The Queen's Bastard Read online

  “Why does this upset you so? If you say you are not pregnant, then you are not. ’Twas a false seeing, my love, that is all. No need to rush away so angrily. Poor John is beside himself. He meant you no harm!”

  Elizabeth felt suddenly cold, and Robin, who sensed her moods and temperatures keenly, wrapped his gentle arms about her and rocked her trembling body.

  “Stay, please stay, Elizabeth. I have been dreaming of this cozy night abed with you, under no royal roof, no disapproving eyes spying on us, gossiping. Just to wake with you on a sweet spring morning in the country surrounded by friends, oh stay!”

  “I am not pregnant,” she said quietly but firmly.

  “You are not pregnant,” he replied dutifully.

  “And we shall not speak of it again.”

  “Agreed.”

  “Would you make my apologies to the others?” she said more mildly. “I’m suddenly tired.”

  “No need. They will understand. Here, let me show you to your room.” He smiled the crooked smile she so loved. “Our room.”

  Elizabeth felt good humors flowing back through her veins in a warm rush. ’Twould indeed be lovely to lie in a warm bed with her love this night.

  “Come, Robin,” she said, taking his hand. “Show me the way.”

  Seven

  “The chin a bit higher, Majesty.”

  Elizabeth rolled her eyes in irritation at Master Thomas Rhys, the timid young portrait artist whom Robin had convinced her to hire, then thrust her chin skyward at an extreme angle.

  “Like this?” taunted Elizabeth.

  The poor young man, entirely discomposed by the uncooperative queen, was careful to refrain from speaking impertinently.

  “’Tis a bit … high, Madame.”

  Elizabeth fought the temptation to drop her chin to her chest and further upset the painter, his paintbrush suspended impotently in midair but restrained herself and leveled her chin to the perfect haughty angle she knew he desired.

  “Beautiful, beautiful!” cried Rhys enthusiastically and with obvious relief.

  Elizabeth felt herself flush with the compliment and was suddenly contrite. She knew she’d been irritable of late and unreasonable in the extreme. All of her servants and councillors, even Robin, had been treading lightly in her presence, but she’d made no attempt to change her behavior and continued acting the spoilt child. Kat and Lady Mary Sidney, sitting silently to one side with placid countenances staring straight ahead, dared even not exchange glances when Elizabeth was in such a temper.

  With a sharp knock the Presence Chamber door opened. Sir William Cecil and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton moved forward and presented themselves to the Queen.

  “Secretary Cecil.” He nodded, and she then skewered Throckmorton with her gaze. “And how does my ambassador to the French court?” Elizabeth’s question was sharpened to a fine edge.

  “Well, Your Majesty. With much news to report.”

  “’Tis clear from Sir Nicholas’s intelligence that we must pay strict attention to your cousin Mary, Your Majesty,” offered Cecil. Alone amongst her men and ladies, William Cecil showed no fear of Elizabeth even in her most difficult moments, having served her from the earliest days of her reign, and possessing the most finely honed instincts of all her councillors. He was trustworthy, loyal, and generally unflappable.

  “Now that Queen Mary’s husband is dead and she is merely queen dowager in France,” Cecil went on, “she is far more dangerous to you than before. A wild card. For she is still queen of Scotland and may, in her widowhood, be played in one of many directions.”

  “Speak to me, Throckmorton,” said Elizabeth, turning to her ambassador. “Tell me the good news first.”

  Throckmorton hesitated, knowing full well he was riding into an ambush, with Elizabeth the entire raiding party. For what was good or bad news to the Queen depended entirely upon her mood, and her mood, he could not help but be aware, was entirely foul. He feigned an optimistic tone and began.

  “Since young King Francis’s death —”

  “A death not unexpected,” interrupted Elizabeth peevishly. “He was always feeble, always sickly. A pathetic creature, stunted in growth, a child whom his mother de Médicis was always reminding to blow his nose. He was, I am told, not a capable man at the time he married my cousin.”

  “The rumors were that the couple were intimate, Your Majesty. You are aware that they were childhood friends — grew up in the same house-hold. They loved each other dearly. But no, he was by all reports not yet … capable. ’Twas said that Mary might have many, many children, but not by Francis.”

