The Virgin's Lover

He chatted to her politely over the meal, with the easy intimacy that he could always summon, and with all the warmth that he genuinely felt for her. Elizabeth, returning to her confidence after her fright, delighting in the thrill of Robert’s touch, laughed, smiled on him, flirted with him, patted his hand, pulled at his sleeve, let her little slippered foot slide to his under the shield of the table, but never once suggested that they should send the people away and be alone.

Robert, apparently unperturbed by desire, made a hearty breakfast, touched his lips with his napkin, held out his fingers to be washed and patted dry by the server, and then rose from the table.

“I must take my leave of you, Your Grace.”

She was amazed, and she could not hide it. “You’re going so early?”

“I am to meet a few men in the tilt yard, we are practicing for the joust of the roses. You would not want me unhorsed in the first tilt.”

“No, but I thought you would sit with me for the rest of the morning.”

He hesitated. “Whatever you command.”

She frowned. “I would not keep you from your horse, Sir Robert.”

He took her hand and bowed over it.

“You were not so quick to let me go when we were together in your rooms at Kew,” she whispered to him as she had him close.

“You wanted me then as a woman wants a man, and that is how I want to come to you,” he said, as fast as a striking snake. “But since then you have summoned me as a courtier and a queen. If that is what you want, I am at your service too, Your Grace. Always. Of course.”

It was like a game of chess; he saw her turn her head and puzzle how she could outwit him.

“But I will always be queen,” she said. “You will always be my courtier.”

“I would want nothing less,” he said, and then he whispered, so she had to lean forward to hear him, “but I long for so much more, Elizabeth.”

She could smell the clean male scent of him and he felt her hand tremble in his. It took an effort for her to make herself move away, sit back in her chair, and let him go. He knew what it cost her; he had known women before who could not bear to lose a moment of his touch. He smiled at her, his dark, saturnine, knowing smile, and then bowed low, and went toward the door.

“Whatever you command, you know you will always be queen of my heart.” He bowed again, his cloak swirled from his shoulders as he turned and he was gone.

Elizabeth let him go, but she could not settle without him. She called for her lute and she tried to play but she had no patience for it, and when a string broke she could not even be troubled to retune it. She stood at her writing table and read the memoranda that Cecil had sent her but his grave words of warning about Scotland made no sense. She knew that there was much that she should do, that the situation with the currency was desperate, and that the threat to Scotland and to England was a real and pressing one, the French king was on his deathbed and once he died then the safety of England died too; but she could not think. She put her hand to her head and cried: “I have a fever! A fever!”

At once they were all over her, the ladies fluttered around her, Kat Ashley was called and Blanche Parry. She was put to bed, she turned from their attentions, she could bear no one to touch her. “Close the shutters, the light burns my eyes!” she exclaimed.

They would send for physicians. “I will see no one,” she said.

They would prepare a cooling draught, a soothing draught, a sleeping draught. “I want nothing!” she almost screamed with her irritation. “Just go! I want no one to watch me. I don’t even want anyone outside my door. Wait in my presence chamber; I don’t even want anyone in my privy chamber. I shall sleep. I must not be disturbed.”

Like a troubled dovecote they fluttered out as they were bid, and went to the presence chamber to discuss her. In her bedchamber, through two closed doors, Elizabeth could still hear their concerned murmur and she turned her hot face to the pillow, wrapped her arms around her own slim body, and held herself tight.

Sir Robert, riding slowly up and down the line of the tilt yard, made his horse wheel at the bottom, and then took the line again. They had been doing the exercise for more than an hour. Everything depended on the horse’s willingness to ride a straight line, even though another horse, a warhorse, with a knight in full armor on its back, his lance down, was thundering from the other end, only a flimsy barrier between the two creatures. Sir Robert’s horse must not swerve, not even drift aside, it must hold its line even when Sir Robert, lowering his own lance, was one-handed on the reins, it must hold to the line even if he rocked in the saddle from a blow, and all but let it go.

Robert wheeled, turned, did the line at a trot, wheeled, did the line again at full gallop. His horse was blowing when he pulled it up, a dark patina of sweat marking its neck. He wheeled it round and raced down the line once more.

A ripple of clapping came from the entrance to the yard. A serving girl was standing at the entrance where the riders came in and out, a shawl around her shoulders, a mobcap becomingly perched on her head, a lock of red hair showing, her face pale, her eyes black.

“Elizabeth,” he said in quiet triumph, as he recognized her, and rode toward her. He pulled up the horse and dropped down from the saddle.

He waited.

She nipped her lip, she looked down, looked up again. He saw her gaze dart from his linen shirt where his sweat was darkening the cloth at his chest and on his back, to his tight riding breeches and his polished leather riding boots. He saw her nostrils flare as she took in the scent of him, her eyes narrow as she looked up at him again, at his dark head silhouetted against the bright morning sky.

“Robert,” she breathed.

“Yes, my love?”

“I have come to you. I can be away from my rooms for no more than an hour.”

“Then let us not waste one moment,” he said simply and tossed the reins of his warhorse to his squire. “Put your shawl over your head,” he said softly, and slid his arm around her waist, leading her, not to the palace, but to his private rooms over the stables. There was a small gated entrance from the garden; he opened the door and led her up the stairs.

In Robert’s apartments, Elizabeth dropped the shawl and looked around. His chamber was a big room with two tall windows, the walls of dark linenfold paneling. The plans for the next day’s tournament were spread out on the table; his desk was littered with business papers from the stables. She looked toward the door that was behind the desk, the door to his bedchamber.

“Yes, come,” he said, following her gaze, and led her through the door into his chamber.

A handsome four-poster bed took up most of the room, a priedieu in the corner, a shelf with a small collection of books, a lute. His plumed hat was on the bed, his cloak on the back of the door.

“No one will come in?” she asked him breathlessly.

“No one,” he assured her, and then shut the door and slid the heavy iron bolt.

He turned to her. She was trembling with anticipation, fear, and mounting desire.

“I cannot have a child,” she specified.

He nodded. “I know. I will take care of that.”

Still she looked anxious. “How can you be sure?”

He reached into the inner pocket of his doublet and drew out a prophylactic, made of sheep’s bladder sewn with tiny stitches and trimmed with ribbons. “This will keep you safe.”

Torn between nerves and curiosity, she giggled. “What is it? How does it work?”

“Like armor. You must be my squire and put it on me.”

“I cannot be bruised where my women might see.”

He smiled. “I will not leave so much as a print of my lips on you. But inside, Elizabeth, you will burn up, I promise.”

“I am a little afraid.”

“My Elizabeth,” he said softly, and stepped toward her, and took off the mobcap. “Come to me, my love.”

Her mass of red hair tumbled about her shoulders. Robert took a handful of the locks and kissed them, then, as she turned her entranced face toward him, kissed her full on the mouth. “My Elizabeth, at last,” he said again.

Within moments she was in a dream of sensuality. He had always imagined that she would be responsive but under his skilled hands she stretched like a cat, reveling in pleasure. She was wanton: no hint of shame as she stripped to her skin and laid on his bed and reached out her arms for him. As his chest pressed against her face he smiled to find her feverish with desire, but then lost his own awareness in the rise of his feelings. He wanted to touch every inch of her skin, to kiss every fingertip, every dimple, every crevice of her body. He moved her one way and then another, touching, tasting, licking, probing, until she cried out loud that she must, she must have him, and then at last he allowed himself to enter her and watched her eyelids flicker closed and her rosy lips smile.

It was Sunday. The Hyde family, Lizzie Oddingsell, Lady Dudley, and all the Hyde servants were seated in a block in the parish church, the Hyde family and their guests in their high-walled pew, the servants arranged in strict order of precedence behind them, the women first, the men behind.

Amy was on her knees, her eyes fixed on Father Wilson as he held the Host toward them, preparing the communion in full sight of the congregation, in obedience to the new directive, though no bishop in the country had agreed, and most of them were either in the Tower or the Fleet prison. Oxford’s own Bishop Thomas had escaped to Rome before they could arrest him, and the see was vacant. No one would come forward to fill it. Not one man of God would serve in Elizabeth’s heretical church.

Amy’s gaze was entranced, her lips silently moved as she watched him bless the Host, and then bid them come to take communion.

Like a sleeper in a dream she walked forward with the others and bent her head. The wafer was cloying on her tongue as she closed her eyes and knew that she was sharing in the very body of the living Christ, a miracle that no one could deny or explain. She returned to her pew and bent her head again. She whispered her prayer: “Lord God, send him back to me. Save him from the sin of ambition and from the sin that is that woman, and send him back to me.”

After the service was over Father Wilson bade farewell to his parishioners at the lych-gate. Amy took his hand and spoke quietly to him, for his ears only.

“Father, I would confess, and celebrate Mass in the proper way.”

He recoiled and glanced around at the Hydes. No one but him had heard Amy’s whispered request.

“You know it is forbidden now,” he said quietly. “I can hear your confession but I have to pray in English.”

“I cannot feel free from my sin without attending Mass in the old way,” Amy said.

He patted her hand. “Daughter, is this true to your heart?”

“Father, truly, I am most in need of grace.”

“Come to the church on Wednesday evening, at five o’clock,” he told her. “But tell no one else. Just say you are coming to pray on your own. Take care not to betray us by accident. This is a life-and-death matter now, Lady Dudley; not even your husband must know.”

“It is his sin that I must atone for,” she said dully. “As well as my own in failing him.”

He checked at the pain in the young woman’s face. “Ah, Lady Dud ley, you cannot have failed him,” he exclaimed, speaking more as a man than a priest, prompted by pity.

“I must have done,” she said sadly. “And many times. For he has gone from me, Father, and I don’t know how to live without him. Only God can restore him, only God can restore me, only God can restore us to each other, if he can forgive me for my failures as a wife.”

The priest bowed and kissed her hand, wishing that he could do more. He looked around. Mrs. Oddingsell was nearby; she came up and took Amy’s arm.

“Let’s walk home now,” she said cheerfully. “It will be too hot to go out later.”

It was the fifteenth of July, the day of the tournament, and all Elizabeth’s court could think of was the clothes they would wear, the arrangements for the jousting, the roses they would carry, the songs they would sing, the dances they would dance, the hearts they would break. All Cecil could think of was his latest letter from Throckmorton in Paris.

July 9th

He is failing fast, I expect to hear of his death any day. I will send to you the moment I hear. Francis II will be King of France, and it is certain that Mary will style herself Queen of France, Scotland, and England; my intelligencer has seen the announcement that the clerks are drawing up. With the wealth of France and the generalship of the Guise family, with Scotland as their Trojan horse, they will be unstoppable. God help England and God help you, old friend. I think you will be England’s last Secretary of State and all our hopes will lie in ruins.

Cecil translated the letter out of code, and sat with it for a few thoughtful minutes. Then he took the whole transcript to the queen in her privy chamber. She was laughing with her ladies as they prepared their costumes; Laetitia Knollys, in virginal white trimmed with the darkest rose red, was plaiting roses into a circlet for the queen to wear as a crown. Cecil thought that the news he had in the letter in his hand was like a summer storm which can blow up out of nowhere, and strip the petals from roses and destroy a garden in an afternoon.

Elizabeth was wearing a rose-pink gown with white silk slashings on the sleeves, trimmed with silver lace, and a white headdress trimmed with pink and white seed pearls in gorgeous contrast to her copper hair.

She beamed at Cecil’s surprised face and twirled before him. “How do I look?”

Like a bride, Cecil thought in horror. “Like a beauty,” he said quickly. “A summertime queen.”

She spread her skirts and bobbed him a curtsy. “And who do you favor for the champion?”

“I don’t know,” Cecil said distractedly. “Your Grace, I know this is a day for pleasure but I have to speak with you, forgive me, but I have to speak with you urgently.”

For a moment she pouted and when she saw his face remained grave, she said: “Oh, very well, but not for long, Spirit, for they cannot start without me; and Sir Ro… and the riders will not want to wait in their heavy armor.”

“Why, who is Sir Ro…?”Laetitia asked playfully, and the queen giggled and blushed.

Cecil ignored the young woman, and instead drew the queen into the window bay and gave her the letter. “It is from Throckmorton,” he said simply. “He warns of the French king’s death. Your Grace, the moment that he dies we are in mortal danger. We should be arming now. We should be ready now. We should have sent funds to the Scottish Protestants already. Give me leave to send money to them now and to start the muster for an English army.”

“You always say we have no funds,” she said willfully.

Carefully, Cecil did not look at the pearls in her ears and the thick rope of pearls at her throat. “Princess, we are in the gravest of danger,” he said.

Elizabeth twitched the letter from his hand and took it to the window to read. “When did you have this?” she asked, her interest sharpening.

“This very day. It came in code; I have just translated it.”

“She cannot call herself Queen of England; she agreed to give up her claim in the treaty of Cateau-Cambrésis.”

“No, you see, she did not. She agreed nothing. It was the king who made that agreement and the king that signed that treaty is dying. Nothing will stop her ambition now, the new king and his family will only egg her on.”

Elizabeth swore under her breath and turned from the merry court so that no one could see the darkening of her face. “Am I never to be safe?” she demanded in a savage undertone. “Having fought all my life for this throne, do I have to go on fighting for it? Do I have to fear the knife in the shadows and the invasion of my enemies forever? Do I have to fear my own cousin? My own kin?”

“I am sorry,” Cecil said steadily. “But you will lose your throne and perhaps your life if you do not fight for it. You are in as much danger now as you have ever been.”

She gave a harsh little cry. “Cecil, I have been all but charged with treason, I have faced the block, I have faced my own death from assassins. How can I be in more danger now?”

“Because now you face your death, and you face the loss of your inheritance, and you face the end of England,” he said. “Your sister lost us Calais through her folly. Will you lose us England?”

She drew a breath. “I see,” she said. “I see what must be done. Perhaps it will have to be war. I shall talk with you later, Spirit. As soon as the king dies and they show their hand we must be ready for them.”

“We must,” he said, delighted at her decision. “That is spoken like a prince.”

“But Sir Robert says that we should prevail upon the Scottish Protestant lords to settle with their regent, Queen Mary. He says that if there is peace in Scotland there can be no excuse for the French to send in men and no reason for them to invade England.”

Oh, does he? Cecil thought with scant gratitude for the unsolicited council. “He may be right, Your Grace; but if he is wrong then we are unprepared for a disaster. And older and wiser heads than Sir Robert’s think we should strike at them now, before they reinforce.”

“But he cannot go,” she said.

I wish I could send him to hell itself, flashed through Cecil’s irritated mind. “No, we should send a seasoned commander,” he said. “But first we must send the Scots lords money to maintain the fight against the regent, Mary of Guise. And we must do that at once.”

“Spain will stand our friend,” Elizabeth reminded him.

“So can I send the Protestant lords some funds?” He pressed her with the main point, the only point.

“As long as no one knows it is from me,” Elizabeth said, her habitual caution uppermost as always. “Send them what they need, but I can’t have the French accuse me of arming a rebellion against a queen. I can’t be seen as a traitor.”

Cecil bowed. “It shall be done discreetly,” he promised her, hiding his immense sense of relief.

“And we may get help from Spain,” Elizabeth repeated.

“Only if they believe that you are seriously considering the Archduke Charles.”

“I am considering him,” she said emphatically. She handed the letter back into his hand. “And after this news, I am considering him with much affection. Trust me for that, Spirit. I am not joking. I know I will have to marry him if it comes to war.”

He doubted her word when she was in the royal box overlooking the tilt yard and he saw how her eyes searched the mounted riders for Dudley, how quickly she picked out his standard of the bear and ragged staff, how Dudley had a rose-pink scarf, the exact match of the queen’s gown, unquestionably hers, worn boldly on his shoulder where anyone could see. He saw that she was on her feet with her hand to her mouth in terror when Dudley charged down the list, how she applauded his victories, even when he unseated William Pickering, and how, when he came to the royal box and she leaned over and crowned him with her own circlet of roses for being the champion of the day, she all but kissed him on the mouth, she leaned so low and so smilingly whispered to him.

But despite all that, she had the Hapsburg ambassador, Caspar von Breuner, in the royal box beside her, fed him with delicacies of her own choosing, laid her hand on his sleeve, and smiled up into his face, and—whenever anyone but Dudley was jousting—plied him with questions about the Archduke Ferdinand and gave him very clearly to understand that her refusal of his proposal of marriage, earlier in the month, was one that she was beginning to regret, deeply regret.

Caspar von Breuner, charmed, baffled, and with his head quite turned, could only think that Elizabeth was seeing sense at last and the archduke could come to England to meet her and be married by the end of the summer.

The next night Cecil was alone when there was a tap on the door. His manservant opened the door. “A messenger.”

“I’ll see him,” Cecil said.

The man almost fell into the room, his legs weak with weariness. He put back his hood and Cecil recognized Sir Nicholas Throckmorton’s most trusted man. “Sir Nicholas sent me to tell you that the king is dead, and to give you this.” He proffered a crumpled letter.

“Sit down.” Cecil waved him to a stool by the fire and broke the seal on the letter. It was short and scrawled in haste. The king has died, this day, the tenth. God rest his soul. Young Francis says he is King of France and England. I hope to God you are ready and the queen resolute. This is a disaster for us all.

Amy, walking in the garden at Denchworth, picked some roses for their sweet smell and entered the house by the kitchen door to find some twine to tie them into a posy. As she heard her name she hesitated, and then realized that the cook, the kitchenmaid, and the spit boy were talking of Sir Robert.

