Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2

by Philippa Gregory

  He was dismounting from his horse, he greeted her with a cursory kiss on the cheek.

  ‘My lord,’ Amy said in greeting. ‘Are you unwell?’

  ‘No,’ he said shortly. Amy wanted to cling to him, to treasure his touch, but gently he put her aside. ‘Let me go, Amy, I am dirty.’

  ‘I don’t mind!’

  ‘But I do.’ He turned, his friend John Hayes was coming down the front steps of the house.

  ‘Sir Robert! I thought I heard horses!’

  Robert clapped John on the back. ‘No need to ask how you are,’ he said cheerfully. ‘You’re putting on weight, John. Obviously not hunting enough.’

  ‘But you look dreadful.’ His friend was concerned. ‘Are you sick, sir?’

  Robert shrugged. ‘I’ll tell you later.’

  ‘Court life?’ John said, guessing quickly.

  ‘It would be easier to dance the volta in hell than survive in London,’ Robert said precisely. ‘Between Her Grace, and Sir William Cecil, and the women of the queen’s chamber, and the Privy Council, my head is spinning from dawn when I get up to check the stables, till midnight when I can finally leave the court and go to bed.’

  ‘Come and have a glass of ale,’ John offered. ‘Tell me all about it.’

  ‘I stink of horse,’ Robert said.

  ‘Oh, who cares for that?’

  The two men turned and went towards the house. Amy was about to follow them and then she dropped back and let them go on. She thought that perhaps her husband would be relieved if he could talk alone with his friend, and would perhaps be easier, not constrained by her presence. But she crept after them and sat on the wooden chair in the hall, outside the closed door, so that she should be there for him when he came out.

  The ale helped Robert’s bad temper, and then a wash in hot, scented water and a change of clothes. A good dinner completed the change; Mrs Minchin was a famously lavish housekeeper. By six in the evening when the four of them, Sir Robert, Amy, Lizzie Oddingsell and John Hayes, sat down to a game of cards, his lordship was restored to his usual sweet temper and his face was less drawn. By nightfall he was tipsy and Amy realised that she would get no sense from him that evening. They went to bed together, and she hoped that they would make love, but he merely turned away, heaved the covers high over his shoulders and fell into a deep sleep. Amy, lying awake in the darkness, did not think that she should wake him since he was tired, and in any case, she never initiated their lovemaking. She wanted him; but she did not know where to begin – his smooth unyielding back did not respond to her tentative touch. She turned away herself, and watched the moonlight coming through the slats of the shutters, listened to his heavy breathing, and remembered her duty before God to love her husband whatever the circumstances. She resolved to be a better wife to him in the morning.

  ‘Would you like to ride with me, Amy?’ Robert asked politely at breakfast. ‘I have to keep my hunter fit, but I shan’t go too far or too fast today.’

  ‘I should like to come,’ she said at once. ‘But don’t you think it will rain?’

  He was not listening, he had turned his head and ordered his manservant to get the horses ready.

  ‘I beg your pardon?’

  ‘I only said I was afraid it will rain,’ she repeated.

  ‘Then we will come home again.’

  Amy flushed, thinking that she had sounded like a fool.

  On the ride it was not much better. She could think of nothing to say but the most obvious banalities about the weather and the fields on either side of them, while he rode, his face dark, his eyes abstracted, his gaze fixed on the track ahead of them but seeing nothing.

  ‘Are you well, my lord?’ Amy asked quietly when they turned for home. ‘You do not seem yourself at all.’

  He looked at her as if he had forgotten that she was there. ‘Oh, Amy. Yes, I am well enough. A little troubled by events at court.’

  ‘What events?’

  He smiled as if he were being interrogated by a child. ‘Nothing for you to worry about.’

  ‘You can tell me,’ she assured him. ‘I am your wife, I want to know if something troubles you. Is it the queen?’

  ‘She is in great danger,’ he said. ‘Every day there is news of another plot against her. There never was a queen who was more loved by half the people and yet more hated by the others.’

