Philippa Gregory - The Virgin's Lover

Cecil concluded his arguments in favor of war, certain that no one of any sense could disagree with the relentless plod of his logic. There was a silence as his peers took in his long list.

“But what if we lose?” the queen said bleakly.

“Exactly.” Sir Nicholas Bacon agreed with her.

Cecil saw she was in an agony of fear.

“Spirit,” she said, her voice very low. “God help me, but I cannot order a war on France. Not on our own doorstep. Not without certainty of winning. Not without—” She broke off.

She means not without Dudley’s support, he thought. Oh, merciful God, why did you give us a princess when we so desperately need a king? She cannot take a decision without the support of a man, and that man is a fool and a traitor.

The door opened and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton came in, bowed to the queen, and laid a paper before Cecil. He glanced at it and then looked up at the queen and his fellow councillors. “The wind has changed,” he said.

For a moment Elizabeth did not understand what he meant.

“The French fleet has sailed.”

There was a sharply indrawn breath from every councillor. Elizabeth blanched a paler white. “They are coming?” she whispered.

“Forty ships,” Cecil said.

“We only have fourteen,” Elizabeth said, and he could hardly make out the words, her lips were so stiff and cold she could hardly speak.

“Let them set sail,” Cecil whispered to her, as persuasive as a lover. “Let our ships get out of harbor where they can at least intercept the stragglers of the French fleet, perhaps engage them. For God’s sake, don’t keep them in port where the French can sail in and burn them as they go by!”

The fear of losing her ships was greater than her fear of war. “Yes,” she said uncertainly. “Yes, they should set sail. They must not be caught in port.”

Cecil bowed swiftly, dashed off a note, and took it to the doorway for a waiting messenger. “I am obliged to you,” he said. “And now we must declare war on the French.”

Elizabeth, her lips nipped raw and her cuticles picked away, walked through the court on her way to take communion on Christmas Day like a haunted woman, a smile pinned on her face like a red frayed ribbon.

In her chapel she looked across and found that Robert Dudley was looking at her. He gave her a little smile. “Courage!” he whispered.

She looked at him as if he was the only friend she had in the world. He half rose from his seat, as if he would go to her, crossing the aisle of the church before the whole of the court. She shook her head and turned away so that she should not see the longing in his eyes, so that he should not see the hunger in hers.

The Christmas Day feast was carried out with joyless competence. The choristers sang, the ranks of serving men presented course after course of elaborate and glorious dishes, Elizabeth pushed aside one plate after another. She was beyond eating; she was beyond even pretending to eat.

After dinner, when the ladies were dancing in a masque specially prepared for the occasion, Cecil came and stood behind her chair. “What?” she said ungraciously.

“The Hapsburg ambassador tells me that he is planning to return to Vienna,” Cecil said quietly. “He has given up hopes of the marriage between you and the archduke. He does not want to wait anymore.”

She was too exhausted to protest. “Oh. Shall we let him go?” she asked dully.

“You will not marry the archduke?” Cecil said. It was hardly a question.

“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.”