‘Well, I’ll leave you to it,’ Sir Francis said, retreating as if in fear that he would be sent up a ladder.
Robert grinned at him. ‘Aye. I’ll call you when the work is over,’ he said cheekily, and strode to the centre stage. ‘I imagine you will return in good time for the feast once all the hard work is done. Are you jousting?’
‘Good God, yes! I shall be a very noble gentil parfit knight! I shall be the very flower of chivalry. I am off now to polish my shield and my couplets,’ Sir Francis called mockingly from the stand. ‘Sing hey nonny nonny, sweet Robin!’
‘Hey nonny nonny!’ Robert shouted back, laughing.
He returned to his work, smiling at the exchange, and then he had a sense of being watched. It was Elizabeth, standing alone on the platform that would be decked out as the royal box, looking down at the empty jousting rails and the sandy arena.
Robert scrutinised her for a moment, noted her stillness, and the slight droop of her head. Then he picked up a flagpole as if still at work, and strolled past the royal box.
‘Oh!’ he exclaimed, as if he suddenly saw her. ‘Your Grace!’
She smiled at him and came to the front of the box. ‘Hello, Robert.’
‘Thoughtful?’
‘Yes.’
He wondered if she had overheard their conversation about the danger she walked through every day, if she had heard them name the dangers from every sort of person, from the lowest apprentices to her closest friends. How could a young woman bear to know that she was hated by her own people? That the greatest spiritual power in Christendom had declared her fit to die?
He stuck the flagpole in its stand and came before the box and looked up. ‘Anything I can help you with, my princess?’
Elizabeth gave him a shy little smile. ‘I don’t know what to do.’
He did not understand her. ‘Do? Do about what?’
She leaned over the rail of the box so that she could speak softly. ‘I don’t know what to do at a tournament.’
‘You must have been to hundreds of tournaments.’
‘No, very few. I was not that often at court during my father’s reign, and Mary’s court was not merry and I was imprisoned for most of the time.’
Again Robert was reminded that she had been in exile for most of her girlhood. She had educated herself with the passion of a scholar, but she had not prepared herself for the trivial entertainments of court life. She could not do so; there was no way to be at ease in the palaces or at the great events except through familiarity. He might relish the wit of thinking of a new theme to flavour a traditional event, but he knew the traditional event as one who had attended every joust since first coming to court, and indeed, had won most of them.
Robert’s desire was to outdo the tournaments and entertainments that he knew only too well, Elizabeth’s desire was to get through them without betraying her lack of ease.
‘But you like jousting?’ he confirmed.
‘Oh, yes,’ she said. ‘And I understand the rules but not how I should behave, and when to clap, and when to show favour, and all the rest of it.’
He thought for a moment. ‘Shall I make you out a plan?’ he asked gently. ‘Like I did for your coronation procession? So that it shows you where you should be and what you should do and say at each point?’
At once she looked happier. ‘Yes. That would be good. Then I could enjoy the day instead of worrying about it.’
He smiled. ‘And shall I make you a plan for the ceremony of the Order of the Garter?’
‘Yes,’ she said eagerly. ‘Thomas Howard told me what I should do but I couldn’t remember it all.’
‘How would he know?’ Dudley said dismissively. ‘He was hardly uppermost at court in the last three reigns.’
She smiled at his habitual rivalry with the duke, her uncle, their contemporary in age, and Robert’s life-long rival.
‘Well, I will write it out for you,’ Robert said. ‘May I come to your room before dinner and go through it with you?’
‘Yes,’ she said. Impulsively she reached down her hand to him. He stretched up and could reach only her fingertips with his own, he kissed his hand and reached up to touch hers.
‘Thank you,’ she said sweetly, her fingertips lingering against his.
‘I’ll always tell you, I’ll always help you,’ he promised her. ‘Now that I know, I will draw you a table to show you where to go and what to do for every event. So that you always know. And when you have been to a dozen jousts you can tell me that you want it done differently, and you shall be the one that draws it up for me and shows me how you want everything changed.’
