Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (91 page)

for Burghley’s second son, Robert, had grown into a sprawling palace,

nothing short of a playground for the Queen’s pleasure. On her first

visit Elizabeth had complained about the size of her chamber. Burghley

had had it enlarged to such enormous proportions that it was now big

enough to sport its own fountain; and the rest of the house, year after

year, had grown around it, like some monstrous, extravagant weed curled

in a stranglehold around the Cecil purse. Every visit she made there cost

them at least three thousand pounds.

In the privy garden, deeply sunk and surrounded by a nine-foot hedge,

Mildred found the only spot which afforded her a sense of escape from

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Elizabeth’s strident domination. There she sat for several hours, brooding

among the figs and plums that grew along the wal s, while the house towered

above her, a pink brick façade with blue slate turrets and gilded weather vanes

which seemed to mock al her austere good taste. How could Burghley have

built anything so vulgar! The house
was
the Queen—unforgettable, ostenta-

tious, overbearing—and Mildred hated it, hated to feel it sitting there self-

satisfied in the sunshine, looking down on her with al its calm superiority.

No woman, thought Mildred angrily, had the right to make other

women feel so colourless and drab, or to be so slim and upright at the age

of fifty-four that merely to look at her was to feel as plain and stout and

purely functional as a carthorse. No woman had the right to such presence!

She had always been out of her depth in the company of the Queen, her

dull bluestocking image overshadowed by all that effortless brilliance. But

never before had Elizabeth made it quite so plain that, in the final analysis,

Mildred and all the comfortable domesticity she symbolised counted for

nothing. The Queen had merely to raise her little finger and Burghley, the

devoted husband, the loving father, and doting grandfather, would turn his

back on everything he held dear to follow her shining trail.

“I am nothing,” Mildred told the smug house savagely, “
nothing
,” and

great tears forced themselves between her scanty lashes to roll sombrely

down her unpainted cheeks.

Shadows were falling across the garden by the time Burghley came

painfully down the steps to the stone bench where she still sat.

“I thought I would find you here, my dear,” he began cordially.

“Would you care to take a turn with me in the Mulberry Walk? It will

be cooler there.”

He was grey with fatigue but his faded blue eyes were alive again, alert

with a joyful anticipation such as she had not seen there for many months.

She got up immediately and took his arm and they went slowly down

the brick-walled walk, past the seventy-two mulberry trees that led to the

Great Pond.

“So,” she said a trifle impatiently, when five minutes’ silence had still

produced no voluntary information from him, “what happens now that

you are forgiven?”

“I’m not forgiven,” he replied quietly. “I never hoped for forgive-

ness—only for the chance to serve her again. I thank God that of her

mercy she has seen fit to grant me that favour.”

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Every nerve in Mildred’s body screamed out in protest, but was given

no voice.

“You have accepted the post,” she murmured dully, staring at the

fountain ahead. “You will return to court.”

Burghley smiled faintly. “My dear, I could hardly refuse.”

His absent smile, his utter certainty of her acquiescence, were unbear-

able. For a moment she regretted all the years of patient self-restraint and

wished she might throw one of Elizabeth’s famous tantrums here in the

grounds of his own house. But even as she thought of it, she knew she

had neither the spectacular temperament nor the essential physical frailty

which enabled Elizabeth to make an exhibition of her instability without

looking either ugly or ridiculous.

“How long are we to be honoured by Her Majesty’s presence?” was

all that emerged at last in a rather dry tone from between her thin lips.

He coughed, as though realising that this, of all things, might be the

final straw.

“Perhaps a month.”

So it was not enough to break his heart and then make him jump

through a hoop like a performing dog; it was necessary to bankrupt him

as well!

Not trusting herself to speak, she withdrew her arm stiffly from his

hand and began to march back up the Mulberry Walk.

“Mall!”

She stopped. He never called her that, except behind the privacy of

the bed curtains; in the hours of daylight she was always Mildred, respect-

able, serviceable.

“If you want me to say no—” He hesitated, staring miserably at the

gravel walk. “I could plead my growing infirmity. If I do, I know she

won’t ask it again. It could be as you wish—the house—the family.”

And you would be in the grave before the Spaniards come, thought

Mildred sadly. So what is the point?

“Whatever you choose to do,” she said loyally, “I will support you,

William. Don’t refuse her just to humour me.”

The relief in his face made her want to weep. He squeezed her arm

gratefully and they went back into the house with their marriage intact.

t t t

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So Burghley returned to court to resume his post as Lord Treasurer and

having drawn her chief minister back into her web, Elizabeth turned her

power on every man at court, deftly weaving the separate threads of their

loyalty into one strong fabric. Transfigured by her own sense of purpose

she was irresistible. No one escaped the network of her charm, neither

courtier nor councillor. Poets and pirates, rogues and time-servers were

suddenly united in her service, as Elizabeth alone was capable of uniting

them. Never before had Leicester, watching her with awed fascination,

been quite so strongly reminded of a queen bee; and indeed her influence

over the hive held the same sort of primitive mystery. Like workers and

drones, men fell into their appointed places around her, blindly, without

questioning why they placed their lives at risk in a hopeless cause.

