by Jeane Westin
—Elizabeth I to Fenelon, the French ambassador
EARL OF LEICESTER
Autumn 1572
Hampton Court
While the queen was being dressed for an audience in the presence chamber, the Earl of Leicester looked out from her antechamber windows upon Hampton Court Palace. The cluster of brick towers and cupolas, the shady cloisters and sunny loggias were as grand this day as on the day Henry VIII had admired them so much that its builder, Cardinal Wolsey, was forced to give the palace to him. Henry would not have borne his servant having a better palace than a Tudor king and Wolsey knew it. The cardinal fell to his knees and Henry received Hampton Court as a gift . . . on the spot. Was that why Bess favored this palace, because it was royal as a result of her father’s power?
Robert had been in Henry’s court as a boy and was able to summon the scene to his mind all too clearly. The huge king would have towered, intimidating Wolsey, a powerful man in his own right, yet in no way touching the king’s supremacy. The king’s vast bulk and florid face containing all the authority of his person and his realm behind it would have inspired any subject to please him and not make Henry wait a minute longer for his desire.
Would Bess feel the same about his own manor of Kenilworth? He doubted it, rather hopefully, since she already complained of the cost of upkeep on all the palaces she had inherited with her throne. And, Jesu knew, it cost him a treasure of gold marks to maintain and embellish his manor.
His planned addition of a great wing for Elizabeth’s next visit had already put him in debt, not that he was ever out of debt. He had always lived far above his means, borrowing from one estate to add to another. For what purpose? None but to honor Bess and show his love. “And damned if I change now,” he murmured.
“Sorry, my lord. Is there something I can bring you?”
“No, no, just thinking aloud.” He saw that it was Sir Christopher Hatton speaking beside him, one of the dozen or more gentlemen pensioners, men of good family and some wealth who stood guard about the queen. Hatton was tall and well made, with blond, curling hair, a man whom women would find handsome. Bess found him handsome; Robert had no doubt. He felt jealousy rising within him, always there when the queen looked fondly on another man. And she kept no man about her who was ill to look upon. She adored youth and beauty, which he would inevitably lose. It took a moment of strong will to keep his face from showing what was seething inside him.
Since their night at Rycote, they had kept their promise never to speak of it again, though he had never ceased to remember. At times, he thought he saw sweet memory on her face, but he was never certain.
Was Bess’s will to remain a virgin queen so strong that she could truly forget? Could she bewitch herself? He had proposed marriage time and again. Sometimes she had said yes, only to evade or deny the promise hours later. Sometimes she had not answered at all, leaving him in hope, or in anger and ultimately in despair. Yet, no matter how many years had passed, he had not forgotten the night they . . . He dared not think of it, lest it show on his face. He called on the endurance that life with her demanded, since life away from her grew no easier.
“Announce me, sir,” he said when he heard Elizabeth entering her privy chamber, although there was no need. Bess had long ago granted him entrance into her bedchamber upon a knock whenever he wanted, the only one of her courtiers so honored. His desire, now, was to immediately put Hatton in a less exalted place as a servant . . . mean natured, but thus Robert must be to closely guard his place in Bess’s court—and in her affections—or be lost in an instant and lonely hell.
“My lord of Leicester is come, Your Majesty,” Hatton announced rather too self-importantly.
“Yes, yes, Kit, we see him.”
So it was Kit now.
Hatton bowed. “Majesty, may I have your leave for the afternoon? There is a contest. . . .”
“A contest?” The queen, who loved games of skill and tournaments, looked interested.
“Aye, madam, at the archery butts in the near village of Molesey.” He bowed and added, “With the prize being a kiss from the prettiest maiden. I am woefully out of practice at the butts,” he said.
Elizabeth laughed. “But not at the lips, I vow.”
Robert frowned at Bess’s coquetry. It rubbed his heart raw to hear Bess jest so with anyone but him, though he had to hear it and bear it, as he always did, or leave her service if she would allow it. It was hell with her and an even hotter hell away from her.
