His Last Letter

by Jeane Westin

Elizabeth nodded, accepting her friend’s reason, no doubt true. Though Robin and his brother Ambrose, Earl of Warwick, were of the same blood, they could have been born from different wombs. Ambrose was sober-minded and settled with a wife. His younger brother, Robert, was fun-loving, with a roaming eye, even while he waited for a queen to marry him. At first passion Elizabeth had been furious with Robert for the other women and they had had many roaring arguments; each time she banished him, only to recall him. She had forgiven him and all between them had been as before. She could live and rule no other way than with him beside her. When she tried, her need was proved true again.

  Grooms brought horses into the courtyard, and the queen was quickly dressed by her ladies for hunting in a gown topped by a doublet and a brimmed red hat, the latest fashion from France.

  She raced down the wide stairs and stopped to step regally into the courtyard to meet proud Leicester, bathed and dressed, holding a splendid white hunter with pinkish eyelids and startling blue eyes, trembling eagerly to the sound of the hunt trumpets. Lord Leicester knelt and handed her the reins.

  “He is called Whiteboye and he is yours, my queen, foaled by the most famous Irish bloodline I could command . . . and that is the very best.”

  Magnificent, both horse and man, Elizabeth thought. “We thank you for him and we thank you for our garden,” she added with a slight tremor in her voice. He bent his head to her and she could not resist stretching a hand to tickle his neck. He shivered and raised his head, his eyes swimming with love, dark eyes that pierced her heart like hot quarrels from a crossbow. She must . . . must be on her guard against him. Against herself.

  Elizabeth was quickly in the saddle and the huntsman’s horn called her to the chase. Laughing as of old, they raced out of Kenilworth into a slanting sunlit morning, followed by a pack of dogs, and onto Leicester’s great greensward deer chase said to be twenty-six miles long. Deer were everywhere for the shooting.

  “Majesty,” Robin called loudly to be heard over baying hounds and pounding hooves, “I have set aside a special buck with a great rack for you.”

  “Take me to him,” she cried, excitedly spurring her horse, the great stallion leaping under her, tireless and wonderfully strong, his flank muscles rippling with each stride under her demanding hands and prodding feet.

  The stag was indeed magnificent, bounding away from them, but, experienced and wily, he turned an abrupt circle and headed back toward Kenilworth, the dogs and hunters after him.

  The queen braced herself and pulled on the left rein, and Whiteboye began to turn immediately in a shorter arc than any other horse she’d ever ridden, the perfect hunter.

  They all dashed pell-mell after the stag, Leicester next to her, his hunter taking a stride for each of hers, all the court, servants and huntsmen pounding after them. Ahead Kenilworth rose high on its hill as the stag reached the mere and with no hesitation plunged in and began to swim, its head and horns sailing over the lake like a great ship on the ocean. The dogs swam after it, nipping at its hindquarters.

  Elizabeth came up to the lake and reined in her horse so fast that the front hooves skidded into the water. Robin was right there to grab her horse’s head.

  “Have a care, Bess. I will send my huntsmen to drive him to you for a fair crossbow shot.”

  The queen watched the men in several boats turn the stag toward her until it stood half out of the water, so weary its body trembled, its breath whistling past its flaring nostrils. She took the loaded crossbow, its quarrel big enough to sink deep into this huge beast, and sighted it at the stag’s heart. Her finger tightened, but refused to pull. Why? She did her duty daily and sacrificed her love to do it. In the forests of her realm, it was the duty of this deer to die for her entertainment and meat. Still, the beast looked straight at her, unafraid. He is king here and will bow to no one. We are rulers together, given life and title by God.

  Nay, she silently commanded herself, and spoke aloud to the stag. “Sir Beast, I grant you a royal pardon and long life in honor of your strength and courage.”

  The people around her were silent for a moment and then burst into applause.

  “He loves you and thanks you, Majesty,” someone in the milling hunt crowd offered.

  She laughed. “He is a male and loves a woman who pursues him,” she shouted back over her shoulder, wheeling her great horse.

