Elizabeth I (72 page)

In the privacy of my inner chambers, I divulged to Catherine what had happened in council that morning. She would hear it from her husband in any case. Without the admiral's quick action, things might have turned out very differently. I still trembled to think about it. In recounting it, my voice shook. The more I thought about it, the larger it loomed, unlike other things that dwindle in perspective.

“I can still see his hand gripping the sword, with Charles's hand covering it, smothering his action,” I said, my voice a whisper. “I think it was his father's sword. Or perhaps it was Sidney's.”

Catherine's plump and usually serene face had assumed a masklike rigidity. “What difference whose sword it was?” she very sensibly said. “What matters is what he intended to do with it. What do you think that was?”

“I don't know. It could have just been a threatening gesture, like a stage prop. Or he could truly have meant to harm me. In his temper, perhaps he would have done so, unthinkingly. But regardless, by doing it in council, it was a true public challenge.”

“What caused him to do it? Was he sitting down and suddenly leaped up? Did someone say something?”

“You make a good examiner, Catherine. Yes, let us trace the steps. I had boxed his ears for turning his back on me.”

“As if he were an unruly schoolboy? You insulted him, then, as he saw it?”

“He did claim I had insulted him,” I admitted.

She crossed the room and threw open the shutters. The hottest part of the day had passed, and the air was cooling. It made the room less confining. She poured out a goblet of summer wine—diluted with fresh water and flavored with mint—and handed me the slender glass. She knew I would find it soothing.

“Dear one, this is a most peculiar situation. You ask what subject would brook his prince so boldly, and in public? A telling question. But it has no answer that does not take into account another question: What other subject would you have felt free to smack in public?”

“I smacked that Bess Throckmorton,” I said, “for her insolence and lies. And I'd have done the same with Elizabeth Vernon, if her liaison with Southampton were not punishment enough. He asked permission to marry her and I refused. Then he asked permission to go abroad. But he sneaked back home to marry her—with the connivance of Essex, I might add. Essex challenges me at every turn.”

“I don't mean ladies in the privacy of your chamber, I mean statesmen in public,” she said.

“I did throw a slipper at Walsingham once,” I said.

“And you missed.”

“Deliberately. I have a good aim.”

“A slipper is one thing—it signals a comedy—a slap is another.”

I did not like her leadings here. I was finding them painful. But I would not shrink from what they told me.

“Do you think I have behaved in an unnatural fashion toward him?” I asked.

“Everyone thinks so, although I know nothing untoward has happened between you.”

“What do people say?”

“That you are lovers,” she said.

“They said that about Leicester,” I said. “It was not true.”

“Since the age difference between you and Essex is so extreme, it makes for hotter gossip.”

I had a dreadful thought. “Perhaps ...
he
believes it in some fashion. He thinks I am in love with him and want to be his lover,” I whispered. The night at Drayton Bassett ... His assumptions had almost been proved true.

“Perhaps,” Catherine agreed. “And your lovers' quarrels, with him playing sick and your humoring him, confirms it to him.”

Never again. How had I been so blind and foolish?

I ended it, in my own mind. I would demote him from that exalted and special place in my affections where I had mistakenly placed him. Like John Knox yanking an idolatrous statue from a niche and smashing it on the floor, just so would I do to the young earl. Down from the crevice that protected him, down onto the floor to mix with ordinary men. Let him see clearly in harsh daylight exactly where he stood and what he was made of.

I
reland continued to fester. In the end I made William Knollys lord deputy of Ireland, a lower rank than lord lieutenant. That exalted post still needed filling. But this time its holder had to be a man capable of strength and resolution, someone to make the Irish tremble. I could not think of such a man, and until we had him, I would not send another weakling. The Irish problem needed someone like my father or, dare I say it, the Duke of Parma—someone ruthless and clearheaded.

In the meantime we hung on. The fort on the Blackwater River in Ulster was still in English hands but running low on supplies, and would be easily besieged and taken by O'Neill. Although it would be difficult to hold, we could not afford to lose it, so a relief convoy was to be dispatched from nearby Armagh.

The Privy Council continued meeting, in a hand-wringing way, minus its two polar anchors—Burghley and Essex. Until Essex apologized (the very least I demanded of him) he was not to set foot at court. Burghley was unable to, growing weaker at his London home on the Strand. The last meeting he had attended was the one in which he had quoted the psalm about violent men dying early.

Even so, I was unprepared for the news Robert Cecil brought me in late July. Requesting a private meeting, he told me that his father was no longer able to sit up in bed.

