But there was a difference. I had not loved Essex as I had loved Leicester. My love for Robert had been as real as life itself; for Essex it was but a fantasy. I had tried to believe I was young again, capable of arousing love and desire, and when that brash young man had burst into my chamber so unceremoniously he had destroyed a dream and with it himself.
On a cold February day Essex walked out of his prison in the Tower to his execution.
He looked very handsome in a cloak of black velvet over a satin suit and wearing a black hat. He mounted the scaffold calmly and bravely, although he had been less so after his sentence and had accused all manner of people, including his own sister, of drawing him into intrigue; and he had heaped reproaches on Sir Francis Bacon, whom he had believed to be his friend and who had acted as one of the prosecution's lawyers.
“Oh God be merciful to me, the most wretched creature on Earth,” he prayed.
He took off his hat and standing there beside the scaffold he addressed the assembly.
“My lords and you, my Christian brethren who are to be witnesses of this my just punishment, I confess to the glory of God that I am a most wretched sinner, and that my sins are more in number than the hairs of my head; that I have bestowed my youth in pride, lust, uncleanness, vainglory and divers other sins…
“Lord Jesus, forgive it us, and forgive it me, the most wretched of all… The Lord grant Her Majesty a prosperous reign and a long one, if it be His Will. Oh Lord, bless her and the nobles and ministers of the Church and State. And I beseech you and the world to have a charitable opinion of me for my intention upon Her Majesty, whose death upon my salvation and before God, I protest I never meant, nor violence to her person, yet I confess I have received an honorable trial and am justly condemned. And I desire all the world to forgive me, even as I do freely and from my heart forgive the world…”
When he had taken off his ruff and his gown, the executioner came forward and as was the custom asked his forgiveness.
“Thou art welcome,” he replied. “I forgive thee. Thou art the minister of justice.”
He took off his doublet and stood there in his scarlet waistcoat. Then he prayed for humility and patience.
Would to God he had cultivated those qualities in life. If he had done so, he would not have been standing where he was at that time.
He knelt on the straw and put his head on the block; and that was the end of my Lord Essex.
The End Draws Near
HE WAS DEAD, BUT I COULD NOT FORGET HIM. His handsome face appeared in my dreams and when I awoke I remembered that I should never see him again, and I was overcome with sadness.
They were all dying around me—all those whom I had loved and it seemed that I was outliving them all. How much longer? I wondered sometimes. I was sixty-eight years old. Not many lived so long. Surely my time must soon be at hand.
These thoughts occupied me very much in the quiet of the night, and I used to think: “What will happen when I am gone? Who will take my place? There must be no war. War is no good. England has known peace too long to appreciate its blessings.”
It would have to be her son. He was the natural heir. They had brought him up in Scotland as a Protestant, so there would be no difficulty about religion.
How strange! Mary Stuart's son, James the VI of Scotland and the first of England. I wondered what he would be like. The son of one of the most foolish of women and that oaf Darnley! If she had called me bastard—and many would secretly say that I was—at least I had had a great king for a father and a mother who must have been one of the most fascinating women in England, to make a king break with Rome for her sake. That had turned out well. It was better to be free of Rome; and the English, I was sure, would in the future, thank God for Queen Elizabeth.
Another of my friends fell ill that year. I was very fond of the Countess of Nottingham and immensely grateful for what her husband—Howard of Effingham—had done for his country at the time of the war with Spain. I visited her and as I sat with her it became clear to me that she had something on her mind.
Her hands were hot and feverish, her eyes wild. I said to her: “You must lie quietly. You need your breath, my dear.”
But she could not rest and when she said: “There is something I must tell you,” I was not surprised.
Then it came out. She had a terrible secret and she could not rest without my forgiveness for she knew that she was about to die.
I said she must tell me what was troubling her and relieve her mind. It was hard for me to believe that she had ever done me any harm.
She said: “It was the ring…”
I bent closer to her. “What ring?” I prompted.
“It… was to have been given to you. Sir Robert Carey sent a messenger with it…to give it to my sister when she was in attendance on you.”
She hesitated again and I said: “Yes, yes, your sister, my dear Lady Scrope.”
She closed her eyes. “He…he brought the ring to me… thinking I was my sister… and I took it… and when I showed it to my husband, he said I must not give it to you… because for the good of England he must die.”
“Who? Who must die?”
“The Earl of Essex,” she said.
Then I began to understand, and I felt myself go cold with fear of what was to come.
