Elizabeth I (28 page)

“It is stunning that the revenues of England are now defending five countries!” the Lord Keeper cried. He pointed out that I had had to sell Crown lands to meet expenses, despite my ongoing frugality.

“In building, our Queen has consumed little or nothing,” he said. “In her pleasures, not much. As for her apparel, it is royal and princely, as required for a sovereign, but not excessive. Her household expenses, being a solitary ruler, are small, yes, less than in any other king's time. In the past, Her Majesty, despite hardship in doing so, has always repaid her debts.”

This was true. I had built no palaces and could not even afford to convert the temporary banqueting house at Whitehall into a permanent pavilion, something much remarked upon by foreign visitors. I had no consort's lodgings, nor children's, to support.

“And there is more!” he said. “When Her Majesty came to the throne, it was mired deep in debt. The navy had rotted. But she discharged the debt, and now she is able to match on sea any prince in Europe, which the Spaniards found out when they came to invade us.” A purr of pride rumbled through the room. “She has compassed the world with her ships, whereby this land is made famous throughout all places!” The purr rose. “I trust that every good subject, seeing it concerns his own good and the preservation of his estate, will grant a generous subsidy. They are less than half that granted to her father, King Henry VIII.”

He rumbled on about other matters, then called upon anyone who wished to speak. Suddenly an older man rose in the back. “I am Peter Wentworth, representative of Barnstable.”

Not him! The fiery Puritan who had steadfastly opposed me in matters of religion, trying to force the Church of England to abolish priests, vestments, and music. But he could not be silenced now. The Keeper nodded.

“Besides the Spaniard, we have another enemy to address once and for all in this parliament. I mean the chaos that will descend upon us if Her Majesty does not settle the succession. We must frame it as a law and have her name the one to follow her.”

The unmentionable topic, the one I had succeeded in silencing in the years since Parliament had ordered me to marry. How dare he?

The Keeper said, “Sir—”

“I have addressed these concerns in my pamphlet ‘A Pithy Exhortation to Her Majesty for Establishing her Successor to the Crown.' ” He waved a dark leather-bound book in his right hand. “I have presented it, yet I receive no answer!”

“Sir, this is not meet—”

“We have free speech here in Commons! I must present—”

“This is not the proper time; we are not framing law.”

I stared at him, hoping by my stern gaze to silence him. But Puritans are not silenced by looks, not even from their Queen. Let the irritating man speak, then.

“Exercise that privilege of free speech, sir,” I ordered him. “You may proceed.”

He looked startled; now that he was told to speak, he stuttered. “I—I—” He thumbed the pages of the book.

“No, no book,” I said. “You must speak from your own head and heart.”

“Very well! You know I have urged this since 1562, when Your Majesty was smitten with the smallpox and we saw that if our captain perished, there was no one to take the wheel of the ship. Many, many shared my fear! But you did nothing to assuage that fear. After the Queen of Scots was ... removed ... I wrote my ‘Pithy Exhortation,' urging you to act. Now, Parliament must act in your stead since you will not. Parliament must draft a law regarding the succession.”

I felt the brush of heat spreading across the back of my neck like the palm of an overwarm hand. Dr. Lopez's herbs had helped quiet the attacks, like a flash of fire that crackled and struck, but had not altogether ended them. My collar grew damp, and the plain gown I was wearing suddenly felt like a hair shirt indeed.

“Parliament does not have that power,” I said.

“Parliament determined the succession that brought Your Majesty to the throne,” he said.

Now my face felt as if it were before a smithy's furnace. Parliament had passed a law of succession, but only according to my father's wishes—wishes that he changed quite often. I had been in, then out, then in the succession again. I did not care to be reminded of that.

“In compliance with the will of Henry VIII,” I said.

Wentworth now whirled around and addressed his fellow parliamentarians, while not exactly turning his back on me. “History tells us what happens in a kingdom with no clear heir,” he cried. “Each age is different; each age has its own particular horrors. Now, for us, should our gracious Queen die and no successor be known, fierce competition will break out for the crown. The realm will fracture into many pieces, making us easy prey for Spain.” He raised his eyes to heaven. “Farmers will be slain in the field, children murdered in every town, women ravished, towns burned, and religion laid in the dust!”

“You paint a vivid picture,” was all I said.

“Remember Rehoboam, Solomon's son! He lost his father's kingdom; it split in half. The eyes of all England are upon you!” he cried to me.

“Yes, they always are, and have been since my birth,” I said calmly. There was a reassuring laugh from the chambers.

“My true and unfeigned love for you forces me to tell you, our most dear and natural sovereign, that if Your Majesty does not settle the succession in your lifetime, I greatly fear that you shall then have such a troubled soul and conscience, yea, ten thousand hells in your soul, when you die, as die you most certainly will—your noble person shall lie upon the earth unburied, a doleful spectacle to the world—”

“Representative Wentworth needs air,” I said, motioning to the guards. “Remove him so that he may catch his breath.”

