A Court Affair (65 page)

My horse was gone, as was my mother, both of them vanished all of a sudden, and I was left standing alone in a clearing, when Robert, galloping astride a fierce black stallion, accompanied by a retinue of huntsmen clad in his blue velvet livery and a pack of spotted hounds, came thundering towards me. I ran for my life. I felt my heart pounding in my chest, and the pinch and bite of my stays, my limbs tangling in the skirts of my purple velvet riding habit and linen petticoats, slowing and impeding me. Then I too was cornered, just as my mother had been, with my back pinned against a tree.

I heard a horse’s whinny as Robert’s night black stallion reared high, his hooves kicking the air before they thudded down again, throwing up clods of earth. Sitting haughty and high in the saddle, Robert took an arrow from his quiver and raised his bow. There he sat, aiming straight for my heart, a killing blow. But he was distracted, and I saw a grimace of annoyance cross his face, like a dark shadow, as a cream-coloured mare broke through the brambles. A young woman, buxom, full-hipped, and petite, clad in a flowing-skirted butter yellow riding habit, leapt from the saddle and ran to me. It was Amy—I recognised her instantly—vital and healthy as she used to be. A cascade of golden curls poured from beneath the wide brim of a yellow straw hat adorned with silken buttercups and sky blue ribbons and frothy cream-coloured plumes to frame her face.

“You’re not the one who dies,” she said simply, softly, her voice, like herself, shy and vulnerable, with a faint quiver of her upper lip. Her blue green eyes, which dared to meet mine only for an instant, were as bright as jewels beneath a shimmering veil of tears. And then she stepped swiftly between me and Robert’s arrow just before it struck.

With a gasp, she fell back, wilting into my arms, a scarlet flower blossoming on her left breast, around the wooden shaft.

I lowered her gently to the ground and sat there, cradling her in my arms. When I tried to reach for the shaft, my hand hovering indecisively, trying to decide whether I should attempt to pull it out, her hand rose to cover mine, and she shook her head, and a faint smile graced her lips just before her eyes closed forever.

“Elizabeth.” I looked up to see my mother standing beside me, holding out a bow and a quiver filled with arrows. “Robert Dudley uses people like the steps on a staircase that he can climb to reach the top. The knave has grown too proud. Take him down, Bess,
take him down
!” she commanded, her iron will evident in every word.

Gently, I laid Amy aside, and I stood up. Swiftly, I plucked an arrow from the quiver, took the bow, and aimed right for Robert Dudley’s heart.
An eye for an eye, a life for a life,
I thought. But, at the last moment, I altered my aim.

“You missed,” my mother said calmly as we watched Robert tumble backward from the saddle, clutching his arm as he rolled to avoid being trampled by his horse’s hard, crashing hooves as the startled beast reared.

“No, Mother,” I said in a voice surprisingly calm, “I didn’t. He has fallen and shall never rise again.”

I turned and looked at her. Our eyes met.

“It is crueller to let him live,” we—mother and daughter—spoke as one.

It was at that moment that Cecil woke me, so I never knew what—if anything—came after.

I appeared before my court gowned in black and silver brocade, long ropes of silvery grey and black pearls about my throat and twined within my hair, and calmly announced the sad news—that Lady Dudley had died the previous day; apparently she had fallen down a staircase and broken her neck. And in the appalled hush that followed, as all eyes turned to Robert, I offered him my most sincere condolences and gave him my permission—in a tone that showed it was an absolute command and
not
an option he might consider or not as he pleased—to retire from court. “We”—I said, adopting the royal we—“know you will want to be alone with your grief, to mourn your loss in private. You are excused from your duties at court, My Lord. We suggest you go to your house at Kew and there await the coroner’s verdict.” Then I asked my court to don mourning clothes as a show of respect for Lady Dudley, and, giving my arm to the Italian Ambassador, I pointedly turned my back on Robert.

I quickly excused myself from the Ambassador’s company, claiming a headache brought on by this sad news, and went alone to my private rooms. But I was not left alone for long, as I knew I would not be. The door connecting my chamber with Robert’s flew open, and there he was—a pulsing mass of fury, like a human volcano about to erupt.

