The Secret Diary of Anne Boleyn (15 page)

The children, smiling impishly, faced each other with their palms — his left, her right — pressed together. Robin spoke first. “Together we are a steeple.”

“Together we are a
clam”
said Elizabeth and giggled. Her favorite quality in her favorite playmate was that Robin Dudley made her laugh and inspired her to bouts of silliness, perhaps the only levity the young princess was permitted in an otherwise tightly laced royal life. All at once Elizabeth noticed that her friend’s gaze had changed. Where it had been playful it was now earnest. Where his eyes had darted here and there they were now fixed, seeming to study her in the way that together they would sometimes study the inside of a flower. And when he spoke, his voice too had changed.

“Together,” said Robin quietly, “we are a prayer.”

The sensation that passed through Elizabeth’s soul was as subde as the touch of a butterfly lighting on the back of her hand. And yet her child’s heart was touched and lifted beyond measure. Without words to express her tenderness she simply pressed harder with her hand on his. He pressed back and the moment was magic. Elizabeth was suddenly aware of tiny flecks of dust gendy suspended and dancing in the warm air, lit by the dappled sun glinting through the oak branches. She was aware of birdsong so clear and lovely she thought she might cry from the sound of it. And of Robin Dudley whose moist warmth through the blue doublet radiated out to enfold her like two arms. He, too, was transfixed by the strange and wonderful moment.

Then, since they were neither of them able to break from it, nature prevailed and did it for them. A push of wind in the branches above sent a rain of dead, prickly-tipped oak leaves down upon their heads. Surprised, the children laughed and their hands separated. The spell was broken.

“What shall we play at?” demanded Elizabeth.

“Eve brought dice.”

“I don’t feel like dice.”

“Shall we catch a frog and examine it?” he offered, half expecting Elizabeth’s dramatic sigh of refusal. “All right then, we shall play Queen and Courtier.” ‘

“Robin!” Elizabeth squealed.

“What? You like the game. Indeed you play it very well.”

“I do like it,” admitted Elizabeth. “But we should not play at it.”

“And why not?”

“Because … it’s treasonous.”

“Only because it’s
you
playing it,” he responded mildly.

“Well then …”

Robin grabbed a curl that had escaped from beneath Elizabeth’s cap and dandled it teasingly. “You don’t like the game because you wish to be queen and fear you never will be.”

Elizabeth felt her pale face flush hot and red. “I don’t want to be queen! My brother is the heir and I love Edward!”

“I’m sony, I meant no harm, Elizabeth. And it’s no harm to pretend, really it isn’t.” With that Robin, one foot slighdy in front of the other, doubled over in the most extreme bow he could achieve, arms swept out from his sides like the wings of a hawk. As he rose he brought them together, fluttering and weaving his hands in a hilariously exaggerated gesture of obeisance which wrenched an unexpected laugh from Elizabeth’s throat.

“Your Maaaaaaajesty,” he intoned in the most lugubrious voice the nine-year-old could muster.

Elizabeth took up the game. “Sir Dinglebelly,” she replied with excessive seriousness.

Robin lifted one eyebrow. “Have you knighted me, then?”

“Oh yes, don’t you remember the feast I held in your honor? Your whole family were there, all seated above the salt. Your father was very proud, and your brothers were very jealous.”

“Of course, how could I forget such a magnificent celebration? And didn’t you grant me six great houses, twenty thousand head of sheep, and a cupboard full of gold plate?”

“Have you forgot the horses?”

“No, Your Majesty! A stable full of them. You have been most generous with me.”

“Indeed I have. And what, pray, have you brought me, Sir Robert?” Elizabeth, fully engaged now, turned and swept imperiously away from her friend. “Your queen, aside from flattery, demands gifts, you know. Rich treasures. Fortunes. Rare books. Jewels. Exotic animals.”

“Like the green talking parrot I gifted you last week.”

“He sings my praises very cleverly,” said Elizabeth, spinning the story into an intricate tapestry, pacing under the arch of branches as though it were a stately presence chamber. “God bless Queen Bess,” squawked the girl in the imaginary parrot’s voice. “You are more fair than the loveliest Tudor rose and smell more sweet, more sweet, more sweet, aarrgh, aarrrgh!” Then she was in her own voice again. “But that was last week. Where is
this
week’s offering?” she demanded petulandy.

