Elizabeth of Bohemia

by David Elias

  Christmas Day came and went and I was glad for it to be over. I thought of the story told with such sentiment in the Bible verses of the humble stable where Mary gave birth to Jesus, and how the story had hitherto evoked feelings of tenderness in me. I realized that it altogether dismissed what an ordeal it must have been for poor Mary, and ever after abandoned any romantic notions I might have had about the unfolding of that first day of Christendom.

  ***

  When I was feeling up to it we continued on our way and eventually arrived at The Hague where, thanks to the Prince of Orange, some modest lodgings had been set aside for us in Binnenhof. The apartments there were situated within an entirely unremarkable red brick building that sat next to a wide boulevard. Square white-trimmed windows ran along the side in an even line, and the overall design of the place boasted an almost complete lack of imagination. The place was hardly a palace, but then I’d had no illusions about what we might find when we got there. The small grounds in behind were surrounded by a hornbeam hedge that afforded some much-needed privacy, and there were even a few flowerbeds and a fountain to enjoy. It wasn’t exactly the Hortus Palatinus, but for now it would have to do.

  I was somewhat unprepared for the gloominess of the interior, which featured walls of dark wainscoting under a high ceiling. Oak cupboards and shelves cluttered with all manner of pottery ran along the walls, and the fireplace appeared to be covered in a bawdy arrangement of coloured tiles. The place was far from well-appointed, the furniture inadequate for our purposes, but we settled in with what meagre possessions remained to us to set up a modest household. At the very least my bed had made it through all the turmoil, and I was grateful for its familiar comforts, but we were forced to make do with such a paltry allowance provided by the Prince that I was far from content, and struggled to keep from complaining too bitterly about the poverty and privation we were being subjected to.

  One evening, emboldened by more than a little wine, those unseemly aspects of my nature which drink was wont to engender got the better of me, and so bitterly did I berate my poor husband that I was hardly surprised when next morning I discovered he had disappeared, and Captain Hume along with him. Neither of them was anywhere to be found.

  Chapter Thirteen

  I thought I might have driven Frederick away, and that perhaps he and the Captain had gone off to raise a glass or two at the nearest inn, if only to seek some relief from my displeasure. But the better part of a week went by and still there was no sign of them, until one afternoon they were back as mysteriously as they had vanished. The two had about them the air of an adolescent conspiracy. Frederick in particular seemed very pleased with himself and could hardly contain his excitement.

  “Alright,” I said at supper that evening, “you have waited all day to offer me your explanations, and now I will have them.”

  The table was set with a feast unlike any we had enjoyed in a long time. Frederick had ordered an extravagance of food and drink, and when I sought to chide him for spending money we did not have he looked and me and said, “Dearest Elizabeth, be assured that I bring us not to hardship but rather to celebration, the need for which you shall soon hear of, only leave off until we have dined and then all shall be revealed.”

  When at last we were done eating and drinking, I said, “Very well, I have kept my end of the bargain, and now you must keep yours. The two of you have been acting like schoolboys newly returned from some secret adventure and seem quite satisfied with yourselves.” I turned to Captain Hume. “You have not turned into a pair of highwaymen, I hope. Where were you all this time?”

  “Here.” Frederick passed me a handbill. “Captain Hume himself tore that from the door of the great cathedral in Heidelberg.”

  “Heidelberg? You mean to say you travelled all that way?”

  “The Hapsburgs seek not only to withhold that which is rightfully ours,” Frederick continued, “they are determined to make an example of us. I had not fathomed the lengths to which the Holy Roman Emperor would go to humiliate us.”

  I held up the poster and read aloud: “A king run away some days since,” it said, “of adolescent age, sanguine colour, middle height, a cast on one of his eyes, no moustache, only down on his lip, not badly disposed when a stolen kingdom did not lie in his way — his name is Frederick.”

  “I can hardly imagine what he might have had to say about me,” I offered. “But you say you got this in Heidelberg?”

  “There is much encouragement that the people should see fit to disparage your part as well,” said Frederick.

  “And you have heard something of this?”

  “Naught but insult and provocation,” said Captain Hume. “Not worth repeating.”

  “I will hear it.”

  “Not from me,” said Frederick.

  In all this Captain Hume continued eating with great relish, washing down the generous portions of roasted meats with great gulps of wine, but now he paused, swallowed.

  “Captain Hume, what do they say about me?” I demanded.

  The Captain looked over at Frederick, who shook his head no.

  “I command you,” I said.

  “Madam, I disdain.”

  “We are all in this.”

  “Why should you wish me to repeat such talk as is not worthy even of your contempt?”

  “I’m waiting.” I stared him down.

  “They say that the English king’s daughter is fled from Prague . . . like . . .”

  “Say!”

  “. . . an Irish beggar-woman with her babes at her back.”

  “And what else?”

