Shakespeare's Rebel (31 page)

Essex stared down. ‘Is he a true Englishman, lad, and loyal to the crown?’

The boy gaped. ‘I . . . I . . . I believes so, aye.’

The earl nodded. ‘Good. Then he will not mind us commandeering them, for our mission is entirely for her majesty’s safety. Saddle them.’ Without waiting to see if he was obeyed – he was, on the instant – Essex turned to his men. ‘Here’s a gift from the Almighty himself. He blesses us in our endeavour. Praise him and mount!’

One of the few things that Essex had taken time to do in his hurry was pray, to which he was much given. Amens and hallelujahs now echoed around the trunks as the party rushed forward to aid the overwhelmed grooms in their labours. Even the earl helped and, driven by desperation, the horses were saddled and bridled in moments. The men mounted. ‘To the Queen!’ yelled Essex, rising high in his stirrups.

The party took off at a gallop. Mud clods flew up, for this major route to London had been much chopped by hoof and wheel. Ducking his head, John felt the strikes of earth on hat brim and chest. He kicked his new mount and, finding it sprightly, moved through the ranks to ride beside his lord in the van, where less earth flew.

Yet they had travelled barely a mile when a horseman came the other way, halting them with his cries. ‘My lord,’ yelled Sir Thomas Gerard, and all reined in around him. ‘News, my lord,’ continued the knight breathlessly. ‘I caught up with Lord Grey and asked that he slow and await your coming. “I have business at court,” he declared and rode on. I followed, asking that he at least let you precede and announce yourself to her majesty.’

‘And what did he reply?’ asked Southampton.

‘He looked along his nose at me and wondered if the plea came from his cousin or his lordship himself. Either way, he would not be delayed,’ Sir Thomas growled.

‘Plea? The cur!’ Essex slapped the saddle before him, making his mount skitter. ‘He means to warn the Secretary whose creature he is.’

‘By the Devil and all his imps!’ yelled St Lawrence, drawing his sword. ‘I will ride now and skewer this traitorous dog. And then, begod, I’ll ride ahead and do the same to the Toad.’ He waved his sword above him, yelling, ‘Who is with me?’

Several. John was not one of them, and was trying to think of some way to halt an act which was both murder and treason – when he did not have to, for another did. ‘No, friends. No!’ The earl was once more up in his stirrups, despite Irish steel whirling close to his head. ‘We will deal with Grey and all traitors when we arrive. Once we have secured the Queen’s person and, again, her love. Many false friends will then learn the cost of their betrayals.’ He turned to St Lawrence. ‘Put up, good fellow. Your blade will find its just mark soon enough.’

‘By God,’ yelled the Irish knight, ‘and isn’t it my family motto: “Never put up a clean sword”? So . . . there!’ he continued, impaling his thumb on the tip, drawing blood. ‘There’s a drop for your thirst – and my lord’s promise that you will soon have a draught!’

A loud cheer came. Spurs were dug into flanks and the gallop resumed. Eight miles left to Nonsuch, and despite the mudded track, they were taken at speed.

It was yet early, and the sun, as they crested the last rise, glittered brightly in the scores of windows, plain leaded or stained, that covered the palace. It was shaped like a castle, with towers at four corners, but it was never designed to be defended. And indeed, no guards manned its false battlements nor even stood with halberds raised at the gatehouse. As they slowed to ride in pairs over the bridge that crossed the waterless moat, all were aware of the silence. Only their mounts’ metal shoes echoed around the cobbled courtyard beyond, no alarms. Glancing up, John saw a shape move away from a thick-glassed window. They were noted, but not challenged.

A lone horse stood, loosely hitched to a post. ‘Grey’s,’ declared Sir Thomas, but of the rider there was no sign.

Everyone dismounted – save for Robert Devereux himself, who was looking up at the windows as if he expected Bess herself to open one and call to him. John watched apprehension war with hope on his broad, mud-smirched face. In the dash across the realm, his dreams could be sustained by frantic momentum. Here, in pause and the unnerving silence of the palace, John could see him falter. He was like a dice thrower with a huge stake before him. The next roll led to fortune or the fall.

It was the moment, he realised, for the earl looked like a man who needed a sign from Fortune herself. So, handing his reins to St Lawrence, John crossed to the earl’s stirrup. ‘My lord?’ he said, raising his hand. Essex took it, descended . . . and opened his to find the Queen’s handkerchief in it.

