The Queen's Bastard Read online

  I was sixteen, no longer a boy and not yet a man. Perhaps full grown in body, but with a soul as tender and green as spring grass. My Mother had become a zealot and lived in abject fear of the Devil. He stalked her, she said, stalked her incessantly and her only protection against his evil was Scripture. We were all made to endure not only our usual morning and evening prayers, but several more every day, she deciding the precise hour for each using a sundial, the Book of Numbers, and a divinely inspired numerical logic which only she understood.

  Her Bible had become an appendage as much as an arm or a leg. She would scurry thro the manor and the yard, and many times a day to the garden sundial, the book clutched in her white knuckled hand, muttering numbers and snatches of psalms, a litany of heavenly and fallen Angels, and exhortations for the Devil to be gone from the place she was going.

  My Father, sister Alice and I tolerated her mania, for it seemed harmless enough. Twas, after all, the word of God and besides, we were able to slip away after several moments of her ministry, Maud reading from the book transfixed and rapturous, blind to the world around her. My Father had made some strange peace with her, and tho they shared a bed still, I do not think they took their pleasure in it.

  That autumn, soon after the days shortened and the first bout of cold gloom descended on the Chase, the pitch and frenzy of her religious fervor grew frightening. She carried a flat iron pan in whichever hand she was not carrying the Bible, proclaiming that only with these two weapons would she be safe from Beelzebub and his minions. And she began to regard me with a suspicious eye, watching and listening carefully to see whether I uttered every syllable of every prayer. Forcing me to stand still while she checked my scalp and body for marks of the Devil. And she would not let me touch her with my six fingered hand.

  By All Hallows Eve day her fears had grown so wild that my Father sought to keep her locked safe in the manor, before the hearth with her family round to guard her. She began reading from Genesis at sundown, and as evening waxed full, she droned on and on and on. My eyes grew heavy, and before I closed them I saw that my Father was already dozing. Alice was attending her needlework and seemed bored but never the less alert.

  Twas Barlington shouting that awoke us, for even Alice had finally succumbed. Looking round groggily we all at once saw Maud was gone, her Bible with her. But most alarming was Barlingtons call.

  “Fire! Fire in the stables!”

  We all scrambled out the door and across the yard to a scene of chaos. Smoke billowing from the doorway of the long building along with soot covered stableboys emerging with panicked horses. A bucket relay had formed, but we could see at once it was a lost cause. The thatched roof was already ablaze. My Father grabbed a boy leading two horses from the conflagration.

  “Where is my wife!” he cried.

  “In there, Sir!” he shouted, nodding over his shoulder to the stables. “She rushed in with no warning, Sir, waving her Bible and screaming that Arthurs horse was the Devil himself and should burn in Hell. I saw her grab a lantern and make for Chargers stall down the end, but halfway there the lamp caught on a nail and the lighted oil spilt on some hay. It caught so quick, the straw and the wooden stalls …”

  We three looked at each other, the horror rising in us all. Alice covered her face with her hands. My Father and I both moved at once, running for the doorway. Barlington came running alongside us carrying two pistols. I moaned inwardly with the sudden understanding of their use.

  Now we were inside and thro the thick smoke could see that in deed the middle section of the stone walled stable was entirely engulfed, flames leaping from floor to roof. And whilst the horses from the front had all been rescued — their stalls on either side of the long aisle blessedly empty — the fire was racing towards the far end of the stable. Horses trapped in their stalls were shrieking in terror and pain, throwing them selves against the walls, some stalls ominously still, only fire rising where once living animals had stood.

  And now thro the flames and the smoke we could see my Mother, far down the aisle near Charger in his stall. The fire had not yet reached them, she shrieking at the horse in a terrible voice, an exorcist to a possessed creature, and he kicking crazily with his rear hooves at the stall door, again and again and again …

  A loud report at my ear. Barlington had put one tortured horse out of its misery and was taking aim at another.

