by Brandy Purdy
Before I left, I went to her to say good-bye, dressed in my wine-dark velvets for travel. I found her sitting listlessly upon the floor in her nightgown and robe with her knees drawn up to her chin and her ivory rosary clasped in her clawlike hand. I was horrified to see her face close up, so heavily lined and wrinkled, more like a woman of seventy than a year past forty, her bleary gray eyes so red and swollen and with such a vacant, lost look in them I thought even her own soul had fled and abandoned her.
Kat and Blanche had told me that Mary now avoided sleep as much as possible, for when she did sleep she was tormented by such vividly real dreams of Philip’s lovemaking that she, to use her own words, “disgraced herself in her dreams.” Thus she chose to spend her nights either writing to her absent husband or kneeling in her private chapel imploring the Blessed Virgin to help rid her of these unclean distractions and deliriums, this “incubus sent by Satan” in the guise of Philip, and begging her to send a swarm of angels to surround her bed and guard her so she could sleep in blessed peace.
“Mary”—compassion and worry flooded my heart as I knelt beside her and took her hand in mine—“you must take heart! You must try to get well!”
With a long, heart-heavy sigh, Mary shook her head. “Only his return can cure me.” After that she would say no more except to absently murmur, “Safe journey,” before she turned her face away from me and went back to staring longingly at the portrait on the wall, that devilishly handsome likeness of the haughty Spanish prince that had first made her fall in love with him.
There was nothing more I could do, so with a heavy heart I left my sister and went home to Hatfield, wondering if I would ever see her alive again.
49
Mary
God is merciful. He took my husband, and let him sail away to war and into the arms of another, but He left me with a baby in my womb.
This time I waited six months before I let my people know. I was afraid they wouldn’t believe me and would laugh and remember how it had been before. But this time, I knew it would be different; this time God would smile and give one more miracle to His good servant Mary. When Philip returned to me I would greet him smiling with our baby in my arms.
50
Elizabeth
No one believed her or gave much credence to Mary’s announcement that she was with child. The announcement provoked more pity and laughter than genuine belief. Philip had been gone from her six months and as impressively large as he thought his cock was, it was not long enough to stretch across the English Channel to impregnate his wife. This time, everyone knew it was just her imagination, a lovely illusion she wanted so badly to believe. She wanted to believe that Philip had not entirely forsaken her, that he had left her with something tangible, some little part of himself, a miracle that they had made together. But she was pregnant with hope, nothing more, and everyone but Mary knew it.
Then he lost Calais and it broke the already broken pieces of Mary’s heart into still more pieces, so shattered they could never be mended and put back together again. Calais was England’s last remaining foothold in France; it never would have happened if Philip had not embroiled us in a war we had no cause to fight. Our proud nation smarted with the humiliation, for there was not money enough in the Treasury to raise and equip an army to go out and try to win it back. The people blamed Mary; they called her a traitor to her own country, and accused her of loving Spain more than England. Philip had now taken everything from her. He would never come back. What was left for him to come back for?
Finally, she sent for me. As “Faithful Susan” took me to her, she confided that Mary had not left her chamber in weeks. She spent most of her time sitting on the floor, too afraid to face her people, and too cast down in spirits to even think of trying. Susan paused in the corridor and looked into my eyes and told me that she feared for Mary’s life. Sorrow was strangling the life out of her heart and, if that deathly grip could not be broken, soon it would cease to beat. As for the child Mary still believed she carried as God’s gift to her, with tears brimming in her eyes, Susan said the doctors and midwives now suspected it was a tumor partnering with the sorrow to leech away Mary’s life.
When I walked into the candlelit bedchamber and beheld that poor brainsick woman, mired deep in darkest sorrow, I started in amazement. I hardly recognized this devastated wreck as my sister, so greatly had she altered.
When she looked up at me, her gray eyes squinting hard, straining to pierce the shadows and blurriness that encroached upon her vision, her tear-damp face was a wrinkled red and swollen mask of despair surrounded by a grizzled silver cloud of hair with just a few rusty streaks running through it. In the flickering candlelight I fancied I could see the skull beneath the lined yellow flesh, like a gruesome, parchment-pale death’s head. She sat huddled upon the floor, tucked into a corner, where she must have felt safe, rocking back and forth, crooning a Spanish lullaby and cradling her grossly swollen belly. Her robe hung open to reveal that she was wearing one of her birthing smocks made of pleated Holland cloth, and beneath its gold braided hem her bare feet peeked out to reveal long, cracked and brittle yellow nails. She was surrounded by exquisitely stitched and beribboned little baby garments, lovingly embroidered by her own hands, that the ghost-child in her womb would never wear. Her sewing basket sat beside her and her prayer book lay open to a page so stained with tears that the ink had run and entirely obliterated the words written there.
I knew I was looking at a dying woman, a woman who had lost everything that mattered to her, and with it the will to live. She was old and tired and sick, her body, heart, and soul worn out. Raw and aching, and utterly naked and vulnerable in her grief, she was suffering pain to rival the agony of the childbirth that she would never herself experience. When she raised a trembling hand to reach out for me I saw that the rings hung loose and spun around on her fingers and the skin was almost transparent, like old yellowed parchment, and I could see every vein and bone beneath.
