Watch the Lady (23 page)

Cecil takes his place next to the Queen, feeling somehow taller, more finely wrought. She points a long finger to the floor before her and Essex moves slowly forward to kneel there.

“Tell me, Pygmy, who is the bride?”

Essex is fumbling with his gloves.

“It is Frances Walsingham, madam, and she is with child.”

The Queen's nostrils flare as if she has smelled something rotten.

“That whey-faced girl! Is it true?” She stretches out a foot and pokes Essex with it right at the center of his doublet, leaving a mark.

He looks up at her with a small nod; Cecil is astonished to see the gleam of a tear in the corner of his left eye.

She sighs, as a nurse might, in response to an infant who has committed some minor misdemeanor. Cecil feels bereft—he had wanted her to show the earl the full force of her anger and watch him abase himself pleading for mercy, but her expression is overflowing with sympathy.

“You do know what this means?”

He nods once more.

“You will have to go. The girl too. How far gone is she?”

“Six months.”

Her mouth draws together like the lips of a purse. “I will
not
see her. You are to tell her she is no longer welcome in my presence . . . in perpetuity. As for you—well, we shall see. Understood?”

Her anger is still too muted to provide real satisfaction for Cecil.

Essex nods yet again and then emits a strangled murmur: “Please tell me I have not lost your love. My adoration of you is so great I cannot find a way to express it. My tongue is entirely tied with love . . . I would rather die . . .”

He is a better actor, thinks Cecil, than Mr. Shakespeare himself.

The Queen does not answer, just says softly, “Go now.”

Cecil can barely believe she has been touched by that display of hyperbole and yet feels his envy brewing, for he would like to have such a gift of expression. But words like that do not match a misshapen creature such as he.

Essex rises and, head stooped, slowly backs out of the room. Cecil's triumph feels small. After the door has closed the Queen drops her face into her hands and sits like that, motionless, for some time.

When she lifts her head, she says, “Pygmy, be a dear and pour me a cup of wine.” As he moves towards the table she adds, “Watered as I like it. You know how I like it, don't you?”

“I do, madam—three parts water.”

He hands her the cup; she sips it carefully and mutters under her breath, “Of all the girls, my splendid boy has chosen that dull little thing.”

Then she sits up, shunting her shoulders back. “Now, Pygmy, we have business to attend to, England will not run herself.”

It is as if it never happened.

Penelope is seated next to Cecil in the Queen's party, looking down on the tiltyard. She can feel his sideways look on her. He folds his handkerchief carefully, squaring up its edges before inserting it into his cuff, and then brushes some invisible dust from his doublet. She has a letter from Scotland concealed beneath her gown and it gives her a little thrill that Cecil, who thinks he knows everything, knows nothing of it. The viewing stands are filled to the gunnels. Twelve thousand souls, come from miles around, have each paid their fee to watch England's finest horsemen battle it out in the lists. Each year the Accession Day Tilt seems to have become a greater affair; Penelope thinks back to all the times she has sat up here listening to the drums and trumpets, the roar of the crowd, the thunder of hooves, and the great applause, as some earl or other enters to recite his piece to the Queen. She listens to the babble as people repeat the jousters' mottoes, speculating on their hidden meanings and whose favors they might be wearing tucked in their breastplates.

She has heard of little else for weeks in Leicester House, where her brother has been dreaming up ever more farfetched schemes to ensure that his performance is the one on everyone's lips. There have already been signs that the Queen is ready to forgive him for his marriage; she had sent word stating that she expected him to participate in the tilt, and there had been other good indications. Essex had said he wouldn't be in the wilderness for long, and it seems he was right, but it is the women for whom the Queen holds the deepest antipathy. Indeed, Penelope now has a mother, a sister, and a sister-in-law in exile. She will not allow herself to imagine her own fall, though its possibility lurks constantly at the edge of things. It would only take a single mistake, a slip of the tongue, an intercepted letter. The thought sends a shiver through her.

“Are you warm enough, my lady?” asks Cecil, looking as if he would like to take a bite out of her.

