The Marriage Game: A Novel of Elizabeth I

by Weir, Alison

  In the end, after much wrangling and bad feeling, her will prevailed, and Parliament contented itself with drawing up a bill depriving Mary of her pretended claim to the throne. From henceforth it was to be an offence for anyone to proclaim or assert it. But when the bill was laid before the Queen for her signature, she vetoed it.

  ‘Effectively, Bess, Mary has escaped censure,’ Robert protested. He had a high colour these days, and was well-nigh purple with fury.

  ‘I despair!’ Burghley groaned. ‘Madam, how can you be so lenient when all our intelligence suggests that King Philip and the Pope are set upon overthrowing you and setting Queen Mary up in your place. And then what will become of us all?’

  ‘I have no legal jurisdiction over her,’ Elizabeth protested.

  ‘Then her imprisonment is illegal.’

  ‘It is necessary!’ she retorted. ‘But I will not harm a hair of her head.’

  ‘Well then,’ Burghley said slyly, ‘if you will not proceed against her, at least make an example of Norfolk.’

  Elizabeth was about to open her mouth to disagree, but realised that she dared not. She had forced her will upon them in sparing Mary, but now she would have to throw Norfolk to the wolves. They deserved no less.

  ‘Bring me the warrant,’ she commanded in a tight voice. They laid it before her, and with a shaking hand she signed it.

  She did not sleep at all that night.

  She had vowed never to go to the Tower again. It was a horrible place, redolent of terrible deeds that had touched her too nearly. But Norfolk was kin, and she felt she had a responsibility. She needed to do what she could for him, to make reparation for sending him to his death, and she was determined to ensure that her orders were carried out. The next day, brimming with guilt and dread, she summoned Robert to attend her in private.

  ‘I want you to come with me to the Tower, now,’ she said.

  ‘Are you mad, Bess?’ he erupted, astonishment making him forget the courtesy due to her. ‘Besides, the execution takes place tomorrow.’

  ‘I have no intention of witnessing it, or of seeing Norfolk,’ Elizabeth said. ‘I cannot explain why, but I want to make sure that the arrangements have been made in a seemly and proper manner.’ There would be no arrow chest for Norfolk’s mangled remains, as there had been for her mother, no provision having been made for a coffin.

  ‘It will distress you,’ Robert warned, concern in his gaze. ‘Let me go for you.’

  ‘No, my Eyes, I must do this,’ Elizabeth insisted. ‘I have sat on my throne for fourteen years now, and this is the first time in my reign that anyone has been sent to the block. I have a debt of conscience to pay.’

  ‘Very well,’ he said. ‘I will stay by your side. But do not say I did not warn you.’

  It was a warm June day, but both donned cloaks with hoods. The Queen was travelling incognito, and refused to take any attendants with her. She and Robert left Whitehall by the road going south, tethered their horses at a waterside inn near Chelsea, then hired a boat to the Tower. As the astonished boatman pulled in where he had been told, at the Queen’s Stairs, the private royal entrance to the fortress, and Elizabeth sat rigid in the cabin remembering how it had been for her when she had been brought here a prisoner in Mary’s reign, the Constable and a detachment of yeomen warders – who had been sent word ahead by a trusted messenger – came saluting to receive their mistress.

  ‘No fuss or ceremony, good sirs,’ Elizabeth said briskly, mounting the steps where once she had sat in the pouring rain, refusing to enter the fortress for fear of never leaving it. And now she had condemned Norfolk to the very fate she had herself dreaded. ‘Where is the Duke being held?’

  ‘In the Bell Tower, Madam,’ the Constable informed her.

  ‘Has he been well fed and looked after?’

  ‘Aye, Madam.’ The officer’s face was impassive, not betraying whether he thought this visitation strange or otherwise.

  ‘See that he is given a hearty last meal, and that a minister be brought to attend to his spiritual needs,’ Elizabeth commanded. ‘Has provision been made for a coffin?’

  ‘Aye, Madam, of stout oak.’

  ‘Good. He shall be buried in the chapel.’ She nodded in the direction of St Peter ad Vincula, where lay her mother and many others who had suffered execution in or near this place. ‘Lay him to rest next to his cousins, my late mother Queen Anne, and Katherine Howard, before the altar.’

