The Virgin's Lover ttc-4 Read online

  Elizabeth rose to her feet. “We will go out to him.” The court was mostly dressed to go hunting; there was a murmur of surprise as people noticed that Robert Dudley was not in riding clothes but in the most somber black. As the queen came in with her ladies he bowed to her, raised himself up, and said, perfectly composed, “Your Grace, I have to report the death of my wife. She died on Sunday at Cumnor Place, God rest her soul.”

  “Good God!” the Spanish ambassador exclaimed.

  Elizabeth glanced toward him with eyes that were as blank as polished jet. She raised her hand. At once, the room quietened as everyone crowded closer to hear what she would say.

  “I am very sorry to announce the death of Lady Amy Dudley, on Sunday, at Cumnor Place in Oxfordshire,” Elizabeth said steadily, as if the matter were not much to do with her.

  She waited. The court was stunned into silence, everyone waiting to see if she would say more. “We will go into mourning for Lady Dudley,” Elizabeth said abruptly, and turned to one side to speak to Kat Ashley.

  Irresistibly, the Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, found himself moving toward her. “What tragic news,” he said, bowing over her hand. “And so sudden.”

  “An accident,” Elizabeth said, trying to remain serene. “Tragic. Most regrettable. She must have fallen down the stairs. She had a broken neck.”

  “Indeed,” he said. “What a strange mischance.”

  It was afternoon before Robert came to Elizabeth again. He found her in the garden, walking with her ladies before dinner.

  “I shall have to withdraw from court for mourning,” he said, his face grave. “I thought I should go to the Dairy House at Kew. You can come and see me easily there, and I can come to see you.”

  She slid her hand on his arm. “Very well. Why do you look so odd, Robert? You are not sad, are you? You don’t mind, do you?”

  He looked down at her pretty face as if she were suddenly a stranger to him. “Elizabeth, she was my wife of eleven years. Of course I grieve for her.”

  She made a little pout. “But you were desperate to put her aside. You would have divorced her for me.”

  “Yes, indeed, I would have done, and this is better for us than the scandal of a divorce. But I would never have wished her dead.”

  “The country has thought her half dead any time in the last two years,” she said. “Everyone said she was terribly ill.”

  He shrugged. “People talk. I don’t know why they all thought she was ill. She traveled; she rode out. She was not ill, but in the last two years she was very unhappy; and that was all my fault.”

  She was irritated and let him see it. “Saints’ sake, Robert! You will never choose to fall in love with her now that she is dead!” she teased him. “You will never now find great virtues in her that you didn’t appreciate before?”

  “I loved her when she was a young woman and I was a boy,” he said passionately. “She was my first love. And she stood by me through all the years of my troubles and she never once complained of the danger and difficulty I led her into. And when you came to the throne and I came into my own again she never said one word of complaint about you.”

  “Why would she complain of me?” Elizabeth exclaimed. “How would she dare complain?”

  “She was jealous,” he said fairly. “And she knew she had cause. And she did not receive very fair or generous treatment from me. I wanted her to grant me a divorce and I was unkind to her.”

  “And now she is dead you are sorry, though you would have gone on being unkind to her in life,” she taunted him.

  “Yes,” he said honestly. “I suppose all poor husbands would say the same: that they know they should be better than they are. But I feel wretched for her, today. I am glad to be a single man, of course. But I would not have wanted her dead. Poor innocent! No one would have wanted her dead.”

  “You do not recommend yourself very well,” Elizabeth said archly, turning his attention to their courtship once more. “You do not sound like a good husband at all!”

  For once Robert did not respond to her. He looked away, upriver to Cumnor, and his gaze was somber. “No,” he said. “I was not a good husband to her, and God knows, she was the sweetest and best wife a man could have had.”

  There was a little stir among the waiting court, a messenger in the Dudley livery had entered the garden and paused at the fringe of the court. Dudley turned and saw the man and went toward him, his hand out for the proffered letter.

