Legacy: The Acclaimed Novel of Elizabeth, England's Most Passionate Queen -- and the Three Men Who Loved Her (51 page)

stone. He could not believe it had happened to him and he was too

amazed, too demoralised even to feel anger. Not knowing what to do or

say, he hung there, staring at her in a bemused stupor.

It was a full moment before he even realised that she was crying and

then, in spite of everything, he was moved by a curious tenderness. He

had thought her so hard, so clever, so invulnerable, and now her tears

hurt him beyond belief.

He leaned over and laid a hand on her shoulder, touching her gently,

without demand.

“Tell me about the Lord Admiral,” he said simply.

There was no sound except her tortured sobbing, a dreadful sound

which knifed his senses. It affected him like the wild anguish of an animal

in a trap. He tried to gather her up in his arms and hold her close.

“Tell me and have done with it,” he begged. “Tell me—how can I

help you unless you do?”

It was a mistake—oh, he knew it the moment the words were out. He

could not hold her now, she was like a wild animal in his arms, savage

with fury. She sat upright, with the tears still running down her face, and

he recoiled from her.

“You insolent bloody knave—I don’t want your help. Get out of

here. Get out, God damn you!”

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She reached out for the little silver bell and his hand went out to her

in a hopeless gesture of bewilderment.

“Elizabeth—wait!”

The angry, imperious jangle cut across his protest and brought Mrs.

Ashley sweeping back into the room with alacrity.

She paused on the threshold and took in the scene with one glance,

the Queen’s face still wet with tears and Dudley, struggling with frantic,

humiliated haste to fasten his codpiece. Her lined face settled itself into

a mask of strict neutrality as she approached the bed, where Elizabeth,

unable to meet her gaze, lay down and stared up at the tester.

“Your Majesty?”

“Show Lord Robert out,” said Elizabeth shakily, “and see to it that I

am not disturbed again.”

Ashley curtsied and turned away in silence. From the opposite side of

the bed, Robin caught Kat’s gaze with an urgent, questioning look that

she ignored.

For the first time he was angry. As soon as they were alone in the Privy

Chamber, he turned masterfully on the old lady and manoeuvred her to

a window-seat.

“Well, my Lord?” She was looking at him with ill-concealed hostility.

“What do you want?”

“Information,” he said bluntly. “You’ve been with the Queen since

she was a child; she can have no secrets from you.”

Kat’s lips set into a thin line of pain.

“If she had, my lord, you can rest assured they would be safe with me.”

She got up abruptly and made to step past him, but he blocked her path.

“What holds her back from me—is it only the Admiral? Or is there

something more—something I’ve not even begun to guess?”

Kat’s stubborn silence was infuriating, following so hard on the heels

of his humiliating failure. He caught her wrists in a bruising grasp and his

handsome face was suddenly savage with rage in the harsh sunlight.

“You damned old fool! If you know what ails her, then for Christ’s

sake tell me!”

Kat’s eyes were stony. After a moment he released her and stepped

back, ashamed and vaguely alarmed by his behaviour. She was the second

woman he had bullied in the last hour, and all for desire of one on whom

he dared not lay a hand in anger.

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“There’s only one thing you need to know,” said Kat with icy dignity,

“and I will tell it with pleasure. You will never be King of England while

my lady lives. So—if that’s all she means to you, get out of her life. Take

your wretched little wife and go abroad and don’t come back. Heed my

advice, my lord—there’s nothing ahead for you but misery if you don’t.”

He let her pass and did not watch her leave the room. Beneath the

narrow window where he sat, the brightly clad courtiers and ladies

walked to and fro, like mechanical dolls, across the wooden terrace. But

he neither saw nor heard them as he stared out through the little leaded

panes. Only Kat’s voice walked slowly up and down his mind, like the

doleful tolling of a death bell.

There’s nothing ahead for you but misery…

Somewhere, in the depths of unwilling consciousness he knew that he

had heard an awful truth.

t t t

It was stiflingly hot in the curtained bed, but Elizabeth found she was

shivering. She got up slowly, instinctively avoiding a sharp movement

which would jar her throbbing temple, and groped her way blindly to her

writing table. For a long time she sat in the faint stream of cooler air that

blew in from the open window, with her head in her hands. Hot tears

burned tracks down her fingers and soaked the tiny ruffles at her wrists.

The coils of her brain writhed with the conflict of opposing desires.

For twenty-five years she had lived in peace with her shadow, her mirror

image, her other self, unaware of its consuming malevolence, its need

to destroy one man in the name of love. But she was aware of it now,

terribly aware. And afraid of its power to hate.

One man. Only one. It was all that shade demanded as it looked from

time to time out of her amber eyes, turning them to mirrors of black glass,

waiting quietly, unobtrusively, for its ultimate revenge on manhood. The

shadow slept, but how little it would take to wake it.

Death waited in a lost corridor of her mind, waited for Robin in the

glittering guise of her love. She knew now what she feared, what held her

back from taking the very thing she desired. She could not trust herself

with his life.

For marriage would not content him. Men like Robin were never

content, and men like Robin were all she would ever love, grasping,

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ambitious reflections of herself. Once he knew that the crown matrimo-

nial would never be his, that she would not make him king in his own

right, he would begin to plot and scheme behind her back, building up

a court faction to force her hand. Robin was too like his father, neither

men to be ruled by their wives. To emerge from that final conflict as the

victor, it would be necessary to kill him. And she knew she was capable

of doing it—it was as simple as that. His company, his friendship, his

passionate attachment were all that she dared to take from him; she loved

him too much to let him pay the price of owning her, body and soul.

