by Jane Feather
Joan’s lip trembled. Things had been better for her since Rosamund’s arrival and she had felt she was on the way to being accepted, but she should have known better than to have contradicted the group leaders by standing up for the outsider. Safety in this court lay both in numbers and the acceptance of one’s peers. Without them one was easy prey to malice and gossip. She stood awkwardly alone on the outskirts, then forlornly followed Rosamund out to the terrace, which basked in the warm sunshine.
Rosamund had spotted Will talking with the man she now knew as Anthony Babington. She crossed the terrace willing Will to turn and acknowledge her. However, Anthony Babington saw her first. He swept his hat with a flourish as he bowed. “Mistress Walsingham, I give you good day.”
Rosamund curtsied. It would seem that Master Babington had either forgotten or chosen to ignore the edge to their previous conversation about religion and power. “And I you, sir . . . Master Creighton.” She smiled at Will, who bowed his own greeting, the gravity of his countenance belied by the glint in his eye and the twitch of his lips.
“A beautiful day, Mistress Walsingham.”
“It is. I’ve a mind to stroll down to the river.” She gestured to the sweep of lawn leading down to the silver glimmer of water. “I sorely missed the opportunity to go by water to Greenwich with the court.”
“Then allow me to escort you, Mistress Walsingham.” Anthony offered his arm.
That was not quite what Rosamund had intended, however she could hardly refuse. She accepted the arm with a smile. “Do you accompany us, Master Creighton?”
“With alacrity, ma’am.” He fell in on her other side as they walked down the wide, shallow steps leading to the lawn. “I understand you have been unwell. You are better now, I trust?”
“Oh, yes, quite better, I thank you, sir. A day abed can be most restorative.”
“I’m sure it can,” Will agreed, a smile playing over his lips as he held out his hand to assist her down the last step onto the lawn. He invested the four words with so much undercurrent of meaning that Rosamund was hard-pressed to keep a straight face. She glanced at Babington to see if he had noticed anything, but his polite smile seemed preoccupied.
Joan stood on the terrace watching the three of them move away. Rosamund must have known she was there, and she had ignored her, too intent on keeping both her escorts to herself. It was unseemly and unfriendly, particularly when Joan had gone out of her way to introduce her to the younger members of the court who were not attendant upon the queen. She stood at the edge of the terrace watching them as they strolled to the river. Rosamund and Will were laughing, and Joan wished with all her heart that she had not introduced them. Will showed much more interest in Rosamund than he had ever shown in her, and it had been many weeks since Joan had decided that Will belonged to her, even if he didn’t as yet know it.
To Rosamund’s relief Anthony excused himself after a few minutes of strolling along the riverbank. “I am engaged to go coursing on the heath with some friends and they’ll be sorely put out if I keep them waiting. I beg your forgiveness, Mistress Walsingham.” His words were as flowery as the richly colored garlands embroidered on his sky blue doublet.
Rosamund decided to withhold judgment on Master Babington. Will had told her to steer clear of his company, a piece of advice he clearly didn’t take himself, and the ferocious intensity in Babington’s dark eyes made her uneasy. Sometimes he seemed to be ready to burst into flame even as the words that came out of his mouth were perfectly unobjectionable.
He walked away, leaving Rosamund and Will at long last alone. “I have missed you,” Will said simply, taking her arm. “Let’s go around the bend in the bank. We’re too likely to be observed here.”
They walked around the curve in the bank out of sight of any wanderers from the palace. “I missed you too,” Rosamund said. “It seems like such a wonderful, sensual dream now, Will. I wish we could do it again . . . when can we do it again?”
“Hush,” he said softly, although his eyes said something different. “It was madness, my sweet. We mustn’t let it happen again.”
“Why ever not?” she exclaimed. “As I understand it, people take lovers all the time at court. ’Tis said that the queen herself has taken the Earl of Essex as her lover—”
“Hush,” Will exclaimed again in a fierce undertone. “You’ll find yourself in the Tower if you’re not careful.”
