Elizabeth (20 page)

For the first time in her life Elizabeth felt the onset of emotional pain, keener and more terrifying than mere physical agony. She sat with her hands gripping the arms of her state chair, and felt the oppressive silence of the empty room with all its grandeur and the symbolic shadow cast by the velvet canopy over her head.

Robert had gone. Robert had tried to intrigue with Cecil—what a fool, she thought contemptuously, what an ass's head he must have to play those tricks with the Secretary—he had actually tried to resurrect the old conflicts and problems and tempt her to jeopardize her independence. Just when their relationship was really satisfactory and she could indulge her affection for him without stint, when she could parade to the world as a woman with a dozen suitors and one constant lover, without having to commit herself with the men abroad or the man at home beside her—at the moment when she had been enjoying the most peaceful and relaxed period in her reign, Leicester—or Dudley, she corrected herself angrily—Dudley had to dare make an issue of his ambitions, bringing all her old suspicions and conflicts to life. She repeated his crimes to herself, trying to revive her anger as an antidote to the quiet and the loneliness which closed in upon her in the lofty room. He had gone into exile, with the last sting of her reminder about the Richmond estate in his ears. He was gone and she was right to send him; but he would never know how that insane remark about her mother's execution had saved him; it had brought them to the same level, a man and woman quarrelling all the more bitterly because of the closeness of the ties which bound them. In her own way she loved him; Elizabeth's cheeks were wet with tears. It was years since she had cried last, and she could not even remember the occasion—she thought it was her first night as a prisoner in the Tower when life had seemed so sweet and death so revolting and inevitable. Now she wept for Robert, and for herself, because she was the Queen and she would never marry him, and she was still a woman whom her position condemned to send him away and punish herself more than she punished him.

“Madam.”

She raised one hand to shield her wet eyes, and quickly wiped the stains of tears away. Lady Dacre was standing in the doorway; she curtsied and fidgeted shyly.

“Madam, I have been searching for you everywhere.… My Lord Sussex begs an audience; he has received news from Scotland.”

Elizabeth leant forward and said very loudly and distinctly in a voice Lady Dacre hardly recognized, it was so hoarse and choked:

“You can tell my Lord Sussex to go straight to hell. And take the whole of Scotland with him.”

James Stuart, Earl of Moray, stood in the smallest antechamber of the Queen's Palace at Greenwich, warming his hands in front of the fire. It was a cold, sombre room, with stone floors and heavy tapestries and curtains, which closed out what little was left of the dull October daylight. The mist rising from the river had pearled the window panes; it was a different kind of cold to the bitter Scottish climate which never affected James like this miserable pervading dampness which made the clothes he wore seem chilled and clammy.

He had been in England for nearly a month after fleeing from Mary's forces over the Border. The rest of the rebel Lords were in England with him, but not in London. He had been elected to go to the Queen of England and reproach her for not sending them the men and money she had promised and to remind her of her obligations to them. She had encouraged their rebellion against Mary; her agents had made it clear that a successful overthrow of their Queen would place Elizabeth in their debt and she was ready to give them material support. She had sent some money: enough to raise their hopes but too little to have much effect. When Queen Mary's soldiers defeated them and chased them across the Scottish Border in a running fight, the rebels fully expected the Queen of England to declare herself and send them reinforcements. Instead James received a note forbidding him to approach any closer to London and to wait on the Queen's pleasure.

He was not accustomed to such action from a woman; he had never been given an order by his sister Mary until he actually raised arms against her, and it never occurred to him to obey Elizabeth and stay away. Women did not command men, whether they were Queens or not. Certainly no woman commanded him. He set out at once for London and presented his petition to see the Queen.

