A Court Affair (41 page)

And the silky-tongued Comte de Feria was always there to remind me of his master’s ardent interest. With Philip’s counterfeited rubies about my throat I laid my hand caressingly upon his sleeve as we stood and watched the dancers and said in a voice low and sultry, “Be thou well persuaded that should I decide to marry outside my kingdom, my eyes and heart shall fix on none but Philip. But we find that we have no wish to give up our solitary and lonely state, though God in His inscrutable and infinite wisdom may at any time change our mind,” I hinted tantalisingly as Robert caught my hand, pulling me away from de Feria, and swept me up in the dance.

And when Philip, later that summer, withdrew his suit and married a daughter of the King of France, also named Elizabeth, I pouted and in a fit of pique told de Feria that his master could not have been as deeply in love with me as he had led me to believe. In a fury, I tore his rubies from my neck and flung them at the Ambassador’s feet. “His love is as false as his jewels! They are glass—just like his heart!” I cried and ran to my room, to muffle my laughter in the goosedown pillows, leaving de Feria and others to think that I was overcome with grief for the loss of the Spanish King’s love. I kept to my bed the rest of the day and shunned the night’s entertainments, enjoying some vastly welcome private time lolling abed with my favourite books. The next morning, with the curtains drawn so that my face was shadowed, so de Feria would not see that it was not swollen red from weeping, I sent for him and, sighing dolefully as I reclined weakly against my pillows, I extended my hand and bade him to “convey these most heartfelt words to your master: Although my heart weeps at the memory of the dreams that will never see fruition, that the ‘someday’ that was our shared dream will never come, like summer, love ends, and winter comes, but I cherish the hope that the friendship forged between us shall hold as an unbreakable bond and endure through all the seasons to come.”

Overcome with emotion, de Feria flung himself to his knees beside my bed and kissed my hand and assured me that he and his master would stand my lifelong friends, that such bonds were not easily broken, and though he could never be my bridegroom, Philip would
always
be my brother, and the flame of fraternal love would burn forever bright inside his heart.

And in short order a new and even more magnificent necklace, this one of emeralds to stand symbol for the constancy of “my loving brother Philip’s affection”, arrived with a letter urging me to consider his nephews, the Archdukes Charles and Ferdinand, as prospective bridegrooms. They both found many supporters amongst my Councillors, as neither had a principality to govern and thus would be free to come and live in England and take from my shoulders the heavy burden of ruling. My Councillors and the Imperial Ambassadors, Count von Helfenstein and Baron von Breuner, aided by the suave Spaniard de Feria, did their best to persuade me, to emphasise all the Archduke Charles’s best characteristics and minimise his flaws.

Whenever I voiced a concern, they were quick to allay it with answers as fast as a finger snap. Once I casually remarked, “He is said to be hunchbacked.” At once they hastened to assure me, “It is
so
small
as to be quite insignificant” and, “His tailors conceal it so expertly, it is hardly noticeable at all.”

“But hasn’t he a limp?” I then inquired.

“Yes,” the Ambassador reluctantly admitted, “but it is
very
slight, and you will
never
notice it as long as he remains sitting or standing still and doesn’t attempt to walk. And he cuts such a
splendid
figure upon a horse, Your Majesty!”

And to prove it, I was promptly presented with a handsome portrait of the Archduke Charles magnificently apparelled and sitting astride a pure white stallion.

“I don’t know …” With mock seriousness I tapped my chin and cocked my head as I examined it. “I am told his head is uncommonly large and most ill-proportioned to the rest of his body.” Inwardly I convulsed with glee at the storm of protests that followed, all assuring me that Charles’s head was perfectly sized, “neither excessively large nor inordinately small.” And then I could not resist …

“I am told his brother, the Archduke Ferdinand, has a very fine pair of legs. Have you a portrait of him?” I asked, knowing full well that the Ambassadors had only brought a miniature that showed just his head and shoulders. “Oh, what a
shame
!” I pouted. “His face is quite fine, but … oh, if only I could see his legs! The man I marry must be a fine dancer and horseman, and I find you can
always
tell by the legs.” And so an envoy was immediately dispatched back to Austria, riding as though his very life depended on it, to procure a full-length portrait of the Archduke Ferdinand.

