Elizabeth I Read Online Free PDF Page A

was wrong to call you a lily,” he said. “I see now that roses reflect your true nature better. There are so many different kinds, just as there are so many sides to you.”
    “But my personal motto is ‘ Semper eadem ’—‘Always the same, never changing.’”I had chosen it because I thought unpredictability in a ruler was a great burden for the subjects.
    “That is not how your councillors would describe you,” he said. “Nor your suitors.” He looked away as he added, “I should know, having been both.”
    It was good that I could not see his face, read his expression. “I only play at being fickle,” I finally said. “Underneath it I am steady as a rock. I am always loyal and always there. But a little playacting adds spice to life and keeps my enemies on their toes.”
    “Your friends, too, Your Majesty,” he said. “Even your old Eyes sometimes does not know when to believe what he sees.”
    “You may always ask me, Robert. And I will always tell you. That I promise.”

    Robert Dudley: the one person I could almost bare my soul to, could be more honest with than anyone else. Long ago I had loved him madly, as a young woman can do only once in her life. Time had changed that love, hammered it out into a sturdier, thicker, stronger, quieter thing—just as they say happens in any long-term marriage. The Russians say, “The hammer shatters glass but forges iron.”
    I once told an ambassador that if I ever married it would be as a queen and not as Elizabeth. If I had ever been convinced marriage was a political necessity, then I would have proceeded despite my personal reluctance. But at my coronation I promised to take England itself as my spouse. Remaining a virgin, not giving myself to anyone but my people, was the visible sacrifice they would prize and honor, binding us together. And so it has proved.
    And yet, and yet ... at the same time I spared them the horrors of foreign entanglement and the specter of domination, I left them with the very thing my father turned his kingdom upside down to avoid: no heir to succeed me.
    I cannot say it doesn’t worry me. But I have other immediate decisions to make, of equal and urgent concern to the survival of my country.

    It took Francis Drake the better part of a week to travel the two hundred miles separating Plymouth and London. But now he stood before the full Privy Council, and me, in the meeting room at Whitehall. He had wanted not to rest but to come straight to us.
    The sight of him always made me feel safer. He had such buoyant optimism that he convinced anyone listening that his plans were not only attainable but reasonable.
    The group had expanded beyond the inner three—Burghley, Leicester, and Walsingham—to include Sir Francis Knollys; Henry Carey, the Lord Hunsdon; and John Whitgift, the Archbishop of Canterbury, as well as Charles Howard, the new lord admiral.
    “We welcome you,” I told Drake. “Your feeling about our situation?”
    He looked around. He was a stocky man, barrel-chested. It was fitting for the man who had destroyed the barrel staves for the Armada last year. His sandy hair was still thick, and although his face was weathered, it looked young. He was sizing up the possible opposition in the council before he spoke. Finally he said, “We knew it would come, sooner or later. Now is the hour.”
    No argument there. “And your recommendation?” I asked.
    “You know my recommendation, gracious Queen. It is always better to attack the enemy and disarm him before he gets to our shores. An offensive is easier to manage than a defensive action. So I propose that our fleet leave English waters and sail out to intercept the Armada before it gets here.”
    “All of it?” asked Charles Howard. “That would leave us unprotected. If the Armada eluded you, they could slip in with no resistance.” He lifted his brows in consternation. Charles was an even-tempered, diplomatic man who could handle difficult personalities, making