Elizabeth I

by Margaret George

  His surety took me by surprise. He usually softened his warnings. “Indeed?”

  “Yes. You must transfer immediately. Do not linger! Whitehall is a death trap for you.”

  He was fierce about it. In fact, I had never seen him more committed to a prediction.

  “But we have New Year’s celebrations planned, and plays for Twelfth Night,” I argued.

  “You must not let festivities be an obstacle,” he said. “Just so those eating and feasting are often swept away.”

  “John, you are sounding like one of those tedious prophets crying in the wilderness. I will not upset my court by leaving in the middle of celebrations I have invited them to. What talk it would cause! They are already murmuring about that sermon. I will not give them any more food for gossip.”

  He crossed his arms, glared at me. “Your stubbornness imperils your precious royal self.”

  “It has before, and it will again. But I do not want to cause alarm, and a hasty removal will do just that.”

  “I have done my part,” he said. “I can do no more!”

  That night I told Catherine, Helena, and the other ladies of the chamber to ready themselves for a move. “As soon as the Twelfth Night play is done, we will depart for Richmond.”

  “At night?” Catherine cried in alarm.

  “No, but as soon as dawn breaks.” It would be cold then, but I felt impelled to do it. Dee’s eyes had frightened me.

  Daybreak on January 6 revealed a drizzly mist enveloping the buildings so thickly that I could not see the great gatehouse across the courtyard. The river was invisible, masked by a fog that lay over it like a cloud. Cold gripped the rooms as we passed through them on our way out to the water steps. As our footsteps sounded, they seemed to drum out, Flee, flee, for your father died here in just such weather.

  It was true. My father had kept to his sickbed at Whitehall for three weeks in January, and then, just as the month was about to end, he died. Perhaps Dee had felt that time reverberating, wanting to repeat itself.

  “Are you sure you want to transfer now?” asked Helena.

  “Yes,” I replied, walking faster. Let me find a plausible reason. “It is warmer there. The heating system at Richmond is better.”

  “Perhaps so,” said Catherine, struggling to keep up. “But the fifteen miles of river in between are colder than either palace.”

  “We shall bundle up in the royal barge,” I assured her.

  Behind them trailed the other ladies of the chamber, as well as Eurwen. I should have sent her back to Wales before the weather turned, but I had promised her a festive Christmas at court. Now it was too late; she would have to come with us to Richmond and wait until spring to return home.

  Torches lit our way down the mossy steps to the barge, its oars-men waiting. As we pushed off, I saw the mist swallow Whitehall, obliterating it.

  Soon it began to sleet, the icy particles hurling themselves against the windows. We were going with the tide, but still it would take hours to reach Richmond. Suddenly the heaps of furs and heated bricks seemed a pitiful defense against the elements.

  Oh, John Dee, I thought, are you sure you saw what you saw? This is folly.

  Beside me, Catherine began to shiver violently, and everyone huddled together for warmth.

  Past Lambeth, then past Barn Elms and Mortlake. I tried to see the little landing at Mortlake, but it was curtained by fog. After Mortlake willows and reeds lined the banks, making lacy patterns. And then the towers of Richmond behind their guarding wall, spires piercing the mist, their vanes glinting. At last.

  “Ladies, you have been hardy travelers,” I said. “Soon we will be warm.”

  I could not have guessed I would not be warm again.

  The dreariest part of the year now commenced—holiday gaieties over, roads iced and dangerous, seas stormy and almost impassable, wood and food carefully husbanded. The court was skeletal. Many courtiers were at home, attending to neglected business. Helena departed for her own family, as they lived nearby.

  The Great Hall all but begged for an entertainment; it was a wonderful setting for plays. But there were not enough people at court just now to warrant it. Eurwen was particularly lonely, as many of the younger people at court were missing.

  “I fear I have done you a disservice,” I said. “It is boring here for anyone but the old. As soon as the weather breaks, you shall leave and return home.”

  She did not look as pleased with that as I expected. Oh, so that was the way the wind blew. “I see,” I said. “And when this young man returns?”

