The Virgin's Lover Page 15

  “Well, you were not missed here. There has been nothing here but courtships and suitors and romancing.”

  “I don’t doubt it,” he said, smiling down at her. “For you missed me so little that you thought me in Kendal.”

  She pouted. “How am I to know where you are, or what you do? Aren’t you supposed to be at court all the time? Is it not your duty to be here?”

  “Not my duty,” Sir Robert said. “For I would never neglect my duty.”

  “So you admit that you neglect me?”

  “Neglect? No. Flee? Yes.”

  “You flee from me?” Her ladies saw her face alight with laughter as she leaned forward to hear him. “Why would you flee from me? Am I so fearsome?”

  “You are not, but the threat you pose is dreadful, worse than any Medusa.”

  “I have never threatened you in my whole life.”

  “You threaten me with every breath that you take. Elizabeth, if I let myself love you, as I could do, what would become of me?”

  She leaned back and shrugged. “Oh, you would pine and weep for a sennight and then you would visit your wife again in Camberwell and forget to come back to court.”

  Robert shook his head. “If I let myself love you, as I want to love you, then everything would change for me, forever. And for you…”

  “For me what?”

  “You would never be the same again,” he promised her, his voice dropping to a whisper. “Your life would never be the same again. You would be a woman transformed; everything would be …revalued.”

  Elizabeth wanted to shrug and laugh but his dark gaze was utterly hypnotic, far too serious for the flirtatious tradition of courtly love. “Robert…” She put her hand to the base of her throat where her pulse was hammering, her face flushed pink with desire. But experienced philanderer as he was, he did not attend to the color in her cheeks but to the slow, revealing stain that spread from the base of her neck to the tips of her earlobes where two priceless pearls danced. It was the rose-red stain of lust and Robert Dudley had to bite his lip not to laugh aloud to see the virgin Queen of England as red as any slut with lust for him.

  In the house at Camberwell Amy went into the parlor with the Scotts and Mrs. Oddingsell, swore them to the strictest of confidence, and announced that her husband was to be given the very highest order of chivalry, the Order of the Garter, a pretty little house at Kew, a grant of lands, a profitable office, and that best of all he had asked her to find them a suitable house in Oxfordshire.

  “Well, what did Mrs. Woods tell you?” Mrs. Oddingsell demanded of her radiant charge. “And what did I say? You will have a beautiful house and he will come home every summer, and perhaps even the court will visit on progress, and you will entertain the queen in your own house and he will be so proud of you.”

  Amy’s little face glowed at the thought of it.

  “This is to rise high indeed,” Ralph Scott said delightedly. “It’s no knowing how far he may go on the queen’s favor like this.”

  “And then he will need a London house, he will not be satisfied with a little place at Kew, you will have Dudley House or Dudley Palace, and you will live in London every winter, and give such grand feasts and entertainments that everyone will want to be your friend, everyone will want to know the beautiful Lady Dudley.”

  “Oh, really,” Amy said, blushing. “I don’t seek it…”

  “Yes, indeed. And think of the clothes you will order!”

  “When did he say he would join you at Denchworth?” Ralph Scott asked, thinking that he might call on his cousin in Oxfordshire and promote his relationship with her husband.

  “Within a fortnight, he said. But he is always late.”

  “Well, by the time he comes, you will have had time to ride all around the country and to find a house he might like,” Mrs. Oddingsell said. “You know Denchworth already, but there are many old houses that you have never seen. I know it is my home, and so I am partial; but I think Oxfordshire is the most beautiful country in England. And my brother and sister-in-law will be so pleased to help us look. We can all go out together. And then, when Sir Robert finally comes, you will be able to ride out with him and show him the best land. Master of the Queen’s Horse! Order of the Garter! I would think he could buy up half of the country.”

  “We must pack!” Amy cried, seized with urgency. “He says he wants me to go at once! We must leave at once.”

  She dragged her friend to her feet, Mrs. Oddingsell laughing at her. “Amy! It will take us only two or three days to get there. We don’t have to rush!”

