Elizabeth (6 page)

“And what,” she asked softly, “do you mean by my ruin, Sussex?”

“He hopes to marry you himself, may God forgive him!”

“Marry me.…” The thin brows arched with surprise. “What makes you think any such thing—and by Jesus, my Lord, in what way would I be ruined by a man's honourable intentions?”

“They are not honourable!” Sussex burst out. “He seeks you from ambition to be King of England! And I tell you, as I shall tell him, that he won't live to carry out his plan. He's taken advantage of you, Madam, and for that alone I can never forgive him. Only a base-born dog, the son of a base-born traitor like his father, would dare dangle after an innocent woman and try to advance himself at her expense!—I come to warn you of it, before it is too late. I come to ask that you dismiss him from Court.”

She swung round on him then, and he was startled at the fury in her face. The deadly, murderous anger of her father blazed up in front of him, and though he had never known fear, Sussex recoiled.

“You come to ask!—in that language? Take care, my Lord, take care. You talk of my ruin because you suspect that Robert Dudley hopes to marry me. You sit there and you dare to say he seeks me from ambition, as if I were so unwomanly it was impossible that he should love me for myself! Oh, by God, you say I'm an innocent woman, and all you mean is that you take me for a fool; Now you're united, all you squabbling grandfathers, because you suspect a young man may succeed where these paper princelings fail! And you dare to threaten him and indirectly threaten me. Believe me when I tell you this. If anything befalls Robert, I'll send a dozen of you to the Tower.”

“That's in your power, Madam.” Sussex stood up, his heavy face crimson. “But there was a time when you yourself went there under my keeping, and I showed you more favour than you show me now, when I seek to help you once again.”

She looked at him, and again it was King Henry, on whose friendship no one could rely once he was crossed.

“You presume too much on the gratitude of Princes.—You already owe your life and your position in my Government to what you did for me. My debt to you is paid. Remember that. You've delivered your message, now go and be my spokesman. Tell my Council that when I marry and if I marry an Englishman might well be to my taste. And thank them; until now I had not thought of Robert Dudley. From this time I shall seriously consider him.”

CHAPTER THREE

July was the hottest month for nearly ten years; the country baked under a cloudless sky and a brassy sun. The water supplies fell dangerously low in some areas. There was a drought which killed off crops and cattle, and the plague broke out with ugly virulence in London. The wealthy had left their big houses on the City outskirts and taken refuge on their country estates and the Court moved from Whitehall Palace to Hampton Court.

There were so many reminders of her mother and father at Hampton that some people expected Elizabeth to avoid it. The beautiful red-brick Palace was haunted by memories of Henry, and Anne Boleyn, who had come there as his Queen; she had slept and eaten and made music in the rooms Elizabeth used every day, walked through the same formal gardens by the river bed, and watched jousts from the tournament tower, where her daughter now sat in Royal state.

As Elizabeth sat sewing in the shade with her ladies, she could see the graceful cornice where workmen had carved Anne's initials with the King's bound by a lovers' knot in stone. The same motif, ordered by the infatuated Henry, had once decorated porticoes and ceilings in the Palace. But they were gone, erased to make room for the initials of her successor, Jane Seymour. And further down the garden walk there was a little artificial hillock, called the Mount, where Henry had stood on a clear May day, listening for the Tower cannon to announce Anne's execution. Once only, Elizabeth went there and gazed up the shining stretch of the river. In spite of the heat, her two attendants saw her shiver. She went back to the Palace without speaking, and she never climbed the Mount again.

She spent most of the evenings in the Long Gallery, where the windows opened out, admitting the cooler air from the river, and the sound of music and voices drifted out into the deepening twilight.

The middle day of the month had been so stifling that the Queen had stayed in her room, drinking cordial and fanning herself while a hot, tired Lady Warwick read to her aloud. When it was cooler she dined informally, and frugally, in spite of the variety of dishes which were always set in front of her, and then to her attendants' relief, decided to go into the Long Gallery and join her Court for the evening.

