by Brandy Purdy
I don’t know how much time passed before Pirto came running out to me. She told me later that when she saw Robert with his hands and shirt all stained red, she thought for certain he had murdered me, until she realized, to her immense relief, that it was not blood, only henna, the same diluted red orangey mess that now trickled down the sides of my face and the back of my neck and still streaked my waterlogged golden hair. Pirto knelt beside me and, with her apron, did her best to wipe it away lest it stain my skin, then used it to wrap my hair up in a makeshift turban before she helped me up and back inside the house.
“He’s gone now, love, ridden back to London as though the hounds of Hell were nippin’ at his heels,” she assured me, as I leaned heavily against her. “It’s all right, love, you’re safe now; you’ve nothing to fear.”
I stood in silence, the tears pouring down my face, washing the remnants of the paint away, as Pirto undressed me. The red gown was ruined, but I didn’t care; it had accomplished nothing except arousing the kind of rage its color was named for, and I never wanted to see it again. As I stood shivering in my wet, henna-streaked shift while Pirto banked up the fire, my eyes fell on the ropes of pearls and jeweled clasps. Furiously, I snatched up the gown, the red dye bleeding onto my hands, as it had onto my shift, and ripped the clasps away, letting the fabric tear and the pins pop and bend; then, scooping up the ropes of pearls, I ran from the room before Pirto could stop me. I plunged downstairs and burst out the front door and onto the road, running hard. I didn’t stop even though Pirto ran after me, with a cloak fluttering from her arms, begging me to stop. I never slowed or looked back; I kept running until I reached the village church, where, panting and clasping my chest, even as colored sparks danced before my eyes, I thrust the pearls and clasps into the poor box, then wrenched the rings from my fingers and threw them in too. “Let them do someone some good!” I cried, slouching in agony against the church’s sturdy stone wall and praying God to bear me up and give me some comfort. “Let some good come of this!” I cried as, panting and flush-faced, Pirto caught up with me just as I slid to the ground.
“Look, Pirto,” I said, half laughing, half sobbing, as she bundled me into the cloak, “I am barefoot and in my shift, just like Patient Griselda!”
“Oh, sweetheart!” Pirto cried, near tears herself as she sank down beside me and gathered me in her arms, holding me close and rocking me as if I were a child again.
We sat there for a long time, me torn between tears and laughter, while Pirto rocked me and stroked my sodden hair, which still dripped orange-tinted droplets like blood-tinged tears.
At last, when my laughter had ceased and my sobs had subsided, she helped me to my feet and gently led me back to the Hydes’ house. I was too ashamed to meet anyone’s eyes. When I caught a glimpse of Mrs. Hyde peeping out of her bedchamber door, I hastily looked away even as she quickly closed it.
Back in my bedchamber as Pirto bustled about, laying out a fresh shift for me and preparing a hot bath, I stood staring, without seeing, out the window. I kept my back turned to the room, trying to hold back my tears and not give the wary-eyed servants who carried in pails of steaming water something more to talk about; I knew they thought I had gone mad.
When we were alone and Pirto came and gently put her hands upon my shoulders to turn me toward the steaming tub, my eye caught the tapestry depicting Griselda being turned out of her husband’s kingdom in her shift. As Pirto lifted my ruined, red-stained shift over my head, I truly understood for the first time in my life why rage is sometimes called red. With a fiendish cry, like a demon escaped from Hell, I flew at that tapestry. My sewing basket was sitting in the fireside chair, waiting for me, as if it knew that my whole world had come apart at the seams and wanted to help, to offer me the means to sew it back together. I snatched up my silver scissors and lunged at the tapestry, stabbing into it and pulling the scissors down, tearing and ripping it, again and again and again, until it hung in tatters and gilt and colored silk threads littered the floor and clung to my damp hair and skin. “She should be the one turning him out!” I screamed. “He is not worthy of her!” I didn’t notice when Lavinia came in, but it took both her and Pirto to pull me away from the tapestry and wrest the scissors from my hand and prevent me from doing the same to the rest of the series.
