The Marriage Game: A Novel of Elizabeth I

by Weir, Alison

  Elizabeth too was upset. Heneage’s insinuation that Robert had betrayed her had struck at her heart and she had lashed out accordingly. But on reflection – which did take several days – she concluded that the slur had been born of sheer malice and envy. No wonder Robin was hurt.

  She summoned him, and there was yet another tearful reunion. Robert thought it augured well for the future. It was plain that she could not do without him.

  1566

  In the name of friendship, King Charles had graciously decided to bestow the Order of St Michael – France’s highest order of chivalry – upon two of Elizabeth’s subjects, the choice to be hers. She named Leicester and Norfolk – Leicester because she needed once more to placate him for her failure to name the day, and Norfolk to pre-empt any jealousy. She need not have bothered. Norfolk was so resentful of Leicester receiving the honour that it took all her powers of persuasion to stop him from boycotting the investiture.

  Robert was – almost – certain that the ceremony was a prelude to the announcement of his forthcoming marriage to the Queen. But Candlemas came and departed without Elizabeth mentioning marriage at all, let alone making a proclamation.

  ‘How many more times will you break your word?’ he raged.

  Elizabeth sighed. ‘Robin, be patient, just for a little longer. This is a delicate time in regard to foreign negotiations. And to please me, pretend to support the Habsburg marriage.’

  ‘Very well,’ he flung back. ‘Marry the Archduke, for the sake of your realm. Don’t worry about me.’

  ‘I commend you for your selflessness,’ she said, deliberately ignoring his sarcasm.

  He could not believe it when, later that day, he saw her brazenly flirting, in full sight of himself, with the gallant Earl of Ormond. It was too much. After another violent quarrel, heated sufficiently, it seemed, to make the very walls combust, he left court.

  He had had enough, he told himself, as he rode furiously to his house at Kew. He was weary of strife and the intrigues of the court, and Elizabeth’s endless, tortuous games. He was sick of being blamed for her failure to marry, even though he had urged her to do so countless times. Everyone marked his failings, never his better qualities.

  Cecil wrote to him, as did Throckmorton. Feeling genuinely sorry for him, and concerned that the only really viable husband for the Queen was out of her sight, and possibly – this was even more worrying – out of her mind, they kept him updated on state affairs. Robert wrote to Cecil that he despaired of Elizabeth ever marrying, and was taken aback to read that she was still in a vile mood, and that, if he took Cecil’s advice, he would stay away from court, lest he incur any more blame. When he thought about it, in truth he was glad to do so.

  The trees were in bud, and a light March breeze was in the air when Cecil brought Elizabeth a letter bearing the Queen of Scots’ seal. She read it with mounting horror.

  ‘God’s death!’ she swore. ‘Rizzio has been murdered.’

  According to Mary, Darnley and many of the lords who had once opposed him had burst in upon her as she was having supper with Rizzio and a few friends. There had been an unseemly brawl, with Mary’s very life being threatened. One conspirator had even rammed a chair into her belly – and she six months gone with child. Darnley had held her fast as the lords dragged a frantic Rizzio from her presence and stabbed him to death, fifty-six times. Mary had then found herself a prisoner, for the lords had got Darnley on their side by promising him that he could rule in her name, but she had persuaded him – with truth, no doubt, given what Elizabeth knew of these turncoats – that they had no intention of keeping their word. Together she and Darnley had escaped, and now, thanks to the support of the loyal and trusty Earl of Bothwell, she had reasserted her authority and the traitors were in flight. But it had been a close thing.

  Elizabeth shuddered; in fact she could not stop trembling. That a queen, answerable only to God, should be disparaged and threatened thus was scandalous, and treason of the highest order. She too was a queen. What would it take to make her lords plot against her in such a way? Not that she could imagine it, for she ruled by their love, but it was a salutary warning. You did not take these things for granted. She had been right all along not to marry. Darnley’s base example proved that. But he, arrogant fool that he was, had been a mere pawn in the conspirators’ hands. What had happened proved that Mary was isolated and vulnerable – and that made Elizabeth feel vulnerable too.

