Elizabeth I (121 page)

“They believed in it,” I said. “Whatever happened later, this moment in their lives was pristine.”

Now came Lettice’s comment. “For him.”

“No, for all of them.” Dear Catherine, the peacemaker. “They were young. All the things we see, knowing how it ended, they did not. We have to honor that innocence.”

Lettice laughed. “Mary Boleyn is rarely credited with innocence,” she said.

“But she
was
innocent,” insisted Catherine.

“I will embrace that,” Lettice said. “I am weary of having my grandmother branded a whore. Or a fool.”

“She was neither,” I said. “You have carried that far too long.” I made up my mind about something. “Let us sit here and be with them.” It was the nearest we would ever come.

We brushed off the seat and sat down together. Overhead the old trellis protected us from the breeze that had sprung up, its dead vines stirring, murmuring.

I rested against the back, feeling the letters against my spine.
The Bower of Love.
I felt for the small gold ring on my little finger, one that I had worn for seven years. I tugged, slid it over my thickening knuckles. Finally I held it between thumb and forefinger. “Lettice, this is for you. Your son gave it to me when we went to Wales.” Green Wales.
Dwi yu dy garu di.
I handed it to her.

She took it, strained to see it in the fading light. “You kept wearing it? Even through—?”

“He was close to my heart. That never changed.”

She slid it onto her finger. “It is rare to receive a new gift from someone so long after the fact.”

“It is from both of us. He would want you to have it. And I want you to know that my care for him never ceased. It was a tragedy. We all must walk our paths. Even a queen cannot depart from them. A queen, sometimes, least of all. At the end of the path, perhaps, is understanding.”

“Thank you,” she said, no trace of anything hidden in her voice. Then she moved her hands behind her neck and fumbled with a clasp. Slowly she withdrew the
B
necklace, which had been hidden beneath her bodice. “Catherine, I want you to have this,” she said. “It is time I give it away. You will treasure it more than my daughters or grandchildren. Here.” She handed her the necklace.

Before Catherine could respond or say no, Lettice turned to me. “I had vowed never to let you see this, or even know about it. It was my revenge. But now there is no point. You should have it.” She withdrew a folded, puckered envelope from a battered purse she carried and thrust it at me.

I took it, not understanding what it was. It was too dark to read. I turned it over in my hand.

“It is one of the King’s private letters to Anne Boleyn,” she said. “The Vatican spy did not get all of them. Some were entrusted to Mary Boleyn, although this is the only survivor of the lot. I told you she gave my mother some personal things, and my mother passed them on to me. You have earned this.”

“I do not know what you mean,” I said.

“My son’s wife, loving him and wanting to help, gathered up family papers while he was imprisoned in York House. She feared some might incriminate him, so she entrusted them to a servant, Jane Daniel. Now do you remember?”

“The blackmailer,” I recalled. “This Jane had a husband eager for profit, so he withheld the papers and asked for payment.”

“Whom Your Majesty graciously punished, and returned the papers unread to Frances, in addition to his fine. Within that casket of papers lay this very letter. Now it is yours.”

“Oh.” This priceless treasure! An unseen, uncensored exchange between my mother and father, in the hopeful green time of their lives. “I thank you. It is a gift beyond all other gifts.”

“Your charity toward Frances merits it.”

I was humbled. I had done it not out of policy but only out of pity and justice for Frances. And to have this, now ... “Perhaps all recompense is not delayed until heaven,” I said. “But, Lettice, your charity far exceeds mine. I am stunned.”

“I hated you,” she said bluntly. “But I know that to be a queen requires cruelty sometimes. I do not understand it, or grasp what alchemy transforms a person into the substance of a ruler, but I accept it. I am thankful we could meet and speak of these things. Otherwise I would have gone bitter to my grave, and that would have made an uneasy rest.”

“I hated you, too,” I said. “You took my Robert Dudley away!”

“I made him happy,” she said, “when you could not.”

“Perhaps that is what love is,” I said. “To give over to someone else a precious thing. My love was incomplete at the time. So, only now, long after he is gone, can I render him into your hands. I no longer begrudge him to you.”

“All that was long ago, and what we have done, we have done,” she said. “Our story is as old as what happened here in this garden.”

“You speak as if it is over,” said Catherine.

“For me it is,” Lettice said. “I plan to withdraw to Drayton Bassett.”

“The country!” I said. “Oh, Lettice, you had always railed against it!”

