Mary Queen of Scotland & the Isles (178 page)

She was relieved to get to her rooms. She had hated the staring; for
the first time she was hideously aware of how she must appear to others
now: stooped, infirm, older than her years. It was a novel, unwelcome
feeling. She had always taken her grace and allure for granted, until
now, when it had abruptly vanished. Perhaps it would be better if she
had not come.

First my reputation is ruined by the printing of the casket letters,
then my faith is besmirched by the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre,
next my cause is wrecked by the final fall of Edinburgh, and now even
my last possession, my beauty, has been snatched away in the common
mind, she thought. I do not mind losing it so much for myself, but as
a spur to action. People are more likely to help a beautiful poor
prisoner than an ugly poor prisoner. And ... if ever I see Bothwell
again, I do not want him to see me ugly.

She looked at her reflection in the glass of the windowpanes. From a
distance, and in the wavering glass, she still looked fetching. But
she knew that in the light of day, and close up, she was no such thing,
at least not in the eyes of strangers.

Mary put on her white bathing robe and gingerly made her way to the
edge of the pool. She stuck her foot in it, and found it to be
pleasantly warm and caressing, so she eased herself down and took her
place on the underwater bench. The waters lapped up around her
shoulders; gentle steam rose and settled in a mist on her face. Her
ankles and knees, so swollen in the mornings that sometimes she could
hardly bend them to arise, now began to tingle and loosen in the warm,
circulating streams. She extended her legs to flex the muscles, which
often had spasms and became stiff. She sighed and put her head back.

There were only a few other bathers there that morning an old woman
with a skin affliction of some sort, a man who looked swollen with
dropsy, and a thin boy who kept wheezing with asthma. They looked at
her with eyes dulled with pain and did not seem to recognize in her
anything but a fellow sufferer.

After her bathing, and her slow walk within her own quarters, and a
light supper for the regimen imposed a semi-fast she was put to bed
with two pigs' bladders filled with hot water, so that she might sweat.
The heat had already proved therapeutic; her limbs had relaxed their
tightness. And her headaches had ebbed away.

Shrewsbury stopped in to see her, but she begged him to excuse her for
not leaving her bed.

"God forbid I should interrupt Your Majesty's treatment, for which we
have journeyed here!" he said. "I see that you are smiling; are you
in less pain?"

"Indeed I am. I do believe I may be cured here."

"Here is some news to lighten you further. I have just received word
that Her Glorious Majesty Queen Elizabeth is nearby at Kenilworth, only
some sixty miles away."

"Sixty miles!" Mary said. "The closest we have ever come!"

"You may come closer yet," he said. "She plans to journey afterward to
Chartley Castle, only thirty-four miles from here. And then, perhaps
to Buxton itself."

"Here? Then I may, at last, meet her face to face?"

"It is possible, Your Majesty. Entirely possible."

Elizabeth! To meet her now and in this condition!

"I pray it may be so," said Mary.

"It is in the hands of the gods specifically the pagan ones Robert
Dudley has summoned to meet him and his Queen at Kenilworth."

TWELVE

The Eaerie Queen was passing through the outer courtyard of

Kenilworth, beneath the azure-painted astronomical clock in Caesar's
Tower, when delicate, angelic voices began to sing of her divine
beauty. Elizabeth attired in such stiff and shining brocade that she
could not turn in the saddle, encased in an armour of cloth-of-gold,
pearls, and precious stones, her head framed by a starched ruff that
stuck up like a lacy sail looked up to see a young boy, dressed as
Cupid, suspended by a gold-painted rope over the clock's face. He was
touching the hands, stopping the clock.

"For you, O Gloriana, fairest Virgin Queen, time shall stand by and
cease to run, whilst you are here amongst us!" chorused the voices.

"You see, my beloved?" said Robert, riding beside her. "Even Time is
your obedient and adoring subject."

She smiled and continued on her way in to her quarters. It was
twilight, a drowsy summer twilight, and she had come at last to
Kenilworth, dear Robert's monumental estate in Warwickshire, "the navel
of England." She had given it to him, as was her prerogative to
present it to her favourite, ten years earlier. But although she knew
that he had enlarged it and made many alterations, she had never
journeyed to see it. Now she was to be his guest she and three hundred
of her courtiers on progress with her for the lengthy period of
seventeen days. He had promised that she would leave the ordinary
world behind and enter one that he had created especially for her.

"You will not be disappointed, my heart," he had said. "Only come and
do me the honour of setting foot in my world!"

He had met her when she was still seven miles away, feasting her and
her company in a golden tent so large it took seven carts to haul it
away after it was dismantled. They had hunted, using bow and arrow,
all the way to Kenilworth. Then, as Elizabeth had approached the
artificial ornamental lake, a lighted "island" had floated up, and
riding on it was a Nereid, who called, "I am the lady of this pleasant
lake. Come, refresh yourself!"

A sibyl beside her, dressed in a floating white gown, prophesied,
"Health, prosperity, and felicity to Your Majesty!"

