Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (54 page)

She saw the sudden rush of purple colour in his sallow face, and

wondered idly how long it was since anyone had made William Cecil

blush like a bashful schoolboy. When he knelt solemnly at her feet and

told her that the Queen’s word was as sacred in his mind as the word of

God, she was vastly amused by her power to move him, and rapped him

lightly on the head with her fan.

“Then pray that I don’t come to confuse the two—as my father did,

several times.”

He rose to his feet, inflated by a bubble of triumph that remained

invulnerable to the needle of her mockery. She was safe for ever from

Dudley’s vulgar grasp; she had given her word, her royal word. And he

believed it, because he needed to believe it.

As he left, it occurred to him that it was rather a pity his hand in this

remained unseen. It was the triumph of a lifetime that surely ought to be

accorded the honour of verse.

Some years after his death, the playwright, John Webster, unwittingly

obliged him:
“The surest way to chain a woman’s tongue is break her neck; a

politician did it.”

Short and to the point, it would have pleased his fastidious taste in

epitaphs.

t t t

When Cecil had gone, Elizabeth sat alone in the empty room and played

the virginals by candlelight. For a short while her fingers moved with

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their customary skill across the keyboard, then suddenly struck wildly,

savagely, marking a jarring discord of the tinkling notes. She slammed

the keyboard shut and gave way to the uncontrollable laughter which

had seized her, an uncanny echo of her mother’s wild levity, which had

laughed even at death. For, like her mother, she too was laughing at the

travesty of love, laughing to find herself caught in a fierce emotional

tangle with two men who had nothing in common but ambition and the

English language. Two men prepared to fight like dogs for the right to

possess her, one desiring her body, the other her soul. Only now did she

realise how closely she was bound to them both.

They pulled in opposite directions, and if they pulled long and hard

enough no doubt she would split in two, like a rag doll, so that each

could run off to his lair, gloating over his dead and useless trophy. Only

now she knew how to turn this deadly game to her own advantage. She

could be the apex of that triangle, controlling every force within it; Cecil,

unwittingly, had just handed her the very means with which to do it.

She was free of Robin now, free of his predatory affection and her

own dark uncertainty. She could indulge her love for him within the

limits she chose to set. All the world knew she could not marry him,

and because she could not marry him he could not expect her to risk the

threat of pregnancy. Iron-cast bars of logic would keep him out of her

bed and keep him safe—as safe as that terrible secret which need never

be told.

But the cream of the jest for her was Cecil—her dear, wily Cecil who

imagined he had been so very clever. As indeed he had been—perhaps a

little too clever for his own good. He imagined, as they all did, that her

reluctance to accept a foreign prince lay in her secret longing for Robert

Dudley. Even Cecil believed her public statement that she was wedded to

England and would live and die a virgin was just the empty protestation

of a coy female. No one took her seriously, and perhaps in the game she

had elected to play it was just as well.

Above and beyond her own emotional conflict, the choice of spinster-

hood burned free, fuelled by the purest of political considerations. She had

seen only too plainly the disaster her sister’s foreign match had brought in

its wake. Marriage to France or Spain would reduce England to a vassal

state once more, while marriage to an Englishman raised the spectre of

faction warfare among her jealous nobility. There was only one way for

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a Queen Regnant to survive and that was alone. As she was now she had

perhaps another twenty years to play her enemies off against each other,

to drive a wedge between France and Spain by keeping both in perpetual

fear that she would marry a candidate of either side. It was a game that

only a woman could hope to get away with and, if it worked, it would

gain her the time she needed to rebuild a nation which was spiritually and

financially bankrupt. She would cultivate this country till it bloomed like

a fine rose; she would cosset trade, stimulate education, encourage piracy,

and fling her ships wide to the wealth of the new world. She would not

be too nice about her methods; whatever paid was worthwhile and when

trouble threatened she would wriggle out of it with a cunning facade of

lies. She was probably the most accomplished liar in the world, and proud

of it! She had no illusions about what lay ahead—there would be years of

endless struggle, perhaps even heartbreak, years in which she would have

to fight herself and her own desires as hard, if not harder, than the myriads

of enemies around her. In many ways it would be a nun’s existence.

She stood at the crossroads of her life and stared at the deep forking

of the ways. Down one lay the ultimate fulfilment of a woman; down

the other the fulfilment of a queen. And for a moment, as she saw the

steep and barbed path before her, she quailed. She wanted to ride to

Kew and throw herself into Robin’s arms and beg him to lay the ghosts

that haunted her; she wanted to love and be loved and bear him a dozen

merry, black-haired children. But it wouldn’t work. In her heart she

knew that, knew that she was not fit to be any man’s wife.

Yet those very things which flawed her womanhood could be made

to serve England and make her a great queen. She could play them all

off against each other, France and Spain and the Papacy, people and

Parliament, Cecil and Robin—

Poor Robin
!

She was aware of tears in her eyes and rubbed them away with a

fierce gesture. Great queens did not wail like little girls for what could

not be! She went to her mirror and took up the tiny pots of paint which

would remove the marks of grief from the mask of majesty. When she

had finished, her reflection looked back at her calmly, a bold, clever face

that was both composed and utterly resolute.

