The Queen's Bastard

by Robin Maxwell

  “What plans have you?” I asked, leaning across the table urgently. “How do you propose to protect yourselves?”

  “As I have said,” replied Don Ramón, “the net of our family is thrown very wide over Spain, and we are prosperous and respected. Whilst this has always been a strength, now it also means more opportunities for exposure. Each of our members must take especial care to anger no one, create no resentment nor jealousy, for if one of us falls, all of us will follow.”

  “We are looking to the possibility of emigrating to the New World,” said Constanza. “Jews are flocking there in great numbers, you know. The King has recently granted an enormous tract of land in the northernmost territories to a hundred Jewish families. Whilst there is an Inquisition on the other side of the Atlantic as well, it is not so active as the one in Seville.”

  “You would leave Spain after all your struggles?”

  “Not willingly,” she went on, “but until times are better, what is important is simply carrying on, keeping our children alive. Little did you know, when you risked your life to stop a runaway carriage, that you were preserving the bloodline of Abraham.”

  I smiled, and Constanza made no attempt to conceal her love for me, tho I doubted her Father knew of that afternoons intimacy.

  “You must tell us the true story of your life,” she said. “But first, we have recently received a piece of intelligence you will surely appreciate knowing.” Constanza then pulled from her lap the letter I had that afternoon given into the hands of the harelipped courier, along with the payment I had made him. I laughed at my own naivete, amused at how easily I had been fooled by a young messenger boy.

  “The loyalty of our servants,” said Don Ramón, “is precisely how we have sustained our selves over the generations. Now, there is something you must know. Your countryman Drake, with a force of more than twenty English vessels, has been sailing down the Portuguese coast doing mischief to the harbors and the ships being assembled in them. He is likely heading for Lisbon, and we thought you would wish him to know of the fleet at Cadiz which has, in fact, come to a point of readiness to sail in the past week.”

  “Yes, he must know!” I cried. “Can you set me on the quickest overland route to Lisbon?”

  “The arrangements have already been made,” replied Constanza quietly. “You will ride at first light. Enrique will ride with you to see to your comfort.”

  I could detect pain in Constanzas eyes at the thought of my leaving, perhaps never to return, and worry about my barely healed injury on the long treacherous ride. She was forced to maintain a brave facade, however, as larger matters were at stake than our love for each other.

  “Now, amigo,” said Don Ramón sitting back in his chair, “let us hear all about your self. First, so we can call each other honestly, tell us your real name.”

  “My name,” I said, vastly relieved to be finished with lying to these good people, my friends, “is Arthur Dudley.”

  Constanza and I had spent my final hours locked in each others arms. Her perfect body, rich in luxuriant curves, sweet, mysterious fragrances, the strength and unreserved passion of her embraces, forged for ever their memory on my soul. When the candles had burnt low, I knew finally that she must go from my bed, and I from this place. She fixed me with eyes which were overfilled, took my hand to place it over her breast and said simply, “This can never be broken, my love, not thro time, nor thro distance, nor thro death.” Then she kissed me once more, rose and left my chamber.

  I dressed, and in what was left of the night walked to the stables where Enrique had already saddled Mirage with the special saddle the Lorcas had fashioned for me. Hanging around the pommel I found a beautiful silk sash. I could see that besides an exquisitely embroidered horse, its legs lifted in a regal levade, some writing had been stitched in below it. Holding the sash up to the light of the lantern I read,

  When God created the horse He said to the magnificent creature: I have made thee as no other. All the treasures of the earth shall lie between thy eyes. Thou shalt cast mine enemies between thy hooves, but thou shalt carry my friends upon thy back. Thy saddle shall be the seat of prayers to Me. And thou shalt fly without wings and conquer without sword. O Horse.

  — The Koran

  Even as the sun began to peek over the eastern horizon Enrique and I mounted up and rode out of the finca gates. I was glad of the remaining darkness, for he could not clearly see my forlorn face nor the silent unstanchable river of tears which flowed from my two eyes.

