Elizabeth I (27 page)

“Yes, Your Majesty.” Suddenly she looked ashamed. As well she should.

“He is a great seducer,” I said. “But I never thought he would be the proverbial fox in the henhouse, with so much at stake. Courage, Bess. You are not the first to be deceived by such a man.” I remembered his elegant poems to my charms and his great love of me, his calling me his Cynthia, his moon goddess. I shuddered with disgust.

“He is my husband.”

A double betrayal! “And when did this take place?”

“Last autumn,” she said.

When he was swearing there was no one he would be fastened unto.

“Well,” I said, “you must leave court and go to your child, wherever he—or she—may be.”

“He, Your Majesty. His name is Damerei.”

“Peculiar name. On second thought, you will await your wayward husband in the Tower. I shall command him to return immediately. His crimes are threefold: deceiving his sovereign, seducing a virgin under his protection, and marrying without royal consent. I would add, lying when asked directly about a marriage.”

Her composure crumbled and she said, “As you wish, Your Majesty. We did not undertake the marriage for any evil thought, but of necessity. It is well known that Your Majesty does not receive such requests gladly, and delays granting them, and time was urgent for us.”

“How noble of Raleigh!” I laughed. “So eager to make you an honest wife.”

As she bowed and left the chamber, I turned to the tongue-tied girls still forming a circle. “Stop staring, and learn your lesson from this.”

“What lesson shall that be, Your Majesty?” asked Frances Vavasour. If it had been anyone else, it would have been mocking, but she was clear as water.

“There are several,” I said. “The main one is, do not be deceived by a fancy man. Then, if you are—God forbid!—do not seek to hide it from me!”

Raleigh. I sat in my inner chamber and studied the miniature of him, which captured so well his arrogant charm. He was a volcanic spirit, restless at court, always wanting more. More than anyone else he seemed enthralled by the mystery and potential of the New World, as if the Old had grown stale for him or was too small to satisfy his appetite for adventure.

His appetite ... his appetites ... The carnal one was well known. I had spoken true to Bess; he was widely known as a seducer, and proudly so. There was a story abroad at court (which my rogue godson Harington had passed on to me) that he had backed a woman up against a tree in the woods. When she protested, “Nay, sweet Sir Walter! Oh, sweet Sir Walter!” he had ignored her and proceeded to that which they both desired, changing her cries into “Swisser Swatter! Swisser Swatter!” It made a good story, and if it was not true, as the saying goes, it should be. There are two kinds of tales: one accurate but not true, the other true but not accurate. Swisser Swatter was most likely the latter.

I sent for Robert Cecil, knowing he was always at hand. Not for him floating in a barge for a river party, afternoon matches on the tennis courts, long rides in the countryside. One wit had described him as always having “his hands full of papers and his head full of court matters,” and that served me well.

In no time he was knocking upon the door, and I admitted him. Quickly I told him about Raleigh. He shook his head. “I questioned him on this very matter,” he said. “You have seen my report. The man lied at every turn. If I may say so, Your Majesty, that is why he is so widely disliked, in spite of his looks and cleverness. Dishonesty stains his other virtues.” He laughed, his little rounded shoulders shaking. “Now it makes sense,” he said. “Some of the sayings I have heard. One, that he has been too inward with one of Her Majesty's maids.”

“Clumsy wit,” I said.

“The other, that ‘all is alarm and confusion at the discovery of the discoverer, and not indeed of a new continent but of a new incontinent.' ”

Now I laughed. “Clever,” I admitted. I was still feeling cross, but it was subsiding. “Swisser Swatter must needs learn to control himself in the Tower.”

Robert hooted. “You have heard that?”

“I do have a gown with eyes and ears on it,” I reminded him.

But they did not hear and see everything, as they used to. I would have to try harder. This was, ultimately, of no matter. But what else might I overlook that was?

It was night. The usual gathering of card players and gossips filled the privy chamber; I could hear them from my own bedchamber but declined to go out there. They were all discussing the abrupt departure of Bess, I had no doubt. So many must have known of her marriage and the reason for it and only wondered how long the brazen game could go on before I became aware of it.

Catherine dragged a small chest across the floor to where I sat. The others had already gone to bed, and only a few candles were left burning in the chamber.

“In her haste, she forgot this,” said Catherine, running her hands over the carvings on the rounded, ribbed lid. The initials “E.T.” shone gold beneath the handle.

E.T. My initials. How amusing. Telling myself that I had the right to open it—as abandoned property, after all—I raised the lid and peeked in. A jumble of ribbons, pomades, and handkerchiefs greeted me. There was nothing of value here, which was a relief. I pulled a lacy handkerchief out and almost choked on the perfume. It was lily, a scent I dislike as it reminds me of death, in spite of its Easter association.

