The Queen's Cipher (34 page)

Leaving Percy to unload the luggage, Francis rushed off in search of her. Lady Anne was a creature of habit. Before dinner she liked to take a stroll in the long gallery Sir Nicholas had built for her. And there she was, dressed in black, gazing myopically at a stained glass window and crying softly to herself. He called out to her.

“Is that you, Francis?” she asked. “Let me see you boy.”

Lady Anne wiped the tears from the wrinkled lids of her pale grey eyes. Her white hair had thinned and the once unblemished round face with its broad forehead and small, upturned nose was now daubed with liver spots that stuck to her skin like pieces of brown plaster.

“I miss your father more with each passing day,” she sighed. “Did you know, he wrote me a poem after the death of our second baby daughter? That was back in Mary’s reign. It was a sad time for all of us. Three hundred Protestant martyrs burned at the stake.”

Her mind was wandering. Catching herself in time, she pointed to the painted window.

“What bird is that on yonder tree? I forget its name.”

“It’s called a turkey. Father wanted these window panes to include New World novelties.”

Lady Anne frowned at this. “A turkey you say? Queen Elizabeth ate one at her Christmas feast but I could not be persuaded to partake of its flesh when I was at court.”

“Why was that, madam?” He was always formal with her.

“The turkey cock is a disgusting creature in that it excites lust. Not a fit meat for the godly to eat.”

Lady Anne’s gaze returned to the painted glass window leaving Francis tongue-tied and helpless. Throughout his early years he had stood in awe of his mother’s formidable character and piety. She had been his moral compass, his hair shirt and his fierce defender. The familiar unflinching stare remained but she no longer seemed able to hold on to an idea long enough to make sense of it.

“That’s a tobacco leaf up there,” she said eagerly. “The weed ‘Nicotiana’ is such a panacea our physicians call it the ‘holy herb.’ What think you of that, Francis?”

“Aye madam, all herbs are considered therapeutic, none more so than the tobacco leaf, but I seriously question its efficacy. This fashionable remedy may be a monster in disguise.”

“So it’s no elixir.” She sounded disappointed.

“Those who prescribe tobacco for all manner of diseases have yet to find their patients reaping any benefit from its use. Far from curing fever it invades the respiratory organs and makes the sufferer cough and splutter.”

This was not what his mother wanted to hear. Keen to make amends, he reached into his breeches for the leather purse. “But not all New World cures are deficient. This is the aromatic bark of a Peruvian tree which has been pulverised into a light brown powder. Dissolved in wine or water this potion may be taken in half-dram doses every third or fourth hour until the fever is removed.”

Lady Anne gave him a sharp look. “I have never heard of Peruvian bark. How do you know so much about it?”

“I was told about it by a man in whom I have the greatest confidence. He works at the Royal College of Physicians.”

“Does this friend of yours profess the true religion of Christ?”

“I believe he does. He also knows a great deal about the treatment of illness.”

“Then I will take the physic. The world is so hard a place it breeds suspicion.”

She handed the purse to a servant with strict instructions concerning its use. “After supper I will take half a dram of this powder with nitre in milk. Bring it to me at table, without fail.”

“How are you, Francis?” she asked, changing tack.

“Well enough, madam, thank you for asking.” There it was again. Why did he address her in such a cold and distant manner? Was it a punishment for leaving him in limbo?

Twenty years had gone by since his father’s death and still it rankled. As a long-lasting Lord Keeper, Sir Nicholas Bacon had made huge sums of money out of public office and had used it to purchase estates which were entailed to his surviving sons. By the time he died four of them had sufficient lands to live off. Only he, the youngest, was not provided for in his father’s will. After the funeral he had asked Lady Anne for an explanation and her evasive answer had haunted him ever since. He had never seen her so agitated and uncertain. “It was thought her Majesty would support you in recognition of your father’s services to the state,” was all she could manage. This had mystified him. “Why should Sir Nicholas’ services, however meritorious, warrant such attention from the Queen?” he had asked. Lady Anne’s normally pale skin had gone scarlet. “The answer to that is not for me to give.” And that was it. She could not be coaxed into saying more. Queen Elizabeth must speak for herself.

