Philippa Gregory 3-Book Tudor Collection 2

by Philippa Gregory

  Thomas Blount found Sir Robert in the stable. There was a hunt planned for the next day and Sir Robert was checking the horses for fitness, and inspecting the tack. Forty-two saddles of gleaming supple leather were arranged in long rows on saddle horses in the yard, and Sir Robert was walking slowly between the rows looking carefully at each saddle, each girth, each stirrup leather. The stable lads, standing alongside their work, were as rigid as soldiers on parade.

  Behind them the horses were standing, shifting restlessly, a groom at each nodding head, their coats gleaming, their hooves oiled, their manes pulled, and combed flat.

  Sir Robert took his time but could find little wrong with the horses, the tack, or the stable yard. ‘Good,’ he said finally. ‘You can give them their evening feed and water, and put them to bed.’

  Then he turned and saw Thomas Blount. ‘Go into my office,’ he said shortly, pausing to pat the neck of his own horse. ‘Yes,’ he said softly to her. ‘You don’t change, do you, sweetheart?’

  Blount was waiting by the window. Robert threw his gloves and whip on the table and dropped into the chair before his desk.

  ‘All done?’ he asked.

  ‘All done quite correctly,’ Blount said. ‘A small slip in the sermon.’

  ‘What was it?’

  ‘The stupid rector said that she was a lady “tragically slain” instead of “tragically died”. He corrected himself, but it jarred.’

  Sir Robert raised one dark eyebrow. ‘A slip?’

  Blount shrugged. ‘I think so. A nuisance, but it’s not strong enough to be an accusation.’

  ‘It adds grist to the mill,’ Robert observed.

  Blount nodded.

  ‘And you dismissed her servants, and you have her things?’ Deliberately Robert kept his voice light and cold.

  ‘Mrs Oddingsell had gone already. Apparently she had taken it very hard,’ Blount said. ‘Mrs Pirto I sent back to Stanfield with the goods and she will be paid there. I sent a note. I saw Mr and Mrs Forster, they have a sense that a great scandal has been brought to their door.’ He smiled wryly.

  ‘They will be compensated for their trouble,’ Dudley said shortly. ‘Any gossip in the village?’

  ‘No more than you would expect,’ Blount said. ‘Half the village accept the verdict of accidental death. Half think she was murdered. They’ll talk about it forever. But it makes no difference to you.’

  ‘Nor to her,’ Robert said quietly.

  Blount fell silent.

  ‘So,’ Robert said, rousing himself. ‘Your work is done. She is dead and buried and whatever anyone thinks, no-one can say anything that can hurt me more.’

  ‘It’s finished,’ Blount agreed.

  Robert gestured for him to put the boxes on the table. Blount put down the keepsake box and then the little box of jewels with the key beside it. He bowed and waited.

  ‘You can go,’ Robert said.

  He had forgotten the box. It was his gift to Amy when they had been courting, he had bought it for her at a fair in Norfolk. She had never had many jewels for the small box. He felt the familiar irritation that even when she had been Lady Dudley, and commanded his fortune, still she had nothing more than a small jewel box, a couple of silver-gilt necklaces, some earrings and a ring or two.

  He turned the key in the box and opened it up. On the very top lay Amy’s wedding ring, and his signet ring with his crest, the bear and ragged staff.

  For a moment, he could not believe what he was seeing. Slowly, he put his hand into the box and lifted out the two gold circles. Mrs Pirto had taken them from Amy’s cold fingers and put them in her jewel box and locked it up, as a good servant should do.

  Robert looked at them both. The wedding ring he had slipped on Amy’s finger that summer day eleven years ago, and the signet ring had never left his own hand until he had put it on Elizabeth’s finger to seal their betrothal, just three months ago.

  Robert slipped his signet ring back on his little finger, and sat at his desk while the room grew dark and cold, wondering how his ring had got from the chain around his mistress’s neck to the finger of his dead wife.

