The Virgin's War (35 page)

“But Stephen—” he protested.

“Stephen forfeited such, as he well knows. Besides, he is as stubborn as your mother. I doubt we'll ever pry him away from whatever his Scottish wife wishes. The best we can hope for is to persuade the young Mariota to bring her business to London. Your brother will not be jealous.”

His training asserted itself through his shock, and Kit knelt before the queen. “Your Majesty, it is a great honour. One I never imagined.”

“That is why it is being given. Every monarch should be served by at least a few men who are not solely seeking their own advancement.”

She leaned down a little, so that her voice—even in this empty chamber—would not carry beyond Kit's ear. “And have you considered that only a future duke could be considered a suitable match for a princess?”

On 5 September 1586 the Duke of Medina Sidonia led what remained of the armada into harbor at Santander on the north coast of Spain. Philip had received a surfeit of reports over the last six weeks—reports of victory, of Spanish troops landed in England, of the fearsome El Draque himself captured—reports that had overlapped and contradicted, with the only thing they had in common being a lack of hard confirmation.

Philip sat alone in his secluded chambers at El Escorial, contemplating the wreck of his great enterprise. Medina Sidonia had arrived in port desperately ill, and though he had brought back almost two-thirds of the fleet, many of the ships were good for nothing now but timber. One had actually sunk
after
anchoring in port. And hundreds of the men aboard were dead or dying from scurvy, typhus, dysentery, and even starvation. Philip knew something now of the duke's desperate weeks guiding his flock of ships around Scotland's treacherous north coasts, keeping away from Ireland and the vengeful English who had taken back the territory lost in the last years, surviving storms and simple bad luck.

There had been one piece of surprising news, offered to the king as sign of a miracle: amongst the ships Medina Sidonia had brought back included two of those that fought off Berwick. And on one of those ships came Mary Stuart—hungry, weary, and furious.

Philip had not yet seen his queen. She had gone to Valladolid to recuperate and see their sons. He was not prepared yet for her scorn, for her contempt, for her certain attempts to press another attack against the English. Perhaps it would come to that. Perhaps not. For now, he was only too aware of life's little ironies. For example, the letter that had arrived today from Ambassador de Mendoza—who had left his post in England to serve in France.

Mendoza had been the source of the most optimistic stories in these last weeks, and this letter was no exception. The ambassador wrote that he had excellent intelligence that the armada, having made repairs and restocked food and water in the Orkney Islands, was now sailing south back toward Flanders with twelve captured English ships in tow.

Philip sighed, and picked up his pen. In precise strokes he wrote in the margins of this false report his last word on the Enterprise of England:
Nothing of this is true. It will be well to tell him so.

Three months after the Battle of Berwick, Elizabeth joined the Courtenay family at Wynfield Mote for the service of reinterment of the remains of Philippa Courtenay Harrington. Her body had been brought from Pontefract with royal honours, the catafalque covered with the colours of both Exeter and the Princess of Wales, and large crowds along the way bearing hushed witness.

The coffin lay in state in the old, unused chapel near Wynfield for the household to pay their respects, and then the service was held at Holy Trinity Church in Stratford-upon-Avon. The mourners exceeded capacity, for Minuette's family was well loved. Elizabeth had ceded her right to be chief amongst the mourners. Instead, she watched the Courtenay family with an attention she rarely paid to anyone outside her council chambers.

They held up well, not that she had expected any different. Anyone trained to be at court knew how to keep their private feelings behind closed doors. And they had each other—a gift of family not to be underestimated. But still, Matthew Harrington looked thin and wan and Pippa's siblings seemed curiously…less without her there. Kit, of course, was the worst. But Elizabeth thought he would heal.

Next to her, Anne stood slim and straight, her face giving away nothing of her own loss. Elizabeth considered how she would feel if it were Minuette being laid away beneath stone—remembered the panic that had gripped her when William sentenced Minuette to death—and impulsively she touched her daughter's hand in sympathy.

“I am the resurrection and the life (saith the Lord) he that believeth in me: yea, though he were dead, yet shall he live.”

Elizabeth knew the words of the Order of the Burial of the Dead by heart. It was, after all, her own prayer book.

