Just Flesh and Blood

by Caro, Jane;

  ‘It was Drake that beat the Spaniards! I’d have given anything to be on his flagship – watching the Armada turn tail and run in the face of his fireships must have been a sight!’

  Two workmen dawdle in the quadrangle below. One of them trundles a wheelbarrow; the other totes rakes and long-handled spades.

  ‘Not if you were one of the Spaniards terrified of burning to death while surrounded by the ocean!’

  ‘They shouldn’t have tried to invade England, then, should they? We’d have left them alone if they’d left us alone.’

  ‘Aye, they say the queen’s not over-fond of war.’

  ‘Stands to reason. She’s a lass, after all.’

  ‘But they say she had the blood well and truly up at Tilbury, sitting on her white horse, ready to fight and die like any common soldier.’

  Then the two men leave the courtyard and I can eavesdrop no longer. It takes me a moment to get over being called ‘a lass’ but I am pleased my words at Tilbury are being repeated.

  I remain so exhilarated by the triumph that I am easily distracted from my work and drawn away repeatedly from my desk, back to the window to see what is happening below. I catch other conversations.

  ‘They say Drake captured a great treasure ship …’

  ‘My nephew was at Cadiz. He said he’d never seen a sight like it!’

  ‘Think I might run away to sea …’

  William Cecil is not as flighty. He is at his desk. Then a door opens, bringing with it a draught of air. A messenger enters and approaches Cecil. My secretary rises from his desk and the man hands him a sealed document.

  I remain at the open window. I do not even turn my head.

  I have not forgotten those last few carefree seconds: the smells in the room, the sounds from the streets, the way the sunlight was falling through the open window, spilling itself onto the Persian carpet at my feet, illuminating the interwoven reds and browns. I have also not forgotten how I felt: light-hearted, unburdened, confident of the future that lay in front of me.

  Another snippet of vivid memory bursts upon my mind’s eye. It is as if even now, all these years later, my brain skitters away from the tragedy of which I was about to be informed. My meandering brain hurries backwards through the years of my life to a moment the evening after my coronation. I see it unfold in front of me as if it were happening here and now.

  ‘A toast! A toast to our new queen!’ Robin stands before me, shining with youth and vigour. His cap is awry and he has had rather more of the fine wine than he should, but he is filled with exuberance and holds aloft his goblet for the umpteenth time.

  ‘Another one? Surely, Robin, our fine company has had their fill of toasting my health and I rather suspect you have had your fill as well.’

  He looked so tipsily crestfallen at my gentle scold that I had to laugh.

  ‘Oh, very well, my lord, let us have another toast to my health and prosperity, if you insist.’

  And the gathered company of lords and ladies rose as one and raised their cups and shouted in unison.

  ‘God bless Queen Elizabeth! Long may she reign!’

  Then Robin very slowly listed sideways, his face suffused with a silly grin, until he toppled over completely and landed noisily upon his neighbour, spilling his wine as he fell. The grin never leaving his face.

  I laughed at him heartily and from the sheer delight at being alive, being safe and – at last – being queen. I had no conception then of what it really meant to rule.

  The next time I was to feel so sure of myself and the future was in those few seconds at the open window of St James’s Palace, as I savoured my victory over the Spanish and my growing international reputation as a formidable queen.

  I continued to look out of the window and paid little heed to the messenger who had entered. William Cecil took receipt. I still paid no attention. If the message was important I knew that Cecil would waste no time telling me of its contents. If it mattered little, he would make his own judgment in his own time. It was part of his job to protect me from trifles.

  I had forgotten the messenger by the time I became aware that Cecil was standing close by. I looked up and when I saw his face my exuberant mood evaporated. So sombre was his expression that a cold dread took hold of my heart. It was so soon after our triumph over the Spanish that my first thought was that our euphoria had been premature.

  ‘What is it, my lord? I knew our time of peace and triumph could not last so very long. Has Spain mustered another Armada?’

