The Queen's Bastard Read online

  My punishment for running away to join the cavalry was less severe than for riding to Maidstone to bring John home, and all my queries of how the Privy Council could know of my flight or care, were met with stony silence. Finally the importance of the answer faded away as I returned to my life at Enfield Chase and waited for the day when I should ride off to my great destiny.

  Eighteen

  “So, my lords, are you suggesting that I execute my own cousin Mary Stuart in cold blood?”

  Elizabeth glared piercingly at William Cecil, now Baron Burleigh, at Francis Walsingham, recently appointed head of her secret service, and at Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, who had in the past several years distinguished himself as a constant and trusted Privy Councillor no less than as a faithful lover. This triumvirate of her closest and most worthy advisors dared this time to glare back at the Queen.

  “In her deviousness and scheming, Queen Mary would have had you murdered, England invaded by an army of bloodthirsty Spanish soldiers, and herself placed upon your throne,” answered Cecil, his eyes cold as the midwinter morning.

  “She has already fomented one Catholic rebellion in her name on English soil. Would you give her leave to begin another?” demanded Walsingham.

  “I would not mind,” replied Elizabeth evenly, “if the second revolt failed as miserably as the first. My prisoner could find no supporters to rally round her despite all of her legendary beauty and charm and two of England’s highest nobles plotting with her.”

  Elizabeth turned her gaze on Robert Dudley, who stroked his bearded chin with all the gravity of an ancient scholar. “I wish to know your opinion, Lord Leicester, of what should be done with her closest accomplice. Do you agree with your colleagues that the Duke of Nor-folk should have his head hacked off as well?” Her voice was particularly scathing, and she could not deny that she gained some satisfaction from the harshness with which she addressed the man she loved. She knew Robin would never — considering his past machinations regarding Norfolk — answer the question cleanly or easily, and she wished at this moment to see him squirm as these three advisors were now causing her to do.

  “Clearly there is no easy solution to this dilemma,” said Robin soothingly. “How could we ever have guessed what an untenable position Mary would place herself in?”

  “I suppose you blame me for allowing young Darnley to travel to Scotland, knowing how wickedly Lady Lennox schemed for her son’s marriage to Mary.”

  “We do not blame you, Your Majesty,” said Walsingham. “There was no way of foreseeing how desperately your cousin would fall in love with the boy.”

  “I suppose there is something irresistibly romantic about nursing a young man through a case of measles,” said Elizabeth with unmistakable sarcasm.

  Walsingham and Cecil chuckled but Leicester was stony-faced. He was no doubt, thought Elizabeth, still brooding about her scheme to marry himself off to the Scots queen, a plan she had never seriously intended to carry out, but one that had accomplished several political objectives at the time.

  “I do understand obsessive love, my lords,” said Elizabeth. “I saw my wise and levelheaded stepmother Catharine Parr lose her senses completely over Lord High Admiral Seymour. But her punishment was relatively swift and painless. She died in childbed. Mary’s punishment has been a protracted agony. She marries Darnley impetuously and names him king of Scotland and within months he has become a syphilitic drunkard who whores with women highborn and low and openly plots to steal her crown. Seven months pregnant, she is forced to watch as her dear friend and secretary Riccio is beaten and stabbed into a bleeding corpse by the barbaric ruffians who are her highest nobles. Then Darnley himself is strangled in his bed by perhaps the same men.”

  Elizabeth felt herself wince, wondering if the reason was the horrors she was describing or the painful pang of jealousy she experienced every time she thought of the son Mary had birthed. James. A further threat to her throne, and a reminder of the child she had lost.

  “My spies in Edinburgh,” said Walsingham, “tell me Lord Bothwell was almost certainly the ringleader in Darnley’s murder.”

  “Is he as hideously ugly as they say, Walsingham?” asked Elizabeth, her curiosity sincerely piqued. “I’ve heard him called ‘an ape in purple.’”

  “I have never met the man, Your Majesty, but there must be something which attracted your cousin to him. I do know he is not a large man, but very strong.”

