Just a Queen Read online

  Eight

  I was indisposed when I heard that the Queen of Scots was with child. The irony of the moment was one I had to keep to myself, for I had been on my close stool adjusting my garter and changing my soiled wallops with the help of a maidservant and this is business that can never be discussed. The dull ache that so regularly accompanied my monthly cycle had not improved my mood, so when the messenger from the Scots court was announced and one of my ladies discreetly rapped on the closed door to tell me so, I was not well pleased. I also recognised that the news must be urgent (and so unlikely to be welcome) before anyone would dare to interrupt me while I was about such intimate pursuits.

  ‘Whatever tidings he brings can wait a few more moments!’ I barked through the door.

  My maidservant looked up and, wiping her hands on a fresh linen wallop, assured me that all was secure and I was free to emerge from my private chambers. I paused to apply some rich perfumes to various parts of my person. I had a horror of any revealing odour escaping from beneath the confines of my gown.

  There are many things that distress me about the passage of time. I have only to look in a mirror to see the marks that the years have etched upon my face. As time has passed I have reduced the number of mirrors hanging on the walls of my apartments. I no longer take any pleasure in catching sight of myself unawares.

  I was never beautiful. I knew the truth of this despite all the protestations to the contrary. It is one of the things I value most about Cecil: he never flatters me. He has not once remarked upon my appearance. I believe he is utterly indifferent to it. When I was young, however, I was attractive in my own way. My hair was auburn and fell silkily down my back. My eyes were large and black and well set. My nose, too strong for beauty, had character and proportion and my cheekbones were high and my face well moulded. My skin was bright and fair, if a little pale. My lips have always been too thin and my teeth have never been good, but I was lively and vivacious and men found me desirable. My figure is still good. It is not marred by the thickness that marks women who have suffered through many pregnancies.

  The one compensation of my age, however, is the cessation of my monthly cycle. Unlike other women, I could not withdraw from the wider world when my bleeding was upon me. The tide of history rolled on, regardless of my physical woes. I could never reveal my travails to any who served me; we dealt with the matter in silence, as women do. Kat knew, and Blanche and my bedservant and laundress, and maybe Cecil was also aware of the changes in my mood that so often accompanied my menses, but none ever broached the subject. It is the curse of Eve, sent along with the pains of childbirth to punish her female descendants for their part in the corruption of Adam. We poor women can do nothing but bow our heads and suffer in silence and shame.

  I tried to schedule my duties around my monthly cycle, but sometimes a clash was unavoidable. How I dreaded the sense of stickiness on my thighs that told me, if a meeting went overlong, that my wallops were over-burdened. I was queen, I could ask for a recess and I did so, but my face felt hot as I hurried from the room, deathly afraid that a telltale mark stained the embroidered cushion upon my chair, or that some unspeakable but familiar female smell had escaped from me as I swept out. I know not if such things did occur, no one would ever have dared mention them, but I did not wish the men who served me ever to be reminded of my weakness as a woman.

  There is another compensation of age, of course. I am still alive. The Queen of Scots will never now grow any older.

  But, I lose track of my story and must return to a past when I was young, fertile and full of hope. When I emerged from my close-stool, the messenger handed me the letter that announced that the Queen of Scots was with child. It was hardly unexpected news. She was a young woman, recently married. It was the usual result – indeed the primary purpose – of such arrangements, yet it hit me like a blow. ‘Your mistress is with child? And so quickly.’

  ‘Aye, Your Majesty. The entire country rejoices at the tidings.’

  ‘I shall write personally to your mistress with my congratulations.’

  I waved the man away and retreated to my private apartments. There I gave way to a surge of emotion: part grief, part envy. As I sobbed, my womb heaved and cramped and drove home my own barren state. The blood that flowed from it had never felt quite as repellent.

  ‘Oh!’ I cried out. Good Mary Sidney was immediately by my side.

  ‘What ails Your Grace?’ She placed a comforting hand on the small of my back.

