Elizabeth I (108 page)

“Yes. To my sorrow, I do.”

“What of your brother?” I asked. “How is Anthony faring?”

“His illness progresses. I fear for him in this. He may not survive it.”

“I am sorry to hear it. Essex’s fortunes have touched many, and dragged many down with him.” I looked at Francis. “You are not among them. Never castigate yourself for extricating yourself from that doomed man. It is no sin to survive.”

He shook his head gently. “I thank Your Majesty for understanding. Many do not.”

“They want to pin the Judas label on you, do they? That is simplistic. To accompany a traitor on his path is not loyalty but treason,” I assured him.

I thought of Essex in the Tower. It would be easier if he were indeed mad. The mad see things differently than we do. He had refused to see any of his family. He refused to confess to the Dean of Norwich, who had been sent to attend him. He had waved him away, insisting on his innocence.

His innocence ... perhaps in his own mind. But his mind was disordered.

Robert Cecil asked to see me, and I admitted him. “The earl’s wife begs us to spare him,” he said. “She has been on her knees before me.”

“Frances Walsingham?”

“Yes. I had always thought her marriage a political one—after Sidney, how could it be otherwise? But she is distraught.”

How naive men are. Philip Sidney! “Sidney may not have been as good a bedfellow as Essex,” I said. “Men who write sonnets to women other than their wives often live entirely in their own poetic mind. A woman wants more.” I laughed. “You blush? Oh, Robert, if you are to wed again, you must shed your exalted vision of women. We want a
man
.”

“Uh”—he cleared his throat—“would you consent to receive her?”

This would be difficult. I could not spare her husband. Yet in charity I should hear her. “Yes, I will.” Suddenly I wondered about Lettice. She had been quiet. No appeals, no letters, for all that her husband and son were prisoners and soon to be tried.

“Have you had any appeal from Essex’s mother?” Perhaps Cecil had set it aside.

“No,” he said. “There has not been a word from Essex House.”

“Is she there?” Perhaps she had retired back to Wanstead or her estates in Drayton Bassett.

“From all my reports, she is there,” he said.

I agreed to see Frances the next day. She came to the privy chamber and I ushered her into my private quarters. My attendant shut the door behind us and then discreetly disappeared.

Frances stood before me, dressed all in black. Her belly was enormous. But she looked directly at me, unflinching.

“When is your child due to be delivered?” I asked her.

“Yesterday,” she said, then laughed. “It tarries.”

“You should not be abroad,” I said.

“When the pains begin, I know to start for home,” she said. “This is my fourth.”

“Let me help you, then. Ask me quickly what you wish to ask, and then I may send you safely home.”

To my shock, she flung herself facedown on the floor.

“Frances!” I cried. “You must not.”

She raised herself up on her arms. “I will do anything. I will sacrifice this baby; I crawl before you. Spare my husband! If he perishes, I cannot live, I cannot draw one breath afterward!” She burst into tears. “If the death warrant is signed, I will never live an hour past that!”

“Frances,” I said, as gently as I could. “You know what he has done. It was heinous. The law does not permit him to live.”

“He was misled—he did not know!”

“Alas, he did know,” I said. “He was warned, over and over again. No one can deny that. Would that they could.”

She sank back down and buried her head in her arms, sobbing. I bent down and embraced her. “Frances, Frances,” I said. “It is a tragedy for England.”

“It is a tragedy for me,” she said. “England can endure. She has had many tragedies. But I shall not survive.”

“You cannot know that.” Neither of her husbands, for all their mighty reputations, was worthy of a simple, loving woman. They loved themselves—or honor—more. “We must steel ourselves. Often it is the women who show the most bravery and endurance.” Oh, might the fates send her another husband, this one her equal.

She pulled herself away. “As you say.” Already she had distanced herself. “You will not save him, then?” she said, standing up. “You, to whom he genuflected, whom he worshipped?”

“Except when he tried to capture and depose me?” I said. “I as a person could overlook that. I as a queen cannot, and I told him that. Long ago.”

She dashed the tears away with the back of her hand. “I go, then.”

“God be with you,” was all I could say. She would need his sustaining hand.

“Since you will not be with me, I must make do,” she shot back.

“God is not second best,” I said. “Do not insult him. You will need him.”

February 19, eleven days after the uprising, Essex and Southampton stood trial. I would not attend. But I received a full report from everyone involved.

At the near end of the hall, where the stairs led up into St. Stephen’s Chapel, would sit the lord high steward, Buckhurst, under a canopy of estate, presiding in my stead. In front of him would be eight judges—Lord Chief Justice Popham leading them. Facing them were the Queen’s counsel, lawyers who would prosecute the case. Attorney General Sir Edward Coke, Solicitor General Thomas Fleming, Queen’s Sergeant Christopher Yelverton, the recorder of London, two sergeants at law, and Francis Bacon made up the seven.

Stretching between them on each side were the twenty-five peers who would act as jury. At the far end of the hall, a long bar stretched to divide the spectators from the trial.

