Constant Heart (27 page)

To hands stretched through the gates, the gatekeeper gave bread.

And for every hand that was satisfied, another soon appeared.

He turned toward the steward. “When is the soonest they can expect a return from spring’s plantings?”

“If they have the strength to sow, then they could eat the roots of their crops, my lord, once they have sprouted.”

“But then they will have no harvest next fall.”

They shared a look that set a dog to gnawing at my belly.

Lytham’s aspect brightened. “There are fish in the river.”

“The river went dry in July, my lord. It will return this winter, if there is snow, once it melts, but there will be no fish.”

“Then I have little to offer them. Do they think me God that I can turn three fishes into a feast? I have none! I have naught to give them.

London is destitute. There is no trade, there is no commerce. And I can conjure nothing from plain air! It is too heavy a burden. This is what the Church is for! At least when we allowed monks, they cared after the people. This wandering about the countryside is shameful.”

But the steward only sighed. “You could open the hunting park, my lord.”

“And have the game run out? And the underbrush destroyed?

Nay.” He began to pace. Then he stopped. “But I could order it hunted.

If it were hunted wisely, there may be enough to last until spring.”

He looked toward the steward, who nodded.

“Then with God’s help we will manage this. No one may have enough, but if I may say it, no one may be found to have too little.”

Lytham returned to Hampton Court once my mother and aunt arrived. They were joined by Lady de Winter. And it was not many days later before the babe decided to come.

No time was wasted in sending for the midwife. So quick was she drug from her labors that she arrived in my chambers still bloodied from butchering her dinner. I wished for Joan’s calming presence, but being still a maid, she had been pushed from my rooms at the first opportunity.

The midwife ordered the windows shut up and the candles extinguished. At first she made me stay abed. And then, as the pains increased, she plied me with drink. There were some moments of great peace, and then came the sensation of all of my insides pushing to get out.

At my mention of this, the midwife and my mother pulled me from bed and pushed me into the birthing chair.

I gripped my mother’s hand as I strained.

“Why must it be so difficult?”

“Great joy is received from so hard a labor.”

“How did you survive this?”

“The pain is quick forgotten.”

In the cramps which then seized me, my mouth loosed words I might have sworn I never knew. Most of them blighted Lytham’s good character. Suffering as I was in my travails, words ushered forth uncensored from my mouth. “. . . sends me away from his sight while he stays at Hampton Court cavorting with the Queen!

Would that she suffer so much as I—” My words were drowned by my screams. When I once again found breath, I continued my tirade.

“I shall never allow him to touch me again. I care not how many radishes he may eat!”

“So
that
is how he did it!”

My mother clucked at Lady de Winter and wrapped my head in a dampened cloth. “Do you not make promises you cannot keep.”

“A pox on men and all their devices!”

“You cannot mean it.”

“I do mean it! I curse them all. Every wandering, pox-bitten dog of them. Every one of them who leaves the countryside peopled with his likeness while his daughter and his wife pretend not to notice!”

The room had fallen silent. And every servant, every person attendant, looked at all things other than my mother and myself.

I clenched her hand and brought her close to me. “Why do they do it?”

“They cannot help it.”

“Then why did you allow it? What did you do to make him not love you?”

Before my mother could reply, Lady de Winter provided an answer. “If he did not love her, then let the fault be with him!”

I gasped, and not only from the pain.

Lady de Winter pushed from her chair and poured a cordial, then came to my side and handed it to me. “A wife and lovers: the one is for empire building and the others for pleasure. You cannot hope to be both, girl. Love is a luxury most of us cannot afford.”

But I did hope. And I wanted to be both.

And then pain seized me and I wanted nothing more than for the babe to be born.

He was so small. So very tiny.

I did not, at first, understand the gasps of those attending me.

But I was not long in gaining their knowledge. He had come into the world too soon. And one hour after he was born, he expired.

30

L
ytham could not get permission to leave court, but my friend, my mother, and my aunt stayed with me for the month. I cannot say that I was good company. Or a good hostess. I could not, in fact, say very much at all. Not without bursting into tears. Not when everyone was trying to console me.

“Have no fears, there will be another.”

But I wanted no other. I wanted the one that had been lost.

“It happens. I lost four myself. Died ere they were born.”

I knew it happened. Of course it happened. But why did it have to happen to me?

“There, girl. This time, next year, see if you are not lying-in again. Lytham will see to it.”

Next year? Pain squeezed my heart tighter with every breath.

How would I survive until the coming year?

When a month had passed, when it was time for my churching, I dressed with care and I dried my eyes. I asked the chambermaid to take pains with my hair that day and then I tried to add to my costume a smile.

