Elizabeth of Bohemia

by David Elias

  ***

  Lady Anne had hardly been married more than a few months when she announced to me one morning that she was with child. By then my own son Henry was almost a year old, and in that time his grandmother the Countess Juliana had come to dote on him and all but given herself over to his care and keeping, a task for which she seemed in my estimation to be entirely well-suited. In as much as young Henry clearly loved his grandmother, and that Frederick seemed reconciled to the arrangement, I was content to let it be so. But it simply had not occurred to me that Lady Anne might soon be looking to the needs of her own child. No doubt she would make a devoted and loving mother, but I was still adjusting to her diminished attention to my needs, and found the idea that she should soon be rearing a child of her own an unwelcome prospect.

  The pregnancy was uneventful, as was the birth of an infant son, whom they christened Frederick. But no sooner had baby and mother been pronounced healthy and whole than Lady Anne complained of a severe headache, followed by stomach pains and nausea. Not long after, she began to exhibit periods of delirium, and the baby was taken from her. Thereafter Count Schomberg sat constantly at her bedside, holding her hand, speaking to her, stroking her cheek, even as her features changed before him, face turned puffy, olive skin become blotchy red, unseeing eyes swollen to twice their size. He could hardly be convinced to leave her side, and when he deigned to do so for a moment, became utterly inconsolable once out of the room, his heart breaking right before our eyes. Frederick and I shared his torment, much as we had my brother Henry’s, and though it gave rise to a certain tenderness of feeling between us, there was an aspect of cruelty to it. Why did it have to be tragedy which brought such a thing into being?

  When it was clear that the worst was indeed imminent, Frederick sent for the preacher Abraham Scultetus, who had seen to the baptism and now arrived to perform the last rites. He appeared in his usual garb of clerical robes, cap pulled tightly down upon his head, cropped beard and moustache accentuating his dour expression and severity of manner. My husband placed a great deal of trust in him where clerical matters were concerned, and though his office did not call for counsel in matters of state, Scultetus seemed eager to offer it. The few exchanges between us had already made it clear that we should hardly be allies when it came to my ambitions for Prague, but at the moment I was eager to set all that aside, content to let him perform his spiritual duties. When he had finished, Count Schomberg returned at once to the bedside.

  “Hans, is that you?” asked Lady Anne. It was the first and only time I heard her address her husband by that name. “I’m so glad you came by. I thought we might go to the countryside. London is so hot this time of year.”

  The Count turned to look up at us helplessly, then back to Lady Anne.

  “My head.” Lady Anne put up her hands. “My head is become a cathedral and within it such a ringing of bells as I have never heard . . . I had a baby once, a boy . . . when the bells have finished I shall take my rest. Will you stay until then?”

  “I shall.”

  “Light. I feel so light.”

  Now she gripped the Count’s hand tightly in hers and pulled herself forward with great effort, clutched his shoulder, and as he leaned back a little, straightened herself almost to a sitting position, every muscle of her body strained with some invisible force. “Is it time? I hardly thought the hour was so late. But who will see to My Lady?”

  Her eyes fell shut and her body went limp. Before the Count could lower her back onto the pillow she had passed into a sudden sleep. There was nothing to be done, and so for a time I withdrew into an antechamber, but after a moment Count Schomberg appeared and beckoned me to the door.

  “Your Highness, she has awakened of a sudden, and wishes to speak to you.”

  “Of course, let’s go in.”

  “She asked to see you alone.”

  “Very well.”

  “I shall be right outside the door.”

  I went to the bedside, just the two of us now in the dimly lit room, for even though Lady Anne was by then completely blind, the light bothered her, and as I leaned over to inspect her features it was clear she was in tremendous discomfort.

  “Elizabeth?” asked Lady Anne. “Is that you?”

  “Yes. Yes, I’m here.”

  “They will not bring me my son.”

  “No. The physicians fear a miasma in the room.”

