Elizabeth I (76 page)

I opened it, seeing the title:
A View of the Present State of Ireland
. “This should be of immediate use,” I said. But obviously it had been written earlier; this poor creature, whose recent observations would be most pertinent now, could hardly hold a pen.

“The only way to rule Ireland is to destroy it and then build it up again, in our own image,” he cried. “Burn it to the ground! Finish what they have started! Only by overriding all law, by stamping out every vestige of their language and customs and clans, can we turn it into a real country!”

The ugly face of violence now showed itself; spawned by the violence he had experienced, he was dyed in that color himself.

Unthinking violence was hideous no matter who was spouting it or who had been wronged. None of us could say we would not feel the same after seeing our families killed, but a gentle poet was such an unlikely avenging killer. If it could convert him, even in thought, it could convert anyone. Oh, what had the people of Ireland turned into, on both sides?

“I shall read your manuscript,” I promised him. “Raleigh, let me tell you of Constancia the tortoise and how she fares,” I said, changing the subject. “She went inert over the winter, and moving her indoors into a barn took four men, as she was so heavy and her shell did not afford any handholds. But she revived in the spring and now paces the Hampton Court garden. I think she is lonely. She seems to yearn. Can you bring her a mate?”

“Only if I can sail to where her kind lives,” said Raleigh. “But the moment you give me leave, off I’ll go. Percival, what do you say?”

“I am ready,” he said.

We all laughed gently, and Percival and Raleigh helped Spenser to the door.

61

LETTICE

October 1598

A
golden swirl of leaves danced outside my windows. October this year was a honey yellow succession of warm days. The harvest, again, was meager, making autumn like unto a beautiful woman who was barren. Still it was possible to appreciate the season’s sterile beauty, to walk in the soft afternoons along brick garden pathways and take pleasure in it.

Essex House was now the center of the preparations for the Irish venture. I trembled to think about it. The Queen, for reasons known only to herself, had settled the fate of England in my son’s hands. When he had burst out, “Her mind is as crooked as her carcass!” that day at home, I had hushed him immediately. The very birds of the air might be spies. But that phrase had stuck in my mind. I could not help thinking that perhaps her mind was faltering. She was sixty-five now and her behavior was erratic. She had forgone her Progress this year; the official reason was the death of Burghley, but I wondered if that was just an excuse because it was too demanding of her.

I had to admit that she had acted with uncharacteristic decisiveness in her response to the defeat at Yellow Ford and the uprising. But a Tudor can never accept rebellion or defeat, and her blood called forth her prideful response. It may have been the insult of the “bush-born kern,” as she called him, besting her forces. With surprising speed she had determined to subdue Ireland and had chosen Robert as marshall of the army.

He would go where his father had gone and never returned. To the place that was the graveyard of one English commander after another. His most immediate predecessor, Lord Burgh, had perished last year, some said of poison. If malaria and treachery in Ireland did not do you in, poison finished the job.

This time the army was to be huge—the largest force ever sent to Ireland. They were talking of sixteen thousand foot soldiers and thirteen hundred cavalry. All under the leadership of my son, whose grasp of land warfare was tenuous at best. The only other sole command he had been given was in France seven years ago. Nothing was achieved there, except the death of his brother, my youngest child, Walter. Robert had become a military figure by fierce desire, showing how wishing for something can bring it about, but wishing does not bestow natural ability to go along with it.

Robert could make men follow him, but he did not know how to lead. That was the truth of it. Only luck could guarantee his success. But did not Caesar himself say luck played a large part in his battles? “The luck of Caesar” became a byword.

Oh, ghost of Caesar, grant a little of it to my son!

As I was framing these words, I rounded a corner and startled a flock of magpies quarreling over a heap of leaves and compost. Chattering, they rose up, wings astir. One ... two ... three ... There were seven of them.

Quickly I made the sign to reverse the bad luck, crossing my two thumbs. The devil’s own self was Ireland.

I hurriedly left the place where I had seen the magpies and soon heard the chattering of human voices, reminding me of the birds. It was Frances, arm in arm with an extremely pregnant Elizabeth Vernon, Southampton’s disgraced wife. She had taken refuge under our roof—another thing for the Queen to hold against us. So infuriated was she that they had married in defiance of her forbidding it that she clapped Southampton in Fleet Prison. There he languished, while Robert brought him news of his wife’s condition.
The Queen,
I thought bitterly.
She holds us all prisoner to her whims and prejudices.

I greeted the lady who was now Countess of Southampton, whether the Queen would have it or no. At court she had been known as a beauty, with her sleepy eyes and tumbling curls, but now her face was puffy with the last stages of pregnancy and with weeping and worry. Her belly swelled out the front of her gown like the sails of a ship sailing before the wind.

“It’s a boy,” said Frances. “We have just held the wedding ring above her belly on a string, and it swung back and forth. That means it’s a boy!”

