The Virgin's Lover Page 24

  He went to Amy with the letter in his hand. “It seems that you are to leave us.”

  “So soon?” she said. “Did he say nothing about a house here?”

  “The queen has given him a great place in Kent,” he said. “He writes to tell me. Knole Place, do you know it?”

  She shook her head. “So does he not want me to look for a house for him now? Are we not to live in Oxfordshire? Shall we live in Kent?”

  “He does not say,” he said gently, thinking that it was a shame that she should have to ask a friend where her home would be. Her very public quarrel with her husband had obviously wounded her deeply; he had watched her shrink inside herself as if shamed. In recent weeks she had become very devout and it was William Hyde’s view that churchgoing was a comfort to women, especially when they were in the grip of unhappy circumstances over which they had no control. A good priest like Father Wilson could be counted on to preach resignation; and William Hyde believed, as did other men of his age, that resignation was a great virtue in a wife. He saw her hand go to her breast.

  “Are you in pain, Lady Dudley?” he asked. “I often see you put your hand to your heart. Should you see a physician before you go?”

  “No,” she said with a swift, sad smile. “It is nothing. When does my lord say I am to leave?”

  “Within three days,” he said. “You are to go first to Cumnor Place to visit the Forsters, and then to your friend Mr. Hyde at Chislehurst. We shall be sorry to lose you. But I hope you will come back to us soon. You are like one of the family now, Lady Dudley. It is always such a pleasure to have you here.”

  To his discomfort, her eyes filled with tears and he went quickly to the door, fearing a scene.

  But she only smiled at him and said, “You are so kind. I always like coming here; your house feels like a home to me now.”

  “I am sure you will come back to us soon,” he said cheerfully.

  “Perhaps you will come and see me. Perhaps I am to live at Knole,” she said. “Perhaps Robert intends that to be my new home.”

  “Perhaps,” he said.

  Laetitia Knollys stood before William Cecil’s great desk in his handsome rooms at Hampton Court, her hands clasped behind her, her face composed.

  “Blanche Parry told the queen that she was playing with fire and she would burn down the whole house and us inside it,” she reported.

  Cecil looked up. “And the queen said?”

  “She said she had done nothing wrong, and no one could prove anything of her.”

  “And Mistress Parry said?”

  “She said that one only had to look at the two of them to know they were lovers.” A quaver of laughter colored her solemn tone. “She said they were hot as chestnuts on a shovel.”

  Cecil scowled at her.

  “And the queen?”

  “Threw Blanche out of her rooms and told her not to come back until she had rinsed her mouth of gossip or she would find her tongue slit for slander.”

  “Anything else?”

  She shook her head. “No, sir. Blanche cried and said her heart was breaking; but I suppose that’s not important.”

  “The queen sleeps always with a companion, a guard on the door?”

  “Yes, sir.”

  “So there could be no truth in this vile gossip.”

  “No, sir,” Laetitia repeated like a schoolgirl. “Unless…”

  “Unless?”

  “Unless there is a doorway behind the paneling, so that the queen could slip out of her bed when her companion is asleep and go through a secret door to Sir Robert, as they say her father the king used to do when he wanted to visit a woman.”

  “But no such passage exists,” Cecil said flatly.

  “Unless it is possible that a man can lie with a woman in the hours of daylight, and if they do not need a bed. If they can do it under a tree, or in a secret corner, or up against a wall in a hurry.” Her dark eyes were brimful of mischief.

  “All this may be true, but I doubt that your father would be pleased to know of your thoughts,” Cecil said severely. “And I must remind you to keep such speculation to yourself.”

  Her dark eyes gleamed at him. “Yes, sir, of course, sir,” she said demurely.

  “You can go,” Cecil said. Good God, if that little minx can say that to my face, what can they be saying behind my back?

  Sir Robert was leaning down to whisper to the seated queen, when Cecil walked into the presence chamber, and saw the queen laugh up at him. The desire between the two of them was so powerful that for a moment Cecil thought he could almost see it, then he shook his head against such nonsense and went forward to make his bow.

  “Oh, no bad news, Cecil, please!” Elizabeth exclaimed.

  He tried to smile. “Not one word. But can I walk with you for a moment?”

  She rose from her seat. “Don’t go,” she said quietly to Robert.

  “I might go to the stables,” he said.

  Her hand flew out and touched his sleeve. “Wait for me, I’ll only be a moment.”

  “I might,” he said teasingly.

  “You wait, or I’ll behead you,” she whispered.

  “I’d certainly lie down for you and tell you when I was ready.”

  At her ripple of shocked laughter, the court looked around and saw Cecil, once her greatest friend and only advisor, waiting patiently, while she tore herself away from Sir Robert, her cheeks flushed.

  Cecil offered his arm.

  “What is it?” she asked, not very agreeably.

  He waited until they had walked from the presence chamber into the long room of the gallery. Members of the court lingered here too, and some came strolling out of the presence chamber to watch Cecil and the queen, to wait their turn to catch her attention now that someone, at last, had separated her from Dudley.

