His Last Letter

by Jeane Westin

  Robert knew that she did not really want him here except to taunt him with her handsome boys, but she needed to be the one to send him away. And he had admitted to himself long ago that she needed to punish him for not marrying her when she was pregnant with Essex and he had forced her from court. Lettice, like her Boleyn cousin Elizabeth, could carry a grudge forever.

  “My lord,” his wife said, not taking her gaze from the ring, “I did not expect anything so grand. This is a jewel fit for the queen. She will be jealous.”

  “And you will take delight in that,” Robert murmured for her hearing alone.

  Lettice laughed. “You know me well, my lord husband.”

  When she laughed, Robert could not help but admit that she was still beautiful, and so much like Bess that it took him some time in his wife’s presence to become used to the near resemblance again. It had intrigued him from the first. Jesu, more than intrigued! It had led him to this marriage in 1578, when Lettice returned to court long after her husband, Walter Devereux, had died of the flux in Ireland. All his hopes of wedding Bess had fled by then, but his marriage had almost cost him the queen’s affection. Yet it was a marriage without choice. By 1578, Lettice carried his babe once more and this time without a prospective husband other than the Earl of Leicester. If he wanted a son and heir, he had no choice but to wed her, though he kept it from the queen until he could find a way to gently inform her and convincingly plead his truthful, unending love . . . a delaying scheme, as it proved, unworkable in the Tudor court. Bess had been told by the spiteful French ambassador, de Simier, who thought Robert opposed the queen’s marriage to the Duc d’Alençon. Although the queen had gone very far in these marriage negotiations, she had never really meant to marry the pockmarked young son of the monstrous French queen Catherine de’ Medici.

  The French marriage matter had been resolved when Elizabeth sent her suitor off with enough wealth, both real and promised, to satisfy his honor; then Elizabeth’s full fury had fallen on Robert and Lettice. The queen had threatened them with the Tower, but on Burghley’s strong advice the queen had relented and banished Robert to Wanstead and Lettice to Leicester House on the Strand.

  Elizabeth’s wrath had nearly broken his heart and he had fallen ill almost to death, bringing the queen to him by fast carriage from Richmond Castle. For three days she had nursed him with her own hands, her heart seeming to shatter. They had secretly reconciled in this house . . . in his chamber above, although for appearances he had not gone back to court immediately.

  His mind had wandered, but Lettice brought him back. With little sounds of pleasure, she turned her hand from one side to another to capture all the light she could reflect from her jeweled ring. “Is this a consolation gift, my lord husband, or does it mean you have succeeded in urging the queen to invite me to court as she would any other peer’s wife in the realm?”

  Robert caught the groan in his throat before it was expressed. Lettice would never cease from gnawing that old bone. He bowed. “The queen is so burdened with grave matters that—”

  “You have not pressed her!”

  Knots of chatting young men turned toward them to stare. They had nothing else to do, since Lettice had allowed few young women but her daughters, always needing to be the queen in her hive.

  “Have a care, wife. I will not be tormented in my own house.”

  She made an obvious effort to control her anger and he advised her in soft tones: “The time was not right, my lady. If I did not know how and when to approach the queen, I would have had no such long position in her court as I have had.”

  “Ah, yes, my lord husband,” Lettice said, her hands clenched about the arms of her chair, “you are courtier everywhere except in your own home with your own wife.”

  He saw it was useless to talk with her when she was in such a mood, knowing Elizabeth’s blood cousin Lettice had received—along with her red hair, her Anne Boleyn slanted eyes and her fair skin—a full portion of the Tudor temper.

  Robert bowed to his wife and her daughters, turned, walked from the room and climbed to the great gallery and his rooms, where he could seek some warm quiet and peace.

  He was to have the warmth, but not the peace.

  As he climbed the short steps into his bed, Tamworth parted the heavy tapestry curtains that would shut out the night’s cold. Within minutes Lettice entered his room in a diaphanous night shift that brought a blush to Tamworth’s face along with his hasty exit.

