Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I

TWELVE

Autumn: Year of Our Lord 1575

The Palace of Whitehall

Years of Our Lord 1576, 1577

The Palace of Whitehall

Autumn: Year of Our Lord 1577

Blackfriars, London

That September, we traveled to Woodstock, where Sir Henry Lee wrote a play, The Hermit’s Tale, and then had it performed for the queen’s entertainment. The story centered around two lovers who end up parting from one another due to her duty to her father and his dukedom. Elizabeth enthusiastically clapped throughout the play and at its end commended Sir Henry for his fine writing. Her duty came before her lover. He would not have dared perform it for her if he had not known it would meet with her approval. I began to understand even more about my mistress; as with the acceptance of the sacrae dedication, her support here was not only personal, it was strategic; it was a method in which she guided and ruled.

It would behoove us at court, I thought, to better pay attention to what she did and not only to what she said. She showed us all what she told very few.

• • •

I had one other occasion that year to ask to see the queen privately, just before the Accession Day celebrations in November. “Majesty, may I see you in private?” I asked. She indicated that yes, in the afternoon she would dismiss the others and speak with me. I arrived after the noon meal.

“Do you recall that I wear a locket necklace with a sketch of my mother and myself?” I asked.

She nodded. “Of course, Helena.” She wasn’t abrupt, but her tone said, “Do get on with it!”

I handed a golden ring box to her. “I commissioned this from Robert Brandon and Nicolas Hilliard.”

She opened it up, and nestled within was the ring, gold and surrounded with rubies and pearls with a diamond E on the front. She drew in her breath and let true pleasure shine upon her face. “It’s marvelous!”

“I know it’s not typical to present gifts to you other than at New Year’s, but I wanted this to be given in private, not public.”

She nodded. “Yes, of course,” she said. She lifted the ring out of the box and held it to the weak autumn light. The jewels shimmered. “This is a truly wonderful gift, Helena.”

“There is a locket under the diamond E,” I said. “I would be honored if you would open it.” I held my breathing, hoping that I would please her beyond all measure, slightly worried that I had overstepped.

The queen opened up the locket to see a tiny miniature of herself on one side, and one of her mother, Anne Boleyn, on the other.

She closed her eyes for a moment, and as she did, a tear slipped from one of them, which she quietly brushed away. She opened her eyes to look at it again, and then closed the locket clasp before slipping the ring onto her slender finger. “Kept close, and yet hidden away,” she quoted herself exactly from some years back.

I laughed. “Do you forget nothing?”

“No.” She shook her head. “I do not.” She drew me near and took my hands in her own ungloved ones, a sign of deep friendship and intimacy. “Our servants and favorites profess to love us for our good parts, but they all end in the same thing, namely, asking us for money. But not you. I shan’t forget this.”

From then on, she wore the ring continuously and smiled at me when she caught me looking upon it. It brought me great pleasure, perhaps as much as it brought her.

• • •

The next year passed quietly, almost without incident, and we were falsely lulled by a sense of peace we rarely enjoyed. At the end of September 1576, word reached court that Walter Devereux, Earl of Essex, had died a violent death. The cause was dysentery, but the word circling round court was that Lord Robert had had him poisoned to clear the way to marry Essex’s wife, Lettice Knollys Devereux. At the end, Essex charged that his children be transferred to the care of one of his kinsman, the Earl of Huntingdon, rather than be despoiled by their mother. His request was granted.

Few mourned Essex; he had once invited the Irish nobles to a peace feast and then had them ambushed and slaughtered. But I again heard the name of Amy Robsart whispered in dark hallways and at the end of long banquet tables. It was clear when you saw Lady Devereux and Lord Robert together that, having been spurned by the queen once and for all, Lord Robert’s gaze lit and rested upon her beautiful cousin. It made me long for a loving gaze to be set and then rested upon me.

Thomas did not return to court, as the queen kept him abroad on minor business with the Spanish, but he did write to me, infrequently, so we did not draw curious eyes, I supposed. When he returned in the spring of 1577, I was the first person he sought. He sent a simple note by way of his manservant. My hands greedily opened the envelope. He’d scrawled, in bold script, “I’ve come for you.”

I threw the letter into the air and laughed aloud, followed by roisterous singing in Swedish, to the concern, I was sure, of my servants in the next room.

