The Virgin's Lover ttc-4 Page 36

  “Yes,” Cecil said. “It will hurt the people with treasuries, but not the common people. The people with treasuries will squeak but the common people will love us. And the people with treasuries are also merchants and sheep farmers and venturers, they will get good value for the new coins when they trade abroad. They won’t squeak too loud.”

  “What about the royal treasury?” she asked, alert at once to her own diminished fortune.

  “Your councillor Armagil Waad is dealing with it,” he said. “You have been converting to gold since you came to the throne. We will make the coinage of this country solid once more, and they will call this a golden age.”

  Elizabeth smiled at that, as he knew she would.

  “But it has to be an utter secret,” he said. “If you tell one person,” and we both know which person it would be “then he would speculate in coins and it would alert everyone who watches him. All his friends would speculate too, they would copy him, even if he did not warn them, and his rivals would want to know why and speculate also. This has to be an utter secret or we cannot do it.”

  She nodded.

  “If you tell him you will be ruined.”

  She did not glance back up the steps at Dudley; she kept her eyes fixed on Cecil.

  “Can you keep such a secret?” he asked.

  Her dark Boleyn eyes gleamed up at him with all the bright cynicism of her merchant forebears. “Oh, Spirit, you of all people know that I can.”

  He bowed, kissed her hand, and turned to mount his horse. “When shall we do it?” she asked him.

  “September,” he said. “This year. Pray God we have peace then as well.”

  Summer 1560

  IT TOOK CECIL and his entourage a week to reach Newcastle from London, riding most of the way on the Great North Road though fine early summer weather. He spent one night at Burghley, his new, beautiful half-built palace. His wife, Mildred, greeted him with her usual steady good humor, and his two children were well.

  “Do we have much coin?” he asked her over dinner.

  “No,” she said. “When the queen came to the throne you told me that we should not save coin and since then it’s easy to see that matters have got even worse. I keep as little as possible. I take rent in kind or in goods wherever I can, the coin is so bad.”

  “That’s good,” he said. He knew that he need say no more. Mildred might live in a remote area but there was not much happening in the country and in the city that she did not know of. Her kin were the greatest Protestants in the land; she came from the formidably intelligent Protestant Cheke family, and constant letters of news, opinion, and theology passed from one great house to another.

  “Is everything well here?” he asked. “I would give a king’s ransom to stay and see the builders.”

  “Would it cost a royal ransom for you to be late in Scotland?” she asked shrewdly.

  “Yes,” he said. “I am on grave business, wife.”

  “Will we win?” she asked bluntly.

  Cecil paused before replying. “I wish I could be sure,” he said. “But there are too many players and I cannot know the cards they hold. We have good men on the border now; Lord Grey is reliable and Thomas Howard is as fiery as ever. But the Protestant lords are a mixed bunch and John Knox is a liability.”

  “A man of God,” she said sharply.

  “Certainly he acts as if divinely inspired,” he said mischieviously, and saw her smile.

  “You have to stop the French?”

  “Or we are lost,” he concurred. “I’d take any ally.”

  Mildred poured him a glass of wine and said no more. “It’s good to have you here,” she remarked. “When all this is over perhaps you can come home?”

  “Perhaps,” he said. “Hers is not a light service.”

  The next morning, Cecil had broken his fast and was ready to leave at dawn. His wife was up to see him off.

  “You take care in Scotland,” she said as she kissed him farewell. “I know that there are Protestant rogues as well as Papist ones.”

  They made good time to Newcastle, arriving in the first week in June, and Cecil found Thomas Howard in good spirits, confident of the strength of the border castles, and determined that there should be no peace negotiations to cede what a battle might win.

  “We are here with an army,” he complained to Cecil. “Why would we bring an army if we are just going to make peace?”

  “She thinks that Leith will never fall,” Cecil said shrewdly. “She thinks this is a battle that the French will win.”

  “We can defeat them!” Norfolk exclaimed. “We can defeat them and then open negotiations for peace. They can ask us for terms when they are beaten.”

