by G Lawrence
“You and your wife would appear more loyal, if you were not constantly hiding secrets from me and attempting to inflict pain upon me.”
“No pain was intended.”
“Yet much was received.”
Robin tried again. “Lettice loves you as a sister, Majesty, and is sorrowed that our marriage should have turned you against her.”
Like a sister? I thought. Perhaps he had a point. In my experience sisters often betrayed one another.
“If that were true,” I said. “She would come and apologise. She would have apologised long before this time, for she knew that I was aware of your filthy marriage. But she did not and will not. I will not see her again.”
Since our argument, Lettice had been seen riding through London in a carriage drawn by four white horses. People had come out to cheer, as they thought it was me inside the carriage at first, since my carriage alone was drawn by four white horses. Finding Lettice inside, they had gone away confused, but if they were I was not. I knew she was trying to show me that she was my equal… that she had more power than me. She had won the man I had not, and more than that, she was proud of her actions, proud she had Robin, proud she had hurt me.
I stared at him, and then smiled. It was the swipe of a rapier, ghastly and gruesome, as it spread up my cheeks.
“Robin,” I said. “Let me make one thing perfectly clear. Your wife will never be welcome at my court. Never. I will allow you to visit her, get babes in her belly so you might have your heir, but never will she be brought to my presence again. Lettice chose her path. The price she will pay for you is obscurity.”
“She will be lonesome in the country.”
“We are all lonely, Robin. It is the human condition.”
Robin fell silent for a moment, and then spoke. “You do this to punish me.”
“Should you not be punished? Should there be no justice for the agony you inflicted upon me? You wounded me, Robin, so hard and deep I may never recover. I was yours and you mine, or so I thought.”
“You were never mine!” he shouted. “You were yours, Elizabeth. I had to save myself for you as you went about, flitting through court, dancing and courting other men.”
“Save yourself?” I shouted. “Save yourself? Do you forget all the women I turned a blind eye to? All I did was speak and dance with other men, Robin. You bedded the ones you turned to.”
“You took me for granted. I became an ornament to you… something pleasing to the eye, nothing more.”
Oh, there was just cause for all Robin said to me that day. I had played him, had I not? Flirted and danced with other men, shown affection to his enemies, real and imagined. Yes, I had done this, but he understood not the reason. He did not see that I was the scales, and my men the weights. Tip too far one way, for loving a man, and the scales would fall, then all would be chaos.
But I had never told him that.
I had never explained myself, never told him this was how it had to be, for that would defeat the object. So in his mind, his actions were justified. I had taken him for granted, cast him aside, used him, played him. In his mind, this punishment for me was just. But not so in my mind, or in my broken heart. I had done what I had to, to survive. I could not be as other women and offer myself to a man without reservation. I could not cast myself out, hoping for the generosity of fate to catch me. I knew only too well fate was no kind master. If I was to stay upon this throne, stay free, I had to think with the wits of a woman and a queen. If I fell, it meant death.
“I wanted you,” he said. “And you would not have me.”
“And without a tussle in the bedroom, I could not be enough for you.”
“I would have died for you.”
“And what purpose would that serve?” I snapped.
I stared at the wall. “All I asked of you was that you remain unmarried. You said you would die for me, but you could not even keep a ring from being placed upon your finger. Make no more promises you cannot keep. What mattered to you was not what I wanted, as you swore, but what you wanted. When your desires were thwarted, you betrayed me.”
I fixed my eyes on the tapestry, seeing nothing of its pattern. “And you say that I hurt you, even though no other man has had a piece of my heart, let alone all of it, as you have. You understand not my reasons for keeping friends with many men. You have wit enough to understand, were you not blinded by the fug of jealousy.” I breathed in through my nose. “But you say I wronged you, and I say you have wronged me. It is done. We are both hurt. On that score then, we are even.”
I could feel his eyes hammering into my back. “You swore to be mine, howsoever and in whatever way I needed you,” I went on. “I told you what I needed and you did not keep your oath, but you will now. You said you were mine, always, and I believed you. I am not willing to lose faith in that.”
I turned and stared at him with cold eyes. “Once before,” I said calmly, “you had a wife, and I was thrust into the position of your mistress. Though we had never touched or been together in such a way, I was forced to endure the shame of that position, and for love of you, I suffered it. But no more.”
“What do you mean?”
“I will not be the mistress again, my lord. I refuse the position. You men might think we women should be grateful for any attention, but we are not. You treat women as commodities, Robin. One is for your bed, another for your ambition, another to breed from. I will not be such a thing, such a tool, for you.” I drew myself up. “You swore once to be mine. You will keep that oath. I will not be the mistress in this arrangement, I will be the wife. I will be your first priority, your only concern. Lettice must take the part you tried to force me into. She will be your mistress, your second concern, your last priority.”
Robin did nothing but stare.