  She blushed and found something very interesting to look at out the window.

  “The Eve of St. Agnes is almost here,” I said. “Perhaps you can get an answer.”

  “I must have a room to myself, then,” she said.

  “So you know the rite?”

  “I am Welsh, and we know every magic rite there is!”

  I laughed. “Very well. On the night of January 20, you shall have your own chamber. What else will you need?”

  “A small cake made of flour, eggs, water, and salt. Two white candles that have never been lit. And I shall have to fast all day, so please excuse me from dinner.”

  She must be very fond of this young man, whoever he was. “Those wishes are easily granted.” I smiled, studying her eager eyes. “Do you really believe in it?”

  “Oh, yes!” she said. “In my village, a woman who performed the rite saw three men, not one, and the last had a wooden leg. It all came true. She married three times, and the last had a wooden leg. He had been married to someone else when she dreamed the vision.”

  “Tell me how you perform the ritual in Wales.” Blanche Parry might have once done the same.

  “You have to go without food all day. Then you make the cake and set it by the hearth. You mark your initials on it, then walk backward to your bed. It is very important not to speak a word all day. Then you go to sleep. While you are sleeping, the apparition of your future husband will come in, mark his initials in the cake, then appear in your dreams. When morning comes, you can see what is on the cake. Then—if the boy is to your liking—you eat a piece of the cake. That breaks the spell. Then you can speak to others again.”

  “Oh, my, you will be hungry by the time morning comes. And can you reveal who you saw in your dreams?”

  “Only if you don’t like him. Telling a dream means it won’t come true.”

  “So if you won’t tell me who you saw, that means it was the one you like?”

  “Yes, Godmother.”

  “Then I hope you cannot tell me.”

  With such frivolities I hoped to distract this young and lovely girl from the sense of heaviness and endings that hung over us. It is the weather, I kept telling myself. But the truth was, Dee’s warning had rung a tone of doom, even though we had fled Whitehall.

  Catherine seemed to grow paler by the day, and she confided that she had never warmed up after the boat ride, no matter how high the fire or how many furs she wore. I was stabbed with guilt for dragging her here.

  Robert Cecil, who never even hinted about being needed at home, kept loyal company at Richmond, as did Admiral Charles. John Harington and John Carey came to court. But Raleigh was away on his estate at Sherborne, with Lord Cobham as his guest. Egerton was at his London home, and so was Lord Buckhurst.

  Thus, the absent courtiers missed the most exciting news in years. Mountjoy had captured The O’Neill at last, and he was at our mercy. Ever since the Spanish had surrendered after the Battle of Kinsale and sailed away, he had been on the run, refusing to give in. Gradually my forces had smothered the resistance in the south and west and chased O’Neill north to Ulster, cornering him in a little area of forest near Lough Erne. His lands were destroyed, and the old coronation chair at Tullaghoge was smashed to pieces. Famine ravaged the land, and stories of people eating weeds and even resorting to cannibalism turned the stomach. At last O’Neill, the erstwhile Earl of Tyrone, surrendered unconditio
nally to Mountjoy, writing, “Without standing on any terms or conditions I do hereby both simply and absolutely submit myself to Her Majesty’s mercy.”

  I held the letter in my hand and kept rereading it. Cecil stood obediently before me.

  “I see this did not require fumigation,” I said. “I would have imagined it to stink of death.” Before he could stammer out a ludicrous explanation, I added, “But good news, even if it comes from an ill place, needs no perfume.” He looked relieved.

  My head was spinning. It had been spinning before, from a headache that had plagued me for two days, along with aching bones from the cold. But this spinning was one of exultation. We had done it. We had broken the Irish rebellion. What everyone had said was impossible we had achieved. And in spite of the evil Spanish aid!

  “What shall our conditions be? What shall we demand?” he asked.

