The Men Who Would Be King (23 page)

Though the French wished Anjou to be settled abroad, they had no intention of allowing the English to dictate the terms on which they would have him. When a draft of proposed conditions was brought to England, in April, by one of Catherine de' Medici's most trusted Italian servants, Guido Cavalcanti, Cecil and Leicester had the task of examining the proposals, but it would not have taken a detailed scrutiny to show them that the French were making demands that Elizabeth could not submit to. The draft stipulated that the marriage ceremony was to be performed by Catholic rites alone, and the duke and his servants were to practice their religion freely and openly at all times; Anjou was not only to be crowned king but to govern jointly with Elizabeth; he was to receive £60,000 a year from England's revenues, even if no children were born of the marriage, and if the queen were to die before he did—which seemed likely, considering the difference in their ages—the payments were to continue. It was evident that in this courtship, as in the archduke's, the gaping problems of religion and the consort's status would provide grounds for lengthy diplomatic dispute.

Skillful, prudent Cecil suggested compromises. Ever anxious that Elizabeth should take a husband and secure the succession, and conscious that every year her chances of marriage and childbearing grew slighter, he patiently endeavored to forward the Valois match in spite of its notable drawbacks. “I see no continuance of her quietness without a marriage,” he had written in March. Cecil was encouraged by the belief that the queen was at last sincerely disposed to marry, however, and for a time it seemed that the match would succeed. In a letter to Leicester, Walsingham had argued forcefully that unless Anjou married the queen it would be most dangerous, for “if England refuse, then is Scotland more ready to receive him.” To keep that threat at bay Elizabeth was happy to appear fascinated by her young Valois suitor, while her ministers loyally labored over the terms of a contract that was never to be signed. Leicester, who gave the impression of supporting the match, knew very well how her mind worked and what the outcome was likely to be, and some of the observations in his letters to Walsingham offered clues for the initiated. The queen was resolved to marry, he wrote, but she wished to deal “as privately as may be devised,” for less reproach to both parties if nothing should come of the negotiations. He reported that Elizabeth found Anjou most acceptable in person and situation, but she was determined not to be swayed on the religious issue—a decision of which Leicester truthfully expressed cordial approval, his piety and self-interest united. Elizabeth could safely inform Catherine de' Medici that she was ready to accept Anjou, as long as certain difficulties could be settled, just as she had been able to assure the discontented Parliament of 1566 that she would marry unless “some great let happen.” The great let, the hindrance that still barred the path of Elizabeth's suitors, was religion, and behind that immovable obstacle she could always take shelter from the chase.

Soon after Cavalcanti returned to France with the English amendments to the draft contract, de La Mothe Fénelon had to face an unpleasant scene with Elizabeth. It had come to her ears that a notable French courtier had been joking at her expense, publicly mocking the courtship with Anjou by saying in front of a large number of people that she had a sore on her leg which was incurable, and that this would be a good pretext for Anjou to give her a potion that would make him a widower and thus enable him to marry Mary, Queen of Scots, and become the absolute master of the isle. De La Mothe Fénelon denied it energetically, and demanded to know who had spread such a tale, so that the miscreant might be punished, but Elizabeth would reveal no names. In the first heat of anger and chagrin she swore she would take up with Spain again, to France's cost; though reason prevailed over rage, the story continued to rankle with her, and for some time after she would make haughty references to it when she saw the French ambassador, telling him on one occasion that she was sorry he had not seen her dance at Lord Northampton's ball, since he would have seen that the Duke of Anjou was in no danger of marrying a cripple. For a woman accustomed to ceaseless extravagant flattery any hint of mockery was doubly painful, and to this, as she was acutely aware, she would always be vulnerable while her love dealings were with a suitor whose age was so laughably different from her own.

But the threat of another, far deeper discord hung over the match, which no diplomatic reassurances could smooth away. “I prize quietude of conscience and the continuance of the peaceable reign which I have begun and desire to pursue higher than all the favors which princes of the world and all kingdoms can confer upon me,” Elizabeth had written to the emperor, with proud sincerity. To marry Anjou would almost certainly be to forfeit that quietude and disrupt that peace. Anjou could not be permitted to go to Mass publicly and practice his faith openly, since that would be against the laws of Elizabeth's realm; to allow him to do so would be to expose England to the kind of religious strife that had so recently torn France apart. But, Catherine urged, the strength and assistance of the King of France would be Elizabeth's best protection against all such troubles. Walsingham told her diplomatically that he believed more good than evil must come from the match, and added that in England civil wars tended to be sudden and violent but short-lived, as there were no strongholds or walled towns that could hold out over long periods. Perhaps, in the months following the massacre of St. Bartholomew's Eve, he would remember that remark, as the gallant Huguenot inhabitants of La Rochelle held out against their king's besieging forces, with Elizabeth's tacit support. For the continuance of her peaceable reign she needed protracted negotiations with France for a marriage that would almost certainly have brought an end to her quietude.

