Watch the Lady (47 page)

“But this is different, dear,” says Knollys. “They will be trying to prove that you published this to incite rebellion. It could lead to . . .” He pauses, placing a hand on his forehead. “It could lead to . . . to . . . more serious charges.” He is clearly loath to utter the word “treason.”

ESS-EX
,
ESS-EX
,
ESS-EX
.

“But
I
didn't publish it. They cannot try me for something I didn't do.” As she says it she realizes how wrong she is, that people are tried and convicted for things they didn't do all the time, and that if Cecil has decided he wants rid of her, this is a golden opportunity. A sudden vivid memory of Doctor Lopez fills her head. “I will fight this to the death.” The air in the chamber seems thin, as if it will not sustain her, and her head feels light. She takes up her fan, closing her eyes, gratefully breathing in the wafts of cool air it produces.

“Oh God!” says Essex, drooping with despair. “This is too much.” She wants to take him by the shoulders and shake him, force him to find his fighting spirit.

She stands suddenly and takes her brother's hand, leading him over to the window, flinging it open. A great roar goes up from the crowd outside as they see the face of their hero, the only man they trust to deliver them from the Spanish threat. “See how you are loved.” She waves, causing another cheer to sound out, reverberating around the street. The guards begin to shuffle from foot to foot, presumably wondering whether they should put a stop to this. Penelope closes the window.

“We can try and find out who
did
publish it,” says Anthony quietly, once they are back beside him.

“That would be a start,” says Knollys.

“Meanwhile,” Penelope says to her brother, strumming once more at her instrument, “you
must
petition the Queen to renew your sweet wines license. Your rights end at Michaelmas, don't they?” He nods slowly, as if he is under water. “Without it, now you are stripped of your offices, you will have nothing and your debts are—”

Before she can say “insurmountable” he interjects sharply. “You think I don't know it!”

“She means to keep you in your place,” says Anthony. He is talking of the Queen, who knows well enough that if Essex has no funds, he is nothing.

“It is as good as a siege. She thinks she will starve you into submission,” says Southampton under his breath; he is pacing up and down.

Essex has his head in his hands. They are still chanting outside.

“I see Cecil written all over this,” says Penelope. “He is a snake. All that pretense at kindness, having the hearing postponed. It smelled wrong at the time and it stinks now. Write to the Queen.” Penelope says it like an order, looking directly at her brother. “Convince her of your innocence. You
are
innocent.” She remembers his plaintive words that night at Nonsuch. “All you did was what you thought was in England's best interests . . . just a six-week truce with Tyrone, until your troops had gained their strength . . .” Her voice trails off.

“That is why I refused to admit to insubordination at the hearing,” he says without lifting his face. “I will not lie. I will not stoop to dishonor.”

“Your sister is right. It
is
Cecil who drives this. We all know that,” says Southampton. “He has poisoned the Queen's mind.”

“I sought to articulate that in my letter,” says Penelope. “And look where that's got us. We must fight fire with fire. Find me something against Cecil, Anthony—something that will truly incriminate him.” She is whispering. “He cannot be entirely free from misconduct; he must have failed to cover his tracks
somewhere
.” She looks towards Anthony and thinks she can see a gleam in his eyes.

“Remember Pérez?” he says, one eyebrow raised. A thread of hope winds through her and the atmosphere in the room lifts minutely. They are all aware that Pérez knows the inner secrets of the Spanish court, and if Cecil overstepped his mark with his Spanish dealings, Pérez will surely know of it. “It is nothing definitive, but it is a possible lead.”

The guards both turn their way, as if they have sniffed intrigue in the air, and they peel themselves off the wall, moving slowly across the room with the thinly disguised pretense of going to look out of the window.

“How about a round of Primero?” suggests Southampton, producing a pack of cards from somewhere on his person. “Will you join us?” he calls to the guards, who are clearly unsure how to react to this. “A little enjoyment will do no harm.”

