She had made herself notorious; she would make herself inconspicuous. She had been fearless and proud; she would show herself shamefaced and serious.
Ashley wrote to Katherine—writing the letter with a silver pen given to her by Mr. Ascham, who recognized her devotion to Elizabeth and made a friend of her: “It would do your heart good to see how my Lady minds her lessons.” But during these quiet months under the great trees at Hatfield Elizabeth was pondering and getting by heart very different lessons. The hardest and most bitter lessons of her young life…
7 think you think you love him, Kate had said. But who’s to balance the difference between loving and thinking you love? Elizabeth was in love with Thomas Seymour… And it was not the daydreaming love at a distance of a girl for an older man who was unapproachable and beyond her scope. And her young being flamed into first eager desire, for him. All it had brought her was hurt and disgrace … and Tom escaping, and herself banished from home, her one real home. She’d been angry, fiercely angry; but the hurt went deeper still, and endured, and left a scar.
Moving through the still rooms and the green glades of Hatfield, Elizabeth was torn by a conflict of frustrated love for Tom, and contrition and devotion to Kate who had been an angel of mercy to her, and she knew it. So, this was what
loving and being unabashed and fearless brought upon you? The green void and silence of the country closing over your head like a sea, like a grave. There were hours when it seemed to Elizabeth that the turf and the branches smelled lushly and dankly of death. A living death. You were being buried alive. The cost of loving and being truthful about loving was banishment and boredom. God’s truth! What drowning deeps of boredom …
And this was the least of the cost. Kate had hinted at enemies … tongues … eyes … on all sides. Kate knew very little about what was going on in London, and cared less since she was a happy wife and going to be a happy mother. But Elizabeth knew something. She knew that Ned, poor young Ned, was a cipher, for all his gravity and the astonishing seriousness with which he took his Kingship. It was the Council that ruled England. And the Council hated Tom…. The Council loved power — and held it in both fists, while a King was no more than a boy. They were keeping her from Court and from Ned… They had his ear, the King’s ear, while she could not come near him. What were they saying about her? And what dark plans might they spin concerning her, those swollen spiders? …
Certain things came clear and barbed as lightning from smoldering clouds and branded themselves on Elizabeth’s mind, through the months of quiet at Hatfield. She had let her heart and her senses get the better of her head, this one time. But never again. Never, never, never, so long as she lived …
And she had been used to speak as she thought. To look as she felt and chose. To laugh or weep as she was moved; except
that she despised tears. It was Mary who wept damply, at the least touch! By God! It was hard to credit the story that their father had said proudly of her, “This girl never cries!” She’s made up for it since! …
Well—this, it seemed, was only the way to catastrophe and disaster. It could be the way to—death. … So, no more of it. She was mightily well gifted in foreign tongues: she must learn to be gifted in speaking her own, wisely, cunningly, with discretion. To say one thing and mean the opposite. To say things that held no meaning at all. Good Mr. Ascham could not teach her this learning. Only she could teach herself…
And this not solely to save her head from the way of the block. Though that nightmare must haunt her now as it had never done aforetime. But because of what Kate had said from her pillows in her earnest, tired voice, husky from weeping but always sweet: she could be Queen…
One day as Elizabeth was riding under the trees, she sighted a horseman who had reined his mount to a standstill and sat, looking before and around him as though he had lost his way. Elizabeth reined in, and he rode slowly to meet her, baring his head.
“Mr. Secretary, as I live!” Elizabeth called as he drew nearer and she could recognize him. “Why, this is a happy chance! Just when I was parching for news of the great world outside these smothering oaks. What brings you into these parts?”
William Cecil sprang to the ground and stood bareheaded before the girl.
“Why, Your Grace, 1 for my part was parched for a breath of country air. So I rode out from Whitehall and lay at an inn hard by your gates.”
“Country air!” Elizabeth echoed explosively, and was just about to say that he could breathe it up till it choked him, give her the reek of the Thames below the windows at Chelsea or Greenwich; when her new-learned diplomacy stopped her.
“Certainly, it is healthy above all things,” she agreed. “As I myself am finding daily. Well, now, you must surely leave your inn and take lodging under my roof.” And as Cecil gravely and politely shook his head: “What? The Council cannot spare you? Why, then, return with me to breakfast, at least.”
Cecil said softly, with a swift look in all directions:
“Does Your Grace ride unattended?”
“To be sure. When I ride early as this.”
“It is not very wise,” Cecil said in the same quiet tone. “But this time it is fortunate—for me. With your permission I will mount and ride a short way with you.”
“With all my heart! I have had overmuch of my own company.”
“Your Grace,” Cecil said as they rode forward at an easy pace, “I will confess something to you. This meeting is not the chance you were so kind as to call it. I lay at the tavern and rode out two hours ago, hoping to gain a sight of you. I know your early-morning rides,” he ended with a smile.
“But why put yourself to such inconvenience? You would have been a hundredfold welcome at Hatfield—”
“Your Grace is goodness itself. But it is better thus,” Cecil answered firmly. “I would know how you are. Axe you well? And I would, if your patience will bear with me and pardon me, venture, perhaps, a word of counsel to you. But, madam, I think you do not know how closely every movement of your household is watched — and reported. … It were no help to you, if word should reach those in authority that I visited you at Hatfield.”
“I can believe it,” Elizabeth said bitterly.
She turned on him the penetrating, steady gaze of those strange eyes.
“You have spoken to me friendly and free: I wonder much if I can do the like to you—with safety? ”
“I wonder not that you so wonder,” Cecil said gently. “I can but say this to you: your father trusted me, and so did one you love well, Her Majesty the Queen Dowager.”
Elizabeth drew in her breath.
“Then, marry! So will I. You asked me—what? Of my health, I think. … I am well enough, as you see. And being well, I would I had better company than my own thoughts.
… Cecil, good Cecil, I would I might see my brother! I am kept from him, you know I am kept from him. They must have filled his little ears with lies of me, that he has turned against me.” Her voice shook for an instant. She went on, with a little, hard laugh, “In faith! I have so craved company beyond my worthy tutor and my good nurse, that I’ve once again thought of how often my sister Mary importuned me to go to her at one or another of her dreary country houses!
And almost—I say, almost—wished she would visit me here.
… We quarrel, ’tis true! But—we are sisters—”
“Your Grace,” Cecil said, “bear with me now. It is because of these matters that I have sought speech with you, coming like a very poacher, and at some risk to myself. The King is no wise turned against you. You are dear to him as you have always been. But those who—guide him—do hold you from him. Nay, give me leave.” as Elizabeth started erect with such sudden vigor that her horse pricked up his ears. “I entreat you, hear me out.”