But now that death stared her in the face and beckoned to her with ghostly fingers, the indomitable spirit arose once more within her and she fought with all her strength to banish death. She refused to take to her bed. She refused even to lie down upon the cushions which had been set upon the floor of her Presence Chamber, but stood motionless, her back only slightly bent, her eyes blazing.
“Do not think to conquer me. I have defied the greatest of Kings and the edicts of the Pope, begone from me for I will not yield to you!” she silently defied the unseen enemy.
For fifteen hours she stood but finally that will of iron could hold out no longer. The Lord Admiral, Charles Howard, her only surviving kinsman, begged her to lie down and she was gently placed upon the cushions. Her braided wig was slightly askew and her face was grey and haggard. The old man who himself had just buried his beloved wife, kissed the gnarled hands.
“Madam, dearest cousin, I beg of you take some nourishment?”
Elizabeth remained silent but Lord Charles persisted and finally she agreed. He placed one arm behind her head and gently raised her while with the other hand he fed her broth from a spoon. Tears misted his eyes as he remembered how graceful and elegant she had once been.
“For my sake, madam, if for no other, will you rest upon your bed?” he begged her.
The old fire flashed in her eyes. “No, and if you were in the habit of seeing such things in your bed as I do when in mine, you would not persuade me to go there.”
Young Cecil, the deformed but brilliant son of his dead father, asked quietly, “Does Your Majesty see any spirits?”
She glared at him. “He thinks I am insane,” she thought. “I scorn to answer such a question, sir!”
“Madam, to content the people, you must go to bed,” he urged.
She smiled at him contemptuously. “Little man, if your father had lived ye durst not have said so much, but ye know that I must die and that makes ye so presumptuous.”
With an effort she raised herself. “Begone! All of you, save for my Lord,” she cried, placing a hand upon Howard’s arm as an indication that he alone was to remain.
When the door had closed behind them she sank back once more and the tears started in her eyes.
“I am tied with a chain of iron about my neck,” she said.
“No, you have the courage of a lion!”
“I am tied, the case is altered with me. Even now I know that they are waiting for me to die and that in some stable a rider awaits in readiness to ride with haste to my nephew of Scotland.”
Howard remained silent for he knew she was right and he could find no words of comfort or denial.
For twenty-four hours she lay staring at the floor, one finger placed in her mouth—a habit which had also been her mother’s. Her ladies stood helplessly about her. Then she was removed to the great carved bed where she lay like a shrivelled, emaciated doll beneath the rich brocade and ermine coverlet.
On March 23rd it was obvious that she could not last for much longer and the Archbishop of Canterbury was called to her bedside.
The Archbishop knelt and prayed and when he had finished he said quietly, “Madam, you have been long a great Queen here upon earth, but shortly you must yield an account of your stewardship to the great King of Kings.”
The blue eyes rested upon the cross which hung upon his breast and slowly she nodded. For nearly seventy years she had journeyed upon this earth. For forty-four of those years she had guided and steered her people safely through the greatest peril since the coming of the Normans. She had given them peace and prosperity and now at last the weight of the crown was to be lifted from her weary head.
She closed her eyes, slipping into a peaceful sleep where her cares disappeared like the morning mists before the sun. She was a girl again and she felt once more the warmth of the spring sunshine upon her face as she walked the gardens of Hatfield.
Beneath a tree a handsome, young man upon a great horse beckoned to her and she felt the stirrings of joy within her breast as she lifted her skirts and ran lightly through the sweet grass towards him, as she called out to him.
“Wait. Robin. Wait for me!”
Epilogue
In the dark, dismal hours just before dawn on the 24th March, 1603 the doleful sound of the tocsin rang out over the City of London. Elizabeth was dead. In all the world there was no more desolate a sound than the tolling of that bell as it rang out upon the chill, March air and the people wept bitterly for a dearly beloved Queen.
The golden era of England’s Elizabeth was over but the spirit of that age, to which she had given birth, lived on in the hearts of her people. Elizabeth Tudor had sown the seeds of an Empire which in time was to become the greatest the world has ever seen.
List of Books used for Reference Purposes
Queen Elizabeth. J. E. Neale.
Queen Elizabeth. Milton Waldman.
England in Tudor Times. L. F. Salzman.
History of England. J. A. Froude.
Lives of the Queens of England. Agnes Strickland.
History of the English Speaking Peoples, vol. II. Winston S. Churchill.
Mr Secretary Walsingham and the Policy of Queen Elizabeth. Conyers Read.
English Costume. Doreen Yarwood.
The Elizabethan Renaissance. A. L. Rowse.
Elizabeth & Essex. Lytton Strachey.
The History of the most Renouned and Victorious Princess Elizabeth, late Queen of England. William Camden.
First published in the United Kingdom in 1977 by Robert Hale
This edition published in the United Kingdom in 2017 by
Canelo Digital Publishing Limited
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United Kingdom
Copyright © Lynda M. Andrews, 1977
The moral right of Lynda M. Andrews to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act, 1988.
All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopy, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.
A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.
ISBN 9781911591351
This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places and events are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.
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