Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (52 page)

facts are that the Queen is shutting herself up in the palace to the peril

of her health. Dudley plans to marry her, of course, but the realm will

never tolerate it. He’d better be dead, Quadra—better in Paradise.” Cecil

paused and laid his hand on the bishop’s with an air of desperation. “Sir, I

implore you, for the love of God, to use your influence with Her Majesty

and persuade her not to throw herself away in this manner. Remind her

what she owes to the people.”

“I am grieved by what you tell me.” Quadra shifted uneasily in his

chair. He had no influence whatsoever with the Queen and he believed

Cecil was perfectly aware of that fact. So where was this leading? “Deeply

grieved,” he repeated solemnly. “I have, of course, always done my best

to persuade your Queen to live quietly. If it is of any comfort to you, sir,

I will naturally do what I can with her now.”

“I fear—it may be too late for that.” Cecil leaned forward to fill

Quadra’s goblet again, meeting the steady gaze of those globular brown

eyes. “I have heard it said that Lord Robert Dudley is thinking of

destroying his wife.”

Quadra’s gaze flickered and held.

“
Reliable
sources, sir?”

“Oh yes,” said Cecil grimly, “most reliable. He has given out that she is

ill, hoping, of course, that her death will cause no comment. But I happen

to know that she is perfectly well and taking good care not to be poisoned.

I trust God will never permit such a foul crime to be accomplished.”

Quadra crossed himself and looked suitably shocked. Cecil sat with

his head in his hands, a man in the dregs of despair who had unburdened

himself of a dark confidence. After a moment he felt Quadra’s soft hand

patting his arm.

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“A bad business for you, Sir William. You have my sympathy.”

“Your most
discreet
sympathy, I trust.”

“Without question,” Quadra placed a fat finger to his lips and Cecil

gave him a bleak smile. A moment later the bishop was reaching for

his timepiece and sucking in his breath with feigned surprise. Was that

really the time? Ah, these light nights—so deceptive. And he had work

to attend to.

“Of course, Bishop—I must not keep you from state business.”

Thus, murmuring affable trivia, the two men parted, both knowing

precisely what business would take Quadra to his ambassador’s pen.

And two days later, on Sunday the 8th of September, Amy Dudley’s

household returned at dusk from Abingdon fair to find their mistress’s

dead body at the foot of a shallow stone staircase.

t t t

“Dead, madam. Dead of a broken neck. And in what I’m afraid can only

be called suspicious circumstances.”

Elizabeth sank into a chair and stared at Cecil’s immobile face.

“Suspicious?”

“She was alone in the house, madam. All her servants at the fair. No

witness to say how she came to fall—if indeed she did fall.”

Elizabeth stood up abruptly.

“You think he killed her, don’t you?”

Cecil raised his shoulders in a noncommittal shrug.

“My opinion is immaterial, madam, it’s the opinion of the world that

counts. Guilty or innocent, he will always be tainted by suspicion. Marry

him now, or at any time in the future, and he’ll bring your throne down

within a month.”

She turned away. Her fists were clenching slowly and unclenching,

her face was pale and hard as marble, her eyes black pits of fury.

“The fool,” he heard her mutter, “the blundering dolt!”

She swung round upon Cecil suddenly.

“So! Where is he now, the bereaved husband, the merry widower?”

“I believe he is waiting for audience with Your Majesty.”

“Send him in to me.”

She dug her nails savagely into the carved wood of the chimney-

piece until more than half a dozen of her scarlet talons were smashed and

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ragged. The sound set his teeth on edge. He stood by discreetly while she

examined the wanton damage with an angry glance.

“Cecil.”

“Your Majesty?”

“There will be an inquest.”

“Naturally, madam, under the circumstances.”

“The matter will be tried in open court. Nothing is to be hidden, do

you understand? If he’s responsible I want to know.”

Cecil bowed to hide the smile which hovered at the corner of his lips.

“It shall be exactly as Your Majesty instructs. I commend your wisdom,

madam.”

She nodded absently and wandered away to the window, taut as the

string of a bow, chewing at a broken finger-nail. After a moment she

turned to look at him hesitantly over her shoulder.

“Is your wife expecting you home tonight?”

He bowed. “If Your Majesty has need of me I can easily send a message.”

She smiled distractedly and held out her hand to him.

“You’re very kind, Cecil—more kind than I deserve, perhaps. Remain at

court then and I wil send for you later. I would be grateful for your advice.”

He kissed her hand, dizzy with elation. The lilt in her voice, the

charming grace of her diffident gesture, they were things he would have

sold his soul to win back. She needed him.
I will send for you later.
Had it

been a lover’s invitation, it could not have pleased him more.

He walked slowly into the ante-room and inclined his head in ironical

greeting to the impatient young man who paced the small floor like a

frantic tiger.

“The Queen will see you now, Lord Robert,” he said in his even

voice and passed on with a slow, limping step.

When Robin came through the heavy double doors and closed them

angrily behind him he looked so genuinely pale and shaken that momen-

tarily she was taken aback. For a long, horrible minute they stared at each

other in bleak silence and then at last he made a faltering move to kiss

her hand.

She struck his arm away and her voice was harsh and ugly with suspicion.

“Don’t touch me with your bloody hands—you!—you are no better

than my father was. Did you honestly think you could murder your way

into my bed?”

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The last vestige of colour drained out of his face; his voice was a thin,

reedy gasp.

“You can’t seriously believe that I had anything to do with this?”

“What else am I to think? I forbade you to seek a divorce—now,

conveniently, you no longer need one! But are you such a clod, such an

imbecile, as to think I could ever marry you now? You bury your wife,

and your hope of the crown, in the same coffin!”