  Loudly she voiced her horror at the way that Mary had been treated. She attached her miniature of the Scottish Queen to a chain and wore it at her waist to proclaim her solidarity with her dearest sister. She told Silva, ‘Had I been in her place, I would have taken my husband’s dagger and stabbed him with it!’ Seeing his aghast expression, which clearly told her that he believed her capable of it, she hastened to add, ‘Of course, I would never do such a thing to the Archduke!’

  She wrote to Mary; there was a new kindness between them. She wished her dear sister a happy hour (Heaven knew the poor woman had few enough of them), praying that God would send her only short pains when she bore her child. ‘I too am big with desire for the good news,’ she concluded – and meant it.

  Still feeling vulnerable, she sent one of her ladies to summon Robert, with a message complaining of his unkindness. As she had hoped, he came to her, full of apologies, and they made up their quarrel, as they had the many that had preceded it, but during his absence there had grown a distance between them.

  ‘Never again will I permit you to leave my side,’ Elizabeth declared.

  ‘I am yours to command,’ Robert answered formally, still smarting from having had to apologise for what she had done – or, rather, not done.

  ‘God’s blood, Robin, must you be so stiff with me?’ she exploded.

  ‘I am your devoted servant, you know it,’ he answered, with more warmth than he felt.

  She sighed. ‘I want more than that, and you know it.’

  ‘All I ask is that you show the world that you hold me in some esteem,’ he replied.

  She promised that she would. She assured him that she would never humiliate him publicly again. She kept him once more at her side, showed him the same favour as of old, and did her best – not very successfully, for she was born to it – to cease flirting with her other admirers; all the same, they did not fall into their old easiness with each other.

  In April, unable to bear the situation any longer, Robert craved leave to visit his estates in Norfolk.

  ‘Is this how you repay me for my favour?’ Elizabeth challenged him.

  ‘Bess, I must go. Pressing business calls me, otherwise I would not leave you for the world.’ But his words lacked conviction. She let him go.

  No sooner had he arrived in Norfolk than a letter from her caught up with him. He read it, appalled. What had he done to deserve such a stinging, vicious rebuke? He had never meant to offend her. Surely the coolness between them was as painful for her as it was for him, and she, like he, welcomed the respite. Did his long service and his years of devotion and loyalty count for nothing? He had tried, God, he had tried, just to find his way back to how it had once been between them, and those heady days of love and glory. But he was beginning to think that it might be impossible to recapture that. If you had to try so hard, maybe the moment had gone. And maybe Elizabeth knew it too. He was so grieved that he wanted to crawl into a cave, or even a tomb – somewhere, anywhere, he could find oblivion.

  Then a fresh summons came. The Queen commanded his return to court. He went with a leaden heart, not knowing what to expect, and not daring to hope. But hope, as it proverbially does, sprang anew when he was informed that she would receive him in private, and it leapt for joy when she stretched out her hands, her eyes full of tears. This time, he would not be the one doing the apologising.

  ‘The Queen of Scots is lighter of a fair son,’ Elizabeth announced. She had emerged from the council chamber, visibly trembling. ‘Cecil told me.’

  ‘A
n heir to Scotland,’ Robert said. ‘I am glad for Queen Mary, poor lady. She has suffered much.’ And to think that the child could have been his! He could have been father to the future King of Scots. He felt the usual pang when he thought of his childlessness. He would give much to be the father of any child, king or not.

  ‘Yes, I rejoice with her too, of course,’ Elizabeth said, but her tone implied the opposite.

  ‘What is wrong, Bess?’ Robert asked, but of course he knew the answer.

  ‘For all her troubles, Mary has triumphed,’ she said. ‘And she has done the one thing that it seems I cannot do, for I am of barren stock.’

  ‘That’s nonsense!’ Robert retorted. ‘Do you not think you are being a little dramatic and self-indulgent? As for your being barren, that has yet to be proved.’

  Elizabeth opened her mouth to protest, but he silenced her by putting a finger on her lips. ‘Hear me out,’ he said, folding his arms around her. ‘There is no reason why you should not bear a child, an heir to England – only your baseless fears, which you can overcome if you put your mind to it. You are a normal woman. Your courses come regularly, you know how to feel the pleasure that betokens conception.’

