‘Irish blood,’ she said. ‘I’d like you to send for some Irish mares, Robin. We could try serving them with a Neapolitan stallion, or a Spanish.’
Then, no doubt, she would try them out to see just how fast they could go. At Windsor, Elizabeth had so devoted herself to wild and dangerous exercise and letting of blood, that he was sure she found this a means of fleeing the difficulties around her. Indeed, of fleeing himself, for though he pounded after her, he found it difficult to lay siege to her virginity as he had been doing all summer. Her face had taken on a sharp look like a wary vixen. She looked unhappy, and the only way of escape was on the back of a fast horse, pursued by her demons, uncertain who was the huntress and who the hunted.
‘I saw a man with horns on his head in the forest,’ she said.
‘There’s plenty of them about!’
‘No. Antlers. I thought he was a stag.’
‘Your Majesty saw a stag.’
‘I did not. Robin…?’
‘Then it was Herne the Hunter, riding in daytime!’
‘Or Actaeon.’
‘Did you hear the hounds?’ He tried to laugh it aside. His flesh had begun to creep.
‘Nonsense — it’s all nonsense. I heard nothing!’ She could contradict herself amazingly from breath to breath. She was sitting alert in the saddle, her head half turned away from him, listening. The panpipes must have been calling her, for she was off like a bolt from a bow, leaving Robert to follow or not, as he chose. He always chose to follow.
Elizabeth was besieged on all sides. Pressure from Robert to surrender to his love, pressure from Kat Ashley and Blanche Parry not to, and now pressure from Mr Cecil more serious than any of his previous threats of resignation. He had used the words ‘civil war’ which were the most frightening words in the language to her. Why, civil war meant that someone would end in the Tower, on the block. Queens could be deposed — look at Lady Jane Grey; they all — Cecil, Dudley and herself — had cause to remember Lady Jane Grey. Old Mother Dowe of Brentford had been arrested for saying Lord Robert had given her a child. It was not the first time rumour had got her with child.
Elizabeth fled into the depths of Windsor forest. But the hounds pursued her even there. It was there, resting under an oak as big around as three pillars in a cathedral, that the messenger from Oxford found her. He was looking for Lord Robert Dudley. He found the Queen instead, and knelt, frightened, with no glad tidings to pour out. He wore black. The black at Hatfield had been the gladdest colour she had ever seen.
‘Lady Dudley is dead,’ he said. ‘She fell down stairs and broke her neck.’ Then, having forgotten himself, ‘If it please Your Majesty.’
It did not please Her Majesty. Elizabeth went white and swayed, as if she were a candle flame guttering in a fight to save itself from being blown out. Somehow, she was not extinguished. Her head was as cold and clear and empty as if nothing had burned there. She knew every implication at once. She must return to the confines of her castle of Windsor and take up this burden which had fallen upon her and upon Lord Robert. Whatever happened, the burden would fall heaviest upon the one who was a Queen.
It was then, the music of panpipes fading in her ears, that she saw him. Against a tree, his scythe propped up, his arms the branches, his spine ancient bark, he lounged, his skull turned towards her, the hollow eye sockets — or were they boles on the tree? But no, there was distinctly an hourglass in his hand. The sand was trickling steadily. ‘Even here,’ murmured Elizabeth, ‘he is here.’
Book Four
The Old Arbitrator
VII
The Malicious World
1560 – 1562
From the table clock, its dial held up by crystal dolphins, came a loud, unbidden tick, an intrusion into thought amounting to lese-majesty. Then it did it again, unbelievably importunate. Elizabeth prowled about, turning over papers on her desk, fiddling with pens. Clocks!
It was not Death she had seen, leaning against an oak in Windsor Park, but his cousin, Time. Horrid ancient, limping on a crutch, not worthy of the title ‘Father’. The old arbitrator of men’s lives. Only a handful of sand through his hourglass had made this difference. Amy Dudley would have died decently in her bed so soon. Only a few months. Such a difference.
