Elizabeth I Read online

  “Summon Drake,” said Burghley.

  “Where is he?” asked Leicester.

  “In Plymouth,” said Walsingham. “But he’ll come quickly.”

  5

  As they rose to take their leave, I motioned to Robert Dudley, Lord Leicester, putting on his hat. He halted and waited expectantly.

  “Come, stroll with me in the garden,” I invited—ordered—him. “I have seen little of you since your return from the Low Countries last winter.”

  He smiled. “I would like that,” he said, turning on his heel to follow me.

  Back in the Queen’s garden, three gardeners were busy setting out herbs in the raised beds, their backs bent over their task. Should I send them away? Whatever we said would be overheard and, doubtless, repeated. No, they should stay. I did not plan to say anything that could not be repeated.

  “You are looking well,” I began.

  “I would take that as a compliment, but I was ill and looked dreadful when I first returned. So anything is an improvement.”

  “True.” I studied him. His face had regained some of the flesh and animation that the Low Countries had drained from him. Still, he did not look healthy. And he would never look young, or handsome, again. Time had not been kind to him, my “Eyes,” the man who had been the most glorious creature in my court thirty years ago. The thick chestnut hair had thinned and turned gray; the luxuriant mustache and beard, sleek and shiny as a sable pelt, were wispy and pale. The soul-searching deep hazel eyes now looked watery and pleading. Perhaps it was not just the Netherlands that had wasted him but the ten years he had spent with the notorious, demanding Lettice Knollys as his wife. “The Netherlands were cruel to you,” I told him. “And to me.” I thought of all it had cost, and no resolution in sight. “So many deaths, so much drain on our resources.”

  He paused in our slow walk down the grassed path. “Without us, the Spanish would have crushed the Protestant rebels already. So never think it was in vain.”

  “Sometimes I think all we have done is to give the Spanish some battle practice, the better to attack us here.”

  We resumed our walk, winding our way toward the sundial in the middle of the garden, its centerpiece. “I have seen the Duke of Parma’s army firsthand, and it is all it is reputed to be,” he said.

  “You mean, the best fighting force in Europe? Yes, I know.”

  “But it is weakened by illness and desertion like any other. He started out with thirty thousand men, and hearsay is that he is down to seventeen thousand. That counts the one thousand English exiles, the ones fighting against their own country. They are also”—his eyes lit up like the Robert of his youth—“short of money, and there will be no more until the next treasure fleet arrives from America.”

  I joined him in a mischievous smile. “Which our loyal privateers will try to intercept. You were out of the country, but did you know that Drake’s raiding meant that in the last half of 1586, no silver at all reached Spain?”

  We both burst into gleeful laughter, as we had done so many times, and so many places, together. His laugh was still young. “None?” he cried.

  “Not a sliver,” I said. “Not an ingot. And besides that, the raid he led on Cádiz last spring injured their ships and supplies so greatly that he single-handedly has delayed the sailing of the Armada for a year. That has given Parma’s men more opportunities to die or desert.”

  “Even we knew all about that. Sailing right into their own waters, striking over a thousand miles from his English home base—it was brazen and unthinkable. At least, the Spanish did not think it possible. Now they are all frightened of him. A captured Spanish captain I myself questioned believed that Drake had supernatural powers to see into faraway ports. I did not disabuse him of the notion. Certainly Drake seems to have an uncanny ability to guess where treasure is, what’s guarded, and what’s not. And he moves with the speed of a striking cobra.”

  “Amusing, isn’t it? He looks so innocent, with his round face and red cheeks.”

  “His ships are his fangs. He uses them like an ordinary man uses his own hand or foot—as if they were part of his own body.” Robert shook his head in wonderment.

  We had reached the sundial, a faceted cube that told time in thirty different ways as the sun played on each surface. It had been a gift from Queen Catherine de’ Medici as her princely sons, one at a time, came courting me. Perhaps she thought one big gift from the mother of them all would make more of an impression than many little gifts. It was an ingenious device. One of the faces even told the night hours by moonlight, if the moon was bright enough.

