He saw Elizabeth’s eyes glistening, softening, her mouth trembling.
Finally she spoke, each word a dagger finding its mark in the softness of Dudley’s heart. “Get out of my sight.”
A long breath, a sigh, escaped him. Then Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, bowed, not stiffly or awkwardly as a man dismissed and disgraced might do, but with the grace of a proud cavalier paying high homage to his beloved sovereign.
“As you will, Your Majesty,” he said, and never taking his eyes from the Queen’s mournful face, backed slowly from her chamber.
Twenty-three
Slate grey skies oversaw the winter afternoon. Bitter wind whipped down through the Sierra de Guadarrama onto the desolate plain below. It was a day to mirror exactly the soul of the world’s greatest king. Shrouded in black, cloak flapping round his wind-bitten face, Philip of Spain sat alone, perched like a raven upon a throne hewn from rock and set into the hillside. Spread out before him was the work of his lifetime — construction of a sprawling stone monastery which when completed would serve as his palace and home. Ten years had the builders been building, with ten more before they would finish the edifice he had created. Called El Escorial, the massive greenish granite monument was shaped like a gridiron — the instrument of torture upon which the King’s patron, St. Lawrence the Martyr, had been put to death. But the forbidding building was more than a mere palace or monastery. Like some aging Egyptian pharaoh, Philip was overseeing the construction of his own tomb. Indeed, it was to be not only his own place of burial, but one in which he would gather the mortal remains of his entire family, and lay them to final rest. Now he became morbid thinking about their deaths.
His father the emperor, the most magnificent ruler the world had ever known, had ended his life in a spartan cell in the monastery of Yuste. He had died broken in spirit, failed in his quest to unite the world in Christianity. Philip had adored his father, his teacher, his inspiration — and at the same time hated this giant whose legendary greatness Philip could never hope to equal.
As for Don Carlos, Philip’s prisoner, he had descended ever deeper into madness. He had starved himself into a living skeleton, then slept naked on a bed of ice in the scorching heat of summer. The King’s only son had died violent, raving, and unrepentant. He would be laid to rest in peace beside Philip’s beloved little wife Isabella, who had followed Don Carlos to the grave within months.
If, Philip thought morosely, he had not such important work to carry out — God’s work — he would wish for the peace of an early death himself. Death in which he would be reunited with his family. But for now, the King of Spain would have to console himself with bringing them all here to face eternity.
Though the chill of the rock seeped through his wool tunic, Philip did not move to tuck the cape beneath him, for he felt that the pain of cold was his due. Fitting punishment for the sinner that, despite his many prayers and sacrifices and mortifications of the flesh, he knew he would remain till he died. Yes, he was a sinner — but not as great a one as the scarlet whore of England, Elizabeth.
When she, twenty-three and still beautiful, had come to his English wife Mary’s laying-in, Philip had paid court to his sister-in-law. Mary was worn and old, too old to be birthing her first child. She might die, he had reasoned, and the Spanish-English alliance would of course need to be preserved. If Mary died he would marry Elizabeth, he had decided all those years ago. Elizabeth. She had been so beautiful. No one knew how he had desired her.
Now as Philip sat on his frigid rock throne as he shuddered with the very thought of it. For the heretic queen — his vilest enemy on earth, worse even than the misguided William of Orange — was the spawn of Satan and cursed enemy of the True Religion. He, Philip, had been chosen by the Almighty to visit His punishment upon the English infidels. When he died and flew to heaven, he thought, a thin smile finally animating his dour features, he would find his reward seated at the right hand of God.
Twenty-four
The man riding hell bent before me, I knew with certainty to be a poacher, for I had surprised him in the heart of the forest and some of his filched game had fallen from his mount when the chase had begun. My Father, in pain and sore winded, had dropt back, leaving the pursuit to me. The poacher was either an excellent horseman or exceeding desperate, I thought. He had perhaps poached on these trails before, for he seemed to know the twists and turns of Enfield Chase well enough to stay ahead of me.