  “That’s enough.” Frederick brought the flat of his hand down upon the table. “We will have no more of this.”

  “I suppose it’s not altogether inaccurate to characterize the situation as such,” I said.

  Captain Hume took up his goblet. “I say such filthy slurs make the venture your husband and I undertook all the more satisfying.”

  “Am I going to hear what it was?”

  “Your husband merely saw fit,” said Captain Hume, “to take back what was rightfully his.”

  “You don’t mean to say you set about to steal your crown back?”

  “Nothing so ambitious or foolhardy, I’m afraid.”

  “And yet the spoils have made this fine feast possible.” The Captain replenished his chalice from a large bottle.

  “You say you went to Heidelberg. I understood it lay in ruins.”

  “Your Highness, this thrift of detail,” said Captain Hume, “is borne of modesty, and so” — he turned to Frederick — “with your permission, I shall tell the Queen what we have been at.”

  “Very well.” Frederick sat back in his chair.

  “Your husband, prior to your leaving for Prague, had made provision to store a considerable sum of money and treasure for safekeeping in Heidelberg Castle. It was one of the reasons he was so eager to return, and so disappointed when that option was denied him. He determined that if he could not take back the castle, he could at least try to procure what was rightfully his, and to this end we set out.”

  “Do you remember the replica of Mr. Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre you had constructed as part of the English Wing?” asked Captain Hume. Without waiting for an answer, he added, “Well, then you may also recall that for the presentation of Hamlet a secret trap door was built into the floor of the stage, the better to allow that the ghost of Hamlet’s father should make a spectacular and frightening entrance, as suited your fancy. There beneath that stage, in a secret compartment beneath the dirt floor, your husband saw fit to bury money and gold, as well as some jewels and such.”

  “So it was only a matter of sneaking into the castle to retrieve it.” Frederick thought to take over the story, but Captain Hume would have none of it.

  “But what a sight greeted us there,” the Captain carried on, “when
we first laid eyes on that once-noble fortress.”

  “Better not to have seen such ruin,” Frederick tried again, “not to mention the grounds of the Hortus Palatinus. It would have made your heart ache, Elizabeth, to see how the place had nearly been destroyed!”

  “Much as the patrons of St. Vitus must have felt, I suppose,” I offered, “when they saw what Scultetus had done to their precious relics.”

  “We made our way through the woods in behind the castle, which you know well.” The Captain slipped a furtive glance in my direction. “And there did we bide our time until nightfall, then lowered ourselves down into the drained moat where once you kept your menagerie of animals but where now all was in ruins, and so by degrees through the chapel and along the hallway to the theatre. There was hardly anyone about, and we thought to have the place to ourselves, when a guard stationed in a recess of the wall stepped forth to demand who goes there. At this I ascertained at once that he was one of those same combatants I had trained during my time there, at which he allowed us to pass.

  “And so at length we gained the theatre, still pristine, as the troops of General Tilly had not bothered with it, though the same could not be said for much of the castle. In particular the General seemed to have taken great relish in destroying utterly the terrace from which you, Your Highness, so oft deigned to gaze down upon the town below.”

  “Speak no more of it,” pleaded Frederick, “but finish now the story.”

  “In any case, we managed to garner the treasure and carry it off. With no small effort we made the long journey back here, all the while taking extra care to go by the roads less travelled, else we be captured.” The Captain took a final drink from his chalice and pushed back his chair. “And here we are.” He rose from the table, a little unsteady on his feet. “It would appear I have over-indulged a trifle, and to that end I take myself away to bed at once, lest I fall face-down into snoring sleep here in my chair. And so, I say good night to both of you.”

  When he had seen himself out of the room I turned to Frederick. “You should have told me.”

  “I hardly know why I failed to do so, but that it should have caused you greater distress to know it was there and unavailable to you than to remain ignorant of such a provision.”

  “It gives me cause to wonder what else you may have squirrelled away that I know naught of.”

  “It was Mother’s idea.”

  “Juliana?”

  “That we should only seek to make use of it in the most dire of circumstances.”

  “No doubt she swore you to secrecy.”

  Frederick looked at me for a moment, then lowered his gaze, shrugged his shoulders and shifted awkwardly in his chair.

  “You will not say so, but she did so for want of trust in me. And you were content to go along with it.”

  Frederick looked as though he was about to speak but at the last moment held back, retreated, as he was too often wont to do, to the safety of silence.

  “I had a right to know.”

  “You know it now.”

  “If you had failed, or worse yet perished, I never should have.”

  “I did neither.”

  “But why did you leave it there?” I didn’t wait for an answer. “You didn’t bother to take it with you to Prague because you were resigned to losing your crown even before you had obtained it. You knew you were coming back to Heidelberg. That’s it, isn’t it?”

  “I will grant I considered as much.”

