The other ladies in the chamber leapt to their feet and cleared out of her way, spreading themselves against the wall, eyes down, hoping to be invisible, desperate to avoid Elizabeth’s fiery gaze.
‘Because he will be the death of you!’ Kat rose too, facing her young mistress, desperately earnest. ‘You cannot keep your throne and allow people to speak of you as they are doing. They say you are no better than a whore, Your Grace, God forgive me that I should say such a word to you. This is worse than it has ever been. Even with Lord Seymour …’
‘Enough!’ Elizabeth snapped. ‘And let me tell you something. I have never had a moment’s safety in my life, you know that, Kat. I have never had a moment’s joy. I have never had a man who loves me, nor a man that I could admire. In Sir Robert I have a great friend, the finest man I have ever known. I am honoured by his love, I will never be shamed by it.
‘And there is no shame in it. I know that he is a married man, I danced at his wedding, for God’s sake. I sleep in my bedchamber every night with guards on the door and a companion in my bed. You know that as well as I. If I was a fool and I wanted to take a lover – and I do not – then it would be impossible for me to do so. But if I wanted to, then who should deny me? Not you, Kat, not the Privy Council, and not the Commons of England. If I wanted a lover then why should I, as Queen of England, be denied what any goose-girl can have for the asking?’
Elizabeth was shouting her justification, quite beyond herself with rage. Kat Ashley, backed against the wood-panelled wall, was sick with shock. ‘Elizabeth, my princess, Your Grace,’ she whispered. ‘I just want you to have a care.’
Elizabeth whirled around and plumped down on her stool again, thrust her hairbrush at a white-faced Laetitia Knollys. ‘Well, I won’t,’ Elizabeth replied flatly.
That night she slipped through the secret doorway into Robert’s adjoining chamber. He was waiting for her, a warm fire in the grate, two chairs drawn up before it. His valet, Tamworth, had put out wine and little pastries for them, before leaving the room to stand guard outside the door.
Elizabeth, in her nightgown, slid into Robert’s arms and felt his warm kisses on her hair.
‘I had to wait forever,’ she whispered. ‘I was sleeping with Laetitia and she chattered and chattered and would not sleep.’
Resolutely he turned his mind from the picture of the exquisite young woman and his mistress in bed together, combing each other’s copper hair, their white nightgowns open at the neck. ‘I was afraid you could not come.’
‘I will always come to you. Whatever anyone says.’
‘What has anyone said?’
‘More scandal.’ She dismissed it with a shake of her head. ‘I can’t repeat it. It’s so vile.’
He seated her in the chair and gave her a glass of wine. ‘Don’t you long for us to be together openly?’ he asked softly. ‘I want to be able to tell everyone how much I adore you. I want to be able to defend you. I want you to be mine.’
‘How could it ever be?’
‘If we were to marry,’ he suggested quietly.
‘You are a married man,’ she said, so low that not even the little greyhound sitting at her feet could hear. But Robert heard, he saw the shape her lips made, he never took his eyes from her mouth.
‘Your father was a married man when he met your mother,’ he said gently. ‘And yet when he met her, the woman that he had to have, the woman that he knew was the great love of his life, he put his first wife aside.’
‘His first marriage was not valid,’ she responded instantly.
‘And nor is mine. I told you, Elizabeth, my love for Amy Robsart is dead, as is hers for me, and she means nothing to me. She lives apart from me now, and has done for years, of her own choice. I am free to love you. You can set me free, and then you shall see what we shall be for each other.’
‘I can set you free?’ she whispered.
‘You have the power. You are head of the church. You can grant me a divorce.’
She gasped. ‘I?’
Robert smiled at her. ‘Who else?’
He could see her brain working furiously. ‘You have been planning this?’
‘How could I plan such a thing? How could I dream that this would happen to us? Parliament made you supreme governor and gave you the powers of the Pope without a word from me. Now you have the power to annul my marriage, the Commons of England gave you that power, Elizabeth. You can free me, Elizabeth, as your father freed himself. You can free me to be your husband. We can be married.’
