The queen, able to discern and follow sound counsel, backed off and told her lord admiral that he should do as he saw best.

By the middle of July the Spanish had made it to the English coastal waters. Due to strong winds and the hand of God, most said, the English fleet was able to slip past and surround them, the winds at their back.

Thomas and Essex were in Dover and rode hard back to court to apprise the queen. Things were at a tense but anticipatory standoff.

“Our men danced on the shore as the Spanish came into sight,” Thomas said.

“And Drake finished his game of bowls before boarding his ship,” Essex finished with not a little admiration. But board Drake did, and at the beating of his drum, his crew and the others mustered for battle.

Lord Robert begged the queen to come to inspect her troops at Tilbury. “You shall, dear lady, behold as goodly, as loyal, and as able men as any Christian prince can show you.”

Walsingham disagreed and begged the queen not to go, fearful for her safety. Those of us who knew her well could see that the idea of riding out to war with Lord Robert was something she was unlikely to pass by.

Her Robin promised that he would guarantee her person to be as safe as it would be at St. James’s Palace, and staked his life upon it.

“We agree!” she said. Before she left, she wrote to Lord Howard and asked how things progressed.

“Their force is wonderful great and strong,” he replied, “and yet we pluck their feathers little by little.”

Thomas, who had ridden nearly the entire shoreline to prepare the towns for battle, reported that bonfires had been lit all along the coast to spread news of the armada’s sighting.

“It’s the English way,” he said. Seventeen thousand men had been readied in the southeast. I imagined that the Spanish, approaching the realm and seeing those bonfires, may have thought that they had misjudged the strength or determination of the little isle.

I helped the queen pack her trunks before she left, in August, to Tilbury. Although she was fifty-four years old, she wore a silver breastplate over her white velvet dress, and held a truncheon in her hand.

“A truncheon instead of a scepter, Majesty?” I asked.

“Each in its own time is required for rule,” she answered. She rehearsed her speech in front of us ladies.

“My loving people,” she began. “We have been persuaded by some that are careful of our safety to take heed how we commit ourself to armed multitudes for fear of treachery; but I assure you, I do not desire to live to distrust my faithful and loving people. Let tyrants fear. I have always so behaved myself that, under God, I have placed my chiefest strength and safeguard in the loyal hearts and goodwill of my subjects, and therefore I am come amongst you, as you see, at this time, not for my recreation and disport, but being resolved, in the midst and heat of the battle, to live or die amongst you all, to lay down my life for my God and for my kingdom and for my people, my honor, and my blood, even in the dust.”

I wanted nothing more than to mount a horse and ride alongside her.

Lord Howard ordered some of his ship’s hulks to be laden with pitch and gunpowder, then set afire and sailed into the Spanish fleet anchoring at Calais. The fleet, once ablaze, became disoriented and panicked. The Spanish then headed north, taking a more dangerous and roundabout way home. In the end, only half of the armada made it safely back to Spain. The great crusade to which the pope and several Catholic nations had contributed ended in humiliation at the hand of a brave queen and her Catholic admiral.

The war was won, and England rejoiced, but the queen’s Robin was unwell. I saw him as they returned to court; he was said to have been ill since the eve they dined together in his tent after the queen’s speech at Tilbury.

She worried on his behalf. When they returned to Whitehall, I thought he looked ill unto death. Selfishly, I wondered, should he die, could I find the courage to leave her, too?



TWENTY-THREE

Summer and Autumn: Year of Our Lord 1588