Catherine withdrew and left me to examine the contents of the chest in privacy. How well she knew me. What a treasure to have a friend who averted her eyes from my faults and opened them only to the good in me.

I felt beneath the rumpled mash of items and found some folded sheets of paper. Knowing I should not read them but unable to keep from it, I settled myself back and held the first paper up to the dim light.

It was a poem. Walter, along with everyone else at court, wrote poetry. He had presented me with many poems, usually heavy with allegorical and classical allusions. I was Diana, chaste huntress; I was Cynthia, radiant goddess of the moon, whom shepherds adored. What else had he called me? Athena, wise above all mortals, strong protectress of my realm. That exhausted the store of virgin goddesses, except for Hestia, but the imagery of a hearth-loving goddess did not fit me.

The ink was dark enough to read even in the poor light.

The paper was shaking in my hands. I kept rereading the words, unable to believe what I was seeing. Violet breath ... I had never been that close to her. As for the down and the belly ... I gave a shudder. Vulgar.

No one ever had, or ever would, write such words to me. First, because my majesty would not permit such license, and second, because my person did not conjure them up.

I took out Leicester's last letter to me and reread its cozy, familiar greetings.
Pardon your poor old servant ... my gracious lady ... ease of her late pain ... happy preservation . . . I humbly kiss your foot ...

Foot. Not lips of jelly.

I returned the papers to the chests—hers to the ribbed one, mine to my little bedside box.

I looked down at my slender but now veined fingers, with the coronation ring unchanged since that day I had first put it on. Its gold was not dimmed, its design only a little worn with the years. I had never removed it; it had been with me through every day of my reign. It guarded me, keeping me apart from all other women. Without it, what verses might I have received, what hot whispered vows in the night? Whose wife might I have been?

Instead, I was England's. The only husband who would not grow old, fail, or desert me.

I
fingered the jewel-encrusted miniature skull on its gold chain. Should I wear it today? Would it ward off the plague? I needed to attend the opening speech of Parliament; the official procession had been canceled due to the plague spreading in London, and I would go directly to the Parliament chambers by way of barge. Still, there would be crowds outside, not to mention the crowd in Parliament itself. No, it seemed popish and reeked of superstition. I left it off.

Essex had presented it to me just after I appointed him to the Privy Council. He was exuberantly grateful, making wild promises of his service. In truth, I had relented and named him a councillor despite his clumsy performance in France; since his return he had impressed me with his assiduous team of information gatherers at Essex House, headed by the Bacon brothers. Francis I already knew. There was not a cleverer man in England. His portrait painter had lamented, “If only one could paint his mind!” and written it in Latin around the miniature. Anthony was said to be equally intelligent but tormented by bad health—gout, stones, and failing eyesight. “A gentleman of impotent feet but a nimble head,” someone described him.

Essex, turning his energy from foreign battlefields to domestic politics, procured election to Commons for at least eight of his followers. And besides Francis Bacon, his stepfather, Sir Christopher Blount, represented Staffordshire county. Was he was building up a party?

The surface of the river was dull pewter under the gray skies of February as my barge made its way to Parliament. Lent had not yet begun; this year Easter came late. But the bleakness and austerity of the weather called to mind fasting and rough shirts. Since I intended to ask for money, I dressed plainly, fitting the mood.

A crowd was waiting at the landing, their pinched faces and chapped, blotched cheeks showing the ravages of winter. How we all longed for an end to it. I smiled and waved to them, accepted their little notes and gifts, then hurried inside. The plague lurked in crowds.

The Speaker escorted me into the chamber. I had not called a parliament in four years. The subsidy the one of 1589 had granted me had just run out. The Crown was in desperate need of money. They must grant me more.

The members rose in respect, and the Lord Keeper of the Great Seal bade them be seated while he gave the opening oration. I took the throne beside him and listened.

Quickly he listed the urgencies before us. They could be summed up in one word: Spain.

Far from crawling back into his kennel after the ignominious defeat of his Armada, Philip had been emboldened by it. He had quickly rebuilt it, modeling his new ships on ours, so that his navy was twice as strong now as it had been in 1588, and of a more advanced design. He directly harried the Protestant world in France and the Netherlands. In Scotland, he intrigued with certain lords to land twenty-five thousand troops this coming summer, and the same thing in Ireland, attempting to gain a toehold in neighboring countries where he could launch an attack on us. In addition, he stirred up trouble in Germany and Poland, to cut off our trade with them. It was imperative that we have the means to counter him in his plans to conquer France, England, and Ireland.