Some nights Elizabeth woke hot and sweating, fearing herself sick with the plague, and would cry fitfully into her pillow once the physicians had gone, not relieved by their reassurances and wishing herself safe in the country. But her people liked their queen to reside here a few months of the year, to show her face and walk among them on holy days, dispensing alms as her father had often done or healing the sick with just the touch of her hand. So it must be the palace of Whitehall now and Richmond later, or perhaps Hampton Court; she could not recall which of her residences would be ready for the court first.
‘Your Majesty,’ someone murmured, and Elizabeth came to with a start, realizing that the droning courtier had finally stopped talking. He was still on his knees, waiting for her to pass judgement on his complaint. She glanced about the crowded Presence Chamber and the assembled courtiers discreetly averted their eyes.
Had she been on the verge of sleep? Well, if these fools would bore her.
‘Where is Lucy Morgan this morning?’ she demanded, noticing that the young black singer was not among her ladies.
No one spoke. Several of her women glanced at each other, though. Such malicious smiles. What were they hiding? She heard rumours about Lucy from time to time. But the girls who brought them to her ears never seemed sure of their veracity. And yet … Well, she suspected that Lucy Morgan had been involved with
Robert’s
secret marriage, but she had little proof of it and would not make a fool of herself by pursuing the matter.
One day the truth will come out, Elizabeth thought bitterly. Then she would have her revenge. She would make Lucy suffer for aiding her rival to marry where Elizabeth could not. Meanwhile the wretched girl was not in attendance on her – why was that?
‘Find Lucy Morgan and bring her to me,’ she instructed one of her pages, who jumped to his feet and scampered off through the courtiers. She looked about the chamber restlessly while she waited for him to return, searching for Robert’s dark head in the crowd. ‘And where is the Earl of Leicester these days?’ she demanded of her ladies. ‘Is he missing from court too?’
Now she was not imagining the smiles. Well, let them smile. It had been a mistake to allow her old favourite out of exile so swiftly, barely a few months after his marriage. She knew that. She was weak, that was the truth of it. And Robert still had the power to amuse her. Besides, there were so few men left at court whom she could trust. The doughty old noblemen who had surrounded her during her first years on the throne had died, one by one, and the youths with their pointed beards and lavish doublets who had taken their places were not of the same character.
She could no more ask advice from such boys than she would order her hunting dogs to sit on the Privy Council.
Robert had gone home to his wife again without permission, no doubt. Why did no one obey her any more? Was she grown so toothless, so ancient, that her courtiers mocked her behind her back and did precisely as they chose?
She sighed and leaned her cheek upon her gloved hand again. They were the gloves Alençon had given her. Perhaps she ought to have accepted him. She could be married now, and with a son of Tudor blood to inherit her throne. What was left to her instead but this tiresome parade of complaints, and the same old songs, for the rest of her life?
A tall, silver-haired courtier in russet threaded through the crowd and sank stiffly to his knees before her. What now, she thought wearily, what now? As he looked up and their eyes met, she realized it was Robert.
But how old he looked!
‘Your Majesty,’ Robert murmured. ‘You called for me?’
Did
she
look that old? She baulked at the thought. Yet they were the same age. Fifty years. Fifty years old? It was hard to believe she had now been on the throne half her life. Once, it had seemed such an impossible dream that she would ever wear the crown. First had come her poor brother Edward. Then Northumberland and his treacherous plot. Poor little Jane had paid the price for that, sweet child but too weak to save herself from ruin. After that, her sister Mary. That nightmare had dragged on and on until she had thought she would die in the Tower before she was ever queen. Yet here she still was, clutching at a crown that constantly threatened to be snatched away if she so much as blinked.
‘I am glad to see you at court, my lord Leicester.’ Elizabeth moved upright in her seat. Her body was stiff, her skirts rustling. I am not old yet, she insisted to herself. Slowly, she thought back over the particulars of the man’s complaint. ‘Let the baron be fined for his lack of consideration, and let him leave court until … until …’
‘Michaelmas?’ Robert suggested.
Elizabeth nodded, trying not to let her gratitude show on her face. She had not yet forgiven Robert for marrying that woman. Perhaps she would never forgive him. But she did feel weary today.
