The Marriage Game (28 page)

Aye, thought Melville, but you are worthy of doing as much—and more, if gossip could be believed—for the Queen of England.

“You do not want this match, my lord?” he asked.

Robert shrugged. “It is my belief that my secret enemy, Sir William Cecil, thought up and plotted it, to get me out of the way.”

“I think your queen too is a great dissembler,” Melville confided, “but I must tell you that she has agreed that commissioners from both kingdoms should meet at Berwick to discuss the marriage.”

“Then it seems I must cultivate a taste for haggis,” Robert said lightly. “But tell me, Sir James—is it true that you have been paying visits to the Spanish embassy?”

It was true, and for a moment the normally urbane Melville was nonplussed. “A courtesy visit, nothing of importance,” he said after the slightest pause.

“It could not have been to try to revive negotiations for Queen Mary’s marriage to Don Carlos?” Robert persisted.

“I should have thought that your lordship would have been pleased to hear that it had.”

“And so I would have been,” Robert said, “save that it is never going to happen. Don Carlos is now so far gone in madness that there can be no question of his marrying anyone.”

“So I was informed when I inquired after his health,” Melville fenced. “But if your lordship can keep a secret, I can tell you something that may be of great advantage to you.”

Robert’s eyes lit up. “I can keep a secret,” he said.

“Queen Mary has her eyes on another suitor,” Melville told him. “But I am not at liberty to say who it is. I tell you only to set your mind at rest. She will not have you. That I can promise.”

Soon afterward Mary gave the Earl of Lennox leave to enter Scotland.

The commissioners had met at Berwick. The Earl of Moray, bastard half brother of Queen Mary and leader of the Protestant Lords of the Congregation, had demanded assurances that Queen Elizabeth would settle the succession on her dear sister if Mary agreed to marry the Earl of Leicester. The English deputation refused to confirm that she would do so—or more likely did not know. Moray lost his temper, and the meeting ended in acrimony.

Back in England, Robert was doing his best covertly to whip up support for the Darnley marriage. He knew that Elizabeth was given to changing her mind, and he was determined to preempt her.

Some weeks later a letter arrived from the Scottish lords, informing the Queen that Mary would not agree to marry the Earl of Leicester unless Elizabeth promised to name her as her heir.

“What in Heaven do we reply, madam?” Cecil asked.

“We say nothing,” Elizabeth answered. “Mary will never accept
Robert, even if he comes with a crown. No, she wants to marry Lord Darnley, and as he is my subject, she must be a suitor to me for my consent.” She smiled at the prospect of Mary in a suppliant role. It would compensate for the Scottish queen’s insulting rejection of Robert.

“May I suggest that Darnley be permitted to join his father in Scotland, to whet the Queen of Scots’ appetite?” Cecil proposed, a gleam in his eye.

“That is a capital idea!” Robert enthused, clearly delighted to be out of the running—and no doubt plotting another royal wedding closer to home, Cecil thought.

“Certainly a marriage with Lord Darnley would pose less of a threat to us than one to a great Catholic prince,” Elizabeth said thoughtfully. “But for the present, he must remain here. Absence, they say, makes the heart grow fonder. Let Mary ponder on what she is missing!”

The air was crisp and cold but invigorating as Elizabeth and Robert galloped out in the early morning dark for their usual ride. Christmas was approaching. The baked meats were even now being prepared in the royal kitchens. Men had gone to the woods to fell the Yule log. The choristers and children of the Chapel Royal were busily rehearsing carols and a new motet written by Thomas Tallis, one of the gentlemen of the chapel, and making a divine noise in the process. But only the servants had been stirring as the two cloaked figures left the palace by a wicket gate.

They raced across the park, on ground hard with frost, and made for the chase beyond.

“I love being out at this time, when few souls are abroad,” Elizabeth said as they slowed to a trot by a stream.

“I love being alone with you,” Robert said, extending a hand and squeezing hers.

They trotted on for a mile or so in companionable silence, enjoying the beauty of the winter dawn. But then …

“I don’t feel well,” Elizabeth said suddenly. “Robin, I have to get to
a privy, soon.” She wheeled her horse and cantered back toward the palace, barely making it in time to avoid disgracing herself in public.

By now she was very ill indeed. Repeatedly she vomited, or suffered a looseness of the bowels, and when she was not in the privy she was lying shivering in her bed, complaining that she was freezing to death. But her forehead was burning up. The doctors, having prescribed an infusion of blackberry leaves, stood around looking worried and helpless until she shouted at them to go away. It was Kat and Kate Knollys who soothed her, making her take sips of the revolting brew, chafing her hands and mopping her brow.

Mercifully, just in time for the twelve days of merrymaking, Elizabeth was soon back on her feet.

“For a time, madam, you had us sore afraid,” Cecil confessed.

“Don’t say it, William!” she warned, but there was no deterring him now.

“Madam, I would be failing in my duty if I did not pray God to send some man whom it will content you to wed. Otherwise, I assure you, I have no comfort in living.”

The Bishop of Salisbury, standing nearby, added his voice. “Your Grace, I must tell you how wretched we have been, not knowing under which sovereign we would live, should something evil befall your precious person. I trust that God will long preserve you to us in life and safety!”

Elizabeth was about to say something tart in response—this was all a bit dramatic, she felt—but there was no mistaking the relief and sincerity in both men’s faces. “I thank you, my lords,” she replied. “I promise I will give due thought to the matter in this coming year. But for now, let us make merry, for Christmas is upon us!”

1565
 

Paul de Foix, the new ambassador sent by the Queen Mother of France, made an extremely elegant bow. The French were very good at these things, if not at much else. As she extended her hand to be kissed, Elizabeth noted that Cecil was hovering hopefully nearby, and that Robert was frowning, doubtless feeling beleaguered by all the recent talk of the Archduke Charles renewing his suit. She suspected that he would not be pleased when he heard what Paul de Foix had come to say, because her spies had told her that Queen Catherine was determined to thwart the ambitions of the Habsburg Emperor, France’s great enemy.

