Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (59 page)

have ten thousand devils in her body.”

Certainly she appeared to have more lives than the proverbial cat—

Robin found that he too had begun to wonder.

t t t

Elizabeth’s illness galvanised Parliament to life with all the maddened

ferocity of a half-broken stallion that has felt the cruel sting of a spur.

They had been patient long enough and now in the certain knowledge

that miracles, like lightning, are notoriously disinclined to strike twice

in the same place, the Lords and Commons joined their voices in an

irritation parrot cry for marriage and a settlement of the succession.

She could do neither of these things—both, for many reasons, were

equally impossible politically and personally—but she could not tell them

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so, and it took all her charm and cunning to wriggle through their grip

and emerge at the end of the session with her financial grant and their

affection still intact. Parliament was dissolved before the members truly

appreciated that the royal fish had slipped their line again, but she was

angered by the intolerable pressure to which she had been subjected. And

when she was angry with those it would never do to punish, it was Robin

who suffered for it.

Their relationship had become a permanent source of curiosity to the

court. At the height of her fever, she had begged the Council to make

Robin Lord Protector of England in the event of her death, swearing, with

God as her witness, that though she loved him well, nothing improper

had ever passed between them. Robin had been first amazed, then deeply

moved by the news; but later, when she had recovered consciousness and

he dared to question her about it, she had merely blushed furiously, then

laughed and said she must have been delirious at the time. It was the first

time he had ever seen her at a loss for words, and, however light she tried

to make of the incident, it marked a change in his anomalous position.

She raised him almost immediately to the Privy Council, giving him for

the first time an active say in the government of the realm. Cecil main-

tained an ominous silence on the subject, but he was past panicking now.

And when she raised the Duke of Norfolk to the Council, he was duly

reassured that a balance would be maintained. There was bitter rancour

between Dudley and the premier peer of the realm; whatever ambition

Robin still entertained would be amply restrained by Norfolk’s influence

at the council table.

Robin’s seat on the Privy Council turned out to be no more than one

further step in an unheard of series of ups and downs in the royal favour

which left him in a permanent state of uncertainty.

“He is like my little dog,” Elizabeth was heard to remark in public.

“Whenever people see him they know I am near by.”

And a dog’s life was precisely what she gave him. She showered him

with favours; she slapped his face. She drew up the letters patent to create

him Earl of Leicester; she publicly slashed it to pieces with a penknife in

front of his eyes, saying that Dudleys had been traitors for three genera-

tions and she did not choose to raise another above his station to threaten

her. In March 1563 she stunned the court by offering him to the Scottish

envoy as a suitable husband for Mary Stuart.

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When Robin appeared in the doorway of the Privy Chamber unan-

nounced, Elizabeth could see he was in the grips of a murderous rage. She

had anticipated a scene and dismissed her women hastily.

When the door had closed behind them, Robin snatched the silks out

of her hand and threw the tapestry frame across the room. His expression

suggested that for two pins she would follow it and she was suddenly

breathless with excitement.

“Am I a toy, to be given away when I no longer please?” he shouted.

“Or is this some low trick of Cecil’s to be rid of me for good?”

“I see you’ve heard,” she said calmly.

“It seems everyone’s damn well heard from here to Scotland—

everyone, that is, except me! Don’t you even owe me the courtesy of an

explanation?”

She laid her silks back in their basket and smiled faintly.

“I don’t owe you anything, Robin—you’d better remember that

before you start shouting at me. Now—sit down and hear me out or

you’ll cool your temper in the Tower tonight.”

As he sank down beside her in the window-seat, she was conscious of

an irrational sense of disappointment.

“Then you
are
tired of me,” he said wretchedly.

“Oh, don’t be a fool!” She touched his cheek gently. “If I really wanted

to be rid of you I could take a considerably cheaper course than this.”

“Cheaper?”

“It will cost me your earldom at least.”

His face was suddenly stony and he released her hand abruptly.

“Like the last time? Are you about to make a public fool of me again

for your perverted amusement?”

“No,” she countered evenly. “I told you then that the Bear and

Ragged Staff was not so easily overthrown. And this time I shall sign it. A

place in the nobility to complement your place on the Council—it’s what

you wanted, isn’t it? Well, now you can have it, under such circumstances

that not even Cecil can complain. I shall offer the Earl of Leicester to the

Scottish Queen with my personal recommendation of his prowess.”

“In bed?”

“It will be convenient to let her think so. I have already suggested that

the three of us should form one household—at my expense.”

Robin laughed shortly.

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“What do you expect in return—an open declaration of war?”

“The only war she will declare is on her own judgement—this will

blow her self-restraint to pieces. You need not worry, Robin—you’re

not going to Scotland. You’re merely the bait in my trap, a stalking

horse—a red herring if you like.”

“Worms make the best bait, don’t they?” he remarked bitterly. “Yet

even worms can turn. Perhaps you’d care to explain a little further. I’m

afraid it’s all too deep for my humble powers of perception.”

“It has to be deep,” said Elizabeth slowly. “She’s cunning and she’s

been well trained in France. Given time she could control all the divi-

sion I’ve fostered in Scotland—already she’s too strong and confident for

safety. She’s waited patiently for two years for me to drop dead of my

own accord, but, being mighty unneighbourly, I haven’t obliged her. I

think she’s beginning to suspect that I may not be so frail as she hoped

and all the signs are that she’s not going to wait much longer. One strong

foreign marriage will put an end to all this pretty pretence of friend-

ship between us and the first thing she’ll do is to march against me. I

can’t allow her to make a good match—I dare not! The man she marries

must bring her trouble. And by the time she’s finished chewing over her

resentment at your suit, she might just be ready to choose the one I really

have in mind for her.”

