Elizabeth I (80 page)

“I will have only six thousand?”

“That is enough for your purposes. A larger army would have trouble marching to Ulster. The terrain is boggy, uneven, and filled with fords and narrow passes. And it is to Ulster you must go, and straightway. Land, gather your supplies, and march. Hunt O'Neill down. That is your mission.”

“He will be waiting.”

“Of course he will be waiting! Surprise is out of the question as our tactic. He knows we have to ferry an army and supplies across the sea. But he can only prepare up to a point. Take him on as soon as you can, when your men and horses are freshest and your supplies greatest. Ireland will sap them all. So strike fast.”

This woman thinks she's a general,
he was doubtless thinking.
But she's just an old creature who's never gone to Scotland, let alone across the water to Ireland. She's never seen a rebel or a battlefield. She never even saw any ships from the Armada!

“Yes, Ma'am,” he said.

I had read much of battles both modern and ancient, and that can teach a person about war. But it was also in my blood. I was the daughter of Henry VIII; I was descended from the Conqueror, and before that Arthur himself. I belonged on a battlefield, and I would know my way around one by instinct.

Now was the time to call for the refreshments. At last we were finished with business, and I had spoken openly and honestly to him.

He sat back, relaxing in his chair. It was a relief to have this behind us. If his powers were less than he would have liked, they probably still exceeded his expectations.

Before the drink and tidbits could arrive, a messenger asked leave to come in and see Essex. I asked him to speak, and he said simply, “Edmund Spenser has died. He gave up the ghost shortly after you left, my lord.”

Essex went as pale as a ghost himself. Then he did something very odd for a Protestant. He crossed himself.

“Ireland killed him!” he cried.

H
e had seemed well enough this morning. I had seen him sitting on his bench in his room, drinking warmed ale, hunched in his blanket. He had looked up as I passed and given a wistful smile.

“Essex is off to Whitehall this morning to see the Queen,” I told him. “When he returns, we will know what his fate is to be.”

“May his fate be good and Ireland's bad,” Spenser said.

It was bitterly cold, with a damp that deepened its sting. Just after Christmas London had been blanketed with snow, and now icy shreds of it clung to windowsills and steps and exposed tree roots. January 13, St. Hilary's Day, by tradition the coldest day of the year, was trying to live up to its reputation. I wished with all my heart that Spenser could tolerate a fire in his room, for that was the only way to provide warmth.

Robert had gone to face the Queen and finally speak directly about his commission. I had begged him to keep his head cool and his tongue under control. I could only pray that he would.

I asked Frances to join me in my chamber, so we could sit and sew to calm our nerves. I hated needlework, but it was very soothing when the mind was jumpy. I did not see enough of Frances and scolded myself for that, but she was so easy to overlook. I was pleased that she was expecting again. Except for little Robert, born soon after their marriage, there had been no others. Perhaps he shunned her bed, but he owed her more children. She was having a difficult time with this pregnancy, and I assured her that that meant a trouble-free child.

“A child who troubles you in the womb will never trouble you afterward,” I said. “Elizabeth Vernon, now, she had such an easy nine months, but the girl cries all night long, and also”—dare I say it?—“looks like a monkey.”

In spite of herself, Frances giggled. “She does, doesn't she?” she agreed. “And both her parents so pretty.”

We spoke of other things, court gossip mainly, who was sleeping with whom, fashions, and so on. Mindless subjects to beguile the time. Frances surprised me with her keen interest in these things and her near-perfect recall of dates, names, and details. Perhaps she was not such a prig as I had thought her, or, like some overlooked people, she made it her business to revel in others' doings. She was the daughter of a spymaster, after all.

“I'll ask Spenser to join us,” I said, after we had exhausted all pending liaisons and divorces. It was time to elevate the conversation.

But when I went to his room, I found him sprawled on the floor, toppled from his bench. His cheek was pressed against the stone floor, the dry rushes partially covering his mouth. They did not move with his breath.

Gently I turned his head and held my hand before his nostrils, but I felt nothing. His feathered hat was perched on a chair post; I hurriedly pulled a feather out and put it by his nose, but not a tendril of the feathers stirred. He was dead.

I took his hand; it was cold, but then, it had been cold all along. The poor, poor wretch! How Robert would grieve.

His death shocked me but did not surprise me. He had arrived a dead man, only going through the outward semblance of living.

“Farewell, friend,” I whispered. “You leave us too soon.” He was only forty-six.

In three days' time there was to be a grand funeral for the man called England's greatest living poet. He would be interred in the south transept of Westminster Abbey to lie beside our greatest poet, living or dead, Chaucer. Robert was paying all expenses. In the sorrow and busyness of preparing for the funeral, he had no time to speak of his interview with the Queen, other than to assure me it had gone well and he had been given nearly everything he had hoped for.