  He walked by the river, a question beating at his brain. — Who killed Amy? — He sat on the pier like a boy, boots dangling over the water, looking down into the green depths where little fishes nibbled at the weed on the beams of the jetty, and heard in his head the second question: — Who gave Amy my ring? —

  He rose up as he grew chilled, and strolled along the tow path, westward towards the sun which slowly dropped in the sky and went from burning gold to embers as Robert walked, looking at the river but not seeing it, looking at the sky but not seeing it.

  — Who killed Amy?

  — Who gave her my ring? —

  The sun set and the sky grew palely grey; still Robert walked onward as if he did not own a stable full of horses, a stud of Barbary coursers, a training programme of young stallions, he walked like a poor man, like a man whose wife would give him a horse to ride.

  — Who killed Amy?

  — Who gave her my ring? —

  He tried not to remember the last time he had seen her, when he had left her with a curse, and turned her family against her. He tried not to remember that he had taken her in his arms and she in her folly had heard, and he in his folly had said: ‘I love you.’

  He tried not to remember her at all because it seemed to him that if he remembered her he would sit down on the river bank and weep like a child for the loss of her.

  — Who killed Amy?

  — Who gave her my ring? —

  If he thought, rather than remembered, he could avoid the wave of pain which was towering over him, ready to break. If he treated her death as a puzzle rather than a tragedy he could ask a question rather than accuse himself.

  Two questions: — Who killed Amy? Who gave her my ring? —

  When he stumbled and slipped and jolted himself to consciousness he realised that it had grown dark and he was walking blindly beside the steep bank of the deep, fast-flowing river. He turned then, a survivor from a family of survivors who had been wrong to marry a woman who did not share his inveterate lust for life.

  — Who killed Amy?

  — Who gave her my ring? —

  He started to walk back. It was only when he opened the iron gate to the walled garden that the coldness of his hand on the latch made him pause, made him realise that there were two questions: Who killed Amy? Who gave her my ring? but only one answer.

  Whoever had the ring owned the symbol that Amy would trust. Amy would clear the house for a messenger who showed her that ring. Whoever had the ring was the person who killed her. There was only one person who could have done it, only one person who would have done it:

  Elizabeth.

  Robert’s first instinct was to go to her at once, to rage at her for the madness of her power. He could not blame her for wishing Amy gone; but the thought that his mistress could murder his wife, the girl he had married for love, filled him with anger. He wanted to take Elizabeth and shake the arrogance, the wicked, power-sated confidence out of her. That she should use her power as queen, her spy network, her remorseless will, against a target as vulnerable and as innocent as Amy, made him tremble like an angry boy at the strength of his feelings.

  Robert did not sleep that night. He lay down on the bed and stared at the ceiling but over and over again he saw in his mind’s eye Amy receiving his ring, and running out to meet him, with his signet ring clenched in her little fist as her passport to the happiness she deserved. And then some man, one of Cecil’s hired killers no doubt, greeting her in his place, breaking her neck with one blow, a clenched fist to her ear, a rabbit chop to her neck, and catching her as she fell, carrying her back into the house.

  Robert tortured himself with the thought of her suffering, of her moment of fear, perhaps of a moment of horror when she thought the killer came from him and the queen. That thought made him groan and turn over, burying his face in the pillow. If Am
y had died thinking that he had sent an assassin against her then he did not see how he could bear to live.

  The bedroom window lightened at last, it was dawn. Robert, as haggard as a man ten years his senior, rose to the window and looked out, his linen sheet wrapped around his naked body. It was going to be a beautiful day. The mist was curling slowly off the river and somewhere a woodpecker was drilling. Slowly the liquid melody of a song thrush started up like a benediction, like a reminder that life goes on.

  — I suppose I can forgive her — Robert thought. — In her place, I might have done the same thing. I might have thought that our love came first, that our desire must be satisfied, come what may. If I had been her, I might have thought that we have to have a child, that the throne has to have an heir, and we are both twenty-seven years old and we dare not delay. If I had absolute power as she does I would probably have used it, as she has.

  — My father would have done it. My father would have forgiven her for doing it. Actually, he would have admired her decisiveness. —

  He sighed. ‘She did it for love of me,’ he said aloud. ‘No other reason but to set me free so that she could love me openly. No other reason but that she could marry me, and I could be king. And she knows that we both want that more than anything in the world. I could accept this terrible sorrow and this terrible crime as a gift of love. I can forgive her. I can love her. I can draw some happiness out of this misery.’

