by Susan Kay
He stopped and stared; and the frantic, headlong pacing which he had interrupted stopped in that same second. He was a hardened soldier and he had heard strong language from her on many occasions, but when she rounded on him the torrent of obscenities which greeted him momentarily took his breath away. Her eyes seemed enormous in her livid face, glittering, vicious, quite insane. A vase shattered in thousands of pieces at his feet and his heart sank. How could he hope to reason with this wild, wounded creature?
“How dare you!” she screamed at last, when he did not turn and flee in terror. “How dare you come in here?”
And suddenly, unexpectedly even to himself, he heard his own voice bellow back, “By God, madam, how dare you try to keep me out.”
The mad light went out of her eyes, as though a candle had been suddenly snuffed, leaving them black, opaque and quite hopeless. In that same moment he went down on his knees to her and his rough voice became quiet and gentle.
“Madam—many years ago when you stood in danger of your life, it happened that I was able to do you a service which you swore never to forget. At my command the door of your prison in the Tower remained unlocked. Will you now lock your door against me when I come once more to plead in your interest?”
Drained with exhaustion, she closed her eyes for a moment and felt time roll away beneath their heavy lids to the moment on that cold, rainy day when she had laid her hand on his sleeve and begged for his help. “By God I say she shall write!” Had she ever really been so young? Now she only felt as though she had been born old—old and unloved and wretched beyond endurance. And yet here was this ancient champion of her cause still risking the royal wrath for her sake, a little remembered affection and warmth. Stripped naked of all her scant emotional security, his loyalty was like a tiny glow in a dying fire. She held out her hands to him in real gratitude.
“Get up, my friend.”
“You will listen?”
“I owe you that courtesy at least,” she said wearily. “What is it you want of me? What is so urgent that it cannot wait till I have rid myself of an unworthy traitor?”
For a second he hesitated; and then dared to say it.
“Leicester is no traitor, Your Majesty. I must beg you to reconsider the order for his arrest.”
She gasped and her eyes widened in furious disbelief; she dropped his hand and stepped back from him.
“Are you mad, Sussex—are you quite senile? Can it be that you do not know what he has done?”
“Yes,” he said quickly. “Yes, madam—I fear I do know.”
She had swung away from him and resumed her maddened pacing.
“I want him dead—dead, do you hear? I want to see the crows pick his head clean on London Bridge—he never had such joy in his marriage as he shall have agony in his death. I shall never rest until I have spilt his blood on Tower Hill. By God, he’ll die for this, I swear it.”
Sussex swallowed hard. “Your Highness knows that is not possible.”
She stamped her foot and screamed, “I am the Queen.”
“Even the Queen cannot act without recourse to the law—and he has committed no offence, in law.”
“Then I’ll bend the law!” she spat. “Find another pretext, as my father did when it suited him—fabricate evidence for some new plot against my life. Are you daring to tell me that can’t be done?”
“It can be done,” he said quietly, “but you will not give the order, madam, because you are ten times the monarch that your father was, feared and respected by friends and enemies alike. Even the Pope reveres your name! You cannot throw all this away to be revenged upon an inferior scoundrel who has betrayed your affection.”
She turned away from him, trembling with the intensity of her rage, struggling to control it before it leapt out and destroyed him, too, for his audacity.
“You have said enough and I have listened. Now you will leave me. My order stands unchanged. He goes to the Tower and he will leave it only for the block.”
“Madam, I beseech you, be reasonable.”
“Reasonable? Reasonable? He commits bigamy with that whore and you ask me to be reasonable—”
He caught and held both her hands; he was truly desperate now.
“For the love of God, madam, will you tell me how a man can commit bigamy against a woman he has never married?”
She hit him for that and turned away, sobbing bitterly.
“I won’t be mocked—I won’t, do you hear?”
“No one is mocking you, madam, except yourself. And you know I speak the truth, not as Leicester’s friend but as yours. Whatever you feel for him, he is not your husband. He was as free to marry in honour as any other man in England and if you act now, in a moment of blind passion, it will destroy everything you have worked for. The damage it will do to your standing in Europe and with your own people will be beyond repair.”
She pulled away from him and sank into a chair before the empty hearth in despair.
“Then I am helpless—tied hand and foot by my good name. There is nothing I can do to punish him.”
“You can banish him, madam. In many ways that will be a worse punishment for him than death. You have made him so much your creature that if you cast him out now you destroy him utterly. He has no place in this world but at your side, no protection but yours against the enemies you have made for him.”
“Of which you are one,” she reminded him, now suddenly very quiet, staring at the floor.
“Yes, madam,” he admitted bluntly. “My pleading for his freedom does not alter my enmity for him. I would gladly see him driven from this realm in ignominy and poverty. Leave him to his enemies and they will grant you a better revenge than execution—should you really wish it.”
She looked up, sharply incredulous.
“You cannot mean that I might forgive him.”
“You have forgiven him many things before,” Sussex said quietly.
“But not this.” She buried her face in her hands. “Not this!”