I don’t know how, but somehow they managed to quiet and calm me. They got me into the tub and let the warm water do its work and soothe and cleanse me. I remember the soothing smell of lemons and chamomile as I leaned back and closed my bleary, tear-swollen eyes and let them wash away the last lingering traces of the henna, restoring my hair to its natural golden glory.
Afterward, clad in my night shift and wrapped in a rose-colored velvet robe trimmed with tawny fur, with a goblet of hot spiced wine warming my hands, I sat propped up in bed with Lavinia beside me, like the sister I never had. Anna and Frances, my aloof, older stepsisters, always made me feel an outcast, an intruder upon whom the door of their special society of sisterhood was always locked and barred, and never did such things with me.
We talked far into the night; though she was loath to tell me and tried to change the subject whenever I asked about what went on at court, I saw the truth in her eyes. Though her lips wanted to lie to me, to be kind, to spare me the unavoidable pain, she could not deceive me. All my fears were well founded; my jealous, suspicious fancies and nightmares held more of truth than imagination. Robert and the Queen were in love—many said and believed that they were lovers in the flesh—and it was common knowledge that, had he been free, Robert was the man Elizabeth would have married. If not for me, he would have been the king he believed he was born to be. Only my life stood between him and his destiny, the power, and the passion.
And there was something else. Shyly, hesitantly, for I had never dared such a familiarity, I asked if I might show her something and have her opinion upon it. And when Lavinia readily gave her consent, I eased the robe from my shoulders and lowered my shift to reveal my left breast. There was a sort of dimple upon it that I had only lately noticed. For the life of me, I don’t know when it first appeared, but I knew it had not always been there, else I would surely have seen it before. It was just a little spot, a tad tinier than the tip of my littlest finger, where the flesh dipped in when it used to, I was certain, plump outward, just a little dip that, though it was itself empty, filled my mind with worry.
With a warm smile, my friend embraced me, then, as she helped me right my clothing, spoke so reassuringly that I felt my fears floating away from me.
“You have not been worrying over that little thing?” she asked. “It is nothing! Nothing! Our bodies change as we grow older. I know a woman—in fact I know her very well, for she is me—who, after she passed a certain age, developed such dimples on her buttocks. Mother Nature and Father Time, they have their way of marking us, in ways we would not wish, but such is the natural way of things.” She shrugged. “As we grow older, we sag and wrinkle and turn gray, and sometimes a dimple appears where there was never a dimple before.”
She took the cup of wine from my hand and set it on the table beside the bed and urged me to lie down. “Sleep now,” she said, bending to kiss my brow as she drew the covers up to my chin, as if she were my mother. “The day has been hard and most unkind to you, my friend, but tomorrow will be better.” And her reassuring smile was the last thing I saw before she blew out the candle and I closed my eyes to sleep.
22
Elizabeth
The Queen’s Summer Progress
May–August 1559
The glorious summer of 1559 will always live in my memory as the Summer of Suitors, when all at once they seemed to converge upon me like a great swarm of buzzing black flies on one tender morsel of white bread dipped in honey. The court’s meandering course from one country house to another didn’t deter them at all; the ambassadors and envoys simply packed their belongings and came along with us. What were a few more when there were already several hundred of u
s, thousands if all the servants were counted? It took 2,500 packhorses and 500 carts to transport all our luggage and provisions, and that not counting the more handsome mounts that carried my ladies and courtiers or the litters favored by those aged, infirm, with child, or, for whatever reason, disinclined to ride. “The more the merrier!” I cried, extending a welcome to all.
It was so exciting! To play the royal marriage game while I was still young and pretty enough to do it, to have every eligible bachelor of royal and high birth vying for my hand, to enflame the carnal appetites and ambitions of so many men. And there was even more to celebrate as, just before our departure, we had made peace with France. They would not return Calais, but they agreed to pay us 500,000 crowns in recompense, and there were fireworks, banquets, and masques both indoors and out, tournaments, and hunting parties to celebrate it.
