His Last Letter

by Jeane Westin

  The delegates knelt. Their spokesman hailed him. “My lord, your investiture will take place on the morrow in the great square.”

  When they left, after kissing Lettice’s hand and murmuring, “Majesty,” Lettice was ecstatic, whirling through the chamber, triumphant. “Now, you will be who you were meant to be, and I will have a court of my own.” She laughed—almost hysterically, he thought—and continued whirling, as happy as he had ever seen her.

  “I must choose more ladies from these good people and see to a palace where we may greet our subjects as we should.”

  Robert felt a flush of fear. “Careful, wife. The queen may be accepting of this honor for me, when I explain that it is done for her, for her army and for her honor. . . .” He paused, taking in breath. “But she will not be accepting of too great a display of power.”

  “Display by me! That’s your meaning, Robert. Say it.”

  “Display by you, Lettice.”

  Or by the Earl of Leicester, Robert thought. Bess could have married him and made him king at any time, but feared marriage and sharing her power, driving him, after twenty years of waiting, to marry Lettice in 1578. Would Elizabeth accept his advancement by any other hand than her own? Dark despair swept away any momentary pleasure he had felt. He was trapped between what he dared to do and what he dared not do, what would please Lettice and win a war and what would anger Bess . . . perhaps forever.

  It was a week before he was able to write the truth to the queen that he had accepted absolute governorship of Holland. He sent his trusted secretary, William Davison, with the letter explaining his good reasons for disobeying her orders to obtain England’s victory. How else was he to control events? It was unrealistic for Bess to think that there was any way to command a war in Holland from Whitehall Palace. Yet she did think so; of that he was certain.

  Another week passed before Davison returned with the queen’s answer, a week in which Robert, despite endless ceremonies and struggling with the States-General for funds, spent holding his breath. He was close to emotional exhaustion when his courier finally appeared at his morning court. He immediately took Davison to his private inner chamber.

  “How did you find Her Majesty?” Leicester needed to ask, while dreading the answer.

  Davison hesitated.

  Robert called for wine and, after it was poured, he motioned Davison to the warming fire. He knew from his messenger’s face that he would need to be steady on his feet. “Well, what were her words? Out with them!”

  Davison gulped at his wine cup. “My lord, I fear she was mightily angered.”

  Robert closed his eyes against what was to come, but he could not hold back Davison’s torrent of words, which swept over him like the smoke of a battlefield, making his throat ache and his eyes mist.

  “Her Majesty denounced your actions, my lord, in most bitter and hard terms. She did not stop berating you for an hour by the clock.” He slumped into a chair and held out a letter closed by the royal seal. “This was to be given into your hands and no other’s.”

  Leicester took the letter, his fingers cold, his stomach still gripping him. “Thank you, Davison. You are a good man.”

  “My lord, there is another thing I must tell you. Secretary Walsingham took me aside the morning I left and spoke a message to you privily, not daring to put his words into writing.”

  Robert did not move, bracing for the next blow.

  “He told me, my lord Leicester, that Her Majesty has opened peace negotiations with the Spanish. A delegation was sent to Parma short days after you sailed. The queen needed to show the Spanish that she was only halfhearted in this war. She is greatly concerned that Philip of Spain will come against England before her fleet is ready.”

  Robert heard his own weak laugh. “They will come when Philip is ready.”

  “One other thing, my lord. She also sends Francis Drake with several good ships to the Caribbean to harass Spanish shipping and take what treasure they can.” Davison smiled at that.

  “By God’s chains! She will have it every which way and I am caught in the middle.”

  Davison bowed.

  “Forget what I spoke. The queen has no more loyal—”

  “I know that, my lord, and when her anger abates, she will remember,” Davison murmured.

  What else could the governor-general of the States-General say? This was ongoing treachery, but it was the queen’s way. She hated war so much that she would sacrifice his honor and any man’s life to shorten it. He looked at the folded, sealed letter in his hands, wondering if it ordered him back to England, and almost glad to think of it. If he could see her, if she could see him, all would be soon mended.

