“No, Rob. As you know, I am perfectly content in the country, far from London and its stinks and noise. In fact, Chris and I are moving even farther away, to Drayton Bassett.” Drayton Bassett in Staffordshire was another of my late husband’s manors, one spared the queen’s depredations. It was a small but comfortable house of some twenty-seven rooms with outbuildings, farms and a granary.
Rob drained his tankard and asked for another, wiping his mouth with the back of one large hand.
“The fact is, mother, your place is at court. With your royal blood, and the queen lacking a successor—”
“My royal blood! Well, yes, mother always hinted that she believed herself to be royal, through her mother. But of course she had no way of proving such a claim. And in any case, even if she had been the king’s daughter, she was his bastard daughter.”
“But Elizabeth is only a bastard!” Rob put in. “The Catholics certainly think so. That makes her claim to the throne no stronger than yours—or mine.”
I was surprised and dismayed to hear Rob say this. Until that time I had never heard him talk of the sucession—or indeed of any crown issues, other than military matters.
“I hope, Rob, that you do not entangle yourself in dangerous discussions about the queen’s right to the throne.”
“Why not? It is an important topic just now, since she has no child and must choose who will succeed her. I have heard it said that once, when she was very ill and likely to die, she appointed my stepfather as Protector. Is that true?”
“Yes, though the council opposed her. The decision caused much bitterness.”
“Why shouldn’t she name me Protector? Or better still, heir to the throne? I am far better suited for the role than my stepfather was. I am stronger, and braver. I can make myself obeyed. And he was hated, while I, as you may have noticed, am liked.”
It was true. As I have said, Rob possessed a quality that drew others to him. The older he got, the more prominent he became as the queen’s preferred attendant and escort, the more he was admired. Chris told me that in London, it was not uncommon for a small crowd to form at the gates of the royal palace when Rob was expected to pass by.
Though Rob pressed me to talk more of these matters I refused, merely saying that we would continue our conversation another time. But I was alarmed. Such rash assertions from my son left me in no doubt that he was inviting disaster. And apparently he wanted me to be at court, nearby, to support him in his foolhardy scheming.
I tried talking to Chris, pointing out how dangerous it would be for Rob to try to meddle in the sensitive question of the succession.
“Men have lost their heads for less,” I remarked. “Most of Robert’s family was imprisoned in the Tower when his brother Guildford married Lady Jane Grey and tried to take the throne by force. Executions followed. Elizabeth herself was put in prison when she was suspected of plotting to take the throne from Mary. Rob is walking on deadly turf.”
“Then I am walking with him,” Chris said staunchly.
I stared at him in disbelief.
“Surely you don’t mean—”
“I intend to stand with Rob, whatever he decides to do.” I had never seen my husband so resolute. Or so lacking in prudence. It was clear to me that, when it came to Rob or his plans, Chris would not listen to reason.
In the meantime, what was I to do? I felt helpless in my distress. Trying in vain to sleep at night, I was constantly awakened by bad dreams, dreams in which, amid a babel of voices, one voice stood out. Rob’s voice, saying, “Come to court! You must come to court! I am determined to bring you back to court! It is where you belong! Come now!”
FORTY-SEVEN
In the year my father died, the crops failed, and hard cold rains soaked the sodden earth, bringing starvation and sickness and a great many deaths. England suffered, and Scotland and wild Ireland too, so it was said. Our storehouses were quickly exhausted; our laborers gathered what they could from the dismal harvest into the barns at Drayton Bassett, hoping to have enough food to keep the estate workers alive and to share with the villagers, and praying that we would not lose too many of our animals though the cattle grew very lean in that year and even the chickens—those we spared from the stewpot for the sake of their eggs—were scrawny. I supposed that the worms they fed on were drowned by the heavy rains, though when spring came the robins, who fed on the same worms, seemed sleek and active, their numbers undiminished.
