The Manner of Amy's Death (19 page)

      Blount then resumes the conversation, “Well
I expect Jane Dormer deserved it.  Her husband can’t stand Elizabeth, that’s why he’s quitting.  He thinks her reign will end in tears and there’ll be a rebellion against our Lord Robert when she marries him.  Rumour has it that Feria’s wife’s been trying to smuggle Jane Grey’s sister out of the country so she can marry a Spanish Hapsburg.”

       “What? Katherine Grey?  Now there’s a flighty little piece!”

       Blount laughs.  “She certainly is.  But, after Elizabeth, she has as good a claim to the throne as Mary Stuart.  And what’s more she’s not a Scottish Frenchwoman.  If there’s a rebellion against Elizabeth and Robert, the Spanish are planning to bring ‘Queen’ Katherine and her Hapsburg husband back to England.”

       “Who told you all this?”

       “Oh Lord Robert has a whole army of spies!  He’ll be ready for this when the time comes.”

        “You mean when he marries
Elizabeth?”

       “Quite. 
I think it’s perhaps time we went back in.  We’ve a long day ahead of us tomorrow.  William Chauncey’s organising everything for the move to your place from Christchurch.  Has all the household of ‘Milord Robert’s lady’ ” (he says this in a mocking sing song tone of voice) “been sent to Compton Verney?”

       “Yes everything set off from
Christchurch this morning including that idiotic fool of a woman, Picto.  They should arrive at Compton Verney in three days’ time.”

       We sit in stunned silence
as the voices fade and we hear the sound of the door slamming, making us rise quickly to our feet.

       “
Compton Verney!  That’s Richard Verney’s manor,” gasps Amy in a shocked voice.  “Why are we going there, Kat?  It’s in Warwickshire and miles from court.  I don’t want to go.”

     
Neither do I but it seems we’ll have little choice.  “Quickly Amy,” I say, “Back inside before the door is bolted.  Your cousin John doesn’t know we’re out here.”

       Back in our chamber
we talk well into the night. The gentle Jane Dormer and her husband, the Count de Feria, were universally liked and indeed he’d advised Queen Mary not to pursue her path of violence.  The burning of the Protestants had sickened him but ultimately he was powerless to stop Mary’s over-zealous religious fervour.  The Count dislikes Elizabeth and now, seeing no future for himself and his modest English wife at court, he’s resigned his post as ambassador so that they can both retire to Spain and raise their family there.  Elizabeth had thus behaved disgracefully towards Jane when the latter went to make her farewells.

       “She’s like that you know –
Elizabeth.  She only wants her own cronies around her and lots of men admiring her.  She despises all other women and especially me because she wants Robert.  But she won’t have him, Kat.  Over my dead body, she won’t have him.  He’s besotted with her now but she can’t marry him.  We Dudleys are despised and detested by many.  Even if he divorces me the nobility won’t let her marry him.  She’ll have to find a foreign prince to wed and then I’ll have him back.”

       “But I won’t go with anyone to Compton Verney unless I have a letter from my Lord instructing me to do just that,” she continues.  “Why should I?”

       So the talk goes on well into the night.  By morning we’re both worn out and completely unfit for a long journey.  I haven’t slept at all and the thought that I can’t get out of my head is this.  If Verney and Blount hadn’t seen two shadowy figures sitting underneath the tree then they must have been blind.  Given that, they must have known that Amy could hear the whole conversation.  Did they want her to hear about Robert’s plans to marry the Queen and weren’t they afraid that Robert might disapprove of their actions?  Just what are they trying to do?

Compton Verney

No we didn’t argue with Blount and Verney.  Or demand to see written proof that we were to go with them.  We simply got into
the carriage like two obedient well dressed dolls and set off for Warwickshire.

      It was a three day journey, largely spent in silence.  When we could be sure that no one could overhear there were short attempts at stilted conversation conducted in a monotone on Amy’s part.

       “She swears, you know, and uses oaths.”  I don’t need to ask who is the subject of Amy’s thoughts.

       “Does she?”

