Elizabeth I (58 page)

The Christmas season was particularly gloomy. Sometimes December can be bright and cold, but this year it was murky and wet. It fitted my spirits, which were likewise murky and wet. We kept the festivities at Richmond, and nothing was omitted to signal any diminution of the holiday. The choristers sang as clearly as ever, the boar’s head was serenaded as raucously as normal, and the plays provoked as much laughter as any other year. But I felt all the while that I was pretending for the benefit of others, as a mother will be cheerful before her children, while desperate to get food on the table.

The one genuinely bright respite came when Raleigh’s Indian was baptized and took an English name, Percival. Archbishop Whitgift presided in the royal chapel and Raleigh stood as godfather, and the new Percival, wearing English cloak and breeches, repeated his promises in clear but accented words. He had been studying all year, becoming more and more a fixture at court, and to welcome him into our company was a touching moment. Afterward I gave a reception to celebrate the occasion. Everyone crowded around to congratulate him and question him about his homeland. Raleigh’s cohort Lawrence Keymis had just returned from the Orinoco and was pleased to provide more details of the land and the elusive gold, which he had come close to locating—or so he claimed.

“I’m just about to publish my findings in
Relation of the Second Voyage to Guiana
. It will be almost like being there,” he assured us.

Raleigh stood proudly by, nodding. “I long to return,” he said. “But first, there is the matter of the voyage to the Azores to undertake, there to finish what we started in Cádiz.”

The Azores venture was a sore point with me. Raleigh spoke true. The adventurers, not content with one mission, were clamoring for another.

“You sustained an injury that has you still limping,” I said. “Let that heal before you go seeking another.”

“If we waited for all wounds to heal, none of us would ever walk again,” he said. “ ’Tis nothing.”

“Percival” joined us and bowed. “I thank you that you come,” he said to me.

“It is my pleasure to welcome such a fine new Christian,” I said. He stood straight, his bronze skin not faded from our sunless days. Beside him Raleigh looked pasty and middle-aged, despite his splendid new midnight blue velvet doublet. “I hope that you will ever feel that this land is your home.”

“Someday I go back,” he said. “See my old father. Show Raleigh the gold place. For now, I like England.”

His hair was a shiny, straight black that we never saw among our own people, not even with the Spanish, and his nose as straight as a Roman emperor’s. He towered over Robert Cecil and looked eye to eye with Raleigh. A fine race of men, the Orinoco Indians. Essex might have been taller, but Essex was not here, still hiding away from court this season.

It was while we were at Percival’s celebration that the blessed news came to us: God had proved Protestant once again. He had blown the winds up into a gale just as the Armada was rounding Cape Finisterre—“the end of the world”—at the western bulge of the Spanish coastline, scattering the fleet, driving it onto the shore, and wrecking some forty of the best warships. The few that survived were not enough to mount another attack so late in the year. We embraced the messenger and feted him, and I ordered that more of the palace’s wine stores be opened. Tonight everyone could drink as much as he or she wanted, with my blessing.

The fleet was wrecked! We were safe! I felt giddy with relief and danced with an abandon I had not mustered in months.

My feet hurt. Not dancing vigorously in so long had definitely caused them to forget the shape of my shoes. I pulled them off, and Marjorie held them up, rotating them. “These look small,” she said tactfully.

“Perhaps when I wore them in the rain, they shrank,” I said. I wanted to soak my feet in warm water before climbing into bed, so they could recover before morning. Sitting on a stool with the water lapping up around my calves, I told Marjorie once again how thankful I was that the Oxfordshire rising had collapsed and Henry was safe. He had come to court this Christmas, making Marjorie very happy. I had assigned him a chamber just next to the royal ones so she could easily slip away to spend time with him.

He was stout, and growing stouter. I wondered why that often happens—in the middle years people grow wider, and then when they become truly old they shrink. Perhaps it is a good sign if one is still corpulent.

“There have been so few disturbances during your entire reign,” she said. “That is almost unique in English history. It means that by and large you satisfy the people.”

Yes, it had meant that. But now when I rode abroad there were sullen silences and no cheers, and sometimes they still sang of Essex in the streets.

Catherine brought a thick towel. “When you are ready,” she said, holding it up.

“Charles can join us at court now,” I said. “He is free to dock his warship and come ashore. I know you will welcome that.” I had in mind a promotion for Charles, but I did not wish to reveal it now. It was time he received a new title. I bestowed them so sparingly that it was sure to attract attention. I merely smiled, keeping my secret.

“God has been merciful to us once again,” she said. “Surely Philip will give up now. And yes, I’m delighted to have my husband back again.”

I gestured toward the maidens’ chamber, where the younger girls were sleeping under lock and key. “Doubtless they will also be glad to have their suitors back,” I said. I knew they had them. It was the sneaking and the secrecy I abhorred, not the suitors themselves. Why could they not understand that?

“I shall read a bit,” I said. “You need not wait up for me.” No point in their standing duty while I read quietly. I settled myself in my most comfortable chair and moved two candles to the side table, while Marjorie excused herself to join Henry, and Catherine pulled out her truckle bed and smoothed the covers. But first she tiptoed into the little room where the formidable ajax had been installed, availing herself of it. We were all pleased by the way it functioned, but its roaring noise made us limit our use of it. John Harington, at court this season, claimed victory for his invention and was busy trying to promote it.

