by Karen Harper
“Was she safe as queen?”
“She was not queen in her own right, and I am.”
“You have said it is essential to keep the goodwill of not only courtiers but commoners. You now have the opportunity to remain pure in your court and subjects’ eyes, but you are squandering that, acting the wanton.”
For one moment I thought she would strike me, but I seized her upper arms hard and gave her a little shake. Other things had changed lately, for there was a greater gap between us. Power, as I had known for years and feared for her, did make a difference.
“I am not acting the wanton,” she told me, and tugged herself free. “Of all people, I thought you would understand how much Robin means to me, even if Cecil and your lord cannot grasp it. And if you have that dream again, say to my mother that this man is to me as Thomas Wyatt the poet was to her: a lifelong love, but one I know I cannot really have. I am no dolthead on that account, and don’t you act like one!”
Even when Cecil returned that autumn with a good treaty with Scotland and when John was recalled from Enfield, things did not improve. Scandalmongers now whispered terrible things: that Robert would poison his wife so that he could have the queen, that Elizabeth was with child by him. It was that which made me decide to risk scolding her again, for that very accusation about her illegitimate pregnancy had been bandied about in the Seymour scandal, and I could not bear her being dragged through the mud and mire again. She was blind to all but her dazzling love for her Robin. Even Cecil’s threats to resign if she did not cast off Lord Robert Dudley did not change her willfulness.
But my burden to confront her again was taken from my hands by a horrible accident—or maybe not an accident. I recall the date well because it was September 8, 1560, the day after her twenty-seventh birthday. I was waiting for Robert and Her Grace to return from a ride in the great park at Windsor—also, hoping for a few words with John, who had managed to discreetly accompany them this time—when a man named Forester, one of Dudley’s servants, rushed up to him when they dismounted.
“Yes, my man?” Robert said, turning to the tall, thin steward of his rural lands. Elizabeth leaned close to hear.
“My lord, I regret to inform you that there has been an accident. Your wife has fallen.”
“Fallen where? Is she all right?” I heard him ask.
“Fell down the staircase at Cumnor House, my lord, and broke her neck. She’d sent everyone out to a nearby fair and when they came back—dead, sir. Dead of the fall.”
Dead. Of the fall. I feared that my mistress, Queen of England, and her beloved Robin were about to take another kind of fall. Whispers, innuendos were abroad that the queen, too, had wished Robin’s wife dead, so that they could wed. But now that it had come true, now that their—or at least his—desire had become dreadful reality, even though both of them were here and not in Oxfordshire when Amy fell, would he or Elizabeth herself be blamed? Not just for reckless passion this time, but for murder?
“You must send him away,” I told her that night after I had asked her other ladies to leave us. “It’s not enough that he gives her a fine funeral. Until it is all adjudicated, he must be close-confined.”
Elizabeth had feigned calm all day as she had ordered the court to go into mourning, as she had done business with Cecil at her side. But she had fallen too—fallen in everyone’s eyes and fallen apart the moment the two of us were alone.
“I can’t send him away,” she protested, blowing her nose while her eyes streamed tears. In her night rail and robe, she sat barefoot and cross-legged on the end of her bed while I stood next to it. “That will make him look guilty, and he isn’t.”
“Isn’t guilty of being there where he could have done it, but—”
“Hell’s teeth, do you think he’s hired someone to rid himself of her? He’s an honorable man! And how can I send someone to be close-confined who has been to the Tower—you, too, should know that. Amy was ailing with a lump in her breast, and it made her melancholy. She may have stumbled, or—God forbid—even taken her own life.”
“From being melancholy over and hearing rumors of her absent husband.”
“Leave off! If you care for me, leave off!”
“Because I care for you, I must speak.”
“He has begged me not to send him away or the jackals who are jealous of him—hate him and his family for being greedy upstarts and former traitors—will pick his bones. They are ravening jealous of how much I admire and care for him.”
“At least until there is a ruling on her death, he should go. After all, no one suspected of a crime is to be in the monarch’s presence.”
