This all vexed me greatly. I spoke to God often about how heavy my heart felt and he quietly reminded me of all the lovely times Father and I had shared. The solace I found in having been near him in his last months pulled my sorrow out, but it was a hard relief, like of extracting a splinter. In some moments sweet, yet at other times like a festering sore.
I truly had never seen him so alive and vivacious as I did near the end, even though he was confined to a chair. It made me know him as he would have been while a young lion, and I liked seeing that side of him. He felt proud of himself. He had a legacy. He had Edward and all he’d done to better England.
He’d been God’s servant too in so many ways, though he might not have known it.
Thinking of him in this light, though, always brought on a crying fit. I felt the stinging of my eyes and the ache at the back of my throat, telltale signs—which would not do, for I was waiting for Robert.
And, sure enough, as the first tear fell, I heard his light tap on my door.
As he entered my chamber, I ran to him, tears pouring down my cheeks. I held onto him tightly so that I would not collapse with sorrow as I cried into his shoulder.
Robert had been in and out of my life the last two years. School with Edward and I. Visits when he was at court, for it was but a half day’s ride for Robert to get to Hatfield. And when I was at court, as I had been quite a bit of late, it was easy for us to stay close.
However, recently, our closeness had a tension to it. I did not want to think about what that tension could mean.
“My father is dead, Robert. How can anything be right again?” I said and snotted all over his beautiful buckram waistcoat. I cried even more as I tried to wipe the mess away with my handkerchief. “I am sorry I have ruined your new coat.”
He patted my hair and held me tight. “He is with God now. He will be missed, but at least he is with God…and he does not have to get snotted on by you.” He added the last as a quiet afterthought.
I looked at him sharply, but his face only mocked me when his perfect lips curved slightly up and his beautiful eyes twinkled.
I smacked his arm and sniffed loudly. “Can you not be serious for two minutes together, Robert Dudley? I have lost my father. I can snot on whomever I like.” I began to push him away, but his strong arms would not let me go. Soon I gave up and put the handkerchief to my nose, feeling another bout of crying coming on.
He must have seen it coming too for he said, as sweetly as he could manage, “Come now, my sweet princess, I am sorry. I know you loved your father. You will miss him. You are very much without immediate relation now. I am certain that is difficult. But Bessy, you still have Edward, and Mary, and Kat, and me. We are all here to be snotted on whenever you desire. See here, I still have yet another shoulder.” And pulled my head to his clean shoulder. “Have a go.”
I clawed at the embellishments on his sleeves, and pushed my face into his shoulder, not able to allow myself to smile for him, even though I knew Robert wanted to see that smile, so he could feel as if he’d helped. I just felt overcome.
He snuggled me tightly against his chest. “I am sorry for this loss, my dear princess. He was a great man and will be missed. I am just so glad you grew closer to him in his last years.” He smoothed my hair as I cried on him heartily.
March 1547
Windsor Castle, London
The day was extremely cold, but I did not care; I needed my horse. I was bundled in furs as much as I could be while still holding on to the saddle and reins. Fowler was a beautiful animal and his feet and legs were as sturdy as any I had ever seen and good for winter’s icy months. Robert rode next to me on the stunning black mare he called Blacket.
Father had been gone another fortnight and I still felt the loss keenly. Edward, now age nine, was king, though with a regency council to help him rule. The political state of the country was full of tension as each house tried to gain the favor of the new king. I had so many feelings swirling around me that even filling myself with the power of the moon failed to comfort me as it should.
I wanted to talk to my dear brother and have his reassurance that he would take care of me. Father had of course provided for Mary and me in his will, but a new king could change all of that if it was his pleasure. I did not think that Edward would do such a thing, but Father’s war had left the country near bankruptcy and Edward might be convinced by his council that England needed the money. That serious-natured boy would not stop until he made it all as it ought to be, but who was to be the judge of what was necessary?
I had not realized what a protection Father was to me until he was gone.
A tear rolled down my cheek and I wiped it away before Robert saw it. It seemed all I did of late was cry, and in the last few weeks Robert had been my only confidant. Blanche left me six months ago to retire to her family estate, and Kat was married just before Father died, so she was still busy being a new bride. Therefore, my beloved friend Robert took on the responsibility of making me smile and listening to me when I needed to cry. He was only fourteen but toward me he acted as only a dear friend who knew me inside and out could. I felt the same about him and knew I would still choose to confide in Robert if Kat or Blanche were available to me.
I wanted to weep again, for I knew that Robert and I would be going our separate ways in a few short days—I back to Enfield, until things could be settled as to where I would reside, and Robert to his family home in Sussex. Robert’s father was on Edwards’s council, and so Robert would be at court sometimes, but for now it seemed as if we would be on opposite sides of the world.
After clearing my throat to try and hide my emotion, I said, “I hate that we must separate.” Surely my petulant tone told him how upset I was. I heard it with disgust myself. When had I become such a ninny?
“Yes, I do not like it either,” he said shortly, and his glance in my direction was harder than I was sure he intended.
“When shall we see one another again?” I asked with a bit of whine in my voice.
