Elizabeth I (92 page)

“The earl is gone,” said Catherine, shaking her head. “It seems impossible. Such a man, larger than all around him, cannot just vanish.”

“Others, just as large, have vanished before him. There is no man too large for death’s jaws.” But I could not believe it, either. The beautiful, wayward child gone, before he had attained whatever it was he had been seeking. Now, as I remembered him, he seemed to go backward in time, shrink, grow younger and happier, until I was gazing at that enigmatic boy at his mother’s side who had refused to kiss me.

Full dark had fallen before Egerton arrived. He swept off his cloak, glittering with night mist, and knelt.

“Thomas, I am grieved for you and for him,” I told him. “Please rise. When did it happen?”

He brushed his fair hair and said, “It did not happen. The earl is alive. Just barely, but alive.”

“Then why—”

“A servant from the house must have spread the word, and no one thought to verify it. It was well known that the earl was sinking, and the people just assumed that the illness had followed its natural course.”

“Will it?”

“I cannot say. He is weak, but he has been weak for some time. He does not seem to be losing ground.”

“I shall send my physicians to him.” I was momentarily elated that he was not dead. Then, the pressing problem of what to do with him came back.

“Send them to my wife as well,” he said. “She is gravely ill, and I cannot tend to her as I need to. The earl usurps all my care and attention. It is not he who is the prisoner, but I. Find him another jailer! Set me free!” Egerton burst out.

“Why, Thomas, I did not know that your Elizabeth was not well,” I said. “Certainly you must not neglect her to hover over the earl, who is never content, no matter how much attention he receives. And as for another jailer—if there were another man so honest, strong, reliable, and as kind a friend to the prisoner, I would appoint him in an instant and relieve you. But there is not. So you must endure a while longer. If the earl survives, we will have a proper trial for him and settle his situation.”

After he left, I turned to Catherine. “Only royal deaths are announced by bells. So this is what the people think of him?”

“A state funeral can have such bells,” she reminded me.

“Only with my permission,” I said. “I did not give it. I was not even asked.”

My physicians confirmed that Essex was indeed very ill but the outcome uncertain. He was not exactly at death’s threshold, but any turn for the worse would push him over.

“His liver is stopped and perished,” one of them reported.

“His entrails and guts are ulcerated,” said another, shaking his head mournfully.

“I shall send him some of my game broth,” I said.

“He may be past that,” the physician said. “But knowing it came from your hand may prove healing.”

It had not saved Burghley, but it was all I could offer.

Christmas was coming, and a new century: the year of our Lord 1600. We would celebrate at Richmond this year, and in mid-December the court moved. As I entered the royal barge, I looked back at York House, so near to Whitehall. It was quite dark. Only a few lighted windows reflected in the black, lapping water.

Richmond had been readied for us, and the palace was comfortably snug. The familiar boat-shaped bed with its sea-green hangings greeted me like an old friend.

“You have been waiting for me, have you?” I addressed it. It is easy to imagine that our beds, chairs, and tables miss us. Certainly knowing that when I returned to one of my palaces all would be unchanged was a comfort to me.

Catherine was with me, and the admiral would soon join us. Helena, living so nearby, would also come, bringing her family. The younger maids of honor and the ladies of the chamber were looking forward to the court festivities, hoping for a season of flirtation that might lead somewhere. Their trunks were full of new gowns and old family jewels.

The Great Hall would be the focus of dances, banquets, and new plays. I had ordered it hung with greens, garlands, and holly.

Although everyone was bubbly with excitement, and the palace glowed with decorations and anticipation, I could not shake a melancholy that had settled in my bones. This time last year Essex had been healthy and ready to embark to Ireland. We had danced together at Twelfth Night. But now I suspected that even then he had been corresponding with O’Neill, perhaps arranging their meeting. And I knew that he had also approached King James—secretly, he thought. If I wished we could somehow turn back a year, he must wish it even more.

And there was something else—an uneasy superstition about the turning of the century, leaving behind the one I was born in. It felt vaguely unlucky, as if the new century would cast me out as someone who did not belong.

As I stood in the bedchamber musing on this, Catherine knocked timidly.

When I bade her enter, I saw to my surprise that her husband was there with her.

“Why, Charles!” I said, ready to make a jest about his being in the bedchamber. But his somber face, and Catherine’s tear-streaked cheeks, stopped me.