  Davison started to leave. “Wait outside, Davison. I may have an answer for the queen.”

  When Robert was alone, he bent to kiss the royal seal, where her fingers had touched. Even an angry, obstinate Bess was yet precious to him.

  He opened the letter, recognizing her handwriting. There was no greeting, no tender words, no Rob, but this abrupt opening:How contemptuously we conceive ourselves to be used by you. . . .

  Robert groaned and sat down, squeezing his forehead and breathing deeply, before he could read on.

  We could never have imagined that a man raised up by ourself and extraordinarily favored by us, above any other subject, would have in so contemptible a way broken our commandment in a cause that so greatly touched us in honor. . . .

  He closed his eyes again, hearing her outrage as if he were kneeling at her feet and she were shouting the words in his face.

  Therefore our express commandment is that, all delays and excuses aside, you do obey and fulfill whatever the bearer hereof directs you to do, or you will answer the contrary at your extreme peril.

  Robert got up, adjusted his ruff and doublet, calling to his guards. “Send for Davison.”

  “He is waiting here, my lord,” the guard assured him.

  When his secretary reappeared, Robert spoke clearly but softly. He would not berate the messenger for an unwelcome message. “Davison, the queen gave you verbal instructions for me.”

  “Aye, my lord.” He looked down and clasped his hands in front of him, almost as if to pray. “These are her words: You are to go to the exact place where you were given this false honor and renounce it before the States-General and the populace.”

  Robert felt a hammer blow to his heart. “Impossible! Can the cheers be uncheered, the bells be unrung?” Desolation swept through him like a cold channel wind. Bess had raised his hopes and dashed them many times, so many he had no count of the number.

  “Did she order me back to England?”

  “Nay, my lord. Before I had reached Harwich, a swift messenger overtook me with new instructions from the Lord Secretary Cecil. Cecil and Walsingham had counseled Her Majesty and she had changed her mind. You were allowed to keep the title, but not to act on it.”

  Robert tried unsuccessfully to keep hurt and anger from his voice. “Is that all? I may be a puppet king, with all the duties and responsibilities remaining, but not the authority.”

  Davison bowed. “I suspect my lord Cecil advised the queen that such a public act on your part would weaken you with the Dutch and Spanish . . . doom the war before you could take the field.”

  “Exactly right. Is that all?”

  Davison bowed his head. “I fear not, my lord. The queen demands your countess return with all her baggage and ladies to London . . . but with no Dutch coach. Your wife is to return all gifts.”

  Robert looked hard at the man. “Did Her Majesty use that word . . . wife?”

  “Nay, Your Lordship, she called her . . .” Davison was embarrassed.

  “I know . . . ‘that She-Wolf.’”

  The man nodded, avoiding Leicester’s eyes, his shoulders sagging.

  “Off to your bed, Davison,” Robert said, his throat tight, his words hoarse.

  Davison bowed and the earl returned to the fireplace, seeking warmth that a fire could neve
r give.

  So, with Bess it was not as much the idea that her Rob would be king, but that Lettice would be a queen. That honor for her cousin, Bess could never abide.

  He poured a cup of wine and gulped it to keep from laughing wildly aloud and being overheard by his guards and rumored a hysteric. He hardly knew which would be the worse: being humiliated in public before the States-General and the citizens of The Hague, or telling Lettice she must go home without her new gold-and-ivory-laden coach.

  Jesu. He should have forced Lettice to stay behind with all her young admirers. He should have known that Bess would be angry, jealous and conjuring such images of her Rob with Lettice . . . that her terrible anger was the only possible vent.

  It had happened before.