  “Maud, Maud!” my Father screamed helplessly and then, as in a dream, we saw her turn at the sound of his voice. There was a look of surprise on her face when she saw the wall of flames that separated her husband and son from her, as tho she was altogether unaware of the holocaust she had recently invented.

  “He must be gone!” she called to us, thrusting her Bible in Chargers direction. “Do you not see, Robert, the Devil must burn in the fires of Hell!”

  “Charger!” I screamed. I do not know if he heard my voice above the din, but it seemed as if his kicking of the stall door became more frenzied, and suddenly wood splintered.

  “Charger, Charger, kick it down, boy, kick it down!!”

  More splintering. Another shot as Barlington found a second merciful mark, and my Father clutching me, crying “Maud, Maud, Maud …”

  And then with a roaring sound more terrible than I care to remember a great slab of thatch tumbled from the roof beams in an almost graceful descent, blanketing the length of the aisle with fire. The whoosh of furnacelike heat and smoke blew my Father and Barlington and me backwards as far as the stable door. And then I saw a sight that with mingling joy and horror I will revisit in my dreams for ever. Twas Charger exploding from the billowing smoke and flames, galloping, nay flying as though the Devil himself was at his heels. His mane and tail were afire, his eyes wild with fear and he would not stop, just thundered out the stable door into the night. I followed, crying his name again and again. Leapt upon a rescued horse and raced after him.

  He had not gotten far when I found him standing still as a statue in the moonlight. I slowed, jumped from my mount and moved carefully to him. I could hear the unnatural breathing of scorched lungs, smell the foul stench of burnt hair and flesh, see the whites of his terrified eyes. As I reached him he suddenly sank onto his forehands, and I saw again the glorious day when he had knelt just so at the Queens feet and received her blessings. And now my proud and beautiful horse was dying. He fell heavily on his side and his breathing became more tortured. I laid my hands on his face, leaned close and whispered — I know not what I whispered, some meaningless comfortable words that I was there with him, and loved him, and he was not alone. And then my Father was at my side with a pistol in his hand and he gently lifted me away and wasted no time in releasing my friend from his agony. Then we clung together, my Father and I, and wept like children until there were no more tears to cry.

  Twenty-two

  Even as his barge scraped to a halt on the wooden dock, the Earl of Leicester could feel the ghastly pall hanging heavy over Greenwich Castle. He was, fittingly, all in black as were the lords and ladies of the Court, the guards, stablemen, laundresses. Though the autumn sun was shining ’twas a bleak day, and no one as he passed dared a smile, but only greeted him with somber nods. For death draped round about them in great bloody swaths. On St. Bartholomew’s Eve last, six thousand Protestant brethren in Paris had been dragged from their beds and slaughtered by their Catholic neighbors like so many head of cattle. The butchery, fired more by the will of the queen mother de Médicis than her weak-livered son Charles, had spread across France in the following weeks, and the toll of Huguenot dead had reached staggering numbers. All talk of marriage between Elizabeth and de Médicis’s youngest son were instantly suspended as the English Court descended into the deepest state of mourning. It was reported that Philip of Spain, on hearing of the outrage, had begun to laugh, for all worry about Huguenot assistance to the Netherlands rebels had been extinguished with the lives of the Protestants.

  Leicester’s once soft religiosity had, with news of
the St. Bartholomew’s Eve Massacre, finally congealed into a fervor of righteousness. Some felt his sudden Puritan devoutness sat strangely on a man so ambitious, so apparently insincere, and so fond of the splendors of courtly life. But in his heart, and surprising even unto himself, Leicester had found that earnest conversation with religious gentlemen and ladies was oddly exhilarating, and at the same time comforting. As Spain continued to persecute its Calvinists and France its Huguenots, the Earl had metamorphosed into a war hawk in defense of his newfound faith. The other advantage to these leanings, he thought as he climbed the palace steps, was that he now found himself, finally, on the same side of principle as William Cecil. A grudging respect for the once detested upstart had taken hold of the older man.

