Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2

by Philippa Gregory

  The colour flooded into her cheeks. ‘Oh, Spirit! We are safe!’

  ‘We still have to face the French,’ he cautioned her. ‘But we need not fear the Spanish coming against us at the same time.’

  ‘And I need not marry the archduke!’ Elizabeth laughed merrily.

  Cecil checked.

  ‘Although I still expect to do so,’ she corrected herself hastily. ‘I have given my word, Cecil.’

  He nodded, knowing she was lying. ‘And so shall I write to Lord Grey to take Leith Castle at once?’

  He caught her for once in a confident mood. ‘Yes!’ she cried. ‘At last something is going well for us. Tell him to set the siege and win it at once!’

  Elizabeth’s bright, confident mood did not last long. The attack on Leith Castle in May failed miserably. The scaling ladders were too short and more than two thousand men died scrabbling against the castle walls, unable to get up or down, or fell wounded into the blood and mire below.

  The horror of the injury, illness, and death of her troops haunted Elizabeth as much as the humiliation of failing before the very windows of Mary of Guise. Some said that the stone-hearted Frenchwoman had looked out and laughed to see Englishmen spitted on lances at the top of their scaling ladders and falling down like shot doves.

  ‘They must come home!’ Elizabeth swore. ‘They are dying as they drown in the mud before her door. She is a witch, she has called down rain on them.’

  ‘They cannot come home,’ Cecil told her.

  Her nails shone with the frantic polishing of her fingers, her cuticles were pushed back till they were red and raw. ‘They must come home, we are fated to lose Scotland,’ she said. ‘How could the ladders be too short? Grey should be court-martialled. Norfolk should be recalled. My own uncle and a treacherous fool! A thousand men dead on the walls of Leith! They will call me a murderess, to send good men to their deaths for such folly.’

  ‘War always means death,’ Cecil said flatly. ‘We knew that before we started.’

  He checked himself. This passionate, fearful girl had never seen a battlefield, had never walked past wounded men groaning for water. A woman could not know what men endured, she could not rule as a king would rule. A woman could never learn the determination of a man made in the image of God.

  ‘You have to adopt the courage of a king,’ he said to her firmly. ‘Now more than ever. I know you fear that we are failing, but the side that wins in a war is often the one which has the most confidence. When you are at your most fearful, that is when you have to appear your bravest. Say whatever comes into your head, put up your chin and swear that you have the stomach of a man. Your sister could do it, I saw her turn the City of London around in a moment. You can do it too.’

  Elizabeth flared up. ‘Don’t name her to me! She had a husband to rule for her.’

  ‘Not then,’ he contradicted her. ‘Not when she faced the Wyatt rebels as they came right up to the City and camped at Lambeth. She was a woman alone then, she called herself the Virgin Queen and the London militia swore they would lay down their lives for her.’

  ‘Well, I cannot do it.’ She was wringing her hands. ‘I cannot find the courage. I cannot say such things and make men believe me.’

  Cecil took her hands and held them tight. ‘You have to,’ he said. ‘We have to go forward now because we cannot go back.’

  She looked pitifully at him. ‘What must we do? What can we do now? Surely it is over?’

  ‘Muster more troops, reinstate the siege,’ he said.

  ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I would put my own life on it.’

  Reluctantly, she nodded.

  ‘I have your permission to send out the orders?’ he pressed. ‘For more men, to put the siege back on Leith?’

  ‘Very well.’ She breathed the words like a coerced girl.

  Only Robert Dudley could comfort Elizabeth. They rode out less and less, she was too exhausted by sleepless nights of worry. Day flowed into night in the queen’s private rooms when she paced the floor till four in the morning and then fell into an exhausted dream-filled doze in the early afternoon. They closed the door of her privy chamber, defiant of the gossips, and he sat with her beside the fire in the cold grey afternoons. She took off her heavy jewel-encrusted hood and let down her hair and laid her head in his lap, and he stroked her long bronze locks until the strained, anxious look melted from her face and she sometimes closed her eyes and slept.