“But as long as one’s discreet, there seems no—”
She fell silent as Will pressed a finger against her lips. “It’s easier for some than for others,” he said, his voice still soft, but none the less determined. “For those of us making our way in the world, as we both are, Rosamund, it’s a very different matter. What is acceptable with the rich and ennobled is not for those who have a mark to make on the world.”
“But you were the one who chided me for lack of courage,” she said, puzzled by this apparent volte-face.
“Oh, that was for a little adventure, a little excitement, harmless really. What we did together was not harmless. You lost your virginity . . . what will happen if you conceive?”
“Well, that didn’t happen. I have my monthly courses.”
He pursed his lips in a silent whistle. “Then we may yet pull this coal out of the fire.” He glanced around and, seeing no one, put his hands on her shoulders, looking deeply into her eyes. “Rosamund, my sweet, I would like nothing more than to love you again. But we cannot, we cannot.”
He sounded almost desperate in his anxiety to convince her, and, although she did not know this, even more himself. “If we are discovered, it will be the end of both of us. We will be banished from court, and . . .” He shook his head miserably. “I have no fortune, Rosamund, almost nothing to my name. My family are counting on me. They gave everything they have to give me this opportunity. I have to make my own way, and I am determined to do so.”
“To marry for position and fortune, you mean.” She felt cold, as if an icy draft was blowing against her back, and shivered, suddenly remembering what Joan had said about Will in those early days . . . about what a terrible flirt he was, about how just when a lady thought he was really interested in her, he dropped her like a hot brick and went on to pastures new. But surely that wasn’t what was happening here. Not after what they had had between them.
Will’s hands on her shoulders tightened their grip. “Is it so very hard to understand?” His voice was pleading, his eyes filled with something akin to pain, and Rosamund knew that he had not merely been playing with her.
She shook her head impatiently. “No. I understand . . . I understand the reality, but I don’t see why we cannot enjoy each other discreetly until you find the wife who will bring you what you need. After all, we have had one night together, why can’t we have others?”
He groaned. “Rosamund, sweetheart, think . . . think what we risk. You will lose everything if you are touched by scandal. A woman’s reputation is all she has. A man can recover from scandal . . . a woman, never.”
“Then isn’t it for me to decide whether the risk is worth taking?”
He shook his head vigorously. “You’re not thinking clearly. You don’t know what it means. Listen to me, love. We can play the game, as everyone does, flirt, enjoy each other’s company, but more than that . . . we must not. Trust me, my sweet. I know what I’m talking about.”
She looked at him in silence for a minute. They were talking only of physical passion, of the impossibility of satisfying the desire they both felt so strongly. But was there more than that? Was she talking of being together, talking, laughing, as they had so often done? Sharing little conspiratorial moments of secret understanding? Were those things as dangerous, as potentially scandalous, as clandestine loving?
“Why don’t you go back ahead,” she said. “I’ll wait here a little. Perhaps it would be best if we weren’t seen returning together.” She wanted him to laugh such a consideration out of court, but somehow she knew he wouldn’t. He tra
ced the curve of her cheek with his fingers, then moved away, heading quickly up to the palace.
Rosamund waited awhile, staring out at the river, watching a skirmish between two ducks, before she turned and made her own way back.
She saw Joan on the terrace as she approached and waved a hand in greeting. Joan didn’t appear to see her and turned back inside.
Chapter Seventeen
ROSAMUND PAUSED ON the terrace for a moment watching a group of young courtiers who were playing bowls on the lawn below the terrace. Will had joined them. He had discarded his doublet and pushed up the sleeves of his white lawn shirt. He was poised to roll his ball, and she felt a surge of pure physical longing for the feel of his body against hers. It couldn’t be possible that she would never have that again. Could it?
She bit her lip hard at the threatening prickle of tears behind her eyes and resolutely turned to go back into the hall.
