In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  Elizabeth had seen another pair of eyes smolder in just such a manner; recalling those eyes even now caused her stomach to feel queer. Robert’s lovemaking had always been satisfying, but even she must admit that what she had with Robert paled in comparison to her affair with Thomas Seymour. She often went long stretches without thinking about Thomas, but she knew that she would never be entirely free of his memory. How could she be? For the scene that Catherine Parr had witnessed that fateful day at Sudeley was forever burned in her memory. Thomas had made love to her in fact that day; what Catherine had seen was so real that Elizabeth was convinced that it was that which had killed her stepmother. Poor Catherine had simply lost the will to live after what she had seen.

  For herself, she would never, could never, forget it; the sensations that Thomas had awakened in her had been a part of her life since that day. She dare not ever grant another such liberties, not even Robert (especially not Robert!); she would never have been able to keep such a thing secret. She had simply taken care of herself all these years, and it was that which had stayed her hand where Robert was concerned. She truly understood his plight; none better. It was heartbreaking to suffer a love that was true and genuine, but that could never be.

  ###

  “I like this not,” said Cecil. “The situation grows worse each day.”

  “Aye,” agreed Walsingham. “But there is nothing to be done, I fear me. The queen will not be gainsaid where Simier is concerned. We must work by more subtle means than confrontation.”

  Cecil snorted. “Have we the luxury of time? Already the people grumble, and speak against the French match.” The fire was dying and although his privy closet was small, it faced north and grew chill very quickly. Cecil laid a log on the embers and seized the poker. He stabbed at the log as though it were Simier himself.

  “The people love the queen, but hate the idea of a French king,” said Sir Francs Knollys. “And who can blame them? Even now the broadsheets are circulating, and they are becoming most unpleasant.”

  “That is as may be,” said Walsingham. “But as with His Grace, her father, the people will never turn against her. No matter what King Henry did, the people always loved him. They might deplore what he did, but they never ceased giving him their loyalty.”

  Sir Philip Sidney, by far the youngest of the group of men, gave an involuntary shudder. He had been in Paris at the time of the great massacre of St. Bartholomew’s Day. He could no longer abide the French, and Simier in particular made his hackles rise. “Small comfort, when the whole situation might be avoided if only her Grace would be more circumspect. I, for one, do not understand how Her Grace can fawn upon Simier so,” he said peevishly. “The gossip has become virulent ever since Her Grace granted Simier rooms in the palace pavilion.”

  “I think Her Grace’s behavior shameful and unbecoming to her royal station,” said Heneage. In other company he might not have said such a blatant thing, but this inner circle of the queen’s men were all united in one aspect, besides their love for the queen; they hated Simier to a man, and Cecil and Knollys were strongly opposed to any match with a self-professed Catholic and a Frenchman to boot.

  Of all the men, Sir Christopher Hatton was the one most affected; he truly loved Elizabeth. “And he looks much like the ape Her Grace likens him to!” he cried. “Her monkey, indeed!” Hatton had always been extremely proud of, and jealous of, his own royal nicknames of “Lids” and “Sheep”. The fact that Elizabeth had bestowed a nickname upon a newly arrived foreigner annoyed and worried him.

  Sir Francis understood the petty jealousies, but he was first a practical man and his concerns went much deeper than nicknames and rooms in the palace. “Some are of the opinion that the possibility of a match between the queen and Alençon masks a wider agenda,” he said quietly. “It is very possible that the marriage with Alençon is simply the thin edge of the wedge. I have for years feared a Catholic league between Spain and France. Such an alliance has the potential to be very dangerous.”

  Cecil shrugged. “I am not so certain,” he said. “Such a confederation has been mooted in the past. In theory it sounds plausible but in fact neither country is capable of seeing past its own self-interest.”

