Penelope sighed and took a sip of her wine. “Ah. That first taste of wine, earned after a long day’s watching of little ones, is the best vintage there is.” She looked at me. “You know what I mean, Mother,” she said, almost winking.
“You have left me far behind in that contest,” I said. “Yet I do concur, the first few moments after a job well done are always the sweetest. Savor them.”
An unknowing person would have envied the faces reflected in the gleaming dark wood of the table—the most beautiful woman in London, another woman who was twice countess and cousin to the Queen, a brave soldier, another woman, wife in turn to the two foremost men of her time. My long earrings caught the candlelight and twinkled in the mirrorlike surface of the table; Penelope’s rich curls almost touched the wood. Yet we mimicked condemned prisoners, our faces grim.
“Have you any word from Charles?” asked Christopher.
“Only indirectly, from men returning. He has barely arrived there; it just seems long to us.” Penelope tapped her fingers on the table, her long nails clicking.
“Well, what do they say?” pressed Christopher.
“That the morale was so low before he came, he raises it just by setting foot there.”
“As long as that’s all that’s raised. No expectations.”
“I don’t think anyone has any expectations for Ireland now. We are quite threadbare of hopes,” Frances said.
“What about—the Queen? Does she have hopes—expectations?” Penelope wondered.
“No one knows what she thinks,” I said. “They never have. They never will. But I imagine she has a grim determination to trudge on. She never admits defeat.”
“So far she has never had to. This may be different,” said Christopher.
It might be. It might not be. I cared not. I cared only that Robert be spared and set free. God forgive me, I did not even care what happened to England. I was past that.
“If Charles can turn the tide in Ireland, she will be more amenable to forgiving Robert. If he cannot, then Robert will be held doubly responsible for the loss there. So we must hope. We must,” said Penelope.
A strapping servant entered with a pewter platter heaped with slices of carved pork, followed by another with a mound of honeyed parsnips and carrots. A third refilled our wine goblets with claret. All talk ceased for those moments, but not our thoughts.
“Sir Richard Berkeley is to mind him,” said Christopher, after they retreated back to the kitchen. “He’ll keep a keen eye on him.” He thrust a piece of meat into his mouth.
“At least we know he finds torture distasteful,” said Penelope. “Or he did when he was warden of the Tower.” She moved her food around on her plate but did not eat.
“It is torture for Robert to be imprisoned, kept solitary in our stripped house, held without a trial!” Frances cried.
“Do not long for a trial,” cautioned Christopher. “Can you name any accused of high crimes who are pronounced ‘not guilty’ and let go? Better not to have a trial.”
“Trials are nothing but a showcase where the judges pronounce what has already been decided,” agreed Penelope. “His only hope of escape is to avoid a trial.” She took a long drink of wine.
“What does that say about our celebrated English legal system?” I said bitterly.
“That it’s as flawed as a three-armed octopus,” said Christopher. “But three arms are better than no arms.”
For those with no cares, it would have been lovely to live in this stone house with its leafy garden, on this gracious street of goldsmiths, cordwainers, and trade halls—barbers’, embroiderers’, haberdashers’—along with small publishers and alehouses. It was a lively area, and its refined trades did not spew forth foul smells and garbage.
But we did have cares, and the tranquil setting could not soothe us. It acted only as a frame to our torment.
The days passed as Robert was held incommunicado in Essex House. April came, then May. Frances wrote more plaintive letters to the Queen, which received no reply. We heard at last that Charles Blount had taken the sword of state in Dublin and immediately set about a fierce campaign in the south, where O’Neill had ventured. Although Charles had an army only two-thirds the size of Robert’s, he had what Robert had never had—the unqualified support of the Queen and council. His requests for funds and supplies were promptly met, and as a result O’Neill quickly had to retreat north, abandoning his new conquests.
Penelope was elated, but at the same time she did not want to rub salt in our wounds, to remind us that Charles was succeeding where Robert had failed. Her loyalty to her brother and her lover pulled her first one way, then the other.
“Perhaps it means the Queen has learned from the mistakes she made with Robert,” she said. “A victory in Ireland, brought about with this hard-won knowledge, will surely soften her toward him.”
“If she wants to give him credit,” said Christopher. “But she seemed determined to give him no praise for what he did there.”
“Victory has a way of changing one’s perspective,” said Penelope.
“It is a little too early to speak of victory,” said Christopher. “One battle is not a war.”
As the days dragged by, I wandered the streets of London to distract myself and get away from my own family. We were so collectively miserable that we only reinforced one another’s darkness. Out on the streets I could forget, if only for an hour or so, the thing that preyed like a demon on my mind.
As much as it was possible to lift my spirits, my walks through the streets helped me return to the house feeling better than when I had left. The hurly-burly of life was out there, and waiting to welcome us back. But on the third day of June, when I stepped into the hallway, I saw someone who made me feel worse: our erstwhile friend Francis Bacon. He was deep in conversation with Christopher and Frances, standing in that stiff way that was his hallmark. He turned when I walked in, forcing a smile.
“My dear Lady Leicester,” he said, bowing, “I am so pleased you have returned in time for me to see you.”