“Mary . . .” Tears filled my eyes as I took her hand and knelt down beside her.
I gathered that wasted and forlorn figure in my arms, remembering all the times when I was a motherless child in need of comforting and she had held me and rocked me gently and sung Spanish lullabies to me. As she laid her head on my shoulder I stroked and tried to tame that wild riot of rust-streaked silver hair. The whole story of Mary’s life was written in her hair—the white and gray of woes, the hair of a broken and defeated woman old before her time and dying of an illness that cruelly mimicked her greatest desire, the auburn of a mature woman ripe for life and love, and a few wispy orange-gold strands to recall the beloved little princess who thought her life would always be as golden as her hair and that love always lasts forever.
“When I die . . .” she croaked in a feeble and raspy whisper. “When I die and they open my body they will find the word Calais written on my heart.”
I could think of nothing to say, nothing to assuage or vanquish her guilt or grief, so I just held her.
“Philip . . .” she whispered against my shoulder. “I was”—a shuddering sob broke from her—“I was . . . wrong! I should not have married him, I should not love him, but, God help me, I do, I do!”
I clutched her tight as the tears convulsed her, trying with my embrace to hold her body and soul together.
“There is a reason they say love is blind, Mary,” I said gently. “Sometimes it willfully or unwittingly fails to see the things it should see.”
“But I . . . I was warned! They tried to tell me, they tried to stop me!” she sobbed.
“Mary, my dear sister”—I cradled her to my breast and stroked her wild, wispy and matted hair—“this I have learned from both observation and experience—there are times in our lives when we find ourselves standing on the edge of a cliff. Sometimes you stand there, looking down, for a very long time. Sometimes you find the strength, and the courage, to turn back, but sometimes you go over the edge; you jump. Sometimes you jump beca
use you believe you cannot go back or that there is nothing to go back for, that your soul is lost in a long black tunnel with not even a glimmer of light at the end of it to guide you and give you the hope you need to go on. Sometimes you jump just because you are tired of being afraid. And sometimes you jump just to find out what it feels like to fall, to test your strength, to find out if you can claw your way back up again.”
“Why did I fail?” she rasped, gazing searchingly into my eyes. “I tried so hard! Why did it all go so wrong?”
“Because you shut your ears to the real voice of God,” I said gently.
“No! I didn’t!” Mary tearfully insisted. “I was always true to God, I always followed . . .”
“Mary,” I spoke gently but firmly as if she were a child, “you did. You were always true to your faith, to the teachings of your Church, but to a monarch, the voice of the people is the true voice of God. It is their love and will that puts a king or queen upon the throne and keeps them there. As God’s anointed queen, you were His candle on earth, sent here to light the way, to guide and inspire, but you cannot compel and force people’s consciences with torture and threats as if they were wild horses in need of breaking. But you tried to do just that, and when you began to burn those you branded heretics you also began to burn away your people’s love. You didn’t listen to them, you blocked your ears to their cries, and that is the reason you failed.”
Mary stared at me for a long time as if she hadn’t seen me before or didn’t know who I was.
“Mary?” I prodded her gently.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and drew herself up straight.
“Promise me . . .” Her voice faltered and she tried again. “Promise me that . . . that the true religion will never die in England.”
I took both her hands in mine and stared deep into her eyes. “I promise!” I put all the conviction I possessed into those two words. “I make no windows into men’s souls, Mary. Loyalty to the sovereign is one thing, and faith in God and how one worships Him is another; there is no reason that the two cannot peaceably coexist in harmony.”
“Thank you!” Mary closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of deep gratitude and relief. And then she opened them and asked falteringly, her words punctuated by sobs, “Will you . . . try . . . to find a way to . . . pay . . . my debts? There are . . . I fear . . . a . . . a great many.”
“Of course I will,” I assured her. “Do not trouble your mind over that.”
“And will you . . . be . . . kind . . . to . . . m-my . . . my servants?”
“Those who have served you loyally and well shall be rewarded,” I promised.
“While I live, I am Queen in name,” she said to me, her voice firmer now, marred only by the slightest quiver, “but you are the Queen of Hearts. Go with God, His will be done.” As the storm of tears broke anew she made an adamant gesture, waving me toward the door, and I dared not stay and intrude further upon her broken heart.
Those were the last words she ever spoke to me.
51
Mary
When the door closed behind Elizabeth I struggled to pull myself up from the floor and, leaning heavily upon tables and chairs for support, pausing only when weakness and faintness threatened to overwhelm me, I made my way slowly across the room to the windows overlooking the courtyard. I collapsed thankfully onto the window seat and sat there feeling light-headed, dizzy, and breathless, clutching my heart and panting for air, fearing my sight would not be able to pierce the myriad of colored stars and sparks that obscured it in time for me to see what I needed to see.
There was still snow in the courtyard and a young boy was busily sweeping the flagstones to clear a path when she came out.
