51
Mary
W
hen the door closed behind Elizabeth I struggled to pull myself up from the floor and, leaning heavily upon tables and chairs for support, pausing only when weakness and faintness threatened to overwhelm me, I made my way slowly across the room to the windows overlooking the courtyard. I collapsed thankfully onto the window seat and sat there feeling light-headed, dizzy, and breathless, clutching my heart and panting for air, fearing my sight would not be able to pierce the myriad of colored stars and sparks that obscured it in time for me to see what I needed to see.
There was still snow in the courtyard and a young boy was busily sweeping the flagstones to clear a path when she came out.
She looked like a queen. She walked like a queen. Philip had been correct when he said she understood the power of appearances. All my jewel-bedecked, embroidery-encrusted finery could not mark me as a queen the way Elizabeth’s carefully chosen white gown, covered with a black velvet surcoat, edged with white fur, and embroidered with silver snowflakes embellished with tiny twinkling diamonds and seed pearls, and matching white-plumed black velvet cap could. She wore her hair caught up in a net of pearls instead of loose and flowing as she usually did, I noted, the better to appear a mature woman rather than a green girl too young and inexperienced to rule. Black, silver, and white, with her colors, carefully chosen; elegant but not overdone adornments; the perpetual pearls; her Tudor red hair so none who saw her could mistake her heritage; and her confident, calm, and elegant bearing—she was sending a message of power, virginity, wisdom, and strength neatly tied into a bow with youth and beauty. She was telling the world that the last of King Henry’s roses had grown stronger on the bush while the blossoms around her withered and died, but she, the last Tudor rose, had survived and imbibed the knowledge, through danger and hard lessons and the failings of those around her, that would enrich and empower her to rule England as none had ever done before; Elizabeth had within her the makings of a great queen.
The boy stopped his work and fell to his knees and caught up the hem of her skirt and kissed it. Elizabeth smiled and reached down to cup his chin. She spoke gently to him and caressed his cheek, and I knew then that even when, many years from now, he was a toothless old man that boy would remember the day when he had touched and been touched by God’s chosen one. He would grow old telling the story of the day he met Queen Elizabeth.
Others, alerted to her presence, came running, her name upon their lips like a prayer as they knelt around her, their fingers reaching out to reverently touch her skirts, with such love and unveiled hope upon their faces. She had a smile for every one of them, sometimes even a word, or a touch; a caress for a child’s cheek or an elegant poised white hand extended for someone old and frail harboring fond memories of our father to kiss.
I had been wrong; this was no lute player’s bastard, this was the daughter of a king born to be a queen in her own right. I had let my hatred of Anne Boleyn corrupt and blind me. She had Father’s gift for looking at a person and making them feel as if they were the most important person in the world, as if they alone existed for her, and it wasn’t crude and common after all. I had been mistaken; I had been mistaken about so many things. She also had her mother’s gift for winning against the odds. Elizabeth, daughter of Great Harry and The Great Whore, was a formidable combination to be reckoned with; she did not need a man like I did to be her pillar of strength, she was fully capable of steering the ship of state herself. She would not let England flounder or run aground or be dashed upon the rocks to shatter and drown. And even though the Blessed Virgin might disappear from England’s altars, the people would not be lost with Elizabeth as the figurehead of the nation. She would hold the candle and light their way—no, she actually
was
the candle! She would be the virgin mother of her people, and when she walked amongst them and let them gaze their fill, reach out to touch her skirt and kiss her hands, through Elizabeth, the one God had chosen to wear England’s crown, they would also be touching the divine.
I had lost. Everything I had aspired to, all my hopes and dreams, had been reduced to ashes, and I had lit the fires that rendered them thus. And Elizabeth was the phoenix who would rise from those ashes.
I had seen what I needed to see, and I knew what I needed to know. The true faith might not reign supreme as the only faith in England, but it would not perish.
I braced my hands against the stone window-sill to lever myself up, but as I turned, my head felt as if it were bobbing upon waves, and my eyes within my head felt the same, and then I had the most disturbing sensation that the floor was rising up to meet me, to slam into me with great force. And as it hit me everything went black.
