Виктория Холт - My Enemy the Queen

I turned away. I could derive little comfort from Penelope, and I knew that it was no use pleading further with my son.

So there was nothing I could do to stop the duel and it took place in Marylebone Park. There was defeat for Essex, which was probably for the best, since Charles Blount had no intention of killing my son or dying himself—which would have meant the end of both their careers. There was a good deal of wisdom in Charles Blount. He was able to end the duel in the best possible way since Essex insisted on its taking place. He wounded my son slightly in the thigh and disarmed him. Charles Blount was unharmed.

Thus ended the duel in Marylebone Park, but it was to have far-reaching consequences.

It should have taught Essex a lesson, but alas, it did not.

When the Queen heard there had been a duel, she was angry and would reprimand both men, but knowing the temper of Essex and having had an account of what led up to the quarrel between them, she approved Charles Blount's behavior.

Her comment was: "By God's death, it is fitting that someone or other should take Essex down and teach him better manners, otherwise there would be no rule with him."

That was an indication that she was not pleased with his arrogance and that he should take heed and curb it. Of course he did not.

I tried to warn him, to make him see how dangerous it was to rely on her favor. She could change as quickly as the wind and one day she could be doting and fond and the next an implacable enemy.

"I know her," I cried. "In fact few know her as I do. I have lived close to her ... and look at me now ... banished, an exile. I have felt her malice and hatred as few have."

He retorted hotly that if I had been treated shamefully, it was Leicester who was to blame.

"By my faith, Mother," he said, "one day I will do for you what Leicester should have done. I will make her receive you and treat you with the respect you deserve."

I did not believe him but I liked to hear him champion me all the same.

Charles Blount came to inquire for him every day and sent him a doctor in whom he had great faith; and while my son's wounds were healing, the two, who had once been enemies, became friends.

Penelope, who went to nurse her brother, found the company of Charles Blount very stimulating, and through this incident Christopher and I were drawn closer together. His love and admiration for his brother and his anxiety for me, because he understood my fears for my son, made a stronger bond between us. He seemed to grow up and cease to be a mere boy; and when the affair was over we shared our relief that it had turned out far better than we had dared hope.

The matter of the golden chessman was soon forgotten at Court, but, looking back, I can see that it was an important milestone in our lives.

The year dawned with the main preoccupation, the growing menace of Spain. The Queen, Leicester told me, was constantly trying to ward off the final confrontation which she had been successful in eluding for many years, and now it was undoubtedly at hand. Men like Drake had raided Spanish harbors and destroyed them in a manner which was called "singeing the beard of the King of Spain." That was all very well, but it was not going to destroy the Armada, which even our most optimistic people had to admit was the finest in the world. There was a good deal of gloom throughout the country, for many of our sailors had been captured by the Spaniards, and some had become prisoners of the Inquisition. The tales they had had to tell of Spanish torture were so shocking that the whole country rose in fury. They knew that in those mighty galleons would come not only the weapons of war to destroy our ships and subdue our country, but the instruments of torture through which they vowed they would force us all to accept their faith.

We had made merry long enough. Now we had to face realities.

Robert was constantly with the Queen—restored to the highest favor again—all differences forgotten in the great fight to preserve their country and themselves. It was not to be wondered at that the stories about them, which had existed in their youth, should still be circulated.

At this time a man calling himself Arthur Dudley came into prominence. He was living in Spain helped by the Spanish King, who must either have thought the story was true or that the man's allegations could help to discredit the Queen.

Arthur Dudley was reported to be the son of the Queen and Leicester who had been born twenty-seven years before at Hampton Court. The story was that he had been put into the charge of a man named Southern, who had been warned on pain of death not to betray the secret of the child's birth. Arthur Dudley now alleged that he had discovered who he was, for Southern had confessed this to him.

This tale was circulated throughout the country but no one seriously believed it, and the Queen and Leicester ignored it. It certainly made no difference to the people's determination to keep off the Spaniards.

As the year progressed I saw even less of my husband than usual. The Queen made him Lieutenant General of the troops as a mark of her absolute confidence in him.

The fleet, commanded by Lord Howard of Effingham, assisted by Drake, Hawkins and Frobisher—all tried seamen of great courage and resource—was assembling at Plymouth, where the attack was expected. There was an army of eighty thousand men, all eager to hold the country against the enemy. There could not have been a man or woman in that country—save those Catholic traitors—who was not determined to do everything he—or she-could possibly do to save England from Spain and the Inquisition.

We glowed with pride and determination; a change seemed to come over us all; we had that unselfish pride. It was not ourselves we were anxious to advance, but our country which we wanted to preserve. This astonished me, who am by nature a self-centered woman, but even I would have died at that time to save England.

On the rare occasions when I saw Leicester, we talked glowingly of victory. We should succeed. We must succeed; it must be the Queen's England for as long as God gave her life.

