Elizabeth I (86 page)

He looked at me, that glorious melting glance that had never failed to move me. He had the most beautiful, and persuasive, eyes I had ever seen.

“I gave you a commission. I required you to perform a high task. I forbade you to return until it was completed. Why are you here?” I demanded.

He dropped to one knee and took my hand. “To see you, my most gracious mistress.”

“That had best waited until you had completed your mistress’s task.” My voice was sharp. I must temper it. Who was outside the door? Had his forces overcome my paltry guards? Was I even now in his power, his prisoner?

Stall him,
I told myself.
Hold him off. Lull him. You have done it before, with others. You must do it again.
I stood as regally as possible draped in my nightshirt.

“I must explain everything to you. It is impossible to write everything in letters,” he was saying.

“Did you receive my last one, dated September 17?”

“No, I had left before that.”

“I see.”

Whatever I had said in it was irrelevant at this point. It would only have been pertinent had it been read while he could still carry out his duties.

He, the supreme commander of the English forces in Ireland, had abandoned his post. He was a deserter. A traitor.

“What was it Your Majesty wished to tell me?” he asked hopefully.

I smiled at him. I hoped that, as an unadorned queen, I might still be commanding. That depended on whether I was at his mercy or he at mine. That would soon be revealed. “Shall we talk later? Let us meet for dinner in two hours’ time. You can make yourself presentable, and I will dress. I welcome you to court, my lord.”

The fool bowed and left my chamber.

As soon as he was gone, I rushed to the door and called for my guard. “How did he get in here? Were you sleeping?”

The five of them trooped to the doorway, hanging their heads. “He slipped past us. He had no guard and did not seem dangerous.”

“ ‘Did not seem dangerous’?” I repeated. “He is as dangerous as an adder. They do not have guards either. Outside—is there anyone with him?”

In a few moments they returned, shaking their heads. “No army. Just a few of his retainers. No more than twenty.”

We were safe. Now he was at my mercy. Mercy—there would be none. He had finally used up his allotment of it.

68

H
e would be back in only two hours. I had little time.

“Catherine. Helena. You heard it all. Now stand by me. Do not leave my side. And help me dress, quickly.”

They handed me my fine cambric undergarments and my petticoat and slid one of my day dresses over my head. Then they brushed my hair back and fitted my wig over it. My face was so pale it would need more than the auburn frame of the wig to make me look alive again. “My rouge pot,” I ordered. “Lip color. Leave off the white powder, by God, my skin is whiter than any concoction!” Last the jewels—a rope of gold and sapphires, pearls for my ears, and diamonds for my hair. I must look as I did every day, nothing unusual. “Hurry, hurry!” I urged them.

Prepared at last, I did not even bother to check my final reflection in the mirror. Instead, I summoned Cecil, Carey, and Knollys. They arrived, smiling and relaxed. Their smiles faded when they saw my agitation.

“Essex is here!” I hissed.

“But that’s impossible,” said William Knollys. “We know he was in Ireland just four days ago.”

“Well, he’s here now!”

“Where? Has he been sighted near Chester?” said Robert Cecil. “I knew he’d try to return. That’s why we stationed the ships there. Why didn’t they detain him?”

“He’s been sighted, and right here in this chamber!” I pointed to the muddy shoe prints on the floor. “He stood right here, dripping mud and wet leaves!”

There was a collective intake of breath, the way comic actors gasp in unison onstage. But this was shock, and it was not funny. “Here, in your chamber! What of the guards? Were you utterly unarmed? No protection?”

“Nothing but me and my women,” I said. “As for my guards, they were more useless than a paper sword. I had nothing but words to defend myself with.”

“And your own majesty,” said George Carey.

I gave a snort. “My wits served me better. He clearly did not find awe in majesty.” This was the most chilling aspect of it. He respected neither my person nor my office.

“Whom does he have with him?” asked Cecil.

“When he burst in here, I thought he must have brought his army with him, to depose me. But my guards say he has only a small group of perhaps twenty men. Perhaps the army is following and this is only the advance party.”

