The Wild Irish - Robin Maxwell Read Online Free

the hubbub that surrounded the almost barbaric-looking galley docked beside him. The Dockmaster was engaged in a heated exchange with the ship’s captain, but Essex dismissed it. Shiploads full of exotics and extravagances had been arriving for weeks now, in preparation for the queen’s sixtieth-birthday celebration, a round of festivities that promised to eclipse all those that had come before it, and he took no notice of several guards trotting from the tower gate up the elevation toward the galley.
    Greenwich was a great, redbricked hodgepodge of a castle, whose long main wing with its row of high, transited windows overlooked the river.
    Essex moved along the brick path to the south gate, accepting greetings from gentlemen of the Court—young and old, high peers and eager hopefuls. Their demeanor was deferential, even, he thought with an inward smile, reverential. He, of course, returned the salutations with a warm grace that never failed to delight the recipient. Essex’s pace was leisurely, with an eye to prolonging the pleasure of adulation, but today there was further reason to take his time. He was playing a game with himself, wondering where he would find the queen. He prided himself on knowing her well, guessing her mood. He ’d even memorized her schedule. Now as she grew older it became more regimented, both daily and weekly.
    It was late afternoon, and Elizabeth would have done with her dozens of audiences, he reasoned. She would be finished with the endless pile of paperwork that she ’d attended to, sitting straight backed at her desk as the secretaries Walsingham and Cecil laid the documents before her. He could picture them waiting patiently as she marked them with her studied and flourished signature, to be set carefully with a vellum roller and the finest perfumed powder from France. She would already have taken her exercise, perhaps a brisk walk upon the castle ’s battlement—she had ridden out with him yesterday—and would have completed her daily translations and double translations of Greek classics, her favorite hobby, she claimed. Today was Monday, and there was very little planned for the evening. A light meal taken in her rooms. Perhaps some music, but no dancing. Perhaps a night of gambling. Essex hoped this was the case, as the pleasure of dice and cards always cheered Elizabeth . . . made her more receptive, even to his “incessant nagging,” as she ’d come to call his more and more frequent requests for favors.
    So, he reasoned, if it were not to be a formal evening, her late-afternoon toilette would be abbreviated, perhaps she might even forego changing her gown. If this were the case, where might the queen be just now? A fitting with her seamstress was possible, or a meeting with her Master of Revels in preparation for her birthday celebration.
    No! None of those places. Essex was suddenly sure he knew her whereabouts. All at once three of Elizabeth’s ladies burst from around a corner into the wide corridor, gorgeous in their varicolored silks, fluttering and chattering like a trio of tropical birds. He breathed easier to see that Katherine Bridges was not among them. His latest mistress was entirely delightful and, a married woman, never demanding, but Essex was at this moment seething with single-minded purpose and wished for no distrac-tions. He nodded with graceful exaggeration to the ladies, fixing each of them in that moment with a private, hungry glance. It was prudent, he had discovered, to keep the women of the Court in a state of mild but constant desire for him. Favors of every sort were far easier to extract that way.
    Without bothering to confirm his guess at the queen’s present location, he turned into the corridor of the castle ’s north wing; Essex strode past the now deserted Privy Council Chamber, nodding to the two guards, both of whom sported the squared-off beards, standing at attention at the heavy wooden doors. He took great but secret pleasure from