Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I (14 page)

The Palace of Whitehall

T
he year before had been one of mixed joy and sorrow for me, and it had been for the queen as well. Whilst I’d been celebrating my marriage, the queen had been informed of yet another plot to murder her, leaving her throne open for Mary, Queen of Scots, and her secretly proposed husband, the Duke of Norfolk, he who had promised to meddle no more in Mary’s marriage.

One night at cards, Lord Ambrose Dudley, Lord Robert’s brother, explained to us what had transpired. “The queen received a warning from the Grand Duke of Tuscany that a man named Ridolfi was working with Mary’s ambassador to the English court, John Lesley, to overthrow Elizabeth and place Mary on the English throne.”

“Isn’t he the same man who commissioned that pamphlet
some years back calling for the ‘restoration’ of Mary to the English throne?” Anne Dudley asked her husband.

He nodded. “Yes, in spite of Her Majesty’s kind treatment of him and his mistress. In any case,” he continued, “books and letters directly connected Lesley to Mary’s involvement in the plot, and he divulged more when threatened with torture, including the use of papal money that was sent to the Marians in Scotland. Further investigation showed that Norfolk had been sending money to Mary’s supporters in Scotland, too.”

I couldn’t believe how foolish Norfolk had been. Did he not think that he would be discovered, though he always was? Or did he not care? The plan was, of course, revealed, and Norfolk was arrested and tried by his peers. He was found guilty, and yet the queen was reluctant to sign his death warrant. To the frustration of her government, she’d signed—and rescinded—the execution warrants twice.

We sat in the queen’s chamber some days later, the late sun filtering through the windows of Westminster Palace, watching barges sail up and down the Thames. I did my lacework, other women read, and some worked a needle to linen. Although I sat closest to the queen, carried her train, and had substantial grants of my own, none except Anne Dudley treated me with warmth beyond respect. I’d heard the word
Dane
muttered when I entered the room.

“What are you working, Helena?” the queen asked me, nodding toward my needle.

“I’m making the edge of a linen, Majesty. Would you like a turn with my needle?” I jested. We had indeed grown closer and the queen had given me liberties, within reason, since I’d become a marchioness.

She batted at me. All knew she was disinclined toward needlework.

“I’ve heard that your cousin Mary of Scots excels at needlework,” I said, not looking up. “I’ve been told that she not only plies her own needle but that she fashions her own designs.”

“Perhaps she, and other needleworkers, should spend yet more time in productive yield,” the queen answered tartly before turning back to her lettering, terminating the conversation. I knew that I had reraised an issue in her sharp mind, though. At Norfolk’s trial, there was much hard evidence, letters and communications and such, but there were also hints of treason of a more feminine kind. Norfolk was found to be wearing an engagement ring sent to him by Mary, and also in his possession was a pillow cover in which she’d embroidered a hand clipping off a barren vine—Elizabeth—so that a more fruitful one, Mary, may flourish. Underneath she’d sewn the motto “Virtue flourishes by wounding.” Perhaps that safe pillow he’d sought?

And yet the queen was ill disposed to believe that Mary had plotted treasonously against her. Perhaps because she had so few Tudor family members, she wanted to believe Mary when she called the queen “my dear sister.” There were none so blind as those who would not see. I thought back on my sister, dallying with my fiancé. I hadn’t wanted to believe that she would seek her own good at my expense. But she had. Our queen was, perhaps, vulnerable to that very human, harmful desire to believe the best in others for far too long.

The queen did not alter her daily routine in response to the threats from within and without. She rode, she hunted, she walked, and she entertained without fear. In May, the French came to ratify the Treaty of Blois and she played the virginals herself to
entertain them. I stood nearby, though she played from memory and had no need of a page turner. It did not escape my notice, nor anyone in the rooms, I’m sure, that the virginals had been decorated with a falcon and a tree stump, a mute remembrance of her mother’s badge.

The music she’d chosen to play was wistful and slow compared with the lively volta we’d danced the night before. For those who listened, she foreshadowed. Comfortable with her new French treaty, she shortly thereafter issued the death warrant for Norfolk. This time, she did not rescind it.

