The Virgin's Lover ttc-4 Read online

  I have found a form of words which they can agree: it is that the French king and queen will grant freedom to the Scots as a gift, as a result of your intercession as a sister monarch, and remove their troops. So we have won everything we wanted at the very last moment and by the merciful intercession of God.

  This will be the greatest victory of your reign and the foundation of the peace and strength of the united kingdoms of this island. It has broken the Auld Alliance between France and Scotland forever. It has identified you as the protector of Protestantism. I am more relieved and happy than I have ever been in my life.

  God bless you and your seed, for neither peace nor war without this will profit us long, William Cecil, dated this day, the fourth of July, in Edinburgh Castle, 1560.

  Cecil, having averted war, broken the alliance of the French with the Scots, and identified Elizabeth as Europe’s newest and most daring power player, was walking in the cool of the evening in the little garden of Edinburgh castle and admiring the planting of the small bay trees and the intricate patterns of the colored stones.

  His servant hesitated at the top of the steps, trying to see his master in the dusk. Cecil raised his hand and the man came toward him.

  “A letter from Her Majesty.”

  Cecil nodded and took it, but did not open it at once. She knew he was near to settlement, this would be a letter thanking him for his services, promising him her love and his reward. She knew, as no one else knew, that England had been on a knife edge of disaster with this war in Scotland. She knew, as no one else knew, that no one could have won them a peace but Cecil.

  Cecil sat on the garden bench and looked up at the great gray walls of the castle, at the swooping bats, at the early stars coming out, and knew himself to be content. Then he opened his letter from the queen.

  For a moment he sat quite still, reading the letter, and then rereading it over and over again. She has run mad, was his first thought. She has run mad with the worry and distress of this war and now she has gone as war-hungry as she was fearful before. Good God, how can a man make any sense of his life when he is working for a woman who can blow hot and cold in a second, never mind in a day.

  Good God, how can a man make a lasting peace, an honorable peace, when the monarch can suddenly call for extra settlement after the treaty has been signed? The return of Calais? The coat of arms? And now a fine? Why not ask for the stars in the sky? Why not ask for the moon?

  And what is this, at the end of the letter? To break off negotiations if these objects cannot be achieved? And, in God’s name: do what? Make war with a bankrupt army, with the heat of summer coming? Let the French recall their troops to battle stations, who are even now packing to leave?

  Cecil scrunched the queen’s letter into a ball, dropped it to the ground, and kicked it as hard as he could, over the tiny ornamental hedge into the center of the knot garden.

  Madwoman! he swore at it, though still he did not say a word out loud. Feckless, vain, extravagant, willful woman. God help me that I ever thought you the savior of your country. God help me that I ever put my skills at your crazed service when I would have been better off planting my own garden at Burghley and never dancing attendance at your mad, vain court.

  He raged for a few moments more, walking backward and forward before the balled-up letter, discarded in the knot garden, then, because documents were both a treasure and a danger, he stepped over the little hedge and retrieved it, smoothed it out, and reread it.

  Then he saw two things that he had missed at the first reading. Firstly the date. She had dated it the third of July but it had arrived five days after the treaty had been signed and peace proclaimed. It had taken far too long to arrive. It had taken double the journey time. It had come too late to influence events. Cecil turned for his messenger.

  “Ho! Lud!”

  “Yes, Sir William?”

  “Why did this take six days to reach me? It is dated the third. It should have been here three days ago.”

  “It was the queen’s own wish, sir. She said she did not want you troubled with the letter until your business had been done. She told me to leave London and go into hiding for three days, to give the impression to the court that I had set out at once. It was her order, sir. I hope I did right.”

  “Of course you did right in obeying the queen,” Cecil growled.

  “She said she did not want you distracted by this letter,” the man volunteered. “She said she wanted it to arrive when your work was completed.”

  Thoughtfully, Cecil nodded the man away.

  What? he demanded of the night sky. What, in the devil’s name, what?

  The night sky made no reply, a small cloud drifted by like a gray veil.

  Think, Cecil commanded himself. In the afternoon, say; in the evening, say; in a temper, she makes a great demand of me. She has done that before, God knows. She wants everything: Calais, her arms restored to her sole use, peace, and five hundred thousand crowns. Badly advised (by that idiot Dudley for example) she could think all that possible, all that her due. But she is no fool, she has a second thought, she knows she is in the wrong. But she has sworn before witnesses that she will ask for all these things. So she writes the letter she promises them, signs and seals it before them but secretly she delays it on the road, she makes sure that I do the business, that peace is achieved, before she lays an impossible demand upon me.

  So she has made an unreasonable demand, and I have done a great piece of work and we have both done what we should do. Queen and servant, madam and man. And then, to make sure that her interfering gesture is nothing more than an interfering gesture, without issue: she says that if her letter arrives too late (and she has ensured that it will arrive too late) I may disregard her instructions.

  He sighed. Well and good. And I have done my duty, and she has done her pleasure, and no harm is done to the peace except my joy in it, and my anticipation that she would be most glad, most grateful to me, is quite gone.

