Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I (22 page)

Mary Radcliffe approached me one afternoon as we were attending to the queen’s jewelry. “Whilst you were away, a new
pamphlet was published, and a copy of it found here at court,” she said. “In it, the ladies attending upon Her Majesty are urged to follow the example of Judith, and execute Her Majesty for the good of the Catholic faith.”

Whoever wrote this must have known that the queen often slept under an eight-piece tapestry set of Judith and Holofernes. I shook my head. “Like Eleanor,” I said quietly. “Where did you hear of this?”

“Walsingham,” she said. “He wanted me to be aware.” She looked at me for but a moment longer before turning away. I knew she trusted me; had I wanted to poison the queen I could have done it with the ointments or dipped her dress pins. Perhaps there was nothing at all behind the look. It was hard to tell.

Once the French marriage proposal was dead, the English returned to the love and adoration of their queen. Although they now understood, perhaps like my very own revelation, that the queen was flesh as well as spirit, most certainly did not want Mary, Queen of Scots, upon the throne.

In September, Thomas’s great friend Francis Drake returned from the New World on his ship the
Golden Hind
. He had claimed new land for the queen and brought her back many novel and enjoyable tokens. After mooring his ship and securing it with booty and bounty aboard, he came to court to celebrate his victory.

“We welcome you!” the queen called to him as she raised him from his knees. He bent to kiss her ring and I daresay by the dip of her head that she was inclined to tickle his chin.

She spent six hours closeted with him, learning of his adventures, enjoying with a loud cry of delight the coconut he brought back for her. He cracked one open and personally served her some
flesh and juice before asking if her confectioners could sugar the rest for her pleasure.

“Yes, all but one,” she said, hanging on to one of the large, coarsely clothed fruits. “I shall have a silver cup fashioned in which this shall repose, in a place of honor, in my palace. It will remind all who see it of your exploits, Francis.”

He grinned the devilishly charming smile of a pirate. “I do not want any to reflect upon me, Majesty. But if looking upon such a fruit can remind them that you, and your realm, have begun to dominate the world at large, yanking false claims from the Spaniards, then I am well pleased indeed!”

There had been some question as to whether Her Majesty, now that she had no shield in the French, should keep the booty stolen from the Spanish, but in the end, she kept it, as I knew she would. Francis Drake was made a wealthy man indeed and was knighted by the queen forthwith upon his ship.

Thomas and I profited, too, as investors. But late one night in bed, after we’d made love, he did not rest in the comfortable glow of marriage.

“What is it, Thomas?” I asked, stroking his cheek.

“I am well pleased for Drake,” he said. “And yet I am restless; he is now knighted while I am not. I seek to serve Her Majesty well in all I do, whether it be at home, abroad, or the regular forfeiting of the companionship of my wife.” I heard the notes of anger and restiveness in his voice, unusual for him.

“She may say nothing,” I reassured him, “but she sees. Cecil has said that the queen’s share of the bounty on the
Golden Hind
was more than the crown earned in a typical year throughout all other endeavors. She can hardly ignore that.”

“Not that I want her to,” he said. “But it’s a shame if sure-and-steady
service, though it be quiet, should be ignored.” He kissed me on the lips before turning to sleep, but he seemed disquieted and perhaps overthoughtful. I tried to restart the conversation the next day, but he waved it away and turned the topic. There was nothing for me to do but comply.

Some months later our second daughter was born. We named her Frances after our friend, Drake.

Year of Our Lord 1582

The Palace of Whitehall

Blackfriars

Windsor Castle

I
n the spring of 1582 we entertained Thomas’s relations, many of whom were in town on court business, and some who simply desired to visit the markets of London, very near our home in Blackfriars. I said a quick prayer for my own family, and my mother in particular, as I tucked my locket under my gown. Perhaps now that the waters were mostly clear of Danes I could write to her more regularly and expect to hear something, anything, in return. Even though our home was small, we still had a staff of nearly twenty-five to assist us. I went to my children’s chambers and spoke with them before our guests arrived. They wanted me to stay and tell stories but I could not. I was as disappointed as their little faces showed them to be.

Elizabeth was, as usual, playing with her dolls, lining them up
and speaking to them in an authoritative tone of voice. Francis, who worshipped her, toddled nearby, while little Frances slept under the watchful gaze of the baby nurse. I kissed Francis on the head, and he felt warm to me. “Has Francis been unwell?” I asked the nurse.

“No, ma’am, he has not, though he’s been a wee bit tired. I shall watch after him,” she said. There was no need to ask after Elizabeth; she was always ruddy and solid.

I made my way down to the great hall. The smell of roasting lamb filled the air, as did the aroma of the warm breads made of fine white wheat and the crisp scent of the parchment in which our fish had been baked. And then our guests arrived.

“Lady Gorges,” Thomas’s cousin John greeted me; John was often the first to arrive and last to leave. Thomas beamed; at court I was always the good lady marquess or the Marchioness of Northampton, but here at Blackfriars I was Lady Gorges.

Some of Thomas’s Poyntz relatives, on his mother’s side, came, too, and all told there were perhaps thirty people dining with us. I’d arranged for musicians to play from the upper choir level to soothe and entertain us as we ate. Toward the end of the evening the talk turned, as it almost always did, to court.

“I hear that Parliament has just passed a law that anyone who converts to Catholicism, or induces another to do so, faces charges of treason,” one of Thomas’s cousins said.

Thomas’s brother William, a staunch supporter of the queen, disagreed. “That’s only for those who withdraw their loyalty from Her Majesty, and surely, that would be cause for treason no matter what the cause.”

“Then how be it treasonous to attend mass, for which the penalty is a weighty one hundred marks?” another Gorges cousin chimed in. “And if you don’t attend the Protestant church, why,
that’s a burdensome twenty pounds to the crown from you. No man can afford that. Seems unlikely they’re all treasonous.”