  Cecil settled down to the long process of negotiating with the French commissioner for peace, Monsieur Randan. At once Thomas Howard drew Cecil to one side to object to the French entourage.

  “Cecil, half the so-called courtiers in his train are engineers,” he said. “I don’t want them looking over our dispositions and checking out the walls of the castle here and at Edinburgh. If you give them free rein they will see everything I have done here. The other half are spies. As they travel to Edinburgh and Leith, they will meet with their agents and their news will go straight back to France. Randan has to negotiate on his own word; he can’t go galloping up to the queen regent at Leith and back every other day, seeing God knows what and talking to God knows who.”

  But Monsieur Randan was obdurate. He had to take instructions from Mary of Guise herself, and he could offer no peace proposals, nor answer the English proposals, without speaking with her. He had to go to Edinburgh, and he had to have safe conduct through the siege lines into Leith Castle.

  “Might as well draw him a map,” Thomas Howard said irritably. “Invite him to call in at every damned Papist house on the way.”

  “He has to see his master,” Cecil remarked reasonably. “He has to put our proposals to her.”

  “Aye, and she is the one who is our greatest danger,” Thomas Howard declared. “He is nothing more than her mouthpiece. She is a great politician. She will stay holed up in that castle forever if she can and prevent us from talking with the French. She will get between us and them. If we let Randan speak with her she will order him to ask for one thing and then another; she will agree and then withdraw, she will hold us here until the autumn, and then the weather will destroy us.”

  “Do you think so?” Cecil asked anxiously.

  “I am sure of it. Already the Scots are slipping away, and every day we lose men to disease. When the hot weather comes we can expect the plague and when the cold weather comes we will be destroyed by the ague. We have to move now, Cecil, we cannot let them delay us with false offers of peace.”

  “Move how?”

  “Move the siege. We have to break in. No matter what it costs. We have to shock them to the treaty.”

  Cecil nodded. Yes, but I have seen your plans for the siege, he said to himself. It calls for phenomenal luck, extraordinary courage, and meticulous generalship, and the English army has none of these. You are right only in your fear: if Mary of Guise sits tight within Leith Castle we will be destroyed by time, and the French can occupy Scotland and the north of England at their leisure. You are right that the French have to be frightened into peace.

  Elizabeth was too weary to dress properly. Robert was admitted to her privy chamber as she sat with her women wearing a robe over her nightgown, with her hair in a careless plait down her back.

  Kat Ashley, normally an anxious guardian of Elizabeth’s reputation, admitted Robert without a word of complaint. Elizabeth’s longstanding friend and advisor Thomas Parry was in the room already. Elizabeth settled herself in the window seat and gestured to Robert to sit beside her.

  “Are you ill, my love?” he asked tenderly.

  Her eyes were shadowed so darkly that she looked like a defeated bare-knuckle fighter. “Just tired,” she said. Even her lips were pale.

  “Here, drink
this,” Kat Ashley offered, pressing a cup of hot mead into her hand.

  “Any news from Cecil?”

  “None, yet. I am afraid they will attempt the castle again; my uncle is so hasty, and Lord Grey so determined. I wanted Cecil to promise me a cease-fire while the French commissioner was in the north, but he said that we must keep up the threat…” She broke off, her throat tight with anxiety.

  “He is right,” Thomas Parry said quietly.

  Robert pressed her hand. “Drink it while it is hot,” he said. “Go on, Elizabeth.”

  “It’s worse than that,” she said, obediently taking a sip. “We have no money. I can’t pay the troops if they stay in the field another week. And then what will happen? If they mutiny we will be destroyed; if they try to make their own way home with no money in their pockets they will pillage from the border to London. And then the French will march freely behind them.”

  She broke off again. “Oh, Robert, it has all gone so terribly wrong. I have ruined everything that was left to me. Not even my half-sister Mary failed this country as I have done.”

