Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I

TWENTY

Year of Our Lord 1586

The Palace of Whitehall

January: Year of Our Lord 1587

Sheen

The queen insisted that Mary be taken to Fotheringay Castle, and not the Tower, and Thomas was to convey her there. She sent a letter for Thomas to deliver; I was present as she dictated it to her secretary: “You have, in various ways and manners, attempted to take my life, and to bring my kingdom to destruction and bloodshed. I have never proceeded harshly against you, but have, on the contrary, protected and maintained you like myself. These treasons will be proved to you, and all made manifest.”

Some weeks later, after having returned, he told me of their travel together. I was encouraged, as he had stopped, some time ago, sharing details of his journeys. I now understood why.

“She suffers badly in the joints, and rode for the entirety of the four-day journey. She tried repeatedly to charm and please me as I rode by her side, another man on the other side of the carriage, each of us with weapons lest her supporters try to find another means of escape. She protested her innocence to me. And I told her that I hoped it was so.”

“She is guilty,” I said.

“Beyond a doubt, a dozen times over. A cat may have nine lives, but she’s spent ten, and she will not live out the year. She responded to the letter Her Majesty sent by saying, ‘I am not so base as to wish to cause the death, or to lay hands on an anointed queen like myself.’ ”

I shook my head. “Those who are quickest to protest the wrongs of another are guilty of those wrongs themselves. She seeks to shame Elizabeth into commuting her death sentence.”

“Will she?” Thomas said. “Will the queen allow her to die this time, if her trial proves her guilty?”

I inhaled, thinking of Elizabeth’s mother, an anointed queen who was beheaded when her daughter was but a young child, the memory of which I knew still bedeviled her. “I hope so. But I know not.” I turned toward him and put my hands on his face. “I am so proud of you. This was a difficult, dangerous task, one in which the queen and Walsingham must have thought carefully about before appointing the right man to carry it out.”

He took my hands in his own for a moment, but not to hold them, rather to gently remove them from his face. Then he shook his head. “I am glad that the queen is safe, at last, from Mary and her bloody, wicked plans. But John Gorges is fled from his wife and children forever, and all know I am the cause of it. One of my mother’s Poyntz relatives was involved, too. He apparently made his way to France. They had my assurance, as family, when they shared details with me and allowed me to get close to Mary at the end. I feigned recusancy. ’Twas one reason why Mary was not alerted until it was too late. In order to keep faith with the queen, I broke faith with my family, who trusted me. What kind of person does that?”

“You have chosen well,” I told him. At that, he looked at me for but a moment longer than necessary, sighed before kissing my cheek, and took his leave.

I sat there, relishing the rare feel of his lips on my cheek until it faded into a memory and I could sense it no longer. I dried my eyes, and went back to service.

• • •

The queen knew that pamphlets had been used to sway the public she loved and who loved her. This autumn, ahead of Mary’s trial, she asked the brilliant, hunchbacked son of Lord Cecil, Robert Cecil, to write one and have it circulated. It was to explain her reluctance to execute Mary. Robert Cecil did a brilliant job, though the queen needn’t have worried. Most of her subjects were eager to have Mary, a traitoress many times over still suspected of murdering her husband, meet her Maker and explain herself to Him in person.

The queen’s enemies, who wielded long forks and desired to help themselves to the meat of her realm, would prove a different matter indeed.

The trial commenced on November 15. Though it was held in front of only thirty-six peers, there was not a person at court, from the lowest maid in the buttery to the highest earl, who did not know, in detail, everything that was done and said at the great hall at Fotheringay. When Mary entered, she was said to have exclaimed, “Alas! Here are many councilors but not one for me!” She was not allowed a defense, but was able to defend herself well, with wit and courage. I found it disturbing that Babington and the other plotters were executed ahead of Mary’s trial. Would it not have been prudent to call upon them for evidence? This did not trouble Walsingham, nor many others. There might well have been a chance that Mary had been misled, or that evidence had been contrived against her. But, as in my young Frances’s favorite Aesop’s fable, Mary had cried wolf once too many times with her deceits.

The thirty-six peers appointed to hear evidence were not allowed to deliver a verdict. They did reconvene, however, in the Star Chamber at Westminster and debate the evidence in front of others, including Thomas. All but one agreed that she was guilty of compassing, practicing, and imagining Her Majesty’s death.

The queen thanked them for their nearly unanimous verdict, but still she was loath to write a warrant for Mary’s execution. Perhaps she recalled the times when her own sister had been pressed to write out a death sentence for her but had stayed her hand. Elizabeth begged her councilors to consider how her enemies would look upon her if she agreed to have Mary executed. They already looked upon her as a bastard heretic. “When it shall be spread that for the safety of her life, a maiden queen could be content to spill the blood even of her own kinswoman, what shall they think then?” she asked.

