The Virgin's Lover

by Philippa Gregory

  You are indeed, Cecil said to himself, returning the bow and making his way down the steps to where his short-backed horse was waiting for him, and his entourage was assembling. But why should you be so delighted that she is head of the church? What is it to you, you sly, unreliable, handsome coxcomb?

  She is to be the English Pope, Robert whispered to himself, strolling like a prince at leisure in the opposite direction. The soldiers at the end of the gallery threw open the double doors for him and Robert passed through. The intense charm of his smile made them duck their heads and shuffle their feet, but his smile was not for them. He was smiling at the exquisite irony of Cecil serving Robert, all unknowing. Cecil, the great fox, had fetched home a game bird, and laid it at Robert’s feet, as obedient as a Dudley spaniel.

  He has made her Pope in everything but name. She can grant a dispensation for a marriage, she can grant an annulment of a marriage, she can rule in favor of a divorce, Robert whispered to himself. He has no idea what he has done for me. By persuading those dull squires to make her supreme governor of the Church of England he has given her the power to grant a divorce. And who do we know who might benefit from that?

  Elizabeth was not thinking of her handsome Master of Horse. Elizabeth was in her presence chamber, admiring a portrait of Archduke Ferdinand, her ladies around her. From the ripple of approval as they noted the Hapsburg darkness of his eyes and the high fashion of his clothes Robert, entering the room at a leisurely stroll, understood that Elizabeth was continuing her public courtship of this latest suitor.

  “A handsome man,” he said, earning a smile from her. “And a good stance.”

  She took a step toward him, Robert, alert as a choreographer to every move of a dance, stood stock still and let her come to him.

  “You admire the archduke, Sir Robert?”

  “Certainly, I admire the portrait.”

  “It is a very good likeness,” the ambassador Count von Helfenstein said defensively. “The archduke has no vanity, he would not want a portrait to flatter or deceive.”

  Robert shrugged, smiling. “Of course not,” he said. He turned to Elizabeth. “But how could one choose a man from canvas and paint? You would never choose a horse like that.”

  “Yes; but an archduke is not a horse.”

  “Well, I would want to know how my horse would move, before I gave myself up to desire for him,” he said. “I would want to put him through his paces. I would want to know how he felt when I gentled him under my hand, smoothed his neck, touched him everywhere, behind the ears, on the lips, behind the legs. I would want to know how responsive he was when I was on him, when I had him between my legs. You know, I would even want to know the smell of him, the very scent of his sweat.”

  She gave a little gasp at the picture he was drawing for her, so much more vivid, so much more intimate, than the dull oil on canvas before them.

  “If I were you, I would choose a husband I knew,” he said quietly to her. “A man I had tested with my own eyes, with my own fingers, whose scent I liked. I would only marry a man I knew I could desire. A man I already desired.”

  “I am a maid,” she said, her voice a breath. “I desire no man.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth, you lie,” he whispered with a smile.

  Her eyes widened at his impertinence, but she did not check him. He took silence for encouragement, as he always would. “You lie: you do desire a man.”

  “Not one who is free to marry,” she shot back.

  He hesitated. “Would you want me to be free?”

  At once she half turned her head away from him and he saw that he had lost her to her habitual coquetry. “Oh, were we speaking of you?”

  Immediately, he let her go. “No. We are speaking of the archduke. And he is a handsome young man indeed.”

  “And agreeable,” the ambassador interposed, hearing only the tail of their low-voiced conversation. “A fine scholar. His English is all but perfect.”

  “I am sure,” Sir Robert replied. “Mine is remarkably good too.”

  Amy was blooming in the April weather. Every day she rode out with Lizzie Oddingsell or with Alice or William Hyde to look at land that might be bought, woods that might be felled to clear a space for a house, or farmhouses that might be rebuilt.

  “Will he not want something much grander than this?” William Hyde asked her one day as they were riding around an estate of two hundred acres with a pretty red-tiled farmhouse in the center.

  “We would rebuild the house, of course,” Amy said. “But we don’t need a great palace. He was very taken with my cousin’s house at Camberwell.”

  “Oh, a merchant’s house in the town, yes,” Mr. Hyde agreed. “But will he not want somewhere that he can entertain the queen when the court is on progress? A house where he can entertain the whole court? A big house, more like Hampton Court, or Richmond?”

  She looked quite shocked for a moment. “Oh, no,” she said. “He wants something that we would have as our home, that would feel like a proper home. Not a great big palace of a place. And surely the queen would stay at Oxford if she came to this part of the country?”

  “If she wanted to hunt?” Alice suggested. “He is her Master of Horse. Would he not want enough land for a great deer park?”

  Amy’s confident laugh rang out. “Ah, you would have me buy the New Forest!” she exclaimed. “No. What we want is a place like my home in Norfolk, but just a little bigger. Somewhere like Flitcham Hall that we nearly bought, just a little grander and bigger than that. Somewhere that we can add a wing and a gateway, so that it is a handsome house, he would not want anything mean, and with pleasure gardens and an orchard and fish ponds of course, and some pretty woods and some good rides, and the rest would be farmland and he will breed horses for the court. He spends all his time in palaces; he will want to come home to a house which feels like a home and not a great cathedral filled by a band of mummers, which is what the royal palaces are like.”

  “If you are sure it is what he wants, then we can ask them the price for this place,” William Hyde said cautiously, still unconvinced. “But perhaps we should write to him to make sure he does not want something more imposing, with more chambers, and more land.”

  “There is no need,” Amy said confidently. “I know what my husband wants. We have been waiting to make a home like this for years.”

