The Virgin's Lover

“Let me in, wife,” he said, and walked past her into his hall. “I’ll take a glass of ale,” he said sternly. “It was hot work riding home in this heat.”

“I am sorry,” she said briefly. She poured him the ale and bit her tongue while he settled himself in his own chair and took a long draught.

“That’s better,” he said. “Is dinner ready?”

“Of course,” she said respectfully. “We were just awaiting your return.”

She made herself stand in silence until he took another swig of ale and then turned and looked at her.

“Now then,” he said. “What’s all this?”

“It’s Lady Dudley,” she said. “Very ill. Sick, and with a pain in her breast.”

“Better send for a physician,” he said. “Dr. Bayly.”

Mrs. Forster nodded. “I’ll send someone for him at once.”

He rose from his seat. “I’ll wash my hands before dinner.” He paused. “Is she fit to see me? Will she come down for dinner?”

“No,” she said. “I think not.”

He nodded. “This is very inconvenient, wife,” he said. “To have her in our house at all is to share in her disgrace. She cannot enjoy a long illness here.”

“I don’t think she’s enjoying anything,” she said acidly.

“I daresay not,” he said with brief sympathy. “But she cannot stay here for longer than the appointed time, sick or not.”

“Has his lordship forbidden you to offer hospitality to her?”

Mr. Forster shook his head. “He doesn’t have to,” he said. “You don’t have to get wet to learn it’s raining. I know which way the wind is blowing, and it’s not me that will catch cold.”

“I’ll send for the doctor,” his wife said. “Perhaps he will say it was just riding in the heat that made her sick.”

The Cumnor stable lad made good time and reached Oxford as Dr. Bayly, the queen’s Professor of Physic at Oxford, was sitting down to his dinner. “I can come at once,” he said, rising to his feet and reaching for his hat and his cape. “Who is ill at Cumnor Place? Not Mr. Forster, I trust?”

“No,” the lad said, proffering his letter. “A visitor, just arrived from Abingdon. Lady Dudley.”

The doctor froze, hat halfway to his head, his cape, arrested in midswing, flapping to fall at one shoulder like a broken wing. “Lady Dudley,” he repeated. “Wife of Sir Robert Dudley?”

“The same,” said the lad.

“Sir Robert that is the queen’s Master of Horse?”

“The queen’s Master of Horse is what they call him,” repeated the lad with a broad wink, since he had heard the rumors as well as everyone else.

Dr. Bayly slowly put his hat back down on the wooden settle. “I think I cannot come,” he said. He swung his cape from his shoulder and draped it on the high back of the bench. “I think I dare not come, indeed.”

“It’s not said to be the plague, nor the sweat, sir,” the boy said. “She’s the only one sick in the house, and there’s no plague in Abingdon that I’ve heard of.”

“No, lad, no,” the doctor said thoughtfully. “There are things more dangerous than the plague. I don’t think I should be engaged.”

“She’s said to be in pain,” the lad went on. “One of the housemaids said she was crying, heard her through the door. Said she heard her ask God to release her.”

“I dare not,” the doctor told him frankly. “I dare not see her. I could not prescribe physic for her, even if I knew what was wrong with her.”

“Why not? If the lady is ill?”

“Because if she dies they will think she has been poisoned and they will accuse me of doing it,” the physician said flatly. “And if, in her despair, she has taken a poison already and it is working its way through her body, then they will blame the physic that I give her. If she dies I will get the blame and perhaps have to face trial for her murder. And if someone has poisoned her already, or someone is glad to know that she is sick, then they will not thank me for saving her.”

The lad gaped. “I was sent to fetch you to help her. What am I to tell Mrs. Forster?”

The doctor dropped his hand on the lad’s shoulder. “Tell them that it was more than my license is worth to meddle in such a case,” he said. “It may be that she is taking physic already and that it has been prescribed to her by a greater man than I.”

The lad scowled, trying to comprehend the physician’s meaning. “I don’t understand,” he said.

“I mean that if her husband is trying to poison her then I don’t dare to meddle,” the doctor said bluntly. “And if she is sick unto death then I doubt that he would thank me for saving her.”

Elizabeth was in Robert’s arms; he was covering her face, her shoulders with kisses, licking her neck, overwhelming her as she laughed and pushed him away and pulled him back all at the same time.

“Hush, hush, someone will hear,” she said.

“It is you making all the noise with your screaming.”

“I’m as quiet as a mouse. I’m not screaming,” she protested.

“Not yet, but you will be,” he promised, making her laugh again and clap a hand over her mouth.

“You are mad!”

“I am mad with love,” he agreed. “And I like winning. D’you know how much I took off de Quadra?”

“You were betting with the Spanish ambassador?”

“Only on a certainty.”

“How much?”

“Five hundred crowns,” he exulted. “And d’you know what I said?”

“What?”

“I said he could pay me in Spanish gold.”

She tried to laugh but he saw at once the snap of anxiety in her eyes. “Ah, Elizabeth, don’t spoil this; the Spanish ambassador is easy enough to manage. I understand him, he understands me. It was a jest only. He laughed and so did I. I can manage affairs of state; God knows, I was born and bred to them.”

“I was born to be queen,” she flashed at him.

“No one denies it,” he said. “Least of all me. Because I was born to be your lover and your husband and your king.”

She hesitated. “Robert, even if we declare our betrothal you would not take the title of king.”

“Even if?”

She flushed. “I mean: when.”

“When we declare our betrothal I shall be your husband and King of England,” he said simply. “What else would you call me?”

Elizabeth was stunned into silence, but at once she tried to manage him. “Now Robert,” she said mildly. “You’ll hardly want to be king. Philip of Spain was only ever known as king-consort. Not king.”

“Philip of Spain had other titles,” he said. “He was emperor in his lands. It didn’t matter to him what he was in England; he was hardly ever here. Would you have me seated at a lower place, and eating off silver when you eat off gold, as Philip did with Mary? Would you want to so humble me before others? Every day of my life?”

“No,” she said hastily. “Never.”

“D’you think me not worthy of the crown? Good enough for your bed but not good enough for the throne?”

“No,” she said. “No, of course not. Robert, my love, don’t twist and turn my words. You know I love you; you know I love no one but you, and I need you.”

“Then we have to complete what we have started,” he said. “Grant me a divorce from Amy, and publish our betrothal. Then I can be your partner and helpmeet in everything. And I will be called king.”

She was about to object but he drew her toward him again and started to kiss her neck. Helplessly, Elizabeth melted into his embrace. “Robert…”

“My love,” he said. “You taste so good that I could eat you.”

“Robert,” she sighed, “My love, my only love.”

Gently he scooped her up into his arms and took her to the bed. She lay on her back as he slipped off his gown and came naked toward her. She smiled, waiting for him to put on the sheath that he always used in their lovemaking. When he did not have the ribboned skin in his hand, nor reach to the table by the bed, she was surprised.

“Robert? Have you not a guardian?”

His smile was very dark and seductive. He crawled up the bed toward her, pressing his naked body against every inch of her, overwhelming her with the faint musky smell of him, the warmth of his skin, the soft, prickly mat of hair at his chest, and the rising column of his flesh.

“We have no need of it,” he said. “The sooner we make a son for England’s cradle the better.”

“No!” she said, shocked, and started to pull away. “Not until we are known to be married.”

“Yes,” he whispered in her ear. “Feel it, Elizabeth, you have never felt it properly. You have never felt it like my wife has felt it. Amy loves me naked and you don’t even know what it is like. You’ve never had half of the pleasure I have given her.”

She gave a little moan of jealousy and at once reached down, took hold of him, and guided him into her wetness. As their bodies came together and she felt his naked flesh with her own, her eyes fluttered shut with pleasure. Robert Dudley smiled.

In the morning the queen declared that she was ill and could see no one. When Cecil came to her door she sent out word that she could see him very briefly, and only if it was a matter of urgency.

“I am afraid so,” he said solemnly, gesturing at the document in his hand. The sentries stood to one side and let him into her bedchamber.

“I told them I needed you to sign for the return of French prisoners,” Cecil said, coming in and bowing. “Your note said to come at once with an excuse to see you.”

“Yes,” she said.

“Because of Sir Robert?”

“Yes.”

“This is ridiculous,” he said baldly.

“I know it.”

Something in the flatness of her voice alerted him. “What has he done?”

“He has made …a demand of me.”

Cecil waited.

Elizabeth glanced at the faithful Mrs. Ashley. “Kat, go and stand outside the door and see that there is no one listening.”

The woman left the room.

“What demand?”

“One I cannot meet.”

He waited.

“He wants us to declare our betrothal, for me to grant him and that woman a divorce, and for him to be called king.”

“King?”

Her head bowed down, she nodded, not meeting his eyes.