He shook his head and looked at her with bitter disillusion.

“Cecil digs the grave and the world fills it in,” he said slowly. “How

pleased he will be to know that yours is the first hand to lift a spade.”

She came a step towards him and her eyes glittered dangerously. He

was suddenly acutely aware, like Feria before him, that this was no longer

the Elizabeth he had known.

“Cecil?” Her voice was ominously quiet. “What the devil has Cecil to

do with this?—he’s been in Scotland for weeks!”

“He has agents,” said Robin shortly. “And he’s been back at court long

enough to see how the land lies. He’s a frightened man, madam—and a

frightened man will stoop to anything.”

“Repeat that accusation outside this room,” she said steadily, “and you

will join your wife. Indeed, you may join her anyway, for if this crime is

proved against you, I shall execute you.”

He laughed unsteadily. “For murder?”

“No,” she said icily, “for rank stupidity! For insufferable vanity!”

He caught her arm violently, goaded by her heartless injustice.

“And what will you say when they bring you the news of my execu-

tion—today died
another
man of much wit and very little judgement?

You had best take care, madam. They will say you have a most unhealthy

preference for fools in your bed!”

Without warning, her right hand swung up and struck him ful in the

face. He staggered back a step from the violence of her blow and lifted his

own hand to his cheek, feeling the trickle of blood where a diamond ring had

split the soft skin at the corner of his mouth. The rage left him as suddenly

as it had come, purged by a stark terror greater than he had felt even in his

worst moments in the Tower under Mary. She had threatened to kil him

and with cold, incredulous horror he realised now that she had meant it. In

the last resort nothing mattered to Elizabeth Tudor but her crown; if it was

necessary, she would abandon him to his fate in order to save it.

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“I have many enemies,” he said dully, suddenly quiet and despairing.

“They stand outside that door ready to rejoice at my downfall, waiting to

tear me to pieces like a pack of wolves! Will you desert me now when I

need your help most—is that all our love is worth, Elizabeth?”

She stared at him in an agony of doubting silence, then slowly, delib-

erately, turned her back on him in a cruelly symbolic gesture. He fell to

his knees at her feet in a blind panic and his voice was edged with tears.

“Don’t turn away from me—oh God, why won’t you see it?—You

with the sharpest mind in Europe! For months now they’ve been talking

of murder. My worst enemy could not have found a better time for Amy

to die mysteriously and Cecil
is
my worst enemy—not Sussex or Norfolk

who so plainly hate me and don’t trouble to disguise it—but Cecil! He’s

made you choose between me and the crown.” Robin smiled bleakly.

“Only I could have spared him the trouble. There never was any choice,

was there—I see that now. And seeing that, all I ask of you now is the

opportunity to clear my name. Let me go down to Cumnor and find out

what really happened.”

She turned to look at him and the hand he had stretched out to her

in desperate appeal dropped to his side hopelessly as he saw her face. It

was pale and cold, entirely without a flicker of emotion. In her glittering

gown, she stood in judgement upon him like a stone effigy; she looked

unreal and terrifying and her voice seemed to come from a great distance.

“You may send your own men, but not yourself. You will go to Kew

under house arrest and stay there until the inquest is over. You will make

no attempt to communicate with me.”

He looked at her with disbelief. “Not even a letter?”

“Nothing. You may leave me now.”

He lowered his eyes wearily. After a moment he got off his knees and

turned to go.

“Robin.”

He looked back with wild hope, but her expression was unchanged.

“Guard your tongue in captivity, for I meant what I said. If you breathe

a word against Cecil, I’ll hang you like a felon at Tyburn.”

Across the sunlit room, he thought he heard the echo of an anguished cry.

Her eyes are like ice and you won’t melt them…no man could. There’s some-

thing cruel and twisted deep inside her. Keep away from her, Robert…I know

she’s dangerous…

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Now, at last, he knew it too, and wondered why he had never seen it

before. Gone was the teasing playmate who had shared his childhood, and

the tortured, vulnerable woman he had glimpsed in the preceding weeks. In

their place he saw the Queen and saw her for the first time with the mask of

friendship removed, a figure suddenly as ruthless and terrible as ever her father

had been. He knew now that in any personal crisis it would be the Queen

who ruled and not the woman. Al their dazzling intimacy was an il usion,

a mere straw in the wind, for in the last resort he was but a subject, as her

mother had been. What a fool he had been to forget it, even for a moment!

He bowed formally to that icy and unbending figure.

“I understand you, Your Majesty,” he said at last. “And I thank you

for your plainness.”

t t t

The scandal ran through the length and breadth of Europe, reverberating

like a single gunshot in an empty canyon. English ambassadors were too

humiliated to show their faces once the Queen of Scots, with schoolgirl

wit, had put the world’s opinion in a neat nutshell: “The Queen of

England is going to marry her horsemaster who had killed his wife to

make room for her.”

Everyone expected it and everyone knew it would be the end of

her. It was patently obvious that the Protestant bastard would “lie down

Queen Elizabeth and wake in the Tower plain Madam Dudley.” Even

the Spaniards said so, and they had more cause to fear it than most.

Philip was in agony, for the scandal touched him on an old wound.

She had refused his hand to play the harlot with that handsome, penniless

nobody, and had the matter been on a purely personal level, he would

gladly have stood by and applauded while her people burnt her for a

whore and a murderess.

Trust my love, Philip…

He was on fire with rage at the memory of her cool caress, for cool it

had been, he knew it now. Cool and calculating and filled with mockery.

Did she laugh at him with Dudley behind the curtains of the state bed?

Did she? Oh, how he longed to see her dead—but he must stand by her