‘In the afternoon,’ Dudley said soothingly to her. ‘And nobody can write like you can.’
— He gentles her like one of his Barbary mares — Cecil thought wonderingly. — He manages her in a way that no-one else can do. —
‘You shall compose it and I shall take your dictation,’ Robert said. ‘I shall be your clerk. And we shall publish it, so that everyone knows that you are not the war-maker. If it comes to war they will know that your intentions were always peaceful. You will show that it is all the fault of the French.’
‘Yes,’ she said, encouraged. ‘And perhaps it will avert war.’
‘Perhaps,’ the men reassured her.
The only piece of good news that came in March was that the French preparations for war had been thrown into disarray by an uprising of French Protestants against the French royal family.
‘This doesn’t help us at all,’ Elizabeth miserably predicted. ‘Now Philip of Spain will turn against all Protestants, he will be in terror of it spreading, and refuse to be my friend.’
But Philip was too clever to do anything that would help the French in Europe. Instead he offered to mediate between the French and the English, and the Seigneur de Glajon arrived with great pomp to meet with Elizabeth in April.
‘Tell him I am ill,’ she whispered to Cecil, eyeing the powerful Spanish diplomat through a crack in the door from her private apartments to the audience chamber. ‘Keep him off me for a while. I can’t stand to see him, I really can’t, and my hands are bleeding.’
Cecil stalled the Spanish don for several days until the news came from Scotland that Lord Grey had finally crossed the border with the English army. The soldiers of England were marching on Scottish soil. There was no denying it any longer: the two nations were finally at war.
Elizabeth’s fingernails were immaculately buffed, but her lips bitten into sore strips when she finally met the Spanish ambassador.
‘They will force us into peace,’ she whispered to Cecil after the meeting. ‘He all but threatened me. He warned me that if we cannot make peace with the French then Philip of Spain will send his own armies and force a peace on us.’
Cecil looked aghast. ‘How should he do such a thing? This is not a quarrel of his.’
‘He has the power,’ she said angrily. ‘And it is your fault for inviting his support. Now he thinks it is his business, he thinks he has a right to come into Scotland. And if both France and Spain have armies in Scotland, what will become of us? Whoever wins will occupy Scotland forever, and will soon look to the border and want to come south. We are now at the mercy of both France and Spain; how could you do this?’
‘Well, it was not my intention,’ he said wryly. ‘Does Philip think he can impose peace on France as well as us?’
‘If he can force them to agree then it might be our way out,’ Elizabeth said, a little more hopefully. ‘If we make a truce with him, he has promised me that we will get Calais back.’
‘He lies,’ Cecil said simply. ‘If you want Calais, you will have to fight for it. If you want to keep the French out of Scotland, you will have to fight them. We have to prevent the Spanish from coming in. We have to face the two greatest countries in Christendom and defend our sovereignty. You have to be brave, Elizabeth.’
He always called her by her title. It was a mark of her distress that she did not reprove him. ‘Spirit, I am not brave. I am so very afraid,’ she said in a whisper of a voice.
‘Everyone is afraid,’ he assured her. ‘You, me, probably even the Sieur de Glajon. Don’t you think Mary of Guise, ill in Leith Castle, is afraid too? Don’t you think that the French are afraid, with the Protestants rising up against them in the heart of France itself? Don’t you think that Mary, Queen of Scots, is afraid with them hanging hundreds of French rebels before her very eyes?’
‘No-one is alone as I am!’ Elizabeth rounded on him. ‘No-one faces two enemies on the doorstep but me! No-one has to face Philip and face the French with no husband and no father and no help, but me!’
‘Yes,’ he agreed sympathetically. ‘Indeed you have a lonely and a difficult part to play. But you must play it. You have to pretend to confidence even when you are afraid, even when you feel most alone.’
‘You would turn me into one of Sir Robert’s new troop of players,’ she said.
‘I would see you as one of England’s players,’ he returned. ‘I would see you play the part of a great queen.’ — And I would rather die than trust Dudley with the script — he added to himself.
