The Virgin's Lover

by Philippa Gregory

  “I wouldn’t dream of it,” Mrs. Forster said. “We won’t leave you all on your own.”

  “I insist,” Amy said. “You were looking forward to it, and as Mr. Forster said yesterday, if you want some ribbons or something, the first day is always best.”

  “We can all go tomorrow, when you are better,” Lizzie put in.

  Amy rounded on her. “No!” she said. “Didn’t you hear me? I just said. I want you all to go, as you planned. I shall stay behind. But I want you all to go. Please! My head throbs so, I cannot stand an argument about it! Just go!”

  “But will you dine alone?” Mrs. Forster asked. “If we all go?”

  “I shall dine with Mrs. Owen,” Amy said. “If I feel well enough. And I shall see you all when you come home again. But you must go!”

  “Very well,” Lizzie said, throwing a warning glance at Mrs. Forster. “Don’t get so distressed, Amy dear. We’ll all go and we’ll tell you all about it tonight, when you have had a good sleep and are feeling better.”

  At once the irritability left Amy, and she smiled. “Thank you, Lizzie,” she said. “I shall be able to rest if I know you are all having a good time at the fair. Don’t come back till after dinner.”

  “No,” Lizzie Oddingsell said. “And if I see some nice blue ribbons that would match your riding hat I will buy them for you.”

  The queen went to the Royal Chapel in Windsor Castle and walked in the garden on Sunday morning. Laetitia Knollys walked demurely behind her, carrying her shawl and a book of devotional poems in case the queen chose to sit and read.

  Robert Dudley walked to meet her as she stood, looking toward the river where a few little wherry boats plied up and down to London and back.

  He bowed in greeting. “Good morning,” he said. “Are you not tired after your celebrations yesterday?”

  “No,” Elizabeth said. “I am never tired by dancing.”

  “I thought you might come to me, even though you had said you wouldn’t. I couldn’t sleep without you.”

  She put her hand out to him. “It is still my time,” she said sweetly. “It will only be another day or two.”

  He covered her hand with his own. “Of course,” he said. “You know I would never press you. And when we declare our marriage and we sleep in the same bed every night you shall order it just as you please. Don’t be afraid of that.”

  Elizabeth, who had thought that she would always order everything just as she pleased by right, and not by another’s permission, kept her face perfectly calm. “Thank you, my love,” she said sweetly.

  “Shall we walk?” he asked her.

  She shook her head. “I am going to sit and read.”

  “I will leave you then,” he said. “I have an errand to run but I shall be back by dinner time.”

  “Where are you going?”

  “Just to look at some horses in Oxfordshire,” he said vaguely. “I doubt they will be worth buying but I promised to go and see them.”

  “On a Sunday?” she said, faintly disapproving.

  “I’ll just look,” he said. “There is no sin in looking at a horse on a Sunday, surely. Or shall you be a very strict Pope?”

  “I shall be a strict supreme governor of the church,” she said with a smile.

  He leaned toward her as if he would kiss her cheek. “Then give me a divorce,” he whispered in her ear.

  Amy, seated in the silent house, waited for Robert’s arrival, as he had promised in his letter. The house was quite empty except for old Mrs. Owen, who had gone to sleep in her room after an early dinner. Amy had walked in the garden, and then, obedient to the instructions in Robert’s letter, gone to wait in her room in the empty house.

  The window overlooked the drive and she sat in the window seat and watched for the Dudley standard and the cavalcade of riders.

  “Perhaps he has quarreled with her,” she whispered to herself. “Perhaps she is tired of him. Or perhaps she has finally agreed to marry the archduke and they know that they have to part.”

  She thought for a moment. Whatever the reason, I have to take him back without reproach. That would be my duty to him as his wife. She paused. She could not stop her heart from lifting. And, in any case, whatever the reason, I would take him back without reproach. He is my husband, he is my love, the only love of my life. If he comes back to me— She broke off from the thought. I can’t even imagine how happy I would be if he were to come back to me.