When we could do so without attracting undue attention, Thomas and I sat at the same table for cards, or met one another to walk in the galleries or gardens. We talked of his family, which had suffered some split when the church did, and of mine, though my family had, sorrowfully, begun to recede in my mind. Once I had made the decision to become English, to remain, I chose to focus upon my new home rather than pine for the old whenever the skies grew dark. Those skies were never dark, though, when I was with Thomas. We talked of his business, not only on behalf of the queen, but also at the London Exchange, which Her Majesty had established as a center of commerce and trade, to the health of the realm and the envy of the Continent. He asked about my herbal preparations, and I made some spiced scent for his wash water. I admit, I longed to press my face against his and draw in the scent of it as well as the feel of his skin.

One evening we sat in my apartments, Clemence quietly sewing in the next room, and he presented me with a gift. “I’ve been harried by guilt after ripping the train of your fine gown last year,” he said.

“Oh, that.” I waved my hand. “I am quick with a needle and Clemence quicker still.”

He held out to me a heavy linen bag. “I’ve brought you a gift.”

I cocked my head and eyebrow and took it from him. Inside were yards and yards of the finest silk fabric, shot through with gold, that I had ever seen. “It’s like a cloud lit by sunlight,” I said. “Thank you!” I reached over to hug him, and he wrapped his arms about me, both of us aware of Clemence humming loudly in the next room. He drew away for a moment, and then took my face in his hands and held my gaze with his fine blue eyes, asking my permission, silently, before continuing. I did not pull away.

He kissed me softly at first and then more insistently. I responded likewise. Within a minute he drew away and we both sat in silence, pink, restoring our breath. He stood up and pulled me to my feet. We held hands, facing one another.

“Let us see if you can think upon what occasion a gown made of that fine silk may be used,” he said.

I nodded, and ran my hand through his hair. Nothing more needed, or dared, be said just then.

• • •

Spring fleshed out into early summer, and while the queen was busy with her counselors I was busy falling in love. One early evening a hundred or more courtiers were gathered in Her Majesty’s gardens at Richmond, which were particularly beautiful, playing games upon the lawn. Thomas and I strolled about, he played bowls, and then one of his friends called to him.

“Gorges! Come along. We’re to play Last Couple in Hell.”

Thomas smiled and I looked at him wonderingly. “I have not heard of this game,” I said.

“You’ll like it,” he replied, and followed his friend to a portion of the lawn perhaps a little farther away from the palace than some of the other games.

An area was divided into three sections, and there were three couples who played. One couple was assigned to the center square, called Hell; they must hold hands at all times. The other two couples were in the section to either side of them, and sought to exchange places while the couple in Hell sought to catch them as they ran through. If a couple was caught, they consoled themselves with a kiss, took one another’s hands, and sang together the game’s song:

We two are last in Hell; what may we fear,

To be tormented, or kept pris’ners here?

Alas, if kissing be of plagues the worst,

We’ll wish in hell we had been last and first.

Then the other couples sought to run through and escape their grasp. After several rounds, Thomas and I were caught and had to remain in the center; he kissed me as we took our places.

“I suspect if you had your way, we’d remain here as long as you were required to kiss me,” I teased.

“And, my fair lady, would you object?” he whispered, his eyes smiling.

“Not at all!”

We strolled back to the banqueting area that had been set up outside, lit with torches as the sun began to melt into the horizon. “I am twenty-seven years old. I’ve served the queen for eleven years, and it’s been my pleasure. I served the princess for years before then. Although I’ve lived a life of satisfaction, I have never felt as alive and infused with joy until I met you.”

He nodded. “I do not want to live without you as my wife. But you are a marchioness, and I am well born but untitled. I do not think the queen will suffer you to marry me. It’s said that even in the best of circumstances, she is reluctant to let her ladies marry.”

I shook my head. “No. I believe it’s true that when her ladies marry she is, again, reminded of the fact that she will not, and the losses that entails. But she has arranged many fine marriages for her maids and ladies; do you think that if that were not so, noble parents would be rather reluctant to send their daughters to court? An advantageous marriage, after all, is what they seek for their girls. If they thought the queen would not allow or assist, surely there would not be mothers and fathers vying for their daughters to serve the queen. And there are.”

He nodded. “I hope you are right.”

“She worries, I know, that when one of her ladies marries she is allowing a little piece of her family to break away.”

