Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (39 page)

rank had used that word to him. Her audacity amazed him.

“You are so restless,” he complained suddenly. “You dance and ride

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and shoot as though you may never be free to do these things again. If

you continue to live each day as though it was your last—”

She swung round from the window and smiled at him. “I shall burn

out like a firework before I am thirty, no? But that is no new thought—I

hear it from my governess quite regularly.”

Again he was shaken by her daring. To speak so lightly of burning

with Gardiner’s Heresy Bill now the law of the land—was she mad?

“Your governess is optimistic,” he said severely. “In my opinion you

may be exceedingly fortunate to reach twenty-two.”

“That doesn’t give me long, does it, my brother?”

Her eyes slanted a direct challenge that made him take her roughly by

the hand and lead her to the virginals. This way she had of playing with

her own danger excited his physical desire. And it alarmed him.

“Sit,” he commanded, “and play for me.”

She made a deep mocking curtsey and seated herself at the instru-

ment. He felt vaguely relieved to see her still at last, for somehow he

knew that if she went on talking and laughing and weaving her slender

body around the room, he would not be answerable for what he might

do to her. When she lost herself in the music she would forget to tease

and tantalise.

There was nothing to disturb his ears now except the tinkling notes,

nothing to disturb his eyes except those extraordinary fingers, mesmeric

as snakes, moving lightly across the keyboard and lulling him gently into

a trance-like state of contentment. He sat and watched them until the

failing light forced her to stop; then he leaned over and took her hands in

his, lifting them alternately to his sensual lips.

“You have beautiful hands,” he mused, turning them over in his grasp

and staring at them with an odd intensity, “such long fingers—almost too

perfect to be human.”

She waited patiently. After a moment she frowned.

“Is that all? I rather hoped you would go on to say they matched

my face.”

His pale skin turned furiously red.

“Madam,” he muttered, suddenly gauche as a boy, “your face is

beyond compare.”

“So is a vulture’s!” She gave him a wicked smile. “Oh—you are not

accustomed to paying compliments, are you, my brother?”

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“I am not accustomed to being
asked
for them,” he retorted drily. “In

my country no lady would dream of such brazen talk.”

She laughed and sat back on her stool, watching him.

“But this is not your country,” she said softly, “and I am not a lady—

surely the Queen has told you that.”

He looked away for a moment.

“Certainly she has told me that you are not to be trusted—as indeed

has one other.”

“What other? Come, Your Highness, you may safely tell me—was it

Renard? What did he say of me?”

“That—” Philip hesitated. “That you have a spirit full of incantation

and are greatly to be feared.”

A cold shiver touched Elizabeth’s spine. As an accusation of witch-

craft it could hardly be more plain, and superstition ran deep in Philip.

Suddenly his preoccupation with her hands took on an ominous meaning.

Too perfect to be human
—

Not since the day they took her to the Tower had she been so terri-

fied, and yet she knew instinctively that to show fear before this man

would be the worst thing she could possibly do. He would relish it and

believe at the same time that it betrayed her guilty conscience.

She leaned forward boldly and took his hand in her warm grasp.

“Is that what you believe of me, Philip?”

“I do not know,” he said slowly, staring at her very hard. “I know

nothing about you even after all these weeks in your company and I think

that is how you mean it to be. You hide your true self behind a mask.

You are charming, witty, accomplished—”

She pouted.

“You might try beautiful.”

“I might.” Against his will he was moved to smile. “Oh, I concede

you are fair of face—but beneath that pretty shell, I fear—”

“Oh dear—a natural savage at heart?”

“Madam, I would not venture to suggest what you were—at heart.”

They were very close, close enough to kiss. “But perhaps one day—I

shall find out.”

His pale eyes were locked on hers, urgently trying to suggest what his

pride and rigid breeding still forbade him to put into words. She saw with

amazement that he was desperate for her to make the first move, so that

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he could call her whore in his heart and enjoy her without a qualm of

conscience. What a prig! What a hypocrite! She wanted to slap his suave

face, but if she did that it would be an end of her, for he was not a man who

would ever forgive an insult. So it was better to play the modest virgin, to

blush and withdraw to a safe distance, while indicating with a subtle glance

that he might still pursue his elusive quarry. She dared not risk slighting

him with an open rebuff. Too much depended on his friendship and her

perilous attempt to hold it without running foul of the Queen’s possessive

heart. Already there had been whispers of peevish quarrels between Mary

and her husband, and Elizabeth suspected that she was the cause. She must

step warily, for once the child was born Philip would return to Spain and

she would be at Mary’s mercy once more, shut away perhaps year after year

until she was old and withered. At the end of that month she was abruptly

given leave to retire from court—leave which she had not requested—and

she knew her suspicions of Mary were well grounded.

A fierce tension hung over the country that spring as England waited

for the birth of a new heir. And waited. Mary was many weeks over her

time; the doctors said there was a miscalculation in their dates; the doctors

said it was quite normal. But the days slipped into weeks and the weeks

into months, while Mary lay heavy and moribund on her cushions waiting

for labour to begin. The country was explosive with unrest. Philip lived

in terror that the pregnancy might indeed prove to be a mistake, that his

wife was merely ill with a tumour and had never been with child at all.