“He’s not suspected of a crime!” she shrilled. “Not by me.”
“But he is by others. Yes, the Lord High God gave you this Tudor throne, but haven’t you said you must rule by the love of your people?”
“This isn’t like the Seymour scandal—that’s what you’re thinking again, isn’t it? Seduction again? Well, it isn’t. I have not allowed him the ultimate gift of my love. I do love him, yes, but I am not just—just taken in by his manly skills and wiles to surrender my body to him.”
“Elizabeth, he’s been wed ten years and knows all the tricks. If you ever listened to me—one who’s known you, loved you, gone to prison twice for you—listen now. You must harden your heart to him, or you’ll go down with him. Even if he’s declared innocent, people will talk, even as some dare to whisper now that you might be with child by him—”
“I said stop it!” she screamed. Before I knew she would move from her slumped posture on the bed, she reared up and slapped my cheek.
The sharp sound broke the sudden silence. My cheek stung and, more so, my heart. Tears crowded my eyes but did not fall. I cannot fathom what my expression looked like, but she gasped, scrambled off the bed and fell to her knees before me with her arms around my hips and her cheek pressed to my belly so it seemed my skirts would swallow her head.
“Kat, Kat, forgive me. I didn’t mean—forgive me, forgive me, but I am so undone . . .”
I bit my lower lip and stood like stone as she babbled on, saying the same over and over.
“Get up, Your Majesty.” I finally found some words. “You must not kneel to anyone.”
She stayed where she was. “I can’t do without you, Kat. You’re right, I must distance myself from him, but I just—just can’t face it. Cecil says the same. I can’t, can’t . . .”
I put my hands on her tousled head as if she were a child I would comfort or bless, and we stayed that way for a few moments as if we were both carved from marble.
“Oh, my Kat,” she said, slowly loosing me and getting to her feet, “I see I wear not only a royal crown but a crown of thorns. Yes, I must send him away. I wanted him so much, but maybe now it’s ruined. Amy couldn’t keep us apart in life, but in death—her death day was almost on my birthday. . . . Yes, I see what I must do. I’ll write it out, his orders to go to his house at Kew—”
“Kew is not far. Not far enough from Richmond, where we are going on the morrow.”
“It will have to do,” she said, walking over to her writing desk, looking as if she were the one who had been struck, “at least until the inquest—the hearing—provides a ruling to clear his name—and mine.”
Her pen scratched loudly across the paper. My heart still thudded hard. I had not moved from where she’d slapped me. Somehow, the world had changed, changed even more than when she was crowned, and I feared I could never call her my lovey again, and certainly never again pretend in my heart that she was mine.
Finallybut too late, the queen had realized the error of her passionate ways. The court, the country, even foreigners spoke of the scandal. Elizabeth’s rival, Mary Stuart, now queen of France, was heard to say again, with a snicker, not only that the Queen of England would wed her horse master but that he had had his wife murdered to make room for her.
Any snippet of news from the coroner’s inquest—which was soon to be examined by j
urors—was bandied about everywhere. Though Amy had fallen down a flight of stairs and broken her neck, her cap had not been disturbed, so had someone straightened it before leaving or arranging the body? Her corpse bore no bruises. The staircase was not even steep enough for a fatal fall. And on and on.
Like everyone, I was shocked by it all, but even more shocked when the queen told me after we had been at Richmond Palace but one day, “I am sending you to Kew to speak with Robin, to give him this poem I have written to explain our changed circumstances and to ask him outright if he had aught to do with her death.”
I just stared at her a moment, then blurted, “Can you not send Cecil?”
“Cecil would be too harsh with him. I am sending you, and John is riding with you.”
“I’m to give him what poem?” I asked, recalling all too well the poem I had seen pinned to the bottom of the stool in Queen Anne’s rooms when I was sent to carry a message from her to Cromwell. Indeed, what went around came around.
