Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (68 page)

this after a quarrel with the Queen and she was a woman who appreciated

crude emotions in a man. Not for Lettice the well-mannered lover. She

had married one, for the sake of a title, and wished him dead within a

month. When Leicester flung her across the narrow Indian couch and

took her with a bruising violence that was little short of rape, she writhed

with ecstasy beneath the savage beating of his body in hers.

The arrangement had been in existence for some time now. There

had been other women, of course, over the years, even a bastard son to

Douglass Sheffield, but somehow it had been inevitable for him to drift

back into this old liaison with Lettice. He needed Lettice; she preserved

his sanity, slaking the fire which the Queen delighted to raise.

When at length he lay beside her, with one arm across her breast,

relieved of his fierce tension and desire, staring at nothing, Lettice wanted

to laugh out loud. Oh, how he loved to be the master, to remind himself

that he was truly a man; and how well their mutual need of each other

suited them both; he chained to a frigid mistress, and she to a mild, meek

bore of a husband. If she knew whenever he took her in this angry manner

that his thoughts were not really of her, it made no difference to the

intensity of her pleasure. She lived for his moods of naked savagery and

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revelled in the animal-like quality of their fierce lovemaking. Leicester

satisfied her as no man had ever done before and when at last he rose

in moody silence, dressed, and left her, she lay alone on the old couch,

treasuring her bruises and thinking smugly of Elizabeth.

Danger enhanced the quality of this stolen pleasure. Lettice knew she

risked her position at court, possibly even her life, every time she accom-

modated Leicester’s frustrated manhood. There was only one step more

perilous and already her perverse, possessive nature had begun to set itself

on the idea of secret marriage. It was impossible, of course, while her

husband lived, but he was a weakling and his service in Ireland was taking

a heavy toll of his health. Ireland had hounded better men than Walter

Devereux to their dispirited deaths. And if she should ever be fortunate

enough to find herself a lusty young widow, there was only one man who

would do now for her next husband.

Her throat was dry with excitement at the thought. To goad Leicester

into a permanent, legal relationship, to make him relinquish his vain

pursuit of that royal butterfly—it was madness, sheer insanity, almost a

death wish for the pair of them. He would never do anything so grossly

suicidal—or would he? She remembered a night not long ago when he

had drunk deep and given free rein to his resentment in a burst of inebri-

ated self-pity.

“I was full of hope after her last illness, Lettice. We were so close

that I truly began to think—” He had turned away angrily. “But I was

wrong, of course—I’m always wrong about her. And now it’s all just as it

was before—Hatton, Ormond, Oxford—Tom, Dick and Harry for all I

know—I must take my place in line again and wait until she remembers

to throw me a smile. I can’t bear it, Lettice, it’s destroying me. I never

know for sure just how far she goes with them, but one day she’ll goad

me too far. There’ll be one laugh and one slap too many—and I’ll kill her,

I swear it. I’ll put my hands round that beautiful white neck and squeeze

every last mocking breath out of her body. And when she’s dead in my

arms, she’ll be mine at last—mine only!”

“Treason,” said Lettice softly. “You know that’s treason.”

He went to stand at the window, staring bleakly at the swaying trees,

and for once she was moved by pity for the depth of his despair.

“Come here,” she said. He came back to the bed and lay down beside

her dully.

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“There is a better way to kill Elizabeth,” she whispered, “a way that

may just leave your head on your shoulders for you to enjoy it.”

When she had told him, he laughed and slapped her bare buttocks

and told her she was an impertinent little minx. She could see he had not

taken her suggestion seriously and at the time it had angered her, made

her aware of the inferiority of her position as his mistress. But she had had

the good sense not to show it and they had parted amicably.

“My dear,” he had said, in a sudden excess of maudlin gratitude, “if

only it were possible.”

The seed was safely sown, and each unkind rebuff from Elizabeth

would nurture it tenderly—Lettice was quietly confident of it.

Now she slipped off the couch and began to dress slowly, fastening the

lawn ruff over the red love bites on her neck, and smiling with soft malice

into a tiny pocket mirror.

“You had better be careful, Elizabeth, my bastard bitch cousin,”

she whispered to her reflection, “very, very careful with your precious

possessions from now on, or I may deal you a blow which will make you

wish you were dead.”

t t t

While the court was on progress at Leicester’s castle of Kenilworth later

that year, news came of an event which seemed calculated to destroy the

new alliance between England and France.

Elizabeth was out riding with a small party of courtiers when a despatch

from Francis Walsingham, her ambassador in Paris, was brought to her side.

Leicester brought his horse alongside hers as she opened the seal and

began to read. He saw the look of incredulous fury which stole over her

face and heard her curse vehemently under her breath.

“Bad news, madam?”

“I must return at once!” she said curtly and swung her horse’s head

around. They rode back in total silence and he hurried after her to her

private apartments, where she flung herself into a chair.

“Find Burghley—have him brought to me at once, and the rest of you

women, out of my sight. Leicester—you stay!”

She was in no mood to be questioned, that was obvious, so he took

up his position beside her chair and waited until Burghley hobbled into

the room.

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“Sit down,” she said before he got the chance to bow, “and read this.”

Burghley took the despatch. As he read, his white eyebrows knit

together and his normally bland features hardened.

While he absorbed details of the most unprecedented religious massacre

in history which had taken place on St. Bartholomew’s eve in France,

Elizabeth paraphrased the more horrific passages for Leicester’s benefit.