“He has brought sad news,” said Catherine. “It seems—it seems—” Her choking tears made it impossible for her to continue.

“Marjorie Norris has died,” he said. “I came here as soon as I heard.”

My heart stopped. I swear it. There was a pause where nothing stirred within me, and I felt myself falling, a great swooping gasp. Then it started up again. Beat. Beat. I gripped my hands together tightly and said, “How?” My voice was just a squeak.

“It was grief for their sons,” he said. “Sir Henry sent word from Rycote. She never rallied from the loss of the last three in Ireland in such quick succession, he said, and just dwindled away. He was powerless to stop it—although when I last saw him he was withering away, too. He will follow her soon.”

“That is fitting,” I said. They had been together for fifty-five years, a rarity for a marriage. But oh! I had been with them almost that long.

“She will be buried in the family tomb at Rycote chapel,” said Charles.

I would never see her again. That enormity only just now settled on me. Whether or not we had said formal good-byes did not matter. I had grown accustomed to the truth that one seldom says them to the people one loves the most. But never to hear her laugh again, never to walk together through the autumn leaves, never to hear her astute comment about someone again ... oh, this would be hard.

“We will pray for her,” I said. And, sinking down on my chair, I did. But the prayer turned to one of thankfulness that God had given me such a faithful friend, and for so long. “The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away,” I said aloud. “Blessed be the name of the Lord.” In the end, what else can we believe, if we are to survive?

For the younger people, particularly those celebrating Christmas at court for the first time, I suppose it was a festive event. Certainly the fires blazed as brightly, the musicians played as sprightly, the snow flew as furiously, and the banquets were as sumptuous as of yore. If I had been seeing it through fresh eyes, it would have dazzled me. I got myself up in the richest gowns, draped my ropes of pearls over my bosom, affixed my jeweled hair ornaments, and sallied forth to my own tournament: a test of my skill in creating make-believe. I wanted the youngest to remember this when they were old, to be able to say, “I shall never forget Christmas in the old Queen’s court.” I owed it to them—and to myself.

Nonetheless, I had a shiver of foreboding when midnight came and the entire century that began with “fifteen” slid into “sixteen.” To straddle two centuries is a fearsome thing; one does not have to be superstitious to tremble at the veiled years stretching out, disappearing in a fog of mystery. This century would outlive me; how many years would I be allowed to tread into it?

Raleigh was standing beside me when the last few moments of 1599 flitted away. His sturdy presence made the absence of Essex all the more noticeable. What a difference a year can make in our fortunes.

“Your Majesty looks glum,” he said. “That is no way to welcome the new century. ’Tis said whatever you are doing in the first minutes or hours, you’ll do all year. Whatever is troubling you, thrust it aside immediately, lest it stick!”

I laughed. “You are good medicine, Sir Walter,” I said. “I was thinking only that I don’t like the sound of ‘sixteen’ as well as ‘fifteen.’ But I must get used to it.”

“You should take as your model our dear Constancia,” he said.

Constancia? Who was that? A Portuguese lady? I did not want him to realize I did not know, so I smiled.

“The tortoise, Your Majesty,” he said pointedly. “Remember?”

“Oh! I thought you meant a fair lady.”

“She is fair—if you are a male tortoise. But there is none nearby. She must be lonely.”

“All maiden ladies are not lonely, Sir Walter. And why should I take her as my model?”

He shrugged. “The centuries come, the centuries go—she lives through them all, hardly noticing.”

“But hardly participating, either,” I said. “I would not envy that.” God knew I had plunged fully into the life surrounding me.

Peering down the long corridor of the new century, I knew that whoever followed me would inherit the problems I had failed to solve.

But already I could feel, like the delicate stirring of air in a sealed room, the longing for change in my people.

“The gloomy look again,” said Raleigh. “Come, we must dance and chase that melancholy away.”

I got through it. All the masques, the recitals, the master of misrule’s uproarious Twelfth Night, even a comedy about courtly people hiding in the forest. It was yet another offering by that busy fellow, Shakespeare, who played a rustic in it. He must do nothing but write, or else he wrote very fast. Although I laughed and nodded, I paid little attention, putting on as good an act as the actors themselves.

Now at last it was over. The carts carrying the theatrical costumes and props rumbled away; the courtiers returned to their homes; the servants stripped the greens and the banners from the Great Hall, and we faced January with no adornments, no shields.