“No!” How had he gone down so far, and so quickly? “When last I saw him—”

“Forgive me, Your Majesty, but a month is a long time for him as he slides, against his will, away from us, and indeed, from life.” He drew a deep breath. “I did not want it to progress any further without your knowledge,” he said.

“Misguided humility would have had Father keep it from you.”

“I'll make ready and we shall go together,” I said.

As I got ready, I could not permit myself to think the unthinkable. I would go to him. We would talk. I would send my own special physician to him. He would mend. Perhaps he would have to retire after all. Poor man, he had tried to, and I would not let him. But now, anything he wished. Anything. Anything to keep him with us, within calling distance.

Calling distance. I smiled in spite of myself. His hearing had grown so bad, I thought, I should rather say “within shouting distance.” Certainly he had earned a rest. And relieved of his duties, he would grow strong again. He would flourish in retirement. He was only seventy-eight. Hunsdon had lived longer. “Come,” I said. Suddenly it seemed urgent that we go.

Like many at court, he maintained a London residence. His lay on the Strand, a modest house with no river frontage. Considering his rank and station, it was remarkably self-effacing and humble. When I had visited him in the past, it had always been at his magnificent country homes, Theobalds and Burghley House. Indeed, his only nonpolitical preoccupation had been the building and furnishing of Burghley House, a project that went on for years.

The house was dark, its shutters drawn to keep out noise and dust. It had the peculiar, coffinlike feel of a closed house in warm weather. The servants showed us upstairs to the room where the fallen minister lay.

I was ill prepared for the shrunken wraith that lay in the bed. He had changed utterly from the frail but lively man in the council. There was so little left of him that he barely dented the mattress or made a mound under the covers.

Oh!
I almost cried, then stopped myself. I saw Robert looking at me, observing how I reacted, hoping that I would not say anything unguarded. But saying unguarded things was a luxury I had never been permitted, and I would not begin now. “Why, William, we must make you strong again!” I said heartily, coming over to him. I bent down to kiss his cheek and saw his bright eyes, prisoners of his wizened face, beseeching me silently.

What was he thinking? Did my healthy form, moving briskly, make him feel weaker? Or did it restore him, if only briefly, to a lost connection to the larger world?

“The game broth you sent, Robert, appealed to him, but he was too weak to sit up and eat,” one of the servants said.

“Heat it up,” I said, “and I myself will feed you.”

Now his eyes registered alarm. He mumbled and muttered protests.

“What medicines are you taking?” I asked. His servant obediently brought a box containing various bottles and vials. I pulled each out to examine. “I will send you others,” I assured him. They would make him well. They had to.

The reheated broth was brought up, pleasantly warm in a serving bowl. I sniffed it. “It smells strong and nourishing,” I said. One of the servants gently lifted him and, putting pillows behind him, propped him up.

He could barely sit straight, but kept slipping to one side, unable even to right himself. Then I knew. The strength was gone, utterly fled. It could not be called back; it had vanished forever.

Trying to keep my hand from shaking, I took a spoonful of the broth and slipped it between his lips. Only a little. He could not swallow much. I willed myself not to tremble, but once my hand wobbled and I spilled some broth on the covers.

He was eating to please me, as he had always tried to do my bidding. He was the bridge to my past, the support of my reign, the underpinning that made all the rest possible. It could not be over.

“Try, William,” I told him. “I do not wish to live longer than I have you by my side.” I felt that when he died, part of me would, too. How large a part, how vital a part, I could not know until it happened.

Tears sprang up in his eyes.

“You are, in all things to me, alpha and omega.” I wept, his tears giving me permission to shed mine.

His hand scrabbled across the covers—he had strength only to move it that way, not to lift it—and he sought my hand and squeezed it.

“Thank you,” he whispered.

The next morning Robert Cecil brought me a letter. “Father dictated it after you left. It will be his last letter. Your visit meant more to him than he could express, but even you cannot stay the inevitable.”

“I have sent new medicines,” I said helplessly.

“Knowing who the sender is is the best medicine for him,” said Robert.

I opened the letter. It was advice to Robert from his father.

“I pray you, diligently and effectually let Her Majesty understand how her singular kindness doth overcome my power to acquit it, who, though she will not be a mother, yet she showeth herself, by feeding me with her own princely hand, as a careful nurse; and if I may be weaned to feed myself, I shall be more ready to serve her on the Earth. If not, I hope to be, in Heaven, a servitor for her and God's Church. And so I thank you for your porridges.

“P.S. Serve God by serving the Queen, for all other service is indeed bondage to the Devil.”

The letter, light as it was, seemed as heavy as a piece of wood.

His last letter.
There was already one with those doleful words scratched upon it. Now I would have two.