My Enemy the Queen

The Passing of Leicester

I was at Wanstead when Leicester came home. I did not at first realize how ill he was. He was bolstered up with his glory. Never had he been in such favor. The Queen could not bear him to leave her for long, but she sent him away at this time because she feared for his health.

He did not usually go to Buxton at this time of the year, but she had decided that he must do so without delay.

I looked at him afresh. How old he was, divested of his glittering garments. He had put on weight again and left his youth far behind. I could not help comparing him with Christopher and I knew that I no longer wanted this old man in my bed even though he was the Earl of Leicester.

The Queen had seemed as though she could not honor him enough. She had promised to make him Lord Lieutenant of England and Ireland. This would bring him greater power than any subject of hers had ever known before. It was almost as though she decided that she wanted no more juggling for power between them; if she were not offering him a share in her crown this was something very near it.

There were others who realized this, and he was incensed because Burleigh, Walsingham and Hatton had persuaded her not to act rashly.

"But it will come," Robert told me, those eyes of his once so fine and flashing, now puffy and bloodshot. "You wait. It will come."

Then suddenly he knew.

Perhaps it was because he had ceased to think so much of matters of state. Perhaps his sickness—for he was very sick, more so than he had been during those bouts of gout and fever which had beset him over the last years—had made him especially perceptive. Perhaps there was an aura about me which women get when they are in love, for I was in love with Christopher Blount. Not as I had been with Leicester. I knew there would never be anything like that in my life again. But it was like an Indian summer of love. I was not yet too old to love. I was young for my forty-eight years. I had a lover twenty years my junior, yet I felt that we were of an age. I realized anew how young I was when I was face to face with Leicester. He was a sick and aging man and I lacked the Queen's gift of dedicated fidelity. After all I had been grossly neglected for her sake. I marveled that she could look upon what he had become and still love him. It was yet another facet of her extraordinary nature.

He had seen me with Christopher. I cannot say what it was. Perhaps the manner in which we looked at each other. It may have been that our hands had touched. He may have seen something kindle between us—or he could have heard whispers. There were always enemies to carry tales about us—of me no less than of him.

In our bedchamber at Wanstead he said to me: "You have a fondness for my Master of Horse."

I was not sure then what he knew, and to gain time I said: "Oh ... Christopher Blount?"

"Who else? Have you a fancy for each other?"

"Christopher Blount," I repeated, feeling my way. "He is very good with horses... ."

"And women, it seems."

"Is that so? You would have heard that his brother and Essex fought their duel. It was over a woman. A queen from the chessboard, in gold and enamel."

"I am not speaking of his brother, but of him. You had better admit, for I know."

"What do you know?"

"That he is your lover."

I shrugged my shoulders and retorted that if he admired me and showed it, was I to blame?

"If you let him into your bed, you are."

"You have been listening to tales."

"Which I believe to be true."

His grip was painful on my wrist, but I did not flinch. I faced him defiantly. "My lord, should you not look to your own life before you peer too closely into mine?"

"You are my wife," he said. "What you do on my bed is my business."

"And what you do in the beds of others mine!"

"Oh come," he said. "Let us not diverge from the truth. I am away ... in attendance on the Queen."

"Your good kind mistress ..."

"The mistress of us all."

"But in one particular case ... yours."

"You know there has never been that kind of intimacy between us."

"Arthur Dudley could tell another story."

"He could tell many lies," he retorted, "and when he says he is my son and Elizabeth's that is the greatest lie he ever told."

"It seems to be believed."

He threw me from him in his rage. "Do not evade the matter. You and Blount are lovers. Are you? Are you?"

"I am a neglected wife," I began.

"You have answered." His eyes narrowed. "Think not that I shall forget this. Think not that you can betray me with impunity. I shall make you answer for this insult... you and him."

"I have answered already for marrying you. The Queen has never once received me since."

"You call that payment! You will discover a great deal."

He stood before me—big and menacing, the most powerful man in the country. Words from Leicester's Commonwealth danced before my eyes. Murderer. Poisoner. Was this true? I thought of the people who had died at a time convenient to him. Was it merely a coincidence?

