In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  Oh, God, she thought, what to do? Her natural inclination came to the fore; it was a predisposition that often frustrated her Council. Do nothing. Say nothing. Wait. Never act in anger, lest one say or do something that one might regret forever.

  Still, she must at least relieve poor Robert of the burden of blackmail that Frances was holding over his head. She would have to get Frances married, and quickly. She must graciously allow Douglass to leave court when the inevitable request came. Soon her cousin’s pregnancy would begin to become apparent. Her cousin would be asking leave to retire to the country at any moment, upon one pretext or another. And good riddance! Robert would stay at court; Douglass would go, and no loss to anyone! Douglass and Frances’s father, her own great uncle, Lord William of Effingham, had died earlier in the year; as queen, it was now up to her to dispose of Frances’s hand. She snorted inelegantly. The same should have been said of Douglass! Had she been of a vindictive nature, she could rightfully have thrown both Robert and Douglass into the Tower. Such a rash reaction brought her cousin of Scotland to mind. Well, she was not impulsive and reckless, like Mary. There were other ways to wreak vengeance upon an enemy than by such overt punishment. And what was done was done after all, and worse, it had been inevitable.

  A ghastly moan issued forth from her lips so suddenly that she thought someone else had entered the room. It took her a moment to realize that it was she who was rocking back and forth in the chair where she sat, her arms clasped tightly about herself; for there was no one to comfort her in this intimate heartbreak. Her tears fell like rain. To be able to keen, to wail, would perhaps have helped to assuage this great agony; her mouth gaped wide, but no sound issued forth from it. The pain she was experiencing was beyond description, and beyond such mundane expression. What she was feeling transcended mere grief. Still the words clung to her brain and would not be cast off. Pregnant. Become apparent. Douglass, pregnant with her precious Robin’s seed, his son growing in her cousin’s womb. The agony was exquisite and past any remedy.

  It was strange, she thought, that this was perhaps the first time in her life that the Tudor temper had deserted her. She must do her best to ease Robert’s lot, while never letting him know, and she could not do so whilst in the grip of a blinding rage. The situation called for objective thought and unemotional reasoning. Douglass being sent from court would likely be a relief to her poor Robin; no doubt by now he had discovered what a tiger he had by the tail in Douglass, and was already regretting his folly! And how it must gall Douglass to be unable to take advantage of the title and privileges that were hers now by right as Countess of Leicester. But a secret marriage was just that; a secret. It was scant revenge to that which she would like to have visited upon her cousin for stealing, if not Robert’s love, his hand in marriage. Still, the thought of it was enough to sustain her for now.

  And Frances must be married and neutralized as quickly as possible. It was the only way.

  But still her soul cried out in its extremity. All would be cared for, all seen to, all made comfortable; but what about me?

  She wiped the tears from her eyes and blew her nose. Nothing was ever solved with tears. What were her options? First and foremost, Robert must be protected, both from his enemies at court and from Frances, who sought to ruin him for her own petty revenge. She would find a suitable match for the vixen, preferably one not to her liking, as punishment for her perfidy to her beloved; for despite all, Robert was still that.

  But more than that, she must also look to herself. There were those who were, she knew, laughing up their sleeves at the whole situation. That state of affairs must be remedied. It was never wise to allow one’s power to be undermined; and few weapons were as powerful in that regard as ridicule. She must recommence marriage negotiations immediately with the French. That would deflect attention from the fact that she had been deceived…one must face facts…by her favorite and his paramour. And the timing could not have been better; François, the Duc de Alençon, had finally withdrawn his troops from the siege of the Protestant stronghold of La Rochelle, where he had been fighting the Huguenots. The timing was fortunate for her; no such matrimonial plans would have been countenanced whilst the intended bridegroom was killing Protestants on the Continent. But that was past, and King Charles, no doubt at the behest of the shrewd Queen Mother, Catherine de’ Medici, had even declared that all French Protestants should henceforth enjoy freedom of conscience. For the French such a strategy might prove too little and too late, but it dovetailed nicely with her need to be seen to be actively seeking a husband once again.

  Marriage. Many was the time in the past fifteen years of her reign when she had contemplated it. Nothing had ever come of it because she had not intended that it should. But now, for the first time, she considered the entire idea from a different point of view. Robert was secretly married, but did not know that she knew his secret. Any further importuning for her hand on his part would be tantamount to the basest lie; he was no longer free to marry. But she was free; indeed, not a week went by after all this time but that the topics of her marriage and the succession were not broached and discussed. Her reluctance to marry was viewed by some as the greatest failure of her reign.

  There were only two courses of action open to her, then; to marry or not. Should she inform her Council and the Parliament that she meant to reopen, in earnest, the dialog with the king and queen mother of France for marriage with the Duc de Alençon, some would undoubtedly be pleased, whilst others would view it for what it had always been before; a meaningless political ploy.

  But this time was different. When she thought of Douglass growing sleek at Kenilworth as Robert’s son grew in her belly, the blinding red mist that she saw was quickly replaced by the most baleful melancholy. Why not me, her soul cried. He was mine! But just as quickly as the rage and the sorrow came upon her, so did the answer. She must never, ever even consider marriage with a subject. To do so would undermine her own royalty and that she would never do.

