Виктория Холт - My Enemy the Queen

How we applauded our father's wisdom! Who knew, had we stayed he might have been one of those destined for such a fate.

It could not continue, he told us. The people were weary of death and persecution. The whole country was ready to rise in revolt against the Queen and her Spanish adherents. However, when the news came that she was pregnant we were in despair. Her hopes—"God be praised," said my father—were soon proved to be without foundation. Poor sick Mary, she wanted a child so badly that she could delude herself into suffering all the signs of pregnancy when she was barren.

But we, who shamelessly longed for her death, had little sympathy to spare for her.

I remember well the misty November day when the messenger came with the news. It was the day we had been waiting for.

I was seventeen years old then, and I had never before seen my father so excited.

In the hall he cried: "Rejoice in this day. Queen Mary is dead. Elizabeth is proclaimed Queen of England by will of the people. Long live our Queen Elizabeth."

We knelt and gave thanks to God. Then we hastened to make our preparations for our return.

We arrived back in time to see her coronation. What a day that was with the people rejoicing and telling themselves that good times lay ahead. The smell of smoke from the Smithfield Fires still seemed to cling to the air but that only added to the jubilation. Bloody Mary was dead and Elizabeth the Good ruled our land.

I saw her leave for the Tower at two of the afternoon of that January day; she was dressed in the royal robes of a queen and she looked the part in her chariot, which was covered with crimson velvet over which was a canopy borne by her knights, one of whom was Sir John Perrot, a man of mighty girth who claimed to be the illegitimate son of Henry VIII and therefore brother to the Queen.

I could not take my eyes from her in her crimson velvet robe, ermine cape and cap to match her robe under which her fair hair showed, glinting red in the sparkling frosty air. Her tawny eyes were bright and eager, her complexion dazzlingly fair. I thought she was beautiful in that moment. She was all that our mother had told us. She was magnificent.

She was over medium height and very slender, which made her seem younger than she actually was. She was twenty-five at this time, and to a girl of seventeen that seemed quite old. I noticed her hands, for she called attention to them by displaying them as much as possible. They were white, elegant with long tapering fingers. Her face was oval and longish; her brows so fair that they were scarcely perceptible; her eyes were piercing—a golden yellow, but often later I thought they sometimes seemed quite dark. She was a little shortsighted and often when she was endeavoring to see she gave the impression of penetrating into the minds of those about her, which made them very uneasy. There was a quality about her which even then—young as I was and on such an occasion—I was able to perceive, and it thrilled me to watch her.

Then my attention was caught and held by someone else as arresting as she was. This was Robert Dudley, her Master of Horse, who rode with her. I had never seen such a man. He was as outstanding in that assembly as the Queen herself. In the first place he was very tall and broad-shouldered and possessed one of the handsomest faces I had ever seen. He was stately, noble, and his dignity matched that of the Queen. There was nothing haughty about his expression; it was grave, and he had an air of extreme but quiet confidence.

My eager looks went from him to the young Queen and then back again.

I noticed that the Queen paused to speak to the most humble people, smiling and giving them her attention, brief as it must be. I learned in time that it was her policy never to offend the people. Her courtiers often felt the weight of her displeasure but to the common people she was always the benevolent Queen. When they cried: "God save Your Grace!" she answered: "God save you all!" reminding them that she was no less conscious of their well-being than they were of hers. Nosegays were offered to her and however humble the giver she took them as graciously as though they were rare gifts. It was said that one beggar gave her a branch of rosemary at the Fleet Bridge, and it was still in her carriage when she came to Westminster.

We rode with the procession—after all, were we not her kinsfolk?—so we saw the pageants of Cornhill and the Chepe, which was gay with banners and streamers which fluttered from every window.

The next day we were present at her coronation and saw her walk into the Abbey on the purple cloth which had been spread for her.

I was too bemused to pay much attention to the ceremony, but I thought she was beautiful when she was crowned first in the heavy crown of St. Edward and afterwards in the smaller one of pearls and diamonds. The pipes, the drums and the trumpet sounded as Elizabeth was crowned Queen of England.

"Life will be different for us now," said my father. And how right he was.

It was not long before the Queen sent for him. He was given an audience and came back to us full of enthusiasm and hope.

"She is wonderful," he told us. "She is all that a Queen should be. The people adore her and she is full of goodwill towards them. I thank God that he has preserved me to serve such a Queen, and so will I with my life."

She admitted him to her Council and intimated that she wished her good cousin, Catherine—my mother—to become a lady of her Privy Chamber.

We girls were jubilant. This would mean that we would go to Court at last. All those hours of musical tuition—madrigals, lute and harpsichord—all the dancing, bowing and curtsying, everything we had endured that we might comport ourselves with grace, had been worthwhile. We chattered interminably; we lay awake at night discussing our future, for we could not sleep, so excited were we. I might have had some premonition that I was going to my destiny, so deeply did this wild exultation possess me.

The Queen expressed a desire to see us—not en bloc but singly.

"There will be places for you all," my mother told us excitedly. "And indeed you will have opportunities."

"Opportunities" meant good marriages and that was a matter which had deeply concerned our parents during our exile.

The day arrived when it was my turn to be presented to Her Majesty. Vividly I remember to this day every detail of the gown I wore. It was of deep blue silk, bombasted, and with a bell-shaped skirt and slashed sleeves. The bodice was tightly fitting and my mother gave me a girdle, which she greatly prized, to wear about my waist. It was set with small precious stones of varying colors and she told me it would bring me luck. Soon afterwards, I decided that it had. I had wanted to have my hair uncovered for, to tell the truth, I was extremely proud of it—but my mother said that one of the new French hoods would be more suitable. I was a little rebellious about this, for the veil which flowed out behind concealed my hair; but I had to give way this once, for my mother was very nervous as to the effect I might have on the Queen, and she stressed the point that if I displeased her I could spoil not only my own chances but those of the others as well.

What struck me most forcibly at the first meeting was her aura of sovereignty, and at that moment—although neither of us knew it then—our lives became entwined. She was to play a more important part in my life than anyone else—except perhaps Robert —and my role in hers, in spite of all the momentous events of her reign, was not insignificant.

No doubt I was a little naive at the time in spite of my attempts at worldliness. The German years had been stultifying but I was to realize at once that there was in her a quality which I had never seen in any other person. Her twenty-five years, I knew, had been filled with terrifying experiences, enough to break most people forever. She had come near to death and indeed lived under its shadow, as prisoner in the Tower of London, with the ax again and again ready to fall on that fragile neck. She had not been quite three years old when her mother had gone to her execution. Was she old enough to have remembered that? There was something about those big tawny eyes to suggest that she did and that she would learn quickly and remember what she had learned. She was notoriously precocious—a scholar in the nursery. Oh yes, she remembered! Perhaps that was why though Death had followed closely behind her through those precarious years it had never succeeded in catching up with her. She was regal—so briefly a Queen—and yet to be one minute in her company was to know that she wore her royalty effortlessly, as though she had been preparing for it all her life—which perhaps she had. She was very slender, straight-backed, and her fair skin had been inherited from her father. Her elegant mother had been dark-haired, olive-skinned. I, not Elizabeth, had inherited those dark eyes, which were also said to be like those of my grandmother Mary Boleyn, but my hair—abundant and curly—was the color of pale honey. It would be foolish to deny that this combination was very attractive, and I had quickly realized this. From what I had seen of Boleyn portraits Elizabeth had inherited nothing from her mother, except perhaps that indefinable brilliance, which I was sure her mother must have possessed to have so bewitched the King that he rid himself of his royal Spanish wife and broke with Rome itself for her sake.