  It said four o’clock on all of its faces. Today it would stay light until almost nine, one of those sweet lingering twilights of spring. There was even a face that could read the time as the last light ebbed, a twilight dial.

  Robert leaned on one of the sundial faces. “Did you mind the lily?” he asked.

  “No,” I answered, feeling bad that I had been so dismissive of it. But it was out of place for him to offer it there, then. “It was so like you to do it.”

  He looked around the garden. “Why do you have no roses here? How can a Tudor garden have no roses?”

  “They are too tall for the rails. It would upset the order of the garden. But near the orchard, there is a whole plot of them.”

  “Show me,” he said. “I have never seen them.”

  We left the little enclosed garden and made our way out along the path leading past the tiltyard with its viewing galleries. Iron brackets lined the fence for torchlight tournaments. Robert had taken part in many but would ride in them no longer. I noticed he was out of breath from the short walk. Then I remembered something else.

  “You resigned your post as master of the horse,” I said. “Robert, why?”

  “All things must pass,” he said, lightly.

  “But Burghley is still serving me! You two were my first appointments, at my very first council meeting!”

  “I still serve you, my Be—Your Majesty,” he said. “Just not as master of the horse. Although I will still breed horses.”

  “So ... who now serves?”

  “An energetic young man I discovered. Christopher Blount. He did well in the Netherlands. Got wounded. I knighted him. You’ll be pleased with him, I am sure.”

  “That title belongs to you.”

  “No longer.”

  “In my mind, it always will.”

  “Our minds see things that our eyes cannot,” he said. “I suppose something continues to exist until the mind that sees it no longer exists.”

  Yes, the young handsome Robert Dudley existed now only in the mind of Elizabeth and in portraits. “You are right.”

  We had reached the rose garden, where beds were laid out according to color and variety. There were climbing eglantines, their pink petals spread open like frames; small ivory musk roses studding their prickly bushes; sturdy shrubs with many-petaled reds and whites, damask roses and province roses; beds of yellow roses and pale red canell roses that smelled like cinnamon. The mingled scents were particularly sweet this afternoon.

  “I was wrong to call you a lily,” he said. “I see now that roses reflect your true nature better. There are so many different kinds, just as there are so many sides to you.”

  “But my personal motto is ‘Semper eadem’—‘Always the same, never changing.’”I had chosen it because I thought unpredictability in a ruler was a great burden for the subjects.

  “That is not how your councillors would describe you,” he said. “Nor your suitors.” He looked away as he added, “I should know, having been both.”

  It was good that I could not see his face, read his expression. “I only play at being fickle,” I finally said. “Underneath it I am steady as a rock. I am always loyal and always there. But a little playacting adds spice to life and keeps my enemies on their toes.”

  “Your friends, too, Your Majesty,” he said. “Even your old Eyes sometimes does not know when to believe what h
e sees.”

  “You may always ask me, Robert. And I will always tell you. That I promise.”

  Robert Dudley: the one person I could almost bare my soul to, could be more honest with than anyone else. Long ago I had loved him madly, as a young woman can do only once in her life. Time had changed that love, hammered it out into a sturdier, thicker, stronger, quieter thing—just as they say happens in any long-term marriage. The Russians say, “The hammer shatters glass but forges iron.”

  I once told an ambassador that if I ever married it would be as a queen and not as Elizabeth. If I had ever been convinced marriage was a political necessity, then I would have proceeded despite my personal reluctance. But at my coronation I promised to take England itself as my spouse. Remaining a virgin, not giving myself to anyone but my people, was the visible sacrifice they would prize and honor, binding us together. And so it has proved.

  And yet, and yet ... at the same time I spared them the horrors of foreign entanglement and the specter of domination, I left them with the very thing my father turned his kingdom upside down to avoid: no heir to succeed me.

  I cannot say it doesn’t worry me. But I have other immediate decisions to make, of equal and urgent concern to the survival of my country.

  It took Francis Drake the better part of a week to travel the two hundred miles separating Plymouth and London. But now he stood before the full Privy Council, and me, in the meeting room at Whitehall. He had wanted not to rest but to come straight to us.