“Oh, you have a man in mind, do you? And who might that be?”

“Lennox’s eldest son—Henry Darnley.”

They were silent for a moment and he gaped at her. The light from

the window danced on the crown of diamond spikes that held her blazing

hair in place, and suspended a transparent cobweb veil beyond her bare

shoulders. There was a little glow of malicious pleasure in her face, almost

a touch of the sinister, and as he looked at her he felt, not for the first

time, a small prickle of fear.

“But surely you don’t intend to let her marry a man who has a claim

to your throne! Won’t marriage with your cousin’s son simply strengthen

her position? What’s to stop them invading anyway?”

Elizabeth toyed thoughtfully with her fan.

“If she marries Darnley, she’ll find she’s got her hands too full to even

think of my crown. She’ll be too busy hauling her husband out of every

beer barrel and whore’s bed in Edinburgh. There’s a little more to dear

cousin Henry than that angelic face suggests. Haven’t you ever wondered

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where he gets to whenever he’s excused attendance? Well, I happen

to have made it my business to find out, and believe me, Robin—if

Mama knew what her precious blue-eyed boy does behind the doors of a

whore-house she’d beat him black and blue for it.”

Robin frowned. “I’ve never noticed anything amiss in his conduct.”

“Oh, he wouldn’t dare to bring his nasty little habits to court, not with

Mama watching. He lives in terror of the bitch, like his father and the rest

of her household. But once he’s off the leash in Scotland he’ll run mad

as a rabid dog. We’ll hear no more of Mary’s pretensions once she puts a

crown on Darnley’s head!”

“But what makes you so certain she will want him?”

“His pretty, pouting face—his Tudor blood—his claim to my

throne—oh, he’s certainly got his assets! Superficially he’s a great match

and I shall appear to move heaven and earth to prevent it. I shall scream

and stamp and probably threaten war—that should really convince her

that he’s worth the having! When she takes him—as she will—it will be

with a crow of triumph at having out-manoeuvred me at last. And the

minute that marriage takes place, the Countess of Lennox will go to the

Tower for plotting it against my spoken wishes.”

Robin gave her a speculative glance and touched her clenched fist on

her lap.

“God knows I’m no lover of the Countess, but I’ve often wondered

why you hate her so much.”

Elizabeth stared into space with narrowed eyes.

“Oh—it’s an old grudge and I suppose I should have let it go by

now, only every time the old harridan flounces into my presence, I

remember how she made me suffer and I want to wring her scrawny

neck all over again.”

She told him about the kitchen and saw his eyes widen in surprise

and anger.

“Traitors suffer less on the rack,” he muttered. “You might have gone

out of your mind.”

Elizabeth laughed shortly.

“I wouldn’t have given her the satisfaction, I knew it was what she

wanted. But even so I still bear the scars of her malice.” She held out

her hands at arms’ length, palms down, and for the first time he noticed

their continual tremor. “Ever since then I’ve slept badly, disturbed by

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the smallest sound, I snap and slap for no apparent reason, so that behind

my back my women curse me for a bad-tempered bitch—oh yes, they

do, and it’s true!” She frowned. “A lot of other people had a hand in

wrecking my nerves, Robin, but Lennox was the only one who did it

out of spite. And Lennox alone will pay for it—as I swore at the time.”

“By seeing her son made a king? Won’t that be worth at least ten years

in the Tower to her?”

Elizabeth smiled slowly at him, and something about that smile made

him shiver involuntarily.

“The Scots have sharp daggers and a long-standing tradition of killing

their kings. I imagine they’d make short work of any mincing he-bawd

who tried to lord it over them—and Darnley’s just fool enough to try it.

One sniff of power and he’ll think he’s God Almighty.”

For a moment Robin was silent, staring at the floor.

“You intend to send him out to his death, don’t you?” he said at last.

“That’s your true motive—your ultimate revenge on Lennox!”

She looked at him coolly.

“My only true motive is to restrain Mary’s ambitions and protect my

crown. That’s all that really matters. Anything else that accrues from this

is purely incidental, but I think it will work very nicely—don’t you?”

“No, I don’t,” he said. “I don’t see how you can possibly expect to

play chess with the emotions of half of Europe.”

She smiled and ran her fingers through his hair playfully.

“In that case you’ll be prepared to put a thousand gold crowns on

the outcome.”

And that truly staggered him, for where money was concerned she

had all the instincts of a miser. She would never bet such an amount

on anything she did not consider to be an absolute certainty, but the

possibility of winning such a wager from her was irresistible. It would

upset her for days if she lost!

So at last he agreed to play the part she had assigned him, took on

her wager and watched incredulously as events unfolded steadily, almost

entirely as the Queen had predicted.

t t t

In order to make him a suitable candidate for Mary Stuart’s hand,

Elizabeth raised Robin to be Earl of Leicester and Baron of Denbigh. It

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was a royal title which had never before been bestowed on one without

a drop of royal blood, but as she had surmised, under the circumstances

even Cecil could not breathe a word against it. Sussex and Norfolk held

their tongues with remarkable restraint, so that the only person at the

English court who looked as though he might choke on the issue was

the Scots envoy, Melville, who was forced to watch the ceremony of