“Majesty,” Cecil objected, “they are not unwilling to spill your precious blood; in fact, as time shall prove, they are overeager to do so. Mary was wont to spill your blood and she did not care if it was done neatly, or if you were struck down while hunting in your own park!”

The queen wavered. She assured them of her love and her thankfulness for their caretaking. “As for your petition: your judgment I condemn not, nor do I mistake your reasons, but pray you to accept my thankfulness, excuse my doubtfulness, and take in good part my answer answerless.”

Her council was nearly undone by her indecisiveness, but I felt it should be credited to her that she was not eager to execute Mary. Cecil said that if the queen could not come to a speedy resolution her people would call this a “Parliament of words but no action.”

He did not have to wait long for relief. Soon thereafter the queen agreed that Mary was guilty of treason and she was sentenced to death on December 4. Bonfires were lit day and night in London as the citizens celebrated. All that remained was for the queen to sign the death warrant . . . which she did not do. It brought to mind her indecisiveness years past with Norfolk.

“Watch,” she told me once she’d agreed with the verdict. “The vultures will begin to swarm, but they won’t be wanting to pick from Mary’s corpse, but ours.”

From Scotland came word from King James that if his mother’s life be touched or her blood be meddled with, he could no longer remain on good terms with the queen or estate of that realm. He continued by saying, “King Henry VIII’s reputation was never prejudged but in the beheading of his bedfellow.”

Elizabeth was livid. “It should not be my father with whom he concerns himself about the execution of a wedded bedfellow,” she railed. “For his mother snuffed out the life of her bedfellow—his father, Darnley! Mayhap he should think upon that!”

From France came word that Henry III would “look upon it as a personal affront” if Mary was executed. Elizabeth took pen in her own hand and said that such words were “the shortest way to make me dispatch the cause of so much mischief.”

And yet at night, when I rubbed her thin shoulders, the knots were not only felt but were visible. And she’d yet to hear from the greatest threat of all, Spain. “I have no will to see her executed,” she said, standing near the cages of her quiet songbirds. “She has come to me as a bird that had flown for succor from the hawk.”

Mary wrote, thanking Elizabeth for the happy tidings, expressing joy that she was about to be at “the end of my long and weary pilgrimage.” She concluded by saying, “Yet while abandoning this world and preparing myself for a better, I must remind you that one day you will have to answer for your charge, and for all those whom you doom, and that I desire that my blood and my country may be remembered in that time.” She sought, deviously, to undermine Elizabeth, threaten her, and cause her pain until the end. It was Mary and her ilk written about in the book of Jeremiah: “Can the leopard [change] his spots? Then may ye also do good, that are accustomed to do evil.”

The queen wanted Lord Robert back from the Netherlands, and Lord Robert wanted to return. Thomas volunteered to go and convey her agreement to him, which surprised me, for he was nearly always gone now, and I’d thought he’d relish the opportunity to stay at home.

The queen told me, after he’d gone, that she meant to knight Thomas upon his return and appoint him as Master of the Wardrobe. I kissed her hand and prayed to God that would loose his demons forever.

I returned home for three days to set my household in order before the Christmas season. One afternoon I found a scrap of paper with a bit of a poem on it. I asked the tutor to my older children, “Do you recognize this?”

He took it in hand and within a minute said, “Yes, of course. The poet is Thomas Wyatt, and it is written in the hand of your cousin Sofia.”

“Thank you,” I said, hoping I hid my anger and dismay. I knew, at heart, that she had not meant this for Upjohn. As the tutor took his leave, I read it again before folding it up and securing it in my gold girdle purse.

Pain or pleasure, now may you plant, even which it please you steadfastly;

Do which you list, I shall not want to be your servant secretly.

• • •

After the New Year’s celebrations had passed, the queen made good on her promise to knight Thomas. His accolade was held before our friends and other courtiers, but was solemn, and for Thomas, one of the most important days of his life.

I ensured that he was dressed splendidly in the finest fabrics and leathers we could find; the London merchants thrived under the queen and therefore it was not difficult to procure the best goods. One morning, after the queen, too, dressed in high finery, she had Thomas kneel before her on the knighting stool. I stood nearby, with our children: Elizabeth, who was nine and imperious and beautiful; Frances, seven, quiet and dignified and a scholar in the making; Edward, five, and Theobald, four, locking arms, the very best of companions and already steady horsemen; and baby Bridget, who was three, and the precious joy of all.

The queen rested the flat side of a jeweled sword on Thomas’s right shoulder, then lifted it above his head and placed it upon his left. He then stood, thanked the queen, and kissed her ring, after which she presented him with his new insignia.