  “Call off the dogs, good Robin. See that my stag lives long. Such strength and bravery should replenish your herd and you will have the finest hunting in the realm.”

  He bent to kiss her hand, but she heard his words as clearly as if he had shouted them in her face. “Just as we would have the finest sons, my Bess.”

  She retrieved her hand, but gently, and tugged on her reins, turning Whiteboye’s head. “To prayers now, Robin. I think them needed, don’t you?”

  “Majesty, I never cease to pray . . . for Elizabeth, queen of England.”

  As they cantered across the bridge over a dry moat and through the gatehouse, Elizabeth knew that Robin had determined to make Kenilworth his last and greatest wooing of her. It was obvious at every turn.

  She looked up at the entry tower, puzzled. “My lord, your great clock has stopped.”

  Leicester jumped from his horse and ran to help her from hers. As she slid into his arms, he whispered, “No, Bess, I had the mechanism halted on the moment you arrived. Time stands still for me when you are near. There is no hour, no day, no night . . . only you, the queen of all my time.”

  She smiled, keeping her mouth firm, so that he could not possibly guess how deep into her heart his words had reached. “My lord Leicester, after prayers I will keep to my chambers until the cool of evening.”

  The queen escaped Robin in the heat of day at Kenilworth to read, write, consult with her council, but in the cool of evening, she was always with him, hunting and hallooing through the forests before returning to Kenilworth, heart racing and eager to see the surprise Robin had planned for her that evening.

  One night she was met by a swimming mermaid talking of love, another night a huge mechanical dolphin, large enough to contain a six-voice choir and several musical instruments serenading her with love songs. On successive nights, the pantheon of Roman gods greeted her and she delighted in their offerings: Diana, the huntress, brought her a brace of fat pigeons; Triton brought her greetings and fat fish from Neptune; and Flora presented sprays of flowers. Always, imported Italian tumblers and contortionists made for a merry entrance into Kenilworth after hunting.

  Every night a feast of three hundred dishes was set in the great hall, with musicians, dancers and merry tumblers. One night she watched a village couple wed in a rustic ceremony, another night a re-creation of the slaughter of the Danes at Hocktide.

  “Enough, Robin,” she told him on her last evening as he led her into a shaded bower scented with her favorite perfume. It sat so very near to the mere, she felt as if the water lapped at her toes. “There can be no more entertainment in the world than what you have shown me.” She chose a cherry, red and ripe, from the tray of gilded fruits and comfits placed by her side.

  “If I had a hundred days, I would call on a hundred gods to entertain you,” he said. He smiled down at her as a servant waved a huge feather fan for cooling and the island in the mere floated toward her, full of musicians playing her favorite William Byrd fantasias.

  “What now, Robin?”

  “Wait and see, my queen,” he said.

  Two actors, a man and a woman, stepped out until their toes almost touched the lapping water and the music softened.

  The man, dressed for court, pronounced, “My lady, I am Deep Desire!”

  “I am Ever Virtue,” responded the woman, wearing a flowing gown and a crowned red wig.

  Elizabeth sat up very straight on her cushions, no longer easy. Since she and Robin shared a birthday and nearly the same horoscope and were of the same air-water nature, he knew she was inspired by a flow of emotion. Too clever, Robin. If she wer
e captivated, why would he not be? She laughed slightly and looked to Leicester to see if he heard her, but the music had his attention. Ah, she thought, he has no fear of emotion. He relies on his manly difference. As the greatest minds of the age thought, the sexes were set apart even before they were born, the female developing on the weaker left side of the womb nearest the heart and the male on the stronger right side nearer the liver. God’s bones! He may think his heart more powerful than hers, but she would prove him wrong as she had done since a girl.

  The island floated nearer and Desire looked full at the queen before turning to Virtue, speaking with his hands on his hips, his voice deeply resonant and urgent:Queen of all my desire,

  I wait here upon England’s shore,

  Lit with your royal fire . . .

  Elizabeth watched intently although she knew that Virtue could not hope to win at Kenilworth.