January 16 was a nasty day, with spitting sleet and clouds hanging so low over London they nearly pressed on rooftops. Tiny sparkles of frost clung to fence tops and weather vanes. It was fortunate the coffin could be taken to Westminster Abbey on foot rather than having to use a funeral barge, for ice chunks were drifting on the Thames, remnants of the recent freeze.

It was to be a poet's funeral, as a soldier would have a military one. Instead of marchers, trumpets, and drums, he would be escorted to the grave by fellow writers. They had composed elegies and poems to be read at the graveside.

The mourners took their places in the abbey. My allotted place was near the grave site; behind me I could see that the great nave was filling up. Spenser was revered by many more people than he had realized.

The Queen would not come, but she never attended funerals. She had not attended Sir Philip Sidney's or Lord Burghley's. Apparently nothing would induce her to make an exception. Perhaps by her age she had lost so many people she could stomach no reminders of it.

If possible, the gray stones of the abbey seemed to squeeze the cold out of the air and concentrate it. It was colder inside than out, and I could hear dripping of Stygian water from a column behind the altar. All around me, effigies of long-dead knights and ladies slept on their tomb tops as if on pallets.

From down the nave, the long doors were pulled open and the procession entered. The coffin began to make its way down the aisle. Even the pallbearers were writers. I recognized the florid, beefy face of Ben Jonson and the lordly ones of Francis Beaumont and John Fletcher. George Chapman was there, and on the other side, the last one on the right, was Will Shakespeare. As he passed, he happened to look right at me. I was unable to look away; then he passed, and all I saw was the back of his black hat.

The pallbearers were followed by columns of other writers. I recognized Nicholas Breton and Henry Constable—who had written sonnets to my granddaughter, but really to her mother, Penelope—Michael Drayton, John Donne (Egerton's young secretary, who dabbled in verse), Thomas Dekker, and Thomas Campion. But there were many others I did not know. Slowly, swaying as they walked, the black double line made its way to where the coffin now rested on a bier. The stone floor had been opened to create a grave. Beside it, Chaucer's gravestone had not been disturbed, and his vault was not visible. So Spenser and he would lie side by side, but their coffins would not touch. The coffin was lowered into the grave.

“Here we consign to the earth the remains of Sir Edmund Spenser,” intoned the priest. But rather than proceeding to the usual funeral service, he said, “His fellows will present their eulogies.”

The first one merely said, “Here lies the prince of poets in his time, whose divine spirit needs no other witness than the works which he left behind him.”

Another stepped forward and said, “Here next to Chaucer, Spenser lies; to whom in genius next he was, as now in tomb.”

Another, his face indistinguishable beneath his black hood, said, “Whilst thou did live, lived English poetry; which fears now thou art dead, that she shall die.”

I heard a clicking sound, followed by a soft thud. As each man spoke, he threw his scroll with its verse into the grave, followed by his pen. It was a parallel ceremony to the traditional one in which servants of the Crown throw away and break their white rods of office when the sovereign dies.

Now the famous poets took their turn reciting hastily composed eulogies. Most, as one would expect, were forgettable. The ones that were not may have been written at some other time, lying fallow and awaiting their public voice.

Young John Donne stepped forward and recited, in a strong voice that carried well, “Death, be not proud, though some have called thee mighty and dreadful, for thou are not so....” The poem then went on to reach a conclusion that death itself must die.

But words are not facts. Spenser lay dead, and nothing could change that.

Will stepped up. His eulogy would doubtless be high-flown and awash in classical references. But no. He said, “In death, simple is best. A song suffices. A baby needs a lullaby and a dead man needs a sweet melody, to offset the odor of decay.” He cleared his throat. “Hear me, Edmund.”

He ended with

Then he tossed the poem into the grave and threw his pen after it.

Following him, Thomas Campion fumbled with several sheets of paper, finally selecting one to read.

The earth his somber inn.
I did not want a somber inn; I wanted a banquet hall. The earth offered too many riches to turn my back on them.

The tomb was closed, the earth thrown onto the coffin and the pile of pens and parchment. Spenser was gone.

As befitted the patron of the burial, Robert was to provide the funeral feast at Essex House. Tables had been set up in the hall, laden with the requisite funeral meats, cakes, and drink. We had also provided warm ale and wine to offset the cold that had crept into everyone's bones in the unheated abbey. The hall's huge stone fireplace did its best to banish winter from the room, but only those standing directly in front of it would benefit from the heat.

Everyone but the Queen was here. It gave me great pleasure to realize that although I was barred from court, court had come to me. Even Robert's political adversaries from the Privy Council were present: Cecil, Raleigh, Admiral Howard, Cobham. All were united in their tribute to Spenser this day, overlooking all other allegiances. Egerton was here with his secretary Donne, who was reaping praise for his “Death” poem; old Lord Buckhurst, leaning on his cane, was eager to talk to the young poets; George Carey, young Hunsdon, ambled about—although in his sixties he was young only in comparison with his long-lived father.