Rival to the Queen

by Carolly Erickson

  “Of course it will be possible,” Robert put in. “My friend Francis knows that I, and my purse, stand ready to make it possible, at all times and in all ways. And in return he will reward me—and Frank too, of course—with a share of the gold and silver brought back in the ships’ holds.”

  The contest between the burly chained bear and the dogs had begun. With one swat of his mighty paw the bear sent one of the dogs flying. He lay bleeding and though he struggled to get up, the struggle was futile. But the bear too began to bleed as the dogs tore viciously at his fur. He let out a mighty roaring growl, making the crowd cheer and clap energetically.

  Roger too was roaring.

  “My son Sebastian sails with Captain Drake on his next voyage. There is room for no other.”

  Robert took a ruby ring from his finger and held it out toward Drake.

  “I think this will buy a few loaves of manchet, and a few yards of sail for the voyage.”

  Drake smiled and, taking the ring, slipped it onto his finger.

  “Thank you milord.”

  Fumbling, Roger took a ring from his own finger and held it out to Drake, who looked at it with a slight smile, but did not take it.

  “The earl’s ring will buy many more provisions,” was Drake’s only remark.

  “I have more rings. More treasure,” Wilbraham insisted. “If you will allow me to present them, perhaps tomorrow—”

  But Drake was holding up his hand to silence my pleading brother-in-law.

  “It would take more treasure than you possess to buy a place in my expedition for your son—which is what I believe you are seeking.”

  The bear, shaking his head in fury and pain, drool and blood spattered all around him, and on the dogs’ quivering flanks, had dispatched two more of his tormentors, but was tiring. Shouts rose from the crowd, fights were breaking out among the spectators.

  “But do not despair,” Robert put in. “There is something else you have to offer, besides gold.”

  “And what is that?”

  “Your agreement to an annulment of your marriage.”

  His eyes widened. “But is that possible?”

  “The queen can make it possible.” Robert drew from his doublet a folded document with a pendant seal. “Once the queen signs this, you and Cecelia will no longer be husband and wife.”

  “Will she sign it?”

  “Let us ask her. Come to Greenwich tomorrow, and with luck, all will be resolved—to everyone’s satisfaction.”

  A roar went up from the crowd as the great bear tottered on its short legs, faltered, paws waving vainly in the air, and collapsed. The remaining dogs barked madly, circling the bleeding carcass and baring their teeth.

  Nodding in agreement, Roger Wilbraham got to his feet, paid his curt respects to the others, and lumbered off through the crowd, shaking his head and muttering “He didn’t put up much of a fight. Hardly worth the money.”

  And as we watched, the wounded and dying dogs were dragged off the killing floor, a new bear led in, and the dead bear, roped and chained, was dragged off while servants spread fresh earth and prepared the arena for fresh combat.

  TWENTY-SIX

  The queen’s tiring chamber was abuzz with the news that Douglass Sheffield’s husband was dead.

  “Poisoned,” Cecelia said to the other ladies of the bedchamber gathered there, her voice toneless and hard with certainty. “And by your lover,” she added, addressing me.

  I had never admitted to Cecelia that Robert and I were lovers, but she was shrewd, she guessed. I did not deny it, to her or anyone else—but I did not admit it either.

  “There is too much gossip at this court,” I remarked. “Most of it is inaccurate.”

  “Your Lord Robert Dudley murdered his wife so that he could marry the queen. She won’t have him—so now he has poisoned Douglass Sheffield’s husband so that he can marry her! Everyone knows Douglass has had his child, though the poor little mite barely lived a few days—or was it a few hours?”

  Douglass’s baby by Robert, the one I thought of as representing “mischief and woe,” had indeed been shortlived. No one knew just how long she had lived, as both Douglass and the newborn had been spirited away into the country and not until weeks later did word reach us that indeed the little girl had died.

