Death of Kings (34 page)

“Oh,” I said.

“Your organ of hearing is perhaps not unacquainted with the nomination?”

“Are you related to the Knotts of Nottingham?” I said. “Or the Nevers of Nuneaton?”

He narrowed his eyes but did not condescend to reply.

“Well,” I said, standing before him in my everyday garments. “I’m ready. Impart.”

“Come with me,” said Sir Roger, dropping his courtly manner. “Her Majesty wishes to see you.”

He clapped his bonnet back on his head and spun on his heel. I followed him, without thinking. It was only when I’d gone a few paces that I realised what he’d said. Her Majesty? To
see me? I must’ve misheard. Or this was his way of paying me back for my cheek. Nevertheless, I did as I was told, conscious that Jack and Martin were looking at us as we exited the
tiring-house.

We left the Hall via a small side room and from there proceeded down a wide passageway. Then a warren of smaller passages interspersed with lobbies and more open areas. All the time, the
bobbing, feathered bonnet of Sir Roger Nunn kept a few yards ahead of me. Occasionally he’d glance round to check that I was still in attendance. We seemed to be going deeper into the bowels
of the Palace. I started to regret my gibes about Knotts and Nevers.

Eventually, we arrived at a much larger ante-room. And there I began to fear the worst for, seated to one side of a great fire, was Sir Robert Cecil. On the far side of the room four Yeomen
stood at attention, in two pairs, grasping their halberds and gazing straight in front of them. Sir Robert must have signalled something to Sir Roger because the next I knew – not that I was
truly aware of
anything at
that instant – the beautifully bonneted being left the room.

“Well, Nicholas,” said Sir Robert, “you have done well.”

“I – I – if you say so, sir.”

“Yes, and now she wants to tell you so in person.”

The warm room felt suddenly airless. The fire flared up. The shadow of Sir Robert’s crooked back swelled and sank against the wall. I wanted to tear off my day clothes and to run screaming
through the street. I wanted to hurl myself headlong into a pit of fire. I wanted to drown in the next pond. Anything but understand what he’d just said to me.

Sir Robert saw my quick misery and smiled.

“Be calm, Nicholas. She only wants to thank you. I say that you have done well.”

“I – I – I have done nothing.”

I could only think that he was referring to the business with Essex and the failed uprising. Considering the tiny role I’d played, it was not false modesty that caused me to say I’d
done nothing. For this, I required no thanks, especially no thanks from
Her.

“Perhaps it’s also thanks for what you will do,” said Sir Robert cryptically. “Go in now.”

He gestured at a low door whose outline I now discerned in the oak panelling between where the splendidly uniformed guards stood in pairs. Like a creature deprived of the power to resist, like a
beast being led towards the slaughter, I walked, walked as in a dream towards the small door.

This seemed to take hours – a lifetime – though it can’t have been more than a few seconds. Once at the door, I raised my hand irresolutely and then lowered it again without
knocking. Instead, the guard nearest the door leaned over and rapped gently with the tip of his halberd on the oak, presumably at some signal from Cecil. There may have been a response from within;
I don’t know, because my ears were suddenly filled with a roaring noise and I was conscious of my heart trying to batter its way out of my chest. Then the guard turned the handle and gently
pushed the door open. Rather less gently, he prodded me in the back so that I found myself almost pushed through the entrance.

Once on the far side, I sensed rather than heard the door being closed behind me. Oh for a trapdoor like the one in the Globe to open up at my feet so that I might disappear forever into the
dark depths beneath! Oh to be pursued by my dearest enemy into wastes beyond the reach of man! Oh to be anywhere but here in one of
Her
privy chambers.

What do I do next?

How do I describe to you our Sovereign, and what it meant to be in
Her
presence?

The room was not over-large, and this was the first surprise, that Elizabeth our Queen, she who had the run of the whole land, should on occasion choose to confine herself in close quarters.
There was a good fire going and sitting by it, tall, upright and alert, an old woman.

My first thought was: where is Her Majesty?

My second: perhaps this is one of her ladies.

My third: perhaps it is all a joke after all.

Then I realised, of course, that the old woman in the chair was the Queen.