  Kat Ashley sat in the window seat for form’s sake but she kept her eyes fixed on her needlework or read a book, she never so much as glanced at the lovers as Robert nursed Elizabeth as tenderly as a mother. Kat knew that soon Elizabeth would collapse under the strain. She had watched Elizabeth through a dozen nervous illnesses. She was accustomed to examining Elizabeth’s slim fingers and wrists for any tell-tale signs of swelling which would show that her recurring disease of dropsy was about to exile her to bed. And Kat knew, as only Elizabeth’s closest friends knew, that nothing brought on her illness faster than fear.

  Outside the door, seated in the presence chamber trying to look as if nothing was wrong, Catherine Knollys, sewing a shirt for her husband, was acutely aware of the empty throne and the waiting court, of the whispers that the queen and Sir Robert had been locked up for half the day and would not come out till dinner time. Catherine kept her head up and her face blank, refusing to reply to people asking what her cousin the queen was doing alone with Sir Robert, refusing to hear the muttered comments.

  Mary Sidney, aghast at where her brother’s ambition was taking him, but unswerving in her family loyalty, dined with Catherine Knollys and walked with Kat Ashley, avoiding anyone who might question her as to what Robert Dudley thought he was doing.

  The Privy Council, the Lords, any man who was not on Dudley’s payroll, swore that someone would soon run the man through for dishonouring the queen and bringing her name into the gossip of every alehouse in the land. Some said that Thomas Howard, desperately fortifying castles along the northern border and trying to persuade men to enlist, had still found time to send an assassin south to court to kill Dudley and have done with him once and for all. No-one could deny that the world would be a better place if Dudley were to be gone. He endangered the realm more than the French. Locked up with the queen in her own rooms, whoever was in with them, whoever was on the door, was to bring the queen into fatal disrepute.

  But no-one could stop Dudley. When reproached by someone he trusted, like Sir Francis Knollys, he pointed out that the queen’s health would break under her anxiety if he did not comfort her. He reminded any loyal friends that the queen was a young woman all alone in the world. She had no father, no mother, no guardian. She had no-one to love her and care for her but himself, her old and trusted friend.

  To everyone else he merely gave his impertinent, dark-eyed smile and thanked them sarcastically for their concern for his well-being.

  Laetitia Knollys strolled into Cecil’s apartments and took a seat at his desk with all the dignity of a betrothed woman.

  ‘Yes?’ Cecil asked.

  ‘She wants him to negotiate a peace with the French,’ Laetitia remarked.

  Cecil hid his shock. ‘Are you sure?’

  ‘I am sure that she asked him.’ The young woman shrugged her slim shoulders. ‘I am sure that he said he would see what he could do. Whether she is of the same mind now, I couldn’t say. That was this morning and now it is past noon. When does she ever stay in the same mind for more than two hours?’

  ‘On what terms?’ Cecil asked, ignoring Laetitia’s impertinence.

  ‘That they can have Scotland if they will return Calais, and take her coat of arms from the Queen of Scots.’

  Cecil compressed his lips on any comment.

  ‘I thought you wouldn’t like it.’ Laetitia smiled. ‘A whole country in exchange for a city. Sometimes she acts as if she is going quite mad. She was crying and clinging to him and asking him to save England for her.’

  —
Oh God, and in front of a girl like you who would tell anyone. — ‘And he said?’

  ‘What he always says: that she is not to fear, that he will care for her, that he will arrange everything.’

  ‘He promised nothing specific? Nothing at once?’

  She smiled again. ‘He’s too clever for that. He knows she’ll change her mind in a moment.’

  ‘You were right to come and tell me,’ Cecil said. He reached into the drawer of the desk and, judging by touch, drew out one of the heavier purses. ‘For a gown.’

  ‘I thank you. It’s extraordinarily expensive, being the best-dressed woman at court.’

  ‘Does the queen not give you her old gowns?’ he asked, momentarily curious.

