by Susan Kay
With that sure touch of grace which had never yet failed her in her dealings with England, she laid a soothing hand on the heart of discontent. Monopolies tax was abuse on public liberty and therefore all abuses of that system should be set right at once. She sent Cecil to convey her artful capitulation to the house, yielding the one iota sufficient to win her the day, a first, small concession to what monarchy must now become in England if it was to survive at all.
Even Cecil, cool and hardened statesman that he was, could not remain unmoved at the tumultuous reception the Queen’s message received. Suddenly all the moody carping and bubbling resentment were swept away by a mighty wave of gratitude and someone cried out emotionally that her message was fit to be written in gold.
The memory of Essex was buried beneath a mound of fierce affection, as they recalled once more what they all owed to this frail old lady. She still understood their needs, as she had always understood them, Gloriana—their Faerie Queen. For a moment it was as though the spirit of the coronation and the glowing memory of the Armada had joined forces in a monstrous snowball of emotion and Cecil, watching it all, remembered his father, smiling knowingly behind a grey beard and murmuring, “She is the wisest woman that ever was.” He had thought it fatuous—the distorted, exaggerated, sentimental memory of a very old man; but now at last he understood what Burghley had meant. She knew how to stoop to conquer, how to turn defeat into resounding victory.
For she had conquered the Lower House. Their only quarrel now was over who should go to thank her, and the walls of Parliament shuddered behind the thunderous demand.
“All, all, all!”
* * *
She smiled and said she would be glad to receive them all, or at any rate as many as her council chamber would hold without bursting. So it was that at three o’clock on a cold, dank November afternoon, with the candles already flickering in their sconces and the torches blazing no the walls, one hundred and forty gentlemen knelt before her canopied throne to offer the love and loyalty of the Lower House. And when she spoke in return, it was to thank them for the lifetime of affection she had known, “…though God has raised me high, yet this I count the glory of my crown, that I have reigned with your loves.”
Across the years their love unfolded in her memory like a reel of silver satin, far, far back to that journey into disgrace at Woodstock when they had first taken her into their hearts and claimed her for their own, almost half a century before. Their love had cost her dear in personal happiness, but their love transcended everything, so that she knew she would rather die than live without it. And so she told them, “…it is not my desire to live nor to reign longer than my life and reign shall be for your good. Though you have had, and may have, many princes more mighty and wise sitting in this seat, yet you never had, nor shall have, any that will love you better.”
The emotion in the room swelled towards her like a physical force and lifted her to the peak of her attainment, a triumph snatched from cold ashes where none had believed such a spark could linger still. They felt as though they were hearing her speak for the last time and when she asked that they might all be brought to kiss her hand before they departed, they knew then that that was exactly what she wanted to convey.
One hundred and forty gentlemen knelt reverently, one after another, and lifted that pale, withered hand to their lips in a final gesture of farewell and left her room immeasurably moved. It was as though a swan had sung.
* * *
She had set her affairs in good order. There was a lull in the succession of cries which had marked the last years of her life, a peaceful pause which allowed her, without guilt, to attend to a piece of unfinished business. Burghley had been wrong. It would have been better after the Armada and this time she did not mean to be gainsaid.
That winter she had the coronation ring sawn from the finger in which it had become embedded and everyone guessed that she meant the act to symbolise the end of her marriage to the state. Ignoring the anxious protests of her women, she dressed in summer silks through the harshest winter in living memory and began to refuse food. By March she was shrivelled to skin and bone, running a low, continual fever, ignoring all the advice of doctors, and refusing to go to bed, even at night. Instead she lay on cushions on the floor and when they asked her why she said sadly, “If you were in the habit of seeing such things in your beds as I see when in mine, you would not ask me to go there.”
So they stopped asking. For hours at a time she lay silent, sucking her finger, wretched with some untold grief that kept her from sleep and made her sigh and seem at times about to weep. Once she began to talk wildly of a chain of iron about her neck and they thought her wits had wandered. Cecil asked her outright if she had seen any spirits and she recovered her senses sufficiently to snap that she would not answer such an impertinent question. He backed off like a whipped cur at that, surprised that she still had the strength to retaliate. She knew then that she must guard her rambling tongue more carefully than she had done even in her prison days under Mary. She had not named a successor; it would suit Cecil’s plans to have her declared insane. And once that was done, he would not wait for her to die in peace…
She sank deeper into the labyrinth of her own mind, wandering alone and frightened down a maze of endless corridors, fleeing from the darkness that pursued her, seeking the sanctuary of a voice that had been silent now for fifteen years.
Help me, Robin…help me to free myself while there is still time.
But she could not find Leicester. The chain grew tighter and dragged her down in the darkness and behind her that other shadow grew close, close enough now to be heard at last.
One day you will have to answer for your charge…I pray that my blood and my country may be remembered in that time.
The time had come. The hour of death was upon her, but the chain on her spirit was still unbroken. And if she died now she would be ensnared in dark torment for all eternity…
“No!” Her sudden cry rang out in the silent room, galvanising her weary attendants into action. Women knelt beside her and asked what was wrong.