“I will not be the God-forsaken creature all men watch and pity!” I screamed, fury breaking through calm numbness. “I will not be made into that beast again, not by you, not by anyone!”
“Majesty…”
“Do not speak!” I shouted. “Listen, for once in your life listen, Robin, and hear what I say. I will not be your mistress. That is Lettice’s role to play. She will be the one to be shamed, the one who must hide her face in public, the one who must sit and wonder where her heart is and if he truly loves her. You say you married her only for the child? Then show this is so. For the rest of your life, Robin, you will be at my side, for although I hate you, with more fire than I thought possible, you I cannot do without.”
I stared into his eyes. “But Lettice… I can do without her, quite easily.”
“You mean never to receive her?”
“Indeed. That she-wolf is not welcome at my court or in my presence. She knew that I would be brought low by this, and she chose to do it. She chose to hurt me. I will never have her within my sight again.”
“That is my offer, my lord Earl,” I said, walking to the door. “Take it, and retain your position at court, or refuse and live with your wife in exile. The choice is yours. Decide what and who is more important to you.”
As I left, I allowed the breeze of the chamber to catch the door, slamming it shut with a huge bang. As I walked away, the sound reverberated in the halls, sounding as a death knell in my heart.
I sent him to his chambers at Greenwich then banished him to his Wanstead home. Robin was an exile from court, and until my shame had faded, he would remain so.
Lettice, I would never see again. She had taken Robin and now she would pay the price. The glittering star of my court would shine no more. In the country she would waste into old age, never approaching the throne or the seat of power again. Before his exile began, I told Robin to send her from London, and if he did not, he would pay a harsher price for his marriage. Fearful of imprisonment, he obeyed, and cast his wife into the dull countryside.
“I do not want her at your estates,” I told him. “She will go to her father’s house, and you are not to see her.”
“Majesty, she is
my wife…”
“If you value your head, Robin, obey me!” I screamed.
He all but ran from that chamber.
I had begun to see through the illusion I had cast over Robin. I had thought our love a spiritual entity, a beautiful creature of light, unaffected by the strains of normal relationships. I had deluded myself.
I thought of my cousin of Scots and felt only more a fool. How many times had I looked down on her for creating romantic relationships which did not exist? With Darnley, with Bothwell, with Norfolk… each time a man came into her life she had told a story of love, created a romantic hero to lose her heart to. I had pitied her at best and looked down on her at worst, and now here I was, revealed as the same kind of woman; a woman who had lost her heart to shadow, shade and illusion.
How similar we are, in so many ways, I thought. And how similar are our stories. Each of us had told a tale, willing it to become truth, and each of us had failed. We were not skilled in the art of storytelling, Mary and I. The tales we told were weak, fragile, easily broken.
I had thought Robin my salvation, my sanctuary. I had believed a love as pure as ours would burn, casting out the growing darkness in my heart, birthed from the hard choices I had to make and from my loneliness. I had thought it fed him, too, offering him the strength he needed to work, to act for England, to stand proud. But it was not so. It was all not fire, but smoke. All an illusion. Robin was not my salvation, sanctuary, or soul mate.
He was my curse, the cross I had to bear without reward, the love I had to suffer because I could not cast it from my heart. I cursed myself for not being able to let go of him, for being so weak I could not do without him, but it was so. It was fated. This was my life.
If I could have wished myself anything at that moment, it would have been to become strong enough to stop loving him. But I was bound to him, chained by shackles I could not break. I had to bear the weight of him, the weight of us.
Where my heart should have been, there were ashes. Long and barren, stark and empty, my heart was rendered bleak, and lonely. I wanted to know, to know if there was one last chance for me to seize happiness. I had been let down in the past… if I was to risk this, I had to know that Anjou was all he seemed.
I sent for Cecil. “Send word to France,” I said. “I want the Duc d’Anjou to come to England immediately, so we might speak of marriage between us. He will come in disguise, and the visit will be secret, but we will meet.”
Cecil stared at me, obviously unsure about my motives.
“You will have your cure for my maiden condition,” I said. “I will marry.”
Epilogue
Richmond Palace
February 1603
There is a question lurking under Death’s dark cowl. He wants to know if I seriously considered Anjou as a mate.
“I did think of it,” I tell Him, keeping my eyes on His hood. “There was a part of me that wanted to be loved, old friend.”
He spreads His hands, white bone glinting yellow under the light of the glimmering, guttering candles.
“You want to know why I did not?”
He bows; an elegant, silent answer to His unspoken question.
“Because I was fated to become like you,” I say. “You bring about change, do you not? Each day, you alter lives with death, and yet in nature you are the most stable of beasts; you maintain balance. That, too, was my fate. My father and siblings brought about change, too much change, and too fast. When I came to the throne, men were spinning, their heads whirling from all that had occurred. It was my task to set them on their feet, to offer them a time to stand still, to wait as about us fury erupted in other countries. I was the antidote to chaos. It was my task to keep England steady in a sea of agitation. To keep her safe in a world of peril.”
