The Queen's Secret

by Victoria Lamb

  ‘Do not speak of it,’ she hissed, hating to think of the lines on her face and hands, her sagging breasts, how she could not even wear her own hair in bed with this man. ‘We are young and this is spring, our May flower, our cuckoo-time.’

  ‘You have only to wish it for it to be true. The clock on the tower has been stopped for you.’

  Soon, he climbed on to the bed and lay beside her in the glimmering darkness, dragging away the covers to reveal the rest of her body. She ought to have been afraid of her women hearing them and coming to find out what the noise was, but there was room for nothing in her mind but desire. She saw the flattering bulge at his groin and reached for his lacings, impatient to stroke and kiss him as he had done with her. Robert helped her at first, laughing at her clumsy eagerness. Then he fell silent as she wrapped her fingers about him, squeezing his swollen shaft like a hen’s neck at Christmas, just as he had taught her last time.

  She wanted to lower her mouth to him too, but did not quite dare, in case he thought her shameless and pushed her away.

  His eyes lingered on her face a moment, then surveyed her breasts, the slender curves of belly and hips, and her sex, sparsely covered with reddish curls.

  ‘I love you,’ he said thickly.

  His passion thrilled her, a flush mounting in her cheeks as she looked back at him with equal intensity. ‘Robin, Robin … my lover, my true oak.’

  Their eyes met, then she allowed her thighs to slip open and part, her acquiescence unspoken. This time, unlike every other time they had lain together like husband and wife, there was no talk of protections against a pregnancy, and Elizabeth found she did not even care.

  The lightning realization crossed her mind: if he got her with child, who would dare delay their marriage?

  Then he was on top of her, fumbling between her thighs for the entrance, not even bothering to undress himself or her, urgent as a boy at his first mounting, eyes closed, his breathing fast and shallow.

  ‘Elizabeth,’ he groaned, and in response she gave a sharp cry, half in fear, half excitement, for suddenly he was there, nudging between her damp thighs, pushing his length inside her. His hand came forcefully across her mouth to stifle her cry and too late she remembered the women sleeping on the floor below, the men on guard in the antechamber.

  She bit down hard on her lip. To be disturbed now …

  ‘Yes,’ he muttered, as though she had spoken, and removed the gag of his hand. ‘My sweet obedient queen.’

  ‘My only master,’ she whispered back, her arms linked about his neck. She whimpered with satisfaction as he began to thrust, the bed creaking and rocking beneath them.

  Afterwards, lying together in heavy-limbed torpor, he kissed her throat, her mouth, stroking down the line of her belly to between her relaxed thighs.

  His deep voice rumbled in her ear, slow with sated pleasure. ‘My love, what if there should be a child from this?’

  ‘Then we shall marry.’

  ‘You swear it?’

  ‘On my life.’ She felt him sigh beside her, and stretched luxuriously, her voice tailing off into sleep, unable to keep her eyelids open an instant longer. ‘You are the only man I have ever wanted, Robin. The only …’

  Thirty-four

  ‘YOUR MAJESTY, THE physician is here.’

  Elizabeth turned her head on the pillow, and felt another flush of fury at her own weakness. To be reduced to this feeble state by a few hours of physical pleasure was nothing less than a humiliation, a divine punishment for her lasciviousness that she could stomach no longer. For surely this pain and bleeding must be a sign from God that such activities were forbidden? Yes, the message was clear: the body of an unwed queen was sacrosanct and not to be invaded by any man, even he to whom she had all but promised herself.

  She groaned, closing her eyes at the thought of what she had told Robert as they lay together in pleasure – the foolish, impossible promises she had made the man.

  ‘Send him in.’ Her fury lent a much-needed strength to her voice. ‘Then everyone else, out. Except for you, Lady Mary. You will remain and see to my comfort.’

  ‘Yes, Your Majesty.’

  The man who approached her bed in a plain brown doublet and hose was unknown to her. When he saw her awake and gazing on him, he bowed so low, his nose almost brushed the floor.

  ‘Your Royal Majesty, I am honoured to be called to your bedside. Whatever I can do to alleviate—’

  ‘Where is my physician?’

