Elizabeth I (24 page)

Robert Cecil understood the urgency of it, and he had outdone himself in the hinting letters he had sent the French king. I was coming to rely more and more on him, his sure touch and commonsense approach. His father had raised a worthy successor.

It was now a fortnight since Henri had received our softly worded summons. He knew the dates we would be in Portsmouth. Surely any day now we would spot his ship on the horizon. I felt it would be today.

Now, this morning, as I kept going to the window and peering out, Cecil shook his head. “Old women have a saying, ‘A watched pot never boils,' ” he said.

I laughed. “And a watched horizon always remains empty,” I said. “You speak true.” But somehow I felt I could will him to appear.

After four days we could wait no longer. There was nothing further to do in Portsmouth, and if we lingered another day it would become obvious we were waiting for something. I was deeply grateful for the Armada exhibition and hoped I expressed it sufficiently. But I stood looking forlornly out to sea while the mayor was orchestrating the leave-taking ceremonies. I felt deserted, abandoned by a false lover.

Soon enough I learned what was happening in France. No wonder the king did not want to face me. He had failed to make use of the troops I had sent, squandering their lives and my money. Of the four thousand men I had dispatched under Essex, the best and finest-equipped of any expeditionary force I had ever provided, only fifteen hundred remained. The other twenty-five hundred had given their lives up to disease while they waited in vain to join forces with the elusive French. Essex, easily duped, had led them hither and yon over hill and dale in France with no discernible purpose other than that he liked wearing his fine livery and commanding troops. As a reward for this foolishness, he knighted twenty-four men—for doing nothing. I was livid. I recalled him and published my declaration—in bold print, so even the French king could read it—to bring the troops home.

I
wore mourning yet again. And this one I felt deeply. A woman might earn the cruel nickname of Merry Widow if she sees the death of a husband as less a loss than a deliverance. This is a common feeling, yet some women disguise it better than others. But there is no mother who welcomes the death of a child, no matter how wayward.

My youngest son, Walter, was dead, my sweet boy. And he was dead because of the fecklessness of his brother, Robert, and our prideful ambition. Of my four children, Walter alone never gave me sorrow. He was only twenty-two, killed in that inept war with the Spanish in France under the leadership of Robert.

How pleased we had been with Robert's appointment! How puffed up with what it signified: The Queen had bestowed a major command on Robert. He was on his way to distinguishing himself militarily and rising above the other courtiers who were confined to the halls of court.

Not that she had a great deal to choose from. Those fit to command land forces were few. There was Black Jack Norris and then there was ... no one. The sea fighters had dispersed—Francis Drake and his cousin John Hawkins in disgrace from the failed Portugal venture, Richard Grenville dead after a heroic but suicidal one-man battle in his ship
Revenge
against fifty-three Spanish ships, Martin Frobisher retired to the country life in Yorkshire.

In earlier days, there would have been a host of fire-blooded young men qualified to take the field. Now there was only Robert.

Oh, how we had rejoiced over his elevation. His ascendancy over the scrabbling little Cecil now seemed assured. In vain his friend Francis Bacon had reminded us that military command was not the route to power in a Tudor court, and had not been even as far back as Henry VIII's.

“And is even less so when the ruler is a woman,” he warned us. “It will serve only to threaten her. She may be a formidable woman, but even she cannot lead troops in the field, and any man she must rely on to do so will incur her resentment rather than her gratitude. She will not admire anyone who makes up for her own lacks.”

I hated the way Francis came out with his smug observations. I wondered if he was a bad influence on Robert.

“How can she resent someone for doing her a good service?” Robert had asked, trying on various pieces of his armor to be adjusted. He bent his elbow up and down, testing its flexibility. The hinge creaked. “Will a simple dose of oil cure this, or do the parts need replacing?” he mused.

“Listen!” I ordered him. Francis's words were disturbing me. “The purpose of this command is to further your career and your ambitions. I see no other means to do it except by military success. How can you advise otherwise, Francis?”

“Oh, he should go to war. He makes a fine figure in his regalia, and it will gain him a reputation. But always remember that the Queen may have different goals.”

“Why, what possible other goals could she have than smashing the Spanish?” Robert looked bewildered.

