The Virgin's Lover Read online

  “I would have married him if he had come,” she said. “But I could not marry a man I had never seen, and Cecil, as God is my witness, I am pulled so low I cannot think of courtship now. It is too late to save me from war whether he stays or goes, and I never cared a groat for him anyway. I need a friend I can trust, not a suitor who has to have everything signed and sealed before he will come to me. He promised me nothing and he wanted every guarantee a husband could have.”

  Cecil did not correct her. He had seen her under house arrest, and in fear of her own death, and yet he thought he had never seen her so drained of joy as she was at this feast, only her second Christmas on the throne.

  “It’s too late,” Elizabeth said sadly, as if she were already defeated. “The French have sailed. They must be off our coasts now. They were not enough afraid of the archduke; they knew they would defeat him as they defeated Arran. What good is he to me now the French are at sea?”

  “Be of good cheer, Princess,” Cecil said. “We still have an alliance with Spain. Be merry. We can beat the French without the archduke.”

  “We can lose without him too,” was all she said.

  Three days later Elizabeth called another meeting of the Privy Council. “I have prayed for guidance,” she said. “I have spent all night on my knees. I cannot do this. I dare not take us to war. The ships must stay in port; we cannot take on the French.”

  There was a stunned silence, then every man waited for Cecil to tell her. He looked around for an ally; they all avoided his eyes.

  “But the ships have gone, Your Grace,” he said flatly.

  “Gone?” She was aghast.

  “The fleet set sail the moment you gave the command,” he said.

  Elizabeth gave a little moan and clung to the high back of a chair as her knees gave way. “How could you do this, Cecil? You are a very traitor to send them out.”

  There was a sharp indrawn breath from the council at her use of that potent, dangerous word, but Cecil never wavered.

  “It was your own order,” he said steadily. “And the right thing to do.”

  The court waited for news from Scotland and it came in contradictory, nerve-racking snippets that sent people into nervous, whispering huddles in corners. Many men were buying gold and sending it out of the country to Geneva, to Germany, so that when the French came, as they were almost certain to do, an escape might be easily made. The value of English coin, already rock bottom, plummeted to nothing.

  There was no faith in the English fleet, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, no faith in the queen, who was clearly ill with fear. Then came disastrous news: the entire English fleet, Elizabeth’s precious fourteen ships, had been caught in a storm and were all missing.

  “There!” the queen cried out in wild grief to Cecil before the whole Privy Council. “If you had let me delay them, they would have avoided the gales, and I would have a fleet ready to go, instead of all my ships missing at sea!”

  Cecil said nothing; there was nothing he could say.

  “My fleet! My ships!” she mourned. “Lost by your impatience, by your folly, Cecil. And now the kingdom open to invasion, and no sea defense, and our poor boys, lost at sea.”

  It was long days before the news came that the ships had been recovered, and a fleet of eleven of the fourteen had anchored in the Firth of Forth and were supplying the Scots lords as they laid siege once more to Leith Castle.

  “Three ships lost already!” Elizabeth said miserably, huddled over a fire in her privy chamber, picking at the skin around her fingers, more like a sulky girl than a queen. “Three ships lost, and not a shot fired!”

  “Eleven ships safe,” Cecil said stubbornly. “Think of that. Eleven ships safe and in the Firth of Forth, supporting the siege against Mary of Guise. Think how she must feel, looking from her window and seeing the Scots beneath her walls and the English fleet in her harbor.”

  “She only sees eleven ships,” she said stubbornly. “Three lost already. God save that they are not the first losses of many. We must call them back while we still have the eleven. Cecil, I dare not do this without certainty of winning.”

  “There is never a certainty of winning,” he declared. “It will always be a risk but you have to take it now, Your Grace.”

  “Spirit, please, don’t ask it of me.”

  She was panting, working herself into one of her tantrums, but he continued to press her. “You may not rescind the order.”

  “I am too afraid.”

  “You cannot play the woman now; you have to have the heart and stomach of a man. Find your courage, Elizabeth. You are your father’s daughter; play the king. I have seen you be as brave as any man.”

  For a moment he thought that the flattering lie had persuaded her. Her chin came up, her color rose, but then he saw the spark suddenly drain from her eyes and she drooped again.

  “I cannot,” she said. “You have never seen me be a king. I have always been nothing more than a clever and duplicitous woman. I can’t fight openly. I never have. There will be no war.”

  “You will have to learn to be a king,” Cecil warned her. “One day you will have to say that you are just a weak woman but you have the heart and stomach of a king. You cannot rule this kingdom without being its king.”

  She shook her head, stubborn as a frightened red-headed mule. “I dare not.”

  “You cannot recall the ships; you have to declare war.”

  “No.”

  He took a breath and tested his own resolve. Then he drew his letter of resignation from inside his doublet. “Then I have to beg you to release me.”

  Elizabeth whirled around. “What? What is this?”

  “Release me. I cannot serve you. If you will not take my advice on this matter which so nearly concerns the safety of the kingdom then I cannot serve you. In failing to convince you, I have failed you, and I have failed my office. Anything in the world I can do for you, I will. You know how dear you are to me, as dear as a wife or a daughter. But if I cannot prevail upon you to send our army to Scotland then I have to leave your service.”

  For a moment she went so white that he thought she might faint. “You are jesting with me,” she said breathlessly. “To force me to agree.”

  “No.”

  “You would never leave me.”

  “I have to. Someone else who can convince you of your right interest should serve you. I am become the base that drives out the good. I am disregarded. I am lightweight. I am counterfeit like a coin.”

  “Not disregarded, Spirit. You know…”

  He bowed very low. “I will do anything else Your Grace commands, any other service though it were in Your Majesty’s kitchen or garden; I am ready without respect of estimation, wealth, or ease to do Your Majesty’s commandment to my life’s end.”

  “Spirit, you cannot leave me.”

  Cecil started to walk backward to the door. She stood like a bereft child, her hands outstretched to him. “William! Please! Am I to be left with no one?” she demanded. “This Scotland has already cost me the only man I love; is it going to cost me my greatest advisor and friend? You, who have been my constant friend and advisor since I was a girl?”

  He paused at the door. “Please take steps to defend yourself,” he said quietly. “As soon as the Scots have been defeated, the French will come through England faster than we have ever seen an army move. They will come here and throw you from your throne. Please, for your own sake, prepare a refuge for yourself and a way to escape to it.”

  “Cecil!” It was a little wail of misery.

  He bowed again and went to the door. He went out. He waited outside. He had been certain that she would run after him, but there was silence. Then he heard, from inside the room, a muffled sob as Elizabeth broke down.

  “You are so devout, people are starting to say that you pray like a Papist,” Lady Robsart of Stanfield Hall remarked critically to her stepdaughter Amy. “It doesn’t reflect very well on us; your brother-in-law said only