An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (31 page)

14

Lizbeth quieted her horse which was restive with the cheers and cries of the crowd and the fluttering of handkerchiefs and flags.

The Strand and Fleet Street were decked in blue and there were ensigns and banners fluttering in the crisp air from every house along the route to St. Paul’s Cathedral. It was Sunday, the 24th of November, and the Queen was going in state to celebrate the country’s deliverance from Spain.

Her Majesty was seated in a chariot on which was set a throne supported by four pillars and surmounted by a lion and a dragon holding the arms of England. It was drawn by two milk-white steeds and attended by the pensioners and state footmen. At the head of the procession moved the heralds, gentlemen ushers and harbingers, followed by the Court Physicians, Judges, bishops and nobles, while just before the Queen’s chariot walked the French Ambassador, her Counsellors and Chamberlain, and upon the flanks fined the Serjeant-at-Arms and halberdiers.

It was a wonderful sight, Lizbeth thought and she felt that she could not look enough at the colour, beauty and richness of the great throng, which was unlike anything she had ever seen before.

Near to Her Majesty, leading the richly-caparisoned horse of state, rode the new Master of the Horse, the gay and gallant Earl of Essex; and the six Maids of Honour who followed cast many a glance in his direction. His young, bearded face, Lizbeth thought, was handsome enough but for good looks she preferred Sir Walter Raleigh who, surrounded by his guardsmen, their halberds gilded and with handles set in rich velvet, seemed to watch the new favourite with a brooding resentment which no one pretended to misunderstand.

Lizbeth, in a robe of white satin embroidered with silver flowers, had thought herself finely garbed until she saw the gowns of the other Maids of Honour and the glittering splendour of the Queen herself.

She had grown used, in the few days she had been at Court, to expect Her Majesty to be resplendent but today it appeared she surpassed all other occasions, and even the vivid Aldermen in their scarlet robes and the sparkling jewels of the Lord Mayor seemed but a pale reflection of her splendour.

At the gate at Temple Bar the procession was saluted with music by the City Waits. Here the Lord Mayor welcomed the Queen to the City and Chamber, and after going through the usual ceremony of the keys and swords, set the sceptre in her hand. When the procession passed on, the City Companies with their banners lined one side of the route; on the other were marshalled the lawyers and gentlemen of the Inns of Court.

“Mark the Courtiers.” Lizbeth heard Sir Francis Bacon say in a perfectly audible voice as they passed by him in his black robe. “Those who bow first to the citizens are in debt those who bow first to us are at law!”

At the great West Door of St. Paul’s Cathedral, the Queen dismounted from her chariot throne, and while she was being received by the Bishop of London. The Dean and fifty other clergy in their fine embroidered vestments, the Maids of Honour also dismounted and arranged themselves in a procession behind the Queen.

The Marchioness of Winchester carried Her Majesty’s train, and as she moved forward slowly, Lizbeth, looking up, saw that the banners and other trophies from the conquered Armada were hung in the Cathedral.

She meant to follow the service but somehow after the cheering crowds that thronged the streets she found it hard to listen to the choir chanting the Litany or to the Bishop of Salisbury’s eloquent sermon. There was so much to see around her and though she was ashamed of her lack of religious feeling, Lizbeth could not help watching the glittering, colourful congregation which seemed to have stepped straight from some pageant rather than to be real people being themselves.

She saw Lord Treasurer Burleigh, looking cautious and determined as was his wont, groaning with the gout, but wise in judgment and still capable of tremendous work. Her eyes flickered for a moment over Sir Francis Walsingham, a martyr to the stone, but his nature was as ardent and his grasp of affairs as cunning and brilliant as ever they had been. And then they came back nearer home to the Maids of Honour.

Lady Mary Howard audaciously was striving to catch the attention of the Earl of Essex. She had the merriest, prettiest and naughtiest face Lizbeth had ever seen and though she had been such a short time at Whitehall, already she knew that Lady Mary was invariably in trouble with the Queen and that her attempts to flirt with the new favourite boded ill for her future.

