Elizabeth I (42 page)

The Virgin Queen. The curious Virgin Queen. Do I truly want to go to my grave never even knowing what it is I have turned my back on? Do I not feel cheated in the deepest sense?

Especially if no one would ever know.

But Essex talks. He is a gossip.

I can deny it. Whom will they believe?

If only something could be done and then immediately erased, made not to exist. As we can taste a piece of pastry and then spit it out without swallowing it. But this is not like that. Once done it is done forever.

I stood trembling before the candlestand, breathing deeply. Which took more courage—to open the door and seek him out or to keep it shut? For many long minutes I stood. Then I walked slowly toward the door. I reached out, touched the cold latch. It was just a simple thing to lift it and walk through the door. I raised my wrist, and at the feel of the weight of the latch I dropped it. It was too great a deed.

I stepped back. The door would stay shut.

I slept as one drugged, and perhaps I was—by the scare of the Spanish, by the days of hard riding outdoors, by the last decision. But in the darkest hour of night, I awoke.

It took a moment for me to remember where I was, the bed I was lying in. I pulled back the bed-curtains. The air in the chamber was cold, and there was no hint of light from the windows. All time was suspended; whatever happened now, in this place, for the next few hours, before day came and re-created the real world, was as a dream, insubstantial and unsubstantiated.

Just then I heard a noise through the wall. He was moving about in there. He, too, was awake. I had been given another chance to decide, better now than if I had gone earlier. I could knock gently on the wall and he would come to me in silence. By mutual consent, we would not speak. Speaking would make it real, and this must not be allowed to be real. It would be no more real than the monster in Llangorse Lake, than Merlin’s cave. In the morning it would cease to exist, would evaporate like the Welsh mist. Robert Devereux, my Robin, the Earl of Essex, was himself made of Welsh mist.

Another slight noise from the other side of the wall. He was listening, waiting for a signal from me. I could feel it. I tensed, knowing that if I made any noise myself, he would come in. I held my breath, holding myself rigid, lest I move and send a mistaken message. But what message was the mistaken one? The thought of the moment passing unfulfilled was so sad I did not think I could bear it. Surely, surely—I let out a sigh. Immediately I heard him change his posture, become alert. He had picked up the scent, like a hunting animal.

It was a scent he had undoubtedly picked up many times in his life.

No, I could not be one of many. I would not become just one of his women.

I was unique in his life, and thus it must remain.

I sank back down into the pillows, and let the flap of the bed-curtain fall. The rings made soft clicking noises, and he must have heard them.

The next morning, dressed and ready, I emerged from the room. He was standing before his door, pulling on his gloves. He looked at me piercingly. “Good morrow,” he said. “I trust you rested well? Were you comfortable?”

“Entirely so,” I assured him. “Knowing you were right next door was so reassuring I slept soundly all night through.”

“I kept awake in case you needed anything,” he said.

“That was thoughtful of you,” I said. “But you had foreseen all my needs so carefully that there was nothing left unfulfilled.”

“Well, one can never be sure,” he said. “I did not wish to take any chances.”

“Or miss any,” I said.

I was ever the realist, sometimes to my sorrow. But seldom to my regret.

36

I
expected London to be in an uproar. We finally reached it late at night; all the gates were closed fast and guarded. The watchmen cried out joyfully when they saw it was I, saying, “God be praised! The Queen is here!” We passed through quickly, I to Whitehall, Robert to Essex House. The streets were eerily quiet.

My first wild thought was to order the Cecils to attend upon me immediately. But the palace was asleep; it was long past midnight. Soon it would be dawn, and I could summon them. If I could manage a few hours’ rest before then, my thinking would be clearer.

As soon as it was light, I sent for them, and for Knollys and Hunsdon as well. They did not fail me, appearing within the hour. I ordered ale and bread for them, as well as cushions for their seats. Only one of the four still had brown hair; the other three heads were as white as ermine.

“I returned as quickly as I could,” I said. “Thanks be to your resourcefulness, Robert, in sending a messenger who found me.”

Robert Cecil smiled and passed a hand over his trim beard. He never gave the impression that he looked for praise, but he brooded, so I was told, if he felt passed over. I wondered, not for the first time, how difficult life was for him with his short stature.

“It was prudent of Your Majesty to leave us your whereabouts,” said his father. “Of course, finding you was like searching for one grouse in the heather all over Scotland.” His voice was faint, as if the muscles in his chest did not have the strength to force it out. His gouty leg was propped up on a stool, and every time he moved, he winced, his breath whistling out into his wispy beard.

“I see it is all quiet here,” I said. “I thought to find it otherwise, so I am relieved. Give me your reports of the action in Cornwall. I assume that men and arms have been dispatched, and the Channel patrolled?”

“Yes, we took that liberty, the Privy Council acting on its legal authority,” said Hunsdon. “They report that the Spanish, who had sailed over from their stronghold in Brittany, departed quickly, although they caused great damage during the time they trampled on our land, burning and pillaging up and down the tip of Cornwall. Mousehole was destroyed, its people homeless now, and Newlyn and Penzance were sacked. No ships were sighted beyond the four that landed. But some of the householders, outraged at the attack, managed to capture a lone Spanish soldier. They trussed him up and delivered him to our officers. He’s here now in London, and a little gentle persuasion has convinced him to tell us the bigger Spanish plans.”