“He was the queen’s own knight, wearing her favor,” the cook recounted with relish. “And she kissed him on the mouth before the whole court, before the whole of London.”

“God save us,” the kitchenmaid said piously. “But these great ladies can do as they please.”

“He has had her,” the spit lad opined. “Swived the queen herself! Now that’s a man!”

“Hush,” the cook said instantly. “No call for you to gossip about your betters.”

“My pa said so,” the boy defended himself. “The blacksmith told him. Said that the queen was nothing more than a whore with Robert Dudley. Dressed herself up as a serving wench to seek him out and that he had her in the hay store, and that Sir Robert’s groom caught them at it, and told the blacksmith himself, when he came down here last week to deliver my lady’s purse to her.”

“No!” said the kitchenmaid, deliciously scandalized. “Not on the hay!”

Slowly, holding her gown to one side so that it would not rustle, barely breathing, Amy stepped back from the kitchen door, walked back down the stone passageway, opened the outside door so that it did not creak, and went back out into the heat of the garden. The roses, unnoticed, fell from her fingers; she walked quickly down the path and then started to run, without direction, her cheeks burning with shame, as if it were she who was disgraced by the gossip. Running away from the house, out of the garden and into the shrubbery, through the little wood, the brambles tearing at her skirt, the stones shredding her silk shoes. Running, without pausing to catch her breath, ignoring the pain in her side and the bruising of her feet, running as if she could get away from the picture in her head: of Elizabeth like a bitch in heat, bent over in the hay, her red hair tumbled under a mobcap, her white face triumphant, with Robert, smiling his sexy smile, thrusting at her like a randy dog from behind.

The Privy Council, traveling on summer progress with the court, delayed the start of their emergency meeting at Eltham Palace for Elizabeth; but she was out hunting with Sir Robert and half a dozen others and no one knew when she would return. The councillors, looking grim, seated themselves at the table and prepared to do business with an empty chair at the head.

“If just one man will join with me, and the rest of you will give nothing more than your assent, I will have him murdered,” the Duke of Norfolk said quietly to this circle of friends. “This is intolerable. She is with him night and day.”

“You can do it with my blessing,” said Arundel, and two other men nodded.

“I thought she was mad for Pickering,” one man complained. “What’s become of him?”

“He couldn’t stand another moment of it,” Norfolk said. “No man could.”

“He couldn’t afford another moment of it,” someone corrected him. “He’s spent all his money on bribing friends at court and he’s gone to the country to recoup.”

“He knew he’d have no chance against Dudley,” Norfolk insisted. “That’s why he has to be got out of the way.”

“Hush, here is Cecil,” said another and the men parted.

“I have news from Scotland. The Protestant lords have entered Edinburgh,” Cecil said, coming into the room!

Sir Francis Knollys looked up. “Have they, by God! And the French regent?”

“She has withdrawn to Leith Castle. She is on the run.”

“Not necessarily so,” Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, said dourly. “The greater her danger, the more likely the French are to reinforce her. If it is to be finished, she must be defeated at once, without any hope of rallying, and it must be done quickly. She has raised a siege in the certain hope of reinforcements. All this means is that the French are coming to defend her. It is a certainty.”

“Who would finish it for us?” Cecil asked, knowing the most likely answer. “What commander would the Scots follow that would be our friend?”

One of the Privy Councillors looked up. “Where is the Earl of Arran?” he asked.

“On his way to England,” Cecil replied, hiding his sense of smugness. “When he gets here, if we can come to an agreement with him, we could send him north with an army. But he is only young…”

“He is only young, but he has the best claim to the throne after the French queen,” someone said farther down the table. “We can back him with a clear conscience. He is our legitimate claimant to the throne.”

“There is only one agreement that he would accept and that we could offer,” Norfolk said dourly. “The queen.”

A few men glanced at the closed door as if to ensure that it did not burst open and Elizabeth storm in, flushed with temper. Then, one by one, they all nodded.

“What of the Spanish alliance with the archduke?” Francis Bacon, brother to Sir Nicholas, asked Cecil.

Cecil shrugged. “They are still willing and she says she is willing to have him. But I’d rather we had Arran. He is of our faith, and he brings us Scotland and the chance to unite England, Wales, Ireland, and Scotland. That would make us a power to reckon with. The archduke keeps the Spanish on our side, but what will they want of us? Whereas Arran’s interests are the same as ours, and if they were to marry,” he took a breath, his hopes were so precious he could hardly bear to say them, “if they were to marry we would unite Scotland and England.”

“Yes: if,” Norfolk said irritably. “If we could make her seriously look twice at any man who wasn’t a damned adulterous rascal.”

Most of the men nodded.

“Certainly we need either Spanish help or Arran to lead the campaign,” Knollys said. “We cannot do it on our own. The French have four times our wealth and manpower.”

“And they are determined,” another man said uneasily. “I heard from my cousin in Paris. He said that the Guise family will rule every thing, and they are sworn enemies of England. Look at what they did in Calais; they just marched in. They will take one step in Scotland and then they will march on us.”

“If she married Arran…” someone started.

“Arran! What chance of her marrying Arran!” Norfolk burst out. “All very well to consider which suitor would be the best for the country, but how is she to marry while she sees no one and thinks of no one but Dudley? He has to be put out of the way. She is like a milkmaid with a swain. Where the devil is she now?”

Elizabeth was lying under an oak tree on Dudley’s hunting cape, their horses were hitched to a nearby tree, Dudley was leaning against the tree behind her, her head in his lap, twisting her ringlets around his fingers.

“How long have we been gone?” she asked him.

“An hour perhaps, no more.”

“And do you always pull your mistresses off their horses and bed them on the ground?”

“D’you know,” he said confidingly, “I have never done such a thing in my life before. I have never felt such desire before, I have always been a man who could wait for the right time, plan his time. But with you…” He broke off.

She twisted round so she could see his face and he kissed her on the mouth: a long, warm kiss.

“I am full of desire again,” she said wonderingly. “I am becoming a glutton for you.”

“I too,” he said softly and pulled her up so that she was lying like a sinuous snake along him. “It’s a satisfaction that brings with it only more appetite.”

A long, low whistle alerted them. “That’s Tamworth’s signal,” Robert said. “Someone must be coming near.”

At once Elizabeth was up and on her feet, brushing the leaves off her hunting gown, looking around for her hat. Robert snatched up his cloak and shook it out. She turned to him. “How do I look?”

“Uncannily virtuous,” he said, and was rewarded by the flash of her smile.

She went to her horse and was standing at its head when Catherine Knollys and her groom rode into the little glade followed by Tamworth, Dudley’s valet.

“There you are! I thought I had lost you!”

“Where did you get to?” Elizabeth demanded. “I thought you were behind me.”

“I pulled him up for a moment and then you were all gone. Where is Sir Peter?”

“His horse went lame,” Robert said. “He is walking home in the sourest of moods. His boots are pinching. Are you hungry? Shall we dine?”

“I am starving,” Catherine said. “Where are your ladies?”

“Gone ahead to the picnic,” Elizabeth said easily. “I wanted to wait for you, and Sir Robert stayed to keep me safe. Sir Robert, your hand if you please.”

He threw her up into the saddle without meeting her eyes and then he mounted his own hunter. “This way,” he said, and rode ahead of the two women to where the ride crossed a small river. On the far side, a pavilion hung with green and white had been erected and they could smell venison roasting on the fire and see the servants unpacking pastries and sweetmeats.

“I am so hungry,” Elizabeth exclaimed with pleasure. “I have never had such an appetite before.”

“You are becoming a glutton,” Robert remarked to Catherine’s surprise. She caught the quick, complicit look that passed between her friend and Sir Robert.

“A glutton?” she exclaimed. “The queen eats like a bird.”

“A gluttonous peacock then,” he said, quite unreproved. “Greed and vanity in one,” and Elizabeth giggled.

On Wednesday evening Denchworth church seemed to be deserted, the door unlocked but shut. Tentatively, Amy turned the big iron handle and felt the door yield under her touch. An old lady in the pew at the back looked up and pointed silently toward the lady chapel at the side of the church. Amy nodded and went toward it.

The curtains were drawn across the stone tracery separating the chapel from the main body of the church. Amy drew them aside and slipped in. Two or three people were praying at the altar rail. Amy paused for a moment and then slipped into the rear pew near to the priest, who was in close-headed conference with a young man. After a few moments the youth, head bowed, took his place at the altar rail. Amy went beside Father Wilson and knelt on the worn cushion.

“Heavenly Father, I have sinned,” she said quietly.

“What is your sin, my daughter?”

“I have failed in my love of my husband. I have set my judgment above his.” She hesitated. “I thought I knew better than him how we should live. I see now that it was the sin of pride, my pride. Also, I thought I could win him from the court and bring him back to me and that we could live in a small way, a mean way. But he is a great man, born to be a great man. I am afraid that I have been envious of his greatness, and I think even my beloved father…” She strained her voice to speak the disloyal criticism. “Even my father was envious.” She paused. “They were so far above our station… And I fear that in our hearts we both reveled in his fall. I think that secretly we were glad to see him humbled, and I have not been generous about his rise to power ever since. I have not been truly glad for him, as a wife and helpmeet should be.”

She paused. The priest was silent.

“I have been envious of his greatness and the excitement of his life and his importance at court,” she said softly. “And worse. I have been jealous of the love that he bears the queen and suspicious of that. I have poisoned my love for him with envy and jealousy. I have poisoned myself. I have made myself sick with sin and I have to be cured of this sickness and forgiven this sin.”

The priest hesitated. In every alehouse in the land there were men who swore that Robert Dudley was the queen’s lover and they were giving odds on that he would put his wife aside on some excuse, or poison her, or drown her in the river. There was little doubt in the priest’s mind that Amy’s worst fears were near to the truth. “He is your husband, set above you by God,” he said slowly.

She lowered her head. “I know it. I shall be obedient to him, not just in my acts but in my thoughts too. I shall be obedient to him in my heart and not set myself up to judge him or to try to turn him from his great destiny. I shall try to teach myself to be glad for him in his fame, and not to hold him back.”

The priest thought for a moment, wondering how to advise this woman.

“I am cursed by a picture in my head,” Amy said, her voice very low. “I overheard someone say something about my husband, and now I see it all the time, in my head, in my dreams. I have to free myself from this …torment.”

He wondered what she might have heard. Certainly, some of the talk that had come to his ears had been vile.

“God will free you,” he said with more certainty than he felt. “Take this picture to God and lay it at his feet and he will free you.”

“It’s very…lewd,” Amy said.

“You have lewd thoughts, daughter?”

“Not that give me any pleasure! They give me nothing but pain.”

“You must take them to God and free your mind of them,” he said firmly. “You must seek your own path to God. However your husband chooses to live his life, whatever his choices are, it is your duty to God and to him to bear it gladly and to draw nearer to God.”

She nodded. “And what am I to do?” she asked humbly.

The priest considered for a moment. There were many stories in the Bible that described the sacred slavery that was the state of marriage, and he had exhorted many an independent-minded woman to obedience with them. But he did not have the heart to coerce Amy, whose face was so white and whose eyes were so pleading.

“You are to read the story of Mary Magdalene,” he said. “And you are to consider the text “He that is without sin among you, let him first cast a stone.” We are not ordered by God to judge each other. We are not even ordered by him to consider another person’s sin. We are ordered by God to let Him consider it, to let Him be judge. Wait until God’s will is clear to you and obey it, my child.”

“And a penance?” she prompted.

“Five decades of the rosary,” he said. “But pray on your own and in secret, my child; these are troubled times and devotion to the church is not justly respected.”

Amy bowed her head for his whispered blessing and then joined the other five people at the altar rail. They heard the priest moving about behind them, followed by silence. Then, in his vestments, and carrying the bread and wine, he walked slowly up the aisle and went through the rood screen.

Amy watched through the network of her fingers, through the fret- work of the rood screen, as he turned his back to them and said the prayers in the timeless Latin, facing the altar. She felt an ache in her breast which she thought was heartbreak. The priest had not told her that her sorrows were imaginary, and that she should put them out of her mind. He had not recoiled from the suggestion and denied the gossip of the kitchenmaid, of the spitboy. He had not reproached her with the vanity of wicked suspicions against an honest husband. Instead, he had counseled her in her duty and in courage as if he thought she might have something to endure.

So he knows too, she thought to herself. The whole country knows, from the Denchworth cook to the Denchworth priest. I must have been the last person in England to learn of it. Oh God, how deeply, how very deeply I am shamed.

She watched him raise the bread and drew her breath at the miraculous moment of change, when the bread became the body of Christ and the wine became his blood. Every bishop in the land had defied Elizabeth to insist that this was the truth; every priest in the land still believed it, and hundreds continued secretly to celebrate Mass like this, in the old way, in hiding.

Amy, dazzled by the candles and comforted by the presence of the Living God, too sacred a being to be shown to the congregation, too sacred to be taken every Sunday, so sacred that He could only be watched through the lacing of her fingers, through the tracery of stone, prayed again that Robert might choose to come home to her, and that when he came, she should find some way to hold up her head, rinse those pictures from her mind, be free of sin and glad to see him.

Cecil managed to catch Elizabeth before the great banquet at the Duke of Arundel’s magnificent palace, the Nonsuch, and delay her a moment in her privy chamber.

“Your Grace, I have to speak with you.”

“Spirit, I cannot. The duke has prepared a banquet for an emperor. He has done everything but roll the meat in gold leaf. I cannot insult him by being late.”

“Your Grace, I am duty-bound to warn you. The Pope has increased his threat against you, and there is much gossip against you in the country.”

She hesitated and frowned. “What gossip?”

“They say that you are favoring Sir Robert over and above any other man.” Mealy-mouthed, Cecil scolded himself. But how can I tell her to her face that they are calling her Dudley’s whore?

“And so I should,” she replied, smiling. “He is the finest man at my court.”

Cecil found the courage to be clearer. “Your Grace, it is worse than that. There are rumors that you and he have a dishonorable relationship.”

Elizabeth flushed red. “Who says this?”

Every alehouse in England. “It is widely said, Your Grace.”

“Do we not have laws to prevent me being slandered? Do we not have blacksmiths to cut their tongues?”

Cecil blinked at her fierceness. “Your Grace, we can make arrests, but if something is widely spoken and widely believed we are at a loss. The people love you but…”

“Enough,” she said flatly. “I have done nothing dishonorable, and neither has Sir Robert. I will not be traduced in my own hearing. You must punish the gossips that you catch and it will die down. If it does not I shall blame you, Cecil. No one else.”

She turned but he detained her. “Your Grace!”

“What?”

“It is not just a matter of the common people gossiping about their betters. There are men in the court who say that Dudley should be dead before he brings you down.”

Now he had her full attention. “He is threatened?”

“You are both endangered by this folly. Your reputation has suffered and there are many who say that it is their patriotic duty to kill him before you are dishonored.”

She blanched white. “No one must touch him, Cecil.”

“The remedy is easy. His safety is easy. Marry. Marry either the archduke or Arran and the gossip is silenced and the threat is gone.”

Elizabeth nodded, her hunted, fearful look on her face again. “I will marry one of them, you can count on it. Tell people that I will marry one or the other, this autumn. It is a certainty. I know that I have to.”

“Caspar von Breuner will be at dinner. Shall he be seated beside you? We have to recruit his support for our struggle with Scotland.”

“Of course!” she said impatiently. “Who did you think would sit next to me? Sir Robert? I have given everyone to understand that I am reconsidering marriage with the archduke; I have shown his ambassador every attention.”

“It would be better for us all if anyone could believe you this time,” Cecil said frankly. “The ambassador has hopes, you have seen to that; but I do not see you drawing up a marriage treaty.”

“Cecil, it is August, I am on progress, this is not a time to draw up treaties.”

“Princess, you are in danger. Danger does not stop because someone has cooked you a banquet and the hunting is good and the weather is perfect. The Earl of Arran should be in England any day now; tell me that I can bring him to you the moment that he arrives.”

“Yes,” she said. “You can do that.”

“And tell me that I can draw funds for him and start to muster an army to go north with him.”

“Not an army,” she said at once. “Not till we know that he has the stomach to command one. Not till we know from him what his plans are. For all you know, Cecil, he could have a wife tucked away somewhere already.”

That would hardly prevent you, judging from your present behavior with a married man, Cecil thought, ill tempered. Aloud, he merely said: “Your Grace, he cannot be victorious without our support, and he has the greatest claim to the Scottish throne. If he will lead our army to victory, and you will take him as your husband, then we have made England safe against the French not just for now, but forever. If you will do that for England, you will be the greatest prince that the country has ever had on the throne, greater than your father. Make England safe from France and you will be remembered forever. Everything else will be forgotten; you will be England’s savior.”

“I will see him,” Elizabeth said. “Trust me, Cecil, I put my country before anything. I will see him and I will decide what I should do.”

The candles and crucifix were brought out of storage, polished, and displayed on the altar of the Royal Chapel at Hampton Court. The court had returned from its summer progress in spiritual mood. Elizabeth, going to Mass, had taken to curtsying to the altar and crossing herself on arrival and departure. There was holy water in the stoop and Catherine Knollys ostentatiously walked out of the court every morning to ride to London to pray with a reformed congregation.

“What is all this now?” Sir Francis Bacon asked the queen as they paused at the open doorway of the chapel and saw the choristers polishing the altar rail.

