I knew I must let her go. Reason told me that I wanted as much as Tallie herself to get her safely away from England.
I heard the distant sail snap in a rising wind. A gust whipped my hair into my eyes.
Time was pushing us onwards, out of our control. The moments before execution must feel very like this, I thought, though they would be unlikely to smell of salt water and fish.
The truth was that I wanted her to stay and she wanted to go.
‘How will I manage without you?’ I asked.
‘Very ill, I’m sure.’ She smiled. She had regained her familiar poise. ‘You’ll have to hire a new spy and learn to speak the truth to yourself.’
‘Are you trying to make us quarrel so I won’t mind so much?’ I watched the last bale being winched up from the lighter that bobbed alongside the
Speedwell.
‘No,’ she said. ‘Merely playing my part to the end.’
‘Was it no more than a part?’ I asked. ‘Tell me the truth! Did I force you always to pretend?’
She smiled down at the damp, heavy stone beneath her feet. ‘You have no idea!’
‘Then I don’t know you at all!’
‘On the contrary, you helped make me what I’ve become.’
I was afraid to ask her what she thought that was.
‘I mean still to torment you from a distance,’ I said. ‘I shall have Lynn knighted. Then, if you do relent and agree to marry him, you’ll be Lady Lynn and have to learn to be dainty and well-behaved. That will force you to act against the grain.’
‘I’ll never marry.’
‘Marriage doesn’t seem so terrible to me.’
‘We’ve already spoken more than enough about this matter.’ Her voice was more gentle than her words. ‘You get yourself married to the Palsgrave. It’s the closest you’ll get to manumission.’
‘I don’t know if I can.’
‘You did it for me. And trust your Frederick to work on the king.’
We stood in silence, listening to the waves slapping against the dockside. The gulls swung away with eager cries towards an approaching fishing boat.
If she wasn’t going to weep again, neither would I. Weeping felt too dangerous, as if it might tear loose my inner parts. Anything we had left to say to each other could not be said now, in these last few moments, with sailors rattling their oars below us. It was too late to make good any omissions.
‘Hey, ho. Onwards,’ she said at last. ‘I pierce the mirror and soar up with a great clap of my wings.’
I looked at her, puzzled.
She smiled and shook her head gently. ‘An old dream I once had.’
‘You have my brother’s standard?’ I asked.
‘Of course. Already on board, wrapped up safe in my cabin. I’ll write to tell you when it has been raised on Cape Henry.’
‘I’m losing you too.’
‘Now that you have the Palsgrave, you won’t need me – or all those dogs.’
‘If
I have the Palsgrave.’ My head rattled with unspoken words. ‘I’m already teaching the dogs German.’ The moments of our last chance were seeping away. Along with all the truths she had not had time to tell me.
‘What if Frederick won’t stiffen?’ I burst out.
Tallie peered into my eyes. Then she threw back her head and guffawed. She waved a derisive hand. ‘He will, never fear! He’s young! And in good health. And you’re…’
‘… handsome enough,’ I cut in. ‘I know.’
‘Are you in earnest?’
‘What else should I be?’
‘Your grace…’
‘Please don’t laugh at me when we’re about to part!’
‘Your grace… Elizabeth…’ She took both my hands and shook them gently. ‘Surely, you must look into a glass from time to time!’
‘Please…’
‘D’ you not know?’
I turned my face away from her.
‘You are a fool after all!’ she said. With one hand, she hauled the medallion of Diana free from her cloak. ‘Remember this?’
I nodded.
‘Then open your stubborn ears and listen to me! You’re more than “handsome enough". You’re a real beauty – unless you’ve a taste for whey-faced prigs. Look at you! You’re the envy of all your ladies.’ She stepped back and swept her hands through the air from my head to my feet. ‘All golden and ripe and full of life!’
‘Don’t taunt me, Tallie! We don’t have time to quarrel and make up.’
‘I promise you, you won’t need to do a thing on your wedding night! Not one single Southwark trick. Not with that hair, and mouth and those big blue eyes! And those long legs hidden under all your skirts. And neat, round little titties that would earn you a pile of gold sovereigns in Southwark. Just show yourself to your Frederick in your naked beauty. He’ll manage the rest. And that’s the truth!’
