Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2

by Philippa Gregory

  They were both trembling, gazing into each other’s eyes as if they could never tear themselves away. It was Kat Ashley who had the courage to interrupt them, after long minutes when they had been handclasped and silent.

  ‘Your Grace,’ she said gently. ‘People will talk.’

  Elizabeth stirred and released Robert, and he rose to his feet.

  ‘You should rest, my lady,’ Kat said quietly. She glanced at Robert’s white, shocked face. ‘She’s not well,’ she said. ‘This is too much for her. Let her go now, Sir Robert.’

  ‘May God bring you to good health and happiness,’ he said passionately, and at her nod he bowed and took himself out of the room before she could see the despair in his own face.

  Mr Hayes’ father had been born a tenant of the Dudleys but had risen through the wool trade to the position of mayor at Chislehurst. He had sent his son to school and then to train as a lawyer and when he died, he left the young man a small fortune. John Hayes continued the family connection with the Dudleys, advising Robert’s mother on her appeal to reclaim the title and estates, and as Robert rose in power and wealth, running the various wings of Robert’s steadily increasing businesses in the City and countrywide.

  Amy had often stayed with him at Hayes Court, Chislehurst, and sometimes Robert joined her there to talk business with John Hayes, to gamble with him, to hunt his land, and to plan their investments.

  The Dudley train reached the house at about midday and Amy was glad to be out of the September sun, which was still hot and bright.

  ‘Lady Dudley.’ John Hayes kissed her hand. ‘How good to see you again. Mrs Minchin will show you to your usual room, we thought you preferred the garden room?’

  ‘I do,’ Amy said. ‘Have you heard from my lord?’

  ‘Only that he promises himself the pleasure of seeing you within the week,’ John Hayes said. ‘He did not say which day – but we don’t expect that, do we?’ He smiled at her.

  Amy smiled back. — No, for he will not know which day the queen will release him — said the jealous voice in her head. Amy touched the rosary in her pocket with her finger. ‘Whenever he is free to come to me, I shall be glad to see him,’ she said, and turned and went up the stairs behind the housekeeper.

  Mrs Oddingsell came into the house, pushing back her hood and shaking the dust from her skirt. She shook hands with John Hayes, they were old friends.

  ‘She looks well,’ he said, surprised, nodding his head in the direction of Amy’s bedroom. ‘I heard she was very sick.’

  ‘Oh, did you?’ said Lizzie levelly. ‘And where did you hear that from?’

  He thought for a moment. ‘Two places, I think. Someone told me in church the other day, and my clerk mentioned it to me in the City.’

  ‘Did they say what ailed her?’

  ‘A malady of the breast, my clerk said. A stone, or a growth, too great for cutting, they said. They said that Dudley might put her aside, that she would agree to go to a convent and annul the marriage because she could never have his child.’

  Lizzie folded her mouth in a hard line. ‘It is a lie,’ she said softly. ‘Now who do you think would have an interest in spreading such a lie? That Dudley’s wife is sick and cannot be cured?’

  For a moment he looked at her quite aghast.

  ‘These are deep waters, Mrs Oddingsell. I had heard that it had gone very far …’

  ‘You had heard that they are lovers?’

  He glanced around his own empty hall as if nowhere was safe to speak of the queen and Dudley, even if their names were not mentioned.

  ‘I heard that he plans to put his wife aside, and marry the lady of whom we speak, and that she has the power and desire that he should do so.’

  She nodded. ‘It seems everyone thinks so. But there are no grounds, and never could be.’

  He thought for a moment. ‘If she were known to be too sick to bear children she might step aside,’ he whispered.

  ‘Or if everyone thought she was ill, then no-one would be surprised if she died,’ Lizzie said, even lower.

  John Hayes exclaimed in shock and crossed himself. ‘Jesu! Mrs Oddingsell, you must be mad to suggest such a thing. You don’t really think that? He would never do such a thing, not Sir Robert!’

