Elizabeth (15 page)

Plague came to England with the remains of the army and raged through the population, turning London into a charnel house. Starvation followed, with the usual aftermath of looting and violence, and the sickness spread from the towns to the villages all through the summer, until the cold and damp of the autumn ended the infection.

War had brought nothing but defeat and financial difficulties, exactly as Elizabeth had foretold when pressed to declare it. But she neither turned on Cecil and his friends, nor shifted the responsibility in the eyes of her people. Nothing was said, but her Council knew her well enough to understand that the man who next suggested war would lose his place on the Council, if he did not lose his head.

The Parliament which was summoned to vote money for the war had taken the opportunity to remind the Queen of her late illness and to petition her to name a successor or else marry and provide an heir. They were joined in this by the Lords. Elizabeth answered gently, refusing to commit herself until the grant was given, and then, in phrases expressing motherly affection, rejected their plea. She refused to name an heir to her throne on the assumption that she might yet marry, though if she did it would be from a sense of duty and against her personal inclinations. As usual, she had answered this particular question in a way which allowed her petitioners to hope, and which, at the same time, committed her to nothing beyond vague generalizations.

When she returned to Whitehall Palace after the end of the Session, she sent for Cecil. He knew when he came into the room that she was in a furious temper.

“Well, and are you satisfied now?”

He shook his head.

“Madam, I beg you not to be angry with me. I was not responsible for the Petition from the Commons. I know it angers you, but they only expressed the wish of all of us who love you.”

“Who love yourselves,” she retorted. “So much for Parliament and money grants! I'll see them damned before I let them meet again. Sit down, for God's sake.… Why must I be harried and worried like a dog with a pack of hounds after me, all yelping on the same note? Marry, marry.… Or else dig my own grave and declare a successor!”

“If you did name your heir it might put an end to all the difficulties,” he said slowly. “If you marry, then that nomination will be set aside. As it is now, nothing is settled; one serious illness like the last might be the end of you, Madam. And you would leave England at the mercy of every adventurer with a drop of Plantagenet or Tudor blood.”

“There are no Plantagenets left,” Elizabeth reminded him. “My father killed them all.… As for a successor, are you so anxious for the Queen of Scots?
She
is my heir!”

“Catherine Grey is a claimant, so is the young Darnley.”

“Catherine Grey isn't fit to rule over a pigsty, and you know it. As for Darnley … that drunken fool? My God, Cecil, how could you! Now listen to me. You are my friend and I love you; and you love me, is that not so?”

“You know it is,” he said.

She came and sat down beside him and put her hands on his sleeve.

“I am not afraid for myself. I am not afraid of invasion or an attempt upon my life; I would risk these at any time if it was necessary. But I am afraid of civil war, of bloodshed and factions and the effect of human greed. I will not bring all this upon my people, which is what naming a successor would precipitate. Do you really think that Catherine Grey or Mary Stuart or anyone else would wait until I died before they came to claim the English throne? Are you as stupid as those clods in the Commons to talk about civil war after my death and then purpose the sure means of starting one while I'm alive?”

“Then marry!” he burst out. “Choose a husband! God's life, choose Dudley if you must, but marry and have a child and put an end to it all!”

“I may yet,” she said, but she had turned her head away from him. “The prospect has never appealed to me. I saw enough of marrying with my father.… I like it less and less as the time passes. But I may do it, if I can force myself. If there is no other way.…”

“You would be happier,” Cecil said earnestly. “You'd have someone to share your burdens.”

“I like my burdens,” Elizabeth replied. “They're not burdens to me. The last thing in the world I want is to share them with anybody. Cecil, I tried to explain to you once, three years ago, that I don't long for masculine support in the business of governing, I need you and Sussex, and the others, but that is different. We work well together, there's trust and goodwill between us all. It would not be like that between husband and wife. There's no such thing as joint sovereign, only one ruler. And I am that one. As for Dudley, I appreciate your desperation in suggesting him, but I like him best as he is.”