“King-consort was good enough for the Emperor of Spain.”

“I know. I said. But it is what he wants.”

“You have to refuse.”

“Spirit, I cannot refuse him. I cannot let him think me false to him. I have no words of refusal for him.”

“Elizabeth, this madness will cost you the throne of England, and all the danger and all the waiting, and the peace of Edinburgh, will be for nothing. They will push you from the throne and put in your cousin as queen. Or worse. I cannot save you from this; you are finished if you put him on the throne.”

“Have you thought of nothing?” she demanded. “You always know what to do. Spirit, you must help me. I have to break with him and before God, I cannot.”

Cecil looked at her suspiciously. “Is that all? That he wants a divorce and to be called king? He has not hurt you, or threatened you? You remember that would be treason, even if done in love? Even if done by a betrothed lover?”

Elizabeth shook her head. “No, he is always…” She broke off, thinking what intense pleasure he gave her. “He is always …But what if I have a child?”

His look of horror was as dark as her own. “Are you with child?”

She shook her head. “No. Well, I don’t know…”

“I assumed that he took care…”

“Until last night.”

“You should have refused.”

“I cannot!” she suddenly shouted. “Do you not hear me, Cecil, though I tell you over and over again? I cannot refuse him. I cannot help but love him. I cannot say no to him. You have to find a way for me to marry him, or you have to find a way for me to escape his demands, because I cannot say no to him. You have to protect me from my desire for him, from his demands; it is your duty. I cannot protect myself. You have to save me from him.”

“Banish him!”

“No. You have to save me from him without him ever knowing that I have said one word against him.”

Cecil was silent for a long moment, then he remembered that they had only a short time together: the queen and her own Secretary of State were forced to meet in secret, in snatched moments, because of her folly. “There is a way,” he said slowly. “But it is a very dark path.”

“Would it teach him his place?” she demanded. “That his place is not mine?”

“It would put him in fear of his life and humble him to dust.”

Elizabeth flared up at that. “He never fears,” she blazed. “And his spirit did not break even when his whole family was brought low.”

“I am sure he is indefatigable,” Cecil said acidly. “But this would shake him so low that he would give up all thought of the throne.”

“And he would never know that I had ordered it,” she whispered.

“No.”

She paused. “And it would not fail.”

“I don’t think so.” He hesitated. “It requires the death of an innocent person.”

“Just one?”

He nodded. “Just one.”

“No one that I love?”

“No.”

She did not pause for a moment. “Do it then.”

Cecil allowed himself a smile. So often when he thought Elizabeth the weakest of women he saw that she was the most powerful of queens.

“I will need a token of his,” he said. “Do you have anything with his seal?”

Almost she said “no.” He saw the thought of the lie go through her mind.

“You do?”

Slowly, from the neck of her gown she drew out a gold chain bearing Dudley’s signet ring that he had given her when they had plighted their troth. “His own ring,” she whispered. “He put it on my finger when we were betrothed.”

Cecil hesitated. “Will you give it to me for his undoing? His token of love to you? His own signet ring?”

“Yes,” she said simply. “Since it is him, or me.” Slowly, she unclipped the chain and held it up so that the ring fell down into her palm. She kissed it, as if it were a sacred relic, and then reluctantly handed it to him.

“I must have it back,” she said.

He nodded.

“And he must never see it in your hands,” she said. “He would know at once that it had come from me.”

Cecil nodded again.

“When will you do it?” she asked.

“At once,” he replied.

“Not on my birthday,” she specified like a child. “Let me be happy with him on my birthday. He has planned a lovely day for me; don’t spoil it.”

“The day after then,” Cecil said.

“Sunday?”

He nodded. “But you must not risk conceiving a child.”

“I will make an excuse.”

“I will need you to play a part,” Cecil warned her.

“He knows me too well; he sees through me in a moment.”

“Not play a part to him. You will have to make some remarks to others. You have to set a hare running. I will tell you what to say.”

She wrung her hands. “It will not hurt him?”

“He has to learn,” Cecil said. “You want this done?”

“It must be done.”

Would to God I could just have him murdered and be done with it, Cecil thought as he bowed and left the room. Kat Ashley was waiting outside the queen’s chamber as Cecil came out and they exchanged one brief, appalled glance at the mess in which this new queen was entrapped in only the second year of her reign.

But though not dead I shall bring him down so low that he knows he can never be king, Cecil thought. Another Dudley generation and an other disgrace. Will they ever learn? He stalked along the gallery past the queen’s forebears, her handsome father, the gaunt portrait of her grandfather. A woman cannot rule, Cecil thought, looking at the kings. A woman, even a very clever woman like this one, has no temperament for rule. She seeks a master and God help us, she chose a Dudley. Well, once he is cut down like a weed and the path is clear she can seek a proper master for England.

The page, reporting that the doctor would not attend Lady Dudley, was summoned before Mrs. Forster.

“Did you tell him she was ill? Did you say Lady Dudley needed his help?”

The lad, wide-eyed with anxiety, nodded his head. “He knew,” he said. “It was because she is who she is that he wouldn’t come.”

Mrs. Forster shook her head and went to find Mrs. Oddingsell.

“Our own physician will not attend her, for fear of being unable to cure her,” she said, putting the best appearance on the matter as she could.

Mrs. Oddingsell paused at this fresh bad news. “Did he know who his patient would be?”

“Yes.”

“He refused to come in order to avoid her?”

Mrs. Forster hesitated. “Yes.”

“So now she has nowhere to go, and no physician will heal her?” she demanded incredulously. “What is she to do? What am I to do with her?”

“She will have to come to terms with her husband,” Mrs. Forster said. “She should never have quarreled with him. He is too great a man to offend.”

“Mrs. Forster, you know as well as I, she has no quarrel with him but his adultery and his desire for a divorce. How is a good wife to meet such a request?”

“When the man is Robert Dudley, his wife had better agree,” Mrs. Forster said bluntly. “For look at the strait she finds herself in now.”

Amy, a little better after a rest of two days, walked down the narrow circular stair from her room to the buttery below, and then through the great hall into the courtyard, her hat swinging in her hand. She walked across the cobbled courtyard, putting her hat on her head and tying the ribbons under her chin. Although it was September the sun was still very hot. Amy went through the great archway and turned left to walk on the thickly planted terrace before the house. The monks had walked here in their times of quiet prayer and reading, and she could still trace the paving stones of their circular walk in the rough-cut grass.

She thought that they must have struggled with greater difficulties than hers, that they must have wrestled with their souls and not worried about mere mortal things like whether a husband would ever come home again, and how to survive if he did not. But they were very holy men, she said to herself. And learned. And I am neither holy nor learned, and in fact I think I am a very foolish sinner. For God must have forgotten me as much as Robert has done if they could both leave me here alone, and in such despair.

She gave a little gulp of a sob and then rubbed the tears from her cheek with her gloved hand. No point in crying, she whispered miserably to herself.

She took the steps down from the terrace to walk through the orchard toward the garden wall, the gate, and the church beyond.

The gate was stuck when she pulled at it, and then a man stepped forward from the other side of the wall, and pushed it free for her.

“Thank you,” she said, startled.

“Lady Amy Dudley?” he asked.

“Yes?”

“I have a message for you from your husband.”

She gave a little gasp and her cheeks suddenly blushed red. “Is he here?”

“No. A letter for you.”

He handed it over and waited while she examined the seal. Then she did an odd thing. “Have you a knife?”

“What for, my lady?”

“To lift off the seal. I don’t break them.”

He took a little dagger, sharp as a razor, from its sheath in his boot. “Take care.”

She inserted the blade between the dried shiny wax and the thick paper and lifted the seal from the fold. She tucked it into the pocket of her gown, returned the knife to him, and then unfolded the letter.

He saw that her hands were shaking as she held the letter to read it, and that she read very slowly, her lips spelling out the words. She looked at him. “Are you in his confidence?”

“I am his servant and his liegeman.”

Amy held out the letter to him. “Please,” she said. “I don’t read very well. Does that say that he is coming to see me tomorrow at midday, and that he wants to see me alone in the house? That I must clear the house of everyone and wait for him alone?”

Awkwardly, he took the letter and read it quickly. “Yes,” he said. “At midday tomorrow, and it says to dismiss your servants for the day and sit alone in your chamber.”

“Do I know you?” she said suddenly. “Are you new in his service?”

“I am his confidential servant,” he said. “I had business in Oxford and so he asked me to take this letter. He said there would be no need of any reply.”

“Did he send me a token?” she asked. “Since I don’t know you?”

The man gave her a thin smile. “I am Johann Worth, your ladyship. And he gave me this for you.” He reached into his pocket and gave her the ring, the Dudley signet ring with the ragged staff and the bear.

