by Susan Kay
Essex withdrew to the chimney-piece in frigid dignity, his pride cut to the quick.
“The Queen favours me for myself,” he insisted stubbornly. “I won’t hear you or anyone else say otherwise. Surely it’s obvious from this news that she is wretched without me.”
Lettice laughed shortly and pushed her tapestry aside.
“You speak of wretchedness? Look at yourself, boy—pale as a corpse and thin as a crow. Every time she turns her back on you, you fret yourself into a shadow—it sickens me to see it!”
He shrugged off her concern impatiently and reached for his cloak.
“Nothing matters now except that I go back to court in triumph, despite the Father and the Son.”
“You don’t have to go back,” said Lettice jealously. “Not immediately. Let her wait.”
He bent to kiss his mother’s cheek carelessly.
“The Queen is like the tide, Mother. She waits for no man.”
And he went out of the room with a jaunty step that made her suddenly want to weep.
* * *
The Queen was writing when the little hunchbacked Secretary was shown into her room and she did not look up as he approached her desk.
He executed a clumsy bow to the top of her jewelled head and felt the familiar sting of her indifference. By God, she would look up soon enough if Essex had entered the room, or even Burghley. Must he be constantly reminded by her cool manner that he would never have the charm of his rival or the sheer stature of his own father?
As he waited there, with a wad of papers clutched against his chest and his weak eyes dazzled by the winking diamonds in her hair, he had time to reflect on the past months of failed diplomacy in his own camp.
A brief embassy to France had disclosed the fact that the French King—supposedly England’s staunch ally—was secretly negotiating a separate peace treaty with Spain. The untimely news had been received in Council like a lighted firecracker, instantly igniting the latent hostility between the rival factions. Essex had seized upon it as a vindication of his own aggressive war policies and since then a succession of violent council meetings had weighed war and peace in an atmosphere of increasing personal animosity.
“We have been played false!” Essex had insisted, shouting down Burghley’s quiet pleas for moderation. “The only way to win this war is to fight it—to spare no effort and no expense—”
“My lord,” Burghley interposed softly, “the Treasury is not a bottomless vault in which you may dip your hands whenever you please.”
Essex turned on him with savage contempt.
“When we want the opinions of counting clerks at this table we’ll ask for them—those who have lost their spirit for the fight should stay at home and sit by the fire—where they belong!”
Burghley fumbled with the Bible which lay beside him and flicked the book open at the fifty-fifth psalm. Silently he pushed it over to the young man who sat opposite him, pointing to one line with a twisted finger.
Essex looked down and read aloud: “Bloodthirsty and deceitful men shall not live out half their days!” He looked across at the old man and laughed suddenly. “Is that your idea of a threat, my lord? Is it supposed to put fear and trembling into my heart? By God, sir, it’s small wonder the French mock us when we follow the mealy-mouthed advice of a dotard.”
“That will do, my lord!” The Queen’s voice had cut across the argument and immediately there was silence. But there had been no disguising the naked hostility which now existed between the war and peace parties. The rivalry between the Essex and Cecil factions was slowly coming to a head and the Queen was well aware of it. If she was not very careful in maintaining the balance, she might easily lose control of the game. Now, as she wrote and ignored Cecil with quiet deliberation, her mind was busy resolving the issue. At last she laid her pen down and looked up.
“Well, little man,” she said pleasantly. “What business today?”
He laid the papers on her desk and she immediately began to glance through them. She read quickly, still possessing the power of total recall, and he knew that shortly every word on that stack would be locked in the vast storehouse of her memory. It was a gift he envied.
He cleared his throat hesitantly.
“If I might most respectfully request Your Majesty to consider the unrest in Ireland? As long as the post of Lord Deputy remains empty, Tyrone’s rebel forces will continue to gain ground.”
The Queen frowned. There was always unrest in Ireland and sometimes she felt it was endemic in that savage land. As far back as she remembered a steady stream of loyal, eager men had gone out there to contain the ferocious revolts of local chieftains and had taken only heartbreak, and lost reputations, to their graves. Essex’s father, Walter Devereux, had been one of them and she bit her lip angrily, recalling how that timely death had set Lettice Knollys free to cast her cap at Robert Dudley. Ireland had a lot to answer for in her book!
And yet Ireland could not be ignored. Spain fanned the treachery there, still seeking a landing point for invasion forces, and it was certainly true that the post of Lord Deputy must be filled as soon as possible, before Philip got himself a foothold in the land.
She tapped her long, painted nails on the polished table top and watched Cecil between half-closed lids.
“As you so rightly say, Sir Robert, someone must go to Ireland—Ireland or Hell—it’s one and the same place I’m led to believe.” Her painted lips curled in a sarcastic smile. “And since no Englishman makes his fortune there I suppose some unfortunate soul will have to be inveigled into accepting the post. Not a position to give a friend, eh? I take it you have a man in mind?”
The question was shot at him so suddenly that he started. He wished she would not look at him like that, as though she had already analysed every thought in his head and dismissed them as uninteresting and insignificant. It took him a moment to regain his composure and calmly parrot his prepared line.
