Lost Love Found (75 page)

The queen always enjoyed being obtuse when referring to the succession. Was this her way of telling the Earl of Nottingham that her choice was James? Valentina dared not pursue the subject, which was a forbidden one, for to speak of the queen’s death was considered treason.

Lord and Lady Burke were given a small apartment at Richmond Palace, It consisted of a small anteroom and a small bedchamber. Lord Burke’s manservant Plumgut and Nelda were forced to sleep on pallets by the fire in the antechamber. Despite their cramped quarters, Richmond was a comfortable place. Lord and Lady Burke spent a great deal of time apart, however, since Valentina’s duties kept her in almost continual attendance on the queen.

“I miss you, damn it!” Padraic murmured to his wife as they dressed for a royal reception being given the Venetian ambassador that evening. His wife was attired most fetchingly, he decided, in black silk stockings embroidered with gold clocks and held up by tight garters decorated with gold rosettes. Padraic cupped her bare breasts, nuzzled her neck.

“Padraic!” She sighed softly. “You will make us late.”

“Not if you will cease your foolish protests, and I can get these damned buttons undone,” he growled, nipping at her ear, while he fumbled with his buttoned slit.

“We’ve not made love in almost two weeks,” he murmured, “and I’ve barely seen you since we got to Richmond. We are newly wed, Val! We should be spending our time in the pleasures of Venus, not dancing attendance upon the queen. Oh, I do understand, hinny love, but damn, sweetheart, I need you as much as Her Majesty does!”

Valentina understood his need for her. She needed him as well. Her glance went to the little clock on the mantel. If they hurried—could such a thing be hurried?—there might just be time. She was as eager for him as he was for her. She began to draw him across the room as she kissed him. As she felt the bed against the back of her thighs, she fell backward, wrapping her legs about his waist as she pulled him atop her. With a groan, he slipped into her waiting body, delighted by her actions. “Ah, sweetheart!” he whispered hotly against her ear, catching the passionate rhythm she had initiated and plunging forward eagerly.

“Oh, Padraic!” she encouraged him onward. “Oh! ’Tis sweet!”

He bent over her, kissing her breasts with great ardor while he thrust harder and faster into her burning sheath.

The swiftness of their passion was sharp and sweet. Valentina felt herself quickly soaring upward as her husband’s hardness pierced her to her soul. She stuffed her fingers into her mouth to keep from shrieking her pleasure, for their servants were close by, but she could not muffle her moan of sheer delight as her crisis overtook her and she shuddered with complete pleasure.

A little later, coming to herself, she stroked his dark head, which lay against her breasts. “I will ask the queen for some time with you,” she told him, “for I have had no time for myself or for us since we arrived. I shall ask to be excused from serving her tonight, for this is not enough, Padraic! I must have more of you!”

“And I, you, hinny love,” he said with a happy laugh. “Swear to me, my love, that whatever happens, we will go home this spring!”

“I swear!” she vowed. “But now get up off me, you great oaf! I must call Nelda, and get dressed, or we shall be late. If I displease Her Majesty, she may not give me the night to be with you, my darling lord.”

In defiance of those who worried about her, the queen wore a gown suited to summer weather. It was of silver and white taffeta, trimmed with gold and encrusted with a vast quantity of bright gemstones. Her jewels were pearls, most of which were the size of pears, and she wore the imperial crown. She had resorted to an old trick. The ladies of the court had been instructed to wear dark colors so that the magnificence of the queen would appear even greater.

Valentina’s gown was of gold and burgundy velvet, trimmed with small pearls, garnets, and jet beads. If the queen was the most magnificent woman there, then Lady Burke was the most radiant, for the queen had acceded to her request. After the gala Valentina would be free of her duties for two whole days.

The Venetian ambassador, Giovanni Scaramelli, was the guest of honor. He was deeply impressed by Elizabeth, who chided him in flawless Italian because the Venetians had waited until the forty-fifth year of her reign before sending her an ambassador. Did Venice not think England worthy? Or perhaps they had not thought a mere queen worthy? She apologized prettily for her Italian, saying that she had learned it in childhood but had not spoken it in years. She hoped he had understood her. The ambassador, of course, understood her perfectly, for her command of his language was perfect. She was, he reported in dispatches to his masters, everything her reputation proported, even though she was elderly and her hair “was of a light color never made by nature.”