Spring came to Stanfield Hall, and Lizzie Oddingsell arrived to be Amy’s travelling companion, but no word came from Sir Robert as to where his wife was to go this season.
‘Shall I write to him?’ Lizzie Oddingsell asked Amy.
Amy was lying on a day bed, her skin like paper, her eyes dull, as thin as a wasted child. She shook her head, as if it were too much effort to speak. ‘It does not matter to him where I am any more.’
‘It’s just that this time last year we went to Bury St Edmunds, and then Camberwell,’ Lizzie remarked.
Amy shrugged her thin shoulders. ‘Not this year, it seems.’
‘You cannot stay here all the year round.’
‘Why not? I lived here all the years of my girlhood.’
‘It’s not fitting,’ Lizzie said. ‘You are his wife, and this is a little house with no gay company, and no good food or music or dancing or society. You cannot live like a farmer’s wife when you are the wife of one of the greatest men in the country. People will talk.’
Amy raised herself up on her elbow. ‘Good God, you know as well as I that people say far worse things than that I do not keep a good table.’
‘They speak of nothing but the war against the French in Scotland,’ Lizzie lied.
Amy shook her head and leaned back and closed her eyes. ‘I am not deaf,’ she observed. ‘They say that my husband and the queen will be married within a year.’
‘And what will you do?’ Lizzie prompted gently. ‘If he insists? If he puts you aside? I am sorry, Amy, but you should consider what you would need. You are a young woman, and …’
‘He cannot put me aside,’ Amy said quietly. ‘I am his wife. I will be his wife till the day of my death. I cannot help it. God bound us together, only God can part us. He can send me away, he can even marry her, but then he is a bigamist and she is a whore in the eyes of everyone. I cannot do anything but be his wife until my death.’
‘Amy,’ Lizzie breathed. ‘Surely …’
‘Please God my death comes soon and releases us all from this agony,’ Amy said in her thin thread of a voice. ‘Because this is worse than death for me. To know that he has loved me and turned from me, to know that he wants me far away, never to see him again. To know, every morning that I wake, every night that I sleep, that he is with her, that he chooses to be with her rather than to be with me. It eats into me like a canker, Lizzie. I could think myself dying of it. This is grief like death. I would rather have death.’
‘You have to reconcile yourself,’ Lizzie Oddingsell said, without much faith in the panacea.
‘I have reconciled myself to heartbreak,’ Amy said. ‘I have reconciled myself to a life of desolation. No-one can ask more of me.’
Lizzie stood up and turned a log on the fire. The chimney smoked and the room was always filled with a light haze that stung the eyes. Lizzie sighed at the discomfort of the farmhouse and of the late Sir John’s determination that what he had established was good enough for anyone else.
‘I shall write to my brother,’ she said firmly. ‘They are always glad to see you. At least we can go to Denchworth.’
Westminster Palace
March 14th 1560
William Cecil to the Commander of the Queen’s Pensioners.
Sir,
1. It has come to my attention that the French have hatched a conspiracy against the life of the queen and of the noble gentleman Sir Robert Dudley. I am informed that they are determined that one or th
e other shall be killed, believing that this will give them an advantage in the war in Scotland.
2. I hereby advise you of this new threat and commend you to redouble your guard on the queen and to command them to remain alert at all times.
Be alert also for anyone approaching or following the noble gentleman, and for anyone hanging round his apartments or the stables.
God Save the Queen.
Sir Francis Knollys with Sir Nicholas Bacon sought out William Cecil.
‘For God’s sake, is there no end to these threats?’
‘Apparently not,’ Cecil said quietly.
Sir Robert Dudley joined them. ‘What’s this?’
‘More death threats against the queen,’ Sir Francis told him. ‘And against you.’
‘Me?’
‘From the French, now.’
‘Why would the French want to kill me?’ Dudley asked, shocked.
‘They think the queen would be distressed by your death,’ Nicholas Bacon said tactfully, when no-one else answered.
Sir Robert took a swift, irritated turn on his heel. ‘Are we to do nothing while Her Majesty is threatened on all sides? When Frenchmen threaten her, when the Pope himself threatens her? When Englishmen plot against her? Can’t we confront this terror and destroy it?’