With that unexpected farewell gift, she dropped me a curtsy and turned to give her hand to Lynn, who was waiting to help her down the stairs into the boat.
The sailors unshipped their oars. At the skipper’s shout, the oars bit into the waves. The gap between us widened. Slowly, the boat grew smaller. Against the dark water, her skin disappeared, so that I had the curious impression that her clothing moved away by itself and that Tallie herself had not gone at all. I waved.
A pale silk sleeve waved back.
Tallie, Henry. Goodbye to you both. The Americas are so far away. Tallie, you show me how to leap. At least, you are accompanied by a man who loves you. I try not to fear for you in that wild unknown place… trying not to weep … I remind myself of your good sense, your stubbornness and your ferocity veiled by good behaviour. Your music. My unexpected sister. Queen of the Americas.
‘Belle.’ I called. She had not run to greet me when I returned from Gravesend to Whitehall after saying farewell to Tallie. ‘Belle!’
I went into my bedchamber. Cherami, Bichette, and Mars, the dog pup from the king’s kennels, all jumped off the bed and ran to paw at my skirts. I gave my maid my travelling cloak.
‘Where’s Belle?’ I stooped down to stroke the other dogs. ‘Do you know where she is?’ Fragile with loss, I needed to hold her and kiss her head.
I looked under the bed, in cupboards, behind wall-hangings. I looked down into the orchard. She was not there, playing with a groom. I searched my apartments, calling her name. My ladies had not seen her that day. Nor had the maids, grooms or footmen.
Belle never strayed alone from my apartments. I could see her lying, flat and empty and dead under a bush, like the
paraquetto.
I saw her floating, swollen with putrefaction, in the Thames.
‘Find her!’
The urgency in my voice sent my servants running, grooms, secretaries, maids, even my ladies.
With Anne’s help, I searched the orchards. Then we crossed over the King Street Gate to the privy gardens, where we peered under every box and laurel, growing more and more certain that I was looking for lifeless fur.
I turned my head towards a scuffle at one of the garden gates. Two of my grooms were hauling a third youth between them.
‘Your grace!’ one of them shouted urgently.
They dragged their struggling captive towards me. ‘Tell her!’
He swung his head into the face of one of his captors and almost escaped. Then the other groom elbowed him in the gut.
‘Stop this!’
All three suddenly drew to attention. ‘Tell her,’ the first groom prompted again.
‘He stole her,’ said the other.
‘Belle?’ I asked.
‘Yes!’ chorused the two captors.
The captive stared sullenly at the ground, his mouth clamped shut. His right eye had already begun to swell. One of the grooms elbowed him again. ‘Tell her what you told us.’
‘Did you steal my dog?’ I demanded.
‘I had to, your grace. The prince ordered me.’
He wore my younger brother’s livery.
I wrote to Baby Charles asking him to return my dog. He wrote back that he would not. I should have given her to him in the first place, when he had asked.
I wrote to the king. I had a reply from Carr. I had many other dogs, it said. I would not be able to take them all with me when I left England after marriage. The duke needed consolation after the death of his older brother. The king instructed me that, in the spirit of Christian generosity, I could not object, etcetera.
In short, Baby Charles would keep Belle, whether I liked it or not.
I tore the letter across.
My ladies all looked at me.
‘He’s to keep her!’ I tore Carr’s letter again and again. I crushed the pieces and threw them into the fire.
‘Leave me!’ I said. ‘All of you!’
I saw my ladies exchange glances. Belle was merely a dog, their eyes said.
When I was alone, uncontrolled weeping overcame me at last.
Frederick returned from Theobald’s before Christmas. ‘I worked to charm him,’ he reported. ‘I am become his “sweetest little German mouse". He swears that he will have no son-in-law but me – but not yet. Not while England still drowns in tears for the Prince of Wales. He says that I must return to Heidelberg and return to press my suit again when the mourning is done. In the summer, perhaps.’
And before then, my father would have changed his mind yet again.
I pressed Frederick’s palms to my cheeks. ‘If he sends you away, I’ll drown myself in the wake of your ship.’
‘No!’ He kissed my hands. ‘No! No! I couldn’t live, then. I would drown myself with you. Our souls would live together as dolphins!’ He kissed my hands again, as if this were already our final farewell.