  “Indeed,” replied Walsingham. “There are rumors and counter-rumors, and at the moment, no way to really know what is fact and what is falsehood. I have heard reports from my spies at the Spanish court that King Philip seeks only to undermine the French match, which flies in the face of a Franco-Spanish alliance. But one thing is fairly certain; King Henri and the Queen Mother want Alençon out of France, and fobbing him onto England seems the perfect manner in which to accomplish this.”

  “All of this assumes that Alençon is the witless tool of others,” said Cecil thoughtfully. “But for me, I am not so certain that this is true. I believe that there is great danger in underestimating His Grace. I have heard that he seeks to borrow Don Juan’s strategy of marrying our gracious queen only to do away with her, marry the Queen of Scots, and rule a united Britain.”

  “I have no doubt that such is true,” said Walsingham. “It would certaibly explain Alençon’s known league with the Guises.” For himself, he favored this theory, in that if it were true, then Mary Stuart was almost certainly involved. He had been trying for years to trap Mary in a plot against Elizabeth’s life and to use such complicity to have her executed. Only then would Queen Elizabeth’s crown be safe and the realm secure. He had heard of Mary’s candid remarks that she supported the match with Alençon, and why; but he was an astute enough politician to know that even that could be a blind to throw him off the scent.

  “What I fail to understand,” said Hatton peevishly, “is what Her Grace sees in Simier. The man is not the master. One would almost think that he had been sent to court the queen himself! I have watched him posture and flatter, and the queen simper and flirt, until my stomach turns, but Her Grace cannot get enough of it.” It irritated him, who was usually so calm and self-assured. He knew that his love for Elizabeth must remain of the courtly variety; just to be by her side for the rest of his life would be its own reward. The very idea of a dwarfed, pock-marked Frenchman making love to Elizabeth was enough to make him contemplate violence for the first time in a remarkably calm and sedentary life. And yet it could not be denied that Elizabeth seemed transfixed by Simier’s courtship on his master’s behalf, and at the prospect of marriage with a French prince. He knew why; as with many, she was in love with love. Simier’s attention made her feel young again, beautiful and desirable. But in reality, he knew that she suffered from disgusting leg sores, had hair so thin that she now must wear wigs, and her teeth were turning black. None of this mattered to him; he loved her and would have loved if she had not a hair on her head or a tooth in her mouth. But Simier did not love her, nor did Alençon, and should they marry, he foresaw only disaster…for both Elizabeth and the realm.

  Chapter 23

  “She was a lady surprised by time.”

  -Sir Walter Raleigh

  Greenwich Palace, August 1579

  T he mirror did not lie. That was the ugly truth. No matter how one held the looking glass, the same stranger stared back at one. When had she lost her beauty? With the dew of youth, said the cynical voice inside her head, that matched quite well the malevolent glare she perceived in the glass. But fair was fair; her beauty had stood the test of time quite well until she had had the smallpox. Her perfect complexion was marred, but it might have been much worse. That was one of the things that appealed to her about Alençon. From what she had heard, he was hideous to look upon because of his smallpox scars. At least she had been spared that!

  She studied carefully the pits in her skin. Soon Mrs. Frankwell would arrive to paint her face with that mixture of egg whites, powdered eggshells, white poppy seeds and white lead that gave her skin the illusion of the youth and perfection that she had lost. If only her hair were not so thin and sparse! Once upon a time, her hair had been so brilliant and abundant!
Now it was dull and wispy. If only Alençon could have seen her in her youth!

  Suddenly she swung her arm for all she was worth and flung the mirror from her. It collided with the stone hearth. The glass shattered and the silver of the handle sounded a dull thud as it glanced off the stone. It was a childish gesture, but she felt better for it.

  What cared she what Alençon thought? He would serve a purpose, that was all. To think the relationship went beyond that was folly, in so many ways. First and foremost, Alençon was a royal French prince with whom she was well-matched politically. Beyond that, he would be in England on sufferance. She was a reigning queen, two-and-twenty years his senior. And Alençon was no Don Juan; he had no Lepanto to his credit. Rather the opposite, from what she had heard!

