44
Elizabeth
T
he burnings continued as Mary’s heart burned for Philip. The great men of the Protestant Church, Latimer, Ridley, and even gentle, soft-spoken Cranmer, who had been my mother’s friend and my father’s instrument, all went to the stake and martyrdom, dying heroically with courageous words that would never be forgotten.
Whilst Ridley suffered the full horror of burning at the hands of an inept executioner and died screaming in agony, Latimer seemed to glory in it. With a beatific, saintly smile, he washed his hands and bathed in the flames, calling out encouragingly to his friend, “Be of good cheer, Master Ridley, and play the man, for we shall this day, by God’s grace, light such a candle in England as I trust shall never be put out!”
Fear and the false promises of Mary’s heretic-hunting lackeys had persuaded the sensitive Cranmer to embrace Catholicism to save his life, but he had not counted on Mary. She could never forget or forgive the role Cranmer had played in the divorce drama of our parents’ lives, and she gladly signed his death warrant.
As he walked to the stake, Cranmer repented his cowardice and reaffirmed his faith, asking the crowd to forgive him for fearing the flames and in consequence trying to save his life. Proud to die a Protestant, he boldly thrust his right hand into the flames, loudly proclaiming that since it had signed his recantation it should be the first part of his body to suffer the flames.
Mary haunted the halls of her palaces, a gaunt, white-faced, skeleton-thin, walking wraith, caring for nothing but the persecution of Protestants and the return of Philip. She left her court to its own devices, and neglected affairs of government, while she fasted and prayed and spent long sleepless nights straining her weak, bloodshot eyes by candlelight writing love letters that were almost as lengthy as books to her beloved until the shadows encroached on her vision and her sight, always poor, worsened and dimmed, but still she kept writing. She thought if she kept trying, her devotion would be rewarded, and she would eventually find the right words, like a magical charm, that would bring Philip back to her.
She was too blind to see that he simply did not care. His father, the Emperor, was ailing badly and on the verge of retiring to a monastery. Philip was about to come into his inheritance. He would rule Spain and the Low Countries, and it was expected that he make a tour of the lands he was to govern, to stake his claim and win his people’s loyalty and respect. He didn’t need Mary, or, for the moment, at least, England, either, with the adulation of his new subjects and the welcoming fetes and festivities, and the beautiful women who threw themselves at his feet, to distract and occupy him, and it broke Mary’s heart to find herself unloved and unwanted by the one she loved and wanted most.
My sister had so much love to give, I am sorry she never found anyone truly worthy enough to receive it. That, I think, is the greatest tragedy of love, that those who love and long to be loved are not always loved in return, that the warm love that fills a human heart is sometimes left to curdle and dry up or turn bitter and sour for lack of anyone to give it to, or else it is lavished in vain upon someone who does not want or even deserve it.
45
Mary
H
e left me alone, surrounded by heretics, traitors, and enemies, to fend for myself, and live in fear for my life and crown, hardly daring to eat lest someone slip poison into my food or cup, and afraid to sleep. For when I did sleep, an incubus in Philip’s form would come to visit and ravish me in lewd dreams that made my body gasp and groan and sigh and go through all the motions of passion, making my heart beat fast as if I had climbed to a great height and then leapt blindly, not knowing whether I would land on a soft feather bed or be impaled upon the sharp rocks below sticking up like phalluses to taunt me. I always awoke with a start to find my nightgown pulled up to my chin, my legs spread wide and wet between, and my fingers wet from touching myself. Some of my ladies always slept on pallets in my bedchamber when I was alone, and they saw and heard these wanton displays the Devil tricked and coaxed out of me, and ran giggling to tattle, and soon word spread throughout the court and whenever I appeared before their knowing eyes I felt as if I were being burned on a pyre of shame.
He was not with me on my birthday. He was not there to smile and drink a loving cup with me when Susan and Jane presented me with a goodly supply of Dr. Stevens’s Sovereign Water, a potion made of exotic and mysterious spices mixed into Gascony wine, promising “death-defying longevity well past the normal span allotted to mankind.”
He was not at my side on Easter Sunday when upon my knees in a linen apron I humbly washed the feet of forty-one poor women, one for each year of my life, and kissed with ecstatic devotion the sores of one-and-forty more suffering from scrofula.
He was never there when I was ill with “menstruous retention” and “strangulation of the womb” to hold my hand when the doctors had to bleed me from the sole of my foot to bring on my courses and bring me relief. He was never there when I suffered toothaches, heart palpitations, and megrims.
When he bothered to answer my letters at all, there were no words of love or tenderness, only clipped and curt businesslike phrases. They said he did not welcome my letters and each day when yet another one arrived was wont to exclaim, “The Queen of England is nothing but a nuisance!”