For it
was
a hopeless cause, Leicester was certain of it. He looked at

the odds against them with the cold logic of a mathematician and knew

that no man in his right senses would put a single gold crown on their

chances of survival. A handful of modern ships and an army of ignorant

amateurs! What serious hope had they against Philip’s huge vessels and

Parma’s savage, disciplined troops? The very thought of them bearing

down steadily upon Plymouth ought to be enough to make any sane man

abandon the Queen to her enemies and run for his life.

Only no one would desert her, least of all himself—that was the

miracle. And when he looked into her face, he knew that in spite of the

facts, in spite of the logic, they were going to win.

This self-styled mother of the people was suckling them all, from some

bottomless well of strength, with an intoxicating brew that played tricks

with a man’s normal healthy sense of self-preservation. Each man who left

her presence went out in a state of crazy euphoria, quietly convinced of

his innate ability to walk through fire unscathed.

Her power was a tangible force he could no longer rationalise or

dismiss; and curiosity consumed him. He simply could not help it any

longer—he had to learn from whence that power came.

And what she offered in return for it!

“Elizabeth.” In his mouth his tongue felt dry and swollen, suddenly

heavy with dread. What was it Burghley had once said?
A very dangerous

accusation—some might say it constituted an act of treason…

It could take him to the block.

Equally—it could take her to the stake.

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She looked up and arched her pencil-line eyebrows in mild surprise.

“Are you still here? I thought you would have been at Tilbury by

now, drilling that army of raw recruits.”

He looked down at the floor.

“Before I go—will you answer me one question?”

She sighed and turned a page over; she was really very busy.

“Ask away then, but quickly. Burghley’s waiting outside.”

“Are you a witch?”

The words hung on the air for him to hear, aghast. How could he

have asked it like that, without a grain of sense or subtlety, leaving neither

of them any avenue for escape?

She looked at him in silence. Slowly she rose from her chair, a shadow

curling upward until to his terrified sight she towered above him, all-

pervading, all-knowing. It was a hot, hot summer’s day and all his senses

throbbed and buzzed. Instinctively he passed a hand across his eyes.

“Robin?”

He blinked, and found her standing beside him, a full head shorter

than him, as she had always been, her cool hand on his sleeve.

“This heat,” he muttered and wiped his brow with her handkerchief.

She smiled and patted his stout girth.

“This padding doesn’t help. Now—you are not to tire yourself unduly

at Tilbury, do you hear?” She frowned faintly, as the memory seemed to

strike her. “What was it you wanted to ask me?”

Was it possible that she had been paying him so little attention that she

had genuinely not heard his tense mumble?

Or was she offering the only safe way out for them both?

He would never know; he would never dare to ask it again.

He laughed a little unsteadily and said it was no great matter. Then he

went out to tell Burghley that he might go in.

t t t

In mid-May 1588, a vast crocodile of Spanish ships sailed under its

unwilling commander into storms and torrential rain. Medina Sidonia

was horrified by “such summer seas as had never been in living memory,”

sudden tempests which scattered their precise formation and wreaked

such havoc that they were forced to shelter at Corunna until the middle

of July. By then, they had lost time and the vital element of surprise. The

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Susan Kay

English fleet was rapidly mobilised, and as Medina Sidonia pored over

that dossier of instructions from Philip for the conduct of the campaign,

Elizabeth gave full discretion to her Admiral, Howard of Effingham, and

his vice-admirals.

On the 19th of July the Spanish fleet, a stately crescent with horns

seven miles apart, was sighted from the Lizard and through the summer

dusk the beacon fires sprang up, blazing a trail of warning lights across

England to the Scottish border.

London seethed in a fever of activity. The court moved to St. James’s

Palace, while the beacon signals sent a wave of mustering, training, and

arming throughout the south. Boys slipped away from their mothers’

clutches and flocked down to Tilbury, where Leicester’s army lay

encamped. Huntingdon’s force in East Anglia swelled daily, while

Hunsdon’s bodyguard sprawled to the west of London in defence of

the Queen’s person. The Council met in terrified debate and begged

the Queen to withdraw inland to deeper security, knowing that if she

were taken the main purpose of the invasion would be complete. She

began to talk instead of going down to the coast and Leicester wrote in

a flat panic, “I cannot consent to that for upon your well-being consists

everything—preserve that above all.”

Candles burnt all night at St. James’s Palace, and Leicester rode

between Tilbury and London, attending conferences until three in the

morning. And at last, in August, he and the rest of the Council gave way

to her determination.

She would go to Tilbury to review her army in person.

t t t

The great Spanish sea serpent had rolled relentlessly towards the Cornish

coast and anchored at nightfall just off Dodman Point on the 19th of July.

Next day Howard’s personal pinnace carried the formal English challenge

to the Spanish commander and with propriety correctly observed, the

battle was on.

The small, modern English ships snapped at the huge vessels and darted

away. Howard’s flag ship was rammed, but before the Spanish galleons

could close in on their prey, small boats had towed her head around and

she escaped with remarkable speed. The Armada ran a gauntlet of the

English ships up the Channel, unable to get closer than three hundred

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yards to the swift, sharp-shooting English vessels. Medina Sidonia had

discovered the first flaw in Philip’s instructions. How could they grapple

the enemy ships and board to settle the affray with hand-to-hand fighting

and superior numbers, when they could not get close enough to site the

first hook? “Their ships are so fast and nimble they can do anything they

like with them,” bewailed the Spaniard’s official log-book after the first

day’s engagement.

The Spanish Admiral was growing desperate. He had sent frantic