The Virgin's Daughters

by Jeane Westin

  Lady Essex had not waited for footmen, so John leapt to their standing place at the rear of the carriage and rode there, trying to ignore the jarring ache in his leg until they neared the mob. “To St. Paul’s churchyard,” he heard them yell.

  Windows and doors were shutting as they passed. The streets were empty, though this was Sunday and all Englishmen must be churched on this day or pay a fine. The royal heralds warning the city had done their job well.

  A beadle stood in the deep shadow of a goldsmith’s shop, having no appetite to try to control such a rowdy, armed mob.

  The coach stopped and John dismounted, grabbing the beadle’s arm and drawing him from his hiding place. “I am Sir John Harington, Queen’s Champion, and I command you to warn Whitehall that my lord Essex is at the head of a rabble in open rebellion!”

  The beadle’s mouth gaped and stayed that way.

  John pointed toward King Street, leading to the palace. “Quickly, man! With all speed! Move, or you’ll sleep in the Tower this night!”

  Without waiting for him to obey, John drew his sword and hurried on after Essex, detouring up Ludgate Hill, hoping to head him off. He must stop him! He could feel his ankle swelling against the hard leather of his boots, but he ignored the pain. Running down alleys, he heard Essex’s voice yelling above the curious quiet of the city: “For the queen! Rally to me! Cecil plans to kill me and sell England to Spain—”

  Doors and windows all along his way were tight shut, and citizens caught on the streets were running away from him. John saw Lady Essex draw up in her carriage and call out an alderman, who came from his house, got into her carriage and went immediately out the other door as fast as he could go.

  John’s heart swelled with admiration. There would be no uprising in the city. Londoners were loyal to Elizabeth.

  To catch his breath and cease the throbbing of his ankle, John leaned against a half-timbered house. He caught sight of Essex rushing back from St. Paul’s. Though now a cold wind and fog blew from the Thames, the earl’s shirt and hair dripped with sweat and he turned in a circle like a blind man, demented. “Back! Back to Essex House,” he yelled, his voice a wretched screech.

  Grasping tight hold of his sword, John stepped into the earl’s path. “My lord, surrender now, while you yet may throw yourself upon the queen’s mercy.”

  “John, you’ve joined me after all.” He wiped sweat from his eyes. “No,” he said, his eyes at last recognizing what his ears had missed, “you’re with them. You think those traitors Cecil and Raleigh should—”

  “I think, my lord, it is over and you must know it.”

  Essex lowered his sword, his next words pushed through tightened lips. “You Judas.”

  John spoke softly, as all around Essex’s men began to melt away into the dark alleys. “My lord, surrender now and play the man.”

  Essex lunged, but John’s sword met his, sliding up to the hilt. They had bought these new French thrusting swords together and practiced in Ireland for many hours. The sour smell of defeat covered Essex, but he was driven by his demons. He stepped back and lunged again. “You’ll die before me, John.”

  John parried, favoring his sore ankle and saw that the more they exchanged blows, the more the earl’s men thought better of their lives and ran away. The army had become a mere company.

  Sir Christopher Blount put his sword between them. “Robert, let him loose. We have a boat waiting to take you to France on the next ebb tide. Haste!”

  Essex shook his head, sweat flying in all directions. “We’ll see who’s champion of England,” he yelled, focusing all his frustration and hatred on the enemy at hand.

  John met his thrust, twisting his blade over Essex’s so that he lost his grip and the sword clattered to the street. He could have thrust at that open chest, once so laden with honors, but he lowered his sword, touching the cobbles, his arm leaden, his heart sick of this useless fight with a man lacking all sense.

  For a spent man, Essex moved with insane speed. Snatching up his rapier and sweeping it from the street, he stabbed his sword into John’s chest.

  A sting like a hundred bees staggered John and he fell to his knees. Strangely, his scraped knee now hurt worse than his ankle.