“This is a sop,” she said disdainfully. “For those who wish to see a conversion.”

“And who are they?” he asked curiously.

“For the Pope who would see me dead,” she said irritably. “For the Spanish whom I must keep as my friends, for the archduke to give him hope, for the English Papists to give them pause. For you, and all your fellow Lutherans, to give you doubt.”

“And what is the truth of it?” he asked, smiling.

She shrugged her shoulder pettishly and walked on past the door. “The truth is the last thing that matters,” she said. “And you can believe one thing of the truth and me: I keep it well hidden, inside my heart.”

William Hyde had a letter from Robert’s steward, Thomas Blount, requesting him to be ready for Robert’s men who would come within three days to escort Amy and Mrs. Oddingsell to the Forsters at Cumnor Place for a brief visit, and then on to Chislehurst. A scrawled note inside from his lordship told William the latest news from court, of the gifts that Robert had received from the queen, now returned to Hampton Court, and indicated that William would shortly be appointed to a profitable post in one of the Oxford colleges, by way of thanks for his kindness to Lady Dudley, and to maintain his friendship for the future.

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 not.

“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, leaning 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.”

Dudley tossed him a purse of coins from a drawer in the desk. “Watch him, as you would watch your own baby,” he said shortly. “Tell me when he sees the queen. I want to know every detail, I want to know every word, every whisper, every creak of the floorboard.”

“He has seen her already,” Blount said with a grimace. “He came here under cover of darkness last night and she saw him last night, after dinner, after she withdrew for bed.”

Dudley had a very vivid memory of the previous night. He had knelt at her bare feet and her hair had tumbled over his face as she leaned toward him, enfolding him in her arms. He had rubbed his face against her breasts and belly, warm and sweet-smelling through her linen.

“Last night?”

“So they say.” Thomas Blount thought that he had never seen his master look so grim.

“And we know nothing of what was said?”

“I didn’t pick up the trail until this morning. I am sorry, my lord. Cecil’s men had him well hidden.”

“Aye,” Dudley said shortly. “He is the master of shadows. Well, watch Arran from now on, and keep me informed.”

He knew he should mind his temper and bite his tongue but his quick pride and quicker anger got the better of him. He flung open the door, leaving the papers blowing off his desk, and stormed out of his room and down the twisting private stairs to the garden where the court was watching a tennis match. The queen was in her chair at the side of the court, a golden awning over her head, her ladies around her, watching two players jostle for the prize: a purse of gold coins.

Robert bowed and she smiled on him and gestured to him to come to sit at her side.

“I must see you alone,” he said abruptly.

At once she turned her head, took in the white line around his compressed lips. “Love, what is wrong?”

“I have heard some news which has troubled me.” He could hardly speak, he was so angry. “Just now. I must ask you if it is true.”

Elizabeth was too passionate to tell him to wait until the end of the tournament, even though there were only a few games left to be played. She rose to her feet and all the court rose too, the men on the court let the ball bounce off the roof and roll out of play. Everything was suspended, waiting for the queen.

“Sir Robert would speak with me privately,” she said. “We will walk alone in my privy garden. The rest of you can stay here and watch the tournament to the finish and…” She glanced around. “Catherine can award the prize in my place.”

Catherine Knollys smiled at the honor, and curtsyed. Elizabeth led the way from the court and turned into her privy garden. The guards on the wooden door set into the gray stone wall leapt to attention, swung it open. “Let no one else in,” Elizabeth commanded them. “Sir Robert and I would be alone.”

The two men saluted and closed the door behind them. In the sunlit empty garden, Elizabeth turned to Robert. “Well, I think I have done enough to earn me another lecture from Kat on indiscretion. What is it?”

As she saw his dark expression the smile drained from her face. “Ah, love, don’t look like that, you are frightening me. What is it? What is wrong?”

“The Earl of Arran,” he said, his tone biting. “Is he in London?”

She turned her head this way and that, as if his glare was a beam of light shining on her. He knew her so well he could almost see the quick denials flying through her head. Then she realized she could not lie directly to him. “Yes,” she said unwillingly. “He is in London.”

“And you met with him last night?”

“Yes.”

“He came to you in secret, you met him alone?”

She nodded.

“In your bedchamber?”

“Only in my privy chamber. But, Robert—”

“You spent the first part of the night with him and then came to me. All that you told me about having to wait for Lettice Knollys to fall asleep: all that was a lie. You had been with him.”

“Robert, if you are thinking—”

“I am thinking nothing,” he said flatly. “I cannot bear what I might think. First Pickering, when my back is turned, and now Arran while we are lovers, declared lovers…”

She sank down on a circular seat built around a wide-trunked oak tree. Robert rested one boot on the seat beside her so that he towered over her. Pleadingly, she looked up at him.

“Must I tell you the truth?”

“Yes. But tell me everything, Elizabeth. I cannot be played with as a fool.”

She drew a breath. “It is a secret.”

He gritted his teeth. “Before God, Elizabeth, if you have promised yourself in marriage to him you will never see me again.”

“I have not! I have not!” she protested. “How could I? You know what you are to me! What we are to each other!”

“I know what I feel when I hold you in my arms and I kiss your mouth and bite your neck,” he said bitterly. “I don’t know what you feel when you meet another man just moments before you come to me, with a pack of lies in your mouth.”

“I feel as if I am going mad!” she cried out at him. “That is what I feel! I feel as if I am being torn apart! I feel as if you are driving me mad. I feel that I cannot stand another moment of it.”

Robert recoiled. “What?”

She was on her feet, squaring up to him like a fighter. “I have to play myself like a piece in a chess game,” she panted. “I am my own pawn. I have to keep the Spanish on our side, I have to frighten the French, I have to persuade Arran to get himself up to Scotland and claim his own, and I have nothing to bring to bear on any of these but my own weight. All I can promise any of them is myself. And …and…and…”

“And what?”

“I am not my own!”

He was silenced. “You are not?”

Elizabeth gave a sobbing breath. “I am yours, heart and soul. God knows, as God is my witness, I am yours, Robert…”

He reached out for her, took her hands, started to draw her close.

“But…”

He hesitated. “But what?”

“I have to play them, Robert,” she said. “I have to make them think that I will marry. I have to look as if I will take Archduke Ferdinand; I have to give Arran hope.”

“And what d’you think happens to me?” he asked her.

“You?”

“Yes. When you are known to be spending hours of time with Pickering, when the court is abuzz with the word that you will marry the archduke.”

“What happens to you?” She was genuinely puzzled.

“Then my enemies mass against me. Your kinsman Norfolk, your advisor Cecil, Francis Bacon, his brother Nicholas, Catherine Knollys, Pickering, Arundel, they hunt in a pack like hounds waiting to bring down a stag. When you turn from me they know that their time has come. They will bring charges against me, pull me down, accuse me. You have raised me so high, Elizabeth, that I am envied now. The hour that you announce your betrothal to another man is the hour that I am ruined.”

She was aghast. “I did not know. You did not tell me.”

“How should I tell you?” he demanded. “I am not a child to run crying to my nurse because the other children threaten me. But it is true. The moment they know that you have turned from me to another man I am ruined or worse.”

“Worse?”

“Dead,” he said shortly. “Every day I half expect to be dragged into some dark alley and knifed.”

She looked up at him, still clinging to his hands. “My love, you know I would do anything to make you safe and keep you safe.”

“You cannot make me safe, unless you declare your love for me. Elizabeth, you know that I would do anything to love you and protect you. Marry me, for God’s sake, and let us have a child. Marriage and a son and heir will make us safer than any other way, and you will have me at your side forever. You need not play yourself like a pawn. You can be yourself, your dear, lovely self, and belong to no one but me.”

Elizabeth twisted her hands from him and turned away. “Robert, I am so afraid. If the French come into England from Scotland they will march through the northern kingdoms as welcome friends. Where can I stop them? Who can stop the French army? Mary lost us Calais and they still curse her name. What will they say of me if I lose Berwick? Or Newcastle? Or York? What if I lose London itself?”

“You won’t lose,” he urged her. “Marry me and I shall take an army north for you. I have fought the French before. I don’t fear them. I shall be the man to fight for you, my love. You need not beg for help from others; I am yours, heart and soul. All you have to do is trust yourself to me.”

Her hood had fallen back; she took the thick tresses of hair at her temples in her fists and pulled them, as if she hoped that pain would steady her thoughts. She gave a shuddering sob. “Robert, I am so afraid, and I don’t know what to do. Cecil says one thing, and Norfolk another, and the Earl of Arran is nothing but a pretty boy! I had hopes of him until I met him last night; but he is a child dressing up as a soldier. He is not going to save me! The French are coming, there is no doubt that they are coming, and I have to find an army, and find a fortune, and find a man to fight for England and I don’t know how to do it, or who to trust.”

“Me,” Robert said instantly. Roughly he pulled her into his arms, overwhelming her protests with his weight and his strength. “Trust me. Declare your love for me, marry me, and we will fight this together. I am your champion, Elizabeth. I am your lover. I am your husband. You can trust no one but me, and I swear I will keep you safe.”

She struggled in his grip, pulled her face free; he could hear only the word: “England?”

“I will keep England safe for you, for me, and for our son,” he swore. “I can do it for him, and I will do it for you.”

Amy, on the road again to Chislehurst, after a brief visit with Robert’s friends the Forsters at Cumnor Place, kept her rosary in her pocket and every time she had a jealous thought she put her hand to the beads and said a silent “Hail Mary.” Lizzie Oddingsell, watching her companion ride quietly through the dry August countryside at the end of a hard summer, wondered at the change in her. It was as if, under the burden of terrible uncertainty, she had grown from being a petulant child into a woman.

“Are you well, Amy?” she asked. “Not too tired? Not finding it too hot?”

Instinctively Amy’s hand went to her heart. “I am well,” she said.

“Do you have a pain in your breast?” Elizabeth asked.

“No. There is nothing wrong with me.”

“If you feel at all ill, we could call in at London on the way and see his lordship’s physician.”

“No!” Amy said hastily. “I don’t want to go to London without my lord’s invitation. He said we were to go to Chislehurst; there is no need for us to go through London.”

“I didn’t mean we should go to court.”

Amy flushed slightly. “I know you did not, Lizzie,” she said. “I am sorry. It is just that…” She broke off. “I believe that there is much talk in the country about Robert and the queen. I would not want him to think I was coming to London to spy on him. I would not want to look like a jealous wife.”

“No one could ever think you were that,” Lizzie said warmly. “You are the most tender-hearted and forgiving wife a man could wish for.”

Amy turned her head away. “Certainly, I love him,” she said in a very small voice. They rode on for a few more minutes. “And have you heard much gossip, Lizzie?” she asked very quietly.

“There is always gossip about a man like Sir Robert,” Lizzie said stoutly. “I wish I could have a shilling for every unfounded rumor I have heard about him; I would be a rich woman now. D’you remember what they said about him when he was with King Philip in the Netherlands? And how distressed you were when he came home with that French widow from Calais? But it all meant nothing, and nothing came of it.”

Amy’s hand went to the cool round beads of the rosary in her pocket. “But have you heard a rumor of him and the queen?” Amy pressed her friend.

“My sister-in-law told me that her cousin in London had said that the queen favors Sir Robert above any other, but there is nothing there that we did not know already,” Lizzie said. “They were friends in childhood, he is her Master of Horse. Of course they are friendly together.”

“She must be amusing herself,” Amy said bitterly. “She knows he is a married man, she knows that she has to marry the archduke, she is just enjoying the summer in his company.”

“Flighty,” Lizzie said, watching Amy’s face. “She is a flighty young woman. There was gossip enough about her in her girlhood. If you want to think of scandal—Elizabeth was it!”

Hidden by the flap of her pocket, Amy wrapped her rosary around her fingers. “It is not for us to judge,” she reminded herself. “It is my duty to stay loyal to my lord and wait for his return home.”

“She would do better to mind the affairs of state,” Lizzie Oddingsell volunteered. “They say there must be a war with the French and we are quite unprepared. She would do better to marry a good man who could run the kingdom safely for us all. Her sister married as soon as she came to the throne and chose a man who brought his own army.”

“It is not for me to judge,” Amy said, holding her beads. “But God guide her back to the path of right.”

Autumn 1559

THE COURT, newly arrived in September at one of Elizabeth’s favorite houses, Windsor Castle, started the preparations for her birthday celebrations. Robert planned a day of festivities with the queen awakened by choristers, a choreographed hunt in which huntsmen would pause to sing her praises, woodland nymphs would dance, and a tamed deer with a garland round its neck would lead the queen to a dinner laid out in the greenwood. That night there would be a great banquet, with dancing, singing, and a tableau depicting the Graces, with goddesses in attendance and Diana, symbolizing Elizabeth the huntress, taking the crown.

The ladies-in-waiting were to dance as goddesses and the maids-in-waiting were to be the Graces. “Which Grace am I?” Laetitia Knollys asked Robert as he allocated parts in a quiet corner of the queen’s presence chamber.

“If there was a Grace called Unpunctuality, you could be her,” he recommended. “Or if there was a Grace called Flirtation, you could be her.”

She shot him a look that was pure Boleyn: promising, provocative, irresistible. “I?” she said. “Do you call me flirtatious? Now that is praise indeed.”

“I meant it to be abuse,” he said, pinching her chin.

“From such a master at his trade it is a great compliment.”

He tapped her on the nose, as he would have reproved a kitten. “You are to be Chastity,” he said. “I could not resist it.”

She widened her slanting, dark eyes at him. “Sir Robert!” she pouted. “I do not know what I can have done to so offend you. First you call me unpunctual, then you call me flirtatious, and then you say that you could not resist giving me the part of Chastity. Have I annoyed your lordship?”

“Not at all. You delight my eye.”

“Have I troubled you?”

Robert winked at her. He was very certain he was not going to tell this young woman that he sometimes found it hard to look away from her when she was dancing, that once when he had danced with her and the movement of the dance had put her into his arms he had felt an instantaneous, irresistible thud of desire, stronger than he had ever felt for so slight a touch in his life before.

“How could a little ninny such as you trouble a man such as me?” he asked.

She raised her eyebrows. “I can think of a dozen ways. Can’t you? But the question is not how I would; but whether I do?”

“Not at all, Miss Shameless.”

“Chastity, if you please. And what do I wear?” she asked.

“Something fearfully immodest,” he promised her. “You will be delighted. But you must show it to your mother, to make sure that she approves. The queen’s wardrobe has it for you. It is quite indecent.”

“Should I not come and show it to you?” she asked him provocatively. “I could come to your rooms before dinner.”

Robert glanced around. The queen had come in from the garden and was standing in a window bay, withdrawn from the rest, in close conversation with Sir William Cecil. The young man picked out to be Laetitia’s husband was leaning against the wall, his arms crossed, looking thoroughly surly. Robert judged he should bring this tantalizing conversation to a close.

“Most certainly, you will not come to my rooms,” he said. “You will attempt to behave like a lady. You could be polite to poor young Dev ereux, your unhappy betrothed, while I go and talk with your mistress.”

“Your mistress,” she said impertinently.

Robert hesitated and looked gravely at her. “Do not overreach yourself, Mistress Knollys,” he said quietly. “You are enchanting, of course, and your father is a powerful man, and your mother beloved of the queen, but not even they can save you if you are found to be spreading scandal.”

She hesitated, a pert reply ready on her tongue; but then at the steadiness of his gaze, and the firmness of his expression, her dark eyes fell to the toes of his boots. “I am sorry, Sir Robert, I was only speaking in jest.”

“Well and good,” he said, and turned away from her, feeling absurdly that although she had been in the wrong, and had apologized, he had been a pompous bore.

Elizabeth, in the window bay, talking low-voiced with Cecil, was so absorbed that she was not scanning the room for Robert.

“And he has gone safely?”

“Gone, and your agreement with him.”

“But nothing in writing.”

“Your Grace, you cannot think of denying your word. You said if he attempted the Scottish throne and was successful then you would marry him.”

“I know I did,” she said coolly. “But if he were to die in his attempt I would not want such a letter found on him.”

Well, thought Cecil, my dream that she would be so taken with him, pretty boy that he is, can be forgotten, if she can imagine him dying in her cause, and all she cares is if he is carrying incriminating papers.

“There was nothing in writing, but you have given your word, he has given his, and I have given mine,” Cecil reminded her. “You are promised to marry if he wins Scotland from the French.”

“Oh, yes,” she said, opening her dark eyes very wide. “Yes, indeed.”

She was about to turn away from him but he stood his ground. “There is something else, Your Grace.”

She hesitated. “Yes?”

“I have intelligence of a possible attempt on your life.”

At once she was alert. He saw her face quiver with fear. “A new plot? Another one?”

“I am afraid so.”

“The Pope’s men?”

“Not this time.”

She drew a shaky breath. “How many more men will come against me? This is worse than it was for Mary and she was hated by everyone.”

There was nothing he could say; it was true. Mary had been hated; but no monarch had ever been more threatened than this one. Elizabeth’s power was all in her person, and too many men thought that if she were dead then the country would be restored.

She turned back to him. “At any rate, you have captured the men who planned it?”

“I have only an informant. I hope he will lead me onward. But I draw it to your attention at this stage because it was not only you who was threatened by this plot.”

She turned, curious. “Who else?”

“Sir Robert Dudley.”

Her face drained pale. “Spirit, no!”