  The watching courtiers saw Dudley take the letter, break the seal, open it, and saw him pale as he read the words.

  Elizabeth went swiftly toward him and they parted to let her through. “What is it?” she demanded urgently. “Have a care! Everyone is watching you!”

  “There is to be an inquest,” he said, his lips hardly moving, his voice no more than a breath. “Everyone is saying that it was no accident. They all think that Amy was murdered.”

  Thomas Blount, Robert Dudley’s man, arrived at Cumnor Place the very day after Amy’s death, and examined all the servants one by one. Meticulously, he reported back to Robert Dudley that Amy had been known as a woman of erratic temper, sending everyone off to the fair on Sunday morning, though her companion Mrs. Oddingsell and Mrs. Forster had been unwilling to go.

  “No need to mention that again,” Robert Dudley wrote back to him, thinking that he did not want his wife’s sanity questioned, when he knew he had driven her to despair.

  Obediently, Thomas Blount never mentioned the matter of Amy’s odd behavior again. But he did say that Amy’s maid Mrs. Pirto had remarked that Amy had been in very great despair, praying for her own death on some occasions.

  “No need to mention this, either,” Robert Dudley wrote back. “Is there to be an inquest? Can the men of Abingdon be trusted with such a sensitive matter?”

  Thomas Blount, reading his master’s anxious scrawl well enough, replied that they were not prejudiced against the Dudleys in this part of the world, and that Mr. Forster’s reputation was good. There would be no jumping to any conclusion of murder; but of course, it must be what everyone thought. A woman does not die by falling down six stone steps, she does not die from a fall which does not disturb her hood or ruffle her skirts. Everyone thought that someone had broken her neck and left her on the floor. The facts pointed to murder.

  “I am innocent,” Dudley said flatly to the queen in the Privy Council chamber at Windsor Castle, a daunting place to speak of such private things. “Good God, would I be such a sinner as to do such a deed to a virtuous wife? And if I did, would I be such a fool as to do it so clumsily? There must be a thousand better ways to kill a woman and make it appear an accident than break her neck and leave her at the foot of half a dozen stairs. I know those stairs; there is nothing to them. No one could break their neck falling down them. You could not even break your ankle. You would barely bruise. Would I tidy the skirts of a murdered woman? Would I pin her hood back on her head? Am I supposed to be an idiot as well as a criminal?”

  Cecil was standing beside the queen. The two of them looked in silence at Dudley like unfriendly judges.

  “I am sure the inquest will find out who did it,” Elizabeth said. “And your name will be cleared. But in the meantime, you will have to withdraw from court.”

  “I will be ruined,” Dudley said blankly. “If you make me go, it looks as if you suspect me.”

  “Of course I do not,” Elizabeth said. She glanced at Cecil. He nodded sympathetically. “We do not. But it is tradition that anyone accused of a crime has to withdraw from court. You know that as well as I.”

  “I am not accused!” he said fiercely. “They are holding an inquest; they have not returned a verdict of murder. No one suggests that I murdered her!”

  “Actually, everyone suggests that you murdered her,” Cecil helpfully pointed out.

  “But if you send me from court you are showing that you think me guilty too!” Dudley spoke directly to Elizabeth. “I must stay at court, at your side, a
nd then it will look as if I am innocent, and that you believe in my innocence.”

  Cecil stepped forward half a step. “No,” he said gently. “There is going to be a most dreadful scandal, whatever verdict the inquest brings in. There is going to be a scandal which will rock Christendom, let alone this country. There is going to be a scandal which, if one breath of it touched the throne, would be enough to destroy the queen. You cannot be at her side. She cannot brazen out your innocence. The best thing we can all do is to behave as usual. You go to the Dairy House, withdraw into mourning, and await the verdict, and we will try to live down the gossip here.”

  “There is always gossip!” Robert said despairingly. “We always ignored it before!”

