A Court Affair (45 page)

In the happy, passionate fantasies of my daydreams, after hearing me speak these sincere and heartfelt words, my husband would strip me, and himself, bare, and carry me to the bed, and make love to me the way we used to, lying warm and naked in the cold, salty surf at Hemsby.

This time, I wanted to show Robert that I could be me, but a
better,
brighter,
grander
me,
who was just as good as any lady of the court, an Amy who loved only him and aimed to please.

But when Robert came in and saw me, dancing, swaying, spinning, and sashaying enticingly before him as the blind harpist played, he burst out laughing as though it was the funniest sight he’d ever seen. Bent double and slapping his knees, he laughed himself breathless until he was red in the face and braying like an asthmatic donkey. When he was able to speak again and stood wiping the tears of mirth away, he said, even though I was “painted like a whore, I looked just like a clown”. And then, as abruptly as a sudden summer rain, his mirth turned to anger, and he denounced me like a preacher thundering from the pulpit for my “lewd and lascivious display”. When I told him my intentions, he stared me down sternly, witheringly, making me feel as tiny as an ant, and informed me that “the court is not a brothel, Amy, and the ladies there do not comport themselves like painted bawds and whores, no matter what ignorant country bumpkins might believe”.

My throat froze, and my lips quivered, too hurt and stunned to speak, as tears rolled down my face, ruining the carefully applied paint. No matter what I did, no matter how hard I tried, it
always
went wrong in the end. I just
could not
win! I wondered if it were my fate, written in the stars, to always be a disappointment and a failure. When I looked at myself in the mirror now, those words,
Disappointment
and
Failure,
seemed to spring ever more often to my mind. Sometimes I even felt as if they were branded upon my forehead and half expected to see them there, burned into my skin in charred-edged, angry red letters. It hurt
so
much, to want and try
so
hard, but to
always
fail to enchant and delight him, to make him smile and reach out his arms to me. That was all I
really
wanted. But when it came to my husband’s love, I was a ne’er-do-well.

Then his back was turned, and he was walking away, leaving me once again, going back to court, back to Elizabeth.

I ran after him, in my furious pain forgetting that others might see me so immodestly arrayed, and on the stairs, from the upper landing, I shouted down at him: “I
hate
what you’ve become—the Queen’s pet lapdog who is kept on a short, bejewelled leash! She yanks the chain, and
you
go running back! She holds up a treat, and
you
jump for it!” He stopped for a moment—but it was only for a moment—he never turned around; he just stood still for one long, lone moment, and then he started walking again, walking away from me, never looking back. “You don’t
really
love her, you only love what she can give you, what she represents; once she’s served her purpose, she’ll be
nothing
to you!
Nothing!—
just like me!
I hate you, Robert,
I hate you!
” I screamed through a hard rain of tears, raking my throat raw but too angry to care.
“Your head belongs on a pike, not on the Queen’s pillow!”

As the door slammed shut behind him, I suddenly became aware that there were others downstairs, staring up at me, their eyes and mouths agape. Sir Richard Verney was there, smirking, sneering up at me, his dark eyes telling me that I was nothing, and beside him stood Thomas Blount, who had apparently accompanied Robert, staring at me as though I were a freak in a fair. And there were servants.

I gasped in shame and horror and hugged my arms tightly over my bead-bedecked breasts. As I spun round in retreat, stumbling over my skirts and high-heeled shoes, I fell hard, barking my palms against the stone stairs as I instinctively reached out to break my fall. Tommy Blount was up the stairs and at my side in an instant, taking my arm, trying to help set me aright on my feet again, but, in my shame, I pushed him away, my face burning scarlet and hot beneath the streaks of tear-damp paint. I couldn’t even bring myself to look at him, and instead of thanking him for his help, I lashed out at him, screaming at him to,
“Stay away from me! Don’t look at me! Don’t touch me!”
Then I ran back to my room, losing one high-heeled slipper in my haste and further impairing my gait, but I was too embarrassed to turn back and retrieve it. I only wanted to be back inside my room with the door locked so none could bear further witness to my shame and weeping.

