Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (47 page)

before I let you live to see this day.”

The room was suddenly utterly silent. All the women waited with taut

anticipation for Katherine Ashley to have her ears boxed, but they waited

in vain. Elizabeth turned from the mirror and laughed.

“I was four years old when I first came into your care, Kat. Never tell

me I was still in a cradle!”

Mrs. Ashley dissolved into hopeless, incoherent tears.

“Oh, yes—that’s Your Grace all over—mocking, poking fun—but it

won’t do, I tell you, it won’t do. For God’s sake, madam, marry him and

put an end to all these terrible rumours.”

“What rumours?” inquired the Queen steadily. Kat’s angry gaze fell

to the floor.

“The whole of Europe is saying that—that you and he—”

“Then the whole of Europe is wrong, as you quite well know. I have

done nothing that would bring me into dishonour.”

Elizabeth rose slowly from her chair and her loose ermine robe hung

open over a white nightdress embroidered with diamond-eyed butterflies.

Her narrow face was suddenly weary and strangely sad.

“Kat.” Her voice was gentle, as though she spoke to a dull-witted

child. “I have lived in this world for twenty-six years now with very little

joy. Robin is my loyal subject, my best friend, and I don’t want to hear

another word against him—do you understand?”

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“But Your Majesty—”

“I said, enough!” Suddenly the patience exploded like a treacher-

ously dormant firecracker. She picked up the hairbrush and hurled it at

the door. “God’s death, woman, are you stupid? Outside that door are

guards and ministers and courtiers. Have I a chance in hell of leading a

dishonourable life?”

In the deathly silence she stalked to the curtained bed, threw off her robe,

and plunged between the sheets. First Lettice, now this. It was intolerable!

She glared across the room.

“But I tell you this, Kat Ashley, if I ever had the wish to live in

dishonour, I’m damned if I know of anyone who could forbid me.”

The silence deepened and she punched her pillows furiously before

burying her face in them. The women who had frozen, horrified, about

their various duties, now came forward warily to curtsey and bid her

goodnight. She did not look up or reply to any of them.

Mrs. Ashley signed to them to leave and blew out the remaining

candles; Elizabeth was left alone to stare hot-eyed and miserable through

a sleepless night.

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Chapter 7

C
ecil paused in the doorway of the privy chamber and was

aware of instant irritation at the sight which greeted his eyes.

The Queen was sitting on cushions in the window-seat, virtually

surrounded by Dudleys. Robert sat beside her, as though it were his

right, Mary and Katherine sat on the floor, and Mary’s husband leaned

against the panelled wall. The whole room was ringing with their rude

laughter—evidently, from its shrill, spiteful sound, they were having fun

at someone’s expense. And Cecil immediately felt threatened and uneasy.

No one had noticed his arrival and for a moment he hesitated in the

shadows, wondering how best to break the news which had brought him

here. Always laughing these days, he thought sourly, never serious, never

listening to him as she had sworn to do. “Put not your trust in princes”

said the old adage—he was beginning to think it might be sound advice!

He was very close, close enough now to hear their conversation and

see Robin, with familiar ease, snap shut the Queen’s comfit box and hand

it to his sister Mary.

“Take them away or Her Majesty will eat no supper.”

It was a bad sign, thought Cecil bleakly, that the Queen, instead of

responding to this rank insolence with anger, merely smiled at Mary.

“Temperance is a virtue, as your brother so rightly reminds us,” she

said calmly. “Perhaps he would be happy to set us all a good example by

following the diet I shall draw up for him.”

There was a moment’s silence, followed by immediate laughter at

Robin’s expense.

Legacy

“Dear madam, Mother told him years ago he would eat his way into

an early grave. If you put him on a diet, I beg you, hold him to it.”

“Aye,” said Henry Sidney slyly, “the wing of wren for breakfast and

the leg for supper.”

“The twentieth part of a pint of wine and as much of St. Anne’s sacred

water as he cares to drink—”

“Poor Robin—he’ll fade away.”

“My dear Kitty, where
could
all that flesh fade to?”

Robin got up with dignity and pulled the Queen lightly to her feet.

“Madam, let me remove you from the presence of these gaggling

geese. Come riding with me and I will show you that exercise is more

beneficial than any diet.”

“Oh, but I believe the kind of exercise you have in mind cannot be

conducted on horseback!”

He drew her firmly away from the others with no difficulty.

“You’d be surprised what I can do on horseback when I put my mind

to it.” He smiled meaningfully. “I’m a man of many parts.”

“Yes,” she said with a sly glance at his jewelled codpiece, “some of

them more prominent than others.”

Suddenly they both caught sight of the Secretary and halted; the

raucous laughter behind them also stopped abruptly in that same moment.

Robin’s hand rested possessively at the back of Elizabeth’s waist in a

gesture that was just short of an embrace. Cecil was aware of hostile glances

from the Dudley faction and a certain coolness in the Queen’s eyes.

“I don’t recall sending for you, Cecil.” Her voice was neutral,

faintly bored.

“Madam, I bring news from Scotland.”

“Oh? From the length of your face I take it to be less than good.”

“Cecil never smiles,” remarked Robin spitefully, “but with your

leave, madam, I could instruct him.”

Cecil directed a look of contemptuous loathing at the young man and

turned to appeal quietly to the Queen.

“Madam, I should be grateful for a private audience.”

“If you bring bad news we can all hear it.” She stepped away from

Robin’s encircling arm; her face was suddenly like finely chiselled stone.

