Phil Rickman - The Heresy of Dr Dee

‘Did you know Amy Robsart, John?’

‘I wouldn’t say I knew her. She tended not to come very much to town.’

An understatement. The Queen was not exactly approving of wives brought to court, or even to London. Especially Dudley’s wife, obviously. In the absence of a Dudley country mansion, Amy had spent most of her married life as a guest of various friends of her husband. A dismal existence.

‘Met her once,’ I said. ‘On one of her rare visits to Dudley’s house at Kew.’

‘And what thought you of her?’

At last I sat down. Truth was I’d thought Amy quite beautiful. Also intelligent, lively and warm. In my view – was this treason? – as a wife, the Queen would not quite compare. God help me, I’d even caught myself, wishing that circumstances had been such that I might have met her before Dudley.

‘You’re blushing,’ Cecil said.

‘Heat of the fire.’

Cecil laughed.

‘What a waste, eh, John? As I oft-times think about a carnal marriage—’

‘Starts in joy, ends in tears?’

Cecil frowned. I’d gone too far.

‘A perceptive saying of yours oft-times retold,’ I said, in placation.

He made a steeple of his fingers. His own first marriage may even have been a carnal union, but his second one, to the severe Mildred, could only have been founded on a need for reliability and circumspection. Cecil was a man long wed to his career.

‘Do you know when he last saw her alive?’

I did but said nothing, remembering something else I’d noticed at my one meeting with Amy. While she was – of necessity, no doubt – fairly compliant, there was a certain equality in her union with Dudley. She was not nobility, merely the daughter of a country squire, yet seemed in no awe of the son of the Duke of Northumberland. To his credit, he seemed to like that about her.

‘It was over a year ago,’ Cecil said. ‘Over a year before she died.’

‘A long time.’

Too bloody long.

‘Distance,’ Cecil said, ‘can bring about a cooling.’

‘Sometimes.’

I’d never have left Amy for even a week. When I was called to Europe, I’d have taken her with me.

‘Let’s not walk around the houses, John.’ Cecil let his hands fall flat to the trestle. ‘I was ever fond of Robert Dudley, but never deluded about the extent of his ambition. He wants the highest role possible for a man not born to it. His whole life has been a play performed for the Queen. Whose side he’s scarce ever left.’

‘And she wished him away?’

Cecil was silent. Poor Amy’s fate, in these circumstances, saddened me more than I could say. The inquest had been opened three days after her body was found at the foot of a short stairway. And then adjourned sine die . Nobody knew how long before the jury would reach its verdict but when it came it seemed likely to be one of Accidental Death.

Nobody to blame. I pointed out to Cecil that Dudley had gone to great pains not to be seen as having or attempting to have an influence on the jury, calling for men who were unknown to him to serve on it.

‘Unknown? Is that what you think?’

I said nothing. Dudley had sworn to me his wife’s death from a fall had been a bitter shock to him, and I’d very much wanted to believe that. Although he’d said, on an earlier occasion, that she’d shown signs of unhealth and once had told him she might not have long to live, I’d refused to accept the dark stories, dating back some months before her death, that attempts had been made to poison her.

‘Not that it matters.’ Cecil half turned away from me to peer out over the shiny roofs of London. ‘The Queen herself is young, impulsive and will remain’ – Cecil swung round of a sudden to turn his mastiff’s gaze on me – ‘conspicuously besotted with a man now infamed and likely to remain so for the rest of his life.’

‘But if the inquest verdict clears him of blame—’

‘It doesn’t matter what the inquest verdict is. Enough men hated him before this to make even his return to court a slight against all decency. As for the thought of a Queen of England wed to a murderer… how does that play across the capitals of Europe? And if the Queen thinks everyone here will forget, in time, then she’s not as close to the mind of her country as she likes to believe.’

‘ I don’t…’ I was shaking my head, ‘I can’t believe that Dudley’s a murderer.’

‘Well, not directly , no.’ Cecil spread his hands. ‘No one’s suggesting he planted his foot in her spine and kicked her down the bloody stairs. But whether he ordered it to be done, in his absence, is another matter entirely. Never be proven, but what’s that worth in Europe? Especially if, after however length of time, the Queen does something blindly foolish. She’s had suitors of her own standing in France, Spain, Sweden… and keeps them at arm’s length. At home, she has the Earl of Arundel waiting with his tongue hanging out…’

‘No hope for him, surely?’

‘ I know there’s no hope, you know there’s no hope, but the old bladder peers blearily into the looking glass, sees a face twenty years younger and tells himself it’s only a matter of time before the Queen sees the sense of it.’

I nodded in wry agreement. It was well-enough known that Cecil’s own choice as a husband for the Queen was the Earl of Arran. A resident of France from a Scottish family with no love of Elizabeth’s cousin, Mary, the Queen of Scotland, who was also, since her marriage, Queen of France. In terms of a lasting peace in the north, Arran had much in his favour and would be a satisfyingly severe blow to French hopes of putting Mary on the throne of England.

But the lure of a carnal marriage. Twin souls since childhood. The power of the heart…

‘The Earl of Arundel would have had Dudley dead years ago,’ I said. ‘Or so it’s said.’

Cecil let a silence hang and the rain ceased as if he’d commanded it.

‘Arundel’s too old and too vain, but he’s hardly alone,’ he said at last. ‘Think of Norfolk. Think of those who conspired to get John Dudley topped and now fear Robert’s vengeance if he’s in a position to wreak some. Let me be honest. If he’s betrothed to the Queen, no matter how long after his time of mourning, Dudley must needs be looking over his shoulder all the way to the altar. Indeed, if a messenger was to come knocking on my door now with news that he’d been cut down… or shot… or skewered in a crowd…’

My hands had tightened around the seat of my chair. The rain had begun again.

‘Why are you telling me this?’

‘What did Mistress Blanche want with you?’

‘I don’t know. ’

‘Oh, come now, John. Who does the Queen trust more than Mistress Blanche to conduct business of a highly personal nature? And what personal business might concern you, as a long-time friend and confidant of Robert Dudley?’

‘I don’t know, I can’t—’

‘Think you not that the Queen might wish you to perform, in secret, a similar task to the one you did before the coronation?’

The sound of rain against the good glass panes was like to a cackling laughter. I felt my heart lurch.

‘You mean… she might want me to choose, by the stars, a day that’s mete for…?’

‘A royal wedding,’ Cecil said. ‘Indeed.’

BY NOW I’D learned that Cecil never ventured an opinion without a degree of secret certainty. It was said that his ambitious young fixer, Walsingham, had agents at court who didn’t even know of each other. Spies who spied on spies.

I leaned back, gazing at the window. London had misted, the steeples no more than indents on a bedsheet.