“I don't see why not,” says the bearded one, just as the other replies, “I don't think so.”

“We shall have to toss a coin to decide,” says Penelope. Southampton produces a penny, handing it to her with a smirk. “You call it,” she says to the more amenable of the pair.

“Tails,” he says tentatively.

She throws up the penny, catching it, clapping it onto the back of her hand. “Tails it is.”

Anthony has already begun to shuffle the pack. Southampton drags over a small table and they pull up stools. Essex hasn't spoken a word for some time and that dark look which spells despair has intensified. Penelope sits beside him, taking his hand, kissing it, before wrapping it with both of hers and setting it into her lap. “Do you have a headache coming on?”

He doesn't reply, as if he hasn't heard.

“I will mix you some of that tincture in a minute.”

Anthony is looking through the pack. “What kind of cards are these? I have never seen this design. Look at this lady.” He passes a card to Penelope. It is the queen of spades. “Is she not the spitting image of the Spanish Infanta?” He says it with a laugh, and the guards laugh too, but Penelope understands what lies beneath his little jest. The hope is that Pérez has dug up something on Cecil and the Spanish Infanta—that might be his “possible lead.”

“Now you mention it,” she says.

Southampton is laughing, showing the card to the guards. “Look, she even has a mustache.”

Uncle Knollys snatches it up with a chuckle.

Anthony Bacon is dealing now and they are placing their wagers, only pennies, but Penelope isn't thinking about the game, she has an idea formulating in her head.

“I hope you have come to tell me that you have finally questioned Lady Rich, my lord.” Cecil stands as Lord Buckhurst enters the chamber. He is utterly exasperated with the man and it peeves him to have to offer him the respect his title demands. The lady in question had managed to avoid Buckhurst for more than two months, moving between her houses. Such inefficiency rankles. The painting of his dead wife on the wall opposite is not quite straight and it adds to his irritation.

“I have, my lord.” He is flushed and wheezy and he blots his damp brow with a square of linen. “It is warm today. Would you mind if I were to undo my doublet a little?”

“You can strip naked for all I care as long as you tell me you have interrogated the lady.”

Buckhurst emits a guffaw of laughter at this. “I see you are in good humor, Cecil.”

A couple of Cecil's pages are loitering in the doorway. He commands them to leave, but when they are gone, he wishes he'd asked one of them to straighten the painting, which he tries not to look at.

“Do please sit down,” he says to Buckhurst, who settles his large body into a chair with a sigh like a pair of bellows. “So?”

“I questioned Lady Rich.” He says her name with a soft look about his eyes and Cecil has a bad feeling about this; he'd thought fusty old Buckhurst might be immune to her charms but apparently not. “I tracked her down to her husband's house in Essex, where she was tending him. He had been struck down with some unknown malady. But by the time I arrived there she had departed for . . .”

Cecil wants to tell the man to get on with it, that he hasn't all day to listen to the story of his meanderings around the English countryside. “And when you did question her, what were your findings, my lord?” He is trying to keep a pleasant look on his face.

“I am entirely convinced of her innocence.”

“How so?” Cecil sighs in exasperation. Lady Rich seems to have a way of wriggling out of the tightest corner. An image of her pops into his mind unbidden, which he expels with a sharp intake of breath. He should have sent Bacon to talk to her;
he
wouldn't have been susceptible to her charms. But of course he couldn't, for Bacon is too tightly knit to the whole plan. At least Lady Rich has been away from court and without access to the Queen. So something has been achieved. Plus the earl's guard has been stood down and he has disappeared to the country, meaning the rabble of supporters has dispersed from the gates of Essex House.

There have been reams of letters from the earl to the Queen, all of which Cecil has intercepted, pathetic epistles pleading for her favor: . . .
for till I may appear in your gracious presence and kiss Your Majesty's fair correcting hand
—fair correcting hand, indeed—
time itself is a perpetual night . . .
All this, a thousandfold, in preamble to convincing her to renew his sweet wines license. Cecil had been there when the Queen had read the most recent of them. She had let it flutter to the floor with the words: “He cannot think me such a fool as to believe all this nonsense. All he wants is the means to pay his debts.”

