Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (310 page)

“I am sorry,” Cecil said steadily. “But you will lose your throne and perhaps your life if you do not fight for it. You are in as much danger now as you have ever been.”

She gave a harsh little cry. “Cecil, I have been all but charged with treason, I have faced the block, I have faced my own death from assassins. How can I be in more danger now?”

“Because now you face your death, and you face the loss of your inheritance, and you face the end of England,” he said. “Your sister lost us Calais through her folly. Will you lose us England?”

She drew a breath. “I see,” she said. “I see what must be done. Perhaps it will have to be war. I shall talk with you later, Spirit. As soon as the king dies and they show their hand we must be ready for them.”

“We must,” he said, delighted at her decision. “That is spoken like a prince.”

“But Sir Robert says that we should prevail upon the Scottish Protestant lords to settle with their regent, Queen Mary. He says that if there is peace in Scotland there can be no excuse for the French to send in men and no reason for them to invade England.”

Oh, does he?
Cecil thought with scant gratitude for the unsolicited council. “He may be right, Your Grace; but if he is wrong then we are unprepared for a disaster. And older and wiser heads than Sir Robert’s think we should strike at them now, before they reinforce.”

“But he cannot go,” she said.

I wish I could send him to hell itself,
flashed through Cecil’s irritated mind. “No, we should send a seasoned commander,” he said. “But first we must send the Scots lords money to maintain the fight against the regent, Mary of Guise. And we must do that at once.”

“Spain will stand our friend,” Elizabeth reminded him.

“So can I send the Protestant lords some funds?” He pressed her with the main point, the only point.

“As long as no one knows it is from me,” Elizabeth said, her habitual caution uppermost as always. “Send them what they need, but I can’t have the French accuse me of arming a rebellion against a queen. I can’t be seen as a traitor.”

Cecil bowed. “It shall be done discreetly,” he promised her, hiding his immense sense of relief.

“And we may get help from Spain,” Elizabeth repeated.

“Only if they believe that you are seriously considering the Archduke Charles.”

“I am considering him,” she said emphatically. She handed the letter back into his hand. “And after this news, I am considering him with much affection. Trust me for that, Spirit. I am not joking. I know I will have to marry him if it comes to war.”

*  *  *

He doubted her word when she was in the royal box overlooking the tilt yard and he saw how her eyes searched the mounted riders for Dudley, how quickly she picked out his standard of the bear and ragged staff, how Dudley had a rose-pink scarf, the exact match of the queen’s gown, unquestionably hers, worn boldly on his shoulder where anyone could see. He saw that she was on her feet with her hand to her mouth in terror when Dudley charged down the list, how she applauded his victories, even when he unseated William Pickering, and how, when he came to the royal box and she leaned over and crowned him with her own circlet of roses for being the champion of the day, she all but kissed him on the mouth, she leaned so low and so smilingly whispered to him.

But despite all that, she had the Hapsburg ambassador, Caspar von Breuner, in the royal box beside her, fed him with delicacies of her own choosing, laid her hand on his sleeve, and smiled up into his face, and—whenever anyone but Dudley was jousting—plied him with questions about the Archduke Ferdinand and gave him very clearly to understand that her refusal of his proposal of marriage, earlier in the month, was one that she was beginning to regret, deeply regret.

Caspar von Breuner, charmed, baffled, and with his head quite turned, could only think that Elizabeth was seeing sense at last and the archduke could come to England to meet her and be married by the end of the summer.

*  *  *

The next night Cecil was alone when there was a tap on the door. His manservant opened the door. “A messenger.”

“I’ll see him,” Cecil said.

The man almost fell into the room, his legs weak with weariness. He put back his hood and Cecil recognized Sir Nicholas Throckmorton’s most trusted man. “Sir Nicholas sent me to tell you that the king is dead, and to give you this.” He proffered a crumpled letter.

“Sit down.” Cecil waved him to a stool by the fire and broke the seal on the letter. It was short and scrawled in haste.

The king has died, this day, the tenth. God rest his soul. Young Francis says he is King of France and England. I hope to God you are ready and the queen resolute. This is a disaster for us all.

