None But Elizabeth

by Rhoda Edwards

  On the green, starlings were holding parliament in a tree, as noisy as Westminster. Elizabeth walked out onto the wharf between rows of bowing warders, was handed reverently into her barge by the Lieutenant. How ordinary the place seemed when she visited it, like a village with everyone going about their everyday tasks, Evensong in St Peter ad Vincula, starlings chattering, supper dishes being washed. Somewhere perhaps the man who turned the rack and the headsman were digesting their supper, prior to a pint of ale or a game of bowls. A place where men lived lives and died deaths.

  Norfolk’s head was taken off with one clean chop. He died with dignity and his last words from the scaffold were noble, free from ers and ums. He said: ‘For men to suffer death in this place is no new thing, though since the beginning of our most gracious Queen’s reign I am the first, and God grant I may be the last.’ To which Elizabeth said Amen and wept, because God might be bounteous in His mercy, but to monarchs he was not that generous.

  Parliament still sat and had to be contended with. The Bishops in the House of Lords urged Elizabeth that ‘the late Scottish Queen has heaped up together all the sins of the licentious sons of David’, for which she should pay with her head. They complained of their own Queen’s merciful nature. One exceptionally obstreperous Member had called Mary the most notorious whore in the world. Elizabeth’s own mother had previously held that title. This one increased her will to resist all their demands.

  Lord Burghley threw his hat out of the window in an uncharacteristic display of anger. ‘All that we laboured for,’ he groaned, balding head in hands, for his policy had gone out with his hat. ‘With full consent of Parliament achieved — and lost. A law that would bar the Queen of Scots from the English throne and bring her to trial for treason — passed by both Houses, thrown out of the windows, quashed by Her Majesty. Deferred until the Feast of All Saints!’ He had experienced enough ‘deferred untils’ to make a comprehensive round of the church calendar.

  ‘And who will be blamed? First and foremost I will, together with the other Privy Councillors. We are the scapegoats for the Queen’s tender conscience!’ He must lie down, he felt so exhausted. His gout had kept him chairbound for days; he had to be carried to and from his acrimonious arguments with the Queen, to his martyrdom. He felt ill-used. Elizabeth when cornered gave no quarter. It was her bad blood, self-willed, amoral, immoral. Disgustedly he ordered departure for Cecil House, then, being a tidy man who disliked waste, sent someone outside to retrieve his hat from a flowerbed.

  No peace awaited him at home either, and there was only the Queen’s bad blood to thank for that. His wife Mildred harassed him to do something about the Queen’s public flirtation with their daughter’s husband, the Earl of Oxford. Women! Tears from Anne, waspish words from Mildred, when Elizabeth already filled his working hours with both. The scandalous talk of her relations with Leicester and Hatton and others was bad enough, but now her wilfulness injured his own daughter whom he loved. Mildred begged him to speak to Elizabeth, but at the present time he dared not. If it were not for the danger in which realm and Queen stood, he would tender his resignation.

  *

  It was as if all the jewels in the royal coffers had been showered into a chasm. Below the rocky cliffs flowed the river Avon; up in Warwick castle the Queen watched the fireworks. Reflections in the black water, rubies like eyes of burning fire, sapphires richer than the vault of heaven, emeralds greener than May grass, or anything else in nature except themselves, topaz like transparent gold. Banging and sizzling — the towers of Warwick one moment outlined in red, then blue, green, gold. All their faces transmuted into the colours of gems. Elizabeth, entranced, linked arms with both Robert and Ambrose Dudley, the masters of Warwick, their faces green as Tudor livery.

  ‘Ursus major, and ursus minor,’ she said happily. ‘My two bears of Warwick. All the jewels I have ever been given scarcely equal these.’ She peered down as the river changed from a mine of Peruvian emerald to the gold of El Dorado. ‘King Midas could only manage gold,’ she said.

  Robert clasped her hand and kissed the palm. The Queen’s visit to Warwick on this summer’s progress had been just the success he and Ambrose had hoped for. The harrowing events of the past three years were beginning to drop from her a little. The next day they would move on to Kenilworth for a day or two’s hunting, an intimate, family party, leaving most of the court behind. Since the year of the Northern Rebellion, he had weathered a number of jealous storms. Yet here she was, arm in arm with himself and his brother, and skies were for the present unclouded.

