Lost Love Found (19 page)

Witnesses and depositions followed one after another as the day wore on. There were confessions from the Earl of Rutland; Lords Cromwell, Sandys, Mounteagle, and Danvers; and Essex’s stepfather, Lord Blount. Like an onion, the layers of the Earl of Essex’s treachery were peeled away. Essex, finally beginning to realize that he would not this time escape retribution, accused Robert Cecil of favoring the claim of the Infanta of Spain to England’s throne. Cecil, listening to the trial from a nearby room, dashed into the hall. Kneeling, he begged Lord Buckhurst’s permission to defend himself against the earl’s slander.

“There is not a man here who would believe such a thing of you, Master Cecil,” Lord Buckhurst assured Cecil.

Little Cecil, hunchbacked and fragile, his face white with fury, insisted. “My lord of Essex,” he began in a surprisingly strong voice, “the difference between you and me is great. For wit I give you the preeminence, you have it abundantly. For nobility, I give you place. I am not noble, yet a gentleman. I am no swordsman, there you also have the odds. But I have innocence, conscience, truth, and honesty to defend me against the scandal and sting of slanderous tongues. And in this court, I stand as an upright man, and your lordship as a delinquent.”

There was a low murmur of assent. The Earl of Essex could not look at Sir Robert, who continued, “I protest before God I have loved your person and justified your virtues, and I appeal to God and the queen that I told Her Majesty your afflictions would make you a fit servant for her, attending but a fit time to move Her Majesty to call you to court again. I would have willingly gone down on my knees in your lordship’s behalf before the queen, but now that you have showed us your wolfs head in a sheep’s garment, I wash my hands of you! God be thanked, we now know you! I defy you, sir, to name the councillor to whom I ever said that the Infanta’s claim took precedence over others. Such slander is just that. ’Tis but an invented fiction!”

Essex was silent, but the Earl of Southampton leaped to his feet and cried out, “ ’Twas Sir William Knollys himself, my lords! I swear it on my mother’s honor!”

Essex’s uncle was immediately sent for to clear up the dispute. He arrived, extremely surprised at having been called. He was sworn in and the testimony was repeated to him. He thought for a moment and then said, “I have been seriously misquoted, my lords. Mr. Secretary, Cecil and I were speaking some time back regarding a book in which the tides to the throne were set down. He said he found it strange impudence that the Infanta’s claim to England’s throne was given the same right to the succession of the crown as any other. He said he believed her claim to lack true validity. Never, my lords, did he favor such a claim, nor ever did I claim such words of Robert Cecil.”

As a vast sigh of relief echoed about the hall, the Earl of Essex insisted, “Sir Robert’s words were reported to me in another sense, else I should not have accused him.”

“No, my lord. Your lordship, out of malice toward me, desires to make me odious, having no other true ground,” Cecil replied spiritedly. “I beseech God to forgive you for this open wrong done to me.”

A recess was called so that the peers and judges could make their decision. After refreshing themselves with beer and smoking their pipes, they returned to the courtroom to pronounce sentence. Each peer stood in his turn to answer the question put to him. “My Lord, is Robert, Earl of Essex, guilty of treason? Is the Earl of Southampton guilty of treason?”

“Guilty,” answered every voice.

Both earls were brought back to hear the verdict. Essex, to everyone’s surprise, accepted his fate with good grace, even begging that young Southampton be spared. The sentence was pronounced on both men. Death by hanging, drawing, and quartering. As peers of the realm, however, they would suffer a more merciful beheading. Even so, it was a traitor’s death.

The two men were escorted through the streets of London, the blade of an axe turned toward them to announce the verdict to the watching crowds. It was past six o’clock, and snow had begun to fall.

Robert Devereaux faced death the way he had always approached everything. With enthusiasm. Guided by the Reverend Adby Ashton, he cleansed his soul and wrote a four-page complete confession indicting his stepfather, Christopher Blount; his sister, Lady Rich; his secretary, Mr. Cuffe; and Lords Mountjoy and Danvers as foremost among the conspirators urging him toward his folly. He never thought to write to his grieving mother or his neglected wife. He had finished with earthly cares and wanted nothing more than to devote his remaining hours to the salvation of his soul. Few would have recognized in the contrite young man the overproud and ambitious Earl of Essex except for his total self-absorption.