“…the Protestants lie dead in their thousands, the nobility in Paris, the

rest in villages throughout France. Women, children, and babies—yes,

babies
!—were dragged from their homes and butchered in the streets—

the River Seine is choked and rotten with festering bodies. And all done

at the hands of the French king—or, to be more precise, his damnable

mother—simply because she botched the assassination of a political rival.”

“Not
Coligny
?” murmured Leicester, aghast. Coligny was the leader of

the French Protestants.

“Yes, he’s dead! The rest were murdered for fear of revenge when blood

lust took control. Catherine has wiped out the entire Protestant faction in

France—the Puritans here will make an endless meal out of this!”

Burghley looked up from the despatch and announced with awesome

pomp, “Madam, this is the greatest crime since the Crucifixion.”

She had expected this and her glance was suddenly hostile.

“Oh, for God’s sake, Burghley, spare me the noble sentiments—I

happen to know that were this only a massacre of Catholics you person-

ally would be lauding it to the heavens. Why is it that all bigots are such

hypocrites?”

Burghley flushed as red as a beetroot at her rebuke and Leicester was

unable to resist a smile. There was an uncomfortable silence as the Queen

swept angrily up and down the narrow stone room across an oriental carpet,

then stopped and glared at Leicester, who turned off his smile hastily.

“Well? And what have
you
to say about this—as if I couldn’t guess!”

Catching sight of Burghley’s pleading glance, he coughed and took up

his cue at once.

“Madam, when the news of this gets out the fury against the Scottish

Queen will become uncontainable.”

She put her hands on her hips in what he read as an uncomfortably

threatening gesture.

“You dare to tell me to my face that Mary is responsible for this

outrage?—the woman is a friendless prisoner, not a second Eve.”

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Susan Kay

“The Daughter of Debate can scarcely be called friendless,” Burghley

interposed quietly. “She is the Queen of the Castle and her friends will

be held responsible for this, justly or not.”

“Then God preserve her from her friends, my lords, as I once prayed

he would preserve me from mine!”

It came on an angry note and the two men exchanged looks of alarm.

These odd moments of personal and political sympathy with her rival were

quite beyond their comprehension. Leicester cleared his throat hesitantly.

“Surely Your Majesty will not continue to protect her after this?

France is in no position to object to her execution now—it’s the perfect

opportunity to be rid of her.”

“I fear I must agree with Leicester, Your Majesty,” said Burghley drily

and the Queen laughed outright.

“I suppose that is indeed a miracle—the two of you in agreement after

all these years! But you waste your breath, both of you. I will not take

responsibility for the judicial execution of a sister queen.”

“Assassination then, madam,” suggested Leicester, a trifle too smoothly.

Elizabeth frowned.

“If she dies mysteriously in an English prison every finger will point

to me.”

“She could be returned to Scotland,” said Burghley calmly. “The

Scottish Regent would no doubt be glad to execute her for us—at a price,

of course.”

Elizabeth walked away from them, as though suddenly deep in

thought. Whatever the price, it would be too high, she would see to

that. Once it was accepted that a sovereign was answerable for common

crimes, like any ordinary man, the whole concept of monarchy would

be in the melting pot. She wondered why they could not see what a

dangerous precedent it would set. They were too obsessed with Mary to

see the issue objectively, worrying at her life like dogs with a bone, blind

to all reason. Even a man as astute as Burghley was unable to divorce

himself from the present and see that Mary dead might ultimately be a

great deal more dangerous than Mary alive.

She glanced at the two men, so dear to her in different ways, both

desperately trying to read her mind. The advice they gave was but an

echo of what she could expect to hear from her Council and the country

at large. “Cut off her head and make no more ado with her,” Parliament

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had said months ago. “The axe must give the next warning.” One day

there was going to be real trouble with Parliament; Elizabeth sensed it in

the growing outspokenness of the Commons. Each session seemed just a

little more difficult to rule than the last, testing her powers of autocracy,

making her stoop to flattery and dissemblance. She was not afraid of the

Lords—they were easily brought to book—but she had a deep, instinctive

wariness of conflict with the Lower House. Their readiness to consider

judicial disposal of a monarch filled her with foreboding, for what was

done once might be done again.

So—play for time now—dissipate their energies on a wild goose

chase by pretending interest in Burghley’s plan. Negotiate terms

for Mary’s execution in Scotland, knowing she could thwart them

whenever she chose—indeed, she could probably rely on the greedy

treachery of the Regent to do that for her. And in the end there would

be another negation, one of those perfect impasses for which she had

gained a formidable reputation.

She turned to Burghley and sighed.

“You may approach the Regent, my lord, but be discreet. I shall want

exact details of his terms before we proceed any further.”

Burghley exchanged a quick look of triumph with Leicester, and

Elizabeth bit her lip to curb a smile. How easy it was to manoeuvre them

all when she wished, little men—little chessboard men—who never felt

the hand that moved them.

“As for the French,” she continued calmly, “my ports will naturally be

open to refugees—but there are to be no attacks on French shipping. A

little restraint now will salvage the alliance.”

“But not the marriage, of course,” said Leicester aggressively.

“No, not the marriage, I fear.” She answered Leicester without

looking at him and glanced obliquely at Burghley. “I will leave it to you,

Robin, to keep the French Ambassador out of my sight until I can bring

myself to receive him civilly.”