A Court Affair (51 page)

“So what if I have?” Robert shrugged. “She’ll be there herself soon enough, and then we need never worry about her again, and never waste another moment talking or thinking of her either!”

“What do you mean?” I demanded.

“I mean she is dying,” Robert answered, striding across the room and putting his hands on my shoulders as he gazed down intently into my eyes. “I’ve only just found out, she has a cancer of the breast. Darling, don’t you see?” He had the temerity to
smile
at me, as if this were
happy
news, a
good
thing! “Now we have only to wait! She can’t last long, and her death will spare me the expense and bother—and the scandal of course—of procuring a divorce. Hallelujah, God
is
good! Aye, my love.” He would have pulled me close, but I put up my hands to stop him. “God is smiling down on us; this is a sign of His approval. He wants us to be together as man and wife, to fulfil the destiny that was written in the stars for us at the hour of our birth, and He in His infinite wisdom is removing the only obstacle that stands in our path. Soon He shall take Amy home to Him, and she shall bother and vex us no more! This cancer in her breast is God’s judgment visited upon her; it is divine punishment for her refusing to be a reasonable woman and an obedient wife and give me a divorce when I asked her to. God is punishing her for her sins and blessing and rewarding me—and you!” he added as a brightly smiling afterthought.

“You lying whoreson, bastard, traitor, you insensitive brute!”
The hellcat inside of me was unleashed, and I struck him again and again, slapping and punching him, kicking, clawing, and pummelling until his back was to the wall and his arms up to shield his face from my nails. “I can’t think of anything bad enough to call you! How
dare
you
smile
? How
dare
you
rejoice
?
I
am a woman too, Robert. I have breasts!”

“
Beautiful
breasts,” Robert affirmed, swiftly raising his arms again as I launched another onslaught of blows.

“How
dare
you act like this is cause for celebration? How dare you speak for God and say this is His retribution and reward?
Get out!
” I screamed. “
Get out!
I am mad enough to kill you with my bare hands!”

“At once, my darling. I can see you are overwhelmed by this news. It is as if the clouds are lined with gold and raining diamonds down upon us!” Robert said as he stepped around me, his smiling bravado marred by wincing groans as I continued to follow him, raining blow after blow, pummelling his back with my fists and kicking at his calves and buttocks. He made for the door that led to the rooms adjoining mine that I had recently awarded him as a sign of my great favour, an action that had both scandalised and titillated my entire court and, in the eyes of the foreign ambassadors, hung a dark cloud of suspicion over my morals. “I have some medicines I want to send to Amy …”

“Medicine?”
I ran around in front of him so I could see his face. “What
kind
of medicine, Robert?” I demanded.

Robert shrugged. “I’m no doctor, sweet. They’re just medicines to ease the poor woman’s suffering; Tamworth is packing them now, I believe.” He grabbed my wrist and drew me to him. “You have wounded me deeply, Bess. I am not a man without feeling, and you wound me to the depths of my soul by thinking I am, just because I am honest enough to admit that this is
good
news for
us,
for
our
future, and to be pleased about it. But that does
not
mean I do not care that Amy is being struck down by this horrible disease. How can you credit me with such coldness, such callousness, you who have seen me weep over the death of horses?”

“If you are waiting for me to apologise,” I said coldly, “I would advise you not to hold your breath!” Then I rushed on past him, flinging the door wide with such force that it pulverised the painted plaster acorns carved upon the wall, and I stormed like a whirlwind into his bedchamber.

“Mr Tamworth!” I called.

Instantly the valet stopped what he was doing and fell to his knees before me.

“Mr Tamworth.” I drew myself up regally before him, endeavouring to appear calm and in full possession of myself, for it was impossible that he had not overheard my frenzied attack upon his master. “I believe you are preparing some medicines to send to Lady Dudley?”

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He gestured to the table, where some glass bottles sat alongside a box and some wads of wool and lengths of cloth he obviously meant to wrap and pad them with. “I have them here.”

I reached out and picked up a bottle filled with a murky green liquid. Boldly, I uncorked it. The stench of it was enough to make my nose want to flee my face, but I kept a firm grip on it and stared Robert straight in the eyes.

“Will this harm her?” I asked, my eyes boring into his, digging for the truth.