Good God, does she love him so much? Cecil exclaimed to himself. She takes a threat to herself as a matter of concern; but when I name him as a victim you would think she was in mortal terror.

“Indeed, yes. I am sorry.”

Elizabeth’s eyes were dilated. “Spirit, who would hurt him?”

Cecil could almost feel his thoughts clicking into place as a strategy formed in his mind. “A word with you?”

“Walk with me,” she said quickly, and put her hand on his arm. “Walk me away from them all.”

Through the velvet of his slashed sleeve he could feel the heat of her palm. She is sweating with fear for him, he thought. This has gone further than I had thought; this has gone to the very madness of forbidden love.

He patted her hand, trying to steady himself and hide the thoughts that whirled in his head. The courtiers parted before Cecil and the queen; he saw a glimpse of Francis Knollys with his wife, his daughter demurely talking to young Walter Devereux, Mary Sidney, the Bacon brothers in conversation with the queen’s uncle, the Duke of Norfolk, a few men from the Spanish ambassador’s train, half a dozen hangerson, a couple of City merchants with their sponsors, nothing out of the ordinary, no strange face, no danger here.

They reached the relative privacy of the gallery and walked away from the others, so that no one could see the bleak agony on her face.

“Cecil, who could dream of hurting him?”

“Your Grace, there are so many,” he said gently to her. “Has he never told you that he has enemies?”

“Once,” she said. “Once, he said to me that he was surrounded with enemies. I thought …I thought he meant rivals.”

“He does not know the half of them,” Cecil said grimly. “The Catholics blame him for the changes in the church. The Spanish think that you love him, and if he was dead you would take their candidate in marriage. The French hate him since he fought for Philip at St. Quentin, the Commons of England blame him for taking you from your duties of queenship, and every lord of the land, from Arundel to Norfolk, would pay to see him dead because they envy him for your love, or they blame him for the terrible scandal that he has generated about you.”

“It cannot be that bad.”

“He is the most hated man in England, and the more that you are seen under his influence the greater the danger to you. I spend days and nights on tracking down plots against you; but he…” Cecil broke off and shook his head regretfully. “I don’t know how to keep him safe.”

Elizabeth was white as her ruff; her fingers plucked at his sleeve. “We must have him guarded, Spirit. We must put guards about him, you must find out who would hurt him and arrest them, rack them, find out who they are leagued with. You must stop at nothing; you must take these plotters to the Tower and torture them till they tell us…”

“Your own uncle!” he exclaimed. “Half the lords of England! Dud ley is widely despised, Your Grace. Only you and half a dozen people tolerate him.”

“He is beloved,” she whispered.

“Only by his kinsmen, and those he pays,” he said loftily.

“Not you?” she said, turning her dark gaze on him. “You don’t hate him, Spirit? You must stand his friend, if only for my sake. You know what he is to me, what joy he brings to my life. He must have your friendship. If you love me, you must love him.”

“Oh, I stand his friend,” he said carefully. For I am not such a fool as to let you or him think otherwise.

She took a shuddering sigh. “Oh, God, we must keep him safe. I could not live if… Spirit, you must guard him. How can we make him safe?”

“Only by letting him decline in your favor,” Cecil replied. Careful, he warned himself. Care and steadiness here. “You cannot marry him, Princess; he is a married man and his wife is a virtuous, pleasant woman, pretty and sweet-tempered. He can never be more than a friend to you. If you want to save his life you have to let him go. He has to be your dear courtier, and your Master of Horse; but no more.”

She looked quite haggard. “Let him go?”

“Send him home to his wife; it will still the gossips. Set your mind on Scotland and the work we have to do for the country. Dance with other men, set yourself free of him.”

“Free of him?” she repeated like a child.

Despite himself, Cecil was moved by the pain in her face. “Princess, this can go nowhere,” he said quietly to her. “He is a married man; he cannot put his wife aside for no reason. You cannot sanction a divorce to serve your own lust. He can never marry you. You may love him, but it will always be a dishonorable love. You cannot be husband and wife, you cannot be lovers, you cannot even be seen to desire him. If there is any more scandal spoken against you, it could cost you your throne; it could even cost you your life.”

“My life has been on a thread since I was born!” She reared up.

“It could cost his life,” Cecil switched quickly. “Your favoring of him, as openly as generously as you do, will be his death warrant.”

“You will protect him,” she said stubbornly.

“I cannot protect him from your friends and family,” Cecil replied steadily. “Only you can do that. Now I have told you how. You know what you have to do.”

Elizabeth gripped his arm. “I cannot let him go,” she said to him in a low moan. “He is the only one… he is my only love… I cannot send him home to his wife. You must have a heart of stone to suggest it. I cannot let him go.”

“Then you will sign his death warrant,” he said harshly.

He felt a deep shudder run through her.

“I am unwell,” she said quietly. “Get Kat.”

He walked her to the end of the gallery and sent a page flying to the queen’s rooms for Kat Ashley. She came and took one look at Elizabeth’s pallor, and one look at Cecil’s grave face. “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, Kat,” Elizabeth whispered. “The worst thing, the worst thing.”

Kat Ashley stepped forward to shield her from the eyes of the court and took her quickly away to her rooms. The court, fascinated, looked at Cecil, who blandly smiled back at them all.

It was raining, the gray drops pouring like a stream down the leaded window panes of Windsor Castle, pattering like tears. Elizabeth had sent for Robert and told her ladies to seat themselves round the fire while he and she talked in the window seat. When Robert came into the room in a swirl of dark red velvet the queen was alone in the window seat, like a solitary girl without friends.

He came up at once and bowed and whispered: “My love?”

Her face was white and her eyelids red and sore from crying. “Oh, Robert.”

He took a rapid step toward her and then checked himself, remembering that he must not snatch her to him in public. “What is the matter?” he demanded. “The court thinks you have been taken ill; I have been desperate to see you. What is the matter? What did Cecil say to you this morning?”

She turned her head to the window and put a fingertip to the cold green glass. “He warned me,” she said quietly.

“Of what?”

“A new plot, against my life.”

Robert’s hand instinctively went to where his sword should be, but no man carried arms in the queen’s apartments. “My love, don’t be afraid. However wicked the plot I should always protect you.”

“It was not just against me,” she broke in. “I would not be sick with fear like this, just for a plot against me.”

“So?” His dark eyebrows were drawn together.

“They want to kill you too,” she said quietly. “Cecil says that I have to let you go, for our safety.”

That damned cunning sly old fox, Robert cursed inwardly. What a brilliant move: to use her love against me.

“We are in danger,” he acknowledged quietly to her. “Elizabeth, I beg of you, let me put my wife aside and let me marry you. Once you are my wife and you have my child then all these dangers are gone.”

She shook her head. “They will destroy you, as you warned me. Robert, I am going to give you up.”

“No!” He spoke too loud in his shock, and the conversation at the fireplace was silenced and all the women looked toward him. He drew closer to the queen. “No, Elizabeth. This cannot be. You cannot just give me up, not when you love me, and I love you. Not when we are happy now. Not after so many years of waiting and waiting for happiness!”

She had herself under the tightest control, he saw her bite her lip to stop the tears coming to her eyes. “I have to. Don’t make it harder for me, my love, I think my heart is breaking.”

“But to tell me here! In the full glare of the court!”

“Oh, d’you think I could have told you anywhere else? I am not very strong with you, Robert. I have to tell you here, where you cannot touch me, and I have to have your word that you will not try to change my mind. You have to give me up, and give up your dream of our marriage. And I have to let you go, and I have to marry Arran if he is victorious, and the archduke if he is not.”

Robert raised his head and would have argued.

“It is the only way to stop the French,” she said simply. “Arran or the archduke. We have to have an ally against the French in Scotland.”

“You would give me up for a kingdom,” he said bitterly.

“For nothing less,” she replied steadily. “And I ask something more of you.”

“Oh, Elizabeth, you have my heart. What can I give you more?”

Her dark eyes were filled with tears; she put out a shaking hand to him. “Will you still be my friend, Robert? Though we can never be lovers again, even though I will have to marry another man?”

Slowly, oblivious now of the ladies’ stares, he took her cold hand in his own, and bent his head and kissed it. Then he knelt to her and held up his hands in the age-old gesture of fealty. She leaned forward and took his praying hands in her own.

“I am yours,” he said. “Heart and soul. I always have been since you are my queen, but more than that: you are the only woman I have ever loved and you are the only woman I ever will love. If you want me to dance at your wedding, I will do it as well as I can. If you will recall me from this misery, I will return to joy with you in a second. I am your friend for life, I am your lover forever, I am your husband in the sight of God. You have only to command me, Elizabeth, now and ever, I am yours till death.”

They were both trembling, gazing into each other’s eyes as if they could never tear themselves away. It was Kat Ashley who had the courage to interrupt them, after long minutes when they had been handclasped and silent.

“Your Grace,” she said gently. “People will talk.”

Elizabeth stirred and released Robert, and he rose to his feet.

“You should rest, my lady,” Kat said quietly. She glanced at Robert’s white, shocked face. “She’s not well,” she said. “This is too much for her. Let her go now, Sir Robert.”

“May God bring you to good health and happiness,” he said passionately, and at her nod he bowed and took himself out of the room before she could see the despair in his own face.

Mr. Hayes’s father had been born a tenant of the Dudleys but had risen through the wool trade to the position of mayor at Chislehurst. He had sent his son to school and then to train as a lawyer and when he died, he left the young man a small fortune. John Hayes continued the family connection with the Dudleys, advising Robert’s mother on her appeal to reclaim the title and estates, and as Robert rose in power and wealth, running the various wings of Robert’s steadily increasing businesses in the City and countrywide.

Amy had often stayed with him at Hayes Court, Chislehurst, and sometimes Robert joined her there to talk business with John Hayes, to gamble with him, to hunt his land, and to plan their investments.

The Dudley train reached the house at about midday, and Amy was glad to be out of the September sun, which was still hot and bright.

“Lady Dudley.” John Hayes kissed her hand. “How good to see you again. Mrs. Minchin will show you to your usual room; we thought you preferred the garden room?”

“I do,” Amy said. “Have you heard from my lord?”

“Only that he promises himself the pleasure of seeing you within the week,” John Hayes said. “He did not say which day—but we don’t expect that, do we?” He smiled at her.

Amy smiled back. No, for he will not know which day the queen will release him, said the jealous voice in her head. Amy touched the rosary in her pocket with her finger. “Whenever he is free to come to me, I shall be glad to see him,” she said, and turned and went up the stairs behind the housekeeper.

Mrs. Oddingsell came into the house, pushing back her hood and shaking the dust from her skirt. She shook hands with John Hayes; they were old friends.

“She looks well,” he said, surprised, nodding his head in the direction of Amy’s bedroom. “I heard she was very sick.”

“Oh, did you?” said Lizzie levelly. “And where did you hear that from?”

He thought for a moment. “Two places, I think. Someone told me in church the other day, and my clerk mentioned it to me in the City.”

“Did they say what ailed her?”

“A malady of the breast, my clerk said. A stone, or a growth, too great for cutting, they said. They said that Dudley might put her aside, that she would agree to go to a convent and annul the marriage because she could never have his child.”

Lizzie folded her mouth in a hard line. “It is a lie,” she said softly. “Now who do you think would have an interest in spreading such a lie? That Dudley’s wife is sick and cannot be cured?”

For a moment he looked at her quite aghast.

“These are deep waters, Mrs. Oddingsell. I had heard that it had gone very far…”

“You had heard that they are lovers?”

He glanced around his own empty hall as if nowhere was safe to speak of the queen and Dudley, even if their names were not mentioned.

“I heard that he plans to put his wife aside, and marry the lady of whom we speak, and that she has the power and desire that he should do so.”

She nodded. “It seems everyone thinks so. But there are no grounds, and never could be.”

He thought for a moment. “If she were known to be too sick to bear children she might step aside,” he whispered.

“Or if everyone thought she was ill, then no one would be surprised if she died,” Lizzie said, even lower.

John Hayes exclaimed in shock and crossed himself. “Jesu! Mrs. Oddingsell, you must be mad to suggest such a thing. You don’t really think that? He would never do such a thing, not Sir Robert!”

“I don’t know what to think. But I do know that everywhere we rode from Abingdon to here, there was gossip about his lordship and the queen, and a belief that my lady is sick to death. At one inn the landlady asked me if we needed a doctor before we had even dismounted. Everyone is talking of my lady’s illness, and my lord’s love affair. So I don’t know what to think except that someone is being very busy.”

“Not his lordship,” he said staunchly. “He would never hurt her.”

“I don’t know anymore,” she repeated.

“Then, if it is not him, who would spread such a rumor, and to what end?”

She looked blankly at him. “Who would prepare the country for his divorce and remarriage? Only the woman who wanted to marry him, I suppose.”

Mary Sidney was seated before the fireplace in her brother’s apartments at Windsor, one of his new hound puppies on the floor at her feet, gnawing at the toe of her riding boot. Idly, she prodded his fat little belly with the other foot.

“Leave him alone, you will spoil him,” Robert commanded.

“He will not leave me alone,” she returned. “Get off me, you monster!” She gave him another prod and the puppy squirmed with delight at the attention.

“You would hardly think he was true bred,” Robert remarked, as he signed his name on a letter and put it to one side, and then came to the fireplace and drew up a stool on the other side. “He has such low tastes.”

“I have had highly bred puppies slavering at my feet before now,” his sister said with a smile. “It is no mark of bad breeding to adore me.”

“And rightly so,” he replied. “But would you call Sir Henry your husband a low-bred puppy?”

“Never to his face.” She smiled.

“How is the queen today?” he asked more seriously.

“Still very shaken. She could not eat last night and she only drank warmed ale this morning and ate nothing. She walked in the garden on her own for an hour and came in looking quite distracted. Kat is in and out of her bedroom with possets, and when Elizabeth dressed and came out she would not talk or smile. She is doing no business; she will see nobody. Cecil is striding about with a sheaf of letters and nothing can be decided. And some people say we will lose the war in Scotland because she has despaired already.”

He nodded.

She hesitated. “Brother, you must tell me. What did she say to you yesterday? She looked as if her heart was breaking, and now she looks halfway to death.”

“She has given me up,” he said shortly.

Mary Sidney gasped and put her hand to her mouth. “Never!”

“Indeed, yes. She has asked me to stand her friend but she knows she has to marry. Cecil warned her off me, and she has taken his advice.”

“But why now?”

“Firstly the rumors, and then the threats against me.”

She nodded. “The rumors are everywhere. My own waiting woman came to me with a story of Amy and poison and a whole string of slanderous lies that made my hair stand on end.”

“Beat her.”

“If she had made up the stories I would do so. But she was only repeating what is being said at every street corner. It is shameful what people are saying about you, and about the queen. Your pageboy was set on at the stables the other day, did you know?”

He shook his head.

“Not for the first time. The lads are saying they won’t wear our livery if they go into the City. They are ashamed of our coat of arms, Robert.”

He frowned. “I didn’t know it was that bad.”

“My maid told me that there are men who swear they will see you dead before you marry the queen.”

Robert nodded. “Ah, Mary, it could never happen. How could it? I am a married man.”

Her head came up in surprise. “I thought you… and she …had some plan? I thought perhaps…”

“You are as bad as these people who dream of divorce and death and dethroning!” he said, smiling. “It is all nonsense. The queen and I had a summertime love affair which has been all dancing and jousting and flowery meadows and now the summer is ended and the winter is coming I have to visit John Hayes with Amy. The country has to go to war with Scotland—Cecil predicted it; and Cecil is right. The queen has to be a queen indeed; she has been Queen of Camelot, now she has to be queen in deadly reality. She has had her summer at leisure, now she has to marry to secure the safety of the kingdom. Her choice has fallen on Arran if he can win her Scotland, or else Archduke Charles, as the best choice for the safety of the country. Whatever she may have felt for me in July, she knows she has to marry either one of them by Christmas.”

“She does?” Mary was amazed.

He nodded.

“Oh, Robert, no wonder she sits and stares and says nothing. Her heart must be breaking.”

“Aye,” he said tenderly. “Her heart may break. But she knows it has to be done. She won’t fail her country now. She has never lacked courage. She would sacrifice anything for her country. She will certainly sacrifice me and her love for me.”

“And can you bear this?”

Her brother’s face was so dark that she thought she had never seen him so grim since he came out of the Tower to face ruin. “I have to face it like a man. I have to find the courage that she has to find. In a way, we are still together. Her heart and mine will break together. We will have that scant comfort.”

“You will go back to Amy?”

He shrugged. “I have never left her. We had a few cross words when we last met, and she may have been distressed by the gossip. In my temper, and in my pride, I swore I should leave her, but she did not believe me for a moment. She stood her ground and said to my face that we were married and could never be divorced. And I knew she was right. In my heart I knew that I could never divorce Amy. What has she ever done to offend? And I knew that I was not going to poison the poor woman or push her down the well! So what else could happen but that the queen and I would have a summer of flirtation and kissing …yes! I admit to the kissing… and more. Very delicious, very sweet, but always, always, going nowhere. She is Queen of England, I am her Master of Horse. I am a married man and she must marry to save the kingdom.”

He glanced over. There were tears in his sister’s eyes. “Robert, I am so afraid that you will never love anyone but Elizabeth. You will have to live the rest of your life loving her.”

