Cecil managed to catch Elizabeth before the great banquet at the Duke of Arundel’s magnificent palace, the Nonsuch, and delay her a moment in her privy chamber.
‘Your Grace, I have to speak with you.’
‘Spirit, I cannot. The duke has prepared a banquet for an emperor, he has done everything but roll the meat in gold leaf. I cannot insult him by being late.’
‘Your Grace, I am duty-bound to warn you. The Pope has increased his threat against you, and there is much gossip against you in the country.’
She hesitated and frowned. ‘What gossip?’
‘They say that you are favouring Sir Robert over and above any other man.’ — Mealy-mouthed — Cecil scolded himself. — But how can I tell her to her face that they are calling her Dudley’s whore? —
‘And so I should,’ she replied, smiling. ‘He is the finest man at my court.’
Cecil found the courage to be clearer. ‘Your Grace, it is worse than that. There are rumours that you and he have a dishonourable relationship.’
Elizabeth flushed red. ‘Who says this?’
— Every alehouse in England. — ‘It is widely said, Your Grace.’
‘Do we not have laws to prevent me being slandered? Do we not have blacksmiths to cut their tongues?’
Cecil blinked at her fierceness. ‘Your Grace, we can make arrests, but if something is widely spoken and widely believed we are at a loss. The people love you but …’
‘Enough,’ she said flatly. ‘I have done nothing dishonourable, and neither has Sir Robert. I will not be traduced in my own hearing. You must punish the gossips that you catch and it will die down. If it does not I shall blame you, Cecil. No-one else.’
She turned but he detained her. ‘Your Grace!’
‘What?’
‘It is not just a matter of the common people gossiping about their betters. There are men in the court who say that Dudley should be dead before he brings you down.’
Now he had her full attention. ‘He is threatened?’
‘You are both endangered by this folly. Your reputation has suffered and there are many who say that it is their patriotic duty to kill him before you are dishonoured.’
She blanched white. ‘No-one must touch him, Cecil.’
‘The remedy is easy. His safety is easy. Marry. Marry either the archduke or Arran and the gossip is silenced and the threat is gone.’
Elizabeth nodded, her hunted, fearful look on her face again. ‘I will marry one of them, you can count on it. Tell people that I will marry one or the other, this autumn. It is a certainty. I know that I have to.’
‘Caspar von Breuner will be at dinner. Shall he be seated beside you? We have to recruit his support for our struggle with Scotland.’
‘Of course!’ she said impatiently. ‘Who did you think would sit next to me? Sir Robert? I have given everyone to understand that I am reconsidering marriage with the archduke, I have shown his ambassador every attention.’
‘It would be better for us all if anyone could believe you this time,’ Cecil said frankly. ‘The ambassador has hopes, you have seen to that; but I do not see you drawing up a marriage treaty.’
‘Cecil, it is August, I am on progress, this is not a time to draw up treaties.’
‘Princess, you are in danger. Danger does not stop because someone has cooked you a banquet and the hunting is good and the weather is perfect. The Earl of Arran should be in England any day now, tell me that I can bring him to you the moment that he arrives.’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘You can do that.’
‘And tell me that I can draw funds for him and start to muster an army to go north with him.’
‘Not an army,’ she said at once. ‘Not till we know that he has the stomach to command one. Not till we know from him what his plans are. For all you know, Cecil, he could have a wife tucked away somewhere already.’
— That would hardly prevent you, judging from your present behaviour with a married man — Cecil thought, ill-tempered. Aloud, he merely said: ‘Your Grace, he cannot be victorious without our support, and he has the greatest claim to the Scottish throne. If he will lead our army to victory, and you will take him as your husband, then we have made England safe against the French not just for now, but forever. If you will do that for England, you will be the greatest prince that the country has ever had on the throne, greater than your father. Make England safe from France and you will be remembered forever. Everything else will be forgotten, you will be England’s saviour.’
‘I will see him,’ Elizabeth said. ‘Trust me, Cecil, I put my country before anything. I will see him and I will decide what I should do.’
The candles and crucifix were brought out of storage, polished, and displayed on the altar of the Royal Chapel at Hampton Court. The court had returned from its summer progress in spiritual mood. Elizabeth, going to Mass, had taken to curtseying to the altar and crossing herself on arrival and departure. There was holy water in the stoop and Catherine Knollys ostentatiously walked out of the court every morning to ride to London to pray with a reformed congregation.
‘What is all this now?’ Sir Francis Bacon asked the queen as they paused at the open doorway of the chapel and saw the choristers polishing the altar rail.
‘This is a sop,’ she said disdainfully. ‘For those who wish to see a conversion.’
‘And who are they?’ he asked curiously.
‘For the Pope who would see me dead,’ she said irritably. ‘For the Spanish whom I must keep as my friends, for the archduke to give him hope, for the English Papists to give them pause. For you, and all your fellow Lutherans, to give you doubt.’
‘And what is the truth of it?’ he asked smiling.
She shrugged her shoulder pettishly and walked on past the door. ‘The truth is the last thing that matters,’ she said. ‘And you can believe one thing of the truth and me: I keep it well hidden, inside my heart.’