  ‘No, Your Grace. The Spanish are still licking their wounds. This news concerns the Earl of Leicester, your lieutenant-general. I am sorry, Your Grace, I fear that this is very bad news indeed – and I can think of no kind way to say what must be said. The Earl of Leicester – has died.’

  Cecil’s lined face displayed great kindness and pity. He took the liberty of putting his hand on my shoulder by way of comfort, if only for a moment. In some part of my brain I registered this act of lese majeste, however kindly meant, but most of my wits were concentrated on trying to absorb the meaning of the words that my old friend had just spoken. I had seen his lips move, I had heard what he said, I knew the language he spoke, but I could take no sense from his words.

  ‘How say you? Robin – my Robin?’

  ‘Aye. He has succumbed to the low fever that had him ailing these past few weeks.’

  I was silent. My brain felt as if it had struck an insurmountable obstacle. Its mechanism had stalled. I now knew what my old friend had said, but still I could not comprehend it. ‘Succumbed? When, Cecil, when did he succumb? And where? Who was with him? Was he alone?’

  Perhaps there had been a mistake. Someone else had died and they had mistaken him for Robin. Cecil looked down at the message he still held in his hands.

  ‘It says here he died on the fourth of September at Cornbury, en route to Buxton. His attendants were with him. Those are all the details I have.’

  Still I had not given up hope that this was some strange error. ‘But he wrote to me, only days ago. Here, I still have his letter on my desk …’ And I took it from the pile of papers where it lay. I waved it at Cecil as if its existence would somehow prove that the man who wrote it also still existed.

  ‘He says – he said – he was feeling better, that the physic I gave him had restored him. He says that he is once more himself. He wrote it from Ricote, my lord, where I have also stayed so many years ago … where I stayed on my way to Woodstock. See? See here—’

  And I pointed to Robin’s signature and read the words he had written beneath.

  ‘See? See what he says: “from your old lodging at Ricote, this Thursday morning ready to take my journey.” He was going to Buxton to take the waters …’

  And then it struck me that the journey he had been ready to take had turned out to be an entirely different one, one that would take him wholly away from me – and the thought undid me. The gears in my brain lurched forward and I began to sob.

  Cecil reacted as he always did to my tears: anxiously, clumsily, making haste to stem them. ‘I am so sorry. He was your oldest and dearest friend.’

  My heart and soul were wholly caught up with my own pain – I was only just beginning to feel it as my brain made sense of the world again and it was already overwhelming.

  ‘I thought you would die, Cecil, long before I had to part with Robin.’

  Wise Sir William merely nodded at me silently, hands clasped behind his back. He understood that I was lashing out more from grief than anger. ‘Indeed, as did I. I am many years his senior and the ague eats at my bones and warns me of the grave regularly.’

  This set me to sobbing even more violently. I could not contemplate losing Cecil as well as Dudley and the thought made me realise that all the men and women I loved and cared about were ageing and likely to die. Our time was drawing more rapidly to a
close than any of us had expected. It was Robin’s death, so untimely, that first brought me face to face with the fact of my own mortality.

  I left the chamber and fled to my private apartments. I wanted to be alone to absorb the blow, which I now felt had the force of a broadsword. I wanted to remember, to imprint my memories of Robin on my brain so that while dead he might be, alive he would always be in my memory.

  ‘Here, my Lady Elizabeth, catch this!’

  Robin and I met when we were eight years old, when he and his brothers began to take their lessons in the royal classroom under the tutelage of John Dee, a gifted teacher who made us all long for his praise. Robin was the cleverest of the Dudleys, but he was no match for me and I was no match for my cousin Lady Jane Grey. The three of us led the class and our rivalry was intense. But ‘the little nun’ (the name Robin and I gave to Jane behind her back) was the one who most often received the fairest of our teacher’s words, and her success annoyed us both. It was in teasing her that Robin and I began our first alliance.