‘What’s this?’ Essex murmured.

‘The Queen’s favour. You are her champion still, and your sweet Bess awaits.’

‘Bess,’ replied Essex as softly, fingering the entwined tangerine Es. His eyes misted, as if he looked not at his newest knight, but at the Queen herself. When they cleared, bravado was in them again. ‘We go to her majesty!’ he called, tucking the silk into his doublet. ‘But let no man draw his sword – unless I do! Yet if he do’ – his eyes found the tall Irishman – ‘let him not put it up clean.’

The acclaiming shout propelled him to the steps and through the main doors of the palace. There were servants in the entrance hall beyond them, including a steward who bowed and wrung his hands and tried to interpose his body before the headlong rush. He was brushed aside as Essex led his party, taking the stairs two by two. At the top he did not hesitate, for he had obviously been there before, sweeping down a corridor that had portraits between doors on one side and tall windows on the other. John glanced through them, noted the garden below, the patterned parterres surrounded by hedges of box, the paths between made of different-coloured gravels. At one end stood a stone fountain. At the other a raised mound with a table and chairs. The table was covered in bottles and candelabra. Perhaps the Queen had dined there late last night and so was still sleeping, unaware of what was striding to waken her in mud-caked boots.

The thought made him slow. Momentum and excitement had carried them to the Queen’s threshold; but did they truly mean to cross it? To surprise the Queen in her sanctum where, it was said, no man had ever passed?

The answer lay ahead, down a second corridor at right angles to the first. At the end of it were large oak doors, the approach to them lined with chairs on either side. Rising from these now, hastily snatching up their halberds, were two guards. Putting their backs to the doors, they held their weapons at port and nervously watched the approach of so many armed men.

‘Halt here!’ Essex flung up his arm.

This allowed the steward who had first tried to stop them in the entrance to catch up, slide through the group and place himself between the guards before the door. ‘My lord!’ he cried, his hands raised before him as if in prayer, though he rubbed them as if he had some itch. ‘Please do not proceed further. Her Majesty is wont to lie abed of a morning and not receive before noon. If it please you, return for an audience then.’

‘It does not please me.’ Robert Devereux drew himself up to his full height and glared down. ‘Tell me, sirrah, do you know me?’

‘In . . . indeed,’ quavered the man. ‘You are my lord of Essex.’

‘I am!’ came the bellowed reply. ‘More, I am Earl Marshal of England. And I come with tidings of treason. I come to save her majesty.’ He bent closer, as if examining a small insect. ‘Has a certain Lord Grey passed this way?’

‘Lord Grey? Why . . . n-no . . .’

Essex snapped upright. ‘Good. Then we are in the nick.’ He switched his glance to the two guards. ‘Stand aside, fellows. Your commander commands.’

The two guards looked at each other, did not move. But their gazes snapped back at a growl from Captain St Lawrence, who stepped forward now, hand on hilt. As the huge Irishman loomed, both men scrambled aside. ‘Doors,’ Essex commanded the steward.

Despite his obvious terror, the man did not jump to them. He looked first at the menacing captain, then at the crowd behind, finally again at Robert Devereux. ‘My lord,’ he gasped. ‘So many men in the Queen’s bedroom. It would be’ – he closed his eyes, as if awaiting a sword stroke – ‘sacrilege!’

The word paused the ever-religious earl. John knew – all there knew – that the Queen was appointed by God to her throne. What they were about to do could be considered treason – or at the least a violation of holy sanctuary. Essex turned back, raised a hand, pinched the bridge of his nose between closed eyes. When he opened them again, John saw the same uncertainty that had gripped him in the courtyard below. He spoke, hesitantly. ‘I . . . I will proceed alone.’ At the chorus of protest that arose, he looked around the faces before him. ‘I must. I am the Queen’s champion and perhaps have some right to surprise her thus, but . . .’ He studied them again, his hesitation plain. ‘But . . . I am loath to go entirely unattended.’

His voice had risen in plea, a small boy suddenly afraid. Stronger voices rose in reply, all seeking to be selected. ‘Take me,’ cried the Earl of Southampton.

‘Me,’ shouted Sir Thomas Gerard.