He had loved me. At one time I had meant a great deal to him. Perhaps I still did. He had come to me when he could; we had been well matched physically; but I had grown out of love with him.

Now he knew that I had a lover. Whether he wanted me still, I did not know. He was sick and feeling his age. I think at this time he only wanted to rest, but the hatred was there when he faced me. He would never forgive me for taking a lover.

I believed then that during those absences from home he had not been unfaithful. He had been in attendance on the Queen since his return from the Netherlands and I remembered that when he had been there he had wanted me beside him, decked out as his Queen.

Yes, I had had some power over him, for he had wanted me; he needed me; he would have been a uxorious husband if the Queen had allowed him to be.

And now I had betrayed him. I had taken a lover and one in what he would consider a menial post in his household. He would not allow any to insult him and escape. Of one thing I was certain. There would be revenge.

I wondered whether I should warn Christopher. No, he would show his fear. He must not know. I understood Leicester as Christopher never could. I would know how to act, I promised myself.

He said slowly: "I gave up everything for you."

"Douglass Sheffield, you mean?" I asked, determined to hide the fear I was beginning to feel by a show of flippancy.

"You know she meant little to me. I married you and braved the Queen's wrath."

"That was directed against me. It was not you who had to brave it."

"How could I be sure what would happen to me? Yet I married you."

"My father forced you to make it legal, remember?"

"I wanted to marry you. I loved no one as I loved you."

"And then you proceeded to desert me."

"Only for the Queen."

I laughed at that. "There were three of us, Robert—two women and one man. It makes no difference that one was a queen."

"It makes all the difference. I was not her lover."

"She did not let you enter her bed. I know that. But you were her lover, nonetheless, and she your mistress. Therefore do not stand in judgment on others."

He took me by the shoulders; his eyes blazed and I thought he was going to kill me. There was violence in his eyes. I wished I could see what else. He was making plans, I knew.

He said suddenly: "We shall be leaving tomorrow."

"We ... ?" I stammered.

"You and I and your paramour among others."

"Where shall we go?"

A wry smile touched his lips. "To Kenilworth," he said.

"I thought you were going to take the baths."

"Later," he said. "First to Kenilworth."

"Why do you not go straight to the baths? That was what your mistress ordered you to do. I can tell you, you look sick ... sick unto death."

"I feel so," he answered. "But first I would go to Kenilworth with you."

Then he left me.

I was afraid. I had seen the look in his eyes when he had said Kenilworth. Why Kenilworth? The place where we had met and loved wildly, where we had had our secret meetings, where he had made up his mind that however he angered the Queen he must marry me.

"Kenilworth," he had said, with a cruel smile about his mouth; and I knew some dark plan was in his mind. What would he do to me at Kenilworth?

I went to bed and dreamed of Amy Robsart. I was lying in a bed and saw someone lurking in the shadows of the room ... men who began to creep silently towards the bed. It was as though voices were whispering to me: "Cumnor Place . . Kenilworth ..."

I awoke, trembling with fear, and all my senses told me that Robert was planning some terrible revenge.

The next day we left for Kenilworth. I rode beside my husband and, glancing sideways at him, I noticed the deathly pallor of his skin beneath the network of red veins on his cheeks. His elegant ruff, his velvet doublet, his cap with the curling feather could not hide the change in him. There was no doubt that he was a very sick man. He was approaching sixty and he had lived dangerously; he had denied himself very little of what the world calls the good things of life. It was now apparent.

I said: "My lord, we should go to Buxton without delay, for it would seem you are in need of the beneficial baths."

He answered abruptly: "We are going to Kenilworth."

But we did not reach Kenilworth. The day was coming to a close and I saw that he could scarcely sit his horse. We stayed at Rycott, the home of the Norris family, and he retired to his bed and stayed there for several days. I attended him. He did not mention Christopher Blount. He wrote to the Queen, though, and I wondered what he said to her and whether he would tell her of my infidelity and what effect it would have on her if he did. I was sure that it would enrage her, for although she deplored my marriage, she would take it as an insult to herself that I preferred another man.

