Elizabeth I (66 page)

“For you, Your Majesty,” the messenger said. He stepped smartly outside the chamber to allow me to read it in private.

I disliked the very feel of the letter, heavy with moisture, as if weighted down with its news. It had to be something bad to be delivered so late at night, urgent for me to know before sunrise. It could, of course, equally have been good news that could not wait. But I did not think so.

Slowly I opened it, unfolding it on the table where a candle still burned. Marjorie and Catherine stood on either side of me like protecting angels. I could almost feel the feathers of their wings.

“Sir John Norris passed from this world in my arms,” wrote his brother Thomas Norris. “While awaiting permission to leave, he—”

I felt like an intruder reading this. Slowly I turned to look up at Marjorie, seeing only her strong jaw at this angle. “My dear Crow,” I said, “this is for you, not me.” Rising, I handed her the letter, and we exchanged places.

She read, then burst into tears. “He's gone,” she said. “My brave son!”

And our best soldier, I thought. England's loss as well as hers. “What has happened?” I asked.

“He died of gangrene from a thigh wound,” she said.

“Like Sir Philip Sidney,” said Catherine.

“Damn Ireland!” cried Marjorie. “I've already lost a son there! My oldest, William, died there, and now John! There's still Thomas and Henry on that wretched soil! And Maximilian died in the Brittany war!”

“You have bred six sons, all six of them soldiers,” I said. “It is a dismal thing to lose three. But I fear it is in the nature of their profession.” I reached out to comfort her, but she turned away.

“They were serving you,” she said. “It was under your orders that they went to Brittany and to Ireland, that they are still serving there.”

“At least he had his brother with him,” ventured Catherine timidly. “He did not die alone, as so many must.”

“We can be thankful it was swift,” I said. He had not lingered for almost a month, like Sidney. “And, as Catherine said, to have his brother with him must have been a comfort. To him, and now to you.” I reached out to her again and this time she let me embrace her.

In stepping out into the privy chamber to tell the messenger there was no reply tonight and to return in the morning, I saw the empty
uisce beatha
bottle. It was good we had drunk it. I threw it out. One less thing to cause Marjorie pain when she looked at it.

A
ll my crops had failed. Everything I had sowed—or so it seemed—had yielded only thistles, corpses, and ignominy. The actual harvest of the land: scanty and rotten. Ireland: Jack Norris was just one of many killed there, if not by bullets and arrows, then by their cruel diseases, treachery, and climate. And our mighty seaborne assault on the Spanish enemy had been a financial and military fiasco. The legacy of Drake had burned out, leaving us vulnerable to our enemies. A purposeless—no, worse than purposeless, inept and stupid—chase after treasure ships in the Azores had fizzled as spectacularly as sodden fireworks. The men and their expensively outfitted ships had returned home in humiliation. The passing bell had tolled for England's adventures at sea.

Only Raleigh had the nerve to face me as if nothing had happened. The rest of the leaders slunk away—Essex and Christopher Blount to the country, Charles Blount to his London house. But Raleigh, ever ebullient, arrived at Hampton Court one fine October day to bring me his most precious and unusual gift, as he put it.

I had been taking my usual brisk morning walk in the gardens, angry at the clear, golden weather.
Now
it decided to be bright and clear, now when it was too late to do any good. The perfect crop-gathering weather was only a mockery when there were no crops to gather. When I was told he came to pay a visit, I burst out, “Oh, what can that man want now?” and whirled around to see him striding through the gap in the boxwood hedge.

“To greet you, fair Queen!” he said, rushing toward me.

“Ach!” I all but turned away. The sight of him annoyed me, although in truth he had behaved with more insight and resourcefulness than his master, Essex. I should never have permitted Essex to have overall command. He simply could not work with anyone else or coordinate his plans beyond himself.

“Does the sun hide its face?” cried Raleigh, already beside me. “Say not so!”

“I turn my face downward to search in my empty treasure chests,” I said. But he knew our straits as well as anyone else. “What is it you bring me, Walter?”

“If I told you it was a pyramid of Inca gold, or the ruby from an Indian prince's scepter, it would not please you as much as what I offer!”

“Test me,” I said. “Present those two things first.”

He smiled his sun-melting smile. “Alas, I do not have them. I merely paint them with my words.”

“As I thought. Well, then, for the third?”

He gestured to his manservant, who pulled a small, latticed cart over the graveled garden path. As he strained to tug it, it was obvious the cart contained something heavy. Perhaps it was ingots after all.

“Careful, careful, slow!” warned Walter as the cart lurched and was about to tip. He gave the man a hand and together they rolled it up to me.

The cart was actually a cage, with a barred door. It must be an animal, perhaps another armadillo. But that would not be novel.

I edged over to it. No odor. A clean animal, then. I knocked on the cage. Silence. No bark or hiss. A mute animal. I shoved the cage a bit. No movement. A placid animal.

“Oh, God's teeth, what is it?” I cried. “It does nothing!”

“Behold!” he cried, raising the cage door, so that light flooded in.

A enormous gray head with unblinking, round eyes stared back at me. It emerged, on a wrinkled neck, from what looked like a gigantic seashell or a suit of armor.

“Out, out you go,” said Walter, opening the other end of the cage and prodding the creature from behind. He could not budge it. It just continued staring at me.

“Is this what you plundered?” I asked.

“Yes, I got it from a Portuguese ship just returning from Zanzibar. It seems the animal was a gift from a chief there.”

