by David Field
‘Leave land strategies to Robert Dudley,’ Elizabeth replied, ‘although your work at Dover was well thought. I have two more matters on which I require your counsel. The first is who is to command the English fleet and the second is how we on land are to be advised of how matters progress at sea, should it come to that.’
‘As to the latter, Majesty, I have commissioned a series of faggot stacks along the high points of our southern counties. If and when the Spanish fleet is spied, each stack will be lit and act as a beacon that alerts those next along the cliffs to keep a close watch out to sea. The series of beacon fires will also alert our ground troops to the progress of the invasion force.’
Elizabeth frowned again. ‘Our best intelligence is that the Spanish flotilla is intended only as transport for Parma’s forces in the Low Countries. It is from there that the attack will come, if our sturdy mariners cannot prevent it. Which brings us back to my first question — who shall command our Navy?’
‘I had thought Hawkins, Majesty — or perhaps Drake?’
Elizabeth shook her head. ‘I will not have it said that in its hour of greatest challenge England could do no better than commission pirates to defend it. By all means grant line commissions to Hawkins and Drake — if he survives his rash venture in Cadiz — but which of our leading nobles has experience at sea?’
Walsingham lifted his bonnet back far enough to scratch his head for a moment, but while he was still thinking Elizabeth supplied the answer to her own question.
‘I have in mind our cousin Charles Howard, Earl of Nottingham. He is but recently appointed Lord High Admiral and he was a sailor during his early life. Let it be proclaimed throughout the realm that our brave fleet shall be commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham — but for preference let him know first.’
Walsingham rose, then bowed his acquiescence as he backed towards the chamber door. Just before he reached it, Elizabeth had one more command.
‘Ask the Earl of Leicester to attend upon me.’
An hour later Robert was ushered into the presence and as he bowed and doffed his bonnet, beads of sweat flew from the top of his greying hair.
Elizabeth smiled. ‘Does my Master of Horse no longer enjoy the boundless energy of youth?’
‘In truth, my dearest Lady, I ran all the way from the royal stables upon being advised that you wished to see me. Have I displeased you yet again?’ he added with the boyish smile that looked somehow incongruous on his well-lined face.
‘Not that I am aware,’ Elizabeth replied. ‘Sit by me here and perhaps take my hand for longer than is proper, then tell me how you fare in defending me from Philip of Spain.’
Robert preened as he took her hand, kissed it and proudly announced what he had so far achieved. ‘I have sent word to every shire in the land for their trained bands to be dispatched to Tilbury, where a great earthwork is currently being raised. I hope to have almost twenty thousand men encamped behind it before the first Spanish sail is sighted in the Thames.’
‘You are aware that Walsingham has ordered the strengthening of Dover?’ Elizabeth asked.
Robert smiled condescendingly. ‘With the greatest of respect to Sir Francis, he is no soldier. Were I invading England, I would not attempt to march a massive army for two days over land, with all the baggage and supplies that they would require, not to mention the need to lay waste to the surrounding countryside, when I could sail that army directly into London by way of one of the world’s greatest rivers. They will come, if at all, up the Thames and we must be ready to repel them at Tilbury, with all the ordinance we can muster. But I am advised that the Tower Armoury lacks gunpowder and that such as exists has been requisitioned for the Navy.’
‘Since the Navy is our first line of defence, then it is appropriate, is it not, that it be the first to receive such explosive as we have available?’
‘And if the Navy fails?’ Robert asked.
‘I will give you the same command that I gave to Walsingham with regard to the Navy — your men must fight with what they have.’
They all waited and waited, for Spanish sails to appear off the Lizard on England’s most south westerly peninsular, then came news that Drake had succeeded in his bold plan to ‘singe the King of Spain’s beard’. The English privateer’s fireships had made a bonfire of most of the original fleet moored in Cadiz Harbour and by way of an encore Drake had harassed a few coastal villages, then intercepted a Spanish treasure ship on its way back to port and made the proceeds available for the acquisition of more gunpowder. But they all knew that they had merely bought more time in which Robert Dudley could add to the defences at Tilbury, where a proud array of guns was now elevated to deliver fusillades of shot into the mid channel of the Thames. However, none of them as yet had anything to fire.