And suddenly trumpeters of superhuman size, dressed in Arthurian
costumes, blared out a fanfare from the ramparts.

"The legend is that this was one of King Arthur's castles," said
Robert. "And so our lake must have a lady, too."

Guns blasted out a salute, and then Elizabeth passed over a temporary
bridge, guarded by Hercules and other gods and goddesses stationed at
each of the seven pillars: Jupiter, who promised due season and fair
weather; Luna, who promised to shine nightly; Ceres, who promised the
malt for beer; Bacchus, full cups everywhere; Aeolus, to hold up winds
and keep back tempests; Mercury, the entertainment of poets and
players, and Diana, good hunting. From the huge windows on the new
addition, light flooded out and illuminated the outdoors, like a
gigantic lantern.

Elizabeth turned to Robert as the clock hands were being stopped. "If
only we could command it so!" she said.

"Believe it!" he urged.

But she could look over at him and see that he himself was touched by
time. His youthful suppleness was being replaced by a certain
hardening of his form; his face was often red, and his gorgeous
red-brown hair was thinning and fading. My Robert, she thought. If it
were truly in my power, I would keep time's hands from holding you.

They passed indoors, and Elizabeth was astounded at the gleaming wooden
floors, the high ceilings, the huge gallery, a Turkey carpet at least
fifty feet long with delicate blue background. Everywhere the eye
could see, there was light; crystal candlesticks glittered by the
hundreds.

"This is ... truly enchanting," she finally said. She had never built
any palaces herself, and so none of her royal dwellings were this
modern, with the huge windows, wide staircases, and galleries the size
of a London street.

"It was all built just in hopes that you might glorify it for one
instant," he said.

And she knew that, in one sense, this was true.

It was the height of summer, July, with heat simmering on the horizon,
and each leaf on the trees still and covered with dust. All of time
did seem suspended, even the seasons themselves: summer trembling on
its very apex, pausing just to breathe in and out before descending
into autumn. Ripeness pervaded the air, the feeling of vegetation
being at its prime, its greenest, its fattest, its heaviest.

Every day there were diversions and entertainments in the beguiling
Country of Nowhere that Robert Dudley had created. There was dancing
in the enclosed garden, an acre of fragrant flower beds, with obelisks,
spheres, and a marble fountain with figures of Neptune and Thetis that
squirted people roguishly. A classic temple abutted the garden, its
pillars painted to look like precious stones, and a net enclosing it
turned it into an aviary where exotic birds from Europe and Africa sang
and preened.

There was hunting in the chase, of the hart and red deer. As they
returned, they were met by Wodwose, a wild man of the forest, covered
all over with leaves and moss, who uttered praises to the Queen.

There was a special play reenacting the raids of the Danes on East
England hundreds of years earlier. There was one day devoted to
"country pleasures," with a mock "bridal party," a morris dance,
running at the quintain. There was a ferocious bear-baiting with
thirteen bears and packs of mastiffs. One day was set aside for
"queenly ceremony," in which five men were knighted and the Queen
touched nine sufferers of the "king's evil" to cure them of their
scrofula.

In the evenings there were banquets, including one that featured more
than three hundred different dishes, followed by fireworks displays
that not only lit up the skies but hit the waters of the lake without
being extinguished, so that the waters glowed. There was a masque by
Gascoigne, and an Italian contortionist who seemed to have no human
backbone at all, but to be made only of cords.

The most stunning and elaborate event was a water pageant depicting
"The Delivery of the Lady of the Lake," and involving a mermaid with a
twelve-foot tail, and Triton and Arion, who rode to the rescue on an
unusual dolphin: one that had a choir and orchestra inside. As Arion
approached the Queen, mounted on horseback, he climbed to the very top
of the dolphin's back and began to recite his piece.

"O fairest, O rarest," he cried. "O Goddess Divine!" Then there was a
long pause. The mermaid made signals to him. But Arion just stood
there, until at last he growled and ripped off his mask. "I am no
Arion, not I, but just honest Harry Goldingham!" he said.

The Queen roared with laughter, and pronounced it her favourite
entertainment.

The seventeen days were over, and the royal party was making
preparations for leaving. Even the weather had obeyed their desires,
and nothing rough or unpleasant had intruded, as Jupiter had
promised.

Elizabeth's master of the household had already been sent ahead to
Chart-ley, the home of the Earl and Countess of Essex.

"It will be the farthest north I have ever gone," said Elizabeth,
"although it is still only a hundred and twenty miles from London."

"And where after Chartley?" asked Hatton. "Will you proceed even
farther north?"

"Perhaps." There was Buxton, about thirty-five miles north of that.
Buxton where the thermal waters were. And Mary, the Queen of Scots.

I could go there, see her at last. It would not be the same as
receiving her in London, at court. It could be impromptu, unrehearsed,
just an afterthought in a packed itinerary.... If I saw her, perhaps at
last the spell would be broken, and she would be just a woman to me,
not a symbol.