Elizabeth I (13 page)

Such beauty as his, in words and face, should not be allowed to roam free. It was too distracting.

Standing beside him was a lovely woman. “May I present,” he began, “my friend Henry Wriothesley, the Earl of Southampton.”

“Am I meeting the ghost of Henri III?” I had just been thinking about him, and here was this apparition before me: colored lips, rouged cheeks, tumbling cascades of virginal hair, a double earring.

Southampton gave a tinkling laugh and laid his long, slender fingers on Essex's sleeve. He did not have the decency to blush, but then his rouge would have disguised it. “It is my honor to serve you, my sovereign lady,” he said, falling to his knees.

I let him remain there for a moment, examining the top of his head. It did not appear to be a wig. I could always tell by the part. They never look natural.

“Arise,” I ordered him. “So you have come to London. How old are you?”

“Seventeen, Your Most Glorious Majesty.”

Seventeen. Perhaps he would grow out of it. “Do not keep overmuch company with Essex here. He has a bad influence on young lads like you.”

“Oh, now that I am in my twenties, I am a bad influence on youth?” Essex teased. “You should keep us far from court, then. Send me out on another mission. I have the armor, and I am longing to go.”

I had put him under Drake in Portugal in the so-called Counterarmada, meant to follow up our defensive victory with an offensive one. Essex's role had been swashbuckling and, in the end, ineffectual. My investment was squandered.

“Then you pay for it!” I snapped.

Just then Sir Francis Drake appeared, as if we had conjured him up by speaking of naval operations. The former hero of the Armada was not my favorite sight just now. But with characteristic sangfroid, he pushed his way over to me and fell on his knees.

“Your Gracious Majesty!” he said, kissing my hand.

He had not dared to show his face at court since the bungled Portugal venture. The sultan's generosity was providing him an opportunity.

“Do not forget so soon all the services I have done you, all the jewels, the gold, the hidden passageways in the sea, and singeing the King of Spain's beard. Let me prove myself again.”

But I must hold fast to what financial reserves I had. There would be no missions for Francis Drake this year.

My ladies were clumped together near one end of the table, hovering over a plate of the
loukoum
, as well as an artfully arranged tray of pistachios, almonds, and hazelnuts. I motioned to Frances Walsingham to come to me.

“Frances, I have spoken to your father. He is very ill. You must leave court to go and attend him.”

She bowed but I noticed her eyes straying to Essex. Everyone's eyes strayed to Essex. She had a special relationship to him, though, as her late husband, Sir Philip Sidney, had bequeathed his sword to Essex, as though passing on his noble reputation. As yet, beyond looking noble, Essex had done little to earn it.

Frances lingered a moment by his side, and then—did my eyes deceive me?—she touched her fingers to his. He hastily pulled them away, refraining from looking at me. Southampton pulled on his sleeve, his high voice distressed. “Come, sir,” he said.

With one look back, Essex said plaintively, “If you might receive my mother—”

I shot him a withering look and did not dignify his request with an answer. Lately he had pestered me about it, as if that would change my mind. My mind did not bend under advocacy. If it was right, it needed none. If it was wrong, no amount of wheedling would soften me. Lettice was in the latter category.

Among my own ladies I tried to avoid the false and foolish, but often political considerations dictated that I take someone's daughter or niece, and, pity has it, we cannot always know what will come from our loins. Thus solemn councillors had daughters like Bess Throckmorton. So even here, there were two sorts: the true, such as Helena, Marjorie, Catherine, and her sister Philadelphia, and the flighty—Bess Throckmorton, Mary Fitton, Elizabeth Southwell, and Elizabeth Vernon. As one might expect, the frivolous ones were prettier than the reliable ones. Still, as Solomon said, “As a jewel of gold in a swine's snout, so is a fair woman which is without discretion.” Just as I was imagining a golden ring in Bess Throckmorton's elegant nose, Sir Walter Raleigh's broad shoulders hid her from view.

He had been lingering overmuch in the privy chamber when Bess was about, I had noticed. He, as captain of the Queen's Guard, was charged with protecting the virtue of my ladies, even holding a key to the chamber of the maids of honor. Thus far nothing improper had occurred that I could detect, but my suspicions were up. He seemed lately to have singled Bess out for his attentions. I made it my business to interrupt them.

Bess immediately bowed her head and stepped back. She was always polite and subservient—on the surface. Raleigh turned around and, as always, the sheer presence of him was a marvel. Over six feet tall, solidly muscular, and now in his late thirties, he was a man in his prime.

“Your Majesty,” he said. “I have tasted the
kahve
, and poetry is singing in my head.”

Now he was about to present one of his verses. They were well wrought but I was not in the mood for any. I turned away, but he—without actually touching my arm—stayed me. As I looked over his shoulder, I saw Edmund Spenser, whom I had not seen for nine years, since he departed for Ireland. Raleigh all but pulled him over to me.

“My Irish neighbor,” he said, grinning.

“I am come to London to present you with my humble offering,” said Spenser. “It is dedicated in its entirety to you and presents your glittering and magic court in its epic grandeur. May I leave a copy with you?”

“If you please,” I said. “What is the name of this wonder?”

“
The Faerie Queene
,” he said. “It is only the first three books, of which there will be nine. The others will follow.” In the fast-deepening gloom I studied his face. He was all thin blades and angles. I hoped he had not been stricken with the Irish dysentery that weakened so many of our men there. “I shall have a presentation copy delivered to you,” he was saying.

