42
Elizabeth
M
ary had been pregnant nearly ten months with no sign that the birth was imminent. Many believed that it was a physical delusion wrought by the mind of a brainsick woman because she wanted a child so very much, or else a tumor of the womb that caused her stomach to swell in a grim parody of pregnancy. But her women, her doctors, and even the midwives who were the wisest of the lot, were quick to defend Mary and insist that she had shown every sign of being with child. Her courses had stopped, her breasts were tender and swollen and milk had even flowed from them, and her stomach had expanded with the passing months exactly as it should during the course of a normal pregnancy.
A crudely printed but much circulated drawing predicted that Mary’s pregnancy would end in a great wind and nothing else and showed Philip on a ship being blown out to sea, back to Spain, by the force of a massive fart issuing from Mary as she lay in an attitude of birthing, whilst on the deck of the ship Philip fastidiously held his nose. And there was a rumor that a woman named Isabel Malt, who had just been delivered of a son, had been visited discreetly after dark by men in the Queen’s service who had tried to buy her child so that it might be passed off as the Queen’s.
The burnings had taken on a whole new intensity. From the bed where she still lay, praying and waiting to give birth, Mary spent her days, and sat up far into the nights, signing death warrants. Mary signed them without weighing the merits of each case. There was no time to fully investigate them; the merest hint of suspicion was enough to send the accused to the stake.
Untold horrors reached my ears of people dying in choking agony upon piles of damp, green fagots, and of bags of gunpowder tied about their necks to give them a quick death either failing to explode or doing so but failing to kill and instead maiming horribly so that they died in even greater agony as they waited for the smoke and flames to consume them. One woman went pregnant to the stake—How could Mary do it? Did she even know? Did she miss that crucial fact in her haste to sign and send another alleged heretic to Hell?—and in her agony her womb disgorged the child right into the grasping hands of the flames, thus claiming two lives, one entirely innocent, and the other guilty only of being a poor uneducated woman with a muddled understanding of Catholic dogma, unable to name or number the Sacraments correctly. If any tried to help or intervene or spoke out in protest, they were also subject to arrest and punishment in the stocks or pillory, or even the stake itself if they too were suspected of harboring heretical beliefs.
Lists of those who had died at the stake were sold in the streets of London as “Names of The Martyrs.” Their ashes and belongings were preserved and displayed as holy relics. And verses and prayers for “The Ascension of Elizabeth” were printed on broadsheets on secret presses that changed locations regularly and operated only in the dead of night, the printers knowing full well that if they were caught it was jail or death, or even both. One of the most popular went:
When raging reign of tyrants stout,
Causeless did cruelly conspire
To rend and root the simple out,
With furious force of sword and fire;
When man and wife were put to death:
We wished for our Queen Elizabeth.
There was also an even shorter and more direct verse that was upon many of the common people’s lips.
When these with violence were put to death,
We prayed to God for our Elizabeth.
To them, I was the living embodiment of Hope; I was the virgin queen whose coming to the throne would put out the flames. That, more than anything else, kept me alive. When I grew weary of struggling to stay alive, of flirting with Philip, of battling with Mary and trying to combat and disprove her suspicions, it was their hope and belief in me that sustained me and kept me going to live and fight to preserve my life for one more day. Because I knew that my day would come, and that my people had need of me.
Another month came and went. And it was apparent to all except Mary herself that there would be no child. A rumor arose that the Queen was dead and to prove it false she made a point of showing herself each afternoon at her window overlooking the courtyard, where monks, intent on their prayers, walked round and round even in the deluge of rain that was rotting the crops in the fields and bringing famine upon the country. Some persisted in believing that it wasn’t truly Mary at all but a wax figure held up by Philip.
Mary refused to believe that she was not carrying a child and insisted that every day a long winding procession of clergy trudge through the streets of London praying that England be delivered from heresy and that God send the Queen a goodly hour soon. And the doctors and midwives, too fearful to tell her the truth, continued to reassure her and murmur about miscalculations and such.
Instead of warmth and abundance, the summer of 1555 was a summer of cold and want. Incessant rains drummed down upon the fields and turned the soil to a muddy, mushy mire in which nothing could thrive. The crops were pelted and pounded mercilessly, and when the rains stopped, they lay broken and rotting in the feeble sun. None had seen the like of it in human memory. The people lived in fear of famine and the burnings that continued unabated. And with no grain to be had, prices soared, and people went in want of bread and beer. There was no grass and oats to feed the cattle, sheep, and horses, and many sickened and died, and before summer’s end the price of one scrawny sheep could, in better times, have bought a small house.
In August, everyone, except Mary, admitted that if she were delivered of a child it would indeed be a miracle, for she had by then been pregnant an entire year.
Finally, with the air of Hampton Court grown unbearably foul and ripe, with the rushes in dire need of changing, and the courtiers surly, ill-tempered, and bored from want of fresh air and outdoor exercise, and the gardens a rotting, muddy mess, pounded into a pulp by the pouring rain, and fear of the plague running rampant, Mary emerged from seclusion with her belly deflated and her face defeated.
She made no mention of her pregnancy, and no explanation was ever given out either publicly or privately. She simply declined to discuss the matter; she merely announced that they would be leaving for Oatlands Palace so that Hampton Court could be cleansed.
I was not invited to accompany them, but told to go back to Hatfield or Hell or wherever I would. “You are at liberty to go where you will,” Mary said to me when we parted. “All I know is that I will never trust you again.”
So I took myself back to the peace and quiet of Hatfield and left Mary to play beggarmaid-queen, weeping, whining, and groveling for scraps of affection from her coldhearted husband’s table.