“I must stand,” she sobbed. “Help me.”
“But, Your Majesty—”
“I must stand! I must!”
They looked at each other in astonishment, for surely no creature so frail and wasted could get to its feet again. But her command was so urgent, so anguished, that it could not be ignored as a mad fancy.
They lifted her to her feet and stood around her with hands outstretched, expecting her to fall. But she did not fall. For fifteen hours she remained on her feet, a living skeleton in a golden dress weighted with pearls, staring at a fixed point in front of her, as though at an adversary.
Beyond the window the bare branches of the trees were blasted by the wind which raged through Richmond Park. For those who stood and watched the night was endless. Several of her young women fainted with the strain of standing so long and the word “unnatural” began to be spoken again in awed whispers. They said she must be fighting Death itself; but it was not death she fought, only a phantom in her own mind; her own guilt.
It was just before dawn when they saw her lift one hand to her throat and smile a little, as though in triumph. They caught her as she swayed at last and laid her back on the cushions. And there she remained, because after that no one dared to touch her or move her against her will, until at last the old Earl of Nottingham, braver than most, picked her up as easily as if she were a large doll and carried her to the state bed.
* * *
Cecil received the news in his study and immediately began to tidy his papers with reedy fingers, knowing that if she had allowed that snapping of her earthly authority at last, then the end must be in sight. He felt relieved and at the same time faintly aggrieved that an old man should have succeeded where he had failed; for he, too, had tried to make her go to bed, because it offended his sense of
order and dignity to see her lying on the floor like a sick animal. He had told her she must “to content the people,” and she had smiled up at him, in that manner which made him feel so damned insignificant and told him that “must” was not a word to use to princes.
“Little man, your father, if he were alive, would not have dared to use that word to me.”
Little man! By God, he would see to it that the next reign was that of little men, with himself the foremost among them. James was weak and malleable, open to influence, and Cecil knew he had already made an excellent job of ingratiating himself. The masterly secret correspondence would surely bear fruit once the old harridan was dead, but she must not die without giving her consent. It was the last thing he wanted from her, the one word which would make everything so easy for him. There was no way his plan could possibly fail unless, at the last moment, she should name another heir for spite or jealousy or whatever twisted emotion still flowed in her shrivelled veins. Her last whim, and his whole future could depend upon it. The thought made him sweat with nervousness as he gave the order for the Council to assemble.
The corridors of Richmond Palace were crowded, but a deathly hush oppressed the atmosphere and as Cecil strode past the silent groups, the mingled grief and fear infuriated him. He wanted to shout, “What’s the matter with you, you fools? It’s not the end of the world.”
But for most of the court, who had never known another monarch, that was exactly what it was. There was no excitement, no joyful anticipation, just a bleak and fearful depression which clouded even Cecil’s ambitious spirit. He shrugged it off impatiently and marched past the grim-faced guards into the bedchamber, with the Council at his heels.
Rain was teeming down the tall windows and candles were flickering in their sconces. The light was failing, and an irritable wind rattled the shutters, as though something unseen was growing impatient to claim what was owed to it. Involuntarily Cecil shivered and the councillors hung back, nervous and ill at ease, as he approached the great bed silhouetted in the red firelight.
He knelt to take the hand which lay nearest to him on the coverlet. It felt stiff and icy cold in his grasp and for a dreadful moment he thought he had come too late.
Come back, he begged her silently, come back, God damn you!
As he lifted his head and stared full into her black eyes, he saw the gleam of hostility in their shadowed pits and knew she had heard his thought. He swallowed his sudden terror and forced himself to speak.
“Your Majesty—the succession. Is it to be the King of Scotland?”
Nothing!
He got to his feet frantically and leaned over the bed, shielding her from view.
“Madam—if speech tires you, a sign will do. Is it to be Scotland?”
But there was no movement from the bed, only those dark, dreadfully knowing eyes staring up into his in their last moment of challenge.
James! Yes—she could well imagine the clumsy, uncouth lout pacing his northern castle, waiting for news and cursing her for the delay, as heartily as this little man who was so eager to plant his foot in the future. Cecil would make his king, set him high and keep him there, and nothing she could say or do now would alter it. And so she would not say it, would not humour Cecil’s conscience by giving her consent to what would happen as naturally as day following night. Let him go away and stew, he and the master to whom he had already transferred his allegiance; let them wait till she was ready.
She closed her eyes. For one anguished moment he stared down at her, hardly able to believe that this living corpse had defeated him; then he bowed, gestured to the Council, and followed them out of the room.
Outside, as the heavy double doors swung shut behind them, the little group of grave-faced gentlemen turned to look at the Secretary with appraising eyes. He was very pale and a nerve was jumping in his cheek, his slight stoop more pronounced than ever, as though a great weight rested on his crooked shoulders.
“Well, Sir Robert?”
