Elizabeth I (51 page)

I would sleep in my lightest linen tonight, and even that would most likely be too stifling. I laid my dress aside and made ready for bed, wondering if I would sleep at all.

The bed was as we had left it earlier. I had not tidied it. As I smoothed out the rumples, I was disgruntled with myself.
Is this your way of keeping a memento, Lettice?
I asked myself.
Other women keep flowers or verses; you preserve a disordered bed. Fool!
I smacked at the covers.

“Are you angry at it?” a quiet voice from behind me asked. I whirled around to see Will in the doorway, a black outline against the candlelit outer room.

“How did you get in?” I cried. He had entered so silently.

“You gave me a key. Do you not remember?”

“Yes, yes ...” The Cádiz crisis had driven all else from my mind. “Forgive me, my mind is roiling. I have had news about the expedition, not entirely welcome news.”

“I heard as well. The news is everywhere, although I gather the ships are not back yet. It was the talk of the tavern. It quite drowned out the critics of my play, so I should be thankful.”

“Good for you. I have less to be thankful about. Is that why you have come?” I realized how very late it was.

“I left my satchel here,” he said.

“As long as you did not leave your purse,” I said, I hoped lightly.

“What is in the satchel is of more worth to me than gold,” he said. “I have the outline of the plots of my next play as well as several drafts of poems.” He went around the bed, feeling behind the curtains. “Ah.” He held up a leather satchel triumphantly. “Disaster averted!”

“You could, I suppose, have reconstructed them,” I said. Just as my son would have to “reconstruct” his voyage for the public.

“Probably not,” he said. “My first ideas are the clearest. After that they fade and become commonplace, losing all their originality.” He patted the satchel possessively. “I also”—he looked toward the adjoining room—“wished to speak to you.” Before I could move, he slipped out into the other room, and I had no choice but to follow.

In this large, empty chamber, I suddenly felt at a great disadvantage, clad only in a thin nightgown, while he was wearing his doublet, trunk, and hose. He stood a few feet away, watching me. Then he said, “I must not come here again. It must be over.”

I had been expecting this, sometime, yet now that it had come, I could only ask dejectedly, “Why?”

“Must I list all the reasons? Surely you know them.” He did not sound in the least regretful. That stung.

“Yes, I know them,” I said. “And I concur. It must end. It never should have started.”

“No. It never should.”

“Are you sorry?” Again, the question I should not ask.

“No,” he said. “If I said I did not enjoy it, I would be lying. I enjoy it all too much. Like those poor drunkards we see, still longing for that which is destroying them.”

“That is not very flattering,” I managed to say, thinking all the while that he was describing me, not himself.

“On the contrary, it is an extreme compliment. In any case, your husband is returning, and so is my friend Southampton. Sharing you with all those men taints my appetite, and what was fair becomes festering foulness. You owe your fidelity to your husband, and I owe mine to my friend.”

“You speak true.”

“Thus, I will say farewell. When we meet again, it must be in public.”

He stood there in the middle of the room, his poise enviable.

No man had ever rejected me. I had been the one to call a halt, to say all the tired old phrases, no less true for being tired.

I must do this for your own good.

You will find a woman better suited to you.

The fault lies in me, not in you.

If the world were different, we could be together.

“There is someone else,” I said, the tiredest phrase of all.

He shrugged. “There is always someone else, in a general sense, but at the same time, for me, there is never anyone else.”

“What do you mean by that?”

“Only that, as far as my heart goes, I allow no one to penetrate it, but you have managed. Perhaps you succeeded because you are forbidden. But at the same time, that is why it must end.”

I had never felt so humiliated by a man before. I nursed the wound, even as I finally said, “Of course.”

He looked pityingly at me. “If I told you that I carry you with me always, that you inform my writing, that you will live in my plays and verse, would you believe me?”

I had to wipe that pity off his face. “Why should that matter to me?” I answered flippantly. “It isn’t your writing I’m interested in.” There. I hoped that hit home.

It had. For an instant a hurt expression crossed his face, but it was quickly replaced by indifference. Better that than pity.

Wordlessly he turned and left, and I lost him forever.

42

ELIZABETH

August 1596

T
hat man! That nerve!” I flung the paper down in front of me, a pretend letter giving me the earliest report of the Cádiz venture, featuring the derring-do of the Earl of Essex, entitled “A True Relation of the Action at Cádiz.” The adventurers were back. They had ventured into port at twilight, as if ashamed to face folks in the honest light of day.

“Patience, Your Majesty,” said Robert Cecil. “More will be forthcoming, and have we not received, by hearsay, glowing reports of their success in Cádiz?” He strove to give an impression of calm, to offset me.

“I cannot trust any of them,” I lamented. “They alter the telling to glorify themselves.”