  So what had she to offer Robert, then, beyond that which she had already bestowed upon him? Lands, titles, honors, royal favors. All gratefully accepted, but still he wanted more. And in all fairness, nothing more than his due; a wife, a child, an heir. And now it must be faced that she had nothing more to give. And having nothing, who was she to deprive him of a normal life? He had once, in the throes of one of their flaming rows, thrown at her that it was high time he lived like a man in his own house. She had refused him permission to do so, and he had stayed at court with her all these years. But now he was beyond her reach, and as far as it went, she must give up, give in, let him go. But the very thought seemed to tear the heart from her breast, and again she experienced that visceral inner cry, from the very core of her being…what about me? Give him up…it may come to that…but merciful Christ, not yet, please, not yet!

  And then the vicious cycle of her thoughts would come full circle back to the inevitable situation, the unavoidable circumstances. At the thought of Robert and Douglass sharing the contentment of marriage, taking joy in their child, and merciful Christ! …sharing a bed, her blood began to simmer dangerously. But just as quickly as her ire flared, it died. That bell had been rung; he was married. It could not be undone. She must accept, and move on.

  That decision evoked for her the vision of a future that was almost too terrible to contemplate. Everyone, even perfidious Frances, would marry, enjoy children, and live their lives. Whereas she would go virgin to her grave, husbandless, childless, her life lacking in so many ways. Many envied her crown; would that they could see her misery at this moment, when the long vista of a lonely life appeared before her in her mind like a Passion Play. It would be a solitary march to the grave, watching whilst others enjoyed the pleasures of a normal life. She would have her crown, but nothing more, save the love of her people. And while she valued that love very highly, it was no substitute for true companionship.

  Or she could marry, produce an heir, secure the Tudor succes
sion.

  If she were to marry, which so many had been clamoring for her to do for such a long time, it would be impossible to please everyone with her choice of husband. There was no point even in trying. But if marriage there must be, not only to save her face, but for the political reasons so familiar to royalty, then François, Duc de Alençon, was certainly a most viable candidate. He was known to be flexible in his religion. He was twice removed from the throne of France, so there ought to be fewer of the concerns that had plagued her negotiations for the hand of the Duc de Anjou. She had no desire to be queen of any realm save her own, and she wanted no sort of husband who would haughtily view himself as a reigning king simply because he had married a reigning queen. The whole debacle of Mary’s marriage to their cousin Darnley flitted through her mind. Never would she countenance such a thing. That was the beauty of the idea of marriage to Alençon.

  She knew, through Walsingham’s spies, that François was unhappy at the French court; he would be more than willing to live in England. He was royal, and no subject. And although he had fought the Huguenots at La Rochelle, he had done so only at his brother’s command. She was convinced that one of the reasons for his failure to take the city was the innate half-heartedness of his attempt. In her judgment, he was neither Catholic nor Protestant; perhaps he could be won over to the faith as it was practiced in England. Lastly, such a match had every chance of cementing a lasting accord with an ancient enemy.

  On the other hand, Alençon was twenty-two years her junior. She was old enough to be his mother. There had been eleven years between her sister Mary and King Philip of Spain, on the wrong side; their marriage had been a pathetic disaster. Her father’s marriage to his Spanish queen had ended in disaster because Katharine of Aragon had been a mere six years older. Her courses had ceased and she had lost her looks long before her golden youth of a father had begun to show his age. Her Aunt Mary had also once contemplated such a match, with Philip’s own father; she had been only four years older than her intended bridegroom, and still the match had been ridiculed. So she must be prepared for the inevitable scorn at the idea of her marriage at forty to a boy of eighteen. But that very difference would likely make it easy for her to rule him. And from what she had heard, physically, Alençon was the antithesis of handsome Robert. He was small of stature and his face was marred by the small pox. Well, neither of them should scorn the other for that, she thought, lifting a hand to her pitted face. His military prowess was questionable. Also, he was seemingly disliked by his own family; she was not certain but that that might be a point in his favor! But all in all, an object more for pity than the heady anticipation of fulfillment that marriage ought to have been.

  The alternative was one that she had contemplated once before, when she had first ascended the throne and the men around her had not fully understood or accepted her determination not to take a husband. She had read ancient myths and legends of perpetual virginity in her Greek and Latin studies. The women who chose such a life were revered, held in awe, as if their abstinence from the delights of the flesh bestowed upon them some magical power. But she had come to realize that the power was real only because people believed that it was, not because it was so. The key to the enigma of the Vestal Virgins of Rome was that their chastity was believed to have a direct bearing upon the well-being of the Roman state. So should it be with herself and England. Men were easily led; she would begin to introduce, subtly, gradually, the idea that her own self-imposed purity was essential to the preservation of England. She would build a following that believed in her mystical powers as a virgin queen.

  Or she could marry. The decision was her own to make and no one else’s.