Valentina understood how hard a time this was for Elizabeth. Upon the queen’s desk lay Essex’s death warrant. It was necessary for the queen to sign it, but oh, so difficult. Captain Tom Lee was arrested at the door to the queen’s privy chamber, attempting a mad scheme to force Elizabeth to pardon the earl. For his effort, he would forfeit his head. Valentina wondered if the plotting would ever end.

The queen’s cousin, Lettice Knollys, Lady Blount, managed to accost Elizabeth as the queen went to her private chapel on the morning after the sentencing. Lettice, once the queen’s
bête noire
, now groveled at her cousin’s feet, begging for the lives of her son and her third husband.

“Leave Robin to cool his heels in the Tower, Bess, but spare his life, I beg of you!”

“What?” the queen countered. “Are you mad, Lettice? Or do you wish that viper you spawned to have another opportunity to destroy me? Did he not himself admit that England was not large enough to contain us both? Leave me be! The heart I did not believe I had has been broken a thousand times over by your ungrateful offspring!”

“But what of Christopher, Bess? He cannot harm you. He is a follower, not a leader. I have never been happier since becoming his wife. Do not take him from me also, I beg you!” Tears poured down her face, making dirty tracks in her cheeks.

She is getting old, too, thought the queen with a small measure of satisfaction, and then she boxed Lettice’s ears. “How dare you plead for Lord Blount’s life in such a manner, you she-wolf? So you have been happier with him than with anyone else, have you? What of Dudley? What of my Robert, whom you slyly stole from me? You will learn to live with unhappiness, I have no doubt, Lettice, and you will survive it—even as I have survived it. No, I will spare neither your traitorous husband nor your perfidious offspring! Get you gone from my sight, cousin! I never wish to lay eyes on you again. I give you permission to remain in London until after the executions. After that, you are banned from London and from court!” The queen swept by the sobbing, kneeling woman and entered her chapel.

It was Shrove Tuesday, but because of the attempted rebellion and the coming executions, the queen’s usual pre-Lenten fête had been canceled. In the late afternoon after the Shrovetide play, the queen returned to her privy chamber, walked directly to her desk, and signed the warrant. She handed it to Robert Cecil without a word. Then she withdrew to her bedchamber, refusing all company but Lady Barrows’s.

“If only he had asked, perhaps I might have spared his life,” she whispered brokenly to Valentina.

“By not asking,” said Valentina, “he has done you a kindness, dear madam. You could not have commuted the sentence. You know that to be true, and so does the Earl of Essex.”

“I loved him,” the queen said sadly.

“And this final act of the earl’s proves his love for you, dear madam. You cannot spare him, so he spares you by refraining from asking it of you.”

“ ’Twas ambition, you know,” Elizabeth Tudor observed.

“Ambition and love are at opposite ends of the world, dear madam. The earl could not help himself. He was driven. He allowed ambition to overwhelm his love, and that was his down-fall,” Valentina replied. “You cannot blame yourself, for you gave the earl all you might give.”

The queen sighed deeply and went to sit in a chair by the window to watch the river. In the early evening she dozed off where she sat.

When she awoke, Valentina coaxed her to eat a little soup and toasted cheese. The queen then went to her salon and played cards with her ladies until several hours after midnight. She then retired to her bed.

The bed was a marvelous, fanciful creation that enchanted Valentina, carved with gilded beasts, hung with rich royal purple velvet, and topped with multicolored ostrich plumes spangled with gold.

The queen slept for three hours. Arising, she dressed and, with her ladies and maids of honor in attendance, went to chapel to receive communion and Ash Wednesday ashes. Then, returning to her apartments, she drank a cup of mulled wine and broke her fast with eggs poached in cream and marsala wine. Then she sat down to play her virginals, a regal figure in gold-encrusted white satin, with pearls and rubies about her neck, in her earlobes, and adorning the beautiful, graceful hands that teased such exquisite music from the virginals. As she played, her bright red wig with its wonderful dressing of pearls and gold bobbed merrily. A stranger seeing her thusly would have thought her cold and uncaring, but those who loved and knew her knew better.