As the shadows outside the windows lengthened, Moray began to walk up and down the narrow room, his hands behind his back in the attitude which his sister Mary knew so well. He had never been kept waiting by her and she was his sovereign, not a foreigner like this woman.… Mary had always been polite and considerate as befitted her membership of the inferior sex; he could still hardly believe that she had so far debased herself as to mount up and ride after him like a man with a pistol in her belt. She had no sense of fitness; possibly she felt impelled to make up for her miserable husband's cowardice by the unseemly display of masculine spirit. Whatever the reason Moray felt no admiration for her, only hatred; hatred because he had challenged her at last and she had met his challenge and beaten him soundly on his own terms. She had spurned his advice and given herself to a contemptible libertine who drank and whored behind her back; but he did not pity Mary, because he considered it a just retribution for her own obstinacy. He pitied himself instead; his fate was to stand by while a woman degraded the Crown and abused the rights of her subjects, a woman so unfit to be Queen that she had fallen under the influence of a young chamberer whose appetites she couldn't even match after a year of marriage.

At that moment the doors opened. Behind the figure of Elizabeth's Gentleman Usher, Moray saw a room full of light and people.

“Lord Moray to the Queen's Majesty!”

He stepped into the Presence Chamber, finding himself facing a semi-circle of men; two of them dressed in the fashion he recognized as French. He knew instantly that they were official representatives, he knew that the others were Councillors or noblemen, and he saw them all in a second before he came face to face with the Queen of England.

She was dressed in black; deep black, unrelieved by any colour except the rainbow flash of some enormous diamonds which clustered on her breast, catching a festoon of pearls. He had not been sure what to expect; she was much older than Mary, his sister, who also wore black, but never looked like that. She was extremely pale, but it was a pallor he could only associate with stone, a stone face with hard black eyes and narrow lips, painted bright scarlet. A face which was sculptured, too cold and sharp for beauty, not in the least like the Queen his sister, who was so feminine and lovely. He had never seen a woman who looked like Elizabeth Tudor with her extraordinary piercing eyes and her outrageously red hair.

“How dare you come to London when I forbade it!”

He felt the colour coming into his face. A dry voice interrupted after that single, ringing sentence.

“It is customary to kneel in the presence of the Queen.”

The speaker was standing very close to her; he was a quietly-dressed man with round shoulders and a face which was prematurely aged. He had the keenest green eyes that Moray had ever seen in his life. They bore him to his knees like points of steel.

“Don't chide him, Cecil. Don't you know the Scots have no respect for Majesty? My Lord Moray here is in rebellion against his sovereign, our own dear cousin Queen Mary. By God, my Lord, I wonder you show your face before me with such a crime on your conscience!”

“It is no crime, Madam, to rebel against tyranny.”

His voice was shaking with anger; he was so unprepared for the attack that he could not think of anything to say after that one retort, and some instinct bit back the obvious reference to her own promises of subsidies to the rebels.

There was something in her face, and in the faces of the men beside her, which warned him not to say that.

“M. de Foix——” the Queen turned to one of the Frenchmen and pointed at Moray. “You are my witness that this audience has been forced upon me. I forbade Lord Moray to enter London.

“You are a traitor, my Lord. You have led a rebellion against your lawful Prince and I assure you, that as her cousin and sister Queen, I do not succour Queen Mary's enemies.”

Moray knew at last what she was doing. This was a play, arranged for the benefit of the French who must have known she was encouraging Mary's rebels. She was making him the scapegoat and he had to accept it. If he betrayed her, he read the promise in those reptile eyes that he would never leave her capital alive.

“My friends and I have rebelled against the excesses of her husband, Lord Darnley, Madam. The Queen dealt fairly and was fairly treated until she made this marriage.”

“Husband and wife are indivisible,” Elizabeth said coldly. “In any case, it is not for a mere subject to examine the conduct of his Prince. You are a rebel, Lord Moray. You owe the same allegiance to your Queen's husband as to the Queen herself.”

“He will be the ruin of Scotland, and the Queen!” Moray exclaimed bitterly.

“You are not the saviour of either.” Elizabeth's eyes gleamed at him. “You have broken your oath of loyalty to your sovereign. You have defied my express command and dared to present yourself brazenly before me. I warn you, my Lord, you may find yourself a prisoner in England, instead of an exile. Now, gentlemen, if you will leave us, I desire to question Lord Moray more closely about the affair in Scotland and the part he has played in it.”

