Elizabeth I (69 page)

As she came closer, I saw that the French ambassador had been right: Her face had aged. I would not describe it as “very” aged, though. Her posture was perfect and the clothes she wore—a green afternoon dress with a tawny collar—flattered her and showed off her small waist.

Robert leaped out from behind the doorway and startled them. The other ladies I knew from our days in the royal chambers together: Marjorie Norris, gone gray now, and Catherine Carey Howard, my cousin. They looked timidly welcoming but awaited Elizabeth’s reaction.

“Why, my Lord Essex,” said Elizabeth. “You loiter inside on such a bracing day?”

“Once my feet resounded in these passageways at Your Majesty’s bidding,” he said, bowing and kissing her hand. “You have only to call again and I will fly to you for indoor amusements.”

She raised him up and looked at me, showing no recognition. “And who have you brought?”

She knew very well! What was she doing?

“My most beloved mother, whom you said you would receive,” he said.

Before she could demur, I stepped forward and curtsied so low my knee hit the floor. “I am Your Majesty’s most loyal subject.”

Silence. Then she said, “You may rise.”

I did, and said, “And your most loyal cousin.” I kissed her hand, and leaned forward to kiss her breast. Rotely, she returned the kiss on my cheek. I handed her the box. “I wish you to have this in token of the love between our families.” I knew better than to say “between us.”

She took it, then started to hand it to Marjorie, unopened. Robert grabbed it away and said, “Nay, but you and the ladies must see it. It is most rare!” He flipped the lid open and showed the
B
necklace lying on its velvet pad.

“It belonged to my grandmother, your aunt Mary Boleyn,” I said. “It has always been my greatest treasure, and I want you to have it.”

Her keen black eyes examined it. Was there a flicker of a smile on her thin lips? She handed the box back to me. “I already have one,” she said. “An identical one that belonged to my mother.”

Then she walked around us, leaving us standing in the passageway.

54

ELIZABETH

May 1598

I
am touched,” I told John Whitgift, and I was.

The archbishop merely nodded, but I could see in his dark eyes how pleased he was. “I was only hoping that Your Majesty would come here before the roses faded.”

“Mine, or theirs?” I asked, but seeing that John took the jest as a true question, I quickly added, “Yours will bloom anew every year.”

My Archbishop of Canterbury had planted a sunken rose garden, a tribute to my royal house and my own private taste in flowers, at his riverside episcopal palace. Its centerpiece was a trellis of entwined red and white bushes, since even his skilled gardeners could not re-create the actual Tudor badge of both red and white petals on one flower. Around the borders he had set masses of eglantine roses—my favorite. Musk roses filled in the spaces between them.

“You have created a rose heaven,” I said. Their distinctive scent, made sharper by a morning rain, enveloped us. If only roses could bloom all summer instead of so fleetingly. Their quick vanishing makes us see them more keenly while they are still visible.

“When we go to heaven, there will be more than just roses to greet us,” he said.

Heaven. There were now a great many people waiting there for me; more than were still here on earth with me. Perhaps life is like an hourglass, with dear ones the sand that slips from the upper glass—the earth—into the second—eternity. The bottom one is ever filling, the upper one forever draining.

“I still like to think of heaven as a garden,” I said. “Pray, show me the rest of yours.”

It had been a hard winter, making the sight of flowers doubly welcome. There had been times, when the sleet dashed and slid against my windows, that I thought warmth would never return. But this May had been exuberant, as if offering apologies for the long, cold months. Now I glided along as John led me up the stairs to the raised walkway above the long garden terrace that divided the privy garden from the orchard. On the left side were four neat quadrangles of flower beds, their plantings making a mosaic of color; on the right, the frothy white of a large orchard in full bloom. If I looked closely, I could discern variations in the white treetops, and even some pale pink.

“What trees are in your orchard?” I asked.

“Plum—but that’s finished blooming now—cherry, pear, apple, apricot. I’ve had success with the apricots; you know how difficult they can be.”

My father had first had them brought over from Italy. At the time, it was thought they would never survive here, but by catering to their delicate needs, some gardeners had been lucky with them.

Striding along the walkway, seeing the gentle flowers and swaying, flower-laden branches and beyond them the stately curve of the river, it was easy to think my realm a sun-lapped, well-tended garden. But the winter had been difficult not only weatherwise but also politically. The lord lieutenant of Ireland, Lord Burgh, Black Jack Norris’s hated commander, had died suddenly, the victim, some said, of poisoning. The rebels had corrupted the inner circle of English command, it was rumored, so that they could do away with the leader. I had appointed deputies to temporary command, but for now my forces there were without a true commander, and the void was telling. The rebel forces, under The O’Neill and O’Donnell, were making steady gains, uniting traditionally quarreling Ulster, a deadly development. There were even reports that Grace O’Malley was joining them on the western side of the island. I had been remiss in recalling the repressive Richard Bingham from her area, and now I reaped the consequence. Grace was not a woman to brook insult or inaction any more than I was.

