Lady in Waiting Page 4

  A few hours earlier, Philip Sidney’s body had been laid beneath the choir aisle of St. Paul’s. The Netherlands, for whose freedom he had died, had wanted the honour of burying him, but that was a thing too dear to his own people for them to yield it up to anyone. So the gallant, broken body had been brought home, and earlier that day, Bess Throckmorton, in company with almost every soul in London and Westminster, had watched his funeral procession pass, with solemn pomp and to the music of black-draped fifes and drums, along the streets through which he had so often ridden with his gay companions. The Sergeants of his infantry in the Netherlands, his standards and colours, his friends and brothers-in-arms, his war charger ridden by a page with reversed battle-axe, his tournament horse by a squire with a broken lance. The heralds, Portcullis, Blue Mantle, Rouge Dragon, carrying his spurs, gauntlets and porcupine-crested helmet. Then the quiet thing under a black velvet pall, that one could not believe had ever been the outward seeming of Philip. More mourners, headed by Robert and Tom; the Lord Mayor and Sheriffs; the City trained bands with weapons trailing. A long, dark river, winding between silent crowds; the tossing plumes, the set faces of the men who marched with Sir Philip Sidney for the last time; the slow, deep rolling of the muffled drums ... The sound was still with Bess as she sped her search from room to room, a stifling weight over the heart. It seemed such a heavy requiem for the lad she remembered, laughing, with a lute across his knees.

  It seemed that she was not alone in that, for as she crossed the threshold of yet another gallery, a familiar voice with a strong West Country burr was exclaiming vehemently: ‘A black extinguisher to smother out the living flame! What had Philip to do with that sable panoply?’

  ‘It was the Nation’s love dictated it,’ said another voice.

  Two men stood together in the oriel window of the otherwise deserted gallery. Fulke Greville and the Captain of the Guard. Bess would have slipped away, but the Queen’s button must be found before she would go to supper, and the Queen, ranging far and wide through her palace with the restlessness of grief, had spent some time in the gallery earlier that evening. She moved to the bench beside the Clavichord, and began to turn over the cushions. The two men must have known that she was there, but they were unaware of her with the chief part of their minds. She was supremely unimportant to them. Drawn together by their deep caring for the dead man, they were antagonistic as they had not been in his lifetime, eyeing each other a little jealously over his memory, like two dogs across the feet of the same master.

  Ralegh said, ‘Not for me! Dear God! Not for me, when my time comes!’

  ‘I do not imagine that you need fear it,’ said Fulke Greville quickly. ‘You are not so near to the people’s heart that they are likely to need the easement of trailed weapons and muffled drums for your loss.’

  ‘No.’ Ralegh gave a short laugh. ‘I am not such as wins a people’s love. I am the Queen’s favourite lap-dog, tied to the Queen’s apron strings. Not for me to serve her as she allowed to better men — as she allowed Philip.’

  ‘Mixed metaphors, Queen’s lap-dog,’ said the other. ‘And from you of all men. But is not the lap comfortable, for a powerful lap-dog? Was not that what you wanted?’

  ‘Power? Aye, I wanted it. Wanted, and worked for it, and paid for it too. God knows I have paid for it! — I wanted it for a sword, and now I have it — my most fine sword. Jewels on the hilt, it has — only that I may not draw it from the sheath!’ The bitterness in his voice sparked into sudden angry mirth. ‘There is another metaphor for you, friend Fulke. It seems to me tonight that I am fit for nothing better than the coining of such.’

  ‘Why this so unusual mood of spiritual abasement?’

  ‘Philip is dead,’ Ralegh said simply.

  ‘I did not know you for such boon companions.’

  (‘Why cannot they leave each other alone?’ wondered Bess, on her knees and searching under the little gilded organ. ‘Aren’t they unhappy enough, that they must needs do this because they both loved Philip and he is dead?’)

  Ralegh had been resting one arm along the transom of the window, looking out into the golden evening. He lowered his arm and swung round to face the other man. ‘No, we were never boon companions,’ he agreed, ‘never as you and he were. I am not seeking to rob you, Fulke. But I feel as though some better part of myself was gone with him. He was all that I wish to God I could be. I shall be a worse man for his death.’

