The Spymaster's Daughter (48 page)

“My lord Essex,” Elizabeth said, her face set hard, “you may leave us at once.”

Essex looked startled, but bowed and obeyed.

When the door to the reception chamber closed, Elizabeth
said, “My lady, in your bereavement you may be seated in my presence.”

“Very kind, your grace.” She was glad of the chair, as her bones felt too soft to hold her upright.

“Do you have an affection for the Earl of Essex?” Elizabeth asked, her voice distant and hard.

“No, Majesty, none. I am…I was…a married woman.”

“Has the earl expressed affection to you?”

“Majesty, my lord Essex was friend to my husband.” Frances looked to the door, wishing to be anywhere but near a jealous, aging woman who was once a friend, but now might quickly turn an enemy. And over a man thirty-five years younger! But Frances saw more in the queen's face than her jealousy. Essex's desire for a younger woman forced the queen to face the lie behind her pretense that she never aged.

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed, and pieces of her Mask of Youth sprinkled onto the bosom of her black-and-white gown, the colors of which proclaimed her ever a virgin.

“My lady Sidney, you have the appearance of an innocent, but two men are drawn to you. I have heard of another, your handsome servant…and mine, Robert Pauley. Both these men are unsuitable to your station, one far too high and the other very much too low.” The queen's eyes seemed to see into Frances's mind. “I forbid such attachments on pain of my great displeasure.”

Frances rose and curtsied, not terribly surprised by Elizabeth's knowledge. Information flowed to her. No one could keep their secrets from her for long. Her own days as a lady of the presence were over. Indeed, most of her life seemed over. She would be a widow sitting by a window with her memories. “With permission, your grace, I will retire from court and my duties to you and begin my mourning at once.”

Elizabeth's tone was angry. “Lady Frances, I have shown you favor, indulged your differences…your very great differences.”
The queen lifted her head higher, looking down on Frances. “You have not been my lady of the presence so much as my plaything. I wish to see you no more.”

Frances curtsied very low, then moved backward to the great doors of the royal apartment.

“Wait!” the queen said, her voice hoarse. “I admit that at times you have served us well…very well indeed, and most unusually…but your service is done here, all of it. I give you permission for immediate departure to Barn Elms.”

“My gratitude, Majesty.” Frances made her way to the great doors, somewhat stronger now for the quick change in tone from angry to peacemaking, unusual for this queen.

“My lady Sidney.”

“Yes, your grace.” She half turned.

“Since you did serve but two months of your second year of appointment, you will receive this year no annual pay.”

Frances curtsied and hid a desire to laugh hysterically. The doors shut behind her with a final click, as if so ordered by Elizabeth. Frances knew that she would miss the queen who had looked on her with favor and with anger. Yet Elizabeth's favor, once gone, was gone forever.

This day Philip Sidney's widow walked slowly to her chambers, oblivious of those around her, indeed of Will following. When she faltered, she felt his hand on her arm, ready to assist if she should faint.

He was still to learn that she would never be given to the collapses of other women…if her courage held.

Later that afternoon, not daring to seek out Robert, and perhaps not able to bear another parting that might expose him to the queen's anger, she, along with her servants, was escorted by one of her father's secretaries to Barn Elms in her father's barge. All the way upriver in the misty rain, Frances watched the queen's swans hiding their heads under their wings. She sat huddled under
a sealskin cover stretched overhead as the drumbeat of rain matched the splash of oars slicing into the Thames.

Frances forced herself to find a corner of her mind for Robert, a place to keep him and their memories safe and warm forever. She thought, too, of Philip. Had his last memory been of Stella, as God took him to his hero's place in heaven? Her heart did ache for him. But she had been mourning him all her married life. His body was now dead to her, as his heart had always been.

B
ARN
E
LMS

M
ary Herbert, Philip's sister, had written a long poem eulogizing him and vowed to work on it until it was as perfect as Philip's own lines. Frances held the draft in her lap, proof again that talent and desire did not pass to sons alone.

Frances smiled, knowing that her father would never in this world agree, ever maintaining that if his daughter's work as an intelligencer were known, she would bring his name only great dishonor. Or did she find excuse for no longer being quite so fond of the name intelligencer? The queen of Scots' face at Fotheringhay, her proudly sad eyes seeing betrayal everywhere, yet haunted Frances and, perhaps, always would.

The lady widow, as the servants had named her, sat alone gazing from her bedchamber window onto the familiar snowy landscape. The winter afternoon had settled softly upon Barn Elms and upon Frances. These days she quietly mourned many people. She prayed for Mary Stuart awaiting execution at Fotheringhay; for Philip at rest in his casket while channel storms raged, preventing his body's transport to his homeland. She prayed for his grieving sister, bent so many days over his eulogy, and, finally, she silently pleaded for God's understanding of her own loss that could never be acknowledged.