“There will never be peace or quiet of mind, so long as Mary Stuart is across the Scottish Border and only your life safeguards the throne of England. We'll have an invasion of French or Spanish or some other troops, depending on whom she marries, and all your avoidance of war will come to nothing.”

“I have thought of that,” she said. “I think of very little else, if you wish to know. And there you have your answer. My marriage can wait, hers apparently cannot; she is negotiating with so many men it makes me blush! Marry her to the wrong one, my dear friend, and who knows how our problem may resolve itself. In fact our crafty Lethington, in a despatch of his last year, mentioned a possibility which was so ludicrous I couldn't believe my eyes when you showed me the copy. You remember who he suggested to her! Henry Darnley!”

Cecil's pale eyes blinked for a moment, as if a sudden light had flashed into them.

“I saw the cypher copy of his last letter to her,” he said.

“He has been approached by Darnley's mother. He says the boy is ready to escape to Scotland if the Queen of Scots will consider him. I thought it would enrage you, Madam, and you've been made angry enough for today. I meant to tell you later.”

For a moment Elizabeth looked at him, her dark eyes, half hidden by the heavy lids, more prominent since her illness had wasted her face. No light touched them, but the corners of her lips began to curve in the amused, rather cruel little smile he knew so well.

“Cecil, my dear, clever Cecil, sometimes you are not so clever after all. Now I tell you what we shall do. We shall have our supper here, you and I, all alone so that we can talk. And then I shall tell you why I am not at all angry about Master Darnley and his ambitions to see Scotland. No, not angry in the least.”

CHAPTER SIX

It was early spring, and the Hertfordshire countryside was very green. The weather was warm after a fiercely cold winter, there had been no rain for several days, and many of the trees and hedges were in bud.

The Queen had moved from Whitehall Palace to stay with her maternal cousin Lord Hunsdon on the estate which she had given him out of Royal lands. Hunsdon itself had been her father's hunting box; he and Anne Boleyn had often stayed there and hunted over the flat Hertford country, and Elizabeth herself had spent some time there as a child. The small house had been re-built into a splendid mansion with elaborate gardens boxed in with yew hedges, and with rockeries, fountains and statues and little paved walks, similar to the beautiful stylized gardens at Hampton Court. Lord Hunsdon was already very wealthy; he could offer Elizabeth a magnificent suite of rooms in his new house, with an enormous tester bed made especially for her visit and hung with valuable Flemish tapestries.

The Queen liked travelling; she was not deterred by the appalling roads or the discomfort of a protracted journey with a long wagon train rumbling behind her. Dudley, as Master of the Horse, was responsible for her transport and the safe arrival of all her personal plate, dresses, horses and servants. Removing Elizabeth from London to Hunsdon, a distance of thirty miles, was a complicated and detailed operation, like transporting a small army with supplies, but Dudley was so efficient an organizer that she was encouraged to travel further and more often than any of her predecessors. She was especially fond of Hunsdon, because the hunting was excellent, and also because she had an affection for her cousin. It was a peculiar affection, and it included her other maternal relatives, the Careys. They were connected through the Boleyns and, though distant kin, they were all that remained of her family, and a sentimental quirk, quite alien to her rational and self-sufficient spirit, entitled them to a place in her inner circle of favourites.

She had left on a hunting expedition that morning, taking Dudley with her as usual and a company of fifty ladies and gentlemen. She felt very well and exhilarated, freed from the routine of Council meetings and audiences; only the most urgent despatches were sent to her from London, and no courier had disturbed her for three days. It was a successful hunt; the Queen's grey horse led the field, and the Queen's arrow brought down a magnificent five-pointed stag which Hunsdon had saved for her visit. It was a happy, informal morning, full of sport and excitement, and the company gathered for a picnic under some beech trees.

