A Court Affair (38 page)

The handmaidens lit incense and then left us. Robert came to me and lowered me onto the cushions, and I lay back, loose and languid in his arms. His dark eyes cast a spell, mesmerising me, and his tongue flicked out, like a serpent’s, teasing and lapping at my nipples, hard and rouged as red as cherries as I lay weak and docile beneath him.

“Tell me you love me,” he breathed against my neck, and I did, again and again, clinging to him like a vine as he ground his loins hard against mine to show his ardour, wrapping my arms and legs tightly about him. “I love you, I love you!” I cried, my head whipping wildly against the ruby satin cushion it lay upon as he ripped away the silver tinsel girdle and his fingers plunged into the hot wetness of my sex.

“Now you are in my power!” he sighed.

At the triumph in his voice, I stiffened. His words had penetrated the opium fog and broken the spell completely. I thrust him from me and, hugging my robe tightly about me, ran out into the fresh air to escape the opium-scented incense. Dizzy and light-headed, flush-faced and sweating, I fell to my knees and vomited hard beneath a tree, expelling all the rich, decadent foods I had eaten.

Robert ran out after me and urged me to come back inside.

“Bess,
please
!” he groaned. “I
cannot
live like a monk!”

I waited until my head had cleared a little, gulping in great mouthfuls of the fresh air, then, bracing myself, I plunged back into the incense-clouded tent and found my clothes, my milkmaid’s disguise, and struggled as best as I could without assistance back into it. Robert came to me, begging me to sit down, but I pushed past him, back out into the fresh air, and ran for the river where the barge waited.

Cursing as he endeavoured to pull his breeches back on under his ornate robe to cover his nakedness, Robert ran after me. Suddenly he caught hold of me, grabbed my shoulders, and spun me around so I stood facing him. “Marry me,” he said, staring straight into my eyes.

I turned my face away and felt the day grow suddenly grey. “
Please,
Robert …”

“Every day could be just as wonderful as this!” Robert insisted. “If you would but banish this endless parade of suitors, that pompous lot of strutting cockerels, preening and pining for a crown, and marry me instead, the
one
man in England who
truly
loves
you,
Elizabeth the woman,
not
Elizabeth the Queen!”

I sighed and pulled away from him. “You already have a wife, Robert. You are not the Sultan of Turkey, and you cannot take another …”

“But
you—
” Robert knelt before me and reached out to put his hands on my shoulders, staring into my eyes with a blazing intensity—“
you
have the power to set me free so we
can
be married!”

“No!” I said adamantly.
“Never!”
I pronounced each word clearly and decisively. “I told you before, Robert, I am
not
my father, and I will
not
abuse my power and twist the law to suit me. Your Amy shall not go the way of Catherine of Aragon, and I, Anne Boleyn’s daughter, will not step into my mother’s shoes as the centre and cause of a divorce scandal. And I have no desire to marry …”

“But Amy does not love me, and I don’t love her. I love you!” Robert insisted. “I
never
stop thinking of you, wanting you. I am
mad
with love for you!”

“I am truly sorry, Rob. I remember well your wedding day, and the way her face
glowed
with love, the way she lit up whenever she looked at you; it saddens me to learn such a love has died and that light has gone out. However,” I continued, in a tone much more brusque and businesslike, as though I were addressing my Council, “as you well know, love is very rarely the foundation of marriage. Many marry and live their whole lives without it, often well and contented with their lot. Life is full of hard bargains, Rob, but, sooner or later, we all must make our peace with it, else it drive us mad with torment, or we sicken and wither away for want of what we can never have; and so must you. Make your peace, Robert; it will go better for all of us if you do.”

“But if I could persuade her …” he persisted.

“Oh,
really,
Rob!” I sighed in annoyance and threw up my hands. “There are no grounds that I am aware of, and I will
not
meddle in this!
I will not!
I am Queen and now must have even greater regard for my reputation, and I will not have it being said that I turned Lady Dudley out like Griselda in her shift so I could take her place! Now, I will hear no more about it! And I’ve warned you before …” Robert started to speak, but I silenced him with a furious glare.
“Not one more word,”
I warned, ice and fire in every syllable.

