Philippa Gregory's Tudor Court 6-Book Boxed Set (315 page)

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It was raining, the gray drops pouring like a stream down the leaded window panes of Windsor Castle, pattering like tears. Elizabeth had sent for Robert and told her ladies to seat themselves round the fire while he and she talked in the window seat. When Robert came into the room in a swirl of dark red velvet the queen was alone in the window seat, like a solitary girl without friends.

He came up at once and bowed and whispered: “My love?”

Her face was white and her eyelids red and sore from crying. “Oh, Robert.”

He took a rapid step toward her and then checked himself, remembering that he must not snatch her to him in public. “What is the matter?” he demanded. “The court thinks you have been taken ill; I have been desperate to see you. What is the matter? What did Cecil say to you this morning?”

She turned her head to the window and put a fingertip to the cold green glass. “He warned me,” she said quietly.

“Of what?”

“A new plot, against my life.”

Robert’s hand instinctively went to where his sword should be, but no man carried arms in the queen’s apartments. “My love, don’t be afraid. However wicked the plot I should always protect you.”

“It was not just against me,” she broke in. “I would not be sick with fear like this, just for a plot against me.”

“So?” His dark eyebrows were drawn together.

“They want to kill you too,” she said quietly. “Cecil says that I have to let you go, for our safety.”

That damned cunning sly old fox,
Robert cursed inwardly.
What a brilliant move: to use her love against me.

“We are in danger,” he acknowledged quietly to her. “Elizabeth, I beg of you, let me put my wife aside and let me marry you. Once you are my wife and you have my child then all these dangers are gone.”

She shook her head. “They will destroy you, as you warned me. Robert, I am going to give you up.”

“No!” He spoke too loud in his shock, and the conversation at the fireplace was silenced and all the women looked toward him. He drew closer to the queen. “No, Elizabeth. This cannot be. You cannot just give me up, not when you love me, and I love you. Not when we are happy now. Not after so many years of waiting and waiting for happiness!”

She had herself under the tightest control, he saw her bite her lip to stop the tears coming to her eyes. “I have to. Don’t make it harder for me, my love, I think my heart is breaking.”

“But to tell me here! In the full glare of the court!”

“Oh, d’you think I could have told you anywhere else? I am not very strong with you, Robert. I have to tell you here, where you cannot touch me, and I have to have your word that you will not try to change my mind. You have to give me up, and give up your dream of our marriage. And I have to let you go, and I have to marry Arran if he is victorious, and the archduke if he is not.”

Robert raised his head and would have argued.

“It is the only way to stop the French,” she said simply. “Arran or the archduke. We have to have an ally against the French in Scotland.”

“You would give me up for a kingdom,” he said bitterly.

“For nothing less,” she replied steadily. “And I ask something more of you.”

“Oh, Elizabeth, you have my heart. What can I give you more?”

Her dark eyes were filled with tears; she put out a shaking hand to him. “Will you still be my friend, Robert? Though we can never be lovers again, even though I will have to marry another man?”

Slowly, oblivious now of the ladies’ stares, he took her cold hand in his own, and bent his head and kissed it. Then he knelt to her and held up his hands in the age-old gesture of fealty. She leaned forward and took his praying hands in her own.

“I am yours,” he said. “Heart and soul. I always have been since you are my queen, but more than that: you are the only woman I have ever loved and you are the only woman I ever will love. If you want me to dance at your wedding, I will do it as well as I can. If you will recall me from this misery, I will return to joy with you in a second. I am your friend for life, I am your lover forever, I am your husband in the sight of God. You have only to command me, Elizabeth, now and ever, I am yours till death.”

They were both trembling, gazing into each other’s eyes as if they could never tear themselves away. It was Kat Ashley who had the courage to interrupt them, after long minutes when they had been handclasped and silent.

“Your Grace,” she said gently. “People will talk.”

Elizabeth stirred and released Robert, and he rose to his feet.

“You should rest, my lady,” Kat said quietly. She glanced at Robert’s white, shocked face. “She’s not well,” she said. “This is too much for her. Let her go now, Sir Robert.”

“May God bring you to good health and happiness,” he said passionately, and at her nod he bowed and took himself out of the room before she could see the despair in his own face.

