In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  She heaved a heavy sigh. Before she lost her temper, she must try again. It was always best to get one’s way through peaceable means if at all possible. It was a philosophy that her father had not subscribed to, and which had caused her to inherit a nearly bankrupt England. But her grandfather, King Henry VII, had known the value of peace, and peace’s handmaiden, compromise. But there was no compromise to be had this time; one either married or one did not. There was no middle ground.

  Cecil, Sussex and Sir Thomas Smith exchanged uneasy glances. They supported the match with Alençon because they had always been of the opinion that the queen should marry and shift the burden of state onto a husband. Ruling was not for women. A woman’s first duty was to provide her husband with an heir, and for no woman was this more important than a queen. But Elizabeth had always argued that she was married to England. To hold that white, slim-fingered hand aloft, to point eloquently to her coronation ring and to make such a declaration, had been a dramatic and perhaps an apt metaphor all those years ago. And Elizabeth was a past master at the political wrangling that was characterized by marriage negotiation after marriage negotiation. But gradually it had become apparent that the queen had no intention of marrying, and one could not produce an heir without a husband. So it was ironic indeed that now the boot was on the other foot; after years of the Council and the Parliament haranguing the queen to marry, they now believed that it was too late, just at the moment when Elizabeth had seemingly changed her mind.

  Cecil frowned. Tudor women had a long history of inappropriate behavior when it came to men. He thought back to when he was a young man at the Tudor court and the scandals regarding both of Elizabeth’s aunts had rocked Europe. Margaret Tudor had stunned the Scots by marrying a subject, Archibald Douglas, the Earl of Angus, upon the death of King James IV. It was an unseemly display of the lust of the flesh; all knew why Margaret had married him, and she took no pains to conceal the fact. Like most unions based on lust, it ended badly, with Angus betraying her in the end. But Margaret’s unseemly behavior had not ended there; after divorcing the earl, a scandal in itself, she had married Henry Stewart, Lord Methven, another handsome commoner some years her junior. Like the king and the earl before him, he had betrayed Margaret with a mistress. Another divorce was in the works when Margaret died. Elizabeth’s other paternal aunt, Mary Tudor, had secretly married a poor English knight, creating yet another scandal. It did not stop there; Margaret’s daughter by Angus had had affairs with two Howard men, resulting in her august uncle, King Henry VIII, placing her under house arrest on and off for years before finally marrying her off to the Earl of Lennox. The descendants of Mary Tudor continued the tradition when Lady Katherine Grey secretly married the Earl of Hertford, and her sister, the Lady Mary Grey, married a lowly Castle Keeper. And had not Elizabeth disgraced herself first with Thomas Seymour, and then Robert Dudley?

  And now rumors were spreading that the queen had given a key to her chamber to Simier and that she had visited Alençon in her shift. Such rumors were scurrilous and their source was suspect; Elizabeth believed that they emanated from the poisoned tongues of the Queen of Scots and the Countess of Shrewsbury, and in all likelihood, her suspicions were correct. But that did not alter the fact that the people believed the rumors because they had no reason not to. Such gossip undermined the legitimacy of the proposed match, and worked to destabilize the always tentative accord with France.

  In addition to the scandalous rumors about the true nature of the relationship between the queen and the Duc d’ Alençon, there were the issues of his religion, the ridiculous difference in their ages, and the pernicious chatter seeping through from France that the duc was known to take men to his bed. None of this boded well in terms of convincing either the Council or the Parliament to approve the match. But for some reason, the queen could not, or would not, see it.

  One look at the expression on the queen’s face convinced Cecil that he was relieved to be on Elizabeth’s side in the matter. But convincing the other Council members to support the marriage to Alençon was likely going to be a difficult, if not impossible, task. Only he, Sussex, Knollys and Sir Thomas Smith supported the match; the others, to a man, led by the ever self-serving Earl of Leicester, were violently opposed to it.

