Philippa Gregory - The Virgin's Lover

“There is never a certainty of winning,” he declared. “It will always be a risk but you have to take it now, Your Grace.”

“Spirit, please, don’t ask it of me.”

She was panting, working herself into one of her tantrums, but he continued to press her. “You may not rescind the order.”

“I am too afraid.”

“You cannot play the woman now; you have to have the heart and stomach of a man. Find your courage, Elizabeth. You are your father’s daughter; play the king. I have seen you be as brave as any man.”

For a moment he thought that the flattering lie had persuaded her. Her chin came up, her color rose, but then he saw the spark suddenly drain from her eyes and she drooped again.

“I cannot,” she said. “You have never seen me be a king. I have always been nothing more than a clever and duplicitous woman. I can’t fight openly. I never have. There will be no war.”

“You will have to learn to be a king,” Cecil warned her. “One day you will have to say that you are just a weak woman but you have the heart and stomach of a king. You cannot rule this kingdom without being its king.”

She shook her head, stubborn as a frightened red-headed mule. “I dare not.”

“You cannot recall the ships; you have to declare war.”

“No.”

He took a breath and tested his own resolve. Then he drew his letter of resignation from inside his doublet. “Then I have to beg you to release me.”

Elizabeth whirled around. “What? What is this?”

“Release me. I cannot serve you. If you will not take my advice on this matter which so nearly concerns the safety of the kingdom then I cannot serve you. In failing to convince you, I have failed you, and I have failed my office. Anything in the world I can do for you, I will. You know how dear you are to me, as dear as a wife or a daughter. But if I cannot prevail upon you to send our army to Scotland then I have to leave your service.”

For a moment she went so white that he thought she might faint. “You are jesting with me,” she said breathlessly. “To force me to agree.”

“No.”

“You would never leave me.”

“I have to. Someone else who can convince you of your right interest should serve you. I am become the base that drives out the good. I am disregarded. I am lightweight. I am counterfeit like a coin.”

“Not disregarded, Spirit. You know…”

He bowed very low. “I will do anything else Your Grace commands, any other service though it were in Your Majesty’s kitchen or garden; I am ready without respect of estimation, wealth, or ease to do Your Majesty’s commandment to my life’s end.”

“Spirit, you cannot leave me.”

Cecil started to walk backward to the door. She stood like a bereft child, her hands outstretched to him. “William! Please! Am I to be left with no one?” she demanded. “This Scotland has already cost me the only man I love; is it going to cost me my greatest advisor and friend? You, who have been my constant friend and advisor since I was a girl?”

He paused at the door. “Please take steps to defend yourself,” he said quietly. “As soon as the Scots have been defeated, the French will come through England faster than we have ever seen an army move. They will come here and throw you from your throne. Please, for your own sake, prepare a refuge for yourself and a way to escape to it.”

“Cecil!” It was a little wail of misery.

He bowed again and went to the door. He went out. He waited outside. He had been certain that she would run after him, but there was silence. Then he heard, from inside the room, a muffled sob as Elizabeth broke down.

“You are so devout, people are starting to say that you pray like a Papist,” Lady Robsart of Stanfield Hall remarked critically to her stepdaughter Amy. “It doesn’t reflect very well on us; your brother-in-law said only the other day that you looked very odd in church, you were still on your knees as people were going out.”

“I am very much in need of grace,” Amy said, not in the least embarrassed.

“You’re not like yourself at all,” her stepmother went on. “You used to be so… lighthearted. Well, not lighthearted, but not pious. Not one for constant prayer, at any rate.”

“I was once secure in my father’s love, and then secure in my husband’s love, and now I have neither,” Amy said flatly. Her voice did not quaver; there were no tears in her eyes.

Lady Robsart was stunned into momentary silence. “Amy, my dear, I know there has been much gossip about him but…”

“It is true,” she said shortly. “He told me the truth himself. But he has given her up so that she can marry the archduke to get Spain to join with us in a war against the French.”

Lady Robsart was stunned. “He told you this? He confessed it all?”

“Yes.” For a moment Amy looked almost rueful. “I think he thought I would be sorry for him. He was so sorry for himself he thought I must sympathize. I have always sympathized with him before. He is in the habit of bringing his sorrows to me.”

“Sorrows?”

“This has cost him very dear,” Amy said. “There must have been a moment when he thought she might love him, and I might let him go, and he might fulfill his father’s dream and put a Dudley on the throne of England. His brother married the heir to the throne, Jane Grey; his sister is married to Henry Hastings, next in line after Mary, Queen of Scots; he must feel it is his family’s destiny.” She paused. “And of course, he is deeply in love with her,” she said, matter-of-fact.

“In love,” Lady Robsart repeated, as if she had never heard such words before. “In love with the Queen of England.”

“I can see it in everything he says,” Amy said quietly. “He loved me once, but everyone thought he condescended to the marriage, and it was always true that he thought very highly of himself. But with her it is different. He is a man transformed. She is his lover but still his queen; he admires her as well as desires her. He…” She paused to find the words. “He aspires to love her, whereas I was always an easy love.”

“Amy, are you not heartbroken?” her stepmother asked, feeling her way with this new, composed woman. “I thought he was everything to you?”

“I am sick to my very soul,” Amy said quietly. “I never knew that anyone could feel such a grief. It is like an illness, like a canker which eats at me every day. That is why I seem devout. The only relief for me is to pray that God will take me to his own and then Robert and she can do as they please, and I will be free from pain at last.”

“Oh, my dear!” Lady Robsart stretched out her hand to Amy. “Don’t say that. He’s not worth it. No man in the world is worth shedding a tear for. Least of all him who has cost you so much already.”

“I think my heart is really broken,” Amy said quietly. “I think it must be. The pain in my breast is so sharp and constant that I think it will be the death of me. It is truly heartbreak. I don’t think it will mend. It doesn’t matter whether he is worth it or not. It is done. Even if she were to marry the archduke and Robert were to come riding home to me and say that it was all a mistake, how could we be happy again? My heart is broken and it will always be broken from now on.”

The queen’s ladies could do nothing to please her; she stalked about her rooms at Whitehall Palace like a vexed lioness. She sent for, and then dismissed, her musicians. She would not read. She could not rest. She was in a frenzy of worry and distress. She wanted to send for Cecil; she could not imagine how she would manage without him. She wanted to send for her uncle, but no one knew where he was, and then she changed her mind and did not want to see him anyway. There were petitioners waiting to see her in her chamber but she would not go out to them; the dressmaker came with some furs from Russia but she would not even look at them. Prince Erik of Sweden had written her a twelve-page letter, pinned with a diamond, but she could not be troubled to read it.