But when the canvas came and I stood before it, I heaved a great sigh and lamented that he was wearing black hose, as “Everyone knows black can be deceptively slimming.” With an apologetic smile, I turned to the Ambassadors and asked if I might have another portrait of this handsome young man with his legs clad in white hose instead. “White is a much more honest colour,” I explained above my coquettishly fluttering white ostrich feather fan. “Your wish is my command!” von Helfenstein and von Breuner said as one, and the whole process promptly began all over again. I daresay the portrait painters made quite a splendid profit during those wild days of wooing.

And then, as the lazy days of summer drifted by, one afternoon as I lay resting in the shade after an arduous day of hunting and vigorous country dancing at an outdoor banquet, the Ambassadors came, knelt down beside me, and presented me with a love letter from the Archduke Ferdinand, still busily posing for his portrait in a pair of white hose. I gave it one brief glance, then petulantly crumpled it and flung it away. “I
cannot
marry him,” I announced, and I lay back, pulling the brim of my big straw hat back down over my eyes. “His handwriting is the
worst
I have ever seen.”

As for his elder brother, the Archduke Charles, I found reports regarding the size of his head too contradictory to reassure me, and portrait painters were not to be trusted. Had my own father not learned that when he chose to wed Anne of Cleves after admiring her portrait? And my sister had come to no good end when Titian’s portrait of Philip first aroused love in her heart. “I have taken a vow never to marry a man I have not seen in person,” I declared. “I will not put my trust in portrait painters.” So, unless the Archduke Charles would deign to visit me, that was the end of the matter; I would discuss it no further. And I imperiously waved his Ambassadors away and grandly bade them, “Trouble me no more; my mind is quite decided, and no pretty words or even prettier portraits can ever change it. I will not consider the Archduke again until he is standing before me.”

Many deplored my highhanded ways with the Ambassadors and despaired of my ever taking a husband; they all thought me maddeningly capricious. One was even provoked to complain of me: “She behaves like a peasant upon whom a barony has been conferred. Since she came to the throne, she is puffed up with pride and imagines that she is without peer.” But I laughed all the more when I heard and declared loudly and often that I would sooner be a nun than a wife. I flaunted my coronation ring before all and said, “Behold, I am married already—to England!” And more than once I heard Cecil sigh and complain of that heady summer: “Here is a great resort of wooers and controversy amongst lovers; would that Her Majesty would settle upon one and the rest would depart honourably satisfied.”

And there were gifts aplenty, all luxurious and grand, and ardent envoys sent to woo me by proxy for the Dukes of Savoy, Nemours, Saxony, Holstein, Bohemia, and Bavaria, with each ambassador wearing a miniature portrait of his master proudly pinned upon his breast. I would have them all line up before me, standing at attention, straight as soldiers, and walk up and down viewing the portraits as if I were taking my leisure on a rainy day inside a portrait gallery and causing their hopes to rise or plummet by the comments I made and the questions I asked. One actually wept when I dismissed his royal master on the basis of his portrait as “a lady-faced lad” who would not do at all, as “I have a great liking for a strong, handsome, virile man.” I would not squander even a moment’s thought considering any dainty and effeminate lad, laughing inside at the way some of them winced, squirmed, and nervously shifted their eyes, being all too aware of their masters’ unnatural predilections.

The Scottish Earl of Arran, Jamie Hamilton, the handsome, red-haired, and bearded Protestant claimant to the Scottish throne, came to visit me. He arrived concealed in a carpet, like Cleopatra for her fateful first encounter with Julius Caesar. When it was unrolled before me, he sprang up to dance a boisterous jig to the tune of bagpipers who had accompanied him disguised as merchants, the hem of his kilt bouncing and bobbing up to show off his fine, muscular, though quite hairy legs. And later he would speak words of tender love and vehement ardour that tried valiantly to penetrate his thick Scottish burr. He delighted me no end, and again and again I clapped my hands and cried “Dance, Jamie, dance!” until he fell down exhausted and beneath his silver-buckled shoes his toes bled and his band of bagpipers must carry him to bed and bandage them. But Cecil favoured the match, sagely noting that if I married him, it would bring peace and unite England and Scotland and prevent France—which had a foothold in that sparse and barbaric land through its Catholic queen, Mary Stuart, and her mother, the regent Marie of Guise—from using Scotland to mount an attack against us and financing further Scottish raids upon our borders.

