by G Lawrence
“The Earl is ill, therefore not able to take on this task,” Cecil interjected before I could speak. I glanced at him with unbounded gratitude in my eyes. Merely to speak Robin’s name hurt.
Walsingham and Cobham left in late June, making for Antwerp, and in an effort to stall Anjou I ordered Cecil to step up the pace of marriage negotiations.
On the same day Walsingham and Cobham departed, I received three letters from Robin. For a while, I held them, trying not to break into tears. I did not want to show weakness. I had precious little pride left, and was not about to squander any.
I opened them. Soon, I could not read for tears. Robin told me he loved me, he always had and always would, but there was one desire which matched his love for me. “Not love for a woman, Majesty, but desire for a child of my own, a legitimate heir who might replace me. Think not what I did was done to satisfy fleeting flames of lust, for nothing so weak, when compared to my love for you, could overcome me. I grow old, and, Majesty, I wanted a son. It was that desire which came to rival the love I hold for you. Think not that even this desire has stripped away all I feel for you. If you had wanted me, I would have been your husband. But you could not take me, and so, to get an heir, I took another.”
I wept silently, blurring ink with tears. Was it so? Did he truly love me and not her?
I wanted to believe.
I sent for Hatton and told him to call Robin home.
*
“We are pleased to see you looking so well, my lord Earl.” My tone was stiff, formal.
“I am feeling much better, Your Majesty,” Robin said, his dark eyes wary.
He thinks you will explode, my mind told me. He thinks you still have fire left in you.
“I want you to take care of plans for progress,” I said. “It has been neglected in your absence, and needs attention.”
“I would be delighted, Majesty.”
I smiled. It was false and Robin saw that, but no one else noticed. If I could not beam with happiness when my insides were rank with misery, I would be no Queen at all. “I entrust it to your hands,” I said. “I must leave, to talk to Hatton, but will expect you for a game of chess later, my lord.”
“I look forward to the moment I may see you again.”
This was what I was going to do; ignore the fact Robin was married; ignore the pain, misery and suffering. I would bind them in my heart. There was room for them there, in the ruins Robin had left behind.
Chapter Seventy-Two
Greenwich Palace
Summer 1578
“You should not delay,” Robin said. “Send men to stop Anjou now.”
I gazed at him with cold eyes. “I made you my intermediary with the Council to speak my mind, not to badger me with your concerns.” With my words, a chill breeze seemed to waft through the chamber.
Robin cast his eyes to his shoes, as though he would find how to bridge this gulf between us there. I looked away.
I had been avoiding my Council for days. Wielding the excuse that I was low with toothache, I had stayed away, using Robin to convey messages. They were insisting I send troops to stop Anjou taking an aggressive stance in the Low Countries. I had faith that the marriage negotiations would do this, and was of no mind to send men to irritate a possible ally.
“It is foolish to delay,” Robin said.
“Many men clearly think me a fool. I care not.”
Robin should have read my temper, but he tried again. “We should act…”
“Be silent.”
Robin left and sent Hatton to me. The two men had become united in a quest to draw me from my shell of ice. “People have begun to talk, Majesty,” said Hatton, “about your coldness towards the Earl.”
“Let them.”
“Cecil and the Earl are arguing. There is word Cecil will attempt to oust Leicester from court.”
“Let him. I care not. Why should I shelter Robin?”
Unable to reason with me, Hatton went to Robin, telling him he was in great danger.
For once, I did not care if Robin was in danger. I wanted him to be, wanted him to understand that without me, he was nothing. He had taken everything from me. Let him feel some of the emptiness I suffered.
But it was not enough. I wanted him to suffer more. I sent Sussex to Douglas to ascertain whether the rumoured ceremony of marriage had been valid. If Robin must claim a son, I thought, let it be Douglas’. Lettice will pay for what she has done!
I wanted Lettice in disgrace, and I wanted Robin to lose his legitimate heir. Nothing would have pleased me more than knowing he was forced from the arms of a woman he had clearly desired, and was sent hurtling back to the lady he had discarded.
But Douglas would not comply with my wishes.
“She seemed frightened, Majesty,” Sussex said when he reported back. “She said she knew she had done you a wrong in lying with the man you loved, and she was sorry.”
That is more than I have had from Lettice or Robin, I thought.
“If she is scared, go back and tell her there is no need. If she and Robin are married, I will support her union with him.”
Sussex went back, but Douglas refused to admit she and Robin had gone through any kind of ceremony. In anger, I refused to allow her to come to court. Blanche told me there were rumours Douglas had been threatened by Robin and Lettice, and that was why she was refusing to admit a ceremony had taken place. “There are whispers she thinks she has been poisoned, Majesty.”
I frowned. I had heard those rumours from Hatton, but now I believed them. “Send word to her,” I said. “Her son and she will be placed under my protection.”