It was a year of great dearth, and want, that year of 1596 when I had my fifty-fifth birthday. My dear sister-in-law Marianna, having known want herself for much of her life, became the angel of mercy for our villagers, taking it upon herself to organize and oversee the giving out of grain and dried vegetables and even helping to collect mushrooms from the woods—for mushrooms, as every woodsman’s child knows, are very nourishing, as long as the poisonous ones are avoided—and to harvest the thin inner bark of pines and birches to grind into flour for making ash cakes.
Then came the sad news from London. I was informed that father had died, suddenly, just after a stormy council meeting ended. I suppose I should not have been surprised, given father’s age of eighty-two, but he had not been ill and it was hard not to imagine him at his perennial tasks of governing. He had, after all, been a fixture of the royal council for decades—for most of my life, in fact. The news of his death caught me unprepared and left me dazed, coming as it did amid the daily crises caused by the spreading famine and the mounting unrest and criticism of the queen.
Chris and I went at once to the capital to attend father’s funeral service and to make arrangements for his burial. What we found there shocked us: a stark panorama of want and panic, with the death carts rattling through streets choked with refuse and pathetic scenes of begging and misery at every turn. I had seen plague, I had passed through deserted villages devastated by famine. But I had never seen such an alarming sight as the capital in the dearth year, with the Famine Bells (as I called them) tolling constantly for the dead and angry crowds collecting to curse the queen and troops of soldiers in the streets to prevent uprisings. The treasury, I noticed, was particularly well defended, with fresh supplies of guns and arms being brought in under heavy guard through the massive old iron gates.
I was glad, in a way, that my father had not lived to see the worst of the want and looming chaos. The clusters of disaffected citizens with signs that read feed us, lead us. The murderous apprentices—ever the most volatile of the capital’s fickle populace—with their improvised pikes made from sharpened stakes and the long knives and hatchets hanging from their belts. The riverside hovels where thin mothers in rags tried in vain to comfort crying children.
My father’s splendid obsequies were held at St. Giles’s, as was fitting for a nobleman and a valued officer of the royal household and adviser to the queen. As soon as the ceremony was over, the coffin was brought out to be taken to Rotherfield Greys for burial, in accordance with my father’s will. Rob was among the pallbearers, and as soon as he came into view, the waiting crowd outside the church broke into riotous cheers. Their shouting drowned out the Famine Bells, and their noisy excitement quickly attracted more and more people, until it seemed to us that half the population of London was swarming in to see Rob and cheer for him.
Feed us, lead us! they chanted again and again, until at last father’s shrouded coffin was laid in the coach and Chris and I began the slow journey into the countryside, relieved to leave the shouts and noisome stinks and pathetic sufferings of London behind.
I was summoned back to court, to serve the queen as Mother of the Maids—the post my own mother had once held when I was young—in the second year of the famine. It appeared that Rob had done what he said he was determined to do: he had managed to cajole or pester the queen into making a place for me in her household.
I was wary of her even so. When I went to join the court, and was summoned into Elizabeth’s presence by a tall young yeoman, I was trembling, and my heart was beating far
too fast.
I had been told to present myself in the royal dining room at a certain hour and was careful to be on time. My instructions were to wear a white gown with black trim, and not to adorn my hair with gems. A bearded guard in a gold doublet, carrying a heavy wooden halberd, admitted me to the cavernous, elegantly appointed room, its walls hung with embroidered hangings woven of rich silks of purple and blue (Robert’s colors, I noticed) and its floors covered with fresh, sweet-smelling rushes perfumed with rosemary.
At the head of the long bare dining table sat the queen, her high-piled red wig a harsh contrast to the lush colors of the silken hangings, her garishly painted old face a caricature. Her bright orange gown hung open across her sunken chest; she wore nothing beneath it. Was she being brazen, or was she unaware? I could not tell. The sight of her was disturbing, for she had aged a great deal since I had last seen her at Tilbury, and she had a distracted look. She pulled nervously at her long fingers, sitting there at the empty table, the jewels in her wig and at her wrinkled throat sparkling in the candlelight. I thought, for a brief moment, that I saw tears glittering in her flinty eyes.
