Even now, we may yet make our new Rome in the New World. I will crown her the ‘Queen of the Americas', just as I promised her. Empress of all that is new and unsullied. She will ship me back riches, some of them not yet discovered – pearls from Chesapeake Bay, beaver pelts, gold and silver from mines not governed by the Spanish. I’ll have an army of dusky warriors with the same veiled fierceness as that Nymph of Niger our mother gave her… But that will happen only if I become king very soon. Or else, she will be married and gone.
I can’t bear to lose her. Who will I have left? Who will help me untangle my thoughts? Who will laugh at the snarls of the court? Who will get angrier than I do myself, at our father’s slights and insults to me, and imagine terrible punishments for all those who laugh?
Our mother is nothing. A cipher. A silly woman. She gave up long ago and wants only to get through the days as painlessly as she can. She’s a fool, but not a malicious one.
Sir Francis, on the other hand… a devil but no fool. His sharp wit and snake eyes make me lose my words. Nothing stays clear in my mind when he begins to twist his words through it. He is evil! Dangerous. He says that he loves me, and claims to see the truth of my soul! I can’t let any man live who can truly see such truth. Except that it isn’t true, of course. Only the truth as he would have it. But his sharp wit carves other men’s thoughts into new unwanted shapes. ‘Ferret Eyes'! ‘Ferret Eyes!’ Elizabella made me laugh when she pulled faces at his back and called him names. What will I do without her when she is married and sent away? I can’t bear it!
I’ll be left with poor Baby Charles, who wants so much to be likeme. Tongue-tied and blushing when he’s with me. Unable even to lift my sword without staggering on his bowed little legs.
… Kick… reach… kick.
I find my only peace in exercise. Tilting. Tennis – innocent joy. The succulent perfection of hitting the ball in the exact sweet spot at the centre of the racket. My heart lifting in the arc with the ball, through the air. Then a blissful rush, no need to think. My body thinks for me. Whack! Whack! Another heart-lifting arc… a dive and save. Every muscle working together, a small piece of mind, like a single church candle, alight, guiding. The end known even before the other man misses. Truth at its most absolute and elegant. Standing, satisfied, breathing hard, no need to be any other thing than I am just at that moment.
Swimming. Sometimes, I really do swim. No words. Escape from words. As alone as I can ever be, even with that anxious watcher in the boat rowing after me. Here in the dark water, I remember that I am covered with living skin. I feel every inch of my bodily casing shiver with delight. I am golden, like my Spanish armour, as if my skin had turned to shimmering gold. I turn and float face upwards, looking up into the night sky. The water and sky are one. Broken light glitters on the water around me like stars. I imagine that my face is the moon looking up at its twin. I let myself urinate in the water, feel the fleeting warmth on my thigh. Like a baby. My secret sin. I think about putting my hand on my cock. I turn over and kick out hard, swimming fast against the current.
52
In the end, I simply marched past all my brother’s guardians and gate-keepers, none of whom dared to restrain me by force, walked into Henry’s closet and burst into tears. In his concern, he forgot that he did not want to speak to me.
‘Bacon is your enemy now,’ I sobbed. ‘I saw it in his eyes when he left you yesterday. What did he say to you? I fear what he might do!’
Henry shook his head. ‘Don’t be so fearful, Elizabella. He’s a clerk at heart, in spite of his sharp wits. He destroys with his pen, not a sword. And I don’t think that, even with his pen, he’ll dare attack the Prince of Wales. In any case, he’s nothing while Wee Bobby is alive.’
‘Why did he make you so angry? Was he attacking Wee Bobby again?… Thank you.’ I wiped my eyes and blew my nose on Henry’s offered handkerchief.
He shook his head. ‘He wasn’t…’
‘You were very angry,’ I insisted.
Henry moved his shoulders uneasily. ‘He attacked our father.’
‘Bacon attacked the king, to you? The king’s son?’
The white line flared around his mouth again. ‘He presumed to believe that I might agree with him.’