  “But you can see to it.”

  “What has the Count to say?”

  “He defers to the physicians and thinks it best not to.”

  “Then perhaps we were best to leave it by.”

  “My baby,” she whispered. “I want to hold my boy just once more.”

  I thought of Henry calling out for me from his deathbed, what it must have been like for him, and decided I was not going to stand by and let it happen again.

  “Then I will bring him to you.”

  I stopped at the door, where Count Schomberg was waiting, and stood before him. “She would hold her son one last time.”

  “But the physicians have said . . .”

  “Hang the physicians. Will you allow me to bring him to her?”

  “They will forbid it.”

  “Let them try and stop me.”

  “Do it, then.”

  I made straight for the nursery and returned after no more than a few moments with a nursemaid carrying little Frederick wrapped in swaddling.

  Before I could enter the room, one of the physicians stepped before me and put up his hand. “Your Highness, what do you think you’re doing?” He was one of several who had been treating Lady Anne, all of whom practised much the same way as those in London, that is, with rigid adherence to useless learning and so methodology of pitiable effect. Though none were so abusive of authority as Dr. Mayerne had been, it was pointless to speak to them, for they uttered only the same tired platitudes.

  “I’m bringing this child to its mother,” I said, “and you will not stop me.”

  “I’m afraid I can’t allow it.”

  I looked beyond the physician to where Count Schomberg was kneeling at Lady Anne’s bedside. “The father has given his permission.”

  “There may be a miasma in the room.”

  “I don’t care if there are bats flying around the bed, this baby will go to its mother, and you will not interfere.”

  “I’m afraid it’s out of the question.”

  I felt I was reliving much the same scenario I had been forced to endure during my brother’s illness, save that there were no guards posted at the door, and thought to call out to Count Schomberg for assistance. But just then who should appear but the unshaven and shoddy Captain Hume, sword hung at his side as usual, looking as though he had not slept in days and carrying a sorry bouquet of wilting wildflowers in his hand. I was never so glad to see the man in my life.

  “Good day to you, Your Highness. I came to see whether I might have a moment to place these flowers at the feet of the Lady Anne Dudley, if you will allow it, but now I see that you would bring this baby to its mother and will defer until a more suitable occasion.”

  “This is outrageous,” said the physician. “There shall be no babies and certainly no visitors the like of this beggar allowed in the room. I simply won’t have it. Your Highness, this man is filthy.”

  “When did that become a concern for your profession? I have never seen one of you yet that washed his hands before sticking his fat fingers into a mother giving birth.”

  “I will not be lectured to, even by you, Your Highness.”

  “Then stand aside and leave us to it.”

  “And who might you be?” said Captain Hume.

  “He is one of the physicians,” I said. “A great bother, as they are wont to be.”

  “Stand aside, Sir,” said Captain Hume, “that we may enter.”

  “
I will not.”

  The Captain put one hand on his sword, “You will give passage.”

  “I shall summon the guards.”

  “Then do so. You will find them in the courtyard. They offered me a salute as I went by. But when you return, I suggest you have a weapon of your own at the ready.”

  “Go in,” the Captain turned to me. “I shall wait here and see you are not disturbed, that you should have all the time you need.”

  Lady Anne raised her head as soon as I entered. “Who’s there?”

  “Elizabeth,” I said, and the nursemaid followed me to the bed. “I have brought you your son. Here.” I motioned, and the nursemaid lowered the baby gently down into Lady Anne’s outstretched arms. She took him tenderly, her eyes straight ahead that could no longer see, and brought her cheek down to rub it along the top of the boy’s downy head. “My boy,” she uttered softly, “my sweet boy. Perhaps one day you shall hear how it came about that the first time your mother held you fell so nigh to upon the last, but know that you shall feel this cheek brush against your own when as a man you stand before the wind, and this kiss upon your brow when the sun warms your upturned face. Remember me in this way. Remember me.”

