Robert waited until after dinner when Lady Robsart left them alone, and Amy was seated opposite him on the other side of the small fireplace.
‘I am sorry we have no company,’ Amy remarked. ‘It must be so dull for you, after court. We could have had the Rushleys to visit, you remember them? They would come tomorrow, if you would like to invite them.’
‘Amy,’ he said hesitantly. ‘I have something to ask you.’
Her head came up at once, her smile sweet. She thought he was going to ask for her forgiveness.
‘We spoke once of a divorce,’ he said quietly.
A shadow crossed her face. ‘Yes,’ she said. ‘I have not had a happy moment since that day. Not until last night.’
Robert grimaced. ‘I am sorry for that,’ he said.
She interrupted him. ‘I know,’ she said. ‘I knew you would be. And I thought that I would never be able to forgive you; but I can, Robert, and I do. It is forgiven and forgotten between us and we need never speak of it again.’
— This is something like ten thousand times harder because I was a lustful fool — Robert swore to himself. Aloud he said, ‘Amy, you will think me wicked, but my mind has not changed.’
Her honest, open eyes met his. ‘What do you mean?’ she asked simply.
‘I have to ask you something,’ he said. ‘When we last spoke, you saw Elizabeth as your rival, and I understand your feelings. But she is the Queen of England, and she has done me the honour of loving me.’
Amy frowned, she could not think what he wanted to ask her. ‘Yes, but you said you had given her up. And then you came to me …’ She broke off. ‘It is like a miracle to me that you came to me, as if we were boy and girl again.’
‘We are at war with Scotland,’ Robert ploughed on. ‘We could not be in more peril. I want to help her, I want to save my country. Amy, the French are very likely to invade.’
Amy nodded. ‘Of course. But …’
‘Invade,’ he repeated. ‘Destroy us all.’
She nodded; but she could not care for the French when her own happiness was unfolding before her.
‘And so I want to ask you to release me from my marriage with you, so that I can offer myself to the queen as a free man. The archduke will not propose to her, she needs a husband. I want to marry her.’
Amy’s eyes widened as if she could not believe what she had just heard. He saw her hand go to her pocket and he saw her fingers clench on something there.
‘What?’ she asked disbelievingly.
‘I want you to release me from my marriage with you. I have to marry her.’
‘Are you saying that you want me to divorce you?’
He nodded. ‘I do.’
‘But last night …’
‘Last night was a mistake,’ he said brutally and saw the colour flush to her cheeks and the tears fill her eyes as rapidly as if he had slapped her till her head rang.
‘A mistake?’ she repeated.
‘I could not resist you,’ he said, trying to soften the blow. ‘I should have done so. I love you, Amy, I always will. But my destiny has come for me. John Dee once said …’
She shook her head. ‘A mistake? To lie with your own wife? Did you not whisper: “I love you”? Was that a mistake too?’
‘I didn’t say that,’ he said quickly.
‘I heard you say that.’
‘You may think you heard me, but I didn’t say it.’
She got up from her little chair and turned away from him to the table that she had prepared for dinner with such joy. It was all spoiled now, the broken meats gone to the servants, the waste gone to the pigs.
‘You told me of Sir Thomas Gresham once,’ she said irrelevantly. ‘That he thought the worst thing about bad coinage is that it brings everything, even good coins, down to its own worthless value.’
‘Yes,’ he said, not understanding.
‘That is what she has done,’ she said simply. ‘I am not surprised that a pound is not worth a pound, that we are at war with France, that the archduke will not marry her. She has made everything bad, she is the false coin of the kingdom and she has brought everything, even honourable love, even a good marriage begun in love, down to the value of a counterfeit coin.’
‘Amy …’
‘So that in the night you say “I love you” and everything you do tells me that you love me, and then in the day, the very next day, you ask me to release you.’
‘Amy, please!’
She stopped at once. ‘Yes, my lord?’
‘Whatever you think of her, she is the anointed Queen of England, the realm is in danger. The Queen of England needs me and I am asking you to release me.’