Solemnly she took it from him and at once slipped it on her fourth finger, snugly it fitted above her wedding ring, and she smiled as she put her fingertip on the engraving of the Dudley crest.

“Of course I shall do exactly as he asks,” she said.

The Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, staying at Windsor for the weekend of Elizabeth’s birthday, found himself opposite Cecil to watch an archery tournament on the upper green before the palace gardens on Friday evening. He noticed at once that the Lord Secretary was looking as grave as he had done since his return from Scotland, and was wearing his customary black unrelieved by any slashing, color, or jewelry, as if it were an ordinary day and not the eve of the queen’s birthday.

Carefully he worked his way round so that he was near the Lord Secretary as the party dispersed.

“And so all is prepared for the queen’s birthday tomorrow,” the Spanish ambassador observed. “Sir Robert swears he will give her a merry day.”

“Merry for her, but little joy in it for me,” Cecil said incautiously, his tongue loosened by wine.

“Oh?”

“I tell you, I cannot tolerate much more of it,” Cecil continued in a tone of muted anger. “Everything I try to do, everything I say has to be confirmed by that cub.”

“Sir Robert Dudley?”

“I’ve had enough of it,” Cecil said. “I left her service once before, when she would not take my advice over Scotland, and I can do it again. I have a beautiful house and a fine young family, and I never have time to see them, and the thanks I get for my service is shameful.”

“You are not serious,” the Spaniard said. “You would not really leave?”

“It is a wise sailor who makes for port when a storm is coming,” Cecil said. “And the day that Dudley steps up to the throne is the day that I step out into my garden at Burghley House and never see London again. Unless he arrests me the moment I resign, and throws me into the Tower.”

The ambassador recoiled from Cecil’s anger. “Sir William! I have never seen you so distressed!”

“I have never felt such distress!” Cecil said bluntly. “I tell you, she will be ruined by him and the country with her.”

“She could never marry him?” de Quadra asked, scandalized.

“She thinks of nothing else and I cannot make her see reason. I tell you, she has surrendered all affairs to him and she means to marry him.”

“But what of his wife? What of Lady Dudley?”

“I don’t think she will live very long if she stands in Dudley’s way, do you?” Cecil asked bitterly. “He is not a man to stop at much with a throne in his sights. He is his father’s son, after all.”

“This is most shocking!” the ambassador exclaimed, his voice hushed to a whisper.

“I am certain he is thinking of killing his wife by poison. Why else would he put it about that she is ill? Though I hear that she is quite well and has now employed a taster for her food. What do you think of that? She herself thinks he will murder her.”

“Surely the people would never accept him as king? Especially if his wife died suddenly and suspiciously?”

“You tell her,” Cecil urged him. “For she will hear not one word against him from me. I have spoken to her, Kat Ashley has spoken to her. In God’s name, you tell her what will come from her misconduct, for she may listen to you when she is deaf to all of us.”

“I hardly dare,” de Quadra stammered. “I am not in her confidence.”

“But you have the authority of the Spanish king,” Cecil insisted. “Tell her, for God’s sake, or she will have Dudley and lose the throne.”

De Quadra was an experienced ambassador, but he thought that no one had ever before been entrusted with such a wild mission as to tell a twenty-seven-year-old queen on the very morning of her birthday that her most senior advisor was in despair, and that everyone thought she would lose her throne if she did not give up her love affair.

Her birthday morning started with a stag hunt and Robert had all the huntsmen dressed in the Tudor colors of green and white and the entire court dressed in silver, white, and gold. Elizabeth’s own horse, a big white gelding, had a new saddle of red Spanish leather and new bridle, a gift from Dudley.

The Spanish ambassador held back as the queen and her lover rode at their usual breakneck speed, but when they had killed, and had drunk a glass of wine over the stag’s head to celebrate, and were riding home, he eased his horse beside hers and wished her a happy birthday.

“Thank you,” Elizabeth gleamed.

“I have a small gift for you from the emperor back at the castle,” the ambassador said. “But I could not contain my good wishes a moment longer. I have never seen you in such health and happiness.”

She turned her head and smiled at him.

“And Sir Robert looks so well. He is a happy man to have your favor,” he started carefully.

“Of all the men in the world he has earned it,” she said. “Whether in war or peace he is my most trusted and faithful advisor. And in days of pleasure he is the best of companions!”

“And he loves you so dearly,” de Quadra remarked.

She drew her horse a little closer to him. “May I tell you a secret?” she asked.

“Yes,” he swiftly assured her.

“Sir Robert will soon be a widower and free to marry,” she said, keeping her voice very low.

“No!”

She nodded. “His wife is dead of an illness, or very nearly so. But you must tell no one about it until we announce it.”

“I promise I shall keep your secret,” he stumbled. “Poor lady, has she been ill very long?”

“Oh, yes,” Elizabeth said carelessly. “So he assures me. Poor thing. Are you coming to the banquet tonight, sir?”

“I am,” he said, he tightened his grip on the horse’s reins and fell back from her side. As they rode up the winding road to the castle he saw Cecil, waiting for the return of the hunt, on the little battlements above the entrance. The ambassador shook his head toward Elizabeth’s advisor as if to say that he could make sense of nothing, that it was as if they were all trapped in a nightmare, that something very bad was happening, but no one could know quite what.

Elizabeth’s birthday celebrations, which had started with a roar of guns, ended in a blaze of fireworks that she viewed from a barge in the Thames, heaped with late roses, with her closest friends and her lover at her side. When the fireworks died down the barges rowed slowly up and then down the river so that the people of London, lining the banks to admire the show, could call out their blessings on the twenty-seven-year-old queen.

“She will have to marry soon,” Laetitia observed to her mother in a muted whisper. “Or she’ll have left it too late.”

Catherine glanced toward the profile of her friend and the darker shadow behind her which was Robert Dudley. “It would break her heart to marry another man,” she predicted. “And she’ll lose her throne if she marries him. What a dilemma for a woman to face. Pray God you never love unwisely, Lettice.”

“Well, you’ve seen to that,” Laetitia said smartly enough. “For being betrothed without love I am unlikely to find it now.”

“For most women it is better to marry well than to marry for love,” Catherine said, unruffled. “Love may follow.”

“It didn’t follow for Amy Dudley,” Laetitia observed.

“A man like Robert Dudley would bring trouble for his lover or his wife,” her mother told her. As they watched, the barge rocked and Elizabeth stumbled a little. At once Robert’s arm was around her waist and, careless of the watching crowds, she let him hold her, and leaned back against him so that she could feel the warmth of his body at her back.

“Come to my room tonight,” he whispered in her ear.

She turned to smile up at him. “You’ll break my heart,” she whispered. But I cannot. It is my time of the month. Next week I shall come back to you.”

He gave a little growl of disappointment. “It had better be soon,” he warned her. “Or I shall come to your bedchamber before the whole court.”

“Would you dare to do that?”

“Try me,” he recommended. “See how much I would dare.”

Amy dined with her hosts on Saturday night and ate a good dinner. They drank the health of the queen on this, her birthday night, as did every loyal household in the land, and Amy raised her glass and touched it to her lips without flinching.

“You are looking better, Lady Dudley,” Mr. Forster said kindly. “I am glad to see you well again.”

She smiled and he was struck with her prettiness, which he had forgotten while thinking of her as a burden.

“You have been a kind host indeed,” she said. “And I am sorry to come to your house and immediately take to my bed.”

“It was a hot day and a long ride,” he said. “I was out that day and I felt the heat myself.”

“Well, it will be cold soon enough,” Mrs. Forster said. “How quickly time passes. It’s Abingdon fair tomorrow, think of that already?”

“I am riding over to Didcot,” Mr. Forster said. “There’s some trouble with the tithes for the church. I said I would listen to the vicar’s sermon and then meet him and the churchwarden. I’ll dine with him and come home in the evening, my dear.”

“I’ll let the servants go to the fair then,” Mrs. Forster said. “They usually have a holiday on fair Sunday.”

“Will you go?” Amy asked with sudden interest.

“Not on the Sunday,” Mrs. Forster said. “All the common folk go on the Sunday. We could ride over on Monday if you wish to see it.”

“Oh, let’s go tomorrow,” Amy said, suddenly animated. “Please say we can. I like the fair all busy and filled with people. I like to see the servants all dressed up in their best and buying ribbons. It’s always best on the first day.”

“Oh, my dear, I don’t think so,” Mrs. Forster said doubtfully. “It can be very rough.”

“Oh, go,” her husband recommended. “A little bustle won’t hurt you. It’ll lift Lady Dudley’s spirits. And if you want any ribbons or anything you will know that they have not sold out.”

“What time shall we go?” Mrs. Oddingsell asked.

“We could leave at about midday,” Mrs. Forster suggested, “and take our dinner at Abingdon. There’s a good enough inn, if you wish to dine there.”