  Elizabeth rapped her knuckles impatiently on the table. The men quientened. She waited until everyone was silent. “The Duc d’ Alençon,” she said, “is a man moderate in his views and flexible in his religion.” Fixing a gimlet eye upon Robert she said, “And he is of royal blood, eminently suited to marry any queen. Why must you disregard my wishes in this? Could there be any greater stability for the realm than the production of an heir?”

  “No, Madam, there could not,” Walsingham rejoined promptly. “But not with the heir to France. It is unthinkable. The people will never support such a thing.”

  Her Good Moor’s implication was clear; the people had not supported the match when everyone believed that her dalliance with Alençon and her encouragement of his suit was only so much political posturing. That lack of support was now developing into open defiance and was becoming ugly in its expression.

  Just the month before a vile broadsheet had come out denouncing the French match and all but defaming the queen herself. The culprits had been thrown into the Tower, and the instigator had suffered the severing of his right hand for the offence. With this act, Elizabeth’s popularity had, for the first time, been called into serious question. The backlash of public opinion against this vile deed had worried her, but not enough to convince her to abandon her intention to marry Alençon.

  Robert knew better than to join in the denunciations, but try as he might, he could not erase the derisive sneer from his face. He had been sickened by Elizabeth’s unceasing and public displays of affection towards the duc, which had not ceased even after Alençon had gone back to France. She wore the golden frog the duc had given her every day on a thick golden chain about her neck, and she kept a pair of gloves he had given her tucked into her bodice; a hundred times a day she would remove the gloves, fondle them, kiss them, and then put them back. And he knew for a fact that he was not the only person disgusted by it all. The worst part of it was that he, who knew Elizabeth so well, was convinced that her behavior was sincere, and not an act that she might otherwise have been putting on. He believed that she was truly taken with Alençon, and meant to marry him. The very idea sent him into fits of rage for which he had no outlet; he could not expect Lettice to share his views, indeed, he suspected that the outrageous rumors concerning the queen’s infatuation with Alençon came from quite another source: his own wife.

  Walsingham’s concerns transcended petty rumors and impotent broadsheets; his province as the queen’s Principle Secretary required that he manage the diplomatic corps. Monsieur Castelnau, the French ambassador, was pressing for an answer to the duc’s suit, and Simier daily made it known that he expected the marriage treaty to be signed without further delay. Mendoza, the Spanish ambassador, and Philip of Spain, had all along pooh-poohed the notion that the Queen of England was serious about marrying Alençon as so much pretense, and they were nothing loath at the charade; indeed, why should they be? Any tactic, whether their own or someone else’s, that kept the French out of the Netherlands was to their advantage. But now a worried Mendoza haunted the anteroom to the presence chamber and accosted Sir Francis at every opportunity, demanding to know once and for all what England’s intentions were in regard to the queen’s marriage with the French duc.

  “The people!” cried Elizabeth. “Why, the people welcomed their queen back from Dover with such effusive adoration that one could not fail to believe that they wholeheartedly support the match!” It was true, as far as it went; her brush with death on the river had served to place the people in the frantic mood of a mother who had nearly lost a child beneath the wheels of a runaway carriage. Men and women both had shed tears of joy at her return from seeing off Alençon, and children had strewn rose petals in her pat
h. Emotion was high, but the severing of John Stubbs’ right hand for sedition had done much to squelch the unrestrained joy of the people at seeing their queen whole and healthy. Elizabeth chose to believe that the lavish greeting vouchsafed her by the people on her journey home to London was proof of their support for the French match, but it was not so, and she refused to own it.

  Suddenly she stood up so abruptly that her chair was thrown backwards.

  “How dare you defy me in this?” she cried in rage. The tears that started in her eyes only served to anger her further. “Ungrateful wretches!” she shouted. “Have I not been a good queen? Has England not prospered under my rule? Have I not sacrificed my life, and my personal happiness, to the good of the realm? For years I have endured the incessant urging of all of you, yea, and the Parliament, too! …to marry and beget an heir for England! And now, when I wish to do so, to a man, you say me nay!”

