Watch the Lady (35 page)

Silence echoes through the council chamber as they wait for the Queen's reaction. The Admiral takes his seat, clearing his throat.

All she says is, “Now, what other matters are arising?”

“Can you not make him see sense, Brother?” Lettice says to Uncle Knollys. They are sitting at the far end of the chamber with Dorothy, whom Penelope hasn't seen for months. “I asked my husband to go to Wanstead and talk some sense into him, but it was to no avail. He simply refuses to apologize.”

Penelope is not really listening; she has things nagging at her. Her cousin Lizzie Vernon is in the Fleet prison for her unsanctioned marriage to Southampton. The Fleet is a rat-infested hellhole and is no place for a young woman with child—a fact she had attempted to press upon the Queen, to no avail. Penelope has grown fond of her spirited cousin Lizzie, imagining the brightness knocked right out of her in that squalid place. “What if she should meet her end there?” Penelope had said. “The little whore has what's coming to her,” was the Queen's answer. Penelope had helped arrange that wedding and wondered if the Queen knew, if she was compiling a list of Lady Rich's misdemeanors to use at a later date. The Queen seems to have no pity left in her and that doesn't bode well for Essex. He is a constant source of worry, with his refusal to apologize, his vast debts, his frame of mind, his dead eyes.

“He thinks
the Queen
should apologize
to him
.” Lettice expels a huff of breath, shaking her head. “However did I manage to breed such misplaced arrogance?”

It rained not long ago, a sudden storm that came as swiftly as it went, leaving the gutters running and the eaves dripping. Penelope can still hear the faint trickle of water. Another fear burrows beneath her surface: a messenger, carrying her latest missive to King James, has disappeared. She tries to dismiss it with mundane explanations of sickness and delay but the specter of Cecil lurks constantly—his passing the paper over a flame to reveal the text, his eyes sparking up, his handing that letter to the Queen, his drawing up a warrant for her arrest. It is as if a noose tightens gradually about her throat. If only Blount were with her in Derbyshire and not at court.

“I will write to him,” says Uncle Knollys. “He is flying close to the wind. The Queen has had enough of his pique. He is too old for such antics, a man in his thirties . . . It may have seemed charming once, but not now.” Penelope doesn't attempt to explain that her brother's so-called fits of pique are something so much darker and entirely out of his control. She is tired of endlessly discussing her brother's offenses, would rather be lying in bed at Wanstead discussing philosophy and drinking good French wine with Blount. Their letters move back and forth across the countryside, fond words exchanged, but she wants to witness the joy on his face when she tells him that their baby, St. John, has sprouted a tooth, and that his older brother, little Mountjoy, spoke his first proper word the other day.

Her mother had balked at that choice of name. “For goodness' sake, everyone will know whose boy he is if you call him Mountjoy,” she had said.

“What people think is no concern of mine,” was Penelope's reply.

“That attitude will be your downfall,” her mother had said, not for the first time, before adding, “I still cannot fathom why your husband allows himself to be made a cuckold.”

Penelope couldn't answer that. The burden of her husband's secret has become increasingly heavy over the sixteen years she has carried it. She daren't share it, even with her beloved Blount—the man who has filled her life with joy.

Rich has tolerated her affair for his own reasons, and she has played the obedient wife. They have managed to carve out a mutual respect, in a manner of speaking. She has sometimes questioned why none of the boys he beds has exposed him, but she supposes he pays them well. He has never spoken of it to her. She has come to understand that a secret is like a lie; it blights everything it touches.

“How can he be such a fool as to make an enemy of
her
?” With a desolate sigh, Lettice brings her hands up to cover her face. “Was it not enough for him to see
me
cast out? The same fate awaits him and he brings it upon himself.”

The trickle in the gutter has now become a drip. Penelope is remembering how her mother's humiliation had been compounded a few months ago, before all this, when the Queen could still refuse Essex nothing. He had at last persuaded her to receive Lettice at court. It felt like a triumph, as if all the ills of the past were to be laid to rest. The air of optimism over Essex House was tangible, like the sun reappearing after a storm, making all the world's surfaces glisten. Lettice had sparkled with anticipation, had the seamstress fashion a new wardrobe for all the court appearances she expected, had three new wigs made, a dozen strings of pearls, had commissioned a jewel to offer the Queen.