  She heard the sound of a single horse and she looked out of the window. It was not one of Robert’s high-bred horses, and not Robert, riding high and proud on the horse, one hand on the taut reins, one hand on his hip. It was another man, bowed low over the neck of the horse, his hat pulled down over his face.

  Amy waited for the sound of the peal of the bell, but there was silence. She thought perhaps he had gone to the stable yard and would find it empty since all the lads had gone to the fair. She rose to her feet, thinking that she had better go and greet this stranger herself, since no servants were at home. But as she did so, her bedroom door silently opened, and a tall stranger came in quietly and shut the door behind him.

  Amy gasped. “Who are you?”

  She could not see his face, he still had his hat pulled low over his eyes. His cape was of dark blue wool, without a badge of rank. She did not recognize his height nor his broad build.

  “Who are you?” she asked again, her voice sharp with fear. “Answer me! And how dare you come into my room!”

  “Lady Amy Dudley?” he asked, his voice low and quiet.

  “Yes.”

  “Sir Robert Dudley’s wife?”

  “Yes. And you are?”

  “He said for me to come to you. He wants you to come to him. He loves you once more. Look out of the window, he is waiting for you.”

  With a little cry, Amy turned to the window and at once the man stepped behind her. In one swift motion he took her jaw in his hands and quickly twisted her neck sideways and upward. It broke with a crack, and she slumped in his hands without even a cry.

  He lowered her to the floor, listening intently. There was no sound in the house at all. She had sent everyone away, as she had been told to do. He picked her up, she was as light as a child, her cheeks still flushed pink from the moment that she thought that Robert had come to love her. The man held her in his arms and carried her carefully from the room, down the little winding stone stair, a short flight of half a dozen steps, and laid her at the foot, as if she had fallen.

  He paused and listened again. Still, the house was silent. Amy’s hood was slipping back off her head, and her gown was crumpled, showing her legs. He did not feel he could leave her uncovered. Gently, he pulled down the skirts of the gown and put the hood straight on her head. Her forehead was still warm, her skin soft to his touch. It was like leaving a sleeping child.

  Quietly, he went out through the outer door. His horse was tethered outside. It raised its head when it saw him but it did not whinny. He closed the door behind him, mounted his horse, and turned its head away from Cumnor Place to Windsor.

  Amy’s body was found by two servants who had come home from the fair, a little ahead of the others. They were courting and had hoped to steal an hour alone together. When they came into the house they saw her, lying at the foot of the stairs, her skirts pulled down, her hood set tidily on her head. The girl screamed and fainted, but the young man gently picked up Amy, and laid her on her bed. When Mrs. Forster came home they met her at the gate and told her that Lady Dudley was dead from falling down the stairs.

  “Amy!” Lizzie Oddingsell breathed her name and flung herself from her horse and raced up the stairs to Amy’s bedroom.

  She was laid on her bed, her neck turned horridly so that her face was twisted toward the door, though her shoulders lay flat. Her expression was the blankness of death, her skin was chill as stone.

  “Oh, Amy, what have you done?” Lizzie mourned. “What have you done? We’d have found a way round things, we’d have foun
d somewhere to go. He still cared for you, he would never have neglected you. He might have come back. Oh, Amy, dearest Amy, what have you done?”

  A message must be sent to Sir Robert. “What shall I say?” Mrs. Forster demanded of Lizzie Oddingsell. “What should I write? What can I tell him?”

  “Just say she’s dead,” Lizzie said furiously. “He can come down himself if he wants to know why or how.”

  Mrs. Forster wrote a brief note and sent it to Windsor by her servant John Bowes. “Make sure you give it to Sir Robert, into his own hand, and to no one else,” she cautioned him, uncomfortably aware that they all were in the very center of a massive breaking scandal. “And tell no one else of this business, and come straight home without talking to anyone but him.”

  At nine o’clock on Monday morning Robert Dudley strode to the queen’s apartments and walked in without glancing to any of his friends and adherents who were talking and standing around.

