Watch the Lady (58 page)

She leaves her brother's portrait and wanders about the house, with Fides trotting in her wake, his claws clicking rhythmically on the floor. Wanstead is filled with memories; its very walls seem to whisper to her of Blount and their snatched assignations. The gardens are overgrown, as if they have refused to be clipped into submission, and the summer blooms make bright splashes of color, serenaded by the humming of bees. She presses her face to a rose, feeling its velvet petals touch her lips, breathing in its glorious scent. She throws her head back and arms out, circling like a child, feeling, for the first time in all her forty years, a sense of true liberation, or at least the possibility of it.

Rich has announced in a letter she received lately that he intends, “now our children are grown, to untie what God has put together.” That is how he described it, as if he could not bear to defile his pen with the word
divorce.
She wondered, only for the briefest moment, how he was going to reconcile it with that stern God of his. He will find a way. She has barely seen Rich these last years. She was of no use to him after the demise of her brother. Their paths did cross once, at Leighs, as she was arriving and he leaving. She was glad, for she wanted to tell him she held no grudge.

“Why do you not hate me?” he asked.

“You have been a good father . . .” she began, but stopped herself, not wanting to rub in what he well knew, that three of the children in the nursery were not his. “But, more than that, hatred makes you weak.”

She had never thought of it until those words left her mouth, but it was true. She'd watched the way the Queen's hatred of her mother, and all those other disobedient maids who had incurred her wrath, had eaten away at her and left her empty. Her brother's hatred of Cecil, too, had been his undoing. She had seen enough hatred and needed no more.

She looks back at the golden stone of the house which will soon, finally, be her true home, imagining the sound of her children inhabiting it. There is music drifting from the windows and laughter in the garden as she thinks of them playing chase and catching butterflies on the grass.

Hearing the sound of horses in the distance, she picks up her skirts, running down the drive. And there he is, mounted comfortably on his horse as if in a chair, his reins held loose, wearing an easy smile. She feels strangely shy. It has been three full years since they were last together. He vaults down and they stand several feet apart, scrutinizing each other. His hair is newly cut, his mustache and beard trimmed, and his earring is missing; there is a little rent where it must have been torn from his lobe, which makes her wince inwardly and a tender feeling wells up in her.

“Your poor ear.”

He puts his hand to it, shrugging. “Oh, that.”

There is a new hardness about him. War changes a man—she knows that only too well.

To combat her shyness, she resorts to humor, dropping into a curtsy with a smirk, saying, “My, if it is not the Earl of Devonshire, the great conquering hero, he who quelled the Irish rebels.”

He laughs, and she can see he has lost a tooth at the back of his mouth. “If it is not His Majesty's favorite lady, muse of poets, she with the finest mind in all of Christendom, she with the voice of an angel, she who holds my heart.” She laughs too now; and then they fall into an embrace that dissolves those three years of absence to nothing.

In telling the story of the remarkable Penelope Devereux I have adhered closely to historical fact, drawing on primary sources where possible, but it must not be forgotten that this is a work of fiction and so my Penelope Devereux, with her complex inner world, is a character of my own invention. Penelope was an intriguing woman, living life on her own terms in a time when it was almost impossible for women to take such freedoms.

There are many well-documented truths that form the basis of the novel. It is fact that Penelope was Sidney's muse and the model for “Stella,” and though we don't know whether their relationship was consummated in the traditional sense, it is clear from reading Sidney's sonnets that his feelings for her were profound. It is also documented that Penelope was betrayed by her brother after he was condemned. We cannot know what Essex's motives were in doing this, but we do know that Penelope was not only the sole woman on the list of rebels handed to the Queen, but also the only person whose name was on that list who did not stand trial. This made me wonder if she might have somehow negotiated her freedom, for there is no doubt she was deeply involved in her brother's insurrection and had been in contact with King James for many years.