“The Lord giveth, and the Lord taketh away. Even as it hath pleased the Lord so cometh things to pass: Blessed be the name of the Lord.”

Pippa's body would lay in the chancel of Holy Trinity, with its abundance of light from the west window and the shards of colour from the stained glass and the whimsy of the carved misericord seats.

“Forasmuch as it hath pleased almighty God of his great mercy to take unto himself the soul of our dear sister, here departed, we therefore commit her body to the ground, earth to earth, ashes to ashes, dust to dust, in sure and certain hope of resurrection to eternal life, through our Lord Jesus Christ.”

When the priest had finished the Order of the Burial of the Dead, the Princess of Wales approached the coffin alone. Elizabeth knew her daughter had asked the family's permission to do so, but the queen did not know why.

Kit joined her, handing Anabel a length of crimson silk. Though folded, Elizabeth knew the Hapsburg arms almost as well as she knew her own, and she realized it was a Spanish banner. Taken from one of the ships, perhaps?

Anabel lay the banner on Pippa's coffin, then let her hand rest lightly on the silk, Kit's hand on hers. Though she spoke with her back to the chapel, the words were light and clear. “The banner of victory is yours, Pippa. For it would never have been ours without you.”

Elizabeth returned to Wynfield Mote with the family after the service. At long last, on this bittersweet day, she and Minuette walked alone in the rose garden that had seen so much of both misery and joy in their lifetimes.

“How are you?” Elizabeth asked after a time.

“Weary.”

“I have no doubt. As always, you are the center that holds all else together. Moving from grief to grief…how do you do it?”

“With a great deal of love and a husband who shelters me at day's end. We will be all right, Elizabeth.”

The queen was silent for a bit. “I asked Stephen to accept a barony. You know that, I expect.”

“I know that he refused.”

“Stubborn boy. Still, I have hopes for that wife of his. She is a sensible creature and has agreed to enlarge her branch of the Sinclair Company in London. But first, I understand, they intend to travel to France.”

“With Felix LeClerc, yes. At the boy's request, he will spend the next years between Julien and Stephen here in England. But he does have an aunt and cousins in France, and Blanclair will need to be assured of an excellent steward until Felix is of age and returns. Maisie will help with that.”

“They will not travel until after her child is born?” For a girl so small, pregnancy was difficult to hide.

“Not until spring.”

“So you will be the first to have a grandchild. I expect it will be a boy, simply to complete my defeat.”

“Don't tell me that you would have preferred a son to Anabel.”

“An imaginary son—which therefore makes him perfect—as opposed to the willful, unpredictable daughter I have?” Elizabeth laughed. “Of course not. Though I expect a Prince of Wales who chose to marry one of his own subjects might be less fraught than will be the case for a princess.”

Minuette's breath caught, then resumed. “What are you saying?”

“You know perfectly well what I am saying. I do not want it public just yet, but my privy council has been informed that, as soon as may be considered proper, Princess Anne will be wed to Christopher Courtenay, the Earl of Somerset.”

“Elizabeth—”

“Curious, isn't it, the vagaries of life? If you had married William like any other impressionable girl would have done, then there would be no Anabel or Kit at all. But here they are, and perhaps it was God's intent all along. A sarcastic, cynical intent, to be sure…but perfect for all that. I think even Will would admit the beauty of your son wedding his niece. That your son is also Dominic's son only completes the circle.”

They walked on in silence, Minuette no doubt thinking about Kit and his joy. Elizabeth's thoughts were more selfish. England's welfare was not—would probably never be—completely secure. Philip, his righteous pride bruised by the defeat, would ponder new attempts to bring down the heretic nation he considered the world's greatest threat. Scotland remained independent and thus always on the verge of being troublesome. Ireland was even more of a mess after four years of Spanish troublemaking. Anabel would be a very good queen—but not, Elizabeth trusted, for a long time to come.

This queen had work still to do.

M
inuette Courtenay had never expected to attend the coronations of three British monarchs in her lifetime. The first time, she'd been a child—a nine-year-old girl aware mostly that the boy whose birthday she shared had suddenly become the most powerful person in England. The second time, she had been a young woman, marked by fear and grief, watching her dearest friend steadily take her oath as the first Queen Regnant in English history.

