48
Elizabeth
H
e stayed only long enough to get what he wanted—money and men to fight his war with France—then Mary was left alone again standing on the crumbling precipice of a country she had brought to the brink of ruin.
To provide the money he demanded, coins had to be newly minted, which caused a panic as the value of the currency dropped alarmingly. With threats to take away their titles, lands, and estates, or even sentence them to death, she bullied the Council into doing Philip’s bidding, and seven thousand English men were sent to fight a war that was not of their making. And when Philip wrote to her demanding even more money, Mary sold Crown lands and her jewels to raise funds for Philip.
I was of the party that accompanied them to Dover and watched in sad and pitying silence as Mary, dressed in dramatic black and trailing veils, extravagant mourning for the imminent departure of her love, stood on the icy quay and declared, “My heart is already in mourning for your absence,” as she made her passionate and tearful farewells to the husband who, I knew in my bones, would strike her if she asked of him one more time, “You will come back to me?”
I could see the impatience and irritation twitching his cruel little mouth and simmering in his cold blue eyes, dangerous as a shark-infested sea. I watched her cling to him, anxious for reassurance, her voice and chin all aquiver and her face swollen and red beneath the ceaseless cascade of her tears. But even she, in her besotted blindness, I think, could see that he would never return to her no matter what words his lips spoke.
Before he boarded his ship, he took her aside, reminding her that, since she had failed to give him a son, I remained her lawful successor, and as such I deserved to be treated with respect, and if he should hear otherwise . . . He left the rest unsaid, a threat hanging like a sword on a frayed rope above her head.
Mary stood on the docks of Dover and waved until his ship was not even a speck on the horizon that even the most sharp-eyed amongst us could discern, and then I went to her.
For once, she did not push me away. She looked at me with such sadness in her face, before she burst into tears and fell into my arms, weeping on my shoulder and clinging tight to me as if she were a brokenhearted child, which, I realized then, in a way, for all her forty-one years, she was.
I stroked my sister’s sob-shuddering back and held her close, but I said nothing, for there was really nothing that I, or anyone except Philip, could say, and he was gone forever.
We returned to London and I watched my sister go through the motions of life like the Shadow of Death. She would sit at the head of the Council table without hearing a word. She would just sit there, lost in thought, and stare at Philip’s portrait on the wall, or else sign death warrants by the score to send yet more Protestants to the stake.
She wore black mourning and her eyes were always swollen and red-rimmed from weeping. She did not sleep but sat up the whole night through writing passionate letters to Philip, pouring out her heart and soul to him; letters I daresay he didn’t even bother to read and hardly ever answered. When he did deign to write it was always requests for more money, men, and arms, and reminders that he should have the crown. She kept messengers standing by at all hours, stationed all along the roads, and ships at the ready in the harbor, to carry forth her letters. She even kept the kitchens busy baking batches of Philip’s favorite meat pies, then rushed these culinary offerings of her love out to him on our navy’s fastest ships.
Whenever word reached her of Philip’s adulteries—as it invariably did—she would lash out like a madwoman, seizing a dagger and attacking his portrait, or else tearing it from the wall and ordering her servants to take it out, kicking and screaming at it as they dutifully carried it away to the attic. Later in the night, holding a candle aloft, clad in only her white nightgown and bare feet, with her red-gray hair hanging down her back in a frightfully thin, wispy braid, she would emerge from her bedchamber like a ghost and go in search of the banished portrait and kneel down before it, reverently, as if it were an altar, or Philip himself, and tearfully apologize and worship it with tears and kisses until, exhausted and in sore need of rest, sleep mercifully overwhelmed her. Many a time the morning light found her thus, curled up like a puppy at the foot of Philip’s portrait.
I could not bear to see her in such a state and, as soon as I could, I left for Hatfield. Listless and distracted as she pined and dreamed of Philip, Mary let me go, either forgetting or choosing to ignore the Spanish Ambassador’s sage injunction that one should keep their friends close and their enemies even closer. She was so tired by then, I don’t think she cared anymore, though I wish I could say instead that she had learned to trust me again, and knew that I was not, and never had been, her enemy.
Before I left, I went to her to say good-bye, dressed in my wine-dark velvets for travel. I found her sitting listlessly upon the floor in her nightgown and robe with her knees drawn up to her chin and her ivory rosary clasped in her clawlike hand. I was horrified to see her face close up, so heavily lined and wrinkled, more like a woman of seventy than a year past forty, her bleary gray eyes so red and swollen and with such a vacant, lost look in them I thought even her own soul had fled and abandoned her.