I heard footsteps and voices all around me, a great bustle, a hurried preparation for a journey, servants running back and forth, trunks being dragged down from the attics, the bang of their lids, the snap of the locks. Why was everyone leaving? “Elizabeth” and “Hatfield”—I kept hearing those two names, sometimes spoken in normal tones, other times in whispers as if some didn’t want me to hear them while others didn’t care if I did. And then I understood. They were leaving me, like rats fleeing a burning building. My court was abandoning me, a dying and deluded woman. They were leaving me to die alone and running pell-mell toward the future and the flame-haired beacon of hope—Elizabeth.
I was in my bed now, I suddenly realized, feeling the softness of the mattress beneath me instead of the hard floor, and Susan was bending over to offer a cooling cup to my parched lips and to mop away the fever-sweat with a cloth dipped in rosewater.
“I have failed,” I confided when Susan put her ear down closer to my lips. “All I ever wanted was to be loved, to find on this earth a love as true and everlasting as God’s, but I have failed, and not through lack of trying; I prayed every day for someone to love me.”
Susan was so overcome she could not speak, she had to turn away to hide her tears, but I could tell by the way her shoulders shook. A black-robed doctor was there at her side, patting her back and saying something that made her weep even harder. Somehow I just knew that he was telling her that there was nothing more that he could do for me. Jane Dormer came in carrying a tray and, seeing Susan’s distress, set it down and went to take her in her arms, and they held each other and wept together.
I wanted to comfort them, but I was so tired. I will sleep for just a few moments, the better to gather my strength, to think of the right words to say, I promised myself, and then . . .
I called for Philip, I begged him to hold me. I needed to feel the strength of his arms about me; only he could make me well. I was poised to knock at Death’s door and only Philip could pull me back.
Philip raised his head from the bosom of his “Golden Duchess.” They were lying naked on a bed of buttercups and her hair, the color of ripened wheat, was spread out, rippling all around her naked body in abundant golden waves so that she, with her ample, generous figure, seemed a very Goddess of Plenty. Annoyed at being disturbed, Philip glared at me with hard and angry eyes. “It is not when you need me to hold you, Mary; it is when I want to hold you,” he said, and lowered his head to resume suckling at the bountiful breasts of his golden goddess—Christina. And she laughed and called him “Pompion,” the French word for pumpkin, the name she had teasingly given him because of the round little belly he had acquired from too much drinking and debauchery.
I couldn’t bear to look at them anymore, to see them like that, naked and intent on their own private pleasures, so I slammed the door and ran away.
I was lost in a parched and barren landscape where nothing grew save sharp and ugly black thorns and nothing lived except horrid, slithering black serpents that hissed and looked at me with glowing red eyes. There was a cross in the distance. Our Lord was suffering upon it. I ran and threw myself upon my knees, hugging the cross below His feet. “I would die for you!” I cried as I looked up at Him and He looked down at me. And despite His suffering there was so much kindness and compassion in His face. All round me thorn trees sprang up, watered by the blood that dripped down from His pierced hands and feet, and the wounds caused by the thorny crown upon His brow. I hugged the cross tighter; I was surrounded, hemmed in on all sides, by thorn trees. They pinned me to the cross below Our Savior’s feet, and I felt His blood drip down to mingle with mine as the thorns impaled me. I felt the most peculiar ecstasy: a strange, beautiful, and bewildering blend of pleasure and pain so intricately bound together that I could not tell where one ended and the other began. And as the sharp black thorns pierced my heart I felt the urge to sing. I was past pain; nothing could hurt me now.
A priest was standing at the foot of my bed, and as he held the Host aloft, I saw a golden light as warm and bright as the sun, only it didn’t hurt my eyes and make me want to turn away; I wanted to run straight into it and bask in that lovely golden warmth.
And God shall wipe away all the tears; and there shall be no more death; neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be any more pain: these former things have passed away.
I was in a beautiful garden sitting on the warm green grass surrounded by rosy-cheeked tots with charming smiles and chubby little arms that reached out for me. When I swept them up into my arms they gurgled and smiled and laughed and hugged me tight. These were my babies, the babies I should have been bearing when I was a young woman, and the phantom children who had puffed out my belly with false hope when I was Philip’s bride. Now here they were, safe in my arms, loving me and wanting me just as I loved and wanted them. They nestled in my arms and gave me hearty, smacking kisses and smiled and clung to me. I rocked them on my lap and sang them the Spanish lullabies my mother used to sing to me, and I used to sing to Elizabeth, but now I was singing them to my very own babies. God was good; I truly was blessed among women.