Queen of This Realm

by Jean Plaidy

  The frivolous side of me enjoyed the situation immensely while the more sober side looked on indulgently.

  Robert was essentially a very proud man and I would not have felt so favorable toward him if he had not been. He was frustrated because of his marriage and certainly believed that if he had been free I would have married him…a matter of which I was not entirely sure myself. When he saw me spreading my smiles between Arundel and Pickering he pretended not to notice and when I spoke to him there was a distinct coolness in his voice. He was polite and perfectly proper so there was nothing for which I could reprove him. It was just those ardent glances of love and tenderness which I missed—and I was astonished to discover how affected I could be by his seeming indifference. It was assumed of course, but it did show that he was hurt.

  Philip of Spain had turned from me. Would Robert? But Philip had never loved me—only my crown. I had convinced myself that it was different with Robert.

  The situation was becoming intolerable. There were others present all the time and I could not speak to Robert as I wished to with people eavesdropping—as they always did on my conversations—and they were particularly eager to do so when I was talking with Robert.

  So I wanted to speak to him privately and told Kat to bring him to my apartment. Kat was shocked.

  “But, my love, you cannot do that,” she said.

  “Since when has Kat Ashley seen fit to instruct the Queen?” I asked.

  “Oh, we are Her Majesty today, are we?”

  “Today and always,” I reminded her, “and don't forget it, unless…”

  “Unless I want my head to part company with my body? But listen, my dearest, there are watchers, you know.”

  “I must speak to him,” I said.

  She nodded. “He is a lovely gentleman and I know Your Majesty's feeling for him and his for you. 'Tis a pity he has a wife living… somewhere in Oxfordshire I believe it to be.”

  “Never mind where it is,” I said. “Bring him.”

  So he came.

  When we were alone together I gave him my hand to kiss.

  “Robert,” I said, “you have been somewhat sullen of late, and I like not sullen men and women about me.”

  “I have had good cause,” he said sharply.

  “Indeed. In what way?”

  “I think Your Majesty knows full well. Arundel and Pickering…My God, you could not so demean yourself.”

  “Pray do not take the Lord's name in vain in my presence, Lord Dudley.”

  “Madam, I will state my case.” He took both my hands and drew me toward him. I was too astonished—and delighted—to protest. Gone was the deferential Master of Horse; here was the passionate lover determined not to be denied.

  I said: “State your case then, sir.”

  “I love you, as you know I do. I have put myself at your service and you spurn me.”

  “Spurn you! Have I not made you my Master of Horse?”

  “It is not good enough.”

  “You forget to whom you speak.”

  “I speak to my beautiful Elizabeth whom I love. Whether she be Queen or not is no matter to me.”

  “Show more respect for my crown, I beg you, Lord Robert.”

  “I cannot think of your crown, but only of my love for you.”

  Then he kissed me in a practiced manner which reminded me of Sir Thomas Seymour. There was a similarity between those two men. Perhaps that was why I was almost ready to submit to both of them. Almost. But I was stronger in my determination to resist now than I had been in my younger days. Robert was the most fascinating man I had ever known but I would not allow him to become my lover. The sexual act was a symbol of domination on the part of the male, I had always thought, and I had no intention of being dominated for one moment even by the most attractive man I had ever known.

  I said: “Robert… dear Robin… you know my regard for you.”

  “I know it and I will kill Pickering or Arundel if they dare take liberties.”

  “Do you think I would allow any to take liberties with me… save one?”

  “Elizabeth…my love… whom I have loved all my life… from the time when we were children and danced together. Do you remember? You noticed me then.”

  “I must always notice you, Robin. You are a very noticeable gentleman.”

  “You love me, I know. Do you think I am not aware of it? Even when we were in the Tower we thought of each other, did we not?”

  “Yes, Robert, we did.”

  “And was I not prepared to lay whatever I had at your feet?”

  “So you said.”