  God, mused Leicester, had placed before the adherents of the New Religion a mighty challenge and Elizabeth, who resisted taking sides against Spain at all costs — for she still fervently believed the ultimate cost of a war would be her people’s love — must be gently but firmly moved to support the Protestants abroad. He would speak to her today in the quiet of their rooms. He knew that she was as dismayed by the Dutch Protestants daring to revolt against their sovereign king, as by their persecution at the hands of Philip’s Duke of Alva. Elizabeth and Leicester’s recent separation while he’d been seeing to extensive construction at Kenilworth Castle, and now his return, he thought with a satisfied smile, would no doubt soften her mood in the matter of religion.

  But as he approached their adjoining apartments Leicester noticed, with increasing alarm, a total absence of activity, as if the hand of death had somehow swept along this corridor. There were no courtiers or ladies in waiting fluttering about on their various errands, no petitioners — not even, most astonishingly, royal guards posted at the Queen’s door.

  As he reached for the door leading into the nest of royal apartments, he realized he had never before opened it with his own hand, the small service invariably performed by a liveried doorman. He stepped into the Privy Chamber and, still observing not a soul, walked through into the Withdrawing Chamber. No one. Now he stood before Elizabeth’s bedchamber door. The eerie silence so unnerved him that for a moment he considered turning, leaving. Surely the Queen could not be in her room thus flagrantly unattended. But the mystery compelled him forward.

  She was sitting bolt upright in her highbacked carven seat which had been placed squarely in the center of the room facing the door. Encased in a silken armor of mourning black Elizabeth was pale as a wraith, eyes smoldering with a cold fire, her long fingers curled clawlike round the ends of the chair arms. She was staring at Robin Dudley with so frightening an intensity that he found himself paralyzed. A hoarse breath escaped his lips and finally he composed himself enough to utter, “Your Majesty.”

  When Elizabeth did not answer with either word or gesture or the slightest flicker of her eyes he moved forward, feeling his joints wooden like those of a puppet. He knelt before her, a common suppliant and not her lover of many years. His alarm increased when she failed even to offer her hand to be kissed. This icy anger, this rage, was directed not at de Médicis or Philip of Spain, not at Alva for his atrocities in the Netherlands, not even at God for allowing such outrages to be committed in his name. He himself was the object of this terrifying fury. Elizabeth, he realized suddenly, had cleared her chambers so that no one should be privy to the coming storm.

  Robin Dudley, always a man of unremitting bravado and ready eloquence, found that he was trembling and altogether devoid of speech. The silence between them — the first of their long, intimate friendship — was shattering, and he knew that it devastated them equally.

  “Why?”

  The syllable hung resonating between them like the pluck of a harpstring. ’Twas only one word, but no more was necessary for Leicester’s understanding. All of the calculated answers he had prepared for this inevitable moment, all of his reasoning and arguments, he knew at once to be fatuous and wrongheaded.

  “She means nothing to me,” he finally uttered, but his voice cracked midsentence as a callow boy’s might do.

  “If that is true, Robin,” said Elizabeth as if treading carefully on a brittle crust of snow, “then you have ripped the still beating heart from my chest … for nothing.” She brought her hands together in her lap, laying one atop the other. They were very still and white. “Douglas Sheffield,” she said evenly, “is a woman of rare beauty with the brains of a hedge-hog …”

  “Elizabeth …”

  The Queen skewered him into immediate silence and he sensed that if he interrupted her again she would slice him open with the blade of her anger. He found he could not tear his eyes away from her pale, motionless hands.

  “When Lady Sheffield’s husband discovered that he had been cuckolded by you,” she began again, “he flew into a rage and started out for London seeking a divorce. Is that correct?”

  “Quite so,” replied Dudley, his tone and posture taking on the sullenness of a child being disciplined.

  “But Lord Sheffield did never arrive in London,” continued Elizabeth. “He took ill and died suddenly, under mysterious circumstances. Many of his friends believe he was poisoned.”

  Finally she allowed a space for Leicester to answer.

  He felt some of his senses returning to him. He stood, and answered her question with a question of his own.

