Rival to the Queen

by Carolly Erickson

  And Elizabeth, clever, treacherous Elizabeth, allowed him to keep his illusion.

  To say that there were constant strains at court in those tense days would be far too mild a statement: there was ceaseless combat. Rob was a member of the royal council, but mere membership in that inner circle counted for little. What mattered was the ability to dominate the council, to sway others, and this Rob seemed incapable of doing. The subtleties of politics eluded him; he was no match for the master, the crafty, brilliant, dwarfish Robert Cecil. My father was no longer there at the council table with his dour viewpoint but steadying presence. Walsingham too had died, as had Hatton. The aged William Cecil, Robert’s father and the mainstay of the council in Elizabeth’s youth and middle years, was tottering toward the grave.

  The issue endlessly discussed, endlessly debated, was the very issue that Rob cared about most. Who would assume the throne when the queen died? What if she were to die suddenly, leaving the realm unprepared? Could she be persuaded to make a will, to name her successor? Could she be made to see that until she did settle this question, there would be no peace in her kingdom?

  Sometimes the queen was present during the loud quarrels that arose, and as always, she required that I stay close at hand to serve her. As a result I was often in the council chamber, and witnessed all that was said and done there.

  “It must be King James, or no one,” Cecil announced one morning to the others. “We cannot delay. He is the queen’s nearest relation. He is a son of the true church, unlike his late Catholic mother Mary. He is of mature years, with a wife and children—”

  “He loves boys,” Rob interrupted. “He deserves to be burned.”

  Cecil went on unperturbed. “He has ruled Scotland for many years, and has kept order there. He is a learned man—”

  “And a drunken sot, and a coward.”

  I could see the rage building in Rob’s muscles beneath his thin linen shirt. His jaw was set, his voice held an undertone of menace.

  Cecil went on, not looking at Rob, who got up from the table and began pacing behind his overturned chair.

  “Ah! The Wild Horse is loosed!” I heard the queen say with a chortle of pleasure.

  “I have been in communication with King James,” Cecil was saying. “He offers himself as our next king, in a spirit of service and godliness.”

  Rob snorted, loudly and rudely.

  “Watch him! He’s going to start pawing the ground, and neighing,” was the queen’s taunt. Louder, she called out, “Lettie! Bring me my cordial!”

  I did as she asked. When I brought her the goblet she drank it off right away, her eyes shining with excitement. She watched Rob, who glared at Cecil.

  “Why don’t you ask our queen if she wants that prancing, puking sot to rule this kingdom? Go ahead, dwarf! Ask her!”

  The others at the table stirred nervously. I was on the edge of my bench, wishing desperately that I could do something—anything—to distract my son.

  “Perhaps further discussion—” offered the irresolute Lord Howard of Effingham, only to be squelched by the sound of Rob’s large meaty hand slammed down on the polished oak table.

  “Who is ruler here, our queen or this undersized upstart?”

  “Or shall it be you, Wild Horse?” said Elizabeth, suddenly rising to her feet and approaching Rob with the agility of a woman half her age. “Aren’t you just waiting for me to fall over into my grave, so that you can take my throne?” She grinned, hopping from one foot to the other, all but dancing with pleasure.

  Rob was confused. Was she making an accusation or toying with him, as she so often did, in mock challenge. Frowning, he swayed on his muscular legs, unsure what to say or what to do.

  “Rob—” I called out. “Rob—”

  But it was too late.

  “What? No answer?” Elizabeth demanded. “Cecil would have an answer! He knows!”

  With a snarl Rob grabbed for Robert Cecil’s neck, but before he could seize it the queen struck him, hard, across the cheek, her long nails breaking the skin and drawing blood.

  Rob’s hand flew to the hilt of his sword.

  Immediately there were loud shouts for the guards, and a dozen armed men in the queen’s livery rushed in to seize Rob and lift the queen and take her to safety, restraining the others around the council table while positioning themselves to safeguard the entrances to the room.