  “And you take up this coquettish stance with Arundel and Pickering.”

  “I am the Queen, Robert. I may do as I wish.”

  “It is more than I can endure.”

  “Why so? It is only if I agreed to marry either of them that you should feel these emotions.”

  “So you will not marry one of them!”

  I reached up to touch his hair. It was a long way and I had to stand on tiptoe, for although I was not small in stature he was very tall.

  “You know full well that I will not marry either of them.”

  “They are urging you.”

  “I am being urged all the time.”

  “Philip has become affianced to France. You have refused Eric of Sweden and the Archduke Charles.”

  “Indeed I have.”

  “Is it because you love someone else?”

  “And if I do?”

  “I must know.”

  “Are you by any chance referring to Lord Robert Dudley? And if you are how could he be a suitor for my hand? Have you forgotten that he has a wife tucked away somewhere in the country?”

  “Life has been very cruel to me,” he said. “Rather has life been good to you. Just think if you had not made that marriage when you did, you would be a headless corpse, for almost certainly you would have been the one your ambitious father married to Lady Jane Grey.”

  He looked at me helplessly.

  I said: “There is only one course open to you, my lord. You must be a good husband to Mistress Amy.”

  “Elizabeth!” He caught my hands and drew me toward him. “She is sick. I do not think she will live long.”

  My heart was beating very fast. “Is that true?” I said quietly.

  “True. I swear it. It could well be that within a few months I could be… free.”

  I was shaken. When he kissed me I wanted him to go on doing so. I wanted him to talk of his devotion, his unrestrained passion. Always between us had been the figure of his wife—Amy, the girl in the country who made it safe for me to dally with Robert Dudley. But if she were no longer there…

  It was a dazzling possibility. The frivolous side of my nature wanted him free. The serious side was not so sure.

  He looked at me eagerly and I was enchanted to see his devotion to me and I smiled at him when he said: “If …” And I knew he believed that if he were a free man I would marry him.

  WHEN ROBERT SAID that his wife was ill he had shaken me more than I would admit to myself. I had to know more about her and his matrimonial situation. I couldn't ask him, so I set Kat to discover. She already knew a good deal. Since he had become such a favorite of mine, there was a great deal of gossip about him.

  His grandfather had been that Edmund Dudley, statesman and lawyer, who had found favor with my grandfather King Henry VII because of his clever ways with finance, and who had been beheaded by my father Henry VIII when he came to the throne as a sop to the people who blamed Edmund Dudley, with Empson, for the heavy taxes they had had to pay. Robert's father was, of course, John Dudley, Duke of Northumberland, who had tried to set Lady Jane Grey on the throne after she had married his son Guildford, and had died on the scaffold. What did Robert feel about having lost his grandfather, his father and his brother to the headsman? That grisly fact must have made him anxious at times, though he never showed it. Robert had an enduring faith in himself and he was determined to
marry me. I saw that in his eyes and my desire wavered considerably. There were times when I thought of being married to Robert, and then I said to myself: If he were free, I believe I would. But that other side of me was always there warning me: You would never be completely Queen, if you set up a man beside you. He would become the King. He would oppose your wishes, enforce his will on you, try to subdue you to his desires with soft caresses and with blandishments. No, I must not marry… not even Robert. Yet if he were free… But he was not free.

  Kat was indefatigable in her search for information. I picked it up from others, too. Robert Dudley was the most talked-of man in England at that time—far more so than Arundel or Pickering had ever been, although courtiers were still taking bets on those two. I had been unable to hide my feelings for Robert and of course they were much discussed throughout the Court.

  What I learned was that Robert's father, the Earl of Warwick, as he had been then, had gone as General of the King's army to Norfolk to suppress a rebellion of the peasants there. This he had done very successfully, much to the joy of the landowners in that part of the country because the rising had concerned the enclosures of land. It was while he was there that John Dudley had been entertained by one of those landowners, Sir John Robsart who had a daughter, Amy; and although he had several stepchildren, for he had married a widow, Amy was the only child Robsart had fathered and was his sole heiress.