*  *  *

Amy, walking in the garden at Denchworth, picked some roses for their sweet smell and entered the house by the kitchen door to find some twine to tie them into a posy. As she heard her name she hesitated, and then realized that the cook, the kitchenmaid, and the spit boy were talking of Sir Robert.

“He was the queen’s own knight, wearing her favor,” the cook recounted with relish. “And she kissed him on the mouth before the whole court, before the whole of London.”

“God save us,” the kitchenmaid said piously. “But these great ladies can do as they please.”

“He has had her,” the spit lad opined. “Swived the queen herself! Now that’s a man!”

“Hush,” the cook said instantly. “No call for you to gossip about your betters.”

“My pa said so,” the boy defended himself. “The blacksmith told him. Said that the queen was nothing more than a whore with Robert Dudley. Dressed herself up as a serving wench to seek him out and that he had her in the hay store, and that Sir Robert’s groom caught them at it, and told the blacksmith himself, when he came down here last week to deliver my lady’s purse to her.”

“No!” said the kitchenmaid, deliciously scandalized. “Not on the hay!”

Slowly, holding her gown to one side so that it would not rustle, barely breathing, Amy stepped back from the kitchen door, walked back down the stone passageway, opened the outside door so that it did not creak, and went back out into the heat of the garden. The roses, unnoticed, fell from her fingers; she walked quickly down the path and then started to run, without direction, her cheeks burning with shame, as if it were she who was disgraced by the gossip. Running away from the house, out of the garden and into the shrubbery, through the little wood, the brambles tearing at her skirt, the stones shredding her silk shoes. Running, without pausing to catch her breath, ignoring the pain in her side and the bruising of her feet, running as if she could get away from the picture in her head: of Elizabeth like a bitch in heat, bent over in the hay, her red hair tumbled under a mobcap, her white face triumphant, with Robert, smiling his sexy smile, thrusting at her like a randy dog from behind.

*  *  *

The Privy Council, traveling on summer progress with the court, delayed the start of their emergency meeting at Eltham Palace for Elizabeth; but she was out hunting with Sir Robert and half a dozen others and no one knew when she would return. The councillors, looking grim, seated themselves at the table and prepared to do business with an empty chair at the head.

“If just one man will join with me, and the rest of you will give nothing more than your assent, I will have him murdered,” the Duke of Norfolk said quietly to this circle of friends. “This is intolerable. She is with him night and day.”

“You can do it with my blessing,” said Arundel, and two other men nodded.

“I thought she was mad for Pickering,” one man complained. “What’s become of him?”

“He couldn’t stand another moment of it,” Norfolk said. “No man could.”

“He couldn’t afford another moment of it,” someone corrected him. “He’s spent all his money on bribing friends at court and he’s gone to the country to recoup.”

“He knew he’d have no chance against Dudley,” Norfolk insisted. “That’s why he has to be got out of the way.”

“Hush, here is Cecil,” said another and the men parted.

“I have news from Scotland. The Protestant lords have entered Edinburgh,” Cecil said, coming into the room.

Sir Francis Knollys looked up. “Have they, by God! And the French regent?”

“She has withdrawn to Leith Castle. She is on the run.”

“Not necessarily so,” Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, said dourly. “The greater her danger, the more likely the French are to reinforce her. If it is to be finished, she must be defeated at once, without any hope of rallying, and it must be done quickly. She has raised a siege in the certain hope of reinforcements. All this means is that the French are coming to defend her. It is a certainty.”

“Who would finish it for us?” Cecil asked, knowing the most likely answer. “What commander would the Scots follow that would be our friend?”

One of the Privy Councillors looked up. “Where is the Earl of Arran?” he asked.

“On his way to England,” Cecil replied, hiding his sense of smugness. “When he gets here, if we can come to an agreement with him, we could send him north with an army. But he is only young . . .”

“He is only young, but he has the best claim to the throne after the French queen,” someone said farther down the table. “We can back him with a clear conscience. He is our legitimate claimant to the throne.”

“There is only one agreement that he would accept and that we could offer,” Norfolk said dourly. “The queen.”

