Elizabeth I (128 page)

I turned on her. “Bed! No! That is the end!”

“Ma'am! The bed is your friend,” she said.

“No, it is my enemy. Bring me tapers here!”

I was still Queen, and they had to obey. They brought candles and set them all around me, a glowing fence of slim beeswax tapers.

“A taper of pure virgin wax,” I said, touching one nearest me. “Such I have been. Tell them. Tell them. I have poured myself out for my people, and kept myself only for them. Burned my store of life for them.”

“I will, I will,” said Helena. Her face was gathered and puckered. Weeping. It wreaks havoc on a woman's face. I wanted to tell her so but somehow could not speak.

The day ebbed. I watched the sun leave the windows I gazed upon. And then, like a whisper, I saw the first of them. My visitors.

Peeking cautiously around the screen set up to shield me, the face of William Cecil. But he was not the old man I had attended on his deathbed but the young man who had sat at my first council meeting the day after I had become Queen. He grinned impishly and said, “Good work, my lady, good work.”

Politely he stepped to one side. Another face peered around the screen.

“The Spaniard eats dust at last!” Francis Drake stepped out, his cheeks glowing apple red. “I knew it was a matter of time.” He joined Cecil, standing reverently beside him.

Dimly another figure resolved himself in my vision, a dear sight. Robert Dudley. He came to me and took my hand. I swear I felt his touch, felt the warmth of his fingers. Then he receded.

Marjorie Norris came next, her hair dark again, as it was when she earned the nickname “Crow.” She was laughing, beckoning to me.

A young, glowing face. Small mustache. “
Ma chérie,
” he whispered.

François.

A sad, accusing figure, dressed in blue velvet. He shook his head, waving his spade-shaped beard. Robert Devereux, Earl of Essex.

Grace O'Malley's figure resolved itself, her red hair tumbling over her bodice. She smiled down at me. “My adversary,” she said. “You have triumphed—for now. But it is all one. We shall see. The story of Ireland is never finished.”

Then Catherine, the most recently departed. Her image was strongest of all. I could swear she stood in front of me. She held out her hands silently. I could feel their touch, could feel them pulling me up. I rose from the cushions.

“Her Majesty rises!” All around me the living, more invisible than the dead, cried out. “Escort her to her bed!”

The bed, no, not the bed. Suddenly, in my ear, Robert Cecil was speaking. “Your Majesty, to content the people, you must go to bed.”

I turned, fixed him with my eye. “Little man, ‘must' is not a word to be used to princes.” I lay back down.

And so I remain. Here on the floor, on the cushions, not submitting to the shades, not going to bed. Anxious people watch over me. I still see the departed ones, crowding around, jostling against the living ones crowding my chamber.

“Did I not say, did I not promise you, I do not wish to live longer than my life can serve my people!” I cry. But no one can hear. I have become silent and invisible.

My reign has ended. I have kept my promise.

I
am touched. Ten of my grandchildren and five of my great-grandchildren have come all the way to Drayton Bassett in honor of their
grandmère
's ninetieth birthday. This proves that time bestows the ultimate gift of respectability upon all scoundrels. If one lives long enough, one becomes venerable. It is a recompense for all one has lost.

I have outlived all my children and some of my grandchildren. Time passes both slowly and quickly here in the country, and it is hard to believe that we have had another king after James. The suspense about what James would turn out to be was answered rather quickly: dull. Following the gaudy splendor of Elizabeth would not have been easy for anyone, but this awkward, gauche man made a dreadful contrast. It did not take long for the people to become disenchanted with him and to resurrect the idol of Elizabeth in their minds. The phoenix indeed rose again, and she soars ever higher as the years pass and nostalgia grips the people, even—or especially—those who were not alive when she reigned.

Tell me, tell me, what was she like?
Even my own grandchildren and great-grandchildren pester me with the question. I suspect they may have come here less for my birthday than to hear about Elizabeth from a true witness.

