Elizabeth by Evelyn Anthony Read Free Book Online Page B

areas. There was a drought which killed off crops and cattle, and the plague broke out with ugly virulence in London. The wealthy had left their big houses on the City outskirts and taken refuge on their country estates and the Court moved from Whitehall Palace to Hampton Court.
    There were so many reminders of her mother and father at Hampton that some people expected Elizabeth to avoid it. The beautiful red-brick Palace was haunted by memories of Henry, and Anne Boleyn, who had come there as his Queen; she had slept and eaten and made music in the rooms Elizabeth used every day, walked through the same formal gardens by the river bed, and watched jousts from the tournament tower, where her daughter now sat in Royal state.
    As Elizabeth sat sewing in the shade with her ladies, she could see the graceful cornice where workmen had carved Anne’s initials with the King’s bound by a lovers’ knot in stone. The same motif, ordered by the infatuated Henry, had once decorated porticoes and ceilings in the Palace. But they were gone, erased to make room for the initials of her successor, Jane Seymour. And further down the garden walk there was a little artificial hillock, called the Mount, where Henry had stood on a clear May day, listening for the Tower cannon to announce Anne’s execution. Once only, Elizabeth went there and gazed up the shining stretch of the river. In spite of the heat, her two attendants saw her shiver. She went back to the Palace without speaking, and she never climbed the Mount again.
    She spent most of the evenings in the Long Gallery, where the windows opened out, admitting the cooler air from the river, and the sound of music and voices drifted out into the deepening twilight.
    The middle day of the month had been so stifling that the Queen had stayed in her room, drinking cordial and fanning herself while a hot, tired Lady Warwick read to her aloud. When it was cooler she dined informally, and frugally, in spite of the variety of dishes which were always set in front of her, and then to her attendants’ relief, decided to go into the Long Gallery and join her Court for the evening.
    She was not an easy mistress; even gentle Lady Dacre admitted that, and she had already forgiven that box on the ear. She was too tense and restless; always uncertain tempered if she was denied exercise, she prowled up and down her apartments, demanding to be read to or played to or entertained with conversation, and though some of her ladies were several years her senior, they felt constrained and on edge. Elizabeth was bored by women, and showed it. After a time their chattering irritated her; and she often turned on them with a curt order to be quiet. They had a spiteful explanation for their failure to amuse her or get close to her; in fact Elizabeth’s refusal to make intimates of any of her women provoked them most of all. She was short tempered and impatient because she wanted the Lord Dudley with her day as well as night, the wagging tongues declared. Her unfortunate attendants had to pay for her observance of propriety, and God knew what she did observe was scant enough.… Like most explanations of human behaviour, it was partially true. She missed Robert when she had to be separated from him; she missed him because she was not in Council or out hunting or doing anything that interested her, and like both her parents she could not suffer tedium with any show of patience.
    She missed Robert that day, when it was too hot to go out or venture into the crowded Gallery until the evening. But after dinner she dressed in a long, light gown of white silk, the bodice and sleeves shining with milky pearls, her hair hanging down to her shoulders and drawn back from her face with a narrow crescent, spiked with diamonds.
    She walked out into the Gallery, preceded by her gentlemen ushers crying: “Make way for the Queen’s Majesty! Make way for the Queen!”
    She knew without looking that