Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (62 page)

to preserve your honour; therefore I will not conceal from you what

most persons say about the matter, namely that you will look through

your fingers at taking vengeance for this deed and have no intention to

touch those who have done you this kindness, as if the act would not

have been perpetuated unless the murderers had received assurance of

their impunity.

“…I exhort you, I advise and beseech you to take this thing to heart

and let no persuasion hinder you from manifesting to the world that you

are a noble princess and also a loyal wife.”

She sanded the letter and stared down at it, gnawing the paint on

her lower lip. After a moment she pushed it across the ivory inlaid table

to Leicester, who read it in silence, arched his fine dark eyebrows, and

handed it back.

“Well?”

“A remarkable achievement, madam—anyone who didn’t know you

better would say that was written from the heart.”

His tone made her look up a trifle sharply. “When I ask your opinion

on a matter of state I expect to hear a Privy Councillor reply—not a

petulant lover.”

“I’m not your lover,” he reminded her.

“Be glad of it. One of us must maintain a little common sense. Or

would you prefer to stand in Bothwell’s shoes?”

“Poised to marry his queen—is that so far from my desire?”

“When lovers play for kingdoms desire is not enough. A marriage

between Mary and Bothwell will cost her the crown, and that, as I believe

I have told you before, is the last thing I want. So”—she tapped the letter

with a brisk forefinger—“is that strong enough to make any difference?”

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Leicester raised his broad shoulders in a noncommital shrug.

“That rather depends on how much he means to her. Not all women

abandon their lovers when the going gets rough.”

Elizabeth tucked her bottom lip under her teeth and let her mocking

gaze travel slowly over his extravagant suit, from rich doublet slashed with

gold-thread embroidery to soft leather boots studded with pearl buttons.

“You look singularly unabandoned to me, Robin.”

He followed her gaze and smiled faintly…

“The well-kept lap-dog! I sit on a jewelled cushion chewing whatever

bones you choose to throw to me, and come to heel when I’m called. I

know damned well what I can expect if I don’t.”

She laughed outright.

“You know where the door is, Robin—I shall not lack for company

if you go.”

“And you know I couldn’t stay away from you if I tried.”

“I know you couldn’t afford to stay away,” she said softly. “I’m afraid

it’s not quite the same thing.”

He was silent a moment, staring at her.

“Take any man at court,” he said at last, “use him as you have used me

all these years, and see if pillage alone will hold him.”

She left her desk and went over to him, stroking one long finger over

his taut cheekbone.

“Why do you treat me as you do?” he asked seriously. “If you love

me, why does it give you pleasure to give me pain?”

“I don’t drink and I don’t whore,” she countered lightly. “Surely I’m

entitled to one unfortunate habit.”

“It’s not a habit,” he said quietly. “It’s an obsession.”

Her soul quivered like a plucked lute string and she stepped back from

him, unnerved.

“I know,” she said uneasily, “that I am not always—kind. I try to

make it up to you.”

“Oh yes,” he conceded wearily, “with lands and money and fine

titles. I can’t complain you’re not generous. You give me everything I

want—except yourself.”

“And my crown.”

“Keep your precious crown,” he snapped suddenly. “God only knows

how much I’ve grown to hate it.”

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“And me,” she whispered, looking away from him. “You hate me

too, don’t you?”

He put up his hands to cup her chin between his fingers.

“Sometimes,” he said slowly, as though each word gave him

pain, “there are hours, even whole days, when I think I’m quit of

you for good. I can tell myself that I despise you, that I’ll never care

for you again, and for those few hours I’m a free and happy man,

gloating over my possessions and ogling your women. But you are

a fever in my blood. Each time I think my manhood restored you

strike me down again. You fall ill and I am sick with terror; you

smile and melt away all my resentments. If I could find a doctor to

cure me of my love for you, believe me, madam—I would make

him a wealthy man!”

She laid her head on his shoulder and his arms stole around her,

holding her very close.

Don’t stop loving me, Robin—don’t ever stop. Because the day you do, my

dearest, my beloved—God help me—I know I shall kill you for it
.

t t t

Mary paced her ill-lit chamber with Elizabeth’s letter in her hand. It was

more than an hour since it had been delivered and still she could not

dismiss its urgent wording form her mind.

I exhort you, I advise and beseeeh you—

It was not the sort of letter she had ever expected to receive from

the woman she regarded as her worst enemy, and the naked warmth

of its friendship had shocked and shamed her. Was this woman really a

contemptible whore, a bastard bitch devoid of all Christian feeling? How

easy it would have been for Elizabeth to stand by and laugh, to make the

sort of cruel and tasteless comment that she herself had made in similar

circumstances:
The Queen of England is going to marry her horsemaster, who

has killed his wife to make room for her.

Suddenly she was deeply ashamed of that quip.

In all the weeks of her tempestuous relationship with Bothwell, no

word of warning from friends or ministers had penetrated the crazy

fortress of her infatuation. But this letter had moved her, unnerved her,

made her suddenly begin to question her own actions with torpid bewil-

derment, like someone stirring at last from a drugged sleep. Elizabeth

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was the only woman in Europe who truly understood what it meant to

choose between a lover and a crown.

If only she was here. If only I could talk to her. Throckmorton was right. I

could have trusted her—

In an agony of doubt she turned at the sound of footsteps on the private

stairway and a moment later Bothwell was before her, towering above

her with his magnificent weatherbeaten face laughing down into hers, a

face hard and brutally handsome, like rough-hewn granite. Here was a

man indeed, a man who, given the opportunity, might even have tamed

her cousin, and for a moment she wondered just how hard Elizabeth

would have fought for her honour, that dark night on the floor of the

Exchequer House.