Elizabeth smiled at that and then she turned and went from the royal box, leaving him with an odd sensation of tenderness towards her. Sometimes she was not like a queen come by luck and cunning to greatness. Sometimes she was more like a young girl with a task too difficult to manage alone. He was accustomed to desiring women, he was accustomed to using them. But for a moment in the half-prepared tilt yard he felt a new sensation for him – tenderness, of wanting her happiness more than his own.
Lizzie Oddingsell wrote a letter to Amy’s dictation, and then Amy copied it herself, laboriously making the letters march straight along the ruled lines.
Dear Husband,
I hope this finds you in good health. I am happy and well, staying with our dear friends the Hydes. I think I have found us a house and land, as you asked me to do. I think you will be very pleased with it. Mr Hyde has spoken to the squire who is selling up owing to ill health and has no son to come after him, and he says that he is asking a fair price.
I will go no further until I have your instructions, but perhaps you will come and see the house and land very soon. Mr and Mrs Hyde send you their good wishes and this basket of early salad leaves. Lady Robsart tells me we have eighty lambs born this year at Stanfield, our best ever year. I hope you will come soon.
Your devoted wife
Amy Dudley
PS I do hope you will come soon, husband
Amy walked to church across the park with Mrs Oddingsell, over the village green through the lych gate into the churchyard and then into the cool, changeless gloom of the parish church.
Yet, it was not changeless, it was strangely changed. Amy looked around and saw a new great brass lectern at the head of the aisle and the Bible spread out on it, wide open as if anyone could be allowed to read it. The altar, where it was usually kept, was conspicuously empty. Amy and Lizzie Oddingsell exchanged one silent look and shut themselves into the Hyde family pew. The service proceeded in English, not the more familiar Latin, following King Edward’s prayer book rather than the beloved Mass. Amy bowed her head over the new words and tried to feel the presence of God, even though his church was changed, and the language was changed, and the Host was hidden.
It came to the moment for the priest to pray for the queen, and he did so, his voice shaking only a little, but when it came for him to pray for their beloved bishop, Thomas Goldwell, the tears in his voice stopped him from speaking altogether and he fell silent. The clerk finished the prayer for him and the service went on, ending with the usual bidding prayer and blessing.
‘You go on,’ Amy whispered to her friend. ‘I want to pray for a moment.’
She waited until the church was empty, and then she came from the Hyde pew. The priest was on his knees at the rood screen, Amy quietly went and knelt beside him.
‘Father?’
He turned his head. ‘Daughter?’
‘Is there something wrong?’
He nodded. His head bowed low as if he were ashamed. ‘They are saying that our Bishop Thomas is not our bishop at all.’
‘How is this?’ she asked.
‘They are saying that the queen has not appointed him to Oxford, and yet he is no longer Bishop of St Asaph. They are saying that he is betwixt and between, that he belongs nowhere, is bishop of nothing.’
‘Why would they say such a thing?’ she demanded. ‘The
y must know he is a good and holy man, and he left St Asaph to come to Oxford. He is appointed by the Pope.’
‘You should know as well as I,’ he said wearily. ‘Your husband knows how this court works.’
‘He does not … confide in me,’ she said, picking the right word carefully. ‘Not about court matters.’
‘They know our bishop is a man faithful till death,’ the priest said sadly. ‘They know he was Cardinal Pole’s dearest friend, was at his deathbed, he gave him the last sacraments. They know he will not turn his coat to please this queen. He would not dishonour the Host as he is ordered to do. I think they will first strip him of his Holy Office, by this sleight of hand, and then murder him.’
Amy gasped. ‘Not again,’ she said. ‘Not more killing. Not another Thomas More!’
‘He has been ordered to appear before the queen. I am afraid it is to go to his death.’
Amy nodded, white-faced.
‘Lady Dudley, your husband is spoken of as one of the greatest men at court. Can you ask him to intercede for our bishop? I swear Father Thomas has never spoken a word against the accession of the queen, never a word against her as queen. He has only spoken out, as God has commanded him to do, in defence of our Holy Church.’