  Lord Sheffield had been furious with his wife, so the story went, whose many adulteries had been crowned by this illegitimate birth. He had been consulting lawyers and intended to divorce her, bringing scandal on both Douglass and the presumed father of the child, Robert—until gripped by a sudden terrible pain which soon led to his death.

  “They say it was a gruesome end,” put in the old equerry Whaffer. “I’ve heard he was in agony. He turned red and couldn’t breathe. His insides felt as though a white-hot poker had been shoved up his—”

  “That’s enough!” one of the other bedchamber women snapped. “We don’t want to hear any more. We will pray for the poor man’s soul.”

  “And for the soul of him that did the deed,” Whaffer continued. “Him that made poor Lord Sheffield suffer all the torments of hell and choke and fall over senseless.”

  “It’s that poisoner of Lord Robert’s,” Mistress Clinkerte said. “That Dr. Julio. He must have put something into Lord Sheffield’s food.”

  Robert’s Italian physician was blamed for many a suspicious death at court, though no one had ever been able to prove that he was a sinister character. Italians always came under suspicion, to be sure; to be Italian was to be presumed a rogue, all too familiar with skullduggery and especially poisoning. But in truth it was Dr. Julio’s association with Lord Robert that put him in a dark light. For it was said the queen had set her spies on him, as she had on Robert himself. And the death of Lord Sheffield was seen as confirmation that the royal spying was justified.

  Try as he might, Robert had never been able to redeem his reputation after his wife Amy’s death. Amy’s brother John Appleyard had only made things worse for Robert by spreading the story that Robert had indeed been responsible for Amy’s murder and then had paid Appleyard to conceal the truth.

  I did not believe any of the rumors, and said so.

  “Don’t add to all the untrustworthy stories we are hearing spread about the queen’s trusted councilor, Cecelia,” I said. “The Earl of Leicester is very highly placed and greatly respected and men with such influence always attract envy and malicious gossip. If the queen were here she would shout at us all for telling lies.

  “And what is more,” I went on, “you are the last one who should be adding to all the gossip. You owe Lord Robert thanks for freeing you from your husband—and resolving Frank’s difficulties with Wilbraham as well. He did it all, you know.”

  On the day following the bloody fighting in the bearyard, Robert had met with Roger Wilbraham in Greenwich as agreed, and after more bargaining and bribery, the annulment of Cecelia’s marriage was made legal. Frank was allowed to leave Plymouth in the Gull, and a compromise was arrived at so that even Wilbraham’s son Sebastian was accommodated. It was ungrateful of Cecelia not to feel glad for all that Robert had done, and I told her so.

  I was stout and forthright in my defense of Robert, but in fact the news of Lord Sheffield’s sudden death unnerved me. Was I wrong about Robert? Was it possible that he was indeed a murderer, using others, such as John Appleyard and Dr. Julio, to carry out his dark intent?

  I thought I knew Robert as well as anyone could know him. When we were together—all too rarely at that time—and our bodies were pressed together, with such passionate abandon that I almost couldn’t breathe, it was as if we were but one body. One heart. I could not possibly be closer to anyone than I was to Robert.

  I felt as though we had bared to one another the deepest part of our selves. And yet—could that be only an illusion, created by the intensity of our lovemaking? For I knew that Robert was a man who could never be tamed, whose drives and desires would break any bonds put around him. There were wild places wi
thin him that he would never share. And I had learned, during my years at the royal court—that treacherous labyrinth of illusions and deceptions—that despite ourselves, we humans are beset by falsities. We deceive ourselves. All too often we are trapped in tangled webs of our own devising, webs of lies and delusions.

  Robert loved me, and I him. And yet he had sought the love of other women, not only Douglass Sheffield but her sister, so it was rumored. And no doubt there were others. I did not delude myself into thinking him faithful to me—nor had he ever promised to be. He gave me as much of his love as he was capable of giving, and I knew that I had to be satisfied with that.

  Could it not also be that he withheld from me the terrible truth that he was capable of murder?

  “I am so frail, Lettie! So very frail!” Robert said as he collapsed after a banquet given by the queen in honor of the French ambassador.