  But oh, Alençon’s purpose in her estimation went far beyond the political. On a personal level, he was the embodiment of proof that she was capable of snaring a husband. The insult she had suffered at Don Juan’s rejection of her suit, along with the death of Eric of Sweden, had served to make her keen to enter the ranks of the spoken for. After all, Robert, damn him, had married Lettice! Of her cousin she dared not think for fear of doing murder, or at least of having the deed done for her. And Mary Stuart had had three husbands! Another treacherous cousin! And had not Don Juan died, Her Scottish Grace may well have been vouchsafed a fourth! It was not to be borne.

  But at that her thoughts came full circle, and she began to think that there was a lot to be said for political matches. One’s heart need not be involved in the negotiation. It was true that for a while she had been contemplating marriage with Alençon in terms of love and romance. But could a queen ever truly believe a lover? There were times when she was not even certain of Robert. (Lettice again!)

  But whatever it was that had clouded her judgment was gone, evaporated like a marsh mist, and at last she could see the whole situation for what it was; her negotiations with Queen Catherine for a match with Alençon were no more than political posturing and a tactic to keep the French out of the Netherlands. And should it all come to fruition and result in a Tudor heir to the throne, so much the better. But love was no longer a consideration for her, and quite right, too. She had not survived these one-and-twenty years on the throne by acting like a moonstruck milkmaid. Love was not for such as she. And besides that, Robert had always been her one true love. Love that can survive an infidelity is love indeed. To her, Robert’s marriage to Lettice was just that.

  And Catherine’s conditions for the match! Never had she heard of anything so absurd. Queen Catherine de’ Medici was an astute ruler. A slippery Italian! The French queen mother knew that her demands were outrageous, and they were Catherine’s demands, despite Simier’s insistence that Monsieur was the one who had dreamt them up; a coronation, immediately after the wedding; a pension of sixty thousand a year; a hand in the Government of England; unrestricted religious freedom. Already the people were in an uproar at the very thought of a French Catholic king; the Puritans railed unceasingly against the match at the pulpit and at Paul’s cross. And the list that her Council had drawn up specifying the pros and cons of the match did not even take the French demands into consideration, for the simple reason that they had been dismissed out of hand as soon as they were made.

  The situation in London was so bad that she had decamped to Robert’s manor house of Wanstead Hall to escape the constant shouts outside her palace windows. Wanstead was lovely, but it gave her a special satisfaction to know that Lettice had been banished to Kenilworth Castle for the duration of her stay.

  The entire Council had followed her to Wanstead, the better to continue their debate as to the French match. She treated the entire affair as if it had been a Progress, but the debates amongst the Council members were so spirited that they had twice come to blows. There had even been an attempt on Simier’s life, he who was viewed as the cause of it all. She had heard the story of Simier’s cruel behavior to his unfaithful wife and his treacherous brother; he had murdered his brother and hung him from the castle gates. He was not a man to cross, and the assassination attempt had only served to make him dangerously angry.

  She had always insisted that she would never marry anyone whom she had not first seen with her own eyes; the lesson of her father and Anne of Cleves was still very much alive in her memory. But now that Alençon’s arrival was imminent, it struck her that the visit she had insisted upon so vehemently might force her hand, and could very well end in disaster. In a panic, she sent a jubilant Hatton to the Council, saying that she had changed her mind; she no longer desired the duc’s presence in England. And then two things occurred simultaneously; word came that the French had capitulated on all points, asking only that Alençon be allowed to hear Mass in private; and the Council had sent back a terse statement that things had gone too far, and it would be a serious diplomatic breach of etiquette at this point to tell the French that Alençon was no longer welcome in England.

