The Lady and the Poet (8 page)

A few more bends and we passed the quiet village of Bermondsey with its three corn-grinding mills. Only a short time now and the palace of Greenwich would be in sight.

Out of nowhere the wind got up and the water scudded and eddied and a sheet of muddy water blew off the surface, making us wet even though we were so high.

‘I envy the Queen her barge’s glass windows,’ my aunt said as she shook the river water from her skirts. ‘This water is as brown as my mother’s sere-bark potions.’

‘It was a deal muddier when I was a boy,’ commented the master. ‘So muddy then you could catch haddock in your hand at high tide. The fish saw not where they were going!’

Any thought of mud-blind haddock was pushed from my mind as the palace, its tall lead-roofed turrets gleaming in the sloping sunshine, hove into view. It was a glorious sight indeed. The Palace of Placentia was favourite of all the Queen’s palaces, and the one where she was born.

The bargemaster shouted to a groom on the river bank to look out as we slid in through a great watergate. From there we walked up the steps and through a garden and thence to a courtyard where many people crowded together, some holding petitions, all eager for what could take months or years to secure: an encounter with the Queen herself.

My heart pounded as finally we were led, with great pomp and ceremony and sound of trumpets, into the vast Presence Chamber where lay Elizabeth’s great canopied throne. But the Queen herself was not there, only some of her ladies. These were dressed in great
splendour, all in white and silver, as my aunt had told me, though each outdid the others in trying to make her dress more gorgeous than her rivals’.

My aunt nudged me. ‘They are Ladies of the Presence Chamber, the lowest of the Queen’s attendants, though believe me the competition even for that position is as fierce as a battle. If one of the ladies has a headache, some nobleman will be suggesting his daughter take her place before she recovers.’

She led me past the discreetly chattering women into another smaller room beyond. Even though its size was the less it took my breath from my body. The walls were painted in a midnight blue that glowed with richness, and on them were embellished every flower that could be found in the field, in hues of scarlet, orange, purple and gold. It put me in mind of walking inside a jewelled casket. The hangings, too, were the richest I had ever seen, of ivy and fleur de lis, picked out in dark green upon a cloth of gold.

There were several ladies reclining on great cushions opposite another throne, also canopied. My aunt nodded to them. ‘These are the Ladies of the Privy Chamber. Until recently I have been among their number. The most favoured of all are those of the Bedchamber, who dress the Queen and meet her most personal needs.’

All at once I imagined the Queen calling out in the middle of the night for her close stool and some sleepy lady trying to be grateful for the honour of helping her to it. But I did not voice this for I was fast learning that it was best to keep such thoughts locked inside my breast.

‘Stay here awhile, Ann, while I discover Her Majesty’s whereabouts and whether it is possible that I present you.’

Suddenly shy in the presence of four pairs of inquisitive eyes, and very much aware of the dowdy nature of my gown amongst so much fashionable finery, I smiled humbly and found myself a quiet window seat.

The ladies soon forgot my presence and resumed their chattering.

‘Heard you of the Earl’s latest doings?’ one whispered to her neighbour.

I guessed there was only one man they could be talking of: Elizabeth’s dashing favourite, the Earl of Essex. In her life the Queen had had two great favourites. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, whom my
father served for many years when he was a young man, and he was the man she most nearly married, but for the inconvenience that he had a wife already. And when his wife was found dead at the bottom of a staircase the scandal was so great that the Queen would not wed him. Finally, to her great fury, he married one of her ladies in waiting. This lady, Lettice Knollys, had a son of her own, one Robert Devereux, now Earl of Essex. And though this Robert was thirty years the Queen’s junior, he was yet the only man who could make her laugh and feel young. Or make her furious. Or so people said.

I made busy with opening my fan while the Queen’s lady continued, ‘Last night the Earl stayed so late playing cards with Her Majesty that the birds sang in the trees before he left for his own apartments.’ The lady dropped her voice so low I could hardly hear it.

‘And yet he finds time to make love to Elizabeth Brydges,’ whispered another.

‘And Mistress Fitton also.’

They all giggled.

‘Why does she not stop him? She is the Queen. She could send him to the Tower.’

‘She has too much fondness for him. Even though it is rumoured he looks beyond her reign to James, the Scottish King.’

One of the ladies looked around her stiffly, her eyes nervous as a startled bird’s. ‘So do many, though they would never have it known. And so they all will until she names her successor. Though none dare say so.’