‘The nature of terror is that you don’t know quite what it is or what it can do,’ Cecil observed. ‘We can protect her, but only up to a point. Short of locking her up in a gated room we cannot preserve her from danger. I have a man tasting everything she eats. I have sentries at every door, under every window. No-one comes into court without being vouched for and yet still, every other day, I hear of a new plot, a new murder plan against her.’
‘How would the French like it if we murdered the young Queen Mary?’ Sir Robert demanded.
William Cecil exchanged a glance with the other more experienced man, Sir Francis. ‘We can’t reach her,’ he admitted. ‘I had Throckmorton look at the French court when he was in Paris. It can’t be done without them knowing it was us.’
‘And is that your only objection?’ Robert bristled.
‘Yes,’ Cecil said silkily. ‘I have no objection in theory to assassination as an act of state. It could be a great saver of life and a guarantee of safety for others.’
‘I am utterly and completely opposed to it,’ Dudley said indignantly. ‘It is forbidden by God, and it is against the justice of man.’
‘Yes, but it’s you they want to kill, so you would think that,’ Sir Nicholas said with scant sympathy. ‘The bullock seldom shares the beliefs of the butcher, and you, you are dead meat, my friend.’
Amy and Lizzie Oddingsell, escorted by Thomas Blount, with men in the Dudley livery riding before and behind them, came in silence to the Hyde house. The children, watching for them as usual, came running down the drive towards them and then hesitated when their aunt had nothing more for them than a wistful smile, and their favourite guest, the pretty Lady Dudley, did not seem to see them at all.
Alice Hyde, hurrying out to greet her sister-in-law and her noble friend, felt for a moment as if a shadow had fallen on their house and gave a little involuntary shiver as if the April sunshine had suddenly turned icy. ‘Sister! Lady Dudley, you are most welcome.’
Both women turned faces to her that were pale with strain. ‘Oh, Lizzie!’ Alice said, in shock at the weariness on her face, and then went to help her sister-in-law down from the saddle as her husband came out and helped Lady Dudley to dismount.
‘May I go to my room?’ Amy whispered to William Hyde.
‘Of course,’ he said kindly. ‘I will take you myself, and have a fire lit for you. Will you take a glass of brandy to keep out the cold and put some roses in those pretty cheeks again?’
He thought she looked at him as if he addressed her in a foreign language.
‘I am not ill,’ she said flatly. ‘Whoever told you that I was ill, is lying.’
‘No? I’m glad to hear of it. You look a little wearied by your journey, that’s all,’ he said soothingly, leading her into the hall and then up the stairs to the best guest bedroom. ‘And are we to expect Sir Robert here, this spring?’
Amy paused at the door of her room. ‘No,’ she said very quietly. ‘I do not expect to see my husband this season. I have no expectations of him at all.’
‘Oh,’ William Hyde said, quite at sea.
Then she turned and put both her hands out to him. ‘But he is my husband,’ she said, almost pleading. ‘That will never change.’
At a loss, he chafed her cold hands. ‘Of course he is,’ he soothed her, thinking that she was talking at random, like a madwoman. ‘And a very good husband too, I am sure.’
Somehow, he had said the right thing. The sweet smile of Amy the beloved girl suddenly illuminated the bleak face of Amy the deserted wife.
‘Yes, he is,’ she said. ‘I am so glad that you see that too, dear William. He is a good husband to me and so he must come home to me soon.’
‘Good God, what have they done to her?’ William Hyde demanded of his sister, Lizzie Oddingsell, when the three of them were seated around the dinner table, the covers cleared and the door safely closed against prying servants. ‘She looks near to death.’
‘It is as you predicted,’ Lizzie said shortly. ‘Just as you said when you were so merry about what would happen if your master were to marry the queen. He has done what you thought he might do. He has thrown her off and is going to marry the queen. He told her to her face.’
A long, low whistle from William Hyde greeted this news. Alice was quite dumbstruck.
‘And the queen has proposed this? She thinks she can get such a thing past the Lords and Commons of England?’