Of all the suitors who ever paid court to Elizabeth, Anjou was the most reluctant. Representatives of the aggressive Catholic faction such as the Spanish ambassador and the papal nuncio counseled him to resist the match at all costs, while on the other side Charles IX and Catherine de' Medici demanded his obedience to their own authority. The simmering hostility between the royal brothers more than once flared into heat; in June, Charles IX accused Anjou of accepting bribes from the Catholic clergy to remain in France as the champion of the Roman faith. “I tell you plainly, I will have no other champion here but myself,” he swore, and threatened to make some of the priests shorter by the head, at which Anjou rushed to his rooms in tears and stayed there for the rest of the day weeping. Catherine tried to keep Walsingham from hearing anything about the incident, but there was no concealing the prospective bridegroom's dissatisfaction with his role, even though he had, in one of his more amenable moods, been induced to tell Walsingham that he regarded Elizabeth as “the rarest creature that was in Europe these five hundred years.”

By the autumn of 1571, when Walsingham became ill and had to leave his post at the French court for a time, Elizabeth's situation appeared alarming. As more and more strands of the web of plotting that had been spun around Mary, Queen of Scots, came to light, English relations with Spain deteriorated dangerously, while the Spanish and the Guises wooed Charles IX and Catherine. There were even plans afoot for marrying Anjou to a Polish princess instead of the Queen of England. At all costs Elizabeth wanted to preserve her courtship with the Valois prince; in an endeavor to breathe new life into the dying negotiations she went so far as to instruct Walsingham to give way over the religious issue. But by now Anjou had become so obstinate that the English ambassador could see little hope of a satisfactory outcome to the affair, whatever concessions Elizabeth might offer to make, and it was clearly impossible that the crucial question of the religion of England's prospective king-consort could be set aside for long. When Catherine blandly apologized for Anjou's insistence that he must be free to hear Mass in public with full ceremony, and his refusal to accept any form of compromise, Sir Thomas Smith came out with a reply that spoke for all loyal Protestant Englishmen. “Why,” he exclaimed bluntly, “then he may also require the four orders of friars, monks, canons, pilgrimages, pardons, oil and cream, relics and all such trumperies. That could never be agreed to.” And he proceeded to outline the reasons for the unpopularity of Catholicism among Elizabeth's subjects, telling Catherine of the cruelties of Queen Mary's reign and the treacheries of the present time. It was obvious that Elizabeth could not take a fervent Catholic for her husband, and it was obvious too that Anjou would never be prevailed upon to sacrifice his religious loyalties for the sake of marriage. There was, however, still a means by which Elizabeth might protract her dalliance with France, and Catherine hope to see a Valois prince at last acquire a magnificent share of the rule and revenues of England. Catherine's youngest son, the Duke of Alençon, would soon be eighteen years old; he had reached an age when he too might be considered eligible to become a suitor to the queen.

It was to be the most remarkable courtship of all, and Alençon was almost to succeed in winning the garish old virgin for whom he sighed out his torments of impatient desire; yet at the outset, in the early spring of 1572, Elizabeth showed a marked lack of interest in the youngest Valois prince, for he was known to be undersized and badly scarred by smallpox. It was ironic that the wooing that was to be distinguished by its erotic nature should have begun with Elizabeth disdaining her suitor for his personal appearance. She considered herself slighted by Anjou's reluctance to become her husband, and Alençon seemed a poor substitute for the elegant elder brother. “To be plain with Your Lordship,” Walsingham wrote worriedly to Burghley, “the only thing I fear in this match is the delicacy of Her Majesty's eye and the hard favour of the gentleman, besides his disfiguring with the smallpox, which, if she should see with her eye, I misdoubt much it would withdraw her liking to proceed.” Catherine kept giving assurances that Alençon would grow taller, and that his beard was beginning to show, and in conversation with the envoy Sir Thomas Smith she indulged in some optimistic speculation about the number of children her son and the Queen of England would have; when Smith expressed the humble hope that Elizabeth might bear an heir, Catherine answered confidently, “No, two boys, lest the one should die, and three or four daughters to make alliances with us again.” But her maternal zeal could not disguise the fact that the young prince now being offered as a suitor to the queen was a puny fellow with a big nose and pitted skin, who in no way resembled the hardy, handsome male type that was Elizabeth's ideal.

