In High Places

by Bonny G Smith

  “Certainly, it is wise to consider the advantages and disadvantages of any proposed match,” said Sir Thomas. “But if Your Grace will permit me to say so, as an unmarried queen regnant with no named heir, it would be prudent to take steps to secure the succession. What of Mary of Scotland? What of the Lady Katherine Grey? Surely Your Grace should name someone, just in case…”

  Again the golden eyes glittered. “In case what?” she asked coldly.

  Sir Thomas stood his ground manfully. “The state is immortal, Your Grace, but princes are not. Forgive me, but what if Your Grace were to die childless? In such a case, even if Mary of Scotland has not been named heir, surely the King of France would then seize the opportunity to place Her Grace on the throne by force. It would mean war. And what then would become of our religious settlement, for which we have all worked so hard? A Catholic revival under the Scots queen would be inevitable.”

  “Nothing, sir, is inevitable,” rejoined the queen, in her haughtiest manner. “Has the succession not always taken care of itself? And what is this talk of the Scots queen? Does not my father’s will expressly exclude from the succession the Stuart line begotten of my Aunt Margaret? And think you that this is truly what would be best for England, to place her under the yoke of the French? Did not we, so many days since, bewail the loss of Calais, that you would wish to place all of England under French rule? For that, sirs, is what naming Mary of Scotland as heir to the throne of England would truly mean!”

  “Then Your Grace must marry, and as soon as possible,” said Sir Thomas. “Only marriage to a powerful prince and a male heir can secure your throne, and guarantee England’s safety.”

  Elizabeth stood silently on the dais looking down at them all. Finally she said, “‘Must’, my lords, is not a word used to princes. And it ill behooves a subject to tell a queen what she ought to do.” And how dare they mention Mary Stuart to her, she who had the temerity to style herself Queen of England, and who at that very moment was flying a banner that quartered the arms of Scotland and France with those of England?

  And as for Katherine Grey…! The girl was a witless fool. The very idea of her vacuous cousin Katherine as Queen of England was enough to inspire her to give that inelegant snort that had always so discomfited the Spanish ambassador. The girl’s inane chatter frayed her nerves; she could not abide the sight of her. However, the Lady Katherine was her cousin Frances’s daughter; she must, for form’s sake, employ the girl in some capacity. Finally, annoyed past bearing, she demoted her from the Privy Chamber to the Presence Chamber. Katherine had protested loudly…and most unwisely…within the range of Elizabeth’s hearing, which only served to prove that the chit was entirely lacking not only in decorum, but in prudence and good judgment. She decided then and there that it would be cold in Hell on the day when she reinstated such a scatterbrained moron into her privy service. Let her irksome cousin cool her heels… and her temper! …in the Presence Chamber. And good riddance!

  “Rest assured,” said Elizabeth, in a more congenial tone of voice, “that as your loving sovereign, I shall do as God, who hath placed me in overlordship above you all, directs me to do. As long as it pleases Almighty God to continue my mind to live outside the state of matrimony, then that is what I shall do.”

  Sir Thomas took up the cudgels once more. “But Your Grace, for a woman to remain unmarried is against the laws of nature; and it is not what the people of England expect. Does not Your Grace conceive the urgency of the situation?”

  Once again the glittering eyes smoldered, but still Elizabeth did her best to speak them fair.

  “Fear not, my lords, and be of good heart! The realm shall not be destitute of an heir. God will so direct our counsels that we need not doubt of a successor. And think you carefully; might not a son grow to think evil of the days he must needs spend in waiting to attain his crown? Such a one could cause much sorrow to the land in that impatience. And a foreign husband might seek to usurp the power of the throne, to England’s detriment; did not that self-same fear become reality in my sister’s reign?”

  “Then take a good English man to husband, Your Grace!” came a bellowing voice. “Here stands such a one, if your care for your people be not just words!”

  Arundel! An arrogant, blustering buffoon if ever there was one. It was true that the earl had been named as a possible husband; but she had never seriously considered him as a candidate for her hand, despite his single drop of royal blood.

