Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (95 page)

And as she walked, she reflected with anger that there were a hundred

things she would rather do than trail around the parched countryside at

snail’s pace in the company of a sick old man who could no longer excite

her passion.

Ricote, August 29

I most humbly beseech Your Majesty to pardon your poor old servant

in sending to know how my gracious lady does and what ease of her late

pain she finds, being the chiefest thing in this world I pray for, for her to

have good health and long life. For my own poor case I continue still your

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medicine and find it amends much better than any other thing that has been

given to me…from your old lodging at Ricote, this Thursday morning,

ready to take on my journey. By Your Majesty’s most faithful, obedient

servant, R. Leicester

The letter, written in a tremulous scrawl hardly recognisable as

Leicester’s bold hand, looked up at Burghley from among a pile of

papers on the Queen’s desk. He looked down at it with a curious

hangdog expression and wondered why in God’s name he had had to

notice it at this precise moment.

The Queen lifted her head, smiling as she pushed a pile of signed

documents across the table towards him.

“There—all done at last. You’re a hard taskmaster, William Cecil, to

keep me shut up in here on my birthday. May I go out to play now?”

He raised his eyes to hers uncertainly.

“Your Majesty?” he said vaguely.

“I said: Is that all for today?” She studied his gaunt face and added

kindly, “What’s the matter, Cecil—is your gout bad again?”

“No,” he muttered, scarcely attending, “thank you, madam—I am

much as usual.”

She laughed and flexed her stiff fingers, straightening her rings.

“Indeed you are, with a face as long as a fiddle. For a moment I

thought the Armada must be at sea again.”

She got up and went to open the window and the slight breeze from

the river disturbed the papers on her desk. Leicester’s note fluttered to

the floor and Burghley bent with great difficulty to retrieve it, staring at

it dully.

“What a lovely day,” she remarked thoughtfully. “Had Robin been

here we would have gone hunting—”

Burghley made no response. She turned in surprise to look at him and

suddenly, seeing his face in the harsh sunlight, she knew.

One hand crept slowly to her throat and the other went out to him in

a hopeless gesture of supplication.

“No,” she said dully. “Not now—not after—”

She broke off abruptly to draw a shuddering breath and turned her face

away from his pitying gaze.

Burghley put the letter carefully on the table and went over to her

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slowly, taking her trembling hand and pressing it, palm upward, to his

dry lips.

“Please believe me when I say this, madam—I am truly sorry.”

Elizabeth pulled her hand away from him and rubbed it fiercely against

her gown, for all the world as though he had spat upon it.

“When?” she demanded harshly.

He was hurt by her response and did not pretend otherwise.

“On the 4th of September,” he said, rather shortly. “At Cornbury.”

She looked up and stared at him then. Even the tardiest rider could not

have taken three days to cover such a distance. Lettice’s ultimate revenge,

as his legal wife, was to see her informed of his death like some distant

business acquaintance on the seventh—her fifty-fifth birthday. Burghley

saw her flinch and was ashamed of his momentary resentment.

“It was a peaceful end,” he murmured, hoping the fact would afford

her some comfort. “He died in his sleep. It is understood that the strain

of the journey—”

“It was my command—the journey,” she interrupted softly. “My

command.”

All that was left of Burghley’s human sensitivity curled up and cringed

as though in pain. Oh God, what a blunder!

“Madam,” he began inadequately, “I had no idea that—”

She cut him short with a curt gesture of her hand and stared out

through the window, remembering the hot morning when he had come

into her bedroom at Whitehall to take his leave. Dressed for travel, a short

cloak swinging from his huge shoulders, a plumed cap in his hand, and

the red veins bulging in his temples with the heat.

She had received him alone and he had taken advantage of it, neglecting

to bow or kneel or do any of those things which properly appertained

to the saluting of majesty. For a moment he looked at her searchingly,

turning her face gently to the cruel sunlight which flooded in from the

single window overlooking the river. Then he drew a finger over her

cheekbone and showed her its poppy-hued tip.

“I thought you and I were finished with deception,” he said

reproachfully.

He took off his cloak and told her he would have all the horses in the

courtyard returned to their stables.

“…with your gracious permission, of course,” he added ironically.

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Susan Kay

“Robin! It’s nothing—”

“Please.” He laid a hand on her arm. “If you knew how many times

that wretched phrase of yours has put the fear of God in me you would

not say it again. I have bitter experience of the utter unreliability of your

judgement where your own health is concerned and I intend to remain at

court until I am better satisfied.”

A week ago she might have lost her temper, but now she knew there

was nothing he could say or do that would ever anger her again. She sat

down at her silver-topped table and told him very calmly, very pleasantly,

that he could go to Buxton of his own free will, or under an armed

guard—whichever suited his mood best. After that she sat in silence, with

her chin in her slender hands, watching him smack his hat angrily against

his thigh and listening while he swore.

“You have to go,” she pointed out at length when he paused for

breath. “Your wife is expecting you at Wanstead.”

“My wife,” he said grimly, “can ably fill her time with the attentions

of Christopher Blount, as she has done these several years past.” He glared

down at her. “Do you think she matters now—do you think anyone ever

mattered beside you?”

She looked at him standing there, red and fat and winded with exas-

peration, and thought sadly that she had never loved him better, not even

in the days of his glowing, virile youth. The great white feather, which

had stood so proudly in the brim of his hat, was now dangling limply, like

a broken daisy stalk. He tossed the hat down on the table and she raised

her eyebrows slightly at the sight of it.