  Amy danced to the door, her face as bright as a girl’s. “He’s going to meet me there!” she beamed. “He wants me there now. Of course we have to go at once.”

  William Cecil was in low-voiced conference with the queen in the window embrasure at Whitehall Palace, a March shower pelting the thick glass of the window behind them. In various states of alertness the queen’s court waited for her to break from her advisor and turn, looking for entertainment. Robert Dudley was not among them; he was in his great chambers organizing river barges with the head boatmen. Only Catherine Knollys stood within earshot, and Cecil trusted Catherine’s loyalty to the queen.

  “I cannot marry a man I have never seen.” She repeated the answer she was using to everyone to delay the courtship of the Archduke Ferdinand.

  “He is not some shepherd swain that can come piping and singing to court you,” Cecil pointed out. “He cannot come halfway across Europe for you to look him over like a heifer. If the marriage is arranged then he could come for a visit and you could be married at the end of it. He could come this spring and you could be married in the autumn.”

  Elizabeth shook her head, instantly retreating from the threat of decisive action, at the very mention of a date on the calendar. “Oh, not so soon, Spirit. Don’t press me.”

  He took her hand. “I don’t mean to,” he said earnestly. “But your safety lies this way. If you were betrothed to a Hapsburg archduke, then you have an alliance for life, unbreakable.”

  “They say Charles is very ugly, and madly Catholic,” she reminded him.

  “They do,” he agreed patiently. “But it is his brother Ferdinand that we are considering. And they say he is handsome and moderate.”

  “And the emperor would support the match? And we would have a treaty of mutual support if I married him?”

  “Count Feria indicated to me that Philip would see this as a guarantee of mutual goodwill.”

  She looked impressed.

  “Last week, when I advised you in favor of the Arran match, you said you thought this match the better one,” he reminded her. “Which is why I speak of it now.”

  “I did think so then,” she concurred.

  “It would rob the French of their friendship with Spain, and reassure our own Papists,” he added.

  She nodded. “I’ll think about it.”

  Cecil sighed and caught Catherine Knollys’s amused sidelong smile. She knew exactly how frustrating Elizabeth could be to her advisors. He smiled back. Suddenly there was a shout and a challenge from the doorway and a bang against the closed door of the presence chamber. Elizabeth blanched and started to turn, not knowing where she could go for safety. Cecil’s two secret bodyguards stepped quickly toward her; everyone looked at the door. Cecil, his pulse hammering, took two steps forward. Good God, it has happened. They have come for her, he thought. In her own palace.

  Slowly the door opened. “Beg pardon, Your Grace,” the sentry said. “It’s nothing. A drunk apprentice. Just stumbled and fell. Nothing to alarm you.”

  Elizabeth’s color flowed back into her cheeks, and her eyes filled with tears. She turned into the window bay to hide her stricken face from the court. Catherine Knollys came forward and put her arm around her cousin’s waist.

  “Very well,” Cecil said to the soldier. He nodded to his men to step back against the walls again. There was a buzz of concern and interest from the courtiers; only a few
of them had seen the sudden leap of Elizabeth’s fear. Cecil loudly asked Nicholas Bacon a question and tried to fill the silence with talk. He glanced back. Catherine was talking steadily and quietly to the queen, reassuring her that she was safe, that there was nothing to fear. Elizabeth managed to smile, Catherine patted her hand, and the two women turned back to the court.

  Elizabeth glanced around. Count von Helfenstein, the Austrian ambassador representing the Archduke Ferdinand, was just coming into the long gallery. Elizabeth went toward him with her hands outstretched.

  “Ah, Count,” she said warmly. “I was just complaining that there was no one to divert me on this cold day, and praise be! here you are like a swallow in springtime!”

  He bowed over her hands and kissed them.

  “Now,” she said, drawing him to walk beside her through the court. “You must tell me all about Vienna and the ladies’ fashions. How do they wear their hoods, and what sort of ladies does the Archduke Ferdinand admire?”