  Finally, she could take no more.

  “Enough!” she shouted, her open hand hitting the wooden arm of the great throne with a mighty thud. The room went silent. “During my sister’s reign, I was buried alive under the pressure to marry. First this suitor, then that one. There seems to be a very strong idea, I know not why! …that a woman cannot live unless she is married! Are you not glad now that I resisted such pressure? Why would you now seek to press upon me the very thing I sought, for England’s sake, to avoid? In the end, my lords, this shall be for me sufficient, that a marble stone shall someday declare that a queen, having lived and reigned such-and-such a time, lived and died a virgin!”

  There was no more to be said; the men all bowed and Sir Thomas rolled up his scroll. The men filed out of the room. But the battle was joined; the queen knew what the men of her Parliament wanted and what the people of England expected. But what none of them realized was that she was not a woman like her sister Mary, who was of the nature of the ivy, with her need to entwine herself to another, to cling to a husband for support. She was of the nature of the oak, formed and fitted to stand strong by herself. And come what may, she meant to stay a queen alone, in charge of her own destiny…and England’s.

  London, May 1559

  “But I do not understand why I must go now,” cried Amy. “If I do, I shall miss your water party.” The rain slashed at the windows, causing them to rattle, and although it was only just after the noon hour, it was as dark as night outside. Somehow, that made the mention of a water party on the river sound like so much nonsense, which simply was not fair. “Might I not wait and leave for Norfolk after?”

  Robert held his tongue, biting back the sharp retort that rose to his lips. As calmly as he was able to, he said, “Am I not the queen’s Master of Horse? Do you know better than I what arranging such a move as yours back to Norfolk from London entails? It is all arranged, and I cannot rearrange it now.”

  Tears welled in Amy’s eyes, making them seem larger than they actually were; it gave her a vulnerable, helpless look. “You should if you were minded to,” she said softly. As she turned her head away he saw the tears fall. In that moment, he was tempted to relent, but he knew that he must not. Elizabeth had made it abundantly clear that she expected the men who served her either to remain single or to keep their wives away from court. Certain men of the court were exempt from this unwritten rule due to their advanced years, or like Cecil, because they were not expected to engage in the pretend game of courtly love that so amused the queen. Lord Robert Dudley was certainly not among those exempted from this tacit rule; indeed, unless he missed his guess, he alone of the men who surrounded the queen was not engaged in a game at all, but in something far more serious and intimate.

  When had he first begun to suspect that Elizabeth was in love with him? In the beginning her apparent partiality for him and her playful teasing had seemed like no more than the behavior of a good friend. But in April she had bestowed the Order of the Garter upon him, a signal honor, that while welcome had earned him a passel of enemies to add to the growing list of those at Elizabeth’s court who hated him and who resented the queen’s preference for his company.

  He and Elizabeth had known each other since childhood and had always been close, when circumstances permitted. He had even lent her money when her purse was light, during the time when his father had been, if not in fact, at least in practice, king of England. John Dudley had been as a father to her brother Edward, who as a boy king had studied the art of rule under his tut
elage, first as the Earl of Warwick, and later, when he had been raised to Duke of Northumberland.

  Robert understood Elizabeth completely, as if by some unseen accord, or sixth sense. She was a woman alone and in power; she had few friends, few people with whom she could let her guard down, and those few, although they were old and trusted friends, were mostly servants. With him, for whatever reason, she felt comfortable, safe. It was almost as if they were married and she were his wife. But that could never be; he was married to Amy. In a sudden flash of insight, he wondered if perhaps that very circumstance was at the root of Elizabeth’s extraordinary affection for him…with him, she was safe from the very thing she seemed to fear most and want least; marriage.

  “It is not my water party, as such,” he said, in a somewhat offended tone. “It is my responsibility to arrange such diversions for the queen’s amusement. And I will be much engaged in all sorts of other projects, with no time for dalliance.”