The difficulties on which Elizabeth officially based her objections were Alençon's age and religion. He had strong Huguenot connections, she was assured, and the English envoy wrote that he was “not so obstinate,” so “papistical,” or “restive like a mule as his brother,” adding innocently that for some reason people thought Alençon more likely to beget children than his brother, the perfumed dandy Anjou. Sir Thomas Smith urged the marriage, consoling Queen Catherine for her son's low stature by reminding her that Pepin, father of mighty Charlemagne, had scarcely reached up to his wife's waist, and imploring Burghley to ensure that Elizabeth did not dally and waste time in this courtship “as is commonly her wont.” But Elizabeth had no intention of hurrying into marriage with an unattractive French prince twenty years younger than herself. The signing of the defensive Treaty of Blois, in the spring of 1572, gave her the firm alliance with France that she needed, and while that held she could afford to vacillate over the marriage question, sending contradictory letters to Walsingham, one day declaring herself unable to marry so young a man, and the next announcing that she was very well disposed towards the match. To the French envoys who arrived in England in June for the ratification of the Treaty of Blois, she gave “neither yea or nay” on the subject of Alençon's suit, and in July she informed Walsingham that although she had withheld her consent to the envoys' proposal on the grounds of the disparity of age, a greater cause for dislike was the disfigurement of the prince's face by smallpox, which she had heard was very extensive. She was angling for the return of Calais to be included in the bargain, as compensation for the prospective bridegroom's extreme youth and reputed lack of personal attractions. She wrote to tell Walsingham that considering “the youngness of his years” she could not bring herself “to like of this offer, specially finding no other great commodity offered to us with him, whereby the great absurdity that in the general opinion of the world might grow, might be in some manner recompensed.” The inducement of Calais was not proffered, but soon Elizabeth began to find that there might be other compensations in a French courtship.

Alençon's friend La Mole arrived in England at the end of July, and set himself to charm away the queen's disdain, with considerable success. He was an attractive young man with engaging manners, and Elizabeth was “full of graciousness and caresses” for him. She talked excitedly of receiving a visit from Alençon himself, eager to see the master of such a servant; she publicly drank La Mole's health at a banquet, and as usual she showed off shamelessly, playing the virginals to him with much display of her beautiful white hands. She was delighted with the handsome young envoy's wooing; the flattering attentions of a man who represented a prince of the illustrious and powerful House of Valois held a special pleasure for her that all the customary compliments of her own courtiers could not provide. She found this foretaste of French gallantry very sweet, and it did nothing to diminish her appetite for such delights.

Dalliance was in the air, and Alençon's suit seemed to be prospering, until the events of August 24, St. Bartholomew's Eve, flung a blood-soaked pall over all dealings between England and France. On that day thousands of Huguenots were slaughtered in the streets of Paris, men, women, and children alike, in an indiscriminate massacre that began with the consent of Catherine and Charles IX and accelerated, beneath the blades and blows of the mob, into a frenzy of human butchery, until by nightfall the gutters ran red and the Seine was choked with bobbing naked corpses. In the palace of the Louvre the royal family waited for the roaring hubbub to die down, while in Walsingham's lodgings in the Faubourg St. Germain the terrified English Protestants who had taken refuge with the ambassador huddled together in prayer. It was several days before Walsingham could send word to Elizabeth, and then he dared only write guardedly. But the boatloads of Huguenot refugees fleeing to the English shores carried all the vivid details of the horrors that had spread across France, and as the news of the “horrible universal massacre” became known, Englishmen cried out for vengeance. The old familiar prejudices against France blazed out again, refueled with revulsion and fear. The relatively new distrust of papists had received a baptism of blood. After St. Bartholomew's there were few of Elizabeth's loyal subjects who would have welcomed the coming of a Catholic consort for their queen, and least of all would they accept one who was the brother of the bloodstained King of France.