The Queen's Spymaster: Sir Francis Walsingham by Laura Dowers

Author:Laura Dowers [Dowers, Laura]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781983865275
Google: wRZjswEACAAJ
Amazon: B079YJVX5K
Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
Published: 2018-02-14T23:00:00+00:00

Chapter 12

It was good to be back in England.

On the journey back, crossing the tempestuous Channel, my health failed me once again. Like my daughter Frances had done on the journey out, I spent most of the voyage leaning over the ship’s rail, my stomach spewing forth the little I had managed to consume earlier. But it was not just sickness in my belly that ailed me. My head hurt continually, at times an intense sharp pain behind my eyes, at others, a dull throbbing all over. And I also had occasional sharp pains in my stomach and my back. I had had such pain before, from time to time, and never paid much attention, too busy, I suppose. But I think my quitting of Paris acted on me like something breaking, like the bung bursting out of a too-full barrel of beer. Whatever the cause, by the time I reached English shores, I was in dire need of rest.

‘Oh, dear God,’ was how Ursula greeted me as I climbed, rather unsteadily, out of the coach I had hired to bring me home to The Papey, having decided that I was too ill to ride and would not be able to manage a horse. She picked up her skirts and hurried to my side to clutch my arm and hold me up.

‘Do I look that ill?’ I asked, not altogether in jest.

‘You look terrible, Francis,’ she said, leading me into the house.

‘This was not the homecoming I intended. There are presents in my trunk—’

‘Never mind the presents. You are for bed. I knew you had been neglecting yourself all this time in that wretched country.’

Her nagging words as I climbed the stairs to our chamber, its walls and furniture so welcome to me, and undressed were like balm on burnt skin. I had longed for that kind of attention all the time I was alone in Paris, though so many men would be glad not to have to endure such badgering. I had discovered that the married state is far preferable to being a bachelor. A man yearns for the comfort only a woman can bring.

I was fortunate in that I was left alone to recuperate. Ursula, I discovered later, wrote to Cecil to inform him that I had returned safely from France but that my health was too precarious for me to take up any duties at present. However, she added, she knew the good service I had done the Queen in France would not go unremembered and that I would be at the foremost of his and Elizabeth’s thoughts for a post in England as soon as I was well again. She did not tell me of this letter at the time because she knew I would have instructed her not to send it. A man must not go begging to his master, or in this case, mistress. But it seemed that a wife could. Such is the way of women, we know. They can beguile and manipulate to their heart’s content and everyone simply nods their head and says such is the way of women.

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