Sir Robert Cecil had suggested that the Tower cannon be muffled so that the queen would not hear it, and so it was done. At a little after nine o’clock in the morning the news was brought to her that the Earl of Essex had paid the price for treason. Elizabeth stopped playing the virginals to receive the message. There was an unnatural hush within the room, and then Elizabeth began playing again as if nothing out of the ordinary had happened. Her grief was great, but she was England’s queen and could not show that grief. Her mourning would be terrible, and she would live through it alone.

Hearing the story several days later in Paris, the French king Henry IV cried passionately, “She, only, is a king! She, only, knows how to rule!” All of Europe respected Elizabeth Tudor’s courage in this matter.

To none of the maids of honor’s surprise, both Lord Burke and the earl of Kempe came calling upon Valentina now that the crisis was past. She wanted to send them away, but the maidens protested loudly.

“It has been the most gloomy of winters,” complained the usually contented Margaret Dudley, “and now it is Lententide with no plays or the Bear Garden! Please, Lady Barrows! Please let the gentlemen stay at least for a game of cards.”

“Very well, but you must be quiet. There can be no high spirits or noisy romps, for though the queen says naught, she mourns the earl of Essex deeply.”

“If I cannot have you for myself, divinity, then I am content to share you with such delightful and charming company,” said Tom Ashburne.

The maids of honor giggled, and Honoria de Bohun said most flirtatiously, “It is a pity that we cannot dance in the Maiden’s Chamber of an evening as we used to in days past.”

“There will be no dancing, Honoria,” Valentina said firmly.

“Is she a very stern taskmistress, my ladies?” teased the earl.

“Oh, no, my lord!” little Beth Stanley said earnestly. “Lady Barrows is the kindest of ladies. We have never been happier since she came.”

“Ahh,” sighed the earl, “how fortunate you all are, for Lady Barrows is not kind to me at all.”

“Tom, behave yourself.” Valentina laughed in spite of herself.

“I cannot tell you how vastly relieved I am to hear that Val does not encourage your feeble attempts at courting,” said Lord Burke.

“I neither encourage him, nor discourage him, even as I do with you, my lord,” replied Valentina tartly.

“Is there anything sharper than a woman’s tongue?” demanded Tom Ashburne.

“Nothing, I vow!” agreed Lord Burke, and again the maids giggled.

“Are we to play cards, gentlemen, or not?”

“Are you so anxious to be beaten by me once again,” teased Padraic, “that you can scarce contain your eagerness to play?”

“Hah, sirrah! The last time we sat down to a game of Primero, you lost to me as I recall it,” Valentina countered.

“And you never gave me a chance to regain my honor, as I remember,” he said.

“ ’Twas my honor that was at stake, for you accused me before we began of being a poor player,” Valentina rejoined.

“Your honor will never be a stake where I am concerned, madam,” he returned, and she blushed to the maids surprise and wonder.

“I, on the other hand,” said the earl, “am a terrible player. I shall need Lady Barrows instruction to aid me. Will you sit by me, Valentina, and teach me all I would know?”

Again Valentina felt her cheeks growing pink, for the earl’s words held a far different meaning to her than it appeared to the maids of honor. “Let Mistress Stanley help you, my lord. She is an excellent player of Primero,” Valentina decided. She would not fall into Tom Ashburne’s sly trap.

He smiled at her, and blowing a kiss in her direction with his fingertips, he acknowledged his temporary defeat at her hands.

Winter passed, and spring came filled with brighter promise than springs of recent years. The queen dictated that they move to Greenwich for a time, and so the court moved itself, bag and baggage. Greenwich had always been a happy place for Elizabeth, but this year, looking around her, all the queen could see were the missing faces of those she had loved. Her grief for Essex was deep and relentless.

“Bring me a hand mirror!” the queen commanded her women one afternoon, and there was a moment of shocked silence. For years the queen had not looked at herself closely, declaring narcissism was prideful.

Lady Barrows found a heavy silver handmirror and passed it to little Beth Stanley, the youngest maid. Timidly, the young girl crossed the room and, curtsying to the queen, handed her the mirror. There was not a sound as Elizabeth looked hard at herself for the first time. Quietly, she handed the mirror back to the little girl.

Sighing deeply, she said, “How often have I been abused by flatterers whom I have held in too great estimation, and who have taken delight in informing me to the contrary with regard to my appearance.”