It was a dangerous time, but it was a glorious time. There was with us an almost divine determination to save our country; some spiritual force told every one of us that while we had the faith we could not fail.

Elizabeth was magnificent and never so beloved by her people as at that time. The City of London's response was typical. Having been told that the City must provide five thousand men and fifteen ships as a contribution to victory, its answer was that it would not provide five thousand but ten thousand men, not fifteen but thirty ships.

It was a mingling of fear of the Spaniards and pride in England; and the latter was so strong that we knew—every one of us —that it would suppress the other.

Leicester spoke of Elizabeth in exulting terms and strangely enough I felt no jealousy.

"She is magnificent," he cried. "Invincible. I would you could see her. She expressed her wish to go to the coast so that if Parma's men set foot on her land, she would be there to meet them. I told her I would forbid it. I said she might go to Tilbury and there speak to the troops. I reminded her that she had made me her Lieutenant General and as such I forbade her to go to the coast."

"And she is to obey you?" I asked.

"Others lent their voices to mine," he answered.

Oddly enough I was glad they were together at this time. Perhaps because at this hour of her glory, when she showed herself to her people and her enemies as the great Queen she was, I ceased to see her as a woman—my rival for the man we both loved more than we could any other—and she could only be Elizabeth the Magnificent, the mother of her people; and even I must revere her.

What happened is well known, how she went to Tilbury, and made that speech which has been remembered ever since, how she rode among them in a steel corselet with her page riding beside her carrying a helmet decorated with white plumes, how she told them she had the body of a weak woman but the heart and stomach of a king and a King of England.

Truly she was great then. I had to grant her that. She loved England—perhaps it was her only true love. For England she had given up the marriage she might have had with Robert, and I cannot but believe that that was what she had longed for in the days of her youth. She was a faithful woman; true affection was there behind the royal dignity just as the brilliant statesman lurked ever watchful beside the frivolous coquette.

The story of that glorious victory is well known—how our little English ships, being so agile on account of their size, were able to dart among the mighty but unwieldy galleons and wreak havoc among them; how the English sent fireships among the great vessels, and the great Armada, called by the Spaniards The Invincible, was routed and defeated off our coasts; how the unfortunate Spaniards were drowned or cast ashore where scant hospitality was afforded them; and how some returned in disgrace and shame to their Spanish master.

What glorious rejoicing followed! There were bonfires everywhere with singing, dancing and self-congratulations.

England was safe for the Queen. How like her to strike those medals Venit, Vidit, Fugit as a play on the motto of Julius Caesar, who came and saw and conquered while the Spaniards came and saw and fled. That was very popular; but I think some of her sailors might have taken exception to the other medal in which she declared that the enterprise had been conducted by a woman—Dux Femina Facti. England would never forget what it owed to Drake, Hawkins, Frobisher, Raleigh, Howard of Effingham, as well as Burleigh and even Leicester. However, she was the figurehead—Gloriana, as the poet Spenser had called her.

It was her victory. She was England.

I was at Wanstead when Leicester came home. I did not at first realize how ill he was. He was bolstered up with his glory. Never had he been in such favor. The Queen could not bear him to leave her for long, but she sent him away at this time because she feared for his health.

He did not usually go to Buxton at this time of the year, but she had decided that he must do so without delay.

I looked at him afresh. How old he was, divested of his glittering garments. He had put on weight again and left his youth far behind. I could not help comparing him with Christopher and I knew that I no longer wanted this old man in my bed even though he was the Earl of Leicester.

The Queen had seemed as though she could not honor him enough. She had promised to make him Lord Lieutenant of England and Ireland. This would bring him greater power than any subject of hers had ever known before. It was almost as though she decided that she wanted no more juggling for power between them; if she were not offering him a share in her crown this was something very near it.

There were others who realized this, and he was incensed because Burleigh, Walsingham and Hatton had persuaded her not to act rashly.

"But it will come," Robert told me, those eyes of his once so fine and flashing, now puffy and bloodshot. "You wait. It will come."

Then suddenly he knew.

Perhaps it was because he had ceased to think so much of matters of state. Perhaps his sickness—for he was very sick, more so than he had been during those bouts of gout and fever which had beset him over the last years—had made him especially perceptive. Perhaps there was an aura about me which women get when they are in love, for I was in love with Christopher Blount. Not as I had been with Leicester. I knew there would never be anything like that in my life again. But it was like an Indian summer of love. I was not yet too old to love. I was young for my forty-eight years. I had a lover twenty years my junior, yet I felt that we were of an age. I realized anew how young I was when I was face to face with Leicester. He was a sick and aging man and I lacked the Queen's gift of dedicated fidelity. After all I had been grossly neglected for her sake. I marveled that she could look upon what he had become and still love him. It was yet another facet of her extraordinary nature.