“Yes,” Amy said. “I should love to do that.”

“Well, I am glad to see you so restored to health that you want to go out,” Mr. Forster said kindly.

On Sunday morning, the day they were all to go to the fair, Amy came down to breakfast looking pale and ill again.

“I slept so badly, I am too ill to go,” she said.

“I am sorry,” Mrs. Forster said. “Do you need anything?”

“I think I will just rest,” Amy said. “If I could sleep I am sure I would be well again.”

“The servants have all gone to the fair already, so the house will be quiet,” Mrs. Forster promised. “And I will make you a tisane myself, and you shall take your dinner in your room, in your bed if you wish.”

“No,” Amy said. “You go to the fair as you planned. I wouldn’t want you to delay for me.”

“I wouldn’t dream of it,” Mrs. Forster said. “We won’t leave you all on your own.”

“I insist,” Amy said. “You were looking forward to it, and as Mr. Forster said yesterday, if you want some ribbons or something, the first day is always best.”

“We can all go tomorrow, when you are better,” Lizzie put in.

Amy rounded on her. “No!” she said. “Didn’t you hear me? I just said. I want you all to go, as you planned. I shall stay behind. But I want you all to go. Please! My head throbs so, I cannot stand an argument about it! Just go!”

“But will you dine alone?” Mrs. Forster asked. “If we all go?”

“I shall dine with Mrs. Owen,” Amy said. “If I feel well enough. And I shall see you all when you come home again. But you must go!”

“Very well,” Lizzie said, throwing a warning glance at Mrs. Forster. “Don’t get so distressed, Amy dear. We’ll all go and we’ll tell you all about it tonight, when you have had a good sleep and are feeling better.”

At once the irritability left Amy, and she smiled. “Thank you, Lizzie,” she said. “I shall be able to rest if I know you are all having a good time at the fair. Don’t come back till after dinner.”

“No,” Lizzie Oddingsell said. “And if I see some nice blue ribbons that would match your riding hat I will buy them for you.”

The queen went to the Royal Chapel in Windsor Castle and walked in the garden on Sunday morning. Laetitia Knollys walked demurely behind her, carrying her shawl and a book of devotional poems in case the queen chose to sit and read.

Robert Dudley walked to meet her as she stood, looking toward the river where a few little wherry boats plied up and down to London and back.

He bowed in greeting. “Good morning,” he said. “Are you not tired after your celebrations yesterday?”

“No,” Elizabeth said. “I am never tired by dancing.”

“I thought you might come to me, even though you had said you wouldn’t. I couldn’t sleep without you.”

She put her hand out to him. “It is still my time,” she said sweetly. “It will only be another day or two.”

He covered her hand with his own. “Of course,” he said. “You know I would never press you. And when we declare our marriage and we sleep in the same bed every night you shall order it just as you please. Don’t be afraid of that.”

Elizabeth, who had thought that she would always order everything just as she pleased by right, and not by another’s permission, kept her face perfectly calm. “Thank you, my love,” she said sweetly.

“Shall we walk?” he asked her.

She shook her head. “I am going to sit and read.”

“I will leave you then,” he said. “I have an errand to run but I shall be back by dinner time.”

“Where are you going?”

“Just to look at some horses in Oxfordshire,” he said vaguely. “I doubt they will be worth buying but I promised to go and see them.”

“On a Sunday?” she said, faintly disapproving.

“I’ll just look,” he said. “There is no sin in looking at a horse on a Sunday, surely. Or shall you be a very strict Pope?”

“I shall be a strict supreme governor of the church,” she said with a smile.

He leaned toward her as if he would kiss her cheek. “Then give me a divorce,” he whispered in her ear.

Amy, seated in the silent house, waited for Robert’s arrival, as he had promised in his letter. The house was quite empty except for old Mrs. Owen, who had gone to sleep in her room after an early dinner. Amy had walked in the garden, and then, obedient to the instructions in Robert’s letter, gone to wait in her room in the empty house.

The window overlooked the drive and she sat in the window seat and watched for the Dudley standard and the cavalcade of riders.

“Perhaps he has quarreled with her,” she whispered to herself. “Perhaps she is tired of him. Or perhaps she has finally agreed to marry the archduke and they know that they have to part.”

She thought for a moment. Whatever the reason, I have to take him back without reproach. That would be my duty to him as his wife. She paused. She could not stop her heart from lifting. And, in any case, whatever the reason, I would take him back without reproach. He is my husband, he is my love, the only love of my life. If he comes back to me— She broke off from the thought. I can’t even imagine how happy I would be if he were to come back to me.

She heard the sound of a single horse and she looked out of the window. It was not one of Robert’s high-bred horses, and not Robert, riding high and proud on the horse, one hand on the taut reins, one hand on his hip. It was another man, bowed low over the neck of the horse, his hat pulled down over his face.

Amy waited for the sound of the peal of the bell, but there was silence. She thought perhaps he had gone to the stable yard and would find it empty since all the lads had gone to the fair. She rose to her feet, thinking that she had better go and greet this stranger herself, since no servants were at home. But as she did so, her bedroom door silently opened, and a tall stranger came in quietly and shut the door behind him.

Amy gasped. “Who are you?”

She could not see his face, he still had his hat pulled low over his eyes. His cape was of dark blue wool, without a badge of rank. She did not recognize his height nor his broad build.

“Who are you?” she asked again, her voice sharp with fear. “Answer me! And how dare you come into my room!”

“Lady Amy Dudley?” he asked, his voice low and quiet.

“Yes.”

“Sir Robert Dudley’s wife?”

“Yes. And you are?”

“He said for me to come to you. He wants you to come to him. He loves you once more. Look out of the window, he is waiting for you.”

With a little cry, Amy turned to the window and at once the man stepped behind her. In one swift motion he took her jaw in his hands and quickly twisted her neck sideways and upward. It broke with a crack, and she slumped in his hands without even a cry.

He lowered her to the floor, listening intently. There was no sound in the house at all. She had sent everyone away, as she had been told to do. He picked her up, she was as light as a child, her cheeks still flushed pink from the moment that she thought that Robert had come to love her. The man held her in his arms and carried her carefully from the room, down the little winding stone stair, a short flight of half a dozen steps, and laid her at the foot, as if she had fallen.

He paused and listened again. Still, the house was silent. Amy’s hood was slipping back off her head, and her gown was crumpled, showing her legs. He did not feel he could leave her uncovered. Gently, he pulled down the skirts of the gown and put the hood straight on her head. Her forehead was still warm, her skin soft to his touch. It was like leaving a sleeping child.

Quietly, he went out through the outer door. His horse was tethered outside. It raised its head when it saw him but it did not whinny. He closed the door behind him, mounted his horse, and turned its head away from Cumnor Place to Windsor.

Amy’s body was found by two servants who had come home from the fair, a little ahead of the others. They were courting and had hoped to steal an hour alone together. When they came into the house they saw her, lying at the foot of the stairs, her skirts pulled down, her hood set tidily on her head. The girl screamed and fainted, but the young man gently picked up Amy, and laid her on her bed. When Mrs. Forster came home they met her at the gate and told her that Lady Dudley was dead from falling down the stairs.

“Amy!” Lizzie Oddingsell breathed her name and flung herself from her horse and raced up the stairs to Amy’s bedroom.

She was laid on her bed, her neck turned horridly so that her face was twisted toward the door, though her shoulders lay flat. Her expression was the blankness of death, her skin was chill as stone.

“Oh, Amy, what have you done?” Lizzie mourned. “What have you done? We’d have found a way round things, we’d have found somewhere to go. He still cared for you, he would never have neglected you. He might have come back. Oh, Amy, dearest Amy, what have you done?”

A message must be sent to Sir Robert. “What shall I say?” Mrs. Forster demanded of Lizzie Oddingsell. “What should I write? What can I tell him?”

“Just say she’s dead,” Lizzie said furiously. “He can come down himself if he wants to know why or how.”

Mrs. Forster wrote a brief note and sent it to Windsor by her servant John Bowes. “Make sure you give it to Sir Robert, into his own hand, and to no one else,” she cautioned him, uncomfortably aware that they all were in the very center of a massive breaking scandal. “And tell no one else of this business, and come straight home without talking to anyone but him.”

At nine o’clock on Monday morning Robert Dudley strode to the queen’s apartments and walked in without glancing to any of his friends and adherents who were talking and standing around.

He marched up to the throne and bowed. “I have to speak with you alone,” he said without any preamble. Laetitia Knollys noticed that his hand was gripping his hat so tightly that the knuckles were gleaming white.

Elizabeth took in the tension in his face, and got to her feet at once. “Of course,” she said. “Shall we walk?”

“In your chamber,” he said tautly.

Her eyes widened at the sharpness of his tone but she took his arm and the two of them went through the doors into her privy chamber.