  CHAPTER 12

  AN IMPOSTOR IN HIS BED

  EARL OF LEICESTER

  Early Summer 1566

  Greenwich Palace

  Lettice Knollys, the queen’s youngest lady-of-the-bedchamber and close cousin, lolled against the wall outside the royal apartments across from the windows overlooking an inner court, the light shining about her to her great advantage, as she knew.

  It was there Robert found her when he exited after an argument with the queen that everyone in Greenwich Castle must have heard, or soon would in great detail. Courtiers had long memories when it came to gossip.

  He was in need of softer words from a woman and Lady Knollys looked much like Elizabeth, with red-gold Tudor hair, though her own yielding eyes were so different from Bess’s that he could not resist their obvious invitation to tarry. And if that flirtation were reported to the queen, so much the better. Though Elizabeth would be angered, perhaps she should be.

  “My lord earl,” Lettice said, looking about her before she spoke more, “my cousin the queen uses you harshly today, though it is a certain thing that she will forgive you by eventide.” Her mouth twisted a bit with amusement.

  “Lady Lettice,” he said, bowing. She was a sly one for her young years and Bess’s least favored of her ladies, in fact not favored at all. “You do not agree with your queen’s anger?”

  The girl lowered her voice again, but raised her slanted dark blue eyes, her heavy golden lashes almost too languorous to follow. Robert knew she was desired by the men at court, and a flirt, but thus far had escaped complete scandal, though she was obviously inviting one now.

  “Oh, nay, my lord Leicester. Her Majesty is never wrong.” She smiled slyly and added, “Especially when she is in such temper. It was most startling of you to agree to a Habsburg marriage when the queen depends upon you to oppose all her offers. If she cannot rely on your opposition, then whose?”

  “That is what Her Majesty said,” Leicester added drolly, “as you must have heard.”

  Lady Lettice opened her eyes wide in practiced innocence. “My lord, as faithful subjects we must never add to our queen’s trials, but offer her all comfort. I know you agree with me in this.”

  “I would never add to any lady’s trials,” Robert agreed, but he was intrigued by the seductive minx in spite of his spinning mind warning him against the trouble she posed for him, indeed for any man. He shifted his feet and shrugged his shoulders until his ruff scratched his earlobes. His blood heated. God’s bones! Bess could not keep him a monk forever when there were ladies like this one eager for his company. He bent closer. “But if you would add, Lady Knollys, to her trials, I mean . . . what would you do?”

  She shrugged, sliding away from an answer. “My intimate friends call me Lettice, my lord.”

  He grinned at her, knowing that he was treading in deeper water than he should, but his anger at Bess’s capricious behavior—the queen angry if he opposed a foreign marriage proposal and now angrier when he supported it—such unreasonable resentment pushed him to plunge in further with this maid, and he repeated his question: “What would you add to the queen’s trials, if you could, Lettice?”

  She tapped him playfully on his cheek. “My lord Leicester, do you mean me a mischief?” She smiled, showing teeth still white. “Else how can you tease me so? If I say that I think the queen cruel to you, you will tell her and I will be dismissed from court or take a trip to the Tower for speaking ill of my sovereign mistress.”

  “Nay, Lettice, I would never say aught against you . . . as long as you take care not to involve me in . . . scandal.”

  She laughed and he noticed her laugh was unkind, and, though warned, he did not walk away. He knew he should, but this was a game he had won before.

  “Ah, my lord, I always take care. I would not be sent from court before I have married well.”

  “I think you can be assured of that.” He did not add, as long as you keep your reputation. He gave the expected compliment, never wanting to distress a beautiful woman, especially one who approached him . . . with such friendliness and intimacy.

  She raised one lovely white shoulder, but her face told him everything. This lady had no love for the queen. Was he part of Lettice’s plan to best Elizabeth? He must have a care. Bowing to her curtsy, he kissed her hand and walked away, putting her from his mind for the most part.

  That night the queen called him to her privy chamber, as he knew she would, for she slept ill and needed company through the night. Her ladies remained near the walls in the chamber, sitting in their low chairs embroidering or reading by candlelight.