It was done for spite. I wanted Robin’s son by Douglas upheld, and any children Lettice and Robin had left by the wayside. But the child Lettice had told Robin she was carrying appeared suspect.
“There is no sign she is pregnant,” Helena told me. “Her stomach is flat, and her women say she bleeds still.”
“So Robin was tricked,” I said. “Lettice played the oldest card, and he fell for her ruse.”
That made me feel more generous towards Robin, but not enough to forgive. I could not forget, so could not forgive.
I turned to work to distract myself. Patents were granted to Sir Humphrey Gilbert, Kat’s kinsman, to colonize America, and his whole family become involved. I gave him six years to find “some strange place not actually possessed of any Christian prince or people” and Gilbert set to work. He wanted me to invest, but I was reluctant. Frobisher had taken a great deal of my gold, setting out on yet another trip to find more ore. Until that venture paid off, I did not want to waste more coin. Besides, Gilbert and his kin were pirates, and had plenty stowed away to finance this project.
A little later that year, Gilbert and his fleet would set out, but immediately all but failed. Only one ship, the Falcon, bought from me and commanded by Gilbert’s much younger half-brother, Master Walter Raleigh, managed to sail from the harbour. Although it had been years since I had seen Raleigh, him being a mere boy when presented at court by Kat, I laughed to hear he alone had made it out. When he returns, I would like to speak to him again, I thought. He had been a striking lad, and I was in need of pleasing faces to look upon, for the one that once pleased me more than any other was poison to my heart.
I was less pleased with Gilbert. “He is not of good hap by sea,” I said when I heard of the disaster, but I did not revoke his patent. He was Kat’s blood. For her, I would grant more chances than he deserved.
We left for progress, heading into East Anglia. I was due for a trip to Norfolk and Suffolk, as my men thought my progresses had concentrated too much on the west of England of late. It had been arranged so quickly that the lords I was to stay with had had little time to prepare, but I saw nothing of their careful, if rushed arrangements.
I was broken. I cared not if the whole world was too.
Chapter Seventy-Three
Havering Palace, Audley End, Melford Hall, Bury St Edmonds and Euston Hall
Summer 1578
Whilst at Havering, one of my palaces, we attended to business of state. I sat in on Council meetings for the first time in weeks, and my men, although happy to find me once more present, were dismayed by my lack of enthusiasm for action against Anjou.
We left Havering at the end of July, making for Audley End. My escort of one hundred and thirty Pensioners rode about me, with Hatton, their captain, by my side. From Audley, we headed into East Anglia, into regions I had not visited before. Cecil thought it was high time for me to show myself in the northern counties, enough time having passed since the Northern Rebellion that that region might be favoured. It was a chance to remind the Catholic north of its duty to me. In truth, we were not going so far north, but to those who dwell in London, anywhere a mile upwards from the Thames is the far, distant north.
My journey was hosted by a series of lesser nobles and gentlemen until we reached Melford Hall, where Sir William Cordell, Master of the Rolls, welcomed us. “I hope, Majesty, you will enjoy the comforts of my house,” he said as he led me to my chamber.
“I am sure I will.” When did my voice become not my own? I wondered, hearing my cold, dead tone.
We enjoyed Cordell’s hospitality for three days, then rode for Bury St Edmonds. We passed forests of stumps, from trees cut down to supply the charcoal industry, which fed the iron industry. The woods were coppiced, cut back and then allowed to grow again. The small-rise woods created as the charcoal industry cut and coppiced were hardly magnificent, but at least they were there. My father’s passion for ship building, as well as the demand for timber for houses, had led to a great deal of English lands losing their forests. Half-timbered houses were becoming common in towns, and the wood showed the wealth of the owner, for timber was running scarce. Only in my royal parks and the estates of gentlemen were forests protected.
At Bury St Edmonds I knighted several new men, and stayed with Sir William Dury at Hawstead. He and his wife, Elizabeth Stafford, showed their new baby to me, and she, to my horror, told me about the birth in detail.
“It was hard and long,” Elizabeth told me. “I had trouble bringing forth the cowl, so a potion of rhubarb, beaver’s stones and oil of juniper was fed to me by the midwife, and then it came.”
I was happy when she finished and brought her baby to me.
“Delightful,” I said, cradling the child. Although my comment was honest, for the child was, as many are not, a pretty creature, my tone was sad.
I sacrificed the pleasures of a family for duty, I thought.
Never had I felt so sad for the lack of a child. Had I been wrong, all this time? Should I have done my duty in a more traditional manner? Robin’s betrayal had made me question everything. I was no longer sure of myself, or what I wanted.
*
By the second week in August, we were at Euston Hall in Newmarket, seat of a young gentleman called Edward Rookwood. He was a good host, charming and affable, but I wondered why this house had been added to our route. Rookwood’s house was a strange stop to make. Everyone knew him for a Catholic.