William Hyde had a letter from Robert’s steward, Thomas Blount, requesting him to be ready for Robert’s men who would come within three days to escort Amy and Mrs Oddingsell to the Forsters at Cumnor Place for a brief visit, and then on to Chislehurst. A scrawled note inside from his lordship told William the latest news from court, of the gifts that Robert had received from the queen, now returned to Hampton Court, and indicated that William would shortly be appointed to a profitable post in one of the Oxford colleges, by way of thanks for his kindness to Lady Dudley, and to maintain his friendship for the future.
He went to Amy with the letter in his hand. ‘It seems that you are to leave us.’
‘So soon?’ she said. ‘Did he say nothing about a house here?’
‘The queen has given him a great place in Kent,’ he said. ‘He writes to tell me. Knole Place, do you know it?’
She shook her head. ‘So does he not want me to look for a house for him now? Are we not to live in Oxfordshire? Shall we live in Kent?’
‘He does not say,’ he said gently, thinking that it was a shame that she should have to ask a friend where her home would be. Her very public quarrel with her husband had obviously wounded her deeply, he had watched her shrink inside herself as if shamed. In recent weeks she had become very devout and it was William Hyde’s view that churchgoing was a comfort to women, especially when they were in the grip of unhappy circumstances over which they had no control. A good priest like Father Wilson could be counted on to preach resignation; and William Hyde believed, as did other men of his age, that resignation was a great virtue in a wife. He saw her hand go to her breast.
‘Are you in pain, Lady Dudley?’ he asked. ‘I often see you put your hand to your heart. Should you see a physician before you go?’
‘No,’ she said with a swift, sad smile. ‘It is nothing. When does my lord say I am to leave?’
‘Within three days,’ he said. ‘You are to go first to Cumnor Place to visit the Forsters, and then to your friend Mr Hayes at Chislehurst. We shall be sorry to lose you. But I hope you
will come back to us soon. You are like one of the family now, Lady Dudley. It is always such a pleasure to have you here.’
To his discomfort, her eyes filled with tears and he went quickly to the door, fearing a scene.
But she only smiled at him and said, ‘You are so kind. I always like coming here, your house feels like a home to me now.’
‘I am sure you will come back to us soon,’ he said cheerfully.
‘Perhaps you will come and see me. Perhaps I am to live at Knole,’ she said. ‘Perhaps Robert intends that to be my new home.’
‘Perhaps,’ he said.
Laetitia Knollys stood before William Cecil’s great desk in his handsome rooms at Hampton Court, her hands clasped behind her, her face composed.
‘Blanche Parry told the queen that she was playing with fire and she would burn down the whole house and us inside it,’ she reported.
Cecil looked up. ‘And the queen said?’
‘She said she had done nothing wrong, and no-one could prove anything of her.’
‘And Mistress Parry said?’
‘She said that one only had to look at the two of them to know they were lovers.’ A quaver of laughter coloured her solemn tone. ‘She said they were hot as chestnuts on a shovel.’
Cecil scowled at her.
‘And the queen?’
‘Threw Blanche out of her rooms and told her not to come back until she had rinsed her mouth of gossip or she would find her tongue slit for slander.’
‘Anything else?’
She shook her head. ‘No, sir. Blanche cried and said her heart was breaking; but I suppose that’s not important.’
‘The queen sleeps always with a companion, a guard on the door?’
‘Yes, sir.’
‘So there could be no truth in this vile gossip.’
‘No, sir,’ Laetitia repeated like a schoolgirl. ‘Unless …’
‘Unless?’
‘Unless there is a doorway behind the panelling, so that the queen could slip out of her bed when her companion is asleep and go through a secret door to Sir Robert, as they say her father the king used to do when he wanted to visit a woman.’
‘But no such passage exists,’ Cecil said flatly.
‘Unless it is possible that a man can lie with a woman in the hours of daylight, and if they do not need a bed. If they can do it under a tree, or in a secret corner, or up against a wall in a hurry.’ Her dark eyes were brimful of mischief.
‘All this may be true, but I doubt that your father would be pleased to know of your thoughts,’ Cecil said severely. ‘And I must remind you to keep such speculation to yourself.’
Her dark eyes gleamed at him. ‘Yes, sir, of course, sir,’ she said demurely.
‘You can go,’ Cecil said. — Good God, if that little minx can say that to my face, what can they be saying behind my back? —
Sir Robert was leaning down to whisper to the seated queen when Cecil walked into the presence chamber, and the queen was laughing up at him. The desire between the two of them was so powerful that for a moment Cecil thought he could almost see it, then he shook his head against such nonsense and went forward to make his bow.
‘Oh, no bad news, Cecil, please!’ Elizabeth exclaimed.
He tried to smile. ‘Not one word. But can I walk with you for a moment?’
She rose from her seat. ‘Don’t go,’ she said quietly to Robert.
‘I might go to the stables,’ he said.
Her hand flew out and touched his sleeve. ‘Wait for me, I’ll only be a moment.’
‘I might,’ he said teasingly.
‘You wait, or I’ll behead you,’ she whispered.
‘I’d certainly lie down for you and tell you when I was ready.’