  Amy’s energy and determination to meet her husband meant that she had packed her goods and clothes, organized her escort, and said farewell to her cousins within days. Her spirits did not flag on the long journey from Camberwell to Abingdon, though they spent three nights on the road and one of them in a very inferior inn where there was nothing to eat at dinner but a thin mutton broth and only gruel for breakfast. Sometimes she rode ahead of Mrs. Oddingsell, cantering her horse on the lush spring grass verges, and the rest of the time she kept the hunter to a brisk walk. In the warm, fertile countryside with the grass greening, the pasture and the crops starting to fill the fields, the escort felt safe to drop behind the two women; there was no threat from any beggars or other travelers as the empty road wound over an empty plain, unmarked by hedges or fields.

  Now and again Robert’s armed escort closed up as the way led the party through a wood of old oak trees, where some danger might be waiting, but the countryside was so open and empty, except for the solitary man plowing behind a pair of oxen, or a lad watching sheep, that it was not likely that anything could threaten Lady Dudley as she rode, merrily from one friendly house to another, secure of her welcome and hopeful of a happier future at last.

  Mrs. Oddingsell, accustomed to Amy’s mercurial changes of mood which depended so much on the absence or promise of Sir Robert, let the young woman ride ahead, and smiled indulgently when she heard the snatches of song that drifted back to her.

  Clearly, Sir Robert, with his candidate on the throne, with a massive income flowing into his coffers, would look around for a great house, would look around for a handsome estate, and in very short order would want to see his wife at the foot of his table and a son and heir in the nursery.

  What was the value of influence at court and a fortune in the making without a son to pass it on to? What was the use of an adoring wife if not to run the estate in the country and to organize the house in London?

  Amy loved Robert very deeply and would do anything to please him. She wanted him to come home to her and she had all the knowledge and skills to run a successful country estate. Mrs. Oddingsell thought that the years of Amy’s neglect and Robert’s years under the shadow of treason were over at last, and the couple could start again. They would be partners in a venture typical of their time, furthering the fortunes of a family: the man wheeling and dealing at court, while his wife managed his land and fortune in the country.

  Many a good marriage had started on nothing more tender than this, and forged itself into a strong good partnership. And—who could tell?—they might even fall in love again.

  Mr. Hyde’s house was a handsome place, set back a little from the village green, with a good sweep of a drive up to it and high walls built in the local stone. It had once been a farmhouse and successive additions had given it a charming higgledy-piggledy roof line, and extra wings branching from the old medieval hall. Amy had always enjoyed staying with the Hydes; Mrs. Oddingsell was sister to Mr. Hyde and there was always a warm sense of a family visit which hid the awkwardness that Amy sometimes felt when she arrived at one of Robert Dudley’s dependents. Sometimes it seemed as if she were Robert’s burden which had to be shared equally among his adherents; but with the Hydes she was among friends. The rambling farmhouse set in the wide open fields reminded her of her girlhood home in Norfolk, and the small worries of Mr. Hyde, the dampness of the hay, the yield of the barley crop, the failure of the river to flood the water meadows since a neighbor had put in an overly deep carp pond, were the trivial but fascinating business of running a country estate that Amy knew and loved.

  The children were on the watch for their Aunt Lizzie and Lady Dudley; when the little cavalcade came up the drive the front door opened and they came tumbling out, waving and dancing around.

  Lizzie Oddingsell tumbled off her horse and hugged them indiscriminately, and then straightened up to kiss her sister-in-law, Alice, and her brother, William.

  They all three turned and hurried to help Amy down from her horse.

  “My dear Lady Dudley, you are most welcome to Denchworth,” William Hyde said warmly. “And are we to expect Sir Robert?”

  Her blaze of a smile warmed them all. “Oh, yes,” she said. “Within a fortnight, and I am to look for a house for us and we are going to have an estate here!”

  Robert, walking around the Whitehall Palace stable yard on one of his weekly inspections, turned his head to hear a horse trotting rapidly on the cobbled road and then saw Thomas Blount jump from his hard-ridden mare, throw the reins at a stable lad, and march toward the pump as if urgently needing to sluice his head with water. Obligingly, Robert worked the pump handle.