*  *  *

Mr. Hayes’s father had been born a tenant of the Dudleys but had risen through the wool trade to the position of mayor at Chislehurst. He had sent his son to school and then to train as a lawyer and when he died, he left the young man a small fortune. John Hayes continued the family connection with the Dudleys, advising Robert’s mother on her appeal to reclaim the title and estates, and as Robert rose in power and wealth, running the various wings of Robert’s steadily increasing businesses in the City and countrywide.

Amy had often stayed with him at Hayes Court, Chislehurst, and sometimes Robert joined her there to talk business with John Hayes, to gamble with him, to hunt his land, and to plan their investments.

The Dudley train reached the house at about midday, and Amy was glad to be out of the September sun, which was still hot and bright.

“Lady Dudley.” John Hayes kissed her hand. “How good to see you again. Mrs. Minchin will show you to your usual room; we thought you preferred the garden room?”

“I do,” Amy said. “Have you heard from my lord?”

“Only that he promises himself the pleasure of seeing you within the week,” John Hayes said. “He did not say which day—but we don’t expect that, do we?” He smiled at her.

Amy smiled back.
No, for he will not know which day the queen will release him,
said the jealous voice in her head. Amy touched the rosary in her pocket with her finger. “Whenever he is free to come to me, I shall be glad to see him,” she said, and turned and went up the stairs behind the housekeeper.

Mrs. Oddingsell came into the house, pushing back her hood and shaking the dust from her skirt. She shook hands with John Hayes; they were old friends.

“She looks well,” he said, surprised, nodding his head in the direction of Amy’s bedroom. “I heard she was very sick.”

“Oh, did you?” said Lizzie levelly. “And where did you hear that from?”

He thought for a moment. “Two places, I think. Someone told me in church the other day, and my clerk mentioned it to me in the City.”

“Did they say what ailed her?”

“A malady of the breast, my clerk said. A stone, or a growth, too great for cutting, they said. They said that Dudley might put her aside, that she would agree to go to a convent and annul the marriage because she could never have his child.”

Lizzie folded her mouth in a hard line. “It is a lie,” she said softly. “Now who do you think would have an interest in spreading such a lie? That Dudley’s wife is sick and cannot be cured?”

For a moment he looked at her quite aghast.

“These are deep waters, Mrs. Oddingsell. I had heard that it had gone very far . . .”

“You had heard that they are lovers?”

He glanced around his own empty hall as if nowhere was safe to speak of the queen and Dudley, even if their names were not mentioned.

“I heard that he plans to put his wife aside, and marry the lady of whom we speak, and that she has the power and desire that he should do so.”

She nodded. “It seems everyone thinks so. But there are no grounds, and never could be.”

He thought for a moment. “If she were known to be too sick to bear children she might step aside,” he whispered.

“Or if everyone thought she was ill, then no one would be surprised if she died,” Lizzie said, even lower.

John Hayes exclaimed in shock and crossed himself. “Jesu! Mrs. Oddingsell, you must be mad to suggest such a thing. You don’t really think that? He would never do such a thing, not Sir Robert!”

“I don’t know what to think. But I do know that everywhere we rode from Abingdon to here, there was gossip about his lordship and the queen, and a belief that my lady is sick to death. At one inn the landlady asked me if we needed a doctor before we had even dismounted. Everyone is talking of my lady’s illness, and my lord’s love affair. So I don’t know what to think except that someone is being very busy.”

“Not his lordship,” he said staunchly. “He would never hurt her.”

“I don’t know anymore,” she repeated.

“Then, if it is not him, who would spread such a rumor, and to what end?”

She looked blankly at him. “Who would prepare the country for his divorce and remarriage? Only the woman who wanted to marry him, I suppose.”

*  *  *

Mary Sidney was seated before the fireplace in her brother’s apartments at Windsor, one of his new hound puppies on the floor at her feet, gnawing at the toe of her riding boot. Idly, she prodded his fat little belly with the other foot.

“Leave him alone, you will spoil him,” Robert commanded.

“He will not leave me alone,” she returned. “Get off me, you monster!” She gave him another prod and the puppy squirmed with delight at the attention.

