The Virgin's War (Tudor Legacy #3)(112)
Elizabeth returned to Wynfield Mote with the family after the service. At long last, on this bittersweet day, she and Minuette walked alone in the rose garden that had seen so much of both misery and joy in their lifetimes.
“How are you?” Elizabeth asked after a time.
“Weary.”
“I have no doubt. As always, you are the center that holds all else together. Moving from grief to grief…how do you do it?”
“With a great deal of love and a husband who shelters me at day’s end. We will be all right, Elizabeth.”
The queen was silent for a bit. “I asked Stephen to accept a barony. You know that, I expect.”
“I know that he refused.”
“Stubborn boy. Still, I have hopes for that wife of his. She is a sensible creature and has agreed to enlarge her branch of the Sinclair Company in London. But first, I understand, they intend to travel to France.”
“With Felix LeClerc, yes. At the boy’s request, he will spend the next years between Julien and Stephen here in England. But he does have an aunt and cousins in France, and Blanclair will need to be assured of an excellent steward until Felix is of age and returns. Maisie will help with that.”
“They will not travel until after her child is born?” For a girl so small, pregnancy was difficult to hide.
“Not until spring.”
“So you will be the first to have a grandchild. I expect it will be a boy, simply to complete my defeat.”
“Don’t tell me that you would have preferred a son to Anabel.”
“An imaginary son—which therefore makes him perfect—as opposed to the willful, unpredictable daughter I have?” Elizabeth laughed. “Of course not. Though I expect a Prince of Wales who chose to marry one of his own subjects might be less fraught than will be the case for a princess.”
Minuette’s breath caught, then resumed. “What are you saying?”
“You know perfectly well what I am saying. I do not want it public just yet, but my privy council has been informed that, as soon as may be considered proper, Princess Anne will be wed to Christopher Courtenay, the Earl of Somerset.”
“Elizabeth—”
“Curious, isn’t it, the vagaries of life? If you had married William like any other impressionable girl would have done, then there would be no Anabel or Kit at all. But here they are, and perhaps it was God’s intent all along. A sarcastic, cynical intent, to be sure…but perfect for all that. I think even Will would admit the beauty of your son wedding his niece. That your son is also Dominic’s son only completes the circle.”
They walked on in silence, Minuette no doubt thinking about Kit and his joy. Elizabeth’s thoughts were more selfish. England’s welfare was not—would probably never be—completely secure. Philip, his righteous pride bruised by the defeat, would ponder new attempts to bring down the heretic nation he considered the world’s greatest threat. Scotland remained independent and thus always on the verge of being troublesome. Ireland was even more of a mess after four years of Spanish troublemaking. Anabel would be a very good queen—but not, Elizabeth trusted, for a long time to come.
This queen had work still to do.
Minuette Courtenay had never expected to attend the coronations of three British monarchs in her lifetime. The first time, she’d been a child—a nine-year-old girl aware mostly that the boy whose birthday she shared had suddenly become the most powerful person in England. The second time, she had been a young woman, marked by fear and grief, watching her dearest friend steadily take her oath as the first Queen Regnant in English history.
Today, she was old. Sixty-seven last month, though she had been remarkably fortunate in her health. If her shoulders and wrists ached in the damp, she could still see to read and embroider, and still had enough mischief and laughter to enjoy her grandchildren. Ten of them living, and all of them present in the abbey on this day.
This day in which Anne Isabella Tudor would take her formal oaths and be anointed the queen she had been since her mother’s last breath. The queen is dead, long live the queen.
Minuette herself had been with Elizabeth at the end. Summoned from Wynfield Mote in March by a concerned Robert Cecil, she had arrived at Richmond Palace to find her friend obviously ill but stubborn to the last. The queen would not lie down—spending most of her days standing at the window. Minuette did not think it was the landscape Elizabeth saw. She thought it was the past, perhaps the roll call of her dead: Philip of Spain, Lord Burghley, Francis Walsingham…and even further back. William Tudor. Robert Dudley. Lord Rochford. Anne Boleyn. The great and fearsome Henry VIII.
By dint of sheer force of will, Minuette finally persuaded Elizabeth to recline on a bed of pillows and coverlets made up on the floor. She stayed there for four days and was finally weak enough that she could be moved to her bed without protest. Beyond her doors, the government hovered, hardly knowing how to behave now that the queen who had ruled them for forty-four years was dying.
And then, as mildly and gently as a lamb—belying all Minuette had ever known of her friend—Elizabeth Tudor died on 24 March 1603. She was sixty-nine years old and had been queen since she was twenty-five.
Minuette straightened her back as Anne Isabella proceeded slowly down the aisle of Westminster Abbey. Like her mother, she could never look anything less than royal. Though just turned forty-one, Anabel retained her slender figure and vivid red-gold hair. Minuette darted a look away from the new queen to the Lord High Constable, a purely symbolic office revived for the purposes of this coronation. Dominic, at seventy-two as reticent as ever, silver-haired and striking, served today only because Anabel had asked it of him personally.