  ‘It shall be done, Madam.’

  ‘The axe – is it sharp?’

  ‘The hangman was honing it this morning.’

  ‘Bid him do his task well, and cleanly. Let it be quick.’

  ‘I will ensure that, Madam.’

  ‘Do it, as you love me,’ Elizabeth said fervently. ‘I do not want the Duke’s suffering on my conscience. Leave us now. Tell the boatman to wait.’

  She walked on a little with Robert, past the Watergate, through which so many prisoners had entered the Tower under Tudor rule – but not so many in recent years, she reminded herself. ‘God, I hate this place,’ she said.

  ‘So do I,’ he muttered. So wrapped up had she been in thoughts of her mother and Norfolk that she had forgotten entirely that Robert’s father and his youngest brother Guilford had been imprisoned here and died by the axe on Tower Hill. Robert and his brothers had been incarcerated here for months afterwards, and his older brother John had been so weakened by the experience that he died immediately after their release.

  ‘If you go into the Beauchamp Tower you will see the carving I made with my brothers,’ he said, his voice hoarse. ‘It is our family crest. And somewhere there is the name Jane, carved by Guilford.’

  ‘Poor Jane Grey,’ Elizabeth murmured, shuddering. ‘Come, let us go. At least we can leave at will, unlike when we were held here in Mary’s reign. This place gave me the horrors then, and it still does now.’

  ‘You should not have come,’ Robert reproved her.

  ‘I had to,’ she told him. ‘Norfolk will be the first person I have ordered to be beheaded here – and pray God he will be the last.’

  The next morning she was looking at her timepiece again, chewing her lip and pacing up and down in her bedchamber, when suddenly there came the sound of cannon fire – the guns on Tower Wharf announcing Norfolk’s execution, as they had done her mother’s, thirty-six years before. She fell to her knees, overcome with regret and remorse, and that was how Robert found her. He had heard the guns too, and knew how she must be feeling. He knelt and held her close as she huddled against him weeping, her shoulders juddering. He raised his hand to stroke her hair – and felt only the coarse weave of her wig. His own eyes were moist as he laid his cheek against her head, and not just on Norfolk’s account.

  Negotiations for the French marriage proceeded – and dragged on. The chief stumbling blocks for Elizabeth – or the ones she was prepared to discuss with her ministers – were Alençon’s youth and her fear that France was trying to draw her into a war with the Spanish Duke of Alva, whom King Philip had sent into the Netherlands with a vast army to rout out heresy. France had no sympathy for Protestants, whether Dutch or French – they called the latter Huguenots – but Queen Catherine was as nervous as Elizabeth about having a Spanish army entrenched on her doorstep. And so Elizabeth blew hot and then cold, and her councillors fretted lest these marriage plans go the way of all the others.

  That summer she departed on her usual progress and presently came to Kenilworth, where Robert had promised her a feast of princely sports. They were out every day hunting deer (and Robert was exerting all his charms to pursue a rather different quarry), and were closing in on their prey one afternoon when a messenger on a lathered horse caught up with them.

  ‘Your Majesty, there is terrible news from France!’ he shouted, and Elizabeth abruptly reined in her steed, with Robert following close behind her.

  ‘Tell me!’ she commanded, turning the animal back in the direction of the castle, and signalling to the messenger a
nd the rest of her party to accompany her.

  ‘There has been great slaughter of the Huguenots,’ the man panted, clearly having ridden hard. ‘During the marriage celebrations of the Princess Marguerite to the King of Navarre, the Queen Mother and her Catholic friends tried to murder the leader of the Huguenots, Admiral de Coligny, because – it is said – they resented his influence on the King. They did not succeed, but the attempt provoked riots in Paris, where the people panicked. Then the Queen Mother gave the order for all the Huguenots to be turned out of the city, but before they could leave, the Catholics rose and massacred them in cold blood. They say that four thousand souls have perished. All over France the slaughter has been repeated, and we have heard that ten thousand are dead.’ Tears were pouring down the messenger’s cheeks. ‘Your Majesty, I have seen the atrocities that were committed …’ His voice tailed away. He had no words or stomach to describe the rivers of blood in the streets, the streams choked with mangled bodies, the little children …

  Elizabeth found herself weeping too. ‘This is monstrous!’ she cried, horrified. ‘They are devils. I cannot believe what I am hearing. Tell me, is my Moor safe?’ A known Puritan, Walsingham would have been a marked man; the blood-crazy mob would not have bothered with the niceties of diplomatic immunity.