Moray stood up and watched the French Ambassador kiss her hand and walk past him with a look of contempt; the English Councillors saluted her, including the man she had addressed as Cecil, the man who had told him to kneel. He was interested to see the most famous of her advisers—interested and surprised at the insignificance of his appearance.

They were alone at last and then Elizabeth turned to him.

“Well done, my Lord. You took your rating like a man. I'm sorry I had to deliver it, but I think the French Ambassador was impressed. We must make sure our alliance is a secret.”

“It is almost a secret from us too,” Moray said sourly. “We waited for the soldiers and the money you promised us, and nothing came. We flee to your protection and you try to avoid seeing me. What am I to tell those who sent me, Madam?”

“Tell them,” her voice grated, “that they should have picked a better mannered spokesman. Watch your tongue, my friend; I'm not Queen Mary! As far as my promises are concerned the explanations are due from you. You began this rebellion, and you bungled it. You ran like a pack of curs from my cousin when she brought a few troops against you, and you have the impudence to expect me to throw good money after bad. Tell your fellow rebels this: the best thing you can do is to make peace with my cousin and try to redeem your failure by some other means. I will intercede for you; if you utter one word of our dealings on your eventual return to Scotland, I shall advise Queen Mary that the best way to kill a long serpent is to cut off the head. Farewell, Lord Moray. Be thankful that she is your mistress instead of me. She may be persuaded to forgive you.”

She turned her back on him and walked out of the room into her own apartments before he could answer. As he left the Presence Chamber a page approached him.

“Sir Wiliam Cecil sent me to conduct you to your horses, my Lord.”

Moray followed him without a word. He found himself in a small courtyard, and was about to protest that this was not the way he had entered Greenwich, when the page pointed out a magnificent chestnut gelding, its rein held by one of four mounted gentlemen.

“Sir William begs you to accept this mount; your own has been too hard hidden to take you on the journey back. These gentlemen of the Queen's household will see you safely on your road, my Lord.”

Moray nodded, his practical mind evaluating the splendid horse and its equally fine equipment. It was the first indication that Elizabeth's powerful Secretary was his friend.

Leicester was still exiled from the Court; he had moved to his own very luxurious house at Wanstead after an interval, and his life was not as isolated or as dull as Elizabeth liked to imagine. He had many visitors because no one believed that the Queen would keep up their quarrel, and it was a good opportunity to ingratiate themselves with the Earl against the time when he returned to his former position of power. He hunted and held evening parties, and he complained steadily that his separation from the Queen was affecting his health in the hope that she would hear it and relent. He gave no sign of the intense resentment he felt for the way she had treated him and for his present humiliating position. No word of reproach or complaint escaped him, but inwardly he was convulsed with rage and anxiety. Elizabeth made no move, showed no sign of recalling and forgiving him. The time passed and Dudley's nerves grew ragged and his sense of grievance increased. He heard that she was gay and surrounded by men eager to take his place, and that she spoke of him contemptuously if she mentioned him at all. He had no redress, no means of revenge and he had never thought of taking a mistress. He could satisfy himself at Wanstead or anywhere else without risking discovery; there were women in his household who had accommodated him at some time or another and been paid for it afterwards by his steward, but for the last six years he had never made love to a woman of his own rank.

He could hardly believe that the woman who lay beside him in his bed that autumn morning was truly flesh and blood. In the half light she was almost a parody of that other woman who had given him so much and then ruthlessly snatched it all away; red hair, dark eyes, the same rather deep voice, but softer, more voluptuous, less commanding and the face was different. It was a round face with smooth cheeks and a pretty nose instead of an imperious beak, a face that was sensual and feminine. He knew her quite well; that was what surprised him when she first made advances; he had talked to Lettice, Countess of Essex, many times at Court and thought her an attractive woman who was probably as light as her reputation. When she came among his many visitors he was pleased; when she accepted his invitation to stay and dine, he was not suspicious. When she suddenly came into his arms and offered to comfort him for Elizabeth's heartlessness, he had responded before he realized what he was doing. She was charming and it was impossible to rebuff her advances without ill-grace, and now he was Lady Essex's lover. She turned over and smiled at him; she had a curious slow smile like a contented cat.