A Court Affair (33 page)

When I came downstairs, smiling and ready in my shimmering purple gown, the colour like frosted lilacs, with my shoulders and face framed with stiffened silver lace, Robert took my hand and led me into the parlour. Sitting side by side, facing each other on the fireside settle, he quietly told me that I would be watching the procession from my bedchamber window; he feared that the crush inside the abbey and the press of the crowd outside, all the shouting and grasping hands, would be too much for me. I was not accustomed to such spectacles, he said, and his active role in the ceremony and organising the pageantry would not allow him to be at my side to comfort and protect me, and Pirto alone, he judged, would not be sufficient, and he could not spare any of his men—not even one—to guard and escort me. He assured me that I wouldn’t be missing much; indeed many would think me the more fortunate, as the ceremony inside the abbey would be lengthy and drawn out and dreadfully dull. The procession, he insisted, was the best part, and I would have a wonderful view of that, far better than being pressed and jostled by the masses behind the barricades on the crowded streets, having my toes trod upon and the rabble shouting from all sides around me, and the cutpurses were sure to be out in vast numbers preying on the distracted revellers. And, taking me in his arms again and holding me close just like he had the night before, and lavishing my lips and throat with kisses, he promised that as he passed below my window, he would look up and blow a kiss to me.

Looking from a window above—that was the third time I saw Elizabeth Tudor. Surrounded on all sides by public jubilation, heartfelt cheers, adoration, and the fanfare of gleaming golden trumpets, she was majestically gowned in opulent gold brocade with an ornate raised pattern of silver and cloaked in ermine as befits a queen, and laden with sapphires, rubies, and pearls, with her flame-hued hair flowing free like a virgin’s as she was carried through the streets in a magnificent golden litter borne by footmen clad in crimson liveries. The people wept and cried and reached out their hands as if they
longed
to touch and embrace her; some even broke from behind the barricades and ran to present her with humble offerings, simple little gifts, which she accepted as if they were the most precious things in the world to her, worth far more than jewels and furs.

Robert rode behind her, richly clad, like a king himself, in crimson velvet and ermine, mounted upon a regal, high-stepping ebony steed, and behind him, just like the day when he galloped off to Hatfield, was the white horse, a spirited, prancing, milk white beauty who showed not a sign of nervousness that I, from my high perch, could discern at being in the midst of all this bright, noisy, crowded pageantry. My husband carried himself just like a king; all that was missing was a gold and bejewelled crown upon his head.

The whole time I had him in my sights, as the procession passed slowly beneath my window, he
never
took his eyes off
her
. Once, he even presumed to ride forward to take her hand, lean over it, and press it to his lips, letting them linger long against the pale white flesh. I felt then the most overwhelming sense of dread and panic; it made me dizzy and faint, and I found it very hard to breathe. Panting, trying to draw a deep enough breath in my tightly laced, stiffly boned bodice, I grasped hard the windowsill, feeling the rough, gritty bite of the stone against my palms, fearing that I might pitch forward, toppling over it, into the street below, to lie broken and crumpled in the new Queen’s path, to be crushed and trampled by the horses.

I prayed with all my heart that he would remember his promise and look up and blow a kiss to me. But he never did. He had eyes and kisses
only
for Elizabeth, and none to spare for me, his loyal and loving wife. I was
nothing
compared to her.

All about me people were rejoicing, shouting and singing out their love for Elizabeth, blessing her, wishing her a long life, and thanking God for bringing her to the throne, but I alone, I think,
hated
her. When she had all this love showered upon her, why must she also have Robert’s? I needed him more!

What had seemed like a new beginning was actually the end. Robert was no longer mine; he belonged to another now, one with whom I could never compete, one whose wishes, commands, and capricious whims would always come first, one to whom he would never say no. Elizabeth could give him the world, make all his dreams come true, but all I could give him was my love, and that was not enough. What was my love compared to the glittering gold temptation of a crown? I already knew the answer—
nothing!

