His Dark Lady (19 page)

Hatton was stout now, sombre-faced and with a neatly trimmed grey beard, no longer the handsome young man she remembered from her early years on the throne. He sat bewildered on his horse, glancing from the courtiers to her as though hunting for clues, his expression nervous and perplexed.

Yet there was guilt in his eyes, too.

He stammered, ‘I … I do not know to what you refer, Your Majesty.’

‘By
Mary
, do you not?’ Elizabeth demanded, stressing the hated name of her enemy, and saw Sir Christopher Hatton flinch. ‘Why, now he remembers!’ she exclaimed. ‘A man’s mind is a marvellous instrument, that plays a song one moment, then forgets it the next. Sir, there is a lady by that name whose claim on your admiration is greater than mine, or so rumour tells me.’

‘Not a whit,’ Hatton replied earnestly. He dismounted and knelt heavily on the grass before her, down on both knees, his head bowed. ‘Your image is always and for ever in my heart, Your Majesty. No other lady could hold my admiration, and this I will swear on my sword and by any other oath you might devise.’

‘Then rumour lies?’

‘Or is most grievously mistaken, Your Majesty,’ he insisted, head still bowed. His voice grew more dogged. ‘The lady of whom you speak must herself have put these untruths about, out of very spite for being your inferior in every case, but most in beauty. She is like a candle to the sun, a dim star to the full moon. She has no claim on any Englishman’s affections, but can only usurp one through lies.’

Suddenly impatient, Elizabeth waved him to his feet. ‘Put up, sir,’ she told him as he began laboriously to draw his sword. ‘There is no need for you to swear an oath. This Mary wearies me, for all your swearing that she is not my rival. I shall listen to no more gossip about who among my courtiers is in her favour, or out of it. Shall I send her back to Scotland, do you think, or on to France, where she may make a pact with my enemies?’

‘Neither, Your Majesty,’ interrupted Walsingham, who had approached on foot with his customary stealth. ‘A caged bird may sing too loud at times, but at least it cannot fly.’

Cecil was two steps behind him, frowning. Her treasurer bowed, addressing her with unusual severity. ‘Do your hawks fly well today, Your Majesty? I am glad of it. But we must spoil your sport with bad news, I am afraid.’

‘Come to darken my summer’s day with your clouds, Lord Burghley?’ Elizabeth was laughing, but Cecil’s unsmiling expression told her the news he brought was in truth bad. If so, it was not for the ears of the common court. She dismissed the courtiers, and signalled her ladies to depart, too. ‘Not you, Lucy. Nor you, Helena. I may need comfort after these gentlemen have had their say.’

She spoke lightly, but her heart weighed heavily inside her. Was this some new blow to her person?

A death, perhaps?

If only it could be news of her cousin’s unexpected death that Cecil brought, she thought with a sudden flare of temper. But she knew better than to hope for such a reprieve. Whenever a prisoner represented some threat to her throne, it seemed they must live for ever unless poison or an axe should intervene. And much as Elizabeth hated her flamboyant cousin Mary, she was loath to dispose of her as her father had her mother.

To execute a queen anointed was to set a poor precedent. For who knew that her own head would not be on the block soon after? It seemed the Catholics were intent on removing her if they could, and execution had always been the quickest way to dispose of a queen, to sever her royal head from her body and call it justice. One more swift uprising among her nobles, and Elizabeth herself could be in the Tower, and thence to the block.

Elizabeth dismounted and handed the reins of her horse to a page
to
hold while they talked. She preferred to receive bad news on her feet, standing in the green shade of a young oak, her hands clasped demurely before her.

‘Well, my lord?’ She signalled Cecil to speak directly. ‘I am prepared to hear this grievous news you bear.’

Cecil held up a state letter, its broken seal that of the French court. ‘It is my sad duty, Your Majesty, to inform you that Alençon, Duke of Anjou, is dead.’

Her lips parting in shock, Elizabeth shook her head. Not little dark-haired Alençon!

Her voice sounded like a piece of wood cracking. ‘Alençon? It cannot be true.’