  That morning Dr Dee had praised extravagantly some work of Jane’s and said nothing at all about mine. Now out in the garden, I was still silently sulking over the slight when Robin snatched Jane’s book from her fingers and threw it over her head.

  ‘Got it!’ I cried before I actually had. I ran forward and leapt into the air, deftly catching the spinning volume. ‘Come on, Jane!’

  I laughed as my cousin clumsily attempted to run towards me. ‘You’ll have to do better than that!’ It was the phrase my teacher had said to me that morning and his words still rankled.

  I hoisted up my skirts and kept my distance. I knew that I could outrun her easily, but I stayed just out of reach to torment her. She tried to jump up and grasp the object, but she was too short and too clumsy.

  ‘Give it back! Give it back! That is no way to treat the works of Erasmus!’

  Her protests were to no avail. It soothed my jealous feelings to see her so helpless. Just as she came close enough to reach up for the book in my hands, I raised it higher above my head and threw it back to my fellow tormentor. ‘Robin! The works of the great Erasmus are about to hit you in the head unless you take care!’

  But he was too nimble and, leaping forward, snatched the hurtling book in mid-air. ‘Guildford!’ he cried as he threw the book away from an almost weeping Jane. But Guildford had not been paying attention and the book flew over his head to land in a puddle.

  ‘Look what you have done! That is Master Dee’s own book and he will be furious with you, Robin Dudley!’ Jane picked up the book and tried vainly to dry it off on her skirts, but merely succeeded in getting her dress muddy in the process.

  ‘It was Guildford’s fault. He failed to catch it.’

  ‘No, do not blame your brother. It was you who caused the book to be treated with so little respect and you who will be punished for it.’

  ‘It was just a bit of fun. No one meant for the book to be damaged.’

  ‘What did you think would happen? But then you don’t think, do you, Robin Dudley? That’s your problem.’ Sometimes Jane Grey sounded more like an old woman than a child. It was just another thing that annoyed us about her. I am very sorry now for my cruelty to my brilliant cousin. Hers was a short and sad life. Her shining intellect did her no good at all.

  But all that was in the future. At that moment, in the sunny gardens at Hampton Court, she was just an irritating younger schoolmate whose only fault was to be too obviously our intellectual superior.

  Robin pulled a face at her retreating back as she took her precious book and went in search of our teacher so she could tell him her tale.

  I laughed. ‘You will get another beating, Robin.’

  He shrugged and then winked broadly at me. ‘Well, then, you must give me a kiss afterwards to make me feel better.’

  I blushed and laughed at him, shaking my head. ‘You’ll have to catch me first!’ I was already bolting away from him, but there is no denying my heart skipped with pleasure at his words.

  When he was alive I could only ever see him as he was, how he looked when he stood before me. But with death, it seems, comes an eternal youth. Now, so many years after he died, I see his face as it was when he was young. By dying, he conquered the humiliations of old age, in my memory, at least. There is no one left alive now who will remember me as anything other than the wizened old crone I have become. It is no pleasure to outlive one’s friends.

  Robin’s face was always alive with mischief and expression. His moods were like quicksilver and while he was not the oldest of our classmates by any means – his brothers John, Ambrose and Henry had that honour – he was our leader. We all turned to him for guidance when no adults were nearby.

  When Robin perceived that he could not best Jane or me in the classroom, he decided to move the competition to a different field of endeavour. It was Robin who invented the games we played and what tricks we visited upon the attendants tasked with watching over us.

  This was a clever tactic and I enjoyed physical activity much more than my studious cousin. Even when the sun was shining and the size of the gardens made it easy to avoid adult eyes – especially if we were fleet of foot – Jane would choose to sit on a bench with her nose in a book. She was small of stature and short of sight. When she read she held the book right up close to her eyes so that her nose almost touched the page. The combination of these defects made her poor at games of catch or shuttlecock or bowls. She was slow-moving and cautious. She avoided physical risk – much good that it did her – and lacked confidence away from her desk.