Her brother's bid to regain the Queen's favor means the house has been a hive of activity in preparation for this day: reams of poetry have been written, learned, picked through, rewritten, and relearned; the armorer has been welding and shaping a new jousting suit; Essex has spent hours in the paddock putting his new black mare through her paces. Lettice enlisted all the women of the household to stitch banners and embroider sashes and they sat in the great chamber for weeks with their needles.

A collective gasp goes up from the crowd as one of Penelope's Knollys uncles is almost unseated by his brother. He trots away disconsolately, throwing his broken lance to the ground, causing the crowd to boo and chant “Bad loser,” while his brother makes a lap of honor to enthusiastic handclapping.

“The lists are full of your kin today, my lady,” says Cecil. “I have counted four uncles and a brace of cousins already.”

“And my brother is next.”

“Indeed.” His tone is clipped.

“The Queen requested his attendance personally.” She draws out this last word, well aware that Cecil must already know that, but enjoys reminding him all the same.

He changes the subject abruptly: “Sidney is never far from my mind at the tilt.”

“I think you speak for everybody.” She wonders if Cecil is playing a similar game to her: deliberately talking of Sidney to rile her or to make her think he knows more than he lets on, but she offers him a bland smile.

“No one has quite managed since to embody the chivalric values of our warrior poet.”

Penelope is thankful for the blast of fanfare that silences the crowd, for she does not want to enter into a discussion about Sidney with Cecil, of all people. Sidney inhabits her far reaches, like a specter—always there. She would like to ask Cecil what a man such as he, a man of politics and shady negotiating, could possibly care about chivalry.

“Ah look, my brother!” she says, as Essex enters upright in a chariot, like an emperor of Rome. The crowd burst into applause, cheering and stamping their feet until the stands shake. His new armor is blackened and shaped to show off his athletic form, the chariot is painted black; the horses at its prow are dark as coal with sooty ostrich feathers billowing up from their bridles like plumes of smoke. His men come in behind him wearing black sashes, their mounts caparisoned as if for a funeral. With them is Wat; it is his first proper tilt. As he passes close by the stand Penelope blows a kiss to him; he does his best not to smile and ruin the warrior air he aims for. Her heart dilates with pride to see her baby brother, a young man now, nineteen and betrothed already, riding before the Queen. She had offered him Dulcet for the occasion, knowing he would cut a dash on her, and that she wouldn't easily spook and give him trouble.

Essex swells with the applause. Even the weather plays its part, as glowering November clouds have gathered above, seemingly from nowhere. The sound of a single mournful trumpet quiets the crowd as Essex comes to a halt before the Queen. Behind him two of his men unfurl a banner on which is embroidered the word DOLEO. Penelope had helped stitch it herself.

“
Doleo
, I grieve. He mourns Sidney,” calls someone behind.

“As do we all,” says another in response.

“You are wrong,” says the Queen, turning to the speaker. “Essex mourns
my favor
.”

“He will have to go on mourning,” says Cecil under his breath.

Penelope can see clearly that the Queen is amused by the episode and hides a smile behind a feathered fan, which gives Penelope further hope that Essex will be back in the privy chamber before long. What is the use of her continuing to quietly seek allies if there is no Devereux figurehead to attach them to?

Essex bows deeply, pulling his helmet away from his head, and allowing his dark curls to fall forward and then bounce back as he uprights himself. Penelope is thinking that if he loses the Queen's favor again he can always find employment on the stage. The stand creaks as the crowd leans in to listen to Essex recite his lines.

“We are all delighted by Her Majesty's bountiful generosity,” Penelope says to Cecil quietly. She had been waiting for this; indeed, she had sat herself beside Cecil specifically for the purpose of delivering this piece of news.

“Generosity?” Cecil said. “What generosity?”

Several people shush him angrily.

“You do not know?” she whispers, savoring the moment, watching him squeeze his hands together in his lap, as if wringing water from them.

“I am all ears,” he hisses.

“Has the Queen not told you yet that she means to bestow Leicester House on him?”

“Of course I knew.”

She would wager he is feigning.

“ ‘Essex House' has a nice ring to it, don't you think? And we will all be neighbors. Your London house is nearby, I believe?”