  Lady Mary stepped forward. ‘He is unwell, Your Majesty. Both he and his assistant. They had fish for dinner last night which may have been unfit to eat.’

  ‘Fools!’

  ‘This man is Master Boden. He is Leicester’s own physician here in Warwickshire. He serves both Kenilworth and Warwick, where I am told he administers to the Dudley family. He comes very highly recommended, Your Majesty.’

  The local physician bowed again, wringing his simple cap in his hand.

  ‘I will not be attended by a stranger!’

  ‘Your Majesty,’ Lady Mary murmured in her ear, ‘you are not well and must be seen.’

  ‘It is beneath the dignity of a prince to …’ Elizabeth began to protest, then groaned between her teeth, unable to suppress the sound entirely, racked by another violent spasm in her belly. ‘Very well, he may attend me. But first he must swear to secrecy.’

  ‘Your Majesty, I have already sworn never to reveal—’

  ‘You will swear again, in my presence.’ She motioned Mary to fetch the English Bible from her bedside table. ‘Place your hand on this Bible, sir, and swear by all that is holy not to speak of the matters we discuss to any living soul, now nor in years to come, on pain of your death.’

  He swore the oath exactly as she had told it to him, repeating its terms in a shaky voice. When he lifted his hand from the Bible, a sweaty imprint of his fingers was left behind.

  ‘Now, sir,’ she muttered, ‘you may examine me.’

  He hesitated. ‘Your ladies …’

  ‘Lady Mary here will attend me. I need no other.’

  Master Boden laid down his cap meekly enough and stood at the bedside, looking over her with careful, watery blue eyes. He was a tall man with a pronounced stoop, perhaps from years of bending in just such a manner over the bedsides of his patients.

  His hands trembled as he folded back the edge of her rich coverlet. He hesitated, hardly daring to lift his gaze to her face.

  ‘What ails Your Majesty?’ He must have caught her sudden uncertainty, for he added hurriedly, ‘I cannot treat that of which I know not.’

  She gave a stiff nod. ‘I bleed. From below.’

  ‘I see.’ The physician seemed to need a moment to digest this information, glancing from her to Lady Mary Sidney. ‘Is it not merely your monthly courses?’

  ‘They are not due for another ten days.’

  ‘I see,’ he repeated, licking his lips. ‘In that case, I have no choice but to examine you. Do I have your consent, Your Majesty, to … to make a proper physical examination?’

  She nearly baulked at that, not wishing to have any man, and in particular a stranger, examine her in such an intimate manner. Though perhaps it was as well not to involve her own physicians, who would be believed if they spoke out of turn. This man was just humble enough to have his word doubted.

  Determined to get through this unpleasant trial as quickly as possible, Elizabeth nodded her consent.

  Heavy-handed, the physician signalled Lady Mary to help him pull back the thick embroidered coverlet. The two of them folded it down to the foot of the bed but did not comment on her exposed bedsheets, crumpled and stained from last night’s passion. Lady Mary moved silently to Elizabeth’s left-hand side, as though to protect her from the sight of anyone who might dare to walk unannounced through the door to the Royal Bedchamber.

  The physician asked Elizabeth a series of delicate questions about her symptoms, which she answered in a monotone, keeping her replies short and ev
asive. Then he begged her pardon most humbly and asked if Mary could pull up the Queen’s nightgown so he might examine her more thoroughly.

  This request she denied, her cheeks flushed with anger, finding herself unable to agree to such a humiliation.

  ‘Forgive me, Your Majesty,’ he muttered, bowing his head to examine the bloodied sheets instead.

  ‘Oh, hurry up!’

  ‘As you wish, Your Majesty. This was not …’ Master Boden paused, looking up at her awkwardly. ‘This was not your first … occasion?’

  She did not look at Lady Mary, though she heard the woman’s shocked intake of breath. Robert’s sister might be quiet and placid about court but she was no fool and must have grasped by now to what the physician was so obliquely referring.

  ‘No,’ she admitted flatly.

