Elizabeth I (37 page)

He dropped to one knee. “If it is there, I shall find it.” He grasped my hand and kissed it urgently, so urgently my fingers stung. “I swear it.”

I
took my place in the Great Hall, now transformed into something else entirely. The carpenters and joiners had worked for two days to convert it into a theater, using the minstrels' gallery as the upper part of the set, fastening oil lamps onto wires to hang from the hammer beams and provide twinkling light. I was seated on a throne brought from the royal apartments, one I used when giving audiences. It elevated me so I had a fine view of the stage.

When all the rustling was over as the court took their places, the lord chamberlain, Lord Hunsdon, walked slowly out to the center of the stage. He looked like a white-haired bear, his big shoulders thrust forward as he shuffled one foot in front of the other. How deliberately he crept, my old cousin Henry Carey. Creeping time was creeping up on him. He would turn seventy this year, this dear relative.

In addition to his court, legal, and military duties, he was patron of the best acting company in the realm, which took its name from his title. Tonight he introduced their new presentation. It was impossible to mask the pride in his rough voice.

“Tonight, Your Majesty, Your Graces, the lords of the realm, all the company here present, the Lord Chamberlain's Men have the honor of presenting a new play, as yet unseen in any other venue. It is a fantasy about a night in high summer in which the fairies make mischief for themselves and mortals.” He bowed low. “Here in the depths of winter, we can have a foretaste of June.”

A new play! This was a surprise. Hunsdon took his place beside me, and I murmured, “What a treat for us. I daresay you can vouch for its quality?” It would not do to show what common people called a stink-pool.

“I have not seen it myself,” he admitted.

“Not even in rehearsal?” This was alarming.

“No ... but the writer is known to be good, and I have seen his
Henry VI
.”

Oh, him. What was his name? Yes, Shakespeare. He also wrote poetry. I had skimmed over the
Venus and Adonis
that Southampton had presented to me last New Year. It was heavy for my taste, although his similes were good. “I hope his play is lighter than his verse,” I said.

I saw Southampton's head in the front row, his aureole of hair making him unmistakable. Of course, he would be up close to see his protégé's play. Essex, too, was down in front, eagerly leaning forward, his lanky frame straining the velvet of his coat.

A filmy curtain veiled the stage, but it was slowly lifted, revealing a row of Greek columns and two actors holding hands, who quickly announced themselves to be the Duke of Athens and his betrothed, Queen of the Amazons. The lovers barely had time to lament the four long days until their nuptials before unhappy subjects of the duke appeared, asking him to enforce a father's right to have his daughter obey his choice of husband for her.

I sighed. This promised to be tedious. I disliked plays and poems about arranged marriages and all their variations, having escaped from them myself. Who wishes to see his own life dramatized? And besides, the stratagems the plays used to escape marriage were never as convoluted or clever as my own.

I had to admit, the lighting was very well done, and the suspended oil lamps brightened the stage perfectly. High in the reaches of the great arches above all was dark, but lower down the carvings, covered in gold leaf, were highlighted in stark relief.

“I remember when the whole hall was lit by tallow candles for the workmen,” whispered Hunsdon by my side. “I was just about eight years old when my mother brought me here to watch. My uncle-in-law the King was so eager to have it finished he paid overtime for the workers to work all night. There were piles of lumber stacked outside where we stood, and the whole hall glowed from within like a lantern. It was magic—as we will find this play to be.”

He was too tactful to mention that high in the timbers my mother's initials were still entwined with my father's. In the heat of love the building had commenced, and my father had put my mother's initials everywhere at Hampton Court, only to erase and destroy them later. But he had missed the ones in the roof of the Great Hall, or not wanted to spend the money to send workmen up there, and so this little token of their love remained. There were other places, too. One had to know they were there; one had to look for them. I searched the darkness above but saw nothing.

In the meantime, a painted scene of a wood had replaced the Greek columns, and potted trees were on the stage. The play's lovers had fled into a forest, and now there were fairies as well with their queen and king and a mischief-making spirit, Robin Goodfellow.

“Now comes the magic,” said Hunsdon, “of a midsummer kind.”

The land of faerie was evidently in confusion, their king and queen having fallen out. Their garments glistened and gleamed in the yellow light, iridescent like a snake's skin, and their voices waxed and waned as they spoke their poetry. I could follow the sense of it, but at the same time the words needed lingering over, and yet each rushed on each so quickly it was hard to savor them. Then suddenly the queen spoke of seasons out of joint. Her words were all too clear.

She described perfectly the catastrophic summer rains we had had. No one had blamed it on a quarrel among the fairies, but it had made the entire realm anxious for the next summer to come, to set things right.

Her next lines—
—frightened me. For as I had strolled about the winter grounds I had found roses budding and daffodils pushing through the frosty soil. One bad harvest, yes, that could be expected, but to have the seasons scrambled ...