Servants had already arrived by wagon, bringing the food and the cutlery in baskets, and the Queen lunched with Dudley and two of her ladies a little apart from the others. She sat on a heap of cushions, with a white linen cloth spread on the ground, her own cup-bearer and steward in attendance, and ate chicken and lark pie, and several kinds of salted fish, with ale or wine to drink. She laughed a great deal with Dudley and took a forkful of sugared ginger off her own plate to feed to him.

Elizabeth leant back against the tree trunk, and held out her hand to Robert. He kissed it and held it when she tried to draw it back.

She smiled at him, a mischievous contented smile.

“There will be more scandal,” she said, “but I don't care. What a magnificent day it has been! Do you know, Robert, it makes me wish I were not a Queen but just the wife of some country gentleman, and able to spend my life like this!”

“It's all well enough for one day or a few days,” Dudley laughed at her and leant back until their shoulders touched. “But you are a Queen by nature, Madam, and all Queens like to play milkmaid now and then. But not for too long. I know you—you'll be restless and irritable by the end of the week, longing for Cecil to come paddling in like an old tabby cat, full of some crisis about Scotland or France.”

“Cats are all the more dangerous because they're quiet. And Cecil is no tabby.”

“And no tiger either,” he retorted.

He only ridiculed the man because he knew he was a person to be feared. He hated him even more because he had never been able to influence Elizabeth against him. She had made Dudley a Privy Councillor, given him a valuable monopoly on the import of wines which brought him enormous wealth, and he was admitted into many governmental secrets, but there was one impenetrable barrier between them and that was the power of William Cecil.

“There are quiet tigers,” she reminded him. “They don't all strut through the forest like you, my Robert, or bellow like old Sussex. Tiger is a good description of Cecil. I shall remember it.”

She picked up a sweetmeat from the little gold dish made in the shape of a galley, with Cupid at the prow. Robert had given it to her as part of his New Year gift. He had also given her a splendid set of ruby buttons and a pair of Spanish leather gloves, tanned to the softness of velvet and covered from knuckle to wrist with her cypher in diamonds and pearls.

She loved sweets; there was always a dish of them by her bedside, on the backgammon board or the chess table, and even on her table when she was in Council. Violets, roses, cachous covered in sugar and marzipan. She ate and drank very little, with a rather plebeian taste which preferred the coarse ale to Spanish wine, but she was as greedy as a child for anything sweet. She watched Robert for a moment; the shade of the beech tree dappled the ground around them with patterns of sunshine and shadow, and the patterns shifted with the movement of a slight breeze.

“Talking of crisis and Scotland and France,” she said at last, “I have a proposition to make to you. I might be able to give you that status you have wanted for so long. Are you interested?”

He turned to her quickly, and the grip of his fingers made her wince.

“If you mean what I hope,” he said. “If status means marriage with you.…”

“You have always wanted to marry a Queen, haven't you, Robert?” she said lightly. “Well how would you like to marry one at last?”

“What do you mean, Madam? There's only one Queen I have ever wanted.”

“You can't have me.” Elizabeth withdrew her hand and sat upright. She had sent Lady Knollys and Lady Warwick out of hearing; the servants had gone to their own food. “We are agreed about that, aren't we?”

“I'm not,” he said. “I never have been; I never will be. I only know better than to mention it to you unless you do. When you spoke like that a moment ago I thought you had changed your mind.”

“I change my mind a great deal,” she admitted. “That is a woman's privilege, and damnably useful it is at times. But my mind won't change on that count. My aversion to marrying you, my Robert, is as strong as my love for you. Never be in doubt about either. But if you want a Queen as a wife, why not the Queen of Scotland?”

She saw the surprise and then the anger on his face.

“You are mocking me,” he said. “I must beg you not to, Madam; it's a sore subject and I have no sense of humour for it.”

“On the contrary, I am quite serious. My cousin needs a husband; unlike me, she is only too anxious to lose her independence. I can't think of anyone who would restrain her ambitions and serve my interests better than you, if you filled the place. What do you say, Robert? If you cannot be King of England, Scotland is not such a poor consolation prize—and she is said to be very beautiful.”