I, Elizabeth by Rosalind Miles

Author:Rosalind Miles
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction
ISBN: 978-0-307-42106-7
Publisher: Crown
Published: 2007-12-18T00:00:00+00:00

XLIII

“The lords! The Scots lords have risen against the Catholic rule from France! This is good news for us, the best!” gleamed Cecil. “We must support them, madam, with men and money!”

All the Council were agreed. “Think what that would be, Your Grace,” rumbled Sussex, mentally feeling for his sword, “to have the French, their Queen, the Pope and all driven from our island, buried in the sea!”

I snarled and quibbled. “What? Support a rabble of rebels against their anointed ruler?” I had not forgotten the nine days’ rule of Jane, that traitorous attempt to overthrow my bloodline! I shook my head at Cecil and the little group of lords. “I would not aid a single soul on earth to take up arms against their ordained King. For who knows when the same rebellion might not turn against me!”

“Madam, think not of it!”

“Lady, you rule with the love of a good people!”

Of course, they all rushed to protest that none could strike at me. But I did not credit them. My grasp of my throne was hardly a twelvemonth old. All I had was the people’s loyalty—and if I lost that . . .

This was the stuff of nightmares—the very stuff that had poisoned Mary’s terrible last weeks as Queen, when she huddled herself in her foolish rusty breastplate and kept an old sword by her on her pillow—not that she ever slept! Now with the Scots in arms, I, too, knew what it was to fear for my throne, even fear for my next moment. Yet one look at him and that fear would be forgotten, all forgotten in the love of him . . .

Still, I could scarce believe in my good fortune, his love, our joy. And I could not speak of it, for all around me had their own reasons for disliking him. The jealousy of my lords I could tolerate; much harder was the silent obstruction of my faithful Cecil. The worst was, Cecil liked Robin, unlike Norfolk, who despised him as a “new man,” vaunting his own “old blood” in Robin’s teeth. But Cecil longed for the Hapsburg marriage to give us a friend in Europe, and he saw Robin as the stumbling block to that.

And Robin had an enemy nearer home, and nearer still my heart. While Parry had been glad to aid his wooing—“Such a lord, madam, such a gentleman!”—he had won her heart with that first heart of gold—yet my little Kat now showed her claws indeed, and hardly a day passed but I felt their needling barbs.

“The Lady Catherine was grumbling, madam, yesternight,” she would begin while busying about, as if in gossip, “that Your Ladyship does not recognize her state as your successor, that you take no heed of her desire to marry and become a mother, after nature’s way.”

“Her state, forsooth!” If they but knew my mind, my other cousin had the far older, better claim—not that wild horses would ever make me acknowledge Mary of Scotland—but Catherine

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