A Court Affair (57 page)

And then, after bowing over my hand and uttering a fervent blessing, he was gone. I leaned in the doorway and watched him ride into the sunset on his little grey donkey, and then I turned around and walked slowly back inside bleak and shadowy, cold and clammy Cumnor Place. England was full of pleasant houses; why couldn’t Robert send me to one of those? Surely he had friends or people who owed, or were anxious to do, him favours who lived somewhere nice and cheery, where the cold didn’t creep and seep into one’s bones.

As I started up the stairs, I saw the ghostly grey friar standing at the top, his hands clasped and folded at his waist, holding his rosary, the crucifix at the end of the wooden beads swinging to and fro like a shimmering silver pendulum. Though I could not see his face in the impenetrable black shadows of his hood, I
knew
he was watching me, waiting for me, and that the shivery, prickly feeling up and down my spine and the back of my neck was his sandalled feet walking over my grave.

Westminster Palace, London
February 1560

I
was looking at a selection of embroidered shawls I had requested be sent from London for my inspection when Kat came in to tell me that Dr Dee had arrived.

“This one!” I breathed, holding up a beautiful, fringed butter yellow shawl embroidered in bright, vivid colours with a bountiful variety of flowers, fruits, birds, and animals. “She will like this one—I’m certain of it!” I nodded decisively and folded the shawl carefully. “Wrap it and have it sent to Lady Dudley at once please, Kat.”

“Very well, love,” Kat sighed, shaking her dear grey head. “I’ll do it, but I don’t understand it!
Why
do you do it, send these things to her? Ever since we heard the poor lady was ailing, you’ve not let a week pass without sending her something, and such costly things too, like that fine flowered chair—I doubt there’s another chair in all your palaces even half so comfortable—and
always
in Lord Robert’s name, never your own!”

“If I sent them in my name, it would only scare her,” I explained. “She would shrink from these gifts in suspicion and fear rather than take any delight from them. If Lady Dudley must die, then she is going to die in peace, Kat, comforted by the illusion that she is still cared for. I
can
give her that. But I cannot trust Robert to create that illusion for her; if he were to go to her, she would see his impatience, he would not be able to hide it, and he might even be tempted to hasten her end. He can master horses, but he cannot master himself, curb his impatience, and break his own temper. I know him, Kat, and though I am the Virgin Queen, and many equate virginity with innocence, I am well versed in the ways of men, especially ambitious men. So it is best, and kinder, that he keep away from Lady Dudley, even if I must bear the blame for it. The gossip is already such that I fear she must already know how greatly he desires her death, and this is one way to contradict it. If her husband sends her gifts, such pretty things so carefully chosen, perhaps she will think that despite his absence—which she may blame me for—and what the scandalmongers say, he does
still
care for her. Now show Dr Dee into my private garden, Kat. We will talk there,” I said, and, swathed in the Swedish prince’s sables, I went out to confer with the wisest and most learned man in my kingdom.

I smiled when Dr Dee bowed over my hand. People always expected him to look evil and extravagant, like a wizard in robes embroidered with esoteric symbols, or to see the Devil’s hoofprint blazoned on his brow as flagrant proof that he had signed his name in Satan’s big black book of damned souls. They were always astonished to discover that this benign, serenely smiling man, gowned in plain scholar’s black, with blond hair and beard so fair they were almost white, was the notorious Dr John Dee who cast horoscopes, communed with angels and spirits, caught tantalising glimpses of the future in a black scrying glass, and dabbled in alchemy, as well as many more mundane and ordinary scholarly pursuits such as mathematics and astronomy. He was a great man, a fountain of knowledge, a glutton ever hungry to know more, a man who would spend money to buy a book he didn’t have rather than food. And, even more important for the delicate mission I had entrusted him with, he was a kind man with a benevolent and reassuring manner, which was why I had chosen to send him to visit Amy. While his reputation might frighten her, I knew the man himself would quickly put her at ease and encourage her to confide in him. And I knew I could trust his judgment.

“You have seen Lady Dudley?” I asked, twirling the sable muff around my hands as we fell into step together.

“Yes, Your Majesty.” He nodded sadly.

