Her marriage, everyone acknowledged, was no more than two names joined on legal documents. Roger Wilbraham lived a separate life from Cecelia, and had since their wedding day. With the many official posts and perquisites that had come to him as a result of his marriage, especially his lucrative position as Master of the Queen’s Ships (he was no longer Deputy, but full Master), he had prospered, and the one thing Cecelia could not complain about was the comfort in which she lived—alone. One of her husband’s stewards came every month to bring her a bag of coins to keep under her bed to further her own whims and pleasures, and saw to it that her dressmakers and wigmakers, her physicians and apothecaries, and all the servants of her household were paid—and paid generously—from Wilbraham’s own funds, as were all the costs of keeping up the estate.
Cecelia wanted for nothing, except contentment, and an overflowing heart.
The carriage came to a stop and I went out into the courtyard to welcome my sister. As she stepped down the vehicle listed heavily to one side, her weight pulling it sharply downward. She had become fat; “fat as butter,” Walter said unkindly whenever he spoke of her. Her small eyes were all but lost in her round, fleshy face and her portly, corpulent body, encased that day in a tightly fitting, elegant gown of embroidered silk, was that of a middle-aged woman though she had not yet reached the age of thirty.
She wore, as usual, an elaborate wig, the hair twisted and tortured into an elaborate pattern. Ever since the day years earlier when the queen had ordered Cecelia’s hair shorn she had worn a wig, often a bright red one like those the queen increasingly favored, and she had a collection of wigs in many styles and shades. (All of them made, as I now and then reminded her, from the hair of other unfortunate, shorn girls.) Her own mousy brown curls, which had always been sparse, had never grown back properly; without a wig she looked strange, one side of her head sprinkled with spiky hairs like a half-plucked chicken, the other side sprouting a mousy mane, ringletted but bare in patches.
Her teeth were still good—her best feature—and as far as I could tell, she had retained them all. (She bragged that she had.) But her complexion, which even in her youth had never been a rosy, healthy pink, was a sorry mess, sand-colored and blemished as it was with scars of the pox, scars that she tried without success to hide under layers of stark, unflattering ceruse.
Poor Cecelia! I knew that every time she looked at me she cringed, for the contrast between us, always strong, had become far more marked with the years. I retained my youthful loveliness (everyone said so), while her looks were growing less and less pleasing.
“So!” she announced when I drew her into the salon and she glimpsed Frank, “here is the prodigal pirate, returned at last!”
“A seaman, Cecelia, not a pirate. And a highly successful one, though I could wish he would dress with greater soberness,” was my father’s remark. He said nothing about Cecelia’s own finery. Perhaps, I thought, he regards it as her reward for enduring a disappointing marriage.
But Cecelia only snorted.
“No man who serves Captain Drake can be anything but a pirate. Our queen favors it! But what is this I hear about a quarrel between you and my dear husband?”
There was not, I could not help but notice, any sign of an affectionate or even a civil greeting between Cecelia and Frank, though they had not seen one another for many years. They had never been fond of each other, as children they fought—I was the peacemaker between them. Were they about to fight again?
“Your dear husband, Cecilia, has done the unforgivable: he has come between me and my ship.”
Frank’s response was greeted by another, louder snort.
“And how has he done that?”
“By refusing me royal permission to leave Plymouth in my new ship, the Gull, to join Drake on his next voyage.”
“What reason has he given?” It was our father speaking once again, frowning, his brows curved downward in disapproval.
“None. But I know the reason. Drake only wants one more ship to join his enterprise. And Wilbraham wants that valuable ship to be his son’s. So he is denying me the official papers I need to take the Gull out of Plymouth harbor.”
“Which son?” father asked. “He has several, doesn’t he?”
“Four. But the one he favors is Sebastian. His son by his Spanish mistress.”
Hearing her husband’s hated Spanish mistress mentioned made Cecelia ball her plump fists and stamp her foot.