“It is.” His jaw is rigid, his knuckles white.

“But of course you are not on the river, are you? That is a shame, for the views are delightful.” She is twisting the blade now, and cannot quite stop herself.

“It was
my
suggestion that the earl retain Leicester House.” His eyes flick up to one side, not meeting hers.

“For someone who is so well known for espionage you are not very good at lying.” She says this with a smile.

It is rare that Cecil is the last to know something, and it was quite possible that the Queen kept it from him deliberately, to make some kind of point about his getting above himself. It is the sort of tactic she employs to keep her acolytes in their place.

“I suggest you upbraid your informers for their ignorance of this matter. Do you not pay them to keep you in the know?” She can see the tips of his ears turning red.

“I know more than you think, my lady.”

She presses her lips together to stifle her smirk. He is floundering and she is enjoying this moment more even than she had imagined she would, and more so when she hears the Queen mention something about the “return of the prodigal son.” It couldn't have been better if Penelope had scripted it herself.

“Prodigal son,” echoes someone in the row behind. Cecil turns and gives them the full force of his venomous glare. The words are passed from mouth to ear, until someone in the public stands gets to his feet, throwing his cap in the air and cries out, “The prodigal son!” causing a great cheer to go up like an explosion.

Cecil rises from his seat and, moving sideways awkwardly like a crab, negotiates his way down the row of spectators muttering, “Urgent business to attend to.”

But the Queen calls out. “Cecil, where are you sneaking off to? Do you not want to watch Essex break some lances? For goodness' sake sit down.” And then, catching Penelope's eye, says, “Isn't your brother marvelous?”

Cecil sidles back along the row, collapsing into his seat defeated, and watches sullenly as Essex demolishes each of his opponents, charging recklessly as if he thinks himself immortal. Penelope is quite relieved when he leaves the field in one piece. A final pair of riders enters at the far end and her heart stops, for there he is, mounted on a silver grey, its head tossing in eagerness, armor polished to a gleam, his colors blue and gold.

“Sidney,” she says under her breath as time collapses and she is back in the past, remembering the day Sidney had ridden in the lists in those same colors. He bore the motto scored through to signify his thwarted hope. How that had set the tongues wagging as to what it might have referred, his lost inheritance, a knighthood not offered; the Queen's favor always out of reach. But only Penelope knew what he had really meant by that motto and her heart feels hollow at being reminded of it.

“Spare us another Sidney homage.” This is Cecil, still spitting bile.

Penelope is jolted back to the present. The riders have made their circuit and have halted in front of the royal stand but her view is blocked and she cannot see who it is in Sidney's colors, though the banner his men carry slung between them on poles is clear enough: DUM SPIRO, SPERO.

“While I breathe, I hope,” she says, not realizing until it is out of her mouth that she spoke aloud.

“If Blount is hoping for preferment of some kind, then I'd say he needs to be more subtle,” says Cecil. “A Sidney tribute. Not particularly original. It was always anathema to me—Sidney's excessive popularity. Of course, death on the battlefield is a nice chivalric flourish.”

It is all Penelope can do to prevent herself from slapping Cecil squarely about the face. She takes several deep breaths and focuses her attention on the field and the appreciative roar of the crowd. And as she watches Blount the realization dawns on her sweetly and slowly, like honey running down the throat.
Dum spiro, spero
: this is for her. She has carried young men's favors many a time; it is all part of the ritual. But this is different, more personal.

Her head is suddenly filled with a moment, two days ago, a kiss that had come from nowhere. It had happened in the narrow corridor at her brother's house that joined the old part with the new. She had become used to seeing Blount about the place, as his friendship with Essex was blossoming and he often made displays of courtly adulation to her, which she assumed had more to do with his public affiliation than personal desire. She had certainly, in private moments, imagined—even possibly hoped for—such a personal desire. There was no denying that Blount had increasingly begun to occupy her thoughts, in the easy way any comely fellow will infiltrate a woman's mind from time to time. But it was only coming upon him then in that tight corridor that something shifted from the imaginary to the tangible.