Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (81 page)

gaoler, Paulet, and send down his own personal expert in cipher. The

plan centred on the brewer at Burton who supplied Mary’s household

with beer. Mary was at Chartley and Gifford was confident of persuading

her that the brewer was her friend, ready to smuggle her letters in and out

in a watertight box concealed in a beer barrel. The brewer, paid doubly

by her and by Paulet, had a vested interest in the success of the venture.

He could be trusted to keep the letters dry and his own mouth shut. All

correspondence would pass through Walsingham’s hands en route to its

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destination, deciphered and resealed with a professional skill that would

escape notice from the most critical and suspicious eye.

The plan was so essentially simple that Walsingham knew it could

not fail. She had been months without secret correspondence, enduring

Paulet’s cheerless, spiteful rule. She must be desperate by now, more

impulsive, more eager to leap at any chance of escape, more reckless,

surely, than she had ever been in a lifetime of reckless mistakes. She

would fall into his trap like a starved mouse to a crumb of cheese; he was

convinced of it.

Snow had begun to tap softly against the leaden panes of his narrow

little window and caught the attention of his vacant gaze. Before the snow

falls next winter, he thought grimly, I shall have her tried, condemned—

and executed!

t t t

Elizabeth paced the thinly frosted paths of the privy garden, wrapped

in an ermine-trimmed cloak which trailed behind her with a solitary

swish. Around her shoulders was a sable wrap, a New Year’s gift form

Leicester, its head and four gold paws studded with diamonds and rubies.

Her fingers were enclosed in soft kid gloves, delicately worked with her

cipher in silver-thread embroidery and edged at the wrist with pearls.

In her hand she held Perrico’s jewelled leash and now and then she

jerked it impatiently, whenever the little dog lingered over long about a

bush, sniffing and cocking his leg. He would have preferred to go ratting

in freedom along the hedgerows, but he knew better than to whine and

pull. She had reduced her women to jellied silence before they got out of

the palace and he knew the mood that voice indicated. The hand which

caressed him so lovingly when he curled up on the bed beside her was also

equally capable of administering a nasty stinging blow with shocking speed.

Perrico, like everyone else in close attendance on the Queen, had

suffered from her uncertain temper since the departure of the Earl of

Leicester for a vital armed mission in the Netherlands, and the women who

followed her at a safe distance grumbled among themselves resentfully.

The little spaniel trundled in the wake of Elizabeth’s sweeping skirts

with a sort of dismal resignation. His mistress was miserable and when

she was miserable she had a remarkable facility for ensuring that everyone

around her should be likewise. Leicester had gone and Perrico missed

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that burly figure, the big gentle hands which fondled his ears and the

nice, softly pillowed lap, big enough to accommodate a fat spaniel in

complete comfort. There was small joy to be found on his mistress’s lap,

who seldom sat still for more than five minutes put together, and was so

restless, even in bed, that the little dog sneaked away to his basket by the

fire whenever he wanted a peaceful night’s sleep.

The causes of Elizabeth’s ill humour, however, were more diverse

and deep-rooted than Leicester’s absence alone. Alençon was dead. He

had amply served her purpose in the Netherlands for a couple of years

and then died unromantically, and inconsiderately, of a fever, leaving

her to face the eternal dilemma of the Dutch Protestants once more.

More inconsiderate still was the Dutch figurehead, William of Orange,

who had got himself assassinated in his own household. She could not

help reflecting angrily that it had been damned careless of him to leave

the Dutch without a titular leader and herself as the head of Protestant

Europe, a position she had done her best to avoid for the last twenty-

five years. The Dutch had promptly offered her the sovereignty of their

country, but she had flatly refused it, knowing it would be one challenge

that Philip would not choose to ignore. And yet if the Dutch resistance

was allowed to collapse, Philip’s troops would be safely installed within

easy striking distance of England. There had seemed no alternative to

the course that both Burghley and Walsingham urged upon her, namely,

to send over an army under Leicester, the one man with a smattering of

military experience and a reputation as one of the foremost Protestant

supporters in England to match it. She had done so with the gravest of

misgivings and Leicester had departed on the 9th of December with a

martyred air, a strictly limited authority, and what he was quite convinced

would prove to be insufficient men for the venture.

The royal welcome of the Dutch had put him in a better frame

of mind, with bonfires and fireworks lining his route and the people

cheering themselves hoarse at the sight of the man they regarded as their

saviour. He had written home to tell Burghley: “I like this matter twenty

times better than I did in England.”

But since then nothing much appeared to have been accomplished.

The Duke of Parma, who had replaced Don John of Austria, with a

new, ruthless efficiency, bided his time and bad weather struck both sides

without mercy. It had rained so hard that their clothes had rotted on their

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backs and Leicester’s men had huddled into a church at Middleburg for

shelter, hungry and cursing.

It was not an auspicious beginning and Elizabeth remained unable to

shake off an uneasy premonition that the whole enterprise was going to

prove a disaster. Robin wouldn’t lack for personal courage on the field,

but it was the first time he had undertaken any significant campaign on

his own authority—the first time he had ever really undertaken anything

without her at his side, constantly telling him which move to make and

when to make it. She had sent a lap-dog out to war and in spite of the

confidence of her advisers, she could not help but think that perhaps it

had not been the height of worldly wisdom. And yet, ironically, there

was no one more suitable to send in his stead. A country set for more

than twenty years on peace, absorbed in trade and commercial expansion,

ordered, prosperous but scarcely Spartan, had produced no real military

leader. She cursed Alençon for dropping dead in such a ridiculously

unheroic manner, so that now she was forced to rely on Leicester’s

ability, remembering uneasily how he had bungled his youthful attempt

to capture Mary Tudor. Would he bungle this too?