  ‘Madam, he hid while the killings were going on, and was spared, but he is much shaken. I bear a letter from him for your Majesty.’

  ‘Thanks be to God,’ Elizabeth breathed, but it was only a small mercy in the wider scale of events.

  They had now reached the castle. Having sent the messenger to the kitchens for some much-needed refreshment, Elizabeth, still deeply distressed, called for Burghley and Robert to attend her. Together they read Walsingham’s letter, which divulged more details of the dreadful bloodbath in Paris, and then they debated what was to be done.

  ‘I must leave for London immediately,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Cancel the entertainments and send the musicians home. And tell the French ambassador that he must go back to Paris without delay. I will hear no more talk of marriage.’

  There was a great outcry against King Charles, Queen Catherine and all Catholics when tidings of the massacre of St Bartholemew’s Eve, as it was now being called, became known and spread across England. Elizabeth joined in the outraged chorus of disapproval, but that was all she could do.

  ‘I dare not seek to avenge the Huguenots,’ she told her councillors, her eyes haunted by guilt. ‘We need the French alliance. Believe me, it goes against my stomach, my faith and my humanity to do nothing. I am forced to be a hypocrite, for the sake of policy. Tell me, what can I do to ease my troubled conscience?’

  ‘Might I suggest that your Majesty secretly sends arms to those Protestants who remain in France?’ Burghley advised.

  ‘Yes, I will do that,’ Elizabeth agreed, trying not to weep. ‘And before God, I will do everything else in my power to protect them. Often diplomacy can be more effective than military action. But I would that I could do more.’

  Elizabeth was at Oxford when Fenelon begged for an audience so that he could offer her an official explanation for the accident – as he had the gall to call it – that had occurred in his country. She kept him waiting for three days, then received him in a darkened chamber hung with black, with herself and all her courtiers wearing the deepest mourning. Everyone was silent as he walked forward between the stony-faced, hostile Stygian ranks to kiss the Queen’s hand. Her face loomed pale in the gloom, and her expression was grim.

  ‘I cannot say welcome, your Excellency, for I am not sure if that would be proper,’ she said coldly, loud enough for the entire room to hear. ‘It is my dearest hope that King Charles will clear his name in the eyes of the world.’

  ‘Madam,’ Fenelon hastened to explain, ‘his Majesty had uncovered a Protestant plot against himself and his family, and he had to act quickly to avoid assassination. I assure you, it is not his Majesty’s intention to persecute the Huguenots.’

  No, it was his mother’s, Elizabeth thought. And there was no plot. You do not fool me.

  ‘Such provocation does not excuse widespread violence,’ she said sternly. ‘I wept when I read the reports of the killings. So did all good Christians. However, because his Majesty is a king and a gentleman, I am bound to accept your master’s explanation.’

  ‘Madam, you are most gracious to say so,’ Fenelon declared. ‘Nothing is more important to his Majesty than his alliance with England.’

  ‘I am comforted by that,’ Elizabeth said, relenting only very slightly. ‘I hope that, in the weeks to come, he will do everything in his power to make amends for so much blood so horribly shed, if only for his own honour, which is now blemished in the eyes of the world.’

  ‘I have every confidence that he will, Madam,’ Fenelon said, knowing that King Charles was unlikely to do any such thing. ‘And now, let us proceed to happier matters, such as your Majesty’s marriage to—’

  ‘I do not wish to discuss my marriage when I am overcome with grief for the poor murdered Huguenots,’ Elizabeth barked.

  ‘Madam, the Duke of Alençon took no part in the massacre. He spoke out against it.’