I sat up all night in my glittering purple and silver gown waiting for him. But he never came. As the sun set, I thought of him making merry at the coronation banquet, to which I had not been invited. I pictured him seated at the Queen’s side and dancing the night away with her, holding her close, boldly caressing her bodice when he lifted her high during the volta, and perhaps even daring to let his lips graze her neck as he lowered her, her body pressed tightly against his until her feet touched the ground again, and, even then, lingering for a moment or two longer.

I watched the sun rise through the diamond-shaped panes of my window and wondered where he was and on whose pillow he had laid his head that night. I didn’t touch the breakfast tray Pirto brought for me and shook my head at her attempts to coax me to change into something more comfortable, or to at least let her unleash my hair from the silver net sewn with amethysts and pearls and to loosen my armour-stiff stays. But I wanted Robert to see me again in the gown that had reawakened his long-dormant passion. I wanted it to happen again, to be the woman he wanted, not just one whose conveniently available body he made use of from time to time.

It was well past noon when I finally heard his boots upon the stairs. He had barely crossed the threshold before I was there, kneeling at his feet like a supplicant, grasping his hands, looking up at him with tears spangling my lashes, begging him not to abandon and forsake me.

Robert raised me to my feet and gathered me up in his arms and carried me to the big velvet-cushioned chair beside the fire. With me nestled upon his lap, clinging tightly to him, begging him like a child, nearly incoherent with tears and fears, to never let me go, Robert tried his best to calm me. He said I was tired—we both were—and should go to bed, but first, he would like to read a story to me, just the way he used to do.

“Oh, yes, oh, thank you, Robert, I would like that so much!” I cried, smiling through my tears, which were already starting to dry at the memory of the many times during the early days of our marriage when we would curl up together with a book and my husband would read me tales like
Guy of Warwick,
or stories of King Arthur and his Knights of the Round Table, or Robin Hood and his band of Merry Men, bawdy Italian tales which he translated for me himself, and Chaucer’s
Canterbury Tales
. Which one would it be this time? My mind was dancing, awhirl with tales of adventure and romance.

“First we must make ready for bed,” Robert said as his skilful fingers swiftly divested me of my gown, stripping me down to nothing but my cobweb lawn shift. He removed my dainty silver slippers, untied my purple satin garters, and rolled down my stockings, and I held my breath for a moment and trembled for fear that he would be repulsed by the roughness and calluses that were the unattractive result of the pleasure of going barefoot every spring and summer of my life, but he said nothing of them. Then he plucked the pins from my hair, cast aside the net, and combed his fingers through the harvest gold waves as they flowed down past my hips. Then it was my turn to undress him, though my fingers were nervous and clumsy and fumbled overlong over the golden buttons and aiglets and laces until, at last, he stood before me clad in only his gold-bordered white shirt. He took my hand, kissed it, and led me to bed.

Once we were settled, with him propped high against a mound of pillows, and my head was on his shoulder, Robert drew the three-branched candelabrum closer and took a book from the bedside table. I saw from the gilt letters on its spine that it was
The Canterbury Tales.

“I chose this story just for you, Amy; I have wanted to read it to you for a long time, but I have been waiting, saving it, for just the right moment. And now that my life has changed with my new appointment at court, that moment has
finally
come.”

I pressed a kiss onto the side of my husband’s neck and nestled closer. “Begin at once then, my love. For you to have wanted and waited so long, it must be a
very
special tale indeed.”

Robert opened the book to a page he had marked with a red satin ribbon.

My heart sank like a stone, plummeting from a great height, as if it had been dropped from a clifftop into the sea, when I realised it was “The Clerk’s Tale” of Patient Griselda that my husband was reading to me.

Slowly, as if he wanted each word to sink in, he read me the tale of that stout-hearted and eternally obedient and devoted peasant woman raised to royal estate when the monarch chose her to be his bride, who patiently endured and passed each one of the cruel tests her husband set for her, even when she thought her own children taken away and slain upon his orders, and herself being turned out clad only in her shift and bare feet to make way for a new royal bride. Sometimes he would pause, indicate with his finger a certain passage, and pass the book to me and say, “Now you read to me.” And I heard myself saying things like: “Never in word or thought shall I ever disobey you,” and “I would gladly die that it might please you,” as Robert nodded and favoured me with an encouraging smile.