A few men glanced at the closed door as if to ensure that it did not burst open and Elizabeth storm in, flushed with temper. Then, one by one, they all nodded.

“What of the Spanish alliance with the archduke?” Francis Bacon, brother to Sir Nicholas, asked Cecil.

Cecil shrugged. “They are still willing and she says she is willing to have him. But I’d rather we had Arran. He is of our faith, and he brings us Scotland and the chance to unite England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. That would make us a power to reckon with. The archduke keeps the Spanish on our side, but what will they want of us? Whereas Arran’s interests are the same as ours, and if they were to marry,” he took a breath, his hopes were so precious he could hardly bear to say them, “if they were to marry we would unite Scotland and England.”

“Yes:
if,
” Norfolk said irritably. “If we could make her seriously look twice at any man who wasn’t a damned adulterous rascal.”

Most of the men nodded.

“Certainly we need either Spanish help or Arran to lead the campaign,” Knollys said. “We cannot do it on our own. The French have four times our wealth and manpower.”

“And they are determined,” another man said uneasily. “I heard from my cousin in Paris. He said that the Guise family will rule everything, and they are sworn enemies of England. Look at what they did in Calais; they just marched in. They will take one step in Scotland and then they will march on us.”

“If she married Arran . . .” someone started.

“Arran! What chance of her marrying Arran!” Norfolk burst out. “All very well to consider which suitor would be the best for the country, but how is she to marry while she sees no one and thinks of no one but Dudley? He has to be put out of the way. She is like a milkmaid with a swain. Where the devil is she now?”

*  *  *

Elizabeth was lying under an oak tree on Dudley’s hunting cape, their horses were hitched to a nearby tree, Dudley was leaning against the tree behind her, her head in his lap, twisting her ringlets around his fingers.

“How long have we been gone?” she asked him.

“An hour perhaps, no more.”

“And do you always pull your mistresses off their horses and bed them on the ground?”

“D’you know,” he said confidingly, “I have never done such a thing in my life before. I have never felt such desire before, I have always been a man who could wait for the right time, plan his time. But with you . . .” He broke off.

She twisted round so she could see his face and he kissed her on the mouth: a long, warm kiss.

“I am full of desire again,” she said wonderingly. “I am becoming a glutton for you.”

“I too,” he said softly and pulled her up so that she was lying like a sinuous snake along him. “It’s a satisfaction that brings with it only more appetite.”

A long, low whistle alerted them. “That’s Tamworth’s signal,” Robert said. “Someone must be coming near.”

At once Elizabeth was up and on her feet, brushing the leaves off her hunting gown, looking around for her hat. Robert snatched up his cloak and shook it out. She turned to him. “How do I look?”

“Uncannily virtuous,” he said, and was rewarded by the flash of her smile.

She went to her horse and was standing at its head when Catherine Knollys and her groom rode into the little glade followed by Tamworth, Dudley’s valet.

“There you are! I thought I had lost you!”

“Where did you get to?” Elizabeth demanded. “I thought you were behind me.”

“I pulled him up for a moment and then you were all gone. Where is Sir Peter?”

“His horse went lame,” Robert said. “He is walking home in the sourest of moods. His boots are pinching. Are you hungry? Shall we dine?”

“I am starving,” Catherine said. “Where are your ladies?”

“Gone ahead to the picnic,” Elizabeth said easily. “I wanted to wait for you, and Sir Robert stayed to keep me safe. Sir Robert, your hand if you please.”

He threw her up into the saddle without meeting her eyes and then he mounted his own hunter. “This way,” he said, and rode ahead of the two women to where the ride crossed a small river. On the far side, a pavilion hung with green and white had been erected and they could smell venison roasting on the fire and see the servants unpacking pastries and sweetmeats.

“I am so hungry,” Elizabeth exclaimed with pleasure. “I have never had such an appetite before.”

“You are becoming a glutton,” Robert remarked to Catherine’s surprise. She caught the quick, complicit look that passed between her friend and Sir Robert.

“A glutton?” she exclaimed. “The queen eats like a bird.”

“A gluttonous peacock then,” he said, quite unreproved. “Greed and vanity in one,” and Elizabeth giggled.