‘I fear it is, Your Majesty.’

Dearest Alençon. Dear little François. She thought of how they had met on his visit to England, his sweetly animated face, narrow as a boy’s, and his high-pitched laugh, so droll, so infectious. They had sat together in her bedchamber some evenings – mainly to annoy her nobles, but also in the hope that word of her indiscretion would reach Robert – and he had held her by the waist while she ran her fingers through his dark young curls. ‘
Tu m’enchantes, mon amour
,’ he had murmured in her ear, his compliments delighting her, a different one to accompany each kiss, ‘
ma reine, ma joie, ma belle, ma petite fille
.’ It had been the most delightful ten days of her life, that first visit, and even though she had sadder memories of his second visit, nonetheless she could not forget how they had exchanged gifts and promises.

‘Marry me,’ he had whispered, and she had consented, captivated by the thought of such love at her age, a muscular young man in her bed. It was surely no sin to have enjoyed the thought of what Alençon might bring her as a husband. To have tasted a little of such delights as they lay together on her day bed in the drowsy afternoons …

‘No,’ she managed, and staggered, her knees giving way.

At once, Helena was at her side, supporting her. Dear girl. Dear, sweet girl. Elizabeth steadied herself, gripping Helena’s shoulder. The two men waited in silence, their heads discreetly bowed. Let them wait. Hateful men with their hateful news.

Alençon
.

If she had known her little Frenchman would never return, that he would die so young, would she have said yes to his suit? For the carnal pleasure of such a marriage, yes. But for her country, too, and the great line of Tudor. She might have borne the duke a son before he died, a child to rule both England and France after they were turned to dust, a legendary king of kings. Now neither of them would enjoy such bliss. The dream of uniting their two countries must be laid aside, as the hope of their marriage had been put by once Elizabeth saw how the English hated her for contemplating it.

Her bones ached. She was too old now for a marriage. Too old for anything. ‘Where is Robert?’ she asked plaintively.

‘He is at Wanstead, I believe.’ Walsingham spoke quietly, always a discreet man, even when imparting difficult news.

‘Wanstead? With
her
and the child?’

‘Yes, Your Majesty.’ Walsingham did not offer to send for Robert, she noted sourly. ‘You have received unhappy news today. Your ladies-in-waiting should attend you at once. Shall I call for the others, Your Grace, and for wine to be brought?’

She looked from his swarthy face to Cecil’s paler, more noble countenance. Cecil was watching her closely. He was nervous, she realized, and almost smiled in grim recognition of his fear. He had considered her love for Alençon a weakness, and her desperate pining for him after he had left England a mere affectation. Now he feared she would crumble at this news, would tear her hair like any woman of the streets, and be unable to attend to the affairs of state until the madness passed. But what did Cecil know of loneliness, a man who spent his private hours surrounded by his family? He did not know, nor could ever understand, the terrible solitudes of the night, the knowledge that one could never be a whole woman, a wife and mother, never live out one’s life as other women did, in obedience to a man. Once she had thrilled at the idea of such obedience even as she had loathed and rejected it. Cecil was a man. A good husband and father, but a man. What could he know of her fears?

‘Yes,’ Elizabeth declared. ‘Let red wine be brought for us to drink to the Duc d’Anjou’s memory. And order black clothes for every lord and lady of the court. I shall wear a veil in his honour, and to hide my red eyes. There will be no dancing, but only Mass heard and
songs
for the dead. Send out a decree.’ The pain would consume her. How could she survive this latest blow? Yet she must, she was the Queen. She did not allow her voice to break again, but felt her body tremble. ‘Now leave me.’

Cecil bowed gravely, and Walsingham followed suit. Both men turned and made their way back to the palace in the sunshine, Cecil’s secretary scribbling notes as he hurried behind.

Elizabeth sank on to the grass under the oak tree and buried her head in her hands. Helena and Lucy sat beside her, murmuring words of comfort that she could not hear.
François is dead
. He who had courted her for so many months, and with whom she had shared kisses, long into the night, in open defiance of court gossip, delighted to see Robert burn with fury and despair at their closeness. She wondered how he had died. Some sickness, or an accident? He had loved hunting. Perhaps he had fallen from his horse. What did it matter? Alençon was dead, that was all she needed to know.