The little boy grabbed Elizabeth’s hand and uncurled her fingers. In her palm he laid an object. It was a stone, not unusual in its smooth blackness, but a small miracle of shape. Though obviously natural and clearly uncarved, it was as perfect a heart as nature could have designed. All pretense of the game fell away as Elizabeth contemplated the perfection of the object and the significance of the gift. For the second time that afternoon she was struck dumb.

Robin Dudley, too, had abandoned the game of Queen and Courtier. “Do you like it?” he demanded excitedly. “Yes, of course I do. Where did you get it?” “That’s my secret.”

“Come, tell me! It’s amazing. I must know, Robin.” “I won’t tell you.” His chin hardened in determination. “You must. Your queen commands it,” announced Elizabeth haughtily.

Robin thought for a moment before jumping back into the fantasy. “I am at your service, Majesty. Your wish is my command. But first, may I not receive a kiss in return for my gift?”

“No you may not!” shouted Elizabeth in mock outrage.

Suddenly in a grandly theatrical gesture Robin threw himself prostrate on the ground and began kissing the velvet hem of Elizabeth’s gown. “Oh Majesty, Majesty, let me kiss your hem, your feet, your petticoat, your ankles!”

Elizabeth giggled, and as Robin pulled himself up her skirt to his knees spouting courtly gibberish and various parts of her anatomy and clothing that he might kiss, Elizabeth roared with uncontrollable laughter till tears streamed down her face and they were bent over clutching their bellies and gasping for air.

“Come, let’s ride,” said Robin when he could finally catch his breath.

“Where shall we ride?” Elizabeth asked, praying for an answer that would crown this timeless moment as it deserved to be done.

The boy looked far back into her liquid amber eyes and saw the challenge that this pale golden girl laid before him. And because he knew her so well and loved her even then, he replied in the voice of an adventurer, a pirate, a king.

“To the future,” he cried. “Let us ride to the future!”

Indeed they had, Elizabeth thought, smiling as her mind, like some great invisible bird, soared forward again across time, depositing her in Robin’s firelit rooms. Here before her was the same handsome boy, a blue doublet, his hand up, palm facing her.

“Together we are a prayer,” he whispered, matching her smile with his own. Slowly she joined her hand to his, pressing palm to palm, fingertips to fingertips. Yes, thought Elizabeth, he was the same boy, the one who could endlessly amuse her, reduce her to helpless laughter. The same loyal and trustworthy lad who, before there’d been any hope of her taking the throne, had sold off parcels of his own land to pay her debts. The brave man who had dared to rebel against her sister Mary, and stood as a rock during their dark days as prisoners in the Tower. And, mused Elizabeth, he was the only one who had ever learned his way through the twisted maze to her heart.

Now her eyes fell on a group of miniatures displayed on a table and she moved closer to see them.

“Your family,” she said quiedy. All of the Dudleys — save Robin and his brother Ambrose — were now dead. She lifted one of the gilt-framed portraits, this one a distinguished but leaden-eyed man of forty.

“My grandfather Edmund,” said Dudley, peering down over Elizabeth’s shoulder. “Loyal servant and instrument of King Henry the Seventh.”

My
grandfather…” Elizabeth’s voice trailed off as she remembered the stories she had heard about the first Tudor king, who had taken the throne of England by force. The first English king who had realized that money equaled power. And this man whose picture she held in her hand, Edmund Dudley, had been the King’s own instrument in attaining a great fortune.

“I have heard,” Elizabeth began again, “that Edmund Dudley used, let us say, less than savory methods to enrich the crown.”

“Extortion is a generally unsavory practice,” agreed Robin with a wry smile. “And he tended to enrich his own coffers quite substantially in the process.”

“He was not very well liked?” asked the Queen somewhat rhetorically.

“Despised is closer to the mark. He was in fact likened to a ‘ravening wolf.’”

“Did you know him?” asked Elizabeth.

“I did not have the chance.” Dudley bent and made the motion of dusting the tiny portraits with his finger, but Elizabeth could see the gesture covered a deep discomfiture in a man who was always comfortable.

“Because my father had him executed,” offered Elizabeth.

The slight slump of Dudley’s shoulders told her she had struck home. “One might think Henry would have been grateful. He’d inherited four million pounds on his father’s death, nearly all of which had my grandfather … procured for him.”