  While all this was going on she had shunned Simier’s company; but now that she was to be forced to go through with the charade of Alençon’s visit, she welcomed him back, finding that she had missed him. Once the people became aware that the visit was proceeding and Simier back in the royal favor, the protests in London redoubled; rumors that Simier had bewitched the queen abounded. It was all nonsense, of course, but it showed which way the wind was blowing. The people did not want this marriage, and now, neither did she.

  The row with Robert that had ensued the day she signed Alençon’s safe conduct had been the worst yet. But when she reminded him coldly that he was now a married man and it was unseemly for him to throw such a jealous fit, he had looked so truly stricken that her heart smote her. Perhaps Robert had been punished enough. She would go through the motions of the French royal visit, then say a tearful, regretful goodbye to both Simier and Alençon, and the whole chapter would be closed.

  Elizabeth arose and as she did so, the light shifted and a sunbeam fell full onto one of the shards of mirrored glass that lay strewn upon the floor. She picked it up carefully and regarded her face once more in the shiny sliver. And where the devil was Mrs. Frankwell? For she knew that she could no longer face anyone until she had been transformed into the painted, bewigged version of herself that was now all people knew.

  ###

  “Your Grace, you must wake up,” said Simier. Waking the prince was always difficult, but this morning it had proven well-nigh impossible. “Oh do come on, François,” he said in exasperation. “Her Grace shall arrive at any moment, and you still slug-a-bed!”

  Alençon yawned, stretched and opened his eyes. He had arrived in London in the wee hours of the morning, and had scarce been to bed. The apartments of the Royal Pavilion at Greenwich Palace were spacious and sumptuously decorated. The bed was soft and the linens luxurious. He had no desire to arise. And truth to tell, now that the moment had arrived, he was unsure if the whole affair was a good idea after all.

  “Oh, François, please, do get up!” cried Simier, in utter frustration. He genuinely cared for Alençon, but he had his own agenda as well; once François was King of England, he would be right there, advising both king and queen as to wise policy. But all depended upon his carefully orchestrated campaign to get the prince between the sheets of the Queen of England once and for all. “I have sent a message to Her Grace informing her that you are anxiously awaiting her arrival. If you do not arise and make ready, I shall be quite vexed.”

  Alençon threw the covers back and sat up in the bed. “Oh, all right!” he exclaimed. “I am awake, I am sitting. Are you happy now?”

  “You must do more than that,” barked Simier. “Into the bath with you! And if the water is cold by now, do not blame me!”

  Finally the prince was scrubbed, dried and dressed and not a moment too soon. Alençon’s visit had not been publicized, so there was to be no royal welcome; in fact, his visit was an open secret, but it would have been unseemly, despite Parliament’s reluctant petition for the queen to s
eek Alençon as a husband, for the queen herself to be seen to summon him. So there was no fanfare to announce the arrival of the Queen of England at the rooms of the Pavillion; it was, after all, her palace.

  Suddenly she was standing there, a vision of pale skin, winking jewels, and sumptuous dress. Simier was by now accustomed to Elizabeth’s opulent appearance, but Alençon was struck dumb at the sight of her. Even at the French court he had never seen such a lavish display of wealth, such utter magnificence. But there was something else; he had immediately gone down on his knees and thrown himself at her feet the moment he became aware of her presence in the doorway. But as he raised his eyes up to hers, he saw something there, something that few others had ever had the keenness of mind to perceive. It was an uncertainty, a vulnerability. And her skin! Of a certainty, even now he could see that her skin had once been exquisite, but the pits in her complexion were unmistakable. The paint on her face could only hide so much. At that moment his heart went out to her. She had indeed been very beautiful once. She was indisputably regal in her bearing; the sheer force of her personality came through without her ever having uttered a single word. She was, in a word, awesome.

  The silence in the room was about to become uncomfortable, at least in Simier’s estimation, when Elizabeth, who stood transfixed at the sight of Alençon, reached out her exquisite hand with its long, white fingers. Alençon took it tenderly into his own and brushed it with his lips. But he did not rise, nor did he relinquish her hand.