  “There has never been gossip like this,” Cecil said in very truth. “They are saying that you murdered your wife in cold blood, that you and the queen have a secret betrothal, and that you will announce it at your wife’s funeral. If the inquest finds you guilty of murder then many will think the queen your accomplice. Pray God you are not ruined, Sir Robert, and the queen destroyed with you.”

  He was as white as the linen of his ruff. “I cannot be ruined by something I would never do,” he said through cold lips. “Whatever the temptation, I would never have done such a thing as to hurt Amy.”

  “Then surely you have nothing to fear,” Cecil said smoothly. “And when they find her murderer, and he confesses, your name is cleared.”

  “Walk with me,” Robert commanded his lover. “I must talk with you alone.”

  “She cannot,” Cecil ruled. “She looks too guilty already. She can’t be seen whispering with a man suspected of murdering an innocent wife.”

  Abruptly, Robert bowed to Elizabeth and left the room.

  “Good God, Cecil, they won’t blame me, will they?” she demanded.

  “Not if you are seen to distance yourself from him.”

  “And if they find that she was murdered, and think that he did it?”

  “Then he will have to stand trial, and if guilty, face execution.”

  “He cannot die!” she exclaimed. “I cannot live without him. You know I cannot live without him! All this will be a disaster if it comes to that.”

  “You could always give him a pardon,” he said calmly. “If it comes to that. But it won’t. I can assure you, they will not find him guilty. I doubt that there is any evidence to link him to the crime, except his own indiscretion and the general belief that he wanted his wife dead.”

  “He looked heartbroken,” she said pitifully.

  “He did indeed. He will take it hard; he is a very proud man.”

  “I cannot bear that he should be so distressed.”

  “It cannot be helped,” Cecil said cheerfully. “Whatever happens next, whatever the inquest rules, his pride will be thrown down and he will always be known as the man who broke his wife’s neck in the vain attempt to be king.”

  At Abingdon the jury was sworn in and started to hear the evidence about the death of Lady Amy Dudley. They heard that she insisted on everyone going to the fair so that she was left alone in the house. They heard that she was found dead at the foot of the small flight of stairs. The servants attested that her hood was tidy on her head, and her skirts pulled down, before they had picked her up and carried her to her bed.

  In the pretty Dairy House at Kew, Robert ordered his mourning clothes but could hardly bear to stand still as the man fitted them.

  “Where is Jones?” he demanded. “He is much quicker than this.”

  “Mr. Jones couldn’t come.” The man sat back on his heels and spoke, his mouth full of pins. “He said to send you his apologies. I am his assistant.”

  “My tailor did not come when I sent for him?” Robert repeated, as if he could not believe the words. “My own tailor refused to serve me?” Dear God, they must think me halfway to the Tower again; if not even my tailor is troubled for my custom, then they must think me halfway to the scaffold for murder.

  “Sir, please let me pin this,” the man said.

  “Leave it,” Robert said irritably. “Take another coat, an old coat, and make it to the same pattern. I cannot bear to stand and have you pin that damned crow color all over me. And you can tell Jones that when I next need a dozen new suits I shall remember that he did not attend me today.”

  Impatiently, he threw off the half-fitted jacket and strode across the little room in two strides.

  Two days and not a word from her, he thought. She must think I did it. She must think me so wicked as to do such a thing. She must think me a man who would murder an innocent wife. Why would she want to marry such a man? And all the time there will be those very quick to assure her that it is just the sort of man I am.

  He broke off.

  But if she were accused, I would go to her side, he thought. I would not care whether she were guilty or no. I couldn’t bear knowing that she was alone and frightened and feeling that she had not a friend in the world.

  And she knows that of me too. She knows that I have been accused before. She knows that I have faced a death verdict without a friend in the world. We promised each other that we would neither of us ever be so alone again.

  He paused by the window; the cold glass under his fingers sent a deep shiver through him, though he did not remember why it should be such a dreadful sensation.

