A new storoulette set in Elizabethan times where hystorical figures clash and drama unfolds
Elizabeth played with a lock of her hair, laid down on her chaise while she watched the sumo fighters mid-ring. The fight had been a gift from the Shogun and she and her lady's maids wore Venetian masks for the occasion, a gift from her latest conquest, a man everyone in Italy called Casanova, she had no idea why. He had the unnerving habit of escaping her room through her window every morning, and even though the women heard the queen speak about her new lover, they were beginning to feel she may had been imagining things, although none would ever utter the words.
The fight lacked action. Elizabeth failed to understand how the match was won, and although the nearly naked man presented an amusing diversion from protocol, she grew tired and could not help but yawn.
"Are you tired Your Majesty?"
'Insolent' Elizabeth thought. 'How dared her speak before I.'. But she was, indeed, tired for her nights were now used for amusement, and with a grunt she nodded and waved at the fighters to be gone. They ignored her and she reciprocated by leaving them alone with their nonsense and marching with her entourage back to her quarters.
She slept for hours, demanding not to be disturbed. As she woke up, gazing at the window from which her beloved climbed out that morning, she realized how she missed him and hoped he would return that night.
"(...) what kind of raucous he might have raised in Venice to cause his deeply catholic father to send him to stay with family in her forcibly, deeply Anglican country."
They had met at the Summer ball and crossed eyes behind masks the entire evening. Before leaving she commanded Absalom, her adviser, to make arrangements for him to be at her bed chambers. They spoke all night, he was not an agreeable person, as all others around her, he spoke his mind and even though she could do whatever she damn well pleased, she couldn't find it in her to touch him on that first night. He spoke to her about Italy and how his father decided it was best to stay with family for a while. She thought he had kept out some important details as to what kind of raucous he might have raised in Venice to cause his deeply catholic father to send him to stay with family in her forcibly, deeply Anglican country, but her heart raced faster with each story he told and her throat felt dry each time she was required to reply, and that alone had only happened once before, many years ago. She had missed the feeling so why trouble still waters? He had returned every night for two weeks.
As the night fell and his usual time of arrival approached, she asked her ladies to change and perfume her. She let her hair down and waited by the fire in front of her bed in her nightgown. But he never came.
She waited every night, for days, hoping the reason for his delay was a technical one, unable to climb the steep wall outside her bedroom or being seen by a guard on the corridor outside her room. But when a week had passed she decided to make inquiries. No one had seen nor heard of a man by that name. He had not given any specifics about his family name or his family estate. She had fallen in love with a ghost.
The pain began a month later. Not the heartache but the stomach. She couldn't eat without losing her meal shortly after, nor could she smell half the people around her. The rot in everyone's clothes and teeth, their breath and the hallways of the castle, it all reeked to her. She was sure to have cholera or something that would finally end her short life. All those who rooted for it, all those who claimed for her death after she had killed Mary, the so called queen of Scots, they would all win, she thought, as she returned yet another lunch to the surface in a bucket by her bed.
"Your Majesty, you are with child." Absalom said in their private quarters, safe from anyone else's ears. He asked his Majesty to accompany him in the middle of the night, safe from prying eyes, as he usually did when matters were too delicate to discuss in day time.
"What? How could that be?" She replied, incredulous.
The counselor knew the task of telling a woman how babies come to be fell to the mother, but Elizabeth had been robbed of that and many other feminine bonds by no one less than her own father, and throughout the years and through her many lovers he had been able to keep pregnancy at bay with his many herbs and medicines he would retrieve from all corners of their commonwealth. But he had not heard of a new man, so, even though for different reasons, he felt as surprised as she was.
"Your Majesty, the men you keep in your chambers and what you do together, those are the actions that bring forth a new child."
She stared at the dark wall in front of her in disbelief. After the understanding sank in, she touched her stomach and felt bitter joy at the news. A child from the man that had the audacity to abandon her, The queen. A man she loved.
"We must take care of it." Absalom said matter-of-factually.
She nodded. "Sure, it will be the new king!" She said strongly.
Absalom looked at her and his eighty year old heart fell to his stomach, once again. Decades in service of Elizabeth and her mother before her had made him soft to the woes of women, and their mind's difficulty to comply with what, sometimes, had to be done.
"No, Your Majesty. We must rid you of it." He said, trying to keep his voice from failing.
"What? How dare you speak like this of a member of the Royal Family!" She yelled at him, standing up and knocking her chair down in the process, creating greater distance between them.
"Your Majesty, that is not a member of the Royal Family. It is a child out of wedlock, a b..."
"Don't say it!"
He stopped mid-sentence and waited for her to calm down. He was used to this, tending to her and her mother before her. Anne was exactly the same, even though Elizabeth would never know it.
"You can't kill it." She stated softly, between tears. She slid down the wall behind her, in desperation.
"It is the only way Your Majesty. If your enemies know you had a... an unwanted child, they would use it to dethrone you, the Spanish would dance over your crown and claim England for themselves!" He said forcefully.
"He is not unwanted." She cried harder. Absalom feared for she had already given it gender. Next thing she would be naming it, it had to be stop.
"Your Majesty..."
"We can hide it! You can hide me!" She said, looking deranged, drying tears and rising up and walking up to him, pleading. Absalom waited for the next words, hoping she would be able to concoct a plan that could be executed with no cost to the crown.
"I can leave! I'll take Bess, I'll go far away. You can tell people I have smallpox, anything, and I'll leave!"
"And what of the child?"
She couldn't breathe at the thought. She knew what his question meant.
"You can see that... it will be taken care of." She told him plainly, swallowing feelings she rarely showed him.
He paused and pondered. It could be done. If she was kept inside long enough no one would know. If words of a baby came out he could always pin it on one of her lady's maids. The court was not short of pregnancy scandals and rumors died fast without evidence.
"I'll tend to it, Your Majesty. But we must make haste, the sooner you leave the better."
She nodded, turned and left their secret meeting chamber. She would be gone on the very next day.
❈ ❈ ❈
Elizabeth was leaving the room where Shakespeare usually performed his plays in secret for her and her ladies. She thought it overly sweet, which was not what she expected and caused her mind to wonder throughout the whole thing. Her thoughts went to her son. He would now be thirty years old. The thought of him and the fact she would never see him, speak to him or know who he was, as per her agreement with Absalom to protect both her and the boy, were revolting bit by bit over the last few weeks. The play ended up being performed on the eve of his birthday.
"Did Your Majesty not enjoy it?" William asked her the next day, during a polite private hearing where they engaged in conversation. She refused to answer on the spot. He stood in front of her, waiting. What did she think? She loved it, as per usual, but her own memories had made her mind sour and the taste spilled into his work. She loved it but couldn't enjoy it. Did she love it? Wasn't William overdoing with the Romance? Memories of what she was obligated to do in the past, her giving her child away on a field to a stranger, fearing for his life every day with only Absalom to reassure the baby had lived and was fine. But especially, memories of why she became pregnant in the first place. The loneliness she felt, before the baby and after. She had never heard of the name Casanova again, nor should she, for she had vouched to behead him if ever he returned. Did she enjoy it? Well... "A tragedy next, William, yes? I believe it is fitting." She stated and dismissed him. Shakespeare left the room confused but he knew, a command from the queen must not be ignored.
It is said his next work was Romeo and Juliet.
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