He had had plenty of time to think about this. A devout woman like Lady Anne wouldn’t lie. There was some secret about his birth and it belonged not only to the Bacons but to her Majesty. He had heard the rumours. The backhand sniggers about the Virgin Queen. Then there was his elder brother’s attitude. Anthony served the Queen but refused to go near her. And he wouldn’t say why.

The other mystery was Elizabeth’s apparent aversion. She had taken a real fancy to him as  a child, calling him her “young Lord Keeper” and paying special visits to Gorhambury to see her clever boy, but had kept him at arm’s length ever since. It was as if she couldn’t bear his presence. A principled speech he had made in the Commons against the award of a triple subsidy to the royal household had given her an excuse to ban him from court for more than three years and it was only recently that she had noticed him again, making him her Queen’s Counsel, an honorary, unpaid post in keeping with her miserly nature.

So here he was, a thirty-seven-year-old man, chronically short of money and no nearer to knowing the truth about his birth.

“Still keeping bad hours and worse company, I warrant.” Lady Anne couldn’t help herself. Scolding was a reflex action.

“As to the hours, I plead
nolo contendre
. As to the company I keep, let us not talk of that.”

Lady Anne stamped her foot. “Let me speak plainly. I trust you are no longer waited on by that bloody Percy who is a profane and costly villain.”

“By my troth, madam, he is my most devoted servant.”

“And I suppose you are still seeing that shameless lady who behaves like Solomon’s harlot. That one is bold and impudent; she cannot blush for she has lost the ornaments of a good woman.”

The brazen hussy who had aroused his mother’s anger was Lord Burghley’s enchanting granddaughter Lady Elizabeth Hatton. He thought of her slim white neck, the curly auburn hair, the cupid bow of a mouth, the quick wit and the rebellious nature. He thought of her wearing an ivory satin gown and how they had flirted in the summer of ’97.

“For shame, Elizabeth, where are your widow’s weeds.”

“I am wearing them, you dolt, following the French fashion by dressing in white.”

How perverse, he had thought, but, then again, how very like Elizabeth: her husband three months dead and already flouting convention. As a twenty-year-old widow she came with the Isle of Purbeck including Corfe Castle, Holdenby and Hatton House. Young women of wealth and beauty were in short supply. No wonder men were drawn to her.

Although virtually penniless and older than some of her suitors, Francis had high hopes of winning her hand. They had always enjoyed each other’s company and he had a powerful ally in the Earl of Essex who had written to her parents pressing his case. Yet it felt strange strolling through the gardens of Hatton as a courting couple when he had known his second cousin since her childhood.

It was a hot afternoon in late June. The perfumed gillyflowers were blooming and the sweet smell of lavender wafted through the air. Elizabeth was at her most vivacious, mocking his clumsy attempts at small talk. She told him Fulke Greville had much better manners.

“Good thoughts are better than good manners,” he had replied.

“But not when they take so long to express they grow tedious.”

They were fencing with one another, using words as weapons.

“You and I are too wise,” he retorted, “to woo peaceably.”

“Those who claim to be wise seldom are.”

“My dear Lady Distain, are you yet living.”

“Can distain die when it has Bacon to feed off?”

He could hear the seductive sound of her skirt swishing on the flagstones as they stepped off the terrace into the geometrically laid out garden with its box hedge parterres.

Here the conversation took a different turn. “How does your friend like his new home?”

“Do you mean Shakespeare?”

“Yes, the actor who writes amatory poems.”

“He is well content and wants to thank your ladyship for suggesting the purchase.”

It was a small world: Shakespeare had recently bought New Place in Stratford from William Underhill, the stepbrother of Elizabeth’s late husband, Sir William Hatton.

“I hope Underhill didn’t drive too hard a bargain. Sir William told me he had to sell up because of the huge fines he incurred for recusancy.”

“Will paid only sixty pounds in silver.”

They had come to a rose canopied arbour guarded by a grotesque statue Sir William commissioned before his death. It depicted Priapus, the protector of gardens, with an engorged phallus.

Francis drew Elizabeth’s attention to this swollen member. “Behold Sir William’s last erection!”

“By no means,” Elizabeth said feelingly, wrinkling up her pretty nose.