  They lay in quiet rest for some silent moments, baby and mother, until Lady Anne grew agitated, her eyes wider, as though perhaps some unsettling vision appeared before her, and I motioned for the nursemaid to take the baby from her.

  “Deliver him,” said Lady Anne, her fingertips still outstretched, “into the care of his strong and loving father. I go to my rest.”

  A curtain fell across her eyes, their light muted, while the maidservant carried the baby out of the room, and as Count Schomberg knelt at her side and wept, I motioned for Captain Hume to step into the room. He stopped at the foot of the bed, still clutching the flowers he had picked, their stems crushed in his great fist, and placed them gently upon the sheets without a sound, tears streaming down his cheeks.

  Now a long, languid stiffening ran through the length of Lady Anne’s body, began at her feet and made its way slowly along the sinews of her body until it reached her outstretched neck, at which she turned her head up to the ceiling in the strangest way. A loud exhalation followed, punctuated by a tiny rattle, as slowly her body came to rest again upon the bed, though not seeming to lie on it, her head upon the pillow and yet making no indentation there. She became inanimate before our eyes.

  We wept each of us together and by turns, now this one upon that shoulder and then another, and cried out our anguish, but mine was tinged with wonder to think I had been witness to something so mysterious that left me profoundly saddened and yet, somehow, with a deeper reverence for life than I had ever known. It seemed to me I had been transformed in some small way by her dying, that the floor beneath me shifted ever so slightly, the room a little tilted now, the light somehow altered. I left the room not quite the same Elizabeth as the one that had entered. In a short span of time I had lost the two people closest to me, who each in their way had served as a touchstone for me, a compass of sorts. But now I was truly on my own.

  It occurred to me that Lady Anne’s passing marked the terminus of a great chain, forged from all who had come before her. The spark of her life had originated from another life, and that from another before her, and so on back even to the first, to the start of creation. We were each of us the last link in a chain of life that traced its origin back to the very beginning. Though we might pass that same spark on to a son or a daughter, ours was destined to be snuffed out. In that way, death was final. Let the body struggle to the last to stay, to live, to say it is not the end, still it must come to a finish. Leave it to the mystics to riddle the rest, though they have little invested until it comes their turn. Lady Anne was gone, but perhaps some part of her had not disappeared altogether. Life by its leaving created the unknown, and it was precisely that which awaited us all. For certain, what was left behind to bury amounted to no more than meat, but what of some other? What became of our ethereal and inconvenient souls?

  That evening I made my way through the gate Frederick had erected for me and into the Hortus Palatinus, where I wandered along its paths in solitude, until I had reached the highest terrace of the garden above the fountain of Father Rhine, where a small, unguarded gate opened into the forest beyond. It had never struck me to walk through that gate, but now for some reason it seemed the very thing I should do. Perhaps it would lead me to the meadow where Captain Hume had picked his wildflowers for Lady Anne.

  When I had pushed open the gate and stepped beyond it, there seemed only to be unbroken forest, but after a moment I came upon a little-used path and decided to follow it. Soon enough it led to one more well-worn and I took that. The trail wound its way along the mountainside, where from time to time it intersected others leading in different directions. The sun had descended low in the sky, and I walked mostly in shadow. This was an entirely different experience from my wanderings amid the manicured lawns and pruned shrubbery of the garden. Now I took a trail that led me higher up the mountainside until I reached a small clearing that offered a glimpse of the castle below, its turrets of thick and impenetrable stone aglow in the evening light.

