by Susan Kay
“The people are ignorant fools and knaves,” began Burghley hotly.
“The people are bored,” she said shrewdly. “Peace and prosperity are well enough for a few decades, but now they are restless for novelty, for deeds that fire the imagination and bring warmth to dull lives. War, adventure, spectacle—Essex stands for all this, and the people love him for it.”
“Madam, he is a danger to you and to all of England. Cut him down while there is still time.”
Cut him down…
She got up abruptly and walked away to the window, where an angry bee was beating itself stupidly against the mullioned panes. Idly, she picked up a book and began to guide the frenzied insect towards the open casement.
“This way, you stupid creature,” she muttered in mounting annoyance at its panicking perversity. “Can’t you see I’m trying to help you?”
Suddenly, without warning, the bee stung her, and in a rage at its monstrous ingratitude she flung the book at it. The heavy volume struck the window and fell to the floor, leaving the bee squashed on the narrow leaded pane, blood and guts oozing from the tail.
Her anger died as suddenly as it had flared and left her trembling as she looked at her handiwork. Unnecessary violence! It would have died of the sting anyway—died without her angry, helping hand. It might have been Essex’s mangled body, splattered across the window of public imagination, blotting out the glory of her reign beneath a monstrous smear of blood. And that she did not want at any cost.
For a long time she stared out over the river, seeking a grave deep enough to swallow his shining reputation and bury it for ever. And at length she found one.
Ireland…
No Englishman had ever made his fortune there; no military post was more unsought than that of Lord Deputy. She would send Essex to Ireland at the first plausible opportunity, and perhaps, if God was kind to them both, he would not come back alive.
She turned, at last, to tell Burghley what she had decided and found that he had fallen asleep. She went back to the bed and looked down at the man who had been like a father to her, bent, and laid her lips against his forehead, gently, so as not to disturb him. Then she collected her gloves and the lady-in-waiting who dozed in the next room, and took her barge back to the palace.
She did not see Burghley’s last quavering letter to his son Robert, which lauded her to the heavens for being “so careful a nurse” to him. Nor did she read its hammerblow of a postscript which hit the suave and sophisticated little Secretary squarely between the eyes, making him pause uneasily, as though he felt the warning presence of his father still at his side.
“Serve God by serving the Queen, for all other service is bondage to the Devil!”
Remember it…
Chapter 4
I will not do it,” said Essex belligerently. “Not for you or any other living soul. Christ’s soul, Mother, how can you ask me to abase myself in such a fashion? I tell you this, Leicester may have crept back to her, whining like a whipped cur, but I’m damned if I’ll do the same. She behaved abominably, like a—like a fishwife! And if you think I’m going to accept such treatment from the hands of any woman—”
“The Queen is not any woman,” countered Lettice, with angry desperation. “For God’s sake, Robert, you’re talking of your prince!”
“So?” He lifted his arrogant shoulders. “Can’t princes err, then? Can’t subjects receive any wrong? Is her earthly power infinite?”
Lettice cast a wary glance at the door. His voice was loud and she could not vouch for the discretion of every servant in her house.
“Be silent,” she said hoarsely. “Your thoughts are too perilous for words.”
“She struck me, Mother!”
“Oh, Lord, if that’s all,” sighed Lettice wearily. “And for that you draw your sword on her and put your life at risk. You stupid, stupid boy!”
Suddenly he put out one arm and pulled her roughly to the shelter of his doublet.
“Mother—don’t weep. You know I can’t bear to see you weep.”
“Then don’t give me such cause!” she sobbed.
“You puff this out of all proportion,” he said reasonably. “If she was going to send me to the Tower, she’d have done it by now.”
He paused and stared ahead fixedly, at some new grievance of thought, suddenly come to light.
“You don’t think—you don’t suppose for one moment that she can have forgotten about me?”
Lettice wiped her eyes and sat down by the hearth.
“They say she is so crushed by Burghley’s death that she cares for little else but mourning at the moment. That’s all I know—make what you will of it.”
“She has forgotten me!” Essex clenched his fist convulsively. “Am I of so little account to her that a dead man can oust me from her mind? Am I to compete with a doddering ghost for her attention?”
“Be glad of it,” said Lettice shrewdly. “Grief is the only thing that makes her vulnerable—you’ll never have a better opportunity to make your peace with her. Robert, I’m asking—no—I’m begging you to lower your insane pride for once. Admit your fault humbly on your knees and I swear she’ll welcome you back with open arms. Swallow your arrogance, or, I warn you—the next blow she gives you will be a mortal one.”
He turned away abruptly, riven with internal conflict.
“If I go back now and grovel,” he began slowly, “it will appear I do so for profit—purely for what I can get out of her. And it’s not like that. It’s never been like that.” He made an impatient gesture. “You can’t begin to understand what I feel for her.”
A dark, resentful look crossed Lettice’s face.
“You think not?” Her voice was suddenly ugly with emotion. “You think I was ten years wed to Leicester without learning anything of what makes that woman function? The Queen destroys every man she sets her eyes upon. If you love me, Robert—if there’s an ounce of pity in your soul—don’t break my heart by letting her do to you what she did to Leicester.”