  “And how if by that very act you condemned yourself to failure?”

  I stopped, reproached myself for inflicting such needless recrimination on poor Frederick.

  “How much is there?” I asked.

  “Enough to do us for a while, provided we show restraint.”

  ***

  But the reprieve from penury that Frederick’s adventure provided was short-lived. We were soon in debt again. I grant much of the fault was mine. But which was worse: to torture myself with penny-pinching and self-inflicted suffering, to live unsatisfied, or to fly in the face of austerity and spend as I pleased, be it but briefly, thereafter to endure the hardship that was coming in any event? Those who live poor and have yet riches, who forsake indulgence in the name of moderation, what do they profit? Better to live a pauper than a miser, for what is more wretched than a cheapskate? To hoard, to covet, was not in my nature. I was no magpie, no squirrel!

  Soon enough our apartments fell into disrepair and neglect, my wardrobe into shameful redundancy; the children were not properly fed, the servants left unpaid. Nevertheless I was required to bring more babies into the world and gave birth to Louise, then Edward, thereafter Henriette and also Louis, who lived only a little more than four months. I was time and again occupied, ballooned out of all proportion into unattractive bulkiness. Had I been a commoner I should not have had to marry so soon. A cottage girl might not have to wed until she was twenty-five. By that age I had borne six children. Nothing I wore pleased me. I looked drab and dowdy in everything, my breasts enormous and blue-veined, spilling out of every dress. I refused to wear my husband’s waistcoats, as some women preferred to do, which they let out in the back as the baby grew; I opted instead to walk around all day in an Adrianne dress, unattractive as it was.

  And yet, I suppose I should have been thankful not to have lost my looks as so many women did. There were those among the ladies at court so desperate not to conceive again they turned to remedies, some untried and unproven, others dirty and dangerous. One might wear an amulet containing the testicles of a weasel, the dried liver of a black cat, the anus of a hare, only to find the effort spectacularly ineffective. Another might rub herself with salves — oil of rue, oil of savin, oil of mint — all equally so. Of course the husbands had no knowledge of their meddling. The women only talked about it amongst themselves, and never in the company of their men. They had reason enough to be so secretive. Any talk of intervention in the natural process of propagation was strictly forbidden, let alone the practice of it. Catholic or Protestant, there was an ever-present threat that we might be accused of practising witchcraft. To broach the idea that certain measures might be taken after conception was even worse. The men at court found nothing so frightening as the thought of a secret society of women, and I had no interest in being burned at the stake. No pessaries for me, nor beeswax or small stones.

  One morning I was seated at the table in the antechamber, writing a letter to my brother Charles.

  September, 1627

  Binnenhof, The Hague

  Dear Charles,

  Let this be the last in the long list of correspondences I have composed, all of which remain unanswered. I grant you may have little interest in receiving my letters and even less in answering them when time and again they concern matters of money, but I had hoped these entreaties would appeal to your sense of obligation if not your generosity. Along with the throne, you have inherited the responsibility to live up to that recommendation decreed by Parliament, which entitles me to a pension. If the funds have been made available to you why will you not see fit to release them to me? I cannot think you would stoop so low as to appropriate them for yourself, to squander colossal sums of money on your own estates and lavish court while I am forced to live in penury.

  I am determined to make a clean break of it and instead of asking for my money yet again I have but one final request to make of you. Will you give me an honest explanation for your treatment of me? At the very least you owe me that much. I confess I am less than eager to hear the answer, but will you grant me this much? Perhaps there is some long-festering resentment that yet gives you cause to deny me. If so I would know what lies at the heart of it. For certain there were times I acted unkindly toward you, but who should bear the greater guilt: I for having treated you poorly, or you for holding it against me all these years? If I was selfish and petty as a child, the same was true for you. Ho
w could it hope to be otherwise for those raised in royalty? I say neither of us need seek forgiveness. I ask only to know the reason for your inexcusable neglect. If your purpose is to exact a kind of revenge, be assured you have succeeded.

  Your sister in good faith,

  Elizabeth

  The room was silent and empty, and as I read over what I had written I became aware of a faint sound as though of muted nibbling or chewing. When I turned to see what it was, there at the foot of the damp wall a rat sat up on its spindly hind legs, gnawing at the arras. I ran from the room and right into Amalia, who had been on her way to see me. When I told her what I had seen she sent immediately for the chamberlain to see to the matter, but something about that harrowing experience brought the same black fist I have told you about to hover over me. For a time I fell into a kind of madness amidst all the humiliation and hardship, became convinced that Frederick must be hiding more treasure from me, berated him for not disclosing it to me lest he should meet an untimely death and I be made to suffer needlessly.

  Amalia remained steadfast through it all, saw to my needs as best she could, served as midwife and chambermaid, seamstress and confidante. It seemed a mystery to me that she should choose to do so.