Elizabeth (19 page)

But soon his unwholesome appetites began to dwell upon the prospect of physical possession, and Mary's ignorance inflamed his vanity with the desire to arouse passions which had never woken in her. The poisonous inferiority which festered beneath his polished exterior became suddenly obsessed with the idea of completely subjugating his cousin; this was instantly fused with his personal ambitions which he imagined could be indulged without hindrance from anyone and with her ardent complicity.

With her, too, he was clever, being gentle and refined in the initial stages of their relationship; it gave him a perverted satisfaction to reverse his normal mode of conduct until the time came when he would be entitled to use her as he liked. He watched her headlong, helpless infatuation with him and preened like a peacock. By the time his conceit had got the better of his caution, Mary was too blind with love for him to notice anything.

Fundamentally she was a creature of emotion, though the emotions had been schooled by necessity and the discipline imposed on a Princess of Royal blood. Men like Lethington and her Guise uncles had been able to muzzle her temper and moderate her pride only so long as her personal passions were left sleeping. But now Darnley woke them; Ruthven spoke poisonously of her lust, sneering at her insistence on an early marriage. And if it was love that Mary felt, it was the lust of Darnley which began to permeate the atmosphere beteween them, offending even Lethington who loved her and hoped for so much from the match.

By the summer the real implications of Darnley as Consort were obvious to everyone except Mary. He was so swollen with self-importance that he began insulting her Lords, taking particular delight in baiting the dour, sensitive Lord James, whose resentment of his sister was inflamed still more by the arrogance and pretensions of her future husband. He took liberties with the impeccable ladies surrounding her for the pleasure of seeing their embarrassment on their mistress's behalf. There were times when the Queen saw him emptying his glass and lolling rudely in his chair, his face flushed and disagreeable. She made his youth an excuse; he was only nineteen and probably homesick, and if his head was a little turned, then she was to blame and not Darnley.

As soon as she sensed opposition, her pride fastened on to the marriage with the obstinacy for which the Stuarts were famous. She had found a man she loved who was of Royal blood, perfectly suited by inheritance and upbringing to be her husband, and those who attempted to dissuade her or speak against him only seemed to be trying to thwart her happiness.

Lethington was the first casualty among her friends. He blamed himself bitterly for his part in bringing Darnley to her notice and he almost tore his hair in despair when he realized that Mary was incapable of recognizing a mistake and retreating from it while there was time.

If any member of the Reformed Church were prepared to accept the marriage, Darnley alienated the mildest of them by flaunting his Catholicism and encouraging the Queen to do the same. The English ambassador Randolph wrote to Elizabeth that Lord Darnley was making so many enemies that Mary might yet be forced to abandon her intentions, and Elizabeth chose that moment to order Darnley and Lord Lennox to return to England under pain of her displeasure.

As if she had only just realized what Mary was going to do, Elizabeth wrote her a personal letter, calculated to irritate the most patient recipient, warning her not to attempt to marry an English subject without her permission, and protesting that the Earl of Leicester was ready to travel to Scotland and offer himself without further delay. Mary's answer was to proclaim Darnley King of Scotland and marry him in Holyrood Chapel on July 29th. The resentments, anxieties and jealousies which had been smouldering in the hearts of Lord James and his associate Protestants, the powerful Duke of Argyll, the Earl of Rothes, the Lords Glencairn and Boyd and many others, were fanned by the conduct of Darnley into open rebellion within a few months. Their influence with Mary was overridden in a way that gave them no alternative but to overthrow their enemy by violence and compel the Queen to give them the religious assurances which had always been the condition of her reign and their support.

They were no longer received at her Court; their advice was ignored, their possessions endangered by the new King who was fond of threatening to annex their lands. And the Queen who had managed them all so cleverly, especially her half-brother at times when he had less cause for complaint than at that moment, now lost her temper in an interview where the bitterest reproaches and accusations were exchanged between them. She had never liked him, and now she felt strong enough to show it; he and his friends were meddling in her affairs and criticizing her husband, and much of her vehemence was due to the fact that the passionate love-match had developed a frightening and distasteful aspect which she hardly dared admit to herself.

She parted from Lord James with the injunction to obey her as his sovereign, or she would forget the treatment due to him as her brother. By the following spring, James had mustered a force of armed men, in company with Argyll and many of the other Protestant Lords, and refused Mary's order to submit.

The Queen replied by recalling Lord Bothwell from his exile, and gathering an army which she placed under his command. Urged on by Bothwell who was longing to revenge himself upon Mary and his enemies, and by Darnley who saw the whole issue as a God-sent means of removing the last restraint upon his conduct to the Queen and his interference in the country, Mary declared her brother and his followers traitors and outlaws, and ordered her army into the field against them.

It was a particularly fine summer in England. Elizabeth woke in her room at Windsor Castle to a succession of warm and lovely days, days full of peace and serenity, where her ordered, prosperous kingdom seemed to laze under a benevolent sun, and she amused herself by reading the reports of the war and turmoil in Scotland to Cecil as they sat together on the terrace of the Castle, looking down on to the town below.

They shared the success of their plan like two lovers, entranced with the secret; they spoke the same language and almost thought the same thoughts, united by an understanding which had suddenly reached a state of perfection. Cecil had come to the point where he considered her ability almost inhuman; certainly he had forgotten that he had ever mistrusted her or feared weakness because she was a woman. His work obsessed him, but his work and his relationship with Elizabeth were indivisible; he could never imagine himself conferring with another sovereign, even the idea of a King was repugnant to him, though he still disliked the principle of feminine rule. To Cecil, she was above comparison. His devotion to her was more passionate in its intensity than any fleshly love. She exhilarated his spirits, literally exalting him in his own eyes because of the trust she placed in him and the extraordinary satisfaction he derived from their intimacy. She could torment him or flatter or disconcert him, and she did all three, but she gave him the feeling that he held a particular place in her heart which was founded on his own merits, and that in that place he was unique. His wife had once complained that she had lost him more completely to the Queen than to a mistress. Cecil had not spoken to her for a week, even after she apologized.