  Amy, who hitherto had always been the very soul of demur wifely behavior, rounded on him as if she were a she-cat defending herself against a wolf. “Much engaged!” she cried, her tears now born of anger instead of sadness. “I know how you will be ‘much engaged’! Think you that I have not heard the rumors?”

  Exasperated, he replied, “It is from these very rumors that I wish to shield you by sending you from court!” Robert was usually a tolerant, indulgent husband, gentle and kind. But there was a limit. Wives should do as they were bid!

  Suddenly Amy’s face lost all expression and her eyes took on a faraway look, as if she were seeing into some far future. But it was not the future that played before her mind’s eye; it was the past. She was recalling, so vividly, the day that she had first seen him. Robert Dudley had come riding into her life in the warm, gentle summer of 1549. His father, then Earl of Warwick, and England’s premier general, had been called upon to quell a local feud that had grown into a rebellion large enough to threaten all of East Anglia. With him on that fateful day had come his sons, amongst them the dashing Robert.

  Robert! Tall, dark, more handsome than any boy she had ever seen, galloping in on his fine steed, wearing armor, a crimson sash that billowed in the wind, blue and gold plumes bouncing jauntily atop his shiny helmet. He and his brother Ambrose had come to engage in their first battle and to win their spurs. Their innate excitement lent an air of adventure to the danger of the situation. From her window Amy had seen the entire cavalcade arrive, had watched her father and stepbrothers riding out to meet them. They had all ridden off to battle the next day in high spirits, and then the time of waiting and worrying began, which was always the lot of the women such men left behind.

  But soon, sooner than any of the distraught women could have hoped, they had all come back, dirty, bloody, happy, triumphant. Robert had won his spurs and more; at seventeen he had tasted his first command, and had been instrumental in rescuing Amy’s stepbrothers from the enemy after they had been taken prisoner by the rebel forces. The atmosphere at their return had been one of jubilation, of disaster averted, of glorious victory.

  For the next two weeks in that magical, warm, rose-scented June, she had been wooed by her hero and won. By the time the earl’s troops were ready to depart Norfolk and return to London, Robert and Amy had declared their love for each other and plighted their troth. John Dudley had several sons, all of whom had made, or were in the process of making, advantageous marriages. But John Dudley was that seeming rarity in Tudor England, a loving father; he was sympathetic to his son’s desires. Love matches were not unheard of; he supported the young couple’s wish to marry. Amy Robsart was not a brilliant match, he could have done better for Robert, but the match would vouchsafe to Robert if not great riches, at least lands equal to a sizeable portion of Norfolk. And that was not the least of it. John Dudley enjoyed a loving relationship with his wife in an age when happy marriages were uncommon; if such a thing could be arranged for Robert, he was not the man to say him nay. And Amy was a lovely girl, pleasant and amiable.

  Robert and Amy were married the following summer; in June…their month…in London, at the royal palace of Sheen; the boy king, Edward, and his royal sister Elizabeth, had attended their nuptials. For three years they had been blissfully happy.

  And then the boy king had become desperately ill. Unless her father-in-law took extraordinary measures, the Catholic Mary Tudor would ascend the throne and the Dudleys would be expelled from power. But John Dudley, now Duke of Northumberland, feared a Catholic revival under Mary Tudor even more than he feared the loss of personal power. King Edward had had a like fear; at sixteen he was no mere cipher, but was ruling England himself with Dudley’s help. The king, desperate to uphold the Protestant Reformation in England, had bequeathed his throne not to either of his two sisters, but to his cousin, the Lady Jane Grey, a staunch Reformer like himself. And Jane was married to Robert’s brother Guildford. A desperate attempt to place Jane on the throne had failed after only nine days; Mary Tudor had rallied troops, ousted Jane, and taken the throne as her own by right of blood, by Parliamentary statute, and by the terms of her father’s will.

  Then had begun the nightmare years.