I recalled a line I’d read in a book of poetry found in Her Majesty’s library. It had been penned by Henry Howard, Norfolk’s father, himself executed for treason some years before his son followed him to the scaffold: “Content thyself with thine estate, / Neither wish death, nor fear his might.”

Lord Robert came to the queen’s chambers late on June 2 to report to her. She dismissed all but a few who stayed for support.

“He wore black satin,” he began, and I hid a smile that Lord Robert would notice what the condemned man wore, “and spoke well and nobly to the crowd. He recalled that ‘through great clemency of Her Majesty, it has been strange to see a nobleman suffer in this place. It is my fortune to be the first, and I pray God that I may be the last.’ ”

How readily one may be raised in this realm and how quickly the ennobled may fall.

Would that Norfolk’s prayer come to pass, that his noble death would be the first and last in uneasy years. He was a pawn wishing to be promoted to king, and minor pieces are oft sacrificed early in a game. The game, though, is always between the two most powerful pieces, queens.

Both could not win. One can never predict, however, if a given game shall go to the bold or to the prudent.

•   •   •

That summer, as always, the queen took the court on Progress. Cecil bemoaned the cost of moving the queen’s carts all summer. The rest of us bemoaned not only the inconvenience of traipsing about the country with those hundreds of carts and litters but the lack of rooms for us courtiers, then required to crowd together like rabbits in warrens. But the queen would meet her people and have a summer of, mostly, an abatement from work. ’Twas hard to begrudge her that, and we enjoyed partaking of the lavish hospitality offered at each stop as well.

Things came to a fiery head, twice, in Warwick, however. Early in our stay a firework display was put on for her pleasure; unfortunately, balls of flame and hissing squibs fell into the nearby village, burning to the ground the simple house of a country man and his wife, who just escaped with their lives. The next morning, the queen had them brought to her.

They were still filthy with soot and smelled badly of spoiled meat; it was to Her Majesty’s credit that she did not breathe into her pomander as she bid them come near. “My good man, we have heard that great damage was done to your home last eve,” she began. Her voice was always quieter when dealing with commoners, gentling their nerves.

The man, kneeling before her, said, “Yes, Your Majesty. I’m sorry ta say that the house is done gone, and my bed and boots with it.”

“And you, my good woman, are you well?” the queen kindly asked the woman beside him.

“Yes, yes, ma’am,” she stammered out. She could not meet the queen’s eye.

The queen turned toward me. “My good lady marquess, would you be so kind as to take up a collection among the court for this couple? We should like to see their house rebuilt and relardered before we return to London.”

“Certainly, Your Highness,” I said. I set out to take a collection, and when I returned to the queen she was dictating a letter to her secretary. I stayed well in the background, repinning a brooch to my gown.

The queen stamped her ring into the hot wax seal and said to her secretary, “Please see that this letter gets to Mr. Thomas Gorges, who will deliver it to the Queen of Scots for me.”

I dropped my brooch on the floor and the queen turned to me. “Are you well, Marchioness?”

“Yes, madam,” I said, keeping my eye upon my brooch, not daring to meet her sharp gaze, as I knew she would see more in me if I did.

That week came an apocalypse, news delivered while we were out hunting with the queen. A messenger raced ahead to where the queen and Lord Robert rode in the lead. Within minutes, she had signaled all to stop. The hunt was being canceled and we were to return to Warwick Castle to mourn. The French king, perhaps at the urging of his mother, Catherine de’ Medici, had authorized the assassination of some high-placed Protestants gathered in France for the wedding of Protestant Henry of Navarre to the French princess Margaret. Somehow, the French people had whipped themselves into a bloodthirsty mob and, in the end, murdered tens of thousands of common-born Protestant citizens.

It would not be inaccurate to say that the event turned many in court, and country, further against the Catholic faith and those practicing it.

That night, Eleanor Brydges and I worked together sorting through Her Majesty’s ribbons. When Eleanor bent forward, I saw a beaded necklace tucked under her dress. Rosary beads. Outlawed Rosary beads . . . worn only by recusants, whose loyalties, of course, were now suspect.