There was such a weighty sorrow in his voice that I stopped and turned to regard him fully. “Tell me. Spare me nothing.”

As I listened to his words, it was as though I were actually there in the room with her, looking at her through Dr Dee’s eyes. I saw her cowering there, like a frightened rabbit cornered by a snarling wolf, and I could
feel
her fear as if it were my own, filling every part of me until it threatened to drown me, overflowing from my eyes in tears. It made me
so
angry
; if Robert had had the misfortune to cross my path at that moment, I don’t know what I might have done. I had learned what it was like during my poor, mad sister’s reign to fear the poisoned cup, the assassin’s dagger, the suffocating pillow, or a silken noose as I slept, so I could well understand Amy’s torment and terror. I knew what it was like to live without peace of mind. I also knew what it was like to love, but to not be able to trust, and I knew all about betrayal and lust and the cost of defiance and surrender.

I had been sorely shaken by my ordeals, but I had survived them. Even though my health at times crumbled and gave way beneath them, I was always able to claw my way back up out of the rubble and rise again like a phoenix from the ashes. But I was made of sterner, stronger stuff than Amy Dudley; I liked to think it was the unique and formidable combination of Boleyn and Tudor blood blended together and coursing through my veins that kept me alive and gave me the wits and will to survive, to always see the bright glow of victory, like a candle held aloft by Destiny, at the end of the tar black tunnel to guide me through the hard, treacherous, dark times, to make me persevere and fight to go forward, tenaciously following that light. But gentle Amy was different, and my fear- and exhaustion-provoked ailments did not compare with this disease that, like a great, fierce crab, had clamped its pinching claws upon her life.

“This Dr Bayly who refused to treat her,” I began as we resumed walking, following the gravel path winding through the bleak, leaf-bare rose garden with its thorns standing out starkly against the white snow and leaden grey sky, “being more concerned with safeguarding his own reputation than alleviating her suffering, could he have done anything for her?”

“No, Your Majesty,” Dr Dee replied, “and, I implore you, judge him not too harshly. I spoke at length with Dr Bayly before I left Oxford, and he is not by any means a cold or indifferent man, as circumstances might lead you to believe. I can assure you, he was much moved by her plight; though his decision was not made lightly, it still weighs heavily upon his mind and heart. He is a young man who shows great promise; he is an honourable man and a fine doctor, with a particular interest in ailments of the eyes, and I think he will do much good before he departs this world. But Lady Dudley’s malady is beyond the skill of any ordinary physician, and, given the circumstances, it took both wisdom and courage not to meddle. Many would not have dared refuse Lord Robert; their eyes would have been on the rewards to be reaped from their compliance. The golden nimbus of greed doth often blind common sense and outshine compassion.”

“Well said, Dr Dee.” I nodded thoughtfully and approvingly. “Well said. So … Dr Bayly is to be commended, then. Perhaps one day when I visit Oxford, I shall see this good and honest physician for myself. But, for now, my concern is for Lady Dudley. If her ailment is beyond the skill of any ordinary physician, then find me one who is
extraordinary
!”

“Majesty, if you will forgive the presumption”—Dr Dee smiled—“I foresaw the need, and I have already done so. May I bring him to you?”

I could not resist smiling at Dr Dee. Though I often despised presumptuousness in others, depending on my mood and the circumstances, this was one of those times when I welcomed it. “I think you can foresee my answer to that as well.”

And within moments Dr Kristofer Biancospino was standing before me. A man of blended exotic blood, Italian and Arabic with Persian and Greek ancestry, he had travelled far and wide in his insatiable quest for knowledge about the human body and the ailments that are its enemies, the diseases that strike with or without reason and show no mercy. He harboured a similar passion for plants, and the ability they had to harm or heal, to do good or ill. During his travels he always sought out aged wisewomen and coaxed them to share their secret knowledge, lest it die with them. He had written a most learned and detailed study of poisons and was pleased to present me with a copy for my library. He had studied tenaciously and tirelessly in every land he visited, seeking the weapons, surgical and medicinal, to attack and defeat disease. And cancer, he had discovered, was the
ultimate
adversary, the undefeatable nemesis, the unvanquishable foe. And of the insidious form of this disease that afflicted Lady Dudley, he had made a particular study.