  Kenilworth and Warwick. The Dudleys had inherited places for five hundred years the manifesto in stone of England’s mightiest nobles. Burghley moaned that he was the poorest lord in England, and so he would be if he went on pouring his wealth into the building of Theobalds. A shrine for Elizabeth, where Elizabeth might be entertained on progress at vast expense to her host and excellent economy for the crown. Robert’s own tour of the half-built house had roused in him the competitive feelings such places usually did. At Kenilworth, his own place, she should have entertainments unsurpassed.

  Later that evening Ambrose put into words the question that such successful occasions still posed.

  ‘Do you believe she’d have you, after all these years?’ The royal she.

  Robert was silent, looking down upon the last glimmering of his hopes as they had looked down at the reflected fireworks in the chasm. Then he said, ‘In most moods and situations, no. I think she will never marry. But as you know, the Queen never follows the course we think she will. She needs someone. I would be hard to replace, for all her Muttons and Sanguines and Boars.’

  ‘You’re forty-one; you need a wife. You need an heir. I have none.’ This was a cause of great grief to Ambrose.

  ‘I don’t languish after it. But you’re right, I want a son. I love Philip Sidney as if he were my own, but am often reminded that he is not. I don’t need to tell you what would happen if I married — anyone else, I mean. Permission refused, if it were asked, and all hell let loose if it were not. The Tower. I don’t want to see the fall of ursus major as well as minor. My pretty Douglas Howard pesters me unceasingly to make her an honest woman, but unlike young Oxford I know when my advantages outweigh my disadvantages. Therefore I am unmarried. Here’s to the future, Ambrose, whatever it brings.’

  *

  On the morning of November’s glorious seventeenth day in 1572 Elizabeth leaned from the window of her bedchamber at Whitehall and listened to the bells. She looked up and down the river. Even Father Thames was managing a celebration and had a sparkle in his wavelets, though the sun was reluctant to shine today. A golden day, the fourteenth anniversary of her accession. The bells rang for gladness.

  God-sent-us-our

  Eliz-a-beth!

  Below, someone put two fingers in his mouth and whistled for a boat. A Thames wherry in full red sail swept majestically by, and the crew all waved their hats in the direction of Whitehall and Elizabeth. They could not possibly have known that the tiny head at the window was the Queen — or could they? Her hair was bright still. She waved her hand to them as they passed downstream. Small craft plied like waterboatmen on a pond. A tranquil pond. How peaceful the scene was, with a busy, creative peacefulness. Swans sailed under her window and she threw out bits of bread, watching their long necks dip.

  London’s river. How different England was from the rest of Europe; here peace reigned. In Spain heretics burned in droves. In France heretics’ severed limbs and carcasses had filled the river Seine. Elizabeth shuddered as if she saw dead babies, a hand, a white foot, floating there in the Thames instead of the swans’ reflections.

  Upon St Bartholomew’s Day the Catholic rulers of France had unleashed a fury upon their Protestant brothers which had equalled anything the Spanish had done. An orgy of killing had filled the streets and the Seine with corpses. It was a miracle that Sir Francis Walsingham, her own ambassador in Paris, had been spared. His letters and those
from Robert’s nephew, Philip Sidney, had told a dreadful tale. Thousands had died; men, women and children heaped the gutters.

  Now the English people were like children, crying for revenge, blind to the consequences. They bayed for the blood of her own Catholic bosom serpent, the Queen of Scots. But bloodshed begets bloodshed. God had given Elizabeth a sacred trust never to let the horrors of religious war happen in England. The fate of Mary Stewart lay in her hands and she would never let it go. Let this peaceful Accession Day be succeeded by another and, God willing, many more, an annual reminder of England’s manifold blessings.

  On the morning of November’s glorious seventeenth day the Earl of Leicester leaned from the tilt gallery at Whitehall to watch the Gentlemen Pensioners parade. All the Queen’s men, in black and white. Their newly appointed Captain, Sir Christopher Hatton, was a fine figure of a man. A flock of pied sheep, the Bell Wether at their head. Elizabeth was sometimes cruel in her dubbing of nicknames. It was surprising how Kit Hatton attracted friendship. He was more deserving of his other royal nickname, her ‘Lids’, which by turning a blind eye avoided many of the enmities experienced by those more challenging, vigilant ‘Eyes’.

