Tired and thirsty, but filled with a sense of great urgency, I rode up to the palace gates and, without so much as stopping to be acknowledged by the guards, went on to the inner courtyard and hurried inside. My grooms were right behind me.
I knew Nonsuch well, having often stayed there during my years as maid of honor and bedchamber lady to the queen. I made my way to the royal apartments and on into the chamber where the council usually met.
“I am the Countess of Leicester,” I announced to the guards at the door. “I bring vital information for my husband.”
One of the guards knew me. With a nod he opened the chamber door.
I burst in, and looked anxiously around the council table for my husband.
He was not there.
Instead I found myself looking into the shocked, alarmed faces of William Cecil (who had become Lord Burghley), Francis Walsingham, and my father.
“No, Lady Leicester! You ought not to be here!” cried one of the other councilors. “You are not allowed at court! The queen—”
“Where is my husband? Why is he not among you?” I demanded, my voice tight.
“Father! Where is Robert?”
But my father merely threw up his hands and turned his head away.
“What is it? Has something happened? Is he with his soldiers?”
None of the men would look at me. Several were muttering to one another.
Then an awful thought struck me. Before anyone could stop me I ran out of the council chamber and into the queen’s private apartments, which were immediately adjacent to it.
The first room was empty, in the second was only a startled boy, sweeping up the ashes in the hearth.
But in the third room, the queen’s small, private dressing room, I found them together.
I stopped at the threshold. I caught my breath. I could not believe what I was seeing.
Robert was kneeling before the queen, who was standing, his hand on one of her wrinkled, scrawny bare legs, reaching up toward that part of her that Cecelia always scornfully called “her royal maidenhead.”
She wore only the scantiest of lacy undergarments. Her aging, scraggy body, withered and puckered and white as a mushroom, was ugly. The room was filled with the scent of musk. The musk with which Robert scented his codpieces.
I stood, dumbstruck. The queen’s face turned bright red. She shouted for her guard. Robert, pale and frightened, lowered his wayward hand and got to his feet, standing in front of Elizabeth, shielding her from my unwelcome stare.
Then, in an instant, before the guards could arrive and seize me, I was out of the room, my grooms at my heels, hurrying not along the swept, torchlit corridors of the public part of the palace but along the narrow, dark, urine-stained warren of corridors where the servants ran, carrying loads of food, pails and buckets, firewood and bedding. I ran among the throng, my eyes blinded with tears, stumbling on the uneven stones beneath my feet and wanting to cry out no, no, no, with every painful step.
THIRTY-SIX
“You must understand. You must.”
I heard Robert’s throaty, pleading voice through the thick oaken door of our bedchamber at Wanstead. I had gone back there, wounded and heartsick, feeling betrayed, angry, cheated—and filled with an overwhelming desire to lash out. At my husband, at the queen, at the world.
Yet once I was back in my own home my arms felt as though they were made of iron. I could not move. I managed to go in to see little Denbigh, and found him in the same state as he had been when I left. Still clinging to life, but painfully thin and feeble.
Exhausted, I went to our bedchamber, needing to lie down and rest, when I heard Robert’s voice outside the door. Evidently he had ridden after me from the palace. My heart sank, hearing him speak.
“Please, Lettie. Let me in. Let me explain.”
I had locked the door, and meant to keep it locked. I remained silent.
“Lettie!” He banged on the door with his fist. “Lettie!”
I put my hands over my ears.
“You don’t understand. You can’t think that I—that we—”
“Go away! Go away and leave me in peace!” Now Robert was silent—but his silence was brief.
“I am going to stay here until you listen to all that I have to say! When you saw Elizabeth, she was terrified. I have never seen her so frightened. She was having one of her nervous fits. She had just been attacked! Again! A Welshman this time. A sniveling little Welshman with a knife. He nearly slit her throat! He was disguised as a guard. No one knew what was happening at first. But we stopped him in time. She fainted away. When she recovered, she couldn’t stop screaming.”
