Elizabeth (3 page)

Bands of musicians played on every corner, their music muffled by the cheers which seemed to increase in volume. The procession halted frequently while the Queen accepted flowers and gifts and listened to long addresses of welcome; several times she paused to speak to the ordinary citizens who crowded round her horse's head. The noise of cannon grew louder as they went deeper into the City, and when they rounded the sweep of Mark Lane, Elizabeth raised her hand and the procession halted. The grey walls and turrets of the Tower rose ahead of her, standing like a jewel of stone in the centre of the deep, still moat. The drawbridge was down, and she could see the Governor of the Tower, standing with the yeomen warders in their crimson tunics and breastplates, making a glow of colour under the shadow of the massive spiked portcullis. Never had the Tower seemed more majestic or more remote; it was strange that a place of dread and torment should be so beautiful—for though it was a Palace as well as a prison, she thought of it as a prison and she always would.

Memories pressed in on her, isolating her for a few seconds from the splendid cavalcade, the glittering uniforms, the dignitaries, the cheers and trumpet fanfares. If she heard anything it was the steady boom of gunfire as the Tower cannon fired a Royal salute. And yet only six years before she had come to that same place, arriving by water, and under another portcullis, while the rain lashed down and the whole teeming City was silent, its citizens at church. She had come in by the Traitors' Gate, the prisoner of her sister Mary, suspected of a plot against her life, and neither she nor the men who escorted her, men like Sussex and Arundel who now rode behind her in the procession, no, not one of them had thought she would leave the Tower alive.

The moment lengthened, its significance began to shadow those who witnessed her triumph, and when she turned she saw her own memories reflected in their faces. Her voice was clear; it had a deep tone which carried; her words went beyond the ears of Dudley and Pembroke and Sussex:

“Some have fallen from being Princes of this land to being prisoners in this place; I am raised from being a prisoner in this place to being a Prince of this land. That dejection was a work of God's justice—my advancement is a work of His mercy. I swear by it that I shall be merciful to all men as He was merciful to me.”

As the last members of the procession moved under the Tower gatehouse, and the Queen passed out of sight, the crowds broke up, reforming into groups round the musicians; they began to dance and sing, and fought round the street conduits which were running ale instead of water. All through the night the London crowds celebrated round bonfires blazing in the streets, and someone found a man who kept a dancing bear and dragged the poor beast out to perform. It was a drunken, rowdy celebration, and here and there fights broke out when a known adherent of the dead Queen Mary was identified. The splendid hangings were quickly drawn in, out of reach of grabbing hands, scavengers attacked the tableaux, smashing them to pieces and making off with bits of cloth and garlands. By the dawn of the following day the City looked like a battlefield, its drunken or injured casualties lying in the streets, but the lawlessness was an excellent measure of the popularity of the new Queen. Her words on entering the Tower were repeated and embellished; those who had called out to her and actually received an answer, lived on their anecdotes for days. The people of London were as sentimental as they were rough; the idea of a sovereign who appeared to care for them fired their loyalty. It was a fine contrast to her sister, Mary, who used to ride among them without a smile or a gesture of awareness that they existed.

Hearing the reports Cecil was well satisfied. He had cast his lot for good or evil with Elizabeth. As he had told her, there was no alternative claimant to the throne but the Catholic Mary Stuart, fortunately living in France as wife to the heir to the French throne; but even so, Cecil was too cautious to be entirely sanguine.

However, he was safer than he might have expected. Elizabeth had a genius for touching hearts, which he thought to be strange, for he had discovered that her personality was secretive and cold on close acquaintance. She puzzled him, and he disliked that, for he preferred to document his fellow humans; but there was no pigeon-hole in which she fitted. She spent her evenings playing cards or dancing, decked in Mary's jewels, but she sat with her Council for hours at a stretch and never complained that she was tired or tried to defer the most tedious business till the following day. She gave the impression of spontaneity, when he knew from working with her that she weighed every word before she said it. She expressed herself with beautiful simplicity, as she did as she rode to the Tower, but she could speak and write in riddles when she wished to confuse an issue. He knew she was clever, more clever than he had ever supposed; he imagined she was susceptible to flattery—yet he doubted if she were deceived by it. He supposed many things about Elizabeth whom he had elected to serve and follow for life, but he was sure of very little.