“Look in the Bible,” said Francis. “ ‘The heaven for height, and the earth for depth, and the heart of kings is unsearchable.' ”

“When did you start reading Scripture, you atheist?” asked Robert.

“You do not have to be a believer in order to recognize wisdom there,” said Francis. “And don't call me an atheist. It's dangerous!”

“No one's heart is unsearchable,” I said. “The number of possible motives are usually very few.”

“Very well then. I shall prepare a paper examining the Queen's choice of motives. But in the meantime, friend Robert, do as well as you like on the battlefield but do not court popularity here at home on its basis, or she will see you as a rival.”

“The people
do
like me,” he noted, delight creeping into his voice.

“It has been a long time since they had a popular hero,” said Francis. “Leicester remained hated, for all that he was the Queen's favorite. There was Drake, of course, in his day—and Philip Sidney, who died in time to cement his hold on the imagination. They are hungry for another.”

“It is your time,” I assured him. “The place is empty. Seize it.”

At last I could come into my own. My first husband, Walter, had bankrupted himself pursuing glory in that bog of ambition, Ireland, and only got debt and death for his efforts. My second husband, Leicester, had failed miserably in the Netherlands, when power and command were handed him. Now my eldest son would recoup all.

“Walter wants to come,” Robert was saying.

“What better opportunity?” I said. “You can oversee him, guide him.”

Remembering those words was God's torture for me now. I had urged it; I had encouraged it.

Walter was killed in September, only a few months after arriving on that fool's errand of a campaign. He fell into a French ambush when he was making a token sally before the walls of Rouen, hit in the head by a cursedly accurate French sniper. With difficulty his captain rescued the body and returned it to the English camp.

Having failed to achieve anything, having lost three-quarters of the men, Elizabeth issued her “Declaration of the Causes That Move Her Majesty to Revoke Her Forces in Normandy.” Robert returned home, and together we interred Walter in his vault. That was only a few days ago, and now we passed each other like ghosts, trying to right ourselves as we fumbled along the corridors of the house.

I was laid low by grief in a way I had never been before. I should have been used to loss; my mother was gone, as well as my earlier husbands and my little son with Leicester. But losing a sickly child is not the same, for in one respect I had anticipated it from the moment I saw his puny frame and knew he was weak. But Walter had grown to manhood with none of the faults of my other children—missing the rashness of my daughters and the instability of Robert, he was closest to my heart. The future had looked glorious for him. Now he lay lapped in marble.

I told myself I should take comfort in my surviving children, should be plotting Robert's next moves now that he was back and had no clear path. While he was gone that little weasel Cecil had managed to get himself named to the Privy Council, where my aged father still sat. Next it should be Robert's turn, if he managed things well.

But my heart was not in my schemes. I did not even care if I ever went to London and felt no desire to leave Drayton Bassett. It even began to feel soothing to me. It no longer even felt like exile, and the court at London seemed a faraway and threatening place that no sensible person would want to frequent. Perhaps that was the worst part: to have been cast adrift from my former self.

It was a week since we had laid Walter in his tomb, and today we would return to say final prayers and offer flowers. I had asked both my daughters, Penelope and Dorothy, to come and honor their brother. They joined the family here: me, Robert, Frances and her two children—Elizabeth Sidney, age seven, and little Robert, a year old. As soon as the girls arrived, I felt even worse, for having all the surviving siblings together only emphasized the one that was missing.

Now, as we gathered in the hall, I looked hard at Penelope and Dorothy. Both were stunning beauties. Once I had taken great pride in that. Now I felt like Niobe, that foolish woman who bragged about her children only to have the envious gods strike them down one by one. Penelope was pushing her golden curls up under her hat, fussing with wayward strands. Her delicate, long fingers were pale and ornamented with only finely wrought rings. The dark fabric of her gown was in perfect taste for the somber occasion but fashionably cut. Her husband, Lord Rich, pampered her—with worldly goods, that is. Penelope had not wanted to marry him, but he could offer financial enticements as well as his title, and I am ashamed to say that her father and I insisted on the marriage. But they lived apart now, she calling him a violent man, and there were rumors she had taken up with my husband's distant cousin, Charles Blount. It felt slightly incestuous even to think about.