  The gold and coral button came to light at that moment, among the strewing rushes. Bess caught it up and fled. She did not want to hear more; it was not hers to hear. But as she sped back to the Queen’s apartments, the companion of the shining hour in Lady Sidney’s garden was become real to her again.

  Her understanding was increased a few weeks later, when Mary Herbert showed her an elegy for Philip scrawled on a blank leaf of his Arcadia. It was her first experience of Ralegh the poet. She had seen his verse once or twice before, but that had been the charming, polished verse that could as well have been written by most of his peers. This was a very different thing.

  What hath he lost that such great grace has won?

  Young years for endless years, and hope unsure

  Of fortune’s gifts, for wealth that still shall dure.

  Oh happy race, with so great praises run!

  England doth hold thy limbs, that bred the same;

  Flanders thy valour, where it last was tried;

  The camp thy sorrow, where thy body died;

  Thy friends thy want; the world thy virtue’s fame!

  As time went by, the life of the Court, which had at first been unfamiliar and vaguely terrifying to Bess Throckmorton, became the natural order of things. The Queen’s day was her day. The Queen rose early, prayed, broke her fast and turned to affairs of state with her ministers. Then she walked in the gardens or the long galleries, attended sometimes by a single favourite, sometimes by a group of learned grey-beards or a cluster of boys scarce out of their teens. At eleven she dined, and thereafter rode hunting or hawking, returning to hear evening prayer, and to sup with a few chosen friends. The evening might be spent quietly reading, or playing chess or cards; or at other times, especially if foreign ambassadors or such were present, given over to music and dancing. There were variations, of course: Christmas festivities, masques and mayings, and great doings in the tilt-yard on tournament days. But save for these, whether the Court was at Greenwich or Hampton Court, Richmond or Whitehall, the pattern of the Queen’s day remained the same, and the days of her Ladies followed it of necessity.

  The pattern continued much as usual into the spring and summer of 1588, a delicate arabesque of custom laid upon the fiercening background of an England making ready for war. Ships being hastily armed and victualed, militia trained, the gun-foundries of Kent working overtime, the drums of war beating from end to end of the Kingdom. A great Armada massing on the Spanish coast, and beacons ready built on English hilltops, ceaselessly watched, waiting to send the message of its coming in red flame across the land. Drake and his squadrons at Plymouth, Ralegh training militiamen in Devon and Cornwall; little valiant ships waiting like hounds in leash, in ports all round the coast. The Queen, as she so often did, turning niggardly, and Lord Howard of Effingham pulling at his spade beard and swearing, at his wits’ end for supplies.

  The Queen had moved to Greenwich to be near her troops massing at Tilbury; there were longer sessions — frequently stormy — with her Ministers and Admirals, less hawking and dancing. Otherwise the pattern continued as before, continued even more meticulously than before, as though in direct defiance of Spain.

  ‘It is a statement of faith,’ Bess thought, sitting one evening in the Queen’s privy chamber, industriously stitching at a crown imperial in her tapestry. ‘We ride, we distil toilet waters, we laugh — rather quietly — we practise on the lute, and Lady Scrope continues her translations from the Greek; with the threat of Spain and all that Spain stands for hanging over us. And the darker grows the t
hreat, the more important it seems that I should shade this petal to perfection.’ She chose another strand of silk with infinite care from the gay tangle beside her.

  It was a hot, still evening of early summer, and in the Queen’s privy chamber the doors and windows stood open, but scarce a breath of wind stirred the tapestries, and the unmoving air was heavy with the scent of bruised meadowsweet among the strewing-herbs on the floor. The Queen had returned from evensong, and in a little while she would go to supper, with her ladies attending her. There were several of them gathered here in the lower end of the room, heads bent, hands industriously moving over embroidery frames. Bess glanced round at them, Lady Warwick, Lady Howard and the rest; not one of them but had son or husband, father, brother or lover with the Fleet or the Militia. Not hard to guess where their minds were, while their hands attended so carefully to the setting of their stitches.