Though I kept my hands over my ears, Robert’s voice was loud, and I could hear every word he said. He spoke in explosive fragments, panting with the urgency of his message. He was telling me that Elizabeth had come very near death.
He pounded on the door, this time with the flat of his hand, then with something made of metal. The hilt of his sword, I imagined.
“Listen to me, Lettie. You found us together because she had sent all her tirewomen away. She tore off her clothes. She was beside herself with fear. I was trying to make her decent again. I didn’t want—I couldn’t bear it if—” He broke off, overcome by emotion. “Half those old men around her—they already think she’s losing her wits. I couldn’t let her go out among them naked . . .”
I took my hands from my ears. Was it true? Had I misinterpreted what I saw at the palace? Was he merely being protective of Elizabeth, and not lecherous or erotic?
It was just possible. But it was also possible that he was telling me what he hoped I would accept, rather than the truth. I hesitated.
“Let me in, Lettie.”
“No.”
“Let me in!”
Exhaustion. Confusion. Anger. And with it all, a nagging sense that my feeling of being cheated and betrayed was giving way before the onslaught of Robert’s convincing words. The queen had come under attack, several times that I knew of. She was subject to alarming nervous fits. I had witnessed them often enough. She did send her tirewomen away with screams and threats. And she did trust Robert, and only Robert, and want him near her for reassurance and help.
Robert had fallen silent. Had he given up, and gone away? Would he come back? I went to lie down, but could not close my eyes for long.
Then I heard a scraping sound, and men’s voices outside my door. Several men. Shouts. A metallic clang.
And then, all of a sudden, there was a tremendous bang and the solid, heavy oak door was shattered. Robert rushed in. I screamed.
In an instant he was in the room, crossing to the bed, his strides long and powerful. I cowered beneath the quilted silk but he grabbed my shoulders and held me down where I was, looming over me, half-frowning, beside himself with—what? Concern? Anxiety? Or something darker? I could not be sure.
In that moment, he was not my husband. He was a man in the grip of a violent passion. A man who had just broken down the door with a battering ram. And who now held me immobile, subject to his will.
I could not breathe. I struggled under his weight, knowing even as I did so that it was useless to resist. He was too strong for me. He had always been too strong for me, his vigor, the force of his desire, his raw animal potency. It was this very power that had drawn forth my love. And that even now, amid my fear, drew forth my lust.
“Lettie,” he was saying, “I will not let you suffer by thinking the worst of me. I love you. I am your true and loving husband, today and always. You must believe me.”
And he bent his face to mine and kissed me, a kiss that did not taste of betrayal. A kiss that lasted half the night, and brought with it the full restoration of love.
Love was restored, but hope, alas! was not.
Our dearest little Denbigh died the following night, in the still dark hour just before dawn, with the candles guttering and the birds just beginning to chirp sleepily in the trees outside the windows. I had been holdi
ng his hand. I felt his grip relax, his small fingers grow limp.
“So dies the house of Dudley,” Robert said solemnly. We looked at one another, but said nothing.
I had my children, Robert his base son. But our boy, the longed-for child who would carry the Dudley lineage into the next generation, who would, Robert had once hoped, one day marry into royalty, was gone.
He was buried in his small suit of armor, and laid in a costly tomb. His gravestone was simple, and praised him as a boy born of a noble lineage, a boy of great promise. A promise blighted, to our great sorrow, before he was out of childhood.
I could not give Robert another son. I was past my bearing years, and in any case I did not have the strength for another arduous labor. The travails of childbirth were past, but the travails of mourning had come upon me, and I would not soon put them aside.
THIRTY-SEVEN
It was high summer, young Chris Blount, our handsome new Master of the Horse, was overseeing the redesign of our stables and also having a sundial made for my pleasure. I sat in the garden amid the roses, inert, lost in my thoughts, feeling very alone.