  ‘I see.’ No doubt sensing her anger, he straightened and nodded to Lady Mary to replace her bedcovers. ‘That is all I require, Your Majesty. Tell me, have you experienced bleeding on previous occasions?’

  ‘To some degree, yes.’

  He considered this response for a moment, washing his hands in the gilt-edged bowl Lady Mary held out to him. He dried his long fingers on a white damask cloth which he then dropped carelessly on to the coverlet, the sight of its reddish-brown stains leaving her light-headed.

  ‘It is not unknown for some women to suffer in this way, though it is always unfortunate in …’ He glanced at her and then away, and again she felt some covert insolence in those watery blue eyes. ‘In a married woman, who must endure copious blood loss in order to conceive. Was there any discomfort or bleeding at the time?’

  ‘Not that I noticed.’

  ‘And how long does this blood loss and physical weakness endure?’

  ‘A few days, sometimes more.’

  He began to ask another question, but Elizabeth brushed it impatiently aside.

  ‘What is it that I am suffering? Can you treat it?’

  ‘From the symptoms you have described, Your Majesty, and my own rather cursory examination today, the only possible treatment is abstinence.’

  Abstinence?

  Elizabeth had not missed the sternness and disapproval in his voice, and knew the physician was judging her. Guilt at her own deceit and wanton lasciviousness warred inside her with the violent desire to have this little man, this nobody, imprisoned for his insolence in presuming to judge her, Elizabeth Regina, the anointed Queen of England.

  ‘You will give me nothing for the bleeding? I must get up, I cannot lie about here all day so uselessly.’

  ‘Your women can bind you about with cloths, just as they would for your monthly flow of blood, so that you may rise from your bed. And I can bleed you. Though in my experience, this has little good effect on a woman in your state.’ He shrugged. ‘There are also some purgatives I can prescribe, that my apothecary will make up for you before I leave. But as for the pain and weakness you describe, they clearly derive from some problem of the female anatomy.’

  Master Boden coughed delicately and looked away, as though Elizabeth had been found to have some terrible deformity.

  ‘I can do nothing for that condition, Your Majesty, which must be borne as the Lord intended. But in the meantime,’ he added, turning to his medicine chest, ‘I have to hand a powerful infusion of my own devising, of wormwood and other cleansing plants, which will balance the humours and instill such a feeling of well-being that Your Majesty may go about your duties unremarked.’

  ‘Very well,’ she muttered, determined to regain her composure. She gestured Lady Mary to remove the unpleasant physician from her sight. She had heard enough of his gloomy prognostications. ‘Leave a bottle of it with Lady Sidney. She will give you the proper remuneration for your pains. And do not forget your oath of silence, Master Boden, on pain of death. You will be watched.’

  Later, standing by her window watching rain spatter against the thick leaded glass, Elizabeth heard Robert’s voice raised in enquiry outside in the Privy Chamber. The chamberers were bustling about behind her, changing the soiled sheets and laying fresh rushes.

  At the sound of his voice, her heart began to beat as rapidly as a girl’s in the first flush of love, and she put a hand to the stone sill to steady herself.

  But there was also fear in the pounding of her heart – a deep nagging fear that gripped her like an iron glove and refused to let go. He must not know. She dreaded the thought that Robert might come to hear of this abnormality, these horrific bouts of bleeding and pain, that he might discover she was unfit for proper relations between husband and wife.

  The very idea of talking to him of such matters mortified her almost to the point of death.

  No, Robert must never know.

  The door to her bedchamber opened a crack, and through that tiny gap she caught a glimpse of a crowded Privy Chamber, the whisper and rumble of subdued voices as the courtiers outside waited for her to emerge. Then Lady Mary Sidney slipped back into the room, her white-capped head demurely bent, her silk skirts rustling. Lady Mary ignored the busy chamberers gathered about the bed and came straight to Elizabeth’s side. Her curtsey was low and respectful as ever, but Elizabeth was irritated to catch a flicker of something else in her placid face as she straightened.

  Excitement? Pity?

  Lady Mary had always been one of the most priggish, self-righteous women at court, though she could not fault Mary’s loyalty to the throne nor her devotion to duty.