I recalled a snippet of a letter I’d read in the queen’s library once while searching out a history of the invasion of the Danes so long ago. It quoted the King Richard, second of that name. “This is a strange and fickle land,” he’d written, “which never ceases to be riven and worn down by dissensions and strife and internecine hatreds.”

The comments died away and then were replaced by talk of Drake’s adventure; Thomas brought forth some of the treasures with which Francis had returned home. We had seen little of him in the last year; his beloved Mary had died and he kept mostly to himself and his sailors.

That night, after seeing our guests safely abed and checking on my children, a rare pleasure I was not afforded while I was at court, I went to our bedchamber, where Thomas stood looking out the window upon the dark street.

“What is it?”

“Nothing, love,” he said.

I thought that perhaps he was disturbed by the distressing conversation at dinner. “Your cousin John is a Catholic, isn’t he?” I blurted. Then I wished I could take it back, because in truth, I did not want to know.

But Thomas nodded. “Yes, yes, he is. So are some others in my family, even in my mother’s family, the Poyntzes.”

I sat down on the bed. “How can that be?”

He came next to me and took my hand in his. “It’s an untidy business in this realm, Elin. We were to be Catholic, and then not, and then so, and then not. Neither king nor queen can command what is subject to a man’s own conscience and heart and faith, though they would, if they could.”

I said nothing but looked at his face, still achingly handsome, by the light of the candles near our bedside.

“I want to please you,” he said. “I want you to be proud of me. I am no marquess.”

I gently squeezed his hand. “You joust with a ghost, my lord. I am your wife many times over what I had been to William. I am the mother of your children. I choose you above all others.”

He shrugged and pulled away from me. “And yet, I am still not a knight.”

I did not say that it did not matter, because we both knew it did. I was impatient for a moment, because he held me to account for acting with honor, and I had, from the time of our courting forward, always treated him with honor and respect, too—indeed, with a depth of love I had not developed with William. But I blew out the candles and sought to assure him of my love in the ways that only a wife might.

The next morning, Sunday, he told me to my surprise that he was unwell and could not attend St. Dunstan’s with me and it would be better if I attended alone.

•   •   •

That summer, our son Edward was born.

“He favors you,” I said, holding him toward Thomas, an offering of love that may come only from a woman to her husband. Thomas came near and kissed my cheek.

“He does indeed; he’s a lovely boy,” Thomas said. “Thank you, Elin.” He held the babe for a while, but though we both wished otherwise, he did not have time to spare, as the queen had just honored Thomas by planning to send him to Sweden. There was no official ambassador, but she wished, in the current political climate,
to remain friendly with all Protestant nations. She’d allowed me to retire from court for a week while I helped him prepare.

“I wish I could come with you,” I said.

“I wish you could, too,” he answered. “Do you worry that I shall not represent you, or Her Majesty, well?”

“No, no,” I said, holding him close for a moment. I then disentangled myself. “It’s only that I wish to see my homeland once more. My mother, my sisters, my cousins. The beech trees, the small strawberries . . .”

“I should capture all of them for you, if I could, and return with them.” Thomas was beyond enthusiastic. “I shall comport myself well,” he said, reassuring himself, I knew, and not me.

I laughed. “You shall indeed, was there ever a question? But beware; there are still debts outstanding from Princess Cecelia, and Johan, who was duke when he came here but is king now.”

“Yes, indeed, I know,” he said. He practiced some Swedish and German phrases with me, and our young Elizabeth came dancing into the room and corrected his pronunciation while shushing baby Edward, whom I reluctantly handed over to his nurse.

“I see how it is,” Thomas declared, tickling Elizabeth’s chin. “This young lass is going to correct her father’s speech!”

“I shan’t want you to say it incorrectly!” she insisted.

He turned her upside down and then sent her on her way.

“Me, too!” Francis raised his hands toward his father. Thomas, aware of Francis’s delicate nature, tipped him upside down more carefully and then sent him gently on his way.

I saw Thomas off, watching him ride away until I could not see him on the horizon any longer and wiped tears away from my face. More often than not, it seemed, he was riding away from and not toward me.

I returned to court, where I was pleased that Her Majesty was negotiating in favor of the marriage of Francis Knollys’s son to the rich daughter of Lady Rivett. The lady and young gentleman in question desired to marry out of love, and one might have expected the queen to oppose such a match. But, perhaps out of affection for Sir Francis and loyalty to the long-dead Lady Knollys, the queen intervened on behalf of the young lovers. Perhaps, too, it was a way to pay penance for the banishment from court, forever, of Sir Francis’s daughter the she-wolf.

Illness came to London, and we were all gladdened when it passed by queen and court. However, Clemence came to get me early one morning, while it was still dark. “Lady Northampton,” she called, knocking on my door. “Come quickly. It’s Francis.”

I was only partially awake and did not know of whom she spoke—Sir Francis Knollys? Francis Walsingham? Then it occurred to me that she would not refer to either man by his first name but that she spoke, instead, of my son.

We raced through the dark on horseback with a brace of my servants, but by the time we arrived my poor Francis was gone. His small, gaunt body was laid out on his bed with a thin white sheet covering him; his eyes, their lids darkened, had been closed. His soul was already with the Lord Jesus. That brought me some comfort, as did the continuing health of my other children.

I dismissed everyone from the room and wept over this fine, sweet boy, whom, I admitted, I barely knew though he had held me in highest love and esteem. I sang to him, quietly, till his body cooled, my heart wrenched within me. When I finally left the room, my young Elizabeth and small Frances took my right and left hands in their own small ones, and while it dulled the pain, nothing could erase it.