Roses Have Thorns: A Novel of Elizabeth I

EPILOGUE

Early Spring: Year of Our Lord 1603

Richmond Palace

The Palace of Whitehall

Westminster Abbey

I returned to court for the new year, 1603, and did not leave as expected. My dearest friend Anne Dudley had taken ill; her beloved husband had died some years before, but she had served the queen as a widow since. Although Anne had rallied some, the queen was in need of ladies to assist, because another beloved friend, Catherine Carey, Countess of Nottingham, had taken ill as well.

When Lady Nottingham passed away in February, we could see the life flicker in Her Majesty, who was now a frail seventy years old. I had not thought to live to see the day when her spirit wavered as well as her body, but that day had come.

“I have never seen her fetch sighs,” Lady Nottingham’s brother, Robert Carey, told me after the funeral for his sister. “I have not heard her sigh so since Mary, Queen of Scots, was beheaded.”

I agreed with him; it worried me, too.

Within a few weeks, Her Majesty was having trouble swallowing and grew yet more faint. I did not think she ever recovered from the death of Catherine Carey, but she was not afraid of her own death, either. When, so many long years back, Parliament had hoped to scare her into naming a successor by discussing her death, she had responded, “I know I am but mortal and so therewhilst prepare myself for death, whensoever it shall please God to send it.”

By mid-March she would not take remedy or even food. She lay, prone, on her pillows in a withdrawing chamber and would not move. She rarely spoke, though in a moment with less fever and pain she would grace us with a smile. Finally, Lord Howard of Effingham, her lord admiral and dear friend, coaxed her to her bed, where she reclined with her ladies surrounding her.

Robert Dudley was gone, Sussex was gone, Lady Knollys was long gone, Essex was executed, and Kat and Blanche were both long dead. Anne Dudley was ill unto death. Elizabeth had secured her kingdom. She knew she could die in peace.

We sent for the Archbishop of Canterbury, himself no young man, and he prayed at her bedside for hours, shifting from bony knee to bony knee in his discomfort. She would not let him leave, indicating with a squeeze of her hand that she wished for him to remain. I softly rubbed sweet-smelling oil into her thin hand skin, and willow bark near her jaw, which ached.

She spoke no more to us, but as the night grew on, her face turned from gray to white again, but not the white, at first, of death, but of an ethereal quality. Between two and three in the morning, she slipped from mortal life to eternal life, one of her courtiers later said, “mildly like a lamb, easily like a ripe apple from the tree.”

Of all the honors that came with my high rank, there was one that brought me true satisfaction. As the highest-ranking woman in the land, it was my position to be Chief Mourner for the queen.

I stood near her coffin as arrangements were made for it to make its way by lit barge down the Thames. She had not wanted her body to be prepared, but I tucked one bay leaf near her head, to represent a laurel of sacrifice and victory. I knew she was at peace and with those she best loved: in the embrace of the Lord Jesus, then next, perhaps her Robin, and then finally, finally, resting enfolded in the arms of her mother.

I quoted Holy Writ, and the queen herself, as her men closed the casket. “ ‘And have ye not read this scripture; the stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner: This was the Lord’s doing, and it is marvelous in our eyes.’ ”