He gave her a wry smile. “That’s true. I have loved her from childhood and in these last months I have fallen in love, more deeply and more truly than I every thought possible. I thought myself hard of heart, and yet I find she is everything to me. Indeed, I love her so much that I am going to let her go. I am going to help her to marry Arran or the archduke. Her only safety lies that way.”

“You will give her up for her own safety?”

“Whatever it costs me.”

“My God, Robert, I never thought you could be so…”

“So what?”

“So selfless!”

He laughed. “I thank you!”

“I mean it. To help the woman you love to marry another is a truly selfless thing to do.” She was silent for a moment. “And how will you bear it?” she asked tenderly.

“I shall treasure a memory of loving a beautiful young queen in the very first year of her reign,” he said. “In the golden summer when she came to her throne in her youth and her beauty and she thought she could do anything—even marry a man like me. And I shall go home to my wife and make a nursery full of heirs and I shall name all the girls Elizabeth.”

She put her sleeve to her eyes. “Oh, my dearest brother.”

He covered her hand with his own. “Will you help me do this, Mary?”

“Of course,” she whispered. “Of course, anything.”

“Go to the Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, and tell him that the queen needs his help in concluding the match with the archduke.”

“I? But I hardly know him.”

“It doesn’t matter. He knows us Dudleys well enough. Go to him as if you were coming directly from the queen, not at my request. Tell him that she felt she could not approach him directly, not after this summer when she has blown hot and cold on the plan. But if he will come to her with a renewed proposal, she will say ‘yes’ at once.”

“This is the queen’s own wish?” Mary asked.

He nodded. “She wants to signal to everyone that I have not been rejected, that she stands my friend, that she loves me and you too. She wants the Dudley family to broker this marriage.”

“It’s a great honor to take such a message,” she said solemnly. “And a great responsibility too.”

“The queen thought we should keep it in the family.” He smiled. “Mine is the sacrifice, you are the messenger, and together, the deed is done.”

“And what of you, when she is married?”

“She will not forget me,” he said. “We have loved each other too well and too long for her to turn from me. And you and I will be rewarded both by her and by the Spanish for faithful dealing now. This is the right thing to do, Mary; I have no doubts. It ensures her safety and it takes me out of the reach of lying tongues… and worse. I don’t doubt that there are men who would see me dead. This is my safety as well as hers.”

“I will go tomorrow,” she promised him.

“And tell him you come from her, at her bidding.”

“I will,” she said.

Cecil, sitting at his fireside in the silence of the palace at midnight, rose from his chair to answer a discreet tap at the door. The man who entered the room put back his black hood and went to the fire to warm his hands.

“Do you have a glass of wine?” he asked in a light Spanish accent. “This mist on the river will give me an ague. If it is this damp in September, what will it be like in midwinter?”

Cecil poured the wine and gestured the man to a chair by the fire. He threw on another log. “Better?”

“Yes, I thank you.”

“It must be interesting news to bring you out on such a cold night as this,” Cecil remarked to no one in particular.

“Only the queen herself, proposing marriage to Archduke Charles!”

Cecil’s response was wholly satisfying. His head came up; he looked astounded. “The queen has proposed marriage?”

“Through an intermediary. Did you not know of this?”

Cecil shook his head, refusing to answer. Information was currency to Cecil and, unlike Gresham, he believed that there was neither good nor bad coinage in the currency of information. It was all valuable.

“Do you know the intermediary?” he asked.

“Lady Mary Sidney,” the man said. “One of the queen’s own ladies.”

Cecil nodded; perhaps this was the ripple from the stone he had thrown. “And Lady Mary had a proposal?”

“That the archduke should come at once to pay the queen a visit, as if in politeness. That she will accept a proposal of marriage at that visit. The terms will be drawn up at once, and that the wedding will take place by Christmas.”

Cecil’s face was a frozen mask. “And what did His Excellency think of this proposal?”

“He thought it could be done now or never,” the man said bluntly. “He thinks she hopes to save her reputation before any worse is said of her. He thinks she has seen reason at last.”

“He said this aloud?”

“He dictated it to me to translate into code to send to King Philip.”

“You do not bring me a copy of the letter?”

“I dare not,” the man said briefly. “He is no fool. I risk my life even telling you this much.”

Cecil waved the danger aside. “Lady Mary would no doubt have told me in the morning, had I not known of it already from the queen herself.”

The man looked a little dashed. “But would she tell you that my master has written to the archduke this very night to recommend that he comes at once on this visit? That Caspar von Breuner has sent for Austrian lawyers to draw up the marriage contract? That this time we believe the queen is in earnest and we are going ahead? And the archduke should be here by November?”

“No, that is good news,” Cecil said. “Anything else?”

The man looked thoughtful. “That is all. Shall I come again when I have more?”

Cecil reached into the drawer of his desk and drew out a small leather purse. “Yes. This is for now. And as for your papers, they will be drawn up for you…” He paused.

“When?” the man asked eagerly.

“When the marriage is solemnized,” Cecil said. “We can all rest safe in our beds when that takes place. Did you say Christmas?”

“The queen herself named Christmas as her wedding day.”

“Then I shall give you your papers to allow you to stay in England when your master, the archduke, is named Elizabeth’s consort.”

The man bowed in assent and then hesitated before leaving. “You always have a purse for me in that drawer,” he said curiously. “Do you expect me to come, or do so many men report to you that you have their fee ready?”

Cecil, whose informants now numbered more than a thousand, smiled. “Only you,” he said sweetly.

Robert arrived at Hayes Court in September, in quiet and somber mood, his face grim.

Amy, watching him from an upper window, thought that she had not seen that desolate look on his face since he had come home from the siege of Calais when England had lost its last foothold in France. Slowly, she went downstairs, wondering what he had lost now.

He was dismounting from his horse; he greeted her with a cursory kiss on the cheek.

“My lord,” Amy said in greeting. “Are you unwell?”

“No,” he said shortly. Amy wanted to cling to him, to treasure his touch but gently he put her aside. “Let me go, Amy, I am dirty.”

“I don’t mind!”

“But I do.” He turned; his friend John Hayes was coming down the front steps of the house.

“Sir Robert! I thought I heard horses!”

Robert clapped John on the back. “No need to ask how you are,” he said cheerfully. “You’re putting on weight, John. Obviously not hunting enough.”

“But you look dreadful.” His friend was concerned. “Are you sick, sir?”

Robert shrugged. “I’ll tell you later.”

“Court life?” John said, guessing quickly.

“It would be easier to dance the volta in hell than survive in London,” Robert said precisely. “Between Her Grace, and Sir William Cecil, and the women of the queen’s chamber, and the Privy Council, my head is spinning from dawn when I get up to check the stables, till midnight when I can finally leave the court and go to bed.”

“Come and have a glass of ale,” John offered. “Tell me all about it.”

“I stink of horse,” Robert said.

“Oh, who cares for that?”

The two men turned and went toward the house. Amy was about to follow them and then she dropped back and let them go on. She thought that perhaps her husband would be relieved if he could talk alone with his friend, and would perhaps be easier, not constrained by her presence. But she crept after them and sat on the wooden chair in the hall, outside the closed door, so that she should be there for him when he came out.

The ale helped Robert’s bad temper, and then a wash in hot, scented water and a change of clothes. A good dinner completed the change; Mrs. Minchin was a famously lavish housekeeper. By six in the evening when the four of them, Sir Robert, Amy, Lizzie Oddingsell, and John Hayes, sat down to a game of cards, his lordship was restored to his usual sweet temper and his face was less drawn. By nightfall he was tipsy and Amy realized that she would get no sense from him that evening. They went to bed together, and she hoped that they would make love, but he merely turned away, heaved the covers high over his shoulders, and fell into a deep sleep. Amy, lying awake in the darkness, did not think that she should wake him since he was tired, and in any case, she never initiated their lovemaking. She wanted him; but she did not know where to begin—his smooth unyielding back did not respond to her tentative touch. She turned away herself, and watched the moonlight coming through the slats of the shutters, listened to his heavy breathing, and remembered her duty before God to love her husband whatever the circumstances. She resolved to be a better wife to him in the morning.

“Would you like to ride with me, Amy?” Robert asked politely at breakfast. “I have to keep my hunter fit, but I shan’t go too far or too fast today.”

“I should like to come,” she said at once. “But don’t you think it will rain?”

He was not listening; he had turned his head and ordered his manservant to get the horses ready.

“I beg your pardon?”

“I only said I was afraid it will rain,” she repeated.

“Then we will come home again.”

Amy flushed, thinking that she had sounded like a fool.

On the ride it was not much better. She could think of nothing to say but the most obvious banalities about the weather and the fields on either side of them, while he rode, his face dark, his eyes abstracted, his gaze fixed on the track ahead of them but seeing nothing.

“Are you well, my lord?” Amy asked quietly when they turned for home. “You do not seem yourself at all.”

He looked at her as if he had forgotten that she was there. “Oh, Amy. Yes, I am well enough. A little troubled by events at court.”

“What events?”

He smiled as if he were being interrogated by a child. “Nothing for you to worry about.”

“You can tell me,” she assured him. “I am your wife. I want to know if something troubles you. Is it the queen?”

“She is in great danger,” he said. “Every day there is news of another plot against her. There never was a queen who was more loved by half the people and yet more hated by the others.”

“So many people think she has no right to the throne,” Amy remarked. “They say that since she was a bastard, it should have gone to Mary, Queen of Scots, and then the kingdoms would be united now, without a war, without the change to the church, without the trouble that Elizabeth brings.”

Robert choked on his surprise. “Amy, whatever are you thinking? This is treason that you are speaking to me. Pray God you never say such a thing to anyone else. And you should never repeat it, even to me.”

“It’s only the truth,” Amy observed calmly.

“She is the anointed Queen of England.”

“Her own father declared her to be a bastard, and that was never revoked,” Amy said reasonably enough. “She has not even revoked it herself.”

“There is no doubt that she is his legitimate daughter,” Robert said flatly.

“Excuse me, husband, but there is every doubt,” Amy said politely. “I don’t blame you for not wanting to see it, but facts are facts.”

Robert was astounded by her confidence. “Good God, Amy, what has come over you? Who have you been talking to? Who has filled your head with this nonsense?”

“No one, of course. Who do I ever see but your friends?” she asked.

For a moment, he thought she was being sarcastic and he looked sharply at her, but her face was serene, her smile as sweet as ever.

“Amy, I am serious. There are men all round England with their tongues slit for less than you have said.”

She nodded. “How cruel of her to torture innocent men for speaking nothing but the truth.”

They rode for a moment in silence, Robert utterly baffled by the sudden uprising in his own household.

“Have you always thought like this?” he asked quietly. “Even though you have always known that I supported her? That I was proud to be her friend?”

Amy nodded. “Always. I never thought her claim was the best.”

“You have never said anything to me.”

She shot him a little smile. “You never asked me.”

“I would have been glad to know that I had a traitor in my household.”

She gave a little laugh. “There was a time when you were the traitor and I was right-thinking. It is the times that have changed, not us.”

“Yes, but a man likes to know if his wife is plotting treason.”

“I have always thought that she was not the true heir; but I thought she was the best choice for the country, until now.”

“Why, what has happened now?” he demanded.

“She is turning against the true religion, and supporting the Protestant rebels in Scotland,” she said levelly. “She has imprisoned all the bishops, except those that have been forced into exile. There is no church anymore, just frightened priests not knowing what they should do. It is an open attack on the religion of our country. What does she hope for? To make England and Scotland and Wales and Ireland all Protestant? To rival the Holy Father himself? To make a Holy Empire of her own? Does she want to be a Pope in petticoats? No wonder she does not marry. Who could bear such a wife as she would be?”

“True religion?” Robert exclaimed. “Amy, you have been a Protestant all your life. We were married by King Edward’s service in his presence. Who have you been talking with to get such ideas in your head?”

She looked at him with her usual mildness. “I have been talking with no one, Robert. And our household was Papist for all of Queen Mary’s years. I do think, you know. In the long hours that I spend alone, I have nothing to do but to think. And I travel around the country, and I see what Elizabeth and her servants are doing. I see the destruction of the monasteries and the poverty of the church lands. She is throwing hundreds into beggary; she is leaving the poor and sick without hospitals. Her coins are worth next to nothing, and her churches cannot even celebrate Mass. No one who looked at England under Elizabeth could think of her as a good queen. All she has brought is trouble.”

She paused, seeing his appalled expression. “I don’t talk like this to anyone else,” she reassured him. “I thought it would be all right to share my thoughts with you. And I have wanted to speak to you about the Bishop of Oxford.”

“The Bishop of Oxford can rot in hell!” he burst out. “You cannot talk to me of these matters. It’s not fitting. You are a Protestant, Amy, like me. Born and bred. Like me.”

“I was born a Catholic; then I was a Protestant when King Edward was on the throne,” she said calmly. “And then I was Roman Catholic when Queen Mary was on the throne. Changed and changed about. Just as you have been. And your father recanted his Protestantism and called it a great error, didn’t he? He blamed all the sorrows of the country on his heresy, those were his very words. We were all Catholics then. And now you want to be Protestant, and you want me to be Protestant, just because she is. Well, I am not.”

At last he heard a note that gave him the key to her. “Ah, you are jealous of her.”

Amy’s hand went to her pocket to touch the cool beads of her rosary. “No,” she said steadily. “I have sworn I will not feel jealousy, not of any woman in the world, least of all her.”

“You have always been a jealous woman,” he said frankly. “It is your curse, Amy—and mine.”

She shook her head. “I have broken my curse then. I will never be jealous again.”

“It is your jealousy that leads you into these dangerous speculations. And all this theology is just a mask for your jealous hatred of her.”

“Not so, my lord. I have sworn I will renounce jealousy.”

“Oh, admit it,” he said, smiling. “It is nothing but a woman’s spite.”

She reined in her horse and looked at him so steadily that he had to meet her eyes. “Why, what cause have I for jealousy?” she demanded.

For a moment Robert blustered, shifting in the saddle, his horse nervous under a tightened rein.

“What cause have I?” she demanded again.

“You will have heard talk about her and me?”

“Of course. I assume that all the country has heard it.”

“That would make you jealous. It would make any woman jealous.”

“Not if you can assure me that there is no foundation to it.”

“You cannot think that she and I are lovers!” He made it into a joke.

Amy did not laugh; she did not even smile. “I will not think it, if you can assure me it is not true.” In her pocket she was gripping tight on her rosary. It felt like a rope that might save her from drowning in the deeps of this dangerous conversation.

“Amy, you cannot think that I am her lover and plotting to divorce you, or to murder you as the gossipmongers say!”

Still she did not smile. “If you assure me that the rumors are false then I will not attend to them,” she said steadily. “Of course I have heard them, and very vivid and unpleasant they are.”

“They are most scurrilous and untrue,” he said boldly. “And I would take it very badly in you, Amy, if you were to listen to them.”

“I don’t listen to them, I listen to you. I am listening very carefully now. Can you swear on your honor that you are not in love with the queen and that you have never thought of a divorce?”

“Why do you even ask me?”

“Because I want to know. Do you want a divorce, Robert?”

“Surely, you would never consent to a divorce if such a thing were ever proposed?” he asked curiously.

Amy’s eyes flew to his face and he saw her blench as if she were sickened. For a moment she was frozen on her horse before him, her mouth a little open as she gasped, and then, very slowly, she touched her horse with her little heel and preceded him down the track toward home.

Robert followed her. “Amy…”

She did not stop, nor turn her head. He realized that he had never before called her name without her immediate response. Amy always came when he called her; generally she was at his side long before he called her. It felt very strange and unnatural that little Amy Robsart should ride away from him with her face as white as death.

“Amy…”

Steadily she rode on, looking neither to right nor left, certainly not looking back to see if he was following. In silence, she rode all the way home, and when she got to the stable yard she handed her reins to the groom and went into the house in silence.

Robert hesitated, and then followed her up the stairs to their bedroom. He did not know how to manage this strange new Amy. She went into their room and closed the door; he waited in case he could hear the sound of her turning the key in the lock. If she barred the door against him he could be angry, if she locked him out he was within his legal rights to break down the door, he had a legal right to beat her—but she did not. She closed the door; she did not lock it. He went forward and opened the door, as was his right, and went in.

She was seated at the window in her usual seat, looking out, as she so often looked out for him.

“Amy,” he said gently.

She turned her head. “Robert, enough of this. I need to know the truth. I am sickened to my heart by lies and rumor. Do you want a divorce or not?”

She was so calm that he felt, incredulously, a glimmer of hope. “Amy, what is in your mind?”

“I want to know if you want to be released from our marriage,” she said steadily. “I am perhaps not the wife you need, now that you are become such a great man. That has become clear to me over recent months.

“And God has not blessed us with children yet,” she added. “These alone might be reasons enough. But if half the gossip is true then it is possible that the queen would take you as her husband if you were free. No Dudley could resist such a temptation. Your father would have boiled his wife in oil for such a chance, and he adored her. So I ask you, please tell me honestly, my lord: do you want a divorce?”

Slowly Robert realized what she was saying; slowly it dawned on him that she had been preparing herself for this, but instead of a sense of opportunity he felt rage and distress growing in him like a storm.

“It’s too late now!” he exploded. “My God! That you should say this to me now! It’s no good you coming to your senses now, after all these years, it’s too late. It’s too late for me!”

Startled, Amy looked up at him, her face shocked at the suppressed violence in his voice. “What d’you mean?”