He looked older—but did not we all? These had been aging days for us.
“Welcome, Francis,” I said. “How is the Queen’s counsel?”
“I do have Her Majesty’s ear,” he said quietly. “That is why I am here. I was telling your husband and Frances that there is to be an inquiry and hearing in two days in which Robert will be examined. Four lawyers will specify his misdemeanors before a commission of eighteen.”
Again! Before I could stop myself, I blurted out, “Eight months since he was first imprisoned! This is justice?”
“It is not a trial,” said Bacon.
“Then what in God’s name is it?” cried Christopher. “How long can you hold a man without trial? We’ve already had two mockeries of hearings—the first at Nonsuch and the second in the Court of Star Chamber. Nothing was resolved, and Robert was kept imprisoned.”
“It is—it is—a deep inquiry as to the—the circumstances.”
“What’s the purpose of it?” said Frances.
“The purpose,” said Christopher, “is to shush the murmurs against the Queen for holding him without reason.”
Bacon shook his head. “I came in friendship, to let you know. If you take it another way, then I regret coming. Fend for yourselves.” He turned to the door.
“We have been fending for ourselves,” I said. “We need no admonitions from you to do so.”
Christopher moved to block his way to the door. “Who are these lawyers who will lay out the case?”
“Sir Thomas Egerton, the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal, will chair the meeting. The sergeant at law and the attorney general will present the facts.”
“You said four lawyers, Francis,” I said.
“Four, yes, four. I am—I am—to speak last,” he admitted, looking around Christopher for a way clear to the door.
“That which thou doest, do quickly,” growled Christopher, stepping aside and almost thrusting him out.
“I am no Judas,” said Bacon. “I came to prepare you. I am the only one who dares to come here openly. You have your slinking spies and informants, but never forget it was Francis Bacon who came here in daylight.”
After the door shut behind him, I said, “Snake though he is, he spoke true. No one else wants to be seen with us.” I was a long way from my Puritan childhood, but Scripture once learned is never forgotten, and the words from Isaiah, Like one from whom men hide their faces, he was despised, whispered in my mind. By arrest and judgment he was taken away.
“Once they trailed behind us, singing Robert’s praises,” said Christopher. “They waited hours for a glimpse of him.”
“Yes, I remember.” That golden day when he rode away to Ireland at the head of his troops ... It would only cease to exist when my mind faded. “But now we must address what is coming. I am not sure people have forgotten him. Otherwise the Queen would not feel it necessary to justify herself in this public manner.”
“There, now, you’ve said it. It is nothing but an exercise in self-justification,” said Frances. “Her reputation is what she values above all, the love of her public, and she will defend that to the death, for she cannot reign without it.”
“Then this hearing, or commission, or quasi trial, is nothing but a means to clear her own name,” said Christopher. “The verdict is already decided. If she is to be right, then Robert has to be wrong.”
75
ELIZABETH
June 1600
Some of the most glorious summer days in memory passed, as if taunting us. May, celebrated in English poems and songs as a gladsome time but often in real life cold and rainy, in this year of 1600 lived up to its reputation, as if the new century wanted to set a standard. The trees in the palace orchard exploded in blossoms; every garden tree bristled with new leaves so bright they glowed like stained glass. Hedges bloomed in fragrance, and wildflowers in the fields outside the city walls carpeted the ground in color and scent. The first few days of June were even more beautiful, promising us a summer that would pass into legend for perfection. But as if in mockery of nature, what I must endure indoors was mean and ugly.
The Essex hearing had been forced upon me, and like anything forced upon me, I wanted to vomit it up. It was my paramount goal to avoid ever being in such a position. But once again Essex had led me where I did not want to go.
“I have you to thank for this,” I told Francis Bacon, who had come to Whitehall to tender his respects before setting out for York House. He bowed low but, wisely, said nothing.
“Well, are you prepared?” I barked at him. “This had better be the last of these hearings. I still think a trial would have settled things better. But no, you and Cecil warned against it, and you are the cleverest heads available to me, so it gave me pause. You had better be right!”
He smiled that self-contained smile. “I know I am, Your Majesty. A public trial would have fanned the flames of popular support. Essex would have used it to showcase his strengths and make the people forget his transgressions. Then you would have been the one on trial. This way, in a closed session before commissioners and two hundred of our own select audience, we can control the information.”
I grunted. I was sick of Essex and his dominating all public discourse. Even locked away, he managed, as if he were a vapor, to waft out into the general air. People were demanding to know why the hero of Cádiz (how quickly they forgot Ireland!) was being held without charge and without trial. What they could not see, could not understand, was that without his irksome presence, the government was running better and the Irish campaign was showing success at last. In his absence from public life he had shown just how unneeded he was. So, in a bid to put an end to the murmuring, there was to be a hearing and an examination of all the facts. What there would not be was a pronouncement of “guilty” or “not guilty.” What would happen to him was up to me, not a judge.
York House would serve as the setting. Francis, as one of the four lawyers to preside, adjusted his hat and made ready to leave.
“Take care in all things,” I said.