  Laetitia gleamed at him. ‘D’you think she’d risk a comparison?’ she asked mischievously. ‘When she can’t live without Robert Dudley? When she can’t bear him to even glance at another woman? I wouldn’t put me in one of her old gowns if I was her. I wouldn’t want to be compared if I were her.’

  Cecil, at the head of his spy ring, gathering gossip about the queen, hearing rumours that half the country thought her married to Dudley already and the other half thought her dishonoured, gathered threatening whispers against the pair as a spider collects the threads of its web and lays its long legs along them, alert for any tremor. He knew that there were tens of men who threatened to drag Dudley to his death, and swore to knife him, hundreds who said they would help, and thousands who would see it happen and not lift a finger to defend him.

  — Please God someone does it, and soon, and brings an end to this — Cecil whispered to himself, watching Elizabeth and Dudley dining in her rooms before half the court, but whispering together as if they were quite alone, his hand on her leg underneath the table, her eyes fixed on his.

  But even Cecil knew that Elizabeth could not rule without Dudley at her side. At this stage in her life – so young and surrounded by so many dangers – she had to have a friend. And although Cecil was willing to be at her side night and day, Elizabeth wanted a confidant: heart and soul. Only a man besottedly in love with her could satisfy Elizabeth’s hunger for reassurance, only a man publicly betraying his wife every moment of every day could satisfy Elizabeth’s ravenous vanity.

  ‘Sir Robert.’ Cecil bowed to Dudley as the younger man stepped down from the dais at the end of dinner.

  ‘I am just going to command the musicians, the queen wants to hear a tune I have composed for her,’ Sir Robert said negligently, unwilling to pause.

  ‘Then I won’t detain you,’ Cecil said. ‘Has the queen spoken to you about a peace with France at all?’

  Dudley smiled. ‘Not to any effect,’ he said. ‘We both know, sir, that it cannot be. I let her talk, it eases her fears, and then later I explain it to her.’

  ‘I am relieved,’ Cecil said politely. — You explain, do you? When you and yours know nothing but double-dealing and treason! — ‘Now, Sir Robert, I was drawing up a list of ambassadors to the courts of Europe. I thought we should have some fresh faces, once this war is won. I wondered if you would like to visit France? We could do with a trustworthy man in Paris and Sir Nicholas would like to stay home.’ He paused. ‘We would need a man to reconcile them to defeat. And if any man could turn the head of the Queen of France, and seduce her from her duty, it would be you.’

  Robert ignored the ambiguous compliment. ‘Have you spoken to the queen?’

  — No, — Cecil thought, — for I know what the answer would be. She cannot let you out of her sight. But if I can persuade you, then you would persuade her. And I could do with a handsome rogue like you to flirt with Mary, Queen of Scots, and spy for us. — Aloud, he said: ‘Not yet. I thought I would ask if it pleased you first.’

  Sir Robert gave his most seductive smile. ‘I think it may not,’ he said. ‘Between the two of us, Sir William, I think that by this time next year I will have another task in the kingdom.’

  ‘Oh?’ Cecil said. — What does he mean? — he thought rapidly. — He cannot mean my post? Does she mean to give him Ireland? Or, dear God, she would never put this puppy in charge of the north? —

  Sir Robert laughed delightedly at Cecil’s puzzled face. ‘I think you will find me in a very great position,’ he said quietly. ‘Perhaps the greatest in the land, Master Secretary, do you understand me? And if you stand my friend now, I will be your friend then. Do you understand me now?’

  And Cecil felt that he lost his balance, as if the floor had opened like a chasm beneath his feet. Finally, he did understand Sir Robert. ‘You think she will marry you?’ he whispered.

  Robert smiled, a young man in the confidence of his love. ‘For certain. If someone doesn’t kill me first.’

  Cecil delayed him with a touch to his sleeve. ‘You mean this? You have asked her and she has agreed?’ — Stay calm, she never agrees to marriage and means it. She never gives her word and keeps it. —

  ‘She asked me herself. It is agreed between us. She cannot bear the burden of the kingdom alone, and I love her and she loves me.’ For a moment the blaze of the Dudley ambition was softened in Robert’s face. ‘I do love her, you know, Cecil. More than you can imagine. I will make her happy. I will devote my life to making her happy.’