She closed her eyes so that he could not see the whirl of thoughts in her head, her immediate frightened rejection. ‘Kiss me,’ she said dreamily. ‘Oh, kiss me, my love.’
Thomas Blount was in Robert’s private chambers over the stables the very next morning, leaning against the door, cleaning his fingernails with a sharp knife, when the opposite door opened and Dudley came in from riding, a sheaf of farriers’ bills in his hand.
‘Thomas?’
‘My lord.’
‘News?’
‘The Earl of Arran, James Hamilton, has arrived and is in hiding.’
‘Arran?’ Dudley was genuinely astonished. ‘Here?’
‘Came into London three nights ago. Housed in some private rooms at Deptford.’
‘Good God! That was silently done. Who brought him in? Who pays his bills?’
‘Cecil, for the queen herself.’
‘She knows he is here?’
‘She commanded him. He is here at her invitation and request.’
Dudley swore briefly, and turned to the window overlooking the vegetable gardens where they stretched down to the river. ‘If it’s not one damned opportunity seeker, it is another. To what end? Do you know that?’
‘My intelligencer, who knows the maid where the noble gentleman is staying, says that he is to meet the queen privately, to see if they can agree, and then when they have terms, she will publicly announce his arrival, they will be betrothed, and he will march to Scotland to claim his throne. When he is King of Scotland he will return in triumph and marry her, uniting the two kingdoms.’
For a moment Dudley was so shocked that he could not speak. ‘And you are certain that this is the plan? You could be mistaken? This could be Cecil’s plan and the queen might know nothing of it.’
‘Perhaps. But my man is sure of it, and the maid seemed to think she had it right. She’s a whore as well as a maid and he was bragging to her when he was drunk. She is sure that the queen had consented.’
Dudley tossed him a purse of coins from a drawer in the desk. ‘Watch him, as you would watch your own baby,’ he said shortly. ‘Tell me when he sees the queen. I want to know every detail, I want to know every word, every whisper, every creak of the floorboard.’
‘He has seen her already,’ Blount said with a grimace. ‘He came here under cover of darkness last night and she saw him last night, after dinner, after she withdrew for bed.’
Dudley had a very vivid memory of the previous night. He had knelt at her bare feet and her hair had tumbled over his face as she leaned towards him, enfolding him in her arms. He had rubbed his face against her breasts and belly, warm and sweet-smelling through her linen.
‘Last night?’
‘So they say.’ Thomas Blount thought that he had never seen his master look so grim.
‘And we know nothing of what was said?’
‘I didn’t pick up the trail until this morning. I am sorry, my lord. Cecil’s men had him well hidden.’
‘Aye,’ Dudley said shortly. ‘He is the master of shadows. Well, watch Arran from now on, and keep me informed.’
He knew he should mind his temper and bite his tongue but his quick pride and quicker anger got the better of him. He flung open the door, leaving the papers blowing off his desk, and stormed out of his room and down the twisting private stairs to the garden where the court was watching a tennis match. The queen was in her chair at the side of the court, a golden awning over her head, her la
dies around her, watching two players jostle for the prize: a purse of gold coins.
Robert bowed and she smiled on him and gestured to him to come to sit at her side.
‘I must see you alone,’ he said abruptly.
At once she turned her head, took in the white line around his compressed lips. ‘Love, what is wrong?’
‘I have heard some news which has troubled me.’ He could hardly speak, he was so angry. ‘Just now. I must ask you if it is true.’
Elizabeth was too passionate to tell him to wait until the end of the tournament, even though there were only a few games left to be played. She rose to her feet and all the court rose too, the men on the court let the ball bounce off the roof and roll out of play. Everything was suspended, waiting for the queen.
‘Sir Robert would speak with me privately,’ she said. ‘We will walk alone in my privy garden. The rest of you can stay here and watch the tournament to the finish and …’ She glanced around. ‘Catherine can award the prize in my place.’
