Robert Dudley smiled at her, she could hardly see him through the haze of pain behind her eyes. Simply, she shook her head at him and turned away. She beckoned the Austrian ambassador to take a chair beside her throne and to talk to her of Archduke Ferdinand, who would come with all the power of Spain at his back and who was the only man who might bring with him a big enough army to keep England safe for her.
‘You know, I have no liking for the single state,’ Elizabeth said softly to the ambassador, ignoring Sir William’s goggle-eyed glare at her. ‘I have only waited, as any sensible maid would do, for the right man.’
Robert was planning a great tournament for when they returned to Greenwich, the last celebration before the court went on its summer progress. On his long refectory table in his pretty house at Kew, he had a scroll of paper unrolled, and his clerk was pairing the knights who would joust against each other. It was to be a tournament of roses, Robert had decided. There would be a bower of roses for the queen to sit in, with the red rose of Lancaster and the white rose of York and the Galicia rose which combined both colours and resolved the ancient enmity between England’s greatest counties, as the Tudors themselves had done. There would be rose petals, scattered by children dressed in rose pink before the queen when she walked from the palace door at Greenwich down to the tilt yard. The yard itself was to be blazoned with roses and all the contenders had been told that they were to incorporate roses into their poetry, or into their arms, or armour.
There would be a tableau greeting Elizabeth as the Queen of the Roses and she would be crowned with a chaplet of rosebuds. They would eat sugared rose comfits and there would be a water fight with rose water, the very air would be scented with the amorous perfume, the tilt yard would be carpeted with petals.
The joust was to be the central event of the day. Dudley was painfully aware that Sir William Pickering was a powerful rival for the queen’s affections, a blond, well-made, rich bachelor, widely read, well-travelled, and well-educated. He had intense charm; a smile from his dark blue eyes sent most women into a flutter, and the queen was always vulnerable to a commanding man. He had all the confidence of a man wealthy from boyhood, who came from wealthy and powerful parents. He had never been as low as Robert, he did not even know that a man could sink so low, and his whole bearing, his easy charm, his sunny disposition all showed a man to whom life had been kind and who believed that the future would be as blessed as the past.
Worst of all, from Dudley’s point of view, there was nothing to stop the queen marrying him tomorrow. She could drink a glass of wine too many, she could be teased a little too hard, she could be aroused and engaged and provoked – and Pickering was a master of subtle seduction – then he could offer her a priceless diamond ring, and his fortune, and the job would be done. The gambling men were putting odds on Sir William marrying the queen by autumn and her constant ripple of laughter in his presence, and her amused tolerance of his rising pride, gave everyone reason to believe that his big blond style was more to her taste than Dudley’s dark good looks.
Robert had suffered many rivals for her attention since she had come to the throne. Elizabeth was a flirt and anyone with a valuable gift or a handsome smile could have her evanescent attention. But Sir William was a greater risk than these passing fancies. He was phenomenally rich and Elizabeth, with a purse full of lightweight coins and an empty treasury, found his wealth very attractive. He had been a friend of hers from the earliest days and she treasured fidelity, especially in men who had plotted to put her on the throne, however incompetent they had been. But more than anything else, he was handsome and new-come to court, and an English Protestant bachelor, so when she danced with him and they were the centre of gossip and speculation, it was good-natured. The court smiled on the two of them. There was no-one reminding her that he was a married man or a convicted traitor, or muttering that she must be mad to favour him. And although Dudley’s rapid return to court had disturbed Sir William’s smooth rise to favour and power, it had not prevented it. The queen was shamelessly delighted to have the two most desirable men in England competing for her attention.
Dudley was hoping to use the joust to unseat Sir William with one hard blow, preferably to his handsome face or thick head, and was drawing up the jousting list to ensure that Pickering and he would meet in the final round. He was absorbed in the work when suddenly his door banged open without a knock. Robert leapt up, his hand reaching for his dagger, heart thudding, knowing that at last the worst thing had happened: an uprising, an assassin.
It was the queen, quite alone, without a single attendant, white as a rose herself, who flung herself into the room towards him and said three words: ‘Robert! Save me!’
At once he snatched her to him and held her close. He could feel her gasping for breath, she had run all the way from the palace to the Dairy House, and run up the steps to his front door.
‘What is it, my love?’ he asked urgently. ‘What is it?’
‘A man,’ she gasped. ‘Following me.’
With his arm still around her waist he took his sword from where it hung on the hook, and threw open the door. Two of his men were outside, aghast at the queen’s dashing past them.
‘Seen anyone?’ Robert asked tersely.
‘No-one, sir.’
‘Go and search.’ He turned to the fainting woman. ‘What did he look like?’
‘Well-dressed, brown suit, like a London merchant, but he dogged my feet while I was walking in my garden down to the river and when I went faster he came on, and when I ran he ran behind me, and I thought that he was a Papist, come to kill me …’ She lost her breath for fear.
