Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (20 page)

vulgar curiosity. There were so many questions burning within him

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about the Lord Admiral, questions which he knew he must never dare

to ask. And what could he say to her now that would not sound prying,

that would take the cold wary expression from her pale face? Shocked to

see how strained and frail she looked, he said, unable to think of anything

better, “Will you walk with me, madam?”

“
Madam
?”

He smiled suddenly, took her hand with all his old familiarity and

laid it on his arm. She turned and nodded to Kat, who knew what was

required of her and reluctantly fell back several paces behind them.

“Show me the gardens,” Elizabeth said. “It’s a long time since I’ve

been at court.”

“Too long,” he parried swiftly. “Much too long. I would have ridden

over to Hatfield to see you but—” He hesitated.

“But your father wouldn’t have liked it.”

“Well—” He was uncomfortable. “You know what Father is—”

“You don’t have to apologise, Robin, I’m not offended.”

A look of real relief crossed his face and they began to talk of other things.

Thirty-four columns, each surmounted by a fantastically carved

animal, lined their way as they strolled towards the huge fountain in the

centre of the garden. A sturdy vein of self-confidence marked Robin’s

conversation, based on a belief, as yet unchallenged, that the world was

a pleasant place and life was his own particular oyster. He was cheerful

company and Elizabeth found herself studying him from the corner of

her eye with a warmth of interest that amazed her. She was astonished to

see just how handsome he had grown and very careful not to let him see

that she had noticed. She was accordingly astringent, and as he strutted

beside her, boisterous, bumptious, and buoyant as a half-grown hound,

she put him down several times with verbal cuffs that began to penetrate

his healthy depth of thick skin. So he tried a little of the flattery that had

paid him handsome dividends in other circumstances.

“They say you never wear your hair loose any more.”

“Well?” She gave him a frigid glance.

“Don’t you think it’s a waste to hide it like that—no one else at court

has hair to match yours?”

Against her will she was faintly mollified.

“Courtier!” she said suspiciously. “Where have you been polishing

your tongue?”

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Susan Kay

“In Norfolk, on a softer stone,” he admitted with a shrug.

“Norfolk?”

“Syderstone—we were quartered there for a few nights after the rebel-

lion. You mind old Robsart’s daughter? We marry in June.”

She stared ahead, unable to look at him, hiding an emotion that

seemed as irrational as it was unexpected. For what was it to her, after all,

if he married?

At last she turned with a crooked little smile and slapped his arm

playfully.

“Wild oats,” she said softly. “Pleasant enough to sow, but very tedious

to reap. Poor Robin!”

“Men pay for whores,” he snapped angrily, needled by the sly insinu-

ation. “They don’t take them to wife.”

He watched her go white as a bleached bone and was suddenly on

fire with guilt, ashamed of pricking holes in that hard, careless front of

composure which was her sole defence against the knowing leers and

sniggering talk. At seventeen, with nothing ahead that he could see for

himself but success and happiness, her taut misery hurt him, made him

feel small and mean-minded. How tactless and insensitive to have spoken

of his marriage, with the Admiral rotting at this moment in a dishonoured

grave. He stole an uneasy glance at her. She shivered in the frosty air and

he flung his cloak around her shoulders with a curiously heavy heart. So

it was true then, all the rumours—she had loved a man old enough to

have been her father—And why should she give the time of day now to a

callow, shallow youth who had as good as called her a slut…?

“I didn’t mean to imply—” he began awkwardly.

She smiled faintly and put her finger to his lips to close them. The

clumsy lie had touched her. Certainly he believed the rumours, but

unlike the rest, believed them unwillingly. In spite of evil gossip and

wealthy heiresses, he was still her friend and would always be; it was as

though he simply couldn’t help it.

“Tell me about your bride,” she said gently.

Suddenly bashful as a schoolboy, he told her a little, packing the snow

to ice beneath his boot and not looking at her as he spoke. When he had

finished there was silence between them, a silence it was incumbent upon

her to break with the greatest care.

“So,” she said guardedly, “hardly an
arranged
marriage.”

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He laughed, “If I’d proposed to a peasant it couldn’t have caused

more trouble. Oh, she’s wealthy enough, even Mother couldn’t fault

her there—but of no standing, you see, nothing to further the family’s

interests at court. But I’ll be hanged before I play a pawn on Father’s

chessboard. If I ever find power in England, no man shall say I first went

hunting it beneath my own wife’s petticoats.”

There was a curious expression on her face. She lifted her hand to her

lips as though to hide a smile and he instantly took the gesture for mockery.

“I have amused you,” he continued stonily. “Doubtless you prefer

men to be cold-blooded, ruthless graspers like—”

“Like your father,” she finished for him pleasantly.

He smiled uneasily and conceded the point. Did she know just how

close he had come to flinging the Admiral’s name at her, like a gauntlet?

Her eyes regarded him steadily, hard and bright, quietly superior with an

unvoiced depth of knowledge that touched him with the first moment

of self-doubt. His world had been uncomplicated, coloured simply in

black and white, and he had been sure of himself and his desires. Now

suddenly, unexpectedly, there was confusion, an area of indistinct grey-

ness and uncertainty which he did not care to examine too closely—

It had been easy to fall in love with Amy—too easy, he thought

suddenly, remembering the rough kick Warwick had dealt him beneath

the cover of the Robsarts’ table.

“Paws off, Robin, I know that look of yours! When we leave here

tomorrow I don’t want old Robsart running after us yelling ‘rape.’”