“I am uncertain.” I missed the usual way his mouth curved as he spoke, for the air froze his breath, blocking his lips partially. Those lovely lips should never be blocked.
There were so many things that I would miss.
“Do you think you might come and study with me? I am sure that Dr. Grindal would be most obliging, for he loves you as much as any of his other students.” I sniffed and patted Fowler.
“I do not think so. Because I will be at court more often, Father has informed me that he will have an informal position for me to fill.” He looked over at me intently. “He thinks that under Edward, our family might gain the esteem to merit a nobly born wife for myself and even for Guilford, though he is only ten.”
“Yes, your father is always in a hurry to marry you all off, isn’t he?” I said a bit testily.
“My Lady Princess, once you have had thirteen children, as my parents do, you will understand.”
Robert did not know that I did not want children. I had told no one but Kat and Blanche, and they of course assumed that I was being ironic.
“Besides, I feel it is time to whittle down the choices, for there are many fine-looking girls my age.”
He was trying to goad me, but I would not bite today as I was in too sober a mood. “Yes, well at least you have the happiness of having choices and the knowledge that your fate should be secure. I do not know what I am to do if Edward sends me to stay with someone awful, or if he takes my inheritance away or banishes me.”
“Do not be dramatic, Elizabeth. Your brother loves you. How many times must I tell you that he will never do such a thing as that?” There was a touch of aggravation in Robert’s warbled voice, though his eyes lit, and he smiled as he reached over to take my gloved hand. “You could always just run away with me. I would take care of you and buy you so many sweet things to eat that before you were thirty you would be fat as Emma.” He laughed loudly and I laughed with him.
When the laughter
died down, he said to himself in a quiet voice that I almost did not catch, “Then we could stay together forever.”
He was looking far away now, and his smile brightened as he thought. I watched him closely and wondered if he was imagining the same things I was imagining. I was trying very hard to keep my thoughts under control, as Katherine had told me I should, and so instead of lingering on the thought of Robert and I together forever, I said, “I will race you to our spot.” He looked over at me and I knew that he knew I would not wait for his response, so with smiles on our faces we took off at the same time.
Our spot was at the southernmost edge of the grounds. There was an ancient oak tree there and the foliage which was wild and unmanicured in the summer was a bramble of skeletal twigs now. There was also a wild blueberry bush that we had enjoyed before winter hit and a small pond with huge rainbow fish in it. At each home we stayed at or visited simultaneously, we always picked the most beautiful unusual spot on the grounds and called it “our spot,” or “Queen Elizabeth and Sir Robin’s spot.” Besides having the fun of exploring the grounds to find such a place, we also had the pleasure of enjoying it over and over again when we returned to that particular house.
There was at least a foot of snow in some of the deeper rolls of ground and a significant amount of ice, which we avoided. The crunch our horse’s hoofs made as we raced over the acres of land was beautiful to my ears. I loved to hear Fowler’s slow breathing and feel his body move and strain. Robert kept in perfect speed with me until our goal was in sight and then, as he always did, he kicked his horse in the ribs and the mare took off at an alarming pace to reach the finish line before me. Robert was excellent on his horse. He always had been. I had decided it was his passion for the animal that caused him to excel, not any innate gift. If you did not care about the creature or take the time to ride it every day, then how could you excel?
It took us at least twenty minutes to reach the old oak tree. Both of our faces were bright red and freezing cold by the time we slowed the horses. I walked Fowler up to the tall frozen branches of our tree and turned to Robert. “I love that I share this passion with you. I do not think anything helps me get myself under control better than riding.”
He beamed. “I feel the same. I have never seen a girl with skill to match my own on the horse. I believe it is because you love it. Loving it makes all the difference and you know we choose what we love. I am just glad we both chose the same thing.”
Robert so often took my own thoughts and repeated them back that it did not surprise me anymore. We actually had a word we used when this happened, and I said it now.
“Precisely!”
He smiled wider and nodded his head with a jerk to help him emphasize the word. “Precisely!”
This was one of our private routines.
I looked around the pretty little spot and remembered that the last time we were here we found a doe and her fawn. They had taken cover in the thick heather behind the pond. I slid off of Fowler and said, “Shall we go see if that doe is still keeping a den in the heather?” And before Robert got off his horse, I started to walk across the frozen pond.
As I got to the middle of the frozen water, I heard the eerie sound of cracking ice. I took one more step and heard Robert yell as I fell.
Freezing water surrounded me instantly and my breath was swept away by the shock of the cold. After several frightening and bitterly uncomfortable scrambling moments under the icy water, my mind cleared slightly, and I considered my own demise. It was long enough. I called my power to me, though I did not know what I could possibly do with it. Kicking my heavy legs and flailing my encumbered arms, I forced my way to the surface. As soon as my frozen eyes opened, I saw Robert’s hand grabbing at me, his face grave with concern as he heaved me out with all his might. I tried to help him, but my gloved hands would not work. Finally, he got me out of the water and was ripping at my soaked layers of clothing.