“The Earl told Sir Robert Carey that when you received… the ring… you would forgive him… you would save his life. He had…to get the ring to you.”
“Oh, God's Holy Son,” I murmured.
“Your Majesty, forgive me. My husband forbade me to bring the ring to you. He said Essex would always make trouble. He was preparing to bring revolution to the country…He was as dangerous as Mary Stuart had been in her time. More so… because the people liked him… and he was so reckless…he would attempt the wildest adventures…”
“So you kept the ring, and I did not know that he was sending to me for help.”
She nodded her head. “I have left instructions that the ring be sent to Your Majesty when I am gone. But seeing you there…so kind to me… so good…I had to confess. It has been on my conscience…I could not die without telling Your Majesty and begging you to forgive me.”
I sat there quite numb with emotion. I had always known that had he shown some spark of humility, if he had asked for forgiveness, I should never have signed that death warrant. I had prayed that he would make some sign, give me a way out. Once I had refused to sign it and then delayed for days. One sign from him would have made the difference. But I had believed he had continued in obstinate rebelliousness. And all the time…he had sent the ring. He had lain in the Tower waiting for a response from me—and none had come. He would have died believing that I had broken my promise to come to his aid if ever he should call me through the ring.
I should have hated the dying woman, but I could not. It was not her fault. Her husband had made her do it. And doubtless he was right. Of course he had been Essex's enemy, but then so were many others—Cecil more than any and with him men who were my good friends, and friends of the country therefore. My emotions would have betrayed me if I had seen the ring. Perhaps I should be grateful because it had been kept from me and I had been able to do what, in my heart, I knew was best for my country.
She lay there, her eyes appealing. All she wanted to bring her peace now was my forgiveness.
I took her hand and kissed it. I said: “It is all over now. He is dead… as we all soon shall be.”
She was smiling contentedly.
The next day I heard she was dead. Another friend gone.
* * *
I HAD TO PUT him from my mind. I kept thinking how different it might have been. He would be alive today if I had received the ring and known that he was repentant. But what was the use? It was over. He had gone to join others whom I had loved.
Sometimes I felt very alone, although I was surrounded by my courtiers and rarely had a moment to myself.
But my health improved. There was so muc
h to occupy me and I spent long hours with my Council. Affairs of state pressed heavily. Mountjoy was doing well in Ireland. The Spaniards were threatening again and rumor had it that they would go for our weakest point, which was Ireland. What loyalty could we rely on there! The Irish would be ready to sell themselves to Spain just to spite the English even though they knew that under the Spanish heel they would enjoy less freedom than they did at this time.
I was as popular as I had ever been. I had wondered whether I should lose a little of my people's affection after the death of Essex, for oddly enough, in spite of his many failings, the people had loved him and regarded him as a kind of romantic hero. They mourned him and there were ballads written about him. But they had lost none of their love for me. They were a realistic people and they would understand that I had had no alternative but to sign that death warrant.
I told the Parliament that though God had raised me high, what I regarded as the glory of my crown was that I reigned with the love of my people. “I do not so much rejoice that God hath made me a queen,” I said, “as to be Queen of so thankful a people.”
My dear, dear people! I had never once forgotten their importance to me—and they knew it.
Thus I could live in contentment—or as near to it as a lonely woman can be.
It was a good year. Mountjoy crushed Tyrone's forces and successfully put an end to the Irish rebellion. So the Spaniards gave up their plans of invasion. There had been some brilliant victories at sea which resulted in the capture of several treasure ships; and when harvest time came we had a higher yield than for many a year.
I was in better spirits than I had been for a long time, reveling in each day and determined to make the most of it. I dressed with even greater care and when I was wearing one of my splendid gowns, aglitter with gems, when my luxuriant red curled wig was in place, my women assured me that I looked like a girl—and I felt like one.
I took brisk walks; I danced three or four galliards without the least sign of breathlessness. Sometimes, in the evenings when I would admit to a little tiredness, I would watch the others dance and sit tapping my feet to the music, having to restrain myself lest I get up and join them.
“You don't dance as high as I used to when I was your ages,” I complained.
I was well all through that year of 1602. Peace and prosperity had settled on England. The days were satisfyingly full, and it was only at night when I looked back sadly on the past and remembered all those who had gone.
But as the winter progressed, I felt less healthy. I was becoming forgetful and could not remember the names of people I knew well. A weariness would come to me and sometimes I felt an unpleasant dryness in my mouth as though my body were on fire with fever.
