The Marriage Game (21 page)

Quadra was asking himself what game she could possibly be playing now. Why didn’t she just marry the man and put them all out of their misery?

“If I were you, madam,” he advised, “I would not hesitate any longer, but satisfy Lord Robert without delay. I know that King Philip would be glad to hear of your marriage.”

Yes, thought Elizabeth, and he and the rest of Europe would see it as demeaning, which is why he would be glad of it! Marry Robert, and she would undermine her status and her authority, and leave the way open for a strong Catholic claimant to make a bid for her throne—such as the envious Queen of Scots, who was skulking north of the border and eating her heart out for the English crown.

Yet she could not go on expecting Robert to live on false hopes. She was aware that her relentless procrastination and evasion hurt him deeply, not only in his heart but in his pride. She had seen him watch her talking to Quadra, his emotions naked in his face.

“I will think on it,” she told the bishop.

Later, when Robert pumped her to find out what she had said to
Quadra, she airily told him they had been discussing political relations with Spain. Then, hating herself, she gave herself up to her Robin with all the fervor of which she was capable, cozening him to forgetfulness with her eager kisses and roving hands. But as ever, she drew back before he lost control.

“Will you always leave me so unsatisfied,” he groaned.

“You know why I must,” Elizabeth reminded him. “Even if I were willing, I dare not court scandal. But I do love you, my Eyes!”

She made it up to him. She restored to him many of the lands once held by his father; she granted him a lucrative license to export goods free of duty. When word of this got out, there was a fresh wave of rumors that their marriage was imminent. Some even said they were man and wife already.

“Very amusing!” Elizabeth giggled when recounting it to Bishop de Quadra. “Do you know, my ladies even asked me if they were now to kiss Lord Robert’s hand as well as mine!”

The bishop smiled. Robert forced a laugh. But when they were alone, his fury burst forth.

“You are playing with me again, torturing me!” he shouted.

“Hush, people will hear!” Elizabeth hissed.

“I care not! Let them hear. Let them know that you and I bed together, that you at least accord me that privilege!”

“Well,
I
care!” Elizabeth hissed. “I have a reputation to protect.”

“You know the solution to that!” Robert flung back.

“Is that the way to propose marriage?” she challenged him. That made him pause. Anger visibly draining out of him, he stared at her.

“You don’t mean …?”

Elizabeth was not so certain that she did, but she had to placate him somehow. If she did not, she feared she would lose him, and that she could not bear.

“Ask me and find out,” she said lightly, telling herself that she was not committed until the ring was on her finger.

Robert did not hesitate. Seize the day, he told himself exultantly, citing her own motto; falling to his knees before her, he grasped her hands.

“I never thought to see this moment,” he breathed, raising them to his lips and kissing them with feeling. “That you, my Queen, have at last condescended to accept your humble suitor.”

“You haven’t asked me yet,” Elizabeth reminded him, a nervous smile playing on her lips.

“Then marry me, Bess! I pray you!”

She looked at him for a long moment, savoring what might be her last opportunity for stalling. “Very well, my sweet Robin. I give you my promise. I will marry you. But not this year. There is much to be discussed beforehand.”

“I can wait,” Robert said fervently, and, standing up, he folded her to his breast and kissed her. “A year will seem a little time.”

Even as she gave herself up to his joyful caresses, Elizabeth feared it would be barely enough.

What had she done?
Robert was going about loudly proclaiming that she had promised to marry him next year, and people were offering him their hearty and—it must be said—often insincere congratulations. He found himself accorded a new respect and being treated with greater deference than ever, now that he was expected to be King. He was happier—and more proud—than Elizabeth had ever seen him.

She knew already that she could not go ahead with this marriage. She was still firmly resolved not to give place to any man. She could not face the thought of what marriage entailed. More important, her hand was the best political bargaining tool she had at her disposal—get wed, and what would she have left?