We made our way back to Sheen, where we were to sponsor some fine entertainment and celebrations that evening. The children teasingly called Thomas “Sir Papa” all the long ride home, and he reveled in tickling and teasing them. He sternly jested that there would not be any Lord of Misrule in his household, now that it was run by a knight, but Edward took exception.

“Nay, Papa, next Christmastime I intend to be the Lord of Misrule at our home!”

Thomas had smiled at me during the ceremony, but he kept a margin of space between us and I wondered, to myself, what kind of home I would have by next Yuletide. There was much ill will betwixt my beloved and me.

Did he yet love me? I sorrowed as I realized, nay. Perhaps not.

Nigh on seventy courses were served for dinner, and we had mimes and puppet masters before the children went to bed for the evening, then there was music and dancing. The Pembrokes came, of course, and I had arranged for them to bring young Upjohn as well.

“Do spend some time with him,” I urged Sofia. “If you do not show him some affections, there are other ladies waiting who will!” Indeed, there was a fair line of young women surrounding Upjohn, which did draw Sofia’s interest and competitive nature. But she would not take her eyes off Essex, who would not take his eyes off the queen.

Mary Herbert, only a few years older than Essex herself, but settled, with a mature husband and children, not to mention a large estate and her own writing, came alongside me and slipped her arm through mine. After reassuring me of Upjohn’s continued interest in Sofia, she said, “I see Essex pays mind to the queen whenever possible.”

“Under Lord Robert’s watchful eyes,” I commented.

“Perhaps the attentions of someone beautiful and young, the flattery of being looked up to and wanted in spite of one’s wearying life experience, makes one feel virile and desirable again,” wise Mary said.

I looked firmly at her, surprised that she was speaking so boldly about Her Majesty when the queen was just across the room. Then it occurred to me that perhaps she was not speaking about Elizabeth and Essex at all.

Later that evening, before she retired, the queen drew Thomas and me near to her. “Sir Thomas, we are well pleased to be able to knight you at long last. We have recognized your faithful service in the past and we know we shall be able to depend upon you as the storms batter our coast,” she said. “We thought it particularly apt that you be knighted in reward for service in regards to a Scotswoman. Your father was knighted at Flodden, fighting Scotsmen. We do not forget your family’s long service to the crown.”

Thomas looked pleased and surprised that she knew. “Yes, Your Grace, that is true. I am honored that you have remembered my father and me, and I will serve you to the best of my abilities until my last breath.”

She smiled at him. “And now, Lady Northampton, if you will show me to my chamber for the evening, I will be well pleased.”

Thomas bowed low, but before he did, I saw the smile flex to a frown. Later that evening, I tapped upon his chamber door. He opened it and let me in, though he was already prepared for sleep.

“I am certain that the queen will continue to promote you.”

He nodded but said nothing.

“Thomas”—I took his hand in mine—“what is it?”

“She still calls you Lady Northampton,” he said quietly. “I know ’tis the way of things, but no matter what comes my way, I cannot have one day without being reminded that my wife is more highly titled as the wife of another man.”

“Long dead,” I said, irritated.

He shrugged.

“Mary Herbert told me that Upjohn is interested in Sofia’s hand,” I said. “I’d like that for her.”

“Does she want it?” he asked.

“I don’t know,” I said. “But it’s time she’s married and with a household of her own.”

“One she likes to live in, with a man she wants, I should say,” Thomas said, and then, perhaps realizing he had overstepped, continued, “but that is up to you. I shall take my leave tomorrow—the Rose Theater has officially opened in London. Pembroke’s men and the lord admiral’s men will be performing and I shall attend.”

“I should like to come,” I teased.

“No lady is seen at the Rose,” he said. “Only women of low morals.”

“Do you know such women?” I jested, perhaps a bit sharply.

He didn’t answer. “And then Effingham has asked me to go up and down the coast recruiting sailors and making sure that the ports, including Hurst Castle, of which I am still governor, are secure.”

“Spain?” I asked quietly.

He nodded. “Spain.”

“Can we withstand them?”

“We can pray,” he said. And then, perhaps moved by the thought that we may be under a siege from which we could not recover, he reached out and drew me into his arms for but a moment. I felt him fight with himself not to take me closer, but his will won and at length he withdrew. “Good night, Elin,” he said, holding himself firm.

I’d been dismissed. My eyes filled with tears. “Good night, Sir Thomas.” I despaired as I trudged back to my elaborate, rich chamber, where I lay alone in a beautifully carved bed.

My marriage was dead.

Thomas left the next day for the coast and I returned to court, a careworn, unwelcome pattern.