“Does the size of the male organ matter?” he asked innocently.

“It does in Greek mythology. Priapus deterred garden thieves with his long pike.”

“That is not my meaning, cousin.”

“It is a better answer than you deserve.”

“It is said women of quality are frightened by a proudly worn codpiece. It is too brave a show.”

“When will men learn to be honest? Far from displaying power and virility, the parading of the genitals, in whatever form, demonstrates the opposite case, namely, impotence.”

“God’s teeth, you are hard on my sex.”

“Yes, as you would be hard on us.”

“Let me know your reasoning, fair cousin.”

“Why then, I cite that picked man of fashion, the Spanish grandee, and how his codding spirit got its comeuppance in the English Channel some ten years since.”

“Excellent, i’faith, you advance an armada of reasons.”

They walked towards the fish-ponds. “What think you of my water features?” she asked.

“Ponds I detest, for they pollute the garden with flies and frogs but your fountain does well. Clear sparkling water is a thing of beauty and refreshment.”

“Well said, and what, I pray, is your constellation?”

“You know it is Aquarius.” He wondered where she was going with this.

“In Greek mythology Aquarius is represented by Ganymede, the beautiful Phrygian boy, whom Zeus carried up to Mount Olympus to be cup-bearer to the gods.”

“It is written in the stars that I should have a love of water. What of it?”

Elizabeth’s eyes narrowed. “I am wondering what else you love. The Ganymede myth is about a love of boys and I hear tell, Francis, that you practice the Greek vice.”

Francis’ face flushed with anger. She was accusing him of sodomy. “They do me wrong who say so,” he snarled. “I am sensitive to all forms of loveliness but restrained by moral and religious prohibition. This is not the Greek vice but the Greek virtue, for beauty is nothing but outward virtue and the female form has been idealised in sculpture as nobly as the male.”

Elizabeth nodded her head impatiently, dismissing his carefully crafted argument. “That may be so but the suitor that wins my hand must be more interested in
my
sex than his own.”

He seldom issued a direct challenge and hated receiving one. Rich and beautiful she may be, but could he live with this disconcerting young woman.

“You will find me an ardent wooer, Elizabeth,” he replied coldly. “I am merely a little out of practice.”

“You don’t sound very ardent. Tell me, Francis, are you a wise man?”

“They say wisdom comes from study,” he replied, smelling a trap.

“Then you do not love me for you have written it is impossible to love and be wise.”

Francis acknowledged defeat with a deep bow. “You kill me with my own words. I am a martyr slain in Cupid’s wars.”

There were girlish dimples in her cheeks as she smiled at him. “I would not have you so put down. You are right to think love a weak passion if based only on hyperbole. Like you, I favour experimentation. So what say you cousin, shall we put our feelings to the test?”

Francis swallowed hard. “As in all matters, I am at your ladyship’s command.”

“Good, then give me your arm and let us go inside.”

“Do you know the worst thing about being a woman?” Elizabeth whispered outside the bedroom door. He wondered what fresh indiscretion would follow.

“Having to wear tightly-laced corsets.”

*

“They will undo you!” His mother’s voice broke into his daydream. Lady Anne had embarked on a familiar rant about his servants. Francis waited for the storm to subside.

“These wretches that live off you are an affront to God. Why do you maintain such knaves? Not even Cecil’s loose daughter will look upon you when your fortune is so low.”

He had heard enough. “I am sorry to offend you, heartily, but you can let the Lady Elizabeth rest. My suit was rejected long ago and, if she marries at all, it will be to another.”

Later, in the privacy of his room, he looked again at the tersely worded note he had received from Elizabeth. They had carried on ‘experimenting’ for a year or more, long after it was clear her parents were against the match. Sir Thomas and Lady Cecil had never wanted him as a son-in-law and had only tolerated his suit because of his closeness to Essex but once that foolish lord had drawn his sword in the royal presence all hopes of a match were gone. He was no longer welcome at Hatton House and Elizabeth was lost to him.

6 JUNE 2014

“You’ve got a spot on your chin. Let me pick it for you?”

“No thanks. Just get on with your food.”

“But it’s growing as we speak, turning into a monstrous carbuncle, a pus filled cyst that requires immediate lancing.”