Robert turned to his stunned clerk. ‘Go with them, call out the guard and the Queen’s Pensioners. Tell them to look for a man in a brown suit. Check the river first. If he is away in a boat, take a boat and follow him. I want him alive. I want him now.’ Robert sent the men off, and then drew Elizabeth back into the house, into his drawing room, and slammed the door and bolted it.
Gently, he put her into a chair and closed the shutters and bolted them. He unsheathed his sword and laid it to hand, on the table.
‘Robert, I thought he had come for me. I thought he would murder me, where I walked in my own garden.’
‘You’re safe now, my love,’ he said gently. He knelt beside her chair and took her hand. She was icy cold. ‘You are safe with me.’
‘I didn’t know what to do, I didn’t know where to run. I could only think of you.’
‘Quite right. You did quite right, and you were very brave to run.’
‘I wasn’t!’ she wailed suddenly, like a child.
Robert lifted her from the chair and drew her on to his knees. She buried her face in his neck and he felt her sweaty face and the wetness of her tears. ‘Robert, I wasn’t brave at all. I wasn’t like a queen at all, I was like a nothing. I was as full of fear as a market girl. I couldn’t call for my guards, I couldn’t scream. I didn’t even think to turn and challenge him. I just went faster, and when he went faster, I went faster.
‘I could hear his footsteps coming behind me faster and faster and all I could do …’ She burst into another wail. ‘I feel such a child! I feel like I am such a fool! Anyone would think that I was the daughter of a lute player …’
The enormity of that shocked her into silence, and she raised her tear-stained face from his shoulder. ‘Oh, God,’ she said brokenly.
Steadily, lovingly, he met her eyes, smiled at her. ‘No-one will think anything of you, for no-one will know,’ he said softly. ‘This is between us two and no-one else will ever know.’
She caught her breath on a sob and nodded.
‘And no-one, even if they knew, could blame you for being afraid, if a man comes after you. You know the danger that you are in, every day. Any woman would be afraid, and you are a woman, and a beautiful woman as well as a queen.’
Instinctively, she twisted a tendril of hair and tucked it back behind her ear. ‘I should have
turned on him and challenged him.’
Robert shook his head. ‘You did exactly the right thing. He could have been a madman, he could have been anyone. The wisest thing to do was to come and find me, and here you are, safe. Safe with me.’
She nestled a little closer to him and he tightened his arms around her. ‘And no-one could ever doubt your fathering,’ he said into her red hair. ‘You are a Tudor from your clever copper head down to your swift little feet. You are my Tudor princess and you always will be. I knew your father, remember, I remember how he used to look at you and call you his best girl Bessie. I was there. I can hear his voice now. He loved you as his true-born daughter and heir, and he knew you were his, and now you are mine.’
Elizabeth tipped her head back at him, her dark eyes trusting, her mouth starting to curve upwards in a smile. ‘Yours?’
‘Mine,’ he said certainly and his mouth came down on hers and he kissed her deeply.
She did not resist for one moment. Her terror and then the feel of safety with him were as potent as a love potion. He could smell the sweat of her fear and the new scent of her arousal, and he went from her lips to her neck and down to the top of her gown, where her breasts pressed tight against the laced bodice as she panted lightly. He rubbed his face against her neck, and she felt the roughness of his chin and the eager licking of his tongue and she laughed and caught her breath all at once.
Then his hands were in her hair, slipping out the pins, and taking a handful of the great tumbling locks and pulling her head back so that he could have her mouth once more, and this time he tasted of her own sweat, salty on his mouth. He bit her, licked her, filled her with the heat of his desire and with the very taste of him as he salivated as if she were a dish he would devour.
He rose up from the chair with her in his arms and she clung to his neck as he swept the scroll from the table and laid her on it, and then climbed up, like a stallion covering a mare, on to her. His thigh was pushing between her legs, his hands pulling up her gown so that he could touch her, and Elizabeth melted under his touch, pulled him closer to her, opened her mouth for his kisses, ravenous for the feel of him everywhere.
‘My gown!’ she cried in frustration.
‘Sit up,’ he commanded. She did as he obeyed and twisted around, offering the laces on the back of the tight stomacher. He struggled with the threaded laces and then pulled it off her and threw it aside. With a groan of utter desire he buried his hands, and then his face, in her linen shift to feel the heat of her belly through the thin fabric, and the rounded firm curves of her breasts.
He threw off his own doublet and tore off his shirt and pressed down on her once more, his chest against her face as if he would smother her with his body, and he felt her sharp little teeth graze his nipple as her tongue lapped at the hairs on his chest and she rubbed her face against him, like a wanton cat.
His fingers fumbled at the ties of her skirt, and then, losing patience, he took the laces and with one swift tug, broke them and pushed her skirt down from her waist so that he could get his hand on her.
At his first touch she moaned and arched her back, pushing herself against his palm. Robert pulled back, unlaced his breeches, pulled them down, and heard her gasp as she saw the strength and power of him, and then her sigh of longing as he came towards her.
There was a loud hammering on the front door. ‘Your Grace!’ came an urgent shout. ‘Are you safe?’