  “Robert! For Christ’s pity, he let you live!” Kit Blount pulled Essex away and, dazed, he stumbled after, looking back once. Before John’s eyes closed, he recognized regret on the earl’s face. A moment of reason, a faded memory of the comrades they had once been. Then John thought no more.

  Mary waited with the queen, her other ladies and Robert Cecil as news came to the palace with every hour. At first they heard that all London was in revolt.

  “Pish!” Elizabeth said, stopping in her pacing. “First news from a battle is always false.”

  She took up a breastplate and slid her arms through the armor’s leather strapping and, taking up her sword, made for the door. “But if they dare reach my palace, they will face me!”

  “Your Grace,” Cecil said in great alarm, “I beg you, do not expose yourself.”

  The queen marched on into the hall, her back as straight as any soldier’s. “Do you think Henry Tudor’s spawn will hide in her closet from traitorous rabble?”

  Cecil, much shorter than Elizabeth, threw himself to his knees in front of her. “I beg you, Majesty, stay within the palace. I’ve doubled the guard. The London watch surrounds the city. Your enemies are defeated and running away on every side.”

  Joining her voice to his, Mary knelt and begged, her hands prayer-fully folded. “Your Grace, I entreat you, allow your guards to do their duty to their sovereign. We will have all traitors by nightfall.”

  Elizabeth stopped at that, ever aware, as Mary had known, of a queen’s place in the chain of being. She commanded; others fought. Her troops knew she stood with them as she had at Tilbury, when the Spanish armada came against England.

  Mary saw all the queen must be thinking. “Majesty, your courage is already a legend to Englishmen.”

  Elizabeth breathed deeply, anger fading in her deep-set eyes until no emotion showed at all. “Pygmy,” she said, bending slightly to raise him, her back less rigid, “tell me at once when my lord of Essex is taken.”

  “Aye, madam, at once.”

  To chase away winter’s early dusk that heightened her concern for John, Mary was lighting candles in the queen’s apartments when word came that Essex was taken. Hopelessly surrounded, he and his close followers released their prisoners, broke their swords and surrendered. They were quickly on their way downriver to the Tower.

  “Thank you, my lord,” Elizabeth said, a stillness surrounding her.

  Cecil nodded, composing his face. “And yet there is sad news, Majesty. Your champion, Sir John, escaped his captors, but was gravely injured when he fought the earl in the streets.”

  Mary dropped the taper from her hand. “No!”

  Cecil ignored Mary. “Sir John was carried to the Lord Mayor’s house. Your Grace, I have sent your physicians as I knew you would want. The earl’s blade missed Sir John’s heart, but—”

  Mary ran from the queen’s apartments, and did not hear Elizabeth commanding her to return.

  All the long afterward, Mary did not remember hiring the coach that took her to the Lord Mayor’s house, and had only faint memory of flinging her purse at the coachman, too shaken to count out a single silver shilling.

  She bruised her hand banging on the Lord Mayor’s door, but was admitted, despite her wild eyes and tearstained face. “I come from the queen,” she announced to the startled Lord Mayor wearing his heavy gold chain of office, and rushed past him up to a gallery bedchamber, its open door showing light.

  Physicians, in their star-studded black gowns, stood around the canopied bed as Mary pushed through to the bedside. “John,” she whispered at sight of the bloody bandage on his chest, his face white and lips slack. Cupped leeches sucked at his chest and swollen ankle.

  “Why leech him?”

  “Lady, if th
e blade struck his lungs, they will fill with blood.”

  Fear squeezed her heart and she could not breathe for her head spinning close to the abyss, where darkness would erase this moment and those she feared would follow. “Oh, dear Jesus in heaven, help him.”

  A hand came down hard on her shoulder. “This man must not be disturbed. Are you his wife?”

  With all her heart, she wanted to say yes, but she swallowed and answered truthfully, the words tumbling out: “A friend. A dear friend. I serve the queen, and Her Majesty must know his condition.”