Francis Bacon’s essays, as he called them, resembled a tray of sweetmeats—small, bite-size, tempting the reader to consume one after another until they became a blur. I selected one at time, trying to limit myself, choosing by the title. There were over fifty of them. Tonight “Of Vicissitude of Things” caught my fancy.

“Certain it is, that the matter is in a perpetual flux, and never at a stay. The great winding-sheets, that bury all things in oblivion, are two: deluges and earthquakes.” England was doubly blessed, then, in having neither. I read on. He wrote of the breakup of a great empire and said it was always accompanied by wars. He specifically mentioned Spain and wrote that if it fell, other countries would plunder its corpse, plucking its feathers. After many examples, he concluded, “But it is not good to look too long upon these turning wheels of vicissitude, lest we become giddy.”

I shut the book. He was right. The turning wheels of vicissitude could crush me. And his image of a winding-sheet: Had I not used that very example to explain why I would not name my successor? “Think you I will spread my winding-sheet before my eyes?” I had warned. The moment I named someone to come after me, all eyes would turn that way. We worship the rising, not the setting, sun. It is in our nature. Lament it I would; ignore it I dared not.

47

C
hristmas Day was over, and after the happy news of the scattering of the Armada, the holidays had turned unexpectedly festive. The men guarding the realm had returned in time to join the court for Twelfth Night, which proved exceptionally boisterous and merry. We were safe. We were delivered, once again. God smiled on us. It was hard not to congratulate ourselves, and hard for me to remind myself that the cries of “The Protestant Princess, beloved of Providence” came not from heaven but from fickle men.

There was work to do in the realm, and I must tackle it. We must prepare for parliament, and I must address the clamoring for another venture of derring-do from the Essex faction. Essex himself had continued to absent himself from court, nursing his grievances to whip up sympathy for his misunderstood self. In his view, he was always misunderstood. The terror for him would be in realizing I understood him all too well.

That person ... that boy ... who had nakedly said he loved me, the temptation incarnate at Drayton Bassett ... where was he? He had seemingly been replaced by a pouting and sulking courtier, holding out for recognition and petting. I let him sulk and simmer, all the while wondering what was going through his mind.

His mind was not a constant thing. He was violently inconsistent, unstable. I had thought I could tame him as I had his stepfather, Leicester, but I was beginning to grasp that Essex’s unhappiness stemmed from frustration of his personal ambition rather than anything that could be addressed. No matter what rank and honors he possessed, he would always feel that they fell short and he was thereby insulted.

Lent began, slow, creeping Lent. In Catholic countries wild carnivals snaked their way through streets and bawdy clowns entertained crowds; masked men seduced young women who pretended not to know them. But here in Protestant England, we contented ourselves with using up the butter and eggs that were forbidden during Lent, along with meat. On the Tuesday before Lent began, households ate pancakes all day. In some towns there were pancake races, housewives running with skillets, tossing pancakes. Then stretched the dreariest, drabbest days of the year, the sparkling cold of winter and snow gone, the green of spring not yet here. It was a time of quiet reflection. If anyone had a tendency to brood, Lent would bring it out. The religious said this was their favorite season.

Burghley had worsened over the winter and made many apologies for skipping council meetings. I worried about him, as one always does about the elderly. He had been failing, little by little, for a long time. But I would not allow myself to envision my government without him. I was not a brooder; had I been, I never could have survived so long. I needed Burghley. He must rally; he must go on. My right arm could not lose its strength.

After five weeks of Lent, Holy Week, leading up to Easter, arrived. I knew all the services by heart, but each year I heard something different in them. Palm Sunday: the day Jesus rode into Jerusalem and was hailed by ecstatic crowds. He was the people’s hope, their Messiah. By Wednesday his disciple Judas was making arrangements to betray him. By Thursday he was having his farewell meal with his disciples. Here in England that day was called Maundy Thursday and there was a curious custom attached to it, a ceremony in which the monarch washed the feet of as many poor people as his or her age and distributed twenty shillings to each of them as well as gifts of food and clothing. As I was in my sixty-fourth year, there would be sixty-four candidates. It was like to be a long ceremony.

It was held in the afternoon in the chapel royal at Whitehall, Archbishop Whitgift presiding. I wore a suitably dark gown, with removable sleeves so that I could plunge my arms freely into the deep silver basin of warm, scented water. The sixty-four poor women were seated on stools before the altar steps, and all had removed their shoes. I looked them up and down—they were young, middle-aged, and old, to represent all the stages of life. To be chosen was a high honor; after all, there were many more than sixty-four poor in the realm, and this year in particular.

Whitgift read the Scripture that described the origin of the custom. Before the Last Supper, Jesus had washed his disciples’ feet, over the protests of Peter, who had refused to let Jesus perform the rite. Jesus had said, “If I do not wash you, you have no part in me.” At that the impulsive Peter had cried that he should wash not only his feet but all of him.