Kat and Blanche had told me that Mary now avoided sleep as much as possible, for when she did sleep she was tormented by such vividly real dreams of Philip’s lovemaking that she, to use her own words, “disgraced herself in her dreams.” Thus she chose to spend her nights either writing to her absent husband or kneeling in her private chapel imploring the Blessed Virgin to help rid her of these unclean distractions and deliriums, this “incubus sent by Satan” in the guise of Philip, and begging her to send a swarm of angels to surround her bed and guard her so she could sleep in blessed peace.
“Mary”—compassion and worry flooded my heart as I knelt beside her and took her hand in mine—“you must take heart! You must try to get well!”
With a long, heart-heavy sigh, Mary shook her head. “Only his return can cure me.” After that she would say no more except to absently murmur, “Safe journey,” before she turned her face away from me and went back to staring longingly at the portrait on the wall, that devilishly handsome likeness of the haughty Spanish prince that had first made her fall in love with him.
There was nothing more I could do, so with a heavy heart I left my sister and went home to Hatfield, wondering if I would ever see her alive again.
49
Mary
G
od is merciful. He took my husband, and let him sail away to war and into the arms of another, but He left me with a baby in my womb.
This time I waited six months before I let my people know. I was afraid they wouldn’t believe me and would laugh and remember how it had been before. But this time, I knew it would be different; this time God would smile and give one more miracle to His good servant Mary. When Philip returned to me I would greet him smiling with our baby in my arms.
50
Elizabeth
N
o one believed her or gave much credence to Mary’s announcement that she was with child. The announcement provoked more pity and laughter than genuine belief. Philip had been gone from her six months and as impressively large as he thought his cock was, it was not long enough to stretch across the English Channel to impregnate his wife. This time, everyone knew it was just her imagination, a lovely illusion she wanted so badly to believe. She wanted to believe that Philip had not entirely forsaken her, that he had left her with something tangible, some little part of himself, a miracle that they had made together. But she was pregnant with hope, nothing more, and everyone but Mary knew it.
Then he lost Calais and it broke the already broken pieces of Mary’s heart into still more pieces, so shattered they could never be mended and put back together again. Calais was England’s last remaining foothold in France; it never would have happened if Philip had not embroiled us in a war we had no cause to fight. Our proud nation smarted with the humiliation, for there was not money enough in the Treasury to raise and equip an army to go out and try to win it back. The people blamed Mary; they called her a traitor to her own country, and accused her of loving Spain more than England. Philip had now taken everything from her. He would never come back. What was left for him to come back for?
Finally, she sent for me. As “Faithful Susan” took me to her, she confided that Mary had not left her chamber in weeks. She spent most of her time sitting on the floor, too afraid to face her people, and too cast down in spirits to even think of trying. Susan paused in the corridor and looked into my eyes and told me that she feared for Mary’s life. Sorrow was strangling the life out of her heart and, if that deathly grip could not be broken, soon it would cease to beat. As for the child Mary still believed she carried as God’s gift to her, with tears brimming in her eyes, Susan said the doctors and midwives now suspected it was a tumor partnering with the sorrow to leech away Mary’s life.
When I walked into the candlelit bedchamber and beheld that poor brainsick woman, mired deep in darkest sorrow, I started in amazement. I hardly recognized this devastated wreck as my sister, so greatly had she altered.
When she looked up at me, her gray eyes squinting hard, straining to pierce the shadows and blurriness that encroached upon her vision, her tear-damp face was a wrinkled red and swollen mask of despair surrounded by a grizzled silver cloud of hair with just a few rusty streaks running through it. In the flickering candlelight I fancied I could see the skull beneath the lined yellow flesh, like a gruesome, parchment-pale death’s head. She sat huddled upon the floor, tucked into a corner, where she must have felt safe, rocking back and forth, crooning a Spanish lullaby and cradling her grossly swollen belly. Her robe hung open to reveal that she was wearing one of her birthing smocks made of pleated Holland cloth, and beneath its gold braided hem her bare feet peeked out to reveal long, cracked and brittle yellow nails. She was surrounded by exquisitely stitched and beribboned little baby garments, lovingly embroidered by her own hands, that the ghost-child in her womb would never wear. Her sewing basket sat beside her and her prayer book lay open to a page so stained with tears that the ink had run and entirely obliterated the words written there.
I knew I was looking at a dying woman, a woman who had lost everything that mattered to her, and with it the will to live. She was old and tired and sick, her body, heart, and soul worn out. Raw and aching, and utterly naked and vulnerable in her grief, she was suffering pain to rival the agony of the childbirth that she would never herself experience. When she raised a trembling hand to reach out for me I saw that the rings hung loose and spun around on her fingers and the skin was almost transparent, like old yellowed parchment, and I could see every vein and bone beneath.