  ‘Is this another ploy to get me to marry you?’ Elizabeth asked, eyeing him warily. Such talk made her feel decidedly uncomfortable. It was not seemly for a man to say such things to her, even Robin.

  ‘Nay, I but seek to reassure you, Bess,’ he said tenderly. ‘There is no ulterior motive, no agenda, just the kindness that has been between us of late, thank God.’

  She kissed him back – a brisk, affectionate kiss, not a passionate one. ‘Thank you, but leave it, Robin. I do not want to think about it.’

  That August the Queen led the court on a progress through Northamptonshire and Oxfordshire. Robert pressed her to be his guest at Kenilworth, and plans were made for her visit.

  ‘Madam, is this wise?’ Cecil warned. ‘People are saying that your arrival at Kenilworth will presage an announcement of your betrothal to my lord of Leicester.’

  Elizabeth looked alarmed. ‘Of course it does not.’

  ‘But that is what people are saying.’

  ‘That settles it. I will not go.’

  Robert protested loudly when she told him of her decision. ‘Just because you are visiting me does not mean that you are going to marry me,’ he complained, with only a touch of wistfulness in his voice. ‘You were planning to stay with Cecil, but no one suggests that you have designs on him.’

  ‘That’s a silly analogy,’ she muttered.

  ‘Do come!’ he pleaded. ‘Prove the world wrong! Besides, I want you to see the improvements I have made to the castle. I promise you, you will be lodged splendidly and well served. And the dreaded word “marriage” will not be mentioned once!’

  Elizabeth thought about it for what seemed an endless minute. ‘You’ve persuaded me!’ She smiled. Let the world go hang itself. What did she care about what people were thinking?

  The visit to Kenilworth was a great success, even if it did disappoint the ever-hopeful gossips, but when Elizabeth returned to London afterwards she found Parliament in a recalcitrant mood. She was in desperate need of money, but her treacherous Lords and Commons refused to approve any new taxes until she had heeded their petitions and resolved the weighty – and most urgent, they stressed – matter of the succession.

  ‘How dare they dictate terms to me!’ she stormed in council. But when she had recovered her aplomb she sent a message to Parliament to say that, on the word of a prince, she would marry. The Lords and Commons had heard this before, too often, and sat tight.

  ‘I will never allow Parliament to meddle in such a matter,’ Elizabeth fumed. ‘I need those taxes for the good of my people, and these fools are obstructing me. They should vote them freely and graciously.’

  ‘If your Majesty were to marry, you could spare yourself all this aggravation,’ Cecil pointed out.

  ‘Don’t you think I am aware of that, my Spirit?’ she retorted, then sighed, slumping in her chair in defeat. ‘Very well. I will write to the Emperor, telling him that I will accept the suit of the Archduke.’

  Cecil almost ran to fetch paper, pen and ink, before she changed her mind.

  Parliament was duly informed of the Queen’s resolve to marry; but until the Emperor responded to the Queen’s letter, she could not reveal whom the fortunate suitor would be – or even that there was a specific fortunate suitor in view. When next she heard, the Commons wanted to send a deputation to wait upon her, to beg her to name her future husband, and her successor should she die childless.

  ‘It is insupportable, what they ask!’ Elizabeth said hotly.

  ‘Madam, they want only the future security of the realm,’ Cecil pacified her.

  ‘That is a matter for me to determine. God’s blood, they would never have been so rebellious in my father’s day.’

  ‘Your Majesty should at least consider receiving the deputation,’ Robert urged.

  ‘No,’ she said mutinously.

  ‘Madam, the Lords support them,’ Cecil persisted.

  ‘They would never dare!’ she spat. But they did. They added their weight to this new petition.

  ‘Norfolk, you and your kind are traitors!’ Elizabeth declared, narrowing her eyes at the Duke as he sat stony-faced at the council board.

  ‘Madam, they but have your good, and England’s, at heart,’ Robert declared. It was unheard of for him to defend Norfolk.

  ‘Robert, you are as bad as the rest of them!’ she cried. ‘The whole world might have abandoned me, but I had thought that you, of all people, would not do so.’

