Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (69 page)

“It will be my pleasure, madam.” Leicester bowed and retired in

accordance with her gesture. When he had gone, she sat down again and

looked up at Burghley shrewdly.

“How long before we can resume the marriage negotiations?”

“When the outcry has died down, madam—six months, perhaps a

year—who can say?”

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She nodded and picked up the despatch once more, glancing at it with

a frown.

“What kind of maniac can murder children and believe that God will

say ‘Well done!’”

Burghley shrugged.

“Madam, when a country tolerates two religions forever at war with

each other, I fear such atrocities are inevitable.”

“One castle must fall, eh?” She glanced at him sardonically. “I hope

that’s not the preamble to a cry for more persecution here.”

“Madam, I feel most strongly on the subject. Do you wish to see St.

Bartholomew’s Eve repeated here in England?”

“Don’t take that sanctimonious tone with me, Burghley. You had your

way after the Excommunication Bull, against my better judgement I may

add. I advise you not to make capital out of this, if you value your place.”

He bowed, his dignity ruffled as only the Queen was capable of

ruffling it.

“I am, of course, Your Majesty’s to command in al things,” he said stiffly.

She gave him a strange, compelling look, a piercing gaze that suddenly

made him feel very uneasy and caused him to drop his eyes to the floor.

“Just see that you remember that, my friend—at all times.”

The words went on ringing in his ears as he left the room and he was

suddenly rather relieved to get away from her. It was as though he had

received a warning not to overreach himself again.

t t t

Fenelon, the French Ambassador, spent three days of ostracism at

Woodstock, kicking his heels among hostile glances and waiting uneasily

for a summons from the Queen. When at last he entered the Privy

Chamber, he augured the worst from the stony silence which greeted him

and he walked awkwardly past rows of courtiers, all dressed in mourning

black, who pointedly turned their faces away from him as he approached.

His own footsteps clicking nervously across the floor seemed to be the

only sound in that tense room.

At the end of the Chamber the Queen awaited him, likewise dressed

in black and surrounded by a semicircle of long-faced councillors; her

own face was pale and sad and very stern. She advanced a few steps to

meet Fenelon, drawing him coldly aside to a window embrasure.

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“Well?” she said quietly, looking at him with just a small glimmer of

sympathy. “You had better make your excuses, if you have any.”

Whatever diplomatic suavity had been left to him deserted him

abruptly beneath the glare of so many hostile eyes.

“Madam,” he began hesitantly, “it would seem a conspiracy was

discovered against the King’s life. Justice demanded the most severe

reprisals—”

“Did it demand the murder of women and children—the slaughter of

babes in arms?” she inquired coolly.

He flushed with humiliation and muttered something hopelessly inad-

equate about the confusion of the moment.

“The King and Queen Mother,” he continued hastily, “are most

anxious that you of all people, madam, should understand that no enmity

was entertained against the Protestant powers in Europe.”

Her eyes were cynical, hard as polished stones.

“I fear those who led your King to abandon his natural subjects will

easily persuade him to abandon his alliance with a foreign queen.”

“Madam, my King has sworn to take revenge for this outrage. I swear

he had no hand in the matter, no say at all in this as in other—”

“Enough.” She laid her hand on his sleeve, but her command was

gentle and he realised that his efforts to exonerate his master would only

reveal the unfortunate man for the hagridden mother’s boy he was. “Tell

your master that I grieve for him,” she continued gently.

There was something quite genuine in her voice as she said that and

the warm pressure of her fingers on his hand was remarkably reassuring.

He watched her leave the room with regret and as he turned and saw the

hatchet-faced council descending upon him, like a pack of black wolves

closing in for attack, he was even more sorry to see her go. By the time

they had finished with him, he wrote home that no one would speak to

him “but the Queen, who treats me with her accustomed urbanity.”

Elizabeth, satisfied that she had handled a sore situation with kid

gloves, made a mental note to recall that Puritan hothead, Walsingham,

from France before his rudely expressed outrage earned him a dagger in

the back. The recent promotion of Burghley to Lord Treasurer had left

a gap in the Secretariat which would need more than one man to fill it.

She had no liking at all for Francis Walsingham, but he knew his job and

did not object to footing his own bills for his expenses. There was not a

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great deal of that sort of loyalty about and she was inclined to agree with

Burghley that Walsingham would be a fitting choice as Secretary—always

supposing she could stomach that long Puritan face about her apartments

at all hours. Certainly she could make far better use of the man’s fanati-

cism at home—a less able brain and a more tactful tongue would serve her

better in Paris for the moment.

t t t

Burghley sent his own brother-in-law up to Scotland with the offer of

Mary’s life and found the Regent interested, but greedy; in return for

staging the execution he would expect three thousand English troops as

a safeguard and an annual payment equal to that being spent on Mary’s

upkeep at the moment. In short, the English would have to sanction the

deed to such an extent that they might as well have done it in England.

Having made his outrageous demands, the Regent promptly

dropped dead after dining out; Scotland dissolved into chaos once

more and the negotiations faded into limbo, to the intense chagrin of

Elizabeth’s ministers.

Elizabeth, tongue in cheek at the failure, moved Mary to closer

confinement at Sheffield Castle, doubled the guard, and talked no more

of murder, judicial or otherwise, continuing to protect the woman

Walsingham castigated as the “bosom serpent.”

The months following the St. Bartholomew massacre were curiously

quiet and uneventful. Days were long and memories were short, the

outcry against Mary slowly died. But when Elizabeth talked of reopening

marriage negotiations with France, Leicester was truly alarmed.

