Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (56 page)

diamond and loving her had all the complications of conducting a love

affair simultaneously with half a dozen different women. And yet there

had been moments of hope. On Midsummer’s Day he had given a water

party, a riot of fireworks, music, and pageantry that had cost him a small

fortune. Elizabeth sat on cushions beneath the canopy of the royal barge,

clutching his arm every time a million coloured sparks exploded over

their heads. Her mood was so responsive, so gay and utterly abandoned,

that he had turned to Bishop de Quadra and demanded that he marry

them on the spot. There had been a crazy moment when she had laid her

head on his shoulder and he had honestly thought she was going to go

through with it. Silence had fallen all around them and Quadra, looking

vastly excited, had begged her, in rapid Spanish, to rid herself of Cecil and

his gang of heretics first. “…and then, madam, I shall be glad to do it.”

Everything hung on the cobweb thread of her mood, and her mood

was wild. Robin had begun to draw a gold ring off his finger and Quadra

was moving forward portentously. Then suddenly she sat up and laughed

and said she doubted the Bishop had enough English to perform the

service. She slipped away from Robin’s encircling arm and turned the

whole thing into a joke.

The incident had only served to increase Robin’s sense of insecurity,

his bitter knowledge that sooner or later he was going to lose her, either

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to a foreign husband, or to another handsome young upstart, with the

same ambitions as his own and no legal impediment to stand in his way.

He was jealous and mortally afraid of every man who approached her,

however briefly.

But he would be making no proposals to her tonight, light-hearted

or otherwise; no man in his right senses would risk attracting her moody

attention. He was familiar with all the signs that heralded a tantrum and

he was not surprised when she suddenly tore off a pair of emerald earrings

and threw them back into the velvet-lined jewel box.

“Robin! Those earrings of yours pinch me!”

He hurried across the room to where she sat glowering at her reflec-

tion in the mirror.

“I’m sorry to hear that, madam,” he replied cautiously. “I understood

them to be a perfect fit.”

“Well, your understanding is at fault, my lord, like your miserably

inferior jewellery! What am I going to wear tonight?”

She pushed the box towards him peevishly. “Find me something suit-

able, I’m tired of looking.”

He examined the contents of the huge box with unease. He had good

taste and was not unused to this task, but tonight whatever he selected

would be wrong, he knew it. Over Elizabeth’s jewelled hair he met

Lettice’s despairing glance and for a moment his eyes rested with interest

on her full lips. It was the first time he had ever really noticed what an

extremely attractive girl Lettice was.

Glancing into the mirror he saw the Queen watching him with

hostility, and hastily selected a neutral pair of pearls.

Elizabeth struck them out of his hand.

“Fool! If I wear those I shall have to change the gown again.” She

glanced around her, as though seeking something else on which to vent her

irritation. “Lettice, are all those windows open? It’s like an oven in here.”

“There was one I couldn’t unfasten, madam, the latch was too stiff.”

Lettice lowered her eyes demurely. “Perhaps Lord Robert could loosen

it if I show him?”

Elizabeth glanced at her sharply, then sat down again with an indif-

ferent shrug.

“Very well. See what you can do with the thing.”

Robin and Lettice retired together to a window at the end of the

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room and exchanged a smile behind the Queen’s back. Lettice extended

the tip of her tongue in a rude and risky gesture and Robin laid a warning

hand on her wrist. Their glance met again and held, but the rest of the

women in the room were too hot and too intent on their mistress’s dark

mood to take any notice.

The court was on progress through the counties of Norfolk and

Suffolk, and Robin, as Master of Horse, was responsible for all the

transport arrangements. As much as any other courtier he disliked the

wretched inconveniences of these annual excursions. It was essential for

the sovereign to see and be seen by as much of the population as possible

and Elizabeth had begun to travel more adventurously than any of her

predecessors had done. Her vast entourage moved around the countryside

all through the long summer months, staying in large country houses and

crowded little towns, equal prey to bad roads, foul weather, and the risk of

plague or smallpox. Nothing deterred Elizabeth from this arduous practice

and no one who played host to her was ever quite the same again after the

devastating experience. The court, and the rabble which followed in its

wake, descended like a swarm of locusts, a horde of quarrelling courtiers

all intent on getting a decent bed for the night. The cost to the noblemen

who entertained her was virtually ruinous, but none of them could resist

the honour or the need to outdo one another with entertainment on a

lavish scale. The Queen, delighting in any opportunity to ease the burden

on her inadequate purse, traded heavily on their vanity, oblivious to the

trail of chaos left in her wake, and the common people loved her for it. In

public she was unfailingly gracious, informal and witty, accessible to the

lowest of her subjects, captivating whole towns with a simple, charming

gesture, and stopping to speak to any child who offered her a ragged

bunch of flowers. But as the summer temperatures soared, and the list of

engagements became steadily more impossible, those who waited on her

in private found her almost impossible to please.

Primitive sanitary arrangements were not calculated to improve her

temper either. She was fastidious over matters of hygiene and an iron

travelling bath bumped along beside the state bed wherever she went.

Robin lived in constant terror of losing it between one destination and

the next and his minions mounted a virtual armed guard over it. At

Windsor Castle she had had two stone rooms set aside for bathing with

the ceilings tiled with mirrors, and everyone in close attendance on her

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was obliged to adopt her habits or suffer the consequences. Only Robin

had dared to tease her privately, insisting that a whole new generation of

fleas had found itself obliged to take swimming lessons.