“Richard Topcliffe’s persuasion?” I asked. The chief interrogator who operated his torture machinery at the Tower was known as an unfailing source of information. The Privy Council had the authority to approve torture if necessary.

“Possibly,” said Knollys, his face red. As a good Puritan, he must have found ordering torture difficult to align with his conscience.

“Well, what did he tell us?” I burst out. “Do not be so coy!”

“He claims that his master the Spanish king is outfitting his new Armada, readying it to sail next summer. This one will be much more formidable than the first. They can now match us in firepower and gunner’s skill.”

“God curse that man!” I cried. “His money is endless, whereas ours—” I felt helpless anger tear through me. He was rich, rich, rich, drowning in gold and silver from his looted native mines in America, a never-ending well of it. An entire lost Armada had only caused him to thank God that he could afford to build another, whereas it would have bankrupted my entire kingdom. He could keep coming at us, and coming at us, and we could never bleed him dry. Thrift and skill and bravery and advanced ship design and better training availed us nothing; outperforming the Spanish still did not put us ahead, as they could always outspend us. I had started selling my inherited lands and even some Crown jewels, but that was a feather in the scales compared to what we really needed.

The door flung open, banging on each side, and Essex stood there, legs spread wide. “Why was I not sent for?” he cried.

“Essex! Hold your temper! This is not a full council meeting,” I said. “I am only being given the first report of what has happened in my absence. Seat yourself.”

“The Spanish made a brief landing,” said Robert Cecil, sitting as tall as he could, glaring at Essex, distaste written all over his face. “Short but destructive. They caused great damage on the southwestern tip of Cornwall. A captured soldier has revealed that a new Armada is well advanced in its planning.”

“I knew it!” Essex said, leaping up again and slapping his hands together. “I knew it. They are lurking in Cádiz or Lisbon like a spider, building their ships, plotting.”

“The Spanish are always plotting, my boy,” said old Burghley. “That alone means nothing. We have to look at their actions.”

Essex’s eyes narrowed. “Do not call me boy, old man!”

Now I turned on him. “My Lord Essex, have you not slept enough since your return? For you are as tetchy as a bear just out of hibernation.”

“I’ve slept well enough,” he muttered.

“Raleigh is back,” said Hunsdon. “We should call him in.”

“What did he find?” Oh, if only it
were
El Dorado. If only we had our own source of gold to match Spain’s.

“Some ores—perhaps gold—no one is sure,” said Hunsdon.

“But it wasn’t refined gold,” said Knollys. “The Indians have kept their source secret.”

“Has there been any word of Drake and Hawkins?” I asked.

“We all invested in that venture and are eager for its success, but so far there’s been no word,” said Robert Cecil.

“The days when the Spanish outposts in America were easy pickings are gone. Drake and Hawkins, unfortunately, taught them how to protect their assets, and they took the lesson,” said Hunsdon. “And there’s something else, too, the obliging Spanish gentleman told us. This Armada will be different. They will use the Irish against us, as we used the Dutch against them. They would say it is yet another tactic they learned from us.”

“They’ll land there with troops and men, as well as harrying our coasts. Ireland is our back door, and they mean to come in that way,” said Knollys.

“Oh, God!” Not Ireland, where I already had an unrest on my hands, led by a native hero. Was
I
cursed?

“So the rebellion of O’Neill is part of it?” asked Essex. “The Earl of Tyrone, that blackguard!”

I had proclaimed the Earl of Tyrone, a false ally, a serpent who had turned on us, a traitor earlier this summer. Hugh O’Neill, a man who had been brought up in English households, who had received his title from me, had reverted to his wild Irish roots, been anointed as high chieftain of the O’Neill clan, taking the formal, forbidden title of The O’Neill in ancient rites in an old stone chair in an open field at Tullaghoge in Ulster, and joined forces with another rebel and sworn enemy of England, Hugh Roe O’Donnell.

“Our lord deputy in Ireland, Sir William Russell, seems at a loss as to how to combat these slippery chieftains,” said old Burghley.

“Ireland!” cried Essex. “That sinkhole of treachery, that land of bogs and rebels, that robbed me of my father!”

“They did not ask to be English,” said Robert Cecil pointedly. “Nor do they want to be English, so they would call themselves patriots rather than rebels. We, after all, would fight to the last man if the Spanish attempted the same to us. In fact, that is what this meeting is about—making sure that does not happen to us.”

I thought of Grace O’Malley and her list of grievances against us, many of them well founded. Cecil spoke true. Was Grace a “traitor”? In fairness I could hardly brand her so.

“You speak as if you sympathize with them,” growled Essex. “Anyone who takes their side is a traitor to Her Majesty’s government!”

“If your father had not died there, would you be so adamant about that? Your personal loss—”

“I owe them a death! I owe them many deaths!”

“Make sure it is not your own,” said Hunsdon. “We want as few deaths as possible.”

“Back to the Spanish,” said Knollys impatiently, “the wellspring of our troubles. Without them, the Irish would not be dangerous to us. O’Neill is appealing to Spain on religious grounds, for, among their other failings, the Irish cling to the popish superstition.”