  “We have not yet been able to examine his urine, though we have given him syrup of woundwort to provoke it,” the doctor replied gravely. “We will send news.”

  Another physician bent to her. “Do you know his natal day and hour? The heart is ruled by Leo, the lungs by Gemini. In truth, we must cast his horoscope to make a good diagnosis.”

  She shook her head, only dimly hearing him. Her ears were tuned to John’s shallow breathing, her eyes riveted to his face. “I beg you, sirs, will he live? Speak! Give me hope.”

  “The blade missed his heart or he would be dead at once, but he is gravely wounded.”

  “Yet will he live?” She heard her own strangled voice echoing against the paneled walls, but it was the next words she was forced to carry away to echo in her mind.

  “Who among us knows? The answer lies in his stars.”

  Lord Essex’s trial was swift, and although he tried to implicate Cecil in treason with Spain, no one, not judges nor Londoners, least of all Elizabeth, believed his ravings.

  The queen signed his death warrant a few days later, betrayed by her love and tolerance for a wild horse that now would be tamed in the only way he could be.

  Mary packed her belongings while waiting for the carriage that would take her back to Somersetshire. She was sent from court until Her Majesty chose to reinstate her. Temporary banishment was the mildest of punishments for disobeying the queen, but it was far worse to Mary than any broken finger. She would gladly have given an entire hand to have news of John, to know how he fared. Was he taking food? Sitting up? She had failed him. She had failed the queen.

  Her Majesty’s physicians reported daily that he survived, but despite their superior physicks, they frowned when Her Majesty asked if he would recover, calling his sun signs troubling.

  Elizabeth spoke clearly. “If he lives, I will send my best litter to have him safely taken to his manor of Kelston.”

  Packing done, Mary sat on her bed, clasping her shaking body, shivering half from winter and more from her fear for the future. Would God give her strength to bear the unbearable?

  Through the open door to the anteroom, she could hear the queen playing upon her virginals, a merry tune, which she continued despite the sound of Cecil’s voice.

  “Your Grace,” the Lord Secretary said, and Mary could see him kneeling and straightening his bent back with a grimace of pain. “The Earl of Essex is dead this hour of sixteen February, 1601. His last words were in praise of you.”

  The music ceased for the space of two ticks of the great case clock. And then the cheery, tinkling tune began again.

  When Mary reluctantly arrived home from court in early March of 1601, she found her grandfather sleeping in the great hall before the fire, in such poor health that he had not the strength to climb the stairs. She forced herself to turn her mind from John to Sir William, and had him taken immediately upstairs to his bedchamber.

  A dreary March passed slowly, its dark, sweeping storms making most roads impassable. Hearing only the steady drip, drip from the eaves, Mary bundled against the cold seeping into the manor, swirling down halls and behind bed hangings. She thought back to Lady Grey and wondered if she and her Ned had watched and waited through winter storms, hoping for Elizabeth’s forgiveness as Mary waited now. Jesu, preserve her and John from that fate.

  Finally, Lady Margaret wrote that the queen sometimes forgot and called for her Mouse. At last, welcome word came that John was recovering at his home near Bath, and Mary found some bitter relief in caring for her grandfather, since she could do nothing but worry for John.

  As winter passed into spring, she was thankful to keep herself busy supervising the lambing and sat long hours in Sir William’s bedchamber, which his doctor had ordered darkened. She administered borage, rosemary and citron pills to hold back invasive melancholy vapors, wondering if she didn’t need this physick herself.

  “Sir William’s heart is overheated,” advised another physician from Taunton Town, bleeding him from his right arm and calling for powder of bullock’s heart as a strengthening cordial, since a strong bull’s heart gave the same strength to a man’s. Could this physick help John? She determined to dispatch some with her next letter.

  As summer came on, she stood at the front windows watching the Bath road, eager for news of John, praying for good reports from his sister, Lora, who cared for him, but few riders passed, and none bearing the words of hope she longed to hear.

