by Jeane Westin
Elizabeth would remove again as soon as she was well enough to travel by a coach that rattled bones and sometimes broke them. Until that day, her fireplaces roared with fires to burn away all ill humors.
The sound of four viols and the queen’s boy choristers’ sweet voices singing “Rejoice Unto the Lord” floated through from the outer hall as Kate knelt before the queen and her councilors with a platter containing a peacock with its beautifully colored feathers elaborately wedged under and arranged on the carcass as in life.
The queen lowered a dispatch and took notice.
“Majesty, baked peacock.”
“Eat to please your stomachs, good sirs,” Elizabeth said, waving food away from her own silver plate, taking a little watered wine, but scarce aware of Kate.
“My queen, you should eat something,” Dudley said, leaning over her chair to reach her ear. “If you eat the meat, I will dine on the feathers.”
Elizabeth smiled, but it was a pale response in contrast to her usual appreciation of Robert’s wit.
“We have no hunger when we read of these new demands for gold and men . . . always more, Robin. Is my purse bottomless?” she asked, and his attempt to jolly her was wholly dismissed.
The carver stepped forward to take the platter from Kate. Finding steel in her legs and back, she stood up with as much determined ease as a very pregnant woman could manage. Her babe gave her a sharp kick of complaint, while Kate all the while damned the look of anticipation on Saintloe’s long, disagreeable face. How had such a woman come up from nothing to be one of the queen’s ladies, when Elizabeth demanded beauty in her servants? Kate hid a smile. Of course, the queen meant to keep an eye on the wealthy, thrice-married schemer, who gained a little better title and more property with each wedding. Lucky for Saintloe that she was married and had children before she became Elizabeth’s lady.
Kate backed to the chamber door and waited, resting her aching spine against the tapestry wall. She could hear Saintloe and the others exhale, somewhat piqued by the lack of drama they’d anticipated if Kate had been unable to rise from her knees after serving the queen. At the same time, they were relieved not to have the queen’s fury fall on all within her sight just yet.
Elizabeth bent over the table, tracing her finger along a map of the French coast, always hesitating over the port of Calais, while Dudley hovered near. A moment later, she slumped in her chair, her face paler than its natural pallor, her cheeks flushed.
“Majesty,” said Cecil, standing, his dinner unfinished, “you are so recently recovered from your fevers that—”
“Yes, good Sir William,” Elizabeth said, sinking deeper into the upholstery. “Later this afternoon we will continue. Remain ready.”
The councilors bowed and left, Dudley last. “Bess,” he whispered.
She shook her head, one hand squeezing it. “Return, my lord, before the others, when my head does not ache so.”
He bowed, his hand covering his heart, worry on his face.
Mistress Ashley was immediately hovering over Elizabeth, her ample bosom ready to mother. “I will prepare your bed, sweet girl. Even in youth you were prey to megrims, fevers and dropsical swellings when so much was demanded.”
The queen shook her head slowly. “This unusual heat, Nurse . . . A cool bath will set me to rights. Prepare my bathing room.”
Ashley looked alarmed. “But you have taken one bath previously this month. It is dangerous to—”
As her ladies muttered agreement, Her Majesty shook her head, her complexion now ashen. “As I command.”
“It is done, Majesty,” Blanche Parry said, always ready to step to the fore.
The queen nodded. “Parry, before my lords return, you must give me my true complexion.”
“Majesty, my carmine pots are always ready,” a pleased Parry responded.
Later, the queen returned from her bathing room, announcing she was refreshed, as she had expected. Kate, Blanche and Mistress Ashley dressed her in clean linen and a silver-and-gold silk brocade gown fit for receiving her councilors when they returned.
“Now leave us to study these dispatches,” Her Majesty commanded.
As the other ladies backed away to an outer chamber, Kate carried the queen’s wet, discarded bathing gown into a closet to place in a wooden tub with the other linen for the mistress of the body to give to the royal washerwomen on the morrow.
Longing for her bed to rest in, Kate was almost at the threshold of the privy bedchamber when she heard the door open, followed by Dudley’s voice. Something in the softness and intimacy of his tone caused her to step back and hold her breath.