I smiled. I had done the same with all my children, but I was wrong about three out of the five. “Wonderful!” I said.

She looked so uncomfortable she would doubtless be pleased no matter what the baby turned out to be. I was glad my childbearing days were over; it was a distinctly miserable state. I was also glad I had never revealed to anyone that Southampton and I had been lovers. Robert prided himself on knowing so much, but he was ignorant of this foray on my part. He also never knew about Will.

Southampton had been a good lover. I wondered, fleetingly, if he was different with Elizabeth. Men tended to be, I found, with women they respected. Of course, she had been his mistress for three years first. Ah, well, best not to think too hard about these things.

“All is in readiness for the birth,” Frances said. “The midwife is waiting and the cradle lined with blankets and little mattress.”

“May your time be easy,” I wished her.

I left the gardens of Essex House and went out by the water gate. I was not ready to return to the house, where so many men were always loitering about. Robert seemed to have immense numbers of hangers-on, many of them elusive and troublesome characters, men who had not prospered at court or elsewhere and were looking to make their fortunes somehow, without straining themselves. These were younger sons of country families, adventurers who had staked all on piracy and impoverished themselves, disenfranchised religious zealots on both sides, ambitious scholars who found no appointments equal to their merits, and unemployed soldiers. Such were the flotsam and jetsam now sloshing around Essex House.

The Thames gleamed flat and broad in the sunlight, and I asked our boatmen to take me out.

“Where to, Countess?” the head boatman asked.

“To nowhere,” I said. “Up and down.”

“Tide is coming in, and we don’t dare go under the bridge,” he said. “But we’ll go there and then turn back.”

London was at its best this time of year. Boatmen out on the water were in a jolly mood, waving to and racing one another. The Queen’s swans bobbed up and down, white spots covering the water. There were so many of them this year. The swan herders must have been busy this spring, marking all the new cygnets. I had missed the one day when they had to round up all the swans to count and mark them; it had been right after my nonreception by the Queen, and I was not in a mood to watch other creatures being added to her toll.

But today I did not begrudge her her swans. She had nodded once again to the house of Devereux, had gathered Robert under her wing. He had been given one more chance.

We turned before being caught in the gush of water between the pillars of the bridge and made our way back upstream. I watched the city thin and then die away as we passed Chelsea; the bank became lined with willows and reeds. Before long we came around the bend on the south bank with Barn Elms, the home of Frances, the place where old Walsingham had died.

Frances. Was she happy? Did Robert make her happy? Did she care? Did he? I could not read her at all. She was one of those creatures who always seem content, whose inner workings are never visible. Someone had whispered to me—was it Christopher?—that perhaps Robert had chosen her because she was the opposite of me. That after a mother of such storm and drama, he wanted a quiet wife who would make no demands. Well, he had gotten her.

Around another long loop of the river and we were abreast of Syon House on the north bank. The mansion was set far enough back that it was hard to see through the trees. That was the home of my Dorothy now, the new Countess of Northumberland. She had married the odd earl, Henry, not long ago, and entered into his strange way of life, enduring a husband who fancied alchemical experiments with men such as John Dee and Thomas Harriot, smoking tobacco, and stargazing. All my children seemed to have made peculiar marriages.

My daughter Penelope’s lover was not as odd as the legal spouses of my other children. Charles Blount seemed a perfectly reasonable man, if one overlooked his and Penelope’s flagrant adultery. They had a son already, a boy they had named Mountjoy. In the meantime, Penelope’s legal husband, Lord Rich, seemed unperturbed by the situation and often dined with them.

The afternoon sun was glancing off the water and bothering my eyes. I was ready to return and ordered the boat back to Essex House. I took one last look at Syon House, standing like a sentinel, and sighed. If this was the life Dorothy wanted, then I would not question her choice.

By this time of day, more people had gathered at our home. The numbers swelled as the evening drew on, and we were expected to feed them all. Robert was considered a Great Man, and a Great Man had many retainers, all of whom he must provide for. But it was not in his means to do so, so we were heavily in debt and growing more so. Surely these men would go with him to Ireland and feed off the Queen’s bounty, not ours!

After supper—once again stripping us bare, like a flock of crows—the men drifted off to wherever they roosted during the night, leaving us a semblance of privacy. Withdrawn into our chambers, there was only the family, and Edmund Spenser, who was staying with us. He was too shaken to return alone to his home of Petworth, and we wished to protect him here. He had forced himself to attend on the Queen, although it had taken all his reserves to do it. He would soon be called to the Privy Council, and that would be an ordeal. He was hardly sleeping, and when he did sleep, he was pursued by nightmares. He shivered and shook in his room because he could not bear for a fire to be lit. The flames, the crackle, the pop of wood—they sent him into a fit of fear. To warm himself he tried wrapping furs and blankets around his body; in truth it was not even cold outside yet, but his thin frame and shrunken spirit chilled him.