Elizabeth I (34 page)

“But if I must practice it, I would above all things prefer to practice it for you.”

“It would not be a full-time position. I would only call on you when I needed you, in an occasional case ... to consult. In that way you would be my consultant.”

“I understand. I must continue with Essex for my bread. But be on call to you as needed.”

“Yes. That describes it. You will accept?”

“May I call myself Queen’s counsel publicly?”

“Of course.”

“Your Majesty, I am eternally—I thank you.”

So now I would have the quickest lawyer in the land at my beck and call, and all for the price of allowing him to call himself my counsel. My thrift at work.

29

LETTICE

November 1594

T
hose wretched bells ringing everywhere! I yanked one of the thick tapestries over the window to muffle it further.

Elizabeth’s glorious Accession Day. Thirty-six years ago. What in God’s name would they do to celebrate the fortieth? Would the entire realm have to present gifts? My son was busying himself with last-minute preparations for the tilt, some ridiculous costume about a frozen knight. The expenditure. The waste. When we could be spending it furnishing Essex House as befitted his station.

I looked around the great room. I had restored much from the ordered-by-Elizabeth stripping; tapestries hung heavily from rods again; fat candles in sconces winked up and down the walls; and the long oak table gleamed with its gold Italian centerpiece, an intricate froth of statuary and embellishments. Yes, the import tax from the sweet wines had provided well for us. I had even been able to buy back some of the jewelry we had pawned, and my latest purchase was a coach with four white horses. I loved riding it through the streets; I loved it even better when the people mistook me for the Queen. And why not? We looked alike; we even had some of the same mannerisms. We could almost be twins, except that she loved the day and I the night.

Christopher disliked riding in the coach with me. There were times I found it irksome to be yoked to someone with such a determinedly commoner’s viewpoint. He was so matter-of-fact about trappings, so uninterested in court climbing. He would rather be a soldier, spend his time out in the field. It was in his blood. At least I could console myself that he had the soldier’s appetite for lovemaking.

Lovemaking ... There was far too much of it lately in my family for our own good. My daughter Penelope had given herself over to the adulterous charms of Charles Blount and was now pregnant by him. Dorothy, released from her marriage to Perrot by his convenient death, had quickly married Thomas Percy, an odd chap known as the Wizard Earl for his dabbling in science and alchemy. And Robert ... His affair with the court lady Elizabeth Southwell was sure to reach the Queen’s ears before long. What was I to do with these hot-blooded offspring of mine?

At least my own hot-bloodedness had netted me two titles. I could not see what theirs had netted them, aside from scandal. Lust should serve a purpose; lust should be used as bait. What fool just throws it away?

The Queen ... The Queen knew how to use it as bait. She had been doing it her whole life. Now the bait had grown stale, but she did not seem to notice, and the young men at court were forced to pretend otherwise, to write sonnets about the fair wind caressing the pink cheeks of Diana, when the cheeks were in reality wrinkled and wan. Robert as much as anyone had to write such nonsense as “When Your Majesty thinks that heaven is too good for me, I will not fall like a star, but be consumed like a vapor by the same sun that drew me up to such a height. While Your Majesty gives me leave to say I love you, my fortune is as my affection, unmatchable.” But when I laughed about it, he would huff and defend her. One part of him believed what he was writing; another part wanted to believe it; and the last part was ashamed of himself for having to do it. To assuage his anger and shame, he took young women to bed. Too many of them. I feared that he had brought something untoward upon himself and was suffering from it. And I do not mean his reputation.

Soon he would be reeling in, tipsy, with his companions from the tavern. They longed to spend their energies on a battlefield, but they were cooped up in the court, channeled into tamed, ritualistic war games like the tilts and not allowed to go farther away than a city tavern, lest
she
call them back at any moment on one of her whims. In these dark days of November the dusk, and the drinking time, started early.

I paced the room. It was deadly quiet. Nothing for me to do but wait. I went to my rooms and busied myself reading. If I had had anyone to go with, I would have gone to the theater. I wanted something to take my mind off what was happening all around me. I did not care to visit Frances in her rooms, or even to play with the grandchildren. They gave me a headache.

The light streaming in was thin, although it was nearly midday. I knew my son had come in late last night and was now reversing the days and nights, sleeping like a sloth. Frances and the children were up and gone; in any case, he slunk off by himself when he was on one of his tears. I would not have intruded in his marital chamber, but this was different.

Pushing the door open, I peered into the darkened room. I heard heavy breathing, on the verge of, but not quite, snoring. There was an odor of sour beer and soggy wool. It was time to get him up. I jerked the bed-curtains open and was hit with a wave of the beer and wool smell, much stronger for having been concentrated within the curtains. He let out a wheezing, blubbering gasp, then sat up, grabbing at his hair.

“So here’s Great England’s glory and the world’s wide wonder,” I said, quoting Spenser.

He groaned. “My head—”

“Is empty,” I finished for him. “Purged utterly of anything, just as your bowels undoubtedly are. Get up. What if the Queen sent for you?”

“She won’t,” he said, shaking his head. “She never does, never does, never—”

“That simply is not true,” I said, taking his hand to pull him out of bed. The years rolled away and he was a little boy again, until he stood upright and was a head taller than I.

“She’s busy with Drake and Raleigh again,” he muttered. “Listening to their grandiose plans, financing them, taken in by their brags.”

“Their brags? Raleigh perhaps, but as I recall, Drake
did
sail around the world, discovered a passage below the tip of South America, claimed a coastline in North America for the Queen—little things like that.”