“Bess, you force yourself too greatly to your duty,” he said, concern and caring almost smothering his words. “Would that I—”
“Robin, I am queen,” Elizabeth said in a tone that said no one could take on her burdens.
It was all she needed to say, and in the following silence, Kate thought to slip away. But one step outside the closet and she hastily drew back again to hide herself.
The queen was standing before her windows, her head on Dudley’s shoulder, his arm tight about her.
“Sweet lady,” he murmured. “Most dearest heart.”
“Robin.” The queen breathed his name. “Kiss me, sweetheart. Your mouth is my heart’s ease.”
Kate heard Dudley’s next words tumbling from his mouth. “Here is one for your eyelid. Now the other, each in turn . . . a hundred times.”
Elizabeth sighed.
“And here. And here. And lastly here, sweetest.”
Kate held her breath.
“Don’t leave me ever, Robin,” Elizabeth whispered, and the whisper carried to Kate.
Her heart broke in the silence that followed. She could feel their hunger nearly swamp the room and she understood it, felt it with Elizabeth, ached with it for her. The queen loved him, yet denied herself loving. This queen who could command anything on this island could not command her own happiness. As Kate couldn’t. They were like sisters in that. Sisters.
“Bess, you’re burning hot! The fever is back. Ashley was right: You shouldn’t have gone to your bath.”
“Robin.”
Kate heard a noise and stepped from the closet in alarm to see Elizabeth slumped to the floor.
Dudley lifted her slender body into his arms and carried her to her great bed. He looked up, his eyes wild, and spied Kate. “Stay with her. Do not leave her on your life!”
He rushed from the privy chamber, calling for the queen’s ladies and the queen’s physicians.
Mary Sidney was first to reach Kate’s side as she knelt by the bed. “Call Mistress Ashley, Mary. Bring rose water and linen,” Kate next ordered Saintloe, who had not approached closer than midroom, keeping her pomander to her nose.
“Too much ado,” Elizabeth murmured, trying to rise.
“Majesty, quiet yourself,” Kate said, gently pushing Elizabeth’s shoulders to her pillows. “Lord Dudley has gone for your doctors.”
“We want him . . . here. Only Ro . . . bin,” the queen said, not in her usual commanding voice, but as a plaintive plea.
“He will come soon and will not leave you,” Kate said close to Elizabeth’s ear. “Rest now, Majesty. He loves you and all will be well.”
Elizabeth opened her eyes, her face now flushed red. “Don’t leave me, cousin.”
“Never,” Kate said, and meant it with all her heart. They were one now, two women of the same blood who loved in silence, each unable to openly have the man they desired, both keeping their longing buried deep from other eyes . . . for different reasons, but with the same hurtful consequences.
The queen’s fever raged for several days, but the pocks did not come. For it was the small pocks, Kate knew long before the doctors dared to say it. She also knew that if the pocks did not come, it was a sure sign of a severe case. The queen would surely die. She heard these words whispered from the antechamber and felt the mantle of despair settle about them.
&nb
sp; Kate snatched what sleep she could at Elizabeth’s bedside, and on the evening of the third day, the queen came to herself after hours of senselessness.
Cecil and her councilors hovered near the outer door of the stifling chamber, vinegar cloths tied about their noses and mouths. “Majesty,” Cecil’s muffled voice begged, “you must name your heir.”
Elizabeth turned eyes bright with fever on Kate, kneeling exhausted by her bed. “You get your wish, cousin,” the queen whispered through her swollen throat. “You will see me dead.”
Kate was horrified, the more so because in anger she had once wished Elizabeth dead, but not now, not like this. She leaned close to the queen’s ear, tears falling hot down her cheeks, her life and her babe’s life already at risk. “No, Majesty, I do not wish it. On my hope for heaven, I do not.”
It was the expected response, but also true. Suppressing her own needs, even to risking her own life, was the ancient fealty a subject owed the monarch, and it was a part of her, in her blood, fixed at the moment of her birth. While her head held her fear that Cecil and the council might force her onto the throne, her heart fled from the thought that Elizabeth must die.
