Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (109 page)

an endless walk down rows of grim-faced parliamentarians, whose tradi-

tional, deafening roar, “God save Your Majesty,” had shrunk to a few

isolated cries.

She had faced some cruel moments in her varied life, but this was the

worst, this was the one thing she had believed inviolate—the love of the

people, that had been hers so long it seemed no man could take it from

her. Yet one man had. Hundreds of hostile eyes were on her now and

saw not the Virago of Tilbury, but the murderess of a national hero. And

the bitter irony of it was that no one grieved for that death more than she

who had set her hand to it.

The great hall was airless, the robes of state too heavy for her shrunken

frame, and at the foot of the throne she suddenly knew she was going

to faint.

Not now, she thought with anguished panic, not here—But the ringing

in her ears, the darkening of her vision were unmistakably familiar. She

was suddenly dimly aware of men’s urgent hands on her arms and the

indignity was like a crutch against the threatening veil of darkness. How

dared
they touch her! How dared they show that they had noticed a

momentary weakness she could have conquered without their aid?

Rage upheld her through the weary hours of ceremony and at length

it was over and the shrill voice of a gentleman usher cried out, “Make

way for the Queen to pass.”

But no one moved in all that press of bodies that barred her path to

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the door; and someone shouted in a rude, raucous voice that they’d be

hanged if they would make more room.

England is a fickle shrew who may one day break even your stony heart…

She drew a shuddering breath. The voice was so clear in her memory

that it seemed impossible more than fifty years had passed since the Duke

of Somerset had spoken those very words. She felt as though she had

run upon the point of a sword; she wanted to crumple up with a pain

beyond bearing. But she did not move, or show by a flicker of an eyelash

what she felt. She stood alone and outfaced their silent hostility until, one

by one, their eyes fell from hers and dropped shamefaced to the floor.

Slowly the Lower House began to jostle and shuffle and fall back, so that

a pathway opened before her, cut out of petty defiance by the strength of

her unwavering stare. No man among them was man enough to stand his

ground beneath her bitter scorn, and the drum farthingale of her gown

was unimpeded as she swept down their ranks.

There was new vigour in her movements now, new purpose in her

resolute stride, for there was something left for her to do after all, one last,

impossible challenge to face.

She had lost the love of a people notorious for their fickle hearts; but

she would win it back. She would make them love her again in spite of

all the odds against it; and when that love was hers once more, she would

be free to die of the wound she had received at their hands.

t t t

The houses sat taut and tense, like a pile of tinder-dry wood waiting for a

spark. When one angry member rose in a passionate denunciation of the

royal monopolies tax, it was like the sudden flare of a torch. Seconds later

the whole of the Lower House was in uproar, as lists of articles subject to

this tax were read out.

“Is
bread
there?”

“If order’s not taken it
will
be before next Parliament!”

The nebulous, simmering, sulky resentment had suddenly become

a raging conflagration, a flaming attack on the privileges of the royal

prerogative which couched the first real attack on the security of the

throne in England.

“I never saw the house in such confusion,” sighed Cecil in alarm as

councillors and courtiers alike struggled to make themselves heard above

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the stamping and jeering of open brawls. The noise of it spilt out into the

streets and soon they too were filled with jostling crowds, roaring their

support for their Parliament.

Elizabeth sensed the wave of revolutionary discontent which threat-

ened to break against her shores, sweeping the reins of government

from her hands, like driftwood after a shipwreck. Whatever else had

decayed within her, her political instinct remained true and unerring;

she had ridden too many storms to sink now for want of bending to the

prevailing wind. Her reign was crumbling round her like some brittle

sugar ornament left over from an age-old banquet, but for her there

would be one last flowering before the field of loyalty was laid waste in

a barren future.

With that sure touch of grace which had never yet failed her in her

dealings with England, she laid a soothing hand on the heart of discon-

tent. Monopolies tax was abuse on public liberty and therefore all abuses

of that system should be set right at once. She sent Cecil to convey her

artful capitulation to the house, yielding the one iota sufficient to win her

the day, a first, small concession to what monarchy must now become in

England if it was to survive at all.

Even Cecil, cool and hardened statesman that he was, could not remain

unmoved at the tumultuous reception the Queen’s message received.

Suddenly all the moody carping and bubbling resentment were swept

away by a mighty wave of gratitude and someone cried out emotionally

that her message was fit to be written in gold.

The memory of Essex was buried beneath a mound of fierce affec-

tion, as they recalled once more what they all owed to this frail old

lady. She still understood their needs, as she had always understood

them, Gloriana—their Faerie Queen. For a moment it was as though

the spirit of the coronation and the glowing memory of the Armada had

joined forces in a monstrous snowball of emotion and Cecil, watching

it all, remembered his father, smiling knowingly behind a grey beard

and murmuring, “She is the wisest woman that ever was.” He had

thought it fatuous—the distorted, exaggerated, sentimental memory

of a very old man; but now at last he understood what Burghley had

meant. She knew how to stoop to conquer, how to turn defeat into

resounding victory.