There were some surprising turns of events after King James arrived. The Earl of Southampton was released from the Tower and appointed to court offices, even—oh, deep irony—the monopoly of the sweet wines that had broken Robert. If only Robert could have waited! It was barely two years between his rebellion and the end of Elizabeth's reign. He could have passed that short time studying, playing with his children, and when James arrived, all would have been restored. Even the mellowness of time cannot dull that sharp edge of regret when I think upon it.

His widow, Frances, who swore to Robert Cecil that if her husband died she would not wish to draw a breath for even an hour afterward, remarried. Her new husband, Sir Richard de Burgh, the Earl of Clanricarde, bore an eerie resemblance to Robert. Like the widow who married seven brothers in succession in the question put to Our Lord by the Sadducees, Frances seemed to marry different versions of the same man: Sidney bequeathed his sword and his wife to Robert; Robert's successor looked like his twin. They had three children. Frances died just last year. It is quite true, I have outlived everyone.

Some of the pardoned conspirators in Robert's rebellion involved themselves in the most shocking assassination plot ever uncovered in England: the Gunpowder Plot. They tried to blow up not only the King but all of Parliament as well. No one was hurt, due to a timely tip, but this time the conspirators were executed. A certain Guy Fawkes has given his name to the entire plot, but there were many more involved.

King James was not popular, and since he died after twenty-two years here, his son King Charles I has proved even less popular. He tries to rule with the imperious will of the Tudors, without a spoonful of their charm, tact, and wit. Trouble is brewing, as Parliament is not the docile creature it was in the past.

My memories. What of them? I can barely remember Walter, my first husband. Robert Dudley, too, is fading. Christopher is the strongest presence, the one I yearn to talk to, to have him explain what happened. Will Shakespeare. I saw him once more, at Southwark Cathedral, where I stood staring at a burial plaque of Edmund Shakespeare, born 1580, died 1608. So he had come to London, acted, and died. That saddened me greatly. While I was reading it, I became aware that someone behind me was quietly reading it as well. I turned to see Will.

“Your Edmund?” I asked. It seemed natural to see him, in this place, to speak again after eight years.

He nodded. “He should not have come to London.”

“Had you died young, they would have said that of you,” I said. “But how could you not have come, regardless of what would have happened one way or the other?”

He smiled, that slow, thoughtful smile. “I had to come,” he agreed. “We both had to.” He looked older—much older. “I am thinking of retiring,” he said. “But as always when I think about something, I test it out first by writing about it. What would happen if a king were to retire?”

“Many people wish our present one would consider it,” I said.

He laughed. “Laetitia, always stay as you are,” he said.

Because I liked the sound of it, I did not ask him what he meant by it. In the years since I have often repeated
Laetitia, always stay as you are
to myself when I face disheartening times or people.

I never saw him again. He died eight years later and is buried at Stratford. I do not visit his grave. After all, I cannot visit my son's or my last husband's, so I cannot insult them by visiting Will's instead.

I wander. The past has a way of welling up and gripping me, especially when there is so much of it.

“Great-Grandmother, tell us about Elizabeth,” says seven-year-old Henry Seymour. As I suspected he would ask.

“Did she really wear armor and lead her troops?” asks Susannah Rich, shaking her copper curls.

“No, stupid!” says her brother Robert. “Everybody knows she sailed ships and sank the Armada.”

I put my arms around them. “It was not quite like that,” I begin. “You see, once upon a time there was a red-haired princess ...”

“Like you?” Susannah giggles. “Like me?”

“A bit like us,” I say. “After all, we are her cousins. Now this princess grew up to be a queen, and this queen was quite remarkable. But she didn't sail ships or wear armor.”

“Oh!” says Robert, his face falling.

“But she did something better than that. She made her people feel as if they were wearing armor or sinking ships. Only a very special queen can do that. It isn't easy, you know. It takes a kind of magic.” I look at them. “Do you understand?”

They look blank. Henry shakes his head.

“You will, my children. You will.”