“You are to go to Kew, My Lord,” I said, calmly fluttering my fan, pointedly ignoring his anger. “Consider yourself fortunate that it is not the Tower. I could send you there pending the outcome of the investigation. No doubt there will be a great many who will think me remiss in not doing so; they will see me as blind—wilfully or foolishly—besotted, and indulgent. But I never forget a friend, and you stood by me when I had few; so I choose to remember, and reward, your loyalty now, so I shall spare you the Tower—for the time being—but
nothing
else.”

“Elizabeth!” He rushed across the room and fell on his knees before me, grasping desperately at my hands. “Please, do not send me away! People will think it means that you believe me guilty, and I need you now, to comfort me …”

“
To
comfort you,
Robert?
”
I asked incredulously. I pulled my hands from his and reached up and pinched and pressed my ears. “Did I rightly hear you say that you needed me to
comfort you
? For which loss—the crown you imagined could be yours, or the wife you may have had killed?”

Robert leapt to his feet. He clenched his trembling fists, raising them, rather menacingly, to let me see how they quivered and the knuckles stood out. “How dare you speak to me so? If you were a man, I would—”

I brought my hand up and dealt his face a ringing slap. “
I
am
not
Amy, so do not expect to see
me
quail and quake before the mighty Lord Robert Dudley!” I said scornfully. “
I
am Queen”—I watched with great satisfaction as each word made Robert flinch like another slap—“and
you
do
not
rule here, and
never
will, but
I
do. And I fear
no
man,
least
of all
you
!”

Robert flung himself away from me and began to pace before the great stone fireplace, pausing only to pour himself a goblet of wine. “She killed herself to spite me, to blacken my name, to try to ruin my—our”—he hastily amended—“chance, but don’t you let her do it, Elizabeth. Show yourself to be the wiser, cleverer woman I know you are; don’t let a spiteful corpse come between us!
Damn her!
” he fumed, tossing back his head and downing the wine. “Damn her for the spiteful wench she so obviously was; only in death does she show her
true
colours at last! She was cleverer than I thought! She
knew
no one would ever believe that anyone would be such a fool as to try to take their life that way, by throwing themselves down stairs! Who ever heard of such a thing? It is too uncertain! People fall down stairs every day and just get up, dust themselves off, and go about their business while their bruises heal! To take one’s life is to jeopardise one’s immortal soul and damn themselves to lie for all eternity in unhallowed ground, buried at midnight naked at the crossroads with a stake through the heart. But she knew no one would ever believe it; they would rather think the worst of me, that I did it, and thus she would be spared unconsecrated burial. She
deserves
to be damned for what she did, but she has damned me instead! She is the martyr, whilst I am cast as the Devil, the fiendish murderer who took poor Amy’s life!
Damn, damn, damn her!
”

“And you think she went to such desperate lengths, breaking her own neck, to blacken your reputation?” I asked incredulously. “I don’t believe it.”

Robert paused thoughtfully. “Maybe she hurt herself trying to get my attention, thinking it would bring me back, but it went horribly wrong—
fatally
wrong? Or maybe it was an accident; she was always very clumsy.”

“How very selfish you are! To say nothing of unkind!” I exclaimed. “A woman is dead, a woman you once loved, or claimed to love, enough to wed and bed—or was it the other way around?—and you have uttered not one lamentation, not one kind or sympathetic word, only condemned her for the troubles her death shall cause you.”

“I may have loved her once”—Robert shrugged as he refilled his goblet—“but that seems a whole lifetime ago. I was young and foolish then, thinking with my cock instead of with my head. I will not lie to you, Elizabeth, I am
glad
she is dead.
Glad!
She was a mistake I made in my youth, when hot blood overruled reason; now her death has corrected it, erased my youthful error. A part of me wants to ride straight to Cumnor and kneel down and kiss every one of those stairs for making me a free man!”

It occurred to me then that my father must have felt much the same way when he killed my mother, though he hid behind a farce of a trial, so that he could claim Justice had been done and let a French executioner’s hands be stained with her blood instead of his own. He wanted her gone, and it was his lips that ordered his minion Cromwell to find or fabricate evidence to rid him of the grand passion he now regarded as his greatest mistake, and it was his own hand that signed the death warrant.