‘Knock down the door!’ someone commanded.
With a whimper, Elizabeth rolled away from him and flew across the room, snatching up her stomacher. ‘Lace me!’ she whispered urgently, pressing the tight garment against her throbbing breasts, and turning her back to him.
Robert was pulling up his breeches and tying the ties. ‘The queen is here, and safe with me, Robert Dudley,’ he called, his voice unnaturally loud. ‘Who is there?’
‘Thank God. I’m the commander of the watch, Sir Robert. I will take the queen back to her rooms.’
‘She is …’ Dudley fumbled with the lacing of Elizabeth’s gown and then thrust the laces into any holes he could manage and tied it up. From the front she looked quite presentable. ‘She is coming. Wait there. How many men have you?’
‘Ten, sir.’
‘Leave eight to guard the door and go and fetch ten more,’ Robert said, buying time. ‘I will take no risks with Her Grace.’
‘Yes, sir.’
They ran off. Elizabeth bent her head and tied what was left of the strings at the waistband of her skirt. Robert snatched up his doublet and pulled it on.
‘Your hair,’ he whispered.
‘Can you find my pins?’
She was twisting it into bronze ringlets and tucking it under the ebony combs that had survived his embrace. Robert dropped to his knees on the floor and hunted for pins under the bench and under the table and came up with four or five. Swiftly, she speared them into her hair, and pinned her hood on top.
‘How do I look?’
He moved towards her. ‘Irresistible.’
She clapped her hand over her mouth so that the men waiting outside should not hear her laugh. ‘Would you know what I had been doing?’
‘At once.’
‘For shame! Would anyone else know?’
‘No. They will expect you to look as though you have been running.’
She put out her hand to him. ‘Don’t come any closer,’ she said unsteadily when he stepped forward. ‘Just hold my hand.’
‘My love, I must have you.’
‘And I you,’ she breathed as they heard the tramp of the guard coming to the door.
‘Sir Robert?’
‘Aye?’
‘I am here with twenty men.’
‘Stand back from the door,’ Robert said. He took up his sword and opened the drawing-room door, and then unbolted the front door. Carefully, he opened it a crack. The queen’s men were outside, he recognised them, he threw open the door. ‘She is safe,’ he said, letting them see her. ‘I have her safe.’
To a man they dropped to their knees.
‘Thank God,’ said the commander. ‘Shall I escort you to your chambers, Your Grace?’
‘Yes,’ she said quietly. ‘Sir Robert, you will dine with me in my privy chamber tonight.’
He bowed politely. ‘As you command, Your Grace.’
‘He was upset, because he was disappointed,’ Amy said suddenly at dinner to her hosts, as if she were continuing a conversation, though they had been eating in silence. William Hyde glanced at his wife, this was not the first time that Amy had tried to convince them that what they had seen was a small tiff between a comfortably married couple. As if she were trying to convince herself.
‘I had been so foolish as to make him think that the place was finished, ready for us to move into this summer. Now he will have to stay at court, and go on progress with the queen. Of course he was disappointed.’
‘Oh, yes,’ said Lizzie Oddingsell in loyal support.
‘I misunderstood him,’ Amy continued. She gave an awkward little laugh. ‘You will think me a fool but I was still thinking of the plans we made when we were first married, when we were little more than children. I was thinking of a little manor house, and some rich meadows around it. And of course, now he needs more than that.’
‘Will you look for a bigger estate?’ Alice Hyde asked curiously.
Lizzie glanced up from her place and gave her sister-in-law a sharp look.
‘Of course,’ Amy said with simple dignity. ‘Our plans are unchanged. It was my mistake that I did not understand quite what my lord had in mind. But now that I know, I shall set about finding it for us. He needs a grand house set in beautiful parkland with good tenant farms. I shall find it for him, and I shall commission builders, and I shall see it built for him.’
‘You’ll be busy,’ William Hyde said pleasantly.
‘I shall do my duty as his wife,’ she said seriously, ‘as God has called me to do, and I shall not fail him.’
Then she had wept in her terror like a child, and he had comforted her like a childhood friend. She would not speak of it to him, nor to anyone. She would not even think of it herself. But she knew that something had changed. She had showed herself and she had showed him that he was her only friend.
They were far from alone. Three servers waited on them, the server of the ewery stood behind the queen’s chair, a page stood at each end of the table, four ladies in waiting sat in a little cluster in the window embrasure, a trio of musicians played, and a chorister from the queen’s chapel sang love songs. Robert had to quell his desire, his frustration and his anger as he saw that his royal mistress had walled herself in against him once more.
He chatted to her politely over the meal, with the easy intimacy that he could always summon, and with all the warmth that he genuinely felt for her. Elizabeth, returning to her confidence after her fright, delighting in the thrill of Robert’s touch, laughed, smiled on him, flirted with him, patted his hand, pulled at his sleeve, let her little slippered foot slide to his under the shield of the table, but never once suggested that they should send the people away and be alone.
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Page 77
