The Virgin's Lover ttc-4 Read online

  “Either in Scotland or in England we will have to face the French,” Cecil predicted. “Either with the Spanish on our side or without them. What I am advising, Your Grace—nay, what I am begging you to understand—is that we will have to face the French and we should do it at a time and a place of our choosing, and with allies. If we fight now, we have the Spanish as our friends. If you leave it too long, you will have to fight alone. And then you will certainly lose.”

  “It will anger the Catholics in England if we are seen to join the Protestant cause against a rightful Catholic queen,” she pointed out.

  “You were known as the Protestant princess; it will come as little surprise to them, and it makes it no worse for us. And many of them, even stout Catholics, would be glad to see the French soundly beaten. Many of them are Englishmen before they are Catholics.”

  Elizabeth shifted irritably on her throne. “I don’t want to be known as the Protestant queen,” she said crossly. “Have we not had enough inquiry into men’s faiths that we have to chase after their souls once more? Can’t people just worship in the way that they wish, and leave others to their devotions? Do I have to endure the constant inquiry from the bishops to the Commons as to what I think, as to what the people should think? Can’t it be enough for them that we have restored the church to what it was in my father’s time but without his punishments?”

  “No,” he said frankly. “Your Grace,” he added when she shot him a hard look. “You will be forced again and again to take a side. The church needs leadership; you must command it or leave it to the Pope. Which is it to be?”

  He saw her gaze wander; she was looking past him to Robert Dudley, who had risen from his place at table and was strolling across the room to where the ladies-in-waiting were seated on their table. As he approached they all turned toward him, without seeming to move; their heads all swiveled like flowers seeking the sun, his current favorite blushing in anticipation.

  “I shall think about it,” she said abruptly. She crooked her finger to Robert Dudley and smoothly, he altered his course and came to the dais and bowed. “Your Grace,” he said pleasantly.

  “I should like to dance.”

  “Would you do me the honor? I have been longing to ask you, but did not dare to interrupt your talk, you seemed so grave.”

  “Not only grave but urgent,” Cecil reminded her grimly.

  She nodded, but he saw he had lost her attention. She rose from her seat, her eyes only for Robert. Cecil stepped to one side and she went past him to the center of the floor. Robert bowed to her, as graceful as an Italian, and took her hand. A faint hint of color came into Elizabeth’s cheek at his touch. She turned her head away from him.

  Cecil watched the set of dancers form behind the couple, Catherine and Francis Knollys behind them, Robert’s sister, Lady Mary Sidney, and her partner, other ladies and gentlemen of the court behind them, but no pair even half as handsome as the queen and her favorite. Cecil could not help but smile on the two of them, a radiant pair of well-matched beauties. Elizabeth caught his indulgent look and gave him a cheeky grin. Cecil bowed his head. After all, she was a young woman, as well as a queen, and it was good for England to have a merry court.

  Later that night, in the silent palace, under an unbroken black sky, the court slept, but Cecil was wakeful. He had thrown a robe over his linen nightshirt and sat at his great desk, his bare feet drawn onto the furred edge of his gown against the wintry coldness of the stone floor. His pen scratched on the manuscript as he made out his list of candidates for the queen’s hand, and the advantages and disadvantages of each match. Cecil was a great one for lists; their march down the page matched the orderly progression of his thinking.

  Husbands for the Queen.

  1. King Philip of Spain—he will need dispensation from the Pope/he would support us against France and save us from the danger of the French in Scotland/ but he will use England in his wars/the people will never accept him a second time/can he even father a child?/she was attracted to him before but perhaps it was spite, and only because he was married to her sister.

  2. Archduke Charles—Hapsburg but free to live in England/Spanish alliance/said to be fanatically religious/said to be ugly and she cannot tolerate ugliness even in men.

  3. Archduke Ferdinand—his brother so same advantages but said to be pleasant and better-looking/younger so more malleable?/she will never brook a master, and neither will we.

