Philippa Gregory - The Virgin's Lover

“He knows you don’t like him,” Amy returned spiritedly. “Since you never wanted a word from him when he was out of favor, why should he honor you with his attention now that half the world wants to be his friend?”

“Well enough,” the older woman said, “if you are contented to be neglected too?”

“I am not neglected,” Amy maintained staunchly. “Because it is for me and for us that he is working all this time.”

“Dancing attendance on the queen is work, is it? And her a young woman as lustful as her mother? With a Boleyn conscience to match? Well, you surprise me, Amy. There are not many women who would be happy being left at home while their husbands wait on the word of such a woman.”

“Every wife in England would be delighted,” Amy said bluntly. “Because every woman in England knows that it is only at court that there is money to be made, offices to be won, and positions to be granted. As soon as Robert has his fortune he will come home and we will buy our house.”

“Syderstone will not be good enough for you then,” her stepmother taunted her.

“I will always love it as my home, and admire my father for the work he did there, and I will always be grateful to him for leaving it to me in his will,” Amy said with restraint. “But no, Syderstone will not be good enough for Robert now he is high at court, and it will not be good enough for me.”

“And don’t you mind?” her stepmother suggested slyly. “Don’t you mind that he dashed off to Elizabeth at her accession and you have not seen him since? And everyone says that she favors him above all other men, and that he is never out of her company?”

“He is a courtier,” Amy replied stoutly. “He was always at King Edward’s side, his father was always beside King Henry. He is supposed to be at her side. That is what a courtier does.”

“You are not afraid that he will fall in love with her?” the older woman tormented her, knowing that she was pressing Amy at the very sorest point.

“He is my husband,” Amy said steadily. “And she is the Queen of England. She knows that as well as he does. She was a guest at my wedding. We all know what can be and what cannot be. I will be happy to see him when he comes, but until that day I shall wait for him patiently.”

“Then you are a saint!” her stepmother declared lightheartedly. “For I would be so jealous that I would go to London and demand that he take a house for me there and then.”

Amy raised her eyebrows, the very picture of scorn. “Then you would be much mistaken in how a courtier’s wife behaves,” she said coldly. “Dozens of women are in just such a situation as mine and they know how they must behave if they want their husband to further his fortune at court.”

Lady Robsart left the argument there, but later that night, when Amy was in bed asleep, she took up her pen and wrote to her unsatisfactory stepson-in-law. Sir Robert, If you are now indeed as great a man as I hear it is not suitable that your wife should be left at home without good horses or new clothes. Also, she needs diversion and company and a genteel lady to bear her company. If you will not bid her to court, please command your noble friends (I assume that you now have many once more) to have her to stay at their houses while you find a suitable house for her in London. She will need an escort to go to them and a lady companion as I cannot go with her, being much concerned with the business of the farm, which is still doing badly. Mrs. Oddingsell would be glad to be asked, I daresay. I should be glad of your immediate reply (since I lack the sweetness and patience of your wife), and also of a full settlement of your debt to me, which is £22.Sarah Robsart.

Cecil was at his heavy desk with the many locked drawers in his rooms at Whitehall Palace, in the first week of February, reading a letter in code from his agent in Rome. His first act on Elizabeth’s accession to the throne was to put as many trusted friends, kin, and servants in as many key courts in Europe as he could afford, and instruct them to keep him informed of any word, of any rumor, of any ghost of a rumor, which mentioned England and her new fragile monarch.

He was glad he had got Master Thomas Dempsey into the papal court at Rome. Master Thomas was better known to his colleagues in Rome as Brother Thomas, a priest of the Catholic church. Cecil’s network had captured him coming to England in the first weeks of the new queen’s reign, with a knife hidden in his bags and a plan to assassinate her. Cecil’s man in the Tower had first tortured Brother Thomas, and then turned him. Now he was a spy against his former masters, serving the Protestants, against the faith of his fathers. Cecil knew that it had been a change of heart forced by the man’s desire to survive, and that very shortly the priest would turn again. But in the meantime, his material was invaluable, and he was scholar enough to write his reports and then translate them into Latin and then translate the Latin into code. Master Secretary, His Holiness is considering a ruling that will say that heretical monarchs can be justly defied by their subjects, and that such a defiance, even to armed rebellion, is no sin.

Cecil leaned back in his padded chair and reread the letter, making sure that he had made no error in the double translation, out of code and then out of Latin. It was a message of such enormity that he could not believe it, even when it was in plain English before him.

It was a death sentence for the queen. It assured any disgruntled Catholic that they could plot against her with impunity, actually with the blessing of the Holy Father. It was a veritable crusade against the young queen, as potent and unpredictable as a Knights Templar attack on the Moors. It licensed the deranged assassin, the man with a grudge, indeed, it put the dagger into his hands. It broke the eternal promise that an anointed monarch commanded the obedience of all his subjects, even those who disagreed with him. It broke the harmony of the universe that placed God above the angels, angels above kings, kings above mortal men. A man could no more attack a king than a king could attack an angel, than an angel could attack God. This madness of the Pope broke the unwritten agreement that one earthly monarch would never encourage the subjects of another earthly monarch to rise up against him.

The assumption had always been that kings should stick together, that nothing was more dangerous than the people with a license. Now the Pope was to give the people a license to rise up against Elizabeth, and who knew how many might avail themselves of this permission?

Cecil tried to draw a sheet of paper toward him and found that his hands were shaking. For the first time in these anxious months, he truly thought that they would be defeated. He thought that he had aligned himself to a doomed cause. He did not think that Elizabeth could survive this. There were too many who had opposed her from the start; once they knew that their treasonous plotting was no longer a sin, they would multiply like head lice. It was enough that she had to struggle with the church, with her council, with her parliament, none of which were in full support, some of which were in open opposition. If the people themselves were turned against her she could not last long.

He thought for a moment, for only a moment, that he might have done better to have supported Henry Hastings as the best Protestant claimant for the throne, since the Pope would surely not have dared to summon a rebellion against a king. He thought for another moment that perhaps he should have urged Elizabeth to accept the raising of the Host, to have kept the church in England as Papist for a year or so, to ease the transition of Reform.

He gritted his teeth. What was done had been done, and they would all have to live with their mistakes, and some would die for them. He was fairly certain that Elizabeth would die, to name only one. He clasped his hands together until they were steady again, and then started to plan ways to try to ensure that an assassin did not reach Elizabeth at court, when she was out hunting, when she was on the river, when she was visiting.