  Childhood friends, mused Elizabeth, like herself and Robin Dudley, and yet Mary’s and her upbringings had been as different as they could possibly be. Her own motherless youth had been miserable. Elizabeth, rejected as a bastard by her father and the court, had been stripped of her title as princess and banished to a poor and distant household. And despite her great charm and intelligence, she had suffered from an overwhelming sense of unworthiness mitigated only by the constant, blessed love and devotion of her servants Kat and John Ashley, the Parrys, and finally her father’s sixth and last wife, Catherine Parr. This upbringing she could not help but compare to her cousin Mary’s. Henry VIII’s own great-niece, crowned queen of Scotland at nine days old, was by some standards — Catholic standards — more deserving of the English crown than Elizabeth, child of the great whore Anne Boleyn. Henry had, in fact, attempted to betroth the infant Mary to his own son, Edward. Had the Scots nobles allowed that marriage, and had her dear brother Edward lived, thought Elizabeth with equal measures of relief and regret, Mary Queen of Scots would have been her own sovereign.

  Betrothed at four to the dauphin, heir to the French throne, Mary had been brought up at the sumptuous Valois court, pampered, pleasured, embraced as one of the royal family, adored by her young husband-to-be and loved, always loved. The little queen had sailed blissfully through childhood on gossamer clouds, comfortable within her place in the world. When Francis’s father, King Henry II, had died suddenly and tragically, the young couple had ascended the throne effortlessly. Mary, thought Elizabeth with a raw pang of jealousy, had never had to fight simply to survive as she herself had had to do.

  “Go on, Throckmorton,” commanded the Queen. “You were saying that since Francis’s death …”

  “Yes, the queen dowager has seemingly begun to know her own mind on matters —”

  “As she had not previously, taking all guidance from her mother’s family, as well as her mother-in-law de Médicis,” interrupted Elizabeth again.

  “She was, after all, only sixteen, her husband fifteen. But now she is showing the greatest modesty and excellent wisdom for her years.”

  “How so?” demanded Elizabeth.

  “By thinking herself not too wise, and taking good counsel from learned elders on the matter of her remarriage … a great virtue in a queen, Your Majesty.”

  No one was prepared for Elizabeth’s violent outburst as she sprang from her chair and rounded on Throckmorton, nearly knocking him off his feet.

  “You blatantly contradict yourself, ambassador! First you have the queen knowing her own mind, and one breath later claim she thinks herself not too wise. That she no longer takes counsel from some, but now takes counsel from others. Which is it?”

  “I am sorry, Your Majesty,” Throckmorton mumbled.

  “And is your estimation of the most modest Scots queen being wise to take counsel on matters of her marriage a comment on your own immodest queen refusing to do the same?”

  “No, Your Majesty, never!”

  Throckmorton held himself rigid to control the trembling Elizabeth’s outburst had produced in him. The others seemed to fade into the walls, hoping the Queen’s wrath might not be turned in their direction.

  “Methinks,” continued Elizabeth, pacing the room, glaring at her unfinished portrait as she passed behind the artist, now quaking in his shoes, “that Mary is a fool. She is undisputed
queen two times over, yet she is eager to hand her power to men below her. Well, whom is she considering marrying?”

  “The suitors are many,” replied the ambassador. “Don Carlos of Spain, Philip’s heir, is her first choice.”

  “Don Carlos!” shouted Elizabeth in outrage. “Don Carlos is an idiot, a more wretched oaf than her first husband! Small, crookbacked, cursed with the falling sickness and a lisp! He is known to fly into maniacal rages and attempt murder! Is she mad?”

  “I do not know, Your Majesty. I can only assume she places dynastic considerations before personal ones.”

  “Who else?”

  “The Earl of Arran —”

  “A Scotsman,” spat Elizabeth. “She will never marry a Scotsman.”

  “Her Valois brother-in-law Charles.”

  “De Médicis would never allow it. She will be rid of her darling daughter-in-law as soon as it is seemly, of that you can be sure.”

  “And Lord Darnley, Your Majesty.”

  “My cousin, Lady Lennox’s son?” Elizabeth asked, perplexed.