‘Was he trying to trap you into treason?’ I asked. ‘You must report to our father if Bacon is speaking treason…’
‘Worse than simple treason!’ said Henry unhappily. ‘And I can’t complain to the king! Bacon knows very well that I’m already out of the king’s favour. Am I to accuse our father to his face of the capital crime of being a sodomite? Bacon wanted to reassure me… that I need not… that the king’s… behaviour…’
‘You yourself often speak harshly of our father’s “behaviour",’ I said carefully. ‘As do I.’
Henry searched the ceiling for words. ‘Bacon wished to assure me that I must not think that all such… That there are other men, like himself, of greater refinement than the king, other ways to the same end…’ His mouth twisted. ‘Kindred spirits.’
I busied myself with the handkerchief.
‘As a “kindred spirit", he assured me that I need not have to be like my father!’ He snatched up his sword and slashed viciously at a curtain. ‘How dare he claim me as a “kindred spirit"?’
As often happens, a person can tell you what you need to know while they think they have revealed nothing.
Poor, poor confused Henry, I thought. So much was expected of him, most of all by himself. For the first time in my life, I thought that perhaps his manacles were heavier than mine, and that I had the easier part to play.
53
JUNE 1611
From the window of the gallery over the King Street Gate, I watched the procession of men-at-arms, trumpeters and flag-bearers moving down Whitehall from the Strand. One of my running footmen had already reported that two German ships had sailed up river the day before to the Pool of London.
The king had returned from Theobald’s to meet the new arrivals. He was waiting for me in his little presence chamber, seated on a low dais under a small scarlet canopy. The queen sat beside him, her mouth pinched to a tight line, her eyes fixed on a far corner of the room. She gave the impression that she had gone elsewhere and left behind only her physical husk.
‘You sent for me, your majesty?’
‘Bessie!’ cried my father. The over-excited child again, this time relishing a delightful joke. ‘Prepare to meet your new husband.’
‘Which one?’ I asked coolly though my heart started to race.
‘The only one you’re going to get! Study German.’ My fathersmiled. ‘To please your Frederick.’ He watched me keenly from under half-dropped lids.
He’s daring me to defy him, I thought. So he can clap me into the Tower, like Arbella.
I shall run away, dressed as a boy, I thought. Tallie would help me sell my jewels. I would cut all the pearls from my gowns and yank off all the silver and amethyst buttons – enough there to live for … I will run to Scotland… Who might hide me there? No… not to Scotland, to the Countess Kildare if I could find her.
I would take Tallie with me, if she wanted to come. I would have to live as a boy … a stable groom… until the furore over my disappearance died… buried even deeper in the heart of England than I had been at Combe. Better buried than married to Brunswick.
‘What d’you say to that?’ demanded my father.
Better yet, I thought. I would flee to the Americas, where no one had ever seen me. I could live openly as a woman there… Henry would help me with secret passage on one of his ships. His friends there would shelter me.
‘You might look better pleased.’ My father was enjoying himself. And my apparent meekness. ‘It’s a good Protestant match!’ He shot a glance at the queen.
‘You aimed higher for her once,’ she said to the far corner. ‘France pleased us both.’
‘France wouldn’t have her!’ The king glared at me as if the refusal was my fault.
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‘So now, you will turn our daughter into a huswife!’ My mother still did not look at him. She clamped one fist over the other, as if holding it back from striking him. ‘You will have her no better than a shop-keeper’s wife in a coarse woollen apron! “Goody Palsgrave” they will call her. Where are your great ambitions now? Where are all your grand alliances?’
‘Where is Sweden?’ he countered. ‘Who was it that wouldnot have mighty Sweden for a son-in-law?’ He turned back to me. ‘A hit! We have her there, do we not, lassie?’
‘A goodwife!’ said my mother bitterly. ‘"Goody Palsgrave", in her market apron and straw hat.’
‘The Palsgrave?’ I asked. ‘The Elector Palatine?’
‘Aye, Bessie,’ said my father. ‘As you’re so fond of German Fredericks, I’ve found you another one.’