When young Chris brought me violets I smiled and thanked him, but absentmindedly. I was no longer present to the world, something was pulling me deep within myself, so deep I was all but unaware of my surroundings. The heat clung to the stones, the lizards slithered along the old walls and baked there, eyes half-lidded, until driven to dart away to shelter under the roof. The fish in the pond took refuge from the glare of the sun under broad wet leaves. But I, motionless and silent, sought no shade. I sat where I was until the sky clouded over and rain began plashing in the birdbath. Mistress Clinkerte appeared then, clucking her tongue and chiding me for being so careless, for letting the rain ruin my gown and the sun my complexion, and led me indoors.
In truth I no longer cared how I looked. My once vibrant auburn hair was fading and my skin, which had been rosy and surprisingly free of lines for so long, had begun to show faint wrinkles and had lost its glow. Dr. Julio brought me a tincture of St. John’s wort, which he assured me was sovereign against melancholy and sleeplessness (I slept very badly just then), but I could not detect any change, and soon stopped taking it. Besides, I was uneasy taking any medicine from Dr. Julio’s hand; there had been too many sinister rumors about him and the dark purposes to which his skills had been applied.
I sat by the hour listening to the steady soft hush of the rain, listless and idle. Eventually I went to bed, and fell into a troubled sleep, haunted by the notion that I had lost a vital part of myself and that I was, in memorable words I had once read, “a body without a soul.”
Small, daily, necessary tasks brought me back temporarily from my listless state: attending to the wandering beggars who came to the door, thin and pale and anxious, asking for bread (I fed them all, always, at our table and sent them away with full baskets of bread and fruit), the old ostringer from Hampton Court who came to live in one of our cottages, his skin paper-thin, his voice cracked and broken, who was ill and needed medicine, the match proposed for Penelope, with all the legal questions it raised concerning portions and jointures and inheritances.
And then there was young Rob, my strapping, good-looking dark-eyed son, my dear child of the Evening Star, so concerned about me and so attentive in the time following little Denbigh’s death. Rob was eighteen, an outstanding student at Cambridge, as yet unmarried and full of ambition like his stepfather. It was hard to believe this gifted boy was the son of dull Walter, he shone with such charm and easy grace. Not for him his father’s tedious listmaking! He hovered near me, bringing me my cloak or my book (though I could not manage to read anything), making sure I had my posset or my tincture, trying to lure me into conversation, to shake off my brooding.
Rob was set on going to court, serving the queen, and making his name in the world, and was eager to talk to me about this, but because of her animus against me Elizabeth would not allow him near her. He showed admirable patience, I thought, confident that, with the threat from the Spanish growing greater, she would summon him to her service before long.
Meanwhile my dear husband was laboring under his own season of grief. He went for long solitary walks, accompanied only by his dog Boy, his favorite hound, his long face as sad as the hound’s, limping on his sore swollen foot, his temper short and when he spoke, which was rarely, his tone querulous. I barely saw him for days on end, and when he did seek me out, it was to tell me that he was thinking seriously of retiring altogether from the queen’s service.
“It is just too much, Lettie, far too much, at my age and with my infirmities,” he remarked one morning while being treated by a costly bonesetter he had heard of, one Ezard, from Paris. He sat with his leg elevated, his large red foot exposed, as the bonesetter applied a stinking paste to his engorged toes.
“All the piles of letters and reports to read—more than ever now that the number of spies and informants has grown so great—and all the endless wrangles with Burghley and his crookbacked son on the council, and with your father, who crosses me on everything! And forever keeping the queen soothed, amused, making her feel as if all the best ideas are hers. Oh, I tell you, it is not a task fit for a slave, much less an aging lord like me! And I have been at it these twenty-five years and more!”
I sat by quietly, letting him go on uninterrupted, knowing he needed to talk.
“Pardon, milord,” the bonesetter was saying, “but I must ask you, when did this most recent attack of the swelling begin?”