  It was all over so quickly that I hardly had time to blink. I caught my breath. Rob was nowhere to be seen, but I heard the old queen call out, as she was being hurried into an antechamber, “Lock him away, the miscreant! The assassin! Lock him away and never let him out again!”

  FORTY-NINE

  It was the beginning of the end.

  Elizabeth eventually released Rob from his imprisonment, and he knelt to ask her forgiveness for his hasty and violent reaction to her blow. They resumed their uneasy comradeship, after a fashion, but I noticed that Elizabeth kept her rusty sword closer to her side than ever, and that she was never again entirely alone with Rob. And before long the risk of their volatile tempers clashing became moot, because the Spanish were again snapping at our heels, this time in Ireland.

  The Irish, it seemed, were ever in rebellion, but now, with the grievously ill King Philip being told by his physicians that he could not possibly live much longer, he determined to make a final effort to strike a fatal blow at Elizabeth’s realms. He sent soldiers, treasure and arms to support the Irish rebels, and according to Frank, the Spanish captains were actively searching for landing sites on the western coast.

  Elizabeth sent Rob with an army of sixteen thousand men culled from among the trained bands to engage and suppress the rebels and their Spanish allies. Chris went with him, as his deputy. Penelope’s oldest boys wanted to go as well, but their father Lord Rich wisely refused to allow them to go, and I was relieved that he did.

  For despite Rob’s efforts, the Irish campaign was a disaster. Half the men in Rob’s hastily assembled army came down with bog fever, and a quarter of them died. The Irish proved to be elusive—and lethal when found. Rob wrote me when he could, describing the horrors of bog fever (which he himself contracted), complaining of the constant bad weather and of the desertions among his men. I could not help remembering Robert’s plangent letters from Flanders, for many of Rob’s complaints were the same: the illnesses, the defections, the lack of sufficient funds and the waste of men and treasure. The English militiamen were not trained soldiers like the Spanish; they were not prepared to engage the enemy, merely to fight him off. As a result, the longer the skirmishing continued, the more the advantage went to the rebels and their foreign allies. It became clear from Rob’s letters that he was losing the war—and losing hope.

  In the end there was no choice but to make peace with the enemy—but not the peace of stalemate, rather the peace of virtual surrender. When informed of this, Elizabeth’s wrath flared.

  “I’ll not have it! Not another Robin! Not another failure!” She called Cecil, and shouted loudly and long. In the end she shouted for me.

  “Lettie! Write this! At once!”

  I hurriedly gathered my writing implements and took down her words.

  “To Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex, failed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland:

  On no account are you to return to England until you have subdued the traitorous Irish and expelled their wicked Spanish confederates!

  By order of Her Majesty the Queen.”

  I wrote the message, sealed it, and sent it by swift messenger who rode off into the night, headed for the West Country.

  A scant month later Rob returned, ignoring the queen’s command and rushing into the capital in full cry and with the few thousand soldiers he had left. He counted on crowds surging into the streets to follow him, their pied piper, on hordes of swaggering swordsmen idling in taverns pouring forth to join his ranks, on the London apprentices with their sharp knives and hatchets—in short, he counted on the people to rise up and follow him.
His people. The folk of London, he felt sure, would sweep all opposition before them and put him into power.

  But once he came among them, he soon found that Cecil had called out the London militias in full force, and all the royal soldiery, the men of the garrisons who had been too old to send to Ireland but were not too old to stand at the gates and fortresses of the capital with arquebuses at the ready. Cecil had even drained the treasury to hire paid troops, and to borrow from King James in Scotland what fighting men England could not supply.

  From King James, who had been assured, in Rob’s absence, that once the old queen died the throne of England would be his.

  Word had been put about among the Londoners that Rob, the failed Lord Lieutenant of Ireland, had sent an Italian poisoner to kill the queen. The old, much derided, much criticized, yet ultimately very dear queen. The poisoner, so it was said, had been captured and sent back to Italy. Londoners rejoiced. Any chance Rob might have had to win their favor was lost.