I rushed about like a madwoman, pulling the decorations down from the ceiling beams and ripping the blue bunting waves from the walls, sending the trays of candy shells and fish flying; then I ran to the bed and yanked down the beautiful new bed-curtains, ruining them, ripping the fabric and sending pearls scattering everywhere, as I screamed at the blind harpist to
“Get out!”
before I fell facedown onto the bed, weeping a whole ocean of tears. I didn’t know which was worse—that I had failed again or that others had seen to what desperate lengths I was willing to go to try to win back my husband’s love yet had
still
failed. It was a great and awful blow to my pride, and I did not know how I could ever go downstairs again and face any of the Verney household, knowing that they had seen—and those who hadn’t seen would soon be told by those who had—how I had got myself all hussied-up with my face painted and had brazenly bared my bosom under a smattering of beads. Soon everyone would know; they would be laughing about it in the alehouse and mayhap even calling me lewd names. In my rage, I had become my own worst enemy; I had let my private shame become a public one. Would I
ever
be able to look anyone in the eye again? Could I even bear to face myself in the looking glass?

I sobbed myself to sleep, but even in slumber I found no peace. I was tormented by a dream in which I found myself struggling in a cold blue green lake, weighed down by my mermaid gown and pearl-bedecked hair. I sank down, lower and lower, and as I kicked and fought my way back up, desperate for air, my arms and legs became hopelessly, terrifyingly entangled in the whirls and swirls of my billowing skirts. But somehow I made it to the top, and then … my fist struck
ice
! Hard, unbreakable ice! The lake had frozen over! And through the ice—it was like looking through a frosty window—I beheld a number of stern-faced priests circling the lake, solemnly chanting in a commanding tone words in Latin that I could not understand but somehow knew were meant to keep my soul imprisoned, trapped forever, through all eternity, within this lake. Even though I was underwater, I screamed—curious things can happen in a dream—as the folds of my skirt floated up about me, even as I fought to push the wafting, billowing layers back down, as if they meant to stifle me, the pearls and crystals twinkling like tiny bubbles, mocking bits of air I could not breathe. But no matter how hard I hammered my fists on the ice, it would not break, and no matter how loudly I screamed, no one would help me. And I knew that I was
trapped—forever
!

I sprang up in bed with a bloodcurdling scream that scared even me and shook the entire house out of their beds and sent them running to my room, certain that I was being murdered. And so—yet again—I had humiliated myself and exposed my shame and my pain to the scrutiny of others.

In his black velvet dressing gown and slippers, with a candelabrum in hand, his hair, only slightly mussed from sleep, hanging over his forehead like a sleek black raven’s wing, Sir Richard Verney banged my door open without bothering to knock. He came to stand at the foot of my bed, condescendingly appraising me in my rumpled gown, the crystals over my breasts sparkling in the candlelight, and my face a red, bloated, tear-swollen mess covered with streaks and smears of blue, green, pink, gold, and black paint. He stared hard and long at me, with his cold and poisonous little serpent’s eyes, before he turned and ushered his servants, who were crowding my door, peering in curiously with their annoyed and sleep-bleary eyes, back to their beds, telling them that, “Lady Dudley has suffered a bad dream—
again
,” he added meaningfully, for it was not the first time a nightmare had jolted me awake with a scream that shattered the peace of the night.

Robert was already gone. He had ridden back to London immediately after he walked out on me. He didn’t even say goodbye. He just rode away, in angry silence, charging down the road, back to the arms of Elizabeth, back to the cool, elegant, confident, and poised Queen, and away from his poor, pathetic, country-girl wife, all got up in beads and paint, pretending to be grand, pretending to be something she was not, trying—and failing miserably—to convince him—and perhaps herself as well—that she was every bit as good as the beauties on parade, dancing in the masques, at court.

As the harsh light of morning trickled in through the narrow, arched windows of Compton Verney, Pirto silently prepared my bath and unlaced me from my mermaid gown.

“It will make you feel better, love.” She smiled, nodding towards the tub filled with steaming water, with dried rose petals, lavender, and chamomile bobbing on top.

As the beaded bodice fell away, I noticed that the dimple on my left breast had changed; it was now pointing out instead of in, like the tip of an accusing finger, as if the dimple had suddenly changed its mind about what it wanted to be and decided to become a nipple instead. It filled me with fear just to look at it. And, though there was no way to escape it—it was a part of my flesh—I turned quickly and stepped into my bath and sank down low into the steaming water, wishing I could scald that worrisome imperfection away.

Was that my punishment, I have oftentimes since wondered, for baring and flaunting my breasts beneath the dazzle of crystal beads, even though I did it out of love and desperation and intended the sight only for my husband’s eyes? I had failed so many times in so many ways by the time I donned the mermaid gown, perhaps I deserved it.

