A Court Affair (60 page)

My anger almost gave me the courage to send for Dr Biancospino and agree to the operation, to let myself be strapped to the table right at that moment and sacrifice my breast, to try to save my life just to spite my would-be murderers, to keep Robert, the assassin of all my dreams, from having his come true. But my courage faltered, and then it fell and plummeted to the depths and shattered when it hit the bottom the day I received the book of poisons in a parcel sent from London, authored by Dr Kristofer Biancospino, with the telltale red hair stuck inside that told me that my enemy, the Queen, had sent it.

I was always a creature of feelings, prey to my own emotions, not cold and calculating and precise, and they knew it, and so I played right into their hands and did
exactly
what they meant for me to do. I let Fear take hold of me and dance me round fast until I was senseless and dizzy with it, overwhelmed and unable to think clearly. Thus I let her accomplish what she aimed to do—plant the seed of mistrust and make me turn my back on Dr Biancospino, shun and send away the man who might have been my saviour.

The Queen’s Summer Progress
May–September 1560

W
hen we departed for the Summer Progress, few, if any, of my court were in a tranquil state of mind. There is always an air of excitement and expectancy that hangs about a Progress, but this year there was a strong undercurrent of tension and alertness rippling through the great, snaking procession, making it seem more like an electric eel than a snake as it slowly undulated along the long, dusty, winding roads. Trouble was brewing in Scotland, and many of our men lay strewn, dead and broken, on the field of battle in a war I had never wanted but that the men about me had insisted must be fought, though my inner instincts cried out for peace. Because of this, and other factors, this summer I had chosen not to stray too far from London. And to further complicate matters, the passionate Prince Eric had written vaguely but vehemently that he was determined to come woo me in person, sailing to me in a ship filled with gold to lay this fortune, along with his love, at my feet, to pile it there before me piece by piece with his own hands, and no one could say for certain, not even his ambassadors, whether this was merely sweet lover’s talk or if word might come at any moment that his ship had docked. And the weather was dismal, so cold, rainy, and foul, it was hard to believe this was indeed summer. I heard more than one of my courtiers grumble, and most aptly too, that he would rather sit in the hot and close confines of the noisy, busy kitchen than in the draughty Great Hall, which was far too large to ever heat sufficiently.

And Robert! He was like a man possessed! A whirlwind of infectious, frenetic energy that I found contagious; from rising to retiring it was a constant, unending race to see which one of us would weary first. But he was also drunk on the wine of power and glutted on the feast of folly. Incessantly he hinted and wheedled and pestered me to elevate him to the peerage; he had his heart and mind set on an earldom. He seemed hell-bent on making himself even more hated and appeared to take a peculiar pleasure in being the most detested man in England. Already he wore a vest of chain mail beneath his shirt, and his death was spoken of by many as an event they looked forward to with infinite delight, but these threats seemed only to feed his vanity and pride as seeds for the peacock. And when he rode out as my champion in one of the many tournaments he arranged, he wore a coat embroidered with a tall white obelisk entwined with ivy and blazoned with the words
You standing, I will flourish.
It was clear to everyone what he meant: as long as I ruled, he looked to reign supreme as the highest in my favour and, in time, perhaps as more. It was no secret that he longed to be King and thought himself the man amongst all my suitors most worthy of it. When I told him,
“Never!”
it was as though he didn’t even hear me; his arrogance and vanity rendered him deaf to common sense and reason. He went about behaving like a little boy leaping up and swooping down to catch butterflies, just for the pleasure of pulling their beautiful wings off and leaving them to die maimed and ugly. And I found myself trying ever harder to ignore the qualities that tarnished the allure of this man, whom I had known and loved almost all my life. I was torn. I was being maddeningly contradictory, and I knew it. He was irresistible, yet at times all I wanted to do was resist and put him from me, banish him from my life, though at the back of my mind the nagging thought tugged that if I did, the words would scarcely be out of my mouth before I was issuing orders contradicting them and calling him back to me. He was just too much fun. As for Amy, we never spoke of her.

