Elizabeth (13 page)

Dudley had become a useful scapegoat. He was everywhere with Elizabeth, and more influential with her than ever before. The relationship was a permanent scandal and even its nature was open to question. There were persistent and alarming rumours that Elizabeth had secretly married him. And not even Cecil dared to ask for a denial. She had developed a habit of absenting herself from Council meetings, making her will known to him beforehand, and if her decision were questioned she either vetoed the alternative in writing, or else made a brief appearance which immediately reduced them to obedience. As she tamed her Lords, so she tamed Robert Dudley until he had moulded himself into exactly the man she wished him to be: courteous, tactful, splendid in bearing and behaviour and completely subservient to her in everything. In return she seemed to have given him her confidence, and, what was stranger still, a higher degree of affection than he had enjoyed at the beginning of their extraordinary love affair. Cecil often watched him in amazement, trying to reconcile what he knew of the man's unscrupulous, self-assertive temperament with the perfect courtier he had become. Elizabeth's favour made him many enemies, and she astonished Cecil and others who knew her reverence for money, by pouring a fortune into Dudley's hands. He confined his interest to pleasing the Queen, to amusing her and flattering her, and presumably to playing the lover when they were alone. It was a distorted picture, and no one could get the two of them into perspective no matter how closely they watched or how much they knew. Cecil's spies reported the old scandals until he was sick of hearing them, but some of the impetuosity had gone from that love affair, if indeed it could be called that, and a far stronger and more dangerous tie was creeping in to take the place of a mere sensual attraction. Now it seemed as if she felt able to trust the man as well as love him, and Cecil could not restrain his hatred of him. He often came to an audience, as Sussex had done a year before, and found Robert sitting with her, and to Cecil's fury he stayed through the interview; sometimes Elizabeth actually called on him for an opinion. There were times when the whole Council said he might yet be Consort of England, and once Sussex had shouted that however much he loathed the man, he loved the Queen enough to stomach Dudley if that was the only means to get an heir for England. It was a fantastic, infuriating situation which had become a permanent feature in the life of the Court. And there was nothing he or anyone else could do about it.

By the beginning of October, the Prince de Condé had agreed to the terms of Elizabeth's treaty, and a force of English troops were ready to embark for Havre. Cecil retired to his own house to recuperate from the protracted strain of many weeks, and the Queen, accompanied by Dudley as usual, went on a strenuous hunting party. They returned to Hampton Court at four in the afternoon when the light was failing. It had been a long chase, and the Queen's kill, two bucks and a deer, were being brought back on a cart behind them. She reined in her horse to a walk instead of a gallop home as she normally did, and complained that the weight of her crossbow had made her arms ache. She looked pale and very tired. When they dismounted she held on to Dudley's arm for a moment, and pressed her hand to her forehead.

“I've got a damnable headache,” she said. “I've felt far from well all day.”

She had insisted on taking a bath that morning; bathing was regarded as an unpleasant necessity and very dangerous to health, but Elizabeth was as fastidious over personal hygiene as she was about bad smells; she bathed frequently, sometimes in wine, which was supposed to bleach and purify the skin. No one had been able to stop her going out into the cold October air so soon after that perilous bath.

Dudley turned to his sister, Mary Sidney, and beckoned for her to help the Queen. He was alarmed by her colour and her hand was hot and dry.

“Take Her Majesty upstairs, and make her rest.—Why don't you lie down, Madam, and send for Doctor Hughes? I'll wait outside your door till I know you're comfortable and sleeping.”

She walked up the steps to her rooms, feeling as if every stair was a mountain; her head had begun to throb so violently that she could hardly see, and her limbs were trembling as she walked. Her ladies undressed her, and she was almost lifted into her bed, shivering with ague, and complaining at the same time that she was burning with heat.

“It's that bath,” Lady Dacre wailed. “I begged Her Grace not to go out if she insisted on bathing … and now she's caught a chill.”