“I want that woman sent back to Seville! At once! Father, can’t you help me? Can’t you have her removed?”
“No, dear, but I may be able to do better than that—for both you and Frank. My spies tell me that Roger Wilbraham would like nothing better than to be free of his attachment to our family—without having to give up any of his offices, of course.”
At father’s words both Cecelia and Frank brightened.
“I had no idea,” Frank began. “You never wrote me of this.”
“I didn’t realize it until recently. I am told that Roger went to the queen and requested that he be appointed master armorer for the port of Sluys, with an income of two hundred pounds a year and the right to purvey arms for the English ships berthed there.”
Sluys in Zeeland was in the Spanish lowlands, the much disputed territories where the Dutch were in rebellion against the harsh rule of the Spanish King Philip and where, it was said, Protestants were being persecuted and killed by the hundreds. I remembered with horror the killings I had seen as a child, the burning of my tutor Jocelyn, the pitiless murders of the Anabaptists in Frankfurt. Sluys sounded like a terrible place. Yet Roger Wilbraham wanted to go there, no doubt because there was money to be made if he did.
“But even if he leaves England, he will still be married to Cecelia, and she will certainly not want to go with him,” I said, looking over at her.
“I think father knows that!” she snapped back at me. “You have a solution in mind, don’t you father,” she went on, in the tone she used for no one but our father. “You will work things out. I know you will.”
“If I can, child. I may be able to persuade the queen to grant your husband’s request, though she will certainly never agree to pay him the two hundred pounds a year he is asking for, not when he already receives so much from the royal treasury for his other offices. And she cannot free you, Cecelia, from your marriage. For that, we will need the aid of the church.”
“But the queen is head of the church,” Frank put in. “Surely she can decree whatever she likes where faith is concerned.”
Father glowered at him. “Do you imagine that the church is no more than a plaything of powerful men—and women? No! It is God’s sacred institution. Only He decides what is and is not right, according to His dispensations!”
We all knew better than to confront father on matters of religion, and so went in to dinner, with nothing further said—for that day. But the possibility of removing the wrathful Roger Wilbraham from our lives acted like a tonic to our spirits, and we dined that afternoon, as a family, with more lightness of heart and laughter and good will than we had in many a year. And I thought, perhaps our fortunes are turning for the better, and I too will find my way out of my private, inner difficulties and struggles. My knowledge that the man I love is with another woman, and she has had his child, and the capricious queen, who knows all and governs all, holds everyone’s future in her slender white hands.
TWENTY-FIVE
Try though he did, father could not succeed in persuading the queen to grant Roger Wilbraham the office of master armorer for the port of Sluys, and when the annual payment of two hundred pounds was mentioned she threw a tankard against the tapestry-covered wall and called out, “God’s teeth, Deacon (she had begun calling father by the nickname Deacon), who do you take me for, Croesus?”
Father bore with her, and ducked when she flung the tankard, but afterward, when he was no longer in her august presence, he very nearly swore himself.
“That woman should have married King Philip
when she had the chance,” I heard him say more than once. “What she needs is a husband to take her in hand and keep her in line!”
“But father,” I reminded him, “if she had married King Philip, England would be a Catholic realm now. Surely you wouldn’t want that.”
But he only raised his eyes to heaven and muttered something indistinct. I knew she tried his patience immeasurably. And the older she got, the more insufferable she became.
It was growing clear to me that father was not going to be able to bargain with my brother-in-law Roger Wilbraham through obtaining the queen’s favor. So I determined to do what I could to help. Or rather, to persuade Robert to help my sister and brother.
Robert was the most powerful man at court, even my father admitted that. Though the queen was angry with him at times, and was forever extending and then withdrawing her gifts and indulgence, there was never any doubt that the tall, commanding Earl of Leicester (as he had by then become) was the first among all the men at the royal court, and the most likely to achieve any goal he sought.
