Elizabeth I (110 page)

Although we did not observe the carnival excesses of Catholic countries, nonetheless we traditionally marked the last days before Ash Wednesday in our own distinctive manner. At court we had a “farewell to luxuries” banquet, and attended a play. The plays were usually lighthearted, but this year that would not do. Shakespeare had a new one. We would see that. It was the least he could do for us, after allowing his company to cooperate with Essex and stage
Richard II
with the forbidden scene.

Monday, as promised, the heavy parchment death warrant was placed reverently on my desk to be signed. I did so, not wishing it to linger in my possession, and dispatched it to the lieutenant of the Tower. A little later I realized that I had not specified what day the sentence was to be carried out, so I sent a message telling him to proceed Wednesday morning. I also ordered that there be two executioners, in case one was incapacitated at the last moment. It was to be a private execution, but there must be witnesses—the Queen’s Guard, led by Raleigh, and nobles, aldermen, and councillors.

The banquet proceeded normally. The usual ceremonies were performed, the plates and dishes magnificently presented, the delicate glassware filled with the best wine. The chatter, however, was subdued. The only subject that must not be mentioned drowned all the others.

It was a relief to take our places to watch the play. Let the actors talk and act while we sat mute and motionless. The subject of the play was the Trojan war—nothing could have been further from the events around us.

“Shakespeare seems to have deserted our realm and our time for the ancient world,” said Catherine, by my side. “First a play about Caesar, now this.”

“A love story—
Troilus and Cressida
?” said Charles, making a face.

Catherine pretended to be offended. “And what is wrong with that?”

“I am too old,” said the admiral. “Love affairs are not my main concern any longer.”

“Charles!” She smacked him with her fan teasingly.

Nor mine,
I thought.
Love affairs have ceased to have any meaning for me. Nonetheless, I can still tolerate them onstage or in a poem.

I settled back, expecting heroic characters, combat scenes, and tragic lovers—all earmarks of the Trojan war—told in Shakespeare’s haunting language.

Instead, the play featured two unsavory characters, one of whom had the most scurrilous view of life and people I had ever heard. Every time he came onstage—which was far too often—I winced. He opened the play and closed it, wishing diseases on his audience as his farewell to us. As for the famous names of Homer, they were transformed into unrecognizably mean little people. Hector chased Patroclus for his armor, coveting it. Instead of a duel between the noble Hector and the warrior Achilles, Achilles killed an unarmed Hector in cold blood. Helen was an empty-headed strumpet, Cressida a liar, Troilus a fool, Ajax an ox. There was not one character I would invite to my table. And Shakespeare’s beautiful use of words had shrunk as small as his characters. Convoluted parallels, tortured usages, not a single line that sang in the mind. Only one passage, spoken by Odysseus, sent a chill through me and seemed to whisper,
This is what has just happened.
It was “Power into will, will into appetite, and appetite, a universal wolf, so doubly seconded with will and power, must make perforce a universal prey, and last eat up himself.” Essex’s wolf appetite had devoured him. Had the playwright thought of him when he had written it?

I wanted to apologize for inflicting the play on everyone. But the mood of it—disillusioned, hollow, sad—perhaps reflected what we were all feeling. I said good night and brought the evening to a close. It had been a fitting penance for whatever part I had played in the downfall of Essex.

Dawn, and Essex would soon be led out to the block. I shut the doors of my inner chambers and did not admit any company, even my ladies. The day plodded on; the sun approached its highest point, ending the morning. I could not read, nor fasten my mind on anything. I sat down at the virginals and began to play from memory; it required no effort of the mind or will. The sweet, round notes floated around me, caressing like supple fingers. When thoughts flee and words are inadequate, music can act as timely balm.

There was a soft knock. No one would knock except for something—the one thing—that I must be told.

“Enter,” I said.

The door swung open and Cecil entered, then walked softly over to me. I stopped playing.

“Your Majesty, it is over,” he said. “Essex died this morning.”

I nodded. I could not speak. In a moment, I continued playing. Cecil left.

The next day I ended my isolation and readied myself to hear the details. It was necessary that I hear them, although there was nothing I wanted less. Let him have vanished in a wisp of cloud, easily flying from life to death, an instant translation between the two worlds.

Raleigh, as official observer, recounted it all to me in private. Essex had been led out at eight o’clock by three clergymen. He was dressed all in black—satin doublet and breeches, velvet cloak, with a wide hat and startlingly white ruff.