  “I shudder when I think of Mary abducted by him.” She looked away from her councillors. “Raped by him.” Elizabeth found herself rushing to her cousin’s defense. “She had no honorable choice after the ravishment but to marry him.”

  “But remember, Majesty,” interjected Leicester, “she then protected Bothwell, supported him against his detractors. She’d clearly lost her reason.”

  “Indeed! They say she lost her mind completely. And who would not under such circumstances? A high queen of France, a queen of Scotland, reduced to a helpless prisoner on an island fortress in the middle of a lake! She did after all rally herself, my young cousin, and find a way to escape her prison, lead a rebellion.”

  “Sadly, by that time the love of her people and the loyalty of her nobles were altogether lost,” said Cecil.

  “What kind of people are the Scots?” demanded Elizabeth in a fury. “They murder their king, and prefer putting an infant on the throne over their rightful queen!”

  “They are beastly lot, Your Majesty,” said Walsingham. “A far cry from Englishmen. You have shown extraordinary kindness to your cousin.”

  “Kindness? You call imprisoning Mary in a bleak house in the far north of England kindness!” Elizabeth remembered the day the messenger had arrived breathless with the news that Mary, escaped from her failed rebellion, had landed on English shores wearing clothes borrowed from her maid, her once beautiful red hair shaven to disguise her.

  “You had no choice,” insisted Leicester. “How could you in good conscience bring to London the woman who still claimed to be the rightful queen of England?”

  “He’s right, Your Majesty,” agreed Walsingham. “Mary was the fiercest competitor for your throne, and England is yet a country divided by religion. You know that your religious settlement is considered so lenient that both Catholics and Protestants are neither of them happy.”

  “And now that you have been excommunicated by the Pope …” added Cecil.

  “Enough!” cried Elizabeth.

  “No,” said Leicester. “We are not finished. We have yet to decide what is to be done with this Catholic spider who has passed her whole confinement in England weaving webs of deceit and plots to have you murdered!”

  Elizabeth had to admit it was true. Walsingham’s secret service had intercepted dozens of Mary’s dispatches attempting to raise support from beyond her shores. It had in the end, however, been Elizabeth’s own Duke of Norfolk, and his Machiavellian scheming with the Scots queen and the Italian banker Ridolfi, that had irrevocably tightened Mary’s chains of captivity. Elizabeth wished to be merciful of her cousin’s cause but …

  “Your Majesty,” interjected Leicester, “I think Norfolk has shown his true colors — the colors of a traitor. And he must pay for it properly.”

  “I do not dispute Norfolk’s complicity in the Ridolfi plot,” she conceded, “but I am not convinced of Mary’s.”

  “What more do you need to convince you?” demanded Walsingham. “The letters written by Mary to Ridolfi contained incriminating instructions and promise of financial commission to him. The woman planned to bring King Philip’s most murderous troops across the channel from the Netherlands to invade England and depose you!”

  “Your Majesty,” said Robin, pleading with her sincerely, “we three are your most loyal advisors and believe truly that England is best served by Mary’s execution, better now than later, for we have no way of knowing what harm she may do you in the future.”

  Elizabeth sighed heavily and raised her eyes heavenward. �
�My cousin Mary, the daughter of debate …”

  She now faced her Privy Councillors squarely. “I will not have her executed. She is my kinswoman and a sovereign princess. If I strike out against her, this clearly gives others leave to strike out against me.” Elizabeth thought, but did not say, how entirely repugnant was the idea of doing violence to her own family in the same way her father had done to two of his wives. Most people believed Elizabeth to be her father’s daughter in temperament, but she could not, she would not, follow in his bloodied footsteps.

  “Mary must of course be punished,” continued the Queen, struggling to remain composed. But she was angry, very angry — with these men, with Mary, with the Fates. For Elizabeth had harbored a great wish, despite her ministers’ cautions against it, to defy the familial strain of jealous cruelty and, on her own death, bestow St. Edward’s Crown upon Mary Stuart. But the Scots queen had burnt Elizabeth’s fine wish to ashes, and the great storm of controversy and hatred amongst her English subjects had scattered those ashes to the four corners of the world. “So,” she continued with the official tone of pronouncement, “Mary Queen of Scotland is therefore forever barred from succession to my throne. Now leave me. All of you!”