“She has given me up,” he cried, the truth bursting out of him in his agony. “She loved me and she knew it; she wanted to marry me and I her, but she has to have an ally for a war against France and she has given me up for the archduke or that puppy Arran.”

There was an appalled silence. “Is that why you are here?” she asked. “And why you are so grave and quiet?”

He sank into the window seat and bowed his head. Almost he felt he might weep like a woman. “Yes,” he said shortly. “Because it is all over for me. She has told me she has to be released and I have let her go. There is nothing left for me but you; whether you are the right woman or not, whether we have children or not, whether we will waste the rest of our lives together, and die hating each other, or not.”

He had his hand to his mouth; he closed his teeth on his knuckles, forcing any more words back into silence.

“You are unhappy,” she remarked.

“I have never been in a worse case in all my life,” he said shortly.

She said nothing, and in a few moments Robert mastered himself, swallowing his grief, and raised his head to look at her.

“Were you lovers?” she asked very quietly.

“What does it matter, now?”

“But were you? You can tell me the truth now, I think.”

“Yes,” he said dully. “We were lovers.”

Amy rose, and he looked up at her as she stood before him. Her face, against the brightness of the window, was in shadow. He could not see her expression. He could not tell what she was thinking. But her voice was as calm as ever.

“Then I must tell you: you have made a very grave mistake, my lord. A mistake in my nature, and in what insults I will tolerate, a mistake in yourself and how you should live. You must be mad indeed if you make such a confession to me, hoping that I might sympathize. Me, of all women: who am most hurt by this, I, who know what it is to love without return. I, who know what it is to waste a life in loving.

“You are a fool, Robert, and she is a whore indeed, as half the country thinks. She will have to invent another new religion entirely to justify the hurt that she has done to me, and the peril she has led you to. She has brought you to sin and danger; she has brought this country to the brink of ruin, to heartbreak and poverty; and she is only in the first year of her reign. What wickedness will she undertake before she is done?”

Then she drew her skirts back from him as if she would not have him touch even the hem of her gown, and walked out of the room they had shared.

The November mist was cold on the river. The queen, looking down on the shrouded Thames from the high windows of Whitehall, shivered and drew her furred gown a little closer around her.

“Still a lot better than Woodstock.” Kat Ashley smiled at her.

Elizabeth made a face. “Better than arrest in the Tower,” she said. “Better than a lot of places. But not better than midsummer. It’s freezing cold and deadly dull. Where is Sir Robert?”

Kat did not smile. “Visiting his wife still, Princess.”

Elizabeth hunched her shoulder. “There’s no need to look like that, Kat. I have a right to know where my Master of Horse is. And I have a right to expect him to attend court.”

“And he has a right to see his wife,” Kat said stoutly. “Letting him go was the best day’s work you ever did, Princess. I know it is painful for you, but…”

Elizabeth’s face was peaked with the loss of him. “It’s not a good day’s work done; your congratulations are too early,” she said sulkily. “It is a sacrifice I have to make fresh, every day. It was not the work of one day, Kat, every single day of my life I have to live without him and to know that he is living without me. Every morning I wake and know that I may not smile at him and see him look at me with love. Every night I lie down to sleep aching for him. I don’t see how to bear it. It has been forty-one days since I sent him from me, and still I am sick with love for him. It does not ease at all.”

Kat Ashley looked at the young woman whom she had known from girlhood. “He can be your friend,” she said consolingly. “You don’t have to lose him altogether.”

“It’s not his friendship I miss,” Elizabeth said bluntly. “It’s him. The very person of him. His presence. I want his shadow on my wall, I want the smell of him. I can’t eat without him, I can’t do the business of the realm. I can’t read a book without wanting his opinion, I can’t hear a tune without wanting to sing it to him. It’s like all the life and color and warmth has bled out of the world when he is not with me. I am not missing my friend, Kat. I am missing my eyes. I can’t see without him. Without him I am a blind woman.”

The doors opened and Cecil came in, his face grave. “Sir William,” Elizabeth said without much warmth. “And bringing bad news, if I judge you rightly.”

“Just news,” he said neutrally, until Kat Ashley stepped away from the two of them.

“It’s Ralph Sadler,” he said shortly, naming their agent in Berwick. “He sent our money, a thousand crowns of it, to the Lords Protestant; and Lord Bothwell, a turncoat Protestant serving the regent Mary of Guise, intercepted him and stole it. We can’t get it back.”

“A thousand crowns!” She was appalled. “That’s nearly half of all the money we raised for them.”

“And we were right to do so. The Lords Protestant are selling their very knives and plates to arm their forces. And who would have thought that Bothwell would dare betray his fellow lords? But we have lost the money, and, worse than the loss, the queen regent will know now that we are arming her enemies.”

“It was French crowns, not English coins,” she said rapidly, rushing to a lie. “We can deny everything.”

“It came from our man, Sadler at Berwick. They can hardly doubt it was our money.”

Elizabeth was appalled. “Cecil, what are we going to do?”

“It is sufficient reason for the French to declare war against us. With this, we have given them just cause.”

She turned and walked away from him, her fingers rubbing at the cuticles on her nails. “They won’t declare war on me,” she said. “Not while they think I will marry a Hapsburg. They wouldn’t dare.”

“Then you will have to marry him,” he pressed her. “They will have to know that it is going ahead. You will have to announce your betrothal and name the date of your marriage: Christmas.”

Her look was bleak. “I have no choice?”

“You know you have not. He is making ready to come to England right now.”

She tried to smile. “I shall have to marry him.”

“You will.”

Robert Dudley came back to find the court in feverish mood. Duke John of Finland had arrived to represent his master, Prince Erik of Sweden, and was scattering money and promising favors to anyone who would support his proposal of marriage to the queen.

Elizabeth, sparkling with counterfeit gaiety, danced with him, walked and talked with the archduke’s ambassador, and mystified them both as to her real intentions. When Cecil drew her to one side the smiles fell from her face like a dropped mask. The news from Scotland was grim. The Lords Protestant were encamped before Leith Castle, hoping to starve out the regent before reinforcements arrived from France; but the castle was impregnable, the queen regent inside was well supplied, and the French would be coming soon. No one trusted the Scots to hold the siege. They were an army for a speedy at tack and victory; they had no discipline for a long war. And now everyone knew that it was a war, not some petty rebellion. It was a full-blown, perilous war and none of the court’s brittle gaiety could conceal its anxiety.

Elizabeth greeted Robert pleasantly but coolly, and never invited him to be alone with her. In return, he gave her a slow, sweet smile and kept his distance.

“Is it all over between you forever?” Mary Sidney asked him, glancing from the queen seated very straight on her chair, watching the dancing, to her brother’s dark gaze, watching Elizabeth.

“Doesn’t it look like that?” he asked.

“It’s obvious that you no longer seek each other out. You are never alone with her anymore,” she said. “I wondered what you were feeling.”

“Like death,” he said simply. “Every day I wake and know that I will see her and yet I cannot whisper in her ear, or touch her hand. I cannot tempt her away from her meetings, I cannot steal her away from others. Every day I greet her like a stranger and I see the pain in her eyes. Every day I hurt her with my coldness and she destroys me with hers. It is as bad being away from court as it is being near her. The coldness between us is killing us both and I cannot even tell her that I pity her.”

He glanced briefly at his sister’s aghast face and then he looked back at the queen. “She is so alone,” he said. “I see her holding herself together by a thread. She is so afraid. And I know that, and I cannot help her.”

“Afraid?” Mary repeated.

“She is afraid for her own life, she is afraid for her country, and I imagine she is utterly terrified that she is going to have to take us into war with the French. The old Queen Mary fought the French and they defeated her and destroyed her reputation. And they are stronger now than they were then. And this time the war will be on English soil in England.”

“What will she do?”

“Delay as long as she can,” Robert predicted. “But the siege has to break one way or another, and then what?”

“And what will you do?”

“Watch her from a distance, pray for her, miss her like a mortal ache.”

In the middle of November Robert’s question was answered. The worst news came: the French queen regent’s forces had stormed out of the trap of Leith Castle and thrown their Protestant tormentors back to Stirling. The regent, for her daughter Mary, Queen of Scots, held Edinburgh once more, and the Protestant cause in Scotland was utterly defeated.

Winter 1559-60

AMY TRAVELED on the cold, wet roads back to Stanfield Hall, her girlhood home in Norfolk, for the winter season. The skies arching above the flat landscape were gray with rain clouds, the land beneath was brown speckled with gray flints, as drab as homespun and as poor. Amy rode through the cold with her hood up and her head down.

She did not expect to see Robert again before Christmas; she did not expect to see him at any time during the twelve days of the Christmas feast. She knew that he would be engaged at court, planning the festivities, organizing the masques, the players, the parties, and the hunting, for the court was determined to celebrate the winter feast, thinking, but not saying aloud, that it might be their last with Elizabeth as queen. She knew that her husband would be constantly at the side of the young queen: her lover, her friend, her intimate companion. She knew that whether they were lovers or whether they were estranged there was no one in the world for Robert but Elizabeth.

“I don’t blame him,” she whispered on her knees in Syderstone parish church, looking toward the blank space on the altar where the crucifix had once stood, looking to the plinth where a statue of the Virgin Mary had once raised her kindly stone hand to bless the faithful. “I won’t blame him,” she whispered to the empty spaces that were all that Elizabeth’s new priest had left for the faithful to turn to in prayer. “And I won’t blame her. I don’t want to blame either of them, anyone. I have to be free from my own rage and my own grief. I have to say that he can walk away from me, he can go to another woman, he can love her more than he ever loved me, and I have to release my jealousy and my pain and my grief from my heart. I have to let it all go, or it will destroy me.”

She dropped her head to her hands. “This pain in my breast which throbs all the time is my wound of grief,” she said. “It is like a spear thrust into my heart. I have to forgive him to make it heal. Every time I pluck at it with my jealousy the pain breaks out afresh. I will make myself forgive him. I will even make myself forgive her.”

She lifted her head from her hands and looked toward the altar. Faintly against the stone she could see the outline where the crucifix had hung. She closed her eyes and prayed to it as if it were still there. “I will not agree to the heresy of divorce. Even if he was to come back to me and say that she had changed her mind and she wanted them to marry, even then I would not consent to it. God joined Robert and me together; no one can put us apart. I know that. He knows that. Probably even she, in her poor sinful heart, knows that.”

In his grand rooms in Whitehall Cecil was laboring over the writing of a letter. It was addressed to the queen, but it was not in his usual brisk style of numbered points. It was a far more formal letter, composed by him for the Scottish Protestants to send to her. The circuitous route of the letter, from Cecil to Scotland, copied by the Scots lords in their own hands and sent back south urgently to the queen, was justified in Cecil’s mind because something had to shake Elizabeth into sending an English army into Scotland.

The French garrison at Leith had burst out of the siege and defeated the Scottish Protestants encamped before the castle. In the horror of his defeat the Earl of Arran, Cecil’s great hope in Scotland, was behaving most oddly: alternately raving with rage and lapsing into silence and tears. No feats of heroic leadership could be expected from poor James Hamilton, and no triumphant marriage with Elizabeth; the poor sweet-faced young man was clearly half mad and his defeat was pushing him over the brink. The Scottish lords were leaderless, on their own. Without Elizabeth’s support they were friendless too. What was a retreat now would be a rout when the French reinforcements landed, and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton, newly arrived from Paris, frantic with fear, warned that the French fleet was massing in all the Normandy ports, the troops were armed and would set sail as soon as there was a favorable wind. The ambassador swore that the French had no doubt that they would first conquer Scotland, and then march on England. They had no doubt at all that they would win.Your Grace, Cecil wrote for the Scots. As a fellow religionist, as an ally who fears the power of the French, as a neighbor and a friend, we beg you to come to our aid. If you do not support us, we stand alone against the usurping French, and there can be no doubt that after Scotland falls, the French will invade England. On that day, you will wish that you had helped us now, for there will be none of us alive to help you. We are not disloyal to Queen Mary of Scotland; we are defying her wicked advisors, the French, not her. We are defying the regent Mary of Guise who is ruling in the place of our true Queen Mary. The regent’s countrymen, French troops, are already engaged, any treaty you have with the French is already broken since they have taken up arms against us, on our soil. The regent’s family are our sworn enemies, and yours. If we had appealed like this to your father, he would have defended us and so united the kingdom; it was his great plan. Please, be your father’s true daughter and come to our aid. You can add what you like, Cecil wrote in a postscript to the Scots lords, but take care that you do not sound like rebels against a legitimate ruler; she will not support an outright rebellion. If the French have murdered any women and children by the time you come to write, you should tell her of it, and do not stint in the telling. Do not mention money; give her good reason to think that it will be a swift and cheap campaign. I leave you to tell her the current situation when this letter comes to you and you copy it and send it on. God speed, and God help you.

And God help us all, he said fearfully to himself as he folded it up and sealed it in three places with a blank seal. He had left it unsigned. Cecil only rarely put his name to anything.

A new masque, planned by Robert, was to have the ever-popular theme of Camelot; but not even he, with his determined charm, could put much joy in it.

The queen played the spirit of England, and sat on the throne while the young ladies of her chamber danced before her and the players came later with a specially written play to celebrate the greatness of Arthur’s England. There was an anti-masque of characters who threatened the golden glory of the round table, let no one doubt that one of the signs of a great kingdom was the existence of its enemies, but they were thrown down without much difficulty; in Robert’s fictional England there was no sign of Elizabeth’s constant terror of war.

Elizabeth, looking around the court through the dancers, saw Robert and made herself look past him. Robert, standing near enough to the throne to be summoned, should she want to speak to him, saw her dark eyes go by him and knew that he had been caught gazing at her.

Like a greensick boy, he said angrily to himself.

She looked once directly at him and gave him a faint smile, as if they were ghosts already, as if the shade of Elizabeth had dimly seen, through mist, the young man she had loved as a boy; and then she turned her head to Caspar von Breuner, the archduke’s ambassador, the ally that she must have, the husband she must marry, to ask him when he thought the archduke would arrive in England.

The ambassador was not to be diverted. Not even Elizabeth, with all her charm deployed, could bring a smile to his face. Finally he rose from his seat, pleading ill health.

“See the trouble you have caused?” Norfolk said sharply to Dudley.

“I?”

“Baron von Breuner thinks my cousin the queen unlikely to marry while she is openly in love with another man, and has advised the archduke not to come to England yet.”

“I am the queen’s loyal friend, as you know,” Dudley said disdainfully. “And I want nothing but what is best for her.”

“You are a damned aspiring dog,” Norfolk swore at him. “And you have stood in her light so that no prince in Europe will have her. D’you think they don’t hear the gossip? D’you think that they don’t know that you are all over her like the Sweat? D’you think they believe that you and she have called it off now? Everyone thinks that you have just stepped back for her to pick her cuckold, and no man of honor will have her.”

“You insult her; I will see you for it,” Dudley said, white with anger.

“I may insult her, but you have ruined her,” Norfolk threw back at him.

“Because some archduke won’t come to pay court?” Dudley demanded. “You are neither a true friend nor a true Englishman if you think she should marry a foreigner. Why should we have another foreign prince on the English throne? What good did Philip of Spain do us?”

“Because she must be married,” Norfolk said in a heat of rage. “And to royal blood, at any rate to a better man than a dog like you.”

“Gentlemen.” The cool tones of Sir Francis made them turn. “Noblemen indeed. The queen is looking your way; you are breaking up the pleasant harmony of the feast.”

“Tell him,” Norfolk said, pushing past Dudley. “I am beyond listening to this nonsense while my kinswoman is ruined and the country sinks without allies.”

Robert let him go. Despite himself he glanced at the throne. Elizabeth was looking toward him. The ambassador had left and in her concern for what her uncle was saying to the man she loved, she had not noticed even his farewell bow.

The Scots Protestants’ letter, duly travel-stained and authentically rewritten, came to the queen’s hand at the end of November. Cecil brought it to her and laid it on her desk as she was prowling around the room, unable to concentrate on anything.

“Are you ill?” he asked, looking at the pallor of her skin and her restlessness.

“Unhappy,” Elizabeth said shortly.

That damned Dudley, he thought to himself, and moved the letter a little closer so that she would open it.

She read it slowly.

“This gives you cause to send an army to Scotland,” Cecil said to her. “This is an appeal by the united lords of Scotland for your help in resisting a usurping power: the French. No one can say you are invading for your own ends. No one can say that you are overthrowing a legitimate queen. This is your invitation from the legitimate lords, citing their justifiable grievances. You can say ‘yes.’”

“No,” she said nervously. “Not yet.”

“We have sent funds,” Cecil enumerated. “We have sent observers. We know that the Scots lords will fight well. We even know that they can defeat Mary of Guise; they threw her back right to the very shore of the sea at Leith. We know that the French will come, but they have not yet set sail. They are waiting for the weather to change. Only the wind stands between us and invasion. Only the very air stands between us and disaster. We know this is our moment. We have to take it.”

She rose from her desk. “Cecil, half the Privy Council warn me that we are certain to lose. Lord Clinton, the High Admiral, says he cannot guarantee that our navy could hold off a French fleet; they have better ships and better guns. The Earl of Pembroke, the Marquess of Winchester advise me against going into Scotland; your own brother-in-law, Nicholas Bacon, says the risk is too great. Caspar von Breuner warns me in secret that although he and the emperor are my friends, they are certain that we will lose. The French court laughs out loud at the thought of us trying to make war against them. They find it laughable that we should even dream of it. Everyone I ask tells me that we are certain to lose.”