  The sky grew paler and then slowly the sun rose, pale primrose, over the silver of the river. ‘God forgive me and God forgive Elizabeth,’ Robert prayed quietly. ‘And God bring Amy the peace in heaven which I denied her on earth. And God grant that I am a better husband this time.’

  There was a tap at his chamber door. ‘It’s dawn, my lord!’ the servant called out. ‘Do you want your hot water?’

  ‘Yes!’ Robert shouted back. He went to the door, trailing the sheet, and shot back the bolt from the inside. ‘Put it down there, lad. And tell them in the kitchen that I am hungry, and warn the stable that I will be there within the hour, I am leading out the hunt today.’

  He was in the stable an hour before the court was ready to ride, making sure that everything was perfect: horses, hounds, tack, and hunt servants. The whole court was riding out today in merry mood. Robert stood on a vantage point of the steps above the stable and watched the courtiers mounting up, the ladies being helped into their saddles. His sister was not there. She had gone back to Penshurst.

  Elizabeth was in fine spirits. Robert went to help her into the saddle but then delayed, and let another man go. Over the courtier’s head she shot him a little tentative smile and he smiled back at her. She could be assured that things would be all right between them. She could be forgiven. The Spanish ambassador saw them off, the Hapsburg ambassador rode beside her.

  They had a good morning’s hunting, the scent was strong and the hounds went well. Cecil rode out to meet them at dinner time when they were served with a picnic of hot soup and mulled ale and hot pasties under the trees which were a blaze of turning colour: gold and red and yellow.

  Robert stood away from the intimate circle around Elizabeth, even when she turned and gave him a shy little smile to invite him to her side. He bowed, but did not go closer. He wanted to wait until he could see her alone, when he could tell her that he knew what she had done, he knew that it had been for love of him, and that he could forgive her.

  After they had dined and went to remount their horses, Sir Francis Knollys found his horse had been tied beside Robert’s mare.

  ‘I must offer you my condolences on the death of your wife,’ Sir Francis said stiffly.

  ‘I thank you,’ Robert replied, as coldly as the queen’s best friend had spoken to him.

  Sir Francis turned his horse away.

  ‘Do you remember an afternoon in the queen’s chapel?’ Robert suddenly said. ‘The queen was there, me, you, and Lady Catherine. It was a binding service, remember? It was a promise that cannot be broken.’

  The older man looked at him, almost with pity. ‘I don’t remember any such thing,’ he said simply. ‘Either I did not witness it, or it did not happen. But I do not remember it.’

  Robert felt himself flush with the heat of temper. ‘I remember it well enough, it happened,’ he insisted.

  ‘I think you will find you are the only one,’ Sir Francis replied quietly and spurred on his horse.

  Robert checked the horses over, and glanced at the hounds. One horse was limping slightly and he snapped his fingers for a groom to lead it back to the castle. He supervised the mounting of the court; but he hardly saw them. His head was pounding with the duplicity of Sir Francis, who would deny that Robert and the queen had sworn to marry, who was suggesting that the queen would deny it too. — As if she would betray me — Robert swore to himself. — After what she has done to be with me! What man could have more proof that a woman loves him than she would do such a thing to set me free? She loves me, as I love her, more than life itself! We were born for each other, born to be together. As if we could ever be apart! As if she did not do this terrible, this unbearable crime for love of me! To set me free! —

  ‘Are you glad to be back at court?’ Cecil asked in a friendly tone, bringing his horse alongside Robert’s.

  Robert, recalled to the present, looked at him. ‘I cannot say I am merry,’ he said quietly. ‘I cannot say that my welcome has been warm.’

  The Secretary’s eyes were kind. ‘People will forget, you know,’ he said gently. ‘It will never be the same again for you, but people forget.’

  ‘And I am free to marry,’ Dudley said. ‘When people have forgotten my wife, and her death, I will be free to marry again.’

  Cecil nodded. ‘Indeed, yes. But not the queen.’