  I had the mountain to myself. Birds sang their late evening songs in the darkening wood, thrushes and finches and warblers; a raven’s caw echoed from an outcropping of granite rock. I listened to the sounds of the forest: a small rodent scurrying about among the leaves and twigs, the dying breeze sighing high up in the pines, and then something else, something moving behind me. I imagined some gentle creature and turned to see. A lone wolf, large and grey, shoulders high, stopped in mid-stride, one paw lifted into the air, and posed there, furry head turned toward me, blue eyes piercing and cold. Neither menacing nor friendly, he stood in perfect stillness, let me feel his power, even as he seemed to be trying to make up his mind about something. He took a silent step, stopped again, a different paw raised in the air. Something in his eyes of calculation. I was being judged. Was I to be feared or hunted? I felt myself as a creature in a way I never had before, all my artifice come to naught. I wanted to run, couldn’t, waited. At last he resumed his gait, eyes never relinquishing their grip on me, until he had loped far enough to disappear among the trees.

  It was then I realized I had been holding my breath, and now exhaled, then took in a great gulp of fresh air. My breath restored to me, I next became aware of my heart beating with great force and urgency, my limbs tightened in rigid readiness. Even as my body slowly returned to a more relaxed state, I felt its waning readiness to run farther and faster than ever I had in my life. Was this what it meant to be in a state of nature? My vision was as sharp and clear as I could ever remember it, my sense of smell aroused, every sound intensified. Were those yet the sounds of his distant, furtive footfalls upon the forest floor? And was that yet his scent still in the air, or my own? And was it relief I felt that he had chosen to move on, or regret? I couldn’t recall a time in my life when I had felt so alive.

  I followed the trails, one leading into another, and by the time I had wound my way back down the mountain and entered through the gate into the garden, it was almost entirely dark. Lights had come on in the castle and as I walked across the manicured lawns toward its hulking presence, it felt more familiar to me than it ever had. I would go for many more such twilight walks after that day, always half-hoping, half-dreading that I might run into the wolf again, but I never did. I sometimes fancied it might have been the ghost of my brother, or perhaps even Lady Anne, come in that form to visit itself upon me, shake me out of my melancholy and despair. I don’t know where I should have ended up that day, or indeed if I should ever have come back, but for that encounter. I was glad for the lights of the castle, warm and inviting, though it promised to hold fewer comforts for me now. It might be better to starve my heart for the sake of preserving it, and for a time go hungry.

  Chapter Ten

  After Lady Anne die
d I took myself daily to the mountainside behind the castle to wander the trails aimlessly for hours on end. Frederick worried that I was inconsolable, but the truth was that I had no wish to be consoled. I suggested he direct his concern to Count Schomberg, whose grief had crippled him entirely, to the point where he lost all capacity to see to his own needs, let alone those of his infant son. For my part I took little interest in my own Henry, suffered intensely the same affliction in which that black-fisted darkness threatened to smother me, and which I was powerless to defend against. I only wanted to be alone. Then came news that Count Schomberg had taken ill and been confined to his bed, and soon after that he succumbed to a raging fever and was lost as well, until it seemed to me that tragedy had become my most reliable companion and sorrow my natural state.

  I had the need to acquire the services of another lady-in-waiting, for which there were any number of young women eager to apply. I granted a small number an informal audience that they might demonstrate to me their suitability for the position, but there was not one among them I was eager to employ. It was more of a necessary evil than anything. If I thought I could have managed on my own I should have been glad to do so, but there was simply too much I could not accomplish by myself. I couldn’t even dress myself on some occasions. A French Farthingale, for example, required an entire orchestration of manoeuvres to get into. There’s as much of chattel as privilege in the accoutrements of royalty, and so I was resigned to be fussed over daily, to the point where patience lost its battle with decorum.

  In the case of my lady-in-waiting, the secretarial tasks alone were formidable, from sifting through correspondence to composing replies on my behalf, for I made it always a point to keep very much abreast of any developments that might prove advantageous to my ambitions. I already knew that whomever I chose, the two of us should never enjoy that degree of intimacy Lady Anne and I had indulged in. In the end I chose Amalia von Solms, a woman of little means some six years younger than I, not because she was ambitious, self-important, and scheming, which all of the candidates were, but because in addition to all these traits she promised to be the most efficient, and this turned out to be the case.