We also know that she gave birth to at least three children with Blount, though she was still married to Rich. It seems her adultery was an open secret and, given the morals of the times, and the Queen's particular distaste for such things, it is remarkable that she was able to get away with it for so long. For me this fact is testimony to her strength of character. Her marriage to Rich is interesting because he seems to have been aware of her behavior and yet did nothing. We know he was a man who was rather disliked and also of little courage. He did, indeed, have to be put to shore due to seasickness when he had been supposed to join one of Essex's military campaigns. What is known about him led me to imagine he held a shameful secret that gave his wife a hold over him. In the novel it is the secret of his attraction to young men, but this is pure speculation.

There are also elements of Penelope's story that I had no space to explore in the novel, which are nonetheless fascinating and somewhat poignant. Penelope was eventually divorced from Lord Rich but a condition stipulated by King James stated that she was not to remarry during Rich's lifetime. She and Blount (by then the Earl of Devonshire), perhaps believing themselves to be held in sufficiently high esteem by the King to avoid his wrath, married anyway. This resulted in Penelope's fall from grace; she, like her mother before her, was banished from court, publicly disgraced, and James famously referred to her as “a fair woman with a black soul.” As Penelope fell from favor her great adversary, Cecil, rose to become the most important advisor to the Stuart king.

In a tragic twist of fate the couple, though they had lived “in sin” at Wanstead for two years or so, had only a short period of wedded bliss, as Blount became ill and died in her arms. He, as the great victor of Ireland, was awarded a triumphal state funeral and was buried in Westminster Abbey. In the aftermath Penelope struggled to have her marriage legally recognized and Blount's relatives mounted a challenge to the will that he had carefully drawn up to provide for Penelope and their children. Blount's great wealth was sequestered, and Penelope lived in poverty during a protracted legal battle in which she faced charges of adultery, fraud, and forgery. In the end she won, but at devastating cost to her reputation and her victory was to be short lived as she fell ill and died only months later, aged only forty-four.

There are always curious challenges that arise in writing about the sixteenth century, not least that of characters' names. It was customary for children to be named after their parents, or godparents, so often they not only share a surname but also a Christian name, which could be most confusing for readers. In the story there are no fewer than six Roberts and all are important to the narrative; indeed, Essex, Cecil, and Rich are all Roberts, and this is why I resorted to Robin for Essex (and young Robert, where necessary, for his son), but Penelope's eldest ended up as Hoby, which is an unusual early diminutive of the name. I will not even begin to go into the number of girls named after Penelope and Lettice. Scholars of Elizabethan fashion will note that I have revised the contemporary spelling “bodies” to the slightly later but entirely unconfusable “bodice.”

I must confess to extreme use of poetic license in the scene in which the young actor/poet recites a sonnet. I was indulging playfully with ideas about Shakespeare's mysterious dark lady, whose identity has been much speculated upon over the years. Some have suggested she was Penelope Rich, others the poet Aemilia Lanier, and there are several more candidates, but the truth remains elusive. It is, though, almost certain that Shakespeare was familiar with the Essex circle. It is thought that
Love's Labour's Lost
was loosely modeled on their set, and it is known that his
Richard II
was performed at the request of Essex's men in a bid to generate support for the earl on the eve of his fateful rebellion.

For those interested in further reading about Penelope Devereux, I recommend Sally Varlow's
The Lady Penelope: The Lost Tale of Love and Politics in the Court of Elizabeth I
, a thorough and fascinating biography of a woman whose story has been largely overlooked. Varlow attributes Penelope's disappearance from history to a Protestant propaganda machine seeking “blameless heroes of the reformed faith” that worked to whitewash the names of Sir Philip Sidney and the Earl of Devonshire (Charles Blount) by erasing all memory of their liaisons with a woman who marched to the beat of her own drum.