At her ripple of shocked laughter, the court looked around and saw Cecil, once her greatest friend and only advisor, waiting patiently while she tore herself away from Sir Robert, her cheeks flushed.
Cecil offered his arm.
‘What is it?’ she asked, not very agreeably.
He waited until they had walked from the presence chamber into the long room of the gallery. Members of the court waited here too, and some came strolling out of the presence chamber to watch Cecil and the queen, to wait their turn to catch her attention now that someone, at last, had separated her from Dudley.
‘I hear from Paris that the French are to send reinforcements to Scotland to assist the queen regent.’
‘Well, we knew that they would,’ she said indifferently. ‘But some people think that the Scots will not man the siege for very long anyway. They never carry more than a fortnight’s supplies, they will just give up and go home.’
— So says Sir Robert, does he? — Cecil said quietly to himself. ‘We had better pray that they do not,’ he said with some asperity. ‘For those Scots lords are our first line of defence against the French. And the news I have is that the French are sending men to Scotland.’
‘How many?’ she asked, determined not to be frightened.
‘One thousand pikemen and one thousand arquebusiers. Two thousand men in all.’
He had wanted to shock her but he thought he had gone too far. She went quite white and he put his hand on the small of her back to steady her.
‘Cecil, that is more than they need to defeat the Scots.’
‘I know,’ he said. ‘That is the first wave of an invading force.’
‘They mean to come.’ She spoke in little more than a frightened whisper. ‘They really mean to invade England.’
‘I am certain that they do,’ he said.
‘What can we do?’ She looked up at him, sure that he would have a plan.
‘We must send Sir Ralph Sadler to Berwick at once to make an agreement with the Scots lords.’
‘Sir Ralph?’
‘Of course. He served your father faithfully in Scotland and he knows half the Scots lords by name. We must send him with a war chest. And he must inspect the border defences and strengthen them to keep the French out of England.’
‘Yes,’ she agreed quickly. ‘Yes.’
‘I can put that in hand?’
‘Yes,’ she said. ‘Where is Arran?’
He looked grim. ‘He’s on his way, my man is bringing him in.’
‘Unless he has gone back to Geneva,’ she said bleakly. ‘Thinking the odds too great against him.’
‘He’s on his way,’ said Cecil, knowing that his best man had been sent to Geneva with orders to bring Arran to London, whether he liked it or not.
‘We have to make the Spanish pledge their support to us. The French are afraid of Spain. If we had them as our allies we would be safer.’
‘If you can do it,’ he warned her.
‘I will,’ she promised him. ‘I’ll promise them anything they want.’
William Hyde took a moment to see his sister Lizzie while she was in the throes of packing to leave his house. ‘Does she really have no idea what people are saying about Sir Robert and the queen?’
‘She speaks to so few people that she might hear nothing of it, and anyway, who would have the heart to say such a thing to her?’
‘A friend might tell her,’ he prompted her. ‘A true friend. To prepare her.’
‘How could anyone prepare her?’ She rounded on him. ‘Nobody knows what is going to happen. Nothing like this has ever happened before. I am not prepared, you are not prepared, how can his wife be? How can anyone prepare when nothing like this has ever happened before? What country has ever had a queen who acts like a whore with a married man? Who can tell what is going to happen next?’
‘For God’s sake, Princess, I must speak with you,’ Kat Ashley said in desperation in Elizabeth’s private room at Hampton Court Palace.
‘What is it?’ Elizabeth was seated before her looking glass, smiling at her reflection as they brushed her hair with soft ivory-backed brushes and then rubbed it with red silk.
‘Your Grace, everyone is talking about you and Sir Robert, and the thi
ngs they are saying are shameful. Things that should not be said of any young woman if she is to make a good marriage, things that should never be dreamed of in connection with the Queen of England.’
To her surprise, Elizabeth, who as a princess had been so fearful of her reputation, turned her head away from her old governess and said dismissively, ‘People always talk.’
‘Not like this,’ Kat said, pressing on. ‘This is scandalous. It is dreadful to hear.’
‘And what do they say? That I am unchaste? That Sir Robert and I are lovers?’ Elizabeth dared her to say the worst.
Kat drew a breath. ‘Yes. And more. They say that you bore his child and that is why the court went on progress this summer. They say the baby was born and hidden away with his wet nurse until you two can marry and bring him out. They say that Sir Robert is plotting to kill his wife, to murder her, to marry you. They say you are under an enchantment from him and you have lost your wits and all you can do is bed him, that you can think of nothing but lust. They say you are monstrous in your appetites, perverse in your pleasure in him. They say you neglect the business of the realm to go riding with him every day. They say he is king in all but name. They say he is your master.’
Elizabeth flushed scarlet with rage. Kat dropped to her knees. ‘They say very detailed things about your bedding him, things anyone would blush to hear. Your Grace, I have loved you like a mother and you know what I have suffered for you in your service, and suffered it gladly. But I have never endured such anxiety as I feel now. You will throw yourself from your throne if you do not put Sir Robert aside.’
‘Put him aside!’ Elizabeth sprang to her feet, scattering hair brushes and combs. ‘Why the devil should I put him aside?’
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