The Queen's Cipher (42 page)

“Sounds like a tabloid front page story.”

“And it had a tabloid ending when Catherine caught Elizabeth in Thomas’s arms and sent the girl packing.”

“Did she go quietly?”

“On the face of it, yes, but privately she was distraught as she had a huge crush on Seymour. Her governess Kat Ashley admitted as much under examination. She also testified to the princess’ prolonged illness. According to Kat, Elizabeth was ‘first sick about midsummer,’ roughly six weeks after leaving the Seymour household, which gave rise to stories of a pregnancy and a miscarriage.”

Freddie scratched his head. “Historians don’t believe that.”      

“No, they settle either for a ‘long-drawn-out nervous collapse’ or ignore her illness altogether.”

Cheryl brushed a lock of red hair out of her eyes, her face flushed with indignation. “These male historians seem to have had a thing for Elizabeth. From what I’ve read, she could do no wrong. Her vanity was self-confidence and her indecision masterly temporization. Granted she was a great queen, but she made mistakes too.”

“I guess you’re right. Men idealize powerful women like Maggie Thatcher, the Iron Lady.”

The air grew suddenly cold around him. It was as if he had opened the tent flap and gone out into a blizzard.

“Don’t talk to me about that cow,” Cheryl hissed. “She was the most socially divisive prime minister ever. She busted the unions, destroyed communities, deregulated the City and restored class privilege. As for the Falklands, that was fought to preserve her reputation.”

“I am sure you are right,” he replied hastily. The Falklands had been a ridiculous war. The Argentine poet Jorge Luis Borges said it was like two bald men fighting over a comb.

Cheryl moved on. She had been reading about Elizabeth’s accession day which had begun with a piece of playacting. Sitting under an oak tree at Hatfield reading her Bible, she had waited for news of Mary’s death. As the weather was bitterly cold and the messenger late, she must have been freezing.

“So what have we learned?” Cheryl asked rhetorically. “Elizabeth was an incredibly bright woman who fully understood the seductive power of myth. No one knew what she was thinking. If she gave birth to a child and wanted to conceal the fact, I think she might have got away with it.”

“I need to sit down now,” he murmured, “my ribs are aching.”

The Virgin Queen was instantly forgotten as Cheryl guided him back to the sofa. Once he was comfortable she snuggled up to him, pressing her face against his shoulder. He bent over and kissed her tenderly on the lips. “You’re not messing me around, are you Freddie?” she said fiercely. “If you are leading me on, I’ll cut out your heart with a spoon.”

“You got that from a movie.”

He thought of another film, Branagh’s
Love’s Labour’s Lost
and how it had brought them together. “Do you still want to meet that QC?” he asked.

Cheryl was all for a trip to London but wondered what was so special about this silk.

“We met at a college reunion and got on very well together. Seymour Guest had just been called to the bar and it came as a surprise to discover that he was a member of the Bacon Society. Now he’s president and as a criminal barrister he knows all about the burden of proof. We’ll ask him whether there’s any evidence to support the royal birth theory.”

With that settled he lay back on the couch and closed his eyes.

“Before you rest, there’s one thing I have to know,” she said. “You’ve read loads about Francis Bacon. Did he ever get back into Queen Elizabeth’s good books?”

“Not half. In her declining years, she had a remarkable change of heart where he was concerned. There’s a good book by Lytton Strachey in which he mentions ‘strange dialogues’ held in private between ‘two most peculiar minds.’”

“Sounds quite intimate, mother and son reunited. Do you think they played chess?”

Cheryl’s fluttering eyelashes made Freddie laugh.

“Oh, I’m sure they must have done. Francis would have to let mummy win though.”

THE CHESS MATCH

Set in triple time, to the sound of tabor and pipe, there were five steps to this measure: right, left, right, left, cadence. The last two beats consisted of a leap with the couple landing with one leg ahead of the other. The lavolta step brought men and women into such close proximity many dancing masters felt it should be outlawed. Thomas Cardell was not one of them. With great skill and agility, he put his right arm around his partner’s waist, took her left hand in his, lifted her onto his right thigh, and revolved at great speed before lowering her again. When the music finally stopped she fell in a heap on the floor, dizzy and out of breath.