‘Nay, me!’ yelled St Lawrence, his bellow rising above all others, as each fell to quarrelling over right and precedent. Only one man there said nothing. No, no, thought John Lawley, sliding behind the Irishman’s broad back. But the fellow stepped away, to argue with another. And, of course, Robert Devereux was looking straight at him.

‘Will you accompany me, Sir John?’ His voice halted the rest as the men turned to regard the man several paces to their rear. Essex continued. ‘You are the Queen’s messenger and brought me the news of this conspiracy. It is fitting you are beside me to bear me witness.’ He nodded. ‘And you have ever warded me in the darkest of days. Will you ward me now?’

A cockerel crowed somewhere in the garden beyond the windows. Like the apostle Peter, John thought, I have recently denied
my
lord at least twice. Yet here, under such scrutiny, he could not. Keeping his sigh to himself, he bowed. ‘Yours in the ranks of death, my lord.’

‘Well.’ Essex nodded. ‘Let us pray it does not come to that.’ As John moved to him, the earl turned to loom again above the cringing steward. ‘And now, fellow. Open!’ The man bowed even lower, turned to the two guards, shrugged. One handed his halberd to the other, then reached to the door handle. He twisted it, pushed . . .

And the Earl of Essex marched into the Queen’s apartments. While at his heels, like a forlorn hound, trailed John Lawley.

The first room was a large antechamber with a single chair at one end, facing the door. No doubt this was where the Queen would greet her first visitors of the day. There were two truckle beds and a maid lately risen from each, who clutched each other now, their faces as white as the shifts they wore. Behind them, a door was open and they did not try to stop the men striding towards it, only averted their eyes as if from some horror.

Noises came from beyond, urgent whisperings, a rustling of cloth, the sound of chests being slammed. The earl paused in the doorway, looked back. ‘Wish me fortune, Johnnie,’ he whispered; then, breathing deep, he stepped into the Queen’s bedchamber.

John followed . . . and bumped into Essex’s mud-spattered cloak, which had halted suddenly before him. Stepping slightly to the side so he could see, he did – and froze. There were six women in the room; not one was moving, each as still as if they posed for an artist – though no artist in the kingdom would have dared to depict ladies thus. Only in Italy perhaps could one be found to capture, in marble or in paint, the slight rise and fall of breasts against linen, the only sign that any there lived. Three were at the rear door, their hands raised as if beckoning, while two more were at centre and jointly held a dressing gown above the shoulders of the last woman, who stood between them.

It was only the attention that everyone else in the room was paying her that made John know this thin old lady at its centre. He had always known her age, though no one in England dared mention it. Perhaps he knew it better than most, he thought, given that his grandfather had killed this woman’s mother.

Elizabeth was sixty-three years old. The woman standing before them looked older.

Scant hair hung in grey tendrils across a wrinkled forehead. The whole trend to the face was downwards, sagging from brow to the wattles of her neck, all of it sallow. Her lips, about whose fullness scores of sonnets had been written, were thin and flaking. It was her eyes, though, that showed the years most, for the orbs which the poets had so praised were dull, glazed, dragged down by pouches of flesh. Yet it was what was in them that made John finally cease an appraisal that must have taken mere seconds; the many things within them. There was fear, certainly, at armed men violating her chamber; rage too, for she was still Gloriana. Though what turned him away finally was not his fear.

It was pity. Pity for the aloneness of someone whose being had been suddenly, violently exposed as a lie; the mask ripped aside, to display the saddest of truths: that Time had transformed even the Faerie Queene into a crone. Yet the worst of it John only realised after he’d looked down, and closed his eyes: the woman had been so brutally exposed to the man who had been her last, perhaps her greatest, love. Artifice had allowed her to pretend that handsome Robert Devereux loved her, desired her. In the horror that must have shown in his eyes, this fantasy shattered. And the ache that came to his stomach now was part for her and also part for Essex. There would be no forgiveness here, no redemption – for him. For his lord. For a love so suddenly betrayed could only turn, as suddenly, to hate. The handkerchief was so much ash.

Whatever his eyes betrayed, the courtier could not falter. Did not. ‘Majesty!’ Essex cried, breaking the binding spell that held everyone, transforming all stillness to sudden movement. As he strode across the room, sword slapping his thigh as he marched, the maids who held her gown dropped it on to her shoulders, having time to tie only one swift bow before Essex was upon them, his big body scattering them as he flung himself down before Elizabeth, seizing one hand, kissing it again and again.