Elizabeth I (36 page)

I was not disappointed. He flung open the door, bending low, spreading out a cloak across the threshold. “We must seek to make what is just a story into a truth,” he said.

“Then you should have put the mud beneath it, as the story goes, that you saved me from at Greenwich.” I stepped carefully on the velvet. There was a tale that Raleigh had spread his best cloak on a mud puddle for me to tread upon, lest I sully my dainty slippers. People loved it. Unfortunately it had never happened.

He laughed. He had always had a warm, inviting laugh. “I must needs be more frugal now,” he said. “I cannot sacrifice a good cape so easily. I have had hard times of late.”

“Ah, Walter, when will you cease to be a beggar?” I asked. I was growing ever more weary of the continual requests—some more open and bold than others, but all a constant clawing—for money from all creatures about me.

“When Your Majesty ceases to be a benefactor!” He grinned, setting his hands on his hips—hips clad in fashionable breeches of slashed crimson satin. Then he ushered me into the chamber.

These chambers around the base courtyard had been built by Cardinal Wolsey for his guests, and as usual with the cardinal, he had spared no expense. Even though they were over seventy years old now, the rooms lacked no comfort. Just so is luxury immortal. The walls were covered in the finest linenfold paneling, and a frieze ran around all four walls. Wolsey’s taste was for biblical scenes, and this one featured Samson and Delilah—most fitting. At least Bess had spared Raleigh’s hair.

“Now I can impart the secrets to you,” he said. “I must tell you of El Dorado.” He clapped, and then opened a door leading to another chamber, motioning me in. Inside this smaller chamber, Ewaioma stood silently, almost naked, his body glistening with oil. Standing in a corner, one of Raleigh’s servants leaned on a long, hollow cane, watching me warily. He dipped the bottom of the cane into a jug at his feet, raised it up, and blew a cloud of dust all over Ewaioma. He repeated this again and again, and slowly the Indian’s body turned to gold. When he was a gleaming idol, Raleigh said, “This is what the Indians in Guiana do with their chief. On his birthday they coat him with gold dust. In some ceremonies, all the nobles do likewise, until everyone in the palace is covered in gold. Later they plunge into a sacred lake to wash it off, without trying to recover the precious dust. They have so much of it, they can throw it away.” He rolled up his sleeve, smeared it with oil, then stuck his arm out to be dusted with gold. It was quickly transformed, the veins turning into raised threads, the hairs on his arm like golden slivers. He started to pull at his doublet.

“No need to go further,” I said. I wondered what he would look like all coated in gold, shorn of his doublet and shirt, but did not pursue it. “I have seen enough.”

He lowered his arm and motioned to the other two that the exhibition was over. “Let me tell you what Captain Whiddon has reported,” he said, dragging a table over, and two chairs. He gave me the more comfortable one and put a pillow on it. He unrolled a parchment map and stabbed a thick finger on it. “There is an island just off the coast of South America, named Trinidad after the Holy Trinity. The Spanish have that. But they do not have the land beyond”—he stabbed again—“the land called Guiana. It is a jungle with many rivers cutting through. Somewhere in the highlands above the jungle and the basin of the Orinoco River lies the city of El Dorado, filled with gold. The Indian name for it is ‘Manoa,’ and it is so wealthy the chief has a garden of gold replicas of all the plants growing in his kingdom. We know this because a Spanish explorer, Juan Martínez, found it!”

“Then why does not Spain claim it?”

“She is trying to. The commander of the fort in Trinidad is an old man who is convinced of the truth of the story, and he has sent out his own explorers. But the Indians hate the Spanish and refuse to help them. As the enemies of the Spanish, we will be welcomed. Your Majesty, my good Queen, give me letters patent to explore, and a commission to seek El Dorado.”

“Parliament has already granted you funds,” I said.

“But without your gracious patronage, how can I claim the land on your behalf?” He leaned close, his voice low, as if to frame the words was dangerous. “The Spanish and Portuguese are not in possession of this coast. What matter if the pope granted it to them? He had not the right. Do we recognize the pope’s authority in our own realm? Why, then, outside it? He is nothing but a deluded, corrupt old man, in thrall to the merchants of Italy and Spain.” He shot a shrewd look at me. “Your father would never have hesitated.”

“True,” I admitted. “But this deluded old man, as you style him, has been most successful in rallying the Catholic faithful and stemming the tide of reformation.”

“Yes, with the Inquisition!” Raleigh suddenly raised his voice. Eavesdroppers be damned. “That is why we must fight him on distant shores. This coast will serve as a base of privateering. And surely, my most dear Queen, you would not wish to see the cruel hand of Rome start to choke the noble natives of Guiana. Up until now they have managed to escape the fate of the Incas and the Aztecs, ruined by the Spanish. All that gold, going to Spain. But the Spanish have never found the source of that gold on the South American continent. It must have come from somewhere. I believe it is near this El Dorado. The Spanish have made off with the product, but we can secure the source itself!”

He was persuasion itself. But I needed little persuading. I longed to taste such adventure firsthand. Instead, I was forced to rely on others to live it for me. My blood sang at the thought of exploring this new land, discovering things we could only guess at in these snug rooms at Hampton Court.

“Very well,” I said. “I appoint you to this and will have the commission papers drawn up. Let us hope the golden city of El Dorado is more real than the episode of your laying your cloak in the mud for me. As you said, we can seek to make the first story real. But in this case, either the gold is there or it is not, and we cannot conjure it up.”

He dropped to one knee. “If it is there, I shall find it.” He grasped my hand and kissed it urgently, so urgently my fingers stung. “I swear it.”