Cardell dropped to his knees offering a napkin for her sweating brow. The exhausted face looking up at him was that of an almost toothless woman who hid her wrinkles under a thick white lead foundation. The face belonged to Elizabeth Tudor, now in her sixty-seventh year. She rose with as much dignity as anyone wearing farthingales might muster, straightened her red wig and dismissed him with a wave of the hand. As the dancing master backed out of her presence Elizabeth saw her reflection in a large gilt mirror. In official mythology she was still a demigod but the magic was wearing thin. The mirror would have to go. It was time for a fresh start.

This morning’s meeting was long overdue. Next to herself, he had the sharpest, most subtle brain in England and had used it to support the Earl of Essex in his power struggle with the Cecils. This deep-seated rivalry had begun to threaten her throne. He had said as much in one of his oh so clever essays. ‘When factions are carried too high, and too violently, it is a sign of weakness in princes, and much to the prejudice of their authority.’ There was very little that escaped Francis Bacon’s attention, apart from his own failings. But he was desperate to win her approval and she could use that to bend him to her will. Emotions didn’t enter into it. Where was the wretched fellow?

*

The Palace of Whitehall might be a courtier’s second home but he could still get lost in it. The building was chaotic, sprawling arbitrarily over twenty acres, with more rooms than the Vatican, but only peers could pass unchallenged through the heavily guarded double doors of the Privy Chamber. As he waited to be announced, Francis Bacon thought of previous meetings with the Queen. How she had been a benign figure in his youth, laughing at his precocious wit, but had done nothing for him as an adult. An unpaid appointment as a Learned Counsel was his only advancement. To make matters worse, she had picked a quarrel with him over his Commons speech on the triple subsidy and let it fester for years, banning him from her presence. It was a long time to bear a grudge. Not that he had helped matters with the comedy he’d written but neither of them had spoken of that - until now at least. He could feel his knees trembling.

She was standing beneath Holbein’s massive wall mural of Henry VIII. A reminder, if one was needed, that she was the autocratic daughter of a mighty king. He looked at her long face, the hooked nose and tightly drawn mouth before kissing the royal hand. In bowing low he could not help but see her scrawny bosom for she kept the bodice of her silver gown open to signify her maidenhood. How ironic this was. By staying single, Elizabeth would leave England without a male heir after her father had turned the kingdom inside out to secure one. Parliament had wanted her to marry but she had put its members in their place.

If the ravages of time had left her any beauty it lay in her hands which moved restlessly to reflect her altering moods. Her personal motto
semper eadem
, ‘always the same,’ couldn’t be further from the truth.

“Princes have big ears, Master Bacon,” she said, half-mockingly. “They hear all manner of bruits and are advised of the old saying, ‘no smoke without the fire’.” The accusatory tone served no purpose other than to disconcert him. It was a small revenge for his coded attacks on her style of government with its equivocations and ‘answers-answerless.’ 

“But enough of that,” she added, “We are inclined to forget the past. It is time to look ahead. Join me at the chess table for I know you to be a proficient at this game.” The first person singular had replaced the royal plural.

She pointed towards a Flemish table on which finely carved ivory chess pieces were set out on a games board. “I have to thank the lathe-turners of Germany for my chessmen.  At least the craftsmanship is Protestant, even if the game is Catholic.”

Bacon looked puzzled. “Your Majesty surprises me. I thought chess reached Europe through the Islamic countries of Spain and Sicily.”

“And so it did but Spanish Catholics changed the rules of engagement. In the Arab version of the game, the queen was a feeble piece capable only of single diagonal steps around the board. But after Queen Isabella expelled the Moors from Spain the piece became very powerful, moving any number of squares in a straight or diagonal line.”

Elizabeth pointed to a cushioned oak chair. “Sit down sirrah, I shall play white.”

And give yourself an immediate advantage, Bacon thought, doing as he was told.

She began by moving her king’s pawn to e4. Black responded king’s pawn to e5. She attacked on the king’s side by moving her knight to f3. He replied by advancing his queen’s side knight to c6 in order to protect the black pawn on e5. Elizabeth slid out her king’s side bishop to b5 to pin his black knight.

