Robert had tasted meat and drink in the fairies’ hall, and been enchanted by their Queen. Anywhere else was full of disenchantment. Dull, dull, dull-ditch water dull. He yawned again and stood up as if jerked by strings. He had to get away from the sight of Amy. Why on earth had the fool sung that song for her to mope to the tune. He did not much care either for the sight of Flowerdew, his steward, and his wife, who was Amy’s half-sister. But Amy made him feel guilty, depressed and concerned by her obvious ill health, but mostly guilty. Guilty for what? He was perfectly justified in being bored by her dullness; her nervousness oppressed him, and it was not his fault that she was ill. He hated to feel guilt. He also hated illness — healthy, confident, vigorous people were those he wanted about him.
‘I have,’ he said, his voice distorted by another insuppressible yawn, ‘to write a letter.’
Amy looked up from the hand of cards that she was pretending to study, her eyes tearful and apprehensive, as if he had made an announcement about debt or doctors. She must know he would not be joining her in bed later.
‘To the Queen’s Majesty,’ Robert said, shortly. There was no need to explain himself, but he was proud to make such a statement, though it would probably make Amy even more wretched.
Robert wrote letters easily; it was one of the few solitary pleasures he enjoyed. It had taken practice, however, to strike the right note in his letters to the Queen. Subject, old friend, lover, trusted servant, all one ‘Robert Dudley’.
‘Your poor eyes are dulled while out of Your Majesty’s company…’ He smiled as he wrote the double ‘oo’s’ with a squiggle over each letter, so they looked like eyeballs with quirky eyebrows over them. He was pleased with himself at having invented this intimate trademark, knowing it would please her as much as it did him. Only Elizabeth and he shared the memory of the moment on the downs, when she had dubbed him her Eyes. His letters would for ever remind her of it. Every double ‘oo’ he wrote would look up as eyes from the page into her own short-sighted ones, a lover’s look.
Tomorrow, he would ride to Penshurst to his sister Mary, and they would return together to attend the Queen at Hampton Court. Mary Sidney had snatched a few days to see her little son, Philip, whom she hated to leave for long. Motherhood suited Mary, so fair, open-faced and peachy-skinned, so calmly ordered in her manner. Robert loved his sister dearly and knew no better man than his brother-in-law Henry Sidney. There could be no more pleasant place than Penshurst in soft September.
On warm afternoons the wooded Weald of Kent was as heavy with fruitfulness as a honeycomb with honey. Ceres passed by slowly, languid with the aftertaste of summer, her cornucopia spilling over, a golden face crowned with garlands of ripe, ruddy-cheeked fruit. Robert dug his white teeth into sun-warmed pears and apples picked in the Penshurst orchards. Philip ran, too lively and boy-like for nursery skirts. Watching his blond head bob like a rabbit’s scut among the trees, Robert said, ‘He’s a Dudley.’
‘Yes, he’s like John.’
‘Yes. I love that child as if he were my own, Mary. I always shall.’
‘Even if…?’
‘Even if I marry again and beget my own.’
‘Marry again?’
‘Amy is sick, I’d be surprised if she saw another apple harvest.’
Mary Sidney stood still, facing her brother, her back against the orchard wall, sunlight dappling her. She looked graver than her years. ‘Is it so bad?’
‘She has pain. I can feel it…’
‘The lump?’
‘Mmm…’ Robert took an unnecessarily noisy crunch of apple, sucking in juice. The word ‘lump’ made him shiver. ‘I’m twenty-eight. I’d like a son.’
‘Have you another wife in mind?’
‘Yes.’
Instead of seeking to know her identity, his sister turned away, opening the door in the wall and stepping through into the garden beyond. ‘Be careful,’ she said, without turning her head. Robert was not quite certain whether she meant him to watch out for bumping his head on the lintel, or was issuing a warning upon his unspoken choice of a second wife. He let it go, because he did not want to argue with his sister on such a pleasant afternoon. Instead, he called to Philip, and waited for his nephew to gallop up and collide with his knees with a yell of delight.
He did, however, have words with Mary, to remind her of her family loyalties.
