A Court Affair (22 page)

“Well, it’s the kind thing to do!” I exclaimed. “For all your studying of the Bible—I’m told you can read it in Latin and Greek and are studying ancient Hebrew so you can read it in that language too—you might try living by its teachings instead of just memorising the words and debating over their meanings! But”—I sighed and threw up my hands—“please yourself. You will anyway!” And I turned and left her.

As I continued on my way to check on Robert, I heard a groaning from an alcove hidden behind a gold-fringed red velvet arras and went to give what aid I could. But when I pulled it aside, I saw that the couple there was in no need of my assistance and more likely to resent my intrusion. For there were Katherine Grey and Lord Herbert, he with his back to me, and she with her skirts up and her bodice down, clinging to him, with her arms wrapped tightly around his neck and her legs around his hips, plainly defying the Duke of Northumberland’s edict that none of the marriages was to be consummated for the time being.

Seeing me, Katherine squealed and unwound from her beloved as he spun round guiltily to face me.

“Please don’t tell!” Katherine pleaded as she hastily pulled her gown up over her breasts and smoothed down her skirts.

“Please!” begged her hot-faced bridegroom as he fumbled and struggled to lace up his codpiece.

“Of course I won’t!” I assured them. “It seems to me that someone should get some joy out of this day!” And, with a smile, I let the arras fall back into place and left them to their pleasure.

Two days later I departed Durham House, alone but for Pirto and my entourage of liveried servants brandishing the Dudley banner of bear and ragged staff. And bringing up the rear, behind the cart laden with my trunks of mostly unworn finery, lumbered a second cart, with the tapestries of Patient Griselda carefully rolled up and wrapped in linen sheets with sachets of herbs to keep the moths away. Robert had personally supervised their packing. He even made a point of sending along a serving woman charged with the sole task of caring for them, as he doubted there was anyone at Stanfield Hall who was suitable, forgetting that we had many fine tapestries and not a one of them had been reduced to a moth-eaten rag. He paced back and forth and swore up and down that backs would be flayed if the tapestries suffered any damage upon the journey or after they arrived.

He was still preoccupied with seeing the tapestries safely loaded onto the cart when I bid him farewell, and he merely brushed a quick kiss across my cheek, then was off to cuff the ear of a lad who nearly dropped one end of the tapestry he was helping carry across the courtyard.

Though I hated to say goodbye to my husband and felt as if I were being sent away in disgrace, as a punishment, like a naughty child who had misbehaved, a part of me was heartily glad to quit the Dudley abode. There was no more talk about presenting me at court, especially now that the King was so ill. Robert seemed to have forgotten all about it, and I hadn’t the courage, or the desire, to remind him. I knew full certain now that this life was not for me.

This time, after we had left the noisy, stinking, crowd-choked city behind us, I called a halt to the procession of outriders, guards, servants, and carts, and leapt out of the litter, smiling, as nimble and spry as ever, and called for a horse. I suddenly wanted to ride. I wanted to be out of the stultifying confines of the litter, as well as the Dudley household, and feel free, and breathe—just breathe—the clean, fresh, country air with the sun on my face and the wind in my hair. I tore the cap and net off my head, tossed them to Pirto, letting the pins fall down into the dusty road, and shook out my hair, rumpling it and running my fingers through it, shaking my head hard this way and that, like a wet dog just emerged from the river, loving the wild abandon of it. And, startling the groom who came to help me to mount, I swung my leg over the saddle to ride astride rather than sidesaddle as becomes a fine lady. I dug my heels into the piebald’s sides and galloped off, laughing and waving back at my dumbstruck entourage.

I was going home where I belonged. I was only sorry that it wasn’t at my husband’s side. I thought we belonged together, but Robert disagreed, and in a marriage it is the husband’s word that carries the weight and is like unto law. I understood by his gift of the tapestries that Robert wanted Patient Griselda for a wife, and he had either mistaken Amy Robsart for her or thought he could press her into that mould, like the confectioners did to make figures out of marzipan—that the Amy he married would go docile and trusting into the mould just as he wanted her to and come out as Griselda. But he was
wrong
!