“Mary . . .” Tears filled my eyes as I took her hand and knelt down beside her.
I gathered that wasted and forlorn figure in my arms, remembering all the times when I was a motherless child in need of comforting and she had held me and rocked me gently and sung Spanish lullabies to me. As she laid her head on my shoulder I stroked and tried to tame that wild riot of rust-streaked silver hair. The whole story of Mary’s life was written in her hair—the white and gray of woes, the hair of a broken and defeated woman old before her time and dying of an illness that cruelly mimicked her greatest desire, the auburn of a mature woman ripe for life and love, and a few wispy orange-gold strands to recall the beloved little princess who thought her life would always be as golden as her hair and that love always lasts forever.
“When I die . . .” she croaked in a feeble and raspy whisper. “When I die and they open my body they will find the word
Calais
written on my heart.”
I could think of nothing to say, nothing to assuage or vanquish her guilt or grief, so I just held her.
“Philip . . .” she whispered against my shoulder. “I was”—a shuddering sob broke from her—“I was . . .
wrong!
I should not have married him, I should not love him, but, God help me, I do, I do!”
I clutched her tight as the tears convulsed her, trying with my embrace to hold her body and soul together.
“There is a reason they say love is blind, Mary,” I said gently. “Sometimes it willfully or unwittingly fails to see the things it should see.”
“But I . . . I was warned! They tried to tell me, they tried to stop me!” she sobbed.
“Mary, my dear sister”—I cradled her to my breast and stroked her wild, wispy and matted hair—“this I have learned from both observation and experience—there are times in our lives when we find ourselves standing on the edge of a cliff. Sometimes you stand there, looking down, for a
very
long time. Sometimes you find the strength, and the courage, to turn back, but sometimes you go over the edge; you jump. Sometimes you jump because you believe you cannot go back or that there is nothing to go back for, that your soul is lost in a long black tunnel with not even a glimmer of light at the end of it to guide you and give you the hope you need to go on. Sometimes you jump just because you are tired of being afraid. And sometimes you jump just to find out what it feels like to fall, to test your strength, to find out if you can claw your way back up again.”
“Why did I fail?” she rasped, gazing searchingly into my eyes. “I tried
so
hard! Why did it all go so wrong?”
“Because you shut your ears to the
real
voice of God,” I said gently.
“No! I didn’t!” Mary tearfully insisted. “I was
always
true to God, I always followed . . .”
“Mary,” I spoke gently but firmly as if she were a child, “you did. You were always true to your faith, to the teachings of your Church, but to a monarch, the voice of the people is the
true
voice of God. It is their love and will that puts a king or queen upon the throne and keeps them there. As God’s anointed queen, you were His candle on earth, sent here to light the way, to guide and inspire, but you
cannot
compel and force people’s consciences with torture and threats as if they were wild horses in need of breaking. But you tried to do just that, and when you began to burn those you branded heretics you also began to burn away your people’s love. You didn’t listen to them, you blocked your ears to their cries, and that is the reason you failed.”
Mary stared at me for a long time as if she hadn’t seen me before or didn’t know who I was.
“Mary?” I prodded her gently.
She closed her eyes and took a deep breath and drew herself up straight.
“Promise me . . .” Her voice faltered and she tried again. “Promise me that . . . that the true religion will never die in England.”
I took both her hands in mine and stared deep into her eyes.
“I promise!”
I put all the conviction I possessed into those two words. “I make no windows into men’s souls, Mary. Loyalty to the sovereign is one thing, and faith in God and how one worships Him is another; there is no reason that the two cannot peaceably coexist in harmony.”
“Thank you!”
Mary closed her eyes and breathed a sigh of deep gratitude and relief. And then she opened them and asked falteringly, her words punctuated by sobs, “Will you . . . try . . . to find a way to . . . pay . . . my debts? There are . . . I fear . . . a . . . a great many.”
“Of course I will,” I assured her. “Do not trouble your mind over that.”
“And will you . . . be . . . kind . . . to . . . m-my . . . my servants?”
“Those who have served you loyally and well shall be rewarded,” I promised.
“While I live, I am Queen in name,” she said to me, her voice firmer now, marred only by the slightest quiver, “but you are the Queen of Hearts. Go with God, His will be done.” As the storm of tears broke anew she made an adamant gesture, waving me toward the door, and I dared not stay and intrude further upon her broken heart.
Those were the last words she ever spoke to me.