“Of course not!” Robert cried. “Elizabeth, how could you possibly think …” His mouth dropped, gaping open in a wide, slack
O,
as I put the bottle to my lips, like an open-mouthed kiss against the cold, hard, glass rim.
“Elizabeth!
No!”
He lunged, hurling himself across the room at me, knocking me down flat, and as we fell together onto the floor, to lie disordered and entangled like lovers, the bottle flew from my hand and shattered against the stone hearth.

“Liar!”
I hissed, slapping at him, struggling beneath the weight of his body, panting and pale, his brow beaded with a sweat of guilt or fear.

“I
swear
to you, I am not,” he said, gazing down at me, as he grappled to grasp my wrists and pin them to the floor above my head to restrain me, even as I continued to thrash beneath him. “But I
had
to stop you. You might have harmed yourself. You are not ill and have no need of such strong medicine, my love. I was afraid it might harm you, to take it thus, direct from the bottle, its strength undiluted, when it is meant to be taken a little at a time and mixed with wine to make it palatable.”

I drove my knee into his groin, and as he rolled away, cradling his privy parts, grimacing and groaning, I struggled to my feet.

I stood with my back to him and took a deep breath to steady myself before I turned around again and stared down at him.

“Hear me now, Robert Dudley.” At the icy strength in my voice he stilled, though his hands still clutched between his legs. “And commit every word I speak to memory. As Amy’s husband you may be in the eyes of most her lord and master, but do not attempt to play God and decide whether she lives or dies. My father killed two of his wives, one of them my mother, the other my cousin, so do not imagine that I will take kindly to a man who does the same. If Amy is to die, then let her die in peace, and let it be by God’s will and in His own time; do not seek to hasten it. And do not think to be King
ever
; relinquish those mad dreams
now
before they lead you to do murder. I have always told you the honest and plain truth that I will never marry anyone; I will
never
marry
you
! The games I play I play for my own reasons, for England first and my vanity and amusement second, but when I am dead and buried, the stonemasons will carve upon my tombstone: Here lies Elizabeth the Queen, who lived and died a virgin!”

“Elizabeth!
I love you!
” With pleading eyes Robert rose onto his knees, like a supplicant kneeling before me, and reached out his hands, like one begging the statue of a saint for a miracle. “
Please,
do not deny our love!”

But I held my ground. I didn’t melt. I didn’t waver or weaken. “I warn you, Robert, if
any
harm befalls Amy, if she dies by poison or any other foul or unnatural means, you
will
pay for it like any other murderer upon the gallows or the scaffold. My favour does not place you above the Law or entice Justice to turn a blind eye. You will not hide behind my petticoats. I will
not
shield you. Remember that.” And I left him, this man who had lied to and betrayed two women who had both loved him, to ponder those words.

I was silent as Kat undressed me, but when I was alone in the darkness behind the closed velvet curtains of my bed, I let my tears soak my pillow. I had seen the ugliness that hid behind the handsome face of Robert Dudley, the callous granite hardness and the heart of ice that lay beneath the warmth and charm of the smiling façade he presented to the world at large. I had always known he had a ruthless streak, that Ambition was his guiding star, but I had also thought he had a heart. And though I eventually slept, rest and peace were both denied me as in my dreams the ghost of Tom Seymour stood beside me, his arm about my waist, his fingers roving and caressing, and his lips at my ear, singing in a soft, lust-dripping, voice intended just for me, of “Cakes and Ale” as we watched Robert’s radiant and smiling “Buttercup Bride” walk barefoot across the meadow, blind to the warning presence of the sad-eyed, diaphanous white phantoms of Katherine Parr and my sister Mary floating alongside her like reluctant bridesmaids, frantic but powerless to stop her, as she walked towards a future, and a man, she should have been running away from. I also was powerless to stop her. I could only watch in horror as she went smiling with a loving heart and in good faith to embrace her fate—a handsome, hot-blooded youth who married her in rash and raging lust, only to afterwards punish and hate and blame her for his mistake when a brighter star rose in the sky, to tantalisingly and mockingly remind him of a destiny he thought should have, and could have, been his if only he weren’t already married. And even as he leapt and grasped for the star, that looked from high above so like a crown, Amy was there, grabbing his ankles, to weigh and pull him back down. Would he shed her innocent blood to free him from this burden that impeded his rise? He was blinded by the halo of bright golden light that surrounded the crown; he could not see that he was reaching and grasping for something he could never have. If he killed her, Amy would die in vain.

