The Virgin's Lover ttc-4 Page 8

  “I remember men saying that they lost fortunes to entertain your father,” William Cecil remarked, coming up to the table as the cards were brought.

  “Now he was a gambler indeed,” Dudley concurred amiably. “Who shall we have for a fourth?”

  “Sir Nicholas.” The queen looked around and smiled at her councillor. “Will you join us for a game of cards?”

  Sir Nicholas Bacon, Cecil’s corpulent brother-in-law, swelled like a mainsail at the compliment from the queen, and he stepped up to the table. The pageboy brought a fresh pack, Elizabeth dealt the stiff cards with their threatening faces, cut the deal to Robert Dudley, and they started to play.

  There was a flurry in the hall outside the presence chamber, and then Catherine and Francis Knollys were in the doorway, a handsome couple: Catherine a woman in her mid-thirties, plainly dressed and smiling in anticipation, her husband an elegant man in his mid-forties. Elizabeth sprang to her feet, scattering her cards, and ran across the presence chamber to her cousin.

  Catherine dropped into a curtsy but Elizabeth plunged into her arms and the two women hugged each other, both of them in tears. Sir Francis, standing back, smiled benignly at the welcome given to his wife.

  Aye, well might you smile, Robert Dudley remarked to himself, remembering that he had always disliked the smug radiance of the man. You think you will have the high road to power and influence with this friendship; but you will find you are wrong. This young queen is no fool, she won’t put her purse where her heart is, unless it serves her interest. She will love you but not advance you unless it is for her own good.

  As if he sensed Robert’s eyes on him, Sir Francis looked up, and swept him a bow.

  “You are heartily welcome back to England,” Dudley said pleasantly.

  Sir Francis glanced around, took in the court of old allies, conspirators, reformed enemies, and a very few new faces, and came back to Robert Dudley.

  “Well, here we are at last,” he said. “A Protestant queen on the throne, me back from Germany and you out of the Tower. Who’d ever have thought it?”

  “A long and dangerous journey for all us pilgrims,” Robert said, keeping his smile.

  “Some danger still in the air for some of us, I think,” Sir Francis said cheerfully. “I’d not been in England five minutes before someone asked me if I thought you had too much influence and should be curbed.”

  “Indeed,” Robert said. “And you replied?”

  “That I had not been in England five minutes and I had yet to form an opinion. But you should be warned, Sir Robert. You have enemies.”

  Robert Dudley smiled. “They come with success,” he said easily. “And so I am glad of them.”

  Elizabeth reached out her hand to Sir Francis, still holding Catherine tight by the waist.

  Sir Francis stepped forward and dropped to his knee and kissed her hand. “Your Grace,” he said.

  Robert, a connoisseur in these matters, admired the sweep down to his knee and then the style with which he rose. Aye, but it will do you little good, he said to himself. This is a court full of dancing-master-tutored puppies. A graceful bow will get you nothing.

  “Sir Francis, I have been waiting and waiting for your arrival,” Elizabeth said, glowing with happiness. “Will you accept a post on my Privy Council? I am in great need of your sound advice.”

  Privy Council! Good God! Robert exclaimed to himself, shaken with envy.

  “I shall be honored,” Sir Francis said, with a bow.

  “And I should like you to serve as Vice Chamberlain of my household, and Captain of the Guard,” Elizabeth continued, naming two plum jobs that would bring with them a small fortune in bribes from people wanting access to the queen.

  Robert Dudley’s smile never wavered; he seemed delighted at the shower of good fortune on the new arrival. Sir Francis bowed his obedience, and Dudley and Cecil made their way over to him.

  “Welcome home!” Cecil said warmly. “And welcome to the queen’s service.”

  “Indeed!” Robert Dudley agreed. “A warm welcome for you indeed! You too will be making your own enemies, I see.”

  Catherine, who had been in rapid conversation with her cousin, wanted to introduce her daughter who was to be Elizabeth’s maid of honor. “And may I present my daughter Laetitia?” she asked. She beckoned toward the doorway; and the girl, who had been standing back, half hidden by the arras, came forward.