  “Husband, make a place for me,” breathed Lettice, her curled red hair shining in the candlelight beside his bed.

  Knowing his wife to be a passionate woman, he was not surprised. He lifted his Bruges satin tester and she slid under and stretched herself close against his side. She was wearing Elizabeth’s rose perfume, which made him silently damn her for a scheming tart.

  Yet he was a man and easily aroused as always. Since he willed her to be Elizabeth in his bed, she had to be. If he thought of his wife as the other, there was no way he could raise his cock to do its duty, a duty he had once longed for to ease his aching for another woman.

  As he began to mount her, she squirmed about and turned her back to him like a Bankside bawd afraid of the French pox.

  Oh, no. Roughly, he turned her about to face him. She would know that it was her husband who gave her pleasure.

  It wasn’t to be that night. After enough effort to raise a sweat, he threw himself down beside her. “I’m too tired,” he announced.

  “Husband . . . dearest Robert . . . let me help you be the man I know you to be, the man of our secret trysts.” She bent, the candlelight casting shadows of her curved arse onto the ceiling. She took him in her mouth. Though she had always given him that, her tongue now played the tricks of a slut in the School of Night, or a boy whore in Smithfield’s Cock Lane. Had Lettice been performing with her daughter Dorothy in brothels? He tried to care, but could not. He gave himself over to a vision of Elizabeth bending to him in complete surrender.

  Lettice made the appropriate sounds of delight and triumph when she brought out his manhood, though when he could think on it later, he didn’t believe her ardor, although once he had . . . eagerly.

  “Husband,” she whispered, snuggling against his chest. “If you cannot gain the queen’s consent to show your wife the honor due her at court, then take our perfect son Essex—”

  Robert wrenched himself away from her. “You demean our Noble Imp!”

  “My lord,” she said in a soothing tone, “we cannot deny he was imperfect. One leg was shorter than the other.”

  “He had yet to grow into it,” Robert argued, and knew he was denying a truth he could not bear.

  But Lettice would not silence herself. “My dear lord husband, take Essex to court and introduce him to Her Majesty. She has not seen him for many years.”

  Tired almost unto death, Robert roused himself. “Not since Kenilworth in ’seventy-five, when, as I recall, he refused to kiss her when she asked.”

  “He was but a boy and frightened of so grand a lady.”

  “He was willful and ill taught.”

  She laughed against his chest and he could feel her hot, wet breath radiate on his skin. “He is yet willful, but better taught. He knows how to charm a woman . . . even the queen, who has been charmed by masters of the art.”

  She meant him and he stirred, holding himself farther from her. “I will think on it, wife. The boy did well in Holland. He does not lack courage, but he does lack judgment. He does not know how or when he should let a thing rest.” Like his mother, he thought, speaking without thinking through to consequences. “He pushes until he gets the opposite of what he wants and then is certain he has been ill treated. Elizabeth will never tolerate or mother him.”

  Lettice was silent for a breath. “Do not be so certain of her, husband. She is still in love with the boy you were and she will surely see the likeness.”

  Robert’s chest tightened. “Then it is too dangerous, wife. Her Majesty never
forgets a suspicion. Although young Essex has my dark coloring, he has your reddish hair and is taller and thinner and not of my temperament. . . . Still, she—”

  “Husband,” she said, taking his cock in her hand though it did not stir, “he must begin making his way in the world, and an earl’s place is in the court and on the queen’s council. Perhaps he can bring her to call me back to her service better than you. I have suffered enough exile even for Elizabeth,” she said, her hand sliding up and down.

  There was a time when she could have brought him to stiffen again, but not tonight. He pulled away and opened the bed curtains for her.

  “I remember a time when you did not want me to leave you in your bed alone.”

  Did he see real sorrow or playacting in her face? He did not know, but he felt some blame and thought to ease her. He placed his hand gently on her shoulder, smiling up at her. “Wife, you have exhausted me with your bed sport.”

  “Husband, please,” she begged. “I would have one child, one son, who would make me proud and take the place at court that I am denied.”