  Forty

  Three blows, thought Elizabeth, trying desperately to quell the sick churning in her gut as she sliced, a solitary blade, across the frosty ground of Greenwich Park — three blows from a clumsy axeman to sever the head of my cousin Mary. Had she lost consciousness with the first? Please Jesus that she had! Or had she experienced the full agony of being butchered alive? At least her dear mother had felt nothing, Elizabeth told herself. The swordsman from Calais that her father had hired had swept Anne’s head cleanly from her slender neck in one swift blow. No no, she must stop thinking on the horror of it.

  Returning from a hard ride the Queen had heard London’s churchbells pealing merrily and asked a stableboy the cause. She’d been told that the Scots queen had finally met her end, with the added detail that the executioner, picking up the severed head for all to see, had come away with a red wig in his hand, the skull — its lips still moving in papist prayer — covered in a fuzz of thinning grey hair.

  How had this happened? thought Elizabeth. Yes, she had signed the death warrant for the woman who had, year after year, attempted to usurp the English throne from her. Yes, she had signed the death warrant. She had even sent it with Secretary Davison to be passed under the Great Seal of England. But she had withheld the final order that the warrant be carried out, strictly forbidden her ministers — Leicester, Walsingham, Hatton, Cecil — to take that final irrevocable step. Forbidden them!

  Or had she?

  Suddenly Elizabeth could not remember, could not be entirely sure. God knows she had meant to be clear with them. But they had all nagged her unmercifully day after day for years. Argued that her subjects wished fervently — no, demanded — Mary’s death. That if and when an invasion came, her Catholic subjects should never be afforded the choice of rising in defense of a Catholic monarch instead of a heretical Protestant one. That there should be one and only one living queen in England, and that queen must be herself. Elizabeth finally had given in and signed the warrant, but all the time knowing she could withhold the final signal for it to be carried out.

  Instead her treacherous councillors had moved round her, defied her, taken the law into their own hands, laying her open to the full reprisals of the French and, worse, Philip. Oh, they would be punished! They would know her fury!

  A gaggle of cheerful courtiers at the castle steps bowed low as she thundered past them. She restrained herself from lashing out, slapping the smile off a vacuous face, boxing the ears of a grinning idiot. How dare they smile? They were laughing at her, enjoying the hoodwinking of their queen at the hands of her loyal noblemen.

  “God’s blood!” Elizabeth shrieked as she pushed her way through a rustling flock of waiting ladies into her bedchamber, slamming the door behind her. “The head of a sovereign queen has rolled, and I swear by Christ there will be hell to pay!”

  In that moment the Queen caught sight of herself in a looking glass. It was a terrible sight, tears streaking the caked white alum, red rouge dripping down to the creases of her downturned mouth. All I need are some snakes in my hair, thought Elizabeth bitterly, and my ugly, hateful countenance could turn a man to stone!

  Suddenly a worse thought arose. Whilst outwardly she might resemble Medusa, in the very core of her soul she had finally become her father. Murderer of queens. She could rant and carry on in fits of hysteria, blaming everyone round her for Mary’s death. She could cite national security, claim that she feared for her own life. And yet the fact remained. She alone
ruled. If there was one lesson she had learned from Henry VIII and had indeed practiced from the beginning of her reign, it was the art of ruling with absolute authority. Let all others believe she vacillated, that she depended altogether upon the counsel of her advisors, that she was after all only a weak woman. Let them believe. But she was Queen of England, and she knew that every day for the rest of her life she would wash her snow white, long-fingered hands in the blood of Mary Stuart.

  Elizabeth stared contemptuously at her own image, then picked up a small silver trinket box and flung it violently into the mirror, which shattered, with what was left of her peace of mind, into a hundred thousand pieces.

  Forty-one

  “Damn my eyes!” muttered Francis Englefield as he caught himself from stumbling, on the arm of his young secretary, Randall. Making their way down the endlessly long east corridor of El Escorial, Englefield cursed his dimming vision, not only because it had turned him into a clumsy fool, dependent on another for reading and writing, but because he was wholly unable to enjoy the wonders filling the monstrously large and magnificent palace, described by his employer King Philip as a dwelling for God on Earth. Here amidst eighty-four miles of corridors and halls, Englefield could make out only the vaguest forms in the bold El Greco masterpieces or the one-hundred-eighty-foot-long mural depicting the battle at Higueruela. Most frustrating, however, was Englefield’s inability to enjoy the palace’s extraordinary library, stocked with thousands of the world’s greatest books, its high arched ceiling decorated with frescos depicting the seven Liberal Arts.