‘Is that the last this morning?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty. Though there is that other matter that needs to be heard. Sir Francis Walsingham awaits your pleasure in the Privy Chamber.’
Thankful, Elizabeth rose and allowed her old court favourite to help her down from the low dais. She did not need his help, nor the velvet-topped cane her steward shuffled forward to offer her and that she waved impatiently away. But after sitting so long, her legs were always a little stiff and her knees liable to give.
She gripped Robert’s velvet sleeve. ‘We missed you at court last week, my lord. I do not recall giving you leave to return home. Not so soon after your summer visit there.’
‘Forgive me, Your Majesty.’
Never
. She stiffened and her lips thinned, but she said nothing. There was nothing more to be said on that score.
In the terrible weeks after she had heard of his marriage, she had wept so bitterly she had thought she would die of a broken heart.
Toothache, her old complaint, had come back to haunt her, like a physical reminder of the pain she was feeling inside. She had sent away all her women, smashed priceless ornaments in her private apartments, spent long cold hours alone, planning how she would avenge his betrayal. Oh, how she had wanted to punish them both, to see them on their knees before her! Nothing short of the headsman’s axe would do for that she-wolf, that thief of men, Lettice Knollys, so shameless in her crime. But for Robert?
There, she had been hazier in her plans. Even in the white heat of her fury, Elizabeth could not quite bring herself to take his head. Not Robert’s darkly beloved, treacherous head.
Yet the punishment she did impose – Robert’s exile from court – had not lasted as long as she had intended. Time had dragged without his presence, and his letters of humble contrition had touched her heart. And so within months Robert had been back at her side, paler than before, less outspoken, but still the companion of her youth. Later, a son had been born to the she-wolf, healthy and strong, but Robert had not dared raise the subject in Elizabeth’s hearing, and she had never spoken of his heir. His marriage was still a wound in her side, a vicious thorn no amount of talking would pluck out.
Elizabeth raised her voice. Let the court hear her reprimand, she decided. They must know her favourite to be still unforgiven for his secret and imprudent marriage. Elizabeth Tudor was not weak and womanly like her cousin Mary Stuart, Queen of Scots, whose husbands had always played the tune to which she’d danced so foolishly. She would have the respect of her people, even if, as she constantly feared, she did not have their love.
‘You will not leave court again without our permission,’ she told Robert coldly. ‘We have need of you here. Is that clear?’
‘Yes, Your Majesty.’
The richly dressed courtiers fell to their knees on either side as she passed, murmuring, ‘Your Majesty,’ in suitably respectful tones. Among their downturned faces were one or two young noblemen who eyed her eagerly and with a little too much impudence. She ought to have reprimanded them, too. But to own the truth, it was entertaining to see their boyish smiles in the court, and to dangle intimacy in front of them whenever she wished to hurt Robert. Today though, she could not spare the time for such pleasures.
Gripping Robert’s arm more tightly, she walked steadily past the kneeling courtiers and into the Privy Chamber, followed by two of her noblewomen. She could guess what awaited her behind the splendid double doors, and drew herself up, not wishing to hear more bad news but knowing such blows to be an inevitable part of government. It seemed there was always one more thing to be faced before she could make her throne secure. If it could ever be fully secure, which she was beginning to doubt.
Damn Catholics, always scheming for her death.
In the first years of her reign, she had set her heart on a smooth transition back to a Protestant country. She had intended no burnings, no torture, no lengthy or unwarranted imprisonments, and a tacit pardon for those willing to forego their Roman Mass for the plainer truths of the Anglican church. But Elizabeth had not reckoned on the stubbornness and absolutism of these religious fanatics, on their determination to drag her from the throne rather than live peaceably in the new and more tolerant England she had built.
Walsingham and her treasurer, Robert Cecil, Lord Burghley, were waiting for her in the Privy Chamber, two black figures on either side of the fireplace; vying with each other, it seemed, as to which should look more sober and plainly dressed. They bowed as she entered with Robert, and she waved them to their seats. She had no time for ceremony today. Her head ached, and her bad leg was throbbing. The physicians would need to tend to it again before tonight’s feast for the visiting Swedish ambassador and his entourage.