She smiled at the ambassador’s elaborate courtesies, and the smile stayed fixed on her face as he proposed his young master, King Charles IX of France, as a suitor for her hand, impressing on her the very great honor His Majesty was bestowing by offering her his most sacred person—a king, no less! Which would have been all very well had Elizabeth not heard that Charles’s most sacred person was a pimply fourteen-year-old dwarf with knobbly knees.

“Do not marry him, Bess!” cried her woman fool—engagingly called Ippolita the Tartarian—capering across the floor on her short legs. “He is a boy and a babe!”

Robert laughed out loud.

“Be off with you,” Elizabeth snapped at the fool, but with a twinkle in her eye as she turned to the bristling Foix. “Take no offense, monsieur, she is a scamp who should know her place! But she has a point. Sensible as I am of the honor done me by His Majesty, I fear I am too old to marry him. I think not of now, for I am only thirty-one, but of the future. I would rather die than be despised and abandoned by a younger husband, as my sister was. Why, the age gap between us is so wide that people will say that your master has married his mother!”

“Then, madam, there is no more to say,” Foix sniffed, mightily offended.

Had this idiot
no
idea of how to play the game? Elizabeth flared. “Does the King of France have so little regard for me that he would drop his suit so precipitately?” she cried. “I but wished to draw his attention to the difficulties that might have to be faced, so that he will understand why I cannot give him an answer at once!”

Foix was suddenly all smiles again, and went on his way imagining the credit he would have in store with his terrifying mistress, Queen Catherine. Meanwhile, Robert was pounding after Elizabeth.

“What are you playing at now?” he growled, maneuvering her into a closet where they could be private.

“My usual game,” she replied, wrenching herself free. “And you have no right to be angry with me, Robin. I need to keep the French friendly. I do not want them making an alliance with the Scots. Surely even you can see what would happen if Charles were to marry Mary.”

“
Even me?
That was uncalled for,” Robert protested.

“Well I do wonder sometimes! It might have occurred to you that I do not want the Emperor thinking that his son is the only contender for my hand.”

“Yes, yes, I see your reasoning,” Robert replied testily. “But if you were to marry me—
as you promised
—there would be an end to all this diplomatic posturing, and it would not matter what the Emperor, or anyone else, thought.”

“Oh, but it would—and I would lose my trump card, which may prove to be my only means of keeping other princes friendly.”

Robert’s face fell as he took in the full implication of Elizabeth’s words. God’s blood, she was not reneging on her promise? She
could
not, not now, after all she had said.

“There are surely other means,” he said hoarsely.

“Yes, but not ones I wish to deploy just now,” she said gently. “At present the advantage is mine. I would keep it awhile longer. That is all.”

“So you have no intention of considering this latest proposal?”

“What do you take me for? A cradle snatcher? Come, Robin, it’s a man I need. On the word of a prince, I will not marry the French king.” And with that she danced out of the room.

“I have told Monsieur de Foix that I must consult with my lords on the matter,” Elizabeth told her councillors. Most of them were openly hostile to the French proposal. Only Robert—curiously, they thought—seemed in favor. There really was no accounting for the man’s reasoning.

“The Habsburg match is more feasible,” Cecil pronounced.

“The French one is more prestigious—a king as opposed to an archduke,” Robert countered.

The others raised their voices in protest, but Cecil said nothing.

“Madam, saving your presence, King Charles will follow the usage of his forebears and spend himself consorting with pretty girls, rendering useless all hopes of an heir,” Sussex pointed out. Robert gave him a look that said plainly he would have quite liked to render Sussex useless for opposing him.

Elizabeth quelled them all with a rap on the table. “Enough, my lords. We must pretend to entertain the proposal—for now.”

Robert groaned, but she ignored him and sent for Foix to attend her in her privy chamber, where they remained closeted until late in the evening. Robert was seething when she joined him in bed that night.

“What in Heaven did you find to talk about all that time?”

“Oh, he was very charming,” Elizabeth related, secretly enjoying his discomfiture. “Of course I had to sit there listening to lengthy eulogies
on his master’s precociousness and his most unusual maturity! King Charles has declared himself to be in love with me—primed by his mother, no doubt. I have agreed to an exchange of portraits, and even hinted that I might permit King Charles to visit me secretly …” She smiled at the thought. “You do realize I might have to keep this up for months?”

Robert lay back, barely containing his frustration. She was stalling again, he was convinced of it. He felt like weeping—or throwing something at her, preferably something she held precious.

Elizabeth snuggled down beside him. “It will all be an act, my Eyes. I’ll not have him—ever! And in the meantime I will spin things along with the Archduke, and keep the Emperor warm. With France and the Empire competing for England’s friendship, we can all relax for a while.”

Well, perhaps
you
can, thought Robert.

Darnley had finally been granted permission to go to Scotland, with the caveat that he was not even to think of proposing marriage to the Queen of Scots. He had hastened north at the speed of lightning, not giving a second thought to Elizabeth’s command when the Scottish crown hovered glittering within his reach.

Elizabeth laughed aloud when Cecil showed her the latest reports from Edinburgh. “By God, Mary is besotted!
She thinks him the lustiest man she has ever seen
. Her nobles are spitting fire!”

“They do not want a Catholic king,” Cecil observed, which was putting it mildly. “A Catholic queen is bad enough.”

“Ah, but this Catholic king comes with a claim to my crown,” Elizabeth said. “How can she resist him?”

“He is a liability, madam,” Bacon reminded her. “He is spoiled, unstable, and ambitious.”