His Last Letter

by Jeane Westin

  She passed the garden pavilion Rob had built, where they had spent lovely summer evenings protected from ill breezes blowing from the tanneries and the eyes of the curious. Evenings never to be repeated now.

  “Knock!” she commanded, and her guards pounded loudly with the butt ends of their pikes.

  The rush lights inside appeared to have burned low and there was no immediate response.

  “Majesty, they are all abed,” her captain said, turning back to her, uncertain.

  “Break it down!” ordered the queen in full throaty voice, her rage barely controlled.

  Quickly, the guards who carried short pole arms advanced and took turns skewering the door with their ax blades.

  Elizabeth stepped back and saw lights beginning to blaze one by one from many windows. She noted Rob’s windows up the stairs were among them. He would be readying his lies . . . and his knees for submission. But this night she was in no believing mood. She swallowed bitter laughter, making no sound.

  Her guards began to break through, just as a man shouted, “Who assaults the Earl of Leicester’s house?”

  Elizabeth recognized Tamworth’s voice. “By Jesu and his holy spear wound, open this door to your queen, John, or we will make you a head shorter by sunup!”

  Both doors were flung wide-open and Tamworth threw himself to his knees. “Majesty . . . Majesty . . . had I known . . .”

  Other servants cowered in their night shifts behind him, the hall now ablaze with light.

  “Don’t stand there gawping! Take me to my lord of Leicester at once!” Her voice, her presence and her high color would convince him if her menacing pikemen did not.

  “Your Grace, this way, if it please you,” John said, bowing and holding his many-branched candelabra high to shine light in every corner for her.

  “You . . . you,” she said, pointing to her guards’ captain and his lieutenant, “follow me.”

  She climbed the great, sweeping staircase, narrowing her eyes as her youthful coronation portrait appeared at the top. A show of loyalty, but no real devotion. She expected Rob to come into sight at any moment . . . on his knees, by Jesu and his holy wounds, if he knew her temper.

  But he stood in the door of his bedchamber, one bare foot crossed over the other, smiling his welcome with drowsy eyes, a stubble of beard on his usually clean-shaven cheeks. Was he growing a full beard? Heaven forbid! As she had often noted, the less men trusted their manhood, the more they grew their whiskers.

  She brushed past him as if he were a post. “Search this place,” she commanded the guards. As they rushed to do her bidding, she yelled after them: “And under the bed!”

  He must say something, she thought. But he bowed and, with a wave of his hand, and a shrug that lifted his high robe collar even higher, invited her to look wherever she would. The arrogant fool. All the while appearing so tousled and boyish in his blue velvet night robe embroidered with his coat of arms, as if no one knew who he was in his own bedchamber! She tried to calm her breathing. Why did the sight of him cause her great anger to wend around and pierce her own spirit? Had Rob won his archery match after all, skewering her heart as he had not the dove’s?

  He bowed, a bemused smile on his mouth, his full lower lip slightly lowered in a way that made her wish she were on sweeter business. She clamped her mouth against such thoughts lest they escape into acts.

  “Majesty . . . Bess, as you see me, I am alone here and yet eager to be at your service. What would you have of me?”

  Elizabeth rounded on him in the middle of his anteroom. “My lord, do you think me brainless?”

  “I would never think so, Majesty. And I am puzzled by the question.”

  She clenched her fists and he saw. Clever man, but she was the more clever, as he should know. “I had word this night that the Baroness Sheffield was brought to bed two days ago with a healthy boy.”

  She watched his face closely. What man would not give himself away at news of a son, especially Rob, who had no heir? Were all men alike? Her father had been the same . . . exactly the same. He had raged about Greenwich, canceling the tournament he had ordered planned in honor of his son, who had been born a daughter, good only for cementing ties with a foreign prince. It was said he cried aloud so that half the court heard: “Is this what I destroyed a church for?” Well, she, Elizabeth, had shown him that his daughter was stronger than a girl, strong enough to rule England as well as any son, better than the son, Edward, he finally had of his third queen, Jane Seymour. Oh, if only she could see her father’s face in heaven and read what astonishment she had put there.

  But Elizabeth, queen of England, ruled her emotions as her father never had. Except for Rob. Was she strong enough to rule herself away from the Earl of Leicester?

  By this time Rob had had good time to gather his wits. “Majesty, I must congratulate my lord John Sheffield,” he said, controlling his voice, his face and her . . . or so he must believe, as any clever man would.

  “Too late for congratulations, Rob.”

  “Too late?”

  She narrowed her shortsighted eyes to see him better in the dim light of candles and fire. “It seems the lady’s husband, Lord John, was at the very moment of birth on his way to obtain a divorce.” There! That would be enough to show on even his practiced face. But what was this? He looked truly shocked.

  “Majesty, I am amazed to hear a man would turn away from the birth of his own heir.”

  Pup! Pup! “Enough of this dissembling, Rob! He found a letter from you to his wife that she oh so carelessly dropped on the floor for him to find! He was prevented from a divorce action.” Did she see a look of relief on his face?

  “Prevented?”

