by Caro, Jane;
Now the girl moaned in misery and I did feel a glimmer of pity for her. I often find I feel more sympathy when people admit to their failings, rather than deny any wrongdoing. Notwithstanding, I was determined that I would not soften.
‘You thought you could keep a clandestine marriage to one of the most famous men in my kingdom a secret, and that I would never be any the wiser. You have no conception of how many times I have heard this story before.’
I waited for an answer but the girl said nothing, just wept pitifully at my feet.
‘What sort of a fool do you take me for? You, Bess Throckmorton, of all people, should know that I have eyes and ears in every corner of the kingdom and nothing Sir Walter Raleigh does can be kept secret from me for long.’
Now she spoke. ‘It is not his fault, Your Majesty. If you wish to punish someone, let your wrath fall on me. It is I who persuaded him to marry me, not the other way around.’
‘You must really have no respect for my intelligence if you think I would believe that! As if anyone – even you, Mistress Throckmorton, despite your high opinion of your charms – could persuade that man to do anything he did not want to do.’
Sir Walter Raleigh was a force of nature. Like the Earl of Essex he was young, handsome and full of energy. Unlike Essex he was also a man of intellect and substance. When Raleigh took on a project, he not only finished it, he succeeded. He was an adventurer, a poet, a scientist, a soldier and an explorer. He was always asking permission to make sail for some exotic location in the New World. His enthusiasm for the promise of these heathen lands – laden as they were with precious metals, strange fruits, spices and condiments – persuaded me to grant him a special charter to explore and colonise the Americas. I set one condition: that he gave me a fifth of everything of value he found. He made me much profit and he added to my prestige. He named his new colony Virginia in my honour. He was a man of action, but he also had a subtle and nuanced understanding of human nature, something his contemporary the Earl of Essex never had. Raleigh knew that this tribute to my chastity would please me more than any number of new places named Elizabeth.
I valued and admired Raleigh, but perhaps my positive feelings towards him were also helped by the fact that he was so often absent from my court. Our relationship was largely epistolary. He wrote me letters, very good letters, letters filled with descriptions of strange places and people that I would never see. Unlike most of my correspondents, whose missives I approached in the spirit of duty, I looked forward to reading letters from Raleigh. They gave me windows into worlds that made my heart leap with excitement and my mind’s eye struggle to imagine the strange scenes he described. I had wanted to be a great explorer when I was a girl. The closest I could come to realising this ambition as queen was to finance and encourage Raleigh.
Perhaps this is why I responded with such fury when I discovered that this uncommon man had done such a common thing as marry in secret. Of course, it was imperative for my continued authority that I did not soften my stance on the need for royal approval before any aristocratic marriage, but sometimes I raged and punished and separated more for the sake of appearance than anything else. My fury was not feigned, however, with my close relatives like the Grey sisters because there were political imperatives. Nor was it feigned with those of whom I was truly fond – like Raleigh and, yes, Bess.
Since she had taken charge of my wardrobe I found I trusted her taste more than that of any of my other ladies. I would miss her fine eye. ‘You will go to the Tower, Lady Raleigh, as will your husband.’
I said the words wearily and signalled for the guards to come forward and take her hence. My actions sobered the young woman and she stopped weeping at last. She waved away the hands of the guards and stood up of her own accord, brushing down the crumpled silk of her blue gown. She curtsied with her head held high, but rather spoiled the effect by wiping her nose with the back of her hand.
‘I will go to the Tower happily, as Your Majesty commands. It is a fit punishment for my sin, but may I beg you one last time not to so confine my husband? He is a wild bird, who must take regular flight and he will not take kindly to having his wings clipped.’
‘It does you credit to plead so, Bess, but it is not possible for me to imprison one and not the other. You must both be caged for a time, as all who disobey their prince must, but you will not be treated cruelly.’
‘I need your services, Raleigh. That is the only reason I am temporarily releasing you from the Tower.’
Bess Throckmorton’s husband doffed his cap and swept me a fine bow.
‘I am fully aware of the limits of Your Grace’s mercy.’
I raised a warning eyebrow. ‘Do not presume too much, my lord. I can as easily change my mind as not.’
‘Your Majesty is as quick in comprehension as always, I see.’
‘And you still have a predilection for sailing very close to the wind.’
Raleigh smiled and once again doffed his cap but, wisely, remained silent.
‘I suppose that is why I need your skills as a sailor and a warrior now. You are not a man who is easily daunted.’
‘I am delighted to be once again at your service. What task do you have in mind for me?’
‘There is an expedition returning from the New World and I want you to meet it off the coast of Spain. Your charge is to protect my ships, at any cost.’
I saw his eyes light up as he listened. Nothing could delight a sailor more than to find that he was to set sail after almost a year behind stone walls.
We discussed the details and I gave him permission to take whatever action was necessary. ‘You are likely to attract more than the usual interest from the Spaniards.’
‘How so, Your Grace?’
We were standing over a navigation map by this time, which was laid out upon a table. Raleigh was absorbed in plotting the course of the ships that had already set sail from the New World, calculating their likely speed given the prevailing winds, the better to plan when and where he could intercept them. He looked up from the document as I spoke, but did not lift his finger from the point in the ocean where he felt the expedition must at this moment be.
