Philippa Gregory - The Virgin's Lover

It was all done just as it should be. The queen was represented, and Sir Robert was not there, as was the custom. Amy’s half-brothers and the Forsters were there to show Lady Dudley every respect in death that she had lacked in the last days of her life. Lizzie Oddingsell did not attend; she had gone back to her brother’s house, filled with such anger and grief that she would speak to no one of her friend except to say once, “She was no match for him,” which Alice Hyde gleefully fell on as proof of murder, and which William saw as a fair description of a marriage that had been ill-starred from start to finish.

Thomas Blount waited to see the body interred and the earth shoveled in the ground. He was a thorough man, and he worked for a meticulous master. Then he went back to Cumnor Place.

Amy’s maid, Mrs. Pirto, had everything ready for him, as he had ordered. Amy’s box of jewels, locked with their key, Amy’s best gowns, folded neatly and wrapped with bags of lavender heads, the linen from her bed, the furniture that traveled with her wherever she went, her box of personal goods: her sewing, her rosary, her purse, her gloves, her little collection of wax seals cut from the letters that Robert had sent her over the eleven years of their marriage, and all his letters, tied with a ribbon and arranged by date, worn by constant handling.

“I’ll take the jewel box and the personal things,” Blount decided. “You shall take the rest back to Stanfield and leave them there. Then you can go.”

Mrs. Pirto bowed her head and whispered something about wages. “From the bailiff at Stanfield when you deliver the goods,” Thomas Blount said. He ignored the woman’s red eyes. All women wept easily, he knew. It meant nothing, and as a man, he had important business to transact.

Mrs. Pirto murmured something about a keepsake.

“Nothing worth remembering,” Thomas Blount said roundly, thinking of the trouble that Amy had caused his master in life and in death. “Now you get on, as I must.”

He tucked the two boxes under his arm and went out to his waiting horse. The jewel box slid easily into his saddlebag, the box of personal effects he handed to his groom to strap on his back. Then he heaved himself up into the saddle and turned his horse’s head for Windsor.

Robert, returning to court wearing dark mourning clothes, held his head high and looked scornfully around him as if daring anyone to speak. The Earl of Arundel hid a smile behind his hand, Sir Francis Knollys bowed from a distance, Sir Nicholas Bacon all but ignored him. Robert felt as if a chill circle of suspicion and dislike was wrapped around him like a wide black cape.

“What the devil is amiss?” he asked his sister. She came toward him and presented her cold cheek to be kissed.

“I assume that they think you murdered Amy,” she said flatly.

“The inquest cleared me. The verdict was accidental death.”

“They think you bribed the jury.”

“And what do you think?” He raised his voice and then abruptly spoke more quietly as he saw the court glance round at the two of them.

“I think you have taken this family to the very brink of ruin again,” she said. “I am sick of disgrace; I am sick of being pointed at. I have been known as the daughter of a traitor, as the sister of a traitor, and now I am known as the sister of a wife murderer.”

“Good God, you have not much sympathy to spare for me!” Robert recoiled from the blank hostility of her face.

“I have none at all,” she said. “You nearly brought down the queen herself with this scandal. Think of it! You nearly ended the Tudor line. You nearly destroyed the reformed church! Certainly, you have ruined yourself and everyone who bears your name. I am withdrawing from court. I can’t stand another day of it.”

“Mary, don’t go,” he said urgently. “You have always stood by me before. You have always been my sister and friend. Don’t let everyone see that we are divided. Don’t you abandon me, as everyone else has.”

He reached out to her, but she stepped away and whipped her hands behind her back so that he could not touch her. At that childish gesture which recalled her in the schoolroom so vividly to him, he nearly cried out. “Mary, you would never abandon me when I am so low, and I have been so wrongly accused!”

“But I think you are rightly accused,” she said quietly, and her voice was like ice in his ears. “I think you killed her because you thought in your pride that the queen would stand by you, and everyone else would wink at it. That they would all agree it was an accident and you would go into mourning a widower and come out the queen’s betrothed.”

“That could still happen,” he whispered. “I did not kill her, I swear it. I could still marry the queen.”

“Never,” she said. “You are finished. The best you can hope for is that she keeps you on as Master of Horse and as her little disgraced favorite.”

She turned from him. Robert, conscious of the eyes of everyone upon him, could not call her back. For a moment, he made a move to catch the hem of her gown and jerk her round, before she got away; but then he remembered that everyone watching believed him to be a man who was violent to women, a man who had killed his wife, and his hands felt heavy.

There was a stir at the door of the privy chamber and Elizabeth came out. She was very pale. She had not been out riding nor walking in the garden since the day of her birthday, when she had told the Spanish ambassador that Amy was dead or nearly so—three days before anyone knew that Amy had been found dead. There were many who thought that her opinion, three whole days before the announcement of the death, that Amy was dead “or nearly so,” was more than a lucky guess. There were many who thought that Robert had been executioner, and Elizabeth the judge. But none of them would dare say such a thing when she could come out of her room, as now, flick her eye around the presence chamber, and count on the support of every great man in the country.

She looked past Robert and on to Sir Nicholas; she nodded at Sir Francis, and turned to speak to his wife, Catherine, who was behind her. She smiled at Cecil and she beckoned the Hapsburg ambassador to her side.

“Good day, Sir Robert,” she said, as the ambassador moved toward her. “I give you my condolences on the sad and sudden death of your wife.”

He bowed and felt his anger and his grief swell up so strongly that he thought he might vomit. He came up, his face betraying nothing. “I thank you for your sympathy,” he said. He let his angry look rake them all. “I thank all of you for your sympathy which has been such a support to me,” he said, and then he stepped to a window bay, out of the way, and stood all alone.

Thomas Blount found Sir Robert in the stable. There was a hunt planned for the next day and Sir Robert was checking the horses for fitness, and inspecting the tack. Forty-two saddles of gleaming supple leather were arranged in long rows on saddle horses in the yard, and Sir Robert was walking slowly between the rows looking carefully at each saddle, each girth, each stirrup leather. The stable lads, standing alongside their work, were as rigid as soldiers on parade.

Behind them the horses were standing, shifting restlessly, a groom at each nodding head, their coats gleaming, their hooves oiled, their manes pulled and combed flat.

Sir Robert took his time but could find little wrong with the horses, the tack, or the stable yard. “Good,” he said finally. “You can give them their evening feed and water, and put them to bed.”

Then he turned and saw Thomas Blount. “Go into my office,” he said shortly, pausing to pat the neck of his own horse. “Yes,” he said softly to her. “You don’t change, do you, sweetheart?”