‘The Duc de Bouillon has returned from the Palatine,’ Tallie reported. ‘A formal embassy this time, with a firm proposal from the Palsgrave.’
‘What does the king say?’
‘He hasn’t delivered an opinion yet.’
‘Did the duke bring a portrait?’
‘Not that I’ve learned so far,’ she said. ‘But you will be able to see him in the flesh for yourself. He is coming to England in the autumn.’
I was summoned to dine in the great hall. I was too far from the king and his Palatine guest to hear their words, but the music of their voices was harmonious. I went to bed and wept.
I had escaped the first German Frederick, only to fall to the second. Another uncouth, drunken, swaggering haystack. Unable to sleep, I heard the duke’s voice murmur insinuatingly, ‘She’s handsome enough. She’ll do.’
I imagined the Elector’s eyes probing like those of de Bouillon, weighing me up. In the shadows of the bed canopy, he grew less like a haystack and more like a pig, with a fat round, greasy face and little piggy eyes, snuffling as if I were a box of cakes.
I saw myself forced to open my legs to him. Entered, while I tried to close my nose to the smell of sour sweat and alcohol.
I rolled onto my side. Now, instead, I imagined his disdain for me, and how I would have to lift him on, as the girl at thewhorehouse had done with the terrified young man. The calculating caresses… bobbing head… in her mouth. The thought made me retch.
‘Whilst it’s happening, go somewhere else…’ Tallie had quoted the whore who trained her. ‘… the country of your mind is as vast as the world… as the Heavens… plenty of places in there to run and hide.’
I feared that I would run so far inside my head, trying to hide, that I would lose my way and never find my way back to the real world.
I saw myself turned pale and cold-eyed, like my mother, a creature drained of all vital juices. A living ghost who could barely contain her thrumming of rage and grief and desperate longing.
My head grew thick and hot just imagining it. I would not fade like my mother. I would burst into flame and consume myself. Far better to be a heap of black ashes than the hollow shell that she had become.
I stared up into the shadows of the bed canopy. ‘Why the devil does Sweden have to be at war with Denmark?’ I demanded between clenched teeth.
‘You might be in luck.’ Tallie’s voice startled me. I had forgotten that she was outside the curtains, sitting beside the bed. ‘The queen hates this one, too.’
I pulled back the curtain. ‘Do you think my father heeds her?’
Anne moaned and turned over in her sleep. Tallie and I waited until her breathing steadied.
‘He must be seen to respect her wishes as your mother,’ said Tallie.
I raised my eyes to the bed canopy again. ‘I’ll be good!’ I promised God. ‘Please save me from the Germans.’
Tallie snorted. ‘I wouldn’t ask a man to help me.’ There was a pause. ‘I have a suitor, too.’
‘There’s a swarm of them buzzing in Whitehall.’ I swallowed. ‘Who is he?’
‘Master Simon Lynn.’
Not Peter Blank, as everyone expected, but a minor court gentleman attending my brother.
‘You can stay with me if you marry,’ I said. ‘I’m not jealous like the old queen Elizabeth.’
‘I don’t mean to marry.’ She picked up her lute and ended the conversation with a ripple of notes. ‘You gave me my freedom. Why should I hand it back to a husband?’
If I had been a Papist, I would have turned nun.
‘I can’t lay my hands on a copy of the proposal,’ said Tallie. ‘My tame clerk says that he’s under suspicion and dare not help me anymore. I’ll try again with someone else.’
‘Don’t risk your neck.’
‘Do you imagine that it’s not already at risk? You did warn me at the start.’
‘Any further, I mean.’
Anne came into the bedchamber to prepare for bed. ‘Preparing to sing already?’ She smiled brightly at Tallie as she always did, but could not hide her permanent air of being wounded.
‘I’ll ask Henry,’ I said as if to myself.
Anne had begun to undo her hair. She took a hairpin from between her lips. ‘Ask him what?’
‘All the things that we women are never told,’ I said.
‘I have petitioned our father to permit the Palatine marriage,’ said Henry. ‘This Frederick is a fine fellow.’