And my English suitors were still buzzing around me, all ravenous for the honey of my attention and affection. Faithful old Arundel, who had taken to sporting a vividly gaudy and outlandish wardrobe far better suited to a much younger and more flamboyant man while leaning upon an elegantly wrought silver staff to ease his gouty foot, and telling anyone who would listen that my bravery during the reign of my sister had first led to the flowering of love in his heart for me. Shy, bashful, stammering Gooseberry was still tripping over his own tongue and feet in his eagerness to please me. And the debonair Sir William Pickering, who didn’t try too hard because he knew he did not have to and had privately accepted my word that I meant to live and die a maid, but who was content to continue wooing me just for the pleasure of my company and to tweak Arundel’s beard.

The Duke of Prussia’s ambassador sent yet more falcons so that I might enjoy good sport with them while on progress, as he knew I delighted in hunting. He also brought a handsome miniature that might be worn as a brooch or a pendant depicting the Duke with a hooded falcon upon his wrist and earnestly implored me to wear it when I flew the birds so that in this way, “in spirit” we might hawk together until the day he hoped and prayed for arrived, when we could hunt together as husband and wife.

Robert was in such a
fury
over them all. I had never seen a man so flustered and feverish with jealousy; I fancied I could see the blood sizzling in his veins and feel the heat when I touched him. A perpetual scowl replaced his smile, and his mutinous dark eyes scorched me like embers on my naked skin whenever they turned my way. “
Any
man who advises the Queen to marry a foreigner is neither a good Englishman nor a loyal subject to Her Majesty!” he roared, boldly leaping up onto the banquet table, his eyes flashing a challenge to every man seated around it. And his band of liveried rogues, a surly bunch of cudgel-and-dagger-toting street toughs dressed up in blue velvet, often clashed swords with the retinues of our foreign visitors. He even tried, with money borrowed at enormous rates of interest from the London moneylenders, to bribe my foreign suitors to quit the field and sail away, assuring them with a grave mien and a serious and confiding tone that, “I have known her better than any man alive since the age of eight, and from that time forth she has always said, ‘I will never marry.’ She will go a maiden to her grave.” I reminded him that it was treason to speak of the death of the sovereign and refused to see or speak to him for a week, during which I allowed the delightfully blushing Gooseberry or the dapper, unflappable Pickering into my bedchamber each morning to hand me my shift as I stood naked behind a screen, while Robert, who had been accustomed to performing this most intimate duty, fumed outside my door and had to be restrained from running them through with his sword. Sometimes I even sent him away. “Leave my court—you grow insufferable,” I would say. “I cannot bear to have you near me,” and he would ride off with his surly band and go I knew not where, or to the Devil for all I, in those heated moments, cared.

And to confound them all, my homegrown and foreign-born suitors alike, I lavished attention and favours upon the man I called my “Sweet Robin”. I would, during plays or musical recitals, playing the absentminded and besotted woman for the ambassadors’ avid eyes, reach out a hand and let my jewel-laden fingers toy with Robert’s dark hair or tickle the back of his neck. And when the perplexed ambassadors, concerned about my morals and chastity, discreetly queried the affection I showered upon Lord Robert, I would reply, “Nature has implanted so
many
graces in him that, if I wished to marry, I would prefer him to all the princes of the world.” Or I would tantalise them and leave them wondering just how far I had fallen by saying, “It is true, I am no angel, and I cannot deny that I have some affection for Lord Robert, for the many
fine
qualities he possesses.” Then, to increase their confusion, I would add, “He is like my brother and best friend. I regard and honour him as my brother, for thus do I love him and will love and regard him my whole life long, for he deserves it.” And sometimes I took an indignant stance, declaring, “I am insulted both in England and abroad for having shown too much favour to Lord Robert. I am spoken of as if I were an immodest woman.” With a doleful sigh, a shake of my head, and downcast eyes, I would continue in a resigned tone, “I really ought not to wonder at it! I am young, and he is young, and therefore we have both been slandered! Though my life is lived in the open, and I have so many witnesses—a thousand eyes watch my every move—truly I
cannot
understand how so bad a judgment can have been formed of me.”