Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (89 page)

It contained his own miniature; he knew, because she had once told

him—he had never been permitted to look inside for himself.

The casket was open for once and she was toying with something

unseen in its depths. He came up behind her so silently that, in her taut

preoccupation, she did not hear him.

And so it was that he saw it.

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“Oh God,” he said hollowly. “Dear God.”

She gasped, a frightened, guilty hiss of her breath, as he lifted out the

little doll. It was nearly forty-six years since he had seen it, on that night at

Hampton Court when she had first told him that she would never marry.

It was just as he remembered it; dressed in black satin; and headless.

His face was white as he turned his eyes slowly to meet hers.

“I shall burn this evil thing,” he said.

“No!” Elizabeth snatched it from him wildly. “Oh no, not yet.
Not

yet! She does not wish it!”

She was suddenly so deeply agitated that he was afraid to pursue the

matter. Reluctantly he surrendered the dreadful little object and watched

her lock it back in the casket with feverish desperation. He knew then

that she had been sick for a long time, far, far longer than he could ever

have imagined. Much that had puzzled and frustrated him over the years

was suddenly clear and strangely unimportant, for nothing mattered to

him now, except the need to shield her from discovery and the fate

of brain-sick monarchs. Degrading imprisonment, stealthy death—he

would not allow it. There must be a way to ignite the ashes of her vanity

and make her rise again like the glorious phoenix he remembered.

He could not do it; he lacked the youth and vitality. But there was one

other who just might. And without pausing to consider all the possible

consequences of his suggestion, he remarked casually that it was over long

since she had received his stepson, the Earl of Essex.

She reacted so sharply, angrily, to his suggestion, saying she had no

wish to see that rude, headstrong boy, that Leicester was immediately

convinced he was on the right track; it was the first time in weeks that

anything had interested her enough to make her angry.

“And why not Essex?” he remarked, artfully provoking her. “Is it fair

to damn the boy for being his mother’s son—
the she-wolf’s cub
?”

That stung home, the only time he had ever dared to taunt her with

Lettice, to whom she never referred by name, but only by that insulting

soubriquet—and never to him. Until now it had been an unspoken

understanding that Lettice did not exist. When she swung round to face

him, he saw he had achieved his object; for the moment, at least, she had

forgotten Mary Stuart.

“I don’t know what you’re trying to imply,” she said sharply. “I have

been perfectly fair to all her children—I gave the girls a place at court.”

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“But it’s the boy who really counts—and what have you done to

advance him? Nothing! The lad has no means by which to support his

title and he’s beginning to resent me for his dependent state—Lettice says

you’ll always bear a grudge against him for her sake.”

“I do
not
bear grudges,” she insisted furiously. “How dare she measure

me against her own petty emotions! By God’s precious soul, I’ll make her

eat those words—”

“Then you’ll give him a post?” Leicester considered a moment and

smiled. “Of course, you could always make him Master of the Horse.”

Elizabeth stared at him. “That post is not vacant.”

“It could be—if I resigned—and you know I ought to. I’ve hung on

to it for years out of sentimental attachment—the first gift you ever made

me as Queen. But I’ve so many other offices to fulfil now and it’s a young

man’s job. Let him have it—believe me, he could use the £1,500 a year.”

At the mention of money she was immediately alert and suspicious.

“That’s a great deal to pay out on an untried lad, even on your recom-

mendation, Robin.”

“Then satisfy yourself on his suitability—see him tonight. He won’t

think it odd if you choose to talk and play cards till dawn. No shadow will

trouble you in his company, I promise you.”

The spark of animation faded from her eyes; she pulled her hands free

from his, and he knew a moment of bitter disappointment as she resumed

her aimless pacing. It was no good—nothing worked! Nothing held her

interest long enough to break that vicious circle of guilty despair.

He thought dully: They shall not take her to the Tower. If it comes

to it, I shall keep her close at Kenilworth. And if I find reason to distrust

King James, I shall take her abroad…

As he watched, she passed a wall mirror of rare Venetian glass and

halted abruptly in front of it. In the mirror, he saw her frown at her

reflection and pull angrily at a crumpled curl.

A moment later, she looked over her shoulder at him.

“So what shall I wear tonight to receive him? What would be suitable?”

Leicester smiled with relief as he went to take the hand she held out

to him.

Whatever she wore for Essex, he would make damn certain it was

not black!

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Chapter 4

S
tark and solitary amid the barren desolation in the foothills

of the Guadarrama, the raw stone palace of the Escurial stood silent

beneath a fierce midday sun.

Within the maze of cool corridors, hidden in his Spartan little room,

the mighty ruler of half the world pored shortsightedly over the docu-

ments which lay in neat stacks on a gold inlaid table. He did not look like

a mighty ruler. In his eternal black, crouched over his papers, scribbling

notes in margins and writing his interminable despatches and memoranda,

he more closely resembled an elderly, underfed clerk. Yet half-blind, bent

double with rheumatism, Philip of Spain, at sixty-one, was still the same

model of patience he had been in his lost youth. He never laughed, never

lost his temper—no, not even with the exhausted secretary who had once

poured ink instead of sand all over his King’s newly finished letter.

“It would have been
better
to have used the sand,” Philip had remarked

flatly and began to write the letter all over again. There ought to have

been something endearing about such saintly equanimity, yet Philip

excited little warmth either among his people or his close servants. It was

like serving a living statue.