He pulled me into a quiet corner and took my hands in his. “I love you, Elin. I’ve waited so long. I do not want to wait any longer. Life is fickle, and my heart is given to you.”

“And mine is yours,” I said. Could I, a marchioness, really approach the queen and ask to marry Thomas, an untitled man? It was perhaps better to act, and ask forgiveness, as Mary Shelton had done. Then again the Grey sisters had acted without permission and the queen had never restored them to her affections—and had kept them separated from their husbands until they died. “I will think upon this forthwith,” I answered, then reached up to kiss his lips, stilling the protest I saw forming upon them.

The queen was busy at court that season with one of her new favorites, Francis Drake, whom she had selected to head the expedition to sail round the world seeking gold and glory for God and Her Majesty. It was a way to both give the king of Spain a box on the ears and fill her coffers, two activities that pleased the queen as much as the bold explorer himself.

Thomas was good friends with Francis, so we spent some evenings in his company and Thomas was among those who invested in the journey, hoping for a fine payoff. “I’m not just taking seamen,” Drake told him one night. “I’m taking archers and players and gentlemen adventurers. Can I number you among them? It seems like just the kind of exploit you’d enjoy. There’s certain to be riches and honor for us when we return to the realm, ships pregnant with booty for the queen.”

Thomas shot a quick glance at me. “I’m afraid not, Drake, though my gold and prayers sail with you.”

Drake looked from Thomas to me and back again and then broke out in delighted laughter. “Ah, I see now, the beautiful marchioness. We have both agreed to undertake a dangerous venture, Gorges, but I couldn’t say which of us has the most at risk.” At that he and Thomas both laughed, but I did not, perhaps understanding more than both of them what dangers might be dealt from the hand of our mistress.

The next week Thomas took me hunting after we’d secured permission from the queen to use her park. I was unpracticed with a bow, but he was an excellent shot. After some hours, I drew back my bow, taut and fresh, and shot a hart.

“My Valkyrie! Deciding exactly who falls in battle!” he exclaimed, and I was delighted to have pleased him, and felt flush and brave and, perhaps for the first time since I’d left Sweden, emboldened to let the strong woman I knew I was inside show herself through the court masque of obsequiousness and compliance.

We rode back to court, I pillion behind him, the first man I had ever clasped my arms around in intimacy on a horse, as William and I had always rode separately. I was engulfed in ecstasy.

We spent the summer on Progress, of course, and one evening the queen and I were alone playing chess, as we were wont to do. After I’d shared with her that I missed playing with William, she’d taken to inviting me to a game more frequently. My game had certainly become better as I sharpened myself against her, and as I had been well taught, I liked to think that I offered her a challenge as well.

I was pleasantly surprised one evening when she herself brought up the topic of marriage. I suppose I shouldn’t have been surprised. “I see and say nothing” was one of her mottoes. I was glad she raised the topic, as it would have been indelicate for me to do so.

“What thinketh you of marriage?” she asked me.

“It’s a holy estate,” I said, “to those who are called to it.”

She nodded and moved a piece forward, carefully.

“What do you think, Your Grace?” I moved a pawn one space forward to protect my queen.

“Likewise,” she said. She considered the board, then stood up and moved back, looking upon it from afar. Once she sat down, she moved one of her knights. “With two knights available, it’s best to make good use of both.”

Within a week, I mentioned the game to Thomas. “I think she was affirming that I could marry twice,” I said. “After all, why bring up the subject of marriage? Why speak of using two knights?”

Thomas looked skeptical. “I don’t know, Elin. It doesn’t sound very forthright, and Her Majesty can be as forthright as any man.”

“But she’s also as subtle as any woman,” I disagreed; I did not want to see his skepticism or recognize the truth in what he said. Neither of us said more, but he sent word to the church near his London home that we wished to be married upon our return from Progress. I couldn’t have been too certain of and at peace about Her Majesty’s meanings about knights, as I did not seek her permission before marrying Thomas. In my heart, I strongly suspected she would say no and I was not going to risk that. It was one thing to act without her permission, but far more deadly to act against her stated will.

Thomas was willing to be bold for me, though of the two of us, he had the most to lose by angering Her Majesty. And yet, I would risk not only the perquisites and place I had at court but her friendship, which was dearer to me than almost any other. Almost.

In the end, I was firmly decided. I would be a Valkyrie for him.