A whisper from the bed told her to hold her tongue and get the doctor; not Hughes who was a fool with nothing in his medicine bag but a cluster of leeches, but that new German physician Hunsdon recommended. “Jesus,” the strained voice said, “I feel as if I were lying in boiling oil! Get me something to drink!”

When Doctor Burcot came he did not waste time in preliminaries. He went straight to the bed, pulled back the velvet covering and felt her forehead and her pulse. He bent closer, examining her eyes and feeling the texture of her skin again. When he straightened he looked down into the thin face, the cheeks already sunken and bright red with fever.

He cleared his throat.

“Madam, you have smallpox.”

Someone in the shadows of the bed gave a frightened gasp and quickly smothered it. The sick woman could feel rather than hear the instinctive movement of recoil from the women in her room.

Smallpox! Her confused brain, sliding from sleep to twilight consciousness, digested the terrible diagnosis, and with the remains of her strength she croaked at the squat, pompous figure of the German doctor standing by her bedside, defying him as if he were the dreaded killer and disfigurer itself.

“Get that knave out of my sight!”

They were her last conscious words. She sank back into a sea of alternating heat and cold, tossing and moaning, fighting a devouring fever which rose higher as the hours passed.

Cecil was brought from his home, the other Lords assembled, a hush of terrified expectancy settled over the sprawling Palace, while the Queen lay in her bedroom, and the Court physicians who had replaced Burcot said that it was certainly smallpox, and that the Queen would die as the spots had not come out.

For five days and nights the vigil continued, and when at last she opened her eyes, Elizabeth saw a blur of faces gathered by her bed. She recognized them one by one—her Councillors—Sussex, with tears streaming down into his beard, Cecil, grey and haggard, Arundel and Warwick and Northampton. All staring down at her, her death reflected in their eyes. She turned her head with difficulty and saw a woman kneeling in the shadow, crying. She thought light-headedly that it must be Kate Dacre, poor, silly, faithful Kate, weeping over the mistress who had so often bullied her, and whom she truly loved.

She looked in vain for one more face, for the dark eyes and the pointed beard, and the single, dazzling pearl she had given him to wear in his ear, and did not see him. Where was Robert … had he deserted her …? No, in her extremity of illness, Elizabeth refused to believe that he had done that. He had not left her; but she was dying and unable to protect him, and already his enemies had shut him out. She knew enough about Royal deathbeds to believe that. Robert would suffer when she died. They all hated him, and she was the cause of their hatred. She had set him up to please herself, selfishly and without caring how many enemies she made for him.

Her life was ebbing and she knew it, she knew that the illness had ravaged her system to the point where her spirit was ready to abandon it completely, and she knew, by looking into the eyes of the men standing close to her, that her death was probably a matter of hours. And in that moment, already separated from the mortal power which had been the mainspring of her life, the human softness in her overcame all other feelings; she felt a pain of fear for the one human being that she had come to care for almost in spite of herself and of him: Robert, heartless and unworthy in so many ways, yet so strong and magnificent in his manhood, who would be helpless, helpless as the child she had never borne, when she was not there to protect him.

“I have a request to make of you, my Lords.”

They came closer and then she knew she must have only whispered. It was a feeble chance, a sentimental straw she tried to catch at the last moment, and her knowledge of human nature made her despair of its success. But if they loved her at all, if there was pity in them, they might see her last agony and respect the wish she was going to express.

“I want you to grant my Lord Dudley a pension.… I recommend him to you. I would have you choose him as Protector of the realm if I should not recover. He is a man who can be trusted.… Come closer still.”

The effort was taxing her so much she felt she might be slipping back into that stormy sleep of unconsciousness; her will forced her receding senses to hold fast, and the hoarse, trembling voice went on, making the last, desperate plea for the safety of Dudley.

“I have loved him above any other man,” they heard her say, “but I swear before God that nothing improper has ever passed between us.… I commend him to your care, as you love me.…”

The Earl of Sussex fell on his knees, crying as openly as Katherine Dacre.

“It shall be done, Madam,” he promised. “I give my word.”

“She can't hear you,” Cecil interrupted. “She has fainted again.”