And yet Lizbeth loved Lady Mary. She had been sitting alone, looking out at the river on that first afternoon after her arrival from Camfield, when Lady Mary peeped round the door and with what seemed to Lizbeth a cry of delight ran across the room to welcome her.

From that moment Lizbeth found it almost impossible to be sad or depressed. It was Lady Mary who told her what her duties were and made them sound so amusing that Lizbeth found herself laughing helplessly. It was a state she found herself in continually for the next forty-eight hours, for the Queen’s Maids of Honour were a gay, irresponsible, noisy lot of young women who, it appeared, were continuously at war with the gentlemen of Her Majesty’s Household.

They slept, Lizbeth found to her surprise, all together in a long room opening out of the room to which she had been shown on arrival and which was used as their private sitting-room. When she expressed her surprise at their living as it were in a dormitory, Lady Mary had laughed.

“Her Majesty imagines that it keeps us out of mischief,” she said but the look on her face told Lizbeth that Lady Mary at any rate found ways to circumvent the Queen’s pious hope.

Lizbeth had her first experience that very evening of the bad reputation into which the Maids of Honour had got themselves. After they had retired for the night, they were chattering loudly together and two of the girls were showing Lizbeth the latest dances when the door opened and Sir Francis Knowles, a learned old soldier, marched into the room and berated them soundly. He was in dishabille with a big book in his hand and a pair of spectacles on his nose, and it was impossible not to giggle as he marched up and down declaiming in Latin against their behaviour, which he said made it vain for him to attempt to sleep or study.

Some of the Maids of Honour who were half-undressed begged him to go away, but he swore he would not leave them in possession of their bedroom unless they permitted him to rest. It was only when they promised to be as quiet as possible that he finally retired.

There were always incidents of some sort happening, Lizbeth discovered, and it was not surprising that the Maids of Honour found plenty to make them laugh. They were, however, all desperately afraid of the Queen and Lizbeth could well understand it when she was brought into the Royal presence.

It was impossible to believe, when one looked at her, that the Queen was fifty-five years of age. With her great farthingale spread out about her, a bodice of blue and silver with an open throat, slashed and puffed sleeves sewn with pearls the size of birds’ eggs, she looked not only regal but beautiful.

As Lizbeth curtsied low, everything she had heard and learned about the Queen seemed unimportant save this amazing air of dignity and attraction intermingled one with the other so that it was hard to know where the Sovereign ended and the woman began.

For the first time Lizbeth could understand how the Queen’s influence had extended and made itself felt over the whole world. She could realise why men were willing to strive and fight and die for Elizabeth of England, and why she was utterly and completely incomprehensible to the peoples of other nations.

Lizbeth, as she swept to the ground, remembered the throb in Rodney’s voice as he spoke of Gloriana and now she saw, as other people had seen before her, how the Queen, so intelligent, so effervescent, imperious and regal, intoxicated both the Court and the country, and guided the realm with the intensity of her own spirit.

No one but a woman could have done it, and no woman without superlative gifts.

Late that evening, as Lizbeth stood watching the dancing, Sir Christopher Hatton, the Lord Chancellor, came to her side and asked her how she had fared her first day at Court. This question took Lizbeth unawares and for a moment she could only stammer her reply.

“’Tis all so amazing,” she said, “and – and – the Queen – ”

Sir Christopher smiled.

“The Queen does fish for men’s souls,” he said, “and has so sweet a bait that no one can escape her net.”

Lizbeth had known what he meant, and in the days that followed she knew that her own soul had been caught in Elizabeth’s net. The Queen’s virtues were extolled whenever her name was spoken, but perhaps her Maids of Honour saw her in a different light from other people.

To them she was always letting impulse break through the regal formalities of the Court. She could be sweet and gentle and tender, although a second later she would be berating the same person with a fury and anger that was like a summer thunderstorm. Tears followed smiles and yet the smiles would come again as quickly as they had been extinguished.

Yet even when she was angry, Lizbeth thought, the Queen never lost her regal dignity. Today in white on the gold throne she appeared like a goddess, and it was easy to understand why every man’s heart, whether he was young as the Earl of Essex or as old as Sir Francis Walsingham, beat the faster because they were near her.

