Elizabeth (40 page)

Robert sat by the fire, with his arm round the Queen of England's shoulders. The room was shuttered and warm, lit by a few candles and the bright dancing light from the blazing logs. They had dined together and she had eaten more than usual to please him. She was painfully thin and hollow-eyed, without appetite or enthusiasm even for hunting. It seemed to him that she had aged ten years since the death of Mary Stuart. He had expected her to pretend to be angry when she heard that the sentence had been carried out; he was not surprised when she accused him and the Council of sending the warrant behind her back, and protested to the foreign ambassadors, with tears in her eyes, that she never meant it to be executed. He was not even indignant when she vented her rage upon the innocent Davidson and threw him into the Tower. But he was astonished when she ordered a State funeral for Mary at Peterborough Cathedral and buried her at the enormous cost of forty thousand pounds. Then he began to believe in her grief; he believed it still more when her health showed visible signs of decline. She wept frequently, even when she was alone. She paced up and down her rooms at night, unable to sleep, and sent her food away untasted. And night after night, he listened to her outpourings of regret and recriminations and excuse, and marvelled at the effect the death of someone she had never seen and who had been her mortal enemy for over twenty years, was having on her constitution and her will. He had always thought her hard; now she tormented herself by demanding accounts of Mary's execution, cursing the Dean of Peterborough, who had disputed with the unhappy woman on the scaffold, denouncing the religion which was the only thing left to comfort her.

“They have no pity, these gentle servants of God,” she said bitterly, turning towards him. They had been discussing it yet again. She knew it by heart now, but she was still morbidly unsatisfied.

“She answered him bravely,” Leicester said.

“She was braver in her death than most of the dogs surrounding me would be,” Elizabeth retorted.

“Then let her rest in your own mind,” he urged her. “It had to be done and you know this. She died more royally than she lived; forget her, Madam. You always said to me that only fools dwell on the past—where has that stout heart of yours gone?”

“Sometimes I think it's in her grave at Peterborough.” Elizabeth leant against him and sighed. “I have fought and schemed for Queenship and now I feel as if I had killed part of myself. I feel bloody-handed and degraded, and only you, of them all, understand me enough to know why.”

“I understand you and I love you,” he answered her gently. “Too well to let you pine away for a thing that was inevitable. She had to die, Madam, and you have to live. Now, more than ever, or it will all have been in vain.… Don't think of it or speak of it again. I swear to you now that this is the last time I shall discuss it with you.”

She looked at him obliquely.

“Those are high words, Robert. I've had enough of other men's dictation in the past few months.”

“I don't dictate,” he said. “But I want to see you smile and show your spirit. You've reminded me often enough that you were the Queen in the past, and this is not the time to show that you are just a woman.”

“It never is the time,” Elizabeth said wearily. “It has never been the time in the whole of my life.”

“You cannot change yourself,” he told her.

Suddenly she smiled at him and touched his face.

“You grow very wise, Robert; what should I do without you now? You are the only one who sees me as I am, who sees the grey hair under the wig, the lines beneath the paint.… How is my Lady Leicester? You've seen very little of her lately.”

“She's well,” he said, hesitating. Elizabeth never mentioned his wife unless she were about to quarrel with him.

“I have even forgiven you that,” she said. “If she is impatient to see you, she must wait a little longer. I have the first claim.”

“You have always had it and you always will.”

Elizabeth was staring into the fire; she was sitting more upright, not leaning against him so limply and some of the lassitude had gone out of her expression.

“I will need you more and more, Robert,” she said suddenly. “I will need every man in England who is loyal and able before very long. Now I say it for the last time. Mary Stuart is dead. But like the dragon in the fable, when you cut off one head another grows. I have done what Burleigh and all of you wanted, what had to be done if you like. And now we must take the consequences, and the consequences are Philip of Spain and the Armada he has been building. Our spies report that it will be ready in six months!”

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Hundreds of miles from England, Philip II, King of Spain, sat in his rooms in the Escurial Palace outside Madrid. For many years Philip's recreation had been the planning of this tall sombre building, which even included the magnificent tomb he had designed for himself. It was lofty and cool, and the views showed him a panorama of the capital city of Spain and the brightly-coloured fields and orange groves, scorching in the fierce sun. Philip seldom looked at the view. Heat and colour did not excite him; he had decorated his own apartments with sombre tapestries and dark furniture, and he had dressed in black velvet for over forty years.

