Cate of the Lost Colony Read online

  When the queen summoned me to her chamber one evening, I expected her to request a cordial or a cup of milk or a book from her library. Her back was to me as I curtseyed and greeted her.

  She whirled around and began to revile me. “You crook your knee to me, Catherine Archer? You with the wayward, crooked heart.”

  My heart clenched to hear her say my true name, and with such a dire tone.

  “What do you mean, Your Majesty? My maiden heart is true.”

  “Are you a maid?”

  “How can you doubt that?” I cried, sinking to my knees.

  And yet I knew the answer. I heard a rustling and, without even looking up, I knew she was holding Sir Walter’s letters. Whoever had stolen them had waited until the Scottish queen was dead and Elizabeth could turn to new intrigues.

  She unfolded a page and read aloud, “At a table spread with treats, One tasty morsel tempted me. Did Sir Walter bite that morsel? On the lips?” She threw the letter aside and picked up another. “Double words do double duty, Praising one and another’s beauty. This is what I think of your double dealing!” She ripped the page in half. The two pieces fluttered to the floor in front of me. She read from a third letter—one that had never reached me—crumpled it, and threw it at me.

  “How did you come by them?” I asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “No, how did you come by this?” She flourished the embroidered handkerchief in front of me.

  “Sir Walter gave it to me,” I said, forgetting Emme’s advice to deny everything. What was the point in lying now? “And those letters are mine, too,” I added.

  For a moment the queen was silent. I think she expected me to deny the letters. “Everything is mine,” she said coldly. “Get up.”

  I obeyed. Her eyes, level with mine, flashed with anger and hurt.

  “You deceived me, Catherine. I expect to be betrayed by papists and Spaniards, even by my own cousin,” she said. Her voice trembled, then grew firm again. “Not by those I have entrusted with the care of my own person.”

  Her words stung me, so unjust did they seem. I knew I should beg her forgiveness, but for what? Nothing in those letters could harm her.

  “How do I betray you by loving another?” I heard myself say. “Are you the only one who can be loved?” I went on, more boldly still. “I can love Sir Walter without diminishing the love I owe Your Grace.”

  “Sir Walter cannot be yours. He. Is. Mine!” She threw the words at me one by one, like a handful of stones. “I have made him from nothing and lifted him over the others.” Her forehead and cheeks were bright red with anger. “You were also nothing until I favored you. But I see you have entirely forgotten that.”

  “No, I have not forgotten,” I said forlornly. I could see my good fortune sinking like a wrecked ship. What was left for me to cling to but my pride? So I looked my queen in the eye and said, “I would gladly be nothing again, and thus be free to choose my own love.”

  “So be it,” she said, shaking with rage. “You will not serve me or feel the warmth of my favor ever again. You are nothing to me.” She threw open the door and shouted to her guards, “Take her to the Tower!”

  The Tower? Too stunned to protest, I let the guards lead me away. Over my shoulder I could see the queen feeding pages into the fire, its red glow illuminating her face.

  I never saw my royal mistress again.

  Part II

  Chapter 15

  In the Tower

  It was not the queen’s grand barge that carried me down the Thames to the Tower but a creaking wherry pitched to and fro by the waves. Garbage bobbed on the water and a drowned cat floated by. I leaned over the side and retched, sick with misery and dread. I had left Whitehall without being allowed to say good-bye to anyone. I took with me only what I could fit into my small trunk, the one that had held the letters that undid me. Water sloshed around my feet. The wherry passed the wharf where we disembarked on my first visit to the Tower. It slipped under a rusted portcullis known as the Traitor’s Gate, where the filth of the river gathered, and bumped against a jetty green with slime. Climbing out of the wherry I slipped and nearly fell in the water, but the guard caught me. And so, like a criminal I entered the Tower, my sodden skirt dragging behind me, my heart like a great stone in my chest.