‘I cannot,’ she said simply. ‘Father, forgive me, God forgive me, but I cannot. I have no influence. My husband does not take my advice on court matters, on policy. He does not even know I think on such matters! I cannot advise him, and he would not listen to me.’
‘Then I will pray for you, that he turns to you,’ the priest said gently. ‘And if God moves him to listen, then, daughter: you speak. This is the life of our bishop at stake.’
Amy bowed her head. ‘I will do what I can,’ she promised without much hope.
‘God bless you child, and guide you.’
Robert’s clerk handed him Amy’s letter on the afternoon after his investiture as a knight of the garter. Robert had just hung the blue silk of the garter over the back of a chair and stepped back to admire it. Then he pulled on a new doublet, scanned the letter swiftly, and handed it back.
‘Write her that I am busy now, but I will come as soon as I can,’ he said as he opened the door. His hand on the latch, he realised that the ill-formed letters were Amy’s own hand, and that she must have dedicated hours to writing to him.
‘Tell her that I am very glad she wrote to me herself,’ he said. ‘And send her a small purse of money to buy gloves or something she wants.’
He paused, with a nagging sense that he should do more; but then he heard the herald’s trumpet sound for the jousting and there was no time. ‘Tell her I’ll come at once,’ he said, and turned and ran lightly downstairs to the stable yard.
The joust had all the pageantry and colour that Elizabeth loved, with knights in disguise singing her praises, and composing extempore verses. The ladies gave out favours and the knights wore their ladies’ colours over their heart. The queen was wearing one glove of white silk and holding the other in her hand, when she leaned forward to wish Sir Robert the best of fortune as he came to the royal box to look up at her, high above him, and pay his respects.
Accidentally, as she leaned forward, the glove slipped through her fingers, and it fell. At once, almost quicker than anyone could see, he had spurred his horse on, the great warhorse wheeled, responsive at once, and he caught the glove in mid-air before it fell to the ground.
‘Thank you!’ Elizabeth called. She nodded to a pageboy. ‘Fetch my glove from Sir Robert.’
With one hand holding back the curvetting big horse, he raised his visor with his other hand and put the glove to his lips.
Elizabeth, her colour rising, watched him kiss her glove, did not demand its return, did not laugh away the gesture as part of the jousting courtesies.
‘May I not keep it?’ he asked.
She recovered herself a little. ‘Since you so cleverly caught it,’ she said lightly.
Robert brought his horse a little closer. ‘I thank you, my queen, for dropping it for me.’
‘I dropped it by accident,’ she said.
‘I caught it by intent,’ he replied, his dark eyes gleaming at her, and tucked it carefully inside his breastplate, wheeled his horse around and rode down to the end of the lists.
They jousted all afternoon in the hot April sunshine and when the evening came the queen invited all her special guests on to the river for an evening sail in the barges. Londoners, who had expected this end to the day, had begged and borrowed and hired boats in their thousands, and the river was as crowded as a market place with boats and barges flying gaily coloured pennants and streamers, and every third craft with a singer or a lute player on board so that haunting tunes drifted across the water from one boat to another.
Robert and Elizabeth were in the queen’s barge with Catherine and Sir Francis Knollys, Lady Mary Sidney and her husband, Sir Henry Sidney, a couple of the queen’s other ladies, Laetitia Knollys and another maid of honour.
A musicians’ barge rowed beside them and the lingering notes of love songs drifted across the water, as the rowers kept pace to the gentle beat of a drum. The sun, setting among clouds of rose and gold, laid a path across the darkening Thames as if it would lead them all the way inland to the very heart of England.
Elizabeth leaned on the gold-leafed railing of the barge and looked out at the lapping waters of the river, and the panorama of the pleasure boats keeping pace with her own, at the bobbing lanterns which illuminated their own reflections in the water. Robert joined her and they stood side by side for a long while, watching the river in silence.