  ‘I don’t know what to think. But I do know that everywhere we rode from Abingdon to here, there was gossip about his lordship and the queen, and a belief that my lady is sick to death. At one inn the landlady asked me if we needed a doctor before we had even dismounted. Everyone is talking of my lady’s illness, and my lord’s love affair. So I don’t know what to think except that someone is being very busy.’

  ‘Not his lordship,’ he said staunchly. ‘He would never hurt her.’

  ‘I don’t know any more,’ she repeated.

  ‘Then, if it is not him, who would spread such a rumour, and to what end?’

  She looked blankly at him. ‘Who would prepare the country for his divorce and remarriage? Only the woman who wanted to marry him, I suppose.’

  Mary Sidney was seated before the fireplace in her brother’s apartments at Windsor, one of his new hound puppies on the floor at her feet, gnawing at the toe of her riding boot. Idly, she prodded his fat little belly with the other foot.

  ‘Leave him alone, you will spoil him,’ Robert commanded.

  ‘He will not leave me alone,’ she returned. ‘Get off me, you monster!’ She gave him another prod and the puppy squirmed with delight at the attention.

  ‘You would hardly think he was true bred,’ Robert remarked, as he signed his name on a letter and put it to one side, and then came to the fireplace and drew up a stool on the other side. ‘He has such low tastes.’

  ‘I have had highly bred puppies slavering at my feet before now,’ his sister said with a smile. ‘It is no mark of bad breeding to adore me.’

  ‘And rightly so,’ he replied. ‘But would you call Sir Henry your husband a low-bred puppy?’

  ‘Never to his face,’ she smiled.

  ‘How is the queen today?’ he asked more seriously.

  ‘Still very shaken. She could not eat last night and she only drank warmed ale this morning and ate nothing. She walked in the garden on her own for an hour and came in looking quite distracted. Kat is in and out of her bedroom with possets, and when Elizabeth dressed and came out she would not talk or smile. She is doing no business, she will see nobody. Cecil is striding about with a sheaf of letters and nothing can be decided. And some people say we will lose the war in Scotland because she has despaired already.’

  He nodded.

  She hesitated. ‘Brother, you must tell me. What did she say to you yesterday? She looked as if her heart was breaking, and now she looks halfway to death.’

  ‘She has given me up,’ he said shortly.

  Mary Sidney gasped and put her hand to her mouth. ‘Never!’

  ‘Indeed, yes. She has asked me to stand her friend but she knows she has to marry. Cecil warned her off me, and she has taken his advice.’

  ‘But why now?’

  ‘Firstly the rumours, and then the threats against me.’

  She nodded. ‘The rumours are everywhere. My own waiting woman came to me with a story of Amy and poison and a whole string of slanderous lies that made my hair stand on end.’

  ‘Beat her.’

  ‘If she had made the stories up I would do so. But she was only repeating what is being said at every street corner. It is shameful what people are saying about you, and about the queen. Your pageboy was set on at the stables the other day, did you know?’

  He shook his head.

  ‘Not for the first time. The lads are saying they won’t wear our livery if they go into the City. They are ashamed of our coat of arms, Robert.’

  He frowned. ‘I didn’t know it was that bad.’

  ‘My maid told me that there are men who swear they will see you dead before you marry the queen.’

  Robert nodded. ‘Ah, Mary, it could never happen. How could i
t? I am a married man.’

  Her head came up in surprise. ‘I thought you … and she … had some plan? I thought perhaps …’

  ‘You are as bad as these people who dream of divorce and death and dethroning!’ he said, smiling. ‘It is all nonsense. The queen and I had a summertime love affair which has been all dancing and jousting and flowery meadows and now the summer is ended and the winter is coming I have to visit John Hayes with Amy, the country has to go to war with Scotland – Cecil predicted it; and Cecil is right. The queen has to be a queen indeed; she has been Queen of Camelot, now she has to be queen in deadly reality. She has had her summer at leisure, now she has to marry to secure the safety of the kingdom. Her choice has fallen on Arran if he can win her Scotland, or else Archduke Charles, as the best choice for the safety of the country. Whatever she may have felt for me in July, she knows she has to marry either one of them by Christmas.’