  My prison was a small room furnished with a bed, a bench, and a table. It had a single high, narrow window. If I stood on the bench I could see through it to a simple paved courtyard below. Though the room was damp, there were rush mats on the floor and a fireplace. It would have been comfortable under different circumstances. The bed was even hung with faded curtains. Someone of high status had been confined here before me. Was it the conspirator Babington? I imagined his head on a spike over the Tower gate, a warning to all England. Entering by the water, I had thankfully been spared that sight. Yet there was little else to gladden me in the room, and nothing to do but to wait there and ponder my fate.

  When the heavy door closed behind me and the bolt on the other side fell into place, I began to weep loudly. Magnified by the bare walls, the sound was frightful, like the roaring of the lion in the queen’s menagerie. So I cried noiselessly, letting the tears trickle down my face. I cried over the cruelty of my mistress and because I realized I no longer loved her. Soon I had no more tears.

  In this notorious prison, I was surprised not to be mistreated. A guard delivered my food, took away my chamber pot, and brought me clean water for washing. My soiled linens were laundered, though they were returned to me none too clean. I asked for something to read, and the guard brought me a Bible well-thumbed by other prisoners. Thinking to try my hand at another poem, I asked for ink and paper but he shook his head. He may as well have been mute. Every few days he led me outside, where I was permitted to walk around the courtyard. I had no visitors and no one to talk to.

  The long days passed into weeks. I felt spring arrive in the air that blew through the narrow window. I missed Emme and Lady Mary. Had everyone forgotten me? I wondered if Sir Walter had felt the queen’s wrath. Was he also in the Tower awaiting judgment? What crime had either of us committed? Surely there were malefactors more dangerous than an outspoken maid and a knight who sent her amorous verses. I expected the queen would release me once she thought I had suffered enough.

  And what then? When I thought of her fury, I had no hope she would ever forgive me. Even if by some miracle she did, I could not return to her service as if nothing had happened. Nor could I bear being sent back to the country to live in disgrace with my uncle’s family. I began to think I preferred the lonely Tower to the queen’s palace or my uncle’s house.

  But what I most desired now—to go to Virginia with Sir Walter—seemed impossible. And the letter that I finally received from Emme made my vain dream vanish altogether.

  My dear Catherine,

  I have cried over you nearly every day since you were taken away. I was in the hall and overheard what you said to Her Majesty. (Your brave words are already legendary among the ladies.) I wish I could visit you in that dreadful place and console you, for there is no happiness without a friend nearby. But I dare not. The queen will permit no one to speak of you. It is dangerous even to write this.

  Unfortunately, your W.R. did not suffer as you do. No, she still dotes on him, so much that she has made him Captain of her Guard and he must stand by her at all times. It is unjust that he should be rewarded while you are punished. I have told him that he is a coward who does not deserve your love.

  Catherine—I know who stole your letters. Indeed she makes no secret of it. You will not be surprised that it was Frances. She took them first to Anne, offering her the chance to betray you, but Anne would not touch them, saying, “Do it yourself.” Now Anne weeps with guilt for what has happened to you. She admits she did not stop Frances because she wanted you to lose W.R. as she did her T.G. She wants me to tell you she wishes she had taken the letters from Frances and burned them.

  I do not need to ask Frances why she betra
yed you. Of course she envied you your nickname. She also hates lovers, because she has none. (Does she think spying will make the queen love her?) And she envied our friendship, yours and mine, from the day you arrived. Now that you are away, she thinks I must be her friend again. But I will not speak to her. Indeed she is hated by everyone. So you see we are all in a turmoil here over you. If only none of this had happened, or that I had happier news to write—

  Come what may, never forget your dearest friend, E.M.

  I held Emme’s letter to my cheek. I was grateful for the pains she had taken to write and pleased to think of Frances being hated. I began to fill my empty hours dreaming up plots to torment her. Though I had little hope of ever being able to enact them, it gave me a little comfort to reflect that I had plenty of wit, while Frances’s would fit within her thimble. Still, she was in the queen’s favor, and I was in the Tower.