  ‘So many people think she has no right to the throne,’ Amy remarked. ‘They say that since she was a bastard, it should have gone to Mary, Queen of Scots, and then the kingdoms would be united now, without a war, without the change to the church, without the trouble that Elizabeth brings.’

  Robert choked on his surprise. ‘Amy, whatever are you thinking? This is treason that you are speaking to me. Pray God you never say such a thing to anyone else. And you should never repeat it, even to me.’

  ‘It’s only the truth,’ Amy observed calmly.

  ‘She is the anointed Queen of England.’

  ‘Her own father declared her to be a bastard, and that was never revoked,’ Amy said reasonably enough. ‘She has not even revoked it herself.’

  ‘There is no doubt that she is his legitimate daughter,’ Robert said flatly.

  ‘Excuse me, husband, but there is every doubt,’ Amy said politely. ‘I don’t blame you for not wanting to see it, but facts are facts.’

  Robert was astounded by her confidence. ‘Good God, Amy, what has come over you? Who have you been talking to, who has filled your head with this nonsense?’

  ‘No-one, of course. Who do I ever see but your friends?’ she asked.

  For a moment, he thought she was being sarcastic and he looked sharply at her, but her face was serene, her smile as sweet as ever.

  ‘Amy, I am serious. There are men all round England with their tongues slit for less than you have said.’

  She nodded. ‘How cruel of her to torture innocent men for speaking nothing but the truth.’

  They rode for a moment in silence, Robert utterly baffled by the sudden uprising in his own household.

  ‘Have you always thought like this?’ he asked quietly. ‘Even though you have always known that I supported her? That I was proud to be her friend?’

  Amy nodded. ‘Always. I never thought her claim was the best.’

  ‘You have never said anything to me.’

  She shot him a little smile. ‘You never asked me.’

  ‘I would have been glad to know that I had a traitor in my household.’

  She gave a little laugh. ‘There was a time when you were the traitor and I was right-thinking. It is the times that have changed, not us.’

  ‘Yes, but a man likes to know if his wife is plotting treason.’

  ‘I have always thought that she was not the true heir; but I thought she was the best choice for the country, until now.’

  ‘Why, what has happened now?’ he demanded.

  ‘She is turning against the true religion, and supporting the Protestant rebels in Scotland,’ Amy said levelly. ‘She has imprisoned all the bishops, except those that have been forced into exile. There is no church any more, just frightened priests not knowing what they should do. It is an open attack on the religion of our country. What does she hope for? To make England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland all Protestant? To rival the Holy Father himself? To make a Holy Empire of her own? Does she want to be a Pope in petticoats? No wonder she does not marry. Who could bear such a wife as she would be?’

  ‘True religion?’ Robert exclaimed. ‘Amy, you have been a Protestant all your life. We were married by King Edward’s service in his presence. Who have you been talking with to get such ideas in your head?’

  She looked at him with her usual mildness. ‘I have been talking with no-one, Robert. And our household was Papist for all of Queen Mary’s years. I do think, you know. In the long hours that I spend alone, I have nothing to do but to think. And I travel around the country, and I see what Elizabeth and her servants are doing. I see the destruction o
f the monasteries and the poverty of the church lands. She is throwing hundreds into beggary, she is leaving the poor and sick without hospitals. Her coins are worth next to nothing, and her churches cannot even celebrate Mass. No-one who looked at England under Elizabeth could think of her as a good queen. All she has brought is trouble.’

  She paused, seeing his appalled expression. ‘I don’t talk like this to anyone else,’ she reassured him. ‘I thought it would be all right to share my thoughts with you. And I have wanted to speak to you about the Bishop of Oxford.’

  ‘The Bishop of Oxford can rot in hell!’ he burst out. ‘You cannot talk to me of these matters. It’s not fitting. You are a Protestant, Amy, like me. Born and bred. Like me.’