She could not hide her reluctance. When Robert spoke, as he often did now, of their forthcoming marriage and how he meant to support her in her role, especially while she was bearing the heirs that would assure the succession, she found herself shrinking inside and wanting to run away. She had an excuse now for fending him off at night: they would be married soon, and must wait. But he sensed the relief that lay behind her words, and soon it began to dawn on him that she, who prided herself on keeping the word of a prince, might default on this most crucial of promises.

Elizabeth was walking with Robert in the privy garden at Hampton Court, enjoying the autumnal sunshine, when she felt a headache threatening. Trying to ignore it, she led the way down to the riverside, where they watched the boats sailing past on the Thames, but within an hour she was feeling shivery and her stomach began to hurt.

Robert gave her his arm to lean on and took her back to the palace, where she instructed her women to prepare a hot bath scented with sweet herbs. That, she told them, should cure her. Having immersed herself in it until the water cooled, she bade them dress her again, then strode out into the gardens once more for a bracing walk. When she returned, she gave an audience in the sumptuous Paradise Chamber, seated on a golden throne upholstered in brown velvet and studded with three great diamonds. But as she welcomed envoys and petitioners, she began to feel faint; her head was swimming and she could not focus properly, and the Persian tapestries winking with gold, pearls, and gems, which surrounded her on all four walls, became an alarming blur. By the time the last visitor bowed himself out, she was near collapse and had to lean against the table by the door to keep herself from falling, upsetting a silver backgammon set as she did so. The next morning, she was coughing harshly and running a high fever. Her doctors looked at each other in dismay. There was no doubt about it: the Queen had smallpox.

Robert was distraught lest he lose her. And he feared for his sister Mary too. Elizabeth was now more devoted than ever to Mary Sidney, and Mary, Kat Astley, and Kate Knollys were all with her at this distressing time. She called for them endlessly. In her delirium, she did not realize what she was asking of them, for she was unaware of what ailed her and had not been told. But smallpox was contagious, it could be disfiguring, and it was deadly. Robert knew it; Mary’s husband knew it; both, loving Mary as they did, had warned her to stay away, but she was adamant. Her place was at Elizabeth’s side. A part of Robert secretly rejoiced that she was there.

“It usually attacks only aged folks and ladies of a frail disposition,” he told Mary, sounding more confident than he felt. “You are young
and strong, so you have no need to worry. And the Queen is strong too. She will come through this, especially with you here to help her.”

“Fret not, dear brother,” Mary said gently, patting his arm. “We are in the hands of God, and He will not fail us.”

Robert, of course, was forbidden the Queen’s bedchamber, although he would have defied the contagion for her sake; after all, her physicians and her women were with her unceasingly, trying every remedy in their power to save her.

Elizabeth lay there uncaring, shivering violently, sweat pouring from her, the cough racking her raw chest. She inhabited a strange hinterland between fantasy and reality, which she left only when sleep fitfully claimed her. All she knew was that Kat and Kate were at her side, ministering to her, and that Mary Sidney’s soft voice was sibilant in the background, a sweet, reassuring presence. That made a change from the doctors pulling and prodding her, applying those ghastly leeches, endlessly testing her urine, and bleating on about an imbalance of the humors and murmuring vague reassurances and admonitions to rest. When they left her alone, she just drifted, too exhausted and detached even to worry about the seriousness of her condition.

Then suddenly there was a new doctor with a strange, guttural accent, a frowning face, and an irascible voice.

“This is smallpox,” he told her.

Elizabeth was sufficiently herself to glance down in terror at her bare arms and hands and call croakingly for her silver-gilt mirror. Her beauty! What would become of it? What man would marry her if she was marred by the scars of this dreadful disease. No, it could not be!
Please God!

“There are
no spots
,” she retorted, glaring at this new doctor, who had the temerity to glare back.

“It is still smallpox,” he insisted. “The spots will appear very soon.”