She was not an easy mistress; even gentle Lady Dacre admitted that, and she had already forgiven that box on the ear. She was too tense and restless; always uncertain tempered if she was denied exercise, she prowled up and down her apartments, demanding to be read to or played to or entertained with conversation, and though some of her ladies were several years her senior, they felt constrained and on edge. Elizabeth was bored by women, and showed it. After a time their chattering irritated her; and she often turned on them with a curt order to be quiet. They had a spiteful explanation for their failure to amuse her or get close to her; in fact Elizabeth's refusal to make intimates of any of her women provoked them most of all. She was short tempered and impatient because she wanted the Lord Dudley with her day as well as night, the wagging tongues declared. Her unfortunate attendants had to pay for her observance of propriety, and God knew what she did observe was scant enough.… Like most explanations of human behaviour, it was partially true. She missed Robert when she had to be separated from him; she missed him because she was not in Council or out hunting or doing anything that interested her, and like both her parents she could not suffer tedium with any show of patience.

She missed Robert that day, when it was too hot to go out or venture into the crowded Gallery until the evening. But after dinner she dressed in a long, light gown of white silk, the bodice and sleeves shining with milky pearls, her hair hanging down to her shoulders and drawn back from her face with a narrow crescent, spiked with diamonds.

She walked out into the Gallery, preceded by her gentlemen ushers crying: “Make way for the Queen's Majesty! Make way for the Queen!”

She knew without looking that Robert Dudley was pushing his way forward towards her. Always pushing, always determined to stand where the limelight fell, she thought, but she made the observation indulgently, amused by the characteristic she knew so well. He was ambitious and thrusting, but those traits were part of him; they gave him that keen, hunter's eye, the agile body, radiating energy; he possessed a ravening hunger for life and all that life could offer, and the prize which dazzled all men's eyes was herself. Only Robert, the grandson of a grasping lawyer without a drop of truly noble blood in his veins, would have dared try and take that prize before all the princely competitors in Europe.

“Madam—at last! This has been not only the hottest day but the longest, because of your absence!”

She gave him her hand to kiss, and mischievously dug her nails into his fingers because he held it to his mouth too long. But she was smiling, and her dark eyes sparkled; the boredom and irritation which had frayed her temper all day had vanished without trace. He was the only man except the Admiral who had ever brought this feeling of excitement, of expectation, when they met, as if she were seeing him for the first time and always with new eyes. There was a crowd round her, murmuring compliments—there were half a dozen men, stifling in their best silks and velvets, all trying to claim her attention, but it was Dudley who fell into step with her and brought her to a seat by the open window.

“By God, Robert, I feel as if I'd been baked in one of my own ovens! There's enough sweat running down your neck to melt your ruff!”

“As always you look like a goddess and talk like a stable-boy,” Dudley grinned. “But then you always did, my adored Lady; when we were children I remember being beaten till I couldn't sit for a week because of some oaths you'd come out with, which my father supposed I had taught you!”

“Most likely you learnt them from me,” Elizabeth laughed. “You're always saying what a hoyden I was—don't you know that my tutor described me as the best-lettered Princess in Europe?”

“Oh, you can swear in ancient Greek better than most men can talk plain English,” he retorted. “It's part of your charm, Madam, that no one knows what to expect of you. Have you boxed poor Kate Dacre's ears today?”

“Poor Kate Dacre is devoted to me now, so it must have done her good. I can think of a few others who may benefit in the same way if they're not careful.”

“Not me, I hope?”

“No.” Elizabeth leaned back and fanned herself lazily. “No, not you, my Robert. Only a fool of a woman would hit you and think you too much the gentleman to strike her back. If I ever gave you a blow, which God forbid, it would have to be a mortal one.”

He laughed and took the fan away from her, and began to wave it.

“Let me cool you, Madam, and allay that blow while I can.”

“Cool me now, only to heat me later,” she said softly, watching him. “I know you, my Lord Dudley. Be careful; everyone is watching us.”

“I know, and they're busy damning me to hell because they're not in my place.”