  Sir William wasted in strength and appetite until he could not swallow without choking. As hot summer became a smothering August, Mary read aloud from the Bible by flickering candlelight to comfort him and to pass hours in some absorbing occupation that would quiet her fears. The two men she loved in all the world were beyond her help. She implored God often, her days thick with prayer.

  Sir William came alert only at the sound of rider or carriage below his window.

  “Has the queen recalled you to service?” he asked again one day when she returned from greeting neighbors who had come to inquire and leave favored medicines.

  “No, Grandfather.”

  Another day it was the royal post rider. “A letter from Lady Margaret,” Mary told him truthfully, but less truthfully did not add that she had also received a letter from John’s elder sister, Lora.

  “Read what Lady Margaret says, child.” Wearily he turned his wasted face toward her, though he was only dimly focusing.

  She quickly scanned the cramped writing on the single page. Her heart beat faster to learn that when Lord Howard had come to court in May the queen had sent him away, saying that she would release his promised lady only when her service to her queen was finished. Bless Her Majesty. She couldn’t wait to tell John.

  “What does the letter say?” Sir William asked again.

  Hastily, Mary read the rest of the page. “Lady Margaret writes that the queen says no one keeps her linen as I did.” Mary smiled at the look of pride on her grandfather’s face, and read on: “She says that if I write to Her Majesty admitting my error, I would be quickly forgiven.”

  “Have you not written to the queen earlier?”

  “Nay, sir, for I do know how the queen hates supplicating pleas until her anger has cooled.”

  “Then you must write . . . at once,” Sir William said, seeming to sink farther into the pillows that supported him, his face white with the effort to speak.

  “I cannot leave you, Grandfather.” She hid all her longing for Elizabeth’s forgiveness and a quick return to her service by the longer north road passing near John’s manor.

  “The servants will give me care. . . . I have little time left on this earth. Just as well, child. My life has run its course. My only regret is that I will . . . will not see you married and titled . . . secure with husband and children.” He stopped and caught a fleeting and shallow breath. “At least you will not go to Lord Howard as a pauper, for you will bring this manor and the second-largest sheep run in the Somersetshire levels.” He waved toward a chest near his bed. “My will . . . in there. And call the priest, child. Tell him to come with all speed.” Utterly exhausted, he closed his eyes and immediately and deeply slept.

  Mary waited to see if he would wake and need her. Finally, when he did not stir, she called his majordomo. “Send for the parish priest at once, and sit with Sir William until I return,” she said. She hastened to her own chamber and, taking a chair next to a window flooded with August sunlight, sh
e opened John’s sister’s letter with trembling hands.

  Mistress Rogers—or Mary, Mary, as my brother speaks of you—greetings. John wishes me to write that he mends with every thought of you and even speaks loudly of returning to court as if to deny his hurt, though I hasten to add that like any stubborn man he is not as strong as he chooses to think. He knows that your grandfather ails, but begs you to come to him when Sir William improves. I add my wish to his, since he insists he will take horse and come to you if he cannot see you soon.

  Lora Harington-North

  Mary read Lora’s letter again, seeing John resisting bed and hearing him protest that he was well recovered. She saw him vividly through the words of the letter. He loved and wanted her, his heart answering hers.

  The majordomo called to her from the hall. “Come,” she said.

  The door opened. “Mistress, I am saddened to tell you that Sir William did not awaken.”

  “He yet sleeps?” Mary asked, hoping for that answer.

  “His soul flies to heaven, mistress.”

  Shocked back to reality, Mary gathered her skirts and raced past him down the portrait-lined gallery to her grandfather’s room. “Grandfather,” she murmured, leaning over him. She pulled a feather from a bolster and held it beneath his nose. No breath stirred the feather.

  For a moment she wanted to succumb to her grief, but relief was there as well. His suffering was ended. He had lived out his last days in pain and darkness. Enough!

  She ran to the windows and threw back the draperies and shutters, opening the room to fresh air. She would speed his way on beams of light.