I saw before the man a wooded fork and prayed he would veer to the left, for I knew in that direction lay a lately downed oak which blocked the path entirely. Yes! He rode into the left fork and within moments I heard a terrified neighing and a surprised shriek. I came upon a scene of confusion — the man thrown headlong off his horse into the tangle of fallen branches, his mount stamping nervously but unhurt. A brace of quail hung from the saddle next to a bow and quiver of arrows, and a hare bulged half out of a cloth game bag.
I jumped from Beauty and stood by as the poacher, a mass of angry scratches, a purple bruise beginning to bloom on his forehead, disengaged twisted tree limbs from his own. I leveled my pistol at him.
“Stand where you are,”I said aware of the absurdity of the command as the man had nowhere to run, trapped already in an oak branch prison. “You are arrested for the crime of poaching in the Queens forest. Tell me your name.” I was no stranger to such procedures for I had, since my fifteenth year, assisted my Father with the most consequential and most hated of all the duties of a Royal Chasekeeper — enforcement of the poaching laws.
The man was of middle age and poorly dressed, clearly no gentleman poacher as we oftentimes had cause to arrest. His face, aside from his current injuries, was lined with the worry and fear of poverty. He stared at me with sad, red rimmed eyes and wheezed with exertion. He was utterly hopeless as he spoke his name.
“Do you know the law?” I asked him.
“Aye,” he answered. His eyes fell then on the stolen game hanging from his saddle and his expression seemed to say, “Christ in Heaven, I have lost my life for a brace of quail and a rabbit.”
Twas then I should have taken custody of the criminal and escorted him to the Sheriff, but I suddenly felt my self unable, somehow unwilling to move in the direction of this poor mans destruction.
“Why have you done this,” I said, “when you know as all men do what punishment lies ahead for it?”
He stood in his cage of branches and stared at me. “Why ask me such a question, Sir, when you already know the answer? Do not all lowborn poachers when caught redhanded cry poverty, claim a sick mother or starving children, and beg for mercy which is never given?”
I felt a sudden rush of shame and pity. “Have you a sick Mother?” I asked.
“It does not matter, Sir,” he said, his arms hanging limply at his side. “Believe me, it does not matter.”
I lowered my pistol then, and the weight of it dragged at my own arm. Then I turned and moved to his horse. I stuffed the hare, neatly pierced at the base of its skull, into his pack, walked to Beauty and mounted her.
“Go back to the fork,” I directed the man, never meeting his eye, “and bear to the right of the bridge. Leave the forest thro the marsh. And never let me catch you here again or you will pay for breaking the Queens law.” Tapping Beautys flank with my heel we turned and trotted away. I heard only the mans grunts as he scrambled to extricate himself from his oaken prison.
By the time I returned to the manor my Father was installed exhausted and snoring before the fire, his legs raised on a footstool. His muddy boots had never been removed and they begrimed the cushion embroidered dutifully by Alice the year before she married. Her husband — a man she did not love — was, tho neither old nor odoriferous like Megs husband, so exceeding stiff and pious that youth was entirely wasted on him. Alice had found no joy in their union but for the three children she had borne him in quick succession.
The fiery nightmare of All Hallows Eve had taken its toll of us all.
We children mourned our Mothers passing, but I confess now I did not truly grieve for her. In fact I found my self for more than a year consumed with unceasing rage towards, if not her, then the madness which had held her in its deathly grip and made a horrible end of my Truest Friend.
With the girls gone, my Father and brother and I fell into the rough home life of men living without women. John stayed home rarely, his dissolute habits growing with every year. My Father did depend upon me for all his daily joy which was scarce in deed, and the burden of occupying that position more and more stifled my soul. My childhood habit of fantasy had died a slow but steady death after my arrest at Milford Haven. For a time I had dreamt that the Queen her self, after our meeting when I was eight, had secretly conceived of an important position within her Secret Service for me, and was keeping close watch over my growth into manhood, sending her Guard when it seemed I had gone too far astray. But that dream faded when in several years time her summer Progress came near to Enfield but she did not choose to visit the Chase … or her young agent Arthur Southern. Nor did the Privy Council ever again come to rescue me from any trouble. So by my eighteenth year the pull of a mans life outside of Enfield had become unbearably strong, the ties to my Father and the Chase stretched taut to breaking.