It occurs to Cecil that perhaps he has already won.
Water hollows a stone, not by force but by falling often
. How right his father was.

Buckhurst is wittering: “She acknowledged her follies and faults . . . her horror on discovering that her letter, a private letter (she truly seemed most affronted by it) had been made public . . . assurances that she would never again put pen to paper in such a way that might be exploited so . . . pleaded forgiveness for her insolence . . . said she would never enjoy a moment of comfort until she had the happiness to set her eyes once more upon Her Majesty . . .”

Cecil is barely listening. He is thinking about the gardens at Theobalds and how they have become neglected since he has been so taken up with this business concerning the earl. He is sketching out plans in his mind for a new series of knot gardens, each representing the rulers of England. At the center will be the one devoted to Elizabeth. He imagines the blooms he will plant there, red and white roses entwined and exotic plants from the New World and those lilies the color of flames to echo her hair.

“. . . and,” continues Buckhurst, “she gave me a letter for Her Majesty—made me promise to deliver it personally.”

Cecil is jerked out of his horticultural reverie.

“A letter?” He tries to imagine what further slurs Lady Rich might have written against him. The idea swells once more that somehow that blasted missive of his has come into Lady Rich's hands. His old fears are renewed, as if they had never gone. Why else would she be writing to the Queen if not to finish the work of her earlier letter and denounce him as a traitor? He feels desiccated, as if someone has thrust a handful of sand into his throat. He will make sure it doesn't reach the Queen. Before that thought has fully formed itself, he sees its essential flaw. He cannot suppress the letter, for Buckhurst is sure to mention it. Lady Rich is a shrewd creature indeed. A new idea drops into his mind; he will have it copied and any compromising material removed as a surgeon might purge a boil of pus. That is what he will do. “Let me see it.”

“I am afraid that is not possible—”

“How so?” His smile is a rictus.

“I gave it to Her Majesty on my way here . . .”

He is finding it hard to breathe now.

“She was walking to chapel with her ladies. I have a niece amongst her maids. She stopped. I was most honored . . .”

Suddenly the room is too close and it is
his
forehead that is slick with perspiration.

“I thought it a most excellent opportunity to hand the letter to her myself, as I had promised Lady Rich,” continues Buckhurst.

Cecil's mind is swirling out of control as he tries to remember once more exactly how he worded that letter to the Spanish ambassador. His wife watches him with bright accusing eyes, from her crooked frame. Surely he wasn't so rash as to make it explicit, or did his fervor for a treaty get the better of him? He struggles for breath.

“Are you ailing, my lord?” asks Buckhurst. “Are you in need of a physician?”

He pulls the fragmented parts of himself together sufficiently to say, “It is just a little warm in here; that is all.”

“I will have one of the lads fetch you something to drink.” Buckhurst makes for the door to find one of the pages.

Cecil's mind is in chaos. He digs and digs to the very bottom of his being, to the place where he finally becomes aware that he
would
have seen that Spanish girl at the helm of England, had the circumstances been right for him, had he been placed to best advantage at the end of it. But did he ever say that? Worse: had he ever written it? He simply doesn't know anymore. How is it that he, who prides himself on being so very orderly, never leaving any stone unturned, no thread out of place, could be so completely and utterly awry beneath his surface?

Cecil heaves himself out of his chair. His head spins and a moment of blackness drops over him. He clings to the edge of the desk to stop himself from falling, and when he has recovered his equilibrium, he walks calmly over to the opposite wall to straighten his dead wife. Buckhurst is fussing about, advising him to sit back down and worrying about the whereabouts of the page with his drink, when a lad in the Queen's livery arrives to inform Cecil that Her Majesty wishes to see him, once she is done with her evening worship.