Throughout her reign, suitors had risen and fallen with the ceaseless

regularity of the tide, to be used shamelessly and then cast aside, but this

little Frenchman seemed inclined to linger on the scene with remarkable

persistence. The Queen’s interest grew steadily and that broody look was

more prominent than ever. It occurred to Leicester that if she was really

sickening for a severe attack of maternal instinct, he would do well to

incubate it on his home ground.

So in the summer of 1575, with the desperation of a gambler who

has placed everything on a long shot, he threw a fortune into preparing

a fairytale scene for her at Kenilworth, an entertainment which was

to become a legend. His great castle was a show-piece of scintillating

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grandeur, a brilliant setting awaiting the finishing jewel; and no one was

left in any doubt of the identity of that jewel.

When Elizabeth entered the castle to a cannon salute, the great blue-

dialled clock with gold figures that stood high and solitary on Caesar’s

Tower was stopped; and at the same moment every clock in the castle was

stopped also. “Time stands still for you,” he whispered and saw her smile.

It was the hottest summer in living memory and the glittering pageants

shimmered beneath a July heat haze. The air was filled with the savage

roars of bears in the baiting pit; music, dancing, plays, and masques

passed the days away in endless frivolity and at night the black summer

sky was hidden behind a multicoloured blaze of fireworks which lit the

countryside for miles around. Night after night the castle windows shim-

mered in the light of thousands of perfumed candles, all supported in

glass candelabra, while within the company dined from a choice of three

hundred dishes served on plates of crystal.

One sultry evening, Elizabeth stood on the long drawbridge which

spanned the castle moat and watched the Lady of the Lake float towards

her on an artificial island lit with tiny lights. A mermaid drew a tail

eighteen feet long through the dark water and on the back of a giant

mechanical dolphin Arion prepared to address his Queen. A hush fell over

the watching court for the climax of this spectacular water extravaganza,

but Leicester’s hospitality had been generous, even to minions, and Arion

was gloriously drunk. At some critical point in his speech he forgot his

lines and pulled off his mask, waved it at the Queen, and informed her

that he was none of Arion.

“Not I, ma’am—honest Harry Goldingham, that’s me!”

The Queen glanced at Leicester’s murderous face and went into

paroxysms of laughter, from which she eventually emerged sufficiently to

inform honest Harry that he was the best part of the show.

Leicester was aggrieved as they strolled back into the gardens in the

summer dusk.

“That fool—that village idiot!—I’ll hang him fort his!” he grumbled.

Elizabeth glanced sideways at him with amusement.

“Would you hang a man for making me laugh?”

“The man was drunk in
my
employ! Madam, do you have any idea

what it cost to build that dolphin?”

“What dolphin?”

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Susan Kay

He had pulled up short, on the verge of an angry retort, when he saw

her smiling.

“Well,” he muttered, laying her hand on his arm, “you can’t expect

me to be best pleased. Not when I can see Hatton and the rest sniggering

like schoolboys—”

Elizabeth laughed. “If Hatton had paid for that dolphin wouldn’t you

have sniggered too?”

Leicester smiled faintly and conceded the point—it had suddenly

dawned on him that this trivial incident had put her in a remarkably good

mood; it might be that honest Harry had not failed him after all.

The Queen’s attendants had dispersed discreetly to the pleasure ground

beneath the terrace, leaving Elizabeth alone with her host. The parapet

was dotted with stone effigies of Leicester’s crest—the white bear—and

she stood looking down over the gardens, idly patting the cold head of

one of them. She felt suddenly relaxed and happy, as though all the tension

of these last troubled years was flowing out of her on this balmy evening.

Beyond this haven of peace, the outer world of documents and treason

seemed strangely unimportant. Sometimes it was good to forget reality…

“It’s so beautiful here,” she remarked after a moment. “You should

not make me too comfortable, Rob—I may outstay my welcome.”

“Impossible, madam.” He came to stand beside her. “If I entertained

you for eternity it would seem too short a time.”

“
To serve you is Heaven, to lack you is more than Hel ’s torment
,” she mocked.

Leicester glanced at her jealously.

“I suppose Hatton said that to you!”

Elizabeth shook her head. “He wrote it. I imagine some would say it

reads rather better in reverse.”

He said, with a sudden catch in his voice, “Don’t count me among

them! I despise the man, but I envy his gift with words. I would I could

have put it half so well.”

There had been a time when she regularly showed him her love letters

from Hatton and they had laughed at the man’s extravagant sentiments—

until the moment it occurred to Leicester that she might be doing exactly

the same with his own correspondence. He had promptly declared the

practice obscene and since then he had seen no more of Hatton’s letters—

or anyone else’s.

But tonight he was warmed by that little touch of self-deprecation in

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her voice and sufficiently encouraged by the expansiveness of her mood

to take one final throw at the dice.

Moving closer, he covered her hand with his own where it lay on the

white stone bear.

He said softly, “For sixteen years I have begged you to marry me,

Elizabeth. Now I lay my heart and my possessions at your feet and ask

you for the last time to be my wife.”

She stood very still and he scarcely dared to breathe, feeling her spirit

leap suddenly towards him. Below them jets of water rose and fell in an

octagonal fountain of white marble. A faint breeze carried the scent of

strawberries and roses to her, as she listened to the sleepy flutterings of

the aviary and the soft, steady spray of the fountain. For one moment the