“Majesty, name an heir for England and for your people,” Cecil repeated urgently. “Your doctors can do nothing more.”
But the queen had lost her power of speech.
A commotion at the outer door caused all to turn as Robert Dudley broke through the crowd of councilors. “By Christ’s blood, she will not die! I have brought a German physician who has cured many close to death.” Dudley pulled a robed doctor, carrying a bundle, into the room. “Save her, Burcot, or you’re a dead man this day. By my sword you are!”
Kate and Mary Sidney stood aside while the doctor examined the queen’s body for the pocks, then wrapped her in red flannel and carried her to the hearth, laying her on pillows before a roaring fire.
For two hours Elizabeth lay, eyes closed, mute; then she regained her speech.
Cecil was relentless in his duty. “Majesty, assure the succession! None of your council wants the Scots queen, though some do favor Lady Katherine Grey, according to your father’s will. Tell us your wishes.”
Kate waited, her chest tight at the thought of what might come next. Elizabeth would not have named her in life, but now there was no choice for the queen, or for her mistress of the wardrobe. She bowed her head. If it must be, then it was surely God’s will, and she could not fight that.
“Lord Dudley,” the queen croaked between cracked lips, “Robin will be regent of England with a pension of twenty thousand pounds . . . nay, fifty thousand.” Elizabeth took a gasping breath. “And his faithful body servant, Tamworth, will receive five hundred pounds per annum for life.”
Kate knew her face must reflect the shock she saw in others’. Dudley to rule? And so princely a sum to Dudley’s manservant must be meant to buy his silence of all he knew. What else could be thought?
Immediately, the councilors spoke as one: “But, Majesty—”
Elizabeth, her chest heaving with the effort, cried out, “Although I love and have loved Lord Robert, upon my faith, nothing improper has passed between us.”
Kate knew the queen left her beloved Robin the realm, her most precious possession, and by her very act branded Robert Dudley her lover. And with the legacy to the servant who slept each night at his door, who would now believe Robert was named regent over all the peers of England for any other reason?
Locked on Cecil’s face, Elizabeth’s eyes shouted, if she could have given them voice, Believe me! Believe me!
Dudley had the intelligence to say nothing even after loud, angry protests rose from the councilors.
Kate moved to a chair, needing to sink into it, perhaps never to rise. She was tired unto death and fearful for her babe.
“Look, my lords,” the doctor said in his thick German accent, bending near the queen, “the red spots! They appear on her face and arms. She vill live.”
“Will she lose her youthful beauty?” Dudley murmured low, for only the doctor to hear. “That would be a kind of death for Bess.”
Burcot shrugged. “We vill soon know, my lord. Beauty is give by Gott and may be take by Him.”
Kate felt her head falling forward.
Dudley took her arm and lifted her from her chair. “Come, my lady, you can do no more.” He lowered his voice. “We have both won and lost a throne today, and that is a day’s work for anyone.” He spoke aloud next. “You must rest. She will need your care later.” He led Kate from the privy chamber. “Sir William,” he said to Cecil, “I will return as soon as I have escorted Lady Katherine to her chamber.” With a twist of a smile, Dudley added, “Do not fear, my Lord Chancellor; I will not steal the domed throne in the presence chamber while I am gone.”
Cecil nodded, his mouth drawn into a grim line. Kate knew he was still dismayed at the queen’s startling bequests and none too happy at Dudley’s jesting about it.
Kate wondered what else Robert could do but jest. They had both smelled the crown this day. But she was too relieved and too tired to wonder what he felt. Sleep was the only thing she wanted—indeed, must have.
The halls were full of clusters of courtiers calling to Dudley: “How goes it with the queen?” “Does Her Majesty yet live?”
They left much rejoicing that the queen lived behind them.
“I’m pained to report it,” Robert whispered in her ear, “but word has come that our friend Lady Jane is dead of the pocks.”