Catherine Knollys smiled at the honour, and curtseyed. Elizabeth led the way from the court and turned into her privy garden. The guards on the wooden door set into the grey stone wall leapt to attention, swung it open. ‘Let no-one else in,’ Elizabeth commanded them. ‘Sir Robert and I would be alone.’
The two men saluted and closed the door behind them. In the sunlit empty garden, Elizabeth turned to Robert. ‘Well, I think I have done enough to earn me another lecture from Kat on indiscretion. What is it?’
As she saw his dark expression the smile drained from her face. ‘Ah, love, don’t look like that, you are frightening me. What is it? What is wrong?’
‘The Earl of Arran,’ he said, his tone biting. ‘Is he in London?’
She turned her head this way and that, as if his glare was a beam of light shining on her. He knew her so well he could almost see the quick denials flying through her head. Then she realised she could not lie directly to him. ‘Yes,’ she said unwillingly. ‘He is in London.’
‘And you met with him last night?’
‘Yes.’
‘He came to you in secret, you met him alone?’
She nodded.
‘In your bedchamber?’
‘Only in my privy chamber. But, Robert …’
‘You spent the first part of the night with him and then came to me. All that you told me about having to wait for Lettice Knollys to fall asleep: all that was a lie. You had been with him.’
‘Robert, if you are thinking …’
‘I am thinking nothing,’ he said flatly. ‘I cannot bear what I might think. First Pickering, when my back is turned, and now Arran while we are lovers, declared lovers …’
She sank down on a circular seat built around a wide-trunked oak tree. Robert rested one boot on the seat beside her so that he towered over her. Pleadingly, she looked up at him.
‘Must I tell you the truth?’
‘Yes. But tell me everything, Elizabeth. I cannot be played with as a fool.’
She drew a breath. ‘It is a secret.’
He gritted his teeth. ‘Before God, Elizabeth, if you have promised yourself in marriage to him you will never see me again.’
‘I have not! I have not!’ she protested. ‘How could I? You know what you are to me! What we are to each other!’
‘I know what I feel when I hold you in my arms and I kiss your mouth and bite your neck,’ he said bitterly. ‘I don’t know what you feel when you meet another man just moments before you come to me, with a pack of lies in your mouth.’
‘I feel as if I am going mad!’ she cried out at him. ‘That is what I feel! I feel as if I am being torn apart! I feel as if you are driving me mad, I feel that I cannot stand another moment of it.’
Robert recoiled. ‘What?’
She was on her feet, squaring up to him like a fighter. ‘I have to play myself like a piece in a chess game,’ she panted. ‘I am my own pawn. I have to keep the Spanish on our side, I have to frighten the French, I have to persuade Arran to get himself up to Scotland and claim his own, and I have nothing to bring to bear on any of these but my own weight. All I can promise any of them is myself. And … and … and …’
‘And what?’
‘I am not my own!’
He was silenced. ‘You are not?’
Elizabeth gave a sobbing breath. ‘I am yours, heart and soul. God knows, as God is my witness, I am yours, Robert …’
He reached out for her, took her hands, started to draw her close.
‘But …’
He hesitated. ‘But what?’
‘I have to play them, Robert,’ she said. ‘I have to make them think that I will marry. I have to look as if I will take Archduke Ferdinand, I have to give Arran hope.’
‘And what d’you think happens to me?’ he asked her.
‘You?’
‘Yes. When you are known to be spending hours of time with Pickering, when the court is abuzz with the word that you will marry the archduke.’
‘What happens to you?’ She was genuinely puzzled.
‘Then my enemies mass against me. Your kinsman Norfolk, your advisor Cecil, Francis Bacon, his brother Nicholas, Catherine Knollys, Pickering, Arundel, they hunt in a pack like hounds waiting to bring down a stag. When you turn from me they know that their time has come. They will bring charges against me, pull me down, accuse me. You have raised me so high, Elizabeth, that I am envied now. The hour that you announce your betrothal to another man is the hour that I am ruined.’
She was aghast. ‘I did not know. You did not tell me.’