       “Yes.  Robert always used to correct me if my speech was not completely dignified.  He didn’t like any imperfection in me, not even if I, quite rightly, criticised the way a woman was dressed or complained about any of our gentlewomen companions.”

       “Well, that’s men for you.  They expect their wives to be beyond reproach.”

       “They say she lies in her bed and then walks around in her shift all morning.  They say even passers-by can see her breasts when she leans out of the window.  How can a woman behave in such a slovenly way?  I can’t imagine what Robert sees in her.”

       I can.  She’s the Queen and he’s ambitious.

       When we reach Compton Verney we’re greeted very cordially and are pleasantly surprised.  Warwickshire is a beautiful county and the manor house is large and well appointed.  All the local gentlewomen are waiting to welcome our arrival and Amy is feted as if she were a royal personage.  She’s very surprised!

       Unfortunately everyone, from the lowliest servant to the highest ranking lady, is talking about Amy’s husband and some of the talk is not what Amy wanted to hear.

       “We hear that, on the progress, the Queen so requires your husband’s opinion on all things that he is never far from her ….. day and night.”

       “Is it true,
Lady Dudley, that the Queen is as good at hunting as any man and that your husband is hard pressed to find horses fast enough for her?”

       “Yes, my Lady, they say she hunts all day and none of the courtiers can keep up with her, except your husband.  She must have great courage and be an excellent horsewoman.”

       “Apparently at the castle of the Earl of Arundel the Queen and Sir Robert sit at banquets side by side and laugh and dance until it is time for bed.”

       And so on and so on.  Amy smiles around as all the questions and comments are fired in her direction and is lost for words.  Finally I have to put an end to the chatter.

       “I am sure there’ll be time to talk to my Lady Amy in the days to come and meanwhile shall we all go into the Great Hall?  I heard someone say that dinner is about to be served and we are weary with travelling and would like to go to our beds early.”

       The dinner is a huge banquet but not on the scale of the one that the Queen and Amy’s husband will be enjoying at the expense of the Earl of Arundel.  All the gossip points to the fact that Elizabeth and Robert are in the middle of one long party and having a wonderful time.  Amy has heard the rumours and is quiet and thoughtful throughout the meal.

       “I hope that all this rumour and scandal will stop soon,” Amy says resignedly when we go up to bed.  “You would think that people would be more tactful towards me.  And Robert’s obviously making a fool of himself.  She can’t marry him and is thus using him as her plaything until she finds someone more suitable.  Dear Jesus, Kat!  If this is what they are saying in the Warwickshire countryside what will they be saying in the courts of Europe?”

       What indeed!

       The weeks pass by and the Royal Progress is over.  Amy half expects her husband to join her at Compton Verney but she receives a letter from him stating that the Queen is ill again and he cannot leave her side.  Elizabeth, he says, has few friends she can depend upon at such times and has asked him not to leave her.  Amy quietly tears the note into tiny pieces and, later that evening, throws it onto the fire.

       Amy’
s very careful about what she eats at Compton Verney.  She chooses only the food that others have taken first from the same platter.  And we never eat alone.  Richard Verney is as insultingly obsequious as ever and we spend as little time in his company as is possible, given that he is our host.  The chattering women, seeing that they cannot persuade Amy to make any comment on the subject of her husband, soon realise that they have nothing to gain by waiting on us at Compton Verney and we are mercifully left to our own devices.

       Then another letter arrives from Lord Robert.  He has been made Lord Lieutenant of Warwickshire along with a local man,
Sir Ambrose Cave, and Amy’s half brother, John Appleyard, has been made Sheriff of Norfolk by the Queen, much to the annoyance of the Duke of Norfolk who thought that the appointment should have been under his control and who detests Robert Dudley!  Amy’s both delighted and puzzled.  This is an unexpected honour for her brother but she doesn’t dwell on it too much as, reading further, she’s pleased to learn that Robert would now like to buy a manor house in Warwickshire since it was his family seat in days gone by. 

      
But I’m puzzled over her brother’s sudden catapult to fame in Norfolk.  Why would Elizabeth favour Amy’s kin? 