I sank to my knees and let my head bow down.

“Get up, Master Revill. I can’t talk with you in that position.”

I rose shakily to my feet but still kept my eyes low.

“And look at me, man. Didn’t your mother ever tell you that it was discourteous not to look someone in the face when you’re speaking with them?”

“My father gave instruction in my household, my – your majesty,” I said, a little surprised at the steadiness of my voice.

“And in mine,” she said.

The Queen said! Said to me!

Then, “Sit down. You must be tired after your performance.”

More by luck than by looking, I located a chair and positioned my buttocks on the edge of it. The room was ill-lit by the flicker of firelight and a handful of candles. Nothing compared to the
blazing illumination of the great Hall. Two other doors, apart from the one I’d come through, were set into the walls. I assumed that her ladies must be near at hand behind one of them. It
struck me as strange – I mean not at the time but later – that so far I’d seen only men in the neighbourhood of the Queen.

I looked timidly across to where the old lady sat. If I describe her now, it’s as a result of bringing together several tiny, quick impressions and forming them afterwards into a picture,
however inadequate.

Firstly, she
was
old. Close to, there was no disguising it with face-paint and shadow. Old but very formidable; I mean formidable in herself, and not in what she was, if the two things
can be distinguished. Even if she’d been an oyster seller in Eastcheap you’d have thought twice about crossing her. No, thought three times – and then you wouldn’t have done
it. Her straight posture in the chair emphasised her tallness. Her hair was red like the flickering fire but (I whisper ungallantly) not a quarter so natural. The most prominent features in her
thin, pale visage were a high aquiline nose and her striking eyes. Ah, her eyes. What colour they were I couldn’t have said. But they had opposing qualities: they seemed at once deep-set,
almost buried, and also starting forward. For now, they were bent on me with an expression I couldn’t determine.

“Not so tired, your majesty, as – as amazed to find myself here when my place would be better occupied by any other member of my Company.”

“That is very modest for a player.”

“But I mean it,” I protested, forgetting formalities for a moment. And I did mean it. I wanted all my Company to share in the Queen’s favour. Why wasn’t Master Burbage
here, or Master Shakespeare, or Jack Horner or Martin Hancock come to that? Why had she requested a minor player?

“Did you like the play?” I said, greatly daring.

“Oh yes,” she said absently. I noticed that her heavily beringed hands moved constantly in her lap. “How could one not like it? It is written to be liked. We were amused.
Amused at the way Duke Orsino governs his realm of – Illyria, is it?”

“But he does
not
govern it, your majesty,” I said.

“That is what is amusing,” she said. “That he can devote himself to love rather than affairs of state, and yet come out of it clear at the end.”

“Well,” I said, not knowing what else to say.

“Well? Does he govern well? Perhaps he governs well because he does not know that he does,” she said. “In truth,
fines principum abyssus multa.
”

“The designs of Princes are a deep abyss,” I said, glossing her words automatically, almost without thought.

This seemed to delight her more than anything I’d said since entering the chamber. She leaned forward and, since she was wearing a low-cut gown, exposed a certain quantity of royal
bosomry. Age had taken its inevitable toll here as well and the paps were somewhat shrunk and wizened.

“Master Revill, you are a scholar.”

“My father was a stern schoolmaster, your majesty” I said. “I mean he wasn’t a schoolmaster, he was a parson. But he insisted that I give many hours to the study of Greek
and Latin.”

“For which you ought to give him thanks every day,” she said.

“I do, I will.”

And at that instant, watching the Queen’s hands shift unceasingly in her lap, I vowed to give daily thanks to the memory of my father and his severe regimen of learning.

“And you have other tongues?”

“Alas no.”

“Never mind, you are young and have plenty of time to learn.”

“I fully intend to, your majesty.”

“It is good to expose ourselves to the variety of the world,” she said, “and how better to do it than through a medley of tongues?”

“Of course, your majesty,” I said, still surprised at the calmness of my responses.

“
Per molto variare la natura e bella
,” she said, gesturing even more with her hands. “You understand?”

“Not entirely,” I said, “yet I can catch the gist of it.”

And at that moment my mind snagged on something else, and I did indeed begin to catch the gist.