  Robert opened his mouth to answer her, but she put a finger on his lips.

  “Sshh, husband. Do this one thing for me. I will ask nothing more.” She left quickly, for once knowing when she had said enough, and for once he understood her desire.

  Robert lay back on the bolster, the scent of Elizabeth’s perfume in his nostrils. Lettice had it made from the queen’s own recipe to taunt him. Though he knew her design, the scent worked on him as she had thought and he closed his eyes, wishing it were Bess’s head on his bolster this night. But she was safely sleeping at Whitehall. Sleep softly, my queen, he prayed, his lips touching the pillow. Softly, softly.

  He pulled the coverlet up to his chin against the cold. There was no denying that Lettice spoke truth about Essex. It was time for the youth to be introduced at court . . . and Lettice’s first husband, the man who had thought Essex his own, had been tall and dark very like the boy. Pray God that was enough to quell Elizabeth’s suspicious mind.

  The earls of Leicester and Essex entered through the city gate, cantering through snow turned gray by mud and the many sea-coal fires of London. They made their way to King Street, through the great Holbein Gate and into the Whitehall Palace mews. It was January 1, 1587, and as soon as they changed from their muddied traveling clothes they went immediately to the presence chamber. Everyone of any importance was gathered to bring their yearly gifts and hope to receive Elizabeth’s approval.

  “Have a care, Essex,” Leicester cautioned. “This is the most important day in your life.” And perhaps in my own.

  Queen Elizabeth sat upon her canopied throne receiving her customary homage. She wore a gown of embroidered black velvet, dotted throughout with large white pearls, with seven ropes of pearls about her neck reaching to her knees. Her pet ermine perched on her sleeve above a fine Flemish lace cuff, completing the black and white of her virginal costume. Her gold-and-diamond crown shimmered atop her red hair.

  Robert saw with some relief that she was as he had left her. There were times when he feared for her, since England’s enemies surrounded her realm. He pulled a silk-wrapped New Year’s gift from a large pocket. “Majesty, all my time with you is precious to me, but I would be pleased to know that you counted those hours, too . . . with this.”

  “A riddle, my lord?”

  “Answered, Your Grace, on opening my poor gift.”

  She spread the silk on her lap and looked at the bracelet of small, very fine glowing emeralds, then held it up to look closer at the face of a small mechanical clock in its center. Then she smiled and clapped her hands together in delight. “The hours,” she said, obviously elated, “hours to wear upon our arm. We have never seen such.”

  “It is the smallest clock ever made, for the greatest ruler.” He thought the cost worth it to see her pleasure. He had paid a great price for the intricate piece and it had taken the best clockmaker in the Royal Exchange a near year to make the miniature mechanical parts. It had been even more expensive than Lettice’s large table diamond.

  Elizabeth smiled, a little sadly. “When we look on time, my lord, it is always passing.”

  “Yet over years you grow in power and beauty, Majesty.”

  Robert could sense Essex’s awe as he knelt beside him, head bowed to the sovereign, listening carefully to every word passing between them. That is the way you speak to a great queen, he thought to show Essex, especially this queen, who is surer of her power than she is of her person, a more powerful queen, than woman. Never, never touch her scepter or her idea of her own youth and beauty. She will forgive neither. It had taken him years of being near her to come to this knowledge of Bess. Some men, to their grief, never learned.

  Elizabeth turned a blank stare on Essex. “So, the little boy has learned better manners since the summer at Kenilworth.”

  Essex lifted his head higher. “Majesty, had that young boy not learned of your glorious grace and forgiveness of an overawed lad, he would not dare kneel before you now, a grown man showing you his strong desire to serve your good.”

  “Very pretty words, my young lord. Stand up. Let us see how the boy has grown to almost a man.”

  Leicester felt Essex bristle but for once control his pride. Even this mother-spoiled boy knew that his self-importance could not o’ertop Elizabeth’s on her throne. Pray he always remembered that.