  4. Prince Erik of Sweden—a great match for him and would please the Baltic merchants, but of no help to us elsewhere/ would make the French and the Spanish our bitter enemies and for the scant benefit of a weak ally/Protestant of course/ rich too, which would be a great help.

  5. Earl of Arran—heir to the Scottish throne after Princess Mary/could lead the Scottish campaign for us/handsome/Protestant/poor (and thus grateful to me). If he were to defeat the French in Scotland our worst danger is gone/and a son to him and the queen would finally unite the kingdoms/a Scottish-English monarchy would solve everything…

  6. An English commoner—she is a young woman and sooner or later is bound to take a liking to someone who always hangs about her/this would be the worst choice: he would further his own friends and family/would anger other families/would seek greater power from his knowledge of the country/disaster for me…

  Cecil broke off and brushed the feather of the quill against his lips. It cannot be, he wrote. We cannot have an overmighty subject to further his own family and turn her against me and mine. Thank God that Robt. Dudley is already married or he would be scheming to take this flirtation further. I know him and his…

  He sat in the silence of the nighttime palace. Outside on the turret an owl hooted, calling for a mate. Cecil thought of the sleeping queen and his face softened in a smile that was as tender as a father’s. Then he drew a fresh piece of paper toward him and started to write.

  To the Earl of Arran:

  My lord,

  At this urgent time in your affairs the bearer of this will convey to you my good wishes and my hopes that you will let him assist you to come to England, where my house and my servants will be honored to be at your disposal…

  Elizabeth, in her private apartment at Whitehall Palace, was rereading a love-letter from Philip of Spain, the third of a series that had grown increasingly passionate as the correspondence had gone on. One of her ladies-in-waiting, Lady Betty, craned to see the words upside down but could not make out the Latin, and silently cursed her poor education.

  “Oh, listen,” Elizabeth breathed. “He says that he cannot eat or sleep for thinking of me.”

  “He’ll have got dreadfully scrawny then,” Catherine Knollys said robustly. “He was always too thin; he had legs like a pigeon.”

  Lady Mary Sidney, Robert Dudley’s sister, giggled.

  “Hush!” Elizabeth reprimanded them primly; she was always sensitive to the status of a fellow monarch. “He is very distinguished. And anyway, I daresay he is eating. It is just poetry, Catherine. He is just saying it to please me.”

  “Just nonsense,” Catherine said under her breath. “And Papist nonsense, at that.”

  “He says he has struggled with his conscience, and struggled with his respect for my faith and my learning, and that he is sure that we can somehow find a way that allows us both to continue in our faith, and yet bring our hearts together.”

  “He will bring a dozen cardinals in his train,” Catherine predicted. “And the Inquisition behind them. He has no affection for you at all, this is just politics.”

  Elizabeth looked up. “Catherine, he does have an affection for me. You were not here, or you would have seen it for yourself. Everybody remarked it at the time, it was an utter scandal. I swear that I would have been left in the Tower or under house arrest for the rest of my life if he had not intervened for me against the queen’s ill wishes. He insisted that I be treated as a princess and as heir…” She broke off and smoothed down the golden brocade skirt of her gown…“And he was very
tender to me.” Her voice took on its typical, narcissistic lilt. Elizabeth was always ready to fall in love with herself. “He admired me, to tell the truth; he adored me. A real prince, a real king, and desperately in love with me. While my sister was confined we spent much time together, and he was…”

  “A fine husband he will make,” Catherine interrupted. “One who flirts with his sister-in-law while his wife is in confinement.”

  “She was not really confined,” Elizabeth said with magnificent irrel evance. “She only thought she was with child because she was so swollen and sick…”

  “All the kinder of him then,” Catherine triumphed. “So he flirted with his sister-in-law when his wife was ill and breaking her heart over something she could not help. Your Grace, in all seriousness, you cannot have him. The people of England won’t have the Spanish king back again. He was hated here the first time; they would go mad if he came back again. He emptied the treasury, he broke your sister’s heart, he did not give her a son, he lost us Calais, and he has spent the last few months in the most disgraceful affairs with the ladies of Brussels.”