The morning after her entry in London, one of the Queen's pages came to Cecil's apartment in the main building of the Tower, with a message to attend upon her.

He was admitted to her Privy Chamber, a small, primitive room with a narrow window which admitted inadequate light. Elizabeth was seated at a table writing, with two candles burning beside her. She wore a loose gown of blue velvet, her hair confined in a net of gold thread sewn with pearls. She had a habit of receiving him and other members of her Court in her dressing robe. He privately thought it unbecoming in an unmarried woman to be so lax, but he dared not tell her so. He was discovering every day that there were more and more things he dared not do or say to Elizabeth.

“Master Cecil—good morning to you—if you can see whether it's morning or midnight in this pest hole! It's so dark here that my ancestors must have been cats if they could read and write in such a gloom.”

“Your Grace finds it a strain on your eyes?” Cecil knew that she had short sight and suffered from headaches. Certainly the lighting was poor.

“I find the Tower itself a strain. It's cold as the devil and damp as hell. I can't wait to leave it and go to Whitehall. It's only fit for prisoners. Take that stool, Cecil. I've been seeing into some costs and I want your opinion.—If this place is bleak, it's only matched by my Treasury. I find I come to a bankrupt throne.—Look at these figures.”

She continued while he read. “Trade is poor; my sister's war with France has swallowed every spare penny,
and
taken the men who should be busy at their trades. The coinage is so debased that our credit is a laughing stock abroad. These are the opinions of Sir Thomas Gresham; I heartily agree with them.”

“What does he propose we should do, Madam?” Gresham had a genius for money; Elizabeth's financial adviser was as well chosen as her Master of the Horse. It was typical of her that she had so much in common with two men who had nothing in common with each other.

“Call in the debased currency and restore the old value. Curb spending and expand trade. In the meantime, he undertakes to go to Flanders and borrow for us. He'll tell his own tale to get the money, and he's confident that he can succeed.”

“I shall draft the Bill to go before Parliament. As you know I'm not an expert in finance, Madam, and I'm content to follow Gresham.”

“If you're not one now, Cecil,” she said, turning a page in front of her, “then you must learn. Money is the lifeblood of a government. Without it, you cannot bribe, you cannot wage war, you cannot stand any man's equal. As soon as the Coronation is over, all the Crown's expenses must be cut.”

“May I suggest, Madam, that you begin before your Coronation, and limit the sum to be spent on the late Queen's funeral?”

It was more than he could bear to hear her threatening economy and ordering him to learn finance like any counting clerk, while she proposed to lavish money on the interment of Mary Tudor.

“£40,000 is excessive, even for a sovereign,” he added.

Elizabeth looked at him, and laid down her pen.

“Would you have me bury my sister like a pauper? Excessive or not, that is the sum I shall spend on her. Spare me any more quibbling. I'm sick of hearing you and the others sniffling over halfpennies.”

“But when you are prepared to stint yourself, why throw your money away on this—this burial? Madam, for God's sake, at least allow me to understand you—why must Queen Mary go to a more sumptuous grave than any other sovereign of England?”

“Because,” Elizabeth spoke very slowly and distinctly, “because, my friend, she forbore to send me to mine. I will not sit here squabbling about the cost of her coffin. She was my father's daughter and Queen of this realm when she lived; she is no less in death.”

Mary had spared her life, that was the reason she gave Cecil for a funeral which was going to cost nearly as much as her own Coronation. But there was more to it than that. There were memories of early years at Hatfield, and the sister who was kind and soothed her nightmares. The little cap, sewn with pearls, and the dress made from a length of blue brocade—she had them still, reminders of Mary's generosity, when she emptied her meagre purse to buy the child Elizabeth a costly present. No, Cecil couldn't be expected to understand that; she hardly understood it herself. She only knew that now she could make a present to Mary and bury her with all the pomp and splendour of the Roman Catholic Church she had loved, and Cecil and the rest of them could go to the devil.