“Madam, I can suggest no one better qualified for the post than Sir William Knollys.”
Knollys was Essex’s uncle and a strong supporter in his nephew’s camp. It was not difficult to see why Cecil hoped to link his rival’s name with a campaign that, of its very nature, must prove at best a limited success and at worst an uninspired disaster. Cecil hoped to discredit Essex’s man and thereby weaken the Earl’s influence at the council table. Normally she would not take sides so openly—but now, it might be just the opportunity she was looking for to make an insidious inroad in the Earl’s standing.
But she showed no active interest; that was not her way.
“The matter will be aired in Council,” she said coolly, and waved her hand in dismissal, without looking at him.
* * *
Every window made to open in the council chamber at Greenwich had been pushed wide to admit the cooler air which blew in from the river. They admitted other things too, the talk and laughter of the gaily clad courtiers who walked the lawns beneath in their stifling court costumes; and the shouts of the bargemen who sailed the river beyond. Greenwich stood close to the river, fronting the broad sweep of the Thames, so that ships sailing up to the London port could be clearly seen from the windows.
But no one in the council chamber was listening to the sounds of life which flooded in from the river on that sticky July day. The room had assumed a tense silence, the kind of silence that precedes some mighty conflagration.
It had begun quietly enough. A small group of councillors surrounded the Queen in the window embrasure where she stood, a little desperate for air, in a suffocating gown of gold and silver, which weighed like a shroud of lead on her thin frame. It was too hot for business. Cecil was sweating copiously inside his dark suit and Essex’s handsome face was red and strained. No one was in a good mood, and the Queen was intent on despatching the matter in hand with the minimum of time and effort. She glanced at C
ecil momentarily and then announced her intention of appointing Sir William Knollys as Lord Deputy of Ireland.
Essex stiffened, catching sight of Cecil’s faintly smug expression.
“Madam,” he said with an edge to his voice. “I beg leave to remind you that Sir William Knollys is my uncle.”
Elizabeth turned impatiently.
“And what, pray, has that to do with his appointment, my lord?”
Essex instinctively clenched his fist towards her and took a step towards her.
“My uncle has no experience.”
“He will quickly gain it”
“To what purpose, may I ask—merely to satisfy the whim of a hunchback? If you want the right man for the job, I suggest Sir George Carew.”
Carew was Cecil’s man. Even for Essex, it was a grossly transparent move and Elizabeth laughed outright, her humour suddenly restored.
“My lord, you make yourself ridiculous. I advise you to be silent if you cannot be serious. The matter is settled.”
He caught the ruff at her wrist angrily; he was falling into the routine of a private scene with her and there was a deathly hush among the spectators.
“Madam—I will not stand by while such an appointment takes place. My advice—”
“When I want your advice, young man, I will ask for it!”
“All I ask is that you have the courtesy to hear me out before you make such an arbitrary decision.”
“I have heard all I wish to hear from you, sir.” She paused and looked around the intently listening group. “My lords—Sir William Knollys is appointed!”
With a great oath, Essex turned his back on her, a public gesture of contempt which no man had dared to make in forty years.
With a strangled gasp of fury, she lunged forward and struck him a resounding blow across the ear and the sound of it rang in the silent room like a gunshot.
“Go to the devil and be hanged!” she spat.
He swung round upon her, white with murderous rage, and to their utter disbelief they saw him reach for his sword. With a choking cry, old Howard of Nottingham rushed between them before he could strike her, clamping his hand on the Earl’s arm and shaking the sword to the floor. The room was suddenly galvanised to life and Essex was seized from behind. His arms were pinned, but no one could silence his scream of rage.
“God’s death, I would not have borne such an insult from your father’s hand! I’ll not bear a blow from you or any woman!”
There was no sound in the room, except that of Essex struggling like a wild wounded animal against his captors. With a great wrenching effort he threw off their hands and rushed to the door, slamming it open. They made to go after him, but the Queen said in a thin whisper, “No, my lords. Let him go.”
She stood where he had left her, deathly white, motionless, and ominously silent, staring after him.
She could not believe it had happened.
This time, said the court knowingly, buzzing with the news like a vast sprawling hive, this time he had gone too far. This time it would be the Tower and the block; and they waited in an agony of suspense for the guards to go marching to his apartments and make the expected arrest. An hour later Essex was seen clattering down the main staircase, with his followers at his heels. In the courtyard he vaulted into the saddle of his favourite mare and rode out through the main entrance of Greenwich, like a madman leading a force from the gates of Hell. Rumour had it he would make for Wanstead, where doubtless he would find the Queen’s forces waiting for him, but by the end of that day not a single armed man had set foot outside the palace. The Queen remained alone in her private apartments and no one knew what to make of it. Why hadn’t she acted? Was she paralysed with shock—or merely brooding on some terrible revenge?
The days stole away and crept into weeks. Still she did nothing. She went about her court with her pale face inscrutable beneath its flamboyant wig, apparently totally preoccupied by the news which was carried to her daily from the Lord Treasurer’s house in the Strand.