‘How should I tell you?’ he demanded. ‘I am not a child to run crying to my nurse because the other children threaten me. But it is true. The moment they know that you have turned from me to another man I am ruined or worse.’
‘Worse?’
‘Dead,’ he said shortly. ‘Every day I half expect to be dragged into some dark alley and knifed.’
She looked up at him, still clinging to his hands. ‘My love, you know I would do anything to make you safe and keep you safe.’
‘You cannot make me safe, unless you declare your love for me. Elizabeth, you know that I would do anything to love you and protect you. Marry me, for God’s sake, and let us have a child. Marriage and a son and heir will make us safer than any other way, and you will have me at your side forever. You need not play yourself like a pawn. You can be yourself, your dear, lovely self, and belong to no-one but me.’
Elizabeth twisted her hands from him and turned away. ‘Robert, I am so afraid. If the French come into England from Scotland they will march through the northern kingdoms as welcome friends. Where can I stop them? Who can stop the French army? Mary lost us Calais and they still curse her name. What will they say of me if I lose Berwick? Or Newcastle? Or York? What if I lose London itself?’
‘You won’t lose,’ he urged her. ‘Marry me and I shall take an army north for you. I have fought the French before. I don’t fear them. I shall be the man to fight for you, my love. You need not beg for help from others, I am yours, heart and soul. All you have to do is trust yourself to me.’
Her hood had fallen back, she took the thick tresses of hair at her temples in her fists and pulled them, as if she hoped that pain would steady her thoughts. She gave a shuddering sob. ‘Robert, I am so afraid, and I don’t know what to do. Cecil says one thing, and Norfolk another, and the Earl of Arran is nothing but a pretty boy! I had hopes of him until I met him last night; but he is a child dressing up as a soldier. He is not going to save me! The French are coming, there is no doubt that they are coming, and I have to find an army, and find a fortune, and find a man to fight for England and I don’t know how to do it, or who to trust.’
‘Me,’ Robert said instantly. Roughly he pulled her into his arms, overwhelming her protests with his weight and his strength. ‘Trust me. Declare your love for me, marry me, and we will fight this together. I am your champion, Elizabeth. I am your lover. I am your husband. Y
ou can trust no-one but me, and I swear I will keep you safe.’
She struggled in his grip, pulled her face free, he could only hear the word: ‘England?’
‘I will keep England safe for you, for me, and for our son,’ he swore. ‘I can do it for him, and I will do it for you.’
Amy, on the road again to Chislehurst, after a brief visit with Robert’s friends the Forsters at Cumnor Place, kept her rosary in her pocket and every time she had a jealous thought she put her hand to the beads and said a silent ‘Hail Mary’. Lizzie Oddingsell, watching her companion ride quietly through the dry August countryside at the end of a hard summer, wondered at the change in her. It was as if, under the burden of terrible uncertainty, she had grown from being a petulant child into a woman.
‘Are you well, Amy?’ she asked. ‘Not too tired? Not finding it too hot?’
Instinctively Amy’s hand went to her heart. ‘I am well,’ she said.
‘Do you have a pain in your breast?’ Elizabeth asked.
‘No. There is nothing wrong with me.’
‘If you feel at all ill, we could call in at London on the way and see his lordship’s physician.’
‘No!’ Amy said hastily. ‘I don’t want to go to London without my lord’s invitation. He said we were to go to Chislehurst, there is no need for us to go through London.’
‘I didn’t mean we should go to court.’
Amy flushed slightly. ‘I know you did not, Lizzie,’ she said. ‘I am sorry. It is just that …’ She broke off. ‘I believe that there is much talk in the country about Robert and the queen. I would not want him to think I was coming to London to spy on him. I would not want to look like a jealous wife.’
‘No-one could ever think you were that,’ Lizzie said warmly. ‘You are the most tender-hearted and forgiving wife a man could wish for.’
Amy turned her head away. ‘Certainly, I love him,’ she said in a very small voice. They rode on for a few more minutes. ‘And have you heard much gossip, Lizzie?’ she asked very quietly.
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