As a young man he had been handsome, but the general impression he created was one of reserve and coldness. His hair was receding, it had once been as pale as flax, and his protuberant eyes were a chilly blue. They were heavy eyes, matched by an ugly prominent lower lip. He was sixty-one but he moved and spoke like a much older man. His body was frail, and his habits were monastic. He ate and drank very little, prayed and attended every priestly office during his long days, and he worked and worked until everyone surrounding him was exhausted.

It was difficult to believe that he had ever experienced an emotion or succumbed to a passion. He seemed strangely lifeless, and his curious pale eyes were dull. He never raised his voice, never gave an order without wording it as a request, but he had buried three wives and kept his mistress in a walled-up room without sunlight or fresh air until she died because she had been unfaithful to him. The mistress was the key to the mystery of Philip and his personality. His wives had been chosen for him: the elderly, plain Queen Mary of England, whom he had abandoned to die alone, and two French Princesses for whom he had no enthusiasm; but he had chosen Anna Eboli to please himself. She was beautiful and full of fiery spirit; as a girl she had lost an eye duelling with her page. She was not moral or religious or meek, and she satisfied the immoderate appetites for lust and domination which consumed Philip, burning away beneath his courtesy and reserve like the deep fires of a volcano.

He was cruel with the brutality of the supreme egotist. He had punished Anna with a positive genius for knowing what would most torture that restless, active woman, so passionately fond of life. And then he had forgotten her completely. He supported and encouraged the Inquisition originally formed to rid Spain of the heresies of the Moors and the Jews, and expanded it into a dreaded political weapon. He had largely isolated the Church from the direction of the Pope and, when it suited him, he disregarded Papal interference. He was the most absolute monarch in the Christian world, and the most feared man who had ever ruled Spain. And for nearly thirty years he had been pursuing his plan to conquer England. He had been patient, because time meant nothing to him; he was apt to regard himself as immortal, even when he went alone to the magnificent empty tomb under the Escurial. He had never forgotten England. He was unaccustomed to being challenged and treated as if he were of no importance. He had preserved his usual cool politeness during the three miserable years he was married to Mary Tudor; his feeling never showed on the surface when the London mobs hooted after him and published coarse lampoons about him in the streets. He listened politely while the English Ministers and the English clergy talked over his head and disregarded his advice, and he accepted the supreme humiliation of having to ask his wife for the least thing he wanted. He had been calm and patient, and escaped back to Spain or the Netherlands as often as he could; but his pride had suffered a permanent scar. His hatred for that alien country and its people had grown into an obsession, and Philip's whole character was moulded like cement; it closed over an idea or a grievance and hardened for ever. His desire for revenge was even strong enough to consider marrying his sister-in-law Elizabeth and trying to dominate through her, but she had rejected him and, in his heart, Philip was relieved. He wanted war with England, not then or in the immediate future but at some date ahead, when he could give the details his full attention. He was prepared to wait, and while he waited he had personalized his simmering grievance and hatred until the whole of England, independent, rude, scornful of Spain and Spain's omnipotent King, was symbolized in Elizabeth Tudor.

He would never admit that she was clever. Throughout the years when her policy, her lies and interference in the Netherlands had kept him from striking at her, Philip chose to regard her success as accidental. He was not in a hurry. He could wait, and he had waited nearly thirty years.

The table in front of him now was covered by maps. A sheaf of papers, statistics of men and ammunition, provisions for the long voyage, and a list of all the ships of war, were by his elbow. He had read through them, making notes and referring to the navigation maps set out in front of him. It was the largest fleet ever assembled in the history of warfare, and it would have sailed a year earlier, soon after the death of the Queen of Scots, except that Drake, one of the notorious pirates employed by Elizabeth, had brought a small force of ships into the harbours of Cadiz and Corunna, and sunk some of the Spanish fleet at their moorings. Philip's revenge was delayed, but he ordered replacements to be built and set the date a year ahead. Now everything was ready. Nothing perturbed him, nothing deflected his single-minded purpose to reduce England to ashes, put its Queen and all her Protestant advisers to death, and claim what remained of his inheritance. The only wise word that Mary Stuart had ever written was when she made her will and bequeathed him her right to the English Crown. He had done his best to bring about her death by encouraging plots on her behalf without giving the support of troops and money they needed to succeed. So long as Mary lived, he had been unable to declare war; he was not going to subdue England only to give it to a Queen who was half French and bound to serve French interests. He was not going to give England to anyone when he had taken it, except perhaps to one of his daughters. It would be like the subjugated Indies, part of the Spanish Empire, and once it was properly pacified, fit to form part of the dowry of a Princess of Spain. He had reviewed his Armada of ships and bestowed the command of them upon the Duke of Medina Sidonia. They rode at anchor in the ports of Spain towering like floating castles, their bright pennants streaming in the wind, cannon massed upon the decks. And in the Netherlands a seasoned force of thirty thousand soldiers were waiting to embark.

