Elizabeth I

  Robert ignored the question. “Second, you say that I must stop appealing directly to the people.”

  “Obviously, that is a direct challenge to any ruler, male or female.”

  “Third, you say I demand high offices and honors but don’t have the talent for them!”

  “You are remarkably good at hiding them, if you possess them,” said Francis.

  “I thought you were my friend!” cried Robert.

  “I am your friend; that’s why I am being honest with you. I did not say you had no abilities equal to your ambition; I only said you need to prove it to the Queen. Instead of demonstrating your worthiness, you throw temper tantrums and expect her to appease you. That game grows old. The Queen will tire of it. The day will come when she puts you aside like an outworn toy. Before that day comes, you must prove you are no toy. Now, while you still have time.”

  “You say I should give up soldiership. But the moment I was away, the Queen promoted Robert Cecil, giving him the plum office. I cannot even get offices for my friends. I tried and tried for the attorney generalship and the general solicitorship for you, Francis. Without my military command, I have nothing!”

  “You need to be more subtle. If you could do that, everything else would follow.”

  “How? How more subtle? You know so much, do you? Give me an example!”

  “Well, for example, you might announce leaving court to visit your estates and then cancel the journey if the Queen objects. Or nominate a candidate for an office and withdraw him pleasantly if the Queen says she prefers someone else. Is that specific enough?”

  “It’s out of character. She’ll suspect.”

  “If you continue to behave that way, it will soon be in character. Oh, and stop complaining and harping on injustices and slights. They are over, and the Queen won’t change her appointments, so be gracious about them.”

  “Only a hypocrite changes to please someone,” snorted Robert. “Now I’ll quote Scripture to you: Can the Ethiopian change his skin, or the leopard change his spots? No, and neither can I change into another creature at will.”

  “Bah. You are not one person but many persons. We all are. We can choose which of our many selves to cultivate for any purpose. Don’t be so dense!”

  “I must be who I am.”

  “You must be who you are called to be. And cut off that silly beard that you have so coyly named the Cádiz style. Every time you speak it wags like a flag, crying, ‘Notice me, applaud me.’ ”

  “Good for you, Francis,” I said. “I agree. It is hideous. Son, it makes you look like a billy goat.” As soon as I spoke, I regretted it. He would have to keep it now to show he did not bend his knee to his mother.

  “My chin is no concern of yours,” he said quietly. “And I think you are wrong to advise me to abandon military campaigns. With the end of our involvement in French affairs, we are free to turn our attention to Spain. In fact, I will do everything in my power to lead another mission next summer, as big and as strong as the Cádiz one. Far from following your advice, I plan to take the opposite path.” The square-cut beard trembled and then stayed still when he closed his mouth firmly.

  “That is foolish,” said Francis sadly.

  “It’s within my grasp,” he said. “All I want. Why should I stop now?”

  45

  He stamped out, leaving the room as dramatically as he had entered it. He almost collided with Southampton and Charles Blount, who were just arriving. Shoving them inside, he muttered, “Keep them company, for I’ll not linger with fools!”

  The two men looked around as if they had been deposited on a strange sandbank on an uncharted river. “What ails him?” Charles asked, pulling off his hat.

  “He has just received an unpalatable truth,” said Anthony. “He chooses to attack it rather than embrace it.”

  “Ah, that.” Southampton draped his cloak properly over a peg. He was wearing brown velvet, which always set off his delicate coloring. There was no denying it—he was a spectacularly handsome man, a faun in a sunlit clearing. Holding him had been like embracing classical art. “No one attacks truth and survives; he’ll come to his senses.” He went over to the fire and warmed his hands, spreading out his long, slender fingers. “It’s good to gather here,” he said. “Kind of you to invite us out to the famous Gorhambury.” He was always exquisitely polite. His own Drury House could gobble all of Gorhambury in one swallow.

  Christopher was following him with watchful eyes. When Southampton bent to adjust his shoe, Christopher looked down. When he straightened, he looked up. He was not smiling. Did he know? I had been so careful, or so I thought. And it had been over for months, and the men had been comrades-in-arms at Cádiz.