Then, in mid July 1588, word came of the lighting of the first of Walsingham’s beacons, as the western horizon was filled with the white billowing sails of the largest fleet of ships that had ever been seen approaching the entrance to the English Channel. The massive troop carriers, crammed with grappling crews who would leap onto any English vessel that came close enough, resembled small towns with high sterns and the fleet had been organised into a massive crescent shape, with lightly armed carracks escorting the stately galleons in a fleet so extensive that it had taken two full days to sail out of Corunna. On board were eight thousand sailors and eighteen thousand soldiers and the total of one hundred and thirty ships marked the end product of Philip of Spain’s obsessive drive to rebuild his fleet after Drake’s earlier exploits. The Spanish were coming and they meant England no kindness.
Once the beacon was lit above Beachy Head in Sussex, Robert hustled Elizabeth behind the walls of Windsor Castle and from there they received regular second-hand accounts of the progress of the Armada up the Channel by fast horse-born relay messengers. As they all sat at supper, Elizabeth turned accusingly towards Walsingham and demanded to know how the Spanish had apparently slipped past Howard, Drake and Hawkins.
‘I am no sailor, Majesty,’ he replied with a worried frown, ‘but it seems likely that they will make landfall somewhere in Flanders and from there will be able to load a second army for the assault on England.’
‘Thank God we are ready for them at Tilbury,’ Robert responded wearily, ‘but at the last muster we had only four thousand men. Heaven forfend that the Spanish manage to come ashore and to prevent that we need ordinance for our cannon, to blow them out of the water.’
‘Perhaps we should fire some of these lamprey dumplings at them,’ Elizabeth replied.
‘Or perhaps force the Spanish to eat them,’ Robert jested back, ‘for the dear Lord knows I cannot.’
A few days later came the dreaded news that the Spanish fleet had moored off the coast at Dunkirk and was now awaiting the transfer of Parma’s huge and battle-hardened land army onto flat bottomed barges that could be steered through the shallows to the waiting Spanish galleons at anchor. They were not to know that Drake was about to do what he did best and send his feared ‘hellburner’ fire ships into the moored fleet, causing the Armada vessels to cut their anchors and allowing the stiff south-westerly to blow them aimlessly up the east coast of England. Nor were they advised that Dutch mariners had come to their aid, with their shallow draught ‘flyboats’ harassing every Spanish barge that tried to leave the small harbour of Gravelines.
It was therefore with a heavy heart that Robert sought audience with Elizabeth, in order to advise her that their only hope was to remove such gunpowder as remained in the storage houses at the Tower, load it into his cannons at Tilbury, then rely on the pathetic handful of ‘trained band’ militia currently behind the massive earth bank to race out and finish off any Spaniards who survived.
‘It will be a hopeless act of self-sacrifice, will it not?’ Elizabeth responded listlessly.
‘You recall our nursery days, when we learned of the exploits of your forebears and most notably the fifth Henry? How he grabbed victory against all the
odds in battles such as that at Agincourt? And before him, the great Edward, at Crecy? It is not superiority of arms that makes Englishmen the finest fighters in the world, my Lady — it is their courage and their refusal to be defeated.’
Elizabeth leaned forward and kissed Robert on the lips. ‘Perhaps I should have married you, after all,’ she conceded, ‘since you are a man worthy of maintaining that great heritage.’
‘And why not a woman?’ Robert challenged her. ‘If we are to send so many brave Englishmen to their deaths, are they not at least entitled to hear words of encouragement from their Queen?’