Essex was brought in to kneel before the long table where the commissioners sat; later he was given a cushion, and after that a chair. The examination went on from eight in the morning until seven that evening. The entire Irish debacle was pawed over and Essex’s manifest failings proclaimed. It had all been said before, at Nonsuch. Bacon read portions of the letter Essex had written after the episode in the Privy Council when he had tried to draw his sword on me. In it he had tried to throw the blame on me, saying, “What, cannot princes err? Cannot subjects receive wrong? Is an earthly power or authority infinite? Pardon me, pardon me, my good Lord, I can never subscribe to these principles.” While that may have shed light on his attitude of grievance, it added little to the subject at hand.
In the end, while no sentence was pronounced, he was stripped of his offices—Earl Marshal of England, Privy Councillor, master of ordnance. Only the post of master of the horse, his earliest office, would remain, at the personal command of the Queen. He was ordered to return to custody in his house until Her Majesty made her pleasure known.
Exhausted by these proceedings and still weak from his recent illnesses, he took to his bed again to recover.
“You did well,” I told Bacon.
“I hated doing it,” he said. “It felt like stabbing a blindfolded child.”
“Blindfolded?”
“He couldn’t see what was coming,” said Bacon. “He was helpless.”
Now he made me feel ashamed, which was his intention. “It is true, he was in a vulnerable position,” I agreed. “But a child cannot learn until he is humbled. Your friend has shown a stubborn reluctance to learn. Now perhaps, far from being blindfolded, his eyes will be opened.”
“What do you mean to do with him?” he asked bluntly. “That is the only question remaining, and yet it could not be raised.”
“I cannot set him at liberty until I know it is safe to do so. When I can trust him, we shall see.”
“What does he have to do to set your mind at ease?”
“I am not sure, Francis. I will know when I feel it.”
Things quieted down. Life went on, seemingly merrily, in the summer days. There were weddings, boat outings, and garden parties. The hearing at York House had served to discredit Essex with anyone of standing, so he no longer had a party at court, and the squabbling and factionalism that had plagued us dissipated. It was an immense relief, and a rest well earned for me.
In July I released Richard Berkeley from his duties as Essex’s keeper, but I still did not allow Essex to leave his house. Gradually I was setting him free.
In late August I lifted the restrictions on his movements. He need no longer be confined to his house. He could go anywhere he liked—but not to court. He was not to set foot at court.
“In being kind, you are being cruel,” said Catherine. “You set him loose but forbid him to come to the one place where he draws his strength.”
“Exactly. He grew too strong, and at my expense. I fed a cub who turned on me. Let him find his food elsewhere.”
I was worried about my own expenses. I could not ask Parliament for any more subsidies. I sold more Crown lands and jewels and was even reduced to having a sale of marketable items from the treasury.
I sat staring at the Great Seal of my father, one of my proud inheritances. Its design was old-fashioned now, but it was historic, and its silver would bring a good price. But oh! To surrender it was to lose part of him. His fingers had held it, his hands had carefully slid it into its velvet bag.
“Forgive me,” I murmured, putting it out of sight lest I lose my determination. I must get money wherever I could find it. The exclusive right to duties on sweet wines held by Essex for ten years was due to expire in late September. I would take it back. I could not afford to let a fallen courtier reap its rewards any longer while I pawned my father’s inheritance.
Essex annou
nced that since he was no longer welcome at court, he was retiring into the country. He began pelting me with letters.
“Now, having heard the voice of Your Majesty’s justice, I do humbly crave to hear your own natural voice, or else that Your Majesty in mercy will send me into another world. If Your Majesty will let me once prostrate myself at your feet and behold your fair and gracious eyes, yea, though afterwards Your Majesty punish me, imprison me, or pronounce the sentence of death against me, Your Majesty is most merciful, and I shall be most happy.” This had the ring of a man who could not comprehend that he had had his last audience with me. He still thought he could charm his way into any arena he wished. I did not answer. Soon another letter followed.
“Haste paper to that happy presence, whence only unhappy I am banished. Kiss that fair correcting hand which lays new balms to my lighter hurts, but to my greatest wound applies nothing. Say thou come from shaming, languishing, despairing Essex.”
The fair correcting hand set the letter aside and gave no answer.
Others arrived, each more groveling than the last. He was always a superb letter writer.
“This day the lease which I hold by Your Majesty’s beneficence expires, and that excise of sweet wines is both my chief income and my only means of satisfying the merchants to whom I am indebted. If my creditors will take for payment as many ounces of my blood, Your Majesty should never hear of this suit.”
Then, as the day passed when the lease on the wines expired, he ratcheted up his appeal.
“My soul cries out unto Your Majesty for grace, for access, and for an end to this exile. If Your Majesty grant this suit, you are most gracious, whatever else you deny or take away. If this cannot be obtained, I doubt whether that the means to preserve life, and the granted liberty, have been favors or punishments; for till I may appear in your gracious presence, and kiss Your Majesty’s fair correcting hand, time itself is a perpetual night, and the whole world but a sepulcher unto Your Majesty’s humblest vessel.”