  “News from Westminster,” Thomas said quickly. “And I think I am ahead of anyone else. Perhaps of interest to you.”

  “Always of interest. Information is the only true currency.”

  “I have just come from parliament. Cecil has done it. They are going to pass the bill to change the church.”

  “He’s done it?”

  “Two bishops imprisoned, two said to be ill, and one missing. Even so, he did it by only three votes. I came away as soon as I had counted the heads and I am sure of it.”

  “A new church,” Dudley said thoughtfully.

  “And a new head of the church. She’s to be supreme governor.”

  “Supreme governor?” Dudley demanded, querying the curious name. “Not head?”

  “That’s what they said.”

  “That’s an odd thing,” Dudley said, more to himself than to Blount.

  “Sir?”

  “Makes you think.”

  “Does it?”

  “Makes you wonder what she might do.”

  “Sir?”

  “Nothing, Blount.” Dudley nodded to the man. “My thanks.” He walked on, shouted for a stable lad to move a halter rope, finished his inspection in a state of quiet elation, then turned and went slowly up the steps toward the palace.

  On the threshold he met William Cecil, dressed for the journey to his home at Theobalds.

  “Oh, Lord Secretary, good day. I was just thinking about you.” Dudley greeted him jovially and patted him on the shoulder.

  Cecil bowed. “I am honored to occupy your thoughts,” he said with the ironic courtesy that he often used to keep Dudley at a safe distance, and to remind them both that the old relationship of master and servant no longer applied.

  “I hear you have triumphed and remade the church?” Dudley inquired.

  How the devil does he know that? Cecil demanded of himself. And why can’t he just dance with her and ride with her and keep her happy till I can get her safely married to the Earl of Arran?

  “Yes, a pity in many ways. But at last we have agreement,” Cecil said, gently detaching his sleeve from the younger man’s detaining hand.

  “She is to be governor of the church?”

  “No more and no less than her father, or her brother.”

  “Surely they were called head of the church?”

  �
��St. Paul was thought to have ruled against a woman’s ministry,” Cecil volunteered. “So she could not be called head. Governor was deemed to be acceptable. But if you are troubled in your conscience, Sir Robert, there are spiritual leaders who can guide you better than I.”

  Robert gave a quick laugh at Cecil’s wonderful sarcasm. “Thank you, my lord. But my soul can generally be trusted to look after itself in these matters. Will the clergy thank you for such a thing?”

  “They will not thank us,” Cecil said carefully. “But they may be coerced and slid and argued and threatened into agreement. I expect a struggle. It will not be easy.”

  “And how will you coerce and slide them and argue with them and threaten them?”

  Cecil raised an eyebrow. “By administering an oath, the Oath of Supremacy. It’s been done before.”

  “Not to a church that was wholly opposed,” Dudley suggested.

  “We have to hope that they will not be wholly opposed when it comes to a choice between swearing an oath or losing their livelihood and their freedom,” Cecil said pleasantly.

  “You don’t propose to burn?” Dudley asked baldly.

  “I trust it will not come to that, though her father would have done so.”

  Robert nodded. “Does all the power come to her, despite the different name? Does it give her all the powers of her father? Of her brother? Is she to be Pope in England?”

  Cecil gave a little dignified bow, preparatory to making his leave. “Yes indeed, and if you will excuse me…”

  To his surprise the younger man no longer detained him but swept him a graceful bow and came up smiling. “Of course! I should not have delayed you, Lord Secretary. Forgive me. Are you on your way home?”

  “Yes,” Cecil said. “Just for a couple of days. I shall be back in plenty of time for your investiture. I must congratulate you on the honor.”

  So how does he know about that? Dudley demanded of himself. She swore to me that she would tell no one till nearer the time. Did he get it by his spies, or did she tell him herself? Does she indeed tell him everything? Aloud he said, “I thank you. I am too much honored.”