Wilfully and rebelliously turning a deaf ear and a blind eye to the rumours that branded me wild and wanton, I tossed my hair and told Cecil to deal with the Scottish situation himself, and I flounced off to play and amuse myself with Robert, to spend almost every waking hour riding and hunting with him, picnicking and dancing with him beneath the trees or the stars at open-air banquets. I was in such a strange state of mind that summer! Looking back on it, that Elizabeth sometimes seems a stranger even to me. I no longer trusted Robert. I was
furious
with him over Amy, I despised and deplored his ambitions, and I would
never
marry him—nothing on this earth or in Heaven could ever induce me to make him my husband—but I couldn’t shake or break his hold over me. He was quite simply the most fun and exciting man I ever knew. I still wanted him, but only in
my own
way,
not
his. It was only when his way was also mine that we agreed; when we differed, it was like thunder and lightning, clashing and crashing. And often, in cruel little ways, always publicly, so there would be many witnesses, I would put him in his place. One day when I saw him coming, a delighted smile spreading across his face, as he strode across the lawn of one of the country houses we stopped at, to join me where I sat picnicking with my court beneath the trees, I smiled and waved at him and trilled merrily, “Ah, there you are!” I moved my full skirts aside and patted the warm green grass beside me. “I
cannot
live without seeing you
every
day!” I watched Robert’s smile broaden. “You are like my little dog”—I paused to allow my courtiers to gasp and snigger as the smile fell from Robert’s face—“as soon as he is seen anywhere, people know that I am coming, and when you are seen, they say I am not far off.” And though Robert grumbled and glowered at being compared to a dog, I laughed and gave a playful yank to the Order of the Garter that he wore about his throat, saying, “Just like a jewelled leash!” I smiled. “All of my dogs wear such pretty collars!” And all the rest of the day I made a great show of dropping things—my fan, my gloves, my handkerchief, even surreptitiously pulling the pins from my hat so that it would be blown from my head and go skipping on the breeze across the wide emerald lawn—so that “my gallant puppy” might fetch them for me, and each time he returned be rewarded with a pat on the head and a “Good boy!”—a morsel of praise or a sweetmeat to nibble from my fingers, which I hastily snatched back, lest he nip them in his anger. And by the time I retired that night, the highest man in the land was feeling
very
low indeed.

And still I flirted shamelessly with Arundel, Pickering, and my dear Gooseberry. And when the eldest statesman in the land, Sir William Paulet, who at five years past eighty had served my father, brother, and sister before me, entertained us at his house in Winchester, I kept him constantly at my side, kissing and patting his withered cheeks and clinging to his arm, many times lamenting how I wished that he was not so old, for “I would have him to be my husband before any other man in England, for he is pliable like a willow rather than mighty as an oak, and I care for him most deeply!” Oh, how Robert fumed at that; he banged his fist down into a plate of salad, jarring all the tableware around him and upsetting a goblet of wine into his sister’s lap. I cried out in mock alarm for my physician, and when he raced to my side, directed him to attend Lord Robert. “His face is so red, I fear he is about to succumb to apoplexy! Look at the way the veins in his temples pulse!”

I was selfish, though I would not admit that to anyone but myself. I was young still, and after so many years of fighting for my life, of being a prisoner of fear or behind locked doors, I just wanted to be free. I told myself I had done all that was possible for Amy, that she was comforted and well cared for, and I cast off my cares to have fun with the only man who could keep up with me. Or maybe those are all just excuses designed to try to cloak, conceal, and justify the fascination and allure that held me in thrall to Robert Dudley.

Everyone tried to make me see reason. Sometimes I retaliated by sending the men off to Scotland, including the most prominent and powerful of Robert’s enemies, the Duke of Norfolk. I even dispatched Cecil to sue for peace. I didn’t want to hear; I chose to stop my ears and blind my eyes to Robin’s faults and follies. I wanted to kick Reason out of my life and just have fun. In moments of solitude and quiet, when I forced myself to face the truth—as a result, I tried to avoid too many quiet moments that might open the door to such honest introspection—I knew that there would not be many more summers like this; indeed, this might even be the last one. I was a woman nearly seven years past twenty. Many thought I had dallied overlong in eschewing the marriage bed and began to believe I would indeed die an old maid, a crotchety, sharp, and sour as a crabapple virgin, and though several still ran after me, some of my suitors had already given up, admitted defeat, and married elsewhere.