  “I hear from Paris that the French are to send reinforcements to Scotland to assist the queen regent.”

  “Well, we knew that they would,” she said indifferently. “But some people think that the Scots will not man the siege for very long anyway. They never carry more than a fortnight’s supplies; they will just give up and go home.”

  So says Sir Robert, does he? Cecil said quietly to himself. “We had better pray that they do not,” he said with some asperity. “For those Scots lords are our first line of defense against the French. And the news I have is that the French are sending men to Scotland.”

  “How many?” she asked, determined not to be frightened.

  “One thousand pikemen and one thousand arquebusiers. Two thousand men in all.”

  He had wanted to shock her but he thought he had gone too far. She went quite white and he put his hand on the small of her back to steady her.

  “Cecil, that is more than they need to defeat the Scots.”

  “I know,” he said. “That is the first wave of an invading force.”

  “They mean to come.” She spoke in little more than a frightened whisper. “They really mean to invade England.”

  “I am certain that they do,” he said.

  “What can we do?” She looked up at him, sure that he would have a plan.

  “We must send Sir Ralph Sadler to Berwick at once to make an agreement with the Scots lords.”

  “Sir Ralph?”

  “Of course. He served your father faithfully in Scotland and he knows half the Scots lords by name. We must send him with a war chest. And he must inspect the border defenses and strengthen them to keep the French out of England.”

  “Yes,” she agreed quickly. “Yes.”

  “I can put that in hand?”

  “Yes,” she said. “Where is Arran?”

  He looked grim. “He’s on his way; my man is bringing him in.”

  “Unless he has gone back to Geneva,” she said bleakly. “Thinking the odds too great against him.”

  “He’s on his way,” said Cecil, knowing that his best man had been sent to Geneva with orders to bring Arran to London, whether he liked it or n
ot.

  “We have to make the Spanish pledge their support to us. The French are afraid of Spain. If we had them as our allies we would be safer.”

  “If you can do it,” he warned her.

  “I will,” she promised him. “I’ll promise them anything they want.”

  William Hyde took a moment to see his sister Lizzie while she was in the throes of packing to leave his house. “Does she really have no idea what people are saying about Sir Robert and the queen?”

  “She speaks to so few people that she might hear nothing of it, and anyway, who would have the heart to say such a thing to her?”

  “A friend might tell her,” he prompted her. “A true friend. To prepare her.”

  “How could anyone prepare her?” She rounded on him. “Nobody knows what is going to happen. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I am not prepared, you are not prepared, how can his wife be? How can anyone prepare when nothing like this has ever happened before? What country has ever had a queen who acts like a whore with a married man? Who can tell what is going to happen next?”

  “For God’s sake, Princess, I must speak with you,” Kat Ashley said in desperation in Elizabeth’s private room at Hampton Court Palace.

  “What is it?” Elizabeth was seated before her looking glass, smiling at her reflection as they brushed her hair with soft ivory-backed brushes and then rubbed it with red silk.

  “Your Grace, everyone is talking about you and Sir Robert, and the things they are saying are shameful. Things that should not be said of any young woman if she is to make a good marriage, things that should never be dreamed of in connection with the Queen of England.”

  To her surprise, Elizabeth, who as a princess had been so fearful of her reputation, turned her head away from her old governess and said dismissively, “People always talk.”

  “Not like this,” Kat said, pressing on. “This is scandalous. It is dreadful to hear.”

  “And what do they say? That I am unchaste? That Sir Robert and I are lovers?” Elizabeth dared her to say the worst.

  Kat drew a breath. “Yes. And more. They say that you bore his child and that is why the court went on progress this summer. They say the baby was born and hidden away with his wet nurse until you two can marry and bring him out. They say that Sir Robert is plotting to kill his wife, to murder her, to marry you. They say you are under an enchantment from him and you have lost your wits and all you can do is bed him, that you can think of nothing but lust. They say you are monstrous in your appetites, perverse in your pleasure in him. They say you neglect the business of the realm to go riding with him every day. They say he is king in all but name. They say he is your master.”

  Elizabeth flushed scarlet with rage. Kat dropped to her knees. “They say very detailed things about your bedding him, things anyone would blush to hear. Your Grace, I have loved you like a mother and you know what I have suffered for you in your service, and suffered it gladly. But I have never endured such anxiety as I feel now. You will throw yourself from your throne if you do not put Sir Robert aside.”

  “Put him aside!” Elizabeth sprang to her feet, scattering hair brushes and combs. “Why the devil should I put him aside?”

  The other ladies in the chamber leapt to their feet and cleared out of her way, spreading themselves against the wall, eyes down, hoping to be invisible, desperate to avoid Elizabeth’s fiery gaze.

  “Because he will be the death of you!” Kat rose too, facing her young mistress, desperately earnest. “You cannot keep your throne and allow people to speak of you as they are doing. They say you are no better than a whore, Your Grace, God forgive me that I should say such a word to you. This is worse than it has ever been. Even with Lord Seymour…”

  “Enough!” Elizabeth snapped. “And let me tell you something. I have never had a moment’s safety in my life, you know that, Kat. I have never had a moment’s joy. I have never had a man who loves me, nor a man that I could admire. In Sir Robert I have a great friend, the finest man I have ever known. I am honored by his love; I will never be shamed by it.