  “Dear God,” he said aloud. “Much more of this and I shall be carving my crest into the chimney piece as I did with my brothers in the Tower. I have come so low again. So low, again.”

  He leaned his forehead against the glass when a movement on the river caught his eye. He shaded his face against the thick glass to see more clearly. It was a barge with the drummer beating to keep the rowers in time. He squinted his eyes, he made out the flag, the royal standard. It was the royal barge.

  “Oh, God, she has come!” he said. At once he could feel his heart pounding. I knew she would come. I knew she would never leave me, whatever it cost her, whatever the danger, we would face it down together. I knew she would be at my side, always. I knew she would be faithful. I knew she would love me. I never doubted her for a moment.

  He tore open the door and ran from the room, through the river entrance and into the pretty orchard where he had given Elizabeth her May Day breakfast only sixteen months ago.

  “Elizabeth!” he shouted, and ran through the orchard toward the landing stage.

  It was the royal barge; but it was not Elizabeth getting out of the barge to the landing stage. Dudley halted, suddenly sick with disappointment.

  “Oh, Cecil,” he said.

  William Cecil came down the wooden steps toward him and held out his hand. “There,” he said kindly. “Never mind. She sent her best wishes.”

  “You have not come to arrest me?”

  “Good God, no,” Cecil said. “This is a courtesy visit, to bring you the queen’s best wishes.”

  “Her best wishes?” Robert said brokenly. “Is that all?”

  Cecil nodded. “She can’t say more; you know that.”

  The two men turned and walked to the house.

  “You are the only man to come to see me from the court,” Robert said as they entered the house, their boots ringing on the wooden floor in the silence. “Think of that! Of all my hundreds of friends and admirers that flocked around me every day when I was at the very center of the court, of all the thousands of them who were proud to call me their friend, who claimed my acquaintanceship even when I hardly knew them… and you are the only visitor I have had here.”

  “It’s a fickle world,” Cecil agreed. “And true friends are few and far between.”

  “Far between? Not for me, since I have no true friends at all, I see. You are my only friend, as it turns out,” Dudley said wryly. “And I would not have given you good odds a mere month ago.”

  Cecil smiled. “Well, I am sorry to see you brought so low,” he said frankly. “And sorry to find you with such a heavy heart fitting your mourning clothes. Do you have any news
from Abingdon?”

  “I daresay you know more than me,” Robert said, conscious of Cecil’s formidable spy network. “But I have written to Amy’s halfbrother and asked him to go and make sure the jury do their best to discover the facts, and I have written to the foreman of the jury and begged him to name whoever did it, whoever it may be, without fear or favor. I want the truth to come out of this.”

  “You insist on knowing?”

  “Cecil, it is not me, so who? It’s easy enough for everyone else to think it murder and me with blood on my hands. But I know, as no one else can know, that I did not do it. So if I did not do it, who would do such a thing? Whose interest would be served by her death?”

  “You don’t think it was an accident?” Cecil inquired.

  Robert gave a brief laugh. “Good God, I wish I could think that, but how could it be? Such a short flight of stairs, and her sending everyone out for the day? My worst, my constant fear is that she harmed herself, that she took some poison or a sleeping draft and then threw herself down the stairs headfirst, to make it look like an accident.”

  “Do you think she was so unhappy that she would have killed herself? I thought her more pious than that? Surely she would never imperil her immortal soul, even if she were heartbroken?”

  Robert dropped his head. “God forgive me, it was I who broke her heart,” he said quietly. “And if she did herself to death then her love of me cost her a place in heaven as well as happiness in this life. I was unkind to her, Cecil, but before God I never thought it would end like this.”

  “You really think you drove her to take her own life?”

  “I can think of nothing else.”

  Gently, Cecil touched the younger man’s shoulder. “It is a heavy burden you carry, Dudley,” he said. “I cannot think of a heavier burden of shame.”