  ‘My brother, Lord Robert, is outside in the Privy Chamber and would speak with you urgently, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Urgently?’

  ‘So he says, Your Majesty.’ Lady Mary lifted cool, dark eyes to Elizabeth’s face, eyes which reminded her strikingly of her own darling Robert’s – though far less knowing and ambitious. ‘I have informed him that you are indisposed and will not see anyone until tonight, including him.’

  ‘And what did your brother say to that?’

  She gave a little smile. ‘Lord Robert was not pleased, Your Majesty. Not pleased at all.’

  Turning her face into the pillow, Elizabeth closed her eyes in defeat. Robert would not comprehend her refusal to see him, yet she could not allow him to know of this physical weakness, to witness it for himself and know that he had caused it. The physician was right to suggest she was malformed in some way; she had feared as much herself since she had first begun to bleed, however much her dear nurse Kat had told her not to concern herself, that all women suffered in the same way. Now this pain and lethargy – no, she could not countenance such a life, having to staunch the bleeding each time she lay with her new husband and consort, to lie abed for days when the business of state required her to be up and seen about the court.

  ‘Where is Lady Essex?’ Elizabeth remembered to ask a while later.

  She had sat up at Mary’s insistence, strangely restless, with a dull ache in her belly, to take half a cup of the physician’s foul-tasting herbal infusion. The curtains had been drawn about her bed to block out the light, and she had to remind herself that it must be nearing the middle of the day, though the continuing rain made the room dark and chill.

  ‘Is she in the Privy Chamber with the other women?’

  She disliked not knowing what was happening beyond the closed doors of her bedchamber. Now that Robert had removed himself from her apartments, his repeated demands for admittance ignored, she could not help but worry that he and Lettice must now be closeted somewhere privately.

  Mary tilted the infusion to her lips once more, her face unreadable in the dim light. ‘Lady Lettice is unwell, Your Majesty.’

  ‘Unwell?’

  ‘She too did not rise from her bed this morning, I am told, and cannot keep anything down.’

  Elizabeth stared, her heart tightening with an inexorable agony. Cannot keep anything down? The terrible possibility that Lettice was with child by Robert came back to haunt her.

  Abruptly, she remembered a brief private letter sent to her from Ireland: Lord Essex’s ter
se request had been that his wife should be sent home from court to tend his younger children in his absence. Elizabeth had ignored his letter, for she disliked being told how to order her own ladies, however much she might relish the thought of banishing Lettice to the depths of the country. Besides, it had seemed politic to keep her red-haired cousin close by, where her spies might more easily watch both her and Robert. It was not beyond the bounds of belief, after all, that Lettice could make a play for the throne, given the right allies about her.

  But now she wondered if it was not too late, if her favourite had not already visited Lettice’s bed – and carelessly made a child on the vile woman.

  ‘Send her to me at once,’ she told Mary.

  ‘But, Your Majesty—’

  ‘Do as I bid you.’ Elizabeth knocked aside the cup with its few remaining drops of herbal infusion. ‘And get this stinking privy water away from me. I will see the Countess of Essex this very day, even if she must be carried to my chambers on a litter.’

  Thirty-five

  THE OLD WINE store had not been used in some years. ‘eight, at least,’ the steward’s assistant, Caradoc, had told Goodluck, no doubt hoping it would make him less interested to see inside the old place. Instead, Goodluck’s curiosity had grown and he nodded for the Welshman to show it to him. At the door, Caradoc fumbled for the correct key on his belt, muttering under his breath, shoving one after another aside with a jangle before coming to an ancient-looking copper key with a lozenge-shaped head and a flattened shaft. It reminded Goodluck of one he had seen for an old church crypt in London, the lock dating back several centuries.

  ‘How long since this cellar was built?’ Goodluck asked, looking at the squat, heavily studded door. ‘Is it one of the oldest parts of the castle?’

  ‘Not this, no,’ the Welshman replied, his tone contemptuous. ‘Though you’d have to ask the master steward for the dates. He’d know.’

  Caradoc fitted the key in the lock and attempted to turn it. It would not budge. He removed the key, spat on it several times, then pushed it back into the lock.