Elizabeth I (34 page)

My attendants wondered why I had come, but they were good-spirited about it. Catherine and Marjorie thought of sending for their husbands “to see if they were willing to suffer for us” but did not. The male courtiers would follow, grumbling, but for now we had the palace to ourselves.

We warmed ourselves around the sputtering fire in the privy chamber, throwing beans in the fire to tell our fortunes, reminiscing on our many years together. Sometimes, in the flickering firelight, I could see the younger faces beneath the aging ones: Marjorie in her days as the wife of the French ambassador, Catherine when the future Admiral Howard she married was dark haired and holding minor posts. Perhaps they could also see mine.

The rain finally stopped—or had we only been given a respite? Nevertheless, we took advantage of it, drying the bed linens in the sunshine, opening the windows to let the mustiness out, turning our faces to the light. The Privy Councillors came one at a time to pay their respects and inform me of any pressing business. Then one day, when fresh dark clouds started chasing across the sky, Francis Bacon was announced.

Francis Bacon: that man who had crossed my wishes in Parliament and then dared to apply for the post of attorney general. Essex, his patron, had pestered me about it until I had ordered him to desist and then given the place to Sir Edward Coke. That had angered Essex so much he began pressing for another post for Bacon. Partly it was to demonstrate his loyalty to a friend; partly it was to show that once he had sunk his teeth into a matter, mastifflike, he could be detached only by force.

Essex's fierce championing had made me suspicious of Francis Bacon; that and the fact that his uncle and his cousin, the Cecil father and son, did not extend patronage to him. Yes, it was possible that the elder Cecil did not want to raise up a rival to his own son, but perhaps it was more than that. In any case, I welcomed the opportunity to see Francis away from the court—and Essex—and judge for myself.

He presented himself in a dapper manner, bowing low and sweeping his hat off. “I am eternally grateful to Your Majesty for seeing me today,” he said. His head was still down and I could not read his face to see if he was mocking.

“Eternity is a long time,” I said. “I count myself lucky if gratitude extends beyond the day itself.”

He straightened up. “You are wise as serpents,” he said.

“But gentle as doves,” I finished for him. “Well, Francis, what do you put before me for consideration?”

“Nothing, Your Majesty,” he said. “I am sure Your Majesty is weary of perpetual consideration of things.”

“Ah, there's that concept again,” I said. “You are fond of speaking of perpetuities.” I looked at him. “I prefer to speak of the immediate.” He must stop the mincing now and present his case. I cocked my head. “You do not resemble your father in the slightest.” His father had been rotund, with sleepy, half-lidded eyes. Nicholas Bacon had served me for the first two decades of my reign, but he had died suddenly. Mean-spirited people said that had he kept a leaner table, he might have lived longer. As if in reaction, his two sons were very thin, especially the elder one, Anthony.

“No, we take our looks from our mother's side,” he said.

I waited.

“Your Majesty, I recently sent my uncle Cecil this letter, abasing myself in asking for his help.” He handed me a paper. “He did not even answer.”

“So you do have a petition?” I had known as much.

“My only petition is myself.” He smiled, trying to make the mood light, but it must have been desperate for him to seek me out like this. I glanced down at the letter, skimming it. Phrases jumped out at me. “I wax somewhat ancient: one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hourglass .... I have writ unto Your Lordship rather thoughts than words, being set down without all art, disguising, or reservation ....”

“And you say he never answered you?”

“Yes, Ma'am. That is, no, he never answered.”

I continued skimming it. It was hard to discern what post he was applying for. “You are vague,” I said. “When you say, ‘I have taken all knowledge to be my province,' that is all very well and good, but in what area is your expertise? It would seem you are most suited for the gown of academia.” As a child, he had given such grave and adult answers to questions that I had dubbed him “The Young Lord Keeper.” He had not changed.

“I have labored away as a lawyer in Gray's Inn, but the work is boring,” he said.

“But, Francis, what is your specialty? You are not a soldier like Black Jack Norris, nor a sailor like Drake, nor an astrologer like John Dee, nor a man born to keep the books like Robert Cecil. After all, you find the law boring.”

“I could do any of those things!” he said. “If I set my mind to it, I could be a soldier, or a sailor, or an astrologer, or a secretary.”

“But you would hate it. And what someone hates he does poorly.”

“I hate being a ... a servant most of all!” he burst out. “I have allied myself to Essex because Cecil would not help me.”

“You are hardly Essex's servant,” I said.

“Not his bodily one, but I am his minion! I am forced to be.” His face was filled with self-loathing.

“You are less his minion than he is your dependent, I would venture to say. He needs your wit and your learning and your insights; he needs them badly.” I held out the paper again. “So one and thirty years is a great deal of sand in the hourglass? God willing, it is not. You will have challenges aplenty. You may outlive Essex and find that your service to him recommends you to something more suitable to you.”

His face sagged. “So you will offer me nothing?”

“Francis, I have no post for ‘consultant.' Such a position does not exist. You would have to fill a more definite duty. ‘Consultant' doesn't mean anything.”