The play soon introduced a love potion so powerful that if it were smeared on the eyes, the victim was doomed to love whatever he or she next looked upon. There then ensued comical demonstrations of the potion's effects. But the hard edge of the humor was that in reality love caused disruptions almost that extreme. Again, there was my father's devouring passion for my mother, defying common sense or explanation. And the sad spectacle of my sister Mary, married to the indifferent Philip of Spain, against the interests of her country, and again, my cousin the Scots queen who had lost her throne for love-blindness. Within the circle of my own family there were enough examples that I did not need to search history and find Marc Antony or Paris to serve as warning.

The king of the fairies now said that once he had seen Cupid flying down to earth, and

Suddenly the players halted, and Southampton rose, turned, and dipped his head to me in deference. Beside him, someone else stood and did likewise. Then the play resumed.

It was quickly explained that this shaft, which had missed the “imperial votaress,” the “fair vestal,” had pierced a flower and from thence derived the powerful love drug.

So I passed on, fancy-free? It had not been easily done, to earn those two words.

We retired to the Great Watching Chamber when the play ended. Here we would dance until the musicians tired and the youngest pages grew sleepy. I had, of late, had a pull in my knee that pinched when I lifted it, but that would not stop me. Tonight I felt like dancing; perhaps the play had that effect on me—all those fairies tripping about, and Robin Goodfellow speeding here, there, in an eyeblink.

While we had watched the play, the Watching Chamber had been transformed into a version of the faerie realm to match it. Bare tree branches were, by magic of paper and wire, made to bloom; the mists of midsummer were replicated by gossamer silk draped upon them and hanging from the ceiling; perfumed candles, twinkling from sconces, mocked stars.

“Why do we need nature? We can copy her well enough!” said the master of revels. “If we want midsummer in deep December, we have only to ask.”

“If we have the money,” said someone standing by me. “Money can transform one thing into another; it is the only true alchemist's stone.”

Francis Bacon. I should have known. I greeted him. “Sir, you are looking well. How did you enjoy the play?”

“Well enough,” he said. “Although I question whether even love juice could work so fast. Still, it was only to amuse us, and as such, it need not be true.”

“Francis, you are too serious,” I said. “I hope you plan to dance tonight.”

“I have a sore toe,” he said. “I would not want anyone to step on it.”

“What a pity. Perhaps a stately measure, then?”

He smiled at last. “Perhaps.”

I welcomed the gathering, and as I finished, the musicians struck up at one end of the chamber. They began softly, as if they wanted to capture the floating delicacy of the decorations. But as the guests talked and noise rose, they had to switch to livelier tunes.

I felt oddly bold tonight, as if someone had smeared a juice of audacity on my lids. I approached Francis Drake, who was standing stoutly against one of the tapestries, hands clasped behind his back, talking to Admiral Howard and John Hawkins. Beside them stood Catherine, trying to look interested.

“Ahoy!” I cried, startling them. They swung round to stare at me. “I say ‘ahoy,' as I know you must be talking ships and the sea. What else would the admiral, Hawkins, and
El Draque
discuss?”

Recovering themselves, they bowed. Catherine laughed and said, “How well you know them! I was hoping that by joining them I could steer them in another direction—”

“Steer, woman?” said the admiral. “Now you speak as a helmsman, so what else shall we do?”

“Good Queen, the admiral envies the mission Hawkins and I are fitting ourselves for, with your generous patronage,” said Drake. “We would he could accompany us.”

“Drake, someone must remain here to guard us, while you cavort in the Caribbean.”

He raised his eyebrows. “Cavort? This is serious business! Dangerous business, to sail into the Spanish maw.”

“For you, danger is play,” I said. “If you are too long deprived of it, you wither in despair. Even with your lovely new wife at your side in Devon.” She did not seem to be at his side now, though. Perhaps she had stayed home.

He hung his head like a schoolboy caught out, then gave a roaring laugh.

But he was no schoolboy; his movements were slower and his figure stockier. He must be in his midfifties but looked older. Perhaps it was the sea air that had done it, weathering his face into hard lines. Beside him, his cousin John Hawkins, in his sixties, was thin and straight, but his years were upon him, no matter how lightly they sat. Was I foolish to let them embark on a treasure-hunting mission at their ages? They were the ablest seamen of the day, and Hawkins had designed the ships that gave England the victory in 1588, but they were ... old.

They were ... near my age. But dangerous voyages into inhospitable climes demanded more than my life at court, I assured myself.

“If I perish, I want to do so while firing at the Spanish,” said Hawkins. “And besides all the gold we have brought England, we leave our charities—the one for relief of sick and elderly sailors, the Chatham Chest, and the two hospitals.”

“Two?” I asked. “I knew of one, associated with the Chatham Chest.”

“Just this year, I opened the Sir John Hawkins Hospital,” he said proudly.

“Then I'll have to open a Sir Francis Drake Warehouse for Spanish Booty,” Drake said. “But in all seriousness, our ships are being fitted, the supplies stored, and as soon as the Christmastide is over, we will set out.” He looked at me, as if reading my thoughts. “We will not fail. We are in our prime, John and I, and there's not an enemy on land or sea that knows a trick we do not.”

“I am just as glad you are not going, Charles,” said Catherine to her husband, embarrassing him.

I left them still hugging the tapestries and turned to find Hunsdon waiting patiently for me.