The excitement of the Venetian ambassador’s visit over with, the court settled into a dull winter routine. The Countess of Nottingham had been battling a bad cold ever since their arrival at Richmond, and she begged Elizabeth’s leave to retire from court and go home in order to recuperate from her illness, which seemed to be growing worse instead of better. The queen assented, but was much saddened at the departure of her favorite cousin.

For weeks the court was penned in because of foul weather. As February spent itself, the English spring began to show signs of its arrival. Walking in the garden for the first time all winter, the queen and Lady Scrope saw brightly colored yellow and purple crocuses dotting the lawns and small, early golden daffodils blooming in the shelter of the garden wall. Her Majesty was greatly cheered. The bitter winter was nearly over. She and Lady Scrope strolled together, joking, as the queen’s page came running, bringing his mistress a dispatch just arrived. Elizabeth opened it eagerly, for it was from the Earl of Nottingham. The queen read it, screamed, and fell into a faint.

Lady Scrope knelt by Elizabeth while the young page ran to get help for the queen.

When Her Majesty had been put to bed, Lady Scrope and Valentina quickly read the message. Lady Howard was dead. “May God have mercy on her good soul,” said Valentina.

“Amen,” whispered Lady Scrope, sobbing. “Oh, dear Lady Burke, I do not know how she will survive this! Kate was with her almost her entire life.”

The queen took to her bed for several days, refusing to see anyone except her ladies. The French ambassador, Monsieur Beaumont, was told that Her Majesty was in mourning.

In fact, Elizabeth Tudor was beside herself with grief, and as her melancholy deepened, her cold symptoms returned with a vengeance. She refused to take the medicines her physicians prescribed, shaking her head and pushing them away. She sat on cushions on the floor, oblivious to the cold floor or her surroundings. She neither ate nor changed her garments. A great swelling in her throat prevented speech, and persistent fever sapped her strength, as did her constant weeping.

The abscess in her throat broke. It nearly choked her, and the ordeal left her exhausted, but the doctors dried the abscess, and Elizabeth began to feel a little better.

For a few days it appeared as if the queen would recover. Some of her appetite returned and she was cajoled once more to walk in the garden, one of the few things she still enjoyed. But as soon as she appeared to be recovered, Elizabeth Tudor fell once again into a state of deep sadness.

“Dearest madam, is there some secret cause for your grief? Something we might assuage?” Valentina asked the queen who had again taken to sitting on cushions on the floor of her privy chamber.

Elizabeth looked at the young woman for a long while. Finally, with a deep, mournful sigh, she said, “Nay, my child, there is nothing in this world worthy of troubling me now.” She grew silent again and appeared to go into a sort of trance, a single finger in her mouth.

The queen’s ladies turned away, tears in their eyes. No one but a fool could doubt that the end was near. Word came from London that the plague had broken out in the city and the suburbs. It was much too early for plague. Such an early onset of plague portended a worse epidemic than had been seen in years.

“Our presence here does no good,” the Earl of Lymnouth finally said to his cousins. “The queen has forgotten that we are here. I think it best that Angel and I go home to Devon. With plague raging nearby, it is dangerous for us to stay. Do not risk yourselves once you are no longer needed, I beg you.”

“I must stay until the end,” Valentina said firmly.

“Of course,” replied Robert Southwood, as though he had expected her to say just that. “It is your duty, Val, and like all the women of our family, you know your duty well.”

The Earl of Nottingham arrived in his mourning garb to try to cheer the queen, but when she saw him, she burst into piteous tears.

“She will not eat or take her medicine or go to bed,” Robert Cecil told the earl.

Charles Howard knelt before the queen, who was sitting on her cushions on the floor. Kissing his cousin’s still beautiful but feverish hands, he begged her to take some broth.

“Oh, Charles, do I not know my own constitution?” she said irritably. “I am not in such peril as you all imagine me to be.”

“Nonetheless, Bess, you must take some nourishment,” he said gently. “Your ladies and poor little Pygmy have not your stamina. You are frightening them to death with your melancholy. Kate would be most furious with you, and you know it. You are their queen and you must be as courageous now as you have ever been!”

