Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I (31 page)

“I am certain that the queen will continue to promote you.”

He nodded but said nothing.

“Thomas”—I took his hand in mine—“what is it?”

“She still calls you Lady Northampton,” he said quietly. “I know ’tis the way of things, but no matter what comes my way, I cannot
have one day without being reminded that my wife is more highly titled as the wife of another man.”

“Long dead,” I said, irritated.

He shrugged.

“Mary Herbert told me that Upjohn is interested in Sofia’s hand,” I said. “I’d like that for her.”

“Does she want it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s time she’s married and with a household of her own.”

“One she likes to live in, with a man she wants, I should say,” Thomas said, and then, perhaps realizing he had overstepped, continued, “but that is up to you. I shall take my leave tomorrow—the Rose Theater has officially opened in London. Pembroke’s men and the lord admiral’s men will be performing and I shall attend.”

“I should like to come,” I teased.

“No lady is seen at the Rose,” he said. “Only women of low morals.”

“Do you know such women?” I jested, perhaps a bit sharply.

He didn’t answer. “And then Effingham has asked me to go up and down the coast recruiting sailors and making sure that the ports, including Hurst Castle, of which I am still governor, are secure.”

“Spain?” I asked quietly.

He nodded. “Spain.”

“Can we withstand them?”

“We can pray,” he said. And then, perhaps moved by the thought that we may be under a siege from which we could not recover, he reached out and drew me into his arms for but a moment. I felt him fight with himself not to take me closer, but his will won and at length he withdrew. “Good night, Elin,” he said, holding himself firm.

I’d been dismissed. My eyes filled with tears. “Good night, Sir Thomas.” I despaired as I trudged back to my elaborate, rich chamber, where I lay alone in a beautifully carved bed.

My marriage was dead.

Thomas left the next day for the coast and I returned to court, a careworn, unwelcome pattern.

Years of Our Lord 1587, 1588

Windsor Castle

The Palace of Whitehall

Richmond Palace

Y
our children do you honor,” the queen said to me some days later. “I enjoy them all but must admit that I am perhaps over-fond of young Elizabeth.”

“It’s not a surprise that you might see her namesake reflected therein.”

“Young Bridget is three years of age now, is that correct?” she asked as I pinned on her sleeves.

“I marvel, Majesty, how you never forget a date, a detail, or anything someone says. Do you know everything?” I teased.

“Perhaps,” she said with a smile. “What happened to bringing Sir Thomas a child each year?”

I pinned for a full minute before answering. “That would require us to be in the same chamber, at the same time, willingly.”

The queen said nothing, but she fondly patted my head as I knelt to complete my task. If she was not willing to open windows into men’s souls, it was unlikely she was willing to open them into their hearts.

Her lord admiral, a quietly practicing Catholic, came to speak with the queen persuasively about the great danger she was in, a danger that would not be lifted, he felt, until Mary of Scots was executed.

Finally, she assented. On February 1, she asked Walsingham to have his secretary, John Davison, bring the death warrant for her to sign. She read each word carefully and, at the end, signed it with the swoops and loops her inimitable signature had become famous for. “She should be executed in the great hall of Fotheringay,” she said calmly, “to preserve her dignity. She has asked that her servants be present, and that should, of course, be made possible. She will also want her priest nearby and that, too, should be accommodated.”

She handed the document over to Davison, who took it with a bow. He turned, and just as he was about to leave the room she stood and shrilly called him back. “Mr. Davison!”

He turned. “Yes, Majesty.”

“I wish . . . I wish to proceed upon another course first. I wish that you should write to Sir Amias, at Fotheringay, and ask if it be meet with him to take Mary’s life in accordance to the terms of the Bond of Association.”

Davison’s eyes widened and Cecil and Walsingham could barely sputter out a question. We ladies, who waited outside the chamber to accompany her after her meeting, ducked back so we could hear but not be seen. After Throckmorton’s threat some years back, the queen’s faithful gentlemen across the realm had come together under the leadership of Walsingham and Cecil to form the Bond
of Association, which was authorized by the queen and obliged all signatories to execute any person that attempted to or actually did usurp the queen’s throne, or made an attempt upon or successfully took Elizabeth’s life. If the queen were indeed killed, the signatories were required to hunt down the killer.

“Majesty?” Davison asked. “Ask Sir Amias to . . . murder Mary?”

“Not murder,” the queen said dismissively. “Did he sign the Bond?”

“Yes.”

“And has our cousin attempted to usurp our throne and take our life?”

“Yes, Majesty,” he said quietly. “But I am sure he will not agree to carrying out such an evil deed.”

We held our breath. He had just rebuked the queen.

“There should be no problem in carrying out a legal deed, if he is as good as his word.”

Walsingham spoke up. “Are you so eager to give your power and authority to another?”

“Do you not see the danger, Sir Francis, in setting a precedent for an anointed queen to be executed by command of another monarch?”

There was a silence before he spoke. “Majesty, the monarchs of Spain and France would be glad to see you executed if they could but command it. Do you not see the greater danger in setting a precedent for murdering a crowned queen in her bed?”

I looked at Anne Dudley, a strong reformer, but nothing like the stout observer Paulet. “There is no way he will agree,” she said, and I nodded. It was shameful that the queen would even ask, because most understood that the Bond’s call for the signers to perform the death of a suspect was only obligatory after the successful
murder of Queen Elizabeth. Otherwise, she was expected to act on her royal authority. But neither of us spoke of that.

Within days, the answer came back from Sir Amias. In tempered outrage, he refused to participate in any way. The queen raged, blaming “the niceness of those precise fellows who in words would do great things for her surety, but in deed perform nothing.”