  The men wordlessly gathered up their papers and left the Privy Chamber. Elizabeth was alone. If her stays had allowed it she would have slumped against the highbacked chair, but the corset and stomacher kept her stiff as a washboard. Ah, she was weary. At times like this she felt most keenly the loss of her beloved Kat. When death had claimed her old companion Elizabeth had cried unabashedly for weeks before she was able to go on with the business of government. Never again would she have a friend who loved her basest flaws as much as her greatest strength. Now without Kat or sweet Mary Sidney at her side, Elizabeth seemed adrift in a sea of strangers who dutifully and impersonally ministered to her most intimate needs. They were all young and beautiful, and their very presence made her exceedingly cross.

  She was weary of the eternal weight of government which lay like a heavy mantle upon her shoulders, one she knew would never in her life be removed. She loved England. Loved being queen with all the glory that surrounded her person, growing more splendid with each passing year. But wrapped as she was in this awesome cloak of responsibility, she could less and less easily fly unencumbered into the warmth of Robin Dudley’s bed, lie naked in his arms, speak the tender, intimate words of love. With each passing year she felt somehow less human, less womanly, less a being of flesh and bone and blood, and more a frozen icon who might, like brittle ice, crack in extreme anger, or melt if emotion overtook her too forcefully.

  She loved Robin Dudley more profoundly than ever. He had become something deeper than her friend, her amour, her favorite. He had become, as she herself had, a cog in the machine that was England’s government. And though she missed what they had once shared so freely and frequently, this faithful presence as councillor at her side would simply have to suffice.

  Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, had resisted slamming the Privy Chamber door hard behind him and tried to keep a benign look on his face as he strode down the broad corridors and up the stairs to his apartments. He was forced to pass many courtiers and ladies and wished to give them no cause to gossip, jeer at him, pity him, find pleasure in his displeasure. For Leicester knew he was still the most despised man at court, more so than previously, now that he held true power, was one of the most prominent men of government.

  Today’s meeting of the council had left him feeling frustrated, thwarted. True, imminent threat from that damnable Scots queen and her fanatic Catholic supporters had been temporarily averted. But if Elizabeth actually believed that a mere pronouncement denying Mary the succession would halt her cousin’s attempts to steal England’s throne, she was sorely mistaken. One thing and one thing alone would stop Mary’s murderous plotting — the woman’s death.

  Leicester knew Elizabeth well, could see the lines of pain crisscrossing her forehead as they had spoken of executing her kinswoman. He knew how she resisted the bloodthirsty image of her Tudor relations, how fervently she longed to reign not only as a kind and beneficent ruler but as England’s most glorious prince. Perhaps, mused Leicester, this was the reason his recent marriage proposals to Elizabeth had been met with such chilliness. He had felt the Queen distancing herself from him within their intimate relationship, craving their sexual union less and less frequently, if at the same time growing ever more dependent upon him as her political advisor. He was, increasingly, her Eyes, keeping Elizabeth cognizant of major and minor intrigues at the court, even as Walsingham expanded his network of spies on the Continent and kept her in intelligence of foreign affairs.

  Leicester had watched the Queen’s appetite for shrewd political maneuvering and the workings of everyday government grow into a kind of gluttony, and realized that if he wished to remain close and important to her life, he would be forced to share those concerns. And so he had. He was proud that, despite Cecil’s continuing disdain for himself, they were the only two Privy Councillors who never failed to attend a meeting. And in recent years the Earl of Leicester had taken up the Protestant religion of his childhood with a new fervor, becoming the leader of the Puritan Party.