Before he departed for Scotland, Cecil warned me, “Madame, if you are foolish enough to marry Robert Dudley, it will be your undoing. One night you shall go to bed as Queen Elizabeth and wake up plain Lady Elizabeth the next morning! By courting Robert Dudley, you are courting disaster!” he shouted after me.

But I didn’t listen. Instead, I shouted: “Since this is your war, Cecil, you can finish it; don’t come back until you have achieved peace!”

He was back by July, having seemingly accomplished the impossible, but I was too proud to even tender my thanks; instead, I retreated to Kew, where Robert hosted a grand banquet for all my court. As we fed each other bites of the fat quails, re-dressed after roasting in their proud heads and plumage, stuffed to bursting with apples and chestnuts, and presiding over a nest filled with their own pickled eggs, we sat apart from the other guests, in the perfumed rose garden, lounging upon plump rose silk cushions, tantalisingly veiled from their inquisitive eyes by sheer rose-coloured curtains fringed with Venetian gold, through which all could see our shadowed forms embracing. Robert presented me with an enormous deep blue sapphire that had once belonged to my father, which he had had cut into the shape of a heart and ringed by peerless white diamonds. “Here is my heart,” he said as he offered it to me in a blue velvet box. “Let this jewel stand as surety for my eternal, undying love, and the depth of its blue as testament to the depth of my devotion, bluer than the bluest sea, deeper than the deepest ocean.”

I was silent as he fastened its diamond chain about my throat, remembering the amber heart that Amy, in anguish and pain, had flung at me. No doubt he had presaged that gift with a similarly pretty speech, but to my ears now the words rang hollow, empty, and untrue; there was no sincerity to fill them. And I wondered how many other women Robert had given his heart to with pretty, meaningless words and symbolic gifts of jewellery.

One night, during the early days of September, shortly after we had returned to Windsor in preparation for my twenty-seventh birthday celebrations on the seventh, I rose from my dressing table, where I had sat in my shift, staring at without seeing myself in the looking glass, during one of those rare, moody, and brooding sessions of introspection, and softly bade Kat to help me dress.

“And what will Your Majesty wear?” I started at the sound of her voice; it was like a sharp-pointed icicle hanging above my head. “Might I suggest the scarlet satin? It is, after all, the traditional colour worn by harlots.”

Gasping, hurt, and appalled, before I knew what I was doing, I spun around and slapped her; then, just as quickly, I fell to my knees, grasping her hands, begging her to forgive me.

Kat burst into tears and fell to her knees, and there we were, kneeling on the floor, weeping and snivelling in each other’s arms as Kat implored me to renounce Robert Dudley before my reputation was ruined entirely.

“I would have rather seen Your Highness strangled at birth than live to see the day when my lovely girl, my Princess, my Queen, is spoken of in the same tone as those bawdy women who lift their skirts for any man who has a coin! In God’s name,
please,
my darling girl, marry
now—
marry a prince who is worthy of you, and put a stop to all this ugly, evil talk! Some say you are with child by Lord Robert, and it is not the first child you have borne him, and others say you are in league with him, conspiring to murder his wife so that he will be free to become your husband, that you are just dallying, making cruel sport of all the men who come from far and wide to woo you, until the deed is done. Oh, I
know
you mean the poor lady no ill and have been the very soul of kindness to her—you have protected and shielded her all you can—but the scandal will
never
cease until you are safely married to another man suitable to your royal estate! Already they say he behaves as though he were your consort already, and that you are as good as married by the familiar and intimate way you behave together. They say you are as sinful as adulterers, as the horsemaster has a wife already—a fine lady from whom he has had nothing but good! I tell you, it is not seemly conduct for a queen! Don’t you see, my love? You are lowering yourself in the eyes of your people. Robert Dudley will cost you all the love and respect of your people, just like Spanish Philip did your sister Mary! If you continue on this path, soon they will withdraw their affection and allegiance and look to someone else to take your place, war and bloodshed will rage throughout the land as the claimants battle for your throne, and you will have no one to blame but yourself! Better that you had died in the cradle, that I had strangled you with my own two hands, than that I live to see the day when my dear lady is no longer deemed worthy to wear the crown!” And she broke down, clinging to me and sobbing hard upon my shoulder.