The Earl seemed to Lizbeth to swing between fiery vigour and sulky lassitude, and yet everyone at the Court admired him and the Queen seemed, when he was not there, to yearn for his fresh, gay youth.

All the Maids of Honour were in love with someone. Lady Mary Howard daringly with the young Earl, Elizabeth Throgmorton, whose blue eyes and gold hair reminded Lizbeth of Phillida, dreamed and yearned for Sir Walter Raleigh. There were others who fancied the haughty Earl of Southampton, the tall and graceful Sir Charles Blount, another of the Queen’s favourites, or her god-son, Sir John Harrington.

“You will be in love with someone before you have been here a week,” Lady Mary threatened.

Lizbeth gave her no confidences, knowing that none of these young men, however fine, however distinguished, could compare in her own mind with Rodney. And it was impossible for her not to think of him almost every minute and every second of the twenty-four hours.

Ballads and music played during the Queen’s banquets spoke always of love. When Her Majesty dined in private, she would listen to songs which invariably seemed to arouse the most tender emotion in those who heard them. Indeed, the whole place, old and grey as might be its walls, seemed a fitting setting for the splendid men and the lovely women who moved there, with Cupid loosing his arrows from behind every pillar.

The Company was rising now to leave the Cathedral. Lizbeth collected her wandering thoughts and took her place amongst the other Maids as they moved in procession slowly down the aisle. The Queen was to proceed to the Bishop of London’s Palace to dine, after which they would return through the streets in the same order as before, but by the light of torches.

As they came from the Cathedral, people were shouting:

“God save Your Majesty”

The Queen, smiling and waving to them, replied,

“God bless you all, my good people.”

There was a great roar at the sound of her words and then in a clear voice the Queen said,

“You may well have a greater Prince, but you shall never have a more loving Prince!”

There was a full-throated roar at this and suddenly Lizbeth found that her eyes were wet. The Queen always seemed to say the right thing at the right moment, she thought, and those words would be remembered for ever by everyone who had been present that day.

The banquet which followed was impressive, but as Lady Mary said with a little grimace,

“Once you’ve been to one banquet, you find that all the others are much of a muchness.”

There was music and a great deal of talk before finally they started on their homeward journey. Once again Lizbeth had trouble with her horse, for the torches blowing in the wind caused him to shy. Several times the other Maids of Honour told her to be more careful as she bumped into them.

At length they came to Whitehall, the Queen dismounted and her ladies followed her into the Palace. Lizbeth saw Sir Francis Walsingham detach himself from the other gentlemen of the household and step forward to greet someone who was standing waiting for them in the high entrance Hall.

She had one look, then felt her heart begin to throb madly. It was Rodney who stood there, Rodney more richly garbed than she had ever seen him, in velvet and lace, and his jewelled buttons flashed as he moved forward to be presented to the Queen and now in a daze Lizbeth found herself following the rest of the Court to the Long Gallery where the Queen liked to sit in the evenings. When the candles were lit in the great silver sconces, the whole gallery seemed to sparkle and glitter as if it were bejewelled.

Lizbeth hardly dared to look at Rodney for fear her eyes would betray her secret to him once and for all. But he was not looking for her; his eyes were on the Queen, and Her Majesty was being exceedingly gracious talking with him; and though Lizbeth could not hear what they said, she guessed that they spoke of his voyage and of the great cargo he had brought back with him. Then, as she watched. Rodney went down on one knee and placed a small casket in the Queen’s hand. She accepted it from him and as she opened the lid and looked inside. Lizbeth knew what lay there.

It was pearls from the pearling lugger, she was certain of that, and she guessed now that Rodney had meant the Queen to have them from the very first moment they had been found beneath the floor-boards of the Captain’s cabin. They were indeed a gift worthy of Glonana. Then, as Lizbeth watched, standing a little to one side in the humblest position as became the youngest and least important Maid of Honour, she heard the Queen tell Lord Burleigh to bring her a sword, and despite herself, Lizbeth drew a deep and audible breath of excitement.