  The pair of English pensioners moved into the Patio of Kings, which was thronged with masses of people — courtiers, students, friars, fine ladies, beggars, and caballeros on their horses. Randall — Englefield’s eyes — kept up a running commentary the whole way.

  “The Duchess of Osuna has gotten very fat.”

  “Perhaps she is pregnant,” suggested Englefield.

  “No. She has been drinking too much chocolate. My God, an entire army of artisans are erecting statues in front of the church. None of them look as if they’ve slept in a week.”

  The pair climbed the steps and entered the church to find the hubbub of the courtyard altogether absent. The awesome domed chapel of San Lorenzo was still and deserted except for a lonely black-clad figure kneeling at the High Altar under which, it was reputed, the entire royal family now lay entombed. Philip was thoroughly immersed in his devotions, one of four he practiced every day. The cavernous space echoed even the smallest of sounds, so Randall cupped his hand round Englefield’s ear and quietly explained the scene. There they waited, fidgeting for three quarters of an hour until the King struggled to his feet. He turned, saw the Englishmen, and beckoned them to follow.

  As they advanced toward Philip who was now hobbling through a door off the High Altar, Randall whispered, “His gouty old knees are the size of bloody melons. Imagine, kneeling like that on marble. The pain of it!”

  They caught up with the King as he settled himself into a chair in the monklike austerity of his apartments. He had had his rooms designed, it was said, so that when he became too weak and feeble to attend the Mass in church, he could do it from his very bed. Englefield and Randall made their obeisance.

  Philip, as always, spoke in Spanish — the only language he knew. “You have heard that the heretic queen has had her cousin Mary executed — unlawfully executed,” he said.

  “I have, Your Majesty,” said Englefield. “A loathsome, cowardly act.” An Englishman born, and once a servant to the royal family in Queen Mary Tudor’s time, Francis had come to despise Elizabeth, not so much for her Protestant faith as for her continued refusal to release his legally inherited family properties and fortune to him. True, he was a sworn Catholic and had left England a disgruntled man, but she had consistently ignored his written pleas, driving him, penniless, to seek protection from the Spaniards. True, he had plotted with his fellow expatriate Throckmorton to dethrone Elizabeth and raise the Scots queen Mary in her place. The plot had unfortunately been uncovered and Throckmorton had lost his head. Then Elizabeth, unable to lay her hands on Englefield, had taken his properties from him once and forever, giving them to her beloved Lord Leicester. Now Francis was a common pensioner in Philip’s court — his English secretary — and had very little in his life to enjoy. News of Mary’s beheading had depressed him to the point of illness.

  “She’s probably better off dead,” said the King offhandedly. This caused Englefield to gasp involuntarily and Randall, who was much younger and whose loyalties were far less formed, to laugh, though he stifled it quickly. “I did never trust the woman,” Philip went on. “Catholic though she was, she nevertheless had her mother’s French blood.”

  “Then you prefer her son James for the English throne?” asked Englefield.

  “No, I trust him even less. He cares very little for religion but claims to be a Protestant. I cannot undertake a war in England merely to put a young heretic like James on the throne. What kind of son was he, anyway? He made it quite clear that his mother’s execution should not damage his alliance with her murderess. And before she died, I persuaded Mary to disinherit James and bequeath the claim to me. I have heard of several species of animals whose mothers eat their young. Here, the offspring will just as easily devour its mother.”

  “Then you mean to take the English throne for yourself?”

  “In the main, yes, though I shall let my daughter, the infanta Isabella, rule. I am far too busy myself.”

  “But, Your Majesty —”

  “There will be no problem whatsoever. England is filled with Catholics who will embrace us, so says my ambassador Mendoza.”