‘You can command her armies,’ she observed.
Robert nodded. ‘Yes, but there are other, more skilled soldiers.’
‘You can advise her as to what she should do, she could appoint you to her Privy Council.’
‘I advise her already.’
‘Then what more can you do? And what more can you honourably ask for?’ she burst out.
He gritted his teeth. ‘I want to be at her side, day and night. I want to be her husband and be with her all the time. I want to be her companion on the throne of England.’
He braced himself for tears and rage, but to his surprise she looked at him dry-eyed, and spoke very quietly. ‘Robert, do you know, if it was in my gift, I would give it to you. I have loved you so much and for so long that I would even give you this. But it is not in my gift. Our marriage is an act of God, we stood together in a church and swore we would not be parted. We cannot be parted now, just because the queen wants you, and you want her.’
‘Other people in the world divorce!’ he exclaimed.
‘I don’t know how they will answer for it.’
‘The Pope himself allows it, he says that they will not answer for it, there is no sin.’
‘Oh, shall you go to the Pope?’ she inquired with a sudden rush of malice. ‘Is the Pope to rule that our marriage, our Protestant marriage, is invalid? Is Elizabeth the Protestant princess going to bow her knee to the Pope again?’
He leapt up from his chair and faced her. ‘Of course not!’
‘Then who?’ she persisted. ‘The Archbishop of Canterbury? Her creature? Appointed despite his own misgivings, the single turncoat in the church while all her other bishops are thrown into prison or exile because they know she is a false claimant to be head of the church?’
‘I don’t know the details,’ he said sulkily. ‘But with good will it could be done.’
‘It would have to be her, wouldn’t it?’ Amy challenged him. ‘A woman of twenty-six years old, blinded with her own lust, wanting another woman’s husband and ruling that her desire is God’s will. That she knows that God wants him to be free.’ She drew a breath and let out a wild, ringing laugh. ‘It is a nonsense, husband. You will make yourselves a laughing stock. It is a sin against God, it is a sin against man, and it is an insult to me.’
‘It is no insult. If your father were alive …’
It was the worst thing he could have said. Amy’s family pride sprang up. ‘You dare say his name to me! My father would have horsewhipped you for even thinking of such a thing. He would have killed you for saying such a thing to me.’
‘He would never have laid a finger on me!’ Robert swore. ‘He would not have dared.’
‘He said you were a braggart and I was worth ten of you,’ she spat at him. ‘And he was right. You are a braggart and I am worth ten of you. And you did say you loved me last night; you are a liar.’
He could hardly see her for the mist that rose before his eyes with his blinding anger. His tight voice came out short, as if it were wrested from him. ‘Amy, no man in the world would abuse me as you have done and live.’
‘Husband, I can promise you that thousands will call you worse. They will call you her boy, her plaything, a common little colt that she rides for lust.’
‘They will call me King of England,’ he s
houted.
She whirled around and caught him by the collar of the linen shirt that she had darned so carefully for him, and shook him in her rage. ‘Never! You will have to murder me before she can have you.’
He snatched her hands from his neck and thrust her away from him, down into the chair. ‘Amy, I will never forgive you for this, you will turn me from your husband and lover to your enemy.’
She looked up at him and she collected spittle in her mouth and spat at him. At once, blind with rage, he rushed towards her and, quick as thought, she put her little feet up and kicked out at him, driving him back.
‘I know that,’ she shouted at him. ‘Fool that you are! But what difference does your hatred make, when you lie like a swine with her and then lie with me and say “I love you” to us both?’
‘I never said it!’ he yelled, quite beyond himself.
Behind him, Lady Robsart opened the door wide and stood in silence, looking at the two of them.
‘Go away!’ Amy shouted.
‘No, come in,’ Robert said quickly, turning from Amy and dabbing at the spittle on his shirt and pulling at his collar that she had wrenched. ‘For God’s sake, come in. Amy is distressed, Lady Robsart, help her to her room. I shall sleep in the guest room and leave tomorrow at first light.’