Two men and one woman, she thought suddenly and smiled, for she

knew she could make it work. She could have the pair of them on her

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own terms and take from them everything they had to give. And she

could do it for no better reason than that one of them—normally the

most clear-sighted of men—had allowed fear to make him act like a fool.

One small mistake, with devastating consequences, had given her the

whip-hand over them both.

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Part 3

The Queen

“She fished for men’s souls and had so sweet a bait none could escape

her network…She caught many a poor fish who little knew what

snare was laid for them.”

—Sir Christopher Hatton

Chapter 1

T
he chamber of mourning was silent and lit by the glow of black

candles, the heavy curtains drawn to shut out the bright light of day.

The death of a French king was traditionally followed by forty days of

isolation for his widow and not even the irreverent rays of the sun were

permitted to intrude on this formalised period of grief. Apart from her

four handmaidens, Mary Stuart had seen no one for over a month and,

in spite of her genuine sorrow for the loss of one who had been a play-

mate rather than a husband, she was beginning to find the compulsory

inactivity tedious.

Outside, beyond the courtyard of Orleans, the bells were ringing, as

indeed they were still ringing out all over France:
The King is dead, long

live the King
!

But the King for whom they rang was a frightened nine-year-old

boy cowering in the apartments of his dominating mother. Catherine de

Medici was a mysterious, vindictive woman, waiting only for a decent

interval to elapse before she might have the extremely personal pleasure

of ejecting her detested daughter-in-law from French soil.

Mary knew in her heart that a few months’ respite was the most she

could expect from the woman she had once carelessly castigated as a

tradesman’s daughter. And then it would be goodbye to France for the

girl who was Queen of Scotland by birth, Dowager Queen of France

by marriage, and Queen of England by right in the eyes of every good

Catholic in Europe.

There would be no opportunity to arrange another marriage on French

soil, with her mother-in-law, as Regent, blocking every diplomatic

Susan Kay

avenue. No matter which way she looked at it, Mary could see no alter-

native for the time being but a return to her native land.

She remembered very little of Scotland. The country was just a faded

nightmare, an echo of wild hoofbeats in the night, bearing her away from

her English enemies, a smell of damp and decay and sweat. All that was

proud and fastidious in her recoiled at the memory, so that her mind

writhed like an animal in the snares of a net, seeking the loophole that

would mean escape. And when she thought of escape she thought of

England—rightfully hers, snatched from her grasp by a greedy Protestant

usurper. It was hard to believe that the English could first take a bastard

for their Queen and then support her through the most disgusting scandal

since the days when old King Henry’s matrimonial farces had entertained

the courts of Europe. Elizabeth was not only a bastard, she was a whore;

so what dark arts did she practise to keep a people as proud as the English

in submission beneath her amoral rule?

Mary had stared long into her Venetian mirror asking herself this

very question, and now believed she had the answer. Lack of choice had

cramped the English into mutinous acceptance of this “live dog”—Mary

smiled to think how close the Bishop of Winchester had come by that

remark to calling his Queen a bitch. But once the Queen of Scotland

sat on her throne beyond the border, it would be a different case. With

the right marriage and foreign troops to enforce her claim, she could be

Queen of England within six months. There remained one distasteful

obstacle in her chosen path. To reach Scotland it would be necessary

to pass through English waters; to do that without jeopardy required a

written safe-conduct from the so-called Queen of England; and to ask for

that was to imply that the usurper had authority to grant it.

All that was young and impulsive in Mary cried out that she would

rather enter a French convent than submit to the indignity of asking

Elizabeth Tudor for anything. But ambition, warring against her finer

sensibilities, told her that for once she must lower her high-stomached

Stuart pride. First get home in safety to Scotland and then—England

would be her footstool.

So ask—where was the harm? Elizabeth would never dare to refuse.

Indeed, the only obstacle Mary foresaw lay in getting the English jade

out of the Horsemaster’s bed just long enough for her to sign the neces-

sary document.

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Mary laughed and turned from the mirror; she often laughed when

she thought of Elizabeth. A horsemaster, a low-born knave, a traitor’s

son—was it possible such a harlot could stand in her way for long?

She rang the bell for her ladies and smiled gaily when they entered.

Tomorrow the black candles would be doused to mark the end of her

official period of mourning and she would begin to build herself a new

life beyond the safe haven of French shores.

t t t

Fierce July sunlight streamed in gold shafts through the latticed windows

of the Long Gallery and struck green fire from the emeralds in Elizabeth’s

hair. She smoothed the plumes of her feathered fan between her fingers

and stood looking out over the busy river which was dotted with barges

and small boats. Beneath her gaze, London heaved with activity like a

huge ant-hill; it was a sight she never tired of watching from this splendid

vantage point, the throbbing heart of their kingdom.

Cecil, who waited at her side, shifted his weight on to his good leg

and glanced at her face, which as usual told him nothing. She had flown

into a public rage when news of Mary Stuart’s request had reached her,

but since she was perfectly capable of producing rage, grief, or pleasure in

appropriate proportions whenever it suited her, he was uncertain of her

real reaction.

For himself, he was horrified by the news, and knew his alarm was

shared by most of the Council. The Queen’s most significant rival

installed in close proximity across the border was a grim prospect for