The Twylight Tower (8 page)

“I’ve invested my life in you, Elizabeth Tudor,” Kat plunged on, gripping her hands before her as if she
were praying. “You are on the cusp of your destiny, and I’ll not have you sullied and sneered at by—”

“They dare not!” Elizabeth protested. “Cecil has put you up to this.”

“He has not. Do you think Cecil is the only one around you with half a brain, after all we’ve been through together? And that includes Ned, Meg, even Jenks.”

“Then de Quadra’s poisons have been spreading here, and you’ve given ear to them. I know the man has slandered Robert Dudley for his own purposes.”

“No, I have not heard one vile thing de Quadra’s said, though I can imagine,” Kat countered with a little shake of her head.

“You—all of you closest to me,” Elizabeth said, “against my express wishes, have been investigating Geoffrey Hammet’s death behind my back, have you not? That’s why you were up on the parapet, besides watching Robin’s farewell. I knew someone’s been spying on me!”

“If you want to speak of Geoffrey, it wasn’t white Canary Island sack on him but sweet, red Madeira malmsey,” Kat countered. “And his lute was placed up on the parapet so carefully, Ned and Meg told me, and I saw the very place.”

“ ’S blood, you are saying there is some foul murderer afoot up in the towers? Against Geoffrey? Against me? Some conspiracy?”

“You are becoming frenzied, lovey. I have worried so that you are burning the candle at both ends over
wanting Robert Dudley but keeping him at bay. I came not to discuss Geoffrey Hammet, and it is you who have adroitly changed the subject. The foulness afoot, a conspiracy, yes, could topple you off your throne just as, we fear, someone could have pushed Geoffrey over th—”

“Kat, I have not given Robert Dudley but kisses and my time. And bestowments, of course, but then I’ve given those to several who were loyal to me. I’ve made cousin Carey Baron Hunsdon, given him an old royal hunt lodge, and named him Master of the Queen’s Hawks. I am virgin and unsullied, or I would not be fearless in showing the court and country—and those vile wolves baying for my blood on the Continent—that Robin and I are friends, just dearest friends. I let him go to his Amy, you see. I encouraged it.”

“Oh, my lovey, remember how your own mother’s enemies pulled her down to destruction along with married men accused of adultery with her so—”

“Stop it!” she screeched. “This is nothing like that.
I
rule here, not de Quadra, not Mary Stuart, not Cecil, not gossipmongers, and not you! But I tell you now, if I had the will—or found pleasure in such a dishonorable life as you imply, from which God preserve me—I do not know of anyone on earth who could forbid me, including you!”

Elizabeth turned and banged out of the room, striding through her presence chambers where her ladies and Franklin Dove—their new pet in place of lapdogs and parrots—scrambled to fall in behind her. She did not slow until she reached the gardens overlooking the
river. Under a bower of white roses, she sat on a turf bench and summoned Franklin with a flick of her wrist.

“Play something that suits,” she commanded. “Something about fickle friends will do.”

Elizabeth ignored the fact that Katherine Grey snickered and Mary Sidney shook her head. The queen closed her eyes and felt the river breeze cool her flushed cheeks and neck as Franklin began,

AMY DUDLEY WAS OUT OF BREATH FROM HER
climb up the steps of the monastery’s skeletal bell tower. Even the double flight of stairs in the manor house hadn’t prepared her for this. But now she could see down the road Robert must ride to Cumnor. He’d sent one of his men ahead to tell of his coming. Without even asking, Amy knew his visit would be short. She propped her elbows on the remnant of the windowsill to watch, then put them down at her sides when the lump in her breast hurt again.

Petite but buxom and childless after ten years of marriage, Amy Robsart Dudley couldn’t abide living with her brother’s or half-brother’s families. She used to visit, but they were always fussing at her, always saying she should go to court, as if Robert wanted her
there, as if some wives were even allowed there if they didn’t directly serve the queen. Right now her sisters-in-law would be fretting over her ailment and accusing her of moping. It was better to be here.

Robert had housed her on old monastery lands King Henry VIII had given to his physician Dr. Owen, whose son now owned it and whose widow still lived in part of the manor house. Anthony Forster, Robert’s steward, and his family also leased here to oversee the farm and Robert’s interests in the nearby fields he owned. Amy and her waiting woman, Mrs. Pirto, had some rooms of their own on the second floor and ate noonday dinner with the others, but it wasn’t like really living in a family.

Amy wondered what people thought about the twenty-eight-year-old country wife of the queen’s Lord Robert, if they thought of her at all. Did they know he had a house at Kew and fine apartments within beck and call of their queen, while Amy was still a paying guest in other people’s houses?

Yet Cumnor was a pretty place. It had a park, terraced walks shaded by elms and oaks, and a pond with flashing fish. Fine farmlands stretched to the wild downs. If one wanted shops, it was six miles to the market village of Abingdon and four to the university town of Oxford.

Still, she always thought about the abbots who used to hold this country seat and were buried beside this tower. Sometimes she fancied she heard their mournful voices, singing, praying. She often walked among their graves, and if she was alone, laid flat on the
ground and stared up at the sky. Then she heard them chanting right through the turf. After all, Cumnor had been ripped from the abbots when Queen Elizabeth’s father ruined the holy church. If he could do that, what couldn’t his royal daughter take from anyone she pleased?