At any rate, he didn’t believe Sir Christopher was not prepared for the contest. The man was excellent at tiltyard practice. If his bow was as talented as his lance, Hatton would be impressive.
“Ah.” The queen smiled and then sucked in her cheeks and pursed her lips, as she did when thinking. “Yes, go forth, Kit, and win your kiss.”
The gentlemen pensioner bowed, his hand on his heart, and stepped backward to the outer chamber, closing the door softly.
Bess looked to be in a light mood, smiling and playful, almost skipping to the window where Robert stood. “Ah, a village . . . delightful. How long since I have visited a village?”
“Last month on your progress, Majesty,” Robert said, trying to keep his tone from sarcasm and obviously failing.
Bess gave him a sharp look, missing nothing. She disliked being questioned in the least way. Agreement was her favorite sweet, even sweeter than her vanilla comfits.
Quickly, he smiled and knelt, looking up at her, knowing his features were none the worse for the soft morning light shining on them. “Would you like to walk in your perfume garden, Bess?” He had it in mind to have musicians playing behind the hedgerows for a special surprise.
“Later in the evening, perhaps, Robin, when it grows cooler. I have much work today . . . my marriage. Always my Parliament plagues me for marriage.” As she ever did, she gained the advantage in this old and to him threatening conversation.
“Then until the cool of the evening, Bess, I take my leave.”
She placed one hand fondly on his hair and gave him her other hand to kiss. He turned it palm up to imprint his lips, noting with satisfaction that she trembled slightly and turned her face from him as he left. She knew he could read desire in a woman’s face. Had he put it there? Or had Hatton? Robert clamped his mind around such a thought, unwilling to allow it to escape and torment him all the day. He was never sure; he was never unsure, but suspended in a vast space between. He caught his breath, his chest sore from holding so much inside.
Robert stopped in the outer chamber and frowned. She never refused a walk in her favorite garden on a sunny, breezy day. What had changed her? He stepped closer to her bedchamber doors.
“Anne.” He heard Elizabeth’s excited, slightly shrill voice. “Anne, I will dress as your maid and go to the archery contest.”
He heard a breathless enthusiasm in her voice.
“But, Majesty, you have many warrants from Cecil—beg pardon . . . no longer Sir Cecil, but now Lord Burghley, since you made him a baron this year.”
Pup! Pup! “My new-made Lord Burghley can wait for a few hours. It will be an adventure that I do not read in a love sonnet, but live for myself! Come, Anne, do you seek to deny me some small amusement?”
“Nay, nay! Of course not, Majesty . . . but shouldn’t we take a guard for your safety?”
“A royal guard would most certainly be recognized and that would quite spoil my quest. Dearest Anne, you are growing old and fearful before your time. Come, we are yet young. Adventure with me!”
The excitement in Bess’s voice echoed in Robert’s head as he spurred his feet to race toward his rooms, only to find one of the Earl of Shrewsbury’s sons, Lord Gilbert Talbot, blocking his way.
“Sir, I am hurrying to change and gather my favorite bow and truest arrows. Will your errand await a better time?”
“My lord,” Talbot said, bowing, “I think not. For a beautiful lady awaits you.”
Robert frowned at this presumption and the
scarcely concealed amusement on the youth’s face.
“What lady?”
“My lord earl, I may not mention her name, but she is one you know well and”—he bent forward toward Robert’s ear—“I believe is far gone in love with you.”
In spite of his better self, he was intrigued. “And her name?” It could be someone he did not suspect of such regard.
The youth’s voice became a whisper. “Lady Douglass Sheffield.”
Oh, Douglass. A beauty, true, but her husband had returned from Ireland, Robert knew, and she must leave court for her home. He quite liked her and for the past two years had soothed her loneliness and even at certain times had a real affection for her, but he could not stop now. “Talbot, tell my lady Sheffield that I will attend her later. I am now on an . . . urgent errand to the aid of Her Majesty.”