So he was gone and in his absence she was left to face the whispered

threats of invasion and the constant plotting to end her life. Burghley had

been right, it was rapidly becoming a life not worth the living.

“
Madam, I strongly advise against your walking unguarded, even in your

private gardens—accept no gifts personally—refrain from opening letters with your

own hand—inhale no perfumed articles—eat nothing, nothing at all that has not

been tested—
”

Christ’s soul, if Burghley had his way, an armed guard would follow

her to the privy! She had refused to humour his obsessive anxiety for her

person and had said, with her customary flippancy, that she would sooner

be dead than in custody. The London crowds lauded her courage, but

courage took its toll on her, shrivelling her appetite and gnawing at her

sleep, making her unreasonably irritable with her women, whose soft,

silly cluckings and pretty love affairs aggravated her beyond endurance.

After the disclosure of Leicester’s marriage, she had been virtually unap-

proachable on the subject; only the death of Leicester’s son had seemed

to soften her.

It still hurt Elizabeth to recall her own behaviour when Leicester had

come to her four years before, nervous, yet buoyed up with diplomatically

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suppressed excitement, the pleasure of a middle-aged man who has sired

his first legitimate son. He had told her quietly of the birth and stood in

front of her with his eyes filled with naked joy, silently begging for her

interest and approval.

She had not even asked for the child’s name. Stunned with jealous

misery, she had turned away in silence, without a word of congratulation,

and he had gone out of her room cut to the quick by her attitude. He

made no further reference to his son in her hearing; four years later she

learnt from his sister-in-law, the Countess of Warwick, that the child was

not expected to live long.

“Why didn’t you tell me?” she cried later, as he knelt at her feet; and

he looked up in his tired grief and said with brutal frankness, “Because

you never asked!”

She, who loved all children, had put her hand to her cheek as though

she had been struck a physical blow. The child she had chosen to ignore

brought them together by his death, as in his birth he had driven them

apart. When the funeral was over there was little comfort for Leicester at

Wanstead with his bitter, resentful wife. He went back to Whitehall, like

a lost soul, seeking the understanding that only the Queen could give him,

and her response was generous. She shielded his grief from the spiteful eyes

of those who rejoiced to see “the Great Lord” brought low by any means.

But harmony crept back into their private life only to be thwarted by

their public existence. The whirling vortex of crisis in the Netherlands

had sucked them apart at the very moment when they had begun to

know how much they needed one another. And so he had gone, leaving

Lettice to entertain young Christopher Blount in his absence, leaving

the Queen to fret and wait with feverish impatience for that news of his

success which alone could precede his return. She chafed at the delay, but

dreaded the battles which would place him at risk, no longer the young

man of lightning reflexes who had won military fame on the field of St.

Quentin. She had warned him sternly against empty heroics, impressing

upon him that the English force was purely defensive, designed to deter

Philip’s aggression rather than challenge it openly. She had made a public

declaration to France and Spain, insisting that she sought no territorial

gain in the Netherlands, and she relied heavily on Leicester’s common

sense to ensure that relations between England and Spain were not

unnecessarily inflamed by his presence there.

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He knew how important that was—knew that they were not ready for

war with Spain. Oh yes, he knew it all—so why then could she not relax

and know the matter was safe in his hands?

Returning to the palace she found Burghley waiting for her, so grim-

faced that she immediately feared the worst.

“Is there news of Leicester?”

“Aye, madam,” said Burghley stonily, “I fear there is.”

She stiffened, holding the little spaniel against her breast in a grip

which made the animal protest indignantly.

“Is he hurt?” she whispered.

“No, madam—not yet.”

She dumped the spaniel in his basket by the fire and turned on

Burghley angrily.

“
Not yet
!
What the devil do you mean, not yet?”

Burghley stared at her, his expression unchanged.

“I have just received news that on New Year’s Day, in answer to the

importunate desire of the Dutch, the Earl of Leicester accepted the title

of Supreme Governor of the Netherlands.”

Elizabeth’s eyes widened in disbelief.

“Is it true?”

Burghley nodded slowly.

“I’ll kill him,” said the Queen briefly, and turned away.

Burghley coughed. “With respect, madam, it will not help the Dutch

resistance to see two leaders die in office in such quick succession.”

“So I’ll kill him
after
he’s resigned the post.”

“Madam—”

“I will not support him in this position! After all I have said to reas-

sure the French and the Spanish—Christ’s blood, I might just as well

have accepted the Dutch crown myself ! I shall draft a letter immediately

ordering him to resign the post.”

Burghley laid his hand heavily on her sleeve.

“If you send it, madam, I shall resign mine.”

He was right, of course, and in her heart she knew it. A public humili-

ation of Leicester would throw the Dutch into demoralised confusion

before Parma’s forces.

She shrugged off Burghley’s hand and marched to the door of her

bedchamber.

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