  But it was not enough. His dream of marrying Elizabeth and reigning by her side as king was too long-standing and persistent to be abandoned now. He knew that Elizabeth, despite the infrequency of their ardent embraces, still loved him. And despite the ongoing marriage negotiations with myriad foreign princes, and irritating flirtations with English courtiers like that nuisance Christopher Hatton, he knew without question that in her woman’s heart Elizabeth desired him above all men.

  So lost in his thoughts was Leicester that he suddenly found himself at the Queen’s apartments which adjoined his own, nearly colliding with the palace apothecary, a tall thin man named Treadwell who smelt rather unpleasantly of his laboratory. Each backed away with a courteous bow. As Leicester turned to continue toward his door, he saw Treadwell being admitted to the Queen’s apartments by her lady of the bedchamber, Clarice Hartly.

  Was the Queen ill? Why had he not been told? But he had just been in her presence. She looked well enough. A moment later the apothecary left the royal apartments and walked briskly past Leicester with a nod, wafting the scents of henbane and motherwort.

  Robin entered his own chambers to find Tamworth with every pair of his master’s boots lined up before him, polishing with uncommon vigor. “Good afternoon, my lord,” he said and spit on a burnished leather toe before continuing his rubbing. “Will you be wanting to change your costume for this evening?” I’ll just finish this —”

  “No hurry, Tamworth, go on with your work,” said Leicester as he pulled off the boots he was wearing. In his stocking feet he moved to the far end of the bedchamber to a fall of curtains and, quietly pulling them back, revealed the private door leading to Elizabeth’s chamber. Ignoring Tamworth’s questioning look, Leicester opened it and tiptoed along the dark passageway. Very carefully he pushed open the door into Elizabeth’s bedchamber and stood motionless behind the hanging that hid it. He could not see the ladies Hartly and Wingfield, but from the soft rustling that accompanied their voices he guessed they were working at the Queen’s wardrobe, perhaps folding undergarments or laying out her gown for the evening’s entertainments. They were also, as he had fervently hoped, gossiping about the package the apothecary had just delivered.

  “She needs the potion less and less, it seems to me,” said Clarice.

  “She needed it not at all when she became queen, for then she did not bleed like other women.”

  “I never knew that.”

  “Indeed. We all thought her barren stock. And she played so carelessly with Robin Dudley when first she came to the throne, she must have thought so too.”

  “Do you truly think Master Treadwell’s herbs can bring about an abortion, then?”

  The words, so casually spoken, struck Robin with the force of a jousting lance. He had
always cherished the hope that there would be another child, that the next time Elizabeth would be forced to acknowledge …

  “There’s no doubt in my mind,” answered Lady Wingfield. “Lucy Clark — you know, the youngest silkwoman — and Lady Simms both used the potion, and ’twas a quick end to their troubles.”

  “I still say the Queen has little to worry about, bleeding properly or not. Leicester shares her bed hardly at all.”

  “Mayhaps young Lord Hatton will be taking the Earl’s place between her fine sheets.”

  As the two ladies giggled Leicester backed into the dark passageway and quietly pulled the door shut behind him. Yet he did not immediately return to his rooms. He leaned against the wall trembling with humiliation. He and the Queen had, from the beginning of her reign, been the butt of lewd gossip, but the talk had always celebrated his manliness and virility. Now the Queen secretly schemed against him to murder his children, and every court gossip knew the infrequency of their bedding together.

  The passageway was dark and stuffy, but for Leicester it held a reassuring privacy. Here he could think, plan, rearrange his thoughts far from prying eyes. He knew Elizabeth better than anyone else alive. And she loved him still. When he fell ill she nursed him with her own hands. Their lovemaking, though rare in recent months, still held at moments an incandescent passion. They shared between them the pain of a lost child, and he knew as surely as he lived that they were bound to each other for all the days that lay ahead of them. But how could he move her from her present mind, which cast him as a trusted advisor and occasional lover, to be her husband and king? How, he asked himself, is a mind so moved?

  Suddenly he knew. There was an answer — in fact, the only answer. ’Twas a gamble and a dangerous one at that, but its power was enormous and altogether absolute. Jealousy. The Earl of Leicester would take another lover.