She turned to Robert. She was looking very pale and thin, the marks of the illness still on her. She wore black and white, colours of virginity and constancy, a black velvet gown studded all over with hundreds of silver acorns, faced with ermine, the sleeves slashed with ermine pullings. Her eyes were enormous, like the black tips in the white fur, bluish shadows under them. The white lids deeply indented at the fold like the eyes of someone much older. The pretty little orange curls that had clustered round her brow seemed to have thinned and receded, indeed her bright hair had fallen out in handfuls during the illness. It made her face even more extraordinary, the bony eye sockets, the arched brows, the high, white forehead, and those impenetrable eyes, black ponds in which autumn leaves floated.
‘At least you did not favour her!’ The ‘her’, uttered in that inimitable tone, was Lady Katherine Grey, still confined in the Tower.
‘Not by any stretch of the imagination do I favour her, in any way. She is a poor thing in the sight of these eyes, so used to Your Majesty.’
‘Ah, my Eyes! Will your eyes see me so in years to come, as we grow old, Robin?’
‘My eyes have seen you since you were a little, oyster-faced child, and ever after they have seen a pearl of womanhood. Age cannot wither Your Majesty.’
Her eyes gazed up at him, huge, unreadable in expression, watchful. Then, to his surprise, they grew luminous, even larger, as if they would melt and brim over their sockets. Tears rolled down her cheeks, like pearls of great price.
‘I wanted you, Robin, when I was dying. I wanted to die in your arms. I wanted only you.’
‘I know. I came to you. If you had died, then I would have lived only a death in life after.’
Their faces came closer as if drawn by magnets. He bent to kiss her lips, gently. Her mood was too rare to miss the opportunity. Such moments were fragile as bubbles in the air.
‘My dear love,’ he said.
‘Robin!’ She uttered only his name, but what began on a note of calling, yearning, died like a plaintive little song.
He became aware that she was fiddling with his beard. As she stood back, her face broke into a vixenish grin. She had tied a little ring from her finger in his beard. She pealed with laughter, ringing the bell at the house door and running away again. The bubble had burst.
*
‘All the Queen’s most notable ancestors have commonly had some issue to succeed them, but Her Majesty as yet, none. None…none…none…’ Dean Nowell’s words echoed round the vault of the roof in Westminster Abbey. In this tomb of her ancestors one of them should have spoken up and silenced him. Elizabeth imagined her father’s reaction if someone had preached about the failure of his duty and bodily functions in a sermon before the opening of Parliament.
The Queen sat rigid, with impassive face, in her robes of crimson velvet and her little crown, motionless as that tiny figure from the picture on her Rolls. She would have liked to bring her sceptre down on Dean Nowell’s head, but instead would outface him with icy dignity.
‘As the marriage of Queen Mary was a terrible plague to all England,’ he brayed on, mentioning the unmentionable, ‘so now the want of your marriage and issue is like to prove as great a plague…’ It was a measure of the feelings of her Parliament that this should be said to her face, in public, and for that reason Elizabeth forbore.
‘If your parents had been of your mind, where had you been then?’ The Dean was not stopping yet. ‘Or what had become of us now?’ The effrontery! He exceeded his office. The illogicality of this argument was evident. If her parents had been of her mind, then her mother would have kept her head, her father would not have suffered a second girl child, and as to where she herself would have been, that was one of God’s mysteries. As to the realm, no doubt some other destiny would have fallen out, ensuring its continued existence.
As if this sermon bombarding her was not enough, a fortnight into the Session Mr Speaker brought a petition from the Commons, urging the Queen to marry. She had expected it. She would have to answer civilly, without answering anything else.
‘Being a woman,’ she said, almost, but not quite, sweetly. ‘Being a woman, lacking in both wit and memory, the weight and importance of this matter might make me afraid to answer you.’ She paused. ‘Being a woman, I might, besides, be bashful — a thing most appropriate to my sex, don’t you think, Mr Speaker?’
Lord Robert, listening, knew perfectly well they would get no answer. Wit and memory were the last things she lacked — that was so often the trouble.