31

I
took my place in the Great Hall, now transformed into something else entirely. The carpenters and joiners had worked for two days to convert it into a theater, using the minstrels’ gallery as the upper part of the set, fastening oil lamps onto wires to hang from the hammer beams and provide twinkling light. I was seated on a throne brought from the royal apartments, one I used when giving audiences. It elevated me so I had a fine view of the stage.

When all the rustling was over as the court took their places, the lord chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon, walked slowly out to the center of the stage. He looked like a white-haired bear, his big shoulders thrust forward as he shuffled one foot in front of the other. How deliberately he crept, my old cousin Henry Carey. Creeping time was creeping up on him. He would turn seventy this year, this dear relative.

In addition to his court, legal, and military duties, he was patron of the best acting company in the realm, which took its name from his title. Tonight he introduced their new presentation. It was impossible to mask the pride in his rough voice.

“Tonight, Your Majesty, Your Graces, the lords of the realm, all the company here present, the Lord Chamberlain’s Men have the honor of presenting a new play, as yet unseen in any other venue. It is a fantasy about a night in high summer in which the fairies make mischief for themselves and mortals.” He bowed low. “Here in the depths of winter, we can have a foretaste of June.”

A new play! This was a surprise. Hunsdon took his place beside me, and I murmured, “What a treat for us. I daresay you can vouch for its quality?” It would not do to show what common people called a stink-pool.

“I have not seen it myself,” he admitted.

“Not even in rehearsal?” This was alarming.

“No ... but the writer is known to be good, and I have seen his
Henry VI
.”

Oh, him. What was his name? Yes, Shakespeare. He also wrote poetry. I had skimmed over the
Venus and Adonis
that Southampton had presented to me last New Year. It was heavy for my taste, although his similes were good. “I hope his play is lighter than his verse,” I said.

I saw Southampton’s head in the front row, his aureole of hair making him unmistakable. Of course, he would be up close to see his protégé’s play. Essex, too, was down in front, eagerly leaning forward, his lanky frame straining the velvet of his coat.

A filmy curtain veiled the stage, but it was slowly lifted, revealing a row of Greek columns and two actors holding hands, who quickly announced themselves to be the Duke of Athens and his betrothed, Queen of the Amazons. The lovers barely had time to lament the four long days until their nuptials before unhappy subjects of the duke appeared, asking him to enforce a father’s right to have his daughter obey his choice of husband for her.

I sighed. This promised to be tedious. I disliked plays and poems about arranged marriages and all their variations, having escaped from them myself. Who wishes to see his own life dramatized? And besides, the stratagems the plays used to escape marriage were never as convoluted or clever as my own.

I had to admit, the lighting was very well done, and the suspended oil lamps brightened the stage perfectly. High in the reaches of the great arches above all was dark, but lower down the carvings, covered in gold leaf, were highlighted in stark relief.

“I remember when the whole hall was lit by tallow candles for the workmen,” whispered Hunsdon by my side. “I was just about eight years old when my mother brought me here to watch. My uncle-in-law the King was so eager to have it finished he paid overtime for the workers to work all night. There were piles of lumber stacked outside where we stood, and the whole hall glowed from within like a lantern. It was magic—as we will find this play to be.”

He was too tactful to mention that high in the timbers my mother’s initials were still entwined with my father’s. In the heat of love the building had commenced, and my father had put my mother’s initials everywhere at Hampton Court, only to erase and destroy them later. But he had missed the ones in the roof of the Great Hall, or not wanted to spend the money to send workmen up there, and so this little token of their love remained. There were other places, too. One had to know they were there; one had to look for them. I searched the darkness above but saw nothing.

In the meantime, a painted scene of a wood had replaced the Greek columns, and potted trees were on the stage. The play’s lovers had fled into a forest, and now there were fairies as well with their queen and king and a mischief-making spirit, Robin Goodfellow.

“Now comes the magic,” said Hunsdon, “of a midsummer kind.”

The land of faerie was evidently in confusion, their king and queen having fallen out. Their garments glistened and gleamed in the yellow light, iridescent like a snake’s skin, and their voices waxed and waned as they spoke their poetry. I could follow the sense of it, but at the same time the words needed lingering over, and yet each rushed on each so quickly it was hard to savor them. Then suddenly the queen spoke of seasons out of joint. Her words were all too clear.

She described perfectly the catastrophic summer rains we had had. No one had blamed it on a quarrel among the fairies, but it had made the entire realm anxious for the next summer to come, to set things right.

Her next lines—
—frightened me. For as I had strolled about the winter grounds I had found roses budding and daffodils pushing through the frosty soil. One bad harvest, yes, that could be expected, but to have the seasons scrambled ...

The play soon introduced a love potion so powerful that if it were smeared on the eyes, the victim was doomed to love whatever he or she next looked upon. There then ensued comical demonstrations of the potion’s effects. But the hard edge of the humor was that in reality love caused disruptions almost that extreme. Again, there was my father’s devouring passion for my mother, defying common sense or explanation. And the sad spectacle of my sister Mary, married to the indifferent Philip of Spain, against the interests of her country, and again, my cousin the Scots queen who had lost her throne for love-blindness. Within the circle of my own family there were enough examples that I did not need to search history and find Marc Antony or Paris to serve as warning.

The king of the fairies now said that once he had seen Cupid flying down to earth, and

Suddenly the players halted, and Southampton rose, turned, and dipped his head to me in deference. Beside him, someone else stood and did likewise. Then the play resumed.

It was quickly explained that this shaft, which had missed the “imperial votaress,” the “fair vestal,” had pierced a flower and from thence derived the powerful love drug.

So I passed on, fancy-free? It had not been easily done, to earn those two words.