  ‘She does?’ Mary was amazed.

  He nodded.

  ‘Oh, Robert, no wonder she sits and stares and says nothing. Her heart must be breaking.’

  ‘Aye,’ he said tenderly. ‘Her heart may break. But she knows it has to be done. She won’t fail her country now. She has never lacked courage. She would sacrifice anything for her country. She will certainly sacrifice me and her love for me.’

  ‘And can you bear this?’

  Her brother’s face was so dark that she thought she had never seen him so grim since he came out of the Tower to face ruin. ‘I have to face it like a man. I have to find the courage that she has to find. In a way, we are still together. Her heart and mine will break together. We will have that scant comfort.’

  ‘You will go back to Amy?’

  He shrugged. ‘I have never left her. We had a few cross words when we last met, and she may have been distressed by the gossip. In my temper, and in my pride, I swore I should leave her, but she did not believe me for a moment. She stood her ground and said to my face that we were married and could never be divorced. And I knew she was right. In my heart I knew that I could never divorce Amy. What has she ever done to offend? And I knew that I was not going to poison the poor woman or push her down the well! So what else could happen but that the queen and I would have a summer of flirtation and kissing … yes! I admit to the kissing …’ he added with a smile. ‘And more. Very delicious, very sweet, but always, always, going nowhere. She is Queen of England, I am her Master of Horse. I am a married man and she must marry to save the kingdom.’

  He glanced over. There were tears in his sister’s eyes. ‘Robert, I am so afraid that you will never love anyone but Elizabeth. You will have to live the rest of your life loving her.’

  He gave her a wry smile. ‘That’s true. I have loved her from childhood and in these last months I have fallen in love, more deeply and more truly than I ever thought possible. I thought myself hard of heart, and yet I find she is everything to me. Indeed, I love her so much that I am going to let her go. I am going to help her to marry Arran or the archduke. Her only safety lies that way.’

  ‘You will give her up for her own safety?’

  ‘Whatever it costs me.’

  ‘My God, Robert, I never thought you could be so …’

  ‘So what?’

  ‘So selfless!’

  He laughed. ‘I thank you!’

  ‘I mean it. To help the woman you love to marry another is a truly selfless thing to do.’ She was silent for a moment. ‘And how will you bear it?’ she asked tenderly.

  ‘I shall treasure a memory of loving a beautiful young queen in the very first year of her reign,’ he said. ‘In the golden summer when she came to her throne in her youth and her beauty and she thought she could do anything – even marry a man like me. And I shall go home to my wife and make a nursery full of heirs and I shall name all the girls Elizabeth.’

  She put her sleeve to her eyes. ‘Oh, my dearest brother.’

  He covered her hand with his own. ‘Will you help me do this, Mary?’

  ‘Of course,’ she whispered. ‘Of course, anything.’

  ‘Go to the Spanish ambassador, de Quadra, and tell him that the queen needs his help in concluding the match with the archduke.’

  ‘I? But I hardly know him.’

  ‘It doesn’t matter. He knows us Dudleys well enough. Go to him as if you were coming directly from the queen, not at my request. Tell him that she felt she could not approach him directly, not after this summer when she has blown hot and cold on the plan. But if he will come to her with a renewed proposal, she will say “yes” at once.’

  ‘This is the queen’s own wish?’ Mary asked.

  He nodded. ‘She wants to signal to everyone that I have not been rejected, that she stands my friend, that she loves me and you too. She wants the Dudley family to broker this marriage.’

  ‘It’s a great honour to take such a message,’ she said solemnly. ‘And a great responsibility too.’

  ‘The queen thought we should keep it in the family.’ He smiled. ‘Mine is the sacrifice, you are the messenger, and together, the deed is done.’

  ‘And what of you, when she is married?’