‘No!’ Amy screamed. ‘You will come to me, Robert. You know you will. Your lust, your filthy lust, will wake you and you will want me again, and you will say, “I love you. I love you.” You liar. You wicked, wicked liar.’
‘Take her away, for God’s sake, before I murder her,’ he said to Lady Robsart, and brushed past her out of the room, avoiding Amy’s clutching hands.
‘You will come to me or I will kill you,’ she screamed.
Robert broke into a run up the narrow wooden stairs, and got away from his wife before she could shame them both any more.
In the morning Amy was too sick to see him. Lady Robsart, her voice like ice, spoke of a night of hysterical weeping and told him that Amy had risen in the early hours of the morning and fallen to her knees and prayed for God to release her from this agony that was her life.
Robert’s escort was waiting outside. ‘You’ll know what it’s all about, I suppose,’ he said shortly.
‘Yes,’ Lady Robsart replied. ‘I suppose so.’
‘I rely on your discretion,’ he said. ‘The queen would be much offended by any gossip.’
Her eyes flew to his face. ‘Then she should not give the gossips such rich pickings,’ she said bluntly.
‘Amy has to see reason,’ he said. ‘She has to agree to a divorce. I don’t want to force her. I don’t want to send her out of the country to a convent against her will. I want a fair agreement and a good settlement for her. But she has to agree.’
He saw the shock in her face at his frankness. ‘It would be worth your while,’ he said silkily. ‘I would stand your friend if you would advise her of her best interests. I have spoken to her brother-in-law, John Appleyard, and he agrees with me.’
‘John agrees? My son-in-law thinks that she should give you a divorce?’
‘And your son Arthur.’
Lady Robsart was silenced at this evidence of the unanimity of men. ‘I can’t say what her best interests would be in such a case,’ she said with weak defiance.
‘Just as I have said,’ Robert said bluntly. ‘Just as we say: us men. She either consents to a divorce with a good settlement, or she is divorced anyway and sent out of the country to a convent with no fortune. She has no other choice.’
‘I don’t know what her father would have made of this. She is crying and wishing for death.’
‘I am sorry for it; but they will not be the first tears shed nor, I suppose, the last,’ he said grimly, and went out of the door without another word.
Robert Dudley arrived at the queen’s apartments at Westminster during an impromptu recital of a new composition of some man’s song, and had to stand by, smiling politely, until the madrigal – with much fa-la-la-ing – was over. Sir William Cecil, observing him quietly from a corner, was amused by the scowl on the younger man’s face, and then surprised that even when he bowed to the queen his expression did not become any more pleasing.
— Now what are they doing, that he should look so sour and she so concerned for him? — Cecil felt his heart plunge with apprehension. — What are they planning now? —
As soon as the song was ended Elizabeth nodded Robert to a window bay and the two of them stepped to one side, out of earshot of the attentive courtiers.
‘What did she say?’ Elizabeth demanded, without a word of greeting. ‘Did she agree?’
‘She went quite mad,’ he said simply. ‘She said she would die rather than agree to a divorce. I left her after a night of weeping herself sick, praying for death.’
Her hand flew out to his cheek, she stopped herself before she embraced him before the whole court.
‘Oh, my poor Robin.’
‘She spat in my face,’ he said, darkening at the memory. ‘She kicked out at me. We were all but brawling.’
‘No!’ Despite the seriousness of their situation Elizabeth could not help but be diverted at the thought of Lady Dudley fighting like a fishwife. ‘Has she run mad?’
‘Worse than that,’ he said shortly. He glanced around to make sure that no-one could hear them. ‘She is full of treasonous thoughts and heretical opinions. Her jealousy of you has driven her to the most extreme ideas. God knows what she will say or do.’
‘So we will have to send her away,’ Elizabeth said simply.
Robert bowed his head. ‘My love, it will make such a scandal, I doubt we can do it at once. You can’t risk it. She will fight me, she will raise a storm against me, and I have many enemies who would support her.’