I was able to read that letter before it was dispatched. There was nothing in it but the protestations of his love and devotion to his goddess.

I remember it now, word for word.

I must humbly beseech your Majesty to pardon your poor old servant [he had drawn the two "o's" in the word "poor" as though they were eyes by putting dots in the middle of the circle to remind her of that affectionate nickname] to be thus bold in thus sending to know how my gracious lady doeth 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. For my own poor case, I continue still your medicine and find it amends much better than with any other thing that hath been given me. Thus hoping to find perfect cure at the bath, with the continuance of my wonted prayer for your Majesty's most happy preservation, I humbly kiss your foot, from your old lodging at Rycott this Thursday morning ready to take my journey. By your Majesty's most faithful and obedient servant.

R. Leicester

He had added a postscript thanking her for a gift she had sent him and which had followed us to Rycott. No, there was nothing there about my misdemeanor; and of course he had written it from Rycott because it was a place where, in the past, she and he had stayed often. Here in the park they had ridden and hunted together; here in the great hall they had feasted and drunk and played at being lovers.

I told myself I was justified in taking a lover. Had not my husband been the Queen's lover all these years!

I sent for Christopher and we met in a small chamber apart from the rest of the household.

"He knows," I told him.

He had guessed it. He said he did not care, but that was bravado. He was trembling in his boots.

"What do you think he will do?" he asked, trying to appear nonchalant.

"I know not, but I am watchful. Take care how you go. Do not be alone if you can help it. He has his murderers everywhere."

"I shall be ready," said Christopher.

"I think he will revenge himself on me," I told him, which threw Christopher in an agony of fear, and gratified me.

We left Rycott and traveled through Oxfordshire. We were not very far from Cumnor Place, I realized, and there seemed something significant in that.

"We should stay the night at our Cornbury house," I told Leicester. "You are unfit to go farther just yet."

He agreed.

It was a dark and rather gloomy place—a ranger's lodge really, in the middle of a wood. His servants helped him to the paneled room which had quickly been made ready and he sank onto the bed.

I said we must stay there until the Earl was well enough to continue his journey. He needed a rest, for even the journey from Rycott to Cornbury had exhausted him.

He agreed that he must rest and was soon deep in sleep.

I sat by his bed. I did not have to feign anxiety, for I was indeed anxious to know what was brewing in his mind. I knew by the manner in which he pretended to be unconcerned that he was planning something which affected me.

There was a hushed atmosphere in the house. I could not rest. I was afraid of the shadows which came with the darkness. The leaves were beginning to bronze, for September had come; the wind had brought many of them down and the forest was becoming littered with them. I gazed out of the windows at those trees and listened to the wind moaning through their branches; and I wondered whether Amy had felt a similar sense of brooding during her last days at Cumnor Place.

On the third of September the sun was shining brightly and he rallied a little. In the late afternoon he called me to him and told me that we would resume our journey the next day if the improvement persisted. He said we would sort out our differences and come to an understanding. We were too close, he said, to part while there was life in us.

Those words sounded ominous; indeed his eyes glowed with a feverish intensity.

He felt so much better that he needed food, and he believed that when he had eaten his strength would have revived sufficiently for him to continue.

"Should you not go with all speed to the baths?" I asked.

He looked at me intently and said: "We'll see."

He ate in his bedchamber, being too tired to come down to the dining hall. He said he had a good wine which he wanted me to try with him.

All my senses were alert. It was like a warning signal jangling through my mind. I must not drink this good wine. There was not a man in the whole of the country more skilled in poisoning than Dr. Julio, who worked assiduously for his master.

I must not drink that wine.

Of course he might have no intention of poisoning me. He might have thought of a revenge other than death. If he had kept me a prisoner at Kenilworth, perhaps giving out to the world that I had lost my reason, that would have hurt me more than sudden death. But I must be watchful.

I went to his chamber. On a table was a jug of wine with three goblets—one had been filled with wine, the other two were empty. He lay back on his pillows; his face was very red and I think he had already drunk more than was wise.

"Is this the wine I am to try?" I asked.

He opened his eyes and nodded. I put it to my lips but I would not take any. That would be folly.