Crestfallen, Robert nodded and hung his head, and his shoulders slumped forward, as if all the fire had suddenly gone out of him.

“The sun is setting,” I said. “We’d best be going.”

Robert nodded and came to take my arm. “But first I want to show you something.”

He led me out into the gloaming and waved his hand back at the house. Every window I saw was lit by a single candle.

“Every night I am in residence here,” he announced as he stood before me, holding each of my hands in his, “I make this vow: a candle shall be left burning the whole night through, from dusk till dawn, in every window, in the hope that its light will guide you to my door and into my arms.” Then he gently pulled me to him and kissed me with the utmost tenderness, the gentlest passion I had ever in my life known, that made me also feel aglow, as if lit from within, like the windows of the Dairy House at Kew.

“I love you,” Robert whispered.

And I answered, and in that moment I meant it, “I love you too.”

Then, hand-in-hand, we walked slowly back to the barge, and I returned to my palace, to reality, to doff my milkmaid’s disguise, to plant my feet firmly back on the ground after my afternoon’s flight of fancy, and resume my duties as Queen. But even as the French Ambassador knelt at my feet and recited a poem of love one of Catherine de Medici’s litter of royal princes had written for me, I could think of nothing and no one but Robert. And when I closed my eyes and pretended to swoon beneath the caress of his sonorous syllables, in my mind I was back in Robert’s arms again, and his lips were on mine.

William Hyde’s Mansion House in Throcking, Hertfordshire
April–June 1559

T
he next time I saw Robert, he asked me to set him free. Right there in the Hydes’ best parlour where he had taken me to speak privily. He draped a pretty shawl about my shoulders and settled me comfortably upon the window seat, smoothing the full skirts of my yellow silk gown and placing my sewing basket upon my lap and watching me thread my needle with bright green silk and even complimenting me on the scene I was embroidering—a sly tabby cat crouched in a bed of wildflowers watching a red-breasted robin tugging at a worm. Then he went to stand before the fireplace. He stood with his hands clasped behind his back, rocking gently on his boot heels, as he calmly asked me for a divorce in the same voice he might have used if he were inquiring if we were having quails for dinner.

He would be generous, “
extravagantly
and
absurdly
generous,” he assured me, as if money really mattered when my heart was breaking and he could see it clearly upon my face, as though I were a porcelain figurine of a woman he had just smashed with a hammer. As he knelt to gather up the contents of my sewing basket, which had fallen from my lap and spilled, scattering all around my feet, I sat there white-faced and wide-mouthed, my eyes staring without seeing straight ahead of me. But Robert went on speaking as if nothing was wrong, as if he were merely giving me directions on the best route to ride from Suffolk to Surrey.

Since there were no children or lands and estates to muddle matters and tie up the law courts, he continued, and he closed the basket with a pat upon the lid as if it were a good puppy and set it on the window seat beside me, it should be a very simple matter. I had only to agree and sign my name upon a document, and it would be done, our union would be dissolved, and we would both be free to walk away from a mistake we had made in our youth.