Restraint was the governing principle of life, and self-restraint was

the only thing that had enabled him to wait thirty years before taking

his revenge on England, that miserable little half-isle of heretics, which

prospered and mocked him steadily. Thirty years she had held him off

with an unheard-of series of shameless prevarications. She had laughed at

his holy crusade against heretics:

Susan Kay

“
Can’t he let his subjects go to the Devil their own way
?”

She had laughed at his hostility, as though he were an imbecile child,

for ever playing with model ships, never to be taken seriously:

“
Good morning, Mendoza. Come to declare war again?”

And she had laughed at the chink in his armour, the one weakness she

had tricked him into exposing to a tittering world:

“
My enmity and his having begun with love, you must not think we could not

get along together whenever I choose.”

Oh, to be avenged on her for all those cruel sallies at his expense!

He had loved her once, a little—perhaps more than he would ever be

prepared to admit, except on his deathbed, to his confessor. A lifetime

ago it seemed now, that first brief spring when she had cut across the

darkness of his accursed marriage like a knife of brilliant sunlight, an

insolent, infuriating chit of twenty-one. Even now, after all his marriages

and mistresses, after all his countless hours of penance, he could still catch

his breath at the memory of her laugh and the elusive, come-on look in

her eyes.

But of course, she would not look like that now. She was old! His

foolish infatuation had long since transmuted itself into undying hatred

and soon she would laugh at him no more.

The “Enterprise of England” was a personal vendetta against the woman

he now honestly believed to be the Devil incarnate. It was appropriate,

when he thought about it, that the Anti-Christ should be a woman—had

not a woman been responsible for Man’s first fall from grace? Strange tales

were afloat of her, faithfully carried to him by her arch enemy, Mendoza.

How she had fainted and remained unconscious for four hours, in spite

of every attempt to revive her, “an indisposition,” reported Mendoza

meaningfully, “to which she is occasionally liable.” Oh, he knew quite

well what Mendoza had meant to imply. Sometimes a witch’s spirit could

be called forth from her body to commune in the nether world, leaving

the host in a senseless state which curiously resembled Elizabeth’s. From

time to time she appeared to see sights invisible to the human eye. Only

the previous year, on her way to chapel, she had stopped dead, staring at

something unseen, so overcome with fear that she could not continue on

her way to church and had to be taken back to her apartments. Where

was she during those lost four hours? And what terrified her so badly that

she could not enter the House of God?

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Renard had warned him long ago that she was of the Devil. He had

chosen to ignore it for a long time, hoping to win her for himself and his

Church. But now he knew it was true. She was a witch and she must be

burnt at the stake.

He liked to imagine that burning. It was so exactly what she deserved

for the way she had treated him all those years ago. No matter what she

said, it was he who had put the crown of England on her head, and kept

it there just long enough for her to gain the strength to hold it without his

aid. What a fool he had been, gulled by a woman’s wiles like any lovesick

stable-hand. The sense of degradation had never left him; it was a sore

that festered slowly. Now he would make war on her and it was God’s

obvious design that his enterprise would prosper.

After years of anxiety and indecision, he was unshakeably set on

action in the face of every conceivable setback. Francis Drake had

delayed the expedition for more than a year by his lightning raid on

Cadiz and Corunna. Done quite against her express order, Elizabeth had

insisted blithely. She really must hang that damnable knave one of these

days—he appeared to think he ruled the seven seas. And all that shipping

destroyed—such a shame!

Oh yes, she had spread her hands with mock horror and said a lot

of conciliatory things—but she had quietly welcomed Drake back and

pocketed the lion’s share of plunder from the
San Felipe
, Philip’s personal

treasure ship. That knave had captured it as a casual afterthought on his

way home.

The raid had been a severe blow to Spain. Thousands of tons of ship-

ping and vast quantities of stores had been lost in Drake’s devastating

onslaught. The damage had taken twelve months to repair and had fully

alerted the enemy to their intentions. So-called allies had begun to snigger

and backslide—even the Pope looked down his long nose to sneer:

“We are sorry to have to say it, but we have a poor opinion of this

Spanish Armada and fear some disaster.”

Sometimes it was difficult to be entirely sure whose side the Pope was

on. From Sixtus V, his hard paymaster, Philip received a steady stream of

sarcasm, and the continual reminder that their mutual enemy was “a great

woman—were she only a Catholic she would be our beloved.”

All over Europe it was the same, from friends and enemies alike.

Nothing but reverence for her name, admiration for her achievements,

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Susan Kay

outright delight at her audacity; while Philip was placed with a yawn in

the category of also ran. He could not compete with her glossy brilliance,

her vulgar show; he was the unsung spider to her gaudy butterfly, the

tortoise to her hare.

But the tortoise would triumph, the fable said so, and no calamity could

cloud Philip’s faith in this endeavour. Even the death of his great admiral,

Santa Cruz, had not disheartened him. He refused to believe, as others did,

that there was no one capable of taking Santa Cruz’s place at such short

notice, and devolved the responsibility on the Duke of Medina Sidonia.

Certainly the Duke had begged to be excused, for he had rarely been to sea

before, let alone in a fight, and insisted piteously that he was always seasick

and caught cold. Assuredly, oh assuredly, he was not the man for the job!

Philip appeared not to hear. He had made the appointment and

would not reconsider his decision, and in truth the man’s self-effacing

attitude had pleased him. He approved of humility in his subjects, and