  “Gorhambury being such a quiet retreat, we brought our ladies,” said Charles. “It is hard always to be in hiding.”

  Christopher’s expression did not change. Although he and I had once had to do the same, he gave no recognition of the memory.

  “The fair lady Vernon,” said Anthony, with no trace of envy. “How goes that with the Queen?”

  Southampton shrugged. “She does not know.”

  “Are you sure?” asked Christopher gruffly. “Isn’t her motto ‘Video et taceo,’ ‘I see but say nothing’?”

  “I think we are safe,” he said.

  “We were to discuss other business before Essex so abruptly left,” said Francis. “Accession Day this year—do you know if the Queen means to hold the usual celebrations, with the Oxfordshire rising set for that date, and the impending Spanish attack?”

  “She would never call it off,” said Charles.

  “Then she must feel secure that these threats are checkmated,” he said. “Who has been dispatched to deal with Oxfordshire?”

  “One of the Norris soldiers,” said Charles. “He and his father, old Sir Henry, will do well enough—thanks to your spy network in the Midlands. One clever spy is worth a hundred brave soldiers. He—or she—makes the soldiers unnecessary.”

  Anthony made a comic little bow. “I thank you, good sir.”

  “Were you hindered coming here? Were the beggars out on the roads?” asked Francis.

  “A clump of them were at the crossroad by the village,” said Charles. “They were not aggressive, although they looked rough.”

  “The towns are full of vagrants, and not all of them are peaceful. We will have a job to do in Parliament, dealing with this.”

  “I suppose we must give them money,” said Charles. “I know not what other remedy there can be.”

  “Along with the money, laws to control them. We cannot let people wander about from town to town. Each town should be responsible for its own.”

  Southampton poured himself a drink and sipped it. “Easy to legislate, hard to enforce. Well, sir,” he said, raising his cup to Charles. “Congratulations. You have joined the ranks of knights.”

  Charles beamed. “Indeed. The good Earl of Essex made me one at Cádiz. Just as the good Earl of Leicester made him one on the field at Zutphen. Lady”—he suddenly turned to me—“that makes you the grande dame of all the knights in this room, being wife of one and mother of the other, and then of his knightly offspring, the third generation of knights.”

  “That makes me venerable,” I said, “if not wise.”

  A silence descended as we remembered that neither Francis nor Anthony had been knighted. Perhaps there was something to Robert’s claim that advancement came faster on the battlefield than in council chambers.

  “Leicester knighted me, too,” said Christopher to me. “We are all in your lineage, so it seems.”

  He was irritated, but about what I could not tell. If it was not Southampton, what was it?

  “How is the theater this season?” asked Christopher suddenly. “Anything of note?”

  “Not much,” said Southampton. “Rather a dull season. The play about the Italian youngsters who kill themselves has been a big hit; people are flocking to see it. They love it when beauty goes down t
o doom—especially if it is all due to a misunderstanding. But other than that, nothing exciting.”

  “Isn’t that Shakespeare’s play?”

  “Yes. But he hasn’t had much joy in its success. His son just died, and he went back to Stratford. He returned a different man.”

  His son! I had known only that he had three children, but not their names or ages. He had steadfastly refused to talk about them. “How old was he?” I asked, casually, I hoped. Christopher’s eyes darted to me.

  “Eleven. His name was Hamnet.”

  “What an odd name,” said Francis.

  “His daughters are Susanna and Judith. Much more ordinary.”

  Hamnet. Susanna. Judith. Now they were real to me. And I could do nothing, not even send him a letter expressing my condolences. Even if I were not worried that Christopher would catch me, Will would not accept anything from me.

  “That is very sad,” I said. I had lost both a young child—my son with Leicester—and a grown son. They each hurt in very individual ways, but the loss of any child is near unbearable. We are not meant to outlive our children.

  “Oh, he’ll turn it into poetry, or a character in a play,” said Charles airily. “At least he can get some good from it.”