  “My lord Sheffield was on his way to London to obtain a divorce when he died of dysentery in an inn on the north road. There is already rumor abroad in London and the court that you had her husband poisoned.” She watched him closely.

  Leicester shrugged, but his face reddened and his jaw went rigid. “They must think I do nothing but poison husbands, since I have been accused of killing how many others before tonight?”

  The queen, changing from cold to hot at his arrogance and the truth in it, grabbed a vase and threw it, but he nimbly side-stepped the missile. Elizabeth saw it then: the visage she had expected. He could not help himself. He was damning the Lady Douglass for bringing this on him. How like all men Rob was, only worse because he had a queen to love . . . and he chose a brainless jade like Douglass, who would part her legs for him at every chance.

  The guards crowded back into the anteroom, having found no hidden lover.

  “Leave us and wait below,” she commanded, and watched as they shut the door softly. She was relieved that he did not have a woman every night, but even angrier that she could be made to seem foolish and rejected. Well, she refused to be so. He was at fault here and he would admit it or go to the Tower . . . well, maybe to his new manor of Wanstead.

  “Majesty,” he said, dropping to his knees, “come sit by the fire and warm yourself. I would not have you shivering for my sake.”

  “I shiver not for your sake, my lord,” she said, the words rasping from deep in her cold throat, “but my own. I would know how many ways you make a fool of yourself . . . but not of me. That dishonor I will never accept.”

  He rose without her command and poured some wine in a cup and held it over the edge of the fireplace to warm.

  “Bess, please come, sit, and drink this. I worry for your health.”

  “Worry for your life, my lord,” she said, straightening her spine. It was an old threat that she would never carry out and she knew it. But he did not. Or did he?

  He stood in front of her, and though she was tall for a woman, he was taller yet by a head. He held the cup out, until she must either take it or knock it to the floor. He moved it an inch closer, his dark, uptilted brows showing his concern. “Rob . . .” She heard his name pass her lips. S’blood! Her anger was draining from her like rain from a slu
ice pipe. And he would see it and know, as such practiced men always knew, that she desired him and fought it.

  “Bess, dearest . . . sweetest, I am here in my bedchamber this night waiting for you . . . always waiting for you.”

  As she sagged toward the floor, she heard him drop the wine cup and felt its contents splash her shoes, felt his hands on her. He picked her up and carried her the few steps to a chair by the fire. He knelt and rubbed her hands with his warm ones. He removed her slippers and rubbed her feet, kissing each in turn until she ceased to feel the cold, but did not cease shivering.

  Elizabeth felt her eyes mist and turned her head away. “Is the babe yours?” She whispered the words into the fire, merrily burning the logs away as his faithlessness was burning away all her heart’s love for him. She could never forgive this! Never! She had forgiven him for Lettice because she believed that he bedded the woman thinking she was his queen . . . but not this time. . . . No more forgiveness was in her.

  He laid his head in her lap, holding her tightly, his hands curving around her waist to her hips, the heat of them burning through her gown and shifts to her skin. He kissed her stomacher, bringing on a familiar ache of yearning that she had followed to its end only once, just once, that night in Rycote, seven years earlier. At the memory of that night, she was cold no longer. Her hands went of their own accord to his head and she buried her fists in his thick black hair.

  “Bess,” he said, and looked up at her.

  She was lost now in his Gypsy-dark eyes, so close to him, so close to losing him to that frivolous Douglass, who could give him what she would not . . . and surely never could again.

  Hearing herself make an excuse for him was the last thing she intended, but she heard her own voice saying the words of understanding and forgiveness. “She came to you in your sleep. You believed it a vivid dream. You do not love her. . . . Tell me. S’blood, tell me that much.” She gripped his shoulders. “Rob, I command you!”

  “Bess,” he said, almost choking on her name. He started to bury his head in her breast, but she held him away.

  “I will see your face to know if you speak truth to me.”

  He took a deep, shivering breath and looked into her face. “This is my truth, my only truth. I love you as I never loved another woman, as I never will love another . . . but . . .”

  She bit her upper lip. “But you are a man with a man’s hot appetite. Is that what you were going to say . . . again? Do not say it! I hate the words. I have heard them before and I will listen no more. I am queen and I deny myself everything . . . husband, children . . . nights like this. . . .”

  “But you have favorites other than me who would give you anything you asked. I would give you anything . . . everything.” He withdrew his hands from her and she abruptly had no anchor. She gripped the chair arms to keep from falling toward him, and he saw. Standing, he drew her to her feet and, still holding her, put his lips softly on hers, working her mouth open and finding her tongue.

  She heard a sound rising in her throat, a woman sound, a starved sound. “Robin . . . my Eyes,” she whispered his old, tender names.

  “My queen . . . my Bess.” He bent slightly and picked her up.

  She did not stop him. She could not stop herself. She would know a little of what other women . . . what Lettice and Douglass knew of him. Only a little. She would know the joy that the least village woman in her realm knew. She would know the joy of that one night at Rycote again, or as close to that joy as she could ever allow herself to go. She could not speak of the summer night while on her summer progress they had escaped to his hunting lodge at Rycote, the one night they had completely loved, but sworn never to speak of more. Though that oath could never stop her from thinking of it, of feeling his hands upon her breasts, of knowing what it was to be a woman loved.