  “Yes, Majesty, you called for me,” he said, bowing formally at a distance from her great chair near the fireplace. She had spoken the harsh words to him and she would have to recall them with sweet ones.

  “Robin,” she said, “come and make me laugh.”

  She had said these same words to him as a young girl, shaking with fright at the king’s dealings with her stepmothers, which she had come to know before she understood them. And she had ever understood Henry’s heart, loving and cruel by turns until near his end he was quite mad. Would that be his daughter’s fate?

  Elizabeth raised a hand to her forehead and pressed. “My head aches with petitions and every man in the kingdom calling for an heir to the throne from me as if I were the royal brood mare.”

  He didn’t mention the obvious, that she was England’s only royal brood mare. “You will never give them an heir, Your Majesty.”

  “Won’t I, my lord?”

  She leaned her head against the soft tapestry chair back, weary to the bone. His heart softened as he looked at her, and he knelt and kissed her hand as he always did. And, Jesu protect, he always would.

  “I was a named heir once,” he heard her whisper for him alone, “and never so hated and feared. My sister, Mary, would have had my head on Tower Green if she could have borne a child of her own.”

  “Ah, but Bess, fortunately for both of us while you were in the Tower, King Philip could produce only Spanish tumors in her womb.”

  She smiled, then broke into laughter. “Robin! That is cruel . . . but true.”

  “Gracious lady, much truth is cruel.”

  Robert saw her body relax and he sat down suddenly at her feet, hugging his knees, a grin on his face, his jeweled earring glittering in the fire’s reflection, casting flickering light on her face. He knew well that it created some mystery and, therefore, some uncertainty. “What shall we do to get you an heir for the realm, Majesty?”

  She frowned a warning, casting a quick glance at her ladies.

  “I have it . . . the very thing,” he said, his proud head thrown back so that she could see the glint in his eyes. “Dice, my queen! We shall cast dice among the princes of Europe and the winner will—”

  “Robin”—she laughed behind her hand—“remember decorum. You are an earl and a queen’s favorite.”

  “Am I so fortunate?” he drawled. “Still a queen’s favorite, I vow.” He grinned and tossed his head to its best advantage.

  Bess leaned forward and whispered: “You know you are . . . always. We are tied together since childhood not by blood, but by lo—” She clamped her mouth, then added, “By underst
anding.”

  He moved toward her until their lips were as close as they could be without touching, all her reading and embroidering ladies going rigid with concentration on their tasks. “Marry me, Bess,” he whispered, “and put an end to this torment for both of us. It has been seven years since you came to the throne. Amy has been dead now these six years from a fall down two levels of stairs.”

  “You were absolved by two juries of any wrongdoing, but many still believe you guilty of her death.”

  “What do you believe, Bess?”

  “As you do, Robin, that she killed herself to escape the pain of the tumor in her breast.”

  “But I could not make such known, Bess, or she could not have been buried in consecrated ground.”

  “I know.” She smiled ironically. “You had more care for her soul than you do for your own.”

  He grinned, his face close to hers. He almost dared to touch her lips with his, but he stopped, though he saw a clear invitation in her eyes. He needed more from her, always more than she was willing to give him. “You love me; I know you do,” he whispered. “I do not forget that you willed your realm to my care when you thought you were dying from smallpox.”

  “Yet God saved me—”

  “With the help of the German doctor I brought you when your own doctors had reached the end of their skill.”

  Elizabeth turned her head from him, though she did not push him away. “You do not need to remind us of what we know.”

  “Bess”—he smiled—“I do not know that you always remember.”

  “Then you do not know me.”

  He loosed the top button on his doublet, his body much too warm. He was going very far and he knew it, but he did not stop himself. Now that he had begun, he would say it all. “Most beloved lady, I have waited until the council would accept me. They no longer insist on a prince or a king for you; even I will do for them now, if you would only marry and have an heir . . . our son.”