In the cold darkness, still hours before dawn’s first light, I sprang from my bed, feeling feverish and hot, desperate to escape from the clinging shroud of sheets that damply entangled my limbs, and the disturbing dreams that held me an unwilling prisoner and denied me rest. I shook back my hair and untangled the sweat-dampened white linen folds of my nightgown from my limbs and began to pace, my body as restless as my mind.

Weary but wide awake, I sank down at the table upon which my ebony and ivory chessboard sat. I lined up the pieces, positioning them ready for a new game, and sat back and stared at them, thoughtfully, intensely, tapping my chin. Robert, the man I had loved, in my own unconventional way, was my invisible opponent across this board, so different from real life in which there were many shades of grey betwixt the stark black and white squares. I had been born into this game of royal intrigue, playing from the start, for my life, my title—the triumphant
Princess
instead of the disgraced
King’s bastard
—for this kingdom of England, and the crown I was born to wear. Even though I had won, that did not mean I could sit back, enjoy my laurels, and disdain to play any more. The game must go on, the pieces continually reset, my opponents ever changing, again and again, as long as my life endured, as long as it, and England, were worth fighting for.

I picked up the black king and stared at him intently.
“Robert!”
I felt the carved ebony bite sharply into my palm as I grasped it tightly, wanting to smash, to shatter it, but instead, after a moment, I set it down again.
“You shall not win!”
I said with a defiant toss of my head. “
I shall best you!
And I shall do it in such a way that you will think twice before you ever
dare
challenge me again!
This is war!
” And with my arm I swept all the pieces from the board. Then I folded my arms over the black and white board, laid my head down, and wept as I waited for the sun to rise. I wept because, once again, I must fight against myself, the passion and desire that always simmered and sometimes boiled and even flared into flames inside me that reached high, trying to burn away my reason, to scorch out caution and make it flee from me like one who has awakened in the night to a burning house, desperate to escape the inferno, and the man who stirred and aroused that passion, making it leap into bright flame, a man who used passion to win what he desired, and what he wanted most was my crown. Desire my body and claim to love me though he might, had I been a beggarmaid or a squire’s daughter like Amy, I would have been forgotten the moment his lust was spent. Robert Dudley’s eyes were on a greater, more glittering, prize. He wanted to sit upon a throne; he was not a man to be content with a comfortable fireside chair.

One of the chess pieces had fallen into my lap, and I picked it up. A pawn, one of the weakest and most numerous pieces in the game. A white pawn—
Amy!
In my mind’s eye I saw her, in her bare feet and wedding gown as I always pictured her, frightened and running frantically back and forth across the black and white squares of a chessboard, buttercups falling and scattering from her bouquet and crown as she tried to evade Robert, the Black King who was trying to capture her, to vanquish and get past her, as only she stood between him and the White Queen—
me
!
“You’ll never win!”
I told him from where I stood, white-gowned and defiant, my feet planted firmly upon the black square beneath me. “I
promise,
” I whispered as I gazed down at the white pawn in my hand, “he will
never
win!”

The Spa at Buxton
and
Syderstone Manor in Norfolk
October 1559

T
hough I returned to Compton Verney, I had already decided that I would not tarry there waiting for Robert. I had made up my mind—I would not eat another morsel beneath Richard Verney’s roof. I would return in time for Robert to escort me to my new lodgings at Cumnor Place, but I wanted to go my own way for a while. I had long heard of the miraculous cures wrought by the healing waters at Buxton, both by drinking the mineral-rich water drawn from St Anne’s Well and from soaking in the sulphurous hot springs. Invalids and those troubled by more trifling ails had been flocking to Buxton since Roman times; it was especially renowned for its beneficial effects upon rheumatism, arthritis, gout, and all manner of aches and cramps, so I thought there
must
be
some
good to be had there. And I wanted to try it, to see if it might, if God or His saints be willing, burn the cancer from my breast, and then … even though it was no longer my home, I wanted to go back to Syderstone. I wanted to see it, just one more time. I wanted to say a proper farewell to my dreams. So Pirto and I each packed a trunk, and away we went on an adventure of our own.