“I analyze situations. I have drawn up summaries for Essex, penetrating studies—”

“Which, doubtless, he ignores.”

“But you, Your Majesty, would never ignore it. Or rather, if you did, it would be because you had read it and disagreed with it, not that you did not understand it.”

I felt for him. “Francis,” I said, “let me now give you
my
analysis of your situation. It is this: It is difficult for a man to serve his lesser, difficult for one so clever as you to be subservient to those who are dull in comparison. But the truly wise man can trim his sails to the wind and await his chance. Patience is a form of wisdom. And so is the sad knowledge that comes from Ecclesiastes: ‘I saw under the sun that the race is not to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, neither yet bread to the wise, nor yet riches to men of understanding.' ”

“What is the use, then?” he said.

He was toweringly intelligent, perhaps the cleverest brain in my realm. A person is born smart, but wisdom takes a longer time to acquire.

“Perhaps in the happy surprise that one day an unexpected favor comes your way, just as you have given up on it.” I had a sudden thought. “Francis, I could appoint you Queen's Counsel Extraordinary, but you say you do not like the law.”

“But if I must practice it, I would above all things prefer to practice it for you.”

“It would not be a full-time position. I would only call on you when I needed you, in an occasional case ... to consult. In that way you would be my consultant.”

“I understand. I must continue with Essex for my bread. But be on call to you as needed.”

“Yes. That describes it. You will accept?”

“May I call myself Queen's counsel publicly?”

“Of course.”

“Your Majesty, I am eternally—I thank you.”

So now I would have the quickest lawyer in the land at my beck and call, and all for the price of allowing him to call himself my counsel. My thrift at work.

T
hose wretched bells ringing everywhere! I yanked one of the thick tapestries over the window to muffle it further.

Elizabeth's glorious Accession Day. Thirty-six years ago. What in God's name would they do to celebrate the fortieth? Would the entire realm have to present gifts? My son was busying himself with last-minute preparations for the tilt, some ridiculous costume about a frozen knight. The expenditure. The waste. When we could be spending it furnishing Essex House as befitted his station.

I looked around the great room. I had restored much from the ordered-by-Elizabeth stripping; tapestries hung heavily from rods again; fat candles in sconces winked up and down the walls; and the long oak table gleamed with its gold Italian centerpiece, an intricate froth of statuary and embellishments. Yes, the import tax from the sweet wines had provided well for us. I had even been able to buy back some of the jewelry we had pawned, and my latest purchase was a coach with four white horses. I loved riding it through the streets; I loved it even better when the people mistook me for the Queen. And why not? We looked alike; we even had some of the same mannerisms. We could almost be twins, except that she loved the day and I the night.

Christopher disliked riding in the coach with me. There were times I found it irksome to be yoked to someone with such a determinedly commoner's viewpoint. He was so matter-of-fact about trappings, so uninterested in court climbing. He would rather be a soldier, spend his time out in the field. It was in his blood. At least I could console myself that he had the soldier's appetite for lovemaking.

Lovemaking ... There was far too much of it lately in my family for our own good. My daughter Penelope had given herself over to the adulterous charms of Charles Blount and was now pregnant by him. Dorothy, released from her marriage to Perrot by his convenient death, had quickly married Thomas Percy, an odd chap known as the Wizard Earl for his dabbling in science and alchemy. And Robert ... His affair with the court lady Elizabeth Southwell was sure to reach the Queen's ears before long. What was I to do with these hot-blooded offspring of mine?

At least my own hot-bloodedness had netted me two titles. I could not see what theirs had netted them, aside from scandal. Lust should serve a purpose; lust should be used as bait. What fool just throws it away?

The Queen ... The Queen knew how to use it as bait. She had been doing it her whole life. Now the bait had grown stale, but she did not seem to notice, and the young men at court were forced to pretend otherwise, to write sonnets about the fair wind caressing the pink cheeks of Diana, when the cheeks were in reality wrinkled and wan. Robert as much as anyone had to write such nonsense as “When Your Majesty thinks that heaven is too good for me, I will not fall like a star, but be consumed like a vapor by the same sun that drew me up to such a height. While Your Majesty gives me leave to say I love you, my fortune is as my affection, unmatchable.” But when I laughed about it, he would huff and defend her. One part of him believed what he was writing; another part wanted to believe it; and the last part was ashamed of himself for having to do it. To assuage his anger and shame, he took young women to bed. Too many of them. I feared that he had brought something untoward upon himself and was suffering from it. And I do not mean his reputation.

Soon he would be reeling in, tipsy, with his companions from the tavern. They longed to spend their energies on a battlefield, but they were cooped up in the court, channeled into tamed, ritualistic war games like the tilts and not allowed to go farther away than a city tavern, lest
she
call them back at any moment on one of her whims. In these dark days of November the dusk, and the drinking time, started early.

I paced the room. It was deadly quiet. Nothing for me to do but wait. I went to my rooms and busied myself reading. If I had had anyone to go with, I would have gone to the theater. I wanted something to take my mind off what was happening all around me. I did not care to visit Frances in her rooms, or even to play with the grandchildren. They gave me a headache.