Stanfield Hall, near Wymondham, in Norfolk
July 1553

I
did not see my husband again until July. I was in the kitchen, gossiping and having a laugh with Cook and the maids. I had the sleeves of another old gown—the pink one I had gotten stained with paint—pinned up and was mixing a bowl of spiced batter to coat a roast in while Cook readied it for the spit, when he burst in, taking us all by surprise. He snatched the bowl right out of my hands and flung it at the wall, sending shards of green-glazed pottery and batter flying everywhere; then he wrenched the spoon from my hand and tossed that away too, and ripped the apron from me with such force that it tore underneath the waistband and I was left with the strings still knotted round my waist and frayed threads dangling down in front as he grabbed my hand and dragged me upstairs where his wife belonged, scarcely even stopping when I stumbled and banged my knees upon the stone stairs.

“Christ’s blood, Amy, you’re clumsy as a tot in leading strings when it comes to stairs!” he snapped as I hastily righted myself, and he gave my hand an impatient tug, nigh pulling my arm from its socket by the way it felt, and I knew I would have to ask Pirto to rub it with liniment before I went to bed that night, else it would pain me like the Devil on the morrow.

Upstairs in the privacy of my bedchamber, while I removed the remnants of the torn apron and tidied my hair and quickly shed my gown and covered myself with a pretty yellow damask dressing gown as Robert barked at me to “take that filthy rag off; just looking at it makes my eyes sore!” Robert poured himself a goblet of wine and raged like a caged lion, pacing back and forth before the unlit fireplace.

“It should have been me!” he cried, both petulant and passionate, before bolting down an overflowing goblet of red wine, then refilling it and draining it by half in one gulp. “It should have been King Robert I,
not
King Guildford I! My little brother has stolen
my
crown, and
you
”—he levelled an accusing finger at me—“
you
cheated me of my destiny,
you
tricked me into marrying you, and now, because of
you,
I’ll
never
be King!”

Stung by the venom in his words, I was half afraid to ask, yet I forced myself to stammer, “B-But, R-R-Robert, I … I don’t understand; wh-what are you talking about? H-How could you b-be King or G-Guildford either?”

“Of course
you
don’t understand;
you
never
do!” Robert spat the words at me as he refilled his goblet again. Each word was like a slap in the face to me, and, in truth, I thought blows would have been kinder; they would have only stung and smarted for a little while, and after a few days the bruises would heal, but the words would burrow into my memory and make a home for themselves there from whence they could come out whenever they pleased or were summoned forth to hurt me all over again. “Do you
ever
understand
anything
? God’s teeth, what did I ever do to deserve to be married to a simpleton like you? Why do you think Guildford married Jane? The King is dead, though it’s not to be announced yet, so tell no one; only Father and a few others know. Before he died, Edward wrote a new will; Father propped him up in bed and helped him sign it; he was so weak, he could scarcely hold the quill. Mary and Elizabeth are out—we’ll not have Catholic Mary on the throne—England’s a Protestant country now, and all the Papists can go hang or drown!—and Elizabeth will brook no master; not even Father can control her—so Jane is in. She’ll do what’s good for her or else … She has felt the sting of the whip before—her parents have seen to that—so she
knows
! She shall be proclaimed Queen in London very shortly, and Guildford shall be King of England. If I had married Jane instead of you, I would be King Robert I of England! Oh,
why,
why
did I not listen to my father?” He tore at his hair as he paced back and forth before me. “He tried to stop me, but I would have you against all reason; I in my young man’s lust knew better than any!
God damn you!
May He curse and rot you from the inside out for what you’ve done to me!” He paused to fill his goblet again, but halfway to his mouth he changed his mind and hurled it at me. And though I put up my arms to shield my face, I was still spattered with wine, and my lovely yellow dressing gown was ruined, stained with red blotches like blood that would never wash out.

When I put my arms down, he was already on the stairs, boot heels clattering, spurs jangling, leaving me as suddenly as he had come. “Never mind about ordering a dress for the coronation,” he shouted back over his shoulder. “No one wants you in London. You can stay here in the country and rot for all eternity for all I care! At least that way you’ll not embarrass me!”

