There is less danger in fearing too much than too little.
—SIR FRANCIS WALSINGHAM
1.
“STILL NOTHING?” ROBERT Cecil asked, wiping his eyes as if he were the one exhausted, self-starving, entertaining Death at his bedside.
“She took a sip of wine.”
“No food?”
The lady shook her head, so Cecil walked past her and lowered himself, with some pain in his crooked back, onto a low stool beside the royal bed. “Majesty.”
“My pygmy,” croaked the queen on her fifth night of refusing food.
“I have sampled the broth. As fine as any you have ever tasted, if I may be bold to imagine.” The queen closed her eyes. Now she was so thin that her bones could be seen beneath the fragile skin of her arms; nothing remained of her that was stately to Cecil’s eye, nothing regal, nothing beautiful, nothing that should make her queen, and yet sitting beside her still ignited in Cecil some small spark of the excitement he had felt as a boy, watching from corners as his father tended to her blossoming reign. He watched her doze, rubbed his own sore shoulder, and waited for her to return.
She opened her eyes, and Cecil renewed his insistence that she eat, but she whispered, “I have received such marvelous intelligence. From abroad.” She waited, wanted him to ask what it was, even now tried to flirt with his interest.
“Madame?”
She smiled weakly. “I am with child,” she pronounced. Cecil bowed his head and tried again to guide the bowl to his monarch’s lips. “England,” she proclaimed, then turned her head away. Perhaps the child was to be named England; perhaps she was carrying the entire nation in her ancient and virgin womb. Perhaps, Cecil thought, she was speaking poetically or even cryptically: She was prepared, in her hunger and disease, to discuss, finally and at painfully long last, the matter of her successor. It was a bit late for that.
At the door, Cecil asked the attendant lady if the queen spoke often of this fantastical notion. “She has once or twice said something similar.” And so the principal secretary asked the lady, as kindly as he was able, that she not repeat that to anyone, but still his voice sounded in his own ears like a threat. He wished it were otherwise, that his voice could glide and charm, that his face could evoke affections and confidences. It would make his life easier if he didn’t seem always to be conniving or demanding, complaining or menacing. But it was yet another skill his body refused to acquire.
2.
AND EVEN AS a threat it failed to close mouths or ears or doors, for the day after next, Cecil found Geoffrey Belloc in all his giant bulk sitting in wait in Cecil’s annex, asking a moment of the principal secretary’s time, and not terribly politely. “Before a royal child is born, sir,” Belloc said quietly, when Cecil tried to put him off, and so Cecil, feeling bullied, opened the door for the intruder, said he had a very few, very brief minutes.
Inside the inner cabinet, Cecil gestured with his nose for Belloc to sit on a low folding stool with a leather sling, the lowest point he could offer. Even then, with Cecil settling into his tall chair up on its platform, still Belloc looked down at the secretary. “What are you up to nowadays, Geoff? The Gentlemen Pensioners?”
“Queen’s Messengers, sir,” said Belloc. “More than ten years now. The generosity of Mr. Walsingham when he died.”
“You are from the very old days indeed. The old Earthworms.”
“Earthworms, my lord?”
Cecil laughed without making a sound. “What my father and Mr. Walsingham used to call you fellows, out in the mud of it all.”
“Your father and those other gentlemen were kind to recognize my small service.”
“Stories since I was a boy of fellows like you. Derring-do. Hiding under the Catholics’ beds, in the teeth of it. The sharp end. Saving us all from papal conspiracy, from the bad old days. You were catching Catholics starting when?”
“Since I was nineteen, sir, maybe a bit younger. Mr. Walsingham had me in France around then.”
“And today? Do you come asking for a favor?”
“No, my lord. I come as a messenger of sorts. On the very same question.”
“Catching Catholics?”
“Yes, sir. And I come on behalf of better men than I.”
“Ah.” Cecil leaned back and tilted his head.
“We understand that she isn’t eating, my lord.”
“You hear that in the Messengers’ office? Rumor.”
“As I said, sir, I’m sent today in a private way.”
“Very dramatical, Geoff. You’re still a bit of a player, aren’t you? Drama in all things.”
Belloc had volunteered for this task, had agreed over dinner to represent Mr. Beale’s and all the other gentlemen’s views to the principal secretary and to demand action; he would push on until Cecil listened. Crooked in heart as much as back, Geoff thought; if you met Cecil in an inn, you wouldn’t trust him with your luggage. “You’re still new to your position, sir, and perhaps certain matters haven’t yet risen to your attention. And in your father’s day, this might have seemed distant enough in the future to leave unanswered, but now, sir, the gentlemen have sent me to raise the matter’s urgency to you. Their question is now pressing, as she’s not eating. She wanders in her mind, as you know.”
“Who told you this? How dare you speak of—”
“Events threaten to gallop past any preparations, Sir Robert. If matters are to proceed peacefully, we require certainty. It’s no disgrace for us to discuss it here, behind doors.” Geoff pushed to the end: “King James may believe England is his for the taking, but not as matters stand.”
Cecil winced and rubbed his humped shoulder, to Geoff’s eye an amateur performance of having been stabbed in the back.
“As they stand? With whom? You dare a great deal—”
“There is worry.”
“There just is? Like rain?”
Belloc said nothing more. Size always helped in these matters when there was nothing to be gained by speaking. He learned that years ago, making money by helping to collect rich men’s debts, real or implied.
“So.” Robert Cecil spread his hands on his table, his legs in his chair, his back against the light from the window. “A clique of whispering men will be anonymous. And will send their giant messenger to question Her Majesty’s principal secretary and demand that we all ponder the illegal question of what the future holds. I don’t have a vote in the matter, you know. Inheritance just is.”