Before we took to the roads, in a long, winding procession of horses and carts, Robert staged a mock battle where 1,500 armed soldiers in coats of chain mail displayed their prowess on the lawn at Greenwich whilst silk banners flapped in the air and musicians played drums, trumpets, and fifes. And afterward, those feigning death were resurrected and stood in neat ranks alongside the survivors as I walked amongst them, thanking them most heartily and telling them I could sleep easily in my bed at night knowing that I had such loyal and brave men to hold England safe for me. And I invited them all to sit, informally, on the grass and partake of a picnic with me, and afterward the musicians played lively country tunes, and I danced with many a soldier until the stars came out in a blazing glory to rival the fireworks bursting above the Thames.
We also paused at Woolwich so I could christen and see launched a fine new ship named in honor of me, The Great Elizabeth, and enjoy a banquet and dancing with the sailors upon its deck that night as fireworks lit up the sky above us and colored sparks showered down into the sea.
But best of all was the endless wooing.
From his deathbed, Gustave Vasa, the King of Sweden, sent a delegation of tall, handsome, smiling, blond Swedes, all of them eager and sweet; they seemed never to stop smiling, and I thought their jaws must ache abominably by the time they laid their heads on their pillows at night. They were a dear, bumbling lot, most endearing in their earnest awkwardness and the travesty they made of the English language. They wore crimson hearts pierced by “the arrow of love” upon their breasts and sleeves and trailed after me like puppies, promising me “mountains of silver, diamonds, sables, and ermine” if only I would promise to wed the wonderful Prince Eric, reminding me that as his wife I would also become the Queen of Sweden. And they distributed vast quantities of diamonds and silver coins amongst my ladies in the hope that it would encourage them to sing the praises of “the eternally loving Eric, who burns with the flame-haired fever called Elizabetha.” In the privacy of my chamber late at night I would spread the Swedish prince’s sables upon the floor and dance upon them in my bare feet, laughing all the while. Later, his younger brother, Duke John of Finland, would join us, to take the lead in this wooing by proxy. One night as we rowed upon the moonlit waters, sipping goblets of wine and lolling back against cushions of sapphire velvet whilst the moon played tantalizing tricks with my silver gown, he took my hand and dared proclaim that he had fallen in love with me, and henceforth, though duty required him to woo me in his brother’s stead, his heart would no longer be in it. “My heart is here,” he said, boldly pressing a kiss onto the palm of my hand, then folding my fingers into a tight fist as though they were a cage meant to contain that captive kiss. The rivalry between this pair of handsome, fair-haired brothers would end a few years later when Eric, crestfallen over my refusal to wed him, married a common soldier’s daughter instead and poisoned his brother John’s pea soup as punishment for the treachery he displayed in declaring his love to me.
And the silky-tongued Comte de Feria was always there to remind me of his master’s ardent interest. With Philip’s counterfeited rubies about my throat I laid my hand caressingly upon his sleeve as we stood and watched the dancers and said in a voice low and sultry, “Be thou well persuaded that should I decide to marry outside my kingdom, my eyes and heart shall fix on none but Philip. But we find that we have no wish to give up our solitary and lonely state, though God in His inscrutable and infinite wisdom may at any time change our mind,” I hinted tantalizingly as Robert caught my hand, pulling me away from de Feria, and swept me up in the dance.
And when Philip, later that summer, withdrew his suit and married a daughter of the King of France, also named Elizabeth, I pouted and in a fit of pique told de Feria that his master could not have been as deeply in love with me as he had led me to believe. In a fury, I tore his rubies from my neck and flung them at the Ambassador’s feet. “His love is as false as his jewels! They are glass—just like his heart!” I cried and ran to my room, to muffle my laughter in the goosedown pillows, leaving de Feria and others to think that I was overcome with grief for the loss of the Spanish King’s love. I kept to my bed the rest of the day and shunned the night’s entertainments, enjoying some vastly welcome private time lolling abed with my favorite books. The next morning, with the curtains drawn so that my face was shadowed, so de Feria would not see that it was not swollen red from weeping, I sent for him and, sighing dolefully as I reclined weakly against my pillows, I extended my hand and bade him to “convey these most heartfelt words to your master: Although my heart weeps at the memory of the dreams that will never see fruition, that the ‘someday’ that was our shared dream will never come, like summer, love ends, and winter comes, but I cherish the hope that the friendship forged between us shall hold as an unbreakable bond and endure through all the seasons to come.”