“Oh, Amy!” Robert sighed, still kneeling before me, grasping both my trembling hands in his, rubbing them hard to try to restore the warmth to flesh that had suddenly gone as white and cold as chilled milk. “Do it for England, if not for me! A weak and petty, spiteful, vindictive woman would want to hurt me by refusing, and making no end of scandal and trouble, but I
know
that
you
are
not
like
that
! You, with your good country common sense, know that England is in a precarious position and will remain so until the Queen marries and gives birth to an heir. But she dare not take a foreign consort after the example her sister set with Spanish Philip. But an Englishman … that is a
very
different matter, and would be most heartily approved of by her people, and this Queen listens to and heeds the voice of the people; she believes it is they who put her on the throne and keep her there. And if she will wed an Englishman, then who better than I? I have known her and been her friend almost all her life. We met in the schoolroom when we were eight years old, and I have been her staunch supporter in good times and bad; I even sold my property and lands to put money in her purse. And I am an educated man, and skilled in military tactics, and I know the ways of the court and Council chamber—my father taught me well—and I can parry with words as well as I can with a sword. There’s not a man in England or the whole of Europe who can better or match me! My shoulders can take the weight Elizabeth’s are too frail to bear! And I
want
to, Amy.” He squeezed my hands so hard, I feared the bones would crack into little pieces that, like my heart, could never be put back together. “I
want
to! But,
first,
I
need
you
to set me
free
!” He sat up higher on his knees and kissed and nuzzled my cheek and neck. “
Please,
my darling, say you will set me free to be the King I was always meant to be! Show the
true
nobility and saintly grace I know you possess, and step aside. Do it for England, for the good of the nation, and every man, woman, and child will revere and thank you for sacrificing your heart for their sake! And you can still be my mistress, for I am fond of you in my way, and if you do me this
very
great
favour, I shall be fonder of you still. I shall like you all the more for it, and Elizabeth need
never
know. And if our little interludes together should produce any children, I shall recognise them as my baseborn issue—after I am dead of course—in my will, and leave them a token bequest, though they shall have no claim to the throne of course.”

I felt as though he had just struck off my arm with a battle-axe, then, out of what
he
considered the goodness of his heart, offered me a jar of salve and a linen bandage. How could he think that I, like a modern-day Griselda, would smilingly renounce my respectable position as his lawfully wedded wife and become his secret, on-the-sly mistress? How little he must think of me! I had my pride!

With all the strength I could muster, I pulled my hands free and stood up, marvelling that my knees did not buckle and I did not fall as I stepped around him and walked out the door.

“Never!”
I said without looking back. “Not so long as there is a breath left in my body!”

Too stunned to speak—no doubt he had expected me to instantly and smilingly agree like Griselda—Robert continued to kneel there even after I had gone, and it was several moments before I heard him running after me. By then I was already at the top of the stairs.

“I am your wife, Robert,” I said, startled by the calm coolness of my voice—it sounded so placid and serene. “I am your wife, and so I shall remain until my dying day.”

“Why must I be perpetually punished for a mistake I made in my youth?” Robert howled in fury as he hurled my sewing basket after me. It struck my back, and as the contents went flying all over the stairs, I whirled around.

“And the blame is not
all
mine that we have no children,” I cried accusingly. “I cannot go out into the kitchen garden and pluck up a son for you from the midst of Mrs Hyde’s salad greens! It takes
two
to make a child, Robert, but you so seldom have time for me. You are
always
with
her
!”

“Don’t you
dare
try to foist your failings onto me!” Robert bellowed back at me, his face a contorted red mask of fury. “Your womb hasn’t quickened
once,
not
once,
in all the years we’ve been married, yet tavern wenches get tumbled every night by men they scarcely know and find their bellies filled! It’s more
your
fault than it is mine, Amy, and I’m
glad
now that we have no child—it would only complicate matters!” Then he spun round and stormed towards the door, but once there he turned back and thundered, “
I will have my freedom! You
will
not
stop me or stand in my way! I was born for better things, and a better woman than you, and I
will
have them all—
you
will not keep me from them if you know what’s good for you! I’ll see you damned, dead, or disgraced first! I have the Queen’s ear, she loves me, and all it would take is just
one
word from me, just
one
word, whispered in her ear to send you to prison to rot for the rest of your worthless life, so be forewarned, Amy, be forewarned! You
cannot
win, so why bother to fight me? And I withdraw my offer to keep you as my mistress; I would rather cut off my own cock than let such a mule-stubborn bitch as you have the pleasure of it! Mark my words, Amy,
I will have my freedom!
” he repeated, and then he slammed out the door, leaving me pale and shaken, slumping against the banister, clinging to it for support, as I struggled to breathe. I felt a terrible tightness in my throat, as if a noose were tightening round it, but after a few moments it eased, and I could draw a full breath again.