‘I know as well as I did before, Mr Speaker, that I am mortal. I have felt Death possess almost every joint of me. One day I will have to surrender to him, as we all will. But not yet.’ She paused again and carefully smoothed the silk of her skirts, extending her long fingers upon the crimson cloth like a lace web. Then she sat back, giving the Speaker a most winning, feminine smile.
‘Though after my death you may have many stepdames, yet you shall never have a more natural mother than I mean to be.’ Of course this was irresistible. Its effect was that the Speaker missed the real significance of what came next.
‘I am determined in this so great and weighty matter to defer my answer till some other time, because I will not in so deep a matter wade with so shallow a wit.’
Shallow a wit! Robert could have hooted with laughter. Her words echoed the opinion Mr Secretary Cecil had expressed early in her reign, that some things were too big for a woman’s wit to comprehend. Both Robert and Cecil had begun to learn a different lesson; the Commons had not. But they all by now were familiar with the words, ‘I will defer my answer.’
Next it was the turn of the Lords. More gloomy prognostications of civil war and her death. She snapped out that she had survived by the strength of God’s right hand before and did not fear now.
‘Besides,’ she turned her cheek to them, ‘do you see wrinkles there, my Lord?’
‘God forbid, Your Majesty.’
‘Indeed you do not see wrinkles, but the marks of smallpox. I may be twenty-nine years old, but I believe childbearing is still possible to those of my age? I can even wait a little longer — look at the example of St Elizabeth!
‘If I appoint a successor, it will bring England to civil war, not, as you say, the reverse. You have lived longer than I, do you not remember how I was used when a Princess to unseat my sister?’ It was perplexing how they both reasoned well, yet each regarded the other’s statement as contrary.
***
Whitehall bloomed with flowers even in midwinter. The Queen sat upon a heap of cushions, flanked by her ladies, like a regal sunflower among humbler border plants. The air smelled of flowers; perfumes burned in little pots, more heady with musk than summer scents. Spiced rose petals, violets and lavender lay in bowls. Dried herbs, fragrant as a meadow, were scattered on the plaited rush matting covering the floor. Even the cushions were a bed of embroidered flowers, netted with gold, tasselled with silver, on which bees and butterflies lived, out of season, in silks.
In this February garden of delight were gathered the Queen’s closest friends and family, to celebrate St Valentine. Elizabeth liked to play traditional games just as much, if she were to admit it, as her sister Mary had. Only four of those present had been at such games that Valentine’s Day twenty-one years ago, when Elizabeth had drawn young Robert Dudley as her sweetheart. Lord Robert, past thirty now, stood to one side of the Queen’s seated group, leaning against the fireplace — no one could lean so elegantly, yet with total masculine assurance, as Lord Robert. Kat Ashley sat plumply, no longer young, Mrs Parry older, but her age had always seemed to defy enquiry.
Which of them remembered that day at Ashridge, a time marked by the death of a Queen upon the block and by the happy innocence of childrens’ games? Elizabeth needed no prompting — she had a good memory. No longer a little russet wren, perched in a window, but a paradise bird flown miraculously in from unknown lands. Robert, too, was a gaudy bird now, as fine a peacock as exhib
ited his pride anywhere. She was proud of him. Yet his pride flew too high sometimes, and then a few sharp snips were needed to clip his wings.
The Queen was, of course, every man’s valentine, and they had given her many gifts, mostly gloves. These she enjoyed trying on. Spanish leather so fine it rolled on like paint, in russet and palest straw, creamy-white, and ginger-line. She savoured their different perfumes, sniffed, flexing her fingers meditatively, admiring the fall of a silk tassel, a lace trim, a bead, a jewel.
When lots were drawn for valentines this time, things fell out unromantically among the family. The Queen was partnered by her cousin Lord Hunsdon, which seemed to please her. Harry Hunsdon was a popular man, because he took care to quarrel with few, and he had sufficient manly looks and presence to be Captain of her Gentlemen Pensioners. Lord Robert drew his own younger sister, Kate, whose husband, the Earl of Huntingdon, was not present. Amid general laughter at this outcome, the Queen’s high, carrying voice was heard to remark.