  ‘I was born a Catholic as you were, then I was a Protestant when King Edward was on the throne,’ she said calmly. ‘And then I was Roman Catholic when Queen Mary was on the throne. Changed and changed about. Just as you have been. And your father recanted his Protestantism and called it a great error, didn’t he? He blamed all the sorrows of the country on his heresy, those were his very words. We were all Catholics then. And now you want to be Protestant, and you want me to be Protestant, just because she is. Well, I am not.’

  At last he heard a note that gave him the key to her. ‘Ah, you are jealous of her.’

  Amy’s hand went to her pocket to touch the cool beads of her rosary. ‘No,’ she said steadily. ‘I have sworn I will not feel jealousy, not of any woman in the world, least of all her.’

  ‘You have always been a jealous woman,’ he said frankly. ‘It is your curse, Amy – and mine.’

  She shook her head. ‘I have broken my curse then, I will never be jealous again.’

  ‘It is your jealousy that leads you into these dangerous speculations. And all this theology is just a mask for your jealous hatred of her.’

  ‘Not so, my lord. I have sworn I will renounce jealousy.’

  ‘Oh, admit it,’ he said, smiling. ‘It is nothing but a woman’s spite.’

  She reined in her horse and looked at him steadily, so that he had to meet her eyes. ‘Why, what cause have I for jealousy?’ she demanded.

  For a moment Robert blustered, shifting in the saddle, his horse nervous under a tightened rein.

  ‘What cause have I?’ she demanded again.

  ‘You will have heard talk about her and me?’

  ‘Of course. I assume that all the country has heard it.’

  ‘That would make you jealous. It would make any woman jealous.’

  ‘Not if you can assure me that there is no foundation to it.’

  ‘You cannot think that she and I are lovers!’ He made it into a joke.

  Amy did not laugh, she did not even smile. ‘I will not think it, if you can assure me it is not true.’ In her pocket she was gripping tight on her rosary, it felt like a rope that might save her from drowning in the deeps of this dangerous conversation.

  ‘Amy, you cannot think that I am her lover and plotting to divorce you, or to murder you as the gossip mongers say!’

  Still she did not smile. ‘If you assure me that the rumours are false then I will not attend to them,’ she said steadily. ‘Of course I have heard them, and very vivid and unpleasant they are.’

  ‘They are most scurrilous and untrue,’ he said boldly. ‘And I would take it very badly in you, Amy, if you were to listen to them.’

  ‘I don’t listen to them, I listen to you. I am listening very carefully now. Can you swear on your honour that you are not in love with the queen and that you have never thought of a divorce?’

  ‘Why do you even ask me?’

  ‘Because I want to know. Do you want a divorce, Robert?’

  ‘Surely, you would never consent to a divorce if such a thing were ever proposed?’ he asked curiously.

  Amy’s eyes flew to his face and he saw her blench as if she were sickened. For a moment she was frozen on her horse before him, her mouth a little open as she gasped, and then, very slowly, she touched her horse with her little heel and preceded him down the track towards home.

  Robert followed her. ‘Amy …’

  She did not stop, nor turn her head. He realised that he had never before called her name without her immediate response. Amy always came when he called her, generally she was at his side long before he called her. It felt very strange and unnatural that little Amy Robsart should ride away from him with her face as white as death.

  ‘Amy …’

  Steadily she rode on, looking neither to right nor left, certainly not looking back to see if he was following. In silence, she rode all the way home and when she got to the stable yard she handed her reins to the groom and went into the house in silence.

  Robert hesitated, and then followed her up the stairs to their bedroom. He did not know how to manage this strange new Amy. She went into their room and closed the door; he waited in case he could hear the sound of her turning the key in the lock. If she barred the door against him he could be angry, if she locked him out he was within his legal rights to break down the door, he had a legal right to beat her – but she did not. She closed the door, she did not lock it. He went forward and opened the door, as was his right, and went in.

  She was seated at the window in her usual seat, looking out, as she so often looked out for him.

  ‘Amy,’ he said gently.

  She turned her head. ‘Robert, enough of this. I need to know the truth. I am sickened to my heart by lies and rumour. Do you want a divorce or not?’