  If Emme could manage to write, I wondered, why couldn’t Sir Walter? Surely his every waking moment was not spent beside the queen. While she slept, could he not write to me? While she was awake, could he not persuade her to release me? There could be only one reason he did neither of these things: he did not love me. Rather, he loved the queen. I flung myself on the bed, overcome with fresh tears. So let him enjoy his doubtful reward, waiting on the aging Elizabeth all his days, bearing her changeable moods and incessant demands! My love had turned sour, and disappointment rankled in me like a wound.

  Some days after receiving Emme’s letter, I had a visitor at last: the gray-bearded Earl of Leicester. He was red-faced and short of breath from climbing the stairs. When the guard admitted him, then closed the door without bolting it, I expected to hear I was being released. But Leicester looked morose.

  “I’ve come at Her Majesty’s bidding,” he said.

  “I thought so.” My voice sounded hoarse from disuse. “No one would dare come otherwise, because of the manifest danger I pose.”

  “I am sorry for your plight, my lady. You do not deserve it,” he said gently.

  “Does Sir Walter deserve his? That is a harsh punishment, to be made Captain of the Guard,” I said with a mocking smile.

  “Walter Ralegh is an ass!” Leicester’s face turned purple.

  I stared in surprise, then remembered he had long been the queen’s favorite. He must be jealous of Ralegh, who was younger, handsomer, and now far more favored.

  “She gave him all of the traitor Babington’s estates. He has never been wealthier,” he grumbled.

  “Has the queen decided to give me anything?” I asked, anger growing in me. “Will I be released?”

  “That is the matter of my visit,” he said, letting out a long sigh that did not bode well for me.

  “She will not put me on trial—or will she?” I asked.

  “God, no!” he said. “You are no traitor. She would not dare.”

  “Does she mean to return me to my uncle in Wiltshire?”

  “Alas, I wish that were her will. But it is a harsher fate she has in mind for you, one that I would spare a lady of your tender age and upbringing—”

  “Just tell me, please!”

  He clasped his hands together and his eyebrows lifted in an expression of grief and sympathy.

  “Sit down, my lady, for you look pale.”

  “I will hear my fate while standing on my feet,” I said, losing all patience with his wordy delays.

  “Her Majesty has decreed your banishment! A ship sails tomorrow and you, my lady, are to be on board.”

  My thoughts leapt with a fearful anticipation. I saw vessels moored at Billingsgate, swarming with sun-browned mariners loading cargo for distant parts of the world.

  “Destined for? The ship goes where?” I asked, unable to put my words together.

  “To a barbarous place, that one day, through the presence of those such as yourself, may develop into a civil society—”

  “Not Ireland!” I cried, thinking of warring peasants and forsaken bogs.

  Leicester held up his hand and shook his head sadly. “My lady, that would be a mercy. No, it is the colony on Roanoke Island. I am sorry for you.”

  He looked away and thus did not see the smile spreading over my face. I felt like dancing a jig.

  “But who? Why? How did this come about?” I asked, hardly able to believe my good fortune.

  He turned to me and replied, “You have Ralegh, that horse’s ass, to thank for your doubtful and dangerous freedom.”

  Chapter 16

  From the Papers of Sir Walter Ralegh

  Memorandum

  13 March 1587. C.A. was a very foolish maid not to destroy those letters and then to defy Her Majesty. I know where I must worship and how to pray for mercy, and thus was spared the Tower. Then, to my surprise, she gave me Babington’s estates, which even I expected Walsingham to receive. He falls while I rise; such is the way of this world. The income will permit me to send more colonists to Virginia.

  The bigger prize, the captaincy of her guard, seems to me more punishment than reward. It keeps me at the queen’s side like a dog on a chain. The other night she called upon me to scratch her back, saying she had an itch that could not be satisfied. What could be more humiliating? Yet this would be a most desirable office were my C.A. nearby. Think how easily we might meet, even pass the night together.