  “No!” Elizabeth said, instantly diverted from her love-letter. “So is that what he means when he says he neither eats nor sleeps?”

  “Because he is always bedding the fat burghers’ wives. He is as lecherous as a sparrow!” Catherine beamed at her cousin’s irresistible giggle. “You must be able to do better than your sister’s leftovers, surely! You are not such an old maid that you have to settle for cold meats, a secondhand husband. There are better choices.”

  “Oh! And who would you want me to have?” Elizabeth asked.

  “The Earl of Arran,” Catherine said promptly. “He’s young, he’s Protestant, he’s handsome, he’s very very charming—I met him briefly and I lost my heart to him at once—and when he inherits the throne, you join England and Scotland into one kingdom.”

  “Only if Mary of Guise were to helpfully drop dead, followed by her daughter,” Elizabeth pointed out. “And Mary of Guise is in good health and her daughter is younger than me.”

  “Stranger things happen to further God’s will,” Catherine said confidently. “And if the regent Mary lives, why should she not be pushed off her throne by a handsome Protestant heir?”

  Elizabeth frowned and glanced around the room to see who was listening. “Enough, Catherine, matchmaking doesn’t suit you.”

  “It is both matchmaking and the safety of our nation and our faith,” Catherine said, unrepentant. “And you have the chance to secure Scotland for your son, and save it from the Antichrist of Popery by marrying a handsome young man. It sounds to me as if there is no decision to take. Who would not want the Earl of Arran, fighting on the side of the Scottish lords for God’s kingdom on earth, and the kingdom of Scotland as his dowry?”

  Catherine Knollys might be certain in her preference for the young Earl of Arran, but at the end of February another suitor appeared at Elizabeth’s court: the Austrian ambassador, Count von Helfenstein, pressing the claims of the Hapsburg archdukes, Charles and Ferdinand.

  “You are a flower pestered by butterflies.” Robert Dudley smiled as they walked in the cold gardens of Whitehall Palace, two of Elizabeth’s new guards following them at a discreet distance.

  “Indeed, I must be, for I do nothing to attract.”

  “Nothing?” he asked her, one dark eyebrow raised.

  She paused to peep up at him from under the brim of her hat. “I invite no attention,” she claimed.

  “Not the way that you walk?”

  “For sure, I go from one place to another.”

  “The way you dance?”

  “In the Italian manner, as most ladies do.”

  “Oh, Elizabeth!”

  “You may not call me Elizabeth.”

  “Well, you may not lie to me.”

  “What rule is this?”

  “One for your benefit. Now, to return to the subject. You attract suitors in the way that you speak.”

  “I am bound to be polite to visiting diplomats.”

  “You are more than polite, you are…”

  “What?” she asked with a giggle of laughter in her voice.

  “Promising.”

  “Ah, I promise nothing!” she said at once. “I never promise.”

  “Exactly,” he said. “That is the very snare of you. You sound promising, but you promise nothing.”

  She laughed aloud in her happiness. “It’s true,” she confessed. “But to be honest, sweet Robin, I have to play this game, it is not just my own pleasure.”

  “You would never marry a Frenchman for the safety of England?”

  “I would never turn one down,” she said. “Any suitor of mine is an ally for England. It is more like playing chess than a courtship.”

  “And does no man make your heart beat a little faster?” he asked, in a sudden swoop to intimacy.

  Elizabeth looked up at him, her gaze straight, her expression devoid of coquetry, absolutely honest. “Not a one,” she said simply.

  For a moment he was utterly taken aback.

  She crowed with laughter. “Got you!” She pointed at him. “You vain dog! And you thought you had caught me!”

  He caught the hand and carried it to his mouth. “I think I will never catch you,” he said. “But I should be a happy man to spend my life in trying.”

  She tried to laugh, but at his drawing closer, the laugh was caught in her throat. “Ah, Robert…”

  “Elizabeth?”