My father was toying with us. He dangled happiness, meaning to snatch it away. Thames and Rhine would never flow together. I dared not complain. He had made it clear what he would do if I ever dared to defy him again about my marriage.
‘Drag your feet,’ I said. ‘Smile and say that you obey himand prepare to go. Move as slowly as you dare. We must seem to obey while we find some way to keep you here.’
As if he had detected our strategy, my father devised yet another torment. He now kept Frederick in attendance on him almost day and night so that I never saw him.
I believed that Bacon would do as I asked but could not be certain. Even if he obeyed me, I did not know whether his advice would sway the king. I tried to think what more I could do. I thought I would go mad.
I tried to pass the time by playing my lute, but the sound felt thin and forlorn without Tallie’s lute singing too. My fears sprang up between the notes and fogged the melody. The place in me from which music sprang felt hollow and dry. If I lost Frederick, I would never make music again.
I sat down to meals and rose again. I rode. I tried to play with my dogs but the absence of Belle destroyed my former pleasure. I accepted hands of cards and threw them down on the table again. Night after night, I picked melted wax from the candles and made it into tiny balls. I would arrange these balls in a straight line, then squeeze them together again into larger ones that I threw into the fire, where I watched them melt into the coals.
I drank wine with Lucy and probed her for court gossip. She told me enough to confirm my fears that the king still entertained the envoys of other suitors, whatever he might have told Frederick. The queen still wrote to Savoy. I myself had seen the hopeful arrival of another envoy from Brunswick. And I was inclined to believe the whispers that the king’s waiting gentlemen were more and more often finding excuses to avoid his changeable, irritable presence. I was waiting for the ghostly abbot again, lying in the dark stiff with fear.
Send me the ghost! I thought. Anything but this waiting in ignorance!
In my imagination, I saw Frederick being seized and bundled aboard a ship before he could send me word. Fromseeming possible, it grew to seem likely. When I still heard nothing from Frederick, his secret forced departure swelled into certain fact.
I would dive deep into the dark water, I decided, as soon as his departure was confirmed. At night, when no one could see to fish me out. Gulls, or a curious dog, would find me washed up like seaweed on the estuary mud.
‘I’m weary,’ I announced one evening. ‘You may all go now.’
‘I shall make you a comforting posset,’ said Anne. ‘This is not an easy time.’
I nodded, called Cherami, Bichette and Mars and went into my sleeping chamber. Trey was already curled in his basket by the fire, stinking and wheezing in his sleep. Turning over a book from my table, I heard voices. I almost collided with Anne at the door.
‘He’s here!’
Frederick was warming himself distractedly at the fire. He looked at me with such open longing that I felt faint. ‘His majesty was lost in drink. I escaped,’ he said.
‘Two possets,’ said Anne firmly.
When she had left, I flung myself into his arms. ‘I was afraid you were gone for ever,’ I said.
‘They would have to kill me first.’ He kissed my mouth, my neck. I burrowed into his warmth, all shyness banished by my relief to find him still there. My place in the world was there, pressed against him, with his arms around me. My fingers touched his soft hair, the intricate shells of his ear, the dark down on his upper lip.
When Anne returned with the two warm, foaming mugs, we stepped apart, reluctantly. I held onto his hand, unable to break our contact completely.
Frederick looked down at the gold and enamelled collar, which I now saw hanging across his chest. ‘The king gave this to me this afternoon, after dinner.’
‘It’s the collar and George of the Order of the Garter!’ I exclaimed. ‘My father has made you a Knight of the Garter, one of the highest honours he can give. This must be good news!’
Frederick looked doubtful. He fingered the pendant, a mounted knight spearing the dragon that lay under his horse’s hoofs. ‘I’m not certain. Perhaps because I’m unfamiliar with English customs… You must explain to me, Lizzie.’
With both hands, he lifted off the heavy collar and frowned down at the enamelled garters set with red enamelled roses, all linked by golden tassels. ‘It did not feel like such a great honour to me. His majesty was still in bed, when I arrived.’
‘My father takes pride in behaving badly,’ I assured him and myself. ‘Grown worse since Henry died.’
‘But, undressed? In his night shirt, in the afternoon?’