I later learned that he was off, riding hard at the head of an army of five hundred men, to capture the Princess Mary before she could proclaim herself Queen and rally the people round her to claim the throne that was hers by right. But at this he failed. The reign of Queen Jane lasted just nine days. And when Mary took the throne and set the prisoners from her late brother’s reign free, there were plenty more to take their places in the Tower of London, including all the Dudley sons, their father, and the unwilling usurper, the luckless Lady Jane, who I heard even as the crown was being forced onto her head tried to push it away, sobbing, “It is not my right!”

As all England celebrated the ascension of Queen Mary, I was sick with worry about my husband. Hellish, blood-drenched dreams of horror, of Robert chained up in a dark dungeon and undergoing fiendish tortures, screaming like a damned soul for mercy as his nails were ripped out, or mounting the scaffold and having his head struck off, disturbed my rest at night, and even if I attempted to steal a nap during the day, still they tormented me. It seemed every time I closed my eyes, I saw my husband’s severed head with his neck dripping blood, while his clouded eyes stared sightlessly into space, dead to the world with no emotion or light of life to light them.

The whole Dudley clan were branded traitors, and it was a most fortunate thing indeed that I had a safe and welcoming home with my parents, for all the Dudley estates and lands were confiscated by the Crown. Even quaint little Hemsby Castle, where Robert and I had loved and frolicked in the sea, was confiscated by Queen Mary.

London
August 1553–October 1554

I
t took
all
my courage to return to London, but I
had
to see him, to know if he was all right. I clung to Pirto and cowered behind the curtains of our litter as the stench of death and rotting flesh overpowered us. Pirto pressed a pomander ball of oranges and cloves against my nose and urged me to “breathe deeply, love, breathe deeply, close your eyes, and don’t think about what’s outside”. But I couldn’t help it. Bodies of executed traitors hung like rotten fruit from gibbets on every street corner. They terrified me; their ghoulish faces haunted my dreams. I felt suffocated in the city, the way the houses leaned towards one another across the narrow streets, nigh blotting out the sun, and the danger of being drenched in filth as housewives tossed the contents of their chamber pots out the upstairs windows with only a careless cry of warning that scarcely allowed any time to avoid a nasty, fetid drenching.

When I disembarked from the litter, teetering on the high-soled wooden pattens I wore strapped to my feet to protect my slippers from being soiled by the filthy streets, and struggling with the weight of the large basket I clutched protectively against me, dirty little hands of rag-clad children reached out to tug at my skirts and heart as they pleaded for pennies. Pirto had to beat them back to clear a path for me. But I couldn’t say no to such sad faces, and I reached into my purse and drew out a handful of coins.

“Toss them down, My Lady, toss them down!” Pirto cried as they clamoured about me, jumping up and down and standing on tiptoe, shoving and jostling as they strained to reach up and snatch the money from my hand. And, though it seemed such a contemptuous gesture, I did as Pirto said and threw the pennies onto the ground. The children instantly abandoned me and pounced on them.

The breath caught in my throat as I gazed up at the Tower. It was such a terrifying place, grim grey on the outside and blood-drenched within. It was as if just standing outside of it I could feel all the suffering that had gone on within its walls, and I didn’t want to go on, I didn’t want to go in. Under my arms, I felt the sweat soak through my gown and trickle down my sides and back, and I felt so ashamed, knowing that the laundress would see these stains as emblems of my cowardice, and I
hated
myself for it. After all, I was not the one who was a prisoner in the Tower, I could come and go as I pleased—Queen Mary had issued an order allowing me and Ambrose’s wife to visit and tarry with our husbands whenever we liked—and there was not a scaffold being built below my window as an ever-present reminder that each day might be my last. But Robert
was
inside, and such was the grim reality he lived with every day and lay down with every night, and I, as a dutiful wife, must go to him. I must be brave for his sake and not let fear keep me from his side.

I forced myself to breathe deeply, reminding myself that I was a grown woman one year past twenty and not a little child. “You
can
do this!” I said with a confidence I didn’t quite feel, as I squared my shoulders and, gripping tightly the basket of comforts I had brought with me, passed through the portal of that Hell of human misery.