“You shall leave behind you such a name of infamy—” He was hustled from the chamber, leaving a wake of silence.

It was up to me to break the silence, change the mood. Yet I was awash in sweat, and not from the prickling heat of my neck.
Lie unburied ... die most certainly you shall ...
I cleared my throat. “His words are wilder than Christopher Marlowe's
Tamburlaine
, and I wonder he does not go on the stage.”

That was what was needed. A peal of laughter rang throughout the chamber, and I had dodged the succession question once again. I would settle it my way, and in my own time.

The Parliament continued to meet all through Lent, paralleling the dreary weather of the season and the labored, penitential readings for services. Archbishop Whitgift loved Lent; it allowed him to indulge in his Old Church proclivities. Late dawns and early dusks called for flickering altar candles. Searching one's conscience lent itself to confession and abstention; fasting purified the soul. The time-honored wheel of the church year turned slowly, and the six weeks of Lent could seem very long indeed, depending on the privations one embraced.

There were no plays, few court festivities, no music, and no wedding solemnizations. The courtiers put away their gaudy clothes, and many returned to their homes in the country.

Though Puritans rejected the church year, holding a liturgical calendar to be popish, they seemed to keep Lent all year and wish the country would keep it along with them. Fortunately, political setbacks had curbed their power lately, and so their challenge to my government, and the threat of some sort of Calvinist-type reformed religion being imposed upon us was allayed.

I found solace in the old forms, although I did not flaunt them. I had, after all, grown up with them, and they were comfortingly familiar to me. I liked the whispered “Remember man you are dust and unto dust you shall return,” followed by the flattened thumb smearing ashes on my forehead; I did not flinch from examining the list of transgressions I might have committed—lack of charity, lack of compassion, vanities, and self-delusion. In private I wore the memento mori that Essex had given me, sometimes drawing it out of my bosom and staring at the hollow eye sockets. When I looked in the mirror, my white face and the dark shadows of my eyes traced the same anatomy. The skull beneath my powdered cheeks was all too clear.

Death was very much on my mind, as this Lent plague still raged about us. Many had died in London, and the sound of the bells and the low, mournful cries of “Bring out your dead” did not abate. I sent what food and goods I could to help the survivors, but there was little anyone could do to stop the ravages. I ordered the theaters closed, as well as the concerts at the Royal Exchange, to keep crowds down and try to slow the spread of sickness.

“Queens have died young and fair,” a poet said. I was no longer young, and Wentworth had just loudly reminded me I must die. I would die. Someone would sit on the throne after me. Who was that someone to be?

There were those who thought I could not bear the thought of death, seeking to avoid all mention of it, as if that would keep it at bay. But they were wrong about my motives. What I wished to keep at bay was attention turning to my successor and bypassing me. As soon as I named him, I would be creating an alternative government, someone to whom disgruntled persons could turn for redress. I would be rendering myself obsolete. I had said it plainly: “Think you I will set my winding-sheet before my eye?” From that, people thought it was the shroud I shunned, not being dead politically before my time.

It would have to be James VI of Scotland. We all knew that. But I would not formally name him. He was the only possible claimant who met England's needs. All the other candidates were either foreign, or Catholic, or more distant relatives. Since it was so obvious it would be James, why could they not stop harassing me about it?

I was not overly impressed with James, but he was the best to hand. As a thrifty monarch, I had nonetheless felt it a good investment to put James on an allowance, subject to his good behavior. As a result, he raised barely a murmur when his mother was executed.

James was said to be odd, but how could he be otherwise with such a mother and such a father? It was a miracle he was not insane. If he had a penchant for pedantry and favorites, it was a small price to pay for what he had been through. I hoped my people would welcome him ... sometime in the far distant future.

Robert Cecil brought me reports of Parliament's debates. He sat in Commons, his father in Lords. Essex likewise sat in Lords, his retainers in Commons. I was shocked beyond words to learn that Francis Bacon, Essex's man in Commons, had objected to the subsidy to fight the Spanish, speaking out loudly against granting it in the time period we requested it.

Sir George Carey answered him robustly, saying that the Spanish had already sent 140,000 escudos of gold into England itself to corrupt the nobility, in addition to bribing the Scots.

“The Queen is determined to dispatch Sir Francis Drake to encounter them with a great navy!” he had cried. “Shall we deny her the means?”

Bacon rose and said the country could not afford the subsidy. “The gentlemen of the realm must sell their plate and the farmers their brass pots.”

This disloyalty stunned me. Was he appealing to the masses over and above the peril of the country? Was Essex behind this? For Francis Bacon was his man and could have no justification on his own. Was his master seeking to undermine me, courting popularity directly with the people?