  I knew the answer to that. “He must abjure the title of The O’Neill, High Chieftain of Ireland. He must renounce all loyalty and adherence to Spain. He must order his son to return from that land. He must accept whatever lands I grant him, with no argument. And he must swear his loyalty to me, as my faithful subject. Then and only then will I grant him his life.” I paused. “We shall consider liberty and a pardon as separate issues.”

  “Depending on his behavior?” asked Cecil.

  “Of course. He has made many political promises in his career and kept almost none. Let us see if this is any different. Oh, and—inquire about Grace O’Malley. I know we subdued the Connaught region in the autumn, but I would be glad to know of her whereabouts—and her fate.” Had she fought for me, had she fought against me, or had she abstained from fighting for anyone?

  “I shall carry out your orders with no delay,” he said. He fished in his leather dispatch bag, drawing out another letter. “And here is more good news.”

  I took it, feeling a heavy seal on the seam—the crimson wax seal of the Most Serene Republic of Venice. In the slick parchment letter inside, the doge requested that we open diplomatic relations between our two countries. He wished to send an ambassador as soon as possible.

  “Oh, Cecil!” I said. This was most unexpected, and most welcome. “A Catholic state breaks rank with Rome!”

  “The first to do so,” he said. “It has been a long time coming. Of course, the French have never completely cut us off. But they have been too busy fighting one another for the past generation to worry much about diplomacy abroad. But this is a slap in the pope’s face. His allies desert him. They recognize that you are Queen of an untouchable realm.”

  “Before we know it, Spain will be suing for peace and sending an ambassador.” It was long overdue.

  “I hope so. We have been working for it. And since Essex has ... gone... the war faction has lost its way. Now imagine, if Spain made peace with us, and France already has, and Venice, you would be entirely vindicated.”

  “It has been a long fight, my friend,” I reminded him. I handed the letter back to him. “Tell the doge yes, before he changes his mind.”

  95

  Elated by these two coups, I almost skipped down the long gallery toward the royal apartments. I could have asked the guards at the end of each chamber to dance a measure with me.

  The O’Neill, bowing his head in defeat. The man who had mocked, defied, and tantalized me for years, draining my treasury. The man who was directly responsible for my selling my father’s Great Seal and jewels of my own. Now he was mine. Unless he escaped again. He was a master of that, like a snake, able to slither through any opening.

  And the pope. I hoped he was frothing at the mouth in anger. I had outlasted seven popes. Clement VIII was my eighth. With their rapid transits, I could say—if I were sarcastic—that the rock of Peter seemed to be teetering on sand. This pope was no better than the others. He had eagerly pursued the Inquisition, burning the philosopher and astronomer Giordano Bruno at the stake, and appointed his relatives to the Vatican, even making his fourteen-year-old grandnephew a cardinal.

  Outside, the palace orchard sparkled with icy branches. It would be a long time until spring. But I could wait. It did not feel so cold now.

  I traversed the audience chamber, empty and echoing, but when I reached the outer privy chamber, a knot of people were huddled together inside. Admiral Charles detached himself and interrupted my steps. His face was a welter of wrinkles and anguish.

  “Catherine—she’s taken ill,” he said. “Just in the last hour.”

  She had seemed well enough this morning as she helped me dress, beyond the weakness she had complained about for weeks. “In what way?” I asked.

  “Fever—confusion—nausea,” he said. “The physician is with her.”

  “In the bedchamber?”

  “There was no time to take her anywhere else. She was tidying up in that chamber when she collapsed.”

  “You needn’t apologize, Charles. After all these years, the bedchamber is as much hers as mine.”

  I did not ask if I could go in. As Queen, no one could deny me entrance. But as a friend, I must allow her and the physician privacy. The afterglow of the news about Ireland and Venice still cocooned me. On this day, everything would be well.

  After some time, the physician emerged, closing the door softly behind him. He tiptoed over to us, bowing to me.

  “Tell me!” said Charles.

  The physician shook his head. “I have changed the linens and put extra bottles of water on the table. She must drink, to offset all the sweat. She feels as hot as a new-baked loaf of bread. No food. A fever must be starved. And besides, she has no appetite and cannot keep anything down.”