But already he was fading from my mind as Raleigh murmured, “I have a great concern for the colony. I beg you, let a relief ship sail right away. It has been almost three years.” He smiled that dazzling smile. “Let the Faerie Queen succor her child, Virginia.”

“Is not my child thriving?”

“Not having seen her myself,” he said heavily, “I cannot swear it.” He was referring to my allowing him to name the New World colony Virginia in my honor but forbidding him to go there himself. It had been set up five years ago, but no one had visited it for the past two. The coming of the Spanish Armada in 1588 meant that I could not spare ships to sail to the New World and that danger was still there. There was an embargo on ships leaving English ports.

“There has been no word?”

“None,” he said. “No one has seen the colony since the ships sailed back from Roanoke Island in November of 1587.” He paused. “The little girl born that first summer will be three years old soon. Virginia Dare. The colony needs supplies. It needed them two years ago. It may be desperate by now.”

He was right. Something had to be done. “Very well,” I said. “I shall authorize a small fleet.” Our footing in the New World was but a toehold compared to that of the Spanish, but by staking out territory in the north, beyond their grasp, we could, in time, offset their advantage. The Spanish held the southernmost parts of that coast, a place they called Florida, but we could contain them there and prevent their spread.

Was not the entire continent of South America enough for them? The riches of the Incas and Aztecs feeding their treasuries? As the landmass narrowed toward the wasp-waisted isthmus, the Spanish processed their loot before shipping it back to Spain. Twenty years ago Drake had realized that was their soft spot, where they could be surprised and raided. It had worked for a while, but then the element of surprise was lost and the Spanish raised their guard. Drake then moved his surprise to the west coast of South America, attacking them in Peru before they could transfer the goods to the isthmus. Drake. His genius was undeniable.

But the Spanish had learned from their mistakes and fortified themselves; they were rebuilding the Armada with more modern ships copied from our designs. A ship falling into enemy hands is a disaster, for its secrets will be revealed. We captured and destroyed so many of their ships, but, sadly, they had no secrets to yield, nothing to tell us we did not already know.

D
id you achieve nothing at the sultan gathering?” I was looking at my foolish son, so gifted, so unable to use those gifts, so it would appear. “She noticed that you were there, did she not? Did you mention me? Did you mention another command? What
did
you mention?” Oh, my patience!

“I introduced Southampton to Her Majesty.”

“What an achievement! You know she cannot abide fops. Now when she thinks of you, she will think of him.”

“Stop baiting me!” Suddenly Robert swirled around, a graceful turn that made his fashionable, and useless, short cloak fly out. The sweetness and charm I had always associated with my oldest son had disappeared—all that remained was the impetuous soldier and slick courtier that others saw. “I'll not endure it!”

“You endure it from her, you'll endure it from me, your mother.”

“She gives greater rewards. Her rewards are yet to come; you've spent all yours.”

“You ungrateful bastard!”

“No bastard, unless what the rumors say is true—that Robert Dudley was your lover long before he became your husband, and that I'm his son.”

“If I told you I did not know, would you believe me?” I could hardly believe I was speaking those words.

“I'd rather not. I'd rather think that I inherited the earlship of Essex by rightful descent. Mother, let's forget this. I spoke hastily.”

Yes, let us forget these rash mutterings. I smiled and patted the place next to me on the cushioned window seat. “I am happy to have you here,” I said. He visited me seldom these days, busy with his London dwelling. It had been Durham House, then it became Leicester House, now it was renamed Essex House. No matter its name, it was one of the grandest on the Strand. He had come by it through my marriage to Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, his stepfather. He would not have his blood, then, but was happy enough to inherit his house!

“You would rather we be at Essex House, I think,” he said.

“Nonsense! Do you not find Drayton Bassett exhilarating?” I teased him. After my too-quick marriage to Christopher Blount, a man almost my son's age, following the death of Leicester, discretion had advised me to live far from court in the countryside of Staffordshire. If Her Majesty had never forgiven me for snatching her long-suffering love from under her nose and marrying him, the hint that perhaps I had amused myself with a young lover as well had earned her implacable hatred. To steal one's man was injurious; to betray or spurn him afterward was a crime. But I do not admit that I betrayed him. What was a lonely widow to do? I had many debts. The vindictive Queen had hounded me for Leicester's debts, stripping my home of all the movable goods. As if that would bring him back to life and return him to her. No, he sleeps in Warwick Chapel, and his marble monument completed my financial ruin. In his will, he lauded me as his “faithful and very loving and obedient careful wife.” He also called me “my dear and poor disconsolate wife.” Obviously I had to overcome my grief as best I could, with Christopher. So ... as the Queen's own Knights of the Garter's motto says,
Honi soit qui mal y pense—
“Shame upon him who thinks evil of it.” Leicester was pleased with my services as a wife, and there the matter should end. On his monument is engraved, in Latin, that I, his
moestissa uxor
—tenderest wife—out of my love and conjugal fidelity, caused this to be raised to the best and dearest of husbands. Of course, I wrote it myself.

To my surprise, my son smiled. “There's a part of me that would be content here,” he said. “In truth, a part of me that longs for a quiet life in the country.”

I laughed, but I could see that he was sincere. “My son, you don't know what you are saying!”

“I don't belong at court!” he burst out. “I'm not that sort of creature. To remember what to say to each person, the better to use them, and to hide my true feelings so they can't use me—Mother, I find it repugnant!”

“It is, indeed, hard work,” I said cautiously.