‘She will never do that. It would mean acknowledging the ending of her own great reign. She prefers to live in the present.’

‘Silence!’ said the oldest of them. ‘Such talk is treasonous. It is you who will end up in the Tower not my lord Essex!’

With a glance behind them they returned to their previous topic.

‘Know you the latest?’ the first lady enquired in a low voice. ‘Two days past the Queen saw love looks pass betwixt the Earl and Lady Mary Howard.’

‘Mercy! Has the man no shame? What did Her Majesty say to him?’

‘Nothing at all. He can still do no wrong in the Queen’s eyes. It was the lady in question who caught her ire. Lady Mary wore a dress of fine velvet all powdered through with gold, and the Queen pulled at
the stuff with her own hands demanding to know who said she, a mere lady of the Presence Chamber, could wear such finery?’

They leaned in, eager to hear the climax of the tale.

‘Sssh,’ one lady elbowed the other suddenly to be silent, ‘here comes Mary now.’

A small and neat young woman with fair hair and glowing dark eyes, a striking combination, came slowly into the room. Taking in the knot of ladies who had fallen silent at her approach she seemed to straighten up, like a puppet whose string is pulled to make it stand. Her bearing went from meek to passing proud.

It seemed as if she would speak when, without warning, a figure in a red wig appeared from the royal bedchamber, with many jewels adorning her, wearing a dress of velvet all powdered through with gold that laced not up properly, revealing two ancient white bosoms almost to the nipple. Just as shocking, the dress hung only halfway down the calf, exposing an expanse of velvet stocking. I tried to quieten my gasp of horror. It was the Queen!

Fortunately she had eyes for none but her errant lady in waiting. ‘See, now, Mary Howard!’ she demanded, her voice high and wild. ‘Is not this a fine dress?’ Her pale eyes glinted like stone chips when the mason wields his chisel, and looked just as sharp.

I watched in horror as the other ladies scrambled to their feet. It dawned on me that this was the gown the ladies had just described, the one that had so incensed Her Majesty with its finery. The Queen was wearing Lady Mary’s dress, and it exposed her stockings because she was six inches the taller!

‘Tell me, Mary Howard, how does your fine dress suit me? Since you dress like a Queen, tis meet that the Queen should have your dress. Is it too short for me, Mary, what think you?’ And then, not leaving the hapless Mary time to answer, she shouted furiously, ‘Well, Lady Mary, if it be too short for me, it be too fine for you, so none shall wear it.’

At that the Queen turned on her jewelled heel and walked back into her bedchamber, with all the ladies save Mary in her wake.

Mary turned towards the long window at the end of the room and I heard a sob escape her.

I sat, fixed to my seat, not knowing what to do. There was still no
sign of my aunt. The sobbing continued until, plucking up my courage, I laid my hand gently on her shoulder.

‘I should never have worn that stupid dress. Or listened to my lord Essex’s honeyed words. Except that he told me I looked so well in it. Sometimes I wonder if he does it just to taunt her, to show how great is his power over her.’ She turned towards me, her large eyes glistening with tears.

It struck me that Lady Mary and I were of an age. Old enough, it seemed, to fuel a man like the Earl of Essex’s desire.

‘He is but a serpent sent to try me! And I have failed the test! My father bade me come to find a noble husband and instead I have lost a reputation!’ She seemed to see me properly for the first time. ‘You are young too, Mistress…?’

‘More. My name is Ann More.’

‘It is so hard because the Queen is old,’ she looked around in case her reputation might not be all she lost if she were heard, ‘yet she keeps about her so many men and women who are young. We are summoned to wait on her. And we wait. And wait. And sometimes our eyes stray where they should not.’

‘The Devil makes work for idle hands?’

Mary Howard laughed at that. ‘And not just hands. The Queen does not want us to have a life, she wants all to herself. She is the Virgin Queen and she would have all her ladies be virgins too. Even the married ones! And everyone knows she will not talk of her succession, though she is well past sixty. It is why the young nobles are restless. The Queen seems to have reigned over us forever—and thank God that she does!’ she added nervously. ‘And yet they are wondering what will come after. The Earl of Essex perhaps?’

I wondered if this girl were not so innocent as she appeared. Did she allow the Earl to court her because people whispered that he might one day be King, after Elizabeth had left her kingdom without an heir?