But the young man was welcoming, apologising for the smallness of his home. “It makes no matter,” I said, offering my hand for him to kiss. “I prefer a smaller house. It affords more privacy.”
There was an incident only hours later. Richard Topcliffe, one of Cecil’s men, had joined us, and he went to Sussex with information about our host. After their meeting, Sussex hauled Rookwood before him, demanding to know if he had been excommunicated by my Church for being a recusant. When it was found he had, Sussex told him not to come into my presence again. Sussex wanted to banish Rookwood from his own house, but I intervened.
“The man has been punished for his crimes,” I said. “And swears he is no more a practising Catholic. No more harm will come to him.”
Robin took the opportunity to introduce me anew to Topcliffe, who was gaining a reputation as a Catholic hater.
“I am dedicated to you, Majesty,” Topcliffe said, bowing and at the same moment managing to leer at my breasts. “I think you all that is good and true in a world of deceit and sin.”
From the look in his eyes, I would have said Topcliffe was thinking on sin rather than goodness, but I was used to men regarding me as though I were a slab of meat rather than a creature of thought and mind.
Some would say that since I presented my cleavage uncovered, I invited this, but it was not so. Firstly, cleavage was a symbol of the maiden state, an important, socially acceptable condition, which sometimes needed emphasising. Were I to cover my cleavage as matrons did, people would claim I was no more a maid. Secondly, men wore tight hose, and although I glanced at the sight of their fine muscles with appreciation, I did not stare, and did not spend my time speaking to their thighs. It is possible to appreciate something of beauty when it is put on display, without leering obscenely at it.
Some men, it seems, become so mesmerised by breasts they forget that a person’s eyes and mouth, the parts that do the talking, are on a woman’s face. Curious, is it not, that breasts should so captivate men? Do they harbour a secret wish to return to the bosom of the mother? I think perhaps so, for in truth breasts are just another body part, more functional to women than they are sexual.
I had no objection to a man casting an eye over my form, that was to be expected, but it is quite another thing to find the person you are speaking to is not listening to you, but is engrossed in contemplation of your body. Most men who do this, and not all men do, appear to think it a compliment, when it is, in fact, a gross insult, and can be threatening.
“I am pleased to meet you,” I said. “Although I think we met before, when you were servant to my Lord of Leicester?”
“We did indeed, Majesty,” he said, teeth bared in what he probably thought was a winning smile. “I am humbled to be remembered.”
Topcliffe disturbed me, and not only for his leer. The coldness of his eyes spoke of a soul which knows no mercy, and the inflated impression he had of himself told of a man who thought himself superior. That was why he sought me out. In his mind, I was his equal, perhaps his only equal.
A few days later, my generosity to Rookwood was betrayed. A statue of the Virgin was found in a hayrick near his house and was brought to me.
Was the statue a plant? Was this visit planned so I might see the disobedience of Catholics and agree to harsher measures? I had reason to think this was the case later, although at the time, I was fooled.
I was watching a country dance when the idol was brought to me, and became angry when I looked upon it. Statues such as this were banned, and the possession of one demonstrated Rookwood was disobeying my laws. It seemed all men were flouting me at that time.
“Burn it,” I said.
“Are you sure, Majesty?”
“Burn it,” I said, glancing at Robin. “I will not have people swear they are loyal and then act in outright defiance. Burn the statue.”
As Robin looked away, I continued. “When I am gone, arrest Rookwood.”
Within days of my departure Rookwood, along with seven other lords suspected to be recusants, had been arrested, summoned to appear before the Council at Norwich. But I sent secret word. I wanted their sentences to be generous. They were found guilty. Rookwood and another man were sent to prison for a year. The others were placed under house arrest and were made to pay a bond of two hundred pounds each for promising they would take instruction from a bishop, leading them to conform to my Church.
I was not displeased. I had shown I was willing to enforce measures against Catholics, which pleased my men, but I had been generous. I had asserted my royal authority, but not gone too far.
If only other matters were so easy to resolve, I thought that night, watching Robin as he danced.
Chapter Seventy-Four
Richmond Palace
February 1603
That was a testing time.
A part of me, the part angered at all men, at all who swore and could not
keep their promises, would have enjoyed being harder on Rookwood. It was a struggle to be generous when all I wanted was to lash out, inflicting pain as pain had been inflicted upon me.
“You would have liked that, old friend,” I say to Death. “It is how you gather so many souls, is it not? Pain-ruptured hearts unleashing chaos on others… it is your trade.”
Death cocks His dark head in admission.
“And I had little strength to draw on from within,” I say. “My heart had lost its blood, had become hard. In truth, granting generous sentences to Rookwood and his allies was one of my greatest tests. I might so easily have fallen. It is with a measure of pride I can say I did not.”