“I fell off Roan Gallant, my Irish galloper. After that I could not even pull my boot on. Ten or fifteen days ago, is that right Lettie?”
I nodded. “The pain comes on worst at night. He cries out in his sleep. His head is hot too, and he cannot make water.”
“He cannot make water?”
“He tries, but there is only a dribble.”
“Botheration, Lettie, I can speak for myself!”
“Pardon, milord, but if you cannot—relieve yourself—then you may need a surgeon—”
“None of that, thank you! All I need is for you to make the swelling in my foot go down, so I can get my boot on, and ride to Buxton, where the baths always do me good.”
The bonesetter, frowning, said no more, but I could tell he thought Robert was dismissing his ailment too lightly. I knew better than to speak up, however; like the Frenchman, I frowned and held my tongue. Trying to sway Robert would only lead to frustration and would not do him any good.
The bonesetter began smearing goat’s grease on the red foot, making Robert squirm and then swear loudly.
“If you prefer, milord, I can cut a vein. Or there are the leeches—”
“No! Get on with it! Ah! Ow!”
Finally, after half an hour of pain and loud protests, Monsieur Ezard completed his ministrations and drew forth from his bag a sealed vessel.
“A cupful, every day,” he told Robert. “It will greatly help the swelling and the pain.”
“What is it?”
“Worms, pig marrow, herbs and a secret ingredient known only to myself.”
“I won’t eat worms,” Robert said flatly. “I have had worm piss prescribed to me before.”
“This is not to eat. It is a balm. You will use it. And you will feel better.” Even as I said this I thought, making sure you take your medicine will help me. Will give me something more to do, and cause me to brood less too.
With a bow, the bonesetter presented Robert with his bill.
“Lettie! Where are my eyeglasses?”
I found them and brought them to him.
“What’s this? Thirty pounds, for some goat’s grease and worms?”
“For my expert knowledge and advice, milord.”
Robert looked dubious, but agreed to the sum, telling the Frenchman to present his bill to the steward.
Monsieur Ezard bowed again. “As soon as I receive payment, I shall send the secret ingredient,” he remarked as he left the room.
; “Damn the French!” was Robert’s response. “And the Germans and the Burgundians and the Walloons, and the Flemish, and the damnable Spanish above all!”
Robert was far from at his best, as a husband or lover or companion. Our marriage required much compromise and understanding from me, and though I did my best to provide it, I could not help feeling, in those dark days after the loss of our son, that too much was being asked of me.
Though I hesitate to write it, the truth was that I sometimes thought Robert and I had waited too long to marry. That by the time we married, even though we knew much happiness together, Robert’s best years were behind him. The queen and Douglass Sheffield had his best love, and I was being given the dregs. Naturally I thought this most often when Robert was at his worst, feeling his age and in pain. I always loved him, I was devoted to him. But I was more and more aware that I was married to a man long past his prime, and I wished, selfishly, that I had had more years of the stronger, healthier, more playful Robert at my side. I was only forty-three when little Denbigh died, and Robert was much older.
It was not only the swelling in his foot and other ailments that brought my selfish, ungenerous thoughts to the fore. His body was changing in other ways. His handsome face was much more lined, his cheeks pouchy. His mouth often turned down at the corners, like the queen’s did when she was at her most disapproving. He was losing his hair. And his skin, that skin that had once been so extraordinarily soft, smooth, inviting to the touch, had become dry and puckered. His stomach, while not fat, had a growing bulge, and his limbs were not the supple, shapely limbs of—of, for instance, our new young Master of the Horse Chris, who had the body of an Adonis.
I know that my disloyal thoughts (if so they might be called) were brought on in part by my own low spirits, yet they plagued me then. I prayed to be lifted out of my despond, and in time, thanks in part to events around me, I was restored to my former self. Gradually Robert too found his way back to a sort of contentment, though the scar of our joint loss with the death of little Denbigh went deep, and never fully healed.
Rival to the Queen Page 17