“We are certain to lose if we leave it too late,” Cecil said. “But I think we can possibly win if we send our army now.”

“Perhaps in the spring,” she temporized.

“In the spring the French fleet will be moored in Leith dock and the French will have garrisoned every castle in Scotland against us. You might as well send them the keys now and be done with it.”

“It is a risk, it is such a risk,” Elizabeth said miserably, turning to the window, rubbing at her fingernails in her nervousness.

“I know it. But you have to take it. You have to take the risk because the chance of winning now is greater than you will ever have later.”

“We can send more money,” she said miserably. “Gresham can borrow more money for us. But I dare not do more.”

“Take advice,” he urged her. “Let us see what the Privy Council has to say.”

“I have no advisors,” she said desolately.

Dudley again, Cecil thought. She can barely live without him. Aloud he said bracingly: “Your Grace, you have a whole council of advisors. We shall consult them tomorrow.”

But the next day, before the meeting of the Privy Council, there came a visitor from Scotland. Lord Maitland of Lethington came in disguise, authorized by the other Scots lords secretly to offer the queen the crown of Scotland if she would only support them against the French.

“So, they have despaired of Arran,” Cecil said, his joy so great that he could almost taste it on his tongue. “They want you.”

For a moment Elizabeth’s ready ambition leapt up. “Queen of France, Scotland, Wales, Ireland, and England,” she breathed. “Lands from Aberdeen to Calais. I would be one of the greatest princes in Europe, one of the richest.”

“This makes the future of the kingdom a certainty,” Cecil promised her. “Think of what England could do if joined with Scotland! We would be safe at last, and safe forever from the danger of invasion from the north. We would break the risk of invasion from the French. We could use the strength and wealth of Scotland to go onward and forward. We would become a mighty power in Christendom. Who can tell what we might achieve? The Crown of England and Scotland together would be a power in the world that would be recognized by everyone! We would be the first great Protestant kingdom that the world has ever known.”

For a moment he thought he had managed to give her his own vision of the destiny she could claim.

Then she turned her head away. “This is to entrap me,” she complained. “When the French invade Scotland I would have to fight them. They would be on my land; I could not ignore it. This would force us to fight them.”

“We will have to fight them anyway!” Cecil exclaimed at the circularity of her thinking. “But this way, if we win, you are Queen of England and Scotland!”

“But if we lose then I am beheaded as Queen of England and Scotland.”

He had to control his impatience. “Your Grace, this is an extraordinary offer from the Scots lords. This is the end of years …no…of centuries of enmity. If we win, you have united the kingdom, as your father wanted, as your grandfather dreamed. You have the chance to be the greatest monarch England has ever known. You have the chance to make a united kingdom of these islands.”

“Yes,” Elizabeth said unhappily. “But what if we lose?”

It was Christmas Eve, but the court was far from merry. Elizabeth sat very still in her chair at the head of the table, her Privy Councillors around her, her only movement the constant rubbing at the cuticles of her fingernails, buffing her nails with her fingertips.

Cecil concluded his arguments in favor of war, certain that no one of any sense could disagree with the relentless plod of his logic. There was a silence as his peers took in his long list.

“But what if we lose?” the queen said bleakly.

“Exactly.” Sir Nicholas Bacon agreed with her.

Cecil saw she was in an agony of fear.

“Spirit,” she said, her voice very low. “God help me, but I cannot order a war on France. Not on our own doorstep. Not without certainty of winning. Not without—” She broke off.

She means not without Dudley’s support, he thought. Oh, merciful God, why did you give us a princess when we so desperately need a king? She cannot take a decision without the support of a man, and that man is a fool and a traitor.

The door opened and Sir Nicholas Throckmorton came in, bowed to the queen, and laid a paper before Cecil. He glanced at it and then looked up at the queen and his fellow councillors. “The wind has changed,” he said.

For a moment Elizabeth did not understand what he meant.

“The French fleet has sailed.”

There was a sharply indrawn breath from every councillor. Elizabeth blanched a paler white. “They are coming?” she whispered.

“Forty ships,” Cecil said.

“We only have fourteen,” Elizabeth said, and he could hardly make out the words, her lips were so stiff and cold she could hardly speak.

“Let them set sail,” Cecil whispered to her, as persuasive as a lover. “Let our ships get out of harbor where they can at least intercept the stragglers of the French fleet, perhaps engage them. For God’s sake, don’t keep them in port where the French can sail in and burn them as they go by!”

The fear of losing her ships was greater than her fear of war. “Yes,” she said uncertainly. “Yes, they should set sail. They must not be caught in port.”

Cecil bowed swiftly, dashed off a note, and took it to the doorway for a waiting messenger. “I am obliged to you,” he said. “And now we must declare war on the French.”

Elizabeth, her lips nipped raw and her cuticles picked away, walked through the court on her way to take communion on Christmas Day like a haunted woman, a smile pinned on her face like a red frayed ribbon.

In her chapel she looked across and found that Robert Dudley was looking at her. He gave her a little smile. “Courage!” he whispered.

She looked at him as if he was the only friend she had in the world. He half rose from his seat, as if he would go to her, crossing the aisle of the church before the whole of the court. She shook her head and turned away so that she should not see the longing in his eyes, so that he should not see the hunger in hers.

The Christmas Day feast was carried out with joyless competence. The choristers sang, the ranks of serving men presented course after course of elaborate and glorious dishes, Elizabeth pushed aside one plate after another. She was beyond eating; she was beyond even pretending to eat.

After dinner, when the ladies were dancing in a masque specially prepared for the occasion, Cecil came and stood behind her chair. “What?” she said ungraciously.

“The Hapsburg ambassador tells me that he is planning to return to Vienna,” Cecil said quietly. “He has given up hopes of the marriage between you and the archduke. He does not want to wait anymore.”

She was too exhausted to protest. “Oh. Shall we let him go?” she asked dully.

“You will not marry the archduke?” Cecil said. It was hardly a question.

“I would have married him if he had come,” she said. “But I could not marry a man I had never seen, and Cecil, as God is my witness, I am pulled so low I cannot think of courtship now. It is too late to save me from war whether he stays or goes, and I never cared a groat for him anyway. I need a friend I can trust, not a suitor who has to have everything signed and sealed before he will come to me. He promised me nothing and he wanted every guarantee a husband could have.”

Cecil did not correct her. He had seen her under house arrest, and in fear of her own death, and yet he thought he had never seen her so drained of joy as she was at this feast, only her second Christmas on the throne.

“It’s too late,” Elizabeth said sadly, as if she were already defeated. “The French have sailed. They must be off our coasts now. They were not enough afraid of the archduke; they knew they would defeat him as they defeated Arran. What good is he to me now the French are at sea?”

“Be of good cheer, Princess,” Cecil said. “We still have an alliance with Spain. Be merry. We can beat the French without the archduke.”

“We can lose without him too,” was all she said.

Three days later Elizabeth called another meeting of the Privy Council. “I have prayed for guidance,” she said. “I have spent all night on my knees. I cannot do this. I dare not take us to war. The ships must stay in port; we cannot take on the French.”

There was a stunned silence, then every man waited for Cecil to tell her. He looked around for an ally; they all avoided his eyes.

“But the ships have gone, Your Grace,” he said flatly.

“Gone?” She was aghast.

“The fleet set sail the moment you gave the command,” he said.

Elizabeth gave a little moan and clung to the high back of a chair as her knees gave way. “How could you do this, Cecil? You are a very traitor to send them out.”

There was a sharp indrawn breath from the council at her use of that potent, dangerous word, but Cecil never wavered.

“It was your own order,” he said steadily. “And the right thing to do.”

The court waited for news from Scotland and it came in contradictory, nerve-racking snippets that sent people into nervous, whispering huddles in corners. Many men were buying gold and sending it out of the country to Geneva, to Germany, so that when the French came, as they were almost certain to do, an escape might be easily made. The value of English coin, already rock bottom, plummeted to nothing.

There was no faith in the English fleet, hopelessly outnumbered and outgunned, no faith in the queen, who was clearly ill with fear. Then came disastrous news: the entire English fleet, Elizabeth’s precious fourteen ships, had been caught in a storm and were all missing.

“There!” the queen cried out in wild grief to Cecil before the whole Privy Council. “If you had let me delay them, they would have avoided the gales, and I would have a fleet ready to go, instead of all my ships missing at sea!”

Cecil said nothing; there was nothing he could say.

“My fleet! My ships!” she mourned. “Lost by your impatience, by your folly, Cecil. And now the kingdom open to invasion, and no sea defense, and our poor boys, lost at sea.”

It was long days before the news came that the ships had been recovered, and a fleet of eleven of the fourteen had anchored in the Firth of Forth and were supplying the Scots lords as they laid siege once more to Leith Castle.

“Three ships lost already!” Elizabeth said miserably, huddled over a fire in her privy chamber, picking at the skin around her fingers, more like a sulky girl than a queen. “Three ships lost, and not a shot fired!”

“Eleven ships safe,” Cecil said stubbornly. “Think of that. Eleven ships safe and in the Firth of Forth, supporting the siege against Mary of Guise. Think how she must feel, looking from her window and seeing the Scots beneath her walls and the English fleet in her harbor.”

“She only sees eleven ships,” she said stubbornly. “Three lost already. God save that they are not the first losses of many. We must call them back while we still have the eleven. Cecil, I dare not do this without certainty of winning.”

“There is never a certainty of winning,” he declared. “It will always be a risk but you have to take it now, Your Grace.”

“Spirit, please, don’t ask it of me.”

She was panting, working herself into one of her tantrums, but he continued to press her. “You may not rescind the order.”

“I am too afraid.”

“You cannot play the woman now; you have to have the heart and stomach of a man. Find your courage, Elizabeth. You are your father’s daughter; play the king. I have seen you be as brave as any man.”

For a moment he thought that the flattering lie had persuaded her. Her chin came up, her color rose, but then he saw the spark suddenly drain from her eyes and she drooped again.

“I cannot,” she said. “You have never seen me be a king. I have always been nothing more than a clever and duplicitous woman. I can’t fight openly. I never have. There will be no war.”

“You will have to learn to be a king,” Cecil warned her. “One day you will have to say that you are just a weak woman but you have the heart and stomach of a king. You cannot rule this kingdom without being its king.”

She shook her head, stubborn as a frightened red-headed mule. “I dare not.”

“You cannot recall the ships; you have to declare war.”

“No.”

He took a breath and tested his own resolve. Then he drew his letter of resignation from inside his doublet. “Then I have to beg you to release me.”

Elizabeth whirled around. “What? What is this?”

“Release me. I cannot serve you. If you will not take my advice on this matter which so nearly concerns the safety of the kingdom then I cannot serve you. In failing to convince you, I have failed you, and I have failed my office. Anything in the world I can do for you, I will. You know how dear you are to me, as dear as a wife or a daughter. But if I cannot prevail upon you to send our army to Scotland then I have to leave your service.”

For a moment she went so white that he thought she might faint. “You are jesting with me,” she said breathlessly. “To force me to agree.”

“No.”

“You would never leave me.”

“I have to. Someone else who can convince you of your right interest should serve you. I am become the base that drives out the good. I am disregarded. I am lightweight. I am counterfeit like a coin.”

“Not disregarded, Spirit. You know…”

He bowed very low. “I will do anything else Your Grace commands, any other service though it were in Your Majesty’s kitchen or garden; I am ready without respect of estimation, wealth, or ease to do Your Majesty’s commandment to my life’s end.”

“Spirit, you cannot leave me.”

Cecil started to walk backward to the door. She stood like a bereft child, her hands outstretched to him. “William! Please! Am I to be left with no one?” she demanded. “This Scotland has already cost me the only man I love; is it going to cost me my greatest advisor and friend? You, who have been my constant friend and advisor since I was a girl?”

He paused at the door. “Please take steps to defend yourself,” he said quietly. “As soon as the Scots have been defeated, the French will come through England faster than we have ever seen an army move. They will come here and throw you from your throne. Please, for your own sake, prepare a refuge for yourself and a way to escape to it.”

“Cecil!” It was a little wail of misery.

He bowed again and went to the door. He went out. He waited outside. He had been certain that she would run after him, but there was silence. Then he heard, from inside the room, a muffled sob as Elizabeth broke down.

“You are so devout, people are starting to say that you pray like a Papist,” Lady Robsart of Stanfield Hall remarked critically to her stepdaughter Amy. “It doesn’t reflect very well on us; your brother-in-law said only the other day that you looked very odd in church, you were still on your knees as people were going out.”

“I am very much in need of grace,” Amy said, not in the least embarrassed.

“You’re not like yourself at all,” her stepmother went on. “You used to be so… lighthearted. Well, not lighthearted, but not pious. Not one for constant prayer, at any rate.”

“I was once secure in my father’s love, and then secure in my husband’s love, and now I have neither,” Amy said flatly. Her voice did not quaver; there were no tears in her eyes.

Lady Robsart was stunned into momentary silence. “Amy, my dear, I know there has been much gossip about him but…”

“It is true,” she said shortly. “He told me the truth himself. But he has given her up so that she can marry the archduke to get Spain to join with us in a war against the French.”

Lady Robsart was stunned. “He told you this? He confessed it all?”

“Yes.” For a moment Amy looked almost rueful. “I think he thought I would be sorry for him. He was so sorry for himself he thought I must sympathize. I have always sympathized with him before. He is in the habit of bringing his sorrows to me.”

“Sorrows?”

“This has cost him very dear,” Amy said. “There must have been a moment when he thought she might love him, and I might let him go, and he might fulfill his father’s dream and put a Dudley on the throne of England. His brother married the heir to the throne, Jane Grey; his sister is married to Henry Hastings, next in line after Mary, Queen of Scots; he must feel it is his family’s destiny.” She paused. “And of course, he is deeply in love with her,” she said, matter-of-fact.

“In love,” Lady Robsart repeated, as if she had never heard such words before. “In love with the Queen of England.”

“I can see it in everything he says,” Amy said quietly. “He loved me once, but everyone thought he condescended to the marriage, and it was always true that he thought very highly of himself. But with her it is different. He is a man transformed. She is his lover but still his queen; he admires her as well as desires her. He…” She paused to find the words. “He aspires to love her, whereas I was always an easy love.”

“Amy, are you not heartbroken?” her stepmother asked, feeling her way with this new, composed woman. “I thought he was everything to you?”

“I am sick to my very soul,” Amy said quietly. “I never knew that anyone could feel such a grief. It is like an illness, like a canker which eats at me every day. That is why I seem devout. The only relief for me is to pray that God will take me to his own and then Robert and she can do as they please, and I will be free from pain at last.”

“Oh, my dear!” Lady Robsart stretched out her hand to Amy. “Don’t say that. He’s not worth it. No man in the world is worth shedding a tear for. Least of all him who has cost you so much already.”

“I think my heart is really broken,” Amy said quietly. “I think it must be. The pain in my breast is so sharp and constant that I think it will be the death of me. It is truly heartbreak. I don’t think it will mend. It doesn’t matter whether he is worth it or not. It is done. Even if she were to marry the archduke and Robert were to come riding home to me and say that it was all a mistake, how could we be happy again? My heart is broken and it will always be broken from now on.”

The queen’s ladies could do nothing to please her; she stalked about her rooms at Whitehall Palace like a vexed lioness. She sent for, and then dismissed, her musicians. She would not read. She could not rest. She was in a frenzy of worry and distress. She wanted to send for Cecil; she could not imagine how she would manage without him. She wanted to send for her uncle, but no one knew where he was, and then she changed her mind and did not want to see him anyway. There were petitioners waiting to see her in her chamber but she would not go out to them; the dressmaker came with some furs from Russia but she would not even look at them. Prince Erik of Sweden had written her a twelve-page letter, pinned with a diamond, but she could not be troubled to read it.

Nothing could free Elizabeth from the terror that rode her like a hag. She was a young woman in only the second year of her reign, and yet she had to decide whether or not to commit her kingdom to war against an unbeatable enemy, and the two men she trusted above all others had both left her.

Sometimes she was certain that she was making a mistake from her own cowardice; at other moments she was certain she was protecting her country from disaster; all the time she was terrified that she was making a deep and grave mistake.

“I’m going for Sir Robert,” Laetitia Knollys whispered to her mother after watching Elizabeth’s frantic turning all morning from one unfinished activity to another.

“Not without her order,” Catherine replied.

“Yes,” Laetitia insisted. “He’s the only man who can comfort her, and if she goes on like this she will make herself ill and drive us all mad.”

“Lettice!” her mother said sharply but already the girl had slipped from the room and gone to Robert’s chambers.

He was paying bills, a great money chest open before him, his steward presenting accounts and counting out coins for the huge costs of the stables.

Laetitia tapped on the door and peeped into the room.

“Mistress Knollys,” Robert said levelly. “This is an improper honor indeed.”

“It’s about the queen,” she said.

At once he leapt up, his quizzical look quite gone. “Is she safe?”

Laetitia noted that his first thought was that Elizabeth might have been attacked. So her father was right; they were all in the greatest of danger, all the time.

“She is safe, but much distressed.”

“She sent for me?”

“No. I came without being told. I thought you should come to her.”

He gave her a slow smile. “You are a most extraordinary girl,” he said. “Why did you take such a task on yourself?”

