Elizabeth I (48 page)

The Cádiz mission must have been completed by now. It was no sure thing, but if it had succeeded, I would sing its praises. We needed a victory, something to celebrate. It had been almost a decade since the Armada. Memories were short, and the mood of the country was morose.

The boat bumped against the landing, and we were at Mortlake. I stepped out, onto the familiar ground of the little village, the church with its little cluster of houses around it, the big oaks shading the lanes. As I walked, though, I saw green leaves littering the ground and, looking up, noticed how sparse the leaf canopy was. The trees were dropping their leaves well before time, damaged by all the rain.

John Dee was waiting for me in his doorway, a tender smile on his face.

“You are back where you belong, I see,” I said, noting his long beard, as white as milk, and his magus’s gown with voluminous hanging sleeves and celestial symbols embroidered on it. “Here, in Mortlake.”

He bowed and kissed my hand. “I know now where I belong. Sometimes one finds out only by living elsewhere.”

Behind him his wife peered out. Unlike Dee, she had changed, looking older and fretful. No wonder, after her experience with enforced unchastity. She was probably more grateful to be back than her husband.

I stepped into the library and saw immediately that it was different. The walls were bare and the sagging shelves of books stripped. The shelves still sagged, but only in memory of the lost books.

“I returned to Mortlake to find my library ransacked and plundered, with many of my most precious volumes stolen,” he said. “I once had the largest library in England—over four thousand books. Now”—he spread his hands—“this is what remains.”

He had had rare scientific books, gathered from the suppressed monasteries before they were destroyed. “And what remains in your head,” I said.

“That is only a fraction of the knowledge that was on these shelves,” he lamented. “Many instruments were taken as well.”

“Oh, John,” I said. He had had navigational instruments, globes, and maps, as well as his alchemy equipment and astrological and astronomical charts.

“All is not gone,” he assured me. “They were not interested in my charts, maps, or globes. Their appetite was for the alchemy equipment. I was rumored to have discovered how to transform tin into gold, so they took what they thought would do that. How stupid can someone be? If I had known how to make tin into gold, would I have been in the state I am in?”

“People believe what they wish to, John.” God knows I had found that out. I smiled, remembering the day I had brought François here. The Frog ... How we had laughed and played. Long ago, until Dee’s reading of his future had silenced my laughter.

Suddenly I realized why I had come. “Do you still have your seeing crystal?”

“My shew stone? Yes, it’s still here.” He lifted a tasseled cover, revealing a round crystal about the size of an orange resting on a wax seal. He blew on it, clouding it over and waiting for it to clear. “You want to know about Cádiz,” he said. It was not a question.

“Yes. They have been gone weeks now. The action is complete. I cannot bear not knowing what has happened! And—if it is bad, I need to know before they return,
if
they return.”

“A complicated campaign is hard to discern in this little glass.”

“Look for the town! See if it still stands!”

He tried to coax the image of Cádiz out of the depths of the ball. “I see smoke and blackness,” he finally said. “It looks as if ... Many piles of stones. The defenses are thrown down.”

Excitement coursed through me, but caution reined me in. “What of the harbor? What ships do you see?”

He sighed. “Ma’am, that is almost impossible to make out.”

“Try! Try!”

“The city, as you know, is like a fingernail at the end of a six-mile piece of land that curls up like a beckoning finger from the mainland into the sea. At the place where the finger joins the palm is a smaller city and another harbor. It looks as though there is a fire in the inner city’s harbor. A big one. But I cannot tell what is burning.”

“Are there ships outside the harbor?”

“I think so.”

“Big ones? Unharmed?”

“Yes.”

“Our ships! We had fifty men-of-war.”

“I am not sure I see fifty. But this is a small glass.”

“What men do you see?”

“I will have to coax the ball,” he said, blowing on it again. Squinting, he peered at it from several angles. “Now ...” He gazed intently for several moments. “I see men, but I do not know who they are. It has been a long time since I was at court.”

“Let me try.” I moved over and stood in his place. The depths of the ball showed colors and some wavy lines, but I could make out nothing. “I have not the skill in reading it,” I had to admit. I was frustrated beyond words. He could see, but not identify, and I could identify but not see. “God’s wounds! What a plight is this!”

“We saw the completed event,” he said, “so the fleet must be on its way home. We will know soon enough. At least we know that they succeeded in sacking Cádiz, and that everyone has survived. Is that not what you sought to learn?”

“I’d like to know about the treasure. Was there any? Did they capture it?”

“I cannot imagine that they did not, Your Majesty. And ... if I may so humbly request, would you remember your old servant when you come into it?”

“John, I have already provided a living for you with the position in Manchester, and do not forget, I gave you two thousand pounds when first I heard of the theft here.” Did the man think I had money to spare?

“Yes, Ma’am, yes, I do not forget and am grateful, so grateful. But the post at Manchester—although I am grateful!—has unpleasant aspects. The other Fellows there do not like me. In fact, they make my life hell!”

“Small people always do, John. You must learn to make your peace with them. Not everyone can have your intellect; you must forgive them for that. Perhaps if you forgave them for their lacks, they would forgive you your talents. Envy can only be defanged; it does not die on its own.”

“Yes, yes, of course.” He straightened up, embarrassed by his begging. “I understand that your ventures to the New World, while I was away, have been unsuccessful?”