  Dudley looked at him. ‘What?’

  ‘It is the scandal,’ Cecil confided in him in his friendly tone. ‘As I told you when you left court. She could not have her name linked with yours. Your sons could never take the throne of England. You are infamed by the death of your wife. You are ruined as a royal suitor. She will never be able to marry you now.’

  ‘What are you saying? That she will never marry me now?’

  ‘Exactly,’ Cecil replied, almost regretfully. ‘You are right. She can never marry you now.’

  ‘Then why did she do it?’ Dudley demanded, his whisper as soft as falling snow. ‘Why kill Amy, my wife, if not to set me free? Amy, the only innocent among us, Amy who had done nothing wrong but hold faith. What was the benefit if not to release me for marriage with the queen? You will have been in her counsel, you will have made this plan together. It will have been your villains who did it. Why murder little Amy if not to set me free to marry the queen?’

  Cecil did not pretend to misunderstand him. ‘You are not released for marriage with the queen,’ he said. ‘You are prevented forever. Any other way and you would always have been eligible. You would always have been her first choice. Now she cannot choose you. You are forever disbarred.’

  ‘You have destroyed me, Cecil,’ Dudley’s voice broke. ‘You killed Amy and fixed the blame on me, and destroyed me.’

  ‘I am her servant,’ Cecil said, as gentle as a father to a grieving son. ‘As you know.’

  ‘She ordered the death of my wife? Amy died by Elizabeth’s order so that I should be shamed to the ground and never, never rise again?’

  ‘No, no, it was an accidental death,’ Cecil reminded the younger man. ‘The inquest ruled it so, the twelve good men of Abingdon, even when you wrote to them and pressed them to investigate most closely. They had their verdict, they brought it in. It was accidental death. Better for all of us if we leave it so, perhaps.’

  Author’s Note

  The mystery of how Amy Robsart died is still unsolved four centuries after her death. Several culprits have been suggested: malignant cancer of the breast which would account for reports of breast pain, and could result in the thinning of the bones of her neck; Robert Dudley’s agen
ts; Elizabeth’s agents; Cecil’s agents; or, suicide.

  Also fascinating are the incriminating and indiscreet remarks from Cecil and Elizabeth to the Spanish ambassador in the days before Amy’s death, which he recorded for his master, just as I present them in this fictional account.

  It seems to me that Cecil and Elizabeth knew that Amy would die on Sunday 8th September, and were deliberately planting evidence with the ambassador to incriminate Robert Dudley. Elizabeth incriminates herself as an accessory by predicting Amy’s death before the event, and by saying that she died of a broken neck, before the detailed news reaches the court.

  Why Elizabeth and Cecil should do such a thing we cannot know. I don’t believe that either of them blurted out the truth by accident, to the man most likely to circulate such scandal. I suggest that it was Elizabeth and Cecil’s plan to smear Dudley with the crime of wife-murder.

  Certainly the shadow of guilt was effective in preventing Robert from attaining the throne. In 1566 William Cecil wrote a six-point memorandum to the Privy Council listing the reasons that Robert Dudley could not marry the Queen: ‘IV. He is infamed by the death of his wife’.

  Were Elizabeth and Robert full lovers? Perhaps in these more permissive days we can say that it hardly matters. What does matter is that she loved him all her life, and despite his later marriage to Laetitia Knollys (another Boleyn red-head) he undoubtedly loved her. His last letter was to Elizabeth, telling her of his love, and she died with his letter by her bedside.

  This is a short list of the books that helped my research for this novel.

  Adlard, George, Amye Robsart and the Earl of Leicester, 1870

  Bartlett, A.D., An Historical Account of Cumnor Place, 1850

  Brigden, Susan, New Worlds, Lost Worlds: The rule of the Tudors 1485–1603, Penguin, 2000

  Clarke, John, Palaces and Parks of Richmond and Kew, 1995

  Cressy, David, Birth, Marriage and Death, Ritual, Religions and the Life Cycle in Tudor and Stuart England, OUP, 1977

  Darby, H.C., A new Historical Geography of England before 1600, CUP, 1976