  Desire spoke again, stepping closer to the woman.

  And though you close love’s door . . .

  He lunged forward and knelt.

  It will open and give me more.

  Virtue threw up both hands to stop Desire, pretending horror.

  You are wrong, untamed desire,

  I resist or lose my crown,

  My virtue, the gods require,

  Never to be thrown down.

  Elizabeth smiled. Virtue might win after all.

  Desire rose and pulled Virtue to his body, kissing her full on the lips, until she fell limp in his arms. He turned to Elizabeth and imitated Leicester’s voice perfectly:If it be wrong to love a queen,

  Then there is not desire, nor ever been.

  At this time, the isle slowly sailed away and Elizabeth saw Virtue in a swoon that looked real enough to unsettle her, one hand trailing in the water. In spite of the obvious nature of the speeches, the dusk, the last twittering of birds, the rising moon, the applause, the intensity of the actors and the stillness of Robin beside her . . . all jangled her nerves.

  Elizabeth stood and applauded the actors and musicians. Robin was again standing by her side. “Delightful, my lord, although you overuse your tired poet.” She lifted her skirts to step onto the beaten path running beside the mere. “My journey begins anew tomorrow to end at Oatlands. I will go to my rest now.”

  “Ah, Majesty, I had hoped on your last night at Kenilworth you would like to walk in Elizabeth’s garden one time. Seeing a small garden from your high window is one thing, but walking in the special garden I have made for you, amongst its cool, evening-scented delights, is quite another. It is the last of my tributes.” His eyes, midnight dark in the deepening dusk, implored her and she could not break his heart. After all, it would be ungracious following such extravagant entertainment. And she was ready with answers to his pleas, quite well rehearsed over the years.

  He led her forward as if in a delicate dance and she a nymph found in a beautiful glade deep in the forest. They stepped through a rose-covered trellis onto a terrace that led in wide steps down onto a torchlit garden, while behind her, she heard ushers urging everyone to their duties in low voices. It was indeed glorious to walk down the garden’s sanded paths shimmering with gilt in torchlight, between its obelisks and columns with Robin so close that she could hear his breathing. She bent to smell some rosemary and then some lavender, then on to a rose that had a sharp, spicy scent that stung her nostrils. Water tumbled from the fountain to the lower bowl where fish splashed their tails. She was surrounded with waves of soft sound and scent.

  She took deep breaths, then hastily moved on toward the sound of birdsong. “Come, Robin, I would see your aviary.”

  They walked on toward the jeweled cage the size of an adequate bedchamber. Many strange, colorful birds squawked, chirped and flapped within and at their approach flew about, swooping and dodging.

  “Robin, ask me.”

  “Tell me what you would have me ask, my queen.”

  “My lord of Leicester, no more of this. Let us get to it.”

  “I hardly dare.”

  “S’blood, Robin!” She heard herself sounding impatient. She was not schooled in waiting. “All these days and nights lead to a moment when you ask me to marry you. I suspect you have locked your two former bedmates in the old dungeon.”

  Robin smiled, rather ruefully. “I sent them home immediately they paid you homage, Bess.”

  “And your bed has been empty this fortnight?”

  “I have been waiting for my eternal queen.”

  She felt no more need to jibe at him. “So Virtue wins in the end.”

  “Oh, miserable Desire, deeper than ever before!”

  “Why, my lord? We both know that I love you and cannot live and rule without you at my side. But I will never share my throne. Let what is be enough.”

  He bowed and walked away to the fountain, sitting on the rim of the lower bowl. She thought that he was like those great fish, swimming in a circle getting nowhere, except growing older.

  She came to him and he knelt before her. Since he was to be nothing more than a subject, she saw that he was determined to behave as one.

  “Robin, stand.”

  “Nay, sweet Majesty. This is my proper place, at your feet.”

  “Then this is my proper place.” She knelt in front of him, heedless of her gown spreading in the wet, golden sand, heedless, too, of what those at Kenilworth’s windows could see in the torchlight and whisper about.

  “Bess, why do this? Is it some mockery of me?”