  William Cecil, not a man to be overwhelmed by female charms, took a sharp breath at the beauty of the seventeen-year-old girl and shot an astounded look at Sir Francis. The older man was smiling, a quirky corner upturned at his mouth as if he knew exactly what Cecil was thinking.

  “By God, this is a girl in the very image of the queen,” Cecil whispered to him. “Except…” He broke off before he made the mistake of saying “finer,” or “prettier.” “You might as well declare your wife to be Henry VIII’s bastard, and have done with it.”

  “She has never claimed it, I have never claimed it, and we don’t do so now,” Sir Francis said limpidly, as if the whole court were not nudging each other and whispering, as the young girl’s color steadily rose but the dark eyes fixed on the queen never wavered. “Indeed, I find her very like my side of the family.”

  “Your side!” Cecil choked on a laugh. “She is a Tudor through and through, except she has all the allure of the Howard women.”

  “I do not claim it,” Sir Francis repeated. “And I imagine, in this court and at these times, it would be better for her if no one remarked on it.”

  Dudley, who had seen the likeness at once, was watching Elizabeth intently. Firstly she held out her hand for the girl to kiss, with her usual pleasant manners, hardly seeing her as the girl’s head was bent in her curtsy, her bright copper hair hidden by her hood. But then, as the girl rose up and Elizabeth took her in, Robert saw the queen’s smile slowly die away. Laetitia was like a younger, more delicate copy of the queen, as if a piece of Chinese porcelain had been refined from an earthenware mold. Beside her, Elizabeth’s face was too broad, her nose, the horsy Boleyn nose, too long, her eyes too protruding, her mouth narrow. Laetitia, seven years her junior, was rounded like a child, her nose a perfect tilt, her hair a darker copper to the queen’s bronze.

  Robert Dudley, looking at the girl, thought that a younger man, a more foolish man than himself, might have thought that the odd sensation he was feeling in his chest was his heart turning over.

  “You are welcome to my court, Cousin Laetitia,” the queen said coolly. She threw a quick, irritated glance at Catherine as if she should somehow be blamed for raising such a piece of perfection.

  “She is very glad to be in your service,” Catherine interposed smoothly. “And you will find she is a good girl. A little rough and ready as yet, Your Grace, but she will learn your elegance very quickly. She reminds me very much of the portraits of my father, William Carey. There is a striking similarity.”

  William Cecil, who knew that William Carey was as dark as Henry VIII and this girl were matching copper, concealed another indrawn breath by clearing his throat.

  “And now you shall sit, and you can take a glass of wine and tell me all about your travels.” Elizabeth turned from the young beauty before her. Catherine took a stool beside her cousin’s throne, and gestured that her daughter should retire. The first difficult step had been achieved; Elizabeth had faced a younger, far prettier version of her own striking looks, and managed to smile pleasantly enough. Catherine set about telling her traveler’s tales and thought that her family had managed their return to England rather well, considering all the circumstances.

  Amy was waiting for a reply from Robert, telling her what she should do. Every midday she walked from the house half a mile down the drive to the road to Norwich, where a messenger would ride, if he was coming at all that day. She waited for a few minutes, looking over the cold landscape, her cloak gathered around her against the achingly cold February wind.

  “It is too bad
of him,” Lady Robsart complained at dinner. “He sent me some money for your keep with a note from his clerk, not even a word from himself. A fine way to treat your stepmother.”

  “He knows you don’t like him,” Amy returned spiritedly. “Since you never wanted a word from him when he was out of favor, why should he honor you with his attention now that half the world wants to be his friend?”

  “Well enough,” the older woman said, “if you are contented to be neglected too?”

  “I am not neglected,” Amy maintained staunchly. “Because it is for me and for us that he is working all this time.”

  “Dancing attendance on the queen is work, is it? And her a young woman as lustful as her mother? With a Boleyn conscience to match? Well, you surprise me, Amy. There are not many women who would be happy being left at home while their husbands wait on the word of such a woman.”