For she had conquered the Lower House. Their only quarrel now was

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over who should go to thank her, and the walls of Parliament shuddered

behind the thunderous demand.

“All, all, all!”

t t t

She smiled and said she would be glad to receive them all, or at any rate as

many as her council chamber would hold without bursting. So it was that

at three o’clock on a cold, dank November afternoon, with the candles

already flickering in their sconces and the torches blazing no the walls,

one hundred and forty gentlemen knelt before her canopied throne to

offer the love and loyalty of the Lower House. And when she spoke in

return, it was to thank them for the lifetime of affection she had known,

“…though God has raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my

crown, that I have reigned with your loves.”

Across the years their love unfolded in her memory like a reel of silver

satin, far, far back to that journey into disgrace at Woodstock when they

had first taken her into their hearts and claimed her for their own, almost

half a century before. Their love had cost her dear in personal happiness,

but their love transcended everything, so that she knew she would rather

die than live without it. And so she told them, “…it is not my desire to live

nor to reign longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. Though

you have had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in

this seat, yet you never had, nor shall have, any that will love you better.”

The emotion in the room swelled towards her like a physical force and

lifted her to the peak of her attainment, a triumph snatched from cold

ashes where none had believed such a spark could linger still. They felt as

though they were hearing her speak for the last time and when she asked

that they might all be brought to kiss her hand before they departed, they

knew then that that was exactly what she wanted to convey.

One hundred and forty gentlemen knelt reverently, one after another,

and lifted that pale, withered hand to their lips in a final gesture of fare-

well and left her room immeasurably moved. It was as though a swan

had sung.

t t t

She had set her affairs in good order. There was a lull in the succession of

cries which had marked the last years of her life, a peaceful pause which

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allowed her, without guilt, to attend to a piece of unfinished business.

Burghley had been wrong. It would have been better after the Armada

and this time she did not mean to be gainsaid.

That winter she had the coronation ring sawn from the finger in

which it had become embedded and everyone guessed that she meant

the act to symbolise the end of her marriage to the state. Ignoring the

anxious protests of her women, she dressed in summer silks through

the harshest winter in living memory and began to refuse food. By

March she was shrivelled to skin and bone, running a low, continual

fever, ignoring all the advice of doctors, and refusing to go to bed,

even at night. Instead she lay on cushions on the floor and when they

asked her why she said sadly, “If you were in the habit of seeing such

things in your beds as I see when in mine, you would not ask me to

go there.”

So they stopped asking. For hours at a time she lay silent, sucking

her finger, wretched with some untold grief that kept her from sleep

and made her sigh and seem at times about to weep. Once she began to

talk wildly of a chain of iron about her neck and they thought her wits

had wandered. Cecil asked her outright if she had seen any spirits and

she recovered her senses sufficiently to snap that she would not answer

such an impertinent question. He backed off like a whipped cur at that,

surprised that she still had the strength to retaliate. She knew then that she

must guard her rambling tongue more carefully than she had done even

in her prison days under Mary. She had not named a successor; it would

suit Cecil’s plans to have her declared insane. And once that was done, he

would not wait for her to die in peace…

She sank deeper into the labyrinth of her own mind, wandering alone

and frightened down a maze of endless corridors, fleeing from the dark-

ness that pursued her, seeking the sanctuary of a voice that had been silent

now for fifteen years.

Help me, Robin…help me to free myself while there is still time.

But she could not find Leicester. The chain grew tighter and dragged

her down in the darkness and behind her that other shadow grew close,

close enough now to be heard at last.

One day you will have to answer for your charge…I pray that my blood and

my country may be remembered in that time.

The time had come. The hour of death was upon her, but the chain on

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her spirit was still unbroken. And if she died now she would be ensnared

in dark torment for all eternity…

“No!” Her sudden cry rang out in the silent room, galvanising her

weary attendants into action. Women knelt beside her and asked what

was wrong.

“I must stand,” she sobbed. “Help me.”

“But, Your Majesty—”

“I must stand! I must!”

They looked at each other in astonishment, for surely no creature

so frail and wasted could get to its feet again. But her command was so

urgent, so anguished, that it could not be ignored as a mad fancy.

They lifted her to her feet and stood around her with hands outstretched,

expecting her to fall. But she did not fall. For fifteen hours she remained

on her feet, a living skeleton in a golden dress weighted with pearls,

staring at a fixed point in front of her, as though at an adversary.

Beyond the window the bare branches of the trees were blasted by

the wind which raged through Richmond Park. For those who stood

and watched the night was endless. Several of her young women fainted

with the strain of standing so long and the word “unnatural” began to

be spoken again in awed whispers. They said she must be fighting Death

itself; but it was not death she fought, only a phantom in her own mind;

her own guilt.

It was just before dawn when they saw her lift one hand to her throat

and smile a little, as though in triumph. They caught her as she swayed at

last and laid her back on the cushions. And there she remained, because

after that no one dared to touch her or move her against her will, until at

last the old Earl of Nottingham, braver than most, picked her up as easily

as if she were a large doll and carried her to the state bed.

t t t

Cecil received the news in his study and immediately began to tidy his