Elizabeth I (123 page)

“It has been a long fight, my friend,” I reminded him. I handed the letter back to him. “Tell the doge yes, before he changes his mind.”

95

E
lated by these two coups, I almost skipped down the long gallery toward the royal apartments. I could have asked the guards at the end of each chamber to dance a measure with me.

The O’Neill, bowing his head in defeat. The man who had mocked, defied, and tantalized me for years, draining my treasury. The man who was directly responsible for my selling my father’s Great Seal and jewels of my own. Now he was mine. Unless he escaped again. He was a master of that, like a snake, able to slither through any opening.

And the pope. I hoped he was frothing at the mouth in anger. I had outlasted seven popes. Clement VIII was my eighth. With their rapid transits, I could say—if I were sarcastic—that the rock of Peter seemed to be teetering on sand. This pope was no better than the others. He had eagerly pursued the Inquisition, burning the philosopher and astronomer Giordano Bruno at the stake, and appointed his relatives to the Vatican, even making his fourteen-year-old grandnephew a cardinal.

Outside, the palace orchard sparkled with icy branches. It would be a long time until spring. But I could wait. It did not feel so cold now.

I traversed the audience chamber, empty and echoing, but when I reached the outer privy chamber, a knot of people were huddled together inside. Admiral Charles detached himself and interrupted my steps. His face was a welter of wrinkles and anguish.

“Catherine—she’s taken ill,” he said. “Just in the last hour.”

She had seemed well enough this morning as she helped me dress, beyond the weakness she had complained about for weeks. “In what way?” I asked.

“Fever—confusion—nausea,” he said. “The physician is with her.”

“In the bedchamber?”

“There was no time to take her anywhere else. She was tidying up in that chamber when she collapsed.”

“You needn’t apologize, Charles. After all these years, the bedchamber is as much hers as mine.”

I did not ask if I could go in. As Queen, no one could deny me entrance. But as a friend, I must allow her and the physician privacy. The afterglow of the news about Ireland and Venice still cocooned me. On this day, everything would be well.

After some time, the physician emerged, closing the door softly behind him. He tiptoed over to us, bowing to me.

“Tell me!” said Charles.

The physician shook his head. “I have changed the linens and put extra bottles of water on the table. She must drink, to offset all the sweat. She feels as hot as a new-baked loaf of bread. No food. A fever must be starved. And besides, she has no appetite and cannot keep anything down.”

“Is she in pain?” I asked.

“She moans and says her joints ache, that her head is throbbing, but that is usual with a fever.”

“No spots?” Charles asked.

“No. It is not smallpox, or plague.”

“Thanks be to Jesus!” I cried. Either of those could be lethal.

The physician looked at me, almost pityingly. “This is a most virulent fever, even though we cannot name it. She will need strength to withstand it.”

Strength. But she had been weak of late. She came to this duel ill prepared.

“Keep the young girls out of the chamber,” he said. “Although the young are more resistant to it. She was well last night, you say?”

“Yes,” said Charles. “As well as she has been.”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“I would say that she has been ... dragging ever since autumn. That is the only way I can put it. And then this move, in the cold, and the harsh winter ...”

Now I berated myself again. I had hurried everyone here out of concern for my own safety, never thinking of theirs. But, I argued with myself, we had made such moves all our lives. Why should this one be different?

“She was well this morning,” I said. “When I left her to meet with Cecil, she was humming and gathering her sewing.”

“Perhaps she was pretending,” said the physician. “Perhaps she kept it from you.”

I shook my head. “If it was just beginning, perhaps she was keeping it from herself. After all, if we took to our beds every time we felt a bit off, all the beds in the realm would be full. No, she must have been stricken suddenly.”

“And it is increasing in strength.”

“What do you mean?” cried Charles.

“I have no way of measuring heat except with my hand, but I am certain her fever increased just in the time I was in there.”

“Should she be bled?” said Charles.

“I don’t think it helps in such cases. I’ll have ice brought in from outside and rub her with that to fight the heat coming from inside her. Lucky for us it is winter.”

Lucky for us. If it had not been winter, she would not have been weakened to begin with. “Do whatever you think best. Shall I ask a fellow physician to attend you?”

“I would welcome any assistance,” he said. “In cases like this, only a fool scorns help. I am going to consult my texts to see if there are any remedies I am overlooking.” He bowed and took his leave.

I turned to Charles. “Let us go in.” The other ladies were gathering anxiously but I told them, “Pray wait.”

Catherine lay on her bed, her hair matted with sweat. But she was awake and smiled when she saw us. “Forgive me,” she whispered. I had to draw close to hear her. From a foot away I could feel the heat radiating from her face.

“Why do sick people always apologize?” I retorted. “You have committed no offense.”

“Save not being able to serve you,” she said.

“You did this morning,” I replied. “You will again, in a few days.”

She took a long time drawing in her breath. “Perhaps not so soon.”

“Catherine, we have had jubilant news. The Irish war is over.”

She merely looked at me, as if she did not understand. Or as if it were no matter. “Oh.”

I shot a look at her husband, standing helplessly by the bed. “Charles and I are elated.”

“Yes,” she murmured, and closed her eyes. “I am glad for you.”

“Be glad for England,” I corrected her.