“I hope you don’t intend to wear that to Buxton,” she said softly.

“Forget Buxton,” he snapped. “I never wanted to go anyway—the

season’s almost over. I can live with London’s stench for a few weeks

more, then we’ll go to Ricote together—as you promised.”

She removed the broken feather and began to smooth out the crum-

pled velvet brim.

“You know I can’t get away from London before the autumn. You’ll

have to come back for me.” She handed him the hat with a sigh. “I’m

afraid that’s the best I can do with it. I’ll buy you a new feather.”

“Your Majesty’s generosity is as usual overwhelming.” He was smiling

now, in spite of himself. “I suppose you think to get your own way in

the end.”

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“I usually get it,” she reminded him wickedly. “In the end.”

“Yes.” He was staring at her as though he was etching every fragile

line of her face deep into his memory. “Yes, you usually do, don’t you?

And what pray, am I to tell Margery Norris when I see her?”

“Tell her—November.”

“
November
!”

“At the earliest.”

He bent to kiss first her hand, then her thin cheek.

“You’re a very hard woman,” he remarked without rancour, as he

bowed and began to back stiffly to the door with one hand on the hilt of

his sword. “A diamond to my paltry grain of sand.”

“Robin!”

The sudden panic in her voice had made him turn sharply in the

doorway to look back at her, a black silhouette against the August sunlight.

She smiled uncertainly, made a helpless gesture of confusion.

“Write to me,” she whispered, as though it was not quite what she

had meant to say.

“Of course I shall write,” he said. And was gone.

Elizabeth stood very still watching that door shut over and over

again in her memory, and at her side, watching her narrowly, Burghley

felt cold with apprehension. Her eyes were empty, blank and cold as

marble, as though there was no one behind them. If only she would

move, speak, cry—do something he could accept as a normal manifesta-

tion of grief.

“Madam—” he whispered.

She moved away and began to search blindly among the papers on her

desk. He stepped forward, more quickly than he had moved for many

years and put Leicester’s note into her frantic hand. Her fingers closed

about it with relief and without a word she turned like a sleep walker and

went through into her bedroom, closing the door behind her.

A moment later, he heard the key turn in the lock. It was a harsh,

rasping sound, sudden, unexpected, and strangely final.

And it filled him with a curious foreboding.

t t t

For three days the Queen’s door remained locked and the room beyond

it shrouded in utter silence. The timid tapping of her ladies upon the

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heavy panels grew progressively into a frantic hammering, but there was

no answer, no response—nothing.

Questions pulsed through the palace, gathering bizarre and dreadful

answers, until Burghley could bear the suspense no longer. Accompanied

by a few members of the Council, he gave the order to have her door

broken down; and as the panels splintered he bit his lip and braced himself

mentally against what he would find.

He was the first to step into the room and see her sitting at her dressing-

table, staring into her mirror. As he limped to her side, she turned her

head very slowly and blinked at him, almost without recognition, from

glazed eyes. His glance fell to the empty spirits decanter in front of her

and he suddenly understood; oddly enough, it was the one thing he had

not considered.

His immediate thought was to spare her the indignity of discovery

and without turning round he gestured curtly to the councillors who still

hovered nervously in the broken doorway, ready to run for their lives if this

unpardonable intrusion on her privacy should be greeted with a screaming

tantrum. While Burghley’s back shielded her from view they bowed and

scuttled out beyond the ante-room, closing the outer doors behind them.

Elizabeth turned the decanter upside down over her goblet and swore

softly, finding it empty. She who had always shunned drink like the devil,

fearing to cloud her faculties and loosen her tongue, was now as drunk

as a lord.

She said vaguely, “I don’t like wine. Tell them to bring me more of

this brown stuff—aqua vitae—whatever it’s called.”

Burghley leaned over and took the empty decanter from her hand.

“Madam,” he murmured gently. “Madam, this does no good.”

“You’re wrong, Burghley—why are you always
wrong
about me when

it really matters? It helps to feel nothing, think nothing—be nothing.”

“For a while.” His voice was reproachful. “A very little while. But

you must see it’s not the answer.”

“I see nothing,” she murmured, maudlin with spirits. “My eyes are

closed for ever and I am blind.”

Leicester!
thought Burghley,
suddenly savage with frustration. God damn

him, God rot him, is he to be a greater threat dead than he ever was alive?

Aloud he said desperately, “Does it count for nothing that your

country is safe?”

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“Oh yes—the
miracle
!” She smiled strangely. “But we don’t get mira-

cles for nothing, Burghley, and I have made full payment for mine. One

gaudy hour of triumph in straight exchange for a life. The Devil drives a

hard bargain.”

He was silent a moment, immeasurably shocked, groping blindly for

the right words.

“Madam, it was a cruel loss—none knows better than I, I assure you.

But life goes on and is ill-served by such bitterness.”

“I’m not bitter,” she said wearily, “I’m burnt out. I’m no more use

to you, Burghley, or to England. I’ve no cards left to play. So release me

from our bondage and let me go now—while they still love me.”

While they still love me…

What did she see in her mirror to make her say that at the very peak

of her achievement, when she stood with her power at its zenith and the

people still chanted her name in the streets? What did she see in those

cold crystalline depths to fill her with such utter desolation?

Never in the thirty years of their association had he ever seen her look