When I went to see Robert to ask for his help I was uncomfortable at first. Things had changed between us, because of his love—or was it mere lust?—for Douglass and because I had not seen him more than a few times over the previous year and more. Beyond that, I felt awkward because I was not in the habit of asking him for anything. I am independent, I rely on myself. I never looked on Robert as anything other than my beloved, I never tried to take advantage of him in any way.
I sought him out in the crowded Presence Chamber, where I knew he would most likely be found. I went up to him, feeling unsure of myself yet emboldened by my brother’s and sister’s needs.
“Lord Robert,” I began, my heart beating fast, “I wonder if I might have a word with you.”
His smile was both dazzling and disarming—yet I thought I detected a hint of my own uncertainty in him. When he led me into a window embrasure where we could talk without being overheard by the others in the room his first words to me were tentative—yet his dear voice, the voice I loved so well, was full of warmth. My doubts began to dissolve at the sound.
“Dear Lettie,” was all he said. And then again, “Dear Lettie.”
“Lord Robert,” I went on, stumbling a little over my words, “my sister Cecelia—that is, Cecelia’s husband—”
“Roger Wilbraham.”
“Yes. My family hopes—” I sighed, then tried again. “My family hopes that a way may be found—”
“Your father has already told me of Wilbraham’s demand—I’m afraid it is a demand, he thinks himself invaluable—to be made master armorer for Sluys. At an outrageous cost, I might add.”
“Yes. And Cecelia will be glad to see the last of him. She hopes for an annulment of her marriage.”
The lines on Robert’s broad forehead deepened.
“The queen cares nothing for Roger Wilbraham, but she is not inclined to gratify your sister. She has an animus against her.”
“Yes. She always has.”
“The best way to deal with Elizabeth is to distract her. Set off fireworks, point to them, get her to pay attention to them, and while she is distracted, put a paper in front of her to sign. A very crude method of governance, to be sure, but one those of us on her council employ frequently.”
“And what are the fireworks in this case?” I asked, enjoying the twinkle in Robert’s eyes.
“I don’t know. But for you, Lettie, I will find some.”
And then he was gone, striding off into the throng of officials, clerks, men of law and petitioners that crowded the queen’s chamber.
It was several days before I received a brief letter from Robert, asking me to meet him in a place I had never been before: Southwark, the distant part of London across the broad, stinking river from the royal court. He said he would send an escort to take me there.
Why Southwark, I wondered. The place had a very bad reputation, as a gathering point of thieves and rogues and actors. Without telling anyone where I was going, I put on my cloak and covered my slippers with boots and waited for Robert’s servant to arrive.
It took us forever just to cross London Bridge, the crowds were so thick, our carriage hemmed in on all sides by pushing, shouting peddlers and water-sellers and herdsmen trying to drive their sheep to Smithfield Market. Carts before and behind us broke down and had to be mended, packhorses lost their loads and laughing children climbed up to look in at our windows and shout at us demanding coins.
Robert had sent two of his servants to accompany me, young men in elegant liveries unaccustomed to the noise, stench and irritations of attempting to cross the bridge. One became ill, the other looked bilious but managed to retain his dinner. I did my best to turn my attention to the river traffic, the gilded barges of the nobles and officials, the small tradesmen’s craft, bobbing up and down in the wind-whipped water, the oared wherries taking passengers from one side of the river to the other, the oarsmen singing or whistling as they rowed.
The water was turbulent under the bridge. I wondered how many drownings there had been, how many fugitives that had tried to swim their way to safety escaping from the queen’s guardsmen, only to find themselves trapped in a swirling whirlpool and dragged down to oblivion. There was death under the bridge, that was certain; equally certain was the sight of death on the bridge itself, in the form of grinning skulls—the beheaded remains of criminals hung there to rot as a warning to others not to break the queen’s peace or threaten her rule and authority.