  ‘The Queen of Scots is with child.’ And as I spoke the words, a particularly nauseating cramp twisted my innards, causing me to groan aloud.

  ‘But you seem ill, my lady, and in pain. Surely such news alone cannot have brought you to this state?’

  ‘No. It is women’s troubles merely. As you say, the news of the Queen of Scots’ pregnancy is hardly unexpected.’

  ‘Allow me to fetch you a warm compress, good madam, and an infusion. They can help soothe the pains.’

  ‘It is foolish of me to complain of them so. The Scottish queen will face far worse when her time is upon her.’

  Like a royal death, a royal pregnancy always brings with it a sense of uncertainty. Will the child be a boy or a girl? Will it survive the dangers of birth? If the mother is a mere queen consort, as my mother was, as Katherine of Aragon was when pregnant with my sister, there is less concern – at least among the men who rule the world – whether the mother will survive. The child she bears is all in all to them, especially if it is a boy. But in the Queen of Scots’ case, as it was with my late sister Queen Mary Tudor’s strange phantom child, as it would have been had I ever had a child of my own, when the mother is queen in her own right, then her death can create both great difficulty and great opportunity. A queen heading towards the birthing stool is the female equivalent of a king going to war. If a monarch dies, then everything changes.

  Whether Mary Stuart gave birth to a girl or boy was not the most pressing concern for my court or for me. What mattered was that if she and her child survived they would be first and second in line to my throne. If she died and the child lived, he or she would be my most obvious heir, unless I had a child myself one day. The Queen of Scots was not simply gestating a child in her womb, but the future of our two nations.

  In the months that followed the news of Mary’s pregnancy, the scandals around her reckless choice of husband intensified. All Christendom was hungry for stories about Henry Darnley’s drunken rampages, tantrums and demands. He wanted to be called King of Scotland, we were told, and when she refused to give him the title, he cursed and humiliated his pregnant wife publicly.

  Like the Irish, the Scots have always been barbarians with their rough manners and incomprehensible, guttural accents. There is jockeying for power in all courts, but in Scotland they are quicker to take offence and quicker to pull out their swords. As we prepared to go on progress, to Woodstock, near Oxford, where I had once spent so many weary months as a prisoner, my courtiers and I traded stories about the shocking and unbridled behaviour of the men beyond our northern border. I could not help feeling a little sorry for Mary as we laughed at the bumpkins she ruled over. She was French: fine-made, elegant, nobly born. No wonder the gulf between the queen and her subjects seemed to grow week by week, month by month, much as did her belly.

  We were seated at dinner, a few of my intimates and I, when one of Robin’s manservants came into the room and whispered urgently in his master’s ear.

  ‘By heaven, man! Are you certain of this?’ Robin’s agitation brought the general hubbub to a halt. The only noise that remained came from the musicians playing in the gallery above. I signalled that they should stop. They did so, though one lone trumpeter squeaked tunelessly as he brought his solo to an abrupt conclusion. The discordant note hung upon the air as we all turned to look at the earl.

  ‘What news, my lord, is so striking that you must bring our revels
to an end?’

  I would not have been the only person in that room wondering if the Queen of Scots’ child had died in her womb, maybe taking his mother with him. Ah, think of all the troubles both queens would have been spared if only God had seen fit to do just that.

  ‘The Queen of Scotland’s husband and a group of peers of her realm have murdered the queen’s Italian music master in front of her very eyes and in the face of her protests!’

  A horrified gasp escaped from many at this declaration, including myself. ‘And the queen, is she safe? And what of the babe she is carrying?’

  By way of answer Robin turned towards his manservant. ‘Both unharmed, Your Majesty, but they say the man died clutching the terrified queen’s skirts and calling out her name, begging her to protect him as the murderers rushed in and stabbed him repeatedly. They say her dress was rent by the men’s knives and that Rizzio’s blood – for that was the Italian’s name – his blood covered her gown.’