‘You are the Dudley ambassador in the bedchamber.’
‘I thought you aspired to that!’ Mary often said exactly what she thought, especially to this, her favourite brother.
Robert laughed. ‘To aspire is not to attain, sister dear. I need your help.’ Then curiously, ‘How do you find the Queen, behind those closed doors, among all you women?’
‘A woman.’
‘Are you afraid of her?’
‘Not as another woman, though she has a sharp tongue and a quick temper. I only fear her as any subject fears their sovereign.’
‘Brave Mary. I love you, Mary.’
‘I love you too, Robin. But I will not be dishonest for you.’
When they came to Hampton and rode in together under the gatehouse to the inner court, dismounting under the great zodiac clock, Robert felt the excitement of being there — wherever the Queen was, there was the hub of the universe. As a boy, he had seen King Henry stand here, a fearsome monster to the boy’s eyes, yet such an object of fascination, awe and, yes, glamour, even in that gross hulk, that he could not tear away his eyes while the King’s Majesty was in his sight. He would never tear himself away from court now; he could exist nowhere else. It was akin to the excitement of the chase, though whether he was quarry or hound, he was not always sure.
He looked up at the clock. Time must be my servant, he thought. Time should scurry along a little and make him a widower, but for the Queen should drag, to prevent her becoming a wife too soon. Soon, though, he thought, she would want only him. Already her poor stunted, shackled desires, prisoners of their past, were awake to him. All it needed was time, before she was willing to pass the bounds. Then she would be his. He remembered the gipsy’s words, on Blackheath, the tinkle of tiny gold coins round her ears, her dark face looking up at him — at him, the ‘King that is to be’. Well, it would not be for want of trying, though he would bear his sister’s ‘be careful’ in mind also.
Libra passed unnoticed into Scorpio. The court realized once more that Dudleys went armed with stings. They did not need to have known the father to recognize vaulting ambition in the son. As Robert armed himself, so did his enemies.
In order to make time his servant, Robert, his temper already in his pocket, the other cheek of his proud face at most times turned, must act the honest broker. It was he who welcomed the Queen’s suitors or their proxies to court, and pleaded the cause of the one most likely to suit his purpose.
‘The Queen,’ Mary Sidney said, ‘talks a great deal about them.’
‘Whom does she fancy?’
‘First one and then the other. She laughs a lot and teases us. She’s very good-humoured.’
‘She teases more people than know it.’
‘She seems to enjoy herself.’
‘Tell me who’s the favourite in the running, Mary.’
‘She said the other day, “Maybe England will allow me a Catholic husband, as long as he is not a Spaniard, or a Frenchman.”’
‘The Archduke Charles of Austria?’
‘I think so.’
‘Hmm. Tell me what you hear, Mary.’
Mary heard more of the Archduke. The Queen certainly dwelt upon his possibilities. His marriage was practically in King Philip’s gift.
Robert, knowing what he did of the Queen, suspected that all her wordy speculation was the enjoyment of one blowing bubbles in the sunshine. He saw to it, though, that the Spanish ambassador asked his sister Mary Sidney a few questions, and that he came away encouraged. Alas, he was so encouraged, that he made the error of asking the Queen for a straight answer. Elizabeth was not one for
straight answers. ‘I will not be bound to it,’ she said, in alarm. No, she hated to be bound down, to be made a prisoner of yea or nay. The Spanish ambassador was put out; he had been misinformed. Others, also misinformed, turned upon Lord Robert.
Some servants of the Earl of Arundel, had, it seemed, planned to shoot Lord Robert through the head as he rode past a City shop. No connection with orders from their master could of course be found. Arundel had taken care to keep his nose clean. But that visit to Nonsuch still rankled with him. Then his hot-tempered son-in-law, the Duke of Norfolk, had all but drawn his sword on Robert, only deflected by Robert’s unwillingness to rise to the bait. He kept his temper in his pocket, though with difficulty.
‘Anyone,’ he said righteously, ‘who wishes the Queen to marry out of the realm is not a loyal Englishman.’ Norfolk, astonished at this bare-faced turnabout, went away, though only to grumble to Arundel that the best New Year gift that England could have would be a dead Dudley.