“Lady Sheffield says, my lord, that her need is also urgent.” He smirked.
“Later,” Robert said rather overloudly, but needing to move fast away from this curious lad who thought to collect more court gossip for his father, the Earl of Shewsbury, and his wife, Bess of Hardwick. Rumor had it that the earl, who guarded Mary, queen of Scots, was almost overcome by her charms . . . charms that had proved fatal to better men. A fleeting moment of clarity made Robert angry as well as hurried. How different was he from poor Shewsbury, both chasing the heart of a queen?
“Fortunate man!” the forward lad called, but Robert was already rounding the corner.
Douglass was lovely and fair and of a gentle nature. She had all but thrown herself into his bed, how many nights he could not count. Was he a eunuch to turn away from such willing beauty and satisfaction? He came from Bess every night scarcely able to sleep. Even a queen could not expect to keep his aroused manhood caged!
But he was on more urgent business and hurried on down rush-lighted corridors. “John,” he shouted to his servant Tamworth as he flung his antechamber door open, found his long-bow but not his arrows.
His man rushed from another room.
“Where are my arrows?”
“They are with the fletcher, my lord, their feathers needing to be renewed from long lack of use.”
“Hurry. Get them at once, or ones as good with straight shafts and sharp points . . . three fletches at the nock, mind.”
Tamworth was almost out the door on his last word. “Wait, John. Afterward, hurry to the stables and have my best Irish hunter saddled, then discover which way Sir Hatton rode, so that I can ride another way.”
He dressed in a suit of tight green velvet, the doublet embroidered with his arms of standing bear and double-crooked staff, a pair of purple-and-yellow hosen tight on his long legs held by the garter of a Garter knight, topping all with a peacock-feathered hat. He would be Robin the Hood this day and win a kiss from a maid . . . a particular maid . . . in disguise.
He downed a glass of wine and rushed to the stables, his stomach churning with excitement. It was just such an act of boldness that might topple Bess’s stubborn desire to remain unmarried. She loved surprises and daring, gallant men in equal measure. Today he would give her both.
At the stables, Tamworth held out his arrows, and when he sighted along their shafts, they looked to be the best. He waited impatiently while a groom handed him the reins of his favorite hunter. “My lord,” Tamworth whispered in his ear, “Sir Christopher took the west road. If you take the southwest road, the stable master assures me that you will arrive at nearly the same time.”
“Has the queen left yet?”
“Aye, my lord, in her second-best carriage and in a great hurry.”
Robert nodded and, grim-faced, leaped onto his saddle, gaining the stirrups and galloping through the south gate. He spurred his mount along the southwest road, scarcely wider than a path and not well traveled. He raised an arm to protect his feathered cap when hanging limbs grew too perilously low.
It was cooler on the wooded path, while Hatton would arrive sweating and dusty from the road. Robert, the Earl of Leicester, had not kept his place as supreme favorite with Elizabeth without practicing all the clever arts of courtship at his command. Though neither a poet nor a musician, he was the most practiced man in the courtly arts in this realm. Or perhaps any other, he thought, smiling to himself. He gave constant attention to every detail of dress and every opportunity to outshine Elizabeth’s minor favorites . . . and there was always a new man in the ascendancy—yesterday Heneage, today Hatton, tomorrow another, although Elizabeth did not put away old favorites, or get rid of them as Henry had done. They were promoted, if she deemed them clever enough, and kept in service near her, collected like the treasures in her bedside treasure box to remind her that many men sought her favor. Adoration was as necessary to Bess as breath itself. She would never get enough to fill the void of emptiness her early years had left . . . in fear of her father, without a mother, alone with her servants, suspected of participating in every threat to the throne, alternately bastard, princess and simply Lady Elizabeth, each title more than once. But she remained a princess in her own heart, knowing that one day she would be queen. Those who sought her downfall suspected it and could not dislodge her faith in her own destiny. The long travail had made her strong . . . perhaps too strong for any man.