The queen had come down during her absence and was enthroned in the great chair of state beneath the cloth of state on the dais at the far end. She was laughing behind her fan with the Earl of Leicester, her Master of Horse, who stood beside her, his lush white beard and mustache the only signs of his age. His soldierly posture was as erect as it had ever been on the battlefields on which he’d fought for his queen in his youth.
Rosamund moved closer to the dais, watching them with interest. Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, drifted at will in the tide of the queen’s favor since his unsanctioned marriage. She would refuse to see him or talk to him for weeks at a time and would not permit his wife to appear at court, then suddenly she would treat him with all the loving friendship that had marked their long association, although his wife remained in exile. Rosamund knew the rumors about the long-ago love affair between the queen and the earl, but at this moment she could see only the ease and intimacy of old friends.
The crowd around Rosamund stirred and parted as a young man pushed his way through to approach the dais. He knelt before his queen, one hand on the hilt of his sword, the other holding his hat to his breast. His golden hair glowed in the sunlight. He was magnificently dressed in red velvet, the sleeves of his doublet slashed to reveal their ivory silk lining. Rosamund was close enough now to hear the conversation.
“Madam, my queen, I am come to bid you farewell.”
“Why, Robert, are you to go so soon? You are only just returned to us.” The queen smiled at Robert Devereux from behind her fan. “Come up, dear boy, come up.” She beckoned him, and the Earl of Leicester with a pained look yielded his place beside the chair of state.
Rosamund, fascinated, inched closer without appearing to do so. The Earl of Essex had supplanted Leicester in the queen’s affections it was said. And judging by Leicester’s glum looks, there was some truth to it.
Essex bowed and kissed the queen’s hand as she extended it to him. “I am desolated to leave you, madam, but I am wholly at your service and I obey your commands.”
At this the queen frowned. “That goes without saying, my lord.”
Essex went down on one knee again. “Forgive me, madam, I did not intend any impertinence. I pray you send me away with one smile that I may treasure the memory.”
Elizabeth smiled again and, leaning forwards, tapped his shoulder with her fan. “Rise up, Essex. You are pardoned. Much may be forgiven in such a remarkably pretty youth.”
Essex offered a boyish smile in return. “Alas, madam, I wish I had some keepsake of my queen for my journey, something that I might look upon before I sleep.”
“Oh, such flattery.” She waved her fan in dismissal. Then her eye fell upon Rosamund, who was now standing close to the dais. “Ah, I have the answer. Rosamund Walsingham, approach.”
Rosamund’s heart pounded against her breastbone. She came up the steps to the dais, then dropped to her knees. “Yes, madam?”
“Draw me, child.”
“Draw you, madam?” Rosamund felt her mouth opening and closing like a fish on a slab.
Her majesty frowned. “That is what I said. You shall do a miniature that my loyal servant, the Earl of Essex, may carry next to his heart and look upon before he sleeps.”
It seemed simple enough, but Rosamund could feel the eyes of the court upon her as she knelt. “I have neither paper nor pen, madam.” She kept her eyes on the hem of the queen’s silver gauze gown as she spoke.
The queen turned her head and beckoned to one of her gentlemen. “Find Mistress Walsingham the necessary tools for her task, Gerald.”
The gentleman bowed and left. Rosamund remained kneeling, unsure what to do next.
“Rise, child.” Elizabeth sounded a little impatient. “You may sit on that stool to do your drawing.” She gestured to a three-legged stool in the corner of the dais. “Find the place where you will have the best view of my profile. The right side.”
“Yes, madam.” Rosamund stood and surveyed the scene. The queen’s chair was in the center of the dais, her gentlemen grouped around her. She fetched the stool, chose a perch a little to the right, and said hesitantly, “Would it be possible, madam, to ask the gentlemen to move to the other side of your chair?”
“Go away . . . go away, all of you. Give Mistress Rosamund an uninterrupted view.” The queen waved a hand and the gentlemen all stepped aside. “Now, child, will this do?” She set her head, twitched her lips into the merest hint of a smile.