  He turned slightly as he entered his bedchamber, his broad hand protecting her head, and then she felt his bolster under her hair, the spicy scent of him all about her, all about her forever. At once she was frightened as she never had been. “Rob, do not get a babe on me. . . . I . . .”

  But he was kissing her and pressing his body against hers. She could call her guards. She could stop him . . . but could she stop herself?

  He lay so close that his body’s warmth came through her gown, her stomacher, her shifts. She felt a trembling begin inside, heat making its way to her womanhood and gathering there until the flames nearly o’erwhelmed her. She must cease this!

  “We do not think the better of you for Douglass’s babe,” she said, her voice made cold to put out the blaze.

  “I do not think the better of myself, though I have not claimed the boy.”

  “Douglass will nevermore come to my court.”

  He opened her ruff and kissed her neck and her anger was blown away like a great storm at sea carrying all ships before it. She allowed herself to cling to him, to arch to him . . . just one more time. It had been so long since she had felt the length of him against her . . . weakening her will, burning it away until her cheeks and the woman part, the part her father had hated because he had desperately wanted a male heir, were rapidly turning to enticing flames.

  “Marry me, Bess. There is still time for us . . . for you to have princes, heirs to this realm . . . our princes. We two, together like this every night of our lives, while there is time.”

  “Beloved Robin, we will have many years yet.”

  “No, Bess, I will not make old bones. No one in my family lives long.”

  “They lose their heads.” She immediately regretted uttering those words, true though they were.

  “I could lose mine. You are queen and your love can one day turn upside down to hatred.”

  She wrapped her arms about him to keep him close, continue his warmth. “Never, Robin. My love for you is so much a part of me . . . head and body . . . that if you were to lose your head, my heart would die.” She felt a brief annoyance sweep over her. “Have I not told you that I am married to England and if I married any man, it would be you?”

  He kissed her lightly. “Yes, you have told me, but the words make cold bed comfort on a winter’s night.”

  “Rob, after all these years, do you not know my heart?”

  He laid his head on her breasts, his lips kissing the rounded part that fashion dictated she expose. “Dearest queen of my love,” he whispered, “it is the years themselves that make me doubt you . . . some days . . . and many lonely nights.”

  She was irritated again. “Your nights appear to be less lonely than mine.”

  He sat up and looked at her, his black eyes catching candlelight and holding it. “Bess, don’t you see what you do? Whenever we are close like this, you choose anger to stop your woman’s desire. Do you think I do not know?”

  “That is false!” She trembled with the truth of his words.

  “Is it?” He reached for her.

  She did not roll away from him. Her head told her to, but her body did not obey. And she was queen! How much less could an ordinary woman resist this man’s body?

  He lay atop her, bearing most of his weight on his forearms. He kissed her, opening her lips, or finding them open. Oh, he was very practiced! But her anger did not rise. Her body did. She could not stop it. She did not wish to stop it! She rose to meet him, finding the ancient rhythm again, a rhythm that had wakened her on too many nights of dreaming that he was atop her. Now, through her gown and his night robe, she felt him grow strong, again her dream come true.

  “My long love,” Rob whispered above her tight-shut eyes, “where you are empty, I will fill you.”

  Elizabeth heard a triumph in his voice, which may or may not have been there. She no longer could tell what was true or untrue.

  He rolled from her and put his lips on hers; they were firm . . . hard this time. His hand was at the hem of her gown, reaching under, from satin to satin to fine linen to lace until he found her. She groaned as she felt his hand on the inside of her thigh reaching higher. />
  “Bess . . . Bess . . .” His voice trembled under the words. “Allow me”—he took a quick breath—“to give you pleasure without harm. Only delight, my sweet queen.”

  “No . . . no,” she said, but took his hand and pushed it to where she was burning. As he stroked her, he moved against her leg.

  Her breathing came hard now as she responded to his caresses in fiery spasms. “Ro-bin!” His name, breathed so softly into her pillow for so many nights, filled the room as an anguished cry.

  “Bess, my love. I must—”

  She clasped him to her, smothering her cries against his shoulder, and Rob’s mouth muffled sound against her breast as he shuddered against her.

  Elizabeth felt a great weariness and she wanted to rest, to sleep without moving, to forget that she was . . . No, no, she could never forget that she was a monarch. No Tudor queen could be a simple woman, loving a man. The least brown-faced cottage girl in her realm could leave her fields and love a man, lying with him every night like this, but the queen of England could not.

  Unexpectedly, she wondered if there would be a day when Robin would not be with her. Would she know endless regret? She shivered as if someone had trodden upon her grave.

  She put her free arm about his shoulders and held him close for a long time until she felt him rise again.

  She stirred, lifting herself to sit, and he rolled away.

  “What do you want, Bess? You know what I can give you . . . long to give you.”

  “Yes, many times yes. They say that I am not a real woman, even that I am a man or some crippled mixture.” She gripped him. “But I am a woman with you, Rob.”