‘We will walk in the Arcadian fields no more,’ Elizabeth said aloud. Things could never be the same again. Never. Yet they were the same. Robert was still alive, so was she. Their feelings had not died or altered. Only the world they walked in had changed, the eternal summer darkened by wintry clouds of malice. Poor nymph, poor shepherd. Virgo, their sign, was passing to Libra, and the scales were weighted against them. Where was justice?
The clock had the temerity to tick again. Clocks! Elizabeth pounced, and ripped the hand off the wretched thing. Then, her rage evaporating, she stood with the bent, offending hand in her own. She would send for Mr Oursian to mend it. The clock was too rare and handsome to spoil.
Elizabeth sat down and began to scribble. She had to set out the possibilities upon paper, as if they were not clear enough in her mind already. But wielding the pen gave her a semblance of control over events, which was in fact entirely lacking. This was the sort of thing Mr Cecil did.
1. Had Amy Dudley been murdered?
2. Who, of the three suspects, was guilty? Robert, Robert’s enemies, or Amy herself?
3. What to do to best weather the storm?
The answer to 1. was clearly, yes. 2. Robert? Ridiculous. Would he do something so self-damaging? Robert’s enemies, to harm him? No. The method was too inefficient. People when pushed downstairs were likely to end up with a variety of injuries, but their chances of being dead with a broken neck were not even fifty-fifty. Who of Robert’s enemies were fools enough to risk a fifty-fifty success or failure rate on an attempted murder? They would not have left room for failure. That left Amy herself. Elizabeth felt her heart cringe at the implications. Self-destruction was the most heinous of all sins. What state of mind would Amy Dudley be in to risk the everlasting fires? Such despair — Elizabeth herself, even in the worst times, had not known that sort of desperation.
But Amy had been found lying at the foot of the stairs, her cap still pinned to her head, a decent enough little corpse in a neat heap, no sprawling limbs or embarrassing skirts over her head, halfway down the stairs, or crushed like a netted bird against the banisters. Had there been bruising on her, or broken limbs, or ribs? How could Amy have killed herself without throwing herself haphazardly down? Only the inquest would tell. Or would it? Elizabeth had a shrewd idea that the inquest jury would not be able to exceed her own reasoning powers, and would return an inconclusive verdict. This would mean the guilt laid at Robert’s door for ever, by public opinion.
Elizabeth stood up. There was no more she could do sitting here. She must preside in public for the benefit of opinion, wearing the face of innocence again, like Susannah. This time it was surprisingly easy, for it was the truth. She was the only one who could help Robert, not by taking his part, but by standing for English justice and the triumph of the innocent. She was thankful that her first reaction had been so sensible. To send Robert away from her, from the court, to his house at Kew, to make it clear by putting a guard upon him, that he was under house arrest, pending a jury verdict. This was how a Queen should act, a Princess had learnt that in a hard school. It also protected Robert’s life — the royal guard kept men out as well as in. She hoped fervently that he would not try to influence the Oxfordshire jury, at least not in any way that was detectable. Elizabeth screwed up her sheet of scribbled memoranda and threw it into the fire. Then she waited to see it consumed.
On the road from his house at Wimbledon to Kew, Mr Secretary Cecil made good speed upon an ambling nag, a pace least distressing to his gouty foot. He had not ceased to meddle in the Queen’s affairs. Far from it, he had suddenly found himself up to his neck in them again, and glad of it. He rode to see Lord Robert, the first step in getting to grips with this new and dangerou
s situation.
‘A man without friends at court is like a workman without tools’ Cecil remembered saying this, in his frustration, only a week ago to Bishop De Quadra. ‘God,’ he now said to himself, ‘has put a tool into my hands.’ Lord Robert lay at Kew, friendless and helpless. Here came William Cecil, bearing an olive branch and extending the hand of friendship for the first time. Lord Robert was now also wifeless. If he did marry the Queen, Mr Cecil intended to be King Robert’s friend, and the Queen’s as well. If this did not occur, they would both be sufficiently grateful and Lord Robert would be indebted. Mr Cecil felt himself wielding his political tools as he had not been able to for some time now.
Lord Robert did not look quite the high-nosed gallant of a week ago. His dark curls showed evidence of much running through of distraught fingers. A tailor was applying a measure to one of his interminable legs. He had ordered a suit of mourning.