“You would hardly think he was true bred,” Robert remarked, as he signed his name on a letter and put it to one side, and then came to the fireplace and drew up a stool on the other side. “He has such low tastes.”

“I have had highly bred puppies slavering at my feet before now,” his sister said with a smile. “It is no mark of bad breeding to adore me.”

“And rightly so,” he replied. “But would you call Sir Henry your husband a low-bred puppy?”

“Never to his face.” She smiled.

“How is the queen today?” he asked more seriously.

“Still very shaken. She could not eat last night and she only drank warmed ale this morning and ate nothing. She walked in the garden on her own for an hour and came in looking quite distracted. Kat is in and out of her bedroom with possets, and when Elizabeth dressed and came out she would not talk or smile. She is doing no business; she will see nobody. Cecil is striding about with a sheaf of letters and nothing can be decided. And some people say we will lose the war in Scotland because she has despaired already.”

He nodded.

She hesitated. “Brother, you must tell me. What did she say to you yesterday? She looked as if her heart was breaking, and now she looks halfway to death.”

“She has given me up,” he said shortly.

Mary Sidney gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “Never!”

“Indeed, yes. She has asked me to stand her friend but she knows she has to marry. Cecil warned her off me, and she has taken his advice.”

“But why now?”

“Firstly the rumors, and then the threats against me.”

She nodded. “The rumors are everywhere. My own waiting woman came to me with a story of Amy and poison and a whole string of slanderous lies that made my hair stand on end.”

“Beat her.”

“If she had made up the stories I would do so. But she was only repeating what is being said at every street corner. It is shameful what people are saying about you, and about the queen. Your pageboy was set on at the stables the other day, did you know?”

He shook his head.

“Not for the first time. The lads are saying they won’t wear our livery if they go into the City. They are ashamed of our coat of arms, Robert.”

He frowned. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“My maid told me that there are men who swear they will see you dead before you marry the queen.”

Robert nodded. “Ah, Mary, it could never happen. How could it? I am a married man.”

Her head came up in surprise. “I thought you . . . and she . . . had some plan? I thought perhaps . . .”

“You are as bad as these people who dream of divorce and death and dethroning!” he said, smiling. “It is all nonsense. The queen and I had a summertime love affair which has been all dancing and jousting and flowery meadows and now the summer is ended and the winter is coming I have to visit John Hayes with Amy. The country has to go to war with Scotland—Cecil predicted it; and Cecil is right. The queen has to be a queen indeed; she has been Queen of Camelot, now she has to be queen in deadly reality. She has had her summer at leisure, now she has to marry to secure the safety of the kingdom. Her choice has fallen on Arran if he can win her Scotland, or else Archduke Charles, as the best choice for the safety of the country. Whatever she may have felt for me in July, she knows she has to marry either one of them by Christmas.”

“She does?” Mary was amazed.

He nodded.

“Oh, Robert, no wonder she sits and stares and says nothing. Her heart must be breaking.”

“Aye,” he said tenderly. “Her heart may break. But she knows it has to be done. She won’t fail her country now. She has never lacked courage. She would sacrifice anything for her country. She will certainly sacrifice me and her love for me.”

“And can you bear this?”

Her brother’s face was so dark that she thought she had never seen him so grim since he came out of the Tower to face ruin. “I have to face it like a man. I have to find the courage that she has to find. In a way, we are still together. Her heart and mine will break together. We will have that scant comfort.”

“You will go back to Amy?”

He shrugged. “I have never left her. We had a few cross words when we last met, and she may have been distressed by the gossip. In my temper, and in my pride, I swore I should leave her, but she did not believe me for a moment. She stood her ground and said to my face that we were married and could never be divorced. And I knew she was right. In my heart I knew that I could never divorce Amy. What has she ever done to offend? And I knew that I was not going to poison the poor woman or push her down the well! So what else could happen but that the queen and I would have a summer of flirtation and kissing . . . yes! I admit to the kissing . . . and more. Very delicious, very sweet, but always, always, going nowhere. She is Queen of England, I am her Master of Horse. I am a married man and she must marry to save the kingdom.”