“All men do, Your Majesty. I fear that is just the human condition. That does not mean we must discount all of it.” Robert Cecil shook his head as he shuffled the papers from hand to hand. The most impudent one was this account of the Earl of Essex, which he had tried to have printed secretly and distributed before his arrival. But his messenger, Sir Anthony Ashley, had also been commissioned to track down the treasure that had disappeared once the ships docked. A busy man, Sir Anthony. For as it turned out, he had helped himself to the very treasure he was charged with locating. Trunks of it had been sent to his London house, and he had sold to city merchants an enormous diamond that was earmarked for me. Neither the diamond nor the payment for it had been recovered. The man was an out-and-out thief. I sent him to Fleet Prison and relieved him of the so-called “True Relation of the Action at Cádiz” he was having printed. I then forbade all publications relating to the voyage, on pain of death.

“Where is Essex now?” I asked.

“I just received a request from him to call upon Your Majesty privately. He is, I believe, here in London.”

I drummed my fingers on the desk. They echoed the drumming rain outside. Gusts of wind blew spray through the windows, but to close them was to feel as if we were in a tomb. Oh, it was so hard to think in this damp oven! “No,” I said. “We shall receive him here in front of the entire court, in the most formal manner. Look to it.”

In the meantime I pored over other sketchy reports about the mission, the most factual so far. The fleet had made good speed down to Spain, rounding the corner of Cape St. Vincent before striking Cádiz. The citizens were taken by surprise on that Sunday morning in June. One moment they were strolling in the great square, admiring tumblers and comedians, and the next, 150 warships and galleys, white sails filling the sea, were bearing down upon them. Panicked, they ran for safety to the old citadel on the highest point of land. And then the English commanders—particularly Essex and Raleigh—began to fight among themselves as to who would lead the charge, whether they should first pursue the merchant ships in the harbor or attack the town. Essex had his way, and the naval action was deferred. By the time it was joined, Sidonia had managed to jettison the treasure-laden ships and send them to the bottom of the sea. We had a certain satisfaction in capturing two of their newly built warships named for the apostles,
St. Andrew
and
St. Matthew
, but the other two,
St. Thomas
and
St. Philip
, were burned by the Spanish.

St. Philip
! King Philip must have been gleeful about his namesake escaping our grasp, that is, if it lay in his nature to be gleeful.

The fighting took only two days. Then it took two weeks for the usual capture and counting of goods and burning of the town. Essex put on a chivalrous show in carrying out my instructions that there be no violence to anyone. He stood, unarmed, talking to Spaniards. He escorted Spanish ladies to the safety of boats to convey them out of the city, allowing them to wear their jewelry and carry trunks of fine clothes. The elderly were put in special boats. He gave his protection to all the religious orders and let the Bishop of Cuzco go free. He was courteous and respectful to nuns, virgins, and other honorable ladies. He gave his hand to the populace and let them kiss it.

I kept rereading the last two sentences, feeling anger rising in me like spring sap. So he was respectful, in public, of honorable Spanish ladies, but did his utmost, in private, to deflower the ones in our court? And as for giving his hand to the people of Cádiz to kiss—what brazen posturing and bid for popularity!

I set the day for his reception at court for ten days hence and ordered everyone to be present, on pain of incurring my displeasure. In the meantime, reports of his behavior here reached my ears. He visited Archbishop Whitgift and persuaded him to announce a day of thanksgiving throughout all the realm for the exploits of the mission. Attempting to circumvent my orders forbidding publication of his “True Relation,” he had handwritten copies made to circulate among his friends and had it translated into French, Dutch, and Italian to be printed abroad. He commissioned an engraved map of Cádiz, with himself and his actions there, as another way of advertising himself without actual publication of the text. He presented a Great Psalter, taken in the plunder from Cádiz, to King’s College at Cambridge, with a poem praising himself added to its frontispiece. This went:

So! He was greater than Hercules? Head and shoulders above the rest in height and honors? Anyone who doubted he was building up a party for himself, with the goal of seizing power, was as blind as Samson after his eyes were put out. The only saving grace was that he was not clever enough to do it secretly, so his intentions were plain to see. His need to appeal to the public meant everything he did was visible.

I must control him, before he grew too strong to manage. He was still vulnerable, his rivals more numerous and more powerful than he, despite his claim that he was head and shoulders above them in height and honor. Height yes, honor no. It was characteristic of him to think those two were inextricably tied together, as if to be tall were always to be singular. Craving power, he had become everyone’s plaything.

The most ominous part of the poem was “Who is the friend and beloved of the common people of England.” It was
I
who was the friend and beloved of the people of England. It was I who was their mother, their bride, their protectress. Not he. Never would I allow another to usurp my place in the hearts of my people. I had married England at my coronation, and as with any other marriage, no man must put it asunder.

For the reception I returned to Whitehall as the most convenient place for everyone to convene, even though the city was a dreary place this summer. The rains had turned all the unpaved streets into muddy quagmires, and even the graveled ones were sinking and reverting to mud. The smell from the river had abated somewhat, as so many fish had died and been swept away. Englishmen being Englishmen, things went on gamely. The theaters put on plays; the markets, with their dwindling, sodden produce, stayed open; churches had their rush-strewing ceremonies; river swans were counted and marked. A dogged and determined lot, my people. The taverns did an increased business, spewing drunken people out into the night streets to roam, fight, and sing.