When Elizabeth looked blank, Robert took both her hands in his and gazed into her eyes. ‘Come with me to Tilbury and address your army. At least we shall go down with words of defiance echoing across the Thames.’
‘By God and I shall!’ Elizabeth replied as the determination and obstinacy that had dominated her younger years somehow transfused her face with a flickering flame of her former beauty. ‘Give orders for my horse to be saddled and do you accompany me. You are, after all, still my Master of Horse, even if I could not make you my husband.’
Late that afternoon four thousand apprehensive men gazed in astonishment as a small party of Tower Yeomen rode through the gateway of their fortress mound constructed entirely of Essex clay and announced in loud voices that they should prepare to greet their Queen. To a man they went down on one knee to the sight of Elizabeth, with battle armour strapped over her rich gown, being led into the centre of the drilling square on her grey palfrey by a middle aged, bareheaded, man on foot, who was holding her horse’s bridle. A cry of acknowledgement went up as they recognised their commander, the Earl of Leicester and watched him assist the Queen to dismount, then lead her by the hand to the platform from which drilling sergeants usually stood to supervise daily training.
Elizabeth removed her French hood and loosened her hair so that it fell in dark red folds onto the specially tailored armour that had been awaiting its first public appearance for many months now. She threw back her head, cleared her throat, then let her eyes roam across the long ranks of still kneeling men as her voice rang out clearly though the breeze generated by the incoming tide and above the cawing clamour of the sea birds.
‘My loving people, we have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety, to take heed how we commit ourselves to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but, I do assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear, I have always so behaved myself, that under God I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects; and, therefore, I am come amongst you as you see at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of battle, to live or die amongst you all — to lay down for my God and for my kingdoms and for my people, my honour and my blood even in the dust. I know I have the body of a weak and feeble woman; but I have the heart and stomach of a king — and of 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; to which, rather than any dishonour should grow by me, I myself will take up arms — I myself will be your general, judge and rewarder of every one of your virtues in the field. I know already, for your forwardness, you have deserved rewards and crowns and, we do assure you, on the word of a prince, they shall be duly paid you. In the meantime, my Lieutenant General shall be in my stead, than whom never prince commanded a more noble or worthy subject; not doubting but by your obedience to my General, by your concord in the camp and your valour in the field, we shall shortly have a famous victory over those enemies of my God, of my kingdom and of my people.’
A rousing cheer prevented her from adding anything further, which was perhaps as well, given the tears that were welling in her throat. Robert assisted her back to ground level, kissed her hand, then escorted her back to her horse before helping her back onto it and leading it, still on foot, back out through the fort entrance. The cheers were still echoing as they allowed the royal escort to catch up with them and Elizabeth looked down at Robert.
‘How went that, say you?’ she asked.
Robert smiled as an attendant handed him the reins of his own horse. ‘You were right about one thing, my Lady. You should have married me when you had the opportunity. As for the rest, time will tell, but if any of those men back there die defending England, they will have done so with the blessing of its finest ever monarch ringing in their ears.’
XXI
Elizabeth sat back limply in the specially padded chair in her Bedchamber, the letter slipping from her grasp and sliding onto knees covered by her nightdress, as tears misted her vision yet again. She could not have recounted how many times she had read it and could, if called upon, have recited it word for word. It had been sent by Robert from what he had intended to be his overnight chamber at Cornbury Park, nestled near Oxford, deep in the Cotswold Hills and had been written only the day after he had taken his leave of her in order to take the healing waters at a spa in Derbyshire. It eerily foreshadowed what was to happen that night.
‘My sweet,’ it read, ‘I must once again beg your forgiveness for a deception. For some time now I have been much troubled by a weakness of the stomach, which at times yields me such pain that I am wont to double over and cry out. It would have served neither us, nor England, were I to have disclosed either its existence, or its true nature, to you, but my physician believes it to be a canker and has advised that I take the waters at Buxton, hence my hasty departure.