She kept her court clean and surprisingly sweet, but on progress she was

entirely at the mercy of provincial manners and a general belief that there

was no harm in a stink. Certainly they flushed the streets clean of refuse and

removed the dunghills for her coming—but nobody could fumigate the

masses. She would never permit the people to be held back as they pressed

around her, and this year she was suffering more than usual from the heat

and the stench and the unceasing round of ceremony. The knowledge that

Cecil had been right had put her in such a dark mood tonight that Robin

was vividly reminded of a keg of gunpowder waiting for a stray spark. The

tension in the room filled with nervous women was mounting; it was the

kind of atmosphere in which anyone who made a wrong move might find

themselves with the leisure to regret it in the Tower.

Directly behind the Queen’s jewelled back, Lady Katherine Grey was

unpacking a vial of French perfume, moving mechanically like a creature

in a trance. For several months she had been tense and preoccupied,

seldom talking to the girls who crowded around the Queen. The peevish

complaints about her lack of status, voiced freely to anyone who would

listen in the early days of Elizabeth’s reign, had trailed to a halt of late and

she was no longer to be seen making friendly overtures to the Spanish

Ambassador. In fact she was seldom to be seen anywhere outside her hours

of compulsory attendance on her cousin, and the air of timid silence, so

alien to her earlier aggression, had begun to arouse Elizabeth’s interest.

She watched the girl now in the mirror, studying the slightly ponderous

step which had first alerted her. When Katherine swayed a little and

put out an unthinking hand to steady herself against the Queen’s chair,

Elizabeth turned to place her own fingers over her cousin’s.

“You look pale, Katherine. Are you not well?”

Beneath her own, she felt Katherine’s fingers tense on the back of

the chair.

“It’s nothing, madam, truly. I fear the heat affects us all.”

Elizabeth smiled up at her slowly.

“Are you sure that’s all it is? Your health is very dear to me, cousin, I

think perhaps you ought to see my doctor.”

The vial of perfume dropped from the girl’s hand and smashed on the

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floor, filling the room with the scent of musk. Everyone looked round in

the sudden, electric silence to see Lady Katherine staring down into her

mistress’s steady eyes like a hunted fox.

“Madam, forgive me—forgive me!”

Katherine dropped on her knees, catching the Queen’s hand and

pressing it to her dry lips.

“Forgive you for what?” laughed Elizabeth lightly. “For breaking a

silly bottle of perfume? Get up, you foolish girl, and go and change your

gown—you’re covered with the stuff. You smell like a French brothel!”

The tension in the room broke up into hysterical amusement as al the

women relaxed with the swing of Elizabeth’s mood. Katherine flushed hotly

and fled from the room in a wake of muted sneers and titters. The prim

haughtiness of the Grey sisters had not endeared them to the court, and most

of Elizabeth’s ladies were glad to see Katherine flustered and embarrassed.

“Wretched girl!” muttered Mrs. Ashley, kneeling down to mop up the

mess with flimsy handkerchiefs. “I can’t think why Your Highness makes

so much of the proud trollop—I swear she did it purposefully! Your

Majesty’s favourite perfume too, and so expensive!”

“Oh—Robin will give me another bottle—won’t you, beloved?”

Elizabeth held up her hand to him and he came to take it passion-

ately, laying his lips daringly on the top of her brightly jewelled hair and

watching her face in the mirror.

“I would give you the moon and the stars, madam—if you asked

for them.”

She smiled and drew both his hands over her shoulders, clasping them

just above her breast.

“I’ll settle for the perfume just now—as I rather think you will when

Kat tells you the price. Here—put these on me, will you?”

She handed him the emerald earrings which she had rejected five

minutes earlier.

“I thought they pinched,” he reminded her playfully as he bent to

fasten them.

“These?” She glanced up at him in mock astonishment. “But these

are my favourite pair—they were given to me by someone very special.”

She allowed him to lift her from the chair and kiss her with his

accustomed familiarity. Everyone laughed and applauded softly as the kiss

deepened, except Lettice, who stood abandoned and forgotten where he

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had left her at the window, glaring down at the drunken crowd outside.

She took no part in the malicious female conversation which followed.

“Katherine Grey’s such an insufferable prig, madam—how can you

bear to keep her with you?”

“Oh—I have my reasons, believe me. Now—where’s that dratted fan?”

“Here, madam—and so rude to Your Majesty at times, after all

your kindness.”

“I swear she’d do anything to spite you, madam.”

“Mrs. Ashley’s right—she dropped that bottle deliberately.”

“Oh, I don’t think so.” From the window-seat near Lettice, Mary

Sidney’s lazy, good-humoured voice cut in. “Your Highness knows how

easily these things are done. Lord knows, when I was carrying Philip I

broke almost everything I laid my hands on—”

“Pregnant women are noted for dropping things,” observed

Elizabeth thoughtfully. She looked at Robin, who looked back at her,

blank and uncomprehending.

It was not until the early hours of the morning that he gauged the

significance of that casual remark. For it was only then that he awoke

with a start to find Lady Katherine Grey on her knees at the side of his

bed, beseeching her “good brother” to come to her aid with the Queen.

“I’m not your brother!” he snapped. “I’ll thank you to remember that

any family connection between the Dudleys and the Greys has long since

been severed.”

He got out of the bed with ungallant speed and stared anxiously at

the door. Any beady-eyed spy of Cecil’s could have seen her enter his

room—and if Cecil got to hear of this he would make sure the story

reached the Queen in its most ugly form.

He pulled her roughly to her feet and looked at her with distaste.