I tried to tell myself it was nothing, just some sort of blemish that would get well in its own good time, though I could not resist slathering it with every ointment I could find or think of, hoping to speed it on its way. Every time I looked at it, I hoped to see some change; sometimes I tried to convince myself that I saw some sign of improvement, that it looked a
little
smaller, but I was only deceiving myself, it was only wishful thinking, and in truth, nothing did any good, and it was not getting even a smidgen smaller.

Instead, it grew and grew, and the more I tried to ignore it, the larger it got. But I was afraid to acknowledge it, to show or speak of it, and each time I changed my clothes, I shimmied hurriedly into or out of my shift, and when I bathed, I sank down low in the water and tried to hold my arm, even though to press upon it hurt, so it would not show.

Finally the fear got the better of me, and I broke down. Pirto found me weeping, and I blubbered and blurted out the truth to her.

With the practised and capable fingers of one who has spent a lifetime as first a nursemaid and then a lady’s maid, she gently bared my breast and examined it.

“Oh, pet, an abscess is all that is! Have you been worrying yourself sick over
that
?” She hugged me close, kissed my cheek, and stroked my hair as I laid my head against her shoulder, still shaking with sobs. “My auntie had one of those, and it hurt like hell for a time, it did—pardon my words—but that’s
just
what she said, but after it burst and healed, she was just fine and lived to the ripe old age of seventy-nine, she did.”

“R-Really, Pirto?” I looked up at her.

“Aye, my love, sure as rain she did! Now”—she stood up briskly—“dry your tears.” With the edge of her apron she began to do just that. “A hot poultice is just what you need—’twill encourage it to burst and take the edge off the pain after it does. I’ll fix you the
very
one my Auntie Susan used—I’ll go out into the garden and find a stone, and we’ll put it in the fire to heat, then I’ll lift it out with tongs and wrap it up tightly in a cloth, and you’ll lie down with that, and we’ll soon see the end of it.” And she brightly set about doing just what she had said she would.

For many hours of many an afternoon afterwards I followed Pirto’s instructions and lay with that hot stone upon my breast, but though the warmth felt comforting, it failed to have the desired effect Pirto predicted. It never burst. At times I thought the heat was only making it angrier, because it knew I was fighting back, trying to destroy it before it destroyed me. It grew even larger, until it was an angry, livid lump marring the pink roses and cream of my breast and causing a painful tenderness alongside, reaching fingers of pain beneath my left arm. And the day my nipple began to seep a foul perversion of mother’s milk, sometimes tinted pink by my blood, I knew for the first time what
real
fear was. And I knew in my heart that, no matter what I did, what remedies I tried, I was doomed. This was no abscess; it was cancer, and it would take my life, sever my soul from my body, like a crab’s claw clipping through a frail, fraying tether.

A Visit to London
The Dairy House at Kew
and
Richmond Palace
September 1559

W
hile I languished at Compton Verney, suffering this increasingly painful malady of the breast, though none but Pirto yet knew of it, I received letters from my stepsisters scolding me about how I was being remiss in my duties as a wife. I should be at court, they said, smiling and “being a sparkling ornament at my husband’s side”. They wrote me of the handsome little house at Kew that the Queen had given him, a mansion in miniature called the Dairy House, as it had once provided butter, cheese, and cream for the royal household. They said that I should stop my spoiled and wilful ways, that I was not a little girl any more, being indulged and petted by my father. I should be in London living in grand style and presiding over that fine house as Lord Robert’s wife.
If I were you, that is certainly what I would be doing!
Frances said.
I would not let my honoured and respectable place as his wife be usurped by another woman, even if that other woman
is the Queen of England!
Anna added. They said that I was a disgrace to the name of Robsart, letting myself be hidden away in the country as if I were an object of embarrassment and shame like a dribbling idiot, a hunchbacked dwarf, or a madwoman.
I simply would not tolerate it!
said Anna.
Mark my word,
seconded Frances,
I would make a stand and put my foot down!
Clearly they had also heard the rumours from London that were spreading all over the country just like a plague and even being carried abroad by travellers. If you were there and a good wife to him, they implied, this would not be happening. It was all
my
fault; Anna and Frances had a way of
always
conveying that without actually saying it. Ever since I married Robert, either talking to them or reading their letters always left me feeling overwhelmed and exhausted and as if I could do nothing right at all. If I chanced to look in a mirror just after, the word
FAILURE!
would leap out at me, right into my face, like a blow from a fist struck unexpectedly and out of nowhere.