Выбрать главу

Her ministers were becoming alarmed at her failure to choose a husband, for suitors were not so eager to make a bid for her hand as they had once been. All the world believed that she was the mistress of Robert Dudley, and that as soon as she considered it expedient to do so, she was going to marry him. It was believed that only the scandals which still clung to her favorite, and which must touch herself, were preventing her.

She had been over-fond of Robert. Now she would show the world that he was not the only handsome man at her Court, and that fond as she was of him, she had affection to spare for others.

She was cleverer than Robert; he was merely a man, with a man’s appetites, while she was a Queen who knew the meaning of power, the absolute joy which that power alone could give her; and she intended never to forget it, never to place it in jeopardy if she could help it.

She admitted that Lettice was beautiful. She would have been furious if he had chosen any but a beautiful woman. Lettice was also married and that meant he could not become too involved with her. The gossips were busy. Robert should flirt with Lettice while the Queen showed the world that Robert was merely one of the young men whom she liked to have about her. She had already singled out a charming gentleman who was married to one of her ladies: Sir Thomas Heneage, a gentleman of the bedchamber. He was already wondering why favors such as those heaped upon Leicester should not fall on other handsome shoulders.

Very well, let the world see her affection straying from Robert. Then the suitors would re-appear and Master Cecil and his men would be satisfied because they could dabble in foreign politics to their hearts’ content. The Queen did not like to think that she had frightened away her suitors; one of the most amusing pastimes of her reign had been to consider marriage with one or other of them.

But moonlight meetings in the pond garden she would not allow. Robert’s love affair with Lettice must not go beyond a few languishing glances and whispered words. Let Robert wait in suspense. Let him, if he dare, make another assignation with Lettice. He should never keep it. Meanwhile the Court might whisper that the Queen seemed less fond of Leicester and was keeping at her side a most handsome gentleman of her bedchamber.

Negotiations with Austria were renewed, for the Emperor had died and Charles’s brother had taken the Imperial crown. The Queen was now thirty-three years old, and her ministers were restive. How could they hope for an heir if she did not marry soon?

She was alarmed, she told Cecil, concerning the religion of the Archduke. “Remember,” she said, “the marriage of my sister. The people were against it, and it brought no good to England. And, Master Cecil, if you would say that I might marry an Englishman, I would ask you to turn your eyes to what has happened to my sister of Scotland.”

She was clever. She knew what she was talking about. The Queen of Scots had found in her husband, Darnley, a weak and dissolute youth who was no good to her. The murder of David Rizzio before the Queen’s eyes had just taken place, and the world was still shocked by it. The Queen of Scots was six months pregnant, and there were many who said that the child she carried was Rizzio’s.

Here was a pretty scandal, Elizabeth could point out to her ministers, a scandal such as—in spite of the evil gossip of lewd people—no one had been able to lay at her door. Here was a fine example of marriage; and she would say to them all that it made her cling more eagerly than ever to the single state.

Let her ministers contemplate affairs in Scotland before they urged her to set out on the perilous journey which the Scottish Queen was undertaking with such dire results.

Her ministers quailed before her; in a battle of words she could always confound them. They were called upon to face her feminine illogicality to which they could find no answer in their masculine logic; and when they were exasperated almost beyond endurance, and when they were ready to retire from office rather than serve such a woman, she would turn about and present them with an irrefutable truth which would astound them, since for all their clear thinking, they had missed it.

She kept her eyes on Scotland; she dreamed of having the Queen of Scots in her power. Catharine Grey was still her prisoner; Catharine’s sister, Mary, had obligingly made a love match without the Queen’s consent, and now Mary and her husband with Catharine and Hertford were in the Tower. Darnley’s mother, the Countess of Lennox, who had had to be released since the sorcery charges could not be proved, had been sent back to the Tower on the marriage of Darnley with Mary of Scotland, for Elizabeth accused her of having arranged the marriage, knowing it would be against the wishes of the English Parliament.

Quietly, and for reasons other than the apparent ones, she had collected her dangerous enemies and was keeping them under lock and key. Cecil, Norfolk, Bacon, Leicester, Sussex, and Arundel watched her with amazement; they had thought themselves wily statesmen until they tried to pit themselves against this woman of thirty-three.

Cecil, who knew her a little better than did most people, did not now turn from Leicester as Norfolk and Sussex had. Cecil believed that she still kept a fond eye on her beloved Earl, that her seeming indifference to him was not to be taken too seriously and that it would be folly to seek the friendship of young Heneage whom she was using, partly to show Leicester that he must not turn to other women of the Court and partly to deceive the foreign ambassadors.

It was typical of her that she should get the utmost amusement out of the situation.

She ordered that Robert be brought before her. She would not see him alone, and there before her ladies and some of the gentlemen of the bedchamber, she warned him that she did not care to see philandering in her Court between widowers—however eligible—and married women. It shocked her profoundly and she would not tolerate it.

Robert wanted to retort that she herself set a poor example. Was she not casting coquettish glances on a gentleman of the bedchamber who was married to one of her women? But he saw the cold light in her eyes which told him clearly that this was Elizabeth the Queen who was reprimanding him.

He was profoundly shaken. He feared that if he showed any more interest in Lettice he would be banished from the Court.

Elizabeth was triumphant. She had established a new relationship between them. She wished him to stay at Court. He was a favorite—one of many.

This change did not go unnoticed.

Leicester’s reign is over, it was whispered. The Queen has fallen out of love. What of this new man, Heneage? Is he to take the favorite’s place? What had he that Robert had not? It was true that he was a little younger, but in everything else he was inferior.

Heneage was with the Queen on that day at Greenwich when, after supper, the whole Court was dancing in the great hall, and Cecil came to the Queen to tell her that the Scottish ambassador was without and wished to see her.

There was news from Scotland, and when Cecil had whispered this news into the Queen’s ear, she no longer had any heart for dancing. She sat down, putting her hand to her head, unable to hide her deep feeling. She said in a mournful voice to her women who had gathered about her: “The Queen of Scots is lighter of a fair son, and I am but a barren stock.”

Cecil waved away the women and, bending over her, whispered: “Madam, I know your feelings; but it would not be well for Melville to see you in this state. You must let him see you rejoice in the Prince’s birth.”

She grasped his arm and said: “You are right, as you generally are, my friend. Now bring in Melville.”