• • •

Because most courtiers spent the summer away with the queen, the weeks following Progress were largely taken up by their tending to their families and personal affairs. So it was with little difficulty that I absented myself from service in late August. Clemence and I had spent some evenings stitching the cloud-like silk into an ethereal wedding dress. I could not take any of the ladies at court into my confidence and have them stand stead at our wedding; to do so would have been to put them at risk. Thomas asked Francis Drake, who was thrilled, as we knew he would be, to be included in a daring undertaking, and Clemence was a witness, too. Although I was fond of Clemence, her presence underscored, perhaps, how difficult and different this marriage was from my first one, wherein the queen had been witness.

Afterward, we returned to Thomas’s home in Blackfriars. It was not, of course, on the scale of the palace or of any of William’s homes, but it was tasteful and clean and well lit, with many rooms and a few servants.

“I have also bought a grand property, Langford,” he’d told me as we’d discussed our plans before marrying. “It sits upon the River Avon, and while it is mostly ruins it has a magnificent presence and view. When Drake comes back and makes us all rich, we’ll have money enough to build a formidable house.”

I’d agreed, to make him happy, but in all truth, I was glad enough to be with him wherever we might be.

That night, we moved to his chambers upstairs. I bathed first, and when he emerged from the washing chamber he smelled of the spice preparation I’d made for him. He drew near to me and kissed me on the forehead, stroking my hair, and then my jaw, and then my lips. I pressed myself against him and drew in his breath as we were inches apart, face-to-face. Of a sudden, I had an idea.

I pulled myself back from him and firmly planted my right hand on his left thigh. “I had a promise to fulfill,” I said. “From the night you tripped me. Now he need not feel unequal with his brother.”

Thomas roared in laughter and came at me, tumbling me on the bed, and we sought each other in passion and joy.

Afterward, as he ran his fingers lightly up my spine as we lay nestled together, I thanked God for this night, the wedding night I had dreamed of, and more, since I was a girl. Thomas recited a poem, whispering it from behind me:

My love in her attire doth show her wit, It doth so well become her;

For every season she hath dressings fit, For winter, spring, and summer.

No beauty she doth miss when all her robes are on;

But beauty’s self she is when all her robes are gone.

I giggled and turned to face him again.

We spent the days eating and laughing and jesting and reading lines together until it was time for us to return to court. We agreed I would go first and share the news with Her Majesty, and then Thomas would follow once the storm had quelled, if there were one. Our new life put me in mind of a Lyly line Thomas had once spoken to me as we looked forward to our wedding night: marriages are made in Heaven but consummated on earth.

• • •

My trial in regnis was to be private.

“Come here, Marchioness,” the queen called me forward.

I stood before her, then dropped to my knees. Not “Helena,” nor even “My good lady marquess.” “Yes, Your Grace,” I said.

She looked at me, her eyes cool obsidian. “Is it better to be loved or feared?” she asked me, quoting the Niccolò Machiavelli translation we had read together a few months back. I had thought it to be satire, and had thought Her Majesty felt so, too, but now I was in doubt.

“Loved, Majesty,” I said, answering for myself and not Machiavelli. “Or perhaps both.”

“ ‘One would like to be both the one and the other,’ ” she quoted. “ ‘But because it is difficult to combine them, it is far safer to be feared than loved if you cannot be both.’ ”

I opened my mouth to speak but she put her hand up and silenced me. She called forth one of her pages and said, “Please take the marchioness’s trunks from court and deliver them, and her, back to her husband’s home, which she is not to depart from, on pain of imprisonment. Should she choose that, she can join her husband in the Tower.”

Who had told her? Clemence? Surely not. One of Thomas’s relatives? Drake? It was an unhappy reality of life at court that one never knew whom one could trust, though they be as close as linen to skin.

All the way back to Thomas’s house I shivered in the early fall breeze, thinking, He cannot have been delivered to the Tower. But when I arrived his servant told me that was exactly what had happened. He had been arrested for marrying a noblewoman without the queen’s permission and conveyed to the Tower with little but the shirt he wore. It horrified me, and when I saw his grooming tools in our chamber I burst into tears. I unpacked my trunks, numb. Clemence came to me; I was never so grateful that she was in my pay and keep and not Her Majesty’s. She tried to cheer me, but I could not be cheered.

Late that night, as I lay alone in Thomas’s large bed, I thought, Yes. We are certainly the couple left in Hell.