She looked at him directly, all the passion of a new love affair apparent in her flushed face.
‘Robert, I cannot live without you. I cannot rule England without you at my side. Even now Lord Grey is marching my army into Scotland, and the English fleet, God help them, are trying to prevent three times their number of French ships getting to Leith Castle where that wicked woman has raised a siege again. I am on a knife-edge, Robert. Amy is a traitor to make things worse for me. We should just arrest her for treason, put her in the Tower, and we could forget about her.’
‘Forget her now,’ he said swiftly, his first desire to soothe the anxious young woman he loved. ‘Forget her. I’ll stay at court with you, I’ll be at your side night and day. We will be husband and wife in everything but name, and when we have won in Scotland and the country is safe and at peace, we will deal with Amy and we will be married.’
She nodded. ‘You won’t see her again?’
He had a sudden unbidden memory of Amy’s hand caressing him, and her sleepy unfolding of herself beneath him, of the way her hand had stroked his back and of his own whispered words in the darkness which might have been ‘Oh, I love you’ speaking from desire, not from calculation.
‘I won’t see her,’ he assured her. ‘I am yours, Elizabeth, heart and soul.’
Elizabeth smiled, and Dudley tried to smile reassuringly back at her, but for a moment it was Amy’s dreamy, desirous face that he saw.
‘She is a fool,’ Elizabeth said harshly. ‘She should have seen my stepmother Anne of Cleves when my father asked for a divorce. Her first thought was to oblige him and her second to obtain a reasonable settlement for herself. Amy is a fool, and a wicked fool to try to stand in our way. And she is doubly a fool not to ask you for a good settlement.’
‘Yes,’ he assented, thinking that Anne of Cleves had not married for love, and longed for her husband every night for eleven years, nor had she been in his arms making passionate love the very night before he asked her to release him.
The court waited for news of the queen’s uncle, Thomas Howard, who had been sent away to suit the convenience of the lovers, but was now a key player on the sensitive border. He was to negotiate and to sign an alliance with
the Scots lords in his headquarters in Newcastle, but they waited and waited and heard nothing from him.
‘What is keeping him so long?’ Elizabeth demanded of Cecil. ‘Surely he would not play me false? Not because of Sir Robert?’
‘Never,’ Cecil averred steadily. ‘These things take time.’
‘We have no time,’ she snapped. ‘Thanks to you we have rushed into war and we are not prepared.’
The English army, led by Lord Grey, was supposed to have assembled in Newcastle by January, and to have advanced on Scotland by the end of the month. But January had come and gone and the army had not stirred from their barracks.
‘Why does it take so long?’ Elizabeth demanded of Cecil. ‘Did you not tell him he was to march on Edinburgh at once?’
‘Yes,’ Cecil said. ‘He knows what he is to do.’
‘Then why does he not do it?’ she cried out in her frustration. ‘Why does no-one press forward; or if they cannot, why do they not retreat? Why do we have to wait and wait and all I hear is excuses?’
She was rubbing at her fingernails, pushing the cuticles back from the nails in a nervous parody of her daily manicure. Cecil stopped himself from taking her hands.
‘News will come,’ he maintained. ‘We have to be patient. And they were ordered not to retreat.’
‘We must proclaim our friendship with the French,’ she decided.
Cecil glanced at Dudley. ‘We are at war with the French,’ he reminded her.
‘We should write a declaration that if their soldiers go home, we have no quarrel with France,’ Elizabeth said, her fingers working furiously. ‘Then they know that we are ready for peace, even at this late stage.’
Dudley stepped forward. ‘Now that is an excellent idea,’ he said soothingly. ‘You write it. Nobody can marshal an argument like you.’
— An argument that is pure self-contradiction — Cecil thought to himself, and saw from the flash of Robert’s smile towards him that Dudley knew it too.
‘When do I have time to write?’ Elizabeth demanded. ‘I can’t even think; I am so anxious.’
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