He quoted the sage ancient Greek physicians Hippocrates—who had given the disease its name,
karkinos
, the Greek word for
crab
, because the tumours reached out to grab healthy tissue like a crab’s pincers—and Galen—who thought it was caused by an overabundance of black bile in the body. He told me the stories of two ancient empresses. First, Atossa of Babylon, who had awarded a slave his freedom when he saved her life by cutting a tumour from her breast, then Theodora of Byzantium, the former harlot and dancing girl who had wormed and wiggled her way into the Emperor Justinian’s heart and bed until he put the imperial crown on her head and invited her to stand beside him and wield the sceptre of supreme power. Theodora carried on bravely, as long as she could, donning her bejewelled vestments and crown and playing her regal role, but she had chosen to die young and beautiful rather than submit to the surgeon’s knife. Amputation of the breast was deemed the surest cure, though rarely a permanent one, in the ancient world, Dr Biancospino explained. If the patient survived the bloody and brutal ordeal of surgery, it bought her time, though at
great
cost to her vanity and pride, and, in the end, time
always
ran out, and the unwelcome guest inevitably came back, his claws snapping until he again caught hold of some piece of vulnerable flesh. And, true to his word, when I asked him not to spare me, he recounted the many horrors he had himself witnessed in the world’s convents where the disease was, for unknown reasons, particularly prevalent, to such an extent that doctors had dubbed it “The Nun’s Disease”, though in truth it afflicted women of all kinds and classes, rich and poor, chaste and wanton, pious and pagan, pretty and plain, queens and commoners, highborn and low—it snapped and clamped its claws at random and respected no one. He told me of many of the afflicted Brides of Christ that he had known, and my heart went out to each of them. One French nun, a beautiful, violet-eyed young woman only a few years older than Amy, was so ravaged and riddled with tumours by the time Dr Biancospino came to tend her that, through the dead and brittle blackened tissue, rotting and reeking all over her chest, he could glimpse her heart and saw the exact moment when it ceased to beat and her suffering stopped.

Beneath my sable cloak, I touched my bosom and felt faint and light-headed with horror and dread, wanting to block my ears from this exotic foreigner’s vivid discourse, forget the words I had just heard, and flee them, hoping and praying that the disease they described would never come to visit me, to latch on to me with its tenacious and fatal crab claws as it had done to Amy Dudley. I could see her in Dr Biancospino’s words, like Atossa hiding her body from the eyes of her waiting women, bathing alone and in shame, hoping and praying the lump would just go away. And I glimpsed her in Theodora, falling weakly into the arms of Sleep, a woman of once vigorous and boundless energy too tired to stir herself even to don her royal robes, jewels, and crown. And again in the humble nuns wasting away, their bodies rotting from within, lying upon wafer-thin mattresses in convent infirmaries while the smell of death hovered in the air above the rancid, char-blackened, necrotic tissue on their chests, begging God’s forgiveness for whatever sin they had committed that had opened the door to the Devil and invited this disease into their lives, even if it were something so innocuous and slight as admiring her reflection in the convent’s well, coveting the pretty dress a wealthy benefactress had worn, glutting her belly on blackberries intended for a pie to delight all the holy sisters and afterwards claiming that the branches had been all but bare to explain the few, paltry berries left in the pail, or the lasciviousness and grandeur of a former life, the last like a penitent Magdalene renouncing all and taking refuge behind cloistered walls. I could catch fleeting glimpses of Amy Dudley in all of those poor women, in the cascade of blond hair draped over her shame-hunched shoulders and the arms folded tightly over her full and ample breasts, the desperate, pleading blue green eyes hungry for life and a love she could not have, once vibrant but now dulled and sorrow-filled, as her mind incessantly uttered prayers beseeching God or perhaps even St Agatha, whom Dr Biancospino said these afflicted women often prayed to, believing that this centuries-dead Christian martyr whose breasts had been cut off, then miraculously restored, could well understand their suffering and might even intercede to grant them a miracle.