Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (79 page)

was nothing more to be said. She could not help him now.

She snapped her fingers curtly. At Leicester’s command the guards

returned to remove the prisoner and in his wake the council members

filed silently from the room, leaving the Queen alone with her host.

Elizabeth walked to the empty hearth, laid a hand on the chimney-

piece, and leaned her forehead against it. Leicester watched her for a

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moment in silence, staring at the high lace collar which stood out around

her shoulders, hiding her jewelled hair from view. Presently he came up

behind her and put his hands on her shoulders.

“Don’t reproach yourself—you did everything you could to save him.”

She shook her head.

“I could offer him nothing he held important.”

“You offered him his life,” said Leicester firmly, “and if that’s not

important to a man, I’m damned if I know what is! He’s brought this on

his own head and, fond as I was of the fellow, I can’t say it surprises me.

Since I first knew him he was a stubborn devil.”

“But not a traitor.”

Leicester frowned. This was exactly the reaction he had feared.

“Madam, according to law—”

“I know the law!” she said irritably, moving away from him. “God

knows I ought to—I made it! And may God forgive me for it.”

“Elizabeth—”

“No—don’t humour me! Don’t cozen me with your logic. There is

no way I can escape the consequences of what I have done. When I came

to the throne, this land was sick with religious persecution. I hated it then

and I hate it now. How many more loyal men am I to lose through this

bigoted madness?”

“For every one who is loyal there may be five waiting to strike,” said

Leicester patiently. “Nothing disturbs me more than your belief that the

increase of Catholics in this country can be no danger to you. They are

saying in Europe that the Pope has given England to anyone who will

undertake to go and get it. The danger to your life—”

“Oh, my life!” She swung round upon him contemptuously. “Is my

life really worth all this?”

He put his hand gently beneath her chin and raised her face to his.

“Your life,” he said slowly, “the continuance of your reign, is the only

thing that matters now in England. And if it costs the death of Campion

and a thousand like him, it will be worth it. You are the rightful Queen

of England.”

“In English law,” she said steadily, “I am illegitimate.”

He was silent. It was something no loyal Protestant spoke of—but

certainly there was no denying what lay on the Statute Book. Uneasily

he watched her toy with the contents of his fruit bowl; there was

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something in her expression, oddly intense and preoccupied, that

disturbed him greatly.

“All the evil in the world God took and locked in an apple, forbidden

fruit of a blighted tree.” She held an apple in one hand and scored its

smooth skin with a sharp fingernail, squeezing till it bled a little juice on

to her gown. “
Such an incredible fierce desire to eat apples…the King says it

means I am with child…
” Suddenly she looked over her shoulder at him.

“Do you know who said that, Robin?”

A cold finger touched his spine, setting the hairs at the nape of his neck

on end. He knew the tale of old, how Anne Boleyn, in those very same

words, had announced her pregnancy to a gallery of startled courtiers,

had laughed and run from them in her ecstasy of triumph, leaving them

all abashed and uneasy, knowing the break with Rome was now certain

because “The Lady” had conquered. If Anne had not conceived Elizabeth

so quickly after her surrender; if the King had had time to weary of that

long pursued pleasure so suddenly, unexpectedly attained; if there had

never been that added spur, the promise of a son and heir…

If I had never been born…

That was her thought; he saw it in her face and heard it in her voice,

so full of anguished doubt and uncertainty, almost revulsion. It was a very

short and easy step to the next thought:
If I were dead…

Or had she already reached that conclusion? Was that subconscious

desire at the root of her indifference to safety, the secret of her reckless, at

times almost deliberate, courting of assassination?

He took her hands in an urgent grip.

“There is peace and prosperity in this land now where once there was

discord and bankruptcy. Our status in Europe is unparalleled—how can

you doubt that your power is for good?”

She shook her head sadly.

“You have eaten of the apple and lost the ability to judge. I am

embarking on a reign of terror—is that not evil?”

“It is not of your choosing,” he said grimly. “Your enemies have

forced it upon you.”

“Who will remember that—innocent victims like Campion?”

“God will remember,” he said quietly. “God is your only judge.”

She turned her back on him to stare out of the window and remember

how she had come to the Tower as a prince, thanking God for His mercy

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and in His name pledging mercy “to all men.” As she looked out of’the

window into a growing gloom lit by the flaming torches of Campion’s

escort, she saw bitterly how she must show that mercy from now on. The

prisoner, limping slowly down the sloping lawns to the waiting barge,

stumbled on his crippled legs and fell down on the gravel path. For a

moment he lay still, exhausted and bemused, until an impatient guard

cursed and kicked him to his feet, dragging him on to the hideous death

of a traitor which was all that awaited him now. She bit her lip, angry

with Campion for his stiff-necked stubbornness, angry with Walsingham

and his kind who had brought it to this, angrier still with herself that,

for expediency, she would stand by and let it happen. She felt degraded,

unclean, and faintly sick. The ruling of men was a dirty business—

Out along the dark river went the burning, orange lights, flickering

and bobbing as gaily as festival torches. Leaning against the casement

she watched them disappear, swallowed up in the enveloping mouth

of nightfall.

Leicester put one hand around her narrow waist, twining his fingers

round the gold chain, girdled with pearls. He sensed her despair.

“Let me get you some brandy.”