Today, she was old. Sixty-seven last month, though she had been remarkably fortunate in her health. If her shoulders and wrists ached in the damp, she could still see to read and embroider, and still had enough mischief and laughter to enjoy her grandchildren. Ten of them living, and all of them present in the abbey on this day.

This day in which Anne Isabella Tudor would take her formal oaths and be anointed the queen she had been since her mother's last breath.
The queen is dead, long live the queen.

Minuette herself had been with Elizabeth at the end. Summoned from Wynfield Mote in March by a concerned Robert Cecil, she had arrived at Richmond Palace to find her friend obviously ill but stubborn to the last. The queen would not lie down—spending most of her days standing at the window. Minuette did not think it was the landscape Elizabeth saw. She thought it was the past, perhaps the roll call of her dead: Philip of Spain, Lord Burghley, Francis Walsingham…and even further back. William Tudor. Robert Dudley. Lord Rochford. Anne Boleyn. The great and fearsome Henry VIII.

By dint of sheer force of will, Minuette finally persuaded Elizabeth to recline on a bed of pillows and coverlets made up on the floor. She stayed there for four days and was finally weak enough that she could be moved to her bed without protest. Beyond her doors, the government hovered, hardly knowing how to behave now that the queen who had ruled them for forty-four years was dying.

And then, as mildly and gently as a lamb—belying all Minuette had ever known of her friend—Elizabeth Tudor died on 24 March 1603. She was sixty-nine years old and had been queen since she was twenty-five.

Minuette straightened her back as Anne Isabella proceeded slowly down the aisle of Westminster Abbey. Like her mother, she could never look anything less than royal. Though just turned forty-one, Anabel retained her slender figure and vivid red-gold hair. Minuette darted a look away from the new queen to the Lord High Constable, a purely symbolic office revived for the purposes of this coronation. Dominic, at seventy-two as reticent as ever, silver-haired and striking, served today only because Anabel had asked it of him personally.

Next to Minuette, Lucette squeezed her hand. She and Julien were on Minuette's right, with their four children beyond, wide-eyed and impressed despite themselves. On Minuette's left were Stephen and Maisie and their equally awed three children. And her remaining son and grandchildren? They would be front and center soon enough.

Minuette smiled often to herself as the ceremony unfolded in the deliberate, formal manner of more than five hundred years of ritual. The Archbishop of Canterbury's call for the Recognition of the Sovereign. The administration of the oath, ending with the monarch's vow: “All this I promise to do. The things which I have here before promised, I will perform, and keep. So help me God.”

Then the procession to St. Edward's Chair and the drawing of curtains for the private rite of anointing with oil. After returning to the public eye, there was the ritual robing and presentation of various regalia. Madalena, Anabel's faithful friend and lady for thirty-five years, was today's Mistress of the Robes. Minuette noted the eyes of the Spanish woman's husband upon her—four years after Pippa's death, Matthew Harrington had wed Madalena and they had both served Anabel faithfully in all the years since.

After receiving the orb, the ring, the scepters of both dove and cross, Anne at last received the Crown of St. Edward set atop her long, loose hair. With cries of “God Save the Queen!” it was time for the oaths of fealty.

Though only an earl, and thus subordinate to several of the peers, Anabel's husband was the first to so swear. He knelt at his wife's feet, and Minuette heard the tremble of pride in her youngest son's voice. “I, Christopher Courtenay, the Earl of Somerset, do become your liege man of life and limb, and of earthly worship; and faith and truth will I bear unto you, to live and die against all manner of folks. So help me God.”

When Kit rose, he kissed the queen on the cheek, a liberty not allowed her other peers. Save those two who immediately followed their father in offering fealty: fourteen-year-old William, Prince of Wales, and his twelve-year-old brother, George, Earl of Richmond.

Last of all, Minuette's gaze rested upon the youngest member of the royal family. Though two Courtenay granddaughters had preceded her, both Lucette and Stephen had ignored the obvious choice of name for their daughters, leaving it where it rightly belonged—with Kit. And when this baby princess had been born eleven years ago, God himself—or perhaps one of His angels, still watching over her family—had bestowed a mark of favour. For in the vibrant red hair of her mother, the girl bore a single bright streak of gold framing her face.

Princess Philippa Tudor.