“I was standing beside the block, as was my duty,” he said. “But several people accused me of gloating at the fall of my enemy, so in order to ensure peace, I went up into the White Tower, where I could see everything but not be seen.”

“Ah, Walter,” I said. “Such petty rivalries should not have surfaced then.”

“It was not Essex who objected, but others. In any case, he took off his hat and bowed, then proceeded to his farewell speech. He acknowledged that he deserved to die. But then he spoke wildly. Here.” He fumbled in his cloak and extracted a paper. “I will read his words. I do not want to invent any. He said, ‘My sins are more in number than the hairs on my head. I have bestowed my youth in wantonness, lust, and uncleanness; I have been puffed up with pride, vanity, and love of this wicked world’s pleasures. For all which I humbly beseech my Savior, Christ, to be a mediator to the eternal Majesty for my pardon, especially for this, my last sin, this great, this bloody, this crying, this infectious sin, whereby so many for love of me have been drawn to offend God, to offend their sovereign, to offend the world. I beseech God to forgive it us, and to forgive it me—most wretched of all.’”

“He always had the gift of words,” I said. These were in keeping with that genius; it had not deserted him. “May God have mercy on his soul.”

“He ended by forgiving his enemies and asking God to preserve you.”

“He made a good ending, then.”

“After that, he removed his gown and his ruff. Then the executioner knelt and asked his forgiveness, which he gave. Next he removed his doublet and revealed a red waistcoat underneath.”

Was that so the blood would not be so noticeable? Or did he mean it to signify martyrdom?

“He went obediently. He laid his head on the block and extended his arms to show he was ready.”

“I hope it was done quickly.”

“It took three blows of the ax, but I think the first did its work.”

Thank God. “And he was—he is resting—”

“He was buried quietly and respectfully,” said Raleigh. “But the executioner was attacked in the streets afterward and had to be rescued by the sheriff. People were—upset.”

I had best keep the soldiers stationed in London for a while longer, then.

“I understand,” I said.

“There is one more thing,” he said. “Not everyone mourned his passing. I received this letter regarding Lord Sandys from his wife. He is still awaiting trial.” He handed it to me.

It was short, and the pertinent lines had been marked. “Woe the day my lord was drawn into that plot. He was lured by that wild Essex’s craft, who has been and is unlucky to many but never good to any. I would he had never been born!”

A fitting epitaph for Robert Devereux, although it would not appear on his tomb.
Who has been and is unlucky to many.
Above all to himself.

85

LETTICE

March 1601

S
weet England’s pride is gone, welladay! welladay! / He did her fame advance, in Ireland, Spain, and France, / And now, by dismal chance, is from us taken.
...”

The faint strains of the voices drifted in to me as I lay trying to sleep. Earlier—I mean when Robert still lived—I would have found them tormenting. Now they served to keep him alive for me. As long as people were singing of him—ah, was that not a sort of life? A half life? Any tremor of life was better than none.

“They shall make ballads of us after our death,” Helen of Troy had told Paris. And they still lived.

I arose and went to the windows, flinging them open. A blast of cold February air hit me, but I leaned out. A small group of people were huddled at our gates, grasping the bars, peering into the empty courtyard, where hundreds had thronged but such a short while ago.

“Abroad, and eke at home, gallantly, gallantly, for valor there was none like him before....” I could hear them more clearly now, and my ears drank in every word. “In Ireland, France, and Spain, they feared great Essex’s name, and England loved the same in every place....”

I would send money and food out to them. They could not know the gift they brought me, confirming that Robert had been loved, and still was loved. I stood for the entire ballad, chilled through. Called “Sweet England’s Pride Is Gone,” it had appeared only hours after Robert’s execution, as songs from the people will.

“Yet Her Princely Majesty—graciously! graciously!—hath pardon given free to many of them: She released them quite, and given them their right! They may pray, day and night, God to defend her.”

Yes, they might pray, those eighty or so who had been arrested, questioned, and then let go. Lucky men. But Christopher was not among them. He would stand trial around March 5, five days from now. There was no hope that he would be spared.

It was four days since Robert had been executed. I had kept vigil the entire night before. I knew the hour appointed for his death. As the time crept past it, I wondered why I did not feel a great stabbing, a riving, within my very self. How could I not? It was the last cruel surprise in all the cruel surprises of our lives together.