“It is one of my favourite aphorisms. I have always loved the Italian music. Those are pleasures you still have before you, young man. French, Italian.”

“Your majesty’s learning is one of the wonders of her realm,” I said, feeling that I’d got the measure of this courtly dance pretty quick.

“Yes, there are not many can best me,” she said.

“None, madam, none.”

“How old are you, Master Revill?”

“Er, twenty eight, your majesty.” (Inexplicably, I added more than a year to my age.)

“Do you know where I was at your age?”

“You were – were our monarch then too,” I said, hoping desperately that my guess was correct.

“I have outlived most of those who were my subjects when I first came to this place.”

“And w-w-will live to – t-t-t-to outlive – t-t-to l-l-l-live for ever – t-t-t-to live longer—”

Tangled up in my stuttering expressions, I came to a stop. She half smiled but in a scornful way, as it seemed, and I remembered Master Secretary Cecil’s words about the mortality of
princes, and how the pious Elizabeth would subscribe to no blasphemous doctrine of divinity.

“
Non omnis moriar
,” she said, and looked a question at me.

“The poet Horace,” I said, hoping to please and make amends for my stuttering.

“And what does he mean?” she catechized.

“That – that – ‘I do not die entire’ – those are his words – and he implies, that no man dies entire if he has works that will survive him.”

“Just so,” she said, with satisfaction. “Tell me, Master Revill, since we were earlier talking of the designs of Princes, what is the supreme end of a Prince?”

“I am hardly in a position to say, madam.”

“I will tell you—”

I leaned even further forward on the edge of my seat. It is not every day that the Queen imparts to you the secret of her reign.

“—it is to gain time.”

“To gain time?”

I was not so much disappointed as baffled by her answer.

“Time in which her subjects may be born and grow up and grow old and die. To gain time for them to do that. Have I not done that for my countrymen these many years, done that
handsomely?”

I bowed my head, partly because I could think of nothing to say.

When I looked up again, I saw that her eyes semed to have sunk deep into her head. Her hands writhed constantly.

“Yet not all are grateful. Especially those who have most reason to be grateful. I have discovered that ingratitude grows most abundant in the richest soil, in the best tilled
earth.”

She paused, then continued almost to herself.

“Wild and whirling himself, the ingrate seeks to infect all men with his dizzy condition.”

I half nodded. I didn’t know – but could guess – to whom she was referring.

“What is tomorrow?” she said with sudden fierceness.

“I – I—”

“Remind me of the morrow!”

Her hands opened and closed rapidly. Her encrusted, bejewelled fingers looked like chicken’s feet. Fear entered my tones.

“W-W-W-Wed – no, A-A-A-Ash Wednesday, your majesty.”

“Good,” she almost barked, then in an insinuating tone, “Ash Wednesday will be a good day to finish all of this, will it not.”

I grew frightened of this old woman or, to be precise, my previous fear of her returned two or three times over. I wished to escape her tight, hot chamber. I wished to rejoin my fellows and be
nothing more than a small player for the rest of my life. Perhaps she sensed my fear and took pity on it or, what was much more likely, perhaps she had said all that she wanted to say.

“You may go, Master Revill.”

I waited for a moment uncertainly, then half rose from the edge of my seat.

“Well, go, what are you waiting for?”

Head down, in a servile crouch, I proceeded backwards towards the door.

Then: “Master Revill?”

“Your m-m-m-majesty?” I half looked up.

“Secretary Cecil tells me that we owe you thanks, for helping to stem the giddy infection.”

I made some deprecating movement of arms and shoulders and began to assemble in my mind the components for an answer, involving terms like duty and allegiance. But I don’t think I would
have got the words out. For some reason, any composure I’d had earlier now completely deserted me, and shivers and tremors ran through me like an aspen.

“And, Master Revill . . . ?”

“Y-y-y-yehyehyeh . . .”

My tongue was enormous and unwieldy. I shut my mouth to silence it. Fortunately the Queen didn’t seem to notice; or if she noticed, she didn’t care. Then she said, almost softly:
“A handsome young man like you should have a fine future with the players. Now go and leave me alone.”