Elizabeth Tudor looked directly at her cousin and said passionately, “All my life I have been forced to be brave, Charles, and I have been brave! From the moment of my birth I needed to be brave, for I had dared to disappoint Great Harry himself by being born a mere female instead of his greatly desired son. My gender is what caused my poor mother’s death when I was not even three, but I was brave then, too! Even as a child I realized the danger that surrounded me. I saw poor Queen Jane die in childbed giving my father his son. Their servants were so anxious for poor Edward’s safety that they neglected the queen, thereby causing her death. I saw Anne of Cleves divorced for not being as young and as pretty as Holbein had painted her. I saw poor Kat Howard beheaded on Tower Green even as my mother was, and then Queen Catherine Parr almost fell victim to the politics of my father’s court,
and I was brave
, Charles! Brave when Tom Seymour tried to seduce me in order to gain my throne. He almost broke Catherine Parr’s heart, for he was the one man she loved. Brave when those about my sister Mary would have had me killed.

“Then I became England’s queen. But even then I was not safe! I could not marry the only man I ever loved, and I realized that to marry at all would only endanger me and my position—
yet I was brave
, Charles!

“I am tied, my lord! I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck, and so I have been from the moment of my birth. I am tied, I am tied, and nothing can alter the case with me now!”

Her words pained him, for he knew the truth of them, and he realized for the first time in his life how terribly lonely his cousin, Elizabeth Tudor, had always been. The Earl of Nottingham blinked back tears. “Will you not take just a little beef broth, Bess?” he pleaded with her.

She saw his distress and all her queenly instincts surfaced. She patted his face. “Very well, Charles, I shall take a little broth,” she told him.

As Robert Cecil sighed with relief, Lady Burke hurried to the sideboard and ladled some steaming soup into a small porcelain bowl that she set within a silver filigreed holder. Joanna Edwardes brought Valentina a spoon and draped a linen napkin over her cousin’s arm.

Valentina brought the soup to Lord Howard, handing him the bowl in its holder and the spoon. Gently she tucked the napkin beneath the queen’s chin, receiving a faint smile from her mistress in return.

Outside Richmond Palace quiet groups of people from the nearby villages had gathered to watch the comings and goings of the great and the near-great. There had been no official mention of the queen’s condition, yet the people knew in some mysterious way that all was not well with the queen who had reigned over them for so long. Elizabeth Tudor was dear to them, and they showed their concern by gathering outside her home to wait, to watch, and to pray.

“There!” the queen said. “I have finished your damned broth, Charles. Now, leave me be!”

“You must get some rest,” the earl chided her. “You need to go to your bed, Bess. Cecil tells me you have not slept in your bed for many days now.”

“If you saw in your bed that which I see in mine, Charles, you would not persuade me to go there,” Elizabeth answered him firmly.

“Does Your Majesty see spirits?” Robert Cecil dared to ask her.

The queen glowered at him and refused to be baited.

“My lord,” hissed Lady Scrope, “you go too far, I think!”

“Please, Bess, seek your bed,” Charles Howard pleaded. “After a good night’s sleep everything will look so much better.”

“Aye,” agreed Robert Cecil. “Your Majesty must go to bed if for no other reason than to content your people who worry over you.”

“Little man, little man—if your father had lived, ye durst not have said so much! But ye know I must die and that makes ye so presumptuous. The word
must
is not one to be used to Princes!” the queen told poor Cecil scathingly.

Robert Cecil withered beneath the royal rebuke. He said nothing more.

Eventually, Lord Howard prevailed upon his cousin and Elizabeth agreed to seek her bed. Her ladies took her soiled garments from her and gently bathed her emaciated and withered body, putting a fresh white silk night rail on her that smelled of fragrant lavender. The queen’s thinning hair, once gloriously red, now lank and dull white, was brushed, braided, and tied with a pink ribbon, which seemed to amuse Elizabeth. Finally, wrapped in a crimson velvet quilted gown, she was helped to her bed. But she refused to lie back and rest.

Her voice failed her once again and she communicated with them by means of signs. She would eat no more, taking only occasional sips of wine. Then, for four days, she sat on her bed surrounded by pillows, staring straight ahead, saying nothing at all and refusing food and drink. Her body was alternately hot and racked by cold sweat. Her finger went into her mouth again.