“Spit it out and be quick about it.”

Cecil was appalled by her change of tone. Impossible to remind her

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in public of the promise she had made to give him private audience

whenever he desired it.

“Madam.” He took a faltering breath, “our troops have been defeated

at Leith.”

“
What
!”
Her eyes narrowed on his face like splinters of ice. “Did I not

tell you to let the Scots slit their own throats? How many dead?”

He looked away in the tense silence that had fallen.

“Five hundred, madam.”

A gasp echoed round the room and was stilled on the next breath.

Robin was not alone in hoping to see the distinguished Secretary get

what was clearly coming to him.

Then suddenly, inexplicably, she decided not to make a public scene

of this after all and snapped her fingers to the little group behind her.

“Leave me—yes, Robin, you too—Sir William has a little explaining

to do!”

Cecil watched them go with grateful relief, and thanked God that she

was going to be reasonable after all. But when the door had closed behind

them and he dared to look once more into her face, his heart sank into

his boots.

He emerged from her room more than an hour later, pale and

exhausted after the most blistering interview he had ever endured in his

life. He had known she had a temper, but never, never had he dreamed

she would ever speak to him like
that—
so coldly, contemptuously, as

though she would never trust his opinion again. The fact that he had

eventually persuaded her to send more troops counted for nothing

against that memory. He was suddenly so bitter with disillusion that he

felt quite murderous with rage. How could she have changed so soon,

promised so much and then gone back on her word, when he had been

so sure—so certain—that she was different from all the rest? Put not your

trust in princes!

He was not a violent man; he could not even remember the last

occasion on which he had lost his temper. He was dimly aware of his

servants’ glances of surprise, as he sat at length in his small, panelled study,

drumming his fingers on the desk and gazing stonily at the wall. It took a

long time for the unaccustomed rage to leave him, but when it had gone

it left him stone cold, like iron forged in heat and left to cool. And in such

a mood, this quiet, unassuming man was infinitely dangerous.

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With complete dispassion, he began to examine the policy that

appeared to have so deeply displeased her. At first she had liked it well

enough. Lending underhand assistance to the Protestant rebels in Scotland

had suited her nature admirably. It committed her to nothing and it had

worked quite handsomely, until the Earl of Bothwell intercepted three

thousand pounds of English gold in transit to the rebels. The scandal

provoked by that would have precipitated open hostilities, had not

Elizabeth’s convincing lying mollified the French and Scots ambassadors.

In all his life Cecil had never met a more plausible, smooth-tongued

woman. She could tell you black was white—and you’d believe it! For

weeks she had lied like a Trojan and after she had made such a good

job of smoothing the situation it had been very, very hard to get her to

agree to open war. During the course of a heated disagreement he had

threatened to resign over the issue. It had been a calculated risk and it had

paid off. Quite suddenly she seemed to change her mind and in March

an English army had advanced into Scotland. Philip of Spain promptly

responded with such threatening gestures that Elizabeth was obliged to

humour him with a promise to marry Spain’s latest candidate for her

hand, the Archduke Charles.

A delicate situation admittedly, but not one without hope of success

even now. The defeat at Leith should prove no more than a temporary

setback; indeed Cecil had it on good authority that the Scottish Regent,

Mary of Guise, was near to death and in despair of receiving help from

her French allies.

Why then was Elizabeth suddenly so hostile? Because he had almost

certainly committed her to marriage with the Archduke—was that it?

And if that was so, then it needed little imagination to see who was

stoking the fires of her indignation—Dudley, panicking at a move which

would be the death knell of his own ambitions. For weeks now Cecil

had suspected that Dudley was behind his own unlooked-for disfavour

with the Queen. History was full of incidents which proved how easily

a malicious tongue could pour poison into the royal ear. Anne Boleyn

had destroyed Cardinal Wolsey by that very means—slow, insidious, but

devastatingly effective!

The scandal of Dudley’s undesirable association with the Queen had

already run the length and breadth of Europe. The English Ambassador

to Brussels had written back in December to tell Cecil that the rumours

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were so bad he dared not repeat them. Everyone who loved the Queen

and England longed to see “the Gypsy” dead or disgraced. The young

Duke of Norfolk had said publicly it was a disgrace that the realm could

not produce one man of sufficient spirit to dagger the knave. But no one

would dare to do that and risk facing the Queen’s vindictive wrath. She

would rend to pieces the men she held responsible for that deed, and

Cecil knew that he, along with Norfolk and Sussex, would certainly be

suspected if the event took place. It could be arranged of course, easily

enough, but it was far too dangerous even to be seriously entertained as a

last resort. No, the elimination of Dudley, however desirable, was not the

answer to the Secretary’s dilemma.

Evening drew on and a body-servant lit candles on his table with

respectful curiosity.

“Will there be anything else, Sir William?”

“What? No—no—get yourself to bed.”

“You’ve had nothing to eat, sir.” The man paused in the doorway

uncertainly. His master was a man of regular habits, reliable as a clock;

he was not wont to sit brooding with that odd fierce look on his face.

But the fellow received no answer and at length closed the door and

hurried away.

Cecil sat with his hands clenched on the desk in front of him and

surveyed the ominous facts before him. The Queen was cold with him,

cold in a manner she had never shown him before, and in her moody

preoccupation with Dudley he read a woman on the brink of a disastrous

love affair. If Dudley obtained a divorce she might well be tempted to

marry him. And then—and then it was simple. Once Robert Dudley was

King Consort, there would be no place in the government of England