  “That is a heartless remark, and could only come from someone who has never lost a child,” I said.

  “I didn’t mean it to be,” he said. “I think a poet is lucky to be able to transform his grief into something that lasts and will speak to others. That’s all.”

  “People give too much attention to poets,” said Christopher, with a genuinely menacing undertone to his words. “Some people, that is.”

  “If you mean me,” said Southampton, “I am proud to be the patron of poets. Just as rich, fat men like sponsoring tournaments, so I, who cannot write verse, support that which I admire and cannot do.”

  Oh, clever disarmament. Thank you, Southampton. You may not ride in the lists, but you do know how to defend a lady’s honor.

  Christopher laughed, but his eyes did not leave my face.

  I excused myself by saying I would join the women. Not only did I want to escape Christopher’s disconcerting scrutiny, but it was seldom that I got to see Penelope. For her sake I could endure old Lady Bacon, surely one of the haughtiest ladies in the land.

  They were sitting primly in a withdrawing room, which was quite warm. Its fireplace was big in relation to the dimensions of the room and heated it nicely, guaranteeing warm fingers, ideal for sewing. They had all brought needlework, and Frances’s dark head was bent over hers as she labored with her thread, her tongue between her lips. Lady Bacon held hers at arm’s length, as her eyes were bad, and stabbed at it with her needle. Elizabeth Vernon held hers in a dainty way, its unfinished portion draping becomingly over her knees. My Penelope was staring at hers glumly. She had never been good with the so-called women’s arts—needlework, lute playing, and dancing. The genuine women’s arts—the sort men preferred—however, she excelled at.

  Lady Bacon turned to me, swiveling her head on her scrawny neck like a vulture. “So you have decided to join us,” she said, making it sound like a condemnation. “Had enough of the men, have you?”

  “Of these particular men at this particular time, yes,” I answered her. “Too much politics.” The polite feminine demurral; I shook my head as if it were all too much for me. “I am afraid I have brought no sewing.” I smiled and threw up my hands apologetically. I detested sewing.

  “Here,” she said, “you can work on this panel of mine.” She thrust a stiff piece of material into my hands and piled several skeins of thread on top. “I could use some help.”

  “Of course,” I murmured. I fingered the yellow, deep green, and cream threads. The design featured lilies. “Good evening, dears,” I said, looking around at the seated circle. Here they were, the key women in my life: my own daughter, my son’s wife, my replacement in the bed of an ex-lover.

  “Good evening, Mother,” said Penelope, a smile stealing across her plump lips. She looked more content than I had ever seen her. Clearly, living openly with Charles Blount agreed with her. She had left the abusive Lord Baron Rich—rich as his name—after six children to live with a man who at the time was not even a knight. That must be love, I thought. Now it looked to my practiced eye that she was pregnant. This one had been conceived in desire, not obligation.

  “It’s my privilege to see you, and see you looking so well,” I said. I tried to keep any note of whining out of my voice. Mothers always long to see their children, even grown ones, but if we voice it, we frighten them away. “And you, Frances. We pass each other in Essex House, but seldom sit down together.”

  “Indeed that is so. London is so busy. This retreat is restorative.” She always had a fondness for Wanstead and even liked Drayton Bassett—dullness itself—so it was no polite affectation.

  “And you, Elizabeth? What can you tell us of court doings?” There ought to be a term for one’s successor as a mistress. Perhaps “mistress once removed”?

  “It has been quiet,” she said. “The Queen has been so distracted and challenged by the rumors of attacks, and by the riots and incidents in the countryside, that most of the usual activities have ceased.” She looked up at me, her velvety, dark eyes inviting me to speak more. It was the first time I truly understood what was meant about Anne Boleyn’s eyes: They were said to “invite to conversation.” With such eyes, conversation was just the beginning.

  “You must be bored, then,” I said.