Ireland. I remembered when my father had first proclaimed himself King of Ireland, a formal declaration of liegeship after four hundred years of English invasion and occupation. I had been eight years old and wondered why he changed his title from “Lord” of Ireland to “King.” I had even asked him, and he had said with a laugh, “It’s tidier that way, making me king of everything—England, France, Wales, and Ireland—instead of lord here and king there.” Of course, that had not been the reason, and I was not many years older before I knew that my father had tried to tame the Irish by making them Protestant, and he could not legally dictate their religion unless he was their king. The plan did not work, of course, and the Irish stayed Catholic—a dangerous outpost of southern Europe right at my back door.

During my reign, I had tried half measures with Ireland to save expenses. I had sent the smallest forces I could, and their mandate was limited: to keep the peace in the precariously held English areas of the island and try to domesticate the native Irish—by bribing them with English titles, instituting English law to replace theirs, introducing them to our customs.

It had not worked. The chieftains were willing enough to assume English titles, but they merely added them to their native ones. They resented our enforcing English law, and they found our customs repellent. We had been secure in our possession of Ireland only because they squabbled so much with one another that they could not pool forces to turn on us. That, apparently, was ending now, with the cooperation of the two Ulster chiefs.

There had been another reason we could keep them in check: Our armies were better trained and equipped and obeyed a chain of command. The Irish had individual warriors of great bravery but no logistical or strategic experience. That, too, was ending. The O’Neill had learned warfare on the Continent, the same great training field as young Englishmen.

What must I do now? Should I continue the same policy or increase our presence there? If it were not for the Spanish, the “Irish problem” would not be a pressing one.

“—Puritans are squalling again. They will never be quiet, but must disrupt good honest folk—”

What was he saying? I had not heard any of it. “John, I am sorry, my mind was wandering.”

“The Puritans are starting their personal attacks again,” he grumbled. “The other day, as I was walking to chapel, a group of them—I can always spot them by their dull clothing—set upon me, yelling, ‘Get out of that woman’s frock!’ Imagine, insulting a priest’s robes. They would have all ceremony gone, have the clergy wear farmers’ breeches and pray in a stinking barnyard!”

“Some of them would have no clergy at all,” I said. “There are dangerous ideas about. No clergy today, no king tomorrow. Everyone in the barnyard being equal.” A dreadful thought. “But you, my black husband”—my nickname for him, for his old-fashioned robes and bachelor state—“serve the church well by guarding its traditions and its creed.” It made him unpopular, but his “high church” theology suited me. In truth, it was not merely his beliefs people disliked but his haughty manners. Perhaps the princely prelates of the past had exhausted their tolerance for such behavior.

“You have a fine banqueting house,” I said, stopping to admire the building. It was situated at the far end of the orchard itself, floating like a low ship in the sea of white blooms. The very words “banqueting house” meant summer to me, as they were airy, insubstantial structures where only sweets, drinks, and fruits were served as delicate music was played.

“Cranmer built it,” he said, “along with his other improvements.”

Cranmer. The man who had been my mother’s chaplain and who rose along with her, attaining the highest religious rank in the realm. He had attended her in her last hours, hearing her confession, giving her communion. After my father’s death he vowed not to shave his beard, in mourning. It was very long indeed when he went to the stake under my sister Mary. He lived on in my memory and in his exquisite words in the Book of Common Prayer.

“He always had an eye for beauty,” I said, and let it go at that. But as a victim of rabid Catholicism, Cranmer was a reminder that the Puritans were not the only danger abroad in the land.

“In words and in service,” Whitgift said.

“He left us some forty years ago, but there are still those who would wish me at the stake as well,” I said. “The Catholics here in England may be quiescent, broken as a political force, but they are still strong in personal faith, and the Spanish are doing their best to restore them to political power as well. The missionaries—how many have we caught? Hundreds—and yet they keep coming.” Father Gerard, escaped from the Tower, was still at large.

“I think we catch about half of the Jesuits,” said Whitgift.

“I am besieged on both sides,” I said. “The Church of England is too ceremonial for the Puritans and too heretical for the Catholics.”

“It is in the nature of truth to have enemies,” he said stiffly.

“Stand firm, stand firm!” I said, patting his cheek. “I know I can rely on you, my black husband.”

We descended from the terrace and walked through the garden, taking care to stay on the path. Double violets framed each bed, with a ring of sweet Williams and primroses just behind them. In the middle were taller plants—daffodils, snapdragons, poppies, foxglove, hollyhocks.

“How is my Lord Burghley?” asked Whitgift, changing course.

“Poorly,” I said. “It grieves me. But he still comes to council meetings by strength of will. And he still holds his own against the Earl of Essex and the faction breathing hot for war. A few days ago, when Essex was arguing about the necessity of attacking Spain again, Burghley reprimanded him and quoted the Fifty-Fifth Psalm to him: ‘Bloody and deceitful men shall not live out half their days.’ ”

“What spirit! And what did Essex do?”

“Got angry, saying he was not deceitful. The overall meaning of the warning was wasted on him. In any case, since I do not wish it, there will be no further attacks on Spain. It is a waste of money better spent defending ourselves here at home.” Essex could crow and demand, but in the end only I decided whether we went to war or not.

Afternoon shadows were lengthening. In the days of the monasteries, the monks would have been stopping for None prayers. It was time to leave. This was as close as I would get to a monastery, this old redbrick bishop’s palace that went back five hundred years, to when Lambeth was just a marsh and the stones of Westminster Abbey were new.