Elizabeth I (26 page)

For all my promise that nothing would go beyond this room, there were other ears in the house, and sounds carried. This was so close to treason I signaled for them to be quiet, and I tiptoed across the room and flung open the door. Nothing. The hallway was empty, dark. I shut the door again.

“We understand,” I said. “No more needs to be said.”

“A certain person is almost sixty,” said Robert. The stubborn, reckless boy. “And we can count on those numbered days.”

“Enough!” I said.

A mother always has the right to command her children to obey, no matter their ages.

S
uddenly the ruff was choking me. I did not want to call attention to it, so I fingered it carefully, trying to pull it away from my neck in a manner that no one would notice. My neck was clammy, slippery, and then I felt my face start to pulsate and ripple with heat. God's curse! It was here again, when I thought I was quit of it. I had not been bothered thus for months.

I cranked the window open and leaned out of it, praying for a breeze. But there was none. The May sunshine shone upon a calm garden beneath my rooms at Windsor. I had stayed on here after this year's investiture of the new Knights of the Garter, thinking to enjoy this palace that was always too cold in winter. But this moment I would have welcomed a blast of winter wind.

“A fan, Your Majesty?” Someone had extended one where I could take hold of it discreetly. But no matter how smoothly I took it, the fact remained that someone had noticed, someone had seen my discomfort.

I turned to see the self-satisfied face of Bess Throckmorton. Embarrassed, I clutched at the fan.

“Perhaps a wetted handkerchief—” she began.

“No, thank you!” I said, while longing for one. I struggled to master myself. It would pass. It always did.

She bowed her head in mock servility. I did not like her, and I never had, for all that she was the daughter of my faithful ambassador Sir Nicholas Throckmorton. There was something sneaky and vain about her. Especially lately, when she had taken a sudden leave of court with a flimsy excuse. Now she was back, but there was something different about her, an extra haughtiness that shone through.

I had had to resort of late to writing notes to remind myself of things I could not always trust myself to have at my fingertips, and she had found one of the notes and brought it to me with a puzzled look. But that was a sham, as she knew very well what it was. Did she tell others—her young friends—that the Queen needed notes to remember things now? If I forbade her to say anything, that would call more attention to it, so I tried to make light of it, tearing up the note and saying it was of no moment, memorizing it before I did. As soon as I was alone, I wrote it out again, and this time I made sure to put it in the box where I properly kept them.

My older ladies understood well enough. Marjorie—my Crow—was far on the other side of it, being already in her sixties. The others, Helena and Catherine, were in their forties and beginning that passage that was so easy for some and so difficult for others. It is an unsettling thing when one's fertility begins to ebb and the window that opened in girlhood now begins to close. But now that mine was closed, let these torturous attacks of heat and sweat be gone! They were nothing but cruel reminders.

I would dismiss the ladies and send them out into the gardens to amuse themselves. Once they were gone, I would send for my physician and see if he had any remedy for this unpleasantness.

They took advantage of what they assumed was my generosity and left the chambers with telltale swiftness. I summoned Dr. Lopez from his home at Holborn, praying he would come quickly.

He was resourceful and reliable. And sure enough, before the river tide had turned or the ladies returned, Roderigo was announced in the outer chambers. If he was put out by having to rush here on such a fine day, he did not show it. Instead, his face lit up as he saw me. He exclaimed, “I am so relieved to see Your Majesty standing here in all her glory, not lying on a sickbed.”

That was the wrong thing to say. “Why should I be?” I snapped. I felt that horrid heat starting to sweep over me again. Curse it!

He smiled. “The summons was so sudden,” he said. He had a leathery face that reminded me of a sailor, a prominent nose, and a rather yellow complexion, like the slanting sunshine of late afternoon.

“Let us withdraw and I shall explain,” I said.

Finally secluded behind closed doors, I told him of the return of my distressing symptoms. He kept nodding but said nothing. When I finished speaking, he remained silent.

“Is there no remedy?” I burst out. “You know me, you know everything about me.” And it was true; he had fled the Inquisition in his native Portugal at the beginning of my reign and began to serve as my physician then. He had treated the young Elizabeth and now he treated the older one. He had seen me through the smallpox, the leg ulcer, headaches, and sleeplessness. He had been among the esteemed physicians who had examined me prior to Monsieur's suit to determine how many years of childbearing yet remained to me. There were no secrets from Roderigo Lopez.

“Time is the main remedy,” he said finally.

“Time! I have granted it five years already. I suffered with it and then it subsided and now it is back, like—the Armada!” There were reports a new Armada was being built and would soon be dispatched to do what the first had failed to do. God's truth, I could deal with the Armada more easily.

“There are some herbs from our good English fields,” he said. “They work—if you have willingness and a strong imagination. Then there are others, from the land of the Turks, that are stronger.”

“I want those.”

“They are not as easily to hand, but I can obtain them,” he said. “There's broom root and caper buds and
sabine
. The stronger sun of the south makes for stronger medicine.”

Something in the tone of his voice nagged at me. “Do you still miss your homeland, Roderigo?” I asked. I wondered how I would feel if I had to leave England and live elsewhere.

