Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I (20 page)

Thomas nodded. “They did request that, but Her Majesty forcefully rejected it. She’s said it before, and I’m sure need be she’ll say it again: she has no desire to make windows into men’s souls.”

John covered his mouth with his fist, burped, and continued. “But the council has sent circulars to every diocese in the country asking them to name those known to be recusants.”

“True, I’m afraid,” Thomas said, quickly turning the conversation. “And now, my wife looks to be weary; I’ve heard that carrying a child will do that, and glad I am that I’ll never know!”

At that, those remaining in the room broke out in laughter and relief. The servants tidied up and spread the ashes in the fire, and Thomas and I retired to our bedchamber.

We lay abed, his hand resting on my stomach, caressing our child though we could not, of course, feel him or her yet.

“And so, all is well with you and Her Majesty?” he said. “No residual storm from last month?”

“No,” I answered. “And yet . . .”

He cocked his head at me.

“What is it?”

“I confess, I do love her as much as ever, and I know she senses that. But where I’d once thought her to be like the goddess Idun, now, perhaps, I think upon the tale of Frigga.”

He turned toward me, player inside, courtier out, and urged me on. “Do tell the story, Lady Gorges!”

“Frigga is stately, majestic. She loves to dress in fine gowns and has exquisite taste in clothing and in her jewels. She inspires awe, both fear and love in those around her. But she is the goddess of the
heavens, sometimes garbed in swan white, and sometimes deepest black, depending on her quickly changing moods.”

He nodded his understanding. “Yes, yes, my love, ’tis apt. At least her clothing gives the standers-by a bit of a warning.”

I smiled at that before continuing. “She’s served by a number of maidens,” I said, “but she’s closest to her sister, Freya. Freya always helps Frigga as she prepares for the day, assisting with her ointments and cosmetics. She has charge over her jewels and golden shoes. She sometimes quietly advises Frigga on how to assist the mortals who apply to her for aid.”

He rolled over. “And I suppose you, my love, are Freya?”

I smiled. “Elizabeth has many ladies who help her and whom she loves well. But only one of us is a Swede, so perhaps I may be as Freya to her.”

He kissed me and then said quietly, “You’ve grown up, my love, as has your picture of our mistress, which is meet. Better to love the flesh-and-blood woman and not the taled goddess.” He paused. “Do you think she has given me new tasks and undertakings for my sake, or for yours?”

This was the first in a series of questions, and years, I suspected, where I would have to intercede with my queen for my husband, or the other way round. “Both,” I said. “She awarded Hurst Castle to you and the chancery before she knew we were in love, is that not true?”

He nodded, happy.

That New Year’s, the queen received us both warmly. She gave me a gift of forty-two ounces of gilded silver, and Thomas, eight. The difference was certainly to be expected, but I could see it unsettled him.

•   •   •

Having reconciled herself to my own forthcoming child, the queen sent me to represent her at the christening of a courtier’s child in February, a child to whom she’d promised to stand as godmother. As I was well ranked, I was welcomed as her deputy, and as I wouldn’t attend, by custom, the christening of my own children, I was pleased to participate. ’Twas always a delight to present expensive gifts, too, especially when they hadn’t been purchased from my own purse!

I knew the birth of babes reminded her of her own barrenness; she’d spoken of it to me. My gowns covered my growing child, and though I knew she was pleased for me, it was also a bit of ash in her eye. What made it worse were the whispers round court that her Robin was planning to marry her cousin Lettice some months hence, when her two years of widowhood were complete. She may see and say nothing, but she certainly heard all.

My Lord Sussex and other courtiers were with the queen and me one evening as we gambled. Suddenly, the conversation turned serious. Sussex was pressing the suit of the Duke d’Anjou again. Lord Robert, to no one’s surprise, was against it.

“Majesty,” Sussex said. “It is natural for us to wish for an heir from your own self. How glorious! How magnificent! How natural!”

