Emily Purdy - A Court Affair

I will always love Robert Dudley; he has been my best friend since I was eight years old, and would be—if I let him—my ardent lover and husband; but there is something he worships and adores more than England’s Virgin Queen—Ambition is his guiding star. I’ve seen men ruined before by this elusive, tantalising, sparkling star that they spend their whole lives chasing after, leaping and grasping for, sometimes snaring a little stardust but more often crashing empty-handed back down to earth. And Robert, for all his fine qualities—his smouldering dark eyes, his heart-melting, knee-weakening smile, towering height, handsome horseman’s legs, and hands both gentle and firm, callous and soft, his intelligence, charm, wit, and passion, his showmanship and debonair flair on the tennis court, dance floor, and tiltyard, his supreme confidence and courage riding to the hunt or charging into battle, his feats of daring at the gambling tables—is still Ambition’s catamite and fool.

My eyes are not starry-blind with love for him; romance doesn’t soften and tint everything all rosy pink and beautiful for me. I love Robert, but I see him for what he is, and, though I love, I often do not like. There is ice beneath the fire, steel beneath the softness, and the hard armour of cruelty beneath the plush velvet cloak of kindness. I have often wondered if I were a mere woman—a squire’s daughter perhaps, just like Amy, instead of England’s Queen—would his passion for me have ever flared so high or burned so brightly and constantly? I think not. Or perhaps it is merely that I have lost the ability to believe in anyone’s sincerity. I trust no one; I cannot afford to. I am a queen before I am a woman, England always comes before Elizabeth, and though there are times when my passions flame high and I resent and rage against Fate, I will not bankrupt my soul or my realm by giving too much of myself to the wrong people. My subjects as a whole always come before any individual, and that includes myself. Though I am the Virgin Queen, I regard myself as the mother of many.

There’s something in Robert’s blood he inherited from his father and grandfather that makes him willing to do anything, and risk everything, to rise the highest and shine the brightest, to eclipse even Ambition’s own lustre and luminescence. But all that glitters is not gold. My mother once spoke those very words to my father when he asked why she preferred the doltish Harry Percy, who was, I have heard, as clumsy as a newborn foal, to the more elegant, polished, and cocksure men of the court.

Robert and I, we are the scandal of the civilised world. There are many who would wager all that they possess that I would have him for my husband and no other. I have at times indeed spoken such words myself to confound and cloud the issue of my refusal to marry; the more perplexed and puzzled my suitors are, the better I like it. Even my cousin, the Queen of Scots, has been heard to quip that the Queen’s Master of the Horse murdered his wife to make room for her in his bed. Well, let the gaggles of gossipmongers wager all they wish— they will lose! I let them think that, but it was all part of the merry dance and mad whirl that always kept them guessing and wondering as so many men vied for my hand; but though the dance must of necessity go on, it must slow now to a stately pavane from a galloping galliard. I am Elizabeth of England, mistress with no master; I call the tunes, and my musicians play them, and my courtiers dance to them; and so it has ever been and always will be until the day I die. There will be no King Robert I of England, or a king by any other name, in my lifetime!

I reached out and gently straightened a ruffle of lace on Amy’s wedding apron and tweaked a silk bow, adjusting the sunny yellow ribbon streamers and the strands and loops of tiny seed pearls until they lay just right. I could still smell the lavender and rosemary from when the apron had been lovingly packed away, no doubt with dreams of the daughter Amy longed to have, and of tying it around her waist, with a mother’s love and kiss, on her own wedding day. A dream sadly fated never to come true.

At least Robert had not begrudged her her lace. Amy loved lace; she said it was “like wearing snowflakes that don’t melt”. I hadn’t actually heard her say it, only Robert’s cruel parody when he slapped his hand against the tailor, Mr Edney’s, bill, loudly complaining, “Lace, lace, and more lace!” Laughing at and belittling her. Robert left her alone in the country, foisting her off on his friends instead of giving her a home of her own and children, while he danced attendance on the Queen of England, showered her with jewels, lost hundreds of pounds at cards and dice, spent excessively on his own ornate wardrobe and lavishly laden table, and was known to every moneylender in London, yet he begrudged his wife a few lengths of lace. That was one of the times when I did not like the man I loved.

Sometimes I sent Amy lace and other pretty baubles, trinkets, and tokens in Robert’s name—a bolt of bright blue silk the colour of bluebells; a pretty white silk headdress edged with silver braid and embroidered with violets and pinks; a Venetian looking glass framed in enamelled flowers; and dusky-rose-coloured gloves fringed with gold and embroidered with bright pink rosebuds for her birthday. I knew he would not deny the gifts; he would rather be worshipped like a gilded god, basking in her humble, loving gratitude, even if it were for a gift he had not actually given. I know something of this too. I am the living embodiment of chaste Diana, the Virgin Queen, a secular Holy Virgin; I am worshipped and adored, the subject of poetry and songs. It would be all too easy to let this adulation go to my head like strong wine, and though some may think I have done just that, I have not, for I also know that no one sits easily upon a throne; for all its gilded, jewel-encrusted glory, it is as insecure as a high, rickety stool with one leg shorter than the rest, and no crown fits so firmly that it cannot be knocked or tumble off. The higher the pedestal, the farther the fall; no one who rises to power should ever forget that.

Amy’s little notes of love and gratitude were proof Robert could point to that he had always been a good husband. And always I would ponder the perversity that it is often the lot of womankind to give our love to those who are unworthy of it, like my sister, who destroyed herself all for love of Spanish Philip. We do it, I think, because we fear that if we withhold our love, we may never find a truly worthy recipient for it, so with the largesse of a rich philanthropist we give the precious gold of our affection away rather than be miserable misers and hoard it. What good does a fortune do a spinster on her deathbed? Better to have lived well and spent it. And so we do, we spend our love, though very seldom wisely, and many of us die paupers for it.

Amy’s love of lace—“like wearing snowflakes that don’t melt”—was just one more of those little titbits Robert’s tongue had casually let fall, scornfully, mockingly, or exasperatedly dropped over the years, which my mind had gathered up. As I stood there gazing down at her in her coffin, I staggered under the realisation that perhaps I, Amy’s glittering and much resented diamond-and-pearl-encrusted-alabaster-tower-of-confidence-strength-and-pride rival, the woman, the Queen, who all the world thought had stolen her husband’s love away from her, had known and understood Amy better than her own husband ever had throughout their ten years of marriage, from the first stirrings of the wolf of lust hiding under the sheep’s clothing of love, to the death of that lovely illusion, and the loneliness and hurt, the estrangement, indifference, and callousness that came afterwards.