He stood and watched her in pitying silence for a moment.
At last he said gently, “Is it still to be the Tower, madam?”
“No.” Defeated, humiliatingly close to tears, Elizabeth shook her head slowly. “Let him go in peace to Wanstead. Let him go to Hell for all I care. What does it matter that a traitor’s son has shown his true colours after all? It’s finished—truly finished between us at last.”
“I’m glad, madam,” said Sussex simply. “He was never worthy of you. You are well rid of him.”
“Yes,” she repeated mechanically, like a child learning a difficult lesson by heart, “I am well rid of him.”
The hysteria had passed, leaving her to face the unpleasant physical symptoms of reaction, and she found herself shaking uncontrollably. She had to force herself to stand erect, to hold out her hand to him, and smile. And when he saw that, and reckoned the immense effort it had cost her to face him with grace and dignity, he suddenly knew why he had risked his neck to come in here today.
“Thank you, my lord. I shall not forget your courage.”
Almost, to the word, precisely what she had said that day he took her letter to Queen Mary. Her image blurred suddenly before his old eyes and he blinked to clear it as he bowed low and went out, sending in her most trusted woman, the Countess of Warwick. And if in that moment he could have obtained access to the imprisoned man, he would have killed Leicester with his bare hands and saved the executioner the trouble.
* * *
In tactful silence, Lady Warwick undressed her and put her to bed.
As she sank into the welcoming softness of the mattress Elizabeth felt herself succumbing to the same numb stupor which had overwhelmed her thirty years ago, after the Lord Admiral’s execution. Behind these heavy curtains lay sanctuary from the sniggering world outside her door, refuge from a shame an
d misery too great to be borne with sanity. She had only to let go of reality and nothing would exist for her beyond this bed, no grief, no pain. Already the sounds of the palace were fading, the Countess of Warwick was dwindling before her eyes, and she was slipping down, down into that melancholy state where nothing and no one could matter to her and her only desire would be to sleep and never wake again.
With the last vestige of consciousness she struck out and grasped the anchor of sanity. This pain alone was sharp enough to pierce the great dam of emotion which she had kept welled up for over forty years. Now she turned her face to the pillow and wept for every tragedy that she had suppressed since her childhood; for Katherine Howard and Katherine Parr, for Thomas Seymour and her dead governess, Ashley. And last of all for Robin, the ultimate traitor, who had betrayed her into finally admitting she was a woman, with a woman’s heart—and a woman’s needs.
Chapter 7
In his extravagantly furnished bedchamber at Wanstead, Leicester sat as he had done every day, week in week out, since his banishment, in a low chair before the fire with his great white hound, Boy, at his feet. He had not stirred from the room, nor visited his precious horses, and he had seen no one but his servants. Fever and depression had wasted a body which had already begun to grow stout and no amount of soaking in a hot bath seemed to ease the rheumatic aches in his legs. He was forty-six and he looked and felt every year of it, suddenly feeling as though he had grown old overnight. His face was covered with an unkempt beard and his thinning hair was ruffled by the despairing hands which constantly thrust among it. Rising from his bath, he had not troubled to dress, but sat for hours on end, hunched in his fur-collared chamber robe, drinking a great deal and eating very little, contemplating his stupidity and his ruin with abject misery.
It was over between them. She had cut him out of her life as surely and effectively as if she had followed her original impulse and taken his head—and he knew with grim certainty just how narrowly he had escaped that penalty. There was nothing left to him now without her. The creditors would be lining up, his many enemies closing in with gloating triumph on the best hated man in England. He had few illusions about what lay ahead—persecution, obscurity, poverty—and all to be faced alone, for he doubted that Lettice would follow him into exile. Loyalty had never been one of her virtues. She followed where her physical senses led, and in time they would lead her to a younger man, with a future to offer. He accepted that with quiet indifference, for he had discovered that he did not greatly care what Lettice did. He cared for nothing and no one but himself and the Queen and the life he had thrown away to satisfy a petty spite.
The enormity of his crime had overwhelmed him at last and the depth of Elizabeth’s resentment no longer shocked him; he had been mad to think he could ever get away with it. And now that it was finished, he found himself remembering only the good times, for in spite of their many quarrels there had been good times, moments when he was truly proud to be acknowledged as the man she cared for.
In the flickering firelight, memories leapt out at him, like sparks from the burning logs, each one searing the sense of loss a little more deeply into his soul. In every way, except the true one, he had been her husband, and in his heart he knew her bitterness was justified, that she was right to cast him away.
Across the years he chased the elusive images of their love, until at last he came to Ricote—Ricote, in summer, at the height of a hectic progress, home of Henry and Margery Norris, their mutual friends. Only a skeleton train had followed them to Ricote and informality reigned, shooting parties and candle-lit dinners, a time to laugh and love and be themselves in good company, away from the inhibitions of the court. If he could take her just once more to any place in England, it would be to Ricote; and yet, even there, in the midst of their roistering quartet, the shadow had intruded.