  Cecil tucked her letter into the pocket inside his jacket. Not a generous mistress, he said quietly to himself. Or at any rate not to me, though clearly she will write a letter and delay it and lie about it to please another. There is not a king in Christendom or in the infidel lands who has a better servant than I have been to her, and she rewards me with this… This trap.

  Not really like her, he grumbled quietly to himself, walking toward the steps to the castle doorway. An ungenerous spirit, to distress me so at the moment of my triumph, and she is not usually ungenerous. He paused. But perhaps badly advised.

  He paused again. Robert Dudley, he remarked confidentially to the steps as he set his well-shined shoe on the first paving stone. Robert Dudley, I would wager my life on it. Begrudging my success, and wishing to diminish it in her eyes. Wanting more, always more than can reasonably be granted. Ordering her to write a letter filled with impossible demand and then she writing it to please him but delaying it so as to save the peace. He paused once more. A foolish woman to take such a risk to please a man, he concluded.

  Then he paused in his progress again as the worst thought came to him. But why would she let him go so far as to dictate her letters to me, on the greatest matter of policy we have ever faced? When he is not even a member of the Privy Council? When he is nothing but her Master of Horse? While I have been so far away, what advantages has he taken? What progress has he made? Dear God, what power does he have over her now?

  Cecil’s letter proclaiming the peace of Scotland was greeted by Elizabeth’s court, led by Robert, with sour thanksgiving. It was good, but it was not good enough, Robert implied; and the court, with one eye on the queen and the other on her favorite, concurred.

  The leading members of the Privy Council grumbled among themselves that Cecil had done a remarkable job and looked to have small thanks for it. “A month ago and she would have fallen on his neck if he could have got peace after only three months’ war,” Throckmorton said sourly. “She would have made him an earl for
getting peace within six weeks. Now he has done it within a day of getting to Edinburgh and she has no thanks for him. That’s women for you.”

  “It’s not the woman who is ungrateful, it is her lover,” Sir Nicholas Bacon said roundly. “But who will tell her? And who will challenge him?”

  There was a complete silence.

  “Not I, at any rate,” Sir Nicholas said comfortably. “Cecil will have to find a solution to this when he comes home. For surely to God, matters cannot go on like this for very much longer. It is a scandal, which is bad enough, but it leaves her as something and nothing. Neither wife nor maid. How is she to get a son when the only man she sees is Robert Dudley?”

  “Perhaps she’ll get Dudley’s son,” someone said quietly at the back.

  Someone swore at the suggestion; another man rose up abruptly and quitted the room.

  “She will lose her throne,” another man said firmly. “The country won’t have him, the Lords won’t have him, the Commons won’t have him, and d’you know, my lords, I damned well won’t have him.”

  There was a swift mutter of agreement, then someone said warningly, “This is near to treason.”

  “No, it isn’t,” Francis Bacon insisted. “All anyone has ever said is that they wouldn’t accept Dudley as king. Well and good. There’s no treason in that since he will never be king, there is no possibility of it in our minds. And Cecil will have to come home to see how to make sure there is no possibility of it in his mind too.”

  The man who knew himself to be King of England in all but name was in the stable yard inspecting the queen’s hunter. She had ridden so little that the horse had been exercised by a groom and Dudley wanted to be sure that the lad was as gentle on the horse’s valuable mouth as he would have been himself. While he softly pulled the horse’s ears and felt the velvet of her mouth Thomas Blount came up behind him and quietly greeted him. “Good morning, sir.”

  “Good morning, Blount,” Robert said quietly.

  “Something odd I thought you should know.”

  “Yes?” Robert did not turn his head. No one looking at the two men would have thought they were concerned with anything but horse care.

  “I came across a shipment of gold last night, smuggled in from the Spanish, shipped by Sir Thomas Gresham of Antwerp.”

  “Gresham?” Dudley asked, surprised.

  “His servant on board, bristling with knives, sick with worry,” Blount described.

  “Gold for who?”

  “For the treasury,” Blount said. “Small coins, bullion, all shapes and sizes. My man, who helped unload, said there was word that it was for minting into new coin, to pay the troops. I thought you might like to know. It was about three thousand pounds’ worth, and there has been more before and will be more next week.”

  “I do like to know,” Robert confirmed. “Knowledge is coin.”

  “Then I hope the coin is Gresham’s gold,” Blount quipped. “And not the dross I have in my pocket.”

  Half a dozen thoughts snapped into Robert’s head at once. He spoke none of them. “Thank you,” he said. “And let me know when Cecil starts his journey home.”

  He left the horse with the groom and went to find Elizabeth. She was not yet dressed; she was seated at the window in her privy chamber with a wrap around her shoulders. When Robert came in Blanche Parry looked up at him with relief. “Her Grace won’t dress though the Spanish envoy wants to see her,” she said. “Says she is too tired.”

  “Leave us,” Robert said shortly and waited while the women and the maids left the room.

  Elizabeth turned and smiled at him and took his hand and held it to her cheek. “My Robert.”

  “Tell me, my pretty love,” Robert said quietly. “Why are you bringing in boatloads of Spanish gold from Antwerp, and how are you paying for it all?”

  She gave a little gasp and the color went from her face, the smile from her eyes. “Oh,” she said. “That.”