  “Every wife in England would be delighted,” Amy said bluntly. “Because every woman in England knows that it is only at court that there is money to be made, offices to be won, and positions to be granted. As soon as Robert has his fortune he will come home and we will buy our house.”

  “Syderstone will not be good enough for you then,” her stepmother taunted her.

  “I will always love it as my home, and admire my father for the work he did there, and I will always be grateful to him for leaving it to me in his will,” Amy said with restraint. “But no, Syderstone will not be good enough for Robert now he is high at court, and it will not be good enough for me.”

  “And don’t you mind?” her stepmother suggested slyly. “Don’t you mind that he dashed off to Elizabeth at her accession and you have not seen him since? And everyone says that she favors him above all other men, and that he is never out of her company?”

  “He is a courtier,” Amy replied stoutly. “He was always at King Edward’s side, his father was always beside King Henry. He is supposed to be at her side. That is what a courtier does.”

  “You are not afraid that he will fall in love with her?” the older woman tormented her, knowing that she was pressing Amy at the very sorest point.

  “He is my husband,” Amy said steadily. “And she is the Queen of England. She knows that as well as he does. She was a guest at my wedding. We all know what can be and what cannot be. I will be happy to see him when he comes, but until that day I shall wait for him patiently.”

  “Then you are a saint!” her stepmother declared lightheartedly. “For I would be so jealous that I would go to London and demand that he take a house for me there and then.”

  Amy raised her eyebrows, the very picture of scorn. “Then you would be much mistaken in how a courtier’s wife behaves,” she said coldly. “Dozens of women are in just such a situation as mine and they know how they must behave if they want their husband to further his fortune at court.”

  Lady Robsart left the argument there, but later that night, when Amy was in bed asleep, she took up her pen and wrote to her unsatisfactory stepson-in-law.Sir Robert, If you are now indeed as great a man as I hear it is not suitable that your wife should be left at home without good horses or new clothes. Also, she needs diversion and company and a genteel lady to bear her company. If you will not bid her to court, please command your noble friends (I assume that you now have many once more) to have her to stay at their houses while you find a suitable house for her in London. She will need an escort to go to them and a lady companion as I cannot go with her, being much concerned with the business of the farm, which is still doing badly. Mrs. Oddingsell would be glad to be asked, I daresay. I should be glad of your immediate reply (since I lack the sweetness and patience of your wife), and also of a full settlement of your debt to me, which is £22.Sarah Robsart.

  Cecil was at his heavy desk with the many locked drawers in his rooms at Whitehall Palace, in the first week of February, reading a letter in code from his agent in Rome. His first act on Elizabeth’s accession to the throne was to put as many trusted friends, kin, and servants in as many key courts in Europe as he could afford, and instruct them to keep him informed of any word, of any rumor, of any ghost of a rumor, which mentioned England and her new fragile monarch.

  He was glad he had got Master Thomas Dempsey into the papal court at Rome. Master Thomas was better known to his colleagues in Rome as Brother Thomas, a priest of the Catholic church. Cecil’s network had captured him coming to England in the first weeks of the new queen’s reign, with a knife hidden in his bags and a plan to assassinate her. Cecil’s man in the Tower had first tortured Brother Thomas, and then turned him. Now he was a spy against his former masters, serving the Protestants, against the faith of his fathers. Cecil knew that it had been a change of heart forced by the man’s desire to survive, and that very shortly the priest would turn again. But in the meantime, his material was invaluable, and he was scholar enough to write his reports and then translate them into Latin and then translate the Latin into code. Master Secretary, His Holiness is considering a ruling that will say that heretical monarchs can be justly defied by their subjects, and that such a defiance, even to armed rebellion, is no sin.

  Cecil leaned back in his padded chair and reread the letter, making sure that he had made no error in the double translation, out of code and then out of Latin. It was a message of such enormity that he could not believe it, even when it was in plain English before him.