“Here,” she said, thrusting a piece of paper toward me. “Besides the poem, I have written that, whatever the jury decides, things must be different between us. It is a message I thought you would like to give him.”
I took the parchment from her hand and saw she had addressed it formally to Robert Dudley, G.K., and had signed it Elizabeth R. That gave me hope. For now, at least, no more Robin and Bess. I skimmed the poem:
The doubt of future foes exiles my present joy,
And wit me warn to shun such snares as threaten mine annoy;
For falsehood now doth flow, and subjects’ faith doth ebb,
Which should not be if reason ruled or wisdom weaved the web.
But clouds of joys untried do cloak aspiring minds,
Which turn to rage of late repent by changèd course of winds.
It went on with other verses, but I recall them not. I nodded and went out to do for her—as oft I had before—a duty that I did not want.
With two horses, John and I went by royal barge from the Greenwich Palace water gate and then disembarked to ride the short distance to Dudley’s small house at Kew on the edge of a huge dairy farm. “Ah,” John said, sniffing the scent of distant cows and stables, “good country air. At least at Enfield the prevailing breeze keeps that smell away. How I wish we could get away from all this to stay there for a while, just the two of us.”
I nodded as he helped me dismount. “I, too, miss Enfield. Anywhere but here right now.”
I had somehow fancied Robert would greet us, but as the guard at the door—Robert was under restraint, which some called house arrest—let us in, I saw the place was dim and silent.
“Did you not announce us?” I asked the man. “Was he told we were coming?”
“Aye, milady, milord. This way, by your leave.”
It was darker than a birthing chamber in the small house. Windows draped, a bit damp and musty. John pulled me behind him and even put his hand to his sword.
Our guide knocked once on a door, then again. “Enter!” came the cry.
John peered in before he let me precede him. We had discussed that John would give me some space to speak with the man but not leave the room. Yet John stuck tight to my side as a shadowy figure rose from behind a large desk in the dim room.
“Lady Ashley,” came the distinctive voice, though subdued now, “welcome to my prison. Lord Ashley—how fare our two hundred and fifty charges in the royal stables?”
“Well, my lord. I am seeing that your favorites—horses—are well fed.”
“Ah, better than I am faring, for I’ve lost my appetite as much else. Sit, please, both of you. I was told of your visit.”
“Can we not let in some light and air?” I asked.
“Let in the light—well, yes, that is what the jurors are doing even now, are they not?” He walked to the window behind his desk and yanked the brocade curtains apart. Sunlight flooded the room; we all blinked. John took a chair against the wall, though hardly out of earshot. Perhaps he thought the man was unbalanced or dangerous, but I thought he only looked beaten, a mere shadow of his exuberant, confident self. His hair was unkempt, his usually immaculately trimmed beard shaggy. He wore a plain white shirt under a worn black leather jerkin, no fine fig of fashion today.
“Her Grace sends you this—it’s a poem, my lord,” I said, taking a chair at the side of the desk while Robert dropped into the chair where he had been sitting. He reached for the paper not eagerly but warily and set it before him without opening it.
“Best read in private, I warrant,” he said. “Is she casting me to the dogs?”
“Only a guilty ruling can do that, I suppose,” I said.
“Yes—I suppose. So, she sends her dear friend Kat Ashley to tell me what?”
“To ask if you know anything about your wife’s demise or who might have wanted to harm her.”
“God as my judge,” he cried, slamming both fists into the desk top and leaping to his feet, “does she suspect me too? Then I am doomed indeed!”
John stood when Robert did, but then, when Robert slumped down again, I heard John sit. I was tempted to rephrase the question, to soften it somehow, but this man was the cause of much pain and sorrow, whether or not he was somehow guilty of his wife’s death.
“I had naught to do with Amy’s death, obviously not directly, since I was at court, but not indirectly either. Please assure Her Grace of that.”
“I will.”
“Actually, I think, if it is ruled a murder, that it was more likely set up by my or the queen’s enemies, who knew I—even she—might be blamed. My rivals at court who detest how far I have risen so fast in her goodwill, even the Catholics, who would like to have the queen dead in Amy’s place.”