  — Aye, but it is not a matter of love — Cecil thought miserably. — She is not a milkmaid, you are not a shepherd boy. You are neither of you free to marry for love. She is Queen of England and you are a married man. If she goes on this way she will be queen in exile and you will be beheaded. — Aloud he said: ‘Is it firmly agreed between you?’

  ‘Only death can stop us.’ Dudley smiled.

  ‘Will you come for a ride?’ Lizzie Oddingsell invited Amy. ‘The daffodils are out by the river and they are a beautiful sight. I thought we could ride down and pick some.’

  ‘I’m tired,’ Amy said faintly.

  ‘You’ve not been out for days,’ Lizzie said.

  Amy found a thin smile. ‘I know, I am a very dull guest.’

  ‘It’s not that! My brother is concerned for your health. Would you like to see our family physician?’

  Amy put out her hand to her friend. ‘You know what is wrong with me. You know that there is no cure. Have you heard anything from the court?’

  The guilty evasive slide of Lizzie Oddingsell’s gaze told Amy everything.

  ‘She is not going to marry the archduke? They are together?’

  ‘Amy, people are speaking of their marriage as a certainty. Alice’s cousin, who goes to court, is sure of it. Perhaps you should consider what you will do when he forces a divorce on you.’

  Amy was silent, Mrs Oddingsell did not dare to say anything more.

  ‘I will talk to Father Wilson,’ Amy decided.

  ‘Do so!’ Mrs Oddingsell said, relieved of some of the moral burden of caring for Amy. ‘Shall I send for him?’

  ‘I’ll walk down to the church,’ Amy decided. ‘I’ll walk down and see him tomorrow morning.’

  The garden of the Hydes’ house backed on to the churchyard, it was a pleasant walk down the winding path through the daffodils to the lych gate, set into the garden wall. Amy opened the gate and went up the path to the church.

  Father Wilson was kneeling before the altar, but at the sound of the opening door, he rose to his feet and came down the aisle. When he saw Amy, he checked.

  ‘Lady Dudley.’

  ‘Father, I need to confess my sins and ask your advice.’

  ‘I am not supposed to hear you,’ he said. ‘You are ordered to pray directly to God.’

  Blindly, she looked around the church. The beautiful stained-glass windows that had cost the parish so dear were gone, the rood screen pulled down. ‘What has happened?’ she whispered.

  ‘They have taken the stained glass from the window, and the candles, and the cup and the rood screen.’

  ‘Why?’

  He shrugged. ‘They called them Popish entrapments for the soul.’

  ‘Can we talk here then?’ Amy ges
tured to the pew.

  ‘God will hear us here, as anywhere else,’ the priest assured her. ‘Let us kneel down and ask him for his help.’

  He rested his head in his hands and prayed for a moment very earnestly that he might find something to say which would comfort this young woman. Having heard some of the gossip from court he knew that the task was beyond his doing; she had been deserted. But God was merciful, perhaps something would come.

  Amy knelt with her face buried in her hands and then spoke quietly through the shield of her fingers. ‘My husband, Sir Robert, proposes to marry the queen,’ she said softly. ‘He tells me that it is her wish. He tells me that she can force a divorce upon me, that she is Pope in England today.’

  The priest nodded. ‘And what did you say, my child?’

  Amy sighed. ‘I am guilty of the sin of anger, and jealousy,’ she said. ‘I was vile and vicious, and I am ashamed of what I said and did.’

  ‘May God forgive you,’ the priest said gently. ‘I am sure you were in great pain.’

  She opened her eyes and shot him one dark look. ‘I am in such pain that I think I will die of it,’ she said simply. ‘I pray to God that he will release me from this pain and take me into his mercy.’

  ‘In his own time,’ the priest supplemented.

  ‘No; now,’ she said. ‘Every day, Father, every day is such a misery for me. I keep my eyes shut in the morning in the hope that I have died in the night, but every morning I see daylight and know that it is another day I have to get through.’