Lizzie shrugged. ‘He speaks as if all that stands in their way is Amy’s consent. He speaks as if he and the queen are quite agreed and are picking out names for their firstborn.’
‘He will be consort. She might even call him king,’ William Hyde speculated. ‘And he will not forget the services we have done him and the kindness we have shown him.’
‘And what of her?’ Lizzie asked fiercely, nodding her head to the chamber above them. ‘When he is crowned and we are in Westminster Abbey shouting hurrah? Where do you think she is then?’
William Hyde shook his head. ‘Living quietly in the country? At her father’s old house? At the house she fancied here – old Simpson’s place?’
‘It will kill her,’ Alice predicted. ‘She will never survive the loss of him.’
‘I think so,’ Lizzie said. ‘And the worst of it is, that I think in his heart, he knows that. And I am sure that the she-devil queen knows that too.’
‘Hush!’ William said urgently. ‘Even behind closed doors, Lizzie!’
‘All her life Amy has been on a rack of his ambition,’ Lizzie hissed. ‘All her life she has loved and waited for him and prayed long, sleepless nights for his safety. And now, at the moment of his prosperity, he tells her that he will cast her aside, that he loves another woman, and that this other woman has such power that she can throw a true-wedded wife to the dogs.
‘What do you think this will do to her? You saw her. Doesn’t she look like a woman walking towards her grave?’
‘Is she sick?’ asked William Hyde, a practical man. ‘Does she have this canker in her breast that they all say is killing her?’
‘She is sick to death from heartache,’ Lizzie said. ‘That is all the pain in her breast. And he may not understand this, but I warrant the queen does. She knows that if she plays cat and mouse with Amy Dudley for long enough then her health will simply break down and she will take to her bed and die. If she does not kill herself first.’
‘Never! A mortal sin!’ Alice exclaimed.
‘It has become a sinful country,’ Lizzie said bleakly. ‘What is worse? A woman throwing herself head-first down stairs or a queen taking a married man to her bed and the two of them hounding the true wife to her death?’
Thomas,
&nb
sp; Cecil wrote in code to his old friend Thomas Gresham at Antwerp.
1. I have your note about the Spanish troopships, presumably they are arming to invade Scotland. The great numbers that you have seen must indicate that they plan to invade England as well.
2. They have a plan to invade Scotland on the pretext of imposing peace. I assume that they are now putting this into practice.
3. On receipt of this, please inform your clients, customers, and friends that the Spanish are on the brink of invading Scotland, that this will take them into war with the French, with the Scots and with ourselves, and warn them most emphatically that all the English trade will leave Antwerp for France. The cloth market will leave the Spanish Netherlands forever, and the loss will be incalculable.
4. If you can create utter panic in the commercial and trading quarters with this news I would be much obliged. If the poor people were to take it into their heads that they will starve for lack of English trade, and riot against their Spanish masters, it would be even better. If the Spanish could be brought to think they are facing a national revolt it would be very helpful.
Cecil did not sign the letter nor seal it with his crest. He rarely put his name to anything.
Ten days later Cecil stalked into the queen’s privy chamber like a long-legged, triumphant raven and laid a letter before her on her desk. There were no other papers, her anxiety about Scotland was so great that she did no other work. Only Robert Dudley could distract her from her terrified interrogation of the progress of the war, only he could comfort her.
‘What is this?’ she asked.
‘A report from a friend of mine in Antwerp that there has been a panic in the city,’ Cecil said with quiet pleasure. ‘The respectable merchants and tradesmen are leaving in their hundreds, the poor people are barricading the streets and firing the slums. The Spanish authorities have been forced to issue a proclamation to the citizens and traders that there will be no expedition to Scotland or against England. There was a run on the currency, there were people leaving the town. There was absolute panic. They feared a rebellion would start that would flare into a civil war. They had to give their word that the ships in port are not headed for our shores. The Spanish have been forced to reassure the traders of the Spanish Netherlands that they will not intervene in Scotland against us, that they will stay our friend and ally, whatever takes place in Scotland. The risk to their commercial interest was too great. They have publicly declared their alliance to us, and that they will not invade.’
Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2 Page 90
