Philippa Gregory - The Virgin's Lover

Elizabeth’s fingernails were immaculately buffed, but her lips bitten into sore strips when she finally met the Spanish ambassador.

“They will force us into peace,” she whispered to Cecil after the meeting. “He all but threatened me. He warned me that if we cannot make peace with the French then Philip of Spain will send his own armies and force a peace on us.”

Cecil looked aghast. “How should he do such a thing? This is not a quarrel of his.”

“He has the power,” she said angrily. “And it is your fault for inviting his support. Now he thinks it is his business, he thinks he has a right to come into Scotland. And if both France and Spain have armies in Scotland, what will become of us? Whoever wins will occupy Scotland forever, and will soon look to the border and want to come south. We are now at the mercy of both France and Spain; how could you do this?”

“Well, it was not my intention,” he said wryly. “Does Philip think he can impose peace on France as well as us?”

“If he can force them to agree then it might be our way out,” Elizabeth said, a little more hopefully. “If we make a truce with him, he has promised me that we will get Calais back.”

“He lies,” Cecil said simply. “If you want Calais, you will have to fight for it. If you want to keep the French out of Scotland, you will have to fight them. We have to prevent the Spanish from coming in. We have to face the two greatest countries in Christendom and defend our sovereignty. You have to be brave, Elizabeth.”

He always called her by her title. It was a mark of her distress that she did not reprove him. “Spirit, I am not brave. I am so very afraid,” she said in a whisper of a voice.

“Everyone is afraid,” he assured her. “You, me, probably even the Sieur de Glajon. Don’t you think Mary of Guise, ill in Edinburgh Castle, is afraid too? Don’t you think that the French are afraid, with the Protestants rising up against them in the heart of France itself? Don’t you think that Mary, Queen of Scots, is afraid with them hanging hundreds of French rebels before her very eyes?”

“No one is alone as I am!” Elizabeth rounded on him. “No one faces two enemies on the doorstep but me! No one has to face Philip and face the French with no husband and no father and no help, but me!”

“Yes,” he agreed sympathetically. “Indeed you have a lonely and a difficult part to play. But you must play it. You have to pretend to confidence even when you are afraid, even when you feel most alone.”

“You would turn me into one of Sir Robert’s new troop of players,” she said.

“I would see you as one of England’s players,” he returned. “I would see you play the part of a great queen.” And I would rather die than trust Dudley with the script, he added to himself.

Spring came to Stanfield Hall, and Lizzie Oddingsell arrived to be Amy’s traveling companion, but no word came from Sir Robert as to where his wife was to go this season.

“Shall I write to him?” Lizzie Oddingsell asked Amy.

Amy was lying on a day bed, her skin like paper, her eyes dull, as thin as a wasted child. She shook her head, as if it were too much effort to speak. “It does not matter to him where I am anymore.”

“It’s just that this time last year we went to Bury St. Edmunds, and then Camberwell,” Lizzie remarked.

Amy shrugged her thin shoulders. “Not this year, it seems.”

“You cannot stay here all the year round.”

“Why not? I lived here all the years of my girlhood.”

“It’s not fitting,” Lizzie said. “You are his wife, and this is a little house with no gay company, and no good food or music or dancing or society. You cannot live like a farmer’s wife when you are the wife of one of the greatest men in the country. People will talk.”

Amy raised herself up on her elbow. “Good God, you know as well as I that people say far worse things than that I do not keep a good table.”

“They speak of nothing but the war against the French in Scotland,” Lizzie lied.

Amy shook her head and leaned back and closed her eyes. “I am not deaf,” she observed. “They say that my husband and the queen will be married within a year.”

“And what will you do?” Lizzie prompted gently. “If he insists? If he puts you aside? I am sorry, Amy, but you should consider what you would need. You are a young woman, and—”

“He cannot put me aside,” Amy said quietly. “I am his wife. I will be his wife till the day of my death. I cannot help it. God bound us together; only God can part us. He can send me away, he can even marry her, but then he is a bigamist and she is a whore in the eyes of everyone. I cannot do anything but be his wife until my death.”

“Amy,” Lizzie breathed. “Surely…”

“Please God my