Mary Sidney, too, was angry with her brother.
‘You wanted me to tell the Spanish ambassador that the Queen was certain to have the Archduke.’
‘Did I say so?’
‘No. You were too clever to say so. You knew it would all burst like a bubble. Why, I believe you knew the Queen would say no in the end, though she gave such a reverse impression. I believe you’re just playing for time, waiting for Amy to die. Who’d be a woman! You’ve made a fool of me, Robert. I’m going home to Penshurst. I think I will find the company of my son more honest than my brother’s!’
When she had gone Robert sighed, and tried to pretend that his sister’s regard meant little to him. It did mean a great deal, but it was a price he had to pay in the game he played.
*
They came bearing gifts. So they had, loaded with them. The Queen’s New Year gifts were laid out for inspection. She spent a long time inspecting them herself. The second New Year of her reign had proved more bounteous than the first. She found herself memorizing the items and the names of the donors. She loved to receive gifts.
She poked and peered and caressed her tributes, sampled the edible offerings — a candied orange rind, a sucket puffing a snow of powdered sugar upon her fingers as she delved into a little silver boxful, a sweet almond manikin eaten whole, snatched from a tower of gilded marzipan complete with garrison and guns.
The gifts which most delighted her were not necessarily the most costly, though the many silk purses of money clinked happily in her hands. Elizabeth carefully fingered silk-knitted, peach-coloured stockings given by Mrs Penn, King Edward’s old governess, and was more than satisfied at their fineness. There were a great many items of needlework, especially in black work on translucent lawns, handkerchiefs, sleeves, shifts. Lord Ambrose Dudley had given a smock and a pair of sleeves, one with flowers, and one with bees and wasps, butterflies and caterpillars, the work on white lawn as fine as any penmanship she might achieve herself.
Lord Robert had rendered a purse of money, which had left Elizabeth a little dissatisfied, as she had expected something more original from this source, in spite of the knowledge that the sum in the purse was more than he could afford.
At Mr Cecil’s gift, a writing stand holding an inkpot with a crystal lid, a seal, and twenty-four counters in case her calculations should go astray, the Queen smiled. She would not be surprised if he had purchased this on the same day as he had written that letter about no longer meddling in her affairs.
That night, the first of the year 1560, there was a mask played, of Diana and Actaeon. The maskers came like visitors outside time, from a world aeons beyond that of Whitehall, pacing stately and outlandish among the throng of Elizabeth’s court. Diana was draped in purple shimmery tissue from which white limbs emerged like crocus stems, her red-gold hair bound up in classical style — all goddesses now had red-gold hair. Her attendant nymphs were rainbow shadows in carnation, purple and blue, with floating ribbons of all these colours together. From the other side came Actaeon and six huntsmen in purple tunics with orange buskins and gilded spears, and a dozen greyhounds on purple leashes. They circled round, the hounds padding, prowling, setting down their feet like cats, and the torchbearers lit the circle as it passed, as if for some strange rite.
The Queen, all crimson silk and fire of rubies, led the dance, like a flame springing a trail along the ground, weaving among the maskers and torchbearers, now blood-coloured, now glinting scarlet, now damson-shadowed, as the flare of light caught her, then relinquished her again. Her partner, for ever pursuing this will-o’-the-wisp of flame, now had her in his hand, his arms, now bowed to her as she flickered away. Her partner was Lord Robert Dudley, head and shoulders taller than she; his long, lean dark form threw a longer, leaner shadow on walls and ceiling, grotesquely elongated, like a play made with fingers and a candle. Orange-tawny satin in the torchlight, black velvet in the shadows, he glowed like embers of the Queen’s trail. Only one shadow on the wall was taller than his — the man who was Actaeon in the mask still wore his antlers, and he towered, uncanny, demon-like, over them all. Only the hounds who had hunted him had been taken away.
That particular shade of bloody crimson complimented the Queen’s red hair, rather than resented it — she chose colour cleverly — and it showed up her skin translucent white, as if all her blood had drained out into the cloth. Round her neck were rubies in beaded drops, as if she had come too near the savaged Actaeon, and her sleeves were crusted with garnet and ruby flowers.