Horses still reigned supreme in my small country existence. I had died more than a little when Charger passed out of this life. I believed that no other four legged beast would ever take that brave stallions place. The black mare I now rode, given me by my Father, was smart as she was handsome as she was strong. They say black horses lack a good mouth — and that was true of Beauty — but of the spookiness and treachery attributed to them, I had never seen evidence. I know that she did never perform for me out of love but from duty and good habit instead.
With my Father slow and weak as he was becoming, and with my brother almost entirely absent, I was happily left the task of backing and training all new mounts which came into the stable. Not a man in the parish agreed or approved of my strange method — eschewing torture, and managing a horse into compliance with my wishes by means of a gentle dance I had created twixt the untamed beast and myself, a dance of posture and attitude, of bold concert eye to eye. To my neighbors chagrin all horses under my care learnt the dance and were quickly backed tho never — would I allow it to be said — broken.
My Father stirred in his chair and woke, clearing his throat and chest, and asked had the poacher been caught and properly dealt with. I lied so handily, claiming he had managed somehow to evade me, that I felt a pang of conscience for it, wondering if God would punish me on two accounts. For failing my duty to the Queen, as well as the blatant untruth I had uttered. My Father seemed, however, less concerned with my failure than I supposed he would be. He just stared at me, his eyes softening as tho the very sight of me completed him. I saw suddenly and clearly that the cause of his disinterest in the fate of the poacher was a deep weariness, the slow uncoiling of his soul. I pulled off his boots and kneaded his stockinged feet tween my hands. He groaned with pleasure.
“You are a good boy, Arthur,” he said and smiled weakly. “A good boy. My son.”
That evening I rode to the village ale house, as had lately become my custom. The Sows Belly was small and stank of piss and stale beer, and was dark as a witches cunt. But it was in the heart of Enfield Towne and was as lively a place as could be found for many miles round. I knew I would find my brother there, eyes bloodshot and bleary, lolling drunkenly cross a table, too far gone even for gaming and gambling.
I had lately come to love dice, and my friends were already there squatting in a corner, whooping and shouting as the bones clicked and clattered against the wall. They were all sons of farmers, all young men I had met at the shire muster the year I had become liable for military service. Side by side on the village green, outfitted in armor brought from home, we had practiced firing clumsy arquebuses and learnt to march in good order, trying hard not to laugh aloud at the Muster Master. He was a spindly, spectacled Justice of the Peace other times, but for that week of the year he was commissioned by the Crown to whip the county men from sixteen to sixty into a fighting force.
We lads came away from the muster with a friendly bond and a shared love of the dice. We therefore conspired to meet at the Sows Belly, as often as our chores would allow. Whilst we drank, as all med did, we were moderate in our habits and refrained from loutish behavior, tho if a general ruckus did break out we did not shirk from the pleasure of a little brawling.
This night I had played and lost most consistently and so broke from my friends to swig a cup of ale in a solitary corner. Shortly thereafter into the publick house strode two strangers. All eyes fell on them suspiciously, till stepping up to the bar they ordered their drinks and showed us clearly they were not foreigners but English.
Visitors were rare in Enfield and I could see questions brewing in all the local patrons eyes. Who were these two? Were they brothers or simply travelling companions? Were they gentlemen or of lesser rank? I saw Harold Morton peer out the window to examine the horseflesh they had ridden in on. Where were they from? Why were they passing thro this village, how long did they intend to stay? And where were they headed?
I sat up straighter as I realized to my surprise that the strangers, cups in hand, were heading for my bench and table. They smiled in a friendly way and so I smiled back and with a gesture bade them sit. They were I soon found — for they were as talkative and good natured as men could be — bound for soldiering in the Netherlands.