He was trembling with fear. In spite of her energy he knew she was constitutionally frail: the disease was devouring the last of her strength. She lay in the bed as if she were already dead.…

“Where is that cur Burcot? The others have failed, we must try him; where is he?”

“The Queen insulted him.” Mary Sidney came forward from the head of the bed where she had been standing, half-hidden by the curtain. “He has refused to return and attend her.”

“Leave that to me,” Sir Philip Carew was the Queen's cousin, a kinsman of the Boleyns. He turned and ran out of the room.

Slowly they left her, some looking back at the slight figure in the bed, so thin that the outline of her body hardly showed under the bedclothes, her fiery hair lying damp and tangled with sweat all over the pillow. The Queen was dying. They were all ruined. They went into the Council Chamber to debate who should be named as her successor. She had a cousin, Lady Catherine Grey, sister to the hapless nine-days' Queen Jane. Catherine Grey was in the Tower, for having secretly married and borne two sons. She was a stupid, arrogant little ninny, but she was a Protestant and the only person they could think of; no one mentioned Mary, Queen of Scots. They did not dare.

Within two hours Carew had kept his promise. Doctor Burcot rode into the Palace courtyard, and stamped upstairs to the Queen's room, cursing and grumbling in German.

When he refused the second summons to the Palace, Carew's servant threw his cloak and boots at him, and with a dagger at his back, Burcot was forced to dress and ride with them. When he came to Elizabeth his professional feelings overcame his pride. He grunted with contempt at the heavy covers which had been drawn back to ease the heat of her temperature, and ordered her women to build the largest fire possible in the grate. A mattress was laid in front of it, and a length of red cloth brought up from the linen rooms. He made them lift the Queen out of bed and on to the pallet in front of the fire. He wrapped her up in the cloth himself, and when she opened her eyes he gave her a drink and told her to finish it; it would help her sleep. He was unable to resist saying, crossly: “Almost too late, Madam, almost too late!”

Within two hours he returned to the patient and picked up one hand which was protruding from the crimson covering. It was covered with angry spots.

“The infection is out,” he announced. “The Queen will live; keep her covered in that manner and she may escape disfigurement. And keep the curtains drawn. Sunlight will only cause scars.”

In cottages and great houses all over England, the cure for the dreaded smallpox was the same. Red curtains or a red petticoat shielded the patient from the rays of the sun; it was a feeble attempt to avoid the hideous pitting and scarring which made survival almost more terrible than death.

By the evening the Council received a message that the spots had appeared all over the Queen's body, her fever was sinking and the immediate danger to her life was over. They could hardly believe it at first. The rough plans for proclaiming Catherine Grey were quickly torn up, and a gentlemen's agreement was reached to keep all knowledge of the frantic choice of a successor from the ears of Elizabeth. She was going to recover; even those who hated each other drank mutual toasts of relief, and Cecil suggested that prayers of thanksgiving should be offered as soon as the Queen was safely convalescent.

A week later Doctor Burcot allowed the Councillors to visit the Queen. But Dudley went to see her first. He knelt by the bed, and took her hand in his, and for a moment he was so genuinely affected that he could not speak.

Mary Sidney had told him of Elizabeth's recommendation to the Council; he had been astonished and then almost shamed when he heard of her suggestion that he should be made Protector. He was genuinely touched by her effort to exonerate him for their relationship and to placate all the enemies she must have sensed were gathering to attack him.

“Dear Robert … It's all over, and I'm not even marked.”

It was a miracle; she was unbelievably thin and frail, but the disease had not left a scar on her face.

“If you were as pocked as my old nurse, I shouldn't care,” he said. “As long as you lived … that's all I prayed for, night and day.”

“I know,” Elizabeth smiled, “I know that you did not desert the sinking ship either. You stayed outside my rooms when another man in your boots would have been half-way out of England. I thank you for it. I kept remembering my sister's death, and wondering whether all my friends were hastening to find a successor, just as they hastened to me. My good Sidney told me you never left the Palace.”