“Well done, Your Majesty! You are playing the sixth variation to the king’s pawn opening as described in the Gottingen manuscript.” 

He played knight to f6 and, waiting for her next move, felt a sudden surge of sympathy for his opponent. This once mighty queen was now an old woman with smallpox scars and bad teeth, veering in mood between irrational tantrums and bouts of deep depression. Her physicians spoke openly of fits of weeping, fainting spells, stomach pains and insomnia. And there was plenty to keep her awake at nights. Dismal harvests and repeated outbreaks of the plague had led to rising food prices which made higher taxation for the war with Spain even more unpopular. Elizabeth took the blame for all of this.

“I summoned you here for a purpose,” she said, fixing him with her sharp eyes. “I need sound legal advice about Hayward’s mischievous book. His history encourages boldness and faction but does it contain any passages that might justify a charge of treason.”

So that was it. She was harping on again about Sir John Hayward’s
The First Part of the
Life and Reign of King Henry IV
which had sold more than two thousand copies before the book was seized and its author brought before the Star Chamber. The charge against Hayward was that he had revived the story of a king deposed for misgoverning England in order to draw a contemporary parallel. As always in an authoritarian state, the past was thought to endanger the present and Hayward hadn’t helped matters by dedicating his book to the Earl of Essex who was great in hope and ‘greater in expectation of a future time.’      

Her government had acted swiftly. In future, no English history or play would be printed without the express permission of the Privy Council and any book containing subversive material could be burned by the archbishops of Canterbury and London. But even these draconian measures were not enough for the queen.

“There is no evidence of treason in his book, your Majesty, but a felony has taken place.”     

“How so?” the queen snapped. “Explain yourself.”

Bacon took a deep breath. “The author has committed a very apparent theft, for he has taken most of the sentences of Cornelius Tacitus, and translated them into English, and put them into his text.”

Elizabeth snorted with derision. “You give Hayward too much credit. His source was Sir Henry Savile’s translation of Tacitus’s
Histories
published some eight years since. Savile was my Greek tutor and under his guidance I too translated Tacitus into English.”

“So you know of what I speak,” Bacon added hastily.

“I know Tacitus revealed the treachery and corruption of imperial Rome and deplored the loss of political freedom. Is that what you had in mind?”

“No, by my troth, I was thinking of his authoritative style and high principles.”

“Aye, he was a gloomy fellow but he understood the world he lived in.”

Elizabeth castled on the king’s side. Bacon took her pawn on e4 with his knight. The Queen acknowledged his move with a slight nod of her head but did not seem greatly troubled by it. I’m a pawn up, he thought, but not for long. She knows this opening.

“I have read a transcript of Hayward’s interrogation and wonder whether he pretends to be the author to shield some more mischievous fellow and should be racked to disclose the truth.”

Bacon gulped. He was being tested, to see how he would respond.

“Nay, madam,” he replied. “Never rack his person, but rack his style; let him have pen, ink, and paper and help of books, and be enjoined to continue the story where it breaks off. I will undertake, by collecting the styles, to judge whether he were the author or no.”  

“Ah yes, Master Bacon, I recollect a device my Lord of Essex staged in the tilt-yard four years since. His pretty speeches were the talk of London but you wrote them, did you not?”

Bacon opened his mouth and closed it again. He didn’t like the way this was going.

“‘A man is but what he knows.’ Are those the words of that strutting peacock in his sable armour? No, they are your words. You spoke more eloquently for Robert Devereux than he ever did for himself. You gave him a brain to go with his great heart and foolish stubborn pride.”

“That was four years ago, your Majesty. Things have changed since then.”

“Indeed they have, Master Bacon, and not for the better. Even then, my lord’s allegiance was open to question.” They were back to that again. She had made Robert Devereux Earl Marshal of England and the people adored him. But he was not to be trusted. Fame and power had turned his head, making him the obvious leader of any uprising against her and, as she saw it, he was paving the way for a rebellion by reminding her subjects of Richard II’s fate. First Shakespeare’s successful play and now a book had retold the story of an unpopular monarch overthrown by an Essex-like nobleman.