While I stood watching, two gentlemen, one carrying a silver rod, the other an elaborately embroidered cloak, entered the room and, having knelt before her, spread a heavy cloth of ivory linen on the long table. Behind them came more gentlemen carrying a golden plate with bread and an immense ornate saltcellar, and then, in procession, there entered several dozen servants in scarlet livery, each with a heavy plate of gold on which sat a small serving of food.
So she still eats sparingly, I thought, remembering how little she had eaten when I had served her years before. It is not only because she is so old that she is so thin, it is because she starves herself. I remembered Robert telling me that poison had been found in her food many times.
Twelve trumpeters came in, playing a fanfare, and behind them were half a dozen kettledrummers. While the queen ate, the musicians played lively dance tunes. Only there was no one there to dance. Only the servants, and myself, and the queen, whose feet would not be still and who seemed to bounce and sway to the tunes as they echoed around the walls of the immense room.
As she ate, she drank, cordial after cordial, and hummed along with the music. She paid no attention whatsoever to me, and after what seemed like an hour or more I was weary of standing and longed to sit down. I had not eaten since early morning, and the delicious smells that rose from the gold plates—the food mostly untouched—were tantalizing.
She was humiliating me. She was demonstrating her power over me by keeping me standing there while she nibbled at the abundant food. I was wary, on guard. Yet at the same time I was angry. For was I not, like herself, of royal blood, as Rob had reminded me? Did I not carry the blood of the great Henry Tudor in my veins, just as she did? We both resembled him, after all. Surely we both had an equal right to dine in the great hall of his palace, heirs to his mythic legacy, cousins in the flesh if not in law. What did it matter that my grandmother had been the king’s mistress and not his wife? Had not Elizabeth herself been declared a bastard?
I felt my stomach lurch. On impulse I did the unthinkable. I marched to the table and seized an untouched plate. No one stopped me. Trembling, the heavy plate shaking in my hand, I sat on a bench and began to eat, fearing with every bite that the queen would shout an order and I would be dragged from the room.
Instead she took a draught from her cordial and said, in a voice frosty with scorn, “Help yourself, She-Wolf. There is plenty for all.”
FORTY-EIGHT
“Is that a wen on your forehead?”
The queen’s tone was sharp, her expression flinty. She had finished her meal, and waved the plates away. I remembered well the day, years earlier, when I had first come to court, and she had asked me the same question.
“Is that a wen on your forehead? A wen is the mark of a whore.”
“I don’t believe so, Your Majesty.”
“It quite spoils your looks. And you are getting on.”
The servants and musicians filed out. We were left alone in the beautifully appointed, echoing chamber with its vaulted ceiling and tall windows. Elizabeth clenched her fists and leaned forward toward me, elbows on the polished table, her loose gown flapping unbecomingly.
“You are here for one reason, She-Wolf: to keep a tight rein on your son. Take heed, lest he go too far.”
There was no need for her to say more, or for me to respond. I had seen for myself the excitement Rob was able to engender in the unruly crowds; in such an atmosphere, and given the darkening attitudes of Elizabeth’s hungry subjects, violence was only too likely to erupt. And yet, I realized, if she were to restrain or imprison Rob, his supporters would be even more likely to rise against her.
She was clever, as always. In bringing me back to court she was using me to put a damper on my hotheaded boy and his ambitions, while at the same time making it clear to Rob, who was devoted to me, that she held me in her power and could, if she chose, do me harm.
We were both her pawns—but Rob, with his wide, soldierly appeal, was by far the more dangerous, more a wayward rook than a pawn. A rook indeed. A castle. A bulwark standing in her path, with the weight of the populace behind him.