Overcome with emotion, de Feria flung himself to his knees beside my bed and kissed my hand and assured me that he and his master would stand my lifelong friends, that such bonds were not easily broken, and though he could never be my bridegroom, Philip would always be my brother, and the flame of fraternal love would burn forever bright inside his heart.
And in short order a new and even more magnificent necklace, this one of emeralds to stand symbol for the constancy of “my loving brother Philip’s affection,” arrived with a letter urging me to consider his nephews, the Archdukes Charles and Ferdinand, as prospective bridegrooms. They both found many supporters amongst my Councilors, as neither had a principality to govern and thus would be free to come and live in England and take from my shoulders the heavy burden of ruling. My Councilors and the Imperial Ambassadors, Count von Helfenstein and Baron von Breuner, aided by the suave Spaniard de Feria, did their best to persuade me, to emphasize all the Archduke Charles’s best characteristics and minimize his flaws.
Whenever I voiced a concern, they were quick to allay it with answers as fast as a finger snap. Once I casually remarked, “He is said to be hunchbacked.” At once they hastened to assure me, “It is so small as to be quite insignificant” and, “His tailors conceal it so expertly, it is hardly noticeable at all.”
“But hasn’t he a limp?” I then inquired.
“Yes,” the Ambassador reluctantly admitted, “but it is very slight, and you will never notice it as long as he remains sitting or standing still and doesn’t attempt to walk. And he cuts such a splendid figure upon a horse, Your Majesty!”
And to prove it, I was promptly presented with a handsome portrait of the Archduke Charles magnificently appareled and sitting astride a pure white stallion.
“I don’t know... .” With mock seriousness I tapped my chin and cocked my head as I examined it. “I am told his head is uncommonly large and most ill-proportioned to the rest of his body.” Inwardly I convulsed with glee at the storm of protests that followed, all assuring me that Charles’s head was perfectly sized, “neither excessively large nor inordinately small.” And then I could not resist ...
“I am told his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, has a very fine pair of legs. Have you a portrait of him?” I asked, knowing full well that the
Ambassadors had only brought a miniature that showed just his head and shoulders. “Oh, what a shame!” I pouted. “His face is quite fine, but ... oh, if only I could see his legs! The man I marry must be a fine dancer and horseman, and I find you can always tell by the legs.” And so an envoy was immediately dispatched back to Austria, riding as though his very life depended on it, to procure a full-length portrait of the Archduke Ferdinand.
But when the canvas came and I stood before it, I heaved a great sigh and lamented that he was wearing black hose, as “Everyone knows black can be deceptively slimming.” With an apologetic smile, I turned to the Ambassadors and asked if I might have another portrait of this handsome young man with his legs clad in white hose instead. “White is a much more honest color,” I explained above my coquettishly fluttering white ostrich feather fan. “Your wish is my command!” von Helfenstein and von Breuner said as one, and the whole process promptly began all over again. I daresay the portrait painters made quite a splendid profit during those wild days of wooing.
And then, as the lazy days of summer drifted by, one afternoon as I lay resting in the shade after an arduous day of hunting and vigorous country dancing at an outdoor banquet, the Ambassadors came, knelt down beside me, and presented me with a love letter from the Archduke Ferdinand, still busily posing for his portrait in a pair of white hose. I gave it one brief glance, then petulantly crumpled it and flung it away. “I cannot marry him,” I announced, and I lay back, pulling the brim of my big straw hat back down over my eyes. “His handwriting is the worst I have ever seen.”