  “Is she in pain?” I asked.

  “She moans and says her joints ache, that her head is throbbing, but that is usual with a fever.”

  “No spots?” Charles asked.

  “No. It is not smallpox, or plague.”

  “Thanks be to Jesus!” I cried. Either of those could be lethal.

  The physician looked at me, almost pityingly. “This is a most virulent fever, even though we cannot name it. She will need strength to withstand it.”

  Strength. But she had been weak of late. She came to this duel ill prepared.

  “Keep the young girls out of the chamber,” he said. “Although the young are more resistant to it. She was well last night, you say?”

  “Yes,” said Charles. “As well as she has been.”

  “What do you mean?” he asked.

  “I would say that she has been ... dragging ever since autumn. That is the only way I can put it. And then this move, in the cold, and the harsh winter ...”

  Now I berated myself again. I had hurried everyone here out of concern for my own safety, never thinking of theirs. But, I argued with myself, we had made such moves all our lives. Why should this one be different?

  “She was well this morning,” I said. “When I left her to meet with Cecil, she was humming and gathering her sewing.”

  “Perhaps she was pretending,” said the physician. “Perhaps she kept it from you.”

  I shook my head. “If it was just beginning, perhaps she was keeping it from herself. After all, if we took to our beds every time we felt a bit off, all the beds in the realm would be full. No, she must have been stricken suddenly.”

  “And it is increasing in strength.”

  “What do you mean?” cried Charles.

  “I have no way of measuring heat except with my hand, but I am certain her fever increased just in the time I was in there.”

  “Should she be bled?” said Charles.

  “I don’t think it helps in such cases. I’ll have ice brought in from outside and rub her with that to fight the heat coming from inside her. Lucky for us it is winter.”

  Lucky for us. If it had not been winter, she would not have been weakened to begin with. “Do whatever you think best. Shall I ask a fellow physician to attend you?”

  “I would welcome any assistance,” he said. “In cases like this, only a fool
scorns help. I am going to consult my texts to see if there are any remedies I am overlooking.” He bowed and took his leave.

  I turned to Charles. “Let us go in.” The other ladies were gathering anxiously but I told them, “Pray wait.”

  Catherine lay on her bed, her hair matted with sweat. But she was awake and smiled when she saw us. “Forgive me,” she whispered. I had to draw close to hear her. From a foot away I could feel the heat radiating from her face.

  “Why do sick people always apologize?” I retorted. “You have committed no offense.”

  “Save not being able to serve you,” she said.

  “You did this morning,” I replied. “You will again, in a few days.”

  She took a long time drawing in her breath. “Perhaps not so soon.”

  “Catherine, we have had jubilant news. The Irish war is over.”

  She merely looked at me, as if she did not understand. Or as if it were no matter. “Oh.”

  I shot a look at her husband, standing helplessly by the bed. “Charles and I are elated.”

  “Yes,” she murmured, and closed her eyes. “I am glad for you.”

  “Be glad for England,” I corrected her.

  “Indeed.” Her eyes stayed closed.

  Charles took her hand, stroked her arm. “Dearest, open your eyes.”

  She tried, but the lids seemed to have weights on them, drawing them down. “Forgive me,” she whispered. “I need ... I must ... sleep.”

  I reached out and touched her forehead, which felt like a heated poker. I jerked my hand away. “Jesus!” I cried. Could anyone be this hot and live? “Water! Water!”

  Together Charles and I raised her head and tried to make her drink, but she could not.

  Now fear gripped me. I looked around the chamber, at its shadowed corners, and suddenly felt a darkness waiting there, waiting to creep out and fasten itself on Catherine.

  “Let us carry her into the private withdrawing chamber off this room. She will have more privacy there,” I said. As if a change of room would banish the specter in the larger room. With the help of the attendants, the bed was lifted and moved into the smaller room. She had spent many an hour in this little room, laughing and arranging my linens and ruffs.