  Before her on the council table was a flagon of ale and a goblet; a stack of dispatches; ink and a quill. With one swift stroke the angry queen swept all of it off the table. Black ink sailed in an elegant arc across the room; the flagon and goblet reverberated with a not unpleasant ring as they collided with the stone floor. Parchment rained down like unlikely snowflakes all about the room.

  As if the act itself had served to calm her, Elizabeth placed both hands on the table and leaned forward. In a voice so quiet in contrast with her outburst that the men had to draw closer to hear her, she said, “I had thought to enjoy your support in this, my last chance for happiness, for love, for motherhood.” She did not look at Robert, but she could feel his eyes upon her as she spoke the words.

  She knew in her heart of hearts two things at that moment; first, that in the face of so much opposition, she would not be able to marry Alençon; and that with her words she was breaking Robert’s heart. But at that moment, she had truly ceased to care. After all, he had Lettice to warm his bed; when all was said and done, she had no one.

  Lettice and Robert. And Douglass! Douglass had recently married Sir Edward Stafford, her ambassador to the court of France. By all accounts, her cousin had charmed the French court and was very happy there, even if reports occasionally reached her that Douglass still pined for the Earl of Leicester. Lettice and Robert; Douglass and Edward. Was everyone save herself to know love, happiness, fulfillment? Suddenly her heart was engulfed in a black veil; if she was not to be happy, was it fair that the people who had wronged her should be so?

  As Supreme Head of the Church of England, she knew her scripture: Vengeance is mine, saith the Lord, I shall repay…but not this time! The seeds of an idea took root in her brain and there, at that moment, flowered into a plan of revenge that would be sweet indeed.

  Chapter 24

  “Hurt not the heart whose joy thou art.”

  -Mary Stuart

  The Palace of the Louvre, November 1579

  Q ueen Catherine rolled the brandyweign around on her tongue, savoring its smoky flavor. The velvety liquid tingled in her mouth; by the time she finally sent it down her gullet with a loud, inelegant gulp, her tongue was fair numb from it. Brandy, as it was called in France, was not a drink for a lady. But then Catherine de’ Medici often flouted protocol and etiquette, especially when it suited her to do so.

  As Queen Mother of France, Catherine had few friends and many enemies. But she also had absolute power. And power, she had discovered, was headier, and infinitely more permanent, than the false bravado to be had from quaffing prodigious amounts of brandy. She did not drink brandy for the false courage it afforded one; she drank it because she wanted to.

  Yes, she had few, if any, friends in France where, despite her long tenure, she was still regarded as a foreigner. Ungrateful France! For without her guiding hand these many years, the country of her marriage would have fallen long ago to its enemies. And everyone seemed to forget that she had royal French blood flowing in her veins! Her mother had been Madeleine de La Tour d'Auvergne, a distant cousin of King François I. To cement an alliance with the pope, François had offered her mother’s hand in marriage to a Florentine commoner, albeit a very wealthy one; Lorenzo de’ Medici. And then she, in her turn, had been given as a bride to François’ second son, the Dauphin Henri.

  She had desperately loved her handsome husband, but long before she married him, he had pledged himself to a lady twenty years his senior, and was bound to her with a love so deep and true that it had defied royal protocol, the Church, and even the laws of nature. For many believed that Diane de Poitier must have possessed some unnatural alchemy, some evil association with the Devil, to remain so beautiful even into old age. This was further demonstrated by her unshakable hold upon a man, a king, so much younger than herself.

  The ironic thing was that Henri had never been meant to ascend the throne; he was a second son. His elder brother, another François, had been married to that hapless wench, the Queen of Scotland. And then King Henri had died untimely, and the throne proved too much for poor, delicate François. He died and her Henri became king, making her queen. But she might just as well have stayed in Florence and married some rich merchant. For Diane was placed as if she were Henri’s queen.

  The years that Diane had held sway at the French court were difficult ones for the shy, ugly little queen. Yes, ugly; she knew what she was. Shunted aside as of no importance, taunted mercilessly and called Merchant’s Daughter by those who sought to curry favor with the king’s mistress, her life had been miserable indeed.

