The Lady Elizabeth (49 page)

“She is dissembling, madam, the better to play her own game!” Lord Chancellor Gardiner thundered.

“Now she shows herself in her true colors,” Renard chimed in. “Madam, you are harboring a serpent in your bosom, as I have warned you before!”

Mary sent for Elizabeth.

“I beg you, Sister, speak freely,” she urged. “You must say if you firmly believe what Catholics have always believed concerning the Holy Sacrament, that it becomes the actual body and blood of Our Lord at the moment of consecration.”

Elizabeth paled. She swallowed, aware that Gardiner and Renard were watching her like hawks about to swoop, and sensing the danger in which she would stand if she gave the wrong answer. She must retain Mary’s sympathy at all costs, for there was much at stake.

“Madam, I
have
seen the error of my ways,” she said, low, “and I have been planning to make a public declaration that I attended Mass because my conscience moved me to it, and that I went of my own free will.”

Mary smiled and embraced her impulsively.

“You gladden my heart with your words,” she told her. “Why, you are trembling! There is no need, Sister. All is well.”

“I feared I had displeased Your Majesty,” Elizabeth said.

“Not anymore,” Mary said warmly.

Renard, watching Elizabeth depart, could barely contain his exasperation.

“She is deceiving us all,” he told the Queen. “She failed to give a direct answer to your question.”

“She is lying about her conversion,” growled Gardiner.

Mary looked distressed.

“You still think that, dear friends?” she asked.

“I fear so, madam,” Renard answered. “She is a hypocrite. One day she knows nothing about the Catholic faith, the next she realizes she has been in error. She is clever, but not that clever. And Your Majesty, forgive me, is too trusting, and too ready to believe the best of everyone.”

Bishop Gardiner hummed agreement.

“It troubles me to think that, if I died before bearing a son, my throne would pass to one whose beliefs are so suspect,” Mary said slowly, twisting her rings again. “Indeed, it would burden my conscience too heavily to allow Elizabeth to succeed me, if you are right and she only goes to Mass out of hypocrisy. It would be a disgrace to my kingdom.”

She sank down in her chair of estate, older doubts about Elizabeth surfacing in her troubled mind.

“She is, after all, the daughter of one of whose good fame you might have heard,” she observed with irony. “One who received her just punishment.”

“She has inherited too much of that lady’s character to make a good queen,” Gardiner observed. “I admit I was once taken in by her mother’s superficial charm, but I saw the light in time.”

But Mary was not listening. She was wrestling with a particular worry that had festered in her breast for many a long year, and had lately been the cause of many sleepless nights. Now, with her other pressing concerns about Elizabeth, she could contain herself no longer.

“I must tell you that I doubt she is my father’s child,” she blurted out, surprised at herself, for she had never voiced this to anyone in her life.

Gardiner and Renard stared at her in astonishment.

“Hear me out,” she said, a little breathless at her own candor. “I heard it said, many years ago, soon after the Concubine’s fall, that Elizabeth bore a resemblance to Mark Smeaton, the lute player who was accused of criminal relations with that woman. More than one person remarked that the child bore his face and countenance. And if that is true, then she is not my sister at all, still less the lawful heir to my throne.”

“I heard those bruits too, but I fear they were mere malicious gossip, more’s the pity,” the bishop said. “I saw that fool Smeaton, and I couldn’t detect any resemblance. And she does have a look of Your Majesty’s late father, do you not agree?”

“I wish I could see it,” Mary said.

“It is impossible to prove or disprove paternity, so I counsel you not to go down that road, madam,” Renard put in. “I never saw King Henry or Smeaton, so I cannot comment, but these doubts are based only on rumors. There is no evidence, nothing solid on which to base any case for disinheriting her.”

“That is what bothers me,” Mary said. “It does not allay my doubts, though.”

“The best solution,” Gardiner said, business-like and practical, “is for Your Majesty to marry as soon as possible and produce an heir of your body. Courtenay is ready and willing, so what, madam, are you waiting for?”

Mary winced at his bluntness, her blush deepening. She was remembering secret reports she had received concerning Courtenay’s expeditions to the brothels of London.

“He is too young,” she said dismissively.