“It was the beginning of my father’s reign. He wanted desperately to be loved by his people.” Elizabeth swallowed as she defended her father’s murderous behavior, feeling the tug of understanding for the dilemmas faced by a new monarch. “I think he must have yielded to popular pressure.”

“But to call it treason …”

“It wasn’t fair, Robin. But my father, you know, was not well known for his fairness.” Elizabeth reached past Edmund Dudley’s portrait and lifted another of the miniatures, this one’s frame studded with tiny pearls.

“I think you look quite like your father.”

“Another traitor to the crown,” Dudley intoned bitterly.

Elizabeth stroked his cheek with the back of her hand. “The Tudors and the Dudleys. We are so tightly bound each to the other. So tightly bound.”

Now suddenly it was Elizabeth who was uncomfortable. She shook the thought from her mind — the thought that Kat had so insidiously planted there — that Robin Dudley, from a long line of treasonous scoundrels, had “bad blood” running in his veins. She turned and placed John Dudley’s miniature back in its place.

“So, do you like my small family gallery?” Dudley asked, moving to Elizabeth’s side where he stood near without touching her. A strong silent current flowed between them.

“I do,” she said. “But where is your mother?”

“My mother was too modest to sit for her portrait,” he answered as Elizabeth moved toward the fireplace to warm her hands. Dudley stiffened. A letter lay open on the mantel and even now the Queen’s eyes were feasting on its private contents.

“Dearest husband …she read aloud and turned to him blazing with challenge.

“Do you in fact keep up a lively correspondence with Amy, so far from court, poor woman?”

Dudley could see a storm of conflicting emotions scouring Elizabeth’s face. He wished desperately to answer in a way that would please her. “She attends to household business as good wives do and keeps me in fall intelligence,” he replied finally.

“Business is it?” Elizabeth plucked up the letter and held it to the light of the fire to read, knowing it was a childishly wicked thing to do, knowing Robin cringed and sweated with every word.

“… so I’ve made haste as you requested and sold the wool directly off the sheep’s back, tho at a small loss which could not be helped, so that you might discharge the debt you are so anxious to make good.”

Elizabeth appeared relieved and not without contrition as she replaced the letter on the mantel. “Have you need of money? I will see to it that you have all you require.”

“I don’t want your money. I want you, Elizabeth.” He reached for her but she moved away before his hands could grasp her.

“Then you’re a fool, Robin. If I offer you titles, properties, gold, then you will take them and prosper. I am the Queen. I cannot, after all, be surrounded by paupers.”

He could see the sweetness of the moment slipping inexorably away like fine sand in an hourglass.

“Is she well, then? Amy, I mean?” The Queen’s face had grown hard and she touched a throbbing vein that showed purple through her parchment skin.

“Why are you doing this, Elizabeth?”

“Is she well?”

“Not entirely. There is a growth in one of her breasts.”

It was as if an invisible hand had slapped the Queen suddenly. All imperiousness vanished. She faced Robert Dudley and asked with the look of a guileless child, “Is it bad? I knew a woman once, Lady Windham, who died from such a malady. Died horribly.”

“No, my love,” said Dudley, putting his arms around Elizabeth gently, “she is not dying,” and wondered silently if that was news to make them glad or unhappy.

“Oh Robin, love, why is our lot in life so hard?”

“You well know the answer. But the reason for our misery is, as well, the answer to our darkest troubles. It is because you wear the crown of England. You are entirely responsible and you are all-powerful. You may in all things do as you please. You can raise me or lower me. You can make me king or see me executed on Tower Green. I am your creature, Elizabeth, and my fate lies wholly within your hands.”

Dudley released Elizabeth and turned away to hide his wounded eyes from her sight. For all his postures and strutting and confident intimacy with the most powerful woman in his world, he was deeply humbled by the truth of his own words.

“I’m feeling suddenly tired, Robin. Will you forgive me if I do not stay?”

“Forgive you, Majesty?” He laughed softly to himself and turning back to face her, swept into a low and graceful courtier’s bow. “If you sent me to hell for eternity I would forgive you, Elizabeth. But I will not let you leave me here tonight without a kiss.”

She flew to him then like a moth sucked into the thrall of a great flame. As he crushed her within his arms the two, unsullied by the tortures of guilt or fear or pain, found a moment illuminated by the brilliance of purest desire and tenderest love. She was no longer queen nor he her creature.