  Englefield bit his tongue. Mendoza was perhaps the one man who hated Queen Elizabeth more than himself. He too had been caught conspiring against her, and had been humiliatingly tossed out of England on his ear. But Mendoza had, Englefield believed, led King Philip to think that the Protestant faction in England was a minority, which it sadly was not. Even if the King conquered the little island nation, he would surely find there a people who would die before they accepted Spanish rule. Dear God, worried Englefield, Philip would be forced to erect and support permanent garrisons, like those in the Netherlands, to subdue the vast majority of English who every year grew more patriotic and loyal to their beloved Gloriana. It was an expense in manpower and money the King could ill afford. None of this, however, did Francis Englefield dare to speak.

  “What is your wish, Your Majesty?” he said instead.

  “I wish you to compose a letter to the Catholic lords yet in Scotland. Offer them … I will fill in the amount … a great deal of money in return for the promise that upon my subduing England they will, however they see fit, ‘release’ young James from the Protestant lords who now control him, and return Scotland to Catholicism. Then he shall rule that country while Isabella and I rule England.”

  Philip rose laboriously and moved to a table on which were spread three documents, only the middle of which was in the King’s spidery scrawl. He stood looking down on the documents with an expression which Francis Englefield could only describe as ecstatic, transcendent, glorified.

  “The two pieces of my Great Enterprise against England,” he announced with the smallest glimmer of a smile, “may have originated in the minds of my two greatest generals, but the idea of combining them was wholly inspired by God through the vessel of my own mind. God and I are one in this invasion and that, Englefield, is why we can never fail.”

  Francis found himself trembling with excitement. The King of Spain was about to reveal his plan for the Armada to himself, a lowly pensioner.

  “Admiral Lord Santa Cruz several years ago devised a scheme for ridding my oceans of Elizabeth’s pirates and invading England with an Armada sailing up the Channel.” Philip tapped the document on the left of his desk. Santa Cruz’s estimates of the force needed were far too high, but the plan was clever nonetheless. “My brother Don Juan, God rest his sou
l,” said Philip, laying a hand on the parchment on the right of his table, “conceived a plan to invade England with our land troops from the Netherlands. The Duke of Parma has recast the plan — a surprise attack, a short hop across the Channel with an invading infantry. The Jesuit Father Parsons has pointed out to me that in England’s history, attempts to invade the island have been made sixteen times. Fourteen were successful.”

  “And you — with God’s inspiration — conceived of combining the plans?” asked Englefield.

  “Precisely! Yet now all I hear from Santa Cruz is whining and complaining. ‘We should not sail in the winter, Your Majesty. The gales in the Channel will blow us to Kingdom Come.’ ‘We are not yet provisioned. We need more time.’ And from Parma in the Netherlands even worse. Silent disapproval and sulking. The two of them keep insisting upon war councils. Santa Cruz nags me incessantly to travel to Lisbon to view the fleet. But it is unnecessary, don’t you see? Why must they meet with each other or with me when the Enterprise is inspired, overseen, and advised by God Himself!”

  Englefield found that he was still trembling, but no longer with delight. He was no genius, but he saw now that two of the empire’s greatest military minds had serious doubts about this plan into which the King had thrown the country’s every last soldier and resource and ducat. If the invasion of England failed, thought Francis Englefield, Spain was most certainly doomed.

  Forty-two

  Elizabeth finished reading the decyphered dispatch from John Dee and laid it down on the silver-topped table to allow Mary Ashby to place several rings on the finger of her right hand. All round in her bedchamber, waiting ladies added final touches to her immaculate morning toilette and began restoring the room to order after the elaborate ritual of dressing the Queen. But she was blind to it. All she could see was the impact of the letter. England was finally, irrevocably on the brink of war with the richest and most powerful nation on earth. No longer could she evade or postpone it. She’d finally come to admit that the Duke of Parma’s continuing peace negotiations with her Privy Council were a sham, meant only to pacify Elizabeth. The evidence pouring in from Walsingham’s spies had become too overwhelming for her to ignore, or pray that she could somehow reverse.