It was an indignity and it had stung deep, transforming a moment’s

normal, healthy lust into a pitched battle for independence. Marriage with

the Robsart heiress was the first serious campaign Robin had ever waged

against his father’s authority and he won it sooner than he had expected.

Warwick, preoccupied with pressing matters of state, had neither the

time nor the inclination to master a belligerent man-cub whose stubborn

wilfulness was vaguely reminiscent of his own. He had always had a soft

spot for Robin, of all his sons the nearest mirror image of himself—and

the girl had money that might be useful. So he gave way; the contract was

drawn up, a date agreed, and Robin was complacent at his victory; or had

been, until this moment.

“Seventeen,” remarked Elizabeth casually, “is very young for a man to

put his head willingly into a noose.”

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Susan Kay

He was silent, shaken, infuriated. Young! Now what exactly did she

mean by that—naïve, immature, ignorant? He, twelve months her senior

in an age when many lads of his station had already fathered the next

generation—he,
young
? Too young to recognise a passing fancy in time

to retreat from it? Was that what she meant to imply?

“You must come to the wedding,” he said curtly and they walked on

in hostile silence for a while, with the old spaniel padding between them.

The fountain was still, supported by frozen cherubs. Close by stood

a sundial designed to show the hour in thirty different ways, but today,

thickly covered by a layer of snow and ice, it showed none of them.

Elizabeth chiselled at the frozen mass with a stick. After a while she asked

casually what he knew of the Protector—it was safer ground.

“Somerset’s finished,” said Robin flatly.

“He’s still alive.”

Robin smiled. “For the moment.”

She paused, with the stick suspended in one hand and her eyes met his

across the sundial.

“
When
?” she whispered.

He was silent, weighing the risks of indiscretion.

“When it pleases the people?” she persisted.

“Oh—the people don’t count!” Robin shrugged carelessly. “When it

happens—
if
it happens—it will be at my father’s convenience.”

She asked no more. She had learned all she wanted to know; the

Duke’s days were numbered. Snow began to swirl around them and they

went back to the palace, where she returned Robin’s cloak in silence.

Further down the corridor there was a sudden movement. A sombre,

unimposing figure began to walk steadily towards them and she recog-

nised him at last, in the winter half-light, as Somerset’s secretary.

“Here comes that bloodless wonder, Cecil.” Robin’s voice in her ear

was contemptuously amused. “He’ll have to shift soon if he wants to save

his skin. They say you’ll always be able to judge which way the wind’s

blowing by the way Master Cecil trims his sails. Father’s cultivating him,

thinks he might prove useful. Personally, I wouldn’t bother. He’s just a

spineless weathercock like all the rest of the Council.”

Elizabeth turned to look at the gentleman in question, a small man,

dull and insignificant to look at; she wondered why her heart should

jump at the sight of him. It was the second time now that she had felt

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this extraordinary jolt, as though something had touched her soul at its

very core.

Cecil stopped in front of them and bowed sketchily, taking the hand

she automatically extended to him. He seemed about to speak when an

angry voice cut between them, rebounding down the empty passage from

an open door beyond.

“Robin! Devil take that boy, he’s never about when I need him.

Mary—cut along and find the lovesick lout—”

The door closed abruptly, cutting off the strident tones in the middle

of an oath. Robin didn’t wait for his sister to appear in person.

“Damned dog,” he said, bending to slap the spaniel’s rump affection-

ately. “If I had more sense and less heart I’d have you put down and save

myself a deal of trouble.”

He straightened up briskly to kiss Elizabeth’s right hand and found

Cecil holding it. There was a moment of pointed silence while he glared

at the older man, waiting for him to give way. Then Elizabeth offered

her left hand and he was forced to take it, so that for a curious second the

three of them stood physically linked in a triangle. The moment length-

ened past convention, charged with significance beyond their present

ken, until Elizabeth laughed and withdrew her fingers from Robin’s

fierce grasp.

“Dogs and horses,” she remarked to the secretary, “I believe they

even follow him to bed when they can. You’re a married man, Mr.

Cecil—you had better warn him that his wife will be jealous.”

Robin made her a mocking bow.

“Your Grace may keep an easy mind on the matter. However

crowded the bed, there’s always room to fit in a wife—wouldn’t you

agree there, Cecil?”

The secretary stared with vague distaste, and Elizabeth’s sudden

laughter confirmed his suspicion that he had missed the point of some

vulgar jest. The knowledge irritated Cecil, and his precise mind, trained

to a lawyer’s obsession with detail, began to gnaw at the innuendo.
Always

room to—
He stiffened in disgust as the young man departed cockily—fast,

foul-tongued, symbolic of a jumped-up race he instinctively despised.

The geriatric spaniel, sensing hostility, gazed at him balefully, before

ambling after his master in a leisurely fashion; Elizabeth and Cecil were

left alone in the dimly lit corridor, wrapped in a pulsing silence.

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Susan Kay

“Do you too jump when Warwick roars, Mr. Secretary?” she asked at

last, wondering why he stood and stared at her in that strange manner. “I

understand that soon you may be in need of a new master.”

“We must all seek out one whom we can serve with love and loyalty,

Your Grace. However long the search I shall find my true master—or

mistress—in the end.”

The words had an indescribable ring, and for a moment it was as though

the outer world had faded, leaving them to face one another on a spiritual

plateau, divorced from time and space, a sixteen-year-old princess of

doubtful reputation and a colourless, twenty-seven-year-old lawyer, whose

morals and intellect were equally impeccable. Her right hand still lay in his,

as though some unseen force had suddenly soldered them together.

When she spoke at last it was in a whisper.