  “He holds a weak but definite place in the succession, Majesty,” added Cecil quietly but firmly.

  “God’s death!” cried Elizabeth. “Does Mary believe that two weak claims to my throne together make a strong one? So, is she still demanding that I name her my successor?”

  “Demanding may be too strong a word, Your —”

  “And does she still refuse to ratify the Treaty of Edinburgh which Cecil negotiated last July?”

  “She has declined only until she might consult with her council in Scotland, but she indicated her answer will then be favorable to you. She wishes above all else, your Majesty, to meet with you personally to discuss your differences and solidify your affection as cousins and friends.”

  “Does she? My cousin Mary. I hear she is overlarge for a woman. A giant,” said Elizabeth, “with large floppy ears.”

  “She is nearly six feet tall, Majesty, but delicately boned and willowy.”

  “Willowy…. And is she as lovely as they say, Throckmorton? Tell me the truth.”

  The ambassador found himself suddenly speechless. Whilst his previous reports had soundly angered the Queen, he knew a truthful discussion of her younger cousin’s physical attributes would drive Elizabeth to paroxysms of fury, for it was widely held that Mary was the most beautiful queen in Europe. Throckmorton chose his words with extreme care.

  “Her hair is reddish gold like your own, Madame, and her eyes are the color of amber. Her skin is very pale. They say it was whiter than the white veil of mourning at her husband’s death.”

  “Her features, Throckmorton.”

  “Some say her nose is too long.” The ambassador was pleased to be able to report that. “And, as you say, her ears are quite large. The eyes slant upwards a bit, and her mouth …” Throckmorton had blundered into dangerous territory.

  “Go on.”

  “Her mouth is well formed with a pretty curve to it, and her speaking voice” — he drove on with no road of escape — “is considered very sweet indeed.”

  “Unlike the voice of your harridan queen!”

  “Your Majesty,” interrupted Cecil. “You are acting most unreasonably with your good ambassador. You asked for a truthful report —”

  “And what I have gotten …” Elizabeth stopped midsentence with a suddenly confused look spreading across her face. She had gone a shade paler than her normal alabaster skin tone. Her hand groped blindly for support, finding it with Cecil’s arm. Kat and Mary Sidney had instantly leapt to their feet and surrounded the Queen, Mary fanning her briskly and Kat patting her cheek.

  Elizabeth’s lips were pursed tightly together and Kat Ashley could see that the Queen was fighting nausea. Mayhaps this was the onset of one of the Queen’s migraines.

  “Come, Elizabeth,” Kat crooned soothingly. “Let us get you to your bed.” But before the Queen could take more than a few steps toward the door, she fell into a dead faint.

  “No!” shouted the Queen, slapping away Kat’s ministering hands. “I am not pregnant!”

  The elder waiting lady sat still as stone at Elizabeth’s bedside, her expression almost as horrified as her mistress’s. Mary Sidney stood a few paces away wringing her hands in silence, but otherwise the royal bedchamber was empty, all waiting women sent far from sight and hearing.

  “I have seen too many pregnant women to be wrong, Your Majesty. You have all the signs.”

  A wild-eyed Elizabeth looked to Lady Mary for reassurance that Kat was somehow mistaken, but Mary stood firm, meeting and holding the Queen’s pleading gaze. “John Dee foretold it, Madame. And the symptoms are there,” she said.

  “Damn the symptoms!” cried Elizabeth, then suddenly, with one hand slapped to her mouth, gestured to Kat for the basin. The Queen vomited prodigiously, then lay back on her pillows and began to weep.

  “I warned you, Elizabeth,” scolded Kat sternly. “Warned you time and again that no good would come of this untoward passion. Now it is too late, and all that you have fought your whole life to have, that which you and I, my husband, the Parrys have sacrificed and nearly lost our lives to secure, is forfeit!”

  “Not forfeit,” sobbed Elizabeth, wiping her mouth.

  “No? And how do you suppose you should save your crown? Rush into marriage, as if that were possible, with the prince of Sweden, or Archduke Ferdinand? Pretend the baby is premature and pray that it does not resemble your lover too closely?”

  “I will not marry them, either of them,” whispered Elizabeth.