The night stood out in his memory as though it were yesterday—a warm summer evening with the scent of roses and newly scythed grass drifting in through the open windows. Dinner finished, the servants dismissed, and Henry Norris serving increasingly large measures of his very best claret. Leicester and the Norrises had been pleasantly intoxicated for an hour or so, and the Queen, who had for once not watered her wine, was as near to drunk as anyone had ever seen her. Norris’s father had been one of those five executed with Anne Boleyn, and Henry had a special claim to Elizabeth’s affection; she would not hurt his feelings by committing sacrilege against his prise vintage.
They were boisterous and rowdy as school children, absurd as only inebriated adults can be, and they had reached the point where any remark was liable to send the listeners hysterical with amusement. A game of question and answer, so popular in court circles, hung in abeyance because Henry was too sodden to think of a question to put to the Queen.
“Don’t belch like a pig in the Queen’s presence,” said his wife tartly. “If you don’t think of something soon you must pay a forfeit.”
“A dip in the fountain might sober him up,” suggested Leicester cheerfully.
Norris got to his feet with haste and asked the Queen to marry him. Everyone laughed, except Margery, who kicked her husband under the table.
“What’s amiss?” he grumbled amiably. “Is it not the most popular question in Europe? Hasn’t everyone asked her except the Pope—and he only needs a little more time.”
More irreverent laughter wafted out into the falling dusk, but the prospect of Norris sitting in the fountain now appealed hugely to everyone and even Elizabeth would not let him off the hook. He would have to think of something good if he was to escape a soaking.
“All right—I have it—even Margery can’t fault this.” Norris bowed solemnly to the Queen, who leaned her chin on her hands to listen. “I ask Her Majesty, as the fount of all justice in this land—what is the greatest crime a woman can commit?”
“To kill the man she loves,” said Elizabeth automatically, and looked straight at Leicester as she said it.
There was a moment of quivering silence that sobered that cosy candle-lit quartet like a douse of cold water. Norris arranged nutshells in drunken formation along his plate, and his wife chewed her handkerchief, aghast at what the game had suddenly precipitated.
Leicester stared at the Queen, but was the first to regain composure. He laughed and slapped his host heartily on the back with a force which sent him sprawling among the nutshells.
“Well—that rather rules me out—but if I were you, Norris, I’d watch my step. Everyone knows how fond she is of you.”
There was more laughter, of a rather forced quality, until it was discovered that one of the nutshells had nicked Norris’s lip. And at that point some semblance of normality returned to the conversation, as everyone got to their feet at once.
Derisive scorn from Margery.
“Oh, God’s blood, Henry, you’ll live!”
Profuse apologies from Leicester and excessive concern from the Queen.
“Take my handkerchief, Hal—Robin, what a brute you are—you don’t know your own strength!”
Leicester caught her hand and swung her over to the empty hearth, away from the other two.
“Do you know yours?” he demanded quietly.
Elizabeth did not answer. She smiled and released herself from his hand and went back to the table. The evening ended, as convivially as it had begun, but the Queen did not come down next morning; and Leicester had never seen her even remotely intoxicated again.
It was late. The clock on the chimney-piece ticked on, the big dog yawned by the hearth, and the door behind him opened with a soft click. Staring moodily into the flickering flames he spoke without looking up.
“Take the food away—leave the wine.”
“I think you have drunk quite enough, don’t you, my lord?”
Incredulously, he turned his head and stared. She stood calmly just inside the closed door, pushing the sable hood back fr
om her bright hair and unfastening the gold clasp at her throat. As she walked across the room to the hearth, she let the heavy velvet cloak fall from her shoulders to reveal a simple riding habit. There were no jewels in her hair or at her breast and her fingers were unadorned, save for the coronation ring which, like a wedding ring, never left her hand. It was as though she had deliberately stripped herself of all the accoutrements of majesty, but to his shocked and bewildered glance she had never looked more beautiful or truly regal as she stood looking down on him.
To sit in the Queen’s presence, without her express permission, was an outrageous breach of etiquette and yet he went on sitting and staring in dazed and frozen silence, unable to move or speak or do anything to make use of this unimagined opportunity. It seemed an eternity before he managed to stumble out of his chair and fall on his knees at her feet, lifting the dark velvet hem of her skirts to his lips.
“Isn’t it a little late to play the devoted subject, Robin?”
He buried his face in his hands and sobbed in a broken voice, “Oh, God—I never expected this—I don’t know what to do—I don’t know what to say to you—”
“I suppose,” she said very softly, “you could say you were sorry.”
There was something in her voice which gave him the courage to lift his eyes to hers and, as he did so, she held out her hands and helped him to get clumsily, unsteadily, to his feet. They stood very close, with their hands linked and their eyes locked together. He did not say he was sorry, there was suddenly no need.
“I can’t believe it,” he mumbled inadequately. “I can’t believe you are here—you haven’t ridden alone from Greenwich have you?”
She shook her head.
“Lady Warwick came with me, and a young groom I can trust to hold his tongue. No one else knows.”