At that, his sister and my friend Mary Radcliffe snickered. “Yes, brother, do tell, it is natural. I know it’s been said that spinsters like myself are supposed to be paired up with apes in Hell; as for me, I shall take my chances on if that be true or not. For one thing is certain, to be partnered here on earth would be to assure such a husband!”

Sussex blushed; only his virgin sister could get away with that stinging rebuke. We ladies hid our smiles behind our hands, and
the queen quickly raised her white feather fan to hide her smile as well, rattling the long chain upon which it was clasped to her girdle.

“That’s not what I mean,” Sussex said.

“The people won’t have it,” Lord Robert declared, raising his voice.

“You mean
you
won’t have it, Leicester, and your opinion in this matter concerns me not in the least!” Sussex shouted.

“Her Majesty will not partner herself with a French fop!” Lord Robert retorted.

Sussex looked Lord Robert up and down, noting his fine purple attire. “Nor an English one, apparently.”

“Gentlemen,” the queen said quietly. “I shall consider all you’ve said. And now, if you don’t mind, I wish to play cards. Who will gamble against me this night?”

A cadre of her men agreed, and I thought, in cards and in life, it was the fool who gambled against Elizabeth.

Within days, the queen had signaled her approval for the negotiations to begin again between herself, at forty-four years of age, and Anjou, a man of but twenty-three who had, apparently, a novice’s poverty of looks but a prince’s riches in charm. She insisted in dressing again in the French fashion, which she much preferred anyway, perhaps as a token of affection to her mother.

Was it the rumors of Robin and Lettice that had made her turn aside from her declaration to me that she would remain married only to her realm? Or was it her realm that she was thinking to protect by aligning herself with France against Spain? A French husband would be a powerful antidote to the Scots’ poison for her throne. In any case, I had learned to watch
what she did, not what she said. Walsingham, too, was against the marriage. He was perhaps the most formidable foe any of the queen’s enemies had, slithering as he did through country and court.

“I suspect Walsingham of fomenting public opposition to the French marriage,” Thomas told me one night after he’d returned from a mission to the north for the queen. He loved when we could share a meal together in private, so I’d had one specially prepared and delivered to our quarters.

“Surely not!” I said. “That would border on treason.”

“That’s not how he would view it,” he said. “But I am remiss to speak of matters of the realm. I’m more interested in the matters of my own hearth. How comes our child?”

“She comes soon,” I said. “I sense her shifting within me.”

“Her?” he noted with surprise.

“I’m certain it’s a girl,” I answered him. “Her Majesty has already agreed to stand as godmother and to allow us to name her Elizabeth, if that be all right with you.”

I retired to Blackfriars with our own servants the middle week of May, and I didn’t have to wait long until our insistent, red-haired daughter pushed herself out into the world. For nigh on twelve hours I cried out into a rag that I’d moistened with the helpful lady’s bedstraw until the midwife held her, bloody and wailing, in the air in front of me.

“A daughter, my lady. Will your husband be disappointed?” she asked me.

I shrugged. Truly, I did not know. I’d been afraid to ask. The babe wailed for nigh on an hour and I could do nothing to stop her. But when she was cleaned and wrapped and Thomas brought in, he took her in his arms and she settled right away.

“You know how to charm the young ladies,” I teased him as he bent over to kiss my sweaty brow.

“Seems I do,” he agreed, and smiled back at me. “But I’m only interested in young, beautiful ones who favor you.” I looked at them together and I knew that no matter what we’d risked to marry, it had all been worth it. Nothing and no one would separate us now.

Years of Our Lord 1578, 1579, 1580

Blackfriars

The Palace of Whitehall

Hampton Court Palace

O
ur daughter was christened on June 4 at St. Dunstan’s in the West by the very man who had married us not a year before. The queen gave us a double bowl of gilded silver in which the child was baptized, and then rejoined us at our small home to celebrate. I could not say for certain, but I think Thomas was slightly disconcerted by the size of our home because he brought up the topic of the ramshackle manor at Langford several times over the course of the evening. The queen, gracious as always, told him she felt perfectly at home right where she was.