“That is, I suppose, a possibility.”
“And, Kat Ashley, there is another possibility,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning forward across the desk on his elbows. “That someone who had been warning her, trying to turn her against me, someone with newfound possessions and power, might have hired someone to dispatch Amy so that I might be blamed—and make the queen back off from me. Perhaps someone who had a position to lose if Her Grace wedded me and made me her closest confidant. Perhaps someone who closely serves the queen but does truly not have her happiness at heart.”
My eyes widened. I feared my heart would pound out of my chest. I stammered, in a whisper so John would not pounce on the man, “You—you are accusing me?”
“Or Cecil—or both. I know you detest me and want me gone. But accusing? Only pondering the possibilities, since you asked.”
“You are demented! Blame yourself for this mess, maybe blame the queen, but not me.” I rose and John strode over.
“On the other hand,” Robert went on, slumping back in his chair as if he’d said naught amiss, “the fact that Amy insisted everyone else in the house go to the fair that day indicates she may have wanted to be alone to—to do the deed herself,” he said and his voice broke. “She was in pain from the tumor in her breast. And, obviously, distraught to be living away from me, though I explained to her my destiny to help this queen, to earn the Dudleys’ way back from my father’s and my treason against Queen Mary and . . . hell, for all I know, Amy found the only way she could to keep me from the woman I will always love and mayhap now can never have!”
To my amazement, after that outburst, he broke into sobs, though without tears. His shoulders heaved; like me a moment ago he could hardly catch his breath. Still, I feared, now that John must have realized what the man had said to me, that he might leap on his better and shake him until his teeth rattled. When John clenched his fists, I put one hand on his rock-hard arm to restrain him and told Robert, “You may leave Cecil and me out of this spider’s web you have slyly spun, or be damned to you!”
I tugged John away. We left Robert like that, bitter and shattered. I both pitied him and hated him. I did not mention to Elizabeth that he had insulted me, accused me and Cecil of so much as the possibility of a
rranging his wife’s murder and his demise.
The next day the jurors ruled that Amy Robsart Dudley’s death was fatal mischance, that is, accidental death. Robert would eventually be allowed back to court, but not, the queen vowed, as anyone but another adviser. I could only pray that my intelligent Elizabeth had learned her lesson. As a woman ruling alone, she could emulate neither her father nor her mother, but must tread her own, careful path through the pitfalls and snares of love.
CHAPTER THE TWENTIETH
WHITEHALL PALACE
Autumn 1560
Perhaps from guilt for her previous behavior, perhaps to forget
Robert Dudley, the queen threw herself into hard work and a regimented daily routine, with me right behind her almost each step of the way. She seemed to need me differently now, as if she were young again and I were a comfort or security to her. It reminded me of the time she was just out of leading strings when she lost a small blue silk coverlet she fancied and was so sad until it was found.
Not only I but Cecil was hard-pressed to keep up with her energy. We were both relieved that Robert had not been welcomed back to court with open arms, though the queen had allowed him to return and still showed him every courtesy. Yet she avoided being alone with him as if he had the pox.
Each morning Elizabeth rose early and went for a fast walk that left her ladies stretching their strides and me breathless. Together, the two of us had a meager breakfast in her privy chamber, for she preferred not to eat in public unless there was a holiday or official banquet. Next, she tended to signing warrants and deeds, then oft presided over a meeting of her Privy Council. She was at odds with them and Parliament about marriage: even Cecil urged her to wed for the good of the kingdom.
“Look at this, Kat! Just look!” she cried one winter evening as she stormed into my withdrawing chamber, where I was resting and writing. She smacked down in front of me [right on top of a page of this very narrative of my life] a formal petition from Parliament, urging her to marry as soon as possible in order to safeguard the succession. “How dare they?” she demanded, jabbing her index finger so hard up and down on the document that the hinged lid of the ring from her mother flew open and flopped up and down before she snapped it closed.