“Get my cloak instead,” she said, closing the shutter firmly, as though

she had closed a door in her mind. “It’s late. Burghley will be waiting for

us in the barge.”

For a moment he hesitated, wondering if he dared; but when at last

he found the courage to take her into his arms, she laid her head on his

shoulder and seemed glad of the physical comfort. He held her close, with

rising hope, and remembered that once before despair had brought her

to his bed…

“There’s no need for us to return to court tonight,” he said softly. “I

can send word to Burghley that you’re too weary to make the journey—

it will cause no surprise and little comment. Stay with me here and I will

make you forget them all—Campion, Philip, the Queen of Scots. In my

arms all your enemies are defeated.”

She stiffened and drew away from him. She had just sent an inno-

cent man out to death and Leicester, who had been his friend, had the

disgusting effrontery to suggest they went to bed and forgot all about it!

Pretty much she supposed as her father must have done the day after her

mother’s execution.

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He watched her eyes harden, her hands clench into fists, and,

misreading the cause of her anger, became angry himself.

“So that’s the way it’s to be, is it? Just because I sent your little French

prince packing, you’ll waste the rest of your life and mine, for spite—for

pure spite! You never loved him—you’d have hated him within a month!

So what did I do that cannot be forgiven?”

“You killed my child,” she said softly and his anger went out like a

doused candle, taking his hope with it. He understood at last that the

price he had paid for his victory was to lose her for ever and he looked

at her sadly.

“You accepted the challenge and you lost. Can’t you be gracious

in defeat?”

“I’m a bad loser, Robin, like my father. I should have thought you had

learnt that by now.”

He picked up her cloak and came to wrap it round her shoulders in a

gesture of resignation.

“Come,” he said wearily, “I will take you back to Whitehall if that is

really what you wish.”

Her wish was his command—always had been and always would be.

And she would never change; perversity was second nature to her now.

But it was a waste, a sad and wicked waste of love; and one day she might

be sorry for it—

His steward lit them down the wide staircase into the Great Hall and

out on to the terrace, down a flight of steps to the knot gardens, down

another flight to the lawns, cut in whimsical shape, two stately figures in

gleaming court costume trailing noiselessly away over the twisting paths to

the waterfront. They might have been ghosts, sad and silent in the darkness.

Burghley stood as he saw them approach, but they did not speak to

him or to anyone else. In silence Leicester handed the Queen into the

waiting barge, joined her on the cushions beneath the royal canopy, and

snapped his fingers curtly to the oarsmen.

Slowly the great barge, fluttering gay pennants, slipped away into the

pitch black night.

t t t

Campion and five others stood trial in Westminster Hall, charged with

plotting the Queen’s dethronement. He said with the little glint of

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humour which never deserted him, even at the end, “If our religion

makes us traitors we are worthy to be condemned, but otherwise we are

as true subjects as ever the Queen had.”

On the scaffold he prayed out loud for Elizabeth “to whom I wish a

long quiet reign and all prosperity.” And in return for that prayer he was

allowed to hang until completely dead, before his internal organs were

slit from his body.

t t t

“…There is no doubt whatsoever who sends her out of the world with

the pious intention of doing God’s service not only does not sin, but

gains merit…”

Secretary Walsingham repeated this official edict from the Vatican

with fierce indignation, but the Queen merely yawned and shrugged and

went out hunting, while Walsingham went away to brood darkly on the

forces of evil.

He was one of the few men in her service who had failed to get on

to a warm, personal footing with the Queen. He was cold and sly and

fanatical, but he was also brilliant and efficient; she tolerated him for

that. She was generally unkind and often downright rude to him, but

he bore the kicks and served her with endless diligence, because there

was nothing he abhorred more than the prospect of Mary Stuart on the

English throne. Walsingham’s few emotional needs were satisfied by the

fierce demands of his work, his lifelong devotion to the task of crushing

the Catholic faith in England and extinguishing its most illustrious flame

and figurehead—the Queen of Scots; his hatred of the woman he had

never seen was an obsession.

He maintained, at his own expense, a flourishing and ruthlessly efficient

spy system which was already a byword in Europe. “Knowledge is never

too dear,” he had once said sanctimoniously, and he had found Elizabeth

quite happy to let him prove that. He lavished his personal fortune and

ceaseless vigilance on this unique system and the Queen already owed

her life to it several times over. His unstinting service was given without

love and received without gratitude; and they were both content that it

should be so.

Early in 1583, searching desperately for news of “the Enterprise of

England,” Walsingham stumbled upon a new plot against the Queen’s

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life. His money had left a trail of corruption in every foreign embassy

throughout the length and breadth of Europe. It was thus that he had

come to tap the regular, secret correspondence between Mary Stuart

and the French Ambassador and through it discovered the activities of

Francis Throckmorton.

Throckmorton was seen creeping away from Mendoza’s house late one

night and was placed under close surveillance. Walsingham’s men seized

him at his lodgings at Paul’s Wharf in the very act of writing a ciphered

letter to the Scottish Queen and he was removed to the Tower, where he

withstood the rack three times before breaking down and revealing the

internationally based plot which had embraced the Guise party in France,

the King of Spain, the Spanish Ambassador, the Queen of Scots, and several

Catholic nobles at the English court. The massive conspiracy was revealed

in a welter of impressive circumstantial evidence based on Throckmorton’s

verbal confessions under torture and Walsingham was gratified by the