  The sight of him always made me feel safer. He had such buoyant optimism that he convinced anyone listening that his plans were not only attainable but reasonable.

  The group had expanded beyond the inner three—Burghley, Leicester, and Walsingham—to include Sir Francis Knollys; Henry Carey, the Lord Hunsdon; and John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as Charles Howard, the new lord admiral.

  “We welcome you,” I told Drake. “Your feeling about our situation?”

  He looked around. He was a stocky man, barrel-chested. It was fitting for the man who had destroyed the barrel staves for the Armada last year. His sandy hair was still thick, and although his face was weathered, it looked young. He was sizing up the possible opposition in the council before he spoke. Finally he said, “We knew it would come, sooner or later. Now is the hour.”

  No argument there. “And your recommendation?” I asked.

  “You know my recommendation, gracious Queen. It is always better to attack the enemy and disarm him before he gets to our shores. An offensive is easier to manage than a defensive action. So I propose that our fleet leave English waters and sail out to intercept the Armada before it gets here.”

  “All of it?” asked Charles Howard. “That would leave us unprotected. If the Armada eluded you, they could slip in with no resistance.” He lifted his brows in consternation. Charles was an even-tempered, diplomatic man who could handle difficult personalities, making him an ideal high commander. But Drake was hard to control, or to appease.

  “We’ll find them,” he said. “And when we do, we do not want to be short of ships.”

  Robert Dudley—Leicester in this formal setting—chafed at this. “It makes me nervous,” he said, “to send out all the ships at once.”

  “You sound like an old woman!” scoffed Drake.

  “Then there are two of us,” said Knollys. He was notoriously cautious and scrupulous. Had he been a monk, he would have worn a hair shirt. As it was, his militant brand of Protestantism was a good substitute.

  “Make that three,” weighed in Burghley. William Cecil always favored a defensive strategy, wanting to keep everything within English bounds.

  “It would depend on getting the accurate information about when the Armada leaves Lisbon,” said Secretary Walsingham. “Otherwise it is a fruitless, and dangerous, venture.”

  “I thought that was your job,” said Drake.

  Walsingham stiffened. “I do the best I can with the means at my disposal,” he said. “But there is no method for instant transmission of facts. The ships can go faster than my messengers.”

  “Oh, I can see faraway ports,” said Drake with a laugh. “Didn’t you know that?”

  “I know that the Spanish credit El Draque—the Dragon—with that feat,” said Walsingham. “But they are credulous simpletons in general.”

  “Granted,” I said. “Enough of that. What of the other defenses?”

  “I would propose that we divide the fleet into two—a western squadron to guard the mouth of the Channel, an eastern one to guard the straits of Dover,” said Charles Howard.

  “I see what the enemy’s plan is,” announced Drake, interrupting. “The Armada isn’t coming here to fight. Parma’s army of Flanders will do that, and the Armada will escort them across the Channel. They will guard the flat barges loaded with soldiers as they make the short trip. It’s only twenty or so miles. The entire army could cross in eight to twelve hours. That’s their scheme!” He looked around, his clear eyes taking in the councillors’ doubts. “We must disable the fleet. We must prevent them docking on the shore of Flanders. Our Dutch allies will help. Already they have kept Parma from securing a deep anchorage port, and they can harass him as he tries to use the smaller waterways. The great size of the Armada, meant to ensure a safe crossing, can be its very undoing.” He paused. “Of course, an alternative plan for them would be to capture the Isle of Wight on our side of the Channel and make a base there. But if they pass it by, there are no more ports for them until they reach Calais. It is up to us to hurry them along. That is, of course, assuming they even get up here. Now, if we follow my original plan to intercept them—”

  I held up my hand to quiet him. “Later. For now we must decide on the deployment of our overall resources. So, Admiral Howard, you recommend two separate squadrons of ships? Would it not be better to station all of them at the entrance of the Channel?”

  “No. If they got past us there, they would have clear sailing the rest of the way. They would own the Channel, unless we are already waiting for them farther east.”

  “I don’t think—” said Drake, out of turn.