I referred to many works in my research, too numerous to mention here, but a few I recommend are: Philip Sidney's sonnets (the edition edited by Peter C. Herman has a good introduction, and if they leave you dry-eyed, then you have a heart of stone); Katherine Duncan-Jones's
Sir Philip Sidney: Courtier Poet
is another excellent source of information on one of the foremost Elizabethan poets. For Shakespeare's sonnets, I like the Arden edition for its extensive introduction. Robert Lacey's book
Robert, Earl of Essex: An Elizabethan Icarus
is a good place to start with the earl, and David Loades's
The Cecils: Privilege and Power Behind the Throne
offers much about a father and son who, between them, held the reins of royalty for more than half a century. There are a multitude of books about Elizabeth, but a rich source of inside information on her private life is
Elizabeth's Bedfellows: An Intimate History of the Queen's Court
by Anna Whitelock, and for extensive detail on Elizabethan life, look no further than Ian Mortimer's
The Time Traveller's Guide to Elizabethan England
.

This novel may bear my name but there are many who have contributed to its genesis and to whom I would like to offer my thanks. I am truly grateful for my agent, Jane Gregory, whose support and belief is a blessing, and Stephanie Glencross, whose ability to negotiate a chaotic first draft is invaluable; the team at Michael Joseph—Louise Moore, Maxine Hitchcock, Liz Smith, Hana Osman, Clare Parker, Francesca Russell, and Francesca Pearce, to name only a few—whose enthusiasm and encouragement know no bounds; also Trevor Horwood, who is the most tactful and subtle copy editor known to man; and always to Trish Todd for her wisdom and Catherine Eccles, whose friendship and advice I couldn't do without.

Read more historical fiction from Elizabeth Fremantle

Queen's Gambit

A Novel of Katherine Parr

“Brings the decadent, conniving, back-stabbing world of the sixteenth-century British court to brilliant life, revealing what one woman can teach us about the timeless art of survival.”

—
Oprah.com

Divorced, beheaded, died, divorced, beheaded, survived.

This is the story of the one who survived.

Widowed for the second time at age thirty-one, Katherine Parr falls deeply for the dashing courtier Thomas Seymour and hopes at last to marry for love. Instead, she attracts the attentions of the ailing, egotistical, and dangerously powerful Henry VIII. No one is in a position to refuse a royal proposal so, haunted by the fates of his previous wives, Katherine must wed Henry and rely on her wits and the help of her loyal servant Dot to survive the treacherous pitfalls of life as Henry's queen. Yet as she treads the razor's edge of court intrigue, she never quite gives up on love.

The notary smells of dust and ink. How is it, Latymer wonders, that when one sense blunts another sharpens. He can pick up the scent of everything, the reek of ale on the man's breath, the yeasty whiff of bread baking in the kitchens below, the wet-dog stink of the spaniel curled up by the hearth. But he can see little, the room swims and the man is a vague dark shape leaning over the bed with a grimace of a smile.

“Make your mark here, my lord,” he says, enunciating as if talking to a child or an idiot.

A waft of violets sweeps over him. It is Katherine—his dear, dear Kit.

“Let me help you up, John,” she is saying, as she shifts his body forward and slips a pillow behind him.

She lifts him so easily. He must have wasted quite away these last months. It is no wonder with the lump in his gut, hard and round as a Spanish grapefruit. The movement starts something off, an excruciating wave that rises through his body forcing an inhuman groan from him.

“My love.” Katherine strokes his forehead.

Her touch is cool. The pain twists deeper into him. He can hear the clink of her preparing a tincture. The spoon flashes as it catches the light. The chill of metal touches his lips, and a trickle of liquid pools in his mouth. Its loamy scent brings back a distant memory of riding through woods and with it a sadness, for his riding days are over. His gullet feels too thick to swallow and he fears setting off the pain again. It has receded but hovers, as does the notary who shifts from one foot to the other in an embarrassed shuffle. Latymer wonders why the man is not more used to this kind of thing, given that wills are his living. Katherine strokes his throat and the tincture slides down. Soon it will take effect. His wife has a gift with remedies. He has thought about what kind of potion she could concoct to set him free from this useless carcass of his. She'd know exactly what would do it. After all, any one of the plants she uses to deaden his pain could kill a man if the dose were right—a little more of this or that and it would be done.