  She would have pulled her hand away, but he held it close.

  “I will have to marry a prince,” she said unsteadily. “It is a game to see where the dice best falls, but I know that I cannot rule alone and I must have a son to come after me.”

  “You have to marry a man who can serve your interests, and serve the interests of the country,” he said steadily. “And you would be wise to choose a man that you would like to bed.”

  She gave a little gasp of shock. “You’re very free, Sir Robert.”

  His confidence was quite unshaken, he still held her hand in his warm grip. “I am very sure,” he said softly. “You are a young woman as well as a queen. You have a heart as well as a crown. And you should choose a man for your desires as well as for your country. You’re not a woman for a cold bed, Elizabeth. You’re not a woman that can marry for policy alone. You want a man you can love and trust. I know this. I know you.”

  Spring 1559

  THE LENT LILIES were out in Cambridgeshire in a sprawl of cream and gold in the fields by the river, and the blackbirds were singing in the hedges. Amy Dudley went out riding with Mrs. Woods every morning and proved to be a charming house guest, admiring their fields of sheep and knowledgeable about the hay crop which was starting to green up through the dry blandness of the winter grass.

  “You must long for an estate of your own,” Mrs. Woods remarked as they rode through a spinney of young oaks.

  “I hope that we will buy one,” Amy said happily. “Flitcham Hall, near my old home. My stepmother writes to me that squire Symes is ready to sell and I have always liked it. My father said he would give his fortune for it. He hoped to buy it a few years ago for Robert and me but then…” She broke off. “Anyway, I hope that we can have it now. It has three good stands of woodland, and two fresh rivers. It has some good wet meadows where the rivers join, and on the higher land the earth can support a good crop, mostly barley. The higher fields are for sheep of course, and I know the flock, I have ridden there since childhood. My lord liked the look of the place and I think he would have bought it, but when our troubles came…” She broke off again. “Anyway,” she said more happily, “I have asked Lizzie Oddingsell to write to tell him that it is for sale, and I am waiting for his reply.”

  “And have you not seen him since the queen inherited?” Mrs. Woods asked incredulously.

  Amy laughed it off. “No! Is it not a scandal? I thought he would come home for Twelfth Night, indeed, he promised that he would; but sin
ce he is Master of Horse, he was in charge of all the festivities at court, and he had so much to do. The queen rides or hunts every day, you know. He has to manage her stables and all the entertainments of the court as well, masques and balls and parties and everything.”

  “Don’t you want to join him?”

  “Oh, no,” Amy said decidedly. “I went to London with him when his father was alive and the whole family was at court and it was dreadful!”

  Mrs. Woods laughed at her. “Why, what was so terrible about it?”

  “Most of the day there is nothing to do but to stand about and talk of nothing,” Amy said frankly. “For men of course there is the business of the Privy Council and parliament to discuss, and endless seeking of pensions and places and favors. But for women there is only service in the queen’s rooms and nothing more, really. Very few ladies take an interest in the business of the realm, and no man would want my opinion anyway. I had to sit with my mother-in-law for days and days at a time, and she had no interest in anyone but the duke, her husband, and her sons. My husband’s four brothers were all brilliant and very loyal to each other, and he has two sisters, Lady Catherine and Mary…”

  “That is Lady Sidney now?”

  “Yes, her. They all think that Sir Robert is a very god, and so no one would ever have been good enough for him. Least of all me. They all thought I was a fool and by the time I was allowed to leave, I absolutely agreed with them.”

  Mrs. Woods laughed with Amy. “What a nightmare! But you must have had opinions; you were in a family at the very heart of power.”

  Amy made a little face. “You learned very quickly in that family that if you had opinions that did not agree with the duke, then you had better not voice them,” she said. “Although my husband rode out against her, I always knew that Queen Mary was the true queen, and I always knew that her faith would triumph. But it was better for me, and better for Robert, if I kept my thoughts and my faith to myself.”