“And he is in league with the French ambassador, who is plotting to marry him to the Lady Elizabeth,” Renard added. “And in this respect, as well as the other,
she
is greatly to be feared, for she has her eye on Courtenay, make no doubt. I fear too that, if you turn Courtenay down, madam, his friends might hatch some design to menace you and set up Elizabeth on the throne with Courtenay as her husband.”

“I think you wrong Courtenay,” Gardiner protested. “He has not the wits to devise such a plot.”

“That is what worries me,” Renard said. “He will be easily led by others. You are overfond of the boy, my Lord Bishop.”

“We were many years in the Tower together,” Gardiner said stiffly.

“I fear that has clouded your judgment,” Renard retorted dismissively. “No, madam,” he continued decisively, not giving the outraged bishop a chance to respond, “you must marry, and the Prince of Spain eagerly awaits your answer.”

“The English people will never accept him as their master,” Gardiner blustered, determined to reassert his view. “Courtenay is the better candidate.”

“No,” said Mary. “Enough, gentlemen. The matter is too delicate. I must go and pray for guidance.”

As soon as the door had closed, Gardiner turned to Renard.

“The Queen is a woman, and these matters are beyond her,” he said despairingly.

“That is why she must marry, and soon, so that she can benefit from her husband’s wisdom and guidance,” Renard pointed out.

“And bear children,” Gardiner added. “That will put my Lady Elizabeth’s nose out of joint! Her Majesty should marry Courtenay.”

“Prince Philip would be the greater match,” Renard countered.

Elizabeth had a megrim on the day of Mary’s coronation. It came on as she sat with a smiling and bowing Anna of Cleves in the chariot immediately following the Queen’s, so that she found herself waving at the crowds through a blinding blur of zigzag lines, and by the time she was seated in her place of honor in Westminster Abbey, one side of her head was gripped in a raging agony, and all she longed for was to lie down in a darkened room and have her forehead bathed in cold water. The soaring music, the Latin chants, and the blaring of trumpets were torture to her, as was the glare from hundreds of lighted candles. She had to keep her head down and her eyes closed, so that almost all she saw of the great ceremony was an occasional peep at her white damask skirts spread out upon the blue carpet that had been laid in the church, and the richly shod feet of those who passed in procession near her. Only once did she lift her aching eyes, and that was to see the crown placed on her sister’s brow. She was struck by the rapture in Mary’s face…

Afterward, she had to sit with the Queen and the Princess Anna at the high table in Westminster Hall, where a magnificent coronation banquet was served. She winced as the Queen’s Champion clattered noisily into the hall on his charger and, as was his custom, challenged any man to dispute Her Majesty’s title. The sight of the food made her feel nauseous, and all she could get down herself were sips of wine.

Hours later, after the cloths had been lifted and the tables removed, hippocras and wafers were served, and the Queen began to circulate around the hall, receiving the congratulations of her guests. Elizabeth leaned her aching head against the cool stone of a doorway, then suddenly de Noailles was beside her, his smile ingratiating.

“I trust I find your ladyship in good health,” he said, bowing.

“In faith, my coronet is too heavy,” Elizabeth complained, rubbing her hot brow. Renard, a faintly sinister figure in his customary black, was hovering nearby, she noticed.

“Have patience, madam,” de Noailles counseled. “This small crown will soon bring you a bigger one.”

“I do not understand,” she replied loudly, but Renard had gone. What will he report of me now? she wondered.

William Cecil came rarely to visit her these days, for he was no longer popular at court and feared to compromise her, but one day, as she was riding in Richmond Park, she espied a familiar figure approaching on horseback.

“I thought I would find you in the vicinity, my lady,” he called in greeting. “I came in haste to warn you. You’ll have heard the news of Parliament.”

“I know that England is officially returned to Catholicism,” Elizabeth said, reining in her mount and looking behind her. Her attendants were a long way off.

“Aye,” he said grimly. “And it is now forbidden to criticize the Mass or own the Book of Common Prayer. There are uprisings in London, and do you wonder? They are vandalizing the churches and attacking priests.”

“Soon it will be too dangerous to practice our faith.” Elizabeth shivered.

“Many are fleeing abroad,” Cecil told her. “They are probably the wise ones.”

Something more was troubling him. She could read it in his face.

“What bothers you, old friend?” she challenged. He liked her directness.