  The fire was out and the room was bone-chillingly cold. Her women knew better than to intrude on her in her privy closet, and so no one had come all this long while to disturb her. The hall would be deserted by now; her courtiers would assume that she had been detained on some urgent matter of royal business. Even the time for her elaborate evening ritual of disrobing and preparing for bed was long past.

  She arose and walked to the window of her privy chamber. It was late, and all but a few of the torches had been extinguished. But the boatmen were still plying their trade on the river, and would continue to do so as long as there were passengers willing to pay. The little boats, each with its swinging lantern, resembled so many fireflies in the night as they made their way up, down, and across the river. With a deep sigh, she turned from the window to face the inky darkness of the room, and in the short space of time that this movement took, she had made up her mind.

  Windsor Castle, March 1574

  Elizabeth placed a cool hand upon Christopher Hatton’s fevered brow. He was still so damnably hot! If the spots did not appear soon, he was sure to die. Well, she thought, that he shall not do!

  Her Council was beside themselves with anxiety that she herself was attending her Lord Chamberlain in his sickroom. But who better to do so, than one who had already suffered the scourge of the small pox? No one had ever heard of a survivor of the deadly disease becoming infected a second time. And Christopher had become very dear to her.

  It was March and very chilly, even though she had moved him to the warmest rooms on the south side of the castle. The fire was heaped, but she arose and added another log to it anyway. Keeping the room as warm as possible was very important, just as it was vital to give him as much to drink as he would take, and to ensure that the red flannel stayed up on the windows. All of this advice had been given to her, and to her physicians and apothecaries, by that stubborn German doctor, Herr Burkhardt, when she had been so desperately ill herself. Had she heeded the good doctor’s advice sooner, she might not now have to spend an hour every morning having her face painted so meticulously by Mrs. Frankwell. Her pitted skin was the result of her own stubbornness. It could have been worse; she might have suffered the full horror of the disease, as poor Mary Sidney had. But she had survived, and she meant to ensure that dear Christopher not only survived and recovered, but did so with his beauty unmarred.

  She had been informed of his illness on the first morning he had failed to appear to perform his duties as chamberlain. She had gone immediately to his bedside and refused to leave it, calling for blankets, red flannel, flagons of well-watered wine, and logs for the fire. And so it had been for three whole days. He was so ill that he did not even know she was there. No one else dared to enter his sickroom for fear of contracting the dreaded disease, nor would she have permitted any to enter. Her dear Mutton, her Sheep, her Poor Lamb, needed rest and quiet.

  She mopped Christopher’s brow with a cool vinegar cloth; when that was done she laid the cloth aside and sat holding his hand in her own. He moaned softly, but otherwise remained senseless.

  ###

  On that dreadful night in December at Greenwich her women had become concerned that she had not emerged from her Privy Closet, even to be made ready to sleep for the night. Loath to take the responsibility upon themselves of disturbing the queen against her strict orders, and unsure of what to do, they had fetched Hatton. As Gentleman of the Bedchamber, it seemed the only thing to do.

  How long she stood there in the dark after turning her back to the window on that long, miserable night at Greenwich, how long she stood staring into the smoldering embers of the fire that was now all but gone out, she never knew. And then a light tapping had sounded upon her door. She knew that those without must be concerned about her, but still, it was a brave person who disobeyed an order of hers. She sighed again. No display of temper at being disobeyed would manifest itself on this sad night. She had not the heart to rail at anyone. She walked to the door and reached out a hand to open it; it seemed a strange thing to do, because she very rarely opened a door.

  She blinked like an owl for a moment; the outer chamber was still brightly lit. But there was no mistaking her brave intruder. It was Hatton. And quite right, too. It was the duty of the Gentleman of the Bedchamber to ensure that all was well with
the queen’s apartments, and that included the queen herself if needs be.

  They stood for a moment in silence, her face lit by the bright room beyond, Hatton’s backlit and in shadow.

  She knew that it was time; she must now go forth from the protective cocoon of her privy chamber and face what was to come now that she knew the worst. But still she stood rooted to the spot; she simply could not bring herself to take that first step over the threshold to the room beyond. She could not see Hatton’s face with the light behind it, but he could see hers; swollen with weeping, tear-streaked. So now she knew what everyone else had known for quite some time, and the knowledge of it had devastated her.

  Neither spoke.

  Suddenly Elizabeth turned on her heel and strode back into the darkness of her private room. Hatton hesitated only for a moment that seemed as if it lasted an eternity; and then he entered the room and closed the door softly behind him.

  She stood at the window, looking out over the vast darkness and the blanket of stars in the night sky. He had loved her from the first moment he had ever seen her; tall, lithe, with flaming red hair and skin like alabaster. And the first time he had ever swung her up in a raucous galliard (he had never been quite so close to her before!), her golden eyes had transfixed him. He had vowed to himself, in the short space of time between when he had grasped her waist, lifted her up and then set her gently back down upon the floor, that he would love her forever; not simply as England’s beloved queen, but as a faithful knight devotes himself unselfishly to his liege lady. It doomed him forever to an ideal, to an unrequited love, to admire her from afar with no expectations and no hope of reward. But he had done so gladly. Many wondered why he had never married. The truth was, he simply could not bring himself to do so. What would be the point?