  Robert Dudley was deep in planning the greatest court feast since the high point of the queen’s coronation. Ostensibly it was to honor St. George’s Day, the great day of English celebration that the Tudors had introduced to the court calendar. It would be the day that he and three other great noblemen accepted the Order of the Garter, the highest award of chivalry, from the queen’s hand. The order was given only to men who had excelled themselves in defense of the crown. The queen was awarding it to Robert Dudley; to her young kinsman Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk; to Sir William Parr, her late stepmother’s brother; and to the Earl of Rutland.

  There were those who suggested that Robert Dudley was an odd addition to this array of family, or senior councillors, and perhaps, since he had been part of the expedition that had lost Calais for England, he had not made a particularly dazzling defense of the realm.

  Also, said the gossips, planning a few processions could hardly qualify a man for the highest order of English chivalry, especially since his grandfather and father had been condemned traitors. How could a man like Robert Dudley have earned such exceptional honor? But no one said it very loud. And no one said it anywhere near the queen.

  There would be jousting all the afternoon, the knights would come into the jousting ring in costume and in disguises, they would recite witty and beautiful verses to explain their role. The theme of the feast was to be Arthurian.

  “Is it Camelot?” Sir Francis Knollys asked Robert with gentle irony, in the tilt yard, where he was supervising the flying of the flags with medieval crests. “Are we enchanted?”

  “I hope you will be enchanted,” Robert sa
id pleasantly.

  “Why Camelot, exactly?” Sir Francis was determinedly uncomprehending.

  Dudley dragged his eyes from the tilt yard which was being swatched in gold cloth, economically saved and reused from the coronation pageants. “Obvious.”

  “Not to me. Tell me,” Sir Francis pleaded.

  “Beautiful queen,” Robert said shortly, ticking off the elements on his long, slim fingers. “Perfect England. Unified under one magical monarch. No religious issues, no marriage issues, no bloody Scots. Camelot. Harmony. And the adoration of the Lady.”

  “The Lady?” Sir Francis queried, thinking of the shrines all around England to the Lady Mary, mother of Jesus, now slowly falling into disuse, as the country people were persuaded that what had been the core of their honest faith was error, even heresy.

  “The Lady. The queen. Elizabeth,” Robert replied. “The Queen of Our Hearts, the Queen of the Joust, in her summertime court, ruling forever. Hurrah.”

  “Hurrah,” Sir Francis chorused obediently. “But hurrah to what exactly? Unless to celebrate your ascent to the Order of the Garter, for which greatest congratulations.”

  Robert flushed slightly. “I thank you,” he said with simple dignity. “But it is not to celebrate my honor. It goes further, far beyond someone as humble as me, far beyond the noble lords, even.”

  “Goes?”

  “Out to the country. To the people. Every time we have a pageant or a day of festivities, it is copied, in every town and every village up and down the country. Don’t you think that giving them all the idea that the queen is a ruler as wonderful as Arthur reminds them that they should love and revere and defend her? Reminding them that she is young and beautiful and that her court is the most handsome of all of Europe doesn’t just play well in England; the word goes everywhere: to Paris, to Madrid, to Brussels. They have to admire her, so they have to recognize her power. It makes her as safe as Cecil’s treaty.”

  “I see you are a politician,” Sir Francis said. “And it is as we agreed. That she should be seen to be loveable so that she is beloved, so that they will keep her safe.”

  “Please God,” Robert assented, and then made a little irritated tut as a clumsy pageboy dropped his end of a bolt of cloth and it trailed on the tilt yard’s sandy floor. “Pick it up, lad! It’s getting dirty!”

  “And have you thought of her safety at this day?” Sir Francis confirmed. “Most of the people have heard now that the Pope has blessed an attack on her.”

  Dudley faced him. “I think of nothing but her safety,” he said flatly. “Night and day. I think of nothing but her. You will find no more faithful man in her service. I think of her as if my life depended on it. Indeed, my life does depend on it.”

  Sir Francis nodded. “I don’t doubt you,” he said honestly. “But these are anxious times. I know that Cecil has a spy network across all of Europe to catch anyone who might come to England to threaten her. But what of Englishmen? Men and women that have passed as our friends? People who might even now be thinking that it is their duty, their sacred duty, to assassinate her?”

  Robert squatted down and drew with his finger on the sandy floor of the jousting arena. “Royal entrance here. Only members of the court allowed in. Merchants, citizens of London, general gentry here: kept from her by the gentlemen pensioners. Apprentices here, farther back: since they are always the worst troublemakers. Country people, anyone who has come here without invitation, farther back still. At each corner an armed man. Cecil’s men to go among the crowds, watching. I have a few trusted men of my own who will pass around and keep their eyes open.”

  “But what about the threat from her friends? Gentry and nobility?” Sir Francis asked softly.

  Robert rose up and brushed off his hands. “Pray God that they all now understand that their loyalty is first to her, however they like to celebrate Mass.” He paused. “And, to tell you the truth, most of those that you would doubt are already being watched,” he volunteered.

  Sir Francis gave a sharp crack of laughter. “By your men?”

  “Mostly Cecil’s,” Robert said. “He has hundreds in his secret employ.”

  “Now there is a man I would not want for my enemy,” Sir Francis remarked cheerfully.

  “Only if you were certain you could win,” Robert replied smoothly. He glanced over his shoulder and saw a pageboy unrolling a pennant and hauling it up a pole. “You! Look at what you’re doing! That’s upside down!”

  “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 center 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 scrutinized 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 flavor 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 favor, 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?”

&
nbsp; “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 lifelong 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 toward 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.