"It's good," I said.

"I knew you would think so." I fancied I heard triumph in his voice. I set the goblet on the table and went to his bed.

"Robert, you are very sick," I said. "You will have to give up some of your duties. You have done too much."

"The Queen will never allow it," he replied.

"She is concerned for your health."

He smiled and said: "Yes, she always was." His voice was tender, and I felt a sudden wave of anger to think of those two aging lovers who had never consummated their love and, now that they were old and wrinkled, still glorified it or pretended to.

What right had a husband blatantly to admire a woman other than his wife—even if she was the Queen?

My love affair with Christopher was justified.

He closed his eyes and I went to the table. With my back to him I poured the wine, which I had been afraid to drink, into another goblet. It was one which he used because it had been a gift from the Queen. I went back to the bed.

"I feel so ill," he said.

"You have eaten too much."

"She always said I did."

"And she is right. Rest now. Are you thirsty?" He nodded. "Would you like me to pour you some wine?" I went on.

"Yes, do. The jug is on the table with my goblet."

I went to the table. My fingers trembled as I lifted the jug and poured wine into that goblet which had previously contained that intended for me. What is the matter with you? I admonished myself. If he meant you no harm, then all is well, and he will come to none either. And if he did ... am I to blame?

I carried his goblet to the bed, and as I handed it to him his page, Willie Haynes, came into the room.

I said: "My lord suffers from a great thirst. Bring some more wine. He may need it."

The page went out as Leicester finished the draught.

The next day stands out clearly in my mind, even after all these years. The fourth of September—the summer still with us, the faint tang of autumn snuffed out by the sun at ten of the clock.

Leicester had said we should be leaving that day. While my women were dressing me in my riding clothes, Willie Haynes came to the door. He was pale and trembling. The Earl was lying very still, he said, and looked strange. He feared he was dead.

Willie Haynes' fears were proved correct. That morning, in the Cornbury Ranger's Lodge, the mighty Earl of Leicester had slipped away from this world.

So he was dead, my Robert, the Queen's Robert. I felt stunned. I could not get out of my mind the picture of myself carrying the goblet to the bed. He had drunk that which had been intended for me ... and he was dead.

No, I did not believe that. I was distraught. It was as though part of me was dead. For so many years he had been the most important figure in my life ... he and the Queen.

I murmured: "Now there are only two of us." And I felt desolate.

Of course there was the usual outcry of "Poison"; and suspicion was naturally directed against me. Willie Haynes had seen me give him the wine and mentioned this. That the man believed to be the arch-poisoner of his day should be caught with his own medicine seemed rough justice, if he had indeed been, and I knew that suspicion of having killed him would follow me to the grave. I was panic-stricken when I heard there was to be a postmortem. I did not know whether I had poisoned Leicester or not. It may well have been that the wine he had intended for me, and which I had given him, had been unadulterated. His health was such that he could have died at any time. I had not tampered with it. How could I be blamed?

It was a great relief when nothing indicating poison was found in him. But then Dr. Julio was renowned for his poisons which after a very short time left no trace in the body. So I can never be certain whether my husband intended to poison me and I turned the tables by poisoning him—or whether he died from natural causes.

His death is as mysterious as that of his wife, Amy.

Christopher was eager for us to marry, but I remembered the story of the Queen, Robert and Amy Robsart, and I had to restrain his youthful impulsiveness. Of course I was not the Queen, with the attention of the world on me; but I was now the widow of the most talked of man, not only in England but in the whole of Europe.

"I said I would marry you," I told him. "But later ... not yet."

I wished that I had been at Court so that I could have seen how the Queen received the news. I heard later that she said nothing but stared blankly before her; then she went to her private chamber and locked the door. She would not eat, nor would she see anybody. She wished to be alone with her grief.

How great that grief was I could guess. It shamed me in a way. It made me realize the immense depth of her nature; of her capacity for love and vindictive hatred.

She would not emerge from her room of grief. At the end of two days, her ministers became alarmed, and Lord Burleigh, taking some others with him, had her door burst open.