He will come to visit me no more
.

How could such a man have died so young?

He had given her a golden flower, decorated with a tiny jewelled frog, as a parting gift the last time they’d met.

Memento mori
.

Her heart was broken and she would die of it! She had only loved two men in her life: one was Robert, the other Alençon. One had been snatched away from her by another woman, and now the other had been taken by death. Yet she was a queen as well as a woman, and must bear her grief with fortitude.

‘Sing for me, Lucy,’ Elizabeth choked, and dragged a hand over her face as the young black woman rose to her feet. ‘Sing one of those sad French ballads you love so much. Let me dream of Alençon once more.’

Sixteen

WILL WAS WOKEN
by the sound of hammering at his father’s door. He opened his eyes, dazed. He was half-sitting, half-lying, next to Anne in bed, snug in the cosy little cottage that adjoined his father’s house. Beside their bed stood a sturdy wooden cradle which he recognized as his own, and his brothers’ and sisters’ after him, in which now lay his own child, Susanna. His daughter was awake and gurgling happily, sucking on her fingers.

Groggily, Will swung his bare legs out of bed and looked down at her. She stared up at him cheerfully from the cradle, her blue eyes wide, utterly unafraid of this stranger who was now ‘Papa’.

The hammering had stopped. Now voices were being raised. He recognized his father’s authoritative tones, angry and strained. Men replied, down in the street, equally angry. Then the hammering on the door began again. Somewhere a dog was barking, too. It seemed the men were determined to get in and find whatever they had come for.

Susanna, no doubt upset by the noise and their early stirring in the bedchamber, began to cry lustily, her face soon wet with tears.

Anne climbed out of bed and snatched up the baby from the cradle, clutching Susanna against her breast as she tried to peer down through the gaps in the shutters.

‘They’ve come back,’ she muttered, and he was surprised at the fear in her voice. ‘I knew they would in the end.’

‘Who are they?’ Will did not waste any time getting dressed. He
took
two steps to the clothes chest at the foot of the bed and threw it open. Before he’d left, he’d buried the old theatrical sword he’d used for history plays in Warwick and Coventry under the blankets and clothes in the chest, hoping it would be safe there until his return. He rummaged down under the horsehair blankets and rough, clean linen, searching for it. ‘Magistrates’ men? The ones who came last winter and searched the house?’

She shook her head, hurriedly putting her bodice aside and sliding Susanna on to the breast with a practised movement. ‘Traders. Your father owes them money. They came just after Easter, and John told them he’d pay what he owed when you came back from London. I imagine they’ve heard you’re at home again now, and that’s why they’ve returned.’

Will glanced up from the clothes chest. The child clutched at the round white globe of her mother’s breast, her small fists opening and closing, her eyes shutting with pleasure, her cheeks suddenly flushing a soft pink as the milk began to flow.

‘What are you looking for?’ she asked, puzzled.

‘My sword.’

‘It’s under the bed,’ she told him, then stared. ‘What do you need a sword for?’

Will did not reply, but knelt down in the rushes and felt under the bed. Sure enough, his sword came to his hand, still wrapped in its bundle of old leather, and he drew it out. Then he went to the stairs, glancing back at Anne as she began to follow him.

‘No,’ he said firmly, ‘stay here and look after the baby. This is a man’s quarrel, not any business of yours.’

Once downstairs, he threw open the door and ran out into Henley Street in nothing but his nightshirt, for all the world like a poor madman. His bare feet stumbled over the stony potholes, sword in hand as though he intended to do battle for England. His palm fitted snug into the ornate, twisted handle glittering with false gemstones, for this was the sword of King John from two seasons ago in Coventry, and he had wielded it on many occasions that year, in return for a few pence a show. Will had always intended to hand it back to the company after the Coventry play season had finished. Yet somehow King John’s sword had found its way into his belt on that last drunken night, and then into their clothes chest at home.