“Where is he now? How have you left it with him?”

“He has, I assume, gone to an empty set of rooms here at Nonsuch. And he is to return here at noon to talk. I told him we would dine together afterward.”

“I’ll call for the rest of the council to get here as soon as possible, and to bring enough guards and troops to overcome his retainers,” said Carey. “We must trap him here.”

“I shall speak sweetly to him until help arrives. He is so deluded it is easy to convince him I welcome him.”

“Why is he here at all, if not to overthrow the throne?” said Knollys ominously.

“To rescue me from evil advisers, so he hints, who he assumes have poisoned my mind against him,” I said. “He does not realize—he cannot grasp—that he is his own evil adviser.”

“We will withdraw now and busy ourselves preparing a proper welcome for him,” said Knollys grimly. “One in accordance with his importance.”

“Is there anyone of note with him?” Carey asked.

“My guards recognized the Earls of Southampton, Rutland, and Bedford, Lord Rich, and Sir Christopher Blount, but nobody else.” I took a deep breath. “Southampton again, to plague me! And the feckless Earls of Rutland and Bedford. And Lettice’s husband. A pack of worthless hounds.”

“No one of character would follow him, Your Majesty. He attracts only the wastrels and the malcontents,” said Cecil.

“The common people exalt him,” I said.

“That’s because they only know him from afar. Up close, he draws only the court leavings.”

“He will soon be back! Get you gone, and set the trap, ready to spring. I myself must be the bait, to lure and lull him.”

Hurriedly they left the room.

“Catherine, you have an outstanding memory,” I said. “Try to remember everything that passes between Essex and me, for later questioning.”

“Your Majesty is renowned for her own memory,” said Catherine.

“For something this important, we need two memories. You, Helena, study his face and expressions—you, who are so good at reading character.”

“I think we know his character by now,” she said.

“He is many characters,” I said. “Which one, pray tell, will he be wearing when he returns?”

I would pass the time calmly with him until dinner. Then we would be joined by the rest of the people attending me. By the time the meal was done, help from London should have arrived. My siege would end.

There was a smart knock on the door. This time my head guard properly announced, “The Earl of Essex to see Her Majesty the Queen.”

“Admit the earl.”

The guard stepped back, and Essex strode in. He still wore the same clothes, but he had washed the mud off his face and hands and combed his hair and beard. He fell to his knees, almost sliding across the floor to where I stood.

“Forgive me for my wretched garb,” he said, “but I was in such a hurry to reach you I took nothing with me, not even fresh clothes. Nothing mattered but getting here.”

I fluttered my hand, signaling him to arise. “You have worn these clothes for—how many days?”

“I left Ireland on September 24. It is now the twenty-eighth.”

I burned to say,
Three weeks after you parleyed with The O’Neill. What were you doing in the meantime?
But looking meaningfully at Helena and Catherine, I said, “Ah, you must be tired, my lord. Only Mercury himself could have traveled such distances so swiftly.”

“If I became, temporarily, a god, it was only to fly to the feet of the great goddess herself, the Faerie Queen, there to serve her.”

“We must refresh you,” I said. “Here is some good English cider and fresh Kentish apples and cheese from Devon. It will welcome you back to your native land, after a half year of Irish fare. Pray you, have some.” One of the chamberers poured him a cup and handed it to him; another held out a tray of the apples and cheese, cut and ready. He bolted the drink and gobbled the food. He was clearly famished. It reminded me of a lapping dog. My women and I stood politely by, abstaining.

“Now tell me, dear Robert, why you felt you must come now? What had troubled you so?” The syrupy words almost stuck in my throat.

Dabbing at his mouth with a napkin, he sighed. “When I received your last letter, so cruel, so hard, I knew it could not be truly yours.”

“How did you discern that?”

“The stinging rebukes! This sentence alone: ‘We know you cannot fail so much in judgment as not to understand that all the world sees how time is dallied.’ And these: ‘We must therefore let you know that, as it cannot be ignorance, so it cannot be want of means, for you had your asking. You had choice of times, you had power and authority more ample than any ever had or ever shall have.’”