  He was soon arrested, and confined. There was no outcry. No one came to Rob’s defense. The heavy iron doors of the dungeon were closed and locked, and soldiers guarded them, and my dear, reckless, foolish Rob was left to ponder his fate in darkness and alone.

  FIFTY

  At first they would not let me see him. My own son! I was refused entrance to his cell, they told me, even though I was his mother.

  I demanded to speak to Cecil.

  “No one may see him or speak with him,” the secretary repeated curtly once he arrived at the prison. “He is a condemned traitor.”

  “You know well he is no traitor!” I fairly hissed at the hateful short man who stood between me and my son’s prison door. “Open this door at once!”

  But Cecil merely stood in front of the massive iron barrier, stubby arms crossed over his puny chest, staring straight ahead. No matter how loudly I shouted, or what foul words I used, he would not move. Soon a dozen armed guards came, and Cecil left.

  Rob and Chris and a dozen others had been put on trial and all convicted and sentenced to execution. My hand shakes as I write these words: sentenced to execution.

  What had they done, really? They had flouted a royal command to remain in a fever-ridden land and pursue a failing military venture. Instead of obeying, they had done the sensible thing and left Ireland. Had they not left when they did, thousands more men would have died.

  I paced up and down in front of the prison door, beneath the impervious eyes of the guardsmen. I pounded on the old stone walls. I shouted Rob’s name, again and again, and listened in vain for a reply.

  Then, half mad with anguish and grief, I made my way to the palace. I was not admitted. I pretended to leave, but instead managed to enter the outer courtyard through a small gap in the old fence beside the water stairs, a place accessible only at low water and known only to those of us who had belonged to the royal household and knew the palace grounds well. Once inside, I took off my headdress and ruff and covered my head with a piece of stuff torn from my under-petticoat. Keeping my head down, and walking close beside a cart loaded with lumber and sacks of grain, at last I gained the inner courtyard, the courtyard I knew was overlooked by the queen’s apartments.

  I went to stand beneath the window of her bedchamber. I could see shapes passing back and forth in front of the high window. The curtains were open.

  I stood where I was, directly below the window, unsure whether to call out—and risk summoning the guards—or wait until someone saw me from above.

  Then I heard a familiar sound. The sound of screeching, and glass shattering. The queen was having one of her tantrums. Shouts and thuds. A muffled scream. Then, all at once, I saw a face at the window. Elizabeth’s face, naked of paint, her thin scraggly white hair flying in all directions as the breeze caught it.

  She was squinting down at me.

  “Who is that!”

  “Your cousin.”

  She peered down, unsure of what her eyes were showing her.

  “She-Wolf?”

  Hardly knowing what words to use, yet certain that I had very little time to keep the angry queen’s attention, I heard myself repeat the old formula from the creed.

  “I am heartily sorry, Your Majesty, for all my offenses against you. I beg you, in your mercy, to release my son, and take me in his place.”

  “You!” I heard her shout, a shout of derision. “The forgotten widow of a failed soldier, a hated man! Take you?” She cackled.

  “You did not hate him,” I said. Suddenly we were talking of Robert, not my condemned son.

  “He was a weakling. A coward!”

  “He was no coward. He was a prudent commander.”

  “He was a coward!” she cried out, so loudly that the entire courtyard rang with her accusing clamor. “A brave man would have made me marry him!”

  “And he would have lived to regret it!” Now it was my turn to shout, for her accusations against Robert infuriated me.

  “God’s wounds, She-Wolf! Get away, before I have you thrown into the dungeon with your rattlebrained son!”

  She shut the window then with a loud clatter, and I knew there was nothing more that I could do. I sank to my knees in the dirt of the courtyard, beaten. She had won.

  That night, as I lay in bed, at Leicester House, unable to sleep, I heard a loud banging on the door. I heard men’s voices, and a servant releasing the bolts, and the tramp of boots on the stone floor.

  “Lettie!” It was Marianna, my kind sister-in-law who had offered to stay with me while I awaited the outcome of Rob’s trial and the carrying out of the cruel sentence against him.