  “No, sweet Robin, it is to show you that we are already one. Though our bodies must be apart, in every other way we are together. Let it be enough for now and ever.”

  “It will never be enough for me, Bess, but I will let it rest at last. I am tired.”

  The queen believed him. He would ask her no more for marriage and a seat on her throne. That part of her life and his was over and she felt some relief, though relief was fleeting, followed swiftly by regret and a sense of lost youth. She bent forward and put her head on his shoulder. Finally, he stood and lifted her up. They walked arm in arm about the garden silently, except for the sounds of the aviary birds sensing day in torchlight and the scraping of their feet against the golden sand in unison.

  CHAPTER 18

  TO KILL A QUEEN

  EARL OF LEICESTER

  February 6, 1587

  Whitehall Palace

  Elizabeth’s perfume filled the stuffy council chamber, sending Robert deep into a memory of the Kenilworth gardens, when they had walked there that last summer together and she had finally freed him from all hope of their marriage.

  Outside Whitehall, a winter storm howled, hail rattling against windows, icy winds sweeping down every corridor. He saw Elizabeth shivering but refusing to admit to any weakness of body, and rose from his seat next to hers at the council table, placing his own fur cloak about her shoulders. He whispered for her ear alone: “I cannot see you cold, Bess.”

  It was winter outside and inside at Whitehall, but she would never admit to it in front of her council, just as she would never acknowledge their love to the world by marrying him.

  Robert looked in the faces of the greatest lords of England and thought the queen’s often-repeated maxim, Make haste, slowly, was ringing in their ears. Though unsaid this day, the words were there amongst them as they waited and waited for Elizabeth’s decision to execute the condemned queen of Scots and prepare for the Spanish attack that was sure to follow. Indeed, King Philip’s fleet was already being gathered in the ports of Spain and Portugal.

  Cecil sat calmly observing her every expression, every flicker of an eyelid, as he always did at the other end of the council table, waiting to see which argument prevailed, cautious from long experience. The same guarded look was worn by both Walsingham and Hatton. Lettice’s father, Sir Francis Knollys, kept his eyes on his ledgers, as a good vice chamberlain should.

  “What is this?” the queen asked, picking up a document from the pile in front of her.

  Robert thou
ght she knew very well what it was, since Parliament’s seals dangled from it.

  “You do try my patience, sirs!” Elizabeth had read no more than a few lines and threw it down the table, where it skidded to a halt in front of Mr. Secretary Walsingham, the man who had done more than any other to capture the queen of Scots’ most recent incriminating letters begging King Philip to send his armada at once to save her head. Now from Fotheringay, though under a death sentence, Mary promised to disinherit her son, King James of Scotland, and make Philip’s daughter, Isabella, her heir if he would rescue her from the ax with an immediate attack on England.

  Mary Stuart had plotted to overthrow Elizabeth’s government and take her throne for nearly twenty years, even now plotting her covert death. But Mary, reading the English queen well, had been careful never to openly threaten Elizabeth’s life until the last great plot laid to kill the queen and all her ministers was uncovered. The assassin, Sir Anthony Babington, a Catholic supporter, had been quickly caught and had gone with his coconspirators to a terrible traitor’s death at Tyburn last September. Yet Mary lived on after she had been charged, convicted and condemned to beheading, a noble traitor’s death. Still, Elizabeth hesitated.

  Knowing his queen could forgive almost anything but a direct threat to her person, Walsingham and his agents had cleverly trapped Mary Stuart into agreeing in writing to Elizabeth’s assassination. Then Mary, not content with plotting the queen’s death, had breathlessly promised Philip to have the Protestant religion thrown down and Masses said everywhere in English churches within three months of her accession. These messages written and signed by her hand had condemned her to execution . . . now four months overdue. Unlike Mary, Bess could not quite bring herself to execute a fellow anointed queen and kins-woman.

  All of Elizabeth’s advisors, peers and gentlemen of the realm bowed their heads while she stared angrily about the table, not wanting to catch her eye and be battered by her tongue as they had been for months.