  At the upper end of the room, the Queen sat beside an open window, bending down to watch the movements of the young man who knelt at her feet among the very folds of her silken skirt, playing with the little merlin on his gloved fist.

  ‘A pretty toy,’ she said, half mockingly. ‘A toy for a lady’s hand. Robin, surely unworthy of the Earl of Essex!’

  ‘I have a big German goshawk for use,’ said the young man quickly. ‘But he is not well enough mannered for the Queen’s privy Chamber. Clyte can be a fierce small devil when she chooses. See ...’ He began to tease the merlin, roused her temper more swiftly than he had expected, and not quite swift enough to snatch back his ungloved hand from the lightning stroke, got a gashed thumb for his pains. ‘Ah! — Damnation!’ He sucked the thumb and glared. The goaded merlin bated from his fist with a loud clapping of wings in the quietness, and the Queen laughed on a clear, shrill note.

  ‘A bad falconer, my Robin! Never tease your falcon, nor ever lose your temper with her. Captain Ralegh will tell you that, an you ask him!’

  The Earl of Essex pouted like a spoiled child. ‘Ralegh! Everything is Ralegh! Well, I shall not ask him. Anyway, it is easy to see why he is so skilled with the brutes. He has had to be. My father kept an Austringer.’

  ‘Never fall into the error of looking down your handsome nose at the man who has trained his own hawks, for he is apt to have learned certain useful lessons that you have not,’ said the Queen. ‘Robin, you are jealous! I do believe you are jealous! Is that why you have been so ill-tempered these last three days since Sir Walter returned to Court? He will be away to his press-gangs in three more.’

  The boy knelt up suddenly, his face turned up to hers, beautiful, arrogant, pleading; the face, half of a petulant child, half of an ardent lover. ‘What do you want him for, when you have me? Why do you turn to him when I would die to serve you?’

  ‘You are already the Master of my Horse; would you be the Captain of my Guard, also?’

  ‘Yes!’ He was half in jest, half in deadly earnest. ‘Send him back to his Devonshire mud, Belphoebe, and when he’s gone, I’ll be the truest knight to you that ever Queen had for the Captain of her Guard!’

  ‘A naughty — jealous — brat,’ said the Queen, nodding between each word.

  ‘I only ask to serve you.’

  ‘Robin, Robin, the smallest powder-monkey with the Fleet tonight serves me well.’

  He flushed. ‘That was not my meaning. You know it.’

  ‘I know it; indeed I do! You want a little service with much power, do you not, my Bonnie Sweet Robin?’ She bent nearer, drawing him to her without touch or word, as she still knew how to do. ‘Gin you want power, earn it. Gin you want Sir Walter’s place, prove yourself the better man — if you can.’

  The gilt and lacquer clock between the windows struck the hour of six, and the Queen’s Ladies laid aside their embroidery frames and rose, like a flock of pale birds, shaking out satin skirts over wide farthingales. It was the hour to make ready the Queen’s supper. Leave being asked and given — rather sharply — they withdrew, rustling through the open doorway into the next room, the Queen’s dining parlour. Several Gentlemen of the Guard were on duty there, and their Captain stood before the Queen’s door, a very brilliant figure in silver breastplate over the orange-tawny taffetas of his uniform. He leaned on his tasselled halberd, smiling a little, idly and rather contemptuously, the light striking starwise on the diamond on his halberd-hand, which the Queen had given him. He must have heard every word spoken within.

  Bess glanced at him in passing, and the smile broadened into a flash of very white teeth in the swarthy face, a swift kindling of laughter in the vividly blue eyes under their rather heavy lids. How could he look like that, Bess wondered, as she followed Lady Scrope through into the great dining hall beyond. How superbly, insufferably sure of himself he must be, to stand there, casually amused, listening to his rival’s efforts to bring about his downfall. Yes, and Essex too, who must have known that the man he sought to oust was hearing every word, even as he spoke it. What strange manner of duel was going on between them?

  That evening after supper, they danced in the Long Gallery, where seven years before, Elizabeth had plighted her troth to Anjou, her ‘Poor Frog’, kissing him on the mouth before her whole Court, and dancing with him till dawn. But tonight, when the dancing was fairly started, she withdrew to her private apartments. Tonight she had other business to attend to.