  He sank down onto a cushion-covered bench and, gritting his teeth, unfastened the jeweled buckle of his shoe on his left foot. He moaned and grimaced as he eased the shoe off his swollen foot, and with a practiced movement, swung his leg onto my lap.

  “Rub me, Lettie,” he said. “I hurt.”

  I barely touched his poor sore foot.

  “Ow!” He yowled like a stray cat and pulled his foot back.

  “It must have been all that dancing you did,” I said, waiting for him to put his foot back down on my lap. “I have to say, you were not as spry as usual tonight.”

  “I hate dancing! I hate this court! I hate London! Damn it, Lettie! I want to sail away, with Frank, and never see this place or anyone in it again.”

  “Even me?”

  “You can come and sail away with me.”

  Very gently, so as not to make him yowl again, I began to rub his foot, beginning with the heel and slowly working my way up toward what I knew was the sorest part, his red and bulging big toe. As I neared it I heard his sharp intake of breath and knew I could go no farther.

  “The apothecary says that receiving bad news makes the swelling worse.”

  “Is that the same apothecary who gave me the foul tonic made with worm piss?”

  “The very same. The queen swears by him. He helped to cure her pox.”

  “Botheration! She cured herself of the pox. She was too cross and stiff-necked to die. I never knew a meaner or more contrary woman in my life. Sour, hateful old thing!”

  I knew that Robert, being so far out of temper, was not saying what he truly felt about the queen, to whom he was both loyal and devoted. He was in terrible pain, and the pain was making him livid and spiteful. He was paying a price for having entertained the banqueters; after the dining ended he and Ambrose had been the chief performers in a disguising, playing the principal roles in a pageant called “Gold of the Aztecs” in which they were costumed as brigands who stole a vast treasure and, after much dancing, threw off their costumes and were revealed as princes.

  “She is not old,” I remarked. I did not contradict his other words. “Not quite yet.”

  Robert was clearly exhausted as well as being in pain, but as he laid his head back and closed his red-rimmed eyes I realized that his fatigue came from more than carrying out elaborate, athletic dance steps. He looked anxious, as though he had not slept. His hair and beard needed trimming, and I was inclined to agree with the apothecary that the renewed swelling in his foot was probably caused by worry over bad news.

  I massaged the distended foot, as gently and lovingly as I could, and I could tell from Robert’s groans that I was giving him some relief. Presently he opened his eyes.

  “Thank you, dearest Lettie.”

  We exchanged a loving smile, and the lines in his forehead grew a little less deep.

  “I wish you could escape from court for awhile,” I mused. “I wish you could go somewhere where you wouldn’t have to listen to unkind gossip.”

  “You don’t believe it, do you Lettie? What they are saying about Dr. Julio, and the death of Lord Sheffield?”

  “I know nothing of how Lord Sheffield died, except that it was a painful death.”

  “I barely knew the man,” Robert said, sitting up and starting to put on his shoe. I took over the task from him, carefully sliding on his silken stocking, then the shoe, finally buckling the jeweled buckle. I tried to ignore the grimace of pain that returned to his face. There was no help for it, I knew. He could not very well go barefoot through the rooms and corridors of the palace. And even if he did, he would limp.

  I looked up at him.

  “Will you marry Douglass?” I asked.

  “She is not the one I would choose, if I could choose any woman.” His voice was soft, loving. The look in his warm blue eyes told me that I was his favorite. Yet there was another . . .

  “I always thought you would choose the queen.”

  “Ah! The queen! The man who marries her will have his hands full, that I know only too well. The French are after her, you know. They want her to marry the young Prince Francis, the one who is young enough to be her son! The ambassador has spoken to those of us on the royal council several times about this.”

  I hesitated, then asked, “Is she at all willing?”

  Robert swore. “She likes him. They write to each other. In Latin, she says. Sometimes she adds a little Greek. She enjoys that. She has an odd streak, she likes learning. Comes from her father I suppose. She enjoys speaking and writing the old tongues, and she likes to write poetry too.”