  ‘She will not forget me,’ he said. ‘We have loved each other too well and too long for her to turn from me. And you and I will be rewarded both by her and by the Spanish for faithful dealing now. This is the right thing to do, Mary, I have no doubts. It ensures her safety and it takes me out of the reach of lying tongues … and worse. I don’t doubt that there are men who would see me dead. This is my safety as well as hers.’

  ‘I will go tomorrow,’ she promised him.

  ‘And tell him you come from her, at her bidding.’

  ‘I will,’ she said.

  Cecil, sitting at his fireside in the silence of the palace at midnight, rose from his chair to answer a discreet tap at the door. The man who entered the room put back his black hood and went to the fire to warm his hands.

  ‘Do you have a glass of wine?’ he asked in a light Spanish accent. ‘This mist on the river will give me an ague. If it is this damp in September, what will it be like in midwinter?’

  Cecil poured the wine and gestured the man to a chair by the fire. He threw on another log. ‘Better?’

  ‘Yes, I thank you.’

  ‘It must be interesting news to bring you out on such a cold night as this,’ Cecil remarked to no-one in particular.

  ‘Only the queen herself, proposing marriage to Archduke Charles!’

  Cecil’s response was wholly satisfying. His head came up, he looked astounded. ‘The queen has proposed marriage?’

  ‘Through an intermediary. Did you not know of this?’

  Cecil shook his head, refusing to answer. Information was currency to Cecil and, unlike Gresham, he believed that there was neither good nor bad coinage in the currency of information. It was all valuable.

  ‘Do you know the intermediary?’ he asked.

  ‘Lady Mary Sidney,’ the man said. ‘One of the queen’s own ladies.’

  Cecil nodded; perhaps this was the ripple from the stone he had thrown. ‘And Lady Mary had a proposal?’

  ‘That the archduke should come at once to pay the queen a visit, as if in politeness. That she will accept a proposal of marriage at that visit. The terms will be drawn up at once, and that the wedding will take place by Christmas.’

  Cecil’s face was a frozen mask. ‘And what did His Excellency think of this proposal?’

  ‘He thought it could be done now or never,’ the man said bluntly. ‘He thinks she hopes to save her reputation before any worse is said of her. He thinks she has seen reason at last.’

  ‘He said this aloud?’

  ‘He dictated it to me to translate into code to send to King Philip.’

  ‘You do not bring me a copy of the letter?’

  ‘I dare not,’ the man said briefly. ‘He is no fool. I risk my life even telling you this much.’

  Cecil waved the danger aside. ‘Lady Mary would no doubt have told me in the m
orning, had I not known of it already from the queen herself.’

  The man looked a little dashed. ‘But would she tell you that my master has written to the archduke this very night to recommend that he comes at once on this visit? That Caspar von Breuner has sent for Austrian lawyers to draw up the marriage contract? That this time we believe the queen is in earnest and we are going ahead? And the archduke should be here by November?’

  ‘No, that is good news,’ Cecil said. ‘Anything else?’

  The man looked thoughtful. ‘That is all. Shall I come again when I have more?’

  Cecil reached into the drawer of his desk and drew out a small leather purse. ‘Yes. This is for now. And as for your papers, they will be drawn up for you …’ He paused.

  ‘When?’ the man asked eagerly.

  ‘When the marriage is solemnised,’ Cecil said. ‘We can all rest safe in our beds when that takes place. Did you say Christmas?’

  ‘The queen herself named Christmas as her wedding day.’

  ‘Then I shall give you your papers to allow you to stay in England when your master, the archduke, is named Elizabeth’s consort.’

  The man bowed in assent and then hesitated before leaving. ‘You always have a purse for me in that drawer,’ he said curiously. ‘Do you expect me to come, or do so many men report to you that you have their fee ready?’

  Cecil, whose informants now numbered more than a thousand, smiled. ‘Only you,’ he said sweetly.

  Robert arrived at Hayes Court in September, in quiet and sombre mood, his face grim.

  Amy, watching him from an upper window, thought that she had not seen that desolate look on his face since he had come home from the siege of Calais when England had lost its last foothold in France. Slowly, she went downstairs, wondering what he had lost now.