  He marched up to the throne and bowed. “I have to speak with you alone,” he said without any preamble. Laetitia Knollys noticed that his hand was gripping his hat so tightly that the knuckles were gleaming white.

  Elizabeth took in the tension in his face, and got to her feet at once. “Of course,” she said. “Shall we walk?”

  “In your chamber,” he said tautly.

  Her eyes widened at the sharpness of his tone but she took his arm and the two of them went through the doors into her privy chamber.

  “Well!” one of her ladies-in-waiting remarked softly. “He is more like a husband every day. Soon he will be ordering us as he orders her.”

  “Something’s happened,” guessed Laetitia.

  “Nonsense,” said Mary Sidney. “It will be a new horse or something. He rode to Oxfordshire to look at a horse only yesterday.”

  As soon as the door was shut behind them, Robert thrust his hand into his doublet and pulled out a letter. “I’ve just had this,” he said shortly. “It is from Cumnor Place where Amy has been staying with my friends. Amy, my wife, is dead.”

  “Dead?” Elizabeth said, too loud. She clapped her hand over her mouth and looked at Robert. “How dead?”

  He shook his head. “It doesn’t say,” he said. “It is from Mrs. Forster and the damn fool of a woman just says that she is sorry to inform me that Amy died today. The letter is dated Sunday. My servant is on his way to find out what has happened.”

  “Dead?” she repeated.

  “Yes,” he said. “And so I am free.”

  She gave a little gasp and staggered. “Free. Of course you are.”

  “God knows I would not have had her die,” he said hastily. “But her death sets us free, Elizabeth. We can declare our betrothal. I shall be king.”

  “I’m speechless,” she said. She could hardly take her breath.

  “I too,” he said. “Such a sudden change, and so unexpected.”

  She shook her head. “It’s unbelievable. I knew she was in poor health…”

  “I thought she was well enough,” he said. “She never complained of anything more than a little pain. I don’t know what it can be. Perhaps she fell from her horse?”

  “We had better go out,” Elizabeth said. “Someone will bring the news to court. We had better not hear it together. Everyone will look at us and wonder what we are thinking.”

  “Yes,” he said. “But I had to tell you at once.”

  “Of course, I understand. But we had better go out now.”

  Suddenly he snatched her to him and took a deep, hungry kiss. “Soon they will all know that you are my wife,” he promised her. “We will rule England together. I am free; our life together starts right now!”

  “Yes,” she said, pulling away from him. “But we had better go out.”

  Again he checked her at the door. “It is as if it were God’s will,” he said wonderingly. “That she should die and set me free at this very moment, when we are ready to marry, when we have the country at peace, when we have so much to do. ‘This is the Lord’s doing; it is marvelous in our eyes.’”

  Elizabeth recognized the words she had said at her own accession to the throne. “You think that this death will make you king,” she said, testing him. “As Mary’s death made me queen.”

  Robert nodded, his face bright and glad. “We shall be King and Queen of England together,” he said. “And we will make an England as glorious as Camelot.”

  “Yes,” she said, her lips cold. “But we should go out now.”

  In the presence chamber Elizabeth looked around for Cecil and when he came in, she beckoned him to her. Sir Robert was in a window embrasure talking casually to Sir Francis Knollys about trade with the Spanish Netherlands.

  “Sir Robert has just told me that his wife is dead,” she said, half covering her mouth with her hand.

  “Indeed,” Cecil said steadily, his face a mask to the watching courtiers.

  “He says he does not know the cause.”

  Cecil nodded.

  “Cecil, what the devil is happening? I told the Spanish ambassador that she was ill, as you told me to do. But this is so sudden. Has he murdered her? He will claim me as his own and I shall not be able to say no.”

  “I should wait and see if I were you,” Cecil said.

  “But what shall I do?” she demanded urgently. “He says that he will be King of England.”

  “Do nothing for the time being,” Cecil said. “Wait and see.”

  Abruptly she turned into the bay of the window and dragged him in beside her. “You shall tell me more,” she demanded fiercely.

  Cecil put his mouth to her ear and whispered quietly. Elizabeth kept her face turned away from the court to look out of the window. “Very well,” she said to Cecil, and turned back to the court.