“I see you wear something dear to your heart,” I said quietly, not meeting her eye. “Rosary beads?”

“No!” she denied, tucking the necklace firmly under her neckline. Seeking to defuse the situation, I pulled out my own necklace, the locket of my mother and me. “I have shown this to but few, but I’d like to show it to you.” She had been a constant, if not particularly warm, friend since I arrived at court.

“Lovely,” she said, then turned away. “What do you think of the French matter?” she asked, quickly changing the conversation.

I shook my head. “There has long been talk, on and off, of the queen marrying with the Duke d’Anjou.” He, too, was a son of Catherine de’ Medici. “All wish for Her Majesty to be married, but I question whether any could accept him now. Perhaps it will have to be an Englishman who provides our heir after all!” I finished merrily. I wanted nothing more than for the queen to be happily married, and in the end, I felt that could be achieved only with Lord Robert.

Eleanor did not comment. Maybe she was deep in thought about her own marriage, as she had just become engaged to a man we knew little about, Mr. George Giffard. I did not take mind of it. One thing everyone at court agreed upon was that the queen needed a successor and an heir.

Later that night, as I took off my own jewelry, I thought,
No matter her denial, she wore Rosary beads. For certain. And then she lied about it.
Should I have spoken out further? Was there someone I should tell? This was certainly not something I could ask Clemence, or anyone, and I did not know what to do.

•   •   •

Eleanor was married the next summer; she’d invited the queen to her wedding, of course, but the queen, buried with the work of her realm, sent me as her representative instead. Eleanor pretended that this did not bother her, but I knew it did. Her sister Katherine, younger than she, had married first a year earlier; Katherine was a great beauty and had captured the heart of William Sandys, Third Baron Sandys of the Vyne. The queen had attended that wedding.

Clemence noticed my silence that night. She’d been serving me for many years, and we’d grown close. “Was she unkind to you, then?” she asked.

I nodded. “I understand it, though. My younger sister was chosen, and honored, before I was. Eleanor’s sister has married a man with a grand title, and she a man with no title at all.”

“Don’t be feeling sorry for that one,” Clemence said as she helped me into my nightgown. “That family is oversown with bad seeds. Why, Eleanor’s aunt tried to poison her own husband. He complained right sharply to Cecil. But Cecil, not understanding, mayhap, that the ways of women can oft times be more wicked than the ways of men, did nothing about it.”

I looked at her. “Is this true?”

“Indeed, it is.”

I let it go. The queen had settled some rents and small license
on Eleanor as a wedding gift and spoken to her kindly; I well loved being Her Majesty’s representative at weddings, and in her stead in other places.

As for marriage . . . I had been widowed for not quite three years and marriage was beginning to creep back into my own mind, though no one had roused my interest, save one, whom I had not seen for some time, though I’d kept watch for him.

•   •   •

Just after the new year, whispers passed like a baton throughout the court: Lord Robert was said to have secretly married his lover, the widowed Douglass Howard, Baroness Sheffield, and she was now with child. Elizabeth was too wise and well informed not to know of this, but she hid her feelings for a time. One of the queen’s mottoes was “I see and say nothing.” Perhaps she said nothing, but she always acted. Eventually it seemed that the grief over Lord Robert’s whispered wedding could no longer be dammed and it whipped Her Majesty into a wondrous squall from which we all sought cover.

Poor Mary Shelton bore the brunt of it. In January she approached the queen to ask for permission to marry James Scudamore. The queen refused to give Mary, her second cousin, an answer, and soon enough Mary withdrew from the queen’s presence whenever she could.

Word began to pass that Mary had already married Scudamore, assuming that the queen would grant her permission. When the queen found out she called Mary Shelton before her. “Strange news has reached us,” she began, “that you have married James Scudamore without our permission.”

“Yes, Majesty, I’m sorry, I thought not to trouble you with so trivial a matter.”

“Thought not to trouble me?” She stood and in one quick motion swung her arm around to Mary, striking her hand, hard.

That shocked all of us, apparently even the queen herself. She sat back down, indicated that Mary should come near her, and spoke to her so quietly that none of us could hear what she said. Mary nodded, said nothing, and fled the room.