I had not yet been churched after my daughter’s birth, and therefore had not yet reappeared in public, when the queen left for Progress. She made a special trip to Blackfriars to see me and to ensure that I would join her midway.

“Yes, Majesty, of course. Perhaps I should oversee the effort to secure more sugar to be brought midway through the Progress.”

She feigned annoyance. “Are you saying that we are as a poor-quality wine, and can only be tolerated when well sugared?”

I laughed aloud, which she, like anyone who posits a jest, enjoyed. “No, no, Majesty. All know that you care not at all for the oysters, veal, mutton, anchovies, and eggs that are certain to be served to you as long as your confectionary course is well stocked.”

She smirked. “I shall see you shortly and in fine health, my good lady marquess.”

I settled back on my bed after she left, content that our friendship had been fully restored.

•   •   •

We were near the end of Progress, in August, when Sussex wrote again to the queen. One could not fault the man for his earnest devotion, and the queen credited that and much love to him, but he did not know when to leave a topic lie.

“Mary,” the queen asked. “Would you please read to us the letter from your brother while I am gowned and my hair done?”

Mary nodded and Catherine Carey, the Countess of Nottingham, assisted Her Majesty into her gown.

“ ‘To marry Anjou, who is a most noble and worthy partner to yourself,’ ” she read, “ ‘would be to secure an heir from your own body, which is precious to all in your kingdom. It will also assist you as you seek to gainsay the Spanish and their continued attacks against the Protestants in the Netherlands.’ ”

The queen nodded for Mary to continue.

“ ‘You shall have a husband as a defender of all your causes present.’ ” None of us dared smile, but the thought of twenty-three-year-old
Anjou protecting Elizabeth was one that, in another venue, would have brought loud, merry mirth.

“Well, then, it’s settled,” the queen said. “I’m to be married!”

I did not know if she jested, and by the discomfort in the room I suspected no one else did, either.

“There is more, Majesty,” Mary said. “Shall I continue?”

“Yes, please do.”

“ ‘There are, of course, a few disadvantages. Your own mislike of marriage, and the general mislike which Englishmen have to be governed by a stranger.’ ” He went on to convey that a popular pamphlet had begun to circulate in London, declaring, with admiration and affection, that Elizabeth was “a prince of no mingled blood, of Spaniard or stranger, but born mere English here amongst us.”

The queen did not dismiss pamphleteers; she knew they spoke truth she was unlikely to hear in the gilded galleries of Whitehall.

Within a month of our return to court, the palace hummed with the news that Lord Robert had married his mistress, Lettice Knollys Devereux, at his house in Wanstead, two years after her husband Essex died, and three years after the queen had told him, with finality, that she would not marry him. Lettice’s father, Sir Francis Knollys, was the unshakable witness. None dared tell the queen, and who wanted to be within arm’s or ear’s reach when she learned of it? And yet she would certainly find out.

The queen had sent Thomas abroad, to the Netherlands, as an emissary, and I sat companionably sewing by the fire with Mary Radcliffe one November night.

“My brother . . . ,” she started.

“What is it?” I asked, handing a fresh needle to her. We both loved him well but knew his occasional intemperance of speech.

“He told the French ambassador of Lord Robert’s marriage.”

I set down my work. “I know he loves Lord Robert not, but the queen?” I marveled.

She nodded. “He believes it to be in Her Majesty’s best interests,” she said with a sigh. “Of course with Simier coming from France at the new year, well, it shan’t be long till the queen hears of it. And we’ll all be here as witnesses.”

New Year’s was the one time of year when all courtiers were expected to be present at court unless they were ill unto death or delivering a child. That meant Lettice would have to be there, too.