‘They have captured a Spanish merchant ship, the Madre de Deus. She is loaded with gold, silver and spices and Philip wants it back.’
‘A carrack!’ Raleigh literally rubbed his hands with glee.
‘Your orders are to protect the ship and the expedition, then to organise and divide the treasure that it carries, ensuring that my part is allocated fairly.’
‘I am at your service, Your Grace.’
Since the defeat of the Armada, my small but nimble fleet had become ever more confident of its ability to go wherever I sent them. I often quietly sent them to intercept the Spanish treasure ships as they attempted to haul great loads of gold and other precious cargo home from their colonies. Such was their success, I was rapidly building my treasury at the expense of Imperial Spain and nothing gave me greater pleasure. I could see it gave Raleigh great pleasure as well.
I could also see that he could hardly wait to begin his commission. Laughing at his impatience, I gave him permission to withdraw and he almost bounded for the door before I stopped him.
‘Not a word, my lord, about the imprisonment of your wife? Do you not wish to plead for her release also?’
He turned and smiled at me. ‘I am not such a fool as to presume on good fortune. I intend to so undertake this task that my pleas for my beloved wife will be very hard for you to ignore on my return.’
‘You may be absent for a year or more.’
‘That is so, Your Grace.’
‘Time that will go very hard on your wife, languishing in prison.’
‘I will bring her back something to make up for her solitude – with your permission, of course.’
‘You think to mollify her with a trinket, sir? And me
n wonder why I never wished to marry!’
Raleigh gave a great bark of laughter and hurried on his way, shouting for his horse while still within earshot. I called after him.
‘Do not forget, your freedom is temporary, my lord. Temporary!’ But he had gone.
I liked Walter Raleigh. He was clever and he was honest. He did not try to fool me with honeyed words the way so many others did. Yet I also felt great pity for his wife. How easily men turn their backs on the women they claim to love. Worse, it did not escape me that perhaps he was not all that sorry to leave his wife under lock and key. He need have no fears for her behaviour or her loyalty while she was literally a prisoner.
Raleigh performed his task with great success, but it took him more than a year as I had warned it might. And I remained true to my word. Notwithstanding the great boost to my coffers from the Madre de Deus, on his return to England I had Sir Walter immediately re-arrested and escorted back to the Tower. No doubt his reunion with his wife was touching and I hope the trinket he gave her was pretty enough to compensate.
I let them cool their heels under the weight of my displeasure for a few more months, but in 1593 I relented and released both Sir Walter and his wife. Perhaps the sad fates of Katherine and Mary Grey weighed on my mind. Perhaps I was becoming softer in my old age. I wanted no more deaths on my conscience. No more links on my phantom chain. And Raleigh was too valuable a man to be wasted in prison for long. I gave him many more commissions in the years that followed and he sailed to the New World seeking gold and other precious commodities on more voyages than I could count. As far as I know he and Bess remained devoted to one another. They had two more sons, both of whom are still alive and for that I remain sincerely thankful.
Perhaps I have been asleep?
It seems to me that just this moment I was talking to Sir Walter Raleigh. He was telling me of some exotic place or other, which cannot be, because I know full well that he is on the Jersey Islands – being their governor – and exotic they are not.
The phantom Sir Walter has evaporated now. Rather than his weather-beaten face, when I open my eyes I find I am looking at my hand. It must be my hand because it is in front of my face and it moves when I want it to, but it does not quite feel as if it belongs to me. Perhaps I am dying by inches, bit by bit, starting with my extremities. The hand I am staring at is that of an old, old woman, withered by age. The skin is wrinkled, the flesh hollowed out and the knuckles of the fingers are bent and swollen. Even the nails, well-cared for though they may be, are thickened and yellowed. But it is my ring finger that looks most strange to me. It is naked and strangely exposed. Something is missing, the weight of it is wrong and I notice how I hold it oddly, apart from its fellows. I hold my hand up and turn it slowly this way and that, in front of my face. It is mine, I am sure of that, but it doesn’t look like the hand I remember.
I was proud of my hands. They were narrow, long-fingered and graceful. My skin – the skin I remember – was milky-white and velvet-soft, yet it had vigour and strength. It coated the bones and muscles of my hand snugly. I liked to attract attention to my elegant fingers by drawing my gloves on and then off.
But it is not just the fact that my hands are so old that puzzles me; there is something missing. I have lost something, but I know not what it was.
My ring! My coronation ring! The ring I have worn for forty-five years. It is not on my hand. I can see where it once sat; the skin is whiter there and worn smooth. The finger itself is narrow where the ring has left its mark, but the skin and knuckles above and below are swollen. I take the finger of my other hand from my mouth and use it to feel where the ring used to be. Did I lose it? I turn to look in the folds of my gown and between the cushions on which I sit.
There is a small healing wound above the imprint of the ring, as if the jewel had dug into my flesh. It had hurt for a long time. I used to move the ring up and down on my finger habitually to try and relieve the pain. Eventually it would not budge at all. Maybe it was as little as a week ago that my apothecary finally confronted me about the problem.