He was jealous of the younger, gayer men who surrounded her; he regarded their attempts to flatter her as an insult. The suggestion that anyone less than a King or a King's heir should dream of marrying her infuriated him, and he was furious that afternoon when they sat playing chequers on the sunny Castle terrace. He had been prepared to tolerate Leicester in the role she had allotted him; he had restrained his objection to the title and to the money she gave him on the assumption that it was part of her intrigue against Mary Stuart. But only three hours earlier Leicester had come to his room and made a plain proposal that he should advise his marriage to Elizabeth as the final coup to the disaster of Mary's union with Darnley. If Elizabeth married and bore children, that would dispose of the Scots Queen and her claim and leave her completely at the mercy of her enemies. Cecil had not trusted himself to answer directly. He temporized, controlling his anger and suspicion, and Leicester left him imagining that he had been clever in approaching his principal opponent first.

“You seem very distracted, Cecil. It's your move.”

He pushed the chair back from the table and looked at Elizabeth.

“I was thinking that the Archduke Charles of Austria might be worth considering, Madam.”

Elizabeth sighed in exasperation.

“Not another husband for me, for God's sake. I've told you I don't intend to marry. If you want one reason, remember my cousin across the Border—marriage hasn't brought her much benefit! Now get on with the game.”

“As much benefit as it would bring you if you married Robert Leicester,” he said suddenly.

Elizabeth's eyes narrowed.

“What the devil are you talking about?”

“He came to me today and suggested it; he seemed to think you might agree. His whole tone was so confident that I was thoroughly alarmed. I thought all that matter was settled between you.”

“So did I,” she said sharply. “Page, take this board away! Now, what exactly did master Robert say to you?”

“He said I should counsel you to do it. He said you should have a husband and heirs, and he proposed himself. I gave no answer one way or another. I had to ask you first.”

“By the God above,” she said, “his earldom has gone to his head … he's heard too many state secrets and now he thinks to direct an intrigue of his own.… How dare he mention such a thing to you behind my back!”

“He said you'd be wise to choose him,” Cecil continued, deliberately goading her temper. “I did point out that you were not in such desperate need of a man as he seemed to think.”

“I'll leave him in no doubt of it.” She stood up suddenly; her face was white with anger. “I shall find my Lord Leicester and perhaps remind him that I can put him back in the dust where he was when I found him. You may leave me, Cecil. I will have no master here and only one mistress. If he has forgotten that, I shall have to teach him all over again.”

Leicester listened to her for the first half an hour without losing his temper. He hardly spoke because she gave him no opportunity to interrupt her. She began with calm, the kind of deadly, acid calm which disguised a state of furious temper. She asked him how he liked his new estates and his even newer title; she remarked on his rich clothes and pointed out the pearl earring she had given him. She appraised him and his possessions like a man reminding his mistress of the payments made to her, and then suddenly the quiet, sarcastic voice rose to a shout, and she told him she had a good mind to strip him naked like the beggar he was and throw him out into the Windsor streets. If he dared to approach Cecil or even think in his miserable heart of marrying her again that was exactly what she would have done with him.

He had never seen her so angry; her face was ashen and her eyes were blazing through the narrowed lids. No past quarrel had been as bitter as this one. He was pale himself, and a nerve in his cheek was throbbing. He had no idea how he had stood and listened to her insults without striking her. But he knew that he would never dare, as he had not dared the day she placed him under house arrest for Amy's murder. He was afraid of her, but he was not naturally a coward.

“You deny me everything,” he burst out, using the only excuse he had. “Not only marriage but the rights of a man with a woman who says she loves him! Give me those, and I won't think of marriage to get them! You taunt me with the things you have given me, as if that was compensation for sitting at your feet like a trained dog. May I remind you, Madam, that my father was the Duke of Northumberland when you were still plain Lady Elizabeth!”

She moved so quickly he was taken by surprise; her right hand caught him across the face so hard that he stepped back. For a moment they stood close, glaring into each other's eyes, quivering with hatred like two animals waiting to spring.

“The crows picked your father's head,” she spat at him.

“As they picked your mother's,” he retorted. As he said it, the thought raced through his mind that he had ruined himself with those five words. But she did not strike him again as he half expected. She stared at him and then her eyes opened wider; they were cold and empty; suddenly without rage.

“No man in England would have dared say such a thing to me.”

“No man will soon dare to say anything to you but what you want to hear. But don't count me among them. I make an honest proposal to marry you, and you spit at me like an adder. Take one of your foreign suitors, marry some half-wit German who'll climb into your bed as a duty, and treat you as King Philip did your sister! Take anyone you like, and by God I wish them joy of you!”

She turned her back on him deliberately; she scornfully, almost casually, dismissed and sentenced him at the same time without turning round.

“You are exiled. Go to your house at Richmond.
My
house, which I gave you. Stay there and think on your presumption and ingratitude.”

When the door closed and she was alone, Elizabeth turned slowly as if she were tired, tired and much older than her thirty-two years. She went to her chair of state, the tall-backed chair covered with carving and gilt where she received official visitors in her Presence Chamber, and sat down in it in an attitude of despair. The room was unnaturally quiet; the bright sunshine streamed through the lattice windows, making patterns on the floor. Elizabeth leaned back against the chair; her head ached—just like her sister when she was upset, she thought irrelevantly. Mary was always tormented with pain of some kind; toothache, headache, pains that ran through her limbs, and above all the pain that nagged at her heart, the pain of memories and of loving a husband who did not love her.