Of a sudden I felt beyond my depth, as if some dangerous currents lapped at my feet. My aunt thought it such an honour, indeed the greatest honour, to wait at Court. And yet, to me the Court seemed, despite its richness, and its gilded splendour, to be a dangerous place, a quicksand where the safe banks were not clearly marked. The
Queen might not persecute her subjects for their beliefs with the fervour her sister had done, but it seemed there were other crimes just as punishable.

To my relief my aunt appeared, walking quickly from the royal bedchamber, skirts swishing angrily, her lips pursed in annoyance. ‘Well, Ann, we have had a wasted journey. Due to that silly wench…’

Mary Howard, who had been hiding her reddened eyes by looking out of the window, turned and raised her head proudly.

‘The Queen is in an evil temper and boxes the ears of sundry of her ladies. And only because they ask to bring her some soothing rose water from the still room. If I were you,’ she raised a stern eyebrow at the girl, ‘I would go back to my chamber and summon my lord father to come and take me home.’

‘Will not the Queen forgive her if Lady Mary were to throw herself onto Her Majesty’s mercy?’ I enquired.

My aunt shrugged. ‘Her Majesty says mercy is something a Queen cannot afford to show. It is too costly and dangerous. Come, Ann, let us return to York House. We will present you another day, when the Court is a happier place.’ She stared at Lady Mary angrily. ‘Now it will be weeks, months mayhap, before the Queen will take on another lady to wait on her. At present, thanks to this silly wench with her pretensions, she wishes them all damned to hell.’

I smiled at Lady Mary, trying to convey my sympathy at her plight, yet I had no choice but to follow my aunt towards the river stairs. As the barge rowed upriver my mind teemed with many things, faster than the mill race under London Bridge at high tide. I felt the power of Her Majesty in all her glory but also a sense of shock that so great a Queen should be thus reduced to spiting her rivals for the love of the young earl when she was almost the age of my grandmother.

For I could not picture my grandmother Margaret being chased after by young gallants, their codpieces scented with musk (for that is the scandalous fashion at this Court), nor playing cards with them until the birds sang in the trees as the Queen did.

At York House all was humming with busyness. Messengers came to and fro between the palace of Westminster, where the courts now sat, and the Queen’s advisors at Whitehall. The Lord Keeper had fingers in many pies, sitting in the Privy Council, dealing with the Par
liament, overseeing the courts of Chancery and Star Chamber and, so I had heard, beginning an investigation into lawyers and officials at Chancery for charging extortionate fees from their petitioners.

Since my aunt wanted to be sure the Queen’s humour had softened, it was many days before she came to me once again to suggest we try our luck with another audience at Greenwich. In that time I had had the peace to think and even to pray; kneeling at the foot of the great bed overlooking the river, I asked the Lord our God for His guidance. By the time my aunt bid me go to Greenwich again I had made up my mind and screwed up all my courage to tell her, knowing my words would mightily displease her and all my family with her.

‘I am sorry, Aunt, for you have shown me so much kindness, but I have come to see that I am not suited to the ways of the Court.’

‘What nonsense is this! You will do as you are bid!’ I had never seen my kind aunt so angry, even with the hapless Lady Mary. ‘We have been to much trouble on your behalf. Half the young women in the realm would trade their portion to be in your position!’

‘Indeed, and I thank you for it. But it is not a world whose air I could ever breathe. I am blunt, while a courtier needs to be subtle. I feel things deeply and could never learn to hold my tongue and dissemble. At Greenwich I saw clearly how a lady in waiting needs two faces, one to show to the Queen, and another in private. I heard what those ladies truly said, and thought what a brittle world the Court is, built on fear and rivalry.’

‘You are not a maid in short coats, Ann.’ My aunt’s eyes were as cold and forbidding as a winter sea. ‘You are a woman. You must learn to rein in your emotions, to be discreet. Do you think I, too, do not feel anger, fear, resentment? Yet I keep them to myself. You have a choice, niece, and it is high time you accepted it. Learn the skills of a courtier, as I have learned them, or take whatever husband your father deems suitable for you.’ This time there was no softening of sympathy in my aunt’s manner. Her back had become like a ramrod, and her voice deepened with a strong and harsh reality. She seemed a different woman from the one who had given me my mother’s locket. ‘Ann, remember this. The Queen is the sun who brightens every corner of our realm and even beyond. Without her all would be darkness. You do not choose to accept the sun or reject it.’