His jaw tightened and he raised his proud head. The Earl of Leicester would never be collected into her treasure box. He would be her partner. Bess could not resist him forever . . . she loved him. He knew when a woman loved and wanted him. He had always known that about Bess, as she did about him. Although they could shake each other’s surety with others from time to time, love was always renewed when the hurt and emptiness of their separation could no longer be endured. Perhaps it was time to make her less sure of him. A man always there, like the little dogs that ran after her, was doomed to be less regarded . . . as a chair she didn’t need to look for before sitting.
Robert straightened in the saddle, spurring his horse through the woods and out upon the edge of Molesey to see Elizabeth’s empty carriage hidden just inside the trees. He rode on through smoke scented with roast ox. In moments, he reached the common grazing green and pond. An ox was indeed on a huge spit, and from the number of tethered horses, it was clear that the archery contest had drawn entrants from around the countryside. A kiss was not the grandest prize. . . . Winning and reputation were. But young men could always be in hope that more could follow a kiss. He grinned, knowing that about his own sex . . . and about himself.
He galloped onto the green, skidding to a stop, his great horse almost on its rump. No one missed his arrival.
Leaping from his horse, he threw the reins to a village lad and unfastened his bow and swiftly strung it. He stretched his shoulder and back muscles and sent a silent prayer to God that his archery skills had not faded since his last too-infrequent practice. And why should they? Once learned, the bow was like a galliard. A man just needed to call the moves to mind and his body would answer. Pray God and all His saints!
Surveying the crowd surrounding the green, he easily spotted his sister-in-law, the Countess of Warwick, looking straight at him without surprise. He bowed to her, removing his cap and smoothing its long peacock feather of green, yellow and purple. A tall serving maid hid behind Anne with a basket over her arm. A reddish curl peeked from under her rough hood, though she wore new satin slippers that no serving maid would ever be provided by a mistress.
To Robert’s eyes, Elizabeth, without her Mask of Youth and fine gown, looked much as she had in 1550, at seventeen in her brother, Edward’s court. There, she had assumed a demure, almost Puritan dress and demeanor meant to thwart the ugly rumors of her seduction and pregnancy by Lord Admiral Thomas Seymour, Catherine Parr’s husband. The admiral had high ambitions: to marry Princess Elizabeth, to overthrow his brother Edward Seymour, Lord Protector of England, and to rule England himself, eventually to be a king. By 1550, when Robert and Bess were together at Richmond, Thomas Seymour was an admiral without a head and Elizabeth was cautious with
male admirers, though not with Robert Dudley.
But on the Molesey green, the Bess who was now Queen Elizabeth was no longer used to hiding her true self. Robert could plainly see that her bearing was certainly not that of a lady’s maid. There was no way she could disguise that confident carriage of head and body.
“My lord,” Hatton said, bowing, “I did not know you were shooting today.”
“Sir Christopher, I decided it was time I practiced as every knight should.”
“I never miss practice myself, Lord Robert.”
“Admirable,” Leicester answered, the word pushed between his teeth.
Hatton bent and strung his bow. “May the best man win.”
“Indeed, sir,” Leicester said, galled at the probable double meaning behind those words and ready to teach the upstart a lesson. Robert made ready to walk toward the lineup of archers.
“My lord,” Hatton said, daring to put a hand on Robert’s sleeve, “I would hope to be your friend.”
“My friend, sir?”
“Aye, we have much in common.”
“How so?”
“We both love and serve Her Majesty and want only her good. Is that not so?”
Robert stared at him to see if he saw any devious notion on that too-handsome face, but there was not. Could the man be so naive? It was their mutual love for the queen that made them natural enemies, not friends.
Hatton saluted with his bow and left Leicester to take his place in the line, undecided if here was a rascal or a true man.
Robert, as was his right by rank, took first place ahead of Hatton. He adjusted his arm guard and studied the course. It was laid out in the ancient way of roving marks, where each archer would shoot to a mark and then shoot from that mark to another, gathering points along the way, depending on how close to the mark his arrow lodged.