I tried to plan the Christmas festivities, but a lassitude had come upon me and I did not want to be bothered with them.
Sleep did not come easily now and I would lie awake thinking over the past, and there were times when I could believe that I was back in those glorious days of my youth; I lived again through the time of my accession to the throne, perhaps the greatest days of all of my life, when I had looked forward with such joy and confidence to what was to come.
I had never eaten heartily; now I found it hard to eat at all. My ladies fussed over me and I was too tired to reprove them.
One night, when I was unable to sleep, I saw a strange light in my room, and as my eyes grew accustomed to its brilliance, I saw a figure in the fire. It was myself, exceedingly lean, and yet somehow radiant.
I thought: Leicester, Burghley, Hatton, Heneage, Essex… they have all gone. Now it is my turn.
In the morning I spoke of the vision to one of my women. It might have been Lady Scrope or Lady Southwell—I forgot such details almost as soon as they had happened. I asked her if she had ever seen visions in the night, and for a few seconds she could not hide her alarm and I saw the thoughts in her eyes.
I said: “Bring me a mirror, for mirrors, unlike courtiers, do not lie.”
So she brought it to me and I looked at my face—the face of an old woman who had lived for nearly seventy years … old, white … unadorned… tired and ready to go.
So the end is near. I was never more sure of anything. I can feel death all around me.
I shall write no more. This will be the last. So I sit, thinking of all that has gone, the dangers of my youth, the glory of my middle life, and the sadness of the end. Leicester, I thought, you should never have left me. You should have stayed to the end and we could have gone together.
Much has been said of me. There have been many rumors, and perhaps there always will be for kings and queens are remembered and spoken of long after their deaths. Their smallest acts are recorded and commented on and they are magnified or diminished, shown as good or bad, according to the views of the recorder. Of my life much will be written. But no one can take away the greatness of events and for those who love the truth it will be seen as a good reign.
And what will they say of me? I am not like other women. I did not seek to subjugate myself to men. I demanded their submission to me. I have been a good queen because I loved my people and my people returned my love. But men will say, Why did she not marry? There must be some reason why she refused us all. There was, but they will not believe it, because all people judge others by themselves. So many of them are so overwhelmed by the importance of the sexual act, that they cannot believe that it is of little importance to others. I had no desire to experience it. This they will never believe, but it is so. I enjoyed having men about me because I liked them as much as—if not more than—women. I wanted them to court me, to compliment me, to fall desperately in love with me. Did they not have to do that to win my favor?—except, of course, the brilliant ones whose minds I respected. I wanted perpetual courtship, for when the fortress is stormed and brought to surrender, the battle is lost. The relationship between men and women is a battle of the sexes with the final submission of the woman to the man. The act itself is the symbol of triumph of the strong over the weak. I was determined never to give any man that triumph. The victory must always be mine. I wanted continual masculine endeavor, not triumph. I wanted, during every moment of my life, to be in absolute control. All physical appetites were unimportant to me. I had to eat and drink for my health's sake, but I always did so sparingly. I did not want that momentary satisfaction which comes from the gratification of appetite in whatsoever form it is.
So I was always in control of my men unlike my poor Mary of Scotland, and consequently I had come to the end and could say with gratified resignation Nunc Dimittis, and pass on.
It has amused me to hear some say that I was, in fact, a man. Yes, that makes me laugh. I have been a good queen, a wise queen; I have brought my country into a far happier and more prosperous state than it was in at my accession. I have tried to be tolerant. I have failed in this on one or two occasions, but that was only because I feared it would be dangerous to be lenient. Therefore men say: “No woman could attain so much, so she must have been a man! Only a man could be so great and wise.” So in spite of what I believe to be my excessive femininity they say: “She was secretly a man.”
They hint that there was something strange about me, that I was malformed, that I could not have children and that was why I remained a virgin.
They are wrong, all of them… except Mary of Scotland's Ambassador Melville all those years ago. I shall never forget his words.
“I know your stately stomach. Ye think gin ye were married ye would be but Queen of England and now ye are King and Queen baith…ye may not suffer a commander.”
He had the truth there. And I kept my determination to remain the commander of them all… and not even Robert could tempt me to share my crown with anyone.
My crown and my virginity…I was determined to keep them both, and I did.
I can feel the end coming nearer. I was born on the eve of the day which is celebrated as the nativity of the Virgin Mary. I wonder if I shall die on the festival
of the annunciation. It would be appropriate for the Virgin Queen.
Now I lay down my pen, for the end is coming very near.
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