‘Mr Cecil!’ Amazement first, relief second, and the dawn of hope.
‘That’s enough for now, Jennings,’ Lord Robert moved away his leg. He placed a chair for Mr Cecil, then sat down himself, which removed the uncomfortable discrepancy between their heights. Robert looked tired, as if he had spent a sleepless night or two. Cecil was even more convinced that he was not guilty. He was too miserable at an event he had previously longed for.
‘Lord Robert, I am here on the Queen’s behalf, not yours.’ He took this meekly; he had no choice.
‘Nevertheless, I would not be the one to cast the first stone. I know — as the Queen knows — that this is none of your doing. I will stand on the side of justice, which may give you some protection, as I have not entirely become a cipher in these last months.’ That one, Cecil saw, went home as intended.
‘My advice is — do not protest your innocence too much, show you take it for granted. Let the law rescue you from the worst part of this situation, though it cannot rescue your reputation, as I have no doubt you realize.’
Lord Robert realized all right, that was why he was so wretched. How could the Queen survive an association with a man previously of no reputation but now of an indelibly blackened one? Only with the help of Mr Cecil and her own wits.
‘Have my enemies planted this on me?’ Robert did not mention the Howards, though that was who he meant.
‘Possibly. It seems the most likely explanation, though I would not have thought them to have chosen such bunglers’ methods. It is unlikely to be proven, of course.’
‘This untimely chance has completely altered my life.’
He was right there. Time had cheated him. Though in which direction his life would now go was still speculation. It was obvious that he realized immediate marriage with the Queen was now impossible.
‘Here I feel, as it were, in a dream — too far from the place where I ought to be.’
True, away from court, he and his schemes were nothing but the stuff of dreams.
‘The Queen is better for your absence.’ Cecil could not resist this. ‘She has ordered the court into mourning. Sober black sets the mood there. No one can fault her behaviour now.’ He refrained from saying that plenty did before.
‘Let me hear from you what you think best for me to do, as things develop.’
‘I am glad to find you, Lord Robert, such a willing recipient of my advice.’
Robert shook hands warmly as Cecil departed. ‘My thanks, Mr Cecil. If at any time I may do for you a tithe of what you have done for me…’
Fulsome, but it was never bad to know someone close to the Queen was willing to do something for you.
The verdict of the coroner’s jury was, as expected, ‘accidental death’. It did nothing to clear Lord Robert’s reputation. Within a week word began to come in of reaction abroad. It was hair-raising. Mr Cecil took care not to hide these despatches from the Queen, as he had John Knox’s letters. He was determined that they should have a salutary effect. In Paris, Sir Nicholas Throckmorton reported that the French were saying things that made every hair on his head stand on end, and his ears burn like spinning squibs. A comment from the young Queen of France and Scotland was shrill and nasty: ‘The Queen of England is going to marry her Horsekeeper, who has killed his wife to make room for her!’ Put so baldly, it sounded bad. Worse, Throckmorton said, England had lost any esteem it might have had in France. If in France, then elsewhere.
‘The Queen of England,’ spat Elizabeth, ‘is going to marry no one!’ This was cheering to Mr Cecil’s ears, but he knew by this time that she might say different next week. But next week was perhaps too short an estimate.
Kat Ashley and Blanche Parry watched their Queen like mother hens and consequently infuriated her. They watched her face grow pale as an empty eggshell, her features sharp and her tongue sharper. Mrs Parry took some satisfaction from the turn of events.
‘Do not marry,’ she said firmly. ‘Now, men have no one else to take notice of; they must seek your opinion, your permission, your approval, your royal commands. They cannot do without Your Majesty.’ She managed to say these things very quickly, in between a discussion of new book-bindings, in her capacity as Keeper of the Queen’s books. ‘The spine is worn,’ she said, in exactly the same tone, ‘and the gilding was not good quality.’
‘But if I had a husband,’ Elizabeth said, not looking at the volume, ‘men would come and ask for ‘My Lord’s Grace’, and not for me, the Queen.’