“Something I have to tell you,” he sighed. “You should know that your father’s marriage to Queen Katherine, Her Majesty’s mother, has been declared valid by Parliament; that Act makes the Queen legitimate…”

“And myself still a bastard.” Elizabeth laughed bitterly. “Am I to be disinherited then?”

Cecil did not answer immediately.

“No, Parliament would not agree, but the Queen had asked if it were possible,” he revealed. “I thought you should be aware of that. Know thine enemy—it’s prudent to do so.”

“So she still distrusts me,” Elizabeth said, shaken by this news. Did Mary hate her that much? She had not realized it.

“You can hardly blame her,” Cecil commented. “She knows as well as you do that you go to Mass on sufferance, and that in your heart you adhere to your faith. She wants a Catholic succession—that’s why she would disinherit you.”

“What can I do?” Elizabeth asked him.

“Bide your time,” Cecil counseled. “Put not a foot wrong. Keep going to Mass. God will understand.”

That evening, as they sat at supper in the presence chamber, Mary leaned over to Elizabeth and pressed a small package wrapped in silk into her hand.

“For you,” she said, her eyes glinting.

“I thank you, madam,” Elizabeth replied, surprised and pleased at this apparent mark of favor. “That is most kind of Your Majesty.”

Her smile faded when she opened the tiny gold diptych and saw inside the miniatures of King Henry and Queen Katherine.

“It has an eye and chain so that you may wear it at your girdle,” Mary said, eyeing her closely.

“I am humbly grateful,” Elizabeth forced herself to say. Had Mary shouted her triumph from the rooftops, she could not have made her meaning plainer. For if Katherine’s marriage to their father had been a true one, then Anne Boleyn’s had been no marriage at all. That was the message this gift brought. A message confirming and underlining Elizabeth’s bastardy. And she was expected to wear it, and proclaim thereby to the world her flawed status.

Never! she thought. It would go in the drawer with the coral rosary.

Renard took the proffered stool and seated himself gratefully by the brazier in Mary’s linenfold-paneled closet. It was late evening and the Queen looked weary, he thought, sagging almost in her carved oak chair.

“My master the Emperor would know your answer to his son’s proposal,” he said gently. “He has written to Your Majesty’s council but received no reply. He grows impatient, I fear.”

Mary did not speak for a while. She was thinking of the handsome man in the portrait, the man who made her heart flutter in her maiden breast, the man who was to assist her in her great task of returning England to Rome, and fretting because she knew he could never love an aging virgin such as she was.

“I thank the Emperor for suggesting a greater match than I deserve,” she said at length. “However, I am not sure that my subjects will accept a foreign prince as their king, and I do not yet know if my council will give assent to the marriage. Then I fear that, with all his cares and responsibilities abroad, the Prince will have little time to spend in England, and I can hardly leave my realm for long periods. And I know there are fears that he will involve us in his own wars. Then—and I know we have talked of this before—he is only twenty-six years of age. A man of twenty-six,” she pressed on, blushing, but determined to make her point, “is likely disposed to be amorous, and such is not my desire, not at my time of life. I have never harbored thoughts of love. So you see, I cannot possibly make up my mind quickly.”

Renard bestowed on her his most avuncular smile.

“Madam, hear me out. Prince Philip is so admirable, so virtuous, prudent, and modest as to appear too wonderful to be human,” he declared extravagantly. “Far from being young and amorous, His Highness is a prince of stable and settled character. If Your Majesty accepts his proposal, he will relieve you of the pains and labors that are rather men’s work than the concerns of ladies. His Highness is a great prince to whom your kingdom could turn for protection and succor. Your Majesty would do well to remember that you have enemies: the heretics and malcontents in your realm, the French, and the Lady Elizabeth. All would rise against you if they had the means.”

Mary seized upon this opportunity to deftly change the subject.

“I am happy to report that the Lady Elizabeth no longer has the means, at least in one respect,” she informed Renard. “I spoke with Courtenay last week, and he confided to me that he has never had any wish to marry her, as she is too great a heretic. I told him he could never look to have me, which I fear somewhat offended him, so I offered to find him a suitable Catholic bride, but he declined. I am hoping he will go abroad, and I have made that clear to him. He just makes mischief in this realm, and now that I have turned him down, he may make more. Look.” She handed Renard a sheaf of pamphlets.