  But when the Queen dropped a scarf of yellow silk down from the gallery onto the popinjay person of the young Earl of Oxford Robert’s thoughts were less charitable. As Hatton said, the Sheep has no teeth to bite, but the Boar has tusks to tear, and Oxford tore hearts, like that of his wife, Burghley’s little Tannikin. It was hard to contain the Dudley temper over this latest fancy of Elizabeth. The day when the nun of Hatfield had discreetly dropped her handkerchief for Robin Dudley was long gone. The Queen’s favours were very public now. But Robin Dudley was not too old to be put on his mettle, for he, of all the Queen’s men, had lasted longest, and, he was sure, come closest.

  X

  The Thunder Falls

  1575 – 1579

  The clock on Caesar’s Tower had been stopped. The gilded numerals and hand upon the azure dial caught the evening sun and glinted, silent and motionless as letters in an old missal. They were big enough for Elizabeth to see as she rode towards Kenilworth. They told her that it was two o’clock. But it must be past eight; they were late arriving because of time spent hunting in the Warwickshire forest, indulging to the full in the glorious weather. Two o’clock on a summer’s afternoon. Elizabeth realized that this had been done in her honour. Her Eyes still believed that he could halt Time. For the duration of her visit to his house, no one should count the hours and add them to her score — or to his.

  Elizabeth turned to Robert, who rode, full of the anticipatory pride of a host, at her side. She smiled and the smile was a trifle bitter-sweet.

  ‘Was it us, sweet Robin, who clipped the wings of Time, when we were young?’

  ‘Yes,’ said Robert, characteristically confident. ‘And now I’ve chained the old villain until your Majesty leaves Kenilworth.’ It was a splendid gesture, typically Robert.

  The sinking sun made the stones of the castle walls blush rosy-red at the Queen’s approach. The mere was a mirror of black glass, reflecting the ancient trees, piled like thunder-heads, bowing down heavy laden branches. Elizabeth had ridden through fields of still-green corn, rustling and whispering its homage. The rooks called in excitement, coming home to roost; bats fluttered from the battlements. A black beetle on the wing blundered past, unaware of any lese-majesty. Gnat swarms rose and fell over the reeds of the mere. Hot day relaxed into balmy night. Jupiter’s weather; Robert had prayed that no thunderbolts would be loosed. He checked his horse and held up his hand towards his domain, his Kenilworth.

  ‘Re-enter Arcady,’ he said.

  White-clad sybils wished the Queen prosperity, health and happiness; a porter surrendered up the keys of Kenilworth, and Elizabeth took them in her hands — remember, Robin, when we held those keys of the Tower, triumphant, seventeen years ago. Above the open gate stood six giants, trumpeters nearly twice life-size, blowing mightily on huge gilded trumpets. As the Queen rode through they sounded royal fanfares, and if this had been Jericho, surely the walls would have tumbled down.

  The Base Court was deep in shadow now, the mere lapping the stones. The water-lily constellations upon its dark shining surface were modestly folded, for even the great Earl of Leicester could not make them open up their waxy cups in the dark. They were daytime stars.

  The water was black as Dr Dee’s mysterious magic mirror. Since the days of King Arthur, the Lady of the Lake had dwelt in the depths, and none had seen her since the sword Excalibur was put into her hand by Sir Bedivere as Arthur lay dying. As Elizabeth watched, three shining figures drifted slowly towards her, as if they walked upon water, lit by blazing torches, mirrored in the ripples of the mere. The Lady of the Lake and her nymphs had, after a thousand years, come up to greet the Queen.

  When she touched shore, she spoke some verses, ending:

  ‘Pass on Madam, you need no longer stand,

  The Lake, the Lodge, the Lord, are yours for to command.’

  The Lord had summoned the gods to make their offerings to the Queen, determined that the riches of Kenilworth should be unsurpassed. Seven gods and seven gifts, for the seventh month of the year, in the seventeenth year of her reign. The offerings were set on triumphal pillars lining the bridge over the dry moat, leading to the living quarters of the castle. Sylvanus gave game birds; Pomona, fruit, a cherry mountain gleaming in a gilded basket; Ceres the earth’s rich grains, Bacchus sparkling wine in goblets of crystal glass, one ruby, one diamond. Neptune gave fresh fishes from the Avon; Mars surrendered all his warlike arms, and Phoebus made sweet music.