“How reckless are you?” she asked suddenly. “Do you know that Sussex came to me as the Council's spokesman and asked for your dismissal from Court?”

The rhythm of the fan was interrupted for a second; when it resumed the pace was faster.

“On what grounds, Madam?”

“On the grounds that you were bringing me into dishonour, Robert. He didn't pick and choose his words, I can assure you.”

“I warned you what would happen if I stayed with you,” he answered. “You should have let me go when I asked, before your Councillors force me out.”

“No one,” Elizabeth said sharply, “will send you packing except me. I told my Lord Sussex to mind his tongue and his manners; but there was something else he said—the real reason why he came, I think. He said you were planning to put away Amy. Is that true?”

“Yes,” Dudley answered without hesitation. “I intend going to Norfolk next week if you will give me permission.”

“And when you are a bachelor, what will you do then?” He laid the fan in her lap, and glanced round at the crowded Gallery.

“If we were alone I could tell you,” he said. “But not here, with every pair of eyes searching our faces. Will you walk in the garden with me, Madam—I have so much I want to say to you.…”

“I can take Dacre with us,” she said, “and tell her to wait when we are out of sight of the Palace.”

She made a sign and her gentleman usher preceded her, carrying the rod of his office, and the call went down the Gallery again, “Make way for the Queen's Majesty! Make way!”

Elizabeth walked through the lines of men and women who curtsied and bowed as she passed; she paused for a word with one or two, and smiled at the rest. She stopped before Sussex, who was still smarting from their encounter over Dudley, and suddenly held out her hand to him.

“My Lord Dudley takes me to the garden for some air,” she said. “I require the strong arm of a Sussex to guide me down the stairs. Come, my Lord.”

It was a signal honour, and ignoring his enemy's presence on the other side of her, Sussex kissed her hand before placing it on his arm and led her to the end of the Gallery, past the sentries at the entrance, and slowly down the wide oak staircase into the Great Hall.

“I have seen too little of you,” Elizabeth remarked. “You are not to sulk out of my sight because we had a disagreement, my Lord. I am too fond of you to be abandoned.”

Sussex crimsoned with mixed pleasure and embarrassment. He could never understand how a woman who had lacerated with her tongue a few days, or even hours before, could heal the wound with a few words and put her victim sweetly in the wrong.

“I thought you wouldn't wish to see me,” he said awkwardly. “I thought your Majesty was still angry with me.”

“There's no real anger between friends,” she said. “And we are friends, my Lord, from many years.”

At the entrance to the garden she stopped, and turned to him.

“Thank you for your strong arm.” Elizabeth smiled slowly at him, and he thought with emotion that he had never seen a lovelier expression on the face of any woman. It was so full of sympathy and affection, as if he were the only man in England that she really trusted.…

“It is always at your service, Madam. From now until death withers it!”

“I know that, and I thank God for the knowledge.” Then followed by Lady Dacre, she passed out into the summer dusk with Dudley by her side.

They left Lady Dacre sitting on a little stone seat behind a yew hedge in what had once been Cardinal Wolsey's herb garden; she watched the pale figure of the Queen in her white dress shadowed by Dudley in his gleaming doublet, until they turned a corner by the fountain, and disappeared from sight. Lady Dacre sighed, and crossed her small feet, anticipating a long wait. She disliked Lord Dudley; he was too dark and fierce looking, and his eyes flicked over her with something rather like contempt. She was a gentle creature, and though she was afraid of her, she genuinely loved her mistress and defended her reputation among the scandal-mongering ladies-in-waiting with a vigour that surprised them. The Queen embodied all those characteristics of courage and presence that she knew to be lacking in herself. Perhaps a woman as strong and self-confident as the Queen was not afraid of men like ordinary mortals. Perhaps she could use them as they normally used women, without ever surrendering her freedom or completely losing her heart. Kate Dacre stared through the soft summer gloom till her eyes ached; they must have wandered far because she could not hear their voices. Well, whatever they did, Jane Warwick and Lady Bedford would hear nothing about it from
her
.