  Heiress though she might be, she would not be considered a suitable match for a Dudley. John Dudley, although not at that time Duke of Northumberland and Protector of England, was a man of considerable importance. Robert was not much more than sixteen and he fell in love with Amy and she, naturally enough, with him.

  Why John Dudley agreed to the marriage I cannot imagine, but he had several sons and Robert was the fifth; so he probably thought that the Robsarts were rich enough. Whatever the case, Robert was married. Amy was a quiet little country girl and I can imagine how quickly his infatuation for her began to fade, and when his father's power began to increase rapidly, he must have realized how hasty he had been.

  With Edward Seymour beheaded, John Dudley assumed the title of Duke of Northumberland. His ambition was boundless. A crown for one of his sons. Poor Guildford! He was the only unmarried one left. Oh, how easily it could have been Robert! Often I thought of that and I have no doubt he did also.

  Jane Grey's brief glory was over, Mary on the throne, Northumberland and Guildford beheaded and Robert in the Tower under sentence of death. Such a tragic sequence of events should have made Robert cautious but I saw little of caution in my bold admirer.

  One of his sisters, Lady Mary Sidney, was now serving in my bedchamber. Robert had asked me to give her the post and of course I had agreed; and no sooner did I meet Mary than I liked her. They had great charm, those Dudleys. From Mary I learned a great deal about Robert. He was the most outstanding of all her brothers—alas all dead now except Ambrose. She did not like to talk of Guildford who had died so tragically. “Our father was too ambitious,” she said sadly, “and ambition can lead men into deadly traps.”

  I agreed with her and in any case I did not want to talk of Guildford. My interest was all for Robert.

  “No one could compare with Robert,” she told me. “He excelled at all games; he could ride faster than any. I have never seen anyone manage a horse as he does.”

  “Very becoming in the Queen's horsemaster,” I said.

  She looked at me wistfully. “I believe Your Majesty has as great a regard for him as I have.”

  “Lord Robert is a fine man,” I said, and closed the conversation. I did not want to betray my feelings too strongly. But need I have worried? Didn't everyone know how I felt about Robert?

  The whole Court was saying that there would be no need to look very far for the Queen's husband if Lord Robert had not already a wife.

  But while he had a wife, marriage was impossible and this all-absorbing game of courtship could go on.

  There were times when I wanted to show him how much I understood his frustration. I took a great delight in pleasing him. I wanted him to outshine every other man at Court, which he did naturally, but I wanted him to be the richest and the most powerful… under me, of course. When the lovely old Dairy House at Kew was available, I bestowed it on him; I gave him monastery lands and a much coveted license to export wool. I also invested him with the Order of the Garter.

  Cecil asked me if I was not showing too obvious favor to Lord Robert Dudley, and I told him sharply that I would bestow favors where I wished.

  He lifted his shoulders in some exasperation and I believed he was assuring himself that once I had been persuaded to take the sensible course and marry, Robert Dudley would fade into the background. As if Robert would ever allow that—or that I would, for that matter.

  I was in love, I suppose. I could not stop myself talking about him. I arranged jousts so that he could excel and I would tensely watch his performance, knowing that as many eyes were turned toward me as to the jousters.

  I heard it said that the Tudors formed fierce attachments, and thus my father had been when he was enamored of my mother.

  Cecil was growing more and more restive. He said there were dangerous rumors abroad concerning my relationship with Lord Robert.

  “There will always be rumors about monarchs, Master Cecil,” I said.

  “Yes, Madam,” was the reply, “but these would appear to have some foundation in truth.”

  “What do you imply?” I demanded. “By Your Grace's conduct and that of Lord Robert it might seem that a stronger relationship exists between you than is fitting for you both.”

  “People are jealous of him, Cecil. When a man is gifted and handsome beyond all others, that is often the case.”