“He hasn’t done anything in five years. He’s a has-been.” Robert thrust his feet into warm slippers and made for the fireplace. “He’s old. In his fifties. His seafaring feats were done fifteen, twenty years ago.”

“Defeating the Armada doesn’t count?”

“He didn’t defeat it single-handedly.” He groaned. “Oh, Mother, please! It’s too early!” He huddled before the fireplace, rubbing his hands. “I need ale,” he said. “To clear my head.”

“First there’s ale to muddy your head, then ale to clear it.” Nonetheless, I asked a servant to bring a pitcher of it.

While we waited, I pulled back more curtains, to let as much of the thin light as possible in. Was it my imagination, or was his face blotchy? He was shivering as he stopped rubbing his hands and clasped his forearms.

“How will you be able to ride at the tilt tomorrow?” I wondered out loud. “You can barely sit on a three-legged stool.”

“Tomorrow I will be well enough,” he said.

At least he had been assigned the last day of the three-day celebration. The observance had crept from the actual day out into St. Elizabeth’s Day. What a coincidence in nomenclature. Or was it just another example of the extraordinary hand of fortune that always favored her, in little things as well as big?

The ale did seem to restore him. Like a plant that reverses its wilt after a rain, he took on color and strength and was soon holding forth on his various schemes and how they would all return bounty a hundredfold. I told him to get dressed and come to my chambers; I had something to show him.

When he appeared, I had the midday dinner set before him, and he wolfed it down, smearing his napkin with the good cheese and custard.

“Now that you are restored, good son, I need you to look at this.” I pushed the food tray aside and laid a book down before him, a thick-bound one that carried the scent of its newness. He stared at it, then shrugged.

“You are familiar with it?”

“Oh, yes,” he said. “What of it?”

I stabbed the title with my index finger.
A Conference on the Next Succession to the Crown of England
. “It might as well be
How to Be Executed for Treason
. How do you come to be associated with it? Why, why, is it dedicated to
you
?” For the European author, “R. Doleman, from my chamber in Amsterdam,” had thanked Robert for past favors to “friends” and said that after Elizabeth’s death Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, was the man in the realm who would have the power to decide between claimants to the throne.

“I have no idea,” he said. “It is obviously Catholic propaganda, smuggled into England by Jesuits. Its style bears all the marks of Robert Parsons, Elizabeth’s most determined foe from the ranks of Rome. Claiming it is from Amsterdam is so transparent it is laughable.”

Parsons directed the Jesuits and their English mission from Spain. Ten years ago he had landed in England, but when his companions were captured, he fled, to continue his work from a safe perch. Counterfeit pamphlets, rumors, and false evidence were some of his favorite methods of bringing down leading Protestants.

“It’s meant to damage
you
,” I said. “Otherwise, why single you out and link you to things the Queen is most sensitive about—the succession and overpowerful subjects?”

“I don’t know,” he said. “I have many enemies. People who do not want to see me succeed, people who whisper against me, people close to the Queen who fill her ears with lies about me—”

“Oh, don’t start on the Cecils again.” He had become obsessed with the idea that they were dedicated to undermining him. “They didn’t write it.”

“No, but they will be sure to show it to the Queen.”

“Therefore, you must show it to her first. Lament the shame of it. Commiserate with her about it. Steal the show from the Cecils.”

He drew himself up, cocked his head to one side. “That is what I had planned to do. Right after the tilt. But first I need another fitting for my costume.”

I should have asked him the particulars about it, but costumes and masques bored me. Let the Queen squeal over them. I looked as he turned his face and the light played over his cheek. Perhaps I had been wrong; his skin looked clear now. But we were so seldom utterly alone that I must speak, and not waste it on idle talk of costumes. “Robert, it seems to me—mothers notice these things—that your health of late, of late—” Should I hint, state, or accuse? “Are you feeling well?” I would begin with a hint.

“Except when I have too much at the tavern,” he said. “I will try to avoid that from now on.”

“I mean, not just last night, but for the whole past year. It seems—I think—you have changed. Your moods. Your rashes. Your sleeping. I fear you may have contracted the French disease.”

“Because I’ve been in France, dear Mother?” He gave a winsome smile to warn me off.

“It is in England, too, dear Son. And you have had more opportunity to avail yourself of women here than in France.”

“No! I haven’t got it! Yes, there was a time when I feared ... But no, it wasn’t.” He smacked his fist into his palm and suddenly his face contorted in rage. “I came to
him
as a patient, horror stricken, shaking with fear. Oh, he treated me, and then he blabbed it about when he was in his cups, laughing about me to his friends, saying I had
it
, was pox ridden. Well, I got my revenge!”

It took me a moment to realize what he was saying. No, surely he did not ... He could not have ... “Robert—is that why you trumped up those charges against Dr. Lopez, hounded him to death, raised the popular outcry when it seemed that legally he would escape you? For personal revenge?”

“No, of course not! What do you take me for?”

“I am not sure,” I said slowly. “There are days when I don’t recognize my son in you.”

“That’s nonsense. I don’t know what you mean.”

“Someday, when your own children are older, you will. You think they are part of you always, but that is not true.” Let me get to the rest of the things concerning this stranger. “And speaking of children, is it true that you have been bedding Elizabeth Southwell and that she is with child?”

“Yes, it’s true.”

“I assume she will slink away from court when the time comes?”

“I assume so.” He acted as if it were no concern of his.

“And your friend Southampton celebrated his coming of age by sheltering friends fresh from committing a murder. Why, why, do you persist in these dangerous alliances? A lady from the Queen’s retinue, a man known for quarrels and violence?”