Buckhurst entered the hall escorted by seven sergeants at arms and forty of Raleigh’s guardsmen, led by Raleigh. The lieutenant of the Tower had had the prisoners rowed upriver for their trial, and at nine o’clock he was ordered to produce them. The gentleman porter of the Tower marched in, carrying an executioner’s ax with its blade turned away, followed by Essex, dressed in black, and Southampton, dressed in a voluminous gown. They took their places in the middle of the square of their examiners, facing the judges.

The jurors were called and answered one by one. Then all sat.

The charges—plotting to deprive the Queen of her crown and life, imprisoning the councillors of the realm, inciting the people to rebellion with untruths, and resisting arrest—were read out, and both men declared themselves not guilty. Then Sergeant Yelverton opened the prosecution, accusing the prisoners of treason as heinous as Catiline’s conspiracy in ancient Rome. Attorney General Coke followed, reminding the jury that merely resisting royal authority with force was treason; it was not necessary to prove premeditation. And furthermore, he orated, Essex’s plan to call a parliament was subversive, and “a bloody parliament that would have been, where my Lord of Essex, that now stands all in black, would have worn a bloody robe!”

Next the witnesses were called. First was a statement by Henry Widdington, describing the events of the morning of February 8 at Essex House. Next, Chief Justice Popham, swapping places, was sworn in as a witness and recounted his treatment when his party had gone to Essex with the Great Seal. The Earl of Worcester backed him up in all the details. Raleigh told of his encounter with Gorges and being warned, “You are like to have a bloody day of it.”

Sir Gorges himself testified about the conferences in Drury House planning the coup, and then claimed that he had urged Essex, the afternoon of the event, to submit to the Queen.

Essex asked for the right to question him, and it was granted. Essex warned him to answer truthfully. “Did you in fact advise me to surrender?”

“My lord, I think I did,” was all Gorges was prepared to admit.

Essex almost yelped. “This is not the time to answer ‘I think so’—you would not have forgotten.”

Southampton, the other accused, rose to defend himself. He made a sorry showing. First he said that although he had plotted to capture the court and the City, these plans had come to nothing; therefore he was not guilty. He also said he had had no idea when he went to Essex House that Sunday morning that Essex had any fell intentions. Furthermore, he had not heard the herald in London proclaiming them traitors, nor had he drawn his sword the whole day.

“My lord, you were seen with a pistol,” said Coke.

“Oh, that!” said Southampton. “I had taken it from someone in the street, and anyway, it didn’t work.”

“You were with Essex the entire day in the City. If you did not agree with his aim, you had many chances to separate yourself.”

“I was carried away with love for him!” said Southampton sadly. “I am a victim.”

As further evidence, the court produced the written confessions of Danvers, Rutland, Sandys, Monteagle, and Christopher Blount. The latter had said, “If we had failed in our ends, we should, rather than have been disappointed, even have drawn blood from the Queen herself.”

Finally Francis Bacon rose, testifying against Essex. He likened Essex’s false cries about his life being sought to when Peisistratus of Athens cut himself and then entered the city claiming his life was in danger. “But this does not excuse you. How did imprisoning the Queen’s councillors protect you against these people—Raleigh and Cobham and Grey—you claim threatened you?”

Essex sputtered. “You! You false man! What about the bogus correspondence between myself and your brother that you arranged, so the Queen would be impressed?”

Bacon just smiled pityingly. “’Tis true. I did everything I could to help you win the Queen’s goodwill. I cared more about you, and made more efforts for you, than I did for myself. But that was when you were still her loyal servant.”

“I only wanted to petition the Queen to impeach Cecil.”

“Did you need swords and violence to do that? Are petitioners armed? What man will be such a fool as to believe this was anything other than naked treason?”

Essex began to fall apart, as he did under pressure. “Cecil! You and Cecil! He’s leading a Spanish conspiracy, and you are in on it! When I cried out in the streets that the Crown was sold to the Spaniard, it was not of my own imagination. A trusted councillor had told me that Cecil said the Infanta’s claim was as good as any other’s.”

A great silence fell, and Essex smiled. Now he had said it. Stony faces of judges, jury, and prosecutors stared back at him. Then there was the sound of curtain rings sliding over a rod, and from behind a curtain at the top of the steps emerged Robert Cecil, who had not been present until now.

He limped down the stairs and took his place opposite Essex, staring him down. The tall, black-clad Essex faced Cecil, more than a head shorter.

Furious but, unlike Essex, able to speak coldly and calmly, Cecil let loose. “My Lord of Essex! The difference between you and me is great. For wit I give you preeminence—you have it absolutely. For nobility I also give you place. I am not noble, yet a gentleman. I am no swordsman—there you also have the odds; but I have innocence, conscience, truth, and honesty to defend me against the scandal and sting of slanderous tongues, and in this court I stand as an upright man, and Your Lordship as a delinquent.” He paused to draw breath, then continued, “I protest, before God, I have loved your person and justified your virtues. And had I not seen your ambitious hunger inclined to usurpation, I would have gone on my knees to Her Majesty to have helped you, but you have a wolf’s head in a sheep’s garment. God be thanked, we know you now!” He shook his head. “Ah, my lord, were it but your own case, the loss had been less. But you have drawn a number of noble persons and gentlemen of birth and quality into your net of rebellion, and their bloods will cry vengeance against you.”