“I am sorry that they wounded you. Perhaps I did not understand, fully, what you were going through.” I kept my tone sweetly solicitous.

“Even so, such hard-heartedness has never been in my queenly mistress’s nature.
They
have dictated the letter. It has their tone!”

“And which ‘they,’ my good man, do you mean?”

“The Privy Council! Cecil in particular! He is in back of all the maneuverings to discredit me. And since I left in March, he has had ample opportunity to plant the black poison of suspicion in your mind about me. While I have been risking my life in service to England, he has been lurking here, living warmly and comfortably. He’s poised like a spider, spinning his webs to trap the innocent. He even looks like one, with his hunchback.”

That was more than I could let pass. “He does not have a hunchback,” I said. “And he has never yet entrapped an innocent man, like you did with Dr. Lopez!”

His face clouded and his eyes narrowed for an instant. “This just proves my point,” he said. “He has utterly won you over. But”—he waved his hand expansively—“all the more reason why I needed to come posthaste to speak directly to you. The last letter said, ‘We look to hear from you how you think the remainder of the year shall be employed—in what kind of war, and where, and with what numbers—which, being done and sent us hither in writing with all expedition, you shall then understand our pleasure in all things fit for our service.’ And you ended with, ‘And thus, expecting your answer, we end, at our manor of Nonsuch in the forty-first year of our reign, 1599.’ Here is your answer, Glorious Majesty, in the flesh.”

“I see that full well.”

“It is too complicated to explain in a letter. You are right to expect to know everything, but if it were written it would take months. I can explain it all now.”

And he proceeded to do so, in whining, self-exonerating tedium. He had suffered. He had been misled. The conditions in Ireland were inhuman. He felt unappreciated at home. Furthermore, he had achieved a glorious settlement from O’Neill. A truce!

“You were not sent to conclude a truce,” I said, “but a victory. I did not finance this huge army, the largest I have sent anywhere in my reign, to make a truce.”

He bristled. Yet agreeing with all his drivel was almost beyond me. I checked myself. “Well, time will tell if the truce will hold. In the meantime, have you word of whether you have a new son or daughter?” I knew Frances was expecting.

“No—no—I haven’t been home yet. I came straight here. You—you are above everyone else in my life.”

“That is touching, but do not tell your wife that.”

“She knows. It is impossible not to know!”

“I hope all goes well with her delivery. Her daughter with Sir Philip Sidney is my goddaughter, you know. She is almost a young lady now.”

“Fourteen, Your Majesty.”

“A magic age.”

“It depends on who you are.”

True. I turned fourteen the year my father died, and there was little magic for me on that birthday. “Quite right. But I hope Elizabeth Sidney’s life is touched with good things, including her new sibling.”

Mercifully, I saw the table clock’s hands almost at noon. This torture was over. Then the courtyard clock began chiming on the hour. Just then the steward announced, “Dinner, Your Majesty.”

I beamed at Essex. “Shall we, my lord?”

The tables were laid in the watching chamber. The elaborate ceremony readying my place for me, which involved tasters and ceremonial rods, had already been performed. No poison had been found. I had invited Essex’s companions to join us. He thought it was for courtesy. I meant it so I could have them under my eye. Now, stretching down the length of the table, were the greatest debtors in England: Roger Manners, the Earl of Rutland; Edward Russell, the Earl of Bedford; Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton. All had frolicked and gamboled, as well as gambled, across Europe and home. And then there was Christopher Blount. I watched him as much as I could without being obvious. What sort of a man was it who was content to take orders and follow in the wake of his stepson? He had served under him in Cádiz, done blind obeisance to him in the Azores, and now trotted after him, first to Ireland, and then back, straight into the eye of a certain storm. For that matter, what sort of man wanted to marry Lettice? The termagant must make his life hell. He was alluring, if your taste ran to dark looks and wide shoulders. Like Leicester before him, he could have been nicknamed “the Gypsy.” Obviously Lettice liked that sort. Of course, she liked any sort.