“Well!” one of her ladies-in-waiting remarked softly. “He is more like a husband every day. Soon he will be ordering us as he orders her.”

“Something’s happened,” guessed Laetitia.

“Nonsense,” said Mary Sidney. “It will be a new horse or something. He rode to Oxfordshire to look at a horse only yesterday.”

As soon as the door was shut behind them, Robert thrust his hand into his doublet and pulled out a letter. “I’ve just had this,” he said shortly. “It is from Cumnor Place where Amy has been staying with my friends. Amy, my wife, is dead.”

“Dead?” Elizabeth said, too loud. She clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at Robert. “How dead?”

He shook his head. “It doesn’t say,” he said. “It is from Mrs. Forster and the damn fool of a woman just says that she is sorry to inform me that Amy died today. The letter is dated Sunday. My servant is on his way to find out what has happened.”

“Dead?” she repeated.

“Yes,” he said. “And so I am free.”

She gave a little gasp and staggered. “Free. Of course you are.”

“God knows I would not have had her die,” he said hastily. “But her death sets us free, Elizabeth. We can declare our betrothal. I shall be king.”

“I’m speechless,” she said. She could hardly take her breath.

“I too,” he said. “Such a sudden change, and so unexpected.”

She shook her head. “It’s unbelievable. I knew she was in poor health…”

“I thought she was well enough,” he said. “She never complained of anything more than a little pain. I don’t know what it can be. Perhaps she fell from her horse?”

“We had better go out,” Elizabeth said. “Someone will bring the news to court. We had better not hear it together. Everyone will look at us and wonder what we are thinking.”

“Yes,” he said. “But I had to tell you at once.”

“Of course, I understand. But we had better go out now.”

Suddenly he snatched her to him and took a deep, hungry kiss. “Soon they will all know that you are my wife,” he promised her. “We will rule England together. I am free; our life together starts right now!”

“Yes,” she said, pulling away from him. “But we had better go out.”

Again he checked her at the door. “It is as if it were God’s will,” he said wonderingly. “That she should die and set me free at this very moment, when we are ready to marry, when we have the country at peace, when we have so much to do. ‘This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.’”

Elizabeth recognized the words she had said at her own accession to the throne. “You think that this death will make you king,” she said, testing him. “As Mary’s death made me queen.”

Robert nodded, his face bright and glad. “We shall be King and Queen of England together,” he said. “And we will make an England as glorious as Camelot.”

“Yes,” she said, her lips cold. “But we should go out now.”

In the presence chamber Elizabeth looked around for Cecil and when he came in, she beckoned him to her. Sir Robert was in a window embrasure talking casually to Sir Francis Knollys about trade with the Spanish Netherlands.

“Sir Robert has just told me that his wife is dead,” she said, half covering her mouth with her hand.

“Indeed,” Cecil said steadily, his face a mask to the watching courtiers.

“He says he does not know the cause.”

Cecil nodded.

“Cecil, what the devil is happening? I told the Spanish ambassador that she was ill, as you told me to do. But this is so sudden. Has he murdered her? He will claim me as his own and I shall not be able to say no.”

“I should wait and see if I were you,” Cecil said.

“But what shall I do?” she demanded urgently. “He says that he will be King of England.”

“Do nothing for the time being,” Cecil said. “Wait and see.”

Abruptly she turned into the bay of the window and dragged him in beside her. “You shall tell me more,” she demanded fiercely.

Cecil put his mouth to her ear and whispered quietly. Elizabeth kept her face turned away from the court to look out of the window. “Very well,” she said to Cecil, and turned back to the court.

“Now,” she announced. “I see Sir Nielson there. Good day, Sir Nielson. And how is business in Somerset?”

Laetitia Knollys stood before Sir William Cecil’s desk while the rest of the court was waiting to be called to dinner.

“Yes?”

“They are saying that Robert Dudley is going to murder his wife and that the queen knows all about it.”

“Are they? And why are they saying such a slanderous lie?”

“Is it because you started it?”

Sir William smiled at her and thought again what a thorough Boleyn girl she was: the quickness of the Boleyn wit and the enchanting Howard indiscretion.

“I?”

“Someone overheard you telling the Spanish ambassador that the queen would be ruined if she marries Dudley and you can’t stop her, she’s determined.” Laetitia ticked off the first point on her slim fingers.

“And?”

“Then the queen tells the Spanish ambassador, in my own hearing, that Amy Dudley is dead.”

“Does she?” Cecil looked surprised.

“She said ‘dead or nearly so,’ ” Laetitia quoted. “So everyone thinks that we are being prepared for the news of her death by some mystery illness, that when it comes they will announce their marriage and the widower Robert Dudley will be the next king.”

“And what does everyone think will happen then?” Cecil asked politely.

“Now that, no one dare say very loud, but some men would give you a wager that her uncle will come marching down from Newcastle at the head of the English army and kill him.”

“Really?”

“And others think there will be an uprising which the French would pay for to put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne.”

“Indeed.”

“And others think there would be an uprising which the Spanish would pay for, to put Katherine Grey on the throne, and keep Mary out.”

“These are very wild predictions,” Cecil complained. “But they seem to cover all possibilities. And what do you think, my lady?”

“I think that you will have a plan up your sleeve which allows for these dangers to the realm,” she said and gave him a roguish little smile.

“We should hope I do,” he said. “For these are very grave dangers.”

“D’you think he’s worth it?” Laetitia asked him suddenly. “She is risking her throne to be with him, and she is the most cold-hearted woman I know. Don’t you think he must be the most extraordinary lover for her to risk so much?”

“I don’t know,” Cecil said dampeningly. “Neither I nor any man in England seems to find him very irresistible. On the contrary.”

“Just us silly girls then.” She smiled.

Elizabeth feigned illness in the afternoon; she could not tolerate being in private with Robert, whose exultation was hard to conceal, and she was waiting all the time for a message from Cumnor Place which would bring the news of Amy’s death to court. She gave out that she would dine alone in her room and go early to bed. “You can sleep in my room, Kat,” she said. “I want your company.”

Kat Ashley looked at her mistress’s pallor and at the redness of the skin where she was picking at her nails. “What’s happened now?” she demanded.

“Nothing,” Elizabeth said abruptly. “Nothing. I just want to rest.”

But she could not rest. She was awake by dawn, seated at her desk with her Latin grammar before her, translating an essay on the vanity of fame. “What are you doing that for?” Kat asked sleepily, rising from her bed.

“To stop myself thinking of anything else,” Elizabeth said grimly.

“What is the matter?” asked Kat. “What has happened?”

“I can’t say,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s so bad that I can’t tell even you.”

She went to chapel in the morning and then back to her rooms. Robert walked beside her as they came back from her chapel. “My servant has written me a long letter to tell me what happened,” he said quietly. “It seems that Amy fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck.”

Elizabeth went white for a moment, then she recovered. “At least it was quick,” she said.

A man bowed before her and Elizabeth paused and gave him her hand; Robert stepped back and she went on alone.

In her dressing room, Elizabeth changed into her riding clothes, wondering if they would indeed all be going hunting. The ladies of her court were waiting with her when, at last, Kat came into the room and said, “Sir Robert Dudley is outside in the presence chamber. He says he has something to tell you.”

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

“Good God!” the Spanish ambassador exclaimed.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Abruptly, Robert bowed to Elizabeth and left the room.

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

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

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

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

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

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

“He looked heartbroken,” she said pitifully.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

He broke off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Oh, Cecil,” he said.

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

“You have not come to arrest me?”

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

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

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

The two men turned and walked to the house.

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

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

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

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

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

“You insist on knowing?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

“I can think of nothing else.”

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

Robert nodded. “It has brought me very low,” he said softly. “So low that I cannot think how to rise again. I think of her, and I remember her when I first met her, and first loved her, and I know I am the sort of fool who picks a flower to put in his buttonhole and then drops it and leaves it to die from mere wanton carelessness. I took her up like a primrose, as my mother called her, and then I tired of her, and I dropped her as if I was a selfish child; and now she is dead and I can never ask her forgiveness.”

There was a silence.

“And the worst thing,” Dudley said heavily, “is that I cannot ever tell her that I am sorry that I hurt her so badly. I was always thinking of myself; I was always thinking of the queen; I was chasing my own damned ambition and I did not think what I was doing to her. God forgive me, I put the thought of her away from me, and now she has taken me at my word, and gone away from me, and I will never see her again, and never touch her, and never see her smile. I told her I did not want her anymore, and now I do not have her.”

“I will leave you,” Cecil said quietly. “I did not come to intrude on your grief; but just to tell you that in all the world, at least you have one friend.”

Dudley raised his head and reached out his hand for Cecil.

The older man gripped it hard. “Courage,” he said.