‘We will have to cut it off, Your Majesty.’
I recoiled and put my hand behind my back. ‘I have worn it since I was crowned queen of this kingdom. It is a sacred ring.’
‘I am sorry, Your Grace, but it is either the ring, or the finger. It has grown so tight the ring is cutting off the blood, and I cannot prevent an infection setting in and that could put Your Majesty’s life at risk.’
‘I have not long left on this earth, anyway. What does it matter if I go a little sooner than a little later?’
‘You may have many years left to you, Your Grace. You are otherwise healthy and your subjects pray daily for your continued health. You cannot betray them for the love of a ring. I have seen gangrene proceed from the smallest of wounds and it is not a pleasant way to leave this world, rotting from the finger outwards.’
The man was not a fool. I could not think how to answer him, and he took advantage of my silence.
‘I can call for a surgeon now. It will be the matter of a few moments discomfort only. Once the ring is from your finger you will experience instant relief.’
And my finger was sore. Every time I moved it, the gold of the ring dug itself into my already chafed and weeping flesh. Sometimes the finger went numb because so little blood could get to it. Sometimes, the pain of it woke me in the night and I was aware that the chafing wound had become foul-smelling. Still, I hesitated. I am not brave when it comes to facing physical pain. It was another of the reasons why I was glad not to marry. I had never understood how women went into childbed with such equanimity. The whole idea of it terrified me.
I remember the last time I had a rotten tooth – my teeth have been nothing but agony to me for as long as I can recall – and the surgeon who then attended me recommended extraction. Again, I recoiled and again I delayed the operation, day after agonising day.
I remember I could not eat or sleep, nor even think due to the pain. All I wanted was to be rid of the ghastly tooth and a number of times I actually sat in the extractor’s chair and opened my mouth to allow him to do his gory work. But every time, as he began to prise my jaws wider and bring the hideous clamps closer to my throbbing incisor, I called a halt, bounding from the chair, pushing the man and his hideous implements aside as hard as I could in my panic. Once, taken by surprise, the man fell backwards and landed hard upon his rear, something that might have made me laugh at any other time, but which simply made me shriek louder as I fled from the room.
I could not bear the thought of anything touching my poor tooth, let alone the iron jaws of the surgeon’s instrument. I knew that once he had the offending item in its grasp, there would be no freeing myself.
Eventually it was John Aylmer, the Bishop of London, who persuaded me to undergo the procedure. By the time he did, I was almost mad with the pain. My physicians brought him into my presence. I was seated on my dais, under my cloth of state, trying vainly to conduct the business of my office. I clutched a cold compress to my swollen cheek and my ladies had packed the tooth with soothing herbs (as I screamed and winced whenever they touched it). I could not speak except thickly, because I had to keep my tongue away from the source of the pain. No doubt I was a picture of misery.
‘Your Majesty, it grieves me to see you in such discomfort.’
‘Discomfort!’ (It sounded more like ‘Dithcomfor’.) Pah! This is agony, my lord! Agony!’
‘Indeed, Your Grace, I have suffered with my teeth as well and there is little that causes us greater pain.’
‘It is a curse, a curse!’ (A curth, a curth!)
‘I have a diseased tooth as I speak to you now, Your Grace, and have come before you to have it extracted by these skilled physicians you see here beside me.’
I looked at the men on either side of him. I had thought when he entered that they were merely his attendants
and had paid them little mind. Now I saw they clasped their hands behind their backs, as if hiding something there.
‘You are having your tooth removed here and now?’
He did not need to answer, as I could see that the physicians were already bringing in the appropriate chair and the dreadful instruments to perform the operation.
‘Yes, Your Grace, with your permission. I want to show you the skill and care that these men take and, by my example, give you courage to allow them to finally rid you of the source of your suffering.’
Before I had time to protest, the bishop was in the chair, the surgeon was upon his chest and his assistants were holding his arms tightly.
‘My lord! My lord!’
But before I had time to say anything further the surgeon straightened up and brandished the bloodied tooth. It was now in the jaws of his extraction implement rather than the jaws of the great prince of the church. The operation had happened in the blink of an eye. The surgeon wiped the bishop’s mouth and within seconds Aylmer was standing and, apart from a cloth he held to the corner of his mouth, it was as if nothing untoward had occurred.
‘As you see, Your Grace, the operation is fast and clean and now I am rid of the source of my pain.’
His speech was slightly thickened, but not nearly to the same extent as mine.
‘Does your mouth not hurt at all anymore?’
‘It throbs a little, I will not lie, but it hurts much less than it did before.’
The surgeon handed the bishop another linen with which to stop the blood that was now filling his mouth. He gave him a drink and instructed him to swill it around and spit it into the proffered bowl. This the bishop duly did and then he smiled, and I could see the gap where his painful tooth had so lately been.
‘You may take my word for it. The operation is not as bad as you anticipate and the relief it affords is well worth it.’
I was impressed by his courage and by his devotion and, I had to admit, his example had comforted me. Moreover the pain in my tooth was becoming impossible to bear. I signalled to my ladies to help me from my throne and into the surgeon’s chair.