  “Hush,” he said, taking her hand and pressing it to his heart. “None of this is true. If you need money I will raise it for you; there are lenders we can go to, I promise it. We will pay the troops, and Howard and Grey will not attack without a chance of winning. If you want, I’ll go north, and look for you, see what is happening.”

  At once she clutched his hand. “Don’t leave me,” she said. “I can’t bear to wait without you at my side. Don’t leave me, Robert; I can’t live without you.”

  “My love,” he said softly. “I am yours to command. I will go or stay as you wish. And I always love you.”

  She raised her head a little from the gold cup and gave him a fugitive smile.

  “There,” he said. “That’s better. And in a moment you must go and put on a pretty gown and I will take you riding.”

  She shook her head. “I can’t ride; my hands are too sore.”

  She held out her hands to show him. The cuticles all around the nails were red and bleeding, and the knuckles were fat and swollen. Robert took the hurt hands into his own and looked around at Kat Ashley.

  “She has to rest,” she said. “And not worry so. She is tearing herself apart.”

  “Well, you wash your hands and cream them, my love,” Robert said, hiding his shock. “And then put on a pretty gown and come and sit with me by the fire, and we shall have some music and you can rest and I will talk to you about my horses.”

  She smiled, like a child being promised a treat. “Yes,” she said. “And if there is a message from Scotland…”

  Robert raised his hand. “Not one word about Scotland. If there is news, they will bring it to us as quickly as they can. We have to learn the art of patiently waiting. Come on, Elizabeth, you know all about waiting. I have seen you wait like a master. You must wait for news as you waited for the crown. Of all the women in the world you are the most elegant waiter.”

  She giggled at that, her whole face lighting up.

  “Now that’s true,” Thomas Parry agreed. “Ever since she was a girl she could keep quiet and judge her moment.”

  “Good,” Dudley said. “Now you go and get dressed, and be quick.”

  Elizabeth obeyed him, as if he were her husband to command, and she had never been Queen of England. Her ladies went past him with their eyes down, all except for Laetitia Knollys, who swept him a curtsy as she went past, a deep curtsy, one appropriate from a young lady-in-waiting to a king in waiting. There was not much that Laetitia ever missed about Lord Robert.

  Newcastle,

  June 7th 1560

  1. Assassination is a disagreeable tool of statecraft but there are occasions when it should be considered.

  2. For instance when the death of one person is to the benefit of many lives.

  3. The death of one enemy can be to the benefit of many friends.

  4. In the case of a king or queen, a death which appears accidental is better than a defeat of that king or queen which might encourage others to think of rebellion in future.

  5. She is, in any case, elderly and in poor health. Death will be a release for her.

  6. I would advise you to discuss this with no one. There is no need to reply to this.

  Cecil sent the letter unsigned and unsealed by special messenger to be delivered to the queen’s hand. There was no need to wait for any reply; he knew that Elizabeth would take any crime on her flexible conscience to get her army home.

  The whole court, the whole world, waited for the news from Scotland, and still it only came in unrevealing snippets. Cecil’s letters, arriving always at least three days old, told Elizabeth that he and the French envoy were planning to travel together to Edinburgh, as soon as the details of the French train could be agreed. He wrote that he was hopeful of agreement once Monsieur Randan, the French emissary for peace, could get instructions from Mary of Guise. He wrote that he knew Elizabeth would be anxious about the soldiers, and about the stores, about their arrears of pay, and about their conditions, but that he would report on all of that when he had met with Lord Grey in Edinburgh. She would have to wait for news.

  They would all have to wait.

  “Robert, I cannot bear this alone,” Elizabeth whispered to him. “I am breaking down. I can feel myself breaking down.”

  He was walking with her in the long gallery, past the portraits of her father and her grandfather, and the other great monarchs of Europe. Mary of Guise’s portrait glared down at them. Elizabeth had kept it in a place of honor in the hopes of confusing the French about her feelings toward the queen regent who had brought so much trouble to the kingdom and so much danger to Elizabeth.