  It was a death sentence for the queen. It assured any disgruntled Catholic that they could plot against her with impunity, actually with the blessing of the Holy Father. It was a veritable crusade against the young queen, as potent and unpredictable as a Knights Templar attack on the Moors. It licensed the deranged assassin, the man with a grudge, indeed, it put the dagger into his hands. It broke the eternal promise that an anointed monarch commanded the obedience of all his subjects, even those who disagreed with him. It broke the harmony of the universe that placed God above the angels, angels above kings, kings above mortal men. A man could no more attack a king than a king could attack an angel, than an angel could attack God. This madness of the Pope broke the unwritten agreement that one earthly monarch would never encourage the subjects of another earthly monarch to rise up against him.

  The assumption had always been that kings should stick together, that nothing was more dangerous than the people with a license. Now the Pope was to give the people a license to rise up against Elizabeth, and who knew how many might avail themselves of this permission?

  Cecil tried to draw a sheet of paper toward him and found that his hands were shaking. For the first time in these anxious months, he truly thought that they would be defeated. He thought that he had aligned himself to a doomed cause. He did not think that Elizabeth could survive this. There were too many who had opposed her from the start; once they knew that their treasonous plotting was no longer a sin, they would multiply like head lice. It was enough that she had to struggle with the church, with her council, with her parliament, none of which were in full support, some of which were in open opposition. If the people themselves were turned against her she could not last long.

  He thought for a moment, for only a moment, that he might have done better to have supported Henry Hastings as the best Protestant claimant for the throne, since the Pope would surely not have dared to summon a rebellion against a king. He thought for another moment that perhaps he should have urged Elizabeth to accept the raising of the Host, to have kept the church in England as Papist for a year or so, to ease the transition of Reform.

  He gritted his teeth. What was done had been done, and they would all have to live with their mistakes, and some would die for them. He was fairly certain that Elizabeth would die, to name only one. He clasped his hands together until they were steady again, and then started to plan ways to try to ensure that an assassin did not reach Elizabeth at court, when she was out hunting, when she was on the river, when she was visiting.

  It was a nightmare task. Cecil stayed up all night writing lists of men he could trust, prep
aring plans to see her guarded, and knew at the end that if the Catholics of England obeyed the Pope, as they must do, then Elizabeth was a dead woman, and all that Cecil could do for her was to delay her funeral.

  Amy Dudley had no letter from her husband to invite her to court, not even one to tell her where she should go. Instead she received a very pleasant invitation from his cousins at Bury St. Edmunds.

  “See? He has sent for me!” she said delightedly to her stepmother. “I told you that he would send for me, as soon as he was able to do so. I must leave as soon as his men arrive to escort me.”

  “I am so happy for you,” Lady Robsart said. “Did he send any money?”

  Robert’s work, as Master of the Queen’s Horse was to order her horses, to run the royal stables, to care for the health and welfare of every animal from the great hunters to the lowliest pack animals of the baggage train. Visiting noblemen, with their hundreds of men in livery, had to have their horses accommodated in the stables, guests of the queen had to be supplied with horses so that they could ride out with her. Ladies of her court had to have sweet-tempered palfreys. The queen’s champions had to stable their warhorses for jousting tournaments. The hounds for the hunt came under his jurisdiction, the falcons for falconry, the hawks for hawking, the leather and harness, the wagons and carts for the enormous royal progresses from one castle to another, the orders and delivery of hay and feed, all were the responsibility of Sir Robert.

  So why then, Cecil asked himself, did the man have so much time on his hands? Why was he forever at the queen’s side? Since when was Robert Dudley interested in the coin of the realm and the deteriorating value?

  “We have to mint new coins,” Sir Robert announced. He had inserted himself into the queen’s morning conference with her advisor by the simple technique of bringing a sprig of greening leaves and laying them on her state papers. As if he had gone a-Maying, Cecil thought bitterly. Elizabeth had smiled and made a gesture that he might stay, and now he was joining the conference.