“Things change,” she said. “If we are privileged to live long enough.”

I slumped back against the bench, turning the unread letter over and over between my fingers. “At my coronation, there was an arch at Little Conduit portraying Time. Truly, I have come to believe that Time is the greatest gift of all. Lettice, may you live long at Drayton Bassett. Even longer than old Tom Parr.” I wondered if he was still in his house.

“Look,” said Catherine, pointing to a gleaming white flower opening at the foot of the bench, a vision of hope and delight. “A night-blooming flower. They must have intended the bower to be visited in the evening.”

I leaned forward and touched its stem. “What have you seen?” I murmured. “What do you remember?”

In the dim light of my room, late that night, Catherine sleeping, I opened the envelope with trembling fingers. The paper was so stiff it cracked on one side, but I extracted the letter inside and drew it out.

“Mine own darling, what joy it is to me to understand ... the company of her who is my greatest friend ... Written with the hand of him that longeth to be yours ...”

It had all been real, and it had led to me, their daughter. I felt both their hands resting on my head, saying,
Our dear daughter.
Perhaps they had not wanted a daughter, but I had fulfilled their highest hopes. If only they could have lived to see it.

94

December 1602

W
e were huddled close in the royal box overlooking the chapel, Catherine and I. The seeping cold of winter, with Whitehall being so near the river, ate into our bones.

It was fitting for Advent, the time of preparation for Christmas. Cold and dark. The blue twilight descended early, wrapping us in what seemed continual night, with just a lightening in the sky halfway through the cycle.

Always at Advent, guest preachers—usually renowned for their oratory—were invited to court. This Sunday it was Anthony Rudd, Bishop of St. David’s.

He rose up in the pulpit and began preaching on Psalm 82, verses six and seven: “I have said, Ye are gods; and all of you are children of the most High. But ye shall die like men, and fall like one of the princes.

“Yea, the princes fall. Where is Nebuchadnezzar? Where even Solomon? They all vanish, shrivel like grass in a hot furnace!”

He looked at the congregation. “If even David met his end, how can you hope to escape? Examine your lives. What if the angel of death appeared tonight?”

He looked around, moving his head slowly from right to left. “Some of you will leave here, go home, lie down to sleep tonight—and not awaken.”

Beside me, Catherine gave a violent shiver. I pulled her closer to me.

“And a ruler has a double responsibility. For the ‘things’ a ruler leaves behind are not grain in a barn, or livestock, but the very security of the kingdom. He—or she—has a duty to ensure a smooth passage into another’s hands.”

This was too much. I stood up, wrenched open the little privacy shutter that shielded me from the people below, leaned out, and bellowed, “You have preached me a good funeral sermon! I may die when I please!”

Heads swiveled to see me.

“That is enough!” I shouted. “Proceed with the service, which is your main duty!”

Afterward, in my apartments, Catherine divested herself of her layers of cloaks and furs. “I take it you will not invite him again,” she said.

“Indeed. He can depart for Wales and stay there. Impudent cleric.” I hid my disquiet under indignation.

The realm was waiting for my death—my transition—my passage. Bishop Rudd had slapped me in the face with it today. They were holding their breaths, wondering when the scepter would slip from my hands, to be grasped by another. I was well aware that Robert Cecil had a clandestine correspondence with James in Scotland and that one of his stipulations to the Scots monarch had been that he not press me on the succession. Be patient, he had advised. All things come to him who waits. He thought himself so clever, but he was transparent to me. Once a packet had arrived for him from Scotland and been handed to him in my presence. Rather than open it, he sniffed it and declared it had a “strange and evil smell” that might indicate it had been in contact with an infected person. Therefore, he insisted on sending it outside to have it fumigated. It was all I could do not to laugh and say,
When it has been purged of the secret message from James, bring it back in to be read in my presence.

But they were wrong, all of them. I was not like to die soon. There was nothing amiss with me. Nor was I ready. James would have a long wait.

In the meantime, Cecil at his new house on the Strand, Catherine and her husband, the admiral, at Arundel House, and my cousin George Carey in his London townhouse all entertained me in honor of the Christmas season. I was pleased to see the heirs of Burghley and Hunsdon so ensconced in their dwellings, but I enjoyed most of all having the admiral show me his mementos from his victories at sea. Catherine presided by his side but seemed pale and weak. My repeated inquiries as to her health were brushed aside.