Amy sucked in a breath when she saw three riders on the road. Her heart beat fast, and she began to perspire. She shouldn’t have worn her best gown. Picking her way down the stairs, she waited in the garden amid tall hollyhocks and bright roses. Years ago she and Robert had coupled on the grass in a bower of roses. Robert had watched her face and said she blushed so prettily. She pinched her cheeks to make some roses now.

Her belly fluttered as she watched her husband ride closer. How fine and proud he looked, even dust- and mud-spattered. She always forgot how tall and robust he was when they were apart. But now he rode next to his thin-as-a-rake favorite groom, Fletcher, so maybe that made him look ever bigger.

“Amy, love,” he said, all smiles, dismounting and unstrapping a saddlepack. “I’m heartened to see you outside instead of keeping to the house.”

Fletcher was the only one of his companions she recognized. The other was a burly queen’s man, she supposed. While they went to stable the horses, Robert pecked a kiss on her mouth, then hugged her hard. That hurt her breast, and she flinched, but he didn’t seem to notice. He threw an arm around her shoulders and walked her toward the house, the pack in his
other hand. Anthony Forster, who would do anything to please Robert, came out to greet him. They started talking rents and crop yield, but not for long.

“I’ll speak with you later,” Robert told Anthony as he took her hand. “See to my companions, will you? I’ve brought gifts for my lady, and she’ll make mincemeat of me if she doesn’t have them forthwith.”

“As if I’d ever gainsay or order you about,” she protested gently as they climbed the stairs to her suite of four rooms. Mrs. Pirto bobbed him a curtsy at the door and went out, God bless her.

“Amy,” he said, and sat in her favorite chair by the empty hearth and pulled her onto his lap, “I am sorry to see you paler and thinner. You must eat better, my pet, keep up your strength.”

Amy had gone over many things she’d say to him. She wanted to scold him and insist he had no right to court the queen, that’s what all the rumors were saying. Rumors he might ask for a divorce to wed the beautiful, young Elizabeth. He deserved his wife’s scorn and spite, but Amy loved him yet.

If these gifts in his saddlepack were bribes, she told herself, she didn’t want them. Still, she watched as his sun-browned hands drew them out: an alabaster jar with sweet-smelling something in it, a new ruff, an embroidered sky-blue silk scarf with bouncing fringe, a porcelain pomander for herbs and perfumed petals, and so much more.

“I can’t bear it,” she blurted, and burst into tears.

“Are you in pain?” he asked, seizing her shoulders and trying to study her face while she sobbed. “You
miss me, don’t you? Are you well treated here? Do you need another physician?”

Sniffling, she nodded at his first three questions and shook her head at the last. He offered her his fine handkerchief, and she snatched it to hide her face.

“Amy, Amy,” he said, sounding like her father, “we have already discussed that this is my—our—great moment in time, our moment of destiny. To have the goodwill of the monarch after the two great falls the Dudleys have taken, after my own father and brother were executed for the rebellion, is a blessing to us all.”

Amy tried to listen, but his words blurred. Sometimes Robert’s reasonings came out all twisted together. She blew her nose and dabbed at her eyes.

“But now, my pet,” he went on, “we have the opportunity to regain some of our lost lands and ruined wealth from those disasters.…”

Disasters,
she understood that, all right. She squirmed off his lap, though she would have loved to cling to him, more fool she.

“Monarch, you called her,” Amy said, blowing her nose again. “As if she is not a flesh-and-blood woman to you, as if she could be a man just as well.”

“She intends to rule like a man, mayhap without a man, so she needs advisers who—”

“You think she needs you as a man, as
her
man!” she exploded. She wanted to break the porcelain pomander over his head, to gag or strangle him with that new scarf.

“Amy, don’t you turn on me too,” he said, rising and coming to pull her gently to him. His voice was
silky smooth. She tried not to cling, but she turned her head and rested her wet cheek on his leather doublet. Through its thickness, she fancied she could hear his heart beating right over the sound of the abbots’ songs.

“Who else dares to bear you ill will if she is your friend?” Amy choked out.

“Ah, to know so little of how the world works. Many resent that I fly high and fast and they yet hate my father for taking the badge of the earls of Warwick. Some cannot abide he named himself Duke of Northumberland, the first subject unconnected with royal blood to hold the ducal rank.”

Amy lifted her head as his voice rose. She saw his neck veins throb. “They are all hellfire, raving jealous, and I must show them they need me,” he went on, glaring into space. “Sometimes, I almost think, all but her—and you—hate me. My beloved, I can still count on you?” he asked, and held her at arm’s length and bent down to look straight into her eyes.

Amy sighed, and nodded. What little strength she’d summoned flowed from her, and she sagged against him. He lifted and carried her to the bed and sat perched on it, holding her hand as daylight fled the room. Soon she fell asleep and when she woke, Mrs. Pirto was sitting by the hearth in lamplight, and Amy could hear Robert’s voice somewhere below … entwined with his steward’s … if the voices weren’t the monks’ singing their sad chants from their graves out back again.