And the word ran round in a shocked whisper that Lord Burghley lay on his deathbed at last.
* * *
The Queen of England sat beside the canopied bed in the sunlit Strand and faithfully fed her chief minister with a spoon.
She was not very good at it, Burghley observed, with detached affection. The spoon mounted from the bowl to his sunken lips with frenetic speed, as though she felt life dripping slowly out of him and was desperate to fill him with nourishment. So might she attempt to fill a cracked vessel, working desperately against time.
He lifted his arm at length to stay her busy hand.
“Madam, let it rest.”
“But you must eat,” she insisted, a trifle wildly. “You will never get well unless you eat.”
“My dear,” he said gently, “you deceive yourself. Everyone in this kingdom knows that I am at my last end. Why will you not accept it?”
The spoon halted, wavered, and found its way tremulously back into the bowl. Tears welled up in her eyes and threatened to fall against her will and he saw with anxiety their sudden glisten.
“I am old and my time is done,” he murmured. “If you will mourn my unworthy person, then I pray you, madam—let it be with moderation.”
So he thought of Leicester even now. She forced herself to smile faintly.
“Don’t worry, my friend—I shall be your very merry widow.”
They were silent a moment, struggling respectively for composure. At last she said with studied lightness, “They say King Philip, too, lies on his deathbed. You should go down to Hell together—my best friend and my best enemy. You see—I always said I would outlive you all. Sometimes I think I shall live forever.”
She frowned; evidently the prospect displeased her. Burghley groped for her hand.
“You will live in the hearts of men as long as England endures.”
“And you,” she retorted swiftly, “are a forward old flatterer, like the rest of them.”
But he knew she did not seriously believe that, and he was not concerned. Flattery was something to which their relationship had never sunk.
Suddenly she said with angry despair, “You shall not die. I forbid it. What shall I do without you?”
He bit his quivering lip and looked away.
“There is my son,” he managed to say at length.
“Oh, yes, your precious son!” She glanced at him shrewdly through her tears. “Are you quite sure Mildred never cuckolded you with that one? If I didn’t know better, I’d say he was Walsingham’s—cold as cod-fish! He doesn’t care for me over much, does he?”
“He—” Burghley floundered forwords, “he was always—reserved, even as a child. Sensitive about his physical limitations. And I fear, madam, that to call him your Pygmy—”
“Good God,” breathed the Queen, “did he think I referred to that? Then he is even more stupid than I thought.”
“Stupid!” bridled the loyal father. “Stupid, madam?”
“He suffers by comparison,” said the Queen smoothly. “Beside you any man would seem a dwarf.”
Burghley coughed to hide his confused emotions. It was a full minute before he had recovered himself sufficiently to tell her his son could be trusted.
She lifted his swollen hand to her lips and kissed it gently.
“In all my life I have trusted no man save you—”
And Leicester! he added silently.
“Yes,” she continued softly, exactly as though he had spoken the thought aloud, “and him. Must you still resent that all these years after his death?”
“You loved him!” It was an accusation.
She looked down at the coverlet.
“Then it was true,” he said brokenly. “All those years—you and he—”
She shook her head slowly and Burghley dragged
himself upright against the pillows, staring at her in breathless anticipation.
“It was said to hurt you, William, didn’t you guess that? No man may strike me without receiving double the blow in return. Oh, my Spirit, do I seem like a woman who has known the joys of love?”
That small, grim touch of self-deprecation convinced him as no sworn oath could have done. When he thought how she treated young lovers, he wondered how he could ever have missed the truth. A bitter old maid—everything she said and did supported that image! And slowly tears of joy began to roll down his withered face.
It was a small enough lie to buy the happiness of a dying man, a little worthwhile perjury which she would not regret. For now, sitting here at his deathbed, as she had done day after day, adjusting his pillows and feeding him with her own hand, she found she could not do enough for him. There was so little time left in which to distil a lifetime’s love and gratitude; and this was one man who must not die without knowing how much she cared.
She said kindly, “Your son’s worth is not wasted on me. I shall see him advanced as far as you could ever wish.”
“Madam,” he murmured incoherently, “you are gracious beyond all my hopes—and loyalty will be your reward, I swear it.”
“Loyalty,” she repeated darkly. “Oh yes, they’re all very loyal, these rising young men who can’t wait for me to drop dead—about as loyal as that wild beast mooning at Wanstead! And there’s a pretty piece of devotion to comfort my old age.” She brushed her hand across her eyes, as though to push back the hideous memory. “He’s grown beyond me, Burghley, like a wilful, destructive child baiting its mother. Why did he have to come into my life when I’m too old to handle him? What in God’s name am I to do with him?”
“The insolent lout should be flogged to death for the outrage!” muttered the old man with feeling.
She smiled bitterly and laid her hand on his shoulder.
“One does not flog heroes to death, my gentle dotard. And that is his strength if he chooses to make a stand on it. The love of the people—how well I know the power that it brings.”