They said he was busy dancing in Antwerp, and getting drunk on Flemish beer, that he had cast off his rigid sense of decorum like a winter coat when the weather warms and given himself over to debauchery and pleasure. They said he had developed a passion for masked balls and was likely to attend, whether invited or not, any wedding celebration he could find. They said he was likely to hammer at any hour on any door of any Flemish nobleman and demand beer and to be entertained and to exercise his
droit du seigneur
to bed any woman he desired, even the wives and daughters of his hosts or just a pretty maidservant.
I wept and howled and screamed like a madwoman and took a knife to his portrait. “God often sends bad husbands to good women!” I raged as I slashed it to ribbons. Then I sat on the floor for hours, weeping with remorse, as I tried to piece it back together again. “The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away!” I sobbed.
And everywhere I went people seemed to be singing a mournful ballad of lost love that began:
Complain my lute, complain on him
That stays so long away;
He promised to be here ere this,
But still unkind doth stay.
But now the proverb true I find,
Once out of sight then out of mind.
Ceaselessly, relentlessly, my enemies tormented me with crude drawings, pamphlets, broadsheets, and doggerel verses about Philip’s antics and excesses in the Low Countries. They pictured me as a wrinkled old hag suckling my young Spanish husband at my sagging breasts and labeled me “Mary, the Ruin of England. She robs England’s coffers to send money to her faithless husband.”
They said marriage had aged me ten years; they feared that sorrow would drive me to take my own life. Some even prayed that I would. They said that after I was dead Philip would marry Elizabeth, claiming that he had already secretly petitioned the Pope and been granted a dispensation.
He said he would come back to me if I would finance his war with France, if I would overrule my Council’s adamant “No!” We had no quarrel with France, they said when I begged and pleaded with them, and England had no reason or responsibility to pay for Philip’s warmongering. Furthermore, it would bankrupt the nation. But the only way I could get him back was to provide him with money and men. If I did, then he would come back to me and be my loving husband and share my bed again. Why couldn’t they understand?
And I, in my desperate love and need for him, was willing to bleed England dry as Philip’s faithlessness had bled my heart, if only he would come back to me. To feel his touch again I was willing to do
anything.
I sent him £150,000 and after eighteen months of waiting, hoping, begging, pleading, and yearning, he, at last, came back to me.
46
Elizabeth
W
earing a god-awful gown of bloodred and gold stripes trimmed with heavy, dripping gold fringe, and delicate pink satin ribbons and bows, with a collar so high and tight topped by a tiny white ruff, it made her look as if her head were overly large and teetering on a plate balanced on top of a pillar, Mary ran out to meet him.
As every church bell in London rang and the choir from the royal chapel sang “Hallelujah!” and the Tower guns fired a welcoming salute, she bunched up her skirts, hitching them high above her knees, and ran to him, looking for all the world like an eager dog scampering to lick her master’s face when he returned home after a long absence. She flung herself at his feet, like Sappho hurling herself off the cliff, with all the passionate force of a cannonball, kissing first the toes of his dusty boots, then clutching at his hands and covering them with ravenous kisses and bathing them with her hot, salty tears.
All the time Philip stood there stiff and straight as a soldier at attention, calm and imperious in his gold-trimmed garnet velvet. I watched as, over Mary’s hunched and kneeling figure, he shared an amused glance edged with the intricate lace of cruelty, with the woman everyone knew was his latest mistress—the beautiful and worldly, voluptuous, full-hipped and ample-breasted, golden-haired Christina, Duchess of Lorraine. She had once been a reed-slender widow of sixteen, who, whilst posing for Holbein, had quipped that had she been born with two heads she would have gladly placed one of them at my father’s disposal and thus declined his invitation to become his fourth wife.
It maddened me to see him standing there, calmly accepting Mary’s devotion as if he were a golden idol meant to be worshiped and adored. Mary did not see the flame of gloating triumph blaze up briefly in his cold serpent’s eyes, nor did she, I think, notice the twitch of his leg, as if he were holding himself back, striving not to kick her. I turned away then, sickened and saddened, to see my sister, the Queen of England, debasing herself so before this most unworthy and callous man who cared nothing at all for her.
It also sickened me to know that later that night, in just a few hours, at the flower pageant Mary had devised to welcome him, behind the diaphanous curtains of a barge, in a gown bedecked with honeysuckles, pink roses, and buttercups, with golden shafts of wheat in my hair, I would be lying in his arms. The look in his eyes when he turned them my way told me so. And that was indeed what happened, but as I lay back against the silken cushions, listening to the water lapping gently against the barge, while Philip eased down my bodice and kissed my bare breasts, I was haunted by the memory of Mary down on her knees kissing his dirty boots as if they were a holy relic, and had to close my eyes against my rising nausea. When I could stand it no more, I pushed him away and struggled to my feet, claiming I was taken of a sudden ill by the onset of my courses. I went alone, back to my apartments, and sat on the window seat and hugged my knees and stared up at the stars, reflecting upon how love makes slaves and fools of women, and we are, in truth, better off without it and the meanness of men and the misery it brings.