‘Caesar’s mantle,’ Robert said in her ear, and for some reason she seemed at first flattered, then turned pale.
‘I am no Caesar,’ she said, and moved from him in the dance, although when she turned back she was smiling again.
She danced all evening, led a bransle with the Prince of Sweden, with Guildenstern their ambassador, with Sir William Pickering, the Earl of Arundel, with the Duke of Norfolk, and even with brother Ambrose. But when the torchbearers led them all out of the Great Hall doors in a burst, an outpouring of light and noise into the frosty dark, she led Lord Robert by the hand and suggested a game of cards.
When they were alone, Robert gave the Queen the New Year gift which he had chosen as a decorative supplement to his purse of money. He gave an apple of gold. It lay on her palm, so realistic she was tempted to bite. Inside the gold was a pomander, outside smooth, shiny green enamel, shading to apricot on the rosy-ripe side. On the other side there was a bite taken out, as white as teeth, and perched near the bite, where the lips had been, a tiny green bug with ruby eyes. Elizabeth turned the apple in her cupped hand; it was colder than a real fruit brought in from the frost. She warmed it gradually — the scent would be better then, when she opened it.
‘An apple of gold for Vigilance, my Eyes,’ she said.
‘But most of all for others,’ he countered. ‘One the First. But one is Love.’ Paris gave Venus an apple of gold.
‘Are you tempted, Robin Dudley?’ Eve smiled.
‘Only Your Majesty can bring about my fall!’
‘I should not like to see you fall, my high handsome Robin!’
How often their conversations followed the patterns of the dance, intricate with sidestepping and weaving to and fro, as changeable in light and shadow as a torchlit room.
‘I should have given you a butterfly, my Queen, for that is what you have become. A beautiful golden butterfly. I remember you in the dull chrysalis!’
‘First I was small, and round like a pearl,
Then long and slender, as brave as an earl,
Since, like a hermit, I lived in a cell,
And now, like a rogue, in the wide world I dwell!
Answer — a butterfly!’ Elizabeth said, in delight. ‘I love the wide world!’
‘Where will your wings carry you?’
‘To you, Robin.’
‘And then away again?’
‘Are you the wide world, Robin?’
She lay back in his arms on the embroidered coverlet, a crimson
butterfly with a white face. He tasted the red flower of her mouth. He tasted for a fairly long time, then she wriggled under him, pinched his arm hard enough to make him yelp, and jumped up, shooting across the room in a swish of bloody silks, to land up against the window like a trapped butterfly. He did not follow, but lay there, regarding her seriously. To escape his gaze, she looked out of the window. Peering in at her, white and floating, like the moon in the sky, was a face. The features were wistful, intent and watching, longing to be in there, envious of the fire, trying to catch a glimpse of her jolly Robin, denied him by her unassailable chastity. Diana’s face.
Elizabeth gazed one moment more, at her own reflection. Then she turned, and with measured, almost dragging steps, came back to Robert, seated herself on the bed beside him, took his hands in hers.
‘I saw Diana, looking in,’ she said. ‘She shall not have you. You are my Robin!’
‘I saw you, my Sovereign Lady Elizabeth, my Queen, wanting to fly out.’ Just when he thought he had held the Diana of the groves of yew at Nonsuch.
‘But I didn’t fly.’
‘No. Here you are again.’
‘Hold me, Robin.’ She clutched him suddenly, alarmingly, long ivory fingers fierce on his arms, making him wince.
‘Quiet now,’ he said, as if to a rogue mare. He detached her pinching scissors of hands, folded them gently together, quietly upon themselves, and then he held her enfolded against his chest, soothing her nerves. He might have held a little daughter like that, if he had one. The only child he had ever held like that was Philip. A most extraordinary comparison to make — his little nephew Sidney with his Queen. It was the only way in which he could hold her for long, usually she flitted, whirled, slid, or simply drifted away, as she did from partner to partner in the dance.
None But Elizabeth Page 17