To Elizabeth, it was perhaps little more than a showy rebellion; but to our queen it was an insult that went straight to her heart. When Elizabeth rode out dressed in rich colors and smiling and waving, people would cheer her and doff their hats for her; when she stayed home in plain black and white people came to Whitehall Palace to see her dine at the queen’s table and remark on her fragile beauty and the plain Protestant piety of her dress.
The queen could see that although Elizabeth never openly defied her, she continually gave the gossipmongers material to take outside the court and to spread among those who kept to their Protestant ways:
“The Protestant princess was pale today, and did not touch the stoop of holy water.”
“The Protestant princess begged to be excused from evening Mass because she was unwell again.”
“The Protestant princess, all but prisoner in the Papist court, is keeping to her faith as best as she can, and biding her time in the very jaws of the Antichrist.”
“The Protestant princess is a very martyr to her faith and her plain-faced sister is as dogged as a pack of bear-baiters, hounding the young woman’s pure conscience.”
The queen, resplendent in rich gowns and delighting in her mother’s jewels, looked tawdry beside the blaze of Elizabeth’s hair, the martyr whiteness of her pallor and the extreme modesty of her black dress. However the queen dressed, whatever she wore, Elizabeth, the Protestant princess, gleamed with the radiance of a girl on the edge of womanhood. The queen beside her, old enough to be her mother, looked weary, and overwhelmed by the task she had inherited.
So I could not simply go to Elizabeth’s rooms and ask to see her. I might as well have announced myself to the ambassador from Spain who watched Elizabeth’s every step, and reported everything to the queen. But one day, as I was walking behind her in the gallery, she stumbled for a moment. I went to help her, and she took my arm.
“I have broken the heel on my shoe, I must send it to the cobbler,” she said.
“Let me help you to your rooms,” I offered, and added in a whisper, “I have a message for you, from Lord Robert Dudley.”
She did not even flicker a sideways glance at me, and in that absolute control I saw at once that she was a consummate plotter and that the queen was right to fear her.
“I can receive no messages without my sister’s blessing,” Elizabeth said sweetly. “But I would be very glad if you would help me to my chamber, I wrenched my foot when the heel broke.”
She bent down and took off her shoe. I could not help but notice the pretty embroidery on her stocking, but I thought it was not the time to ask her for the pattern. Always, everything she owned, everything she did, fascinated me. I gave her my arm. A courtier passing looked at us both. “The princess has broken the heel of her shoe,” I explained. He nodded, and went on. He, for one, was not going to trouble himself to help her.
Elizabeth kept her eyes straight ahead, she limped slightly on her stockinged foot and it made her walk slowly. She gave me plenty of time to deliver the message that she had said she could not hear without permission.
“Lord Robert asks you to summon John Dee as your tutor,” I said quietly. “He said, ‘without fail.’”
Still, she did not look at me.
“Can I tell him you will do so?”
“You can tell him that I will not do anything that would displease my sister the queen,” she said easily. “But I have long wanted to study with Mr. Dee and I was going to ask him to read with me. I am particularly interested in reading the teaching of the early fathers of the Holy Church.”
She shot one veiled glance at me.
“I am trying to learn about the Roman Catholic church,” she said. “My education has been much neglected until now.”
We were at the door of her rooms. A guard stood to attention as we approached and swung the door open. Elizabeth released me. “Thank you for your help,” she said coolly, and went inside. As the door shut behind her I saw her bend down and put her shoe back on. The heel was, of course, perfectly sound.
John Dee’s prediction that the men of England would rise up to prevent the queen marrying a Spaniard was proved every day in dozens of incidents. There were ballads sung against the marriage, the braver preachers thundered against a match so dangerous to the independence of the country. Crude drawings appeared on every lime-washed wall in the city, chap books were handed out slandering the Spanish prince, abusing the queen for even considering him. It was no help that the Spanish ambassador assured every nobleman at court that his prince had no interest in taking power in England, that the prince had been persuaded to the match by his father, that indeed Prince Philip, a desirable man of under thirty years might well have sought a bride to bring him more pleasure and profit than the Queen of England, eleven years his senior. Any suggestion that he wanted the match was proof of Spanish greed, any hint that he might have looked elsewhere was an insult.