“It must be a splendid creation,” Lettice had said to the goldsmith. “Something more beautiful by far than the vulgar gewgaws she is given by the foreign ambassadors.”

The goldsmith had barely been able to help rubbing his hands as he spoke. “I have lately acquired a ruby in the shape of a heart, a rare beauty, and big—big as a rosehip.”

He charged three hundred pounds, which Lettice could ill afford. Essex had taken the bill with a flourish, saying, “This is mine.” But later he had confessed to Penelope that he owed thirty thousand pounds. She was shocked at the figure, hadn't realized the extent of her brother's debt, and she had convinced Rich to settle the bill, in the end. “I will persuade the Queen to bestow another license on me,” Essex had said when she asked what he was going to do about his financial liability. The whole business weighed heavily on her but her concern had been counterbalanced by the excitement of Lettice's proposed audience and the hope it brought.

Even to Penelope, who was not given to such flights of optimism, it had seemed that her mother's years in the wilderness might finally be over and when the day came it felt like a wedding. She helped Lettice dress in a satin gown the color of lemons, all stitched about with pearls; one of the new wigs, russet curls scattered with jewels, perched upon her head. She looked like a young woman, not fifty-four with most of her years used up, and Penelope could imagine the figure she cut at court as a girl, had a glimpse of the fateful allure that had turned Leicester's head away from the Queen.

Penelope couldn't accompany her, for it was not long since she had birthed St. John and she hadn't yet been churched. She awaited her mother's return with a sense of well-being, as if all the old scores had been finally settled. But Lettice returned late, exhausted, having pulled her wig off in the coach, her hair awry, giving her the look of a lunatic. “It pinched terribly,” she said in response to Penelope's bewildered look.

“So, what happened?” she asked.

Her mother simply shook her head, saying, “Perhaps tomorrow. Your brother said I should come back tomorrow.”

Lettice had flicked her head away but not before Penelope saw the tears. She had never seen her cry before, had always thought her incapable. As she held her mother's heaving body she felt a new rage gather in her that was unfamiliar in its intensity. It made her think of a play she had seen in which a tragedy, one that might have been waylaid by a simple act of forgiveness, had played itself out relentlessly to its inevitable conclusion. The sensation was physical, gripping her body almost to the point of pain, and Penelope knew that just as the Queen would not forgive Lettice, so
she
would not forgive the Queen.

Her mother waited three days in the public rooms to be seen, and eventually the Queen passed her in the gallery, took the jewel, offered her cheek for a kiss, and passed on with barely a word. The invitation to court was not extended again. Every time Penelope sees that heart-shaped ruby pinned to the Queen's breast, she feels the same tightening in her and is reminded of the other events: her father's death, her mother's banishment and her sister's, her own thwarted marriage to Sidney—all with the Queen's imprint on them.

“He thinks himself immortal.” Lettice is still talking about Essex.

“I will deal with it, Sister,” says Knollys. “He's making things difficult for himself by staying away such a time. There are others ready to jump into his place. Two months is an age at court.”

“I have seen him in this temper many times,” says Penelope. “It takes him to a sinister place.” The light drains from the room and spots of rain appear once more on the windowpanes, as if her words have an effect on the weather. She absently puts a hand down to stroke Spero's domed head, but finds only emptiness and is jolted by the memory of discovering his lifeless little body at the foot of her bed a few weeks previously. Despite his long life and the quiet manner of his demise, she mourned him desperately, the dog named by Sidney. The sense of time passing catches up with her suddenly, the sense of all those she cared for gone. Even Jeanne has gone now—to France with her new husband.

“Dark place or not, he needs to pull himself together,” says Lettice. Penelope wonders if Lettice has found out about the vast debt Essex has amassed. If he isn't able to dance to the Queen's tune, he has no chance of diminishing it.