  “You need not bear it alone. You have me.”

  She paused in her stride and snatched at his hand. “You swear it? You will never leave me?”

  “You know how much I love you.”

  She gave an abrupt laugh. “Love! I saw my father love my cousin to desperation and then he ordered her execution. Thomas Seymour swore he loved me and I let him go to his death and never lifted a finger to save him. They came and asked me what I thought of him, and I said nothing in his favor. Not one word. I was an absolute traitor to my love for him. I need more than a promise of love, Robert. I have no reason to trust sweet promises.”

  He paused for a moment. “If I was free, I would marry you today.”

  “But you are not!” she cried out. “Again and again we come to this. You say that you love me and that you would marry but you cannot, and so I am alone and have to stay alone, and I cannot bear being alone anymore.”

  “Wait,” he said, thinking furiously. “There is a way. There is. I could prove my love to you. We could be betrothed. We could make a betrothal de futuro.”

  “A binding promise to wed in public when you are free,” she breathed.

  “An oath as binding as the marriage vow,” he reminded her. “One that swears us to each other as surely as marriage. So when I am free, all we do is declare publicly what we have done in private.”

  “And you will be my husband, and be always at my side, and never leave me,” she whispered hungrily, stretching out her hand to his. Without hesitation he took it and clasped it in his own.

  “Let’s do it now,” Robert whispered. “Right now. In your chapel. With witnesses.”

  For a moment he thought he had gone too far and she would withdraw in fear. But she glanced around at the court that was languidly chattering, only half an eye on her strolling with her constant companion.

  “Kat, I am going to pray for our troops in Scotland,” she called to Mrs. Ashley. “None of you need come with me but Catherine and Sir Francis. I want to be alone.”

  The ladies curtsyed; the gentlemen bowed. Catherine and Francis Knollys followed Elizabeth and Robert as, arm in arm, they went quickly along the gallery together and down the broad flight of stone stairs to the Royal Chapel.

  The place was in shadowy silence, empty
but for an altar boy polishing the chancel rail.

  “You. Out,” Elizabeth said briefly.

  “Elizabeth?” Catherine queried.

  Elizabeth turned to her cousin, her face alight with joy. “Will you witness our betrothal?” she asked her.

  “Betrothal?” Sir Francis repeated, looking at Sir Robert.

  “A de futuro betrothal, a pledge to publish our marriage later,” Sir Robert said. “It is the queen’s dearest wish and mine.”

  “And what of your wife?” Sir Francis said in a half whisper to Sir Robert.

  “She will have a generous settlement,” he replied. “But we want to do this now. Will you be our witnesses or not?”

  Catherine and her husband looked at each other. “This is a binding vow,” Catherine said uncertainly. She looked at her husband for guidance.

  “We will be your witnesses,” he said; and then he and Catherine silently stood on either side of the queen and her lover as the two of them turned to the altar.

  Elizabeth’s Papist candlesticks and crucifix twinkled in the lights of a dozen candle flames. Elizabeth sank to her knees, her eyes on the crucifix, and Robert knelt down beside her.

  She turned to face him. “With this ring, I thee wed,” she said. She took her signet ring, her Tudor rose signet ring, off her fourth finger, and held it out to him.

  He took it and tried it on his little finger. To their delight it slid on as if it had been made for him. He took off his own ring, the one he used to seal his letters, his father’s ring with the ragged staff and the bear of the Dudley family.

  “With this ring I thee wed,” he said. “From today and this day forth I am your betrothed husband.”

  Elizabeth took his ring and slid it on her wedding finger. It fitted perfectly. “From today and this day forth I am your betrothed wife,” she whispered. “And I will be bonny and blithe at bed and board.”

  “And I will love no one but you till death us do part,” he swore.

  “Till death us do part,” she repeated.

  Her dark eyes were luminous with tears; when she leaned forward and kissed him on the lips they brimmed over. His memory of that afternoon would always be of the warmth of her lips and the saltiness of her tears.