‘You know, this has been the most perfect day of my life,’ Elizabeth said quietly to Robert.
For a moment the constant erotic tension between them was eased. Robert smiled at her, the affectionate smile of an old friend. ‘I am glad,’ he said simply. ‘I would wish you many more such days, Elizabeth. You have been generous to me and I thank you.’
She turned and smiled at him, their faces so close that his breath stirred a strand of hair that had escaped from her hood.
‘You still have my glove,’ she whispered.
‘You have my heart.’
— Generous indeed — William Cecil said drily to himself, as the court rode out on May Day morning to visit Robert Dudley in his new home of the Dairy House at Kew, an enchantingly pretty place built at the very edge of the park, just ten minutes’ walk from the palace. A flight of grand white stone steps led to a double-height arched double door, framed by two windows. Inside, a great hall gave way to small, intimate retiring rooms that overlooked the gardens on each side. A hedge bordered the front of the house with two perfectly pruned trees as round as plums, on sentinel each side.
Robert Dudley greeted the small party at the front door and led them straight through the house to the pretty walled garden at the back. It was planted partly with flowers and partly as an orchard, very much in the new fashion of making a garden appear as much as possible like a flowery mead. A table was spread with a white linen cloth and a breakfast was ready for the queen. In a typical Dudley conceit, all the servants were dressed as milkmaids or shepherds, and there was a little flock of lambs, absurdly dyed the Tudor colours of green and white, gambolling under the blossom in the apple orchard.
Elizabeth clapped her hands in delight at the sight of it all.
‘Oh, Robert, this is exquisite!’
‘I thought you would like to be a simple country girl for the day,’ he said quietly into her ear.
She turned to him. ‘Did you? Why?’
He shrugged. ‘A crown is a weight as well as an honour. The people who flock about you all the time always take from you; they never give. I wanted you to have a day that was filled with pleasure and laughter, a day for a pretty girl; not an overburdened queen.’
She nodded. ‘You understand. They want so much of me,’ she said resentfully.
‘And these new suitors are the worst,’ he said. ‘The two Hapsburg duk
es, who want your glory to hitch them up from poor dukes in Austria to King of England in one great leap! Or the Earl of Arran, who wants to drag you into war with Scotland! They offer you nothing, and expect everything in return.’
Elizabeth frowned, and for a moment he was afraid he had gone too far. Then she said, ‘All they offer me is trouble, but what they want from me is everything that I am.’
‘They want nothing of you,’ he corrected her. ‘Not the real you. They want the crown or the throne or the heir that you might give them. But they are counterfeit suitors, false gold, they do not know you, or love you as I …’ He broke off.
She leaned forward, she could feel his warm breath on her face and he saw her breathe in with him.
‘You?’ she prompted.
‘As I do,’ he whispered very low.
‘Are we going to eat?’ Cecil demanded plaintively, from the group waiting behind them. ‘I am weak with hunger. Sir Robert, you are a very Tantalus to spread a feast before us but never to bid us to dine.’
Robert laughed and turned away from the queen, who took a moment to recover her sense of the others, of the eyes upon them, of the tables laid with the snowy cloths in the sunshine-filled orchard. ‘Please …’ he said, gesturing like a grand lord that they should take their places.
They sat down to a breakfast that was as sophisticated as an Italian banquet but served with the stylish insouciance that was Dudley’s signature, and then, when the meal was ended and the sugared plums were on the table, the shepherds and the milkmaids performed a country dance, and sang a song in praise of the shepherdess queen. A small boy, blond and cherubic, stepped forward and recited a poem to Elizabeth, Queen of all the Shepherds and Shepherdesses, and presented her with a crown of may, and a peeled wand of willow, and then a band of musicians, uncomfortably hidden in the branches of the apple trees, played an opening chord and Robert offered Elizabeth his hand and led her out in a country dance, a May Day dance on this very day for courtship, when tradition had it that even the birds were marrying.
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Page 73