  ‘I am very gratified to hear it. And now, Ambassador, you have our leave to depart.’

  Fenelon went dejectedly. The English alliance was important to France too, with Spain so hostile. God knew he had worked for its happy conclusion long enough. But he feared that it would be some time before Elizabeth thawed sufficiently even to discuss it.

  1573

  The rumours about the Queen and the Earl of Leicester had never subsided completely. Tales that they were secretly married (bad enough), or had children (worse), or were fornicating shamelessly (shocking, but so enjoyable in the telling) were still in circulation. Reports of these came through with dismal regularity to the Council, and offenders were dealt with increasingly severely. Some were sentenced to the pillory, some to a spell in gaol, others to have their ears cut off.

  Often Robert found himself wishing that there was truth in the rumours. He was forty and still single; he had no children to carry on his line or inherit his fortune and his great houses; and as for fornication (he sighed very deeply when he read those particular calumnies), it was years since he and Elizabeth had shared a bed, and for most of those years he had not – fool that he probably was – been able to bring himself to betray her with another woman.

  The truth was, he loved her, and a part of him still believed that she would relent and marry him after all. The more rational part of him was coming to terms with the fact that it might never happen. But while there was hope, he could live with the frustrations imposed by his invidious position.

  In truth, he never had been able to understand why Elizabeth would not marry him. Her fears seemed to be trifles, or excuses, more like. If she had permitted Seymour to penetrate her defences, why should she not allow him, Robert, the same joy? For joy it would be, for them both, he had absolutely no doubt. There were deep bonds between them that would never be severed, bonds of love, loyalty and devotion. In many respects they were like a long-married couple, looking to each other’s interests, tolerating each other’s foibles (although he, it had to be said, was obliged to be far more tolerant than Elizabeth), sharing likes and dislikes, and giving affection and support.

  But it wasn’t enough! And Elizabeth was still egging Hatton on, flirting openly with him. If you believed Hatton, she had led him to think that she loved him above all others. There had even been talk that Hatton had enjoyed what he, Leicester, had been denied for thirteen years now. At the very least she had permitted him some liberties – possibly the same liberties she had permitted Robert. Not to be borne!

  Yet Elizabeth still wanted Robert near her all the time. He was almost permanently at her side when she sat enthroned in her presence chamber; he attended her often when she ate, standing by the table or (when they were alone) sitting down with her; he was her constant daily companion, and she did not trouble to hide h
er affection for him. Much of her flirting with Hatton was done in his presence, greatly to his chagrin, but he reasoned that she probably did it to make him jealous. Maybe he should not be jealous; maybe he should be content with his lot. He was king in all but name: the court deferred to him as if he wore the crown matrimonial, Elizabeth sought his confidential advice in matters of state, much as she would a husband’s, and he enjoyed great riches and privileges. But the very thought of them begged the question: who would inherit them when he was gone? And so he would come around again to the vexing question of marriage and children. Soon Elizabeth would be too old for motherhood – she was forty next year – and he himself was older. He was weary to his bones of waiting for his future to be decided.

  Recently, jealous because of Elizabeth’s intrigues with Hatton, Robert had indulged in a flirtation with two young ladies of the Queen’s household, Douglass Howard, Lady Sheffield, and her sister Frances. Douglass was twenty-five and very beautiful, with a high forehead and luxuriant raven hair piled high on her head – a true Howard. Widowed at twenty, she was ripe for an affair, and Robert seized his advantage, much to the fury of her sister, who fancied him too.

  It began as a flirtation, a game that was never intended to be serious. What Robert did not expect was to experience more than desire for Douglass, and for his feelings for Elizabeth to change. Imperceptibly he found himself longing for Douglass’s presence, the vital warmth of her, her come-to-bed eyes; and he also found himself regarding Elizabeth as past history. That shocked him. How could he possibly feel that way about the woman whom he had been desperate for so long to marry? But, he had to admit, it was true: Elizabeth no longer ignited passion in him; friendship and devotion, yes, and had she been willing he would still have wed her, for ambition was lively in him. Yet the fact was – and he must face it – that she was not willing, and never had been. Could it be – dare he think – that his future lay with Douglass?