  “And when the Queen takes no pains to hide her feelings for him, Madam, what can one expect? I would implore Your Majesty to take care.”

  “Have no fear, my friend, I shall take care.”

  It was from Kat that I heard most of the new rumors. Perhaps others were afraid to tell me, and when Kat began to be worried I, too, felt twinges of uneasiness. Kat was a great lover and purveyor of gossip; yet even she realized that the rumors were going too far.

  “My dear lady,” she whispered, “I am afraid. They are saying dreadful things of you and Lord Robert.”

  “What?” I demanded.

  She turned away and did not want to tell me but I pinched her arm until she squealed with pain. “Tell me,” I insisted.

  “I dursn't,” she replied. “Idiot!” I said. “Do you think I can't guess? They are saying he is my lover, are they not?”

  She nodded.

  “They will always say such things.”

  “It is the rumors, my lady, wicked rumors… lies. There was old Anne Dowe of Brentwood. She walks the roads and learns much, she said, and she is believed to be a wise woman.”

  “Well let us hear of this wisdom.”

  “She has said that you and Lord Robert play legerdemain together.”

  I burst out laughing. “And because an old tramp says these things, should I care?”

  “You should care, my lady, for what old tramps say one day, merchants will say the next, and such tales spread like wildfire through the land. That is not all. Someone said that my Lord Robert gave you a very fine petticoat and she cried out in the company of several: ‘It is not a petticoat only that my Lord Robert gives the Queen. It is a child.' There were loud protests. ‘But the Queen has no child,' they said. And Mother Dowe answered: ‘If she has no child yet, Lord Robert has put one in the making.'”

  I felt the blood rush to my face. Although I was ready to accept Robert's passionate devotion and did not care who knew it existed, the thought of childbearing was repulsive to me. The very idea sickened me and it angered me that this was being said about me.

  Kat who perhaps knew me better than any understood this.

  She said gently: “You remember, my love, what they said of you and Thomas Seymour.�
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  “Yes, wild stories of a midwife's being taken to a house in the dead of night… blindfold. What wicked lies people make up about me.”

  “You are the Queen, my love. You should remember it. They are now talking of you and Lord Robert as they did of you and Thomas Seymour.”

  “And he lost his head,” I mused. “What has happened to this woman Dowe?”

  “She was taken into prison by the Sheriff of Donberry.”

  “She shall be released,” I said. “I will show the people in what contempt I hold such stories by not treating them seriously.”

  Kat nodded.

  “And by acting in a way not to give rise to such,” she added. At which I gave her a push which sent her sprawling. She picked herself up, ruefully shrugging her shoulders.

  “It is all such nonsense,” I said. “What opportunities would I have? I am watched night and day. Am I not surrounded by councilors … ladies of this and gentlemen of that? I have no chance of being other than I am— a chaste virgin. But, Kat Ashley, if ever I took it into my mind to change that state, I should be the one to decide, and no one in this realm would stop me.”

  Kat sank to her knees sobbing.

  “Oh, my dear Majesty,” she said, “take care, take care. Remember Thomas Seymour. I nearly died of fright then.”

  “Because they took you to the Tower and you betrayed me.”

  Her teeth were chattering. “Dearest, take care, take care. Men will be the death of you.”

  “No, Kat, I will be the death of them, but I shall be in command. It is different now. Get up, you idiot, and stop sniveling. There is no need to cry for me. Everything is changed. I am the Queen now. It is for me to say what shall be.”

  She got to her feet and fell into my arms still weeping. I laughed away her tears, but I did feel a twinge of uneasiness.

  WE RODE OUT to the hunt, Robert beside me. I told him how I felt about the rumors.

  He looked at me ardently and said: “It will not be much longer.”

  “There is too much talk. Robert, we must be more discreet. You must not be with me so much.”

  “Do you wish that?”

  “No, certainly not.”