“I cannot tell you how thankful I am that you came,” Robert said. “Will you remember me to the queen? Urge her to let me come back to court as soon as the verdict is known. I won’t be dancing for a while, God knows, but I am very lonely here, Cecil. It is exile as well as mourning.”

“I’ll speak to her for you,” Cecil assured him. “And I will pray for you, and for Amy’s soul. You know, I remember her on her wedding day. She just shone with happiness; she loved you so much. She thought you the finest man in the world.”

Dudley nodded. “God forgive me for teaching her differently.”

Windsor Castle

Memorandum to the queen

Saturday 14th September 1560

1. The jury has delivered a verdict of accidental death on Amy Dudley and so Sir Robert may return to court to his usual duties, if you wish.

2. The scandal of his wife’s death will always cling to his name; he knows this, and so do we all. You must never, by word or deed, indicate to him that this shame could ever be overcome.

3. And so you will be safe from any further proposals of marriage from him. If you must continue your love affair it must be with the utmost discretion. He will now understand this.

4. The matter of your marriage must be urgently addressed: without a son and heir we are all working for nothing.

5. I shall bring to you tomorrow a new proposal from the archduke that I think will be much to our advantage. Sir Robert cannot oppose such a marriage now.

Thomas Blount, Dudley’s man, stood at the back of the church of St. Mary the Virgin at Oxford and watched the Dudley standard of the ragged staff and bear ride past him at slow march, followed by the elaborate black-draped coffin that was all that was left of little Amy Robsart.

It was all done just as it should be. The queen was represented, and Sir Robert was not there, as was the custom. Amy’s half-brothers and the Forsters were there to show Lady Dudley every respect in death that she had lacked in the last days of her life. Lizzie Oddingsell did not attend; she had gone back to her brother’s house, filled with such anger and grief that she would speak to no one of her friend except to say once, “She was no match for him,” which Alice Hyde gleefully fell on as proof of murder, and which William saw as a fair description of a marriage that had been ill-starred from start to finish.

Thomas Blount waited to see the body interred and the earth shoveled in the ground. He was a thorough man, and he worked for a meticulous master. Then he went back to Cumnor Place.

Amy’s maid, Mrs. Pirto, had everything ready for him, as he had ordered. Amy’s box of jewels, locked with their key, Amy’s best gowns, folded neatly and wrapped with bags of lavender heads, the linen from her bed, the furniture that traveled with her wherever she went, her box of personal goods: her sewing, her rosary, her purse, her gloves, her little collection of wax seals cut from the letters that Robert had sent her over the eleven years of their marriage, and all his letters, tied with a ribbon and arranged by date, worn by constant handling.

“I’ll take the jewel box and the personal things,” Blount decided. “You shall take the rest back to Stanfield and leave them there. Then you can go.”

Mrs. Pirto bowed her head and whispered something about wages. “From the bailiff at Stanfield when you deliver the goods,” Thomas Blount said. He ignored the woman’s red eyes. All women wept easily, he knew. It meant nothing, and as a man, he had important business to transact.

Mrs. Pirto murmured something about a keepsake.

“Nothing worth remembering,” Thomas Blount said roundly, thinking of the trouble that Amy had caused his master in life and in death. “Now you get on, as I must.”

He tucked the two boxes under his arm and went out to his waiting horse. The jewel box slid easily into his saddlebag, the box of personal effects he handed to his groom to strap on his back. Then he heaved himself up into the saddle and turned his horse’s head for Windsor.

Robert, returning to court wearing dark mourning clothes, held his head high and looked scornfully around him as if daring anyone to speak. The Earl of Arundel hid a smile behind his hand, Sir Francis Knollys bowed from a distance, Sir Nicholas Bacon all but ignored him. Robert felt as if a chill circle of suspicion and dislike was wrapped around him like a wide black cape.

“What the devil is amiss?” he asked his sister. She came toward him and presented her cold cheek to be kissed.

“I assume that they think you murdered Amy,” she said flatly.

“The inquest cleared me. The verdict was accidental death.”

“They think you bribed the jury.”

“And what do you think?” He raised his voice and then abruptly spoke more quietly as he saw the court glance round at the two of them.

“I think you have taken this family to the very brink of ruin again,” she said. “I am sick of disgrace; I am sick of being pointed at. I have been known as the daughter of a traitor, as the sister of a traitor, and now I am known as the sister of a wife murderer.”

“Good God, you have not much sympathy to spare for me!” Robert recoiled from the blank hostility of her face.

“I have none at all,” she said. “You nearly brought down the queen herself with this scandal. Think of it! You nearly ended the Tudor line. You nearly destroyed the reformed church! Certainly, you have ruined yourself and everyone who bears your name. I am withdrawing from court. I can’t stand another day of it.”

“Mary, don’t go,” he said urgently. “You have always stood by me before. You have always been my sister and friend. Don’t let everyone see that we are divided. Don’t you abandon me, as everyone else has.”

He reached out to her, but she stepped away and whipped her hands behind her back so that he could not touch her. At that childish gesture which recalled her in the schoolroom so vividly to him, he nearly cried out. “Mary, you would never abandon me when I am so low, and I have been so wrongly accused!”

“But I think you are rightly accused,” she said quietly, and her voice was like ice in his ears. “I think you killed her because you thought in your pride that the queen would stand by you, and everyone else would wink at it. That they would all agree it was an accident and you would go into mourning a widower and come out the queen’s betrothed.”

“That could still happen,” he whispered. “I did not kill her, I swear it. I could still marry the queen.”

“Never,” she said. “You are finished. The best you can hope for is that she keeps you on as Master of Horse and as her little disgraced favorite.”

She turned from him. Robert, conscious of the eyes of everyone upon him, could not call her back. For a moment, he made a move to catch the hem of her gown and jerk her round, before she got away; but then he remembered that everyone watching believed him to be a man who was violent to women, a man who had killed his wife, and his hands felt heavy.

There was a stir at the door of the privy chamber and Elizabeth came out. She was very pale. She had not been out riding nor walking in the garden since the day of her birthday, when she had told the Spanish ambassador that Amy was dead or nearly so—three days before anyone knew that Amy had been found dead. There were many who thought that her opinion, three whole days before the announcement of the death, that Amy was dead “or nearly so,” was more than a lucky guess. There were many who thought that Robert had been executioner, and Elizabeth the judge. But none of them would dare say such a thing when she could come out of her room, as now, flick her eye around the presence chamber, and count on the support of every great man in the country.

She looked past Robert and on to Sir Nicholas; she nodded at Sir Francis, and turned to speak to his wife, Catherine, who was behind her. She smiled at Cecil and she beckoned the Hapsburg ambassador to her side.

“Good day, Sir Robert,” she said, as the ambassador moved toward her. “I give you my condolences on the sad and sudden death of your wife.”

He bowed and felt his anger and his grief swell up so strongly that he thought he might vomit. He came up, his face betraying nothing. “I thank you for your sympathy,” he said. He let his angry look rake them all. “I thank all of you for your sympathy which has been such a support to me,” he said, and then he stepped to a window bay, out of the way, and stood all alone.

Thomas Blount found Sir Robert in the stable. There was a hunt planned for the next day and Sir Robert was checking the horses for fitness, and inspecting the tack. Forty-two saddles of gleaming supple leather were arranged in long rows on saddle horses in the yard, and Sir Robert was walking slowly between the rows looking carefully at each saddle, each girth, each stirrup leather. The stable lads, standing alongside their work, were as rigid as soldiers on parade.

Behind them the horses were standing, shifting restlessly, a groom at each nodding head, their coats gleaming, their hooves oiled, their manes pulled and combed flat.

Sir Robert took his time but could find little wrong with the horses, the tack, or the stable yard. “Good,” he said finally. “You can give them their evening feed and water, and put them to bed.”

Then he turned and saw Thomas Blount. “Go into my office,” he said shortly, pausing to pat the neck of his own horse. “Yes,” he said softly to her. “You don’t change, do you, sweetheart?”

Blount was waiting by the window. Robert threw his gloves and whip on the table and dropped into the chair before his desk.

“All done?” he asked.

“All done quite correctly,” Blount said. “A small slip in the sermon.”

“What was it?”

“The stupid rector said that she was a lady ‘tragically slain’ instead of ‘tragically died.’ He corrected himself, but it jarred.”

Sir Robert raised one dark eyebrow. “A slip?”

Blount shrugged. “I think so. A nuisance, but it’s not strong enough to be an accusation.”

“It adds grist to the mill,” Robert observed.

Blount nodded.

“And you dismissed her staff, and you have her things?” Deliberately Robert kept his voice light and cold.