‘And a Protestant, of course,’ I no longer trusted him on the subject of my marriage. ‘But there’s no sister for you.’ I leapt for the ball and missed.
We were playing tennis in the great open court at Whitehall. I wore only a smock and simple, loosely laced linen over-dress. My hair was twisted into a bunch at the back. For a short time, I had felt gloriously light and very hot. Then Henry mentioned his petition.
He glanced at the score-keeper to see that his point was being noted. I was doing better than usual today and felt my brother growing a little flustered. My missed ball might help restore his good cheer. I didn’t care whether I won or not.
‘I hear good things of him,’ Henry assured me.
‘As you did with the other Frederick? And you haven’t answered me about the lack of a sister.’ I wiped my top lip on the back of my hand.
‘We may have to marry separately if neither of us is to wed a Papist.’ He sent me an unhappy glance and called for water.
I felt a chilly spasm in my gut at his words. While he drank, as seriously as he did everything else, I decided to lose.
Winning at tennis meant nothing to me and everything to Henry. The cold spasm gave way to a surge of my new compassion for him, who had always to seem faultless. He, too, would suffer if we were married separately. I was the only person alive whom he trusted with his secret fears.
I watched him wiping his brow with a towel and thought how dearly I loved him, imperfect even more than perfect. I had the odd feeling that I saw another, better self on the far side of the net. The same limbs, the same hair colour, the same set of the mouth. I was both here on my side of the net and there in him.
Tennis was one thing, however, my marriage another.
It was my turn to serve. I bounced the ball a couple of times first. ‘Then you would favour this match for me?’
‘More than anything.’ He missed my serve.
I had forgotten that I meant to lose. But as I watched him chasing after the ball, I felt a jolt as if I had missed a stair. I didn’t know why I hadn’t seen it before. My brother was not well.
Henry not well. Cecil not well.
We played two more balls.
‘I’m tired,’ I said.
‘We can stop if you like.’ The relief on his face terrified me. Then it was replaced by a kindly smile. ‘Women aren’t strengthened as men are by military exercise.’
His cheek was cold and clammy when I kissed him goodbye.
Henry ill. Cecil ill and losing favour.
The river ice cracked under my feet. I was again alone in the forest.
Henry would be better soon, I told myself. I stopped at a high window to catch a glimpse of his di
stant figure, surrounded as always by his troupe of young knights when he emerged from the Park Gate on his way back to St. James’s Palace. The plague in London was not bad this year. He hadn’t cut himself that I could see, and developed a wound that would not heal. With any other young man his age, one might blame too much drink the night before, but not with Henry. It was very likely no more than a bad oyster at dinner.
I felt the old panic of not-knowing.
Tallie was not in my lodgings when I returned from the tennis court. Still in my tennis gown, and with Anne calling faintly after me, I ran unattended through the maze of the main palace to the stables in Scotland Yard. A startled groom handed over his brushes.
I buried my forehead in the soft warm groove behind Wainscot’s jaw and felt the muscles move as she chewed her hay. Then I held her velvet muzzle and kissed the beautiful whorl of short hair, like a Catherine Wheel, between her eyes.
‘Don’t you dare get ill or go lame,’ I told her. ‘I need you to carry me!’
She nudged me gently and then stood, patient old lady that she had become, while I brushed her so fiercely that loose hairs from her coat made a cloud in the air.
What if my mother was wrong? I thought as I worked. And this marriage was the best for England? It then became my duty. Any ill feeling between me and my father becameirrelevant. My feelings became irrelevant. Yet, the marriage might destroy me.
I could avoid it no longer. Though it frightened me, I needed to talk to Cecil.
54
‘Why?’ Henry demanded.
‘God’s Body! Why do you ever wish to talk with him? To learn, of course!’ I dropped my coin into the swearing box before Henry could ask.
‘I’m not sure that it’s wise.’
‘I’ve no patience left for wisdom,’ I said. ‘Is it not enough that I need to talk to the Chief Secretary? Look…!’ I tugged at the ring he had placed on my finger. ‘My need is so urgent…!’
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