He seized her exultantly and swung her round as though she were as

light as a doll, but carefully, gently, remembering that already she carried

his child.

“What’s amiss, my little white Queen? You look as though you’ve just

seen a ghost—not Darnley’s, I trust.”

It was the tasteless joke of a tasteless man and she shuddered as she

handed him Elizabeth’s letter.

“You had better read this—it concerns you.”

He read it in silence, then cursed and flung it on the floor with an

angry laugh. “So the Virgin Queen offers you the advice she took so well

herself ! But that bitch’s game won’t work for you, madam. You’ll never

keep me for a tame bird as she keeps Robert Dudley—I’m no horsemaster

or kept man. I’ll leave you to your enemies first, so take your choice.”

For a long moment Mary hesitated, weighing her future in the balance,

until he bent her backwards in his arms and took her chin between his

strong fingers in a vicious grip that made her cry out with pain.

“I am your destiny. You’ll marry me and we’ll fight for your crown if

we have to. Tell Elizabeth to go to hell—it’s where she belongs anyway.”

Gladly she surrendered to his will and stood perfectly still while he

tore off her cumbersome gown and carried her through into the tiny

bedchamber. And while they made wild, passionate love on the very brink

of disaster, the Queen of England’s letter lay face down and forgotten on

the stone floor of the ante-room.

Disaster followed Mary like a patient spaniel from that day on

as, relentlessly, the very scandal men had expected to see in England

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years before was enacted inexorably, like a morality play. Mary married

Bothwell and swore that she would follow him to the end of the world

in a white petticoat before she would abandon him. And it was the end

of the world, as she had known it. Scotland rose against Bothwell in

the righteous fury of a civil war and the lovers gathered their forces at

Carberry Hill, only to watch their followers melt away in a bloodless

battle which betrayed the utter hopelessness of their course. Torn from

her husband’s side, Mary was stripped of her power, imprisoned on the

lonely island of Lochleven, and forced to the final act of abdication. But

for the fear of Elizabeth’s retribution she would have been executed,

and increasingly Mary looked on her cousin as the only friend left to

her in a world turned suddenly treacherous and hostile. For a few short

months, in spite of the miles between them, each felt a curious closeness

to the other, two women against an army of men. Elizabeth was working

furiously for her release and reinstatement, confident that it could only

now be accomplished on terms favourable to herself, when Mary plunged

everything into chaos by escaping. Her few days of wild liberty ended in

a resounding armed defeat at the battle of Langside, and Mary fled across

the bleak Scottish countryside as a fugitive in fear of her life.

In May 1568, against the advice of her staunchest supporters who

begged her to flee to France, Mary turned to the last relative she trusted.

She crossed the Solway into England in a tiny fishing boat, wearing the

only gown she possessed, to throw herself upon the mercy of her cousin

and dearest friend—Elizabeth.

t t t

“Well, madam, you have the wolf by the ears now, and no mistake.”

The comment fell from the Secretary’s lips, as flat and heavy as a lump

of lead, and she did not trouble to stop writing or look up.

“That’s not an original remark, Cecil. I had expected better of you.”

He promptly began to give it in a tone deliberately casual, but spiced

with malice.

“I hear she is holding a pretty court in Carlisle, madam, for all her

ragged state—a dispossessed princess makes a most appealing damsel in

distress. I hear it said on all sides that, even in rags, she is very beautiful.”

Elizabeth looked up at that and eyed him with respect; he was perhaps

the one man at court who would have dared to mention it.

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“You have no scruples, have you, Cecil? You would have made a

good woman. Are you actually daring to suggest that I have good cause

to be jealous?”

“Jealous of your people’s loyalty, madam. Remember that most of

your northern lords are Papists. Within months the whole of the North

could be aflame beneath her banner. The Catholics—”

“You,” she interrupted waspishly, “have Catholics on the brain.”

“Certainly I maintain that the statutory measures against them are

hopelessly inadequate under the present circumstances.”

She pursed her lips angrily; she was beginning to grow annoyed.

“Did you learn nothing at all from my sister’s reign, Cecil?”

“Madam, I fail to see—”

“Then open your bigoted eyes and look around you, my friend.

Perhaps you will see that the majority of my Catholic subjects are

quiet, law-abiding folk whose only real desire is to live out their lives in

peace. It’s my belief that half of them couldn’t give a damn who is on

the throne. But start a reign of terror and they’ll begin to care heartily

enough—they’ll take up her cause like a crusade and you and the rest

of my godly Council will have so much to answer for you’ll still be

excusing yourselves on the Day of Judgement. I’ve told you more times

than I care to remember that persecution is the last resort.”

“The last resort will come, madam, no matter how you try to avoid it.

If the Pope should excommunicate you now in favour of Mary, the very

word Catholic will become synonymous with traitor. Parliament will cry

out for action against them.”

“And you can’t wait for that day to dawn, can you, Cecil—you

and the rest of your Puritan mob? Well, I can tell you this much—I’ll

stand against it as long as I am able. I will make no windows into

men’s souls!”

She leapt out of her chair and swirled away from him in her billowing

russet skirts, and he sighed inwardly. She was a sad disappointment

to him in religion and indeed he had the sneaking suspicion that she