Kate sagged in his arms, her head lolling against his shoulder, almost too weary to replace exhaustion with regret for Edward’s sister, but quite aware their only friend was gone. The small pocks took young and old, peasant and queen. There was nothing she could do, not even for herself. She stared at her own skin through weepy eyes, expecting the red spots to appear as she gazed. She didn’t know for whom she wept, perhaps for all—queen, Jane and the countless others on their last journey by torchlight to the lime pits.
Dudley delivered Kate to her nurse. “Give her a sleeping draft,” he said to Sybil.
Kate started to express her thanks for his care, but he was already racing back down the halls to Elizabeth’s apartments. She waved away the draft, thinking not to need it.
“Oh, lady,” said Sybil, “I be sorry in my heart to hear the dreadful news from France.”
“What news?” Kate asked, sitting on her bed, now suddenly more alert than she’d been for hours.
“Why, about the Earl of Hertford, your—” She stopped, knowing not to say the word husband aloud.
Kate fell back onto the bed, grabbing at Sybil’s arm. “What about Ned, Sybil? Not dead! Please God, not that! Tell me at once!”
“He is wounded, my love, in a bad way, they say, and—”
“No! Jesu, please . . . This is too much to bear.”
Sybil cradled Kate in her arms. “Hush now, my babe. All will be well.”
But Kate was no longer listening, the pain in her belly following her into a soft, dark place empty of dreams.
“Quiet yerself,” Sybil was saying over and over when Kate woke with a cry, memory flooding in. The thick candles around her bed burned low.
“Ned,” she groaned.
“There be no more news for ye from France.”
“My child?” Kate murmured her next question, her hand searching for her belly under the thick coverlet, and finding the familiar mound under her shift.
“The babe did not come, lady,” Sybil whispered softly, as if her words would fly to the queen’s apartments. “I be stoppin’ a small bleeding. Ye be fine with sleep and food. But the babe be not far off. Ye must get away.”
Kate closed her eyes again, a murmured prayer on her lips, then struggled to sit up. “But the queen?”
“My lord Dudley sends to tell ye that Her Majesty improves with the hours and does not ask for ye.”
Kate nodded. Elizabeth could no longer pretend that Katherine Grey, niece of Henry VIII, daughter of the Duke of Su
ffolk, was in line to succeed her. Twice the queen had used her, once to the Scots ambassador and again at the council meeting. But on her deathbed, she had named Dudley. The game was over. Elizabeth could not think to use Kate again to thwart demands for a royal marriage. Jesu be thanked. No more pretense now. The queen must let Kate and Ned go.
That happy thought did not last for the space of a minute. With the prospect of Dudley looming over them, the council and Parliament might try to force Henry’s will on Elizabeth.
Escape! Kate knew she must flee Hampton Court to Ned’s house in Westminster until the babe came, then to France. If birth was imminent, she could wait no longer. But how to leave the palace? She must have help to get away . . . a barge, a carriage. But she had no friends. Only one name came to her mind.
Robert Dudley. He had his motives, but he had been kind in his way, and now that Jane was dead, he was her only help. And he was her brother-in-law. He must find a way out for her.
Sybil warmed mutton broth over a brazier and spooned it into Kate, who slowly regained some energy. The nurse constantly felt Kate’s skin for fever and examined her body for spots. Finally, on the second day, she smiled. “No pocks, my lady, though I hear Lady Sidney, Lord Robert’s sister, be hard taken and greatly disfigured.”
“Mary Sidney? I will pray for her.”
“The good Lord be watchin’ over ye, lady, for yer little babe’s sake.”
Every word of the queen for the next days was of swift recovery, and Sybil brought news that the entire court was celebrating and praising God, seeing the queen’s escape as the hand of God protecting His anointed, His face smiling on England.
“It be said, lady, that Lord Dudley does not move from Her Majesty’s chambers except to sleep on a straw pallet in her antechamber, for she has the doors open and calls him to her at all hours.”
Kate listened, taking more manchet white bread dipped in good broth. “Tell me immediately, Sybil, when he leaves the queen’s side to sleep in his own chambers.”