“One always misses one's homeland,” he said. “But England has been good to me. I have had responsible positions in London, house physician at St. Bartholomew's, and a practice among the highest in the land, Walsingham and Leicester for instance.”

Both of whom were dead—not the best examples.

He was a Jew but had converted to Christianity, which would not have saved him from the Inquisition there but permitted him freedom here. “Portugal's loss is England's gain,” I said. “Now about these herbs ... How quickly can I have them?”

He assured me he would get them within a month.

“How much longer will I have to endure this?” I asked.

“That is impossible to say,” he admitted. “It varies so much for each woman. And so few reach this age—so many die in childbirth they never experience what happens when the body withdraws from childbearing. Look in the graveyards, see the dates on the tombstones. Think of the men who are with their third wives while their first and second, who provided them with children, sleep underground.”

I shuddered. “The men die in war and the women in childbed,” I said. “In any case life is short.” Should I confide in him? “I am fifty-nine now,” I said. “I feel as strong as ever, no different than at twenty-five.” But there was that, that forgetting, misplacing things. So many more things to misplace, I reminded myself. So many people presented, so many names. And the old names were still in there, inside my head. No room for so many.

No, I would say nothing. Except in passing. “Is there any remedy for those old crones and smiths who bumble about and cannot remember where they left their hats?” I said lightly.

“Yes,” he said. “The remedy is a son or daughter living with them who can keep track of these things.” Then he laughed.

So did I. Until he left and I could stop the pretense.

There was too much giggling in the privy chamber. It was annoying me. Every time I swept into that room, a gaggle of the girls were hunched together, their backsides thrust out, as if to display the patterns on their fine satins. I myself had left off the heavier costumes, saying I wished to be more informal this summer. I thanked the summer sun for giving me the excuse. It would be more difficult in the winter. But by then Dr. Lopez's herbs would be in my hands.

They were an impressive collection of beauties. There was Elizabeth Cavendish, the lady the bastard Dudley had enjoyed kissing at the tilt. She was tall and skittish like a nervous horse. There was another Elizabeth, this one a Vernon, with reddish hair and soft-lidded eyes that promised many things. (She wore too much perfume.) Two more Elizabeths, opposites in coloring—Southwell, blond and round with plump lips, and Bridges, dark and often scornful. There was one Frances, a Vavasour, small and pert (who sang too early in the morning for my taste). Then there was Mary Fitton, with her oval face, black hair, and eyes that watched faces with rapt and breathless scrutiny, which most people found compelling. Her elderly “protector,” Sir William Knollys, was evidently one of them. He was married but seemed determined to forget it when he was in her presence.

There was Mary Howard, whom I found rather stupid and tiresome, but her (dyed?) blond hair and huge brown eyes made her attractive to people who did not value conversation. (She liked to “borrow” other girls' clothes. Once she tried to “borrow” something of mine, claiming she thought I had discarded it.) Last there was brown-haired, voluptuous Bess Throckmorton, their leader. They seemed to consider her, the oldest at twenty-eight, their model.

Sure enough, they were clustered around Bess, whispering about something. I stood behind them and clapped loudly. They whirled around to face me, still tittering.

“As Pharaoh once said, if you are standing idle you must need more work,” I said. “But never fear, I shall not take away your straw to make the bricks. However, I would like my dresses to be aired and pressed. The heavy winter ones, now, while I do not need them. Replace any lost pearls or gems; you can see the keeper of the jewels for extras.”

Now they all bowed as obediently as little lambs. The last one to do so was Bess, and she only inclined her head slightly. I looked carefully at her. She had returned to court changed in some way. Certainly she was thinner; she had put on weight during the winter. Now it was gone, and her cheeks had lost their plumpness.

Everyone seemed to be holding her breath. Elizabeth Cavendish gave a nervous high laugh and Mary Howard turned her bulging brown eyes to the floor, studying her shoes. Mary Fitton adjusted her cuffs.

“What is it?” I demanded. “Have I turned into a monkey?”

Bess looked at me levelly. “I assure Your Majesty, I see no monkey here,” she said soothingly.

Now the others burst into high-pitched laughter.

“I think you seek to make me one,” I said. “But you do not fool me.”

For suddenly I understood it all. “Although for a time, you did, and that is hard to forgive. I selected you to serve me in my private quarters—a position that many girls in the land would covet—not to dupe me. So where is he? Where is the father of your bastard?” Let them know, let them tremble—the Queen still saw all, observed all, even if she had to write notes to herself. Shame that that might be known increased my anger at her.

“At sea, Your Majesty.” She looked almost relieved to be able to admit it.

“Raleigh?” He had taken leave to attack Spanish ships at Panama.

“Yes, Your Majesty,” she said.

“The captain of the Queen's Guard, whose duty it is to guard the virtue of my ladies, who holds the key to the maidens' chamber, has used that key himself?” I was almost speechless at the audacity. Not only was he a seducer, but he was a liar. Before leaving for his venture, when there were rumors about him and Bess, he had sworn to Robert Cecil in a letter, “There is none on the face of the earth I would be fastened unto” and dismissed the rumor as “a malicious report.”