The queen herself nearly collapsed under the weight of conflicting advice, under her great fear that she would lose the love of the people of England without gaining the support of Spain.
“Why did you say my heart would break?” she feverishly demanded of me, one day. “Was it because you could foresee it would be like this? With all my councillors telling me to refuse the match, and yet all of them telling me to marry and have a child without delay? With all the country dancing at my coronation and then, minutes later, all of them cursing the news of my wedding?”
“No,” I said. “I could not have foretold this. I think no one could have foretold such a turnaround in such a little time.”
“I have to guard against them,” she said, more to herself than to me. “At every turn I have to keep them at my beck and call. The great lords, and every man under them, have to be my loyal servants; but all the time they whisper in corners and set themselves up to judge me.”
She rose from her chair and walked the eight steps to the window, turned and walked back again. I remembered the first time I had seen her at Hunsdon, in the little court where she rarely laughed, where she was little more than a prisoner. Now she was Queen of England and still she was imprisoned by the will of the people, and still she did not laugh.
“And the council are worse than the ladies of my chamber!” she exclaimed. “They argue ceaselessly in my very presence, there are dozens of them but I cannot get a single sensible word of advice, they all desire something different, and they all — all of them! — lie to me. My spies bring me one set of stories, and the Spanish ambassador tells me others. And all the time I know that they are massing against me. They will pull me down from the throne and push Elizabeth on to it out of sheer madness. They will snatch themselves from the certainty of heaven and throw themselves into hell because they have studied heresy, and now they cannot hear the true word when it is given to them.”
“People like to think for themselves…” I suggested.
She rounded on me. “No, they don’t. They like to follow a man who is prepared to think for them. And now they think they have found him. They have found Thomas Wyatt. Oh yes, I know of him. The son of Anne Boleyn’s lover, whose side d’you think he is on? They have men like Robert Dudley, waiting on his chance in the Tower, and they have a princess like Elizabeth: a foolish girl, too young to know her own mind, too vain to take care, and too greedy to wait, as I had to wait, as I had to wait honorably, for all those long testing years. I waited in a wilderness, Hannah. But she will not wait at all.”
“You need not fear Robert Dudley,” I said quickly. “D’you not remember that he declared for you? Against his own father? But who is this Wyatt?”
She walked to the wall and back to the window again. “He has sworn he will be faithful to me but deny me my husband,” she said. “As if such a thing could be done! He says he will pull me from the throne, and then put me back again.”
“Does he have many on his side?”
“Half of Kent,” she whispered. “And that sly devil Edward Court
enay as king in waiting, if I know him, and Elizabeth hoping to be his queen. And there will be money coming from somewhere to pay him for his crime, I don’t doubt.”
“Money?”
Her voice was bitter. “Francs. The enemies of England are always paid in francs.”
“Can’t you arrest him?”
“When I find him, I can,” she said. “He’s a traitor ten times over. But I don’t know where he is nor when he plans to make his move.” She walked to the window and looked out, as if she would see beyond the garden at the foot of the palace walls, over the silver Thames, cold in the winter sunlight, all the way to Kent and the men who kept their plans hidden.
I was struck by the contrast between our hopes on the road to London and how it was, now that she was queen crowned. “D’you know, I thought when we rode into London that all your struggles would be over.”