  The breathless day was turning to a breathless night beyond the long uncurtained windows; a blue velvet night, by contrast with the yellow damask radiance of tapers in many branched candle scones along the tapestried walls. The first stately pavane, danced by the older and most noble of the Court, was over; and now the young men laid aside their cloaks and rapiers, donned their jewelled and feathered bonnets and asked the girls to dance.

  Bess found young Killigrew bowing before her, his bonnet feather sweeping the polished floor. The viols and lutes had struck up again, a blithe tune this time, that lilted with a heart-catching gaiety. She gave him her hand and moved forward to take her place in the galliard. She loved dancing; her body felt light as she moved to the music, light as a blown petal, tracing the mazy patterns of the dance. There were fewer dancers than usual; so many of the young men were away already; most of the lads now bowing and pacing with their partners would change their silken doublets for buff and steel tomorrow, or the next day, or the next ... Suddenly, piercingly, Bess wondered which of them would ever come back to dance in the Long Gallery again; and the flutes rose into a wailing sweetness, and the galliard was become a thing to break the heart.

  Midway through the dance, turning once again from her partner, she caught sight of a man standing in one of the doorways. A young man, darkly clad, a hunchback, watching someone among the dancers with an oddly shuttered look. For some weeks Robert Cecil had been abroad with Lord Derby’s mission to the Spanish Netherlands, helping to play England’s part in that unreal meeting with Spain, in which the diplomats of both countries had exchanged flowery platitudes and polite vows of friendship, while along one coast the attack gathered, and along the other defence was hastily made ready. The mask was down now; the mission had been recalled, but this was the first time that Bess had seen him since his return, and her pleasure was naked in her face, for he was one of the very few people at Court she counted truly as a friend. As she drifted by, he turned his head, and seeing her, gave her the quick, unexpectedly sweet smile that he always had for her.

  When the galliard was over, he came to join her, threading his way through the drifting couples, his bare head with its cap of smooth chestnut hair shining coppery in the candle-light, the short Spanish cloak flung back from his painfully hunched shoulders to reveal the lining of waspish gold.

  ‘God den to you. Bess,’ he said.

  She gave him both hands. ‘Robin! I heard that you were returned. Oh, I am so happy to see you again.’

  ‘It is worth a journey to have so pretty a welcome home,’ he said, smiling. ‘You would have seen me ere this, had I been less fully engaged with the dregs of
this insane mission.’ His young voice was suddenly weary. ‘It is as hot as an oven in here. There is no air; not so much as will serve to stir a candle flame. Do you want to dance again, or shall we find some corner where there is a little air to breathe, and we can talk in peace?’

  Side by side they slipped out from the over-bright gallery, and down to a postern on to the terrace. Other couples had come out in search for air, but turning aside from them Bess and her companion mounted a few shallow steps and came to a small secret corner, half screened by pleached vines from the main terrace below. A bar of light lay across it from a window, showing it empty, and Bess moved across to the balustrade and leaned there, drawing back her pale skirts to make room for him beside her. A thin thunder haze had blotted out the stars, but all along the river the riding lights of the shipping formed new constellations, and in the faint light of the window behind them, the scented white stars of the jessamine arching over the balustrade seemed to shine of themselves.

  Leaning side by side on the cool stone, they watched the gay girls and their escorts on the terrace below, drifting into the light of the many windows and out of it again; and talked quietly, with long pauses between. Presently, in the midst of a delicately malicious word-portrait of some member of the Spanish Mission, Cecil checked abruptly, as a group passed across the lit terrace, the spun-glass figure of a girl in their midst, laughing over her shoulder to someone in the shadows.

  ‘That is Elizabeth Brooke, My Lord Cobham’s sister,’ Bess said. ‘Is she not a pretty thing? She has but just come to Court, since you have been away.’

  ‘I know it. I met her last night at supper, at my brother’s house,’ Cecil said, and something in his voice made her turn her head swiftly to look at him. The light from the window fell full across his face, and the shield that had been drawn over it in the gallery was no longer there.

  ‘Go down and join her,’ she said impulsively.