“Don't vex yourself, Lettice dear.” Knollys pats her hand. “I shall make him see sense.” He stops and then seems to remember something. “As long as I am not sent to Ireland.”

“And will you be?” asks Dorothy. “If you are, it will not be immediate. Surely funds must be raised, men mustered.”

“No, it will take time and, besides, she is dithering.” By “she,” he clearly means the Queen. “There are others being considered.”

“Who might they be?” asks Lettice.

“Lord Mountjoy is the favorite.”

“Blount?” Penelope's distress catches in her throat and her sister meets her eye with a look of sympathy. “She can't send Blount.”

“Such a position, Lord Deputy of Ireland, would
make
him. It's an opportunity to prove himself in high office.” Knollys pauses and turns to speak directly to Penelope. “Since he seems to not want to hoist himself up by marriage.” He glares at his niece pointedly, as if to ask what kind of a hold could she possibly have over him that would make him cast off his right to a wealthy wife and legitimate children to pass his title on to. “I'd say Ireland was the ideal appointment.”

Penelope can hardly bear to listen as her uncle speaks. “I know, I know,” she murmurs, “but . . .” She can't say it; Uncle Knollys is right, Blount must take all the opportunities that come his way. She can't help remembering, though, the fate that befell her father in that dreadful place. An unexpected trickle of bitterness spills from her: “I wish she would send Rich.”

Uncle Knollys laughs. “What, he who was so overcome with seasickness on the last campaign he had to be put to port barely before they were out of the harbor?” Dorothy emits a snort of laughter too but Penelope is not amused.

“Yes, your husband is not exactly the epitome of courage,” Lettice says, joining the wave of laughter. Penelope hasn't seen her mother laugh since her foiled return to court, but it doesn't bring her a splinter of joy, for all she can think of is that she might have been married all those years ago to Sidney, a hero, instead of a man who makes her family fall about laughing. As their mirth dies they become aware of a hubbub of voices coming from the courtyard below.

“What's that racket?” asks Knollys, moving towards the window. “Goodness, there is a crowd of folk down there.”

“They come every day,” says Lettice. “They are after kitchen scraps.”

“Such a number?”

“They are starving, poor souls,” says Lettice. “The land is completely barren. After four years of failed harvests they are reduced to making bread from crushed acorns. I do what I can.”

“It is such as these that turn into an angry mob,” says Knollys. “If people like Burghley and his boy weren't siphoning so much from the public purse, there might be more to go round.”

Penelope is beside her uncle and sister at the window, looking down at a tattered mob. The rain has stopped again and the cobbles are slick with mud. The people below seem to be held together by their sodden clothes alone, bundles of sticks tied with rags. Penelope has seen the farmworkers coming in their droves into London, seeking work, until the city is bursting at the seams. But this is different; these people seem barely alive. A woman with a pinched baby in her arms looks up, catching her eye, and she feels ashamed by her healthy plumpness, her fine gown strung with seed pearls, her fingers heavy with rings. She thinks of her own fat babies. She imagines what the woman must see at the window: two ladies draped in fine silks, no sign of hardship on their smooth faces. There is something in that woman's unstinting gaze that cuts her down to size.

Cecil is thinking about his father. He has only a month or so left, the doctors say. When Cecil's wife died two years ago there was some sadness—more for the sake of his son losing a mother. His wife had tolerated him at best, and he her, if he is honest. He cannot forget her look of disgust whenever he sought his conjugal rites and remembers thinking he would never have to see that look again. He loved her for giving him a son, though. When he looks at little William's face, he can see something of Burghley printed there.

As Burghley fades the urgency builds in Cecil finally to make him proud. He has built a fantasy in his mind of the moment he will tell his father that he has succeeded in making peace with Spain. He can see the smile that will spread over his face, can hear his words, “This is a true legacy for we Cecils—a Spanish alliance made in peace, such as England has not seen for forty years.” Cecil closes his eyes, allowing the dream of his father's delight to take hold, now imagining the Queen congratulating him too, on his great triumph.