‘If my Robin cannot have a Queen for a sweetheart, then he must have his sister, whom he hopes may be a Queen some day!’
It was a sharp reminder to Robert who in the smallpox crisis had favoured his brother-in-law Huntingdon’s claim to the throne through a Yorkist and Plantagenet descent above the Tudor and Stewart ones. The Queen had a nasty habit of delivering remarks with an envenomed dart into apparently harmless conversation. This time she let the matter drop at that, having achieved her purpose, and continued in a more frivolous vein. But poor Kate had blushed and been upset, for her husband regarded his ancestry as a curse and was one of the Queen’s most loyal subjects. Robert made much of his sister in consequence, and light of the matter, but he knew how sensitive the Queen was on this question of her successor. It was the assumption of her death, he thought, which made her shy like a startled horse. She frightened easily, but had her own methods of overcoming panic. Sad that she, who so wanted a close family, like she knew the Dudleys to be, was forced by circumstance to hate her Tudor relatives.
‘The fact that Lady Katherine Grey has produced a second son has made the thunder rumble,’ Robert said later, when he went to visit his sister Mary Sidney. ‘Our poor Kate is frightened that her husband will be shut up in the Tower — or that they both will.’
Mary, veiled and shaky still from the smallpox, said, ‘A baby born in the Tower to two close prisoners is enough to make a good deal of thunder and lightning, even if he is proclaimed a bastard. He’s a Tudor bastard. There’s two of them now. That pitiful little Grey girl — the Bell Tower is not a good nursery. We should pity them all, who have lived in that place. Jane the nine-days’ Queen. Elizabeth the Princess.’
‘Elizabeth, even in extremity, was never pitiful.’
‘But she was afraid and alone.’
‘She is still afraid, and alone,’ Robert said soberly, ‘but she goes better armed now, as you would know if you had experienced the sharp end of her weapons.’
‘I am your sister, Robin, and Kate’s.’
‘But you are favoured; your face is a testament to your sacrifice. You know where the infection came from.’
‘The Queen knows that. She has visited me every day, always brings some little gift, as kind as a sister.’
‘She follows her natural inclinations then. But a Queen can seldom afford natural inclinations.’
You are learning, brother Robin, thought Mary Sidney sadly, touching the pitted skin of her ruined face, but it will be a long time before those Eyes see the full meaning of the lesson.
*
King Henry VIII towered there on the wall of the Presence Chamber at Whitehall, a bull only a little past his prime, shoulders like the Atlas of the world, legs like tree trunks, podgy fists loaded with rings, that codpiece unjustified by male heirs At the time of Flodden, he had been twenty-one. The Scots had cause to remember Henry VIII. Sir William Maitland, the Queen of Scots’ Secretary of State, looked up from where he sat upon a low chair at the feet of Elizabeth at the painted father and living daughter. Maitland, like many Scots, was canny, but unlike most, was civilized. He was a well-educated courtier, trained in France, in his thirties, a very presentable man.
Elizabeth smiled. This was Maitland’s third visit to London. She enjoyed dealing with him, and knew she had his admiration. He had come to talk of marriage — what else? All talk this Parliamentary session was of marriage. But this concerned the Queen of Scots; upon her marriage depended England’s safety.
Elizabeth had a plan. It was a very new plan, which had only recently evolved in her mind, and seemed so extraordinary to her in every way that she was waiting to try Maitland’s reaction to it.
‘What would you say, Sir William, to an Englishman? A Protestant Englishman. The finest man in the world?’
‘If such a paragon could be found, and a Protestant Englishman into the bargain, how could I fail to be pleased, Your Majesty?’
‘Lord Robert Dudley has all those qualities.’
Maitland’s face was unable at first to register his astonishment. Elizabeth did not notice this, she was too busy setting light to her firework.
‘Queen Mary, my sister Queen, could do no better than to take Lord Robert as her husband. He is like a brother to me.’
That was not how the world described their relationship. The suave and sophisticated Maitland gaped like a fish for a second before his sophistication took command. He managed a smile fatuous in its archness.
