Elizabeth I (50 page)

“Come back afterward! I want to hear it all!”

He did not answer, and I hated myself for saying it. The door slammed.

I fought with temptation all afternoon to keep away from the theater. Usually I am not very successful against temptation, but today I was. I simply could not go there, could not be seen. I envied him his other life, the company of his fellow actors, the freedom of becoming someone else entirely, even if only for a few hours through his characters. He made whole new worlds; he did not have actually to sail to them.

“My mind to me a kingdom is ...” Shakespeare had quoted Sir Edward Dyer’s entire poem to me, but all I remembered was that first line. And oh, yes, “Such present joys therein I find that it excels all other bliss.” He might as well have been describing himself. But perhaps all poets were like that and it was a common feeling among them.

What did I know about Will Shakespeare, anyway? He came from Warwickshire, a country man, a nobody in aristocratic circles. He was thirty-two years old. He had married at eighteen and had three children. His wife was eight years older. Perhaps he was always drawn to older women? She stayed behind in Warwickshire when he came to London to act and write. He had secured the young Earl of Southampton as his patron and published the wildly successful poem
Venus and Adonis,
following it up with
The Rape of Lucrece
a year later. He acted in the Lord Chamberlain’s Men and wrote plays for them. He refused all gifts I tried to give him, as if accepting anything would compromise him. Anything material, that is. Words, lovemaking—he was free enough with them. He never wrote a note to me, nor a dedicated poem, but he wrote about me in his sonnets and in his plays, although he was careful never to identify me by name. I had read enough of them to feel sure of it, although he never admitted it. He was as guarded as a Spanish bastion.

Spanish bastion ... Soon the official news would come to us about Cádiz. And the arrival of my son in person, and ... Southampton. And my husband. It would all be over for me, my interval of play. But something new would begin for my son, I hoped. His hour would have come at last.

The sun dipped toward the west. These summer days were long and oppressive, the heat unrelenting. The play would be over. I knew the actors would have been miserable in their heavy costumes. This summer had been difficult for them; if they were not sweating under the sun they were soaked from the intermittent downpours. But Will never complained.

Now he would be at the tavern with his friends, after the ticket sales had been tallied up. They would be discussing the performance, how it had been received, how it could be improved, and what was on the boards for the next day. He would have forgotten all about coming back here.

His world was so much richer than mine! A wave of angry envy washed over me. What had I said earlier? He was a nobody from Stratford. But it was I who was the nobody. I had no world outside the narrow confines of Essex House. I had lost my position at court long ago—and court itself was confining, limited—and yet, as a woman, I was not free to roam elsewhere at will. He, on the other hand, was the freest creature in the world. His wife did not confine him, and in any case, she was far away in Stratford. He could invade realms, countries, the past, all at his whim in his own mind. Here in London, he could frequent any tavern or any place he wished. And above all, he could exercise his mind, hone it against other wits, stretch himself as far as he could. His days were never dull repetitions, obligations, duty.

Oh, Lettice,
I told myself.
There is not a person living upon this earth who does not have dull stretches of his life. The everydayness of life is parceled out to us alike.

But I wanted to be able to go to the tavern and talk about my play—or someone else’s. Did I yearn for Will, desire him, for the portal he provided into that forbidden world of freedom? He was my only glimpse, my only entrée, into it.

Stop it
, I told myself.
You are sinking in self-pity.

There was a soft knock on the door. He was here! He
had
come back! Flying to it, I flung it open, and saw a stranger standing there.

He pulled off his hat and bowed. “I am Sir Anthony Ashley, sent by the Earl of Essex.” His clothes were gray with traveler’s dust. “It is most urgent.”

“Pray come in.”

He followed me as I led him past the public rooms and into the withdrawing room. The door to the bedroom was discreetly closed. I poured him some ale and motioned for him to sit. “Where is my son?” I asked him.

“He is still at sea but will be arriving within the next few days,” he said. “He wanted this report to be published before he got here.” He thrust a packet of papers into my hands.

I opened it and saw the title: “A True Relation of the Action at Cádiz the 21st June, Under the Earl of Essex and Lord Admiral, Sent to a Gentleman in Court from One That Served There in Good Place.”

“But why? Why not present it himself?”

“Because there are rival reports that seek to undermine his achievements.”

“I thought we were victorious, and the earl had led the action.” I could stand no more of this. “Tell me! What truly happened? We know almost nothing.”