  “And there is no shame in it. I know that he is a married man, I danced at his wedding, for God’s sake. I sleep in my bedchamber every night with guards on the door and a companion in my bed. You know that as well as I. If I was a fool and I wanted to take a lover— and I do not—then it would be impossible for me to do so. But if I wanted to, then who should deny me? Not you, Kat, not the Privy Council, and not the Commons of England. If I wanted a lover then why should I, as Queen of England, be denied what any goose-girl can have for the asking?”

  Elizabeth was shouting her justification, quite beyond herself with rage. Kat Ashley, backed against the wood-paneled wall, was sick with shock. “Elizabeth, my princess, Your Grace,” she whispered. “I just want you to have a care.”

  Elizabeth whirled around and plumped down on her stool again, thrust her hairbrush at a white-faced Laetitia Knollys. “Well, I won’t,” Elizabeth replied flatly.

  That night she slipped through the secret doorway into Robert’s adjoining chamber. He was waiting for her, a warm fire in the grate, two chairs drawn up before it. His valet, Tamworth, had put out wine and little pastries for them, before leaving the room to stand guard outside the door.

  Elizabeth, in her nightgown, slid into Robert’s arms and felt his warm kisses on her hair.

  “I had to wait forever,” she whispered. “I was sleeping with Laetitia and she chattered and chattered and would not sleep.”

  Resolutely he turned his mind from the picture of the exquisite young woman and his mistress in bed together, combing each other’s copper hair, their white nightgowns open at the neck. “I was afraid you could not come.”

  “I will always come to you. Whatever anyone says.”

  “What has anyone said?”

  “More scandal.” She dismissed it with a shake of her head. “I can’t repeat it. It’s so vile.”

  He seated her in the chair and gave her a glass of wine. “Don’t you long for us to be together openly?” he asked softly. “I want to be able to tell everyone how much I adore you. I want to be able to defend you. I want you to be mine.”

  “How could it ever be?”

  “If we were to marry,” he suggested quietly.

  “You are a married man,” she said, so low that not even the little greyhound sitting at her feet could hear. But Robert heard, he saw the shape her lips made, he never took his eyes from her mouth.

  “Your father was a married man when he met your mother,” he said gently. “And yet when he met her, the woman that he had to have, the woman that he knew was the great love of his life, he put his first wife aside.”

  “His first marriage was not valid,” she responded instantly.

  “And nor is mine. I told you, Elizabeth, my love for Amy Robsart is dead, as is hers for me, and she means nothing to me. She lives apart from me now, and has done for years, of her own choice. I am free to love you. You can set me free, and then you shall see what we shall be for each other.”

  “I can set you free?” she whispered.

  “You have the power. You are head of the church. You can grant me a divorce.”

  She gasped. “I?”

  Robert smiled at her. “Who else?”

  He could see her brain working furiously. “You have been planning this?”

  “How could I plan such a thing? How could I dream that this would happen to us? Parliament made you supreme governor and gave you the powers of the Pope without a word from me. Now you have the power to annul my marriage; the Commons of England gave you that power, Elizabeth. You can free me, Elizabeth, as your father freed himself. You can free me to be your husband. We can be married.”

  She closed her eyes so that he could not see the whirl of thoughts in her head, her immediate frightened rejection. “Kiss me,” she said dreamily. “Oh, kiss me, my love.”

  Thomas Blount was in Robert’s private chambers over the stables the very next morning, l
eaning against the door, cleaning his fingernails with a sharp knife, when the opposite door opened and Dudley came in from riding, a sheaf of farriers’ bills in his hand.

  “Thomas?”

  “My lord.”

  “News?”

  “The Earl of Arran, James Hamilton, has arrived and is in hiding.”

  “Arran?” Dudley was genuinely astonished. “Here?”

  “Came into London three nights ago. Housed in some private rooms at Deptford.”

  “Good God! That was silently done. Who brought him in? Who pays his bills?”

  “Cecil, for the queen herself.”

  “She knows he is here?”

  “She commanded him. He is here at her invitation and request.”

  Dudley swore briefly, and turned to the window overlooking the vegetable gardens where they stretched down to the river. “If it’s not one damned opportunity seeker, it is another. To what end? Do you know that?”

  “My intelligencer, who knows the maid where the noble gentleman is staying, says that he is to meet the queen privately, to see if they can agree, and then when they have terms, she will publicly announce his arrival, they will be betrothed, and he will march to Scotland to claim his throne. When he is King of Scotland he will return in triumph and marry her, uniting the two kingdoms.”

  For a moment Dudley was so shocked that he could not speak. “And you are certain that this is the plan? You could be mistaken? This could be Cecil’s plan and the queen might know nothing of it.”

  “Perhaps. But my man is sure of it, and the maid seemed to think she had it right. She’s a whore as well as a maid and he was bragging to her when he was drunk. She is sure that the queen had consented.”