What woman could keep a man by her side for a lifetime on such

terms? She had no choice but to let him go on hoping, hoping, till he saw

that she had let him waste his life in a vain pursuit, and hated her for it;

as she would hate herself.

She was alone with her secret, her dark legacy of the past; there was

no one she could trust enough to tell, who would not think her mad.

And yet she must tell it somehow and release a little of this caged anguish

which seemed to rock her sanity.

She took up her silver pen and stared down at the blank sheet of

paper before her. The words poured out of her agonised soul and spread

themselves across the page like gleaming drops of black blood.

I grieve and dare not show my discontent

I love and yet am forced to seem to hate.

I do, yet dare not say I ever meant,

I seem stark mute, yet inwardly do prate.

I am and not: I freeze and yet am burned,

Since from myself, my other self I turned.

My care is like my shadow in the sun,

Follows me flying, flies when I pursue it,

Stands and lies by me, does what I have done.

When she came to her senses, the pen was still in her hand and the words

were long dry. She had no conscious memory of writing them down.

For a moment, she felt inclined to destroy the whole page, then found

she could not bring herself to do it. She put the sheet of parchment in a

drawer, locked it safely away, and then turned her guilty attention to the

state papers which waited in a neatly reproachful stack.

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Behind her back, the door clicked open and shut. Soft footsteps went

across the room to Kat’s chair and became a quick rustle of silk that beto-

kened a curtsey. Then there was pointed silence from the tapestry frame.

The afternoon darkened with a threat of thunder and they sat and worked

in the failing light without looking at each other or speaking a word.

There seemed to be nothing left to say.

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Chapter 9

C
ecil stood in the queen’s room in icy, disbelieving silence, aghast

and immobilised by the storm of invective that was raging in his ears.

His tentative reference to the Archduke Charles, Spain’s current choice

of suitor, had brought a hornet’s nest of ungrateful abuse upon his head.

Through narrowed eyes he watched her pace up and down the room,

twisting a lace handkerchief between her trembling fingers. She looked

pale and strained and there were dark circles beneath her eyes, as though

she had not slept for many nights.

Her voice flayed him with spiteful and unreasonable hostility; nothing

in his conduct of the Scottish treaty appeared to please her. She had been

obliged to spend freely on the campaign, so why was there no financial

recompense written into the terms of surrender? Why had he failed

to get Calais back from the French? What had he been doing all these

weeks idling in Scotland? She did not want to hear about the cost of his

journey—if he had incurred expenses, he would have to foot the bill

himself. She was not made of money!

The incredible injustice of her accusations stung him deeply; and if she

carried out her threat and refused to pay him, he had no idea where he

would find the money. But for a moment longer he valiantly put aside his

personal considerations and tried to reason with her, to bring her back to

the question of the Archduke.

The handkerchief ripped in two; she flung the two pieces in his face

and stamped her foot savagely. Marriage, marriage—she was ill of the

miserable word. Had he nothing else to say for himself ?

Susan Kay

“Only this, madam—that I see you are neglecting your business and

half way to ruining the realm.”

She drew in a sharp breath; for a moment he was quite certain she was

going to hit him.

Then abruptly, she turned her back on him so that he could not see

her face.

“Get out! Quickly! And pray for my forgiveness, Cecil—pray very hard.”

He went with his mind made up at last. She was on the very edge of

disaster. He knew he had no choice but to save her from herself and the

evil influence of Lord Robert Dudley.

t t t

The plump, episcopal shadow of the Spanish Ambassador, Bishop de

Quadra, hung on the panel ed wal of Cecil’s study, quivering, like its owner,

with intense interest. It was the most curious interview, held between a spy

of His Most Catholic Majesty and the arch-heretic detested by Spain, and

Quadra was sharp enough to see it was not being held by accident.

He knew the Secretary was in some kind of disgrace, having heard

from various sources that Lord Robert Dudley was endeavouring to

deprive him of his place. Cecil was evidently a man with a serious griev-

ance, but even so his behaviour now seemed strangely out of character.

Since Quadra had been in England he had never seen the Secretary

display a flicker of emotion, or heard him speak a single word that had

not been carefully weighed before hand. Was this really Cecil speaking

now, speaking with the wildest indiscretion in an open disloyalty that

bordered close to treason?

“What I am about to say must never be repeated, Bishop. Will you

swear to absolute secrecy?”

Quadra smiled faintly in ironical disbelief.

“Men of my calling are not without discretion, Sir William. No one

will hear of it, I assure you.”

No one except the whole of Spain and ultimately the rest of the

world, thought Cecil calmly as he poured wine from a glass decanter. He

deliberately slopped the wine into the tray and mopped at it in a gesture

of distraction.

“I tell you this, sir, the Queen conducts herself so strangely that I am

about to leave her service.”

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“Indeed?” It was almost a purr. Quadra stroked his crucifix thoughtful y.

“That, if I might say so, would be a grave loss to your country, Sir Wil iam.”

Cecil shrugged irritably and handed him a goblet.

“That’s as may be, but it’s a bad sailor who fails to make for a port

when he sees a storm coming—though God knows I shall probably end

in the Tower for it.”

“A storm?” Quadra blinked like an owl.

“The Queen is heading for utter ruin with Lord Robert Dudley.”

“Certainly there have been rumours—disquieting rumours.”

“I don’t traffic in rumours, Bishop, I deal with pure facts. And the