Of course the maliciously minded made sure that Mary found out who and what the Duchess of Lorraine was. And Mary made a fool of herself, ordering the Duchess’s possessions carried out of her rooms and taken down to the ground floor of the palace, as far away from her husband as she could decently lodge a noblewoman and honored guest from a foreign land. At table she seated the voluptuous, golden Christina as far away as possible from Philip, trying to block his view of her with lavish subtleties created in his honor by the royal pastry chef. And whenever there was dancing, Mary did all she could, making a complete fool of herself, to keep Philip and his “Fair Christina” apart, even digging in her heels and tugging at his arm to make him stay with her. And when her efforts failed and Philip spoke sharply to her, publicly reprimanding her for her rudeness and behaving like a barmaid jealous of the attentions her favorite patron bestows upon another instead of like a queen, she burst into noisy, wracking sobs and fled the Great Hall, leaving us all to stand in stunned and silent amazement until Philip clapped his hands and called for the musicians to play and led his “Golden Duchess” out to dance a most sensual and provocative rendition of the volta.
Sickened, I turned my back and walked away; I could not abide to see my sister so humiliated in her own palace. I tried to go to Mary but found her door barred against me. She would not let me in or deign to talk to me and I heard her tear-choked voice, muffled by the thickness of the oaken door, shouting at me to go away.
47
Mary
I
gave him the money and the men he demanded but he wanted more—to share my government and wear the Crown Matrimonial. He wanted a grand coronation to publicly proclaim him England’s King.
“A woman ruling absolute and alone is an absurdity, a perversion and abomination in the sight of God and man,” he said to me, pacing before me, with his hands clasped behind his back, like a stern schoolmaster delivering a lecture. “God sent me to you, Mary, to lift this burden from your shoulders; you are clearly not capable of bearing it alone.”
“But, husband, the people fear Spanish rule!” I protested.
“How else should I rule but as a Spaniard?” Philip snapped back at me. “I
am
a Spaniard,
not
an Englishman!” He said this with such pride for his Spanish heritage and such obvious contempt for the English that I could not ignore or mistake it.
“But at our wedding banquet you drank a toast of English beer and said . . .”
Philip snorted derisively. “I know perfectly well what I said. That was for appearances only, to win the people’s good regard. Have you not learned the power of appearances by now? Even Elizabeth, a woman young enough to be your daughter, understands. . .”
“Why must you always say that?” I petulantly demanded.
“Why should I
not
say it?” Philip countered. “It is the truth. Are you so cowardly that you must shrink from it?”
“I don’t want to talk about Elizabeth!” I cried. “I cannot give you the crown you desire, my love, for my people . . .”
“Are stupid, blundering sheep who need the firm hand of a good and skillful shepherd to guide them,” Philip interrupted. “Someone like me. But if you cannot give me what I ask”—he sighed and spread his hands—“then I must depart. My pride will not allow me to stay in a country where I am not respected and have no authority. . . .”
“No!”
I ran to him and flung myself at his feet, grasping his hands. “You
cannot
leave me again!”
“You have humiliated me, Mary; I serviced you like a stud does a brood mare, I gave you a child that
you
failed to deliver, which is not my fault, but where is my reward? Your love and gratitude are insufficient. For all that I have endured, I deserve the crown and have earned it many times over. But if you will not give it to me, then I shall have no choice but to leave and never return.” With those words he pulled his hands away from me and started for the door.
“Beloved,
please.
” I ran after him and caught at his sleeve. “I need a little time to persuade the Council, but I promise, when you return, victorious from your war, I shall crown your head with a wreath of golden laurels, and then, at Westminster Abbey, the Bishop shall bestow upon you England’s crown so that you can feel pride in being my consort. Your wish and will are commands that I will dutifully follow until the day I die!”
“Very well”—Philip nodded—“then I shall stay a little longer.”
“Thank you!”
I bowed my head and fervently kissed both his hands.
“Thank you!”
And that night, in the privacy of my bedchamber, when Philip stood naked before the mirror looking at his favorite person, I swallowed my shame, and put my pride aside with my clothes, and did all he asked of me.
In truth, I would have gone naked, clothed only in God’s love, if it would have pleased him. I would have done
anything
to make him stay. There were moments when I thought Philip made me weaker instead of stronger as he claimed, but he was my husband, my lord and master, my Christ on earth, and his word was law. And, God help me, oh how I loved him and oh how I sometimes hated him for it! I begged for his favor like a dog begging for a bone, and I hated myself for it, that I was willing to grovel and stoop so low. I was the only daughter of Henry VIII and Katherine of Aragon, I should not have had to beg anyone for anything, but I did, outwardly shameless but inwardly filled to the brim with shame. I was a beggarmaid in brocade and diamonds, begging for my husband’s love, or even just a token, some sign of affection, and everyone knew it. I saw the pity and contempt in their eyes when they looked at me, and I saw it in my own when I looked at my face in the mirror.