I sat enraptured listening to their tales, most especially Hirst who had been to war once already as a volunteer, had been injured, sent home and was now returning to serve with his good friend Partridge. This man was well named, for he was tubby and soft featured, and his round birdlike eyes seemed never to blink.
“Aye tis hard, the life of a soldier,” proclaimed Hirst, a tall rangy man with craggy cheeks and a thick head of hair within which were crawling a large company of tiny creatures. He downed his ale in a long gulp. “And harder still in the Low Countries, for tis bloody cold and raw in winter. The watch and ward is deadly tedious, and the food so wretched when you do get it, it heaves your stomach.”
I could see Partridges big eyes growing even bigger with Hirsts description of their future life. Was he wondering, as I was, why if soldiering was so brutal, Hirst was speaking with such zeal?
“We travail and toil over hills and woods and vast flatlands — for the Netherlanders have claimed much of their land from the sea. We wade across icy rivers, lie in fields in rain and wind and frost and snow. But adventuring against the enemy, aye lads, there be the point of it. The best of it. The worst of it. The hacked limbs, the lost lives, making our bodies a fence and a bulwark to ward off the shot of cannon. The noise and the stench of the battlefield. The fine exhausted sleep after a skirmish is won.”
As he spoke I was seeing that fight, hearing it, feeling it, smelling it. I leaned forward clutching my cup. Hirst could not fail to see the effect he was having on my soul.
“I took a Spanish bullet in my thigh, so high up it was, I have not stopped thanking God for my manhood to this day. Well, it festered, so they sent me home to heal.”
“And now you are going back?” I asked incredulously. “For more of the same?”
“Aye, but this time taking me friend Partridge here, to share the joy of it.” They laughed heartily and I joined in with them.
“More brew at this table!” called Hirst. I cannot recall that anyone came to refill our cups, so bound up in the conversation was I. But somehow by the wee hours I had become roaring drunk along with my new companions.
We argued fiercely the relative merits of longbow versus firearms. Hirst propounded to my dismay that the day of heavily armed cavalry was past. Guns, he said, were the very cause of it. We all bemoaned the loss of that shining regiment of knights, the sheer beauty and brave form of an armored man on an armored horse. But modern pellets pierced armor handily, and h
eavy coats of metal slowed mounts when speed was more necessary than ever. All that was left of the cavalry, said Hirst, were the demilancers and light horsemen. That was enough for me, I thought relieved.
“How came you to be conscripted?” I asked Hirst, my tongue thick with more drink than I had ever before consumed.
“He was a cattle thief, due to be hanged,” answered Partridge for him. Hirst glared at his friend who was too drunk to notice. “The judge in our town recruited all the rogues from his prison. Said he could kill two birds with one stone, ridding his streets of riff raff — the sleeveless scum, he called it — and helping fill the muster at that.”
Hirst had quickly got over his irritation at Partridge for revealing his tainted past. “In prison I knew a good many men who took up a life of crime just so they would be levied. Twas a safer haven in the army than roguing their way across England.”
“Now I …” announced Partridge with drunken pride, “I am joining the Queens army of my own free will …” He leveled an absurd smirk at Hirst. “Answering the call of the fife and drum …”
A clout on the head from Hirst silenced Partridge. He slumped into a brief slumber whilst Hirst and I continued.
“I take you for a gentleman of sorts,” he said to me.
“Of sorts,” I replied amused.
“Of course none but nobles can be generals,” Hirst continued. “Tis unthinkable for a common man to command. But gentlemen volunteers do sometimes rise to captain.”
“They do?” I asked, my heavy lidded eyes opening wide.
Now Hirst leaned across the table and whispered conspiratorially, tho I do not know why he whispered, for surely no one left in the Sows Belly in that wee hour cared a whit what he said.
“I know of gentlemen who served abroad, and by ability and experience came to the notice of the Privy Council — tis them as gives commissions. On merit alone these fine fellas got as near to the top as men of their station could dream of. They were given commands of their own,” he added with awe.
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