  ‘I would die at your feet!’ he swore hotly.

  ‘What has that to do with the matter?’ she shouted, and stormed out of the council chamber straight – almost – into the willing arms of Silva, who was in the antechamber waiting to speak with Cecil. Elizabeth was beside herself, distraught that Robin had failed to support her stand. Villainy, pure and simple!

  ‘I am so angry with my councillors,’ she raged, ‘and with my lord of Leicester most of all. What do you think, Ambassador, of such ingratitude in one to whom I have shown so much favour that my own honour has been compromised? I am determined to dismiss him and leave the way clear for the Archduke to come to England.’

  Silva, to whom this was manna from Heaven, clucked soothingly.

  ‘My nobility are all against me,’ Elizabeth went on plaintively, ‘and my Commons refuse to attend to any business until I agree to their demands. I do not know what these devils want!’

  ‘It would be an affront to your Majesty’s dignity to agree to any compromise,’ Silva said, his tone oozing with sympathy.

  ‘Yes, but I have no choice,’ she rejoined bitterly. And that was the problem, of course. She could not do without Parliament.

  At length she gave in. She summoned a delegation from Parliament to wait upon her, but, she insisted, the Speaker was not to be of their number. She would do all the talking; she had prepared one of her special speeches for the occasion. And once she had her Lords and Commons cowering on their knees before her, through the sheer force of her steely gaze, she erupted in righteous ire.

  ‘Unbridled persons in the House of Commons have plotted a traitorous trick,’ she said sternly. ‘I am not used to demands being made on me to name my successor, and you, my lords, have acted rashly in supporting the Commons in this nonsense. Was I not born in this realm? Were not my parents? Whom have I oppressed? How have I governed? I will be tried by envy itself. I need not use many words, for my deeds do try me. I have sent word that I will marry, and I will never break the word of a prince, for my honour’s sake. And therefore I say again, I will marry as soon as I can, and I hope to have children, otherwise I would never marry.’

  She paused. Having admonished them, she would appeal to their reason and understanding. ‘None of you has been the second person in the realm, as I have, or tasted of the practices against my sister. There are some now
in Parliament who tried to involve me in their conspiracies back then.’ She paused to let that sink in, and was gratified to see a few looking nervously at each other. ‘Were it not for my honour, their knavery would be known.’ Several pairs of shoulders slumped in relief. ‘I would never place my successor in that position. My Lords and Commons, the succession question is full of peril to the realm and myself. Kings were wont to honour philosophers, but I would honour as angels any that, when they were second in the realm, did not seek to be first!’

  They looked chastened at that. Some were clearly sympathetic at the thought of their Queen being placed in such a difficult position – and all on their account too. Elizabeth glowered at them. ‘You are impertinent to summon me thus; it is for me, your Prince, to decide who should follow me; it is monstrous that the feet should direct the head. I hope that the instigators of this trouble will repent and openly confess their guilt.’

  Perceiving the ripple of consternation that trembled through the kneeling ranks of men before her, she decided that it was time to remind them what she was made of (she had not forgotten the recent experiences of the Queen of Scots). ‘I care not for death,’ she went on. ‘All men are mortal, and though I be a woman, yet I have as good a courage as ever my father had. I am your anointed Queen. I will never be by violence constrained to do anything. I thank God I am endowed with such qualities that, if I were turned out of the realm in my petticoat, I were able to live in any place in Christendom.’

  Her eyes scanned the faces of the Lords. She had scored a victory there, she thought. But the Commons looked mutinous still. They had heard her out in sullen silence. Sure enough, just days later, there were more calls in Parliament for her to accede to their petitions.

  Elizabeth had had enough. ‘Tell the House that it is my express command that they proceed no further in their suit, but satisfy themselves with our promise to marry.’ That galvanised the Commons to uproar, and provoked accusations that the Queen was attacking the lawful liberties of her subjects. Still the members would not vote for a subsidy, and soon Elizabeth realised, to her consternation, that they had her well and truly cornered. What had started out as a plea for her to marry or name her successor had rapidly turned into a war of words over the rights and privileges of sovereign and Parliament.