  “Lettie! It is a messenger from the queen!”

  It was as if a bolt of lightning shot through me. Could it be? Was it possible? Did the messenger bring news of a reprieve?

  I dressed as rapidly as I could and went out and down the stairs to the wide entranceway. A man stood there, someone I didn’t recognize, wearing the queen’s livery.

  “Lady Leicester?” Although I was Chris’s wife I did not use his name, but kept the title that had come to me as Robert’s wife.

  “Yes?”

  He held out to me a small carved ivory box.

  “From the queen,” he said. “I am ready to accompany you. I will wait outside.”

  I opened the lid of the box. Inside was one of the blue and purple garters Robert had given Elizabeth years earlier, and a folded paper. I unfolded it and read the words written there in the queen’s shaky handwriting.

  “You may say goodbye to your son tonight. Forgive a poor, foolish old woman.”

  It was not a reprieve, but at least I was to be allowed to see Rob after all.

  I was driven to the prison, and this time there was no officious royal councilor to try to prevent me from entering. The jailer admitted me to Rob’s bare stone cell, lit only by a single torch burning low.

  Rob sat on his wooden bed, running his hands through his hair. He wore his doublet and shirt, soft leather breeches and riding boots. He was prepared to leave, not to sleep.

  “Mother!” he cried when he saw me approach. “Mother, have you come to take me home?”

  The shock of his poignant words, the sight of him, anxious and eager, his face lit with a desperate hope, was too much for me. I collapsed, sobbing, into his strong arms.

  FIFTY-ONE

  “Dear,” I managed to say when my tears were spent. “My dearest boy.” He looked into my face, and saw, without my having to say the words, that I had not come to take him away. To save him.

  He kept his arms around me, comforting me. I had never before been so aware of his strength.

  “There there now, mother. Don’t take on so! All is not lost!”

  “Ah, Rob, if only—if only I had been able to warn you, to make you listen, and Chris too—”

  “You did try. You cautioned us. The gamble was mine, and mine alone.”

  “But now—” I could not go on. I had been told he would die the following morning. At first light
. I thrust the thought from my mind. I could not bear it. Already I felt the weight of grief, pressing on me. Crushing me. Making it hard for me to breathe.

  “Listen, mother. We must not give up, even now.” He looked into my eyes. “Tell me, has the queen given you any sign, any message—even the slightest word or gesture could be important—”

  I shook my head.

  “Are you certain?” The intensity of his gaze was alarming.

  “I—I went to see her. I begged her to take my life for yours. She was scathing. But then—”

  “Yes?” He grabbed my shoulders, his hands almost cruel in their grip.

  “She sent a message to me. To Leicester House. To say that I could come and see you. A man from the court brought me. Someone I don’t know. He has a coach—”

  “Ha!” Rob gave an explosive shout, a shout of triumph. “She is sparing me, mother.”

  “But—”

  “I know her. She is devious. This way I can appear to escape. She means me to go with you, when you leave here.”

  “I don’t think so, Rob,” I said tentatively. Part of me wanted to believe what he was saying, but my intuition told me he was wrong. The queen’s note was ambiguous. Forgive her, she had written. Forgive her for what she had to do, I thought it meant. Forgive her for condemning Rob. But could I have misread her words? Could there have been hope in that message?

  My head spun.

  “Don’t you see, mother? There are still those who want to see me on the throne, and not the puking James.”

  I shook my head. No. It couldn’t be.

  “Rob! You must see reason!”

  He was re-lacing his boots, smoothing down his tousled hair.

  “Is there a guard in the corridor?”

  I looked through the tiny opening in the heavy door.

  “I cannot see any.”

  “Perhaps, after you go—”

  I felt panic. “No! I don’t want to leave you!”

  “The longer you stay, the greater my danger.”

  He was convinced that my presence was itself a message. That he would be released—or allowed to escape. I wanted so to believe him, against all reason and common sense . . .