“She’s beside herself,” Laetitia confided. “It’s the war with Scotland. She can’t decide, and she has to decide. And now she has lost Cecil, and she seems to have lost you. She has no one. Sometimes she thinks ‘yes’, sometimes she thinks ‘no’, but she’s not happy with either decision. She is as jumpy as a rabbit with a ferret on its scut.”

Robert frowned at the impertinence of her language. “I’ll come,” he said. “And I thank you for telling me.”

She slid him a flirtatious smile under her dark eyelashes. “If I was the queen, I would want you at my side all the time,” she said. “War or no war.”

“And how are your wedding plans?” he asked urbanely. “Dress made? Everything ready? Groom impatient?”

“Thank you, yes,” she said, quite composed. “And how is Lady Dudley? Not ill, I hope? Coming to court soon?”

In the queen’s chambers, Elizabeth was at her seat by the fire, her ladies scattered around the room, tensely waiting for what she might next demand. Other courtiers stood about, hoping to be invited to speak with her, but Elizabeth would hear no petitions, would be distracted by no one.

Dudley came in, and at the sound of his step she turned at once. The leap of joy into her face could not be hidden. She rose to her feet: “Oh, Robert!”

Without further invitation he went up to her and drew her with him into a window bay, away from the curious stares of her ladies. “I knew you were unhappy,” he said. “I had to come. I could not stay away a moment longer.”

“How did you know?” she demanded. She could not stop herself leaning toward him. The very scent of his clothes, of his hair, was a deep comfort to her. “How did you ever know that I need you so badly?”

“Because I cannot rest without being near you,” he said. “Because I need you too. Has something upset you?”

“Cecil has left me,” she said brokenly. “I cannot manage without him.”

“I knew he had gone, of course; but why?” Robert asked, though he had received a full report from Thomas Blount on the day that Cecil left.

“He said he would not stay with me unless we made war on the French and I don’t dare, Robert, I really don’t dare, and yet how can I rule without Cecil at my side?”

“Good God, I thought he would never leave you. I thought you and he had sworn an oath.”

Elizabeth’s mouth was working. “I thought he never would,” she said. “I would have trusted him with my life. But he says he cannot serve me if I will not listen to him, and Robert …I am too afraid.”

The last words were a little thread of sound; she glanced around the room as if her fear were a most shameful secret that she could only trust to him.

Ah, it’s not just the war, he thought. Cecil is like a father to her. He’s the advisor she has trusted for years. And Cecil has a view of this country unlike any other. He really does think of it as a nation in its own right, not a motley crew of warring families which was my father’s view… mine too. Cecil’s love of England, his very belief in England, is a greater vision than mine or hers. He keeps her steady, he keeps her faithful, even if it’s nothing but a dream.

“I’m here now,” he said, as if his presence would be enough to comfort her. “We’ll talk together after dinner, and we will decide what should be done. You’re not alone, my love. I am here to help you.”

She leaned closer. “I can’t do it on my own,” she whispered to him, “It’s too much. I can’t decide, I am too afraid. I don’t know how to decide. And I never see you now. I gave you up for Scotland, and now it has cost me Cecil too.”

“I know,” Robert said. “But I will be at your side again, I’ll stand your friend. No one can blame us. The archduke has cooled of his own accord, and Arran is defeated, good for nothing. No one can say that I’m standing between you and a good marriage. And I’ll get Cecil back for you. He shall advise us and we shall decide. You don’t have to be the judge of it on your own, my love, my dearest love. I shall be with you now. I shall stay with you.”

“It can make no difference to us.” She hesitated. “I can’t be your lover ever again. I shall have to marry someone. If not this year, then next.”

“Just let me be at your side until then,” he said simply. “Neither of us can bear our lives when we are apart.”

That night at dinner the queen laughed at her fool for the first time in many weeks, and Sir Robert sat at her side once more and poured her wine.

“This wet weather has got into the very timbers of the roof,” he remarked as the servants took the meats and the puddings off the table and brought the sweetmeats and the sugared fruits. “My room is so damp, you can see the steam coming off my linen when Tamworth holds it before the fire in the morning.”

“Tell them to change your rooms,” she said lightly. “Tell the groom of the household to put you back in your old rooms beside mine.”

He waited. He knew the way forward with Elizabeth was not to press her. He decided that he would do nothing more than wait for her.

At midnight, the door between the two rooms slid open and she came quietly in. She was wearing a dark blue robe over her white shift, her red hair was brushed and shining over her shoulders.

“My Robert?”

The table before the fire was laid with supper for two, the fire was lit, the bed was turned down, the door was locked, and Tamworth, Sir Robert’s valet, was on guard outside.

“My love,” he said and took her in his arms.

She nestled close. “I cannot live without you,” she said. “We have to keep this secret, a most deep secret. But I cannot be queen without you, Robert.”

“I know,” he said. “I cannot live without you.”

She looked up at him. “What will we do?”

He shrugged his shoulders, his smile was almost rueful. “I think we have gone beyond choice. We will have to marry, Elizabeth.”

She glanced toward the window where one of the shutters stood open. “Close the shutters,” the queen said in sudden superstitious fear. “I don’t want even the moon to see us.”

In her old bedroom at Stanfield Hall Amy woke with a start and found that the covers had slid from her bed and that she was freezing cold. She reached down to her feet and grabbed the linen sheets, the woolen rugs, and pulled them up to her shivering shoulders. She had left one of the shutters open, and the moon, a big, bold, creamy moon, was laying a path of light on her pillow. She lay down and looked out of the window to the moon.

“The same moon that is shining on me is shining on my lord,” she whispered. “Perhaps it will wake him too, and make him think of me. Perhaps God will waken his love for me in his heart once more. Even now, perhaps he is thinking of me.”

“You played me as a fool!” Mary Sidney raged at her brother, striding up to him in the Whitehall Palace stable yard. He and half a dozen other men were practicing for a joust, his horse was already armed, his squire standing by with his beautifully polished breastplate, his helmet, his lance.

Robert was distracted. He snapped his fingers for his pageboy with his gauntlets. “What is it, Mary? What have I done?”

“You sent me on a fool’s errand to tell the ambassador that the queen would marry the archduke. You sent me knowing that since I believed you, since I was deeply, deeply grieved for you, that I would tell a convincing tale. I was the best person in court to send to him. D’you know I wept as I told him that you had given her up? And so of course, he believed me, and yet all along it was just a plot to throw dust in the eyes of the court.”

“What dust?” Robert was all innocence.

“You and the queen are lovers,” she spat at him. “You probably have been from the first day. You probably were lovers when I thought you were grieving for the loss of her. And you made me play pander to you.”

“The queen and I agreed to part for her safety,” he said steadily. “That was true. As I told you. But she needs friends, Mary, you know that. I have come back to her side to be her friend. And we are friends, as I said we would be.”

She pulled away from his outstretched hand. “Oh, no, not another pack of lies, Robert; I won’t hear them. You are faithless to Amy, and you are dishonest with me. I told the ambassador that I knew for a fact that the queen and you were true friends and that she was a virgin, free to marry and a chaste princess. I swore on my immortal soul that there was nothing between you but friendship and a few kisses.”

“And there is not!”

“Don’t speak to me!” she cried passionately. “Don’t lie to me. I won’t hear another word.”

“Come with me to the tilt yard….”

“I shan’t watch you, I shan’t talk with you. I don’t even want to see you, Robert. There is nothing to you but ambition. God help your wife, and God help the queen.”

“Amen,” he said, smiling. “Amen to both, for they are both good women and innocent of any wrongdoing, and indeed God bless me and all Dudleys as we rise in the world.”

“And what has Amy done that she should be shamed before the world?” she demanded of him. “What sin has she ever done, for everyone in England to know that you have no liking for her? That you prefer another woman instead of her, your own true wife?”

“She has done nothing,” he said. “And I have done nothing. Really, Mary, you shouldn’t throw such accusations around.”

“Don’t you dare speak to me!” she swore again, quite beyond herself with rage. “I have nothing to say to you, and I will never have another word to say to you on this. You have played me as a fool and played the Spanish as fools and played your poor wife as a fool, and all along you have been lovers with the queen and you stay as lovers with the queen.”

In one swift stride Robert was at her side with her wrist in a hard grip. “Now that is enough,” he said. “You have said quite enough, and I have heard more than enough. The queen’s reputation is beyond comment. She is going to marry the right suitor as soon as he comes along. We all know that. Amy is my wife and I will hear nothing against her. I visited her in October, and I shall visit her again shortly. Cecil himself gets home no more frequently than that.”

“Cecil loves his wife and no one doubts his honor!” she flared up.

“And no one questions mine,” he said sharply. “You can keep your poisonous little tongue off my affairs or you will spoil more than you understand. Be warned, Mary.”

She was unafraid. “Are you mad, Robert?” she demanded. “Do you think you can fool the best spies in Europe as you fool your sister and your wife? In Madrid, in Paris, in Vienna, they know that you and the queen have adjoining rooms once more. What do you think they make of it? The Hapsburg archduke won’t come to England while you and the queen sleep behind locked doors, one panel of wood between you. Everyone but your poor wife believes that you are lovers; the whole country knows it. You have ruined the queen’s prospects with your lusts; you have ruined Amy’s love for you. Pray God you do not ruin the kingdom too.”

Mary’s warning came too late, and could not prevent the scandalous intimacy between the queen and her Master of Horse. With Robert at her side once more, Elizabeth’s color came back into her cheeks, her fingernails were buffed and shining and the cuticles smooth. She glowed in his company, her constant nervousness was quieted when he was near. It did not matter what anyone might say, they were clearly born for each other, and they could not conceal it. They rode together every day, they danced together every night, and Elizabeth had the courage to open her letters and listen to petitions once more.

In the absence of Cecil, Robert was her only trusted advisor. No one was seen by the queen except by Dudley’s introduction; she never spoke to anyone without him standing, discreetly, in the background. He was her only friend and her ally. She took no decision without him; they were inseparable. Duke John of Sweden danced around the court but hardly pressed his suit, William Pickering retired quietly to the country to try to economize on his massive debts, Caspar von Breuner came only rarely to court and everyone had forgotten the Earl of Arran.

Cecil, staying firmly on the outskirts of the young couple and their courtiers, remarked to Throckmorton that this was no way to rule a country on the brink of war and learned that she had just appointed Dudley as Lord Lieutenant and Constable of Windsor Castle, with fees to match.

“He will be the richest man in England if this goes on,” Cecil observed.

“Rich: nothing. He means to be king,” Sir Nicholas replied, saying the unsayable. “And then how d’you think the country will be run?”

Cecil said nothing. Only the evening before a man whose face was hidden by his hat pulled down low on his brow had tapped at Cecil’s door and in a gruff voice asked him if he would join with three others in an attack on Dudley.

“Why come to me?” Cecil asked. “I take it you can bludgeon him to death on your own account without my permission.”

“Because the queen’s guards protect him and they follow your rule,” the stranger said. Cecil moved a branch of candles on his desk and caught a glimpse of the angry face of Thomas Howard half hidden under the concealing cap. “And when he is dead, she will ask you to discover his murderers. We don’t want your spies on us. We don’t want to hang for him any more than we would hang for killing vermin.”

“You must do as you think best,” Cecil said, choosing his words with care. “But I will not protect you after the murder.”

“Would you prevent us from doing it?”

“I am responsible for the safety of the queen. I daresay, sadly, I cannot prevent you.”

The man laughed. “In short you wouldn’t mind him dead but you won’t take a risk,” he taunted.

Cecil had nodded equably. “I think no one in England but the queen and his wife would mind at all,” he said frankly. “But I will not be party to a plot against him.”

“What’s amusing you?” Throckmorton asked, glancing round the court for the reason for Cecil’s smile.

“Thomas Howard,” Cecil answered. “He’s not exactly a master of subtlety, is he?”

Throckmorton glanced over. Thomas Howard had managed to enter the double open doors to the presence chamber just as Dudley was coming out. Everyone gave way to Dudley now, with the exception perhaps of Cecil, and Cecil would never have timed his entrance so that he was head to head with the royal favorite. Howard was standing his ground like an angry heifer.

In a moment, Cecil thought, he will paw the floor and bellow.

Dudley eyed him with the coolest of contempt, and then went to pass him.

At once Howard sidestepped and jostled him. “I beg your pardon but I am coming in,” he said loudly enough for everyone to hear. “I! A Howard! And the Queen’s uncle.”

“Oh, please, do not beg my pardon for I am leaving,” Dudley said, the laughter warm in his voice. “It is those hapless men that you are about to join who deserve your apology.”

Howard choked on his words. “You are offensive!” he spluttered.

Dudley went quietly by him, serene in his power.

“You are a damned upstart, from nowhere!” Thomas Howard shouted at his back.

“Will he let that go, d’you think?” Throckmorton asked Cecil, quite fascinated at the little drama before them. “Is he as cool as he seems? Will he ignore Thomas Howard?”

“Not him,” Cecil said. “And he probably knows that he is in real danger.”

“A plot?”

“One of dozens. I think we can expect to see young Thomas Howard as the next ambassador to the Turkish court. I think it will be the Ottoman empire for the Howards, and a long posting.”

Cecil was wrong only in the destination.

“I think Thomas Howard should strengthen our defenses in the north,” Dudley remarked to the queen that night when they were alone, a slight smile warming his glance. “He is so fierce and warlike.”

At once Elizabeth was alert, fearful for him. “Is he threatening you?”

“That puppy? Hardly,” Robert said proudly. “But you do need someone you can trust in the north, and since he is spoiling for a fight, let him fight the French rather than me.”

The queen laughed, as though Robert’s words were meant as a joke, but the next day she awarded her uncle a new title: he was to be Lieutenant General of the Scottish border.

He bowed as he accepted the commission. “I know why I am sent away, Your Grace,” he said with the prickly dignity of a young man. “But I will serve you faithfully. And I think you may find I am a better servant to you in Newcastle than some who hide behind your petticoats in London, far from danger.”

Elizabeth had the grace to look abashed. “I need someone I can trust,” she said. “We must hold the French north of Berwick. They cannot come into the heart of England.”

“I am honored with your trust,” he said sarcastically, and took his leave, ignoring the rumors that swirled around his departure, the gossip that said that Elizabeth had put her own family in the very front of the line, rather than embarrass her lover.

“Why not just behead him and get it over with?” Catherine Knollys asked.

Elizabeth giggled to her cousin, but faced a reprimand from her old governess as soon as they were alone together.

“Princess!” Kat Ashley exclaimed despairingly. “This is as bad as it ever was. What will everyone think? Everyone believes that you are as much in love with Sir Robert as ever. The archduke will never come to England now. No man would risk being so insulted.”

“If he had come for me when he had promised, I would have married him. I gave my word,” Elizabeth said lightly, secure in the knowledge that he would not come now, and that if he did, Robert would think of some way out of it.

But Kat Ashley, Mary Sidney, and all the court were right: he would not come now. The ambassador, deeply offended, asked to be recalled, and wrote to his master that he thought the whole episode of Lady Sidney coming to him and begging him to propose once more to the queen had been nothing more than a plot to take the attention from the clandestine love affair which was notorious once more throughout England and throughout Europe. He wrote that the queen had become a young woman inured to shame, corrupted without hope, and that he could recommend no honorable man to marry her, let alone a prince. She was living as a whore to a married man and their only way out was a semi-legal divorce, or the death of his wife: which was hardly likely.

Cecil, reading the first draft of this letter, retrieved by Cecil’s agent from the ambassador’s kindling paper basket, thought that his foreign policy lay in ruins, that England’s safety could not be guaranteed, and that the Queen of England had run mad for lust and would lose the war in Scotland and then her head, and all for a smile from a dark- eyed man.

But when Elizabeth summoned Cecil by name he came to her at once.

“You were right, I am sure of it now,” she said quietly. “I have found the courage you wanted me to find. I am quite decided on war.”

Cecil glanced past her to where Sir Robert leaned against the shutters of the window, apparently absorbed in a game of bowls taking place in the cold garden below.

So we have the benefit of your advice, do we? And you, in your wisdom, have decided to adopt a policy I have been begging her to deploy for months. Aloud, Cecil asked: “What has Your Grace decided?”

“We shall invade Scotland and defeat the French,” she said calmly.

Cecil bowed, hiding his sense of intense relief. “I shall see that the moneys are raised and the army mustered,” he said. “You will want to meet with the Privy Council and issue a proclamation of war.”

Elizabeth glanced toward Robert. Minutely, he nodded his head. “Yes,” she said.

Cecil, too wise to object to advice that agreed with his own, merely bowed again.

“And Cecil, you will be my Lord Secretary again, won’t you? Now that I have taken your advice?”

“What of the archduke?” he asked.

Robert, at the window, recognized at once that the question was not as irrelevant as it seemed, striking as it did at the very heart of what he was doing there, within earshot of the queen and her most trusted advisor, nodding through her decisions as if he were her husband and king-consort. But this time, the queen did not even look at Robert.

“I shall be betrothed to the archduke as soon as he comes to England,” she said. “I know that the alliance with Spain is more vital than ever.”

“You know very well that he will not come,” Cecil said flatly. “You know that his ambassador is leaving London.”

Robert levered himself up from the shutter. “Doesn’t matter,” he said briefly to Cecil. “King Philip of Spain will stand her ally against France, marriage or no marriage. He cannot risk the French creating a kingdom in England. Their borders would run from Perth to the Mediterranean; they would destroy Spain after they had enslaved us.”