When the tale was finished, and Robert had set the book aside, he asked me what I thought of the story.

“Men like this Walter are unkind,” I said, for how could a man with even a glimmer of kindness in his heart treat his wife thus? It was such a cruel game he played, a game where her head, heart, body, and even the children she bore him were tokens, pawns, made even crueller because only Walter himself knew that it was a game they were playing, while loving, trusting, and loyal Griselda took it all as truth. She paid the price for believing in her husband. “I don’t believe she could have been happy despite what the storyteller says; for every public smile she must have wept a whole ocean of tears in private,” I said. “She must have felt as if she lived her life walking always on ground that might at any moment start to move and shake violently beneath her feet, fighting to always keep her balance and keep smiling and not let anyone see her fear.”

Robert sighed and shook his head and said I had missed the point entirely, but we would work to remedy my ignorance later, but now he was too tired and wished only to sleep. But first there was something else he must tell me: I was to go and stay with Mr William Hyde and his family at their fine new mansion house—built in the new style rather than an old moated manor made of blocks of stone with arched or arrow-slit windows—in Throcking, a peaceful little hamlet in Hertfordshire.

“But why can I not stay with you?” I demanded.

“You’re a country girl born and bred, Amy. You’ll not be happy in the city or at court—it’s a whole other world, Buttercup! And my Buttercup Bride cannot thrive without sunshine, blue skies, fresh air, and green grass; she would wither and die shut up within the walls of a crowded palace. All the etiquette and ceremony would chafe you raw. It is a world where a single mistake can ruin you forever; people have long memories, and the walls have eyes and ears. There is always someone ready to smile to your face, then turn around and talk about you behind your back or stab you in it. You’ll be happier in the country, and I will come to visit you as often as I can. In fact, it will be easier for me to visit you at the Hydes’; you’ll be nearer there than you would have been at Syderstone or any of the other manors your father left you.”

“But, Robert, I want to be
with
you, not just nearer!” I cried. “I can learn to be the lady you want me to be—I
know
I can! I want us to be together—
that
is what matters most to me! I don’t want us to drift apart until we are like two strangers and there’s nothing left holding us together; as it is, every year it feels like the knot that binds us together grows looser.”

“Come now, Buttercup, be sensible.” Robert took me in his arms and kissed my cheek. “You don’t want to ruin my chances, do you?”

“Ruin your chances?” I repeated. “But how should I do that?”

“Wives are not welcome at Elizabeth’s court,” Robert explained. “Elizabeth is a vain and selfish woman who demands to be worshipped and adored like a goddess; she needs to command a man’s
full
attention, and those who make her think she must share them with a wife or a mistress do not prosper.”

“You mean
you
wish to pretend that you are not married,” I said. “I think, Robert, the truth is that you are ashamed of me, and that you are bored and tired of me.”

“Now you’re speaking nonsense again, and fluently too!” Robert reproved me. “I am merely telling you how things are, educating you in the ways of the court. It is Elizabeth who wants to pretend, not I! And I am not the only man who must be parted from his wife to please her!”

“Then be brave enough to be different, Robert,” I insisted. “Make a stand and show her and the world that you love your wife and want her at your side where she belongs!”

“And wave farewell to everything I have worked so hard for? Do you
know
what you are asking me to give up, Amy, and what it will mean to you? Do you really want an angry and embittered husband who sits all day by the fire nursing his regrets and blaming
you
for ruining his chances, while his love for you withers and dies until it is turned to solid, hard black hate? Do you
really
want that?”

“No, but …” I began.

“No buts, Amy.” Robert smacked a kiss onto my lips. “You’re for the country, I’m for the court, and Elizabeth’s for England! That’s the way it has to be if we are all to prosper. Elizabeth holds my future in the palm of her hand, and she knows it, and with her favour I can rise high and become the greatest man in the land. Don’t hold me back, Buttercup, unless, of course, you
want
to sink into poverty and a bitter, loveless marriage; it’s entirely up to you, my love.” He took my hands in his, kissed each one, then held them together, forming a cup of my two palms. “My fate is in these two little hands!”