“Indeed.” Her eyes stayed closed.

Charles took her hand, stroked her arm. “Dearest, open your eyes.”

She tried, but the lids seemed to have weights on them, drawing them down. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “I need ... I must ... sleep.”

I reached out and touched her forehead, which felt like a heated poker. I jerked my hand away. “Jesus!” I cried. Could anyone be this hot and live? “Water! Water!”

Together Charles and I raised her head and tried to make her drink, but she could not.

Now fear gripped me. I looked around the chamber, at its shadowed corners, and suddenly felt a darkness waiting there, waiting to creep out and fasten itself on Catherine.

“Let us carry her into the private withdrawing chamber off this room. She will have more privacy there,” I said. As if a change of room would banish the specter in the larger room. With the help of the attendants, the bed was lifted and moved into the smaller room. She had spent many an hour in this little room, laughing and arranging my linens and ruffs.

The physician returned with a pail of ice and began rubbing her arms and legs with jagged pieces. One icicle was ideal, being slender, allowing him to rub one leg down its entire length. She moaned and cried, “Cold, cold, cold!” but otherwise did not stir.

Charles, standing beside the bed, burst into tears. I took his hand and led him out into the larger chamber.

“She’s gone, she’s gone,” he cried. “She has passed the boundary line. She has gone over
there
. There’s no pulling her back.”

“No, Charles.” I argued fiercely. “Let the ice do its work. They gave me up for dead when I had smallpox. But I came back.”

“You were twenty-nine. She is nearing sixty.”

“She is strong.”

Charles kept shaking his head. “Not so strong,” he said. “She kept much from you.”

The physician emerged from the chamber. “She seems to be weakening. I cannot get her to drink, and without that, she will lose all her water in the sweating.”

“What
is
it?” I cried. “Is it the sweating sickness?”

“I do not know,” he said. “I have never seen a case of that. It has not struck in England for twenty-five years.”

Was he that young? God’s teeth, was I served only by children?

“But does it not cause just such a sudden collapse, and much sweating?”

“So they say,” he said.

“Some recover from the sweat,” I told Charles. “I remember.”

“Not many,” he said. “It left thousands dead in London, Oxford, and Cambridge. Half the students perished.”

“Perhaps it is not the sweating sickness. Perhaps it is just tainted food.” But I had eaten the same food and I was well.

Catherine moaned from within the room, and we rushed in. The bed was soaked with sweat, the linens looking dark around her. Touching them, I could feel the moisture. “Oh, my dear.” I smoothed her brow, slick with sweat.

I had fed Burghley in his final days. I had seen Walsingham’s sickbed. But I had never witnessed as swift and complete a collapse as this one. She seemed changed from just the few minutes we had left her.

The young physician’s assistant arrived, but together they stood helpless at the foot of the bed. “Make her comfortable,” one said. “We must change the linens again.”

I knelt down beside her. If there was little time left, then I must use it to speak. Later I could not. “My dearest companion, my cousin, do not hurry away,” I said. I took her hand, like a burning coal. “I have lost so many, but I cannot lose you.”

I felt a slight squeeze on my hand. Her eyelids fluttered open. “I feel my feet slipping away. I am being pulled down, into a tunnel. I promise you, I do not wish to leave. Help me. Hold tight. Keep me here!”

I gripped her hands, together. “I have you. I will not let go.”

“They are pulling ... pulling ... I slide ...”

“No, no.” I tightened my hold on her. “You are right here. In the bed. You are lying flat. No slant, no slide. It is a bad dream.” I looked around. “The room is here. You are here. Why, just beyond is the water closet we laughed about. It is still here. All is just as it was. Nothing is changed.”

Charles knelt on the other side and put his big hands on her forearms. “I will keep you here. I can hold you. I am stronger than the tunnel.”

For a few moments her eyes closed and I could feel the resistance in her limbs, as if she were pushing against the lid of the opening beneath her. She squeezed my hand and whispered, “They call. I must go. But I cannot. I remain here. Get the pillow.”

“No,” I said. “Not that.”

“It will ease my going,” she said. “I must go, but it is hard. I pray you, as one last favor, get the pillow.”

Charles looked quizzically at me. But I knew what she meant.

If I sent for it, I was acquiescing in her death. But it was her last request. I stood up, my body stiff from the odd position it had been in. I went out into the privy chamber and told one of the guards, “Go to the Bishop of Ely. Request the black lace pillow. He will know what I mean.”

The black pillow of Ely: It had been woven by a nun in that village, and when death approached, it was placed under the sufferer’s head, then gently pulled away. When the head hit the mattress, the person was released.

Within an hour the pillow was delivered. I turned it over gingerly. The pillow of death. But no, it merely eased death. It could not cause it. As some babes come into the world with difficulty, some of the dying have difficulty leaving it. Both are hard passages.

The pillow was a small one, worked all over with lace. It was black as a moonless night. I carried it into the room and held it before Catherine.

Her sunken eyes opened and she smiled, as if recognizing the pillow, although she had never seen it before. “My friend,” she murmured. “I have long expected you, and dreaded you. Come here.” She seemed to be seeing only the pillow, not anyone else in the room. She stared at it in rapture, as if it were the Holy Grail.