I could imagine her feelings. She had known him so long-since they were children. I knew that it would seem to her as though a light had gone out of her life. I could imagine her facing her cold cruel mirror and seeing the old woman whom she had refused to look at before. She was old—no matter how the handsome young men danced round her; she knew they begged only for favors. Stripped of her crown, the light would be doused, and the dance of the moths would be over.

But there had been one, she would tell herself—her Eyes, her Sweet Robin, the only one in the world whom she had really loved—and he was no more. And surely she would think of how different her life would have been if she had risked her crown and married him. What intimate joys they would have shared! Perhaps she would have had children to comfort her now. What pangs of jealousy she would have missed, and what joy it would have given her to know that I could never have shared his life!

She and I were as close as we had ever been. Her grief was mine. I was surprised how much I had cared for him, since in the last years I had turned from him. But I had done so because she had come between us. There was going to be a deep emptiness in my life now that he was gone ... as there would be with hers.

But, as always in times of stress, she remembered at length that she was the Queen. Robert was dead but life went on. Her life was England, and England would never die and leave her alone.

I was in a state of anxiety because I feared that in view of Robert's discovery of my affair, he might have altered his will, and expressed his reason for doing so.

But no. There had been little time, and he had changed nothing.

I was the executrix, with his brother Warwick, Christopher Hatton and Lord Howard of Effingham to assist me. I had not realized how deeply in debt he was. He had always spent lavishly, and at the time of his death was having a gift made for the Queen which consisted of a rope of six hundred pearls on which hung a pendant. This pendant contained an enormous central diamond and three emeralds, encircled by a band of diamonds.

She was the first he mentioned in his will—as though she were his wife; he thanked her for her goodness to him.

Even in death she came first. I allowed myself to savor a certain jealous anger. It salved my conscience.

He had made his will while he was in the Netherlands and he had believed then that I was in love with him.

He had written:

Next to her Majesty, I will return to my dear wife and set down for her that which cannot be so well as I would wish it, but shall be as well as I am able to make it, haying always found her a faithful and very loving and obedient, careful wife, and so I do trust this Will of mine shall find her no less mindful of my being gone, than I was always of her, being alive.

Ah, Robert, I thought a little sadly, how I should be mourning if it was as you believed then, and how different it might have been if you had not had a royal mistress. I loved you once and I loved you well, but she was always there between us.

I was dismayed to find his bastard, Robert Dudley, liberally treated in his will. He was now thirteen years old and on my death and that of Robert's brother, the Earl of Warwick, he was to inherit a great deal. He would also receive certain benefits when he was twenty-one, and he was to be well provided for until he reached that age.

Of course, Robert had never denied that this boy was his; but since he was also Lady Stafford's, I thought that she and her husband might have provided for him.

To me was left Wanstead and three small manor houses including Drayton Basset in Staffordshire, which I eventually made my home. Leicester House was mine including all plate and jewels therein, but to my sorrow and secret rage Kenilworth had been left to Warwick and on his death was to pass to the bastard Dudley.

Moreover, as I have said, Robert was more deeply in debt than I had realized. His debts to the crown were twenty-five thousand pounds. He had been very generous to the Queen, and his gifts to her had been responsible for a great part of his debts. I expected that since he had died in her service this would be remembered. It usually was in such instances.

Alas, she had no intention of relenting towards me one jot. She had her vengeance. She had come out of her solitude, determined that every pound of his debts should be paid. Her hatred towards me had not abated because of his death.

She declared that the contents of Leicester House and Kenilworth should provide the means to pay his debts, and lists of these should be made at once so that those selected for sale could be brought out.

She was merciless where I was concerned and I was enraged but could do nothing about it.

One by one the treasures had to be sold—all those things which had been precious to me and part of my life. I wept with rage over them and inwardly cursed her—but as always I must bow to her will.

Even so, those enforced sales were not enough to settle all the debts, but I felt it important to raise a memorial to him in Beauchamp Chapel. It was of massive marble and bore his motto Droit et Loyal. I had an effigy of him made in marble wearing the collar of St. Michael; and beside him was a space for me when my time came.

So passed the great Earl of Leicester. A year later I married Christopher Blount.