“I won’t be compared with Leicester,” he said contemptuously. “I am the only man in the country who has ever dared to stand up to her. If you only knew how she respects me for that—how she despises the spineless creep-mice who surround her. Little men!—how many times have I heard her say that? Don’t you see? I can be the only master she has ever had! All I have to do is hold out a little longer and she’ll give in.”
“What is it about her?” demanded Lettice darkly. “What is it that drives men to this madness?”
“I admire her,” he said steadily. “I freely admit that I admire her beyond any other creature alive. Oh, Christ—I worship her, if you must hear it. But I will not serve her as a villein or a slave. I will not grovel, nor will I crawl, because if I do—I know she will hate me for it.”
Lettice lifted her face and looked at him squarely.
“You honestly suppose she does not hate you now?” She got up and went slowly to the door like an old woman. There she paused and looked back at him for a moment.
“You fool,” she said softly, “you poor fool. I truly believe you are beyond my aid at last.”
They were silent, staring at each other helplessly across the room.
“I shall pray for you,” she said after a moment; and closed the door with quiet despair.
* * *
So, no apology came from Wanstead and the rift between the Queen and the young Earl widened, a quarrel that might have continued indefinitely, but for a sudden military disaster in Ireland, where the post of Lord Deputy still remained vacant.
The English army, seeking to relieve their garrison at the Blackwater, had been outflanked by the Earl of Tyrone’s rebel forces and ambushed at the Yellow Ford. By the end of that day, two thousand English soldiers, together with the Marshal of the army and thirty of his officers, lay dead in the marshes. Wi
thin days, every local chieftain had given his allegiance to Tyrone. The whole of Ulster lay open now to the rebels, and a wave of burning and pillaging swept across the countryside to Dublin. It was said that Tyrone awaited only the arrival of Spanish troops to drive the English out of Ireland for good.
It was such a serious reversal for England that Essex, as Earl Marshal, knew himself honour bound to return to court. He found the Queen cool and distant, but very ready to reopen the question of appointing a Lord Deputy.
A short list of names had been put forward in Council and she sat back in her chair at the head of the table, taking no part in the heated discussion that followed. Essex waxed critical and, finding his criticism unchecked, had something scathing to say about each candidate.
A little silence fell when at length it seemed he had had his say. He looked up and saw the Queen’s eyes upon him, her lips curled in a smile which filled him suddenly with curious foreboding.
“You seem remarkably well appraised of what this post demands, my lord—I begin to think that perhaps you are the only man fitted for the job.”
He stared at her aghast. Appalled.
“Madam, you overwhelm me. I swear I did not anticipate such an honour—”
“I’m sure you did not—we are all well acquainted with your modesty, my lord.”
Someone sniggered at the foot of the table and quickly stifled it. The Queen smiled at Essex again, a little look of mockery which held a gleam of malice. Across the table his eyes met hers in frantic mute appeal and found them suddenly hard, inflexible as stone. He could not believe she meant to do this to him. Ireland—the graveyard of Englishmen’s reputations, the most hopeless military task in existence. She had baited the trap and he had walked right into it, shackled by the bonds of his own reputation.
* * *
The Earl of Southampton was lounging on a cushioned banker and looked up with a lazy smile when Essex entered the room.
The smile froze on his lips as he saw his friend’s face.
“Christ’s soul, what ails you, Rob? Did the Queen turn on you after all?”
Essex sank down on the hearth stool and stared into the fire. After a moment he smiled bleakly over his shoulder, and held out his hand.
“On your knees, Harry, and pay your respects to the new Lord Deputy of Ireland.”
Southampton paled and said, “Oh, God!”
“Precisely my sentiments, my friend!”
“But Ireland—what possesses her?”
“The Devil,” said Essex shortly. “I looked into her eyes today and saw him as plainly as I see you now.”
“And I thought she loved you.”
Essex’s mouth tightened to an angry, embittered line.
“No one is safe with her—my dear, departed stepfather told me that, before I ever went to court. I did not believe him then.” He frowned. “But I do now. By God, I do.”
Southampton spread his hands helplessly.
“But surely you can get out of it.”
Essex shook his head. “I have my pride.”
“Damn your pride, Robin—think of your life! It was Ireland killed your father—for God’s sake go to her—tell her the task is beyond you.”
Essex got up and turned to go.
“I will die first,” he said.
* * *
Ireland was his destiny; and his downfall. Time, money, and men slipped relentlessly through his fingers as he battled against savage chieftains and hostile weather. From Kilkenny to Clonmel to Limerick he marched, burning and pillaging, while his men dropped dead in the ferns from dysentery and malaria. His own health, never robust, began to give way and his hold on the campaign slowly loosened, as though the stinking bog-mists had rotted the roots of his brain.
When the creation of fifty-nine knighthoods (in direct disobedience to her express command) and the capture of one minor castle seemed to be the sum total of his achievements to date, Elizabeth inquired, with biting sarcasm whether she gave him £1,000 a day to go on progress! Action against Tyrone was what she wanted now, and action she would have or know the reason why. She wrote caustically to her Lord Deputy, commanding him to engage Tyrone’s forces immediately; he was not to dare to leave Ireland until he had done so.
