I helped the queen pack her trunks before she left, in August, to Tilbury. Although she was fifty-four years old, she wore a silver breastplate over her white velvet dress, and held a truncheon in her hand.
“A truncheon instead of a scepter, Majesty?” I asked.
“Each in its own time is required for rule,” she answered. She rehearsed her speech in front of us ladies.
“My loving people,” she began. “We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects, and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down my life for my God and for my kingdom and for my people, my honor, and my blood, even in the dust.”
I wanted nothing more than to mount a horse and ride alongside her.
Lord Howard ordered some of his ship’s hulks to be laden with pitch and gunpowder, then set afire and sailed into the Spanish fleet anchoring at Calais. The fleet, once ablaze, became disoriented and panicked. The Spanish then headed north, taking a more dangerous and roundabout way home. In the end, only half of the armada made it safely back to Spain. The great crusade to which the pope and several Catholic nations had contributed ended in humiliation at the hand of a brave queen and her Catholic admiral.
The war was won, and England rejoiced, but the queen’s Robin was unwell. I saw him as they returned to court; he was said to have been ill since the eve they dined together in his tent after the queen’s speech at Tilbury.
She worried on his behalf. When they returned to Whitehall, I thought he looked ill unto death. Selfishly, I wondered, should he die, could I find the courage to leave her, too?
TWENTY-THREE
Summer and Autumn: Year of Our Lord 1588
The Palace of Whitehall
Lord Robert was heavier than I’d ever seen him—perhaps because he could no longer ride and hunt often due to pain in his legs and back. His face was reddened though he drank but little wine any longer, and after the briefest exertion his breath came in short puffs and bursts like a woman giving birth, which took him ever longer to recover from.
He’d been commander in chief of the home forces, but now that there was no longer a need for land defense, his own defenses buckled some. I noted that he had difficulty standing while reviewing the troops at Whitehall, at the end of August, and after he and the queen applauded as Essex tilted against the Earl of Cumberland, he left for Buxton, at the queen’s command, to take the healing waters. As soon as he was gone, she was sore vexed.
I think she knew.
Perhaps she’d long known, which is why they’d spent so much time together over the summer, dining together, riding together, and meeting Spain together.
Shortly after Lord Robert left the queen, she asked me to fetch a pouch made of cloth of gold and bring it to her. I did, and when everyone had left her bedchamber save myself, Anne Dudley, and a few maids of honor, the queen went to her chessboard and put the ivory king and queen into the pouch and then drew the strings closed and kissed it.
“Call Master Tracy,” she instructed me, and I sent for someone to fetch the young messenger.
“Please ride hard to deliver these to the Earl of Leicester,” the queen commanded him.
Tracy, no fool, did as he was told. Within a few days, he returned to the queen with a letter. She opened it up as soon as it arrived, excusing herself from her councilors who waited, with the post-Spain business of the realm, for the queen to sort out her affections.
I judged her not. Shall governance of the heart always submit to governance of a kingdom?
She instructed me to ask her apothecary to blend something to be sent to Woodstock for Lord Robert, and then she returned to the council.
I fell to temptation and read the bottom part of the letter, which she had left on her writing table. I told myself I wanted to know what his symptoms were so I could better instruct the apothecary.
“I would know how my gracious lady does, and what ease of her late pains she finds; being the chiefest thing in the world I do pray for, for her to have good health and long life. I have partaken of the medicines you had prepared for me, and find it helps more than any other thing that has been given to me.” He finished, “With the continuance of my prayers for your Majesty’s preservation, I humbly kiss your foot . . . P.S. even as I had written this much, I received your Majesty’s token by young Tracy.”
I wondered what went through his heart and mind, after he’d sent this back with Tracy, when in private he opened the golden pouch with the king and queen nestled together, inside.
Word returned to court that Lord Robert had stopped at Cornbury Park to rest, his fever having grown stronger, his ague more pronounced, and a deep cough setting in. Being with the queen at the marshes at Tilbury had certainly done his heart good, but his health mayhap suffered ill for it.
On September 4 came word that Robin, having loved Elizabeth for forty-seven of his fifty-five years, had died. He had been an able horseman, a defender of church reform, a noted linguist, and a wise counselor all the years of her reign. But mainly, he had been her love.
Upon hearing the news, the queen burst into tears and withdrew to her bedchamber and locked the doors to the world outside her, with the exception of a maid who assisted her with a portable privy. Within a day she let Blanche in, and Blanche, perhaps, coaxed her into letting Mary Radcliffe in with food after three days. Mary invited myself and Anne Dudley in a day later.
I worked hard not to show my shock at how she looked. Her skin was taut and for the first time I saw that it hung in small pouches below her black eyes, which were swollen and dull. The lines on her forehead and above her lip folded into pronounced wrinkles, and she set off an air of hopelessness.
“Come now, I’ve brought some ointments and oils to soothe,” I said, though I knew the touch of loving hands would work better wonders.
“Thank you, Marchioness,” she said, using my formal title. She often referred to her ladies, even beloved ones, formally when she sought to maintain her composure. There was no shrieking, or outburst, and perhaps this concerned me most of all.
I rubbed her shoulders and her neck and her head and her hands, one by one, as she switched Lord Robert’s last letter to her from one hand to the other, never letting go of it entirely.
“We didn’t respond to this letter,” she mourned.
“Did he receive your token?” I asked, feigning ignorance of the letter’s contents.
“Yes.” She nodded. “He indicated that he did.”
“Then he needed no answer, Elizabeth,” I said, using her name for the first time in twenty-three years of friendship and service. “The heart needs no words to understand what has been long unspoken but understood.”
She held my hand then, for but a moment more.
“You will rise from these ashes,” I said.
She nodded. She knew she must. Her country waited to rejoice with her over the defeat of Spain.
Before I left her chamber that afternoon I personally replaced the linens on her bed, ensuring that they were scented with soothing oils. As I gathered up the older ones I noticed small, soft haystacks of red and red-gray hairs upon them, the sum of those which had fallen out over the previous few nights.