  It was dark by the time the Queen dismounted, ready to enter the Earl of Leicester’s house. As she looked up every window within her sight was lit up, glowing with the welcome of thousands of candles and torches. Dozens of golden windows shining forth; it was like Pharaoh’s palace, lighting up the whole Alexandrian coast. Kenilworth Chase retreated into the shadows. Then, as Her Majesty stepped over the threshold, guns went off, enough to shake the foundations, and fireworks erupted into the sky, raining down like fairy gold that children ran to seek upon the ground, but found only a smut.

  Indoors, by candlelight and by daylight, Pharaoh’s palace entranced the sight and smell and touch. There was music to delight the hearing, and dishes delicate and dainty to tempt the Queen’s taste. The whole place had been filled with flowers and sweet herbs; they spilled from hundreds of vases and bowls over every surface, perfuming the air, creating a garden of delight, in the best month of all for flowers. Even underfoot, gardens bloomed; rich carpets from the East, coloured like jewels, vied with the flowers. In the Queen’s bedchamber it was hard to tell where real flowers left off and tapestries and carpets began. The walls were hung with Flemish work, with crowded flowers, peacocks with their hens, and pictures of the fountains in the gardens of Kenilworth, surrounding her arms and Leicester’s own.

  Indeed, it was Leicester’s purpose to commemorate those long years of his relationship with his Queen, to proclaim himself again her suitor. Hope of fulfilment, for King Robert, had drained away over the years, but he could still show that no one, English or foreign, had yet displaced him from her side.

  There were only thirty or so honoured guests, chosen from his family connections and hers. Her closest women friends, Ann Warwick and Mary Sidney, were Dudley wife and sister. An intimate family party, in which their roles seemed to have fallen out, strangely, more like brother and sister than candidates for wedding. It was not the role he had chosen.

  The same thought occurred to Elizabeth, and she was pleased and comforted by the sense of family. Once she had told the Scots ambassador that Robert had been like a brother to her since they were, children, and watched the cynical shock cause his face to smirk. But perhaps it was truer than she had intended. Though one should not be jealous of brothers Elizabeth had a woman’s heart, which most failed her when assailed by the pangs of jealousy. The green-eyed monster reduced her
to something less than a woman, who in other adversity seemed more than a man in fortitude.

  For this reason, Robert instructed the Queen’s cousin, Lettice, Countess of Essex, to avoid confrontation, and to guard her tongue. Lettice, at thirty-four, did not take kindly to instruction, and seldom guarded her tongue.

  ‘You pander to her, Robert,’ she said scornfully. ‘I believe you are her lap dog, after all!’

  Robert sighed. The remarks of the Queen, especially when derogatory to himself, took a long time to go out of circulation, and this particular one was a hardy perennial.

  ‘Then pandering has its rewards. I merely ask that you do a little more of it yourself, just for the duration of this visit. I’ve spent enough money, time and effort… Lettice, surely you don’t want to ruin me?’

  Lettice did not care for ruined men. ‘For you.’ She gave a mocking smile which banished the sulkiness from her face. Lettice’s expressions never concealed her whims or her desires, that was part of her fascination. She had, as he had thought she would, worn well, and her figure after five children was not lost, only increased in voluptuousness.

  ‘If she suspects too much, Walter will be brought home again from Ireland.’

  ‘That, grand Earl, I agree, would be too much. I will be decorous, matronly, cousinly, and not speak until spoken to!’

  That would be too much to hope for. In the balmy ointment Robert had prepared at Kenilworth, Lettice was unfortunately the fly. Elizabeth treated her younger cousin with a suspicious and chilly disdain, which Lettice found hard to bear, as she was a woman quick to trade insult for insult. Since he had resumed an affair with her the previous year, a great many barbed remarks had been loosed from the throne in his direction. At the time, he had not yet broken off his association with Douglas Howard, who had in August borne him a bastard son. At least, he called the boy a bastard, though she refused to, saying that he had solemnly promised to marry her. It was a sordid, underhand sort of business that Robert felt was not altogether his fault. He was in an invidious position, in which he could only act like a normal man and marry and beget an heir at peril of his position and maybe even of his life. If this had not been so, he probably would have married Douglas by now and been the proud father of an heir. But a glance around his castle at this time assured him that his self-denial had not been in vain. It was hard for women who became involved with him, but they had their compensations too.