“You look magnificent, madam.” Rosamund found the words tripped easily off her tongue. Magnificent was a good word to describe the queen’s attire. Her gown of silver gauze had sleeves slashed with crimson taffeta. The square bodice was cut very low, and a great chain of rubies and pearls drew the eye perforce to the swell of her breasts.
Too much accuracy there would be a mistake, Rosamund decided. Her majesty would not be best pleased to have the wrinkles delineated on the sagging flesh. She would be safest concentrating on the high-standing collar that rose behind the queen’s neck, its lining studded with myriad tiny pearls and rubies, and the thick curls of her red-gold wig that hung down to her shoulders.
The gentleman returned with a japanned standish containing vellum, quill, and ink. Rosamund thanked him and arranged her materials. She was aware of what felt like a thousand eyes upon her and for an instant was unable to move, paralyzed by anxiety. What would happen to someone whose drawing of the queen failed to give satisfaction? What if the queen considered herself ill-drawn, unflatteringly so? She could spend the rest of her life in the Tower.
Concentrate, she told herself firmly. Look at her as if she were any other subject. A butterfly on a flower, a haymaker in a field. The nose was a dominant feature, particularly in profile. The eyes were a good beginning, black and sparkling. Ignore the teeth, the few that she had were black.
Rosamund began to sketch her outline. She knew there would be no opportunity to redo this portrait, so every stroke must be true. The queen sat still for the most part, but she would occasionally pass some remark with Essex or one of her councilors, and Rosamund used those interludes to imagine her subject as her subject wished herself to be portrayed. She had to be careful, though. Too much dissembling and it would look like a mockery. The queen needed to look like herself, but with the glaring faults of age diminished.
After a while, Rosamund’s audience grew bored with the spectacle and she began to relax. She was only vaguely aware of Sir Francis Walsingham’s arrival on the dais. By then she no longer needed to study her subject. She had committed what she needed to memory.
“Well, Mistress Walsingham, are you not finished yet?”
The queen’s voice broke the spell. Rosamund looked at her sketch before answering, then she made a tiny adjustment to the neck, softening it with a touch of shading. “I believe so, madam.”
“Well, bring it here.” The queen’s voice was as impatient as a child’s for a toy. “Let us see it.”
Rosamund stood up, smoothing down her skirt, and approached the chair of state. She curtsied, proffering the sketch. Then steppe
d back. Oddly she was not afraid of what Elizabeth might think. It was good, Rosamund knew it. If the queen didn’t care for it, then there was little to be done. She had been careful to diminish any unflattering angles, had concentrated on the strength of the features, and had made the most of the jewels.
Elizabeth examined the portrait, then passed it to Essex. “Well, Essex, what do you think?”
“Magnificent, madam. A most accurate portrait of a most majestic and beautiful monarch.” He bowed, his hand on his heart.
Hypocrite, Rosamund thought. Essex had eyes, he must have seen what she had avoided. But she supposed she couldn’t blame him. Their queen was one of the vainest women on earth.
“Francis, what think you of your protégée’s skill?” Elizabeth turned to her secretary of state.
Walsingham took the drawing from Essex and examined it, head on one side. He shot Rosamund a quick, comprehending glance in which she detected approval, before he handed it back to his sovereign. “Masterly, madam. She has you to the life.”
“I will treasure it, my queen.” Essex took back the paper and folded it carefully, inserting it within his doublet. “And now I am for Ireland on your majesty’s service.”
“Go with God, Essex.” The queen gave him her hand to kiss. He left the dais, and Rosamund after a moment decided that she had been forgotten and slipped back down the steps into the anonymity of the hall.
“You have an uncommon skill, Mistress Rosamund.”
She turned abruptly to see the chevalier watching her from a few paces away. “How . . . how could you know that, sir?” She stammered slightly. The unexpected sight of him had thrown her off course. She had forgotten all about him in the heated delights of her time with Will, but now the full flood of memory returned and she was back in the clearing, the chevalier’s lips pressed to hers. His eyes were dancing as if he could read her mind.