He smacked his lips, reminding me that he had ridden hard and was still thirsty. I refilled his glass, and he downed it gratefully. “Ah, that’s better. Let me just tell you briefly, for to do otherwise is to drown in details. Yes, what you heard was true. But there is more. We were successful in surprising the town, although Medina-Sidonia—the former commander of the Armada and now stationed in Andalusia—spotted us when we were getting close, about twelve hours away, and tried to warn them. We did sack the town, after stripping it of its goods. But there was such rivalry between the sea and the land forces that they became their own enemies. The land forces, led by Essex, were determined to go first, and delayed the sea attack on the cluster of merchant ships. Those withdrew to the farther town of Puerto Real at the base of the peninsula, where Sidonia offered a ransom of two million ducats for them. Admiral Howard held out for four million, and while he was haggling, Sidonia ordered all thirty-six of them to be burned. The total loss we reckon as twelve million ducats. Had not Essex and Raleigh been rivals for glory in the campaign, and Essex not sought to thwart his sea action, we would have realized that twelve million. In addition, another small fleet of galleys escaped completely.”

I felt cold. The Queen would be furious.

“There was talk about retaining Cádiz as a permanent base. Essex urged it. I know he had left a letter behind for the Privy Council about it. But he was overruled. He also wanted to stop in Lisbon on the way back, to see if we could take it, but he was overruled then, too, by an exhausted army.” He scratched his head. “Your husband, Sir Christopher, did well, leading a ten-mile land attack on Faro before we reached Lisbon.”

“Well? What did Faro yield?”

“Only a lot of books,” he admitted. “From the archbishop’s library. The town was deserted. They had been warned.”

“Damn them!”

“Unfortunately, only two days after we sailed past Lisbon, a treasure fleet from America arrived there.”

Now I felt sick; the coldness was replaced by nausea. The Queen would be more than furious. I could not picture how incensed she would be at this blundering and loss of her investment, and the punishments she would inflict.

“So it is vitally important that Essex proclaim his intention to attack Lisbon, and stress that he was impeded and prevented from it by others. He should not be blamed for the loss of that treasure, estimated at twenty million ducats. His judgment was sound; it was the others who failed. Already Raleigh is trying to circulate his own version of events. You know how clever that man is at promoting himself through his writing. He is a devilish good penman. First he transformed his cousin Richard Grenville’s suicidal fight against the Spanish into legendary heroism in his pamphlet ‘Report of the Truth of the Fight About the Isles of Azores This Last Summer,’ and then he made his own fruitless expedition to Guiana into a matchless adventure in ‘The Discovery of the Empire of Guiana and Manoa’—which he never even got to!—which was translated into Dutch, Latin, and German. We cannot let that happen to us!”

“No. We cannot,” I agreed. “What do you propose to do?”

“I’ll get this printed quickly, so it can be in circulation before Essex arrives. It must truly look as if it were written by a soldier. I know a printer who can do it.”

“Good.” I felt numb.

“The venture will rank alongside Crécy, Agincourt, and the Armada. It truly was a spectacular long-range expedition, and it succeeded. We must make sure everyone realizes it. For there is another problem.”

How could there be? What else could possibly plague it?

“The precious stones, gold, and coin that were taken have not—oh, let me just state it! The looted goods have in turn been looted! The men have helped themselves, instead of reserving it for the Crown. I have a double commission, a secret one of publishing the letter and a public one of tracking down the missing booty.”

“Excuse me.” I got up and walked as quickly as I could into my private rooms, then ran for the basin, where I was sick. The goods gone. The Queen cheated—no, robbed—by her own countrymen. What did this mean for Robert, the leader of the expedition? I wiped my mouth and leaned weakly against the table to steady myself. A few minutes later I confronted Ashley again.

“You must hurry,” I said. “Do not linger here. When may I expect my son?”

“Within a week.” He cocked his head. “Are you not curious about when your husband will arrive?”

“Yes, yes, of course, but I assumed they would be together.”

He looked amused. “I daresay. Actually, Sir Christopher will probably arrive first. He was on a different ship.”

“Thank you,” I said with as much dignity as I could muster. He acted as if he
knew
.

I paced the room. For an hour I had walked nervously up and down, unable to sit. I was distraught, thinking of my son’s triumph turned to disgrace.
Were
the Devereuxes cursed? Why did these disasters keeping stalking us, poisoning our successes? He would have to mount a second campaign to redeem his role in the first campaign. Publication of the letter was a good start. When he arrived, he would have to trumpet the splendid, chivalrous escapades on the ramparts for the public. The common people loved daring deeds and brave knights. Since they were never to share the booty, they would not mourn its loss. Instead, they would sing the praises of the brave men in arms, banners flying, surmounting the ramparts in the name of England.

Finally I was able to sit without trembling. The candles were burning low, throwing oblique shadows on the walls, and the servants had long since gone to bed. Outside, a few drunken carousers were singing as they stumbled along the Strand, and on the other side, the faint sound of oars on the river. I opened the windows wider, to let in what little breeze there was, and was rewarded by puffs of air as heavy as a basket of wet laundry.