The look she turned to me was haunted, her eyes shadowed with brown, her skin as thick as candle wax. She looked years older than she had done that day when we had ridden in to cheering crowds at the head of a cheering army. “I thought so too,” she said. “I thought that my unhappiness was over. The fear that I felt all through my childhood: the nightmares at night, and the terrible waking every day to find that they were true. I thought that if I was proclaimed queen and crowned queen then I would feel safe. But now it is worse than before. Every day I hear of another plot against me, every day I see someone look askance when I go to Mass, every day I hear someone admire Lady Elizabeth’s learning or her dignity or her grace. Every day I know that another man has whispered with the French ambassador, spread a little gossip, told a little lie, suggested that I would throw my kingdom into the lap of Spain; as if I had not spent my life, my whole life, waiting for the throne! As if my mother did not sacrifice herself, refuse any agreement with the king so that she might keep me as the heir! She died without me at her side, without a kind word from him, in a cold damp ruin, far away from her friends, so that I might one day be queen. As though I would throw away her inheritance for a mere fancy for a portrait! Are they mad that they think I might so forget myself?
“There is nothing, nothing, more precious to me than this throne. There is nothing more precious to me than these people; and yet they cannot see it and they will not trust me!”
She was shaking, I had never seen her so distressed. “Your Grace,” I said. “You must be calm. You have to seem serene, even when you are not.”
“I have to have someone on my side,” she whispered, as if she had not heard me. “Someone who cares about me, someone who understands the danger I am in. Someone to protect me.”
“Prince Philip of Spain will not…” I began but she raised her hand to silence me.
“Hannah, I have nothing else to hope for but him. I hope that he comes to me, despite all the wicked slander against him, despite the danger to us both. Despite the threats that they will kill him the moment he sets foot in this kingdom. I hope to God that he has the courage to come to me and make me his wife and keep me safe. For as God is my witness, I cannot rule this kingdom without him.”
“You said you would be a virgin queen,” I reminded her. “You said you would live as a nun for your people and have no husband but them and no children but them.”
She turned away from the window, from the view of the cold river and the iron sky. “I said it,” she concurred. “But I did not know then what it would be like. I did not know then that being a queen would bring me even more pain than being a princess. I did not know that to be a virgin queen, as I am, means to be forever in danger, forever haunted by the fear of the future, and forever alone. And worse than everything else: forever knowing that nothing I do will last.”
The queen’s dark mood lasted till dinnertime and she took her seat with her head bowed and her face grim. A deadened silence fell over the great hall, no one could be merry with the queen under a cloud, and everyone had their own fears. If the queen could not hold her throne, who could be sure of the safety of his house? If she were to be thrown down and Elizabeth to take her place then the men who had just restored their chapels and were paying for Masses to be sung would have to turn their coats again. It was a quiet anxious court, everyone looking around, and then there was a ripple of interest as Will Somers rose up from his seat, straightened his doublet with a foppish flick of his wrists and approached the queen’s table. When he knew that all eyes were upon him he dropped elegantly to one knee and flourished a kerchief in a bow.
“What is it, Will?” she asked absently.
“I have come to proposaloh matrimonioh,” Will said, as solemn as a bishop, with a ridiculous pronunciation of the words. The whole court held its breath.
The queen looked up, the glimmer of a smile in her eyes. “Matrimony? Will?”
“I am a proclaimed bacheloroh,” he said, from the back of the hall there was a suppressed giggle. “As everybody knowsohs. But I am prepared to overlookoh it, on this occasionoh.”
“What occasion?” The queen’s voice trembled with laughter.
“On the occasion of my proposaloh,” he said. “To Your Grace, of matrimonioh.”
It was dangerous ground, even for Will.
“I am not seeking a husband,” the queen said primly.
“Then I will withdraw,” he said with immense dignity. He rose to his feet and stepped backward from the throne. The court held its breath for the jest, the queen too. He paused; his timing was that of a musician, a composer of laughter. He turned. “But don’t you go thinkingoh,” he waved a long bony forefinger at her in warning, “don’t you go thinkingoh that you have to throw yourself away on the son of a mere emperororoh. Now you know you could have me, you know.”