  “Now,” she announced. “I see Sir Nielson there. Good day, Sir Nielson. And how is business in Somerset?”

  Laetitia Knollys stood before Sir William Cecil’s desk while the rest of the court was waiting to be called to dinner.

  “Yes?”

  “They are saying that Robert Dudley is going to murder his wife and that the queen knows all about it.”

  “Are they? And why are they saying such a slanderous lie?”

  “Is it because you started it?”

  Sir William smiled at her and thought again what a thorough Boleyn girl she was: the quickness of the Boleyn wit and the enchanting Howard indiscretion.

  “I?”

  “Someone overheard you telling the Spanish ambassador that the queen would be ruined if she marries Dudley and you can’t stop her, she’s determined.” Laetitia ticked off the first point on her slim fingers.

  “And?”

  “Then the queen tells the Spanish ambassador, in my own hearing, that Amy Dudley is dead.”

  “Does she?” Cecil looked surprised.

  “She said ‘dead or nearly so,’ ” Laetitia quoted. “So everyone thinks that we are being prepared for the news of her death by some mystery illness, that when it comes they will announce their marriage and the widower Robert Dudley will be the next king.”

  “And what does everyone think will happen then?” Cecil asked politely.

  “Now that, no one dare say very loud, but some men would give you a wager that her uncle will come marching down from Newcastle at the head of the English army and kill him.”

  “Really?”

  “And others think there will be an uprising which the French would pay for to put Mary, Queen of Scots, on the throne.”

  “Indeed.”

  “And others think there would be an uprising which the Spanish would pay for, to put Katherine Grey on the throne, and keep Mary out.”

  “These are very wild predictions,” Cecil complained. “But they seem to cover all possibilities. And what do you think, my lady?”

  “I think that you will have a plan up your sleeve which allows for these dangers to the realm,” she said and gave him a roguish little smile.

  “We should hope I do,” he
said. “For these are very grave dangers.”

  “D’you think he’s worth it?” Laetitia asked him suddenly. “She is risking her throne to be with him, and she is the most cold-hearted woman I know. Don’t you think he must be the most extraordinary lover for her to risk so much?”

  “I don’t know,” Cecil said dampeningly. “Neither I nor any man in England seems to find him very irresistible. On the contrary.”

  “Just us silly girls then.” She smiled.

  Elizabeth feigned illness in the afternoon; she could not tolerate being in private with Robert, whose exultation was hard to conceal, and she was waiting all the time for a message from Cumnor Place which would bring the news of Amy’s death to court. She gave out that she would dine alone in her room and go early to bed. “You can sleep in my room, Kat,” she said. “I want your company.”

  Kat Ashley looked at her mistress’s pallor and at the redness of the skin where she was picking at her nails. “What’s happened now?” she demanded.

  “Nothing,” Elizabeth said abruptly. “Nothing. I just want to rest.”

  But she could not rest. She was awake by dawn, seated at her desk with her Latin grammar before her, translating an essay on the vanity of fame. “What are you doing that for?” Kat asked sleepily, rising from her bed.

  “To stop myself thinking of anything else,” Elizabeth said grimly.

  “What is the matter?” asked Kat. “What has happened?”

  “I can’t say,” Elizabeth replied. “It’s so bad that I can’t tell even you.”

  She went to chapel in the morning and then back to her rooms. Robert walked beside her as they came back from her chapel. “My servant has written me a long letter to tell me what happened,” he said quietly. “It seems that Amy fell down a flight of stairs and broke her neck.”

  Elizabeth went white for a moment, then she recovered. “At least it was quick,” she said.

  A man bowed before her and Elizabeth paused and gave him her hand; Robert stepped back and she went on alone.

  In her dressing room, Elizabeth changed into her riding clothes, wondering if they would indeed all be going hunting. The ladies of her court were waiting with her when, at last, Kat came into the room and said, “Sir Robert Dudley is outside in the presence chamber. He says he has something to tell you.”