  It would have been different had she been able to conceive a child and give France an heir. But it seemed that she was barren. It was the pragmatic Diane who insisted that Henri keep trying to father a child upon his queen. She knew why, if no one else did; for if she did not soon provide an heir, she very much feared that an annulment loomed. Even her Italian relations, who had the pope’s ear, and often, the very office itself, would not be able to help her. King and country needed an heir, and that was that. Diane knew that any new wife may very well supplant her, so it was in her best interests to see to it that Henri kept trying to father a child on herself. And then a miracle occurred. Over the next twelve years she would bear ten children, most of whom actually lived. Only the sons really mattered, and of those, four of the five had survived to manhood. That both François and Charles had died remarkably young she shrugged off as destiny. Henri now sat on the throne, and should he expire, there was still Alençon, her little François.

  Her position as a result of motherhood made her more secure on her throne, but it did not change by one iota Henri’s feelings for her. Indeed, he had none. He was never unkind; he was simply disinterested. His apathy to her was infinitely more hurtful than his anger might have been, and many was the night, after he had done his royal duty and gone away, that she had cried herself to sleep.

  ###

  Catherine eyed Lady Stafford over the rim of her goblet. She was uncertain as to why she had taken such a shine to the girl; weak, sniveling females tended to bore and irritate her. But this one was cousin to the Queen of England, and in that queen’s bad graces. It was simply too good an opportunity to squander.

  Douglass Howard, Baroness Sheffield, and now, Lady Stafford, was the wife of Sir Edward, Elizabeth’s ambassador to the court of France. But for how long? Catherine snorted her derision, but Douglass was busily engaged in the tasks of wiping her streaming eyes and blowing her nose; she did not notice.

  Tender feelings were foreign to her character, so Catherine was astounded to discover that she genuinely liked Lady Stafford, and cared about her heartbreak. In a rare moment of introspection, she perceived the reason why; Douglass reminded her of herself, when she had been a shy, frightened child, orphaned young and utterly unloved, useful only as a political pawn to be used by her ambitious relatives. There was no doubt that Douglass was a pawn as well. But there the similarity between them ended.

  “Why,” cried a tearful Douglass, for perhaps the tenth time, “did Her Grace agree to my marriage with Ed
ward if she was only going to question it later? I cannot understand…” Douglass was indeed an innocent, and none too burdened with brains, in Catherine’s estimation. Must she explain again? It would seem so.

  “The Queen of-a England, she have a plan,” said Catherine. She spread her hands in a very Italian gesture, which had she but known it, often offended her French subjects. Even after spending almost all of her life in France, she still had a marked Italian accent. “How-a you say it, eh? An ulterior motive, yes. She know all along-a that she-a gonna do this thing.” For Elizabeth had waited until Lettice was heavy with child and Douglass and Lord Edward married and in France to announce her evil plan. Douglass had claimed all along that Robert had married her, albeit secretly. Their son had ostensibly been born in wedlock, and had been recognized as Robert’s heir. What could be more plain? And yet now Robert insisted on denying that a marriage between he and Douglass had ever taken place, and being rich and powerful, everyone believed him. She would never forget the fateful day when he had come to her in the garden and demanded that she take the money he offered her to go away so that he could marry Lettice.

  “I was afraid for my very life!” cried Douglass, apropos of nothing. But Catherine had heard it all before; Douglass had confided in her that Robert threatened her life if she did not comply with his wishes; one day she would simply be given too much dinner and life would be through. Catherine believed her; she was Italian and no stranger to the use of poison as a weapon. And had not the Earl of Leicester murdered his first wife by throwing her down a flight of stairs? Why was it so difficult to believe that he would stop at murdering his second, if there were greener pastures to be grazed? And that Lettice Knollys was greener pasture she was in no doubt. Rich, beautiful, clever…the Lady Essex was everything that poor Douglas was not. Take away Lady Stafford’s royal connection and she was just a plain woman with few resources.