       My suspicious mi
nd harbours thought that I can’t mention.  If Robert is planning to divorce Amy, which he could well do since, after almost ten years of marriage, they have no children, then winning Amy’s brothers over to his side would well suit his purpose.  If this is the case then Amy’s truly alone.

       Verney’s men do not spare Amy’s feelings as they discuss Robert and
Elizabeth’s relationship within her earshot.  The latest piece of gossip is that the two of them have played a huge joke on the Imperial Ambassador and have used Robert’s sister, Mary Sidney, as their unsuspecting accomplice.  Apparently Mary was furious when she discovered how she had been used by them both and is now not speaking to Robert.

       The story goes that
, fearing an attack from the French and their newly crowned king and queen, Francis and Mary Queen of Scots, Elizabeth called Mary Sidney to the presence chamber and told her to go to Bruener, the Imperial Ambassador, and tell him that she was ready to consider a marriage with the Archduke Charles, son of the Holy Roman Emperor.  Mary believed Elizabeth and did this in all good faith.  When Bruener tried to broach the subject with Elizabeth, she, the Queen, merely played for time by wavering in her resolve to marry and, when the threat from the French had passed, Elizabeth was downright rude in her dismissal of the Ambassador.

       “She’s like that,” says Amy
when we discuss this latest piece of news for the sixth time.  “She thinks she can do what she likes.”

       “Well – she can, can’t she?  She’s the queen and no one can tell her what to do.”  I have no advice to offer my friend.

       “She’ll have to be careful.  She’ll have the reputation of being the whore of the continent soon, as her mother did.”  There’s grim satisfaction in Amy’s voice.

       We both look round hastily to see if anyone has been listening.  It’s nearly the end of November and the wind is howling around Compton Verney bu
t we’re completely alone.  “Where’s Richard Verney?” asks Amy suddenly.

       I have no information to provide on
that subject either.  We haven’t seen him for four days now, not since he learned that the position of constable of Warwick Castle, which he had asked Lord Robert to give to him, had been given to someone else, someone whom Robert had evidently decided was more suitable.  Before he left we found the little dove that came to take bread crumbs from Amy’s hand lying outside the dove-cote with its neck broken.  It was, as Verney would have put it, a ‘casual thing’, meaning that he considered its death to be of no consequence, but for us it was a little joy in this sad world that had been taken away.  And God knows that Amy has little joy these days.

       Almost as if Amy had had a premonition, there
’s the sound of horsemen in the courtyard.  Looking through the window we can see the stable lads helping Verney and his men to dismount.  As they lead the sweating horses to the stable, the men follow Verney as he strides into the house ripping off his riding gauntlets.  He’s clearly in a bad mood.

       Amy starts to shake visibly at the sound of boots on the wooden stair and gives m
e a frightened look.  The door’s flung open and Sir Richard marches over to Amy who cowers before him.  But at the table he stops and flings down a letter.

       “From ‘Milord Robert’,” he
sneers.  “I take it that you’ve not been very happy during your stay here, despite my generous hospitality.”

      Amy
shakes her head in denial; she’s bewildered. 

       “Anyway,” continues Verney, “You will soon be rid of my loathsome presence.  Your Lord has been made
Lieutenant of Windsor Castle and wishes you and your family to move to the house of a friend of his in Oxfordshire so that you’ll be closer together - like two turtle doves,” he adds with another sneer.  His men laugh.

       When they’
ve left, Amy turns to me and says, “When have I ever said that I’m not happy here, Kat?  Who has said this?  Richard Verney must be guessing that I’ve written to Lord Robert and yet I haven’t.”

       I’m just as puzzled.  It’
s true that Sir Ambrose Cave and his wife, with whom we’ve sometimes dined, have remarked on the fact that Amy is pale and unhappy but we’ve never complained to anyone.  And who is this friend in Oxfordshire to whose house we are to be removed, bag and baggage.  Secretly I rejoice as I’ve never trusted Sir Richard Verney and it seems that Robert is now sending out a message that he wants his wife closer to him.  Maybe his affair with the Queen is cooling down which is good news for Amy.