  I was well aware that Robert had no such scholarly inclinations. He had spent his best learning years in the Tower, as he liked to say. Not much Latin or Greek taught there.

  “Ah, Lettie,” he sighed. “I wonder, what is the Latin word for big red toe that hurts? I must go and find the queen and ask her.”

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Queen Elizabeth’s fortieth birthday was due to occur in September of 1573 and although lavish birthday celebrations were planned, as they were every year, no one dared to mention her age.

  Women of forty were old—or rapidly becoming old. Or, if they were youthful, they were at least too old to have children, as a rule. So it was tacitly understood that once our queen reached the dreaded age of forty, she could not expect to have a child of her own, should she decide to marry.

  Mistress Clinkerte, so far as I knew, continued to keep her silence about the queen’s true physical state, the important secret that she had confided to me years earlier and that I had never told anyone, not even Robert. That the queen was not as other women, and could never have children.

  Advancing years, childlessness, a querulous temper—and now about to reach the age of forty: I did not envy my mistress the queen.

  But I had my own problems—and very serious ones, as they seemed to me then. Not family problems, thankfully. My girls were healthy and growing tall and lovely, Penelope full of fire (the Boleyn fire, some said) and Dorothy affectionate and more prudent in her manner of life. My little Rob was already sitting his pony well, flicking his small whip across the pony’s flank as the groom led it around the paddock.

  My children flourished—but my marriage withered. Walter was away in Ireland most of the time—indeed I had heard that he had a mistress there. Thanks to his years of service to the queen—and to Robert’s influence—Walter had been raised to the honor of Earl of Essex, with the lands and wealth that accompanied that title. I was now Countess of Essex, though I had never sought high standing and was not in the least eager to be a great lady of the court. My father, suspicious of all worldly honors, was full of disapproval of this rise in my status, and my sister, as always, was consumed with envy. At least Cecelia was free of her unloving husband Roger Wilbraham, thanks to Robert’s clever machinations. And my brother Frank was off at sea with Captain Drake—though still at odds with Wilbraham and his bastard son, vying for preeminence in Captain Drake’s favor. I prayed that their rivalry would not lead to disaster.

  It was not long before the queen’s birthday celebrations that I noticed Douglass
Sheffield (who at Robert’s insistence had been appointed one of the bedchamber women) wearing Robert’s ring.

  I recognized the ring as soon as I saw it, a large, showy gold ring with an immense glowing sapphire, surrounded by diamonds. I had often seen it on his own hand. He told me it was a family heirloom that had belonged to his late grandfather.

  That Douglass was wearing it could mean only one thing. The thing I had been dreading: that she and my Robert had become husband and wife.

  “Has he married you then?” I demanded to know, surprising Douglass as she went about her tasks in the tiring chamber. The others in the room quickly withdrew, sensing a quarrel to come.

  Douglass blushed, then hung her head.

  “It has taken him two years, but yes, Robert Dudley and I have finally wed.”

  “What do you mean, it has taken him two years?”

  “Two years ago he promised to marry me. And now he has.”

  I looked down at Douglass’s waist, and saw the beginnings of a definite bulge.

  “Is it because of the child you are carrying?”

  She nodded.

  “Surely you know that I am the one he loves.”

  I thought she would cringe, or run from the room. But she did neither.

  “I believe he loves us both,” she said. “But you are married, and I am a widow.”

  When I confronted Robert he denied that Douglass was his wife.

  “She thinks that because we spoke a few words to one another we are married. But it isn’t true. There was no priest present to hear the words we said. No witnesses—at least none who can be believed, since they were all Douglass’s relations. And in any case, who can say what constitutes a marriage any more? You saw how easily the queen could dissolve the marriage between your sister and Roger Wilbraham, just by signing her name to a paper!”

  “But if you are not Douglass’s husband, what did happen between you? Why did you repeat whatever words you did say to one another?”