Davison apparently felt confident, after such a refusal, to carry forth with the document already entrusted to him and not retaken by the queen. On February 8, at eight in the morning, Elizabeth’s “good sister” went to her death in the great hall at Fotheringay Castle.

Mary claimed until the end to be dying for her Catholic faith, though ’twas the queen’s crown and throne she’d had designs for; had there not been persistent, treasonous attempts to seize those two, the strictures upon Catholics in England would not have been required. Among her last words on the scaffold, as the Protestant Dean of Peterborough sought to comfort her, were these: “My dean, trouble not yourself nor me, for know that I am settled in the ancient Catholic and Roman religion, and in defense thereof by God’s grace mind to spend my blood.”

She then turned to the ax man. “I forgive you,” she said, and then, in Latin, “Into Your hands, O Lord, I commend my spirit.”

It took two rough blows of the ax before her spirit was sent heavenward. When Mary’s head was picked up, in a nightmare moment, the head itself fell to the floor and the poor man was left holding only her wig. Her little dog, a constant companion, scurried out from his mistress’s skirts, whimpering over her prone body.

Elizabeth was informed, quietly, of the death, before Cecil could bring her the official word. I slept in her chamber that night; Mary Radcliffe slept at the foot of her bed. Neither of us trusted
what she might do or say, that could not be soothed by one of the young maids typically on overnight service.

She slept fitfully, but morning brought the storm.

“I did not authorize this!” she shrieked. “I did not tell Davison to deliver that warrant after Paulet refused to honor his word with the Bond of Association. Who instructed Davison to have that carried out?”

“The council met, Majesty, and we thought, with your signature and no other recourse, that was your wish,” Cecil said quietly. He had served her faithfully for many decades; indeed, I think she looked upon him as a father.

“Who chairs this council?” she demanded.

“I do,” he said quietly. His decades of steady service did not save him for the moment. He was banished, and Davison sent to the Tower.

The queen quickly dictated a letter to James, in Scotland, saying she had not authorized the execution and promised to look into the matter to the fullest and punish the wrongdoers, up to and including hanging Davison without a trial if need be.

The queen’s ambassador from France sent a communication saying, “I never saw a thing more hated by little, great, old, young, and of all religions than the Queen of Scots’s death, and especially the manner of it. I would to God . . . she had died and no more.” He followed up by saying that great throngs of people were calling for Mary’s canonization. Walsingham finally stopped sharing the communiqués with the queen, as they only increased her anger against her council, and Cecil in particular, who was still banished.

Within weeks, though, the queen’s anger began to subside and her appetite returned. She was sleeping well again, and though none doubted her sincere discomfort and regret over Mary’s necessary
death, I began to wonder if she, too, were a better player than most credited her for.

“Has James sent word of his anger, or of forthcoming war?” I asked her one morning.

She shook her head, and again quoted Machiavelli to me. “ ‘Men sooner forget the death of their father than the loss of their patrimony.’ ”

It was the closest she ever came to naming a successor in my presence.

After the French fuse had burnt out and James had seen a safer way to claim the southern crown for his head than his mother had inheriting it, the Spanish were still left to be dealt with.

Mendoza, who could not keep himself from meddling and perhaps had a vendetta against the queen, wrote to Philip, “As God has so willed that this accursed people, for His ends, should . . . against all reason commit such an act as this, it is evidently His design to deliver those two kingdoms into Your Majesty’s hands.”

Walsingham had intercepted this communication before it was passed to Philip. But it was not news.

“With Mary alive, Philip could not overlook her claim to your throne,” Walsingham said. “But now that Mary is dead, he has nothing and no one holding him back from claiming it for himself.”

“Which he has long desired,” the queen agreed. “Is there news of an imminent invasion by Spain?”

“They are building up their fleet for such,” Walsingham responded. “A mighty armada.”

“Then we shall have to consider whether to strike first,” Elizabeth said.

I turned to her in marvel and joy. She, who had always tried to forestall those who would come after her and her realm, appeasing
them with charm, with offers of marriage, or with diplomatic dissembling, was on the brink of declaring outright war. I told her so, later.

“We are no craven king,” she lightly rebuked me.

“Never, Majesty, never have I thought this. It’s just that, perhaps—perhaps you should take up jousting!” I teased. “Who could face you on the tiltyard?”

She smiled, but she did seem stronger, bolder. “I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman, but I have the heart and stomach of a king, and a king of England, too, and think foul scorn that Parma or Spain, or any prince of Europe, should dare to invade the borders of my realm; rather than any dishonor shall grow by me, I myself will take up arms!”

I stood back and we ladies all applauded loudly.

“You must tell that to your men, Your Grace,” Anne Dudley said. “They will be heartened by it, as we are.”

In April, it was reported to her, “The pope is daily plotting nothing but how he may bring about your utter overthrow. . . . The King of Spain is busy arming and extending his power to ruin both you and your estate. Will not Your Majesty, beholding the flames of your enemies on every side kindling around, unlock all your coffers and convert your treasure for the advancing of worthy men for the arming of ships and men of war to defend you?”

She nodded. “I shall. And if he attempts to penetrate my shores, I shall meet him myself.”

•   •   •

The air was unstable round us as it is before a storm. Elizabeth recalled Raleigh from his expeditions, understanding that she would have need of his fleet.

Drake, too, was on his way back to England; he sailed into Cadiz harbor, where, he said, he “singed the King of Spain’s beard” by destroying thirty-seven galleons gathering to form an armada against the English. He made his way to a Spanish fort, which he captured, and harried all of the Spanish vessels he could find along the way, perhaps as many as a hundred, burning their cargo, including all materials needed to make water and larder caskets for the entire Spanish fleet. He told the queen, “Philip will be hard-pressed to replace these in an expeditious manner, which means they will have to store their food and water in unseasoned timber, which will bring rot on quickly.”