“Both were Raleigh’s, and both failed,” I said. “The colony in Virginia did not survive. His expedition to the Orinoco in South America discovered nothing of value. He returned empty-handed, except for a few souvenirs, including a most personable savage and some ores that turned out to be worthless—fool’s gold.” His part in the Cádiz venture should have gone better, or, by God, he would never set sail under my patronage again.

“Do not abandon the New World,” Dee said. “That is where your future lies, not in Europe. To the devil with Cádiz, the Spanish, the French, the Dutch. Your destiny is to rule a British empire, stretching all across North America. Look that way, not to tired old Europe.”

“Two failures do not encourage me.”

“Two failures! And how many have you had in Europe?”

“My dear Dee, your vision is too big for reality. I daresay I supported the two missions
because
of your beguiling vision. But I cannot see that it is going anywhere.”

“Patience! Keep sending out explorers. Let them plant the English flag. Drake did it on the west coast of America, Raleigh on the east. Send more!”

“I cannot afford it,” I said flatly. “If this Cádiz mission does not bring back lots of treasure, it must be my last.”

“Never. Never! I tell you, I see the scepter of Britain from shore to shore there. I see your seal, as empress!”

“Since I can see none of them, I suspect that sometimes your inner vision paints over what you actually see in that ball.” I pointed to it. “Let us draw the cover over it and let it be, old friend.”

I moved to Windsor for the remainder of the summer to escape the stinking city and river. Here the Thames had shrunk to a country stream, pleasant and sweetly rippling. In any case, the castle of Windsor was high enough above it, some hundred feet, to protect us from any wayward scents or noise. Looking out across the fields and meadows from its heights made me feel like the commander of a great battleship. Below me was the ribbon of river, and stretching as far as the eye could see were hedgerows, rolling fields, and woodlands. Not far away was the water meadow of Runnymede, where King John had been forced to sign the Magna Carta by stubborn barons. Ah, well, I must guard against being forced to sign away any of my Crown’s rights. One Magna Carta was enough.

I always enjoyed Windsor in the summer; in the winter it was too drafty, and no wonder. Anything dating from the time of William the Conqueror would hardly be snug and modern. He had selected the site for its strategic location on a cliff and at the edge of a Saxon forest, to guard the western approach to London, as the Tower guarded the eastern.

As I said these words to myself, I suddenly realized how strange it was that my mother’s grave was at one site and my father’s at the other—as if they were guarding London, protecting it. My mother lay in the chapel of St. Peter ad Vincula in the Tower, and my father in the chapel of St. George here.

I was anxiously awaiting confirmed news about the Cádiz expedition. The placid countryside soothed me but did not calm me. Oh, when would they come? When would we know?

Young Cecil attended me every day, and in the quiet and privacy of the lull we were able to get much business done—the neglected sort, the things one always sets aside because they are not urgent, but left untended pile up and choke like unruly vines. Plans for the town of Deptford as it encroached upon Greenwich. Improved lists for mustering local militias. Testing of the weights and measures used in the markets. Repair to some stretches of the Wall of London. The unglamorous work of a monarch, which must go on when the robes and crowns are set aside, and woe to the monarch who omits it.

Did he feel passed over, one of the few young men not away at present? He had never ridden in the jousts, commanded a ship, or led troops. He did not sing or join in the dances. Did it eat at him? His wide green eyes gave away nothing; his courteous and gentle manner never betrayed any sense of yearning for that which he could not have. Yet I did not sense true contentment, but rather a resignation to limitations and a determination to excel wherever he was not hampered.

I liked to walk along the breezy upper ward, down the winding paved way where the Knights of the Garter walked every St. George’s Day to the celebration in his namesake chapel here, their blue velvet cloaks trailing them, their order’s garter insignia resplendent on their legs. For the newly elected, it was a high day in their lives. Only twenty-four men could serve as Knights of the Garter, and only I could select them. It was the highest order of chivalry in England. It always tugged at me that I could preside over this order of knights and yet could not be a true warrior. Like Robert Cecil, I could not lead troops or joust or command a ship. Both of us disqualified—I by my sex, he by his back. But by God, we could make them dance to our tabor!

One particularly hot day as I was emerging from the chapel, I saw an eager young man running downhill toward the green of the middle ward, waving his arms like a boy flying a kite. It was John Harington, who skidded to a halt right in front of me, gasping for breath.

“My dear godmother!” he said, bowing and then boldly kissing my cheek.

Here was another young man who had not gone off to sea, and he was able-bodied enough. “What mischief are you up to, John?” I asked. Today I was ready for it. I was ready for anything bold to amuse me, and I could usually count on John to provide it.

“I have brought you an invention, something so marvelous, so modern, so farsighted, that, being associated with your reign, it shall bring you more renown than the Armada in the annals of history.” He was out of breath with excitement, his eyes dancing, suppressed laughter seeping out from around the corners of his lips.

Well, he
was
clever, I knew that. He had once engineered an ingenious mole trap that the gardeners at Hampton swore by. He had also designed a pipe conduit that could carry more water than the old kind. Perhaps now he invented an improved weapon that would give us an edge in war—a gun of some sort that was lighter and could fire accurately with less time in between each shot. That would certainly give our armies an advantage. “What can this be?” I asked.

“Come, and I shall show you. I have it set up. Mere words cannot do it justice! It must be seen in action.” He pulled on my hand.

“Is it a military weapon?” I asked. “Will it be helpful in war?”

“Well ... not exactly.”

“Is it some sort of luxury?”

“Today a luxury, but tomorrow a necessity!”

“Is it expensive?”

“Not so much, when you figure it can service many.”

“Will it improve the appetite?”