The King looked up for a moment, clasping hands swollen with gout; one of his eyes was succumbing to a milky cataract and he found it difficult to read for more than a short period. He sometimes wondered how age had afflicted Elizabeth. Like a lot of old men he was apt to think of her as she had been when they last met; very slim and upright and not unpleasing to look at, though she was too thin and her features were too angular. He liked women to be rounded and small, with bright black eyes and smooth, voluptuous hair. He could not quite imagine Elizabeth as an old woman. In his heart he still saw himself as young.

He rang a little silver handbell and his secretary came out of an alcove; there was always someone on duty all through the day and night. The King sometimes got up from his bed and dictated a letter. He had no Ministers capable of taking even a minor decision. He loved and cherished his power and refused to delegate anything to anyone else.

“Write an order to the Commanders of the Armada,” he said. The secretary sat down at a second small table and waited.

“Tell them,” the precise voice went one, “that the King has studied the charts of the tides and approves the route suggested. He commends their enterprise to Almighty God, and orders them to sail for England on the nineteenth day of May. When you have finished, I will sign the letter. Send it at once to the Duke of Medina Sidonia.”

He read through the letter carefully, and then wrote his own form of signature at the end of it. Three words:
I
,
the King
. Then he left the quiet room and walked slowly down to his private chapel where he knelt in the dim oratory and prayed that God would bless the venture and grant him the victory. It was not a prayer of supplication, for Philip had long since identified his own will with the designs of Providence. He was the King, and God had never failed him.

Elizabeth was alone in her Privy Chamber at Greenwich. It was seven o'clock in the evening and the July sunlight was still streaming through the windows. The room was cool and very quiet; the Queen stood without moving; the black brocade dress hung loosely on her for she had grown very thin; her cheeks were hollowed, and her heavy-lidded eyes were ringed with sleeplessness and anxiety. They had brought her the news that morning: the first ships of the Armada had been sighted off the Devon coast. Up and down the shores of South-west England, the warning beacons blazed. She had imagined the men standing guard beside them, scanning the misty coastline, and then the first shout, the pointing hand, the moment when the watchers gathered, shielding their eyes, and stood there on the cliffs, looking at the distant sails moving like clouds upon the horizon. The Armada was in sight, and now the beacons were fired and the tocsins were ringing, and in all the towns and villages a drummer sounded the call to arms. After twenty-eight years Philip of Spain was returning to England and nothing stood between him and victory but the will of her people to resist and a small fleet of fast, heavily-gunned ships. A force of thirty thousand men were gathered at Winsdor, under the command of her own cousin, Lord Hunsdon, to defend her from capture, and sixteen thousand men waited at Tilbury, barring the way to London. She had almost laughed aloud when the Council proposed this disposition of her forces; she could see Burleigh, greyer and more bent than ever, his face contorted with anxiety, insisting that the person of the Queen was more important than the possession of the capital. Without her there was no point, no reason for resistance and bloodshed. If Philip captured her, England would fall with her. He had been unable to hide his reproach as he looked at her. She was only a woman, without husband or children, and the freedom of her country and the lives of every man and woman who had served her, were dependent upon her alone. And while the numbers of her soldiers were impressive, the quality was pitiful. They were raw and untrained, poorly fed and indifferently armed, conscripted in desperate haste from a population which had not waged a serious war for nearly thirty years. There was not one military commander who could compete with Alva and the veteran Spanish troops were the most highly disciplined and experienced soldiers in the world; they would run through her army like a knife through butter. Elizabeth knew this; she knew that if Alva once landed on English ground, she would be dead and Philip would be in London before two years were over. She had temporized and delayed to the last moment, refusing to let them squander her money in a futile attempt to make a fighting force out of an army of amateurs, insisting that the fleet be maintained as cheaply as possible until the sea captains themselves demanded how they were to fight with leaking ships and men existing on half pay. She had not listened. She had cursed at them all and sworn to fight the battle in her own way, refusing to bankrupt her throne and mortgage her country to an extent where victory would be achieved at the cost of economic ruin. She knew, and so did they, that Philip must be defeated at sea or not at all, and she argued that a few coats of paint and bribing the seamen with full pay would not affect the outcome. She spoke and acted like a miser, and she could not explain to those men who were all so desperately afraid for their own safety, and for hers, that whatever happened to her and to them, her instinct was to save what she could for her people.