‘Nothing but that could have kept me from your side during these triumphant weeks in which the nation glories in your defiance of the Spanish Philip. You are rightly lauded as ‘Gloriana’ and our new breed of playwrights are falling over each other to depict your — and England’s — greatness. But to me you will always remain my “Lillibet” and as my days draw hastily to a close I am buoyed up in my dreams by memories of those long hot summer days in the copse at Hatfield and later in your chambers in Whitehall. I fear that we shall never again meet in this life, but be assured that I shall await you in the next, when you may cast aside your duties to your adoring people and be with me at long last and for all time.
‘Should you remember me with fondness, please be gracious to my son in all but blood, the Courtly and dashing Robert Devereux. He is the apple of his mother’s eye and the hope of all my ambition and he wears his Earldom with all the grace that God has seen fit to bestow upon him.
‘As the candle in my chamber grows dim, so I feel the candle of my life guttering to an end and I therefore take my earthly leave of you knowing that had the affairs of State not prevented it, we would have been the happiest couple in the whole of the realm.
‘As ever, your loving Robin,
‘Robert Dudley, by Elizabeth’s good grace, Earl of Leicester.’
And now Robert was dead; the doleful messenger had arrived only that morning, carrying the vellum along with the dire tidings that could scarcely be believed. That she dared not believe. That she would not believe.
If it was true, then recent events counted for nothing. The Armada had been scattered by the wind all the way around the English and Irish coasts and very few of the awesome flotilla of ships that had set out from Corunna had succeeded in limping back there. Spain was no longer an immediate threat and England’s reputation was restored in Holland, where renewed efforts to overthrow the Spanish yoke had been inspired by England’s example. Elizabeth was now the most revered woman in England and scarcely a theatre anywhere in the nation was now staging a new production that did not have as its muse the almost mythical ‘Fairy Queen’ who never aged, or the ‘Virgin Queen’ who smote her enemies dead with her sword of righteousness and justice.
But Robert was dead and it all tasted like sawdust. Dear, sweet Robin, who she had treated so badly while loving him so dearly. Had he really understood that it was in England’s best interests that she marry royally and had he been able to app
reciate that her failure to marry anyone was because anyone other than Robert would have been a pale substitute? She could understand his need to marry only too well, since her own carnal urges had been her private cross for many a year, but had now mercifully receded into memory as her body aged like a wilting daffodil left too long in a vase. She must bring Lettice, Countess of Leicester, back to Court and she would certainly show favour to her young son Essex, because Robert had asked her to. He would serve as Robert’s enduring memory, since Robert himself was dead.
Dead. Lost to her sight. Beyond where she could not even tremble when he kissed her hand like a loyal subject, but with the burning desire of the man who had once known her body, after a fashion. If he would only appear through that door, he could have all of her now and she would have their union proclaimed from every church steeple, every rooftop, every castle battlement. But Robert was dead.
The fatal, dread, unwilled, word repeated through her head like a funeral toll, as she slid between the bed sheets and gave vent to the silent tears of loss and regret.
‘You must do something, cousin!’ Blanche Parry urged Cecil with flapping hands and swirling sleeves as she confronted him in his ground floor chambers. ‘She’s been in there for three days now and refuses all blandishments to hold audience, eat, or even rise from her bed. It’s like she’s lost to the nation and willing her own death. You’re the man who can most influence her. She heeds your advice, always. For God’s mercy, William, do something!’
The young clerks in the outer chamber bowed their heads to hide their amusement at the entertaining scene, almost like a Courtly comedy. Their master Cecil was now bent with age, the sparse white hair that strayed from under his bonnet betraying his almost seventy years, while his cousin Blanche Parry was almost ten years his senior, a clucking old biddy who children might fear as a witch. They were engaged in an argumentative confrontation worthy of an old married couple in dispute about what to have for supper, although the cause of their disagreement was of crucial import for the nation. The Queen had locked her Withdrawing Chamber door and was refusing to come out.