The court collapsed into a gale of laughter, even the queen laughed as Will, with his comical gangling gait, went back to his seat and poured himself an extra large bumper of wine. I looked across at him and he raised it to me, one fool to another. He had done exactly what he was supposed to do: to take the most difficult and most painful thing and turn it into a jest. But Will could always do more than that, he could take the sting from it, he could make a jest that hurt no one, so that even the queen, who knew that she was tearing her country apart over her determination to be married, could smile and eat her dinner and forget the forces massing against her for at least one evening.
I went home to my father leaving a court humming with gossip, walking through a city seething with rebellion. The rumors of a secret army mustering to wage war against the queen were everywhere. Everyone knew of one man or another missing from his home, run off to join the rebels. Lady Elizabeth was said to be ready and willing to marry a good Englishman — Edward Courtenay — and had promised to take the throne as soon as her sister was deposed. The men of Kent would not allow a Spanish prince to conquer and subdue them. England was not some dowry which a princess, a half-Spanish princess, could hand over to Spain. There were good Englishmen that the queen should take if she had a mind to marry. There was handsome young Edward Courtenay with a kinship to the royal line on his own account. There were Protestant princelings all over Europe, there were gentlemen of breeding and education who would make a good king-consort to the queen. Assuredly she must marry, and marry at once, for no woman in the world could rule a household, much less a kingdom, without the guidance of a man; a woman’s nature was not fitted to the work, her intelligence could not stretch to the decisions, her courage was not great enough for the difficulties, she had no steadfastness in her nature for the long haul. Of course the queen must marry, and give the kingdom a son and heir. But she should not marry, she should never even have thought of marrying a Spanish prince. The very notion was treason to England and she must be mad for love of him, as everyone was saying, even to think of it. And a queen who could set aside common sense for her lust was not fit to rule. Better to overthrow a queen maddened by desire in her old age than suffer a Spanish tyrant.
My father had company in the bookshop. Daniel Carpenter’s mother w
as perched on one of the stools at the counter, her son beside her. I knelt for my father’s blessing, and then made a little bow to Mrs. Carpenter and to my husband-to-be. The two parents looked at Daniel and I, as prickly as cats on a garden wall, and tried, without success, to hide their worldly-wise amusement at the irritability of a young couple during courtship.
“I waited to see you and hear the news from court,” Mrs. Carpenter said. “And Daniel wanted to see you, of course.”
The glance that Daniel shot at her made it clear that he did not wish her to explain his doings to me.
“Is the queen’s marriage to go ahead?” my father asked. He poured me a glass of good Spanish red wine and pulled up a stool for me at the counter of the shop. I noted with wry amusement that my work as fool had made me a personage worthy of respect, with a seat and my own glass of wine.
“Without doubt,” I said. “The queen is desperate for a helper and a companion, and it is natural she should want a Spanish prince.”
I said nothing about the portrait which she had hung in her privy chamber, on the opposite wall from the prie-dieu, and which she consulted with a glance at every difficult moment, turning her head from a statue of God to a picture of her husband-to-be and back again.
My father glanced at Mrs. Carpenter. “Please God it makes no difference to us,” he said. “Please God she does not bring in Spanish ways.”
She nodded, but she failed to cross herself as she should have done. Instead she leaned forward and patted my father’s hand. “Forget the past,” she said reassuringly. “We have lived in England for three generations. Nobody can think that we are anything but good Christians and good Englishmen.”
“I cannot stay if it is to become another Spain,” my father said in a low voice. “You know, every Sunday, every saint’s day, they burned heretics, sometimes hundreds at a time. And those of us who had practiced Christianity for years were put on trial alongside those who had hardly pretended to it. And no one could prove their innocence! Old women who had missed Mass because they were sick, young women who had been seen to look away when they raised the Host, any excuse, any reason, and you could be informed against. And always, always, it was those who had made money, or those who had advanced in the world and made enemies. And with my books and my business and my reputation for scholarship, I knew they would come for me, and I started to prepare. But I did not think they would take my parents, my wife’s sister, my wife before me…” He broke off. “I should have thought of it, we should have gone earlier.”