I look to the window. “That was my task; to make a space where men could breathe once more, where they could right themselves. Had I married, taking my last chance at personal happiness, balance would have been lost. So I cast it aside, although I knew it would hurt me. I had done it before, and I did it again, for my people.”
“Mary was my ghost, you see?” I say to Death. “Her example was set before me of what happens to a queen who abandons duty. The spectre of her mistakes hovered above me, watching every choice.”
I smile. “In the end, it was not Anjou who took the place Robin left gaping in my heart. It was my people. I offered up my blood to them, and when my heart was dry, barren and wasted, they responded, filling me with their love. We each brought the other back to life.”
I turn to Death, watching His robes shift in the breeze fluttering under the tapestry. “Lost love almost made me abandon all that I had thought was right and good, but love found, for my people, not for a man, brought me back to my senses. But Robin knew that not,” I say, a sly smile emerging on my lips. “And that was the way I intended it… so he would suffer, as I had.”
From the darkness of His hood, there comes a noise like a chuckle.
“You enjoy pain, do you not?” I ask. “I judge you not, in this regard, for it brought me pleasure too. There is nothing more dangerous than tender affection thwarted, and nothing more perilous than a heart that has been hurt seeking redress.”
I sigh. The hour is late and I am weary, but I do not want to rest. Soon I will sleep for the rest of time. Eons will drift as I slumber, my cold body decaying in a tomb that in time men will fail to stop beside, as I become forgotten.
“And that was not only true of me,” I continue, “but of another… My cousin of Scots. Pushed to the background, as a shadow, she stood then. But Mary was not made to wilt in the shade. She was a flower who demanded light. But flowers are hapless creatures. They grow and they bloom, so pretty, so sweet. They think they have only to unfurl their petals and the world will become a merry place, made only for them. But there are other things in meadows; unseen things, creeping things, creatures of smoke and silver.
I look at Him. “Flowers do not see, as they grow, the gossamer strands of an invisible web building about them, strand by strand. The creatures that would court them do not see either… the flower draws them in, unaware they will never reach her. The busy bees buzz, racing to their blossom, not seeing the trap set upon her very petals.”
Death lifts a hand and points. At the window, there is an eight-legged creature hanging on a silken thread. The thread shimmers silver and gold against the light of the candles, as the creature drops, disappearing from sight.
He turns His cowl to me. Eyes I cannot see stare out from impenetrable darkness.
“They see not the spider,” I say.
Here ends Blood of My Blood, Book Six of the Elizabeth of England Chronicles. In Book Seven, The Spider’s Web, Mary of Scots is drawn into a web of Walsingham’s construction, and Death will have work to do… as, on England’s distant horizon, the Armada is sighted.
Author’s Notes
This is a work of fiction. Although I try to stick to known facts, there are certain elements I created in this book. All conversations are fiction, although where the words of the characters were set down in historical record, those words are used. The characters of the people involved are my invention, although based on study of their lives and actions.
Drake’s letters to Elizabeth are fictitious. They certainly had a closer relationship by this time, but it is doubtful he would have written to her whilst raiding New Spain. I included this as the tales of his adventures were long, and I thought slotting them in, in one go would be rather arduous for the reader.
Elizabeth’s reaction to the massacre on Rathlin Island is my invention, although it is based on a theory, my own, which I have come to think bears some weight. Although she sent congratulations to Essex after the massacre, she dispatched Sidney, a seasoned commander, popular with Irish lords, not long after, and called Essex home. It is also true that whilst Rathlin was an important, strategic base, it was abandoned by the English at this time. Elizabeth had warned Essex not to allow unneces
sary bloodshed, and she was never one to support mass murder. I think it would have been impolitic for her to condemn Essex, as Ireland was unsteady, but I do not think she would have approved of his actions. This is only a theory and certainly does not excuse the massacre. It is one of the great abuses the Irish suffered at the hands of the English at this time. Another was the suppression of Irish culture. I think this was done for the reasons stated in the book, as Wales was permitted to retain its language and culture, and did indeed have sections of the Bible translated into Welsh for the use of native speakers. But again, this is a reason for this abuse, not an excuse for it.
De Silva’s death scene and last words are my invention. The only information I could find on him was the year of his death, but not the means or the date.
Elizabeth’s black page boy did exist, but I can find his name nowhere, so created one for him. There is no record he was used as a spy, that is my theory, but Elizabeth was known for her servants always having more than one role in her household. She liked useful people, who could take on many jobs, and I think it likely, therefore, that she had other uses for one who could, due to the prejudices against his race, be overlooked by others. None of the negative ideas about race, or indeed religion, in this book are my opinions, but are simply included to show how people considered other races, and indeed faiths, at this time.