As we approached the far shore the stink of the river blended with the putrid aromas of running sewers and drains and piles of offal from the butchers’ shops. I caught the faint scent of flowers mixed with the rank, slightly sweet odor of decaying flesh. Dead animals, the dead and dying poor lying along the roadside, rotting fish and the pervasive stench of filth and decay hung over Smithfield. It was no wonder they brought the bears to fight the mastiffs here, I thought. Such bestial pastimes belong in a place like this, where life is lived in squalor and only the coarsest and most vile and cruel entertainments ought to go on.
Much to my horror, my escorts led me to the place I found most repellant: the bearyard.
“Lord Robert will meet us here,” I was told. “He should be along any time now.”
But as it happened, it was not Lord Robert who joined us, but my distasteful brother-in-law Roger Wilbraham.
Over the years the coarse, red-faced Wilbraham had grown more stout and more choleric, disinclined to show even the simplest courtesies to those around him. He sat heavily on a bench overlooking the bearyard, scarcely glancing at me though he was quite nearby, and said to no one in particular, “Lord Robert comes anon.” He then proceeded to take from his doublet pocket a pouch of sweets, which he ate one after another, his eyes intent on the dirt floor of the fighting arena, where servants were raking the earth in preparation for the match to come.
It was as dismal a moment as I had known in some time, and I had to fight a strong inclination to get up and leave. But it was Robert who had sent me there, and I trusted him. I believed that he had Cecelia’s and Frank’s interests at heart, and wanted to help us. So I stayed, though I did not watch when the great lumbering brown bear was led out into the arena and I could hear the yelping and barking of the mastiffs becoming louder and more intense by the minute, though they were as yet out of sight of the growing crowd.
My two escorts in their fine liveries sat on either side of me, shielding me from the surrounding folk, a noisy array of Londoners and foreigners, mostly men though with a sprinkling of women of the streets—no women of quality that I could see—and peddlers who wandered among the rackety spectators singing and shouting their patter and waving knacks and foodstuffs, cheap fans and purses in hopes that someone would buy.
The great bear was chained to his iron post, the mastiffs led in. They were muzzled as yet, but still their keepers maintained as wide a distance as they could from the dogs’ mouths with their treacherous te
eth. Though I was far removed from the animals, high above them and separated from them by a sturdy tall fence, I could not prevent myself from drawing back. Roger Wilbraham, I noticed, did not draw back but rather sat forward as the dogs were led in, as if wanting to be more a part of the bloody contest to come.
At that moment there was a stir in the crowd and I saw Lord Robert arrive, with a dozen guardsmen, and accompanied by a man I did not recognize. A youngish man with a broad brow and a bright, open face and a curling reddish beard.
There were hisses from the crowd. Robert was feared, everyone knew who he was and knew that he was the queen’s right-hand man, and therefore very powerful. But he was disliked. The hissing ceased when he looked around him, as if to single out his detractors. As soon as he came toward me and ceased to scan the crowd the hissing began again.
He came up to me and greeted me formally, though cheerily, as he always did, and the guardsmen hurried to clear a bench for him and his companion to sit on. Roger rose and joined us.
“Milord Earl,” Roger began, his dark eyebrows raised in surprise. “Had you not sent me a message asking me to greet you here, I would not have expected to see you in Southwark. And with such an esteemed companion.”
“Master Drake lives here. Quite nearby in fact,” was Robert’s response. So this was the mariner and adventurer the queen favored so highly, Francis Drake.
“Near the bearyard?” I wanted to know. I was surprised to discover that such a valued man would make his home in such a disreputable place.
“Master Drake,” Robert interrupted, before the captain could respond, “I have the honor to present to you a lady who is very curious by nature.” He smiled indulgently, affectionately.
“Frank Knollys’s sister, are you not?” Drake said to me, his broad Devon accent startling, his voice a bit hard to hear amid the noise of those around us. “Your brother is a fine seaman.”
“I hope you find him so,” I said, nearly shouting. “I know he values sailing with you greatly. In fact I have seen him recently, and he speaks of joining you again—if that is possible.”
Rival to the Queen Page 12