E
lizabeth Tudor—the Virgin Queen—is the supreme mystery woman. It is safe to say that no one knew, no one knows, and no one will ever know exactly what went on in her mind, and she wanted it that way. That has not stopped everyone from trying, for over four hundred years, to solve that mystery. “What Her Majesty will determine to do only God ... knoweth,” William Cecil, her principal secretary, said. A master of the rolls of the next generation, Sir Dudley Digges, wrote, “For her own mind, what that really was, I must leave, as a thing doubly inscrutable both as she was a woman and a queen.” She famously said, “I will make no windows into men's souls,” and that may reflect less her religious tolerance—as is usually assumed—than serve as a warning sign to others about herself.

History collaborates with her to hide her true self. We have almost no private letters of hers, no diary, no memoirs. The poems attributed to her are of doubtful authenticity. She is also a mystery because of the blatant contradictions in her behavior. She was a Virgin Queen who encouraged lovemaking (up to a point) and all the outward signs of rapturous love. Her motto was “
Semper eadem
”—“Always the same”—yet she was famous for changing her mind several times over the same decision. She was known to call her sailors back after they had already set sail. Her image is one of leadership and decisiveness, yet she loved to give “answers answerless.” She was fastidious, hating the smell of scented leather or bad breath, but she swore and spat. She was stingy but loved jewels. She exercised stern control over her public image, permitting only approved portraits to be released to the public—ones that showed her looking quite different from how she really did—yet she could lose her temper and put on a show of fireworks. “When she smiled, it was pure sunshine, that everyone did choose to bask in, if they could; but anon came a storm from a sudden gathering of clouds, and the thunder fell in wondrous manner on all alike,” John Harington wrote.

The only trait that was consistent throughout her life was a superb ability to judge character and to select exactly the right people to serve in the right capacity, thereby getting the most out of the varied talents that surrounded her. She kept the same ministers throughout her reign. Because she listened to these wise advisers, in some ways her reign was a collaboration. But here again is a contradiction, because she, like all the Tudors, had a sense of majesty and would not allow it to be questioned. At the same time, she was in many ways “the people's Queen” and famously declared herself to be married to England. She seemed to have no illusions about her own limitations as a human being and had inherited her father's common touch, but never forsook her majesty—a difficult balancing act.

Although Gloriana, the Faerie Queen, is eternal, each age fashioned her after its own needs. After Elizabeth's death, people quickly tired of the Stuarts and looked back on her reign as a golden age, pointedly celebrating her Accession Day of November 17 on into the eighteenth century. They rousingly celebrated her as a Protestant heroine. In the next century, the anti-Catholic fervor had died down, and they were more interested in Elizabeth the woman, her private life and (suppressed) passions. They saw the tragedy of unfulfilled love, the suffering woman inside the jeweled gowns. By the 1800s, when England had grown into the British Empire, Elizabeth changed into Good Queen Bess, the embodiment of Merrie England (along with her father, Bluff King Hal).

The Victorians saw her as the founder of England's greatness, with its naval prowess, English trading companies, and explorations of exotic locales. She and her “sea dog” adventurers provided wholesome models for the new children's character-shaping literature.

More recently, Elizabeth has been seen as the ultrasuccessful female CEO (or action heroine, take your pick), as well as the ultimate English celebrity in an age that is fascinated by the mystique of celebrity, of being famous for being famous. Just her outline—with full skirt, ropes of pearls, high ruffed collar—is instantly recognizable as an icon everywhere. Indeed, her brand recognition is such as to make a commercial product weep with envy. Thus
Eliza Triumphans
continues to exercise her power over us.

Although I have tried, as always, to be true to historical facts, some things come from my own imagination; usually they also have some factual basis. I want to sort some of them out here for you. First, the Spanish Armadas. History focuses on the first, and most climactic, Armada of 1588. But there were at least three others after that. As in the novel, for one reason or another (usually weather) they did not reach their objective. However, they caused a great deal of worry in England, their target. By the time of Elizabeth's death in 1603, both sides had tired of the fight, and peace was concluded the following year, 1604. So the famous first Armada, the clash that became a national myth, was the beginning of the war, not its end.