She looked like a queen. She walked like a queen. Philip had been correct when he said she understood the power of appearances. All my jewel-bedecked, embroidery-encrusted finery could not mark me as a queen the way Elizabeth’s carefully chosen white gown, covered with a black velvet surcoat, edged with white fur, and embroidered with silver snowflakes embellished with tiny twinkling diamonds and seed pearls, and matching white-plumed black velvet cap could. She wore her hair caught up in a net of pearls instead of loose and flowing as she usually did, I noted, the better to appear a mature woman rather than a green girl too young and inexperienced to rule. Black, silver, and white, with her colors, carefully chosen; elegant but not overdone adornments; the perpetual pearls; her Tudor red hair so none who saw her could mistake her heritage; and her confident, calm, and elegant bearing—she was sending a message of power, virginity, wisdom, and strength neatly tied into a bow with youth and beauty. She was telling the world that the last of King Henry’s roses had grown stronger on the bush while the blossoms around her withered and died, but she, the last Tudor rose, had survived and imbibed the knowledge, through danger and hard lessons and the failings of those around her, that would enrich and empower her to rule England as none had ever done before; Elizabeth had within her the makings of a great queen.
The boy stopped his work and fell to his knees and caught up the hem of her skirt and kissed it. Elizabeth smiled and reached down to cup his chin. She spoke gently to him and caressed his cheek, and I knew then that even when, many years from now, he was a toothless old man that boy would remember the day when he had touched and been touched by God’s chosen one. He would grow old telling the story of the day he met Queen Elizabeth.
Others, alerted to her presence, came running, her name upon their lips like a prayer as they knelt around her, their fingers reaching out to reverently touch her skirts, with such love and unveiled hope upon their faces. She had a smile for every one of them, sometimes even a word, or a touch; a caress for a child’s cheek or an elegant poised white hand extended for someone old and frail harboring fond memories of our father to kiss.
I had been wrong; this was no lute player’s bastard, this was the daughter of a king born to be a queen in her own right. I had let my hatred of Anne Boleyn corrupt and blind me. She had Father’s gift for looking at a person and making them feel as if they were the most important person in the world, as if they alone existed for her, and it wasn’t crude and common after all. I had been mistaken; I had been mistaken about so many things. She also had her mother’s gift for winning against the odds. Elizabeth, daughter of Great Harry and The Great Whore, was a formidable combination to be reckoned with; she did not need a man like I did to be her pillar of strength, she was fully capable of steering the ship of state herself. She would not let England flounder or run aground or be dashed upon the rocks to shatter and drown. And even though the Blessed Virgin might disappear from England’s altars, the people would not be lost with Elizabeth as the figurehead of the nation. She would hold the candle and light their way—no, she actually was the candle! She would be the virgin mother of her people, and when she walked amongst them and let them gaze their fill, reach out to touch her skirt and kiss her hands, through Elizabeth, the one God had chosen to wear England’s crown, they would also be touching the divine.
I had lost. Everything I had aspired to, all my hopes and dreams, had been reduced to ashes, and I had lit the fires that rendered them thus. And Elizabeth was the phoenix who would rise from those ashes.
I had seen what I needed to see, and I knew what I needed to know. The true faith might not reign supreme as the only faith in England, but it would not perish.
I braced my hands against the stone window-sill to lever myself up, but as I turned, my head felt as if it were bobbing upon waves, and my eyes within my head felt the same, and then I had the most disturbing sensation that the floor was rising up to meet me, to slam into me with great force. And as it hit me everything went black.
I heard footsteps and voices all around me, a great bustle, a hurried preparation for a journey, servants running back and forth, trunks being dragged down from the attics, the bang of their lids, the snap of the locks. Why was everyone leaving? “Elizabeth” and “Hatfield”—I kept hearing those tw
o names, sometimes spoken in normal tones, other times in whispers as if some didn’t want me to hear them while others didn’t care if I did. And then I understood. They were leaving me, like rats fleeing a burning building. My court was abandoning me, a dying and deluded woman. They were leaving me to die alone and running pell-mell toward the future and the flame-haired beacon of hope—Elizabeth.
I was in my bed now, I suddenly realized, feeling the softness of the mattress beneath me instead of the hard floor, and Susan was bending over to offer a cooling cup to my parched lips and to mop away the fever-sweat with a cloth dipped in rosewater.
“I have failed,” I confided when Susan put her ear down closer to my lips. “All I ever wanted was to be loved, to find on this earth a love as true and everlasting as God’s, but I have failed, and not through lack of trying; I prayed every day for someone to love me.”
Susan was so overcome she could not speak, she had to turn away to hide her tears, but I could tell by the way her shoulders shook. A black-robed doctor was there at her side, patting her back and saying something that made her weep even harder. Somehow I just knew that he was telling her that there was nothing more that he could do for me. Jane Dormer came in carrying a tray and, seeing Susan’s distress, set it down and went to take her in her arms, and they held each other and wept together.
I wanted to comfort them, but I was so tired. I will sleep for just a few moments, the better to gather my strength, to think of the right words to say, I promised myself, and then . . .