“Mrs. Oddingsell had gone already. Apparently she had taken it very hard,” Blount said. “Mrs. Pirto I sent back to Stanfield with the goods and she will be paid there. I sent a note. I saw Mr. and Mrs. Forster; they have a sense that a great scandal has been brought to their door.” He smiled wryly.

“They will be compensated for their trouble,” Dudley said shortly. “Any gossip in the village?”

“No more than you would expect,” Blount said. “Half the village accept the verdict of accidental death. Half think she was murdered. They’ll talk about it forever. But it makes no difference to you.”

“Nor to her,” Robert said quietly.

Blount fell silent.

“So,” Robert said, rousing himself. “Your work is done. She is dead and buried and whatever anyone thinks, no one can say anything that can hurt me more.”

“It’s finished,” Blount agreed.

Robert gestured for him to put the boxes on the table. Blount put down the keepsake box and then the little box of jewels with the key beside it. He bowed and waited.

“You can go,” Robert said.

He had forgotten the box. It was his gift to Amy when they had been courting; he had bought it for her at a fair in Norfolk. She had never had many jewels for the small box. He felt the familiar irritation that even when she had been Lady Dudley, and commanded his fortune, still she had nothing more than a small jewel box, a couple of silver-gilt necklaces, some earrings and a ring or two.

He turned the key in the box and opened it up. On the very top lay Amy’s wedding ring, and his signet ring with his crest, the bear and ragged staff.

For a moment, he could not believe what he was seeing. Slowly, he put his hand into the box and lifted out the two gold circles. Mrs. Pirto had taken them from Amy’s cold fingers and put them in her jewel box and locked it up, as a good servant should do.

Robert looked at them both. The wedding ring he had slipped on Amy’s finger that summer day eleven years ago, and the signet ring had never left his own hand until he had put it on Elizabeth’s finger to seal their betrothal, just four months ago.

Robert slipped his signet ring back on his finger, and sat at his desk while the room grew dark and cold, wondering how his ring had got from the chain around his mistress’s neck to the finger of his dead wife.

He walked by the river, a question beating at his brain. Who killed Amy? He sat on the pier like a boy, boots dangling over the water, looking down into the green depths where little fishes nibbled at the weed on the beams of the jetty, and heard in his head the second question: Who gave Amy my ring?

He rose up as he grew chilled, and strolled along the tow path, westward toward the sun which slowly dropped in the sky and went from burning gold to embers as Robert walked, looking at the river but not seeing it, looking at the sky but not seeing it.

Who killed Amy?

Who gave her my ring?

The sun set and the sky grew palely gray; still Robert walked onward as if he did not own a stable full of horses, a stud of Barbary courses, a training program of young stallions, he walked like a poor man, like a man whose wife would give him a horse to ride.

Who killed Amy?

Who gave her my ring?

He tried not to remember the last time he had seen her, when he had left her with a curse, and turned her family against her. He tried not to remember that he had taken her in his arms and she in her folly had heard, and he in his folly had said: “I love you.”

He tried not to remember her at all because it seemed to him that if he remembered her he would sit down on the riverbank and weep like a child for the loss of her.

Who killed Amy?

Who gave her my ring?

If he thought, rather than remembered, he could avoid the wave of pain which was towering over him, ready to break. If he treated her death as a puzzle rather than a tragedy he could ask a question rather than accuse himself.

Two questions: Who killed Amy? Who gave her my ring?

When he stumbled and slipped and jolted himself to consciousness he realized that it had grown dark and he was walking blindly beside the steep bank of the deep, fast-flowing river. He turned then, a survivor from a family of survivors who had been wrong to marry a woman who did not share his inveterate lust for life.

Who killed Amy?

Who gave her my ring?

He started to walk back. It was only when he opened the iron gate to the walled garden that the coldness of his hand on the latch made him pause, made him realize that there were two questions: Who killed Amy? Who gave her my ring? but only one answer.

Whoever had the ring owned the symbol that Amy would trust. Amy would clear the house for a messenger who showed her that ring. Whoever had the ring was the person who killed her. There was only one person who could have done it, only one person who would have done it:

Elizabeth.

Robert’s first instinct was to go to her at once, to rage at her for the madness of her power. He could not blame her for wishing Amy gone; but the thought that his mistress could murder his wife, the girl he had married for love, filled him with anger. He wanted to take Elizabeth and shake the arrogance, the wicked, power-sated confidence out of her. That she should use her power as queen, her spy network, her remorseless will, against a target as vulnerable and as innocent as Amy, made him tremble like an angry boy at the strength of his feelings.

Robert did not sleep that night. He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling but over and over again he saw in his mind’s eye Amy receiving his ring, and running out to meet him, with his signet ring clenched in her little fist as her passport to the happiness she deserved. And then some man, one of Cecil’s hired killers no doubt, greeting her in his place, breaking her neck with one blow, a clenched fist to her ear, a rabbit chop to her neck, and catching her as she fell, carrying her back into the house.

Robert tortured himself with the thought of her suffering, of her moment of fear, perhaps of a moment of horror when she thought the killer came from him and the queen. That thought made him groan and turn over, burying his face in the pillow. If Amy had died thinking that he had sent an assassin against her then he did not see how he could bear to live.

The bedroom window lightened at last; it was dawn. Robert, as haggard as a man ten years his senior, rose to the window and looked out, his linen sheet wrapped around his naked body. It was going to be a beautiful day. The mist was curling slowly off the river and somewhere a woodpecker was drilling. Slowly the liquid melody of a song thrush started up like a benediction, like a reminder that life goes on.

I suppose I can forgive her, Robert thought. In her place, I might have done the same thing. I might have thought that our love came first, that our desire must be satisfied, come what may. If I had been her, I might have thought that we have to have a child, that the throne has to have an heir, and we dare not delay. If I had absolute power as she does I would probably have used it, as she has.

My father would have done it. My father would have forgiven her for doing it. Actually, he would have admired her decisiveness.

He sighed. “She did it for love of me,” he said aloud. “No other reason but to set me free so that she could love me openly. No other reason but that she could marry me, and I could be king. And she knows that we both want that more than anything in the world. I could accept this terrible sorrow and this terrible crime as a gift of love. I can forgive her. I can love her. I can draw some happiness out of this misery.”

The sky grew paler and then slowly the sun rose, pale primrose, over the silver of the river. “God forgive me and God forgive Elizabeth,” Robert prayed quietly. “And God bring Amy the peace in heaven which I denied her on earth. And God grant that I am a better husband this time.”

There was a tap at his chamber door. “It’s dawn, my lord!” the servant called out. “Do you want your hot water?”

“Yes!” Robert shouted back. He went to the door, trailing the sheet, and shot back the bolt from the inside. “Put it down there, lad. And tell them in the kitchen that I am hungry, and warn the stable that I will be there within the hour; I am leading out the hunt today.”

He was in the stable an hour before the court was ready to ride, making sure that everything was perfect: horses, hounds, tack, and hunt servants. The whole court was riding out today in merry mood. Robert stood on a vantage point of the steps above the stable and watched the courtiers mounting up, the ladies being helped into their saddles. His sister was not there. She had gone back to Penshurst.

Elizabeth was riding, in fine spirits. Robert went to help her into the saddle but then delayed, and let another man go. Over the courtier’s head she shot him a little tentative smile and he smiled back at her. She could be assured that things would be all right between them. She could be forgiven. The Spanish ambassador saw them off; the Hapsburg ambassador rode beside her.

They had a good morning’s hunting. The scent was strong and the hounds went well. Cecil rode out to meet them at dinner time when they were served with a picnic of hot soup and mulled ale and hot pasties under the trees which were a blaze of turning color: gold and red and yellow.

Robert stood away from the intimate circle around Elizabeth, even when she turned and gave him a shy little smile to invite him to her side. He bowed, but did not go closer. He wanted to wait until he could see her alone, when he could tell her that he knew what she had done, he knew that it had been for love of him, and that he could forgive her.

After they had dined and went to remount their horses, Sir Francis Knollys found his horse had been tied beside Robert’s mare.

“I must offer you my condolences on the death of your wife,” Sir Francis said stiffly.

“I thank you,” Robert replied, as coldly as the queen’s best friend had spoken to him.

Sir Francis turned his horse away.

“Do you remember an afternoon in the queen’s chapel?” Robert suddenly said. “The queen was there, me, you, and Lady Catherine. It was a binding service, remember? It was a promise that cannot be broken.”

The older man looked at him, almost with pity. “I don’t remember any such thing,” he said simply. “Either I did not witness it, or it did not happen. But I do not remember it.”

Robert felt himself flush with the heat of temper. “I remember it well enough; it happened,” he insisted.

“I think you will find you are the only one,” Sir Francis replied quietly and spurred on his horse.