  “Ah, then the Queen of England will give birth to a bastard child. That should do wonders for her already besmirched reputation,” hissed Kat. “Her loyal subjects will no doubt be delighted to have a harlot queen for their —”

  “Silence!” thundered Elizabeth, suddenly in command once more. “You will not speak to your queen in such a tone again, Katherine Ashley, or you shall find your head on a pike on Tower Bridge!”

  Silence there was. Mary Sidney stood quivering in horror at Elizabeth’s words. Kat simply stared at the Queen in disbelief. In all her time with Elizabeth, from the earliest days of childhood when Kat had been the only human being who cared if the little girl lived or died, through all the years of Kat’s outspoken opinioning and impertinent scolding, Elizabeth had never spoken so harshly. And now this, for simply stating the truth.

  “So you’d have me beheaded, is that it? Bowels ripped from my old belly? Drawn and quartered too?” Kat sniffed indignantly and rose from the bed.

  “Kat …” Elizabeth grabbed her lady’s hand, immediately contrite. How could she have uttered such a terrible threat to her dearest friend and keeper? But her waiting woman had unknowingly touched a painful wound in Elizabeth’s soul, the memory of her mother — by repute England’s harlot queen, in truth a headstrong and honorable woman who had fought courageously against all odds so that Elizabeth could one day wear St. Edward’s Crown.

  “Forgive me, Kat. I’m out of my mind with worry. Please sit. And Mary …” Elizabeth looked to Mary Sidney, who had yet never moved, hardly breathed for some minutes. “Come close to me. I need your loving counsel, too.” Mary approached the bed, sat down at Elizabeth’s feet. “We must think, be reasonable.”

  The three women were quiet for a long moment. When Kat spoke again her voice was so low Elizabeth had to lean in to hear.

  “I can speak to Treadwell, the apothecary. He need never know for whom the potion is meant.”

  “No,” said Elizabeth. “I will not do away with this child. I mean to have my baby.”

  “But, Elizabeth …” moaned Kat.

  “May I speak, Your Majesty?” said Mary Sidney. Elizabeth nodded her consent. “Are you not forgetting my brother?” Mary could feel Kat stiffen next to her, but she went on. “He loves you so, from the depths of his soul … and you love him. No one would make you a better husband than he. And there is already some support for such a match, both here and abroad. You have no less
than King Philip’s blessing on a marriage with Robin. Even Lord Suffolk is said to support it. Robin is an Englishman and the true father of this child. The ceremony could be performed quickly so that appearances could be preserved — the child conceived immediately after the marriage, born prematurely. You might even announce that you have been married secretly for some time. There is rumor to that effect already. I see no better solution to your dilemma, Majesty.”

  “Let me think, let me think!” cried Elizabeth.

  She was a Christian queen, Supreme Governor of the Church of England. Her reputation for strength as well as piety would in the future determine the measure of power she wielded amongst the monarchs of Europe. She reflected with a shiver of awe that in this day and age women ruled a vast portion of the known world — de Médicis in France, Mary in Scotland, herself in England and Ireland. A child born out of wedlock now would brand Elizabeth once and forever as a whore, a prince ill suited to reign … a weak woman.

  But what of the promise she had made to herself on her mother’s grave, that she must never marry? What of the perception that to give her hard-won power away to a husband, no matter how beloved, no matter how trusted, was as good as a sentence of death? If not death of the body, thought Elizabeth, then death of the spirit. For that part of her which lived for her country and her subjects, marriage and the relinquishment of her duty as queen was as mortal a sin as treason.

  But she was young still, thought Elizabeth. She could not allow the world to know her mind’s true turnings. Her subjects would think her mad. Rebellions and civil wars would boil up to topple the lunatic queen who refused to marry and bear heirs. Crucial foreign alliances would be lost. Robin, her darling Robin, might desert her.

  Now was the moment, Elizabeth knew — and John Dee had foreseen it — when England should sail forth into the future, not as the meek and tiny island nation it had always been but as a mighty vessel bound to conquer the world. And she, Elizabeth, standing alone at the helm, should be its captain. For this to happen she must let them all go on believing that she might yet marry. She must play for time. Yes, that was what she needed most of all. Time.