Philippa Gregory - The Virgin's Lover

“Did her family treat you kindly?” she asked, guessing the answer.

“As anyone would treat a son-in-law who had presented himself as the greatest man in the kingdom, and then came home as a penniless prisoner with a touch of jail fever,” he said wryly. “Her stepmother never forgave me for the seduction of John Robsart’s daughter and the collapse of his hopes. She swore that he had died of heartbreak because of what I had done to his daughter, and she never forgave me for that either. She never gave me more than a few pence to have in my pocket. And when they learned I had been in London to a meeting, they threatened to throw me out of the house in my boots.”

“What meeting?” she asked, a conspirator from long habit.

He shrugged. “Oh, to put you on the throne,” he said, his voice very low. “I never stopped plotting. My great terror was that your sister would have a son and we would be undone. But God was good to us.”

“You risked your life in plotting for me?” she asked, her dark eyes wide. “Even then? When you had just been released?”

He smiled at her. “Of course,” he said easily. “Who else for me, but England’s Elizabeth?”

She took a little breath. “And after that you were forced to stay quiet at home?”

“Not I. When the war came my brother Henry and I volunteered to serve under Philip against the French in the Low Countries.” He smiled. “I saw you before I sailed. D’you remember?”

Her look was warm. “Of course. I was there to bid farewell to Philip and to taunt poor Mary, and there were you, as handsome an adventurer who ever went away to war, smiling down at me from the royal ship.”

“I had to find a way to raise myself up again,” he said. “I had to get away from Amy’s family.” He paused. “And from Amy,” he confessed.

“You had fallen out of love with her?” she asked, finally getting to the part of the story that she had wanted all along.

Robert smiled. “What pleases a young man who knows nothing at sixteen cannot hold a man who has been forced to look at his life, to study what he holds dear, and to start from the bottom once again. My marriage was over by the time I came out of the Tower. Her stepmother’s humiliation of me as she stood by and watched only completed the end. Lady Robsart brought me as low as I could go. I could not forgive Amy for witnessing it. I could not forgive her for not taking my side. I would have loved her better if we had walked out of that house together into disaster. But she sat by the fireside on her little stool and reminded me from time to time, when she looked up from hemming shirts, that God orders us to honor our father and our mother, and that we were utterly dependent on the Robsarts.”

He broke off, his face darkened with remembered anger. Elizabeth listened, hiding her relish.

“So…I went to fight in the Low Countries, and thought I would make my name and my fortune in that war.” He gave a short laugh. “That was my last moment of vanity,” he said. “I lost my brother and I lost most of my troop and I lost Calais. I came home a very humbled man.”

“And did she care for you?”

“That was when she thought I should be a teamster,” he said bitterly. “Lady Robsart ordered me to labor in the fields.”

“She never did!”

“She would have had me on my knees. I walked out of the house that night and stayed at court or with what friends would have me. My marriage was over. In my heart, I was a free man.”

“A free man?” she asked in a very quiet voice. “You would call yourself a free man?”

“Yes,” he said firmly. “I am free to love once more, and this time I will have nothing but the best. I will not allow base coin to drive out gold.”

“Indeed,” said Elizabeth, suddenly cool, withdrawing rapidly from dangerous intimacy. She turned and beckoned forward the lady-in-waiting. “I will have that shawl now,” she said. “You may walk with us.”

They walked in silence, Elizabeth taking in what he had told her, sifting the evidenced truth from the gloss. She was not such a fool as to believe the word of a married man. At her side Dudley reviewed what he had said, determinably ignoring an uncomfortable feeling of disloyalty to Amy whose love, he knew, had been more faithful, and continued more strongly than he chose to portray. Of course, his remaining love for her he had completely denied.

Cecil, Sir Francis Knollys, and the queen’s young uncle, the twenty-three-year-old Thomas Howard, Duke of Norfolk, were head to head in the private window bay of the presence chamber; behind them, the queen’s court stood around, chatting, plotting, flirting. The queen on her throne was talking with the Spanish ambassador in fluent Spanish. Cecil, one ear cocked for any danger from that quarter, was nonetheless very intent upon Sir Francis.

“We have to find a means to search everyone before they come to the queen, even the gentlemen of the court.”

“We would give much offense,” the duke demurred. “And surely the threat comes from the common people?”

“It comes from every convinced Papist,” Cecil said bluntly. “The Pope’s declaration, when it is published, will make her a lamb for the slaughter as she has never been before.”

“She cannot dine in public anymore,” Sir Francis said thoughtfully. “We will have to refuse permission for people to come in and see her at her dinner.”

Cecil hesitated. Access to the monarch, or even to the great lords in their halls, was part of the natural order, the way things had always been done. If that were to be changed, then the court would have signaled very clearly to the people that they trusted them no more, and that they were retreating behind locked doors.

“It will look odd,” he said begrudgingly.

“And she can hardly make any more public processions,” Sir Francis said. “How can it be done?”

Before Cecil could stop him, Sir Francis beckoned Robert Dudley, who excused himself from the group around him and started to come toward them.

“If you add him to our councils I’m away,” the duke said abruptly, and turned aside.

“Why?” Sir Francis asked. “He knows how this can be done better than any of us.”

“He knows nothing but his own ambition, and you will rue the day you ever include him in anything,” Thomas Howard said rudely and turned his back as Dudley joined the others.

“Good day, Sir William, Sir Francis.”

“What ails young Howard?” Sir Francis asked as the duke pushed past another man and strode away.

“I think he mourns the rising of my little star,” Dudley said, amused.

“Why?”

“His father hated mine,” Dudley said. “Actually, Thomas Howard arrested my father and my brothers and me and marched us into the Tower. I don’t think he expected me to come marching out again.”

Sir Francis nodded, taking it in. “You must be afraid that he will influence the queen against you?”

“He’d better fear that I will influence her against him,” Dudley replied. He smiled at Cecil. “She knows who her friends are. She knows who stood as her friends through the years of her troubles.”

“And the troubles are not over now,” Sir Francis said, turning to the matter in hand. “We are talking of the safety of the queen when she goes abroad. Sir William here has news that the Pope has sanctioned the use of force against her by ordinary men and women.”

Dudley turned a stunned face to the older man. “It cannot be true? He would never do such a thing? It is ungodly!”

“It is under consideration,” Cecil said flatly. “And we shall hear the confirmation soon enough. And then the people will learn of it.”

“I’ve heard nothing of this,” Robert exclaimed.