Robert checked the horses over, and glanced at the hounds. One horse was limping slightly and he snapped his fingers for a groom to lead it back to the castle. He supervised the mounting of the court; but he hardly saw them. His head was pounding with the duplicity of Sir Francis, who would deny that Robert and the queen had sworn to marry, who was suggesting that the queen would deny it too. As if she would betray me, Robert swore to himself. After what she has done to be with me! What man could have more proof that a woman loves him than she would do such a thing to set me free? She loves me, as I love her, more than life itself! We were born for each other, born to be together. As if we could ever be apart! As if she did not do this terrible, this unbearable crime for love of me! To set me free!

“Are you glad to be back at court?” Cecil asked in a friendly tone, bringing his horse alongside Robert’s.

Robert, recalled to the present, looked at him. “I cannot say I am merry,” he said quietly. “I cannot say that my welcome has been warm.”

The secretary’s eyes were kind. “People will forget, you know,” he said gently. “It will never be the same again for you, but people forget.”

“And I am free to marry,” Dudley said. “When people have forgotten my wife, and her death, I will be free to marry again.”

Cecil nodded. “Indeed, yes. But not the queen.”

Dudley looked at him. “What?”

“It is the scandal,” Cecil confided in him in his friendly tone. “As I told you when you left court. She could not have her name linked with yours. Your sons could never take the throne of England. You are infamed by the death of your wife. You are ruined as a royal suitor. She will never be able to marry you now.”

“What are you saying? That she will never marry me now?”

“Exactly,” Cecil replied, almost regretfully. “You are right. She can never marry you now.”

“Then why did she do it?” Dudley demanded, his whisper as soft as falling snow. “Why kill Amy, my wife, if not to set me free? Amy, the only innocent among us, Amy who had done nothing wrong but hold faith. What was the benefit if not to release me for marriage with the queen? You will have been in her counsel; you will have made this plan together. It will have been your villains who did it. Why murder little Amy if not to set me free to marry the queen?”

Cecil did not pretend to misunderstand him. “You are not released for marriage with the queen,” he said. “You are prevented forever. Any other way and you would always have been eligible. You would always have been her first choice. Now she cannot choose you. You are forever disbarred.”

“You have destroyed me, Cecil,” Dudley’s voice broke. “You killed Amy and fixed the blame on me, and destroyed me.”

“I am her servant,” Cecil said, as gentle as a father to a grieving son. “As you know.”

“She ordered the death of my wife? Amy died by Elizabeth’s order so that I should be shamed to the ground and never, never rise again?”

“No, no, it was an accidental death,” Cecil reminded the younger man. “The inquest ruled it so, the twelve good men of Abingdon, even when you wrote to them and pressed them to investigate most closely. They had their verdict; they brought it in. It was accidental death. Better for all of us if we leave it so, perhaps.”

AUTHOR’S NOTE

The mystery of how Amy Robsart died is still unsolved four centuries after her death. Several culprits have been suggested: malignant cancer of the breast which would account for reports of breast pain, and could result in the thinning of the bones of her neck; Robert Dudley’s agents; Elizabeth’s agents; Cecil’s agents; or, suicide.

Also fascinating are the incriminating and indiscreet remarks from Cecil and Elizabeth to the Spanish ambassador in the days before Amy’s death, which he recorded for his master, just as I present them in this fictional account.

It seems to me that Cecil and Elizabeth knew that Amy would die on Sunday, September 8, and were deliberately planting evidence with the ambassador to incriminate Robert Dudley. Elizabeth incriminates herself as an accessory by predicting Amy’s death before the event, and by saying that she died of a broken neck, before the detailed news reaches the court.

Why Elizabeth and Cecil should do such a thing we cannot know. I don’t believe that either of them blurted out the truth by accident, to the man most likely to circulate such scandal. I suggest that it was Elizabeth and Cecil’s plan to smear Dudley with the crime of wife-murder.

Certainly the shadow of guilt was effective in preventing Robert from attaining the throne. In 1566 William Cecil wrote a six-point memorandum to the Privy Council listing the reasons that Robert Dudley could not marry the queen: “IV. He is infamed by the death of his wife.”

Were Elizabeth and Robert full lovers? Perhaps in these more permissive days we can say that it hardly matters. What does matter is that she loved him all her life, and despite his later marriage to Laetitia Knollys (another Boleyn redhead) he undoubtedly loved her. His last letter was to Elizabeth, telling her of his love, and when she died it was with his letter by her bedside.

This is a short list of the books that helped my research for this novel. Adlard, George. Amye Robsart and the Earl of Leicester, 1870 Bartlett, A. D. An Historical Account of Cumnor Place, 1850 Brigden, Susan. New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The Rule of the Tudors: 1485–1603, 2000 Clarke, John. Palaces and Parks of Richmond and Kew, 1995. Cressy, David. Birth, Marriage and Death: Ritual, Religions and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, 1977. Darby,H.C. A New Historical Geography of England Before 1600, 1976. Doran, Susan. Monarchy and Matrimony: The Courtships of Elizabeth I, 1996. Dovey, Zillah. An Elizabethan Progress,1996. Dunn, Jane. Elizabeth and Mary: Cousins, Rivals, Queens, 2003. Dunlop, Ian. Palaces and Progresses of Elizabeth I, 1962. Evans, R. J. W. St. Michael’s Church, Cumnor: A Guide, 2003 Frere, Sir Bartle. Amy Robsart of Wymondham, 1937. Grierson, Francis. “An Elizabethan Enigma,” Contemporary Review, August 1960. Guy, John. Tudor England, 1988. Haynes, Alan. The White Bear: Robert Dudley, the Elizabethan Earl of Leicester, 1987. ———. Invisible Power: The Elizabethan Secret Services 1570–1603, 1992. ———. Sex in Elizabethan England, 1997.Hibbert, Christopher. The Virgin Queen,1992. Hume, Martin A. S. The Courtships of Queen Elizabeth, 1898. Jackson, Revd. Canon. “Amye Robsart,” The Nineteenth Century, A Monthly Review, ed. James Knowles, March 1882, no 61. Jenkins, Elizabeth. Elizabeth and Leicester, 1961. Loades, David. The Tudor Court, 1986. Milton, Giles. Big Chief Elizabeth, 2000. Neale, J. E. Queen Elizabeth, 1934. Picard, Liza. Elizabeth’s London, 2003. Pettigrew, T. J. An Inquiry Concerning the Death of Amy Robsart, 1859. Plowden, Alison. The Young Elizabeth, 1999.———. Elizabeth: Marriage with My Kingdom, 1999.———. Tudor Women: Queens and Commoners, 1998. Read, Conyers. Mr. Secretary Cecil and Queen Elizabeth, 1955. Ridley, Jasper. Elizabeth I, 1987. Rye, Walter. The Murder of Amy Robsart, A Brief for the Prosecution, 1885. Sidney, Philip. Who Killed Amy Robsart? 1901. Somerset, Anne. Elizabeth I, 1997. Starkey, David. Elizabeth, 2001. Strong, Roy. The Cult of Elizabeth, 1999. Turner, Robert. Elizabethan Magic: The Art and the Magus, 1989. Waldman, Milton. Elizabeth and Leicester, 1944. Walker, Julia M., ed. Dissing Elizabeth: Negative Representations of Gloriana, 1998. Weir, Alison. Children of England,1997. ———. Elizabeth the Queen, 1999. Wilson, Derek A. Sweet Robin: A Biography of Robert Dudley, Earl of Leicester, 1533–1588, 1981. Yaxley, Susan. Amy Robsart, Wife of Robert Dudley, 1532–1560, 1996.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

PHILIPPA GREGORY is the author of several novels, including The Other Boleyn Girl and The Queen’s Fool. Wideacre, her debut, was a New York Times bestseller and the first in a trilogy that included The Favored Child and Meridon. A writer and broadcaster for radio and television, she lives in England.

For further information about this and any of Philippa Gregory’s other books, and on forthcoming appearances, reviews, and unpublished material, please visit her website at www.philippagregory.com.

BY THE SAME AUTHOR

The Queen’s Fool

The Other Boleyn Girl

Meridon

The Favored Child

Wideacre

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2004 by Philippa Gregory Limited

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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Gregory, Philippa.The virgin’s lover / Philippa Gregory. p. cm.“A Touchstone book.” 1. Dudley, Amy Robsart, Lady, 1532?–1560—Fiction. 2. Leicester, Robert Dudley, Earl of, 1532?–1588—Fiction. 3. Great Britain— History—Elizabeth, 1558–1603—Fiction. 4. Burghley, William Cecil, Baron, 1520–1598—Fiction. 5. Elizabeth I, Queen of England, 1533–1603—Fiction. 6. Favorites, Royal—Fiction. 7. Murder victims— Fiction. I. Title.PR6057.R386V574 2004 823'.914—dc22 2004056468

ISBN 0-7432-7534-9

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