  She was so calm that he felt, incredulously, a glimmer of hope. ‘Amy, what is in your mind?’

  ‘I want to know if you want to be released from our marriage,’ she said steadily. ‘I am perhaps not the wife you need, now that you are become such a great man. That has become clear to me over recent months.

  ‘And God has not blessed us with children yet,’ she added. ‘These alone might be reasons enough. But if half the gossip is true then it is possible that the queen would take you as her husband if you were free. No Dudley could resist such a temptation. Your father would have boiled his wife in oil for such a chance, and he adored her. So I ask you, please tell me honestly, my lord: do you want a divorce?’

  Slowly Robert realised what she was saying, slowly it dawned on him that she had been preparing herself for this, but instead of a sense of opportunity he felt rage and distress growing in him like a storm.

  ‘It’s too late now!’ he exploded. ‘My God! That you should say this to me now! It’s no good you coming to your senses now, after all these years, it’s too late. It’s too late for me!’

  Startled, Amy looked up at him, her face shocked at the suppressed violence in his voice. ‘What d’you mean?’

  ‘She has given me up,’ he cried, the truth bursting out of him in his agony. ‘She loved me and she knew it, she wanted to marry me and I her; but she has to have an ally for a war against France and she has given me up for the archduke or that puppy Arran.’

  There was an appalled silence. ‘Is that why you are here?’ she asked. ‘And why you are so grave and quiet?’

  He sank into the window seat and bowed his head, almost he felt he might weep like a woman. ‘Yes,’ he said shortly. ‘Because it is all over for me. She has told me she has to be released and I have let her go. There is nothing left for me but you; whether you are the right woman or not, whether we have children or not, whether we will waste the rest of our lives together, and die hating each other, or not.’

  He had his hand to his mouth, he closed his teeth on his knuckles, forcing any more words back into silence.

  ‘You are unhappy,’ she remarked.

  ‘I have never been in a worse case in all my life,’ he said shortly.

  She said nothing, and in a few moments Robert mastered himself, swallowing his grief, and raised his head to look at her.

  ‘Were you lovers?’ she asked very quietly.

  ‘What does it matter, now?’

  ‘But were you? You can tell me
the truth now, I think.’

  ‘Yes,’ he said dully. ‘We were lovers.’

  Amy rose and he looked up at her as she stood before him. Her face, against the brightness of the window, was in shadow. He could not see her expression. He could not tell what she was thinking. But her voice was as calm as ever.

  ‘Then I must tell you: you have made a very grave mistake, my lord. A mistake in my nature, and in what insults I will tolerate, a mistake in yourself and how you should live. You must be mad indeed if you make such a confession to me, hoping that I might sympathise. Me, of all women, who am most hurt by this; I, who know what it is to love without return. I, who know what it is to waste a life in loving.

  ‘You are a fool, Robert, and she is a whore indeed, as half the country thinks. She will have to invent another new religion entirely to justify the hurt that she has done to me, and the peril she has led you to. She has brought you to sin and danger, she has brought this country to the brink of ruin, to heartbreak and poverty, and she is only in the first year of her reign. What wickedness will she undertake before she is done?’

  Then she drew her skirts back from him as if she would not have him touch even the hem of her gown, and walked out of the room they had shared.

  The November mist was cold on the river. The queen, looking down on the shrouded Thames from the high windows of Whitehall, shivered and drew her furred gown a little closer around her.

  ‘Still a lot better than Woodstock.’ Kat Ashley smiled at her.

  Elizabeth made a face. ‘Better than arrest in the Tower,’ she said. ‘Better than a lot of places. But not better than midsummer. It’s freezing cold and deadly dull. Where is Sir Robert?’

  Kat did not smile. ‘Visiting his wife still, Princess.’

  Elizabeth hunched her shoulder. ‘There’s no need to look like that, Kat. I have a right to know where my Master of Horse is. And I have a right to expect him to attend court.’

  ‘And he has a right to see his wife,’ Kat said stoutly. ‘Letting him go was the best day’s work you ever did, Princess. I know it is painful for you, but …’