  Jane, her father, and all of the Dudley men were charged with High Treason and sent to the Tower. There was no saving the duke; John Dudley had been tried, found guilty, and executed forthwith. Mary, now queen, was content for the time being to forgive her cousin and the other sons of the duke as mere pawns, but even so, they had been detained in the Tower.

  Mary’s cousin Frances had pled on her knees for her husband’s life; and so Henry Grey, the Marquis of Dorset and Duke of Suffolk, had not only been spared, but had been released from the Tower into Frances’s custody, despite his perfidy. Then a few months later he had foolishly participated in a second attempt to oust Mary and place their daughter Jane back onto the throne. Mary had had no choice then but to execute Jane, her own blood cousin, Jane’s husband, Guildford Dudley, and Jane’s father, Henry Grey.

  The remaining Dudley brothers had been kept in the Tower for two years.

  Amy shook off these unpleasant memories. She turned back to face her husband and said, “I am shielded from nothing, Robert. But answer me this, if you please. All expect the queen to marry for state reasons, and yet she will commit to none of the suitors, foreign or English, who press their suits for her hand. Already she has refused Spain, Sweden, and the Holy Roman Empire. What is she waiting for, might one ask? I will tell you what I have heard, Husband. I have heard that I am supposedly mortally ill and that you and Her Gracious Majesty are both waiting for me to die so that you may marry with the queen and be king! The rumors also say that your lord father had the same aspiration to be king, and one might even say he fulfilled that desire; but he ended without his head on his shoulders for the sake of his ambition!”

  But just as quickly as the anger had flared up in her breast and caused her to utter these hurtful words, the fire in her eyes died, and the tears welled up once more. She laid a pleading hand on Robert’s arm and said, “O, my lord, have a care! Have you so quickly forgotten the sad fate of your poor brother Guildford, and Jane?”

  Robert shook off Amy’s hand impatiently. “I have forgotten nothing,” he said.

  “She is in love with you!” cried Amy. “All know it. Do you dare to deny it? And you encourage her!”

  Robert pounded his fist upon the table next to him with a mighty thud. “God’s blood, Amy, what would you have me do? I cannot flout the queen’s affection, no matter how displaced you and others judge it to be! To do so would spell my ruin!”

  Amy breathed deeply, an uneven breath that spoke of tears suppressed. Quietly she replied, “It is likely to be your ruin in any case, and mine as well. You have not thought this through, Robert. My love, you are completely dependent upon her good will. What if you were to have a falling out? You gather enemies at court as a dog gathers fleas! I have lost count of those who are jealous and resentful of your position at court! If Elizabeth
should withdraw her favor, the wolves would close in and tear you to pieces. I cannot go through that again.”

  Robert snorted. “Nor would I wish to go through that again, as you say. But Amy, I swear before Almighty God, there is nothing improper in my relationship with Her Grace. It is true that she is capricious and fickle, but I believe that she is my true friend. And we could do with such a friend, Amy. Think! How many men have been able to overcome the stigma of coming from three generations of traitors? There are more advantages to be had in this situation than disadvantages, I trow.”

  He walked over to her; she had retreated to the window and was watching the rain fall down the glass in little rivulets, absentmindedly tracing them from the inside with her finger. He took her hands into his own and kissed each one in turn.

  “Please, Amy, do as I ask. Go home to Norfolk. Do not fret. All will be well, I promise you.” His dark eyes pleaded as eloquently as did his smooth voice.

  It was May; very soon it would be June…their month. But Robert seemed not to remember that now, or perhaps remembering, did not care. The Robsarts were minor gentry, nowhere near as grand as the Dudleys; she had known this when she married him, and was glad that Robert’s father, and her own, had not let the difference in their stations stand in the way of their marriage.

  Minor gentry the Robsarts may be, but her father, grandfather and great-grandfather had all been knights, proud and brave. Very well, she would be proud and brave, too. No more tears; no more protestations.

  “Very well, then,” she said in a calm, even voice. “There is no more to be said. I shall depart for Norfolk on the morrow as planned.”

  It did not help her wounded pride that the expression of relief on her husband’s face was so patently obvious.