  “Anything but bored, for she gives me permission to leave, and that means I can spend more time with Henry.” It took me a second to realize she meant Southampton. Henry. I never thought of him as Henry. He better fitted the name “Adonis,” as in the poem dedicated to him. And here was his Venus. Soft, seductive, perfumed with youth. I blinked and bent over my needlework. There is a point at which no amount of experience can offset youth, no matter how unpracticed. The finest, crispest autumn cannot undercut the supremacy of spring. Deep crimson does not have the charm of delicate pink.

  I willed the tears away and thanked the gods for the sewing that allowed me to avert my eyes without suspicion. When I raised them, I was myself again.

  We were given a bedchamber in the west wing of the house, the part built for the Queen. It was tastefully, but not stylishly, furnished, a dowager of a room. A dark bed, its bulbous posts supporting a heavy canopy, squatted in one corner, with a writing table and two cushioned seats beneath a window. I noted that the lily pattern of the cushions matched the one I had worked on; Lady Bacon must be refurbishing all the rooms to match. A thick carpet, a surprising luxury, covered the floor between the window and the bed. A generous number of candles were set about. However much they were struggling for money, the Bacons did not wish to give the impression of cheapness.

  Christopher opened the window and a blast of rainy wind blew in.

  “Would you please close it?” I tried to sound pleasant. But I would rather be anywhere but here with him tonight. A nun’s cell seemed more appealing. Lettice, there are no more nuns in England, I reminded myself. Only Her Majesty.

  He slammed it loudly. He had kept drinking all through the supper, and now his clumsy movements and flushed face made me think he must be drunk. Well, let him sleep. Let him sleep and awake the good-natured Christopher I knew. I did not like this man here tonight.

  “Did you enjoy yourself among the hens?” he said.

  “Yes,” I answered. “It is always good to see Penelope.”

  “The daughter most like her mother.” His voice was thick and sneering.

  “I was never as pretty.”

  “But your behavior was similar. Who will replace Charles, I wonder? My trusting cousin.”

  “No one will replace him. They are devoted to each other.” Perhaps I should make an excuse and leave; when I returned, he would be asleep.

  “As you are to me?” Instead of falling into bed, he came over to me and took my neck in h
is hands.

  I stared back at him. His eyes were hard to read in this dim light. “Yes. As I am to you.”

  “Would it were so.” He did not sound angry now, just tired.

  “Why should you think otherwise?”

  He let me go and made his way to the bed, pushing the heavy curtains aside, sitting on its edge with his legs dangling, like a little boy. “All the men at Cádiz wondered what their women were doing while they were away. The more lovely the wife, the greater the danger.”

  Relief tingled through me. He was speaking only in general terms, not out of suspicion. “Since all the men were away fighting, I’d say there was little danger at home. What man of any note was here? Only the old, the infirm, the incapable remained. They made us long all the more for our absent men.” I walked over to him, almost dizzy with the sense of reprieve. He did not know. He must not know. I must never do that again. “I spent the nights with you, in my dreams and thoughts.” His very vulnerability made me wish to reassure him. I bent over and kissed him. For the first time since his return, I actually desired his kiss. For the first time, his lips were only his own, not a reminder of anyone else’s.

  He was a good man, a man to cherish. I would. I do, I vowed. I do not deserve you, Christopher, but I will try to.

  That was my heartfelt promise. But what were my promises worth?

  The next morning, as we prepared to leave, we had to step over the scattered forms of men sleeping all over the floor, their cloaks pulled over them, their legs sprawled out as they snored and muttered. I recognized some of them—there were the campaign veterans Sir Charles Danvers, a hotheaded, quarrelsome friend of Southampton’s, Sir John Davies, and Sir Ferdinando Gorges; wild noblemen such as the spendthrift Roger Manners, Earl of Rutland, his spiky hair sticking up, and Edward Russell, the Earl of Bedford, sleeping like an angel; Thomas Radcliffe, the Earl of Sussex; William Lord Sandys; the Catholic-leaning William Parker, Lord Monteagle; and Robert’s secretary, the Greek scholar Henry Cuffe, and Gelli Meyrick the Welshman.