with me through my life a quick dismissal of the dead. Some might have argued I was guilty of as much in my dealings with the living, but in any case I mourned briefly, intensely, and then I moved on. It seemed to me that to do otherwise was to hold death in too high a standing. There were those who brought to their mourning an ostentatious manner I found unbecoming. Better sorrow should hardly warrant notice.

  We have each of us the experience of some particular mourning unlike any other. It may be the very first of such or perhaps only the most recent, and little to do with the manner of departure or the intensity of loss. Some aspect of enlightenment attends our grief, allows us a glimpse into the best and the worst of living and dying. With its passing we feel ourselves changed, departed from a place we can never come back to. So it was with me after my brother Henry died. I knew I should never grieve that way again, let death do its worst. Where once a great river had traced its source to the wellspring of my grief, in future but a meagre trickle should be allowed to flow.

  I had the sense, too, that I was grieving for myself, caught up in an indulgent and unseemly sorrow. Life is a matter of degree, and some of us are more alive than others. But dead is dead. Though the manner of our departure may be noble and steeped in courage, the state we arrive at amounts to a banal singularity. If death serves any purpose at all surely it must be to reveal to those who remain some small aspect of their life.

  My husband’s death at age thirty-six ushered a watershed moment into mine, and into the life of my family, for it threw everything into a new and unforgiving light. My son Charles Louis immediately took it upon himself that he should now see his way to the throne his father once occupied, but made it clear that he thought little of my methods in hastening such an eventuality. He had seen enough of my ineffectual ways, he told me, and if he wanted to make progress he would have to do it himself. Hardly a week had passed since the funeral when he sailed for England, intent on positioning himself as the spearhead for reformation on the continent, hopeful that certain Protestant parties would declare themselves to his cause. He intended to ingratiate himself to my brother the King, that he might be allowed to present himself at court to further those ends. If his uncle agreed it would be for his own reasons, as he had married Henrietta Maria of France, a Catholic, and such a gesture might mitigate those that accused him of straying too far from the Protestant path.