  Essex turned about on his toes, his boots gleaming, as if he danced the popular brawle, a country dance that ended masques. His steps showed his fine long legs to advantage and drew all female eyes in the presence chamber.

  Leicester knew it was exactly the kind of flourish that the queen liked in her courtiers . . . the very thing he would have once done himself to catch her eye, though her face showed nothing of what she must see. Must guess!

  “How old are you, my young lord?”

  “Almost twenty years, Majesty.”

  Leicester could see the queen mentally counting back the years.

  The queen stood. “My lord Leicester, we will speak to you in our privy chamber. At once!”

  He followed her entourage, preparing himself for the tempest that would surely follow.

  When they reached her privy chamber she angrily dismissed the yeoman guards, gentlemen pensioners and her ladies busy with their duties and embroidery. “Close and guard my doors,” she shouted, and turned on Leicester. “Down on your knees, my lord liar!”

  She did not come near him, where he might try to draw her into his arms, but paced about before she finally came to the table and took a chair. “Do you think to make a fool of us in front of our court, my lord of Leicester?”

  “Majesty—”

  “Do we not have eyes? Though others may think him sired by the Devereux husband, dead these fifteen years, do not count us as one so easily duped. We see you as you once were, in his face, his movements . . . his carriage, his eyes. . . .”

  Leicester bowed his head.

  “He is your son by that She-Wolf. She whelped him of you while yet a maid! Admit it.”

  The queen stood and came to him, her gown brushing his legs, her fists beating upon his head. “Do not lie to us!” When he did nothing to protect himself, her hands dropped to her sides.

  “How could you so betray me?” She lowered her voice but he could hear the scarred-over old wound opening, a suspicion flowing out that she had covered over for nearly two decades without allowing herself to recognize it.

  Leicester straightened his spine. “Because you had turned from me to Kit Hatton.” It was not the whole truth, but true enough.

  “God’s blood! You blame me? Admit your guilt!”

  He looked up at her, his eyes begging for an understanding she could never give. “Yes, it is true. Essex could be my son . . . could be our son in my heart.”

  She seemed to freeze. “How do you dare say that to me?”

  “My queen, he will need you when I am gone.”

  “Do
not speak of such things to me,” she said, her voice hoarse.

  “I must. He lacks judgment and will need your guidance and understanding. Bess, will you give it for my sake?”

  He bent and kissed her feet. That she allowed it gave him courage to rise from his aching knees. “Love him, Bess, for me. Do not hate him for the father’s fault.”

  “I will love him or hate him for his father’s sake. Maybe both.”

  She was shaking and he put his hands on her arms and then drew her to his chest so his soft words could reach her ear. “The truth now, my love. Lettice came to me one summer night wearing your gown and scent. I thought . . . I thought it was you, Bess. I had waited every night for you to come to me again.”

  “And I did not come to you.”

  “You did not, but I thought you had. I wanted to think it. I had to think it!”

  Elizabeth stiffened and he thought tears stood in the corners of her eyes.

  “Bess, when Lettice told me she was pregnant, I did not know whether to believe her or think it a trap to take me from you . . . to win me from you. She knew where my heart rested.”

  “You did not want to marry her?” Elizabeth’s usual confident tone was missing. She needed his reassurance.

  “Never! That is why I suggested Essex to you.”

  “And why we stopped the night at Rycote on my progress that year,” she said, putting her still-trembling arms about him, though they could not move closer. “Have you forgotten I made that happen?”

  “You knew about Lettice even then.” He tightened his hold on her fragile body. “Bess,” he whispered, knowing the answer. “My sweetest lady, Rycote is never forgotten. It will be my last thought on this earth. But, Bess . . . Bess, you wouldn’t take me in marriage, even after that night.” He still ached from the weight of that truth after all the years that had passed.

  “Yet you continued to ask me by word or by look almost daily for years until you finally married that She-Wolf without my permission.” Her eyes closed in pain at the memory of the struggle between her heart and her head. “I had much practice in denying you. You did not give up until—”