“Get out,” I ordered. “I cannot bear the sight of you or the sound of your voice; I don’t want you near me. Get out, and know that if you were behind this, you have killed her for nothing. I will
never
marry you, Robert; I never would have, even if there had never been an Amy or any other woman you took to wife. There is something I love more than any person, something I put before the wishes, whims, and caprices of my head and heart and the desires of my body—
England,
my
first
and
greatest
love! And none shall ever come between us,” I said, glancing down at the heavy gold and onyx coronation ring on my left hand. “And you would not be very good for England, Robert; on the contrary, you would be a
disaster
. Though your ambition makes you think otherwise, you have let your dreams delude you and convince you that you were born to be King, just like a child who dreams of growing up to be a great knight to slay dragons or to marry a fair princess, but you would in truth make a
terrible
king. You would be detested by your subjects for your arrogance and condescension; though your charm is a formidable weapon, and it works especially well upon women, it is far too haughty and lofty to win and hold a kingdom’s heart. You would be loved only by those who profited well by your favour—and despised the moment you refused them anything they desired, passed over them in favour of another, or behaved towards them in a manner they perceived as a slight. Oh, I know.” I came and patted his arm with mock condolence. “Ironic, is it not? The
one
thing you thought would set you free to marry me is also the one thing that will prevent it forever; you killed her for nothing, Robert. Besides, I don’t think you would make a very good husband; you were not very kind to your first wife. I pity the poor woman who would be fool enough to take a chance upon becoming your second.”

With blazing eyes, Robert rounded on me, flinging his goblet into the corner with a great clatter. “I see now that the only way to clear my name is to find the real culprit!” he cried.

“Yes.” I nodded. “And I can help you, and I will,” I promised, again patting his arm soothingly. “There is the door,” I directed, brandishing my fan at it, “and on your way out of it, if you will pause and look to your left, you will find the
perfect
instrument to aid your discovery.” I indicated the round Venetian looking glass framed in a wreath of silver set with jewelled and enamelled flowers.

“Damn you!”
Robert hissed at me. “I
will
go, but
you
will be sorry when I discover the
real
culprit, when the real killer stands in chains before you, and you see how basely you have treated me, accusing me falsely of killing a woman who is better dead than she ever was alive! And then … then
you
will fall on
your
knees before
me,
like a supplicant; you will crawl to me and plead with me,
beg me,
for
my
forgiveness, to grant
you
my hand in marriage! Then we will see who is sorry!”

I threw back my head and laughed. “Oh, what a proud and vain peacock you are!” I exclaimed, and I laughed until tears rolled down my face, and I had to fan myself to ease the hot flush that coloured my cheeks. “Robert, why ever should I beg to marry
you
? You are emperor only of your own vanity and
nothing
else! I am Queen, and as such
I
have
all
the power; it is
mine
by right of birth, God’s will, and my people’s; you are my subject, and I can humble you in an instant lower than I have raised you, and your manly charms are, I assure you, not sufficient to bring me to my knees like a Southwark whore dazzled by a coin. And while I readily admit that you are a very amusing companion endowed with many manly charms and graces, and you are the best dancer and horseman at this court, and the best at keeping pace with me, and your kisses and caresses are not without skill or merit, and, when your presumptuousness does not border on treason and you keep your ambition under your hat, I have taken immense delight in your company, at forgetting myself, perhaps more than I should, and revelled in just being a woman, a
passionate
woman, but …” I shrugged and spread my hands. “… you are not worth a kingdom! You are
not
indispensable, as you seem to think you are, for I assure you, without you, I shall not lack for company and interesting and pleasant diversion. Now, be gone”—I flourished my fan towards the door—“before I call my guards and have them escort you from the palace; if I must do that, methinks I shall amend your destination to the Tower instead of Kew. You can either sleep on a pile of dank straw with the rats and black beetles to attend you, or on a feather bed with a satin pillow to rest your head upon and Mr Tamworth to serve you as befits the great lord you think you are; it is
entirely
up to you, Lord Robert.”