  Ah, my mistress knows exactly what she does. She keeps C.A. locked up to punish me.

  25 March. Today I have been so altered in my thinking I hardly know myself anymore.

  The maid called Emme has been continually frowning at me, and I was determined to know the reason. So, passing her in the hall, I asked if her lovely forehead pained her.

  “’Tis the sight of you that pains me,” she said. Then she drew me into the empty wardrobe, where she began to denounce me as a rank opportunist and a villain. “My friend languishes in the Tower while you proudly prance around here in your new livery,” she said, with a disdainful eye toward my suit.

  I defended myself, saying Lady Catherine’s indiscretion had caused the queen to be embarrassed, and once Her Majesty’s mood recovered, she would no doubt return.

  “And how long will that be, for one who is innocent? The indiscretion was all yours, Sir Walter Ralegh,” she said, scorning my very name. “My friend loved you truly, but you only feigned your love in verses.”

  I admit she startled me. “She loved me, you say? But she refused my kisses. We barely touched one another.”

  “An honorable man considers the lack of looseness to be a virtue in a woman,” Emme said coldly.

  I thought I knew the marks of love in a woman: the desiring looks, the coy refusals followed by the revelation of a bit of the breast. Now I am not sure. Catherine is not like any woman I know.

  “Sir Walter, right now you should be at the queen’s feet, begging her mercy on Catherine’s behalf. I am forbidden to speak about her, but you are so close to Her Majesty’s heart you could ask her for anything.” Every word of hers rebuked me most harshly.

  I thought of the estates and other favors that could yet be withdrawn, putting the Virginia expedition at risk, if I displeased my queen now. As I hesitated Emme struck again.

  “Do you know Catherine stood before the queen and proclaimed her love for you? Was that not brave? Had you a similar courage, you might be a man worthy of her love. But you are not.”

  She pushed me out of the wardrobe and into the hallway, where I stood as if paralyzed.

  Now I cannot sleep. I see my Catherine resolute before the queen, defying her with her words. Like a fool expecting the king to see truth in his antics. I did not know the maid possessed such greatness of mind.

  What could she gain by her defiance? Nothing. She lost everything rather than deny her love for me. I must adore her for it, though she despise me. Indeed I despise myself. I threw her into the lion’s den while I sat at a fine table feeding my self-regard. I deserve to be flayed alive.

  I swear, never again will I, Sir Walter Ralegh, be such a
damnable villain in matters of love, but behave with the highest honor.

  Poem

  That pearl I careless cast away

  Now o’er my heart asserts her sway,

  And I am vowed, at any cost

  To revive her trust, that I have lost.

  10 April 1587. All my good intentions come to naught before my canny, heartless queen. I meant to deal honorably in the matter of C.A. but was forced into the path of deceit.

  I asked if Her Majesty was prepared to forgive the poor maid, who was young and inexperienced and had no one to protect her.

  “She had me. That would have been enough for any young lady in the kingdom,” she retorted. “Do you dare plead for her?” Her words carried a tone of threat.

  “I do, for she does not deserve her misfortune.” Remembering Emme’s accusations, I added, “I confess I misled her with my affections.”

  “How could you affect her? She is low and base. Did I show you too little love?” she asked, now petulant.

  “I have repented of my infidelity to you, my sovereign mistress,” I said, trying to sound humble. “Not you, but I, loved too little.” The flattering words were like chalk in my mouth.

  But she smiled and I went on with my calculated lies, saying I desired to be free of the maid’s charms and only a great distance between us would keep me from temptation. She seemed to take my bait.

  “When do your ships sail for Virginia?”

  “At the end of this month, God and Your Majesty willing.” Then I pretended to be startled. “Nay, I see the drift of your thoughts! That would be too cruel. I’ve heard the maid has a fear of wild animals. I pray you, send her to Ireland instead.”

  Her eyes narrowed at me. “Ireland is too near. I have decided to send her to Virginia.”