She allowed Robert to lead her to her seat at the head of the table, and settled herself there heavily. Lady Helena Snakenborg stood to her left, arranging the jewelled folds of Elizabeth’s gown. Lady Mary Herbert, a heavy-jawed young woman with yellow hair set in ringlets, poured her a glass of wine and set it at her right hand, then smiled prettily across at her uncle, Robert. The girl had been away from court for months, nursing her baby son. However, it was unlikely she would stay for long before returning to Wales, as her husband Henry, Earl of Pembroke, was apparently eager for yet more offspring. Being a man of advancing years, Elizabeth thought sourly, he was no doubt fearful of dying before he could secure the Pembroke line by means of his young wife.
‘Let us not waste time in pleasantries,’ Elizabeth said sharply.
‘This might be better heard alone, Your Majesty,’ Walsingham suggested.
She sighed, but indicated that the two noblewomen should leave the room. When the door had closed behind Mary and Helena, she turned to her spymaster again.
‘Well?’
Walsingham bowed, and slid a sheet of paper across the table towards her. ‘This was intercepted at Dover yesterday, Your Majesty. It is a letter from one Thomas Dooley, a Catholic priest. He writes from the seminary at Rheims to one of my agents here in London, thinking him a Catholic too. This Dooley lays out plans for how the English court may be infiltrated by Catholic priests disguised as porters and watermen.’
Elizabeth barely glanced at the letter. It was always the same thing these days. Plots, plots, plots.
‘What, am I to be threatened with incense burners and a three-hour Mass as they row me across the river? Tell me you have something more substantial, Walsingham. I have a headache.’
‘Your Majesty, Signor Mendoza is mentioned several times in the letter as a courtier to be trusted and approached for funds.’
She paused then, looking narrowly from him to Cecil. ‘The Spanish ambassador?’
‘The very same, Your Majesty,’ Cecil agreed. ‘And it is not the first time we have intercepted letters of this kind, naming Mendoza as a contact for incoming Catholics. I’m afraid there can be little doubt that the Spanish ambassador is no friend to us.’
‘Mendoza is friend only to those who would bring England back to the old faith, we have long known that. But to be named in a coded letter …’
She drank some wine and fell to brooding on her many enemies. Would she never be safe on her throne? ‘Though our Englishmen are little better. What of this Master Arden whose lunatic son was to have shot me and stuck my head on a pole, or some such nonsense?’
‘We have Edward Arden and his son-in-law safe in the Tower, Your Majesty. And their wives too.’
‘Their wives? Why, were these women to have cooked up my bones in a broth when their men were done murdering me?’
Cecil looked uncomfortable. ‘Arresting the wives along with their
menfolk
seemed the wisest thing to do, Your Majesty. The Arden family have long been rebellious and worked against your reign in Warwickshire. They are hardened Catholics, and would be pleased to see your cousin on the throne and England restored to the Roman faith. These arrests make an example of the entire family and may suppress further rebellion in the Midlands.’
She indicated the letter. ‘Walsingham, when we spoke earlier, you said there might be a link between these disguised priests and the Arden boy’s lunacy. What did you mean by that?’
‘I cannot say for sure, Your Majesty. But there is a link between the Arden family and Mendoza. Arden’s son-in-law, this John Somerville, has spoken several times of the ambassador under torture. Not coherently enough for an arrest, but it seems Signor Mendoza may be involved in some movement against you that stretches as far as the Midlands, and possibly into the North too.’
Cecil’s expression was cautious. ‘This is dangerous territory, sir. The boy may have heard some idle talk against the Queen through a keyhole, and decided to do the great deed himself. That he knows Mendoza’s name does not mean the Spanish ambassador was involved in some Papist conspiracy. Let us not forget the boy is a lunatic.’
‘That has not yet been proven,’ Walsingham reminded him softly.
‘Then prove it,’ Elizabeth said with a snap, and stood up from the table. ‘And don’t come back to me with any more of these wild conspiracies until you have harder evidence. This is not one of our own, but the Spanish ambassador we are talking about. We cannot accuse Mendoza on the strength of a single coded letter and the ravings of a lunatic. We must be certain of his guilt first. We must be sure beyond all doubt. Do I make myself clear?’