In a dark Dublin hostelry, Essex’s discontented young friends clustered round the fire and clinked tankards morosely. A low grumbling rose steadily among the acrid smoke of several pipes and a seedy, spitting fire of damp sea-wood.
“So it’s true, then—we march to Ulster tomorrow with five hundred men lost already. It’s madness!”
“It’s suicide.”
“Aye—and who sends us out to it? That little Crookback Cecil, who couldn’t lift a sword, let alone wield it. It’s his poisoned pen the Queen writes with to my lord. There’ll be no joy for us from England while Cecil lives.”
“And the Queen?”
Silence! A deathly hush broken only by the quiet shifting of a wooden stump on the fire.
“My lord would never agree to that.”
“Would he not? Let him once get back to England—and then we shall see.”
The mugs clinked and there was a fugitive burst of laughter.
* * *
Essex met the rebel leader, Tyrone, on horseback in the centre of the River Lagan, to parley. From the high ground above the ford at Bellaclynthe, the English officers looked down fearfully, knowing that behind the northern hill the entire Irish army lay encamped.
For nearly an hour the two men talked, each with his horse up to its belly in icy water; then at last they saluted each other curtly and separated, Essex spurring his mount up the steep incline at the far side of the bank.
Southampton was the first to reach him.
“A truce,” said Essex breathlessly, forestalling the inevitable question. “An honourable truce.”
He saw Southampton’s face.
“I know,” he continued peevishly, “I know it’s not what I was sent to do, but will you tell me in God’s name what alternative I have? They have enough men to wipe us out in a single encounter.”
“Then why do they choose to treat?”
Essex was silent. The reason was obvious. At this juncture delay suited Tyrone, who was still awaiting Spanish troops. Once they had arrived no English force, however enlarged, could hope to contain them; and Ireland would be free of the English scourge for good.
They rode back to Dublin Castle, nervous and ill at ease, to find another letter from the Queen awaiting him. It was a caustic letter, dismissing all Essex’s futile activities to date, castigating his “impertinent arguments,” and once more demanding immediate military action.
“You had your asking, you had your choice of times, you had power and authority more ample than ever any had, or shall have…”
Essex let the letter fall from his hand and slumped into a chair, burying his face in his hands. Southampton picked up the paper, read it in silence, and handed it around their small company.
No one spoke. There was no need to stress the fact that after that there was no hope of Elizabeth accepting the terms of his shady truce.
Essex sat up wild-eyed and hurled his goblet across the room.
“This is Cecil’s doing, God damn him. She is surrounded by men who speak against me. I must go back to her now.”
“But not alone,” warned Southampton anxiously. “Pick a thousand men and we’ll march on London.”
“We’d be hard put to find ten fit to go,” remarked Essex’s young stepfather, Christopher Blount. “My lord,” he turned to Essex, once more hunched in his chair, “will you desert your post in defiance of the Queen’s command?”
Essex closed his eyes and pushed the wet strands of hair back from his burning forehead. He felt drained and weak from the bouts of dysentery which had plagued him since he entered this wretched land a
nd ate its tainted food, drank of its foul water. Surely Elizabeth would be moved by the sight of him now, stricken with sickness got in her service. He had feigned illness before and it had always brought her running, sending her personal physician and trusted potions. Suddenly, he ached to be with her again, safe and sheltered beneath the mantle of her old affection. All this filthy failure would be behind him when he knelt once more at her feet and kissed her hand—she had forgiven Leicester worse in the Netherlands.
And, once he was back, he would show her he had learnt his lesson well, that he knew his place at last. No more telling her what to do, trying to snatch the reins of government from her old hands. She knew what she was doing, she had known all along; and now, at last, he saw it.
He must get to her quickly with his news, before his enemies could make capital out of it.
He would go home—and be humble; he would go at once.
* * *
Across the Vale of Evesham, through the northern Cotswolds, and down into the Vale of the White Horse they rode without pausing for food or drink. Reaching Lambeth, they discovered the court was at Nonsuch Palace, ten miles south of London; but their horses were done and swayed where they stood. There was a frantic search among the back streets, until sufficient stolen mounts were found to carry them on the final stage of that desperate journey, a small party riding as though all the forces of Hell were on their tail. The country side heaved and merged before Essex’s starved gaze and blood drummed in his ears, competing with the thunder of horses’ hooves. He became dimly aware of a shouting voice and turned his head vaguely in its direction.
“My lord, my lord, they have news of your arrival. Lord Grey rides ahead even now to warn Cecil.”
Someone plucked at Essex’s sleeve, causing him to sway violently in the saddle and curse.
“Let me ride ahead, my lord. I’ll kill Grey and Cecil before they reach the Queen, by your leave.”
A red, sweating face swam into Essex’s blurred sight. God’s light, who was this man? Then he remembered. St. Lawrence of course, who else? Always a hothead—but a loyal knave—a good friend; he had so many good friends. And yet—