  But I wanted Robin’s good opinion more than anyone else’s except, perhaps, my father’s. I think I have lived all my life wanting my old schoolmate’s good opinion, and relying upon it too, even when he betrayed me, which he did, not just once but many times. I forgave him, though. Always forgave him. The bond we forged in childhood was stretched on occasions, but never broken. Perhaps it was because we shared not just our games and our mischief, but times of great difficulty and danger. The strongest alliances are usually forged under duress.

  It was Robin who tried to comfort me on the dreadful afternoon in the long gallery at Hampton Court as we watched Queen Katherine Howard run for her life, because she was about to be arrested for treason by my father, her husband. We were but nine years old at the time and I think the terror of that doomed young queen taught us both in a few moments just how harsh life could be. I remember we clung together in an ante-room, trying to make sense of what we had seen. I also remember that it was me who ended the embrace. That was another pattern throughout our lives – until he took it upon himself to die so prematurely, of course.

  He grew from harum-scarum boy to confident stripling. He swaggered a bit as a young man, a little too sure of his own worth, perhaps. I remember how pleased he was with himself at his first wedding, although he very quickly came to rue the day.

  ‘I am an old married man now, Elizabeth, with a fine young wife eagerly awaiting me in my bed.’ He watched me carefully to see how I might react.

  ‘Well, you must do your duty by her, sir, and not tarry any longer with me.’

  I was not about to let him see how unsettled I was feeling.

  ‘Duty! Is that what you call it?’

  ‘I call it nothing, my fine married friend, for I am but an ignorant young virgin and happy to stay that way. It is you who must perform now, my lord, not me.’

  And just for a moment, I could see he was nervous and my heart softened towards him, but before I could say another word, he had gone. I turned to my Bible, grimly determined to keep my thoughts on things spiritual. I did not succeed.

  I watched him grow and mature and gain wisdom as life refused to bend itself to either his charm or his will. No doubt he observed the same changes in me. I never approached the future with the same gusto and optimism as did the young Robin Dudley. It was
one of the things I loved best about him. No matter what life handed out, he never quite lost his enthusiasm for it. He was not half-hearted, he was not cautious. He could find enjoyment even at the worst times. Yes, he was vain and cocksure, attributes that did not endear him to other members of my court. He was too fond of worldly praise and favours and I had to knock him down many a time because of it, but he was never daunted. Back he came, throwing himself once more into the fray, speaking his mind, boasting, telling ribald stories, seducing pretty women (aye, I am neither blind nor a fool), showing off. He entertained me, he made me laugh and I knew he sincerely loved me. Partly because I was his queen and it served him well to love me, but partly because he knew me as no others did, as Elizabeth the woman. Despite his fair words I was never Gloriana to him. I was no mythical creature in his eyes. I was mere flesh and blood. It was a relief to see the reality of my human frailty reflected back to me. It meant I could relax with him as I could with few others and no other man.

  Our fortunes rose and fell together too. We were both prisoners in the Tower at the same time. My mother was executed on the Tower lawn by my father. His father and his brother (poor Guildford) were executed there by my sister, Mary. Along, of course, with our old schoolmate and victim – poor Jane Grey, the nine days’ queen. We survived, but we knew what it was to live in daily fear of our lives. Yet still in the face of great loss and much danger, Robin made merry quips when we saw each other within the prison’s grim confines and his dauntless cheek raised my spirits.

  Once we were released and our fortunes turned for the better as my poor sister’s health declined, he remained my loyal servant. When she finally died, Robin was one of the first to ride helter-skelter from London to Hatfield to tell me that I was now queen.

  ‘Long live Queen Elizabeth, the first of that name!’ Robin knelt before me, his head bowed. I was not used to being treated as a queen and it felt even stranger that the friend of my youth, the boy who had never hesitated to tease me, should be making his obeisance so solemnly.