And if that was so then the most disagreeable of his duties would have

to begin all over again, to say nothing of the humiliation which would

attend the announcement. He knew the epithet which the English would

hurl behind his back.

Another impotent ƒoreigner
!

It was August before the Queen finally accepted that there would

be no child and Philip, making his father’s abdication his excuse to go,

prepared to escape from England at the first opportunity. Elizabeth was

summoned to Greenwich and in a small panelled room the Prince of

Spain stood alone to bid farewell to his sister-in-law.

She sat on a little footstool at his feet, spreading her skirts around her

like the petals of a flower; and when he reached for her hand, she raised

her eyes slowly to his face with an expression which could only flatter his

taunted manhood, a look which promised an exquisite surrender.

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“I have things to say to you,” he said quietly, “things that must not be

heard outside this room.”

“You can trust me, Philip, surely you know that by now.”

He shook his head slightly. All he knew was that he had to trust her,

because he was too deeply lost in her coils to do otherwise.

“Savoy is very close to Spain,” he began haltingly, “and the Duke is

my vassal. If you marry him he would not be a possessive husband and I

would look to see you often at my court.”

She smiled.

“You disappoint me, Philip. I had hoped for something better than a

place in your harem.”

His breath caught in his throat. Was she telling him that in the event

of Mary’s death she would be prepared to give herself to him in marriage?

“Dare I hope—” he began and faltered.

She held out her hands to him and he lifted her to her feet; they stood

staring into each other’s watchful eyes.

“When I am Queen of England, Philip,” she said softly, “you will not

find me ungrateful for your protection.”

The bargain was now quite plain to him.
Keep me and my inheritance safe

from Mary and you shal have your reward
!

His hands moved to her bare shoulders; his mouth was dry with

sudden excitement.

“Will you not show me a little of that gratitude before I leave?”

As though on impulse she put her arms around his neck and kissed

him deeply. Drowning in her embrace, he pressed her close against his

codpiece. Suddenly she pulled away, shaken with what he could only

interpret as the violence of her desire.

“Not now,” she whispered. “Not here. Anyone could walk in.”

She saw the real horror in his eyes; to be caught in a compromising

situation would be worse than death to him. She laid a fragile hand

regretfully on his sleeve. “Wait for me, Philip—as I shall wait for you.”

He bowed and went to the door, a stiff, courtly figure in his black

suit. There he turned to look back with longing, and in his eyes was the

question he could not bring himself to ask.

“Trust me, Philip,” she said steadily, “trust my love for you—as I

know I can trust yours.”

He smiled his rare smile and was gone.

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When the door had closed behind him, she went to her own apart-

ments and scrubbed his kiss from her lips with a rough cloth.

t t t

Mary knew she must not weep. She must sit quiet and calm and listen

with borrowed dignity, while Philip held her limp hand and spoke to her

with the forced kindness she had grown to dread.

He was angry beneath that dignified exterior, and she bowed her head

before his cool eyes, shutting out the mask of pity which cloaked his

contempt. Her failure had exposed his sensitive pride to the worst of

insults. She had brought him to England and humiliated him, and now

that he was leaving and promising absently to return in a few weeks only,

he was speaking not of her, but of Elizabeth.

Always Elizabeth!

“If you wish to please me, madam, you will treat her with kind-

ness when I am gone. And in my absence the Act of Succession must

remain unaltered.”

When I am dead she will be Queen. And then he will take her…

But after she was dead, what did it matter? There was that in his face

which suggested he would not set foot again in England if she refused

him. And so anxious was she to bring him back that she agreed without

murmur to his terms.

When Philip had sailed away, pity chained Elizabeth to her sister’s

side. The empty cradle still lay forlornly in the empty nursery, mocking

its cruel inscription:

The child which through Mary, oh Lord of Might has sent

To England’s joy, in health preserve, keep and defend.

Elizabeth stood in the doorway and watched her sister rock the gilded

thing with her foot, and thought that in all her life she had never seen so

sad a sight. Impulsive words of sympathy rose to her lips, but she turned

away quickly before she could be seen, knowing she would do more

harm than good by voicing them.

With Philip gone there was nothing to keep Elizabeth at court.

She went back to Hatfield and lived as quietly as she could, while the

Protestants burned.

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Chapter 3

A
few weeks only” lengthened into nineteen long months

before Philip set foot in England once more. He stayed just

long enough to muster English forces for his war with France and

within a month of achieving this was gone again, leaving his wife

behind, once more indulging in a phantom pregnancy which deceived

no one but herself.

The war began well enough for the Anglo-Spanish troops, with a great

victory at St. Quentin; but Philip failed to make the vital march on Paris

at the critical moment and the French rallied their forces. On the 10th of

January came news of the greatest English disaster in more than a hundred

years: Calais, the last outpost of England’s influence in France, had fallen,

“the heaviest tidings to London and to England that ever was heard of.”

After that the French war dragged on and became a sieve, draining the life

force of the English crown to the point of bankruptcy.

Among the many young Englishmen who had accompanied Philip

to France was Robert Dudley. Released at last from the Tower, but not

permitted to show their faces at court, he and the rest of his brothers had

been kicking their heels in poverty around London and their country

houses until the god-sent chance of employment came. Robin had seen

Philip retire inexplicably from the furore of St. Quentin at the very

moment when Paris lay open to their troops. He was filled with contempt