The Secretary had no idea what was passing through her mind; she appeared perfectly composed, frowning over some item in front of her, the argument over Mary's funeral apparently forgotten. But he did know that he had lost again in the contest of wills.

“You're very silent, Cecil,” Elizabeth said suddenly. “Come, I have some human feelings—don't condemn me for it.”

“God forbid.” He coughed and changed the subject. He was embarrassed and not quite as proof against a woman's charm as he supposed.

“The Duke de Feria has been to see me, Madam. He's asking for another audience with you. He wants assurances of your continued friendship for his master King Philip.”

“Don't worry, he shall have them. Better still, Philip shall hear of them in person. Last night I drafted a letter to send to my dear brother-in-law. Here, read it.”

It was a long letter, written in her exquisite Italian copperplate hand. He had seen other letters equally long in which she had managed to confuse her meaning to the point where it was impossible to make any sense of the contents at all. But this was a masterpiece of clarity.

She began by telling Philip of her accession, reminding him of how much was due to his intervention on her behalf with the late Queen. Not once, but many times, she wrote, Philip had protected her from the false accusations of her enemies. Cecil read the last paragraph aloud:

“‘My only motive in writing this to your Majesty is to let you see that I do not forget your great kindness to me.… I shall be able to show my gratitude to your Majesty by doing all that it prompts me for your service and in your interests.…'”

He put down the letter and looked at her. She smiled at him across the table, the same wry, twisted smile which made Dudley vaguely uncomfortable.

“Words,” Elizabeth said, “just words; they cost nothing and they mean less. I dare not let him know his influence here died with my sister. When he does realize it, I will be strong enough to suggest that if he was fool enough to believe my letter he deserves to eat it—all ten pages!”

“If you do owe him all that you say here, no wonder he expects the alliance to continue.”

“I owe him nothing. How long would I have kept my head if Mary had borne a child? He knew she would die early and I would inherit. And now, my friend, he has to support me whether he wants to or not!”

“Even when he knows that you are a Protestant, Madam? I saw his religious fervour, blackening the English skies with smoke from burning honest men and women; why should he support you when he knows you are the opposite of everything he stands for?”

Elizabeth stood up and began to walk up and down, her long gown trailing the floor, one hand opening and shutting in a gesture which always betrayed either nerves or excitement in her.

“Religious fervour is just another name for policy where that man is concerned. His god is Philip—he worships at his own shrine and says his prayers to himself! Don't make the mistake of judging him by the burning of a few cranks and Puritans! That was my sister's error, not his!”

“Madam, do you describe Bishop Latimer, Archbishop Cranmer as cranks?”

It was Cecil's recurring weakness, this obsession with the Protestant martyrs of the previous reign, whose number he had not elected to join when he had the chance. At that moment it jarred on Elizabeth and she swung round on him; for a second her temper blazed.

“Don't drag me into your religious bear pit! Latimer, Ridley, Cranmer, and the rest! What the devil does it matter what I call them? They burnt Catholics, that precious trio of saintly clerics, and then a Catholic burnt them! That's the long and short of it as far as I'm concerned. Know this, Cecil, once for all time. I'm no bigot—I care nothing for how men worship or whether they worship at all. It's a matter for their conscience, and the only time I'll take a hand in it is if my throne is threatened. I'm a Protestant because that's what the people want me to be, and because according to Catholics I'm a bastard with no claim at all. Now do you understand me, and will you let me finish about Spain, which really matters, and not interrupt about things that aren't worth a fingers' snap?”

He flushed at the rebuke but said nothing; there was nothing he could say. He waited, tense and silent, until the angry light died out of her eyes and she began to pace up and down again.