“Why didn't you take their cloves instead?”

“The cloves had long been unloaded. Nothing remained in the hold but the delicious smell.”

“And this creature.” Now it was stirring, rearing itself up on its massive legs, causing its shell to hit the roof of the cage.

“Here you are, my beauty,” said Raleigh. “Come out, come out.”

But it could not descend from the wagon, and together the two men could barely lift it.

“Not here!” I said. Once they got it onto the ground there would be no more moving it. “It belongs in the New World garden.” I led the way to the walled area I had designated for the plants people had brought from the Americas. There were rows of potatoes—both sweet and plain—more rows of tobacco (but they took up too much room with their broad, spreading leaves and I planned to move them), yucca plants and fleshy cactus plants with huge spikes, and plants with leaves like water lotuses and red or yellow flowers. There were ground-growing vines that produced orange-colored, ribbed gourds, called pumpkins, and tall, spindly plants that grew narrow, leaf-wrapped packages of golden kernels on a cob, called maize. There were bushes that grew beans. And these were just the ones that grew in our climate. Others had perished after the first summer.

“Let all the strangeness mingle together,” I said. Straining themselves, they heaved the huge turtle from the cart and set it down between two rows of potatoes. Immediately it ducked its head into its shell, so it looked like a gray boulder.

“A giant turtle?” I exclaimed.

“It's properly known as a tortoise, Ma'am, as it lives entirely on land.” He nodded gravely.

“How long will it stay like that?” I asked.

“It could be days,” admitted Walter. “And she is probably shy and won't come out until she feels at home.”

“You know it is a she?”

“The Portuguese were told it was. In any case, she has a woman's name. Constancia. It means ‘constant, steadfast.' ”

I looked at the immobile bulk. “Yes, I can see she fits her name.”

“Every time you look at her—”

“I shall think of you, Walter. Now tell me, what does this remarkable creature eat?”

“The sailors told me she can go a long time without eating anything, but on Zanzibar she ate field grasses and fallen fruit.”

“An inexpensive diet. We shall do our best to please her appetite.” Constancia still had not moved, nor shown her head. I turned away. “Perhaps if we do not look at her—” I steered Raleigh away. “Now, Walter, what have you really come to tell me?”

We withdrew into the pond garden not so far away. “You are astute, as always. Nothing gets past you.” We took a seat on a stone bench, across from the wall fountain that gurgled water from its grinning mouth.

“I do not have to be particularly astute to see past the gift to the giver. I assume you wish to tell your side of the ill-fated expedition.”

“The voyage ...” He began tentatively. Then, “Essex spoiled it! You put all of us under his command and gave orders we could do nothing without his consent. He used that mandate to tie us up in inaction. The man did not obey even the basic commander's rule to inform his subordinates of changes in plans. Because of him, we lost St. Michael's. I waited at our appointed meeting place, thereby announcing the English presence to the entire town, allowing them ample opportunity to remove their valuables and arm themselves. Knowing I would be severely reprimanded if I did anything without orders from Essex, I could take no action. Finally, after three days waiting, I decided to land the troops and try to capture what little remained.”

“And where was Lord Essex all this while?”

“Eating, drinking, and enjoying himself with his men on the other side of the island. Yes! Instead of proceeding to St. Michael's garrison from the land side as he had promised, he remained in town, gorging himself and resting up.”

“He sent not even a single messenger to you?”

“Nothing! And when we were reunited, he charged me with treason for landing ‘without permission,' and his worthless cronies, the pretty boys Southampton and Christopher Blount, wanted to have a military trial right there and execute me.”

“Well, you are alive,” I said, trying to make light of it, but inside I was churning. I did not want to give him any words to quote from me secondhand. “What happened?”

“I forced myself to apologize to him, although the fault was all on his side. I was not going to give his supporters the excuse they were looking for to do away with me.” He leaned forward, and if I had not been Queen, he would have clutched my shoulders and pulled my face up to his for emphasis. But he knew better. “My dear Cynthia, my moon, I fear that Essex is completely in thrall to these men—these boys—he surrounds himself with. They inflame him, fill his head with nonsense, or rather empty it, making it as empty as their own.”

“He keeps a swarm of them at Essex House, I hear.” They were young, violent, and without either achievements or hope of advancement: a combustible combination.

“Swarm
is a good word, for they are like locusts—devouring his bounty and making up his army. They cut him off from the counsel of other people. The only levelheaded person in that house is his mother, Lettice. And he listens less and less to her. The same with Francis Bacon. The others sing the song he wants to hear, and he is dancing to it.”

The song others sing ... That is the true siren song, the one to lure us to the rocks.

“I am grieved to know this,” I said. Raleigh's description of his behavior made him sound unbalanced as well as deluded.

“I am grieved to tell you,” he said. “But it is imperative that you know. He, of course, will paint it a different color.”

“Never hesitate to speak truth to me. That is the understanding that I have had with Burghley from the beginning.”

“ ‘The wrath of a prince is death,' ” he quoted the warning given Thomas More. “It is dangerous to anger one's ruler.”

“That adage does not fit me,” I replied. “The two—the Duke of Norfolk and the Queen of Scots—I was forced to condemn to death I was never angry with, but sorrowful toward. And those I have been most angry with—as in the present company—have been quite safe. If to make me angry meant death, then you, Leicester, the Polish ambassador would all be dead. Even Lettice Knollys still breathes in peace—that she-wolf!”