He was staring at the panelled wall ahead of him, seeing nothing but the memory of her mocking glance; but at last he realised the absolute necessity of brazening it out.
He fixed them with a haughty stare, as though daring any man among them to deny it, and said, in a tone he tried desperately hard to make casual and convincing, “By the Queen’s own wish, my lords—who but her cousin of Scotland?”
Epilogue
“We are such stuff as dreams are made on and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”
—Shakespeare, The Tempest
Within the labyrinth she walked slowly down the corridor, knowing it to be the longest and the last. She had conquered and no fear informed her stately progress now, only idle curiosity to see what waited at the end of this journey inwards. When she found the door she was not unduly surprised; and since she had nothing better to do, and there was no one here to do it for her—as there had been as far back as she remembered—she chose to open that door herself.
The door gave out on to an unfathomable expanse of darkness; cold, empty, remarkably uninviting, it made her hesitate and look back down the endless passage, a narrow tunnel that ended in a bright pin-prick of light—the world she was about to leave.
“It will go on without you, you know.”
She whirled round, wild with hope. “Robin!”
“You were expecting perhaps the Devil in person?”
His voice was exactly as she remembered it, amused, cynical, slightly peevish.
She laughed a little shakily and took an uncertain step towards the darkness.
“I don’t know what I was expecting. What place is this?”
“Oh, this is no-where. The boundary between our two worlds.”
“Then—then I’m not dead.”
“No, you’re not dead.” The voice paused, sighed, seemed to consider. “You may return even now if you wish. Or you may come with me. But if you go back now, I shall not wait for you again.”
She took another step towards the engulfing abyss and stretched out desperate hands.
“But I can’t see you!” she cried. “How do I know this isn’t a dream, or some trick of the Devil’s? How do I know you are really there?”
“You don’t know,” he said quietly. “That is the final test of your love, you see—to take me on trust in death, as you never did in life.”
For a moment she was silent.
“What must I do to reach you?” she asked at last.
“You must step off the edge,” he said.
Instinctively she recoiled from the prospect and drew back from the emptiness.
“Will you not do that for me, even now?” he asked sadly. “Are you still afraid to fall?”
She smiled and flung up her head with pride.
“I’m not afraid of anything—in this world or the next.”
“I don’t believe you,” he said with soft challenge. “Prove it to me.”
She walked alone into the void.
The corridor was gone and the light at the end of it; the darkness around her was absolute. She mastered a scream and held out one hand.
“Robin?”
“I am here.”
Joyfully, triumphantly, he took her hand and pulled her forward into infinity.
Bibliography
Beckingsale, B. W. Elizabeth I.
Chamberlin, F. The Private Character of Queen Elizabeth.
Dunlop, I. Palaces and Progresses of Queen Elizabeth.
Ericson, C. The First Elizabeth.
Fraser, A. Mary, Queen of Scots.
Harrison, G. B. Letters of Queen Elizabeth.
Hurstfield, J. Elizabeth I and the Unity of England.
Irwin, M. That Great Lucifer.
Jenkins, E. Elizabeth the Great.
Elizabeth and Leicester.
Lacey, R. Robert, Ea
rl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus.
Luke, M. A Crown for Elizabeth.
Gloriana: The Years of Elizabeth I.
MacNalty, Sir A. S. Elizabeth Tudor—The Lonely Queen.
Neale, Sir J. Queen Elizabeth I.
Plowden, A. The Young Elizabeth.
Read, C. Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth.
Lord Burghley and Queen Elizabeth.
Rowse, A. L. The England of Elizabeth.
Scarisbrick, J. J. Henry VIII.
Sitwell, E. The Queens and the Hive.
Smith, Lacey Baldwin. A Tudor Tragedy.
Elizabeth Tudor: Portrait of a Queen.
Strachey, Lytton. Elizabeth and Essex.
Waldman, M. Elizabeth and Leicester.
Williams, N. All the Queen’s Men, Elizabeth I and Her Courtiers.
Elizabeth I: Queen of England.
The Life and Times of Elizabeth I.
Reading Group Guide
Throughout the novel, Elizabeth’s furious temper earns her quite a reputation, but what is the underlying cause of this anger? Was it her pride or her guilt that caused the queen’s famous tantrums? Or was it something else entirely?
The struggle between Protestants and Catholics is central to the division of the people of England and the other powerful European countries. The foundation for their disagreement lies in the separation of church and state, forcing the argument: who should have more power over the people, God or the reigning monarch? How would events have been different if King Henry had not separated from Rome? How much of an issue do you think the separation of church and state is today?
Rivalries were abundant in the Elizabethan court. Do you think it is the fate of those in power to always be surrounded by rivals, or did something about Elizabeth’s nature lend itself to more controversy?
At the end of her life, Queen Elizabeth was overwhelmed by the realization that “she had lost the love of a people notorious for their fickle hearts; but she would win it back” (635). Why was she so motivated to gain back the love of the people? How important are the common English people to the events in the novel?