‘But surely Your Majesty could not bring yourself to bestow such a prize on someone else? A great proof of love, to be sure, but how could my Queen deprive you of the solace of Lord Robert’s, er, companionship?’
‘Lord Robert is a whole, proper man,’ said Elizabeth proudly, ‘endowed by nature with so many graces that if I were to marry, I would prefer him to all the Princes in the world.’
A mere lord, a gigolo, and a secondhand one at that! The insult of it staggered Maitland, but what staggered him even more was that the Queen appeared perfectly serious.
‘If only,’ Elizabeth said chattily, ‘the Earl of Warwick had the grace and good looks of Lord Robert, then we might have a brother each!’
She appeared to dwell at the moment in realms of fantasy, not in chilly England. Maitland was rendered speechless, his smile fixed inanely on his face.
‘Of course,’ Elizabeth went on, into the flow of her thought now, ‘The Earl of Warwick is not a bit ugly, but his manners are not as polished as his brother’s. He is not so accomplished. He lacks the quality of a Prince.’
Maitland did the only thing he was able to do, and laughed. ‘Your Majesty is too generous,’ he burbled, ‘we must come back to this matter later, but I’m sure Your Majesty will think again when you see the handsome Lord Robert at your side.’
The Queen’s eyes suddenly and sharply focused upon his face. She saw the meaningless smile upon his lips, the horror and disbelief in his eyes, the mask of the diplomat momentarily stripped off
‘I am insulted both in England and abroad,’ she said, ‘for having shown too much favour to Lord Robert. No…’ She dismissed Maitland’s conventional protest before it was voiced. ‘No, I ought not to wonder at it. I have favoured him because of his excellent disposition and many merits, but I am young, and he is young, and therefore we have been slandered.’ Maitland would have described persons of thirty as of mature years and old enough to know better, but because the Queen was so sober and serious he listened attentively.
‘God knows,’ she said, ‘they do us grievous wrong, and the time will come when the world will know it also. A thousand eyes see all that I do…’ That was no doubt true, but other monarchs had managed to blinker the eyes for long enough to get up to all kinds of immorality.
‘Calumny,’ swore Elizabeth, ‘will not fasten on me for ever.’ That also, thought Maitland, might be true, but it had fastened and stuck to Lord Robert, which was what in this case mattered.
But to Elizabeth, her solution was amazingly simple. She had ne
ver been more serious. King Robert in Scotland could safeguard her own future, and her kingdom’s, as King Robert in England never could. Mary would cease to be a threat and would become a sister, the mother of an heir Elizabeth might accept to succeed them both. A united England and Scotland. Enmity since the times of the Romans healed. Peace triumphant. It must be worth the sacrifice, the frantic jealousy which threatened to overwhelm her when she thought of the meaning of this marriage, when she thought of the loss of Robert. He could keep Mary in friendship with herself and prevent Scotland becoming an enemy. Only he could do this, for her. Would he, in this, see with her eyes?
*
Some months later, when the Queen at last put her scheme to him, Robert sought first of all to confide in his brother Ambrose. In July Warwick was forced to surrender Le Havre. He came home lame for life with a wound in his leg and in danger of carrying the sweating sickness. Robert rode to see him at once, heedless of the infection.
‘The Queen has given me Kenilworth castle.’
‘Then we shall be neighbours, for I intend to live mostly at Warwick. Splendid news, Robin, the bear and ragged staff is restored!’
‘Not quite. No new earldom yet.’
‘It will come.’
‘Hmm.’
‘I hope to see you win more than an earldom.’
Robert gave a curious, mirthless bark.
‘You don’t give up so easily, Robert?’
‘I don’t give up easily.’
‘You don’t look too cheerful about it.’
‘There’s cause for that. Ambrose, I am being hawked as husband to the Queen of Scots!’
‘Good God, Robert!’ Ambrose’s reaction mimicked Maitland’s, Cecil’s and his own.
‘I hope it proves to be a straw in the wind, but she is very set upon it. I shudder at the thought — exile in barbarian Scotland, at the mercy of Knox, even if the bride is young and attractive. The discomforts outweigh the honour. But I believe the fair Queen of Scots will not be flattered by the offer. I hope for “No sale”.’
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