Sudden clarity hit my mind, as if my body had finally processed what was happening and was now ready to fight back. I saw that the power was around me, but I also felt the icy cold water touching every portion of my light-infused skin. Holding that light to me with fervor, my frantic mind willed the water to leave me, to get away and make me cold no longer.
In that moment, the light around me surged and all the freezing water that covered me was pushed away from my body and clothing. It rose from me in a clear aura of rolling waves. As it passed over Robert’s frantic hands, it left his gloves soaked through. Naturally, he jumped back in alarm.
It rose further and further away from me and I felt again as if I were snuggled in furs, dry furs, warm except for the places where my skin was exposed—those places where Robert had loosened or undone my clothing. I pulled one such place closed, and when I did, my elbow should have brushed up against the pale water surrounding me as it hung in the air, but it did not. The water bulged outward to make sufficient room for my movement as if it were repelled by me. Then it grew cloudy and suddenly stopped moving. I had thinned the water so much in my pushing that it froze in a dome around me, clouding my view of Robert and all things outside of the dome.
I instantly felt fear and began kicking at the ice, which shattered into jagged shards on first impact. I looked at my now ice-covered fur and sat up. Amazingly, I felt fine. The glow of my power still surrounded me and its light helped me feel some warmth in the freezing air. As if the sky were threatening me ominously, a loud crack of thunder sounded, and I jumped to my feet, brushing myself off. An unusually dark, low cloud had gathered above us. Rain would soon be coming.
After all that, I did not want to be rained on.
I looked over at Robert and his face held an expression I had never seen on him before. I could not tell if it was fear, amazement, or a combination of both. I cleared my throat and started for my horse.
“It is going to rain,” I said in a tight voice and got onto Fowler with little difficulty. Before seeing whether Robert followed, I kicked the horse hard in the ribs and Fowler took off at a startling pace.
Episode 2
March 1547
Windsor Castle, London
I entered my room, knowing that Robert would not be far behind me. I was glad that Kat had a fire lit, though it did worry me that she sat in front of it with her needle and thread. She was working on a pillow and smiled at me as she opened her mouth to say something. Without even considering what I was doing, I took a piece of my power and flung it at her to cut her off.
“Go somewhere else.” The words cut me internally as I spoke them but there was nothing to be done about it.
Instantly she stood and said in a quick, jerky voice, “Good evening, Princess. I think I will go somewhere else.” And she grabbed all of her needlework and opened the door for herself and, as it were, for Robert, who threw himself inside my room.
I looked at him once and saw he was covered in sleet and snow. Part of my frantic mind wondered why he was all wet, but I was too angry, confused, and frightened to think on that question for long. I began taking off my furs and laying them on the chair where Kat had been sitting.
The moment the door closed behind Kat, Robert spoke.
“I see it now.”
I did not look at him as I focused on my buttons.
“I see the light that surrounds you.”
My head did whip about then.
“I began to see it as I followed behind you. The sleet…the snow…it did not touch you.” He looked down at the carpet and I saw him shiver. “It moved out of your way.” He looked back up at me and I saw how wide his beautiful eyes were, but I also saw how his jaw quivered.
It only took a moment to understand that he did not shiver because he was frightened by me, for he did not look frightened. He looked cold and wet. This realization made me furious. I was the one that fell in the pond and Robert was the one who came home wet as a dog and in danger of getting ill. In a thoughtless flood of emotion, I willed the water to leave him as it h
ad me. A large shield of my power left me and raced across the room to him. He must have seen it too for his eyes got even wider, but he did not shrink back.
It was then that I realized how much he trusted me.
Soon the light surrounded him and pushed the water away from him in the same manner it had me, but instead of freezing, it fell to the floor in a puddle. Robert watched it splash and then turned to me with amazement.
All I could say was, “Come to the fire, Robert. Let it warm you. I would be positively heartbroken if you were to get sick after rescuing me.”
He did not hesitate. We stood next to one another, looking into the flames for what seemed like forever before he spoke. “Elizabeth, we have to talk about this. I am so scared to start for I do not know how to ask what I need to know.”
Fear again prickled my skin. What could I tell him? I must say something. He had seen. He could see me now for what I was. Instantly I pushed the power away from me and looked over at him. His eyes seemed to take in the change in aura but remained silent, waiting for me to speak.
I found my voice. “Then do not ask me, Robert, if you are unsure or scared. Do not make me say something that would cause problems between us.” My voice seemed to almost beg. I hoped that he did not want problems more than he wanted answers.
He looked at me, his face as serious as I had ever seen it, and considered me for a long moment, staring into my eyes with such penetrating intensity that I could not look away. Soon his look changed from seriousness to loving understanding, and he exhaled. “Alright. If you have not reasoned out what to say, then I will wait. Only tell me this: if I do not press this now, will there ever be a good time for me to hear the truth?”
I looked at my hands. Must he prove to me how trustworthy he was? I thought of how he did not flinch away from me when my power went toward him. Was there a soul more trustworthy than he? How could I doubt him? I was not supposed tell anyone my secret, but I wanted to tell Robert. He was the only person I had ever wished I could tell.
Elizabeth Tudor- Ancestry of Sorcery Page 18