Once at church, I knelt as the vicar thanked God for preserving my life during childbirth. It was true enough that He had, but why could He not have also preserved the life of my child? Why should I be celebrating my own good fortune while my babe slept in the cold tomb of the earth?

I did not give way to my melancholy. At least not outwardly. It was a day for drinking and feasting. For celebrating motherhood. And I had been a mother, if only for one short hour. It was also a day to send my guests back to their own homes. And I did not want them to leave if they would only worry about me the length of their journey home.

When Marget returned to Hampton Court, it was with pale face and subdued spirits. I longed to take her into my arms, to hold her, to comfort her, but I could not. Had we been at Lytham House, I would not have hesitated for an instant. But at court, who knew who could be watching? And since the news of Raleigh and Bess Throckmorton’s marriage, everyone anticipating the next scandal, the next courtier who might betray the throne.

Had I been able to do as I wished, I confess that still I would not have known what to say to Marget. My own spirits were distinctly lacking in joviality. I had no wish but to mourn the tiny life who had been, for an instant, mine. And who better to mourn with than my wife? But then . . . had not our union been the cause of all of the sadness? I feared she might wish for nothing more than to be left alone.

Upon my return to Hampton Court, I resumed my role. Lytham never spoke of the babe and neither did I. In fact, he spoke to me very little at all. I longed to hide myself within the stronghold of his arms, but they were not opened to me. Lacking a safe port at which to anchor, at which to gain strength, I moored myself at court instead, though I had no great wish to be there. I had no great wish to be anywhere at all.

But there was much news to catch up on. And Lady de Winter was the first to fill my ears with it.

“The Viscount of Montacute has died. Much to Her Majesty’s sadness.”

“I cannot account for her emotion. Was he not Catholic?”

“A Catholic of the heart, not of the politic.”

“And what is that to mean?”

“Simply that his body belonged to Her Majesty and his soul to his God.”

“I do not see how a man could live divided when Spain provokes war against us, inciting all kinds of villains to assassinate our Queen. To be Catholic is not to be heretic, it is to be traitor.” I was in no mood to dissemble. I no longer had any patience for the duplicity of the courtier. Could no one understand? My heart had been broken. I had a son. He had died. Babes died frequently, but that babe had been mine.

The only thing I wanted to talk about was the one thing no one would mention. Had none of the women in that Presence Chamber noticed my distended belly? Had none of the women noticed that I had, of late, returned to court from a long absence? Grief lapped at my heart like the waves of the sea. And there were times, like the coming of high tide, when I could do naught but feel its coming. I needed some place to retreat. Some place to hide, but there was nowhere to go in that great palace.

And Lady de Winter would give me no peace. She plied me with news and harassed me with questions.

“And what, your New Year’s gift to the Queen?”

“I do not know. Lytham presents the gift.”

“Then you must find out. And when you do, you must tell me.”

I only did it so she would cease her harassments. And then I reported back for lack of any other diversion.

“He gives her an astrolabe.” Just as he had once given me.

“Every person gives her an astrolabe; they think to appeal to her mind. Her intellect.”

“He says that she adores them.”

“And so she does. But the goal of a present to a Queen is not to impress her, it is to delight her.” She looked at me with expectancy, but I failed to respond.

She spoke to me slowly and with great elucidation. “How does one delight a Queen? With a gift that tells her she has no weakness.”

In spite of my mood, my curiosity was piqued. “And what weakness can a Queen have?”

“Vanity. She fears growing old because she fears losing love. She is closer now to her death than to her birth. She must fear that men circle her, not because they wish to be near her but because they wish to survive her after she has gone. Men come not to give love, but to get gain. So Lytham must not give a gift that she will adore; he must give a gift that speaks to her of
his
adoration. She must be convinced that she is still worthy of admiration as a woman, not as a Queen. Any man can admire an intellect. Not every man can admire a body in decline.”

“Then what must he give?”

I took Lady de Winter’s answer straight to Lytham.

“A length of damask?”
That
was Marget’s marvelous idea? “Her Majesty has more clothes than she can possibly wear. Every town she visits gives her gloves and fans and sleeves in abundance.” I hated to dampen her excitement. There had been so little that piqued her interest since the babe had died.

“Aye. They give her a gift they have fashioned themselves. The best that
they
can make or imagine. But how can they know the mind of a Queen? Why would she wish to be dressed in a design of someone else’s making?”

At least my wife was talking to me again. That was something. I pushed my chair away from my desk, took her by the arm, and settled her into my lap. “And what do you suggest?”