Though the royal court of the queen’s ripe (some said overripe) years was quite a different place from the youthful court I had known in my girlhood, I soon settled into its uneasy routines, and began to discover what was expected of me. My official title was Mother of the Maids, with responsibility for overseeing the conduct of the highborn unmarried girls sent by their parents to adorn the royal apartments and make advantageous marriages. But my true function, I quickly discovered, was to serve the queen’s needs, wherever and whenever she voiced them. In an odd way—odd because of her long-held enmity toward me—she trusted me more than she did younger people or those less familiar to her. The bumptious rising generation that came of age in the closing years of the century alarmed her, though she tried to hide her fear; the truth was, she was feeling the weight of her years, and the nearness of old acquaintances, of family, gave her ease.
“Lettie! Lettie! Bring me my cane! My eyeglasses! My cordial!” she would call out, her voice hoarse from shouting and complaining. “Lettie! That fire is too hot! It hurts my eyes!” “Lettie! Take away that looking-glass! I look too ill! No one should see me in this state, not even these old eyes of mine!”
Sometimes, when the painful gout in her right thumb became too strong to bear, she called on me to write for her. She had secretaries, to be sure, learned men who could couch her letters and official messages in elegant Latin, but it was easier for her to dictate to me, and she admitted—in one of her rare bursts of praise—that she found my large, round handwriting easy to read.
She was often gruff and even more often rude, she could be cutting and cruel, and the women who served her had long since learned to duck when she flung her slippers with a cry of “Point de guerre!”—a swordsman’s cry—and to suffer in silence when she boxed their ears playfully and pulled their hair. Though I must note that when she pulled Rob’s hair, sometimes yanking forcefully enough to bring tears to his eyes, he grew angry. It was a tense, bitter game between them; she liked to rile him, to see how far she could go with her barbed playfulness before he would turn on her with a snarl or storm out of her presence with an oath.
For Rob’s sake I bore up under the weight of her demands and criticisms as well as I could, indeed, I thought, as well as anyone could, given all that had passed between us, all that was unspoken but everpresent, but when her black moods came upon her even I was unable to cope.
At her worst she became capricious and savage, murmuring “Strike, or be stricken! Strike, or be stricken!” and hurling pots and tankards and even heavy silver candlesticks at those of us who triggered her sudden fury. Everyone learned to watch out for these squalls of anger, and to leave her presence. In the grip of her frenzy she paced angrily up and down in her privy chamber, stam
ping her feet, calling out shrill oaths and threats, lifting the rusty sword she kept near her and thrusting it into curtains, closets, anywhere she imagined her enemies lurked.
Rob seemed almost to thrive on the rough and tumble of Elizabeth’s caprices, and to welcome the contest of wills. I watched as they played cards, raced their horses through the park, even in the rain (for the queen continued to ride and hunt, to the despair of her physicians), danced to the lusty tunes of the galliard and even the acrobatic volta, argued and tussled, sometimes coming to mock blows, sometimes ending the quarrel amid convulsions of laughter.
It was rough play, to be sure, and Rob was always careful to let the brittle old queen win whatever contest arose between them. But I never saw the battling carried to the point of injury. Perhaps my presence prevented it, I don’t know.
I could see that Elizabeth had a fondness for Rob, but she was not at all in thrall to him, not even a bit, as she had been in thrall to Robert. What was more, it was very clear to me that she saw through him. She knew full well that what he sought was not her company or even the honors she could bestow, but her power itself.
I knew my son, and I knew the queen. I could see that Rob imagined that he had charmed her, that he could, when he chose, exert his will over her. He was not so deluded as to imagine that she loved him; he knew, as we all did, that her love had been for Robert and Robert alone. But he imagined that, with Robert dead, he had stepped into Robert’s place in her life. And that one day, before long, her mask of embattled rulership would slip, and she would feel her mortality, and then—why, then he would be there, waiting for the summons to take over in her stead.
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