  “Quiet!” I silenced him. “What of our land forces? What say you, cousin?” I spoke to Henry Carey, Lord Hunsdon.

  He was a big man who always made me think of a bear. Like a bear, he seemed to belong outdoors. He was warden of the East Marches and stationed near the Scottish border. “I will be responsible for your safety,” he said. “I will have forces based at Windsor. Should things become more ... uncertain ... I can secure a safe place for you in the country.”

  “I shall never hide in the country!” I said.

  “But, Your Majesty, you must think of your people,” said Walsingham. “You must appoint deputies to oversee the administration of supplies and control the defensive preparations, while taking care of your most precious person.”

  “God’s death!” I cried. “I will oversee it all myself!”

  “But that is not advisable,” said Burghley.

  “And who advises against it?” I said. “I rule this realm and I shall never delegate its high command to anyone else. No one cares more for the safety of my people than I myself.”

  “But, Ma’am, you are not—” began Leicester.

  “Competent? Is that what you think? Keep your opinion to yourself!” Oh, he maddened me sometimes. And only he would have felt safe in voicing his low opinion of me as a war leader. “Now, what of the rest of the forces?” I turned to Hunsdon. “How many men can we raise?”

  “In the southern and eastern counties, perhaps thirty thousand. But many of those are boys or old men. And hardly trained.”

  “Defensive measures?” I asked.

  “I will see to it that some of the old bridges are demolished, and we can put up barriers across the Thames to stop the Armada from sailing down it to London.”

  “Pitiful!” broke in Drake. “If the Armada gets that far, it will only be because I, John Hawkins, Martin Frobisher,
and the good admiral here are dead.”

  This was a turning point. I motioned with my hands downward for them to be quiet. I closed my eyes and brought my thoughts to bear, trying to sort everything I had been told. “Very well, Sir Francis Drake,” I said. “You shall have your experiment. Sail south to take on the Armada. But return the instant you feel we are in danger. I want all the ships here to face the enemy if she comes.” I looked at the other faces, ringed around me. “You, Admiral Howard, shall command the western squadron, to be based at Plymouth. In addition, you will be overall commander of both the land and the naval forces. Your ship will be the Ark. Drake will be your second in command. Do you hear that, Francis? Admiral Howard is your commanding officer.”

  Drake nodded.

  “Lord Henry Seymour, whose usual post is admiral of the narrow seas, will command the eastern squadron at Dover.” I looked at Hunsdon. “Lord Hunsdon, you will command the forces responsible for my safety, based near London. I will appoint the Norrises, Sir Henry the father and his son Sir John, alias “Black Jack,” as general and under-general of the southeastern counties. Young Robert Cecil shall serve as master of ordnance for the main army. And you”—I looked straight at Robert Dudley—“Lord Leicester, shall be lieutenant general of land forces for the defense of the realm.” He appeared stunned, as did the others. “See that you do it better than you did in the Netherlands.” There, that was my reply to his earlier insult.

  As they left my presence, I noted they looked surprised—and relieved—to have had all the appointments settled. Good warriors all, their thoughts were already with the battlefield and the work ahead.

  Now, evening having finally fallen, the quietness of night descending like a gentle rain, I could rest at last. My bedchamber, facing the river, bathed in reflected light for a few moments before the gold faded. It caressed a painting of my late sister, Queen Mary, hanging on the opposite wall. I had kept it to remind me of her sorrows and, while taking heed of her mistakes, not to judge her soul. I had always thought it sad, the hopeful little glint in her eyes, her mouth curling as if she had a secret. Dangling from a brooch on her bosom was the creamy, tear-shaped pearl that her bridegroom, Philip, had presented to her. But now—was it a trick of the light?—her eyes seemed not wistful but sly. The curve of her mouth seemed a sneer. The whole picture pulsated with a reddish glow, as if fiends were backlighting it. She had brought the evil of Spain to our shores, entwined us with that country. Philip’s wedding entourage, in its Armada, had arrived in July thirty-four years ago, as it would again, coming to finish what it had started with the 1554 marriage to Mary: returning England to the papal fold.