  “Why would I — for I assume you are impugning my innocence — murder the man unless I wished to marry his widow? And why would I — still believed by many to be the murderer of my own wife — put myself in the very same position a second time? I may be arrogant and vainglorious, Elizabeth, but do you really suppose me to be so unrelentingly stupid?”

  “So you do not mean to marry Lady Sheffield?” asked the Queen, choosing to address his first question.

  “I do not.”

  “What then will become of the child she is carrying? It is your child, is it not?”

  ’Twas the Queen’s voice that was now breaking and, to Leicester’s ear, was heartrendingly vincible. He had never meant his affair with Douglas, begun only to provoke jealousy, to continue as long as it had. Lady Sheffield was indeed a dazzling creature and had been an easy purchase, but as he basked in the warmth and unqualified devotion with which she blanketed him, he had grown sincerely fond of her.

  With sudden annoyance Dudley realized that Douglas Sheffield had as much pursued him as he had her — the prey laying a trap for the hunter. She had snared herself a great prize, never once considering the consequences of stealing the Queen’s lover. From this day forward, Douglas would find her life at Court was finished. Leicester had never, however reckless he had become, wished for a child with her. Finding that she was pregnant, Lady Sheffield had demanded that Leicester marry her, claiming rightly that she had rejected many offers of marriage and wanted only him. It even occurred to him that it was she who had had her husband poisoned, leaving the way clear for Dudley to marry her.

  The Earl felt his mouth quiver with all that was unspoken. Elizabeth could not help but notice his agitation.

  “Speak your mind, Lord Leicester,” she said, her crimson lips a thin, cruel line dividing her face, “for it may be your last chance to do so.”

  “And how is that, Elizabeth?” he said tersely. He had finally found his voice and the words spilled out freely, filling the room with a rage equal to the Queen’s. “Have you plans to banish me? Execute me! Has it taken you so completely by surprise that I could no longer live with your rude refusals? Did you believe that I had no feelings? That my masculinity could suffer your bloodless rejections forever!”

  “I have never rejected you!” she shouted.

  “You have indeed, Madame. I have begged you endlessly to marry me and you have turned your back on me again and again. You have, without my consent, offered me up to your cousin Mary like roast meat on a platter! I am a laughingstock, Elizabeth, I am your concubine!”

  “Ah, I have not respected you.” Her sarcasm bit like a Janua
ry wind off the Thames. “And you have not happily and greedily accepted all the fame and wealth and honor and title this crown has generously bestowed upon you.” She sat back in her chair satisfied, as though she had perfectly driven home her point.

  “I have loved you, Elizabeth,” Robin Dudley said simply. “I have loved you.”

  With that the entire magnificent countenance of the Queen seemed suddenly to crumble. Her rigid features sagged, leaving fine cracks in the whitened mask of her face, and her chin dropped to her chest in defeat, for she had no way to deny his words.

  “We had a son, you and I,” continued Leicester, “and God in His unfathomable wisdom saw fit to take him from us. But then, whilst you never sent me from your bed, you and your apothecary made certain that you would never again bear my children.” Elizabeth flinched at this, but had no argument. “Am I not a man like any other, Elizabeth? Should I not desire a true wife and a legitimate son to carry on my family’s bloodline? You know my brother and his wife are barren. If I die childless the Dudleys are finished.”

  At this last, Elizabeth slowly raised he head.

  “A legitimate son, this is what you desire from me above all else?”

  Dudley felt the ground giving way beneath him. He suddenly realized that he had spoken of the one matter that, unfailingly, drove Elizabeth into spasms of rage. Her father, with such a desire taken to excess, had executed her mother. But Leicester could not now retreat.

  “Marry me, Elizabeth,” he said with steady calm.

  “Make you king of England?” she responded sneeringly.

  “Marry me, Elizabeth!”

  “Lay open to you my power, my country, my soul?”

  He grabbed her shoulders and pinioned her hard against the chair back, forcing her to meet and hold his commanding eye.

  “Marry me,” he whispered fiercely.