“You are a fool. Get out!” And with a weak but imperious wave of her hand she dismissed him.

The spots did not appear, and her ladies and physicians were inclined to believe—indeed, they prayed—that the doctor had been wrong. But Elizabeth’s fever worsened. Six days after her sickness had
begun, she was beyond speech, delirious, and very ill indeed. Soon afterward she lapsed into unconsciousness, and remained in that state for a night and a day.

“She is dying,” whispered the terrified doctors, and Kat burst into tears. An exhausted and tearful Mary hastened to warn Robert, who had kept an anxious vigil in the outer chamber throughout, snatching sleep on cushions on the floor and barely eating.

“We must summon the council,” he said, his voice unsteady. He could not think beyond that, could not bear to contemplate a world without Elizabeth. But when Cecil and his colleagues arrived, their frantic talk was all of the succession. When the Queen died—there seemed to be no “if” about it—who should succeed her?

They argued and argued, and for once they did not exclude Robert from their counsels. Some favored Lady Katherine Gray, who had now—predictably and helpfully—converted back to the Protestant faith and was the next heir under Henry VIII’s Act of Succession. Others wanted a man to rule, and nominated the Earl of Huntingdon, whose claim was rather too distant for credibility. The rest thought the judges should rule on the matter. No one, it seemed, was ready to declare for the Queen of Scots. Her name was not mentioned. But it was clear that opinion was divided and that the situation might just escalate into civil war, with factions already forming around the rival claimants.

Robert was horrified to see that the courtiers were already preparing to go into mourning; some had even ordered black material.

“The Queen is not dead yet!” he protested to Cecil, who looked at him and saw a distraught soul. In that moment, he warmed for the first time to this man who had been the bane of his life. Who could but feel sorry for him? Yes, Robert Dudley was ambitious and bombastic, but right now there was no doubting his devotion to his queen. “We cannot give up on her!” he said wildly.

Lord Hunsdon, Elizabeth’s bluff, soldierly cousin, the brother of Kate Knollys, agreed. “Where’s that German doctor fellow?” he roared. “Get him back here.”

Dr. Burcot came reluctantly. The Queen had not heeded him before,
so he was not prepared to treat her now. “No,” he declared firmly, “I will not attend her.”

Hunsdon was not a man to take no for an answer. Drawing his dagger, he gripped the recalcitrant doctor by the throat and held it to his breast. “Get in there!” he ordered. Burcot went, muttering curses.

Taking one look at the unconscious, fevered figure on the bed and her exhausted attendants, he took control of the situation.

“Build up the fire and bring me as much red flannel as you can find,” he commanded. Then he rapped out the ingredients for a potion he had himself devised. Within a very short time Elizabeth was lying swathed in flannel on a mattress before the fire, being fed Burcot’s remedy in sips.

Many hours later the doctor emerged. Robert and Cecil, who had been waiting for news, looked at him fearfully.

“The Queen is now conscious and speaking,” Burcot announced, looking about warily to see if that thug Lord Hunsdon was lurking somewhere, and thanking God that he wasn’t.

“Oh, God be praised!” Robert breathed, tears in his eyes.

“Amen to that,” Cecil declared, relief flooding him.

“But she is still very ill and might yet die,” the doctor warned. “She knows it, and is asking to see her council.”

What of me? Robert thought desperately, watching the lords file behind Cecil into the royal bedchamber. After all we have meant to each other, has she forgotten me?

But there was Cecil again, framed in the doorway, beckoning him in. “You are called too,” he said, “and it is fitting that you should be here.”

“Robin!” came a weak voice from the bed. “Come here.”

Robert was shocked to see Elizabeth. Her long red hair, spread out over the high pillows, was dark and stringy with sweat, and her face looked white and drained, the hooked nose jutting out in gaunt relief, the heavy-lidded eyes sunken. But to him she still looked beautiful. He hastened to her bedside and knelt, clasping her limp hand and kissing it.