  “Yes,” he replied evenly. “That. Don’t you think you had better tell me what is going on?”

  “How did you find out? It is supposed to be a great secret.”

  “Never mind,” he said. “But I am sorry to learn that you still keep secrets from me, after your promises, even though we are husband and wife.”

  “I was going to tell you,” she said at once. “It is just that Scotland has driven everything from my mind.”

  “I am sure,” he said coldly. “For if you had continued with your forgetfulness till the day that you called in the old coin and issued new, I would have been left with a small treasure room filled with dross, would I not? And left at a substantial loss, would I not? Was it your intention that I should suffer?”

  Elizabeth flushed. “I didn’t know you were storing small coin.”

  “I have lands; my tenants do not pay their rents in bullion, alas. I have trading debts which are paid in small coin. I have chests and chests of pennies and farthings. Do tell me what I may get for them?”

  “A little more than their weight,” she said in a very small voice.

  “Not their face value?”

  She shook her head in silence. “We are calling in the coins and issuing new,” she said. “It is Gresham’s plan—you know of it yourself. We have to make the coins anew.”

  Robert let go of her hand and walked to the center of the room while she sat and watched him, wondering what he would do. She realized that the sinking feeling in her belly was apprehension. For the first time in her life she was afraid what a man was thinking of her— not for policy, but for love.

  “Robert, don’t be angry with me. I didn’t mean to disadvantage you,” she said and heard the weakness in her own voice. “You must know that I would not put you at a disadvantage, you of all people! I have poured places and positions and lands upon you.”

  “I know,” he said shortly. “It is partly that which amazes me. That you should give with one hand and cheat me with the other. A whore’s trick, in fact. Did you not think that this would cost me money?”

  She gasped. “I only thought it had to be a secret, a tremendous secret, or everyone will trade among themselves and the coins will be worse and worse regarded,” she said quickly. “It is an awful thing, Robert, to know that people think that your very coins are next to worthless. We have to put it right, and everyone blames me for it being wrong.”

  “A secret you kept from me,” he said. “Your husband.”

  “We were not betrothed when the plan started,” she said humbly. “I see now that I should have told you. It is just that Scotland drove everything out—”

  “Scotland is at peace now,” he said firmly. “And try and keep in your mind that we are married and that you should have no secrets from me. Go and get dressed, Elizabeth, and when you come out you will tell me every single thing that you and Cecil have agreed and planned together. I will not be made a fool of. You will not have secrets with another man behind my back. This is to cuckold me, and I will not wear horns for you.”

  For a moment he thought he had gone too far, but she rose to her feet and went toward her bedchamber. “I will send your maids to you,” he said, taking advantage of her obedience. “And then we will have a long talk.”

  She paused in the doorway and looked back toward him. “Please don’t be angry with me. I didn’t mean to offend you. I would never offend you on purpose. You know how this summer has been. I will tell you everything.”

  It was the moment to reward her for her apology. He crossed the room and kissed her fingers and then her lips. “You are my love,” he said. “You and I are true gold and there will be nothing mixed with that to spoil it. Between us there will always be an absolute honesty and openness. Then I can advise you and help you and you need turn to no other.”

  He felt her mouth turn up under his kiss as she smiled. “Oh, Robert, I do,” she said.

  Cecil allowed himself the indulgence of one night at home with his wife at Burghley before pressing on with his journey to London.
Mildred greeted him with her usual calm affection but her gray eyes took in his lined face and the stoop of his shoulders. “You look tired,” was all the she remarked.

  “It was hot and dusty,” he said, saying nothing about the several journeys he had been forced to make between Edinburgh and Newcastle to forge the peace and make it stick.

  She nodded and gestured that he should go to his bedchamber, where in the palatial room there was hot water and a change of clothes waiting, a jug of cold ale and a warm fresh-baked loaf of bread. She had his favorite dinner ready for him when he came downstairs again, looking refreshed and wearing a clean dark suit.

  “Thank you,” he said warmly, and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you for all this.”

  She smiled and led him to the head of the table where their family and servants waited for the master to say grace. Mildred was a staunch Protestant and her home was run on most godly lines.

  Cecil said a few words of prayer and then sat down and applied himself to his dinner. His four-year-old daughter Anna was brought down from the nursery with her baby brother William, received an absentminded blessing, and then the covers were cleared and Mildred and Cecil went to their privy chamber, where a fire was lit and a jug of ale was waiting.

  “So it is peace,” she confirmed, knowing that he would never have left Scotland with the task unfinished.

  “Yes,” he said shortly.

  “You don’t seem very joyous; are you not a blessed peacemaker?”

  The look he shot at her was one she had never seen before. He looked hurt, as if he had taken a blow, not to his pride, nor to his ambition; but as if he had been betrayed by a friend.

  “I am not,” he said. “It is the greatest peace that we could have hoped for. The French army is to leave, England’s interest in Scotland is acknowledged, and all barely without a shot being fired. This should be the very greatest event of my life, my triumph. To defeat the French would be a glorious victory at any time; to defeat them with a divided country, a bankrupt treasury, an unpaid army led by a woman is almost a miracle.”