Her room echoed with the voice of Aunt Jennet. “You do your duty, dear child, and that is ever the right way.”

Frances's throat constricted at a familiar sight. Here came another rider in Essex livery up the road from Mortlake.

No doubt the rider brought more letters, more ponderous Petrarchan poetry from the Earl of Essex, extolling her every feature and limb in wearisome rhyme. Why? Why did the earl want her when he could have his choice of Europe's princesses and most of the unmarried noble daughters of England and perhaps even some married ones? She knew, or thought she knew. He was a conqueror. He had conquered Elizabeth, or so he thought, and now he would take the only woman at court who did not want him, and would make himself her master. Her reluctance was her allure; it enticed him and always had. That was not love. To be taken first by a famous poet in need of escaping his failed love and his debts, and next by a man who dared not lose was neither love she would ever choose. Yet the love that thrilled, that contented her in every way, was impossible—nay, more than that, lunacy. A common man of no station against a high noble of the kingdom…Why couldn't her heart follow the path her father and all custom had laid for her?

She gripped the arms of her chair not for the first time that day, glancing at her writing table, where she had placed a number of letters from Essex, which arrived now most every day, sometimes
one in the morning and another before an early winter's night made the roads too dangerous for horse or man.

In a smaller and quite separate stack were letters from Robert tied round with a blue ribbon, but they'd been read and reread almost to tatters. He had promised to come as soon as the Thames was clear of ice, and her hands clasped tight to think of it. She had not seen him for near two months; her father had kept him busy, almost using him as a courier, as if to keep them apart. She doubted her father had any such thought, except an instinct he did not want to own.

She heard a servant answer the door and waited while the rider from Essex was invited to rest with mulled wine to warm him for his ride back to Mortlake a few leagues away. Then, as if in a play of Lord Leicester's men being performed every afternoon to the penny groundlings, Frances heard the servant wearily climb the stairs, waited for his knock, and, when it came, called out: “Enter and place the package on my table. There will be no answer.”

Waiting for the rider to take horse and return to Mortlake, she stood and brought the package to her chair to open in the light. If it contained another jeweled necklace or earring, she would return it with the next rider.

Unwrapping the long package, she lifted a narrow full-length portrait of Essex standing by his horse, looking heroic enough for a hero's widow, which was no doubt his intention. She held the frame at arm's length, the winter light falling on his long, lean body and handsome face. It was obviously a copy of a much larger image he was having painted. How thoughtful of him to have rushed a duplicate to her.

She closed her eyes and breathed deeply. This gift was difficult to return. Jewelry, unsuitable for her mourning, was one thing; to reject his portrait was too much a rude rebuff of the man himself. Surely there was a dark corner at Barn Elms that could hold it.

A note under the portrait read:

He offered himself. There it was, written plainly. She had heard other widows speak of such kind offers from gentlemen who thought once a woman was a wife, she would always be in need of bed sport. God's grace, he would find none in her widow's bed!

Feeling as if her chamber were closing in about her, Frances stood and wrapped herself in her heavy cloak for a walk in her desolate garden. As she trod the lane of poled elm trees, she missed their summer shade and pruned symmetry. Her roses, similarly, were trimmed to bare sticks for early bloom. All was as winter-bare as her life. No, no, she was too morose, a burden to herself. She forced her head up and widened her mouth into a semblance of pleasantry.

At the end of the gravel path, the Thames flowed sluggishly toward London. She saw some ice chunks near the banks where the water shoaled, and pulled her cloak tighter. She was surprised to hear a drumbeat. It was a raw day for any but the most determined traveler to be abroad from London. Could it be her father? Or another lord come to soothe a grieving widow? Or a kind neighbor seeking to cheer her?

Pray God,
no!

Yet, she did grieve for Philip's painful death. From his friends,
she had heard much of his last hours and his bravery, along with some gossip of Stella. Had she come to him, or had he called for her in his final delirium? Only the men close about him knew, and they would soon enough tell the story, which would be carried to her. It would get out, as all secrets eventually did, and she would see it in the hands raised to hide the whispers.

She gazed hard through the fog toward the steady sound of oars splashing. The oarsmen were not coming from Mortlake in Essex livery. If not Essex, then who? Gradually she recognized her father's official barge. A man stood in the prow by the lantern pole…something her father would never do because of the pain to his sore joints.

Her legs started moving toward the pier as the man's clear outline, his dear outline, came from behind the foggy shroud. Could he hear her above the sound of oars rasping in their locks and the beat of the drummer? “Robert!” she called, caring naught for the gardeners raking the last of the fallen leaves into piles for burning.

R
obert heard her call his name and saw her as he had imagined her almost since taking leave of Whitehall hours before. Her cloak swirled about her; her skirts were pulled by the breeze surging upriver from the channel as her hair was whipped about her face, the face that had dwelled in his night dreams and filled his mind from one day's break to the next.