‘Precisely.’ Mrs Parry shut the book with a snap.
‘I would rather,’ Elizabeth said, ‘that they asked for me.’ Then defiantly, ‘But Robin Dudley would make them ask for me.’ She ignored the deprecating sound from Mrs Parry’s pursed lips. It was amazing the liberties Blanche could get away with.
Robert was now reviled by the public as some bogey figure from history, like Tiberius or Richard III or Machiavelli. If he were her husband, then maybe people would ask for neither of them. The French would say even more offensive things. The answer must be — wait. Memories were short. Or were they? One of the less damaging comments on Lord Robert’s ancestry went: ‘Son of a Duke, brother of a King, grandson of a squire, great-grandson of a carpenter, and the carpenter was the only honest man of the lot, and the only one to die in his bed.’ Perhaps they said her own great-grandfather Boleyn was a shopkeeper. They had certainly said her own mother was a whore. Would the combination prove too much for England to stomach?
When Lord Robert had been made a Knight of the Garter the Queen had promised him the earldom of Leicester, and his brother Ambrose, Warwick. A Queen might condescend to marry an Earl, but not a mere Lord, son of a decapitated Duke, and brother of a deposed, decapitated ‘King’. Poor Guilford, he had found the rule of a wife who was a Queen, if only for nine days, hard to accept. Robert remembered his tantrums, and Lady Jane Grey’s uncompromising words: ‘I should be content to make my husband a Duke, but would never consent to make him King.’ Jane had been more predictable than Elizabeth. If he were given an Earl’s coronet, then there was still hope of a crown to follow. Would he become Leicester, or would he not?
She loves me, she loves me not… The Queen played upon her virginals of ebony and gold. The notes scattered like jet beads from a broken necklace and fell upon Robert’s ears transmuted into crystal fragments. She had her back to him, but on the wall in front of her was hung a mirror so that she might admire the play of her own delicate fingers. He watched her in the mirror, white eyelids lowered like shutters; they did not even flicker as she spoke, above an elaborate trill.
‘Two new Earls is a great many new Earls.’
‘Your Majesty has the patents drafted.’
Jarr-rr-jangle! The Queen deliberately laid the flat of her long, elegant hand upon the keys, squashing them into discordancy. The musician got up. Ropes of pearls rattled together like thrown dice, skirts swished across the Turkey carpet. She went to her work table and picked up a penknife which was resting on the inkstand. Then she took the drafts of the patents, cut them in two, then in four, then to strips and shreds,
the knife making a hideous squeaking on the silver table top. Then she scooped up the fragments, lifted her cupped hands and let their contents fall, scattering like a handful of wheat thrown at a wedding.
‘Not yet,’ said Elizabeth.
Robert’s face expressed his feelings. ‘But the whole world expected it to be now!’
‘So it is not now.’
‘They’ll laugh all over their faces!’
‘Ah, Robin, no one shall laugh at the bear and ragged staff.’ She gently tweaked one of his ear lobes, and patted his cheek. Robert was not appeased.
‘Why?’ he said. Why did she indulge in these sorts of reversals?
‘No whys today.’ She was mocking, gentle, but adamant.
He would have to go away and tell Ambrose — ‘No earldoms today.’ They were still the plain Lords Dudley, and likely to remain so at the Queen’s pleasure.
What was the Queen’s pleasure? Nobody knew. But Elizabeth had no pleasure. It was no pleasure to her to refuse her Robin what she had promised him. She wanted to refuse him nothing, to load him with honours, to show her love was unchanged. But he had changed, or rather his repute in the world’s book had been rewritten.
*
Death walked in those few weeks before Christmas. Thomas Parry, Blanche’s brother, who had suffered imprisonment for Elizabeth and served her for the better part of fifteen years, left her service for a greater one on 15 December. Elizabeth mourned him, not because he was fat and sometimes pompous and not quite as efficient in his financial management of her household as he could have been, but because he was a mainstay of her regime, a kind, loyal friend, part of her surrogate family, like Blanche and Kat, who had looked after her all through the bad times, and she mourned because he had left her. It was a sign of mortality, of a world where time could not be halted.
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