  I leapt to my feet, my hand at my mouth in genuine shock. I may not have grieved if Mary had died from the complications of childbearing. After all, I had not laid eyes on the woman and still have not. Such events are the will of God, but this insult to a sovereign – any sovereign – was not to be borne.

  ‘But that is disgraceful! Unbelievable! To draw your sword in the presence of your prince is treason enough, but then to use it, with so little regard for the safety of the queen and the child she is carrying! I thought the Scots mere buffoons, but I see I was sadly mistaken. They are traitors and savages to use their queen so.’

  ‘We must not forget, Your Majesty, that one of their number was an Englishman and her husband and, indeed, the father of her child.’

  I knew Robin had said Darnley was one of the murderers, but the horror of that had not registered with me fully until that moment.

  ‘He has been corrupted by the company in which he has found himself.’ The Duke of Norfolk spoke hurriedly in defence of his fellow Catholic.

  Robin was having none of it. ‘Perhaps, my lord, but we all know what a fool Lord Darnley is; only now he is a murdering fool.’

  ‘She may have disliked him before, but she will hate him now.’

  I was filled with pity for my cousin, and then my pity at her terrible predicament became fear for myself. I looked at the assembled company and fixed my gaze on William Cecil. ‘And yet all of you continue to pressure me to marry.’ I left the chamber, before my feelings could betray me further.

  I still am not sure why the news undid me so completely, dreadful though it was. Was it that my cousin’s vulnerability, despite her status as queen, brought home the reality of my own? Did her situation remind me that monarchs stay safe only by the sufferance of the men who surround us? Men who have little respect for female rule? All I knew was that I needed to get away from all the men in that room. Well, almost all of them.

  ‘I had no wish to upset you. My only wish is for your happiness.’ Robin had followed me from the dining chamber and now knelt at my feet, his face creased with concern.

  ‘How now, my eyes?’ I was making an effort to subdue the turbulent feelings that assailed me.

  ‘No, good madam, how do you do? I can see that your cousin’s plight has upset you.’

  Kind words have always undone me faster than harsh ones and his pity unleashed tears. He stood and put his arms around me, pulling me close so that I could weep upon his chest. It felt very good to be held so and, God forgive me, I allowed my body to collapse against his. I could feel the strength in his arms and his back and it soothed me.

  ‘Elizabeth, Elizabeth,’ he whispered urgently and then he began to kiss me gently along my hairline, then on my eyelids, as if to kiss my tears away and, then, lifting my face from his chest, upon my lips – gently at first and then more urgently. Something long dormant had come back to life deep inside me. For the first time since his wife tumbled headlong to her death, I kissed him in return, opening my mouth beneath his. I felt him sigh, a deep and heartfelt sigh; an expression that exactly mirrored my own feelings of relief and, yes, release. Suddenly his hands were caressing and stroking me. He kissed my ears, my neck and lower still, all the while moaning and whispering words of love.

  ‘Oh, Elizabeth, my queen, my lady, my love, my own, how I have longed—’

  He bent me backwards now and I could feel the heat rising within him being answered by a heat of my own. Suddenly he lifted me off my feet and his hand went up and under my skirts. The shock and thrill of his hand on my thigh still, all these years later, causes my heart to beat faster. But, all the while, a hard little voice whispered in my ear, ‘This was the Queen of Scots’ undoing. You cannot allow yourself to be similarly undone.’ So, almost without realising what I did, I put my own hand upon his and halted its movement. His mouth was once again over mine, but I spoke regardless, through his kiss. ‘We must stop this now, we must. We cannot do this, my dearest, we cannot.’

  After a moment’s resistance, when for a terrible second I thought he meant to force me, I felt him release me. He placed me gently back upon the floor. I bent and smoothed my skirts back into their rightful place and then raised my head and looked up at him. His eyes were closed and his chest heaved. From under his eyelids, great tears rolled and were lost in his beard. I took out a handkerchief and wiped them away as gently as I could.

  He grasped my wrist and pushed my hand away. ‘You torture me.’

  ‘Do you not think I suffer just as you do?’

  He shook his head, like a heartbroken boy.

  ‘Then you know me little. You are all that I want and all that I cannot have.’

  I freed my hand. He remained silent, his face sullen and closed against me. Without another word, he turned and left the room and I stood where he had left me, frozen and alone.

  Nine

  ‘Had I been in Queen Mary’s place, your excellency, I would have taken my husband’s dagger and stabbed him with it.’

  I flourished my hand as if it contained an invisible blade. The storm of emotion that had overwhelmed me when I first heard the news of the Italian musician’s murder had passed to such an extent that I was beginning to take pleasure in the court gossip about the scandal, a scandal that was now on the lips of all Europe. Mary was no longer a wise, accomplished and fecund queen. Now she was a pitiful, foolish female who had married the wrong man for love. Where once I had feared she was seen as the superior queen, I took satisfaction from the scales finally tipping in my favour. I had already resigned myself to the fact that as long as we both lived, we would be compared constantly.

  The assembled petitioners and courtiers applauded my play-acting and the Spanish ambassador, to whom I had addressed the bloodthirsty remark, acknowledged my antics with a smile and a bow, but as he straightened up I saw his elegantly raised eyebrow and remembered too late that we were still officially in negotiations about a possible marriage with his master Archduke Charles of Austria. Privately I knew that such a union would never take place and that was why I found it so easy to forget the many hours spent by our various representatives arranging the match.

  Diplomatically, however, I knew it was important to keep my hand in marriage dangling before the Spanish, while also keeping it hopefully free of any daggers, imaginary or otherwise. I had to appear as if I was seriously considering the archduke’s proposal. As all this flashed through my brain, I recognised my faux pas and hastily tried to rectify the situation.

  ‘Of course, my lord, if your master and I were married I would never take such action against him.’ Even as the words escaped my lips I realised they were only making things worse. I tried to make amends, but, again, only compounded the difficulty. ‘Not, of course, that your gracious master, the archduke, would ever do something as extraordinary as the crime perpetrated by the consort of the Queen of Scotland.’

  This would not do either and my mortification intensified
. The ambassador, as befitted his profession, took pity on me and steered our conversation to more mundane matters. Nevertheless, I shuddered later when I thought how my words would be repeated and laughed at by my old friend and rival Philip of Spain. I only soothed myself back to sleep by reminding myself how much more humiliated Mary must be in her awful predicament.

  When I was a little girl, Kat often warned me that pride cometh before a fall – particularly when I boasted of my achievements in the schoolroom, an admonition that never failed to irritate me. If only I had paid more attention.

  We were enjoying a performance of conjurers. I remember the magician and his wonders vividly. He was able to make different coloured flames appear from the end of his wand and doves disappear and reappear beneath a silken cloth. Dressed in a weird purple costume decorated with moons and stars, the master conjurer was accompanied by a small band of musicians who played to punctuate and exaggerate the wonders of their master’s magic. They beat the drum as the magician prepared to astonish us, and clashed the cymbals at the climax of every trick. It was pleasant to gasp at the sudden appearance of a bouquet of flowers – seemingly from nowhere, or to duck our heads as a newly conjured bird flew and flapped above us on release from its master’s hands. It was also pleasant to receive the conjured flowers and the length of fine silk cloth that had miraculously remade itself after being snipped into little pieces by the conjurer’s scissors. After running the silk through my fingers and peering at it closely through my spectacles I could attest there was no sign of either repair or damage.

  The more religious members of my court sometimes whispered about witchcraft and the devil’s work, but I had been assured by my servants that there was nothing supernatural about such trickery. It is all done with distraction and sleight of hand and relies on our willingness to believe. Magicians are apprenticed. They learn their trade as surely as cobblers or coffin-makers.