Free Elizabeth I by Margaret George Page B

King Philip, who was puzzled. “I hope God has not permitted such evil, for everything has been done for his service,” was all he said.
    But God had sent his winds to aid England instead.
    We celebrated. Church bells rang for days. Ballads were composed. Commemorative medals were struck. Services of thanksgiving were held all across the land.
    In Lisbon, a street cry gloated over the Spanish defeat:
    Which ships got home?
The ones the English missed.
And where are the rest?
The waves will tell you.
What happened to them?
It is said they are lost.
Do we know their names?
They know them in London.
    Oh, we did. And we knew the names of all our own ships, and all our heroes. We even had an eighty-nine-year-old captain who had commanded his ship in Howard’s squadron so well that he was knighted for bravery on the deck by the admiral himself. Such was the stuff our men were made of.
    For the first month, I was lifted high on a cloud of exhilaration. It was beyond normal time, something extraordinary. It was as if I had only just now been born, learned to see, hear, taste and smell and feel. All my senses were heightened, to an almost painful degree. There are places far to the north in Norway and Sweden where in the summer it never grows dark. They say that during those weeks the people don’t need sleep, that they exist in an extreme state of animation. Such were the weeks for me just after the threat of the Armada lifted.
    We were preparing for a service of national thanksgiving at St. Paul’s Cathedral. The banners Drake had captured from the Nuestra Señora del Rosario flagship would be dedicated, a mirror image of the service when the pope had blessed the Armada’s flagship banner. I wondered if it even survived and, if so, where they would hide it away in shame.
    The pope, however, in keeping with his vigorous peasant mind, seemed to delight in the outcome, as if he had never opposed it. In Rome, he declared, “Elizabeth is certainly a great queen, and were she only a Catholic, she would be our dearly beloved daughter. Just look how well she governs! She is only a woman, only mistress of half an island, yet she makes herself feared by Spain, by France, by the Empire, by all!” When his assistant chided him for his endorsement, he cried, “If only I was free to marry her. What a wife she would make! What children we would have! They would have ruled the whole world.” He sighed.
    â€œYour Holiness,” the priest objected, “you are speaking of the archenemy of the church!”
    â€œUmmm.” Then he blurted out, “Drake—what a great captain!”
    I suspected it was a case of one pirate respecting another.
    When Robert Dudley related this story to me, we laughed together.
    â€œHe seems to have forgotten his principles, if ever he had any,” said Dudley. “Of course, he is probably relieved not to have to make good on his promise of a million ducats to Philip. I trust you are not tempted to become Mrs. Sixtus?”
    â€œWell ... you know I fancy adventurers,” I said. Then I slid into seriousness. There were things that must be said. “Robert, the question of marriage—it has always been there between us. The big questions have all been answered, and we have learned to live with those answers.” I looked straight into his eyes. “Nothing can separate us now.”
    Our bond had survived the ghost of his first wife, Amy, the strong earthly presence of his second wife, Lettice, and my dedicated virginity.
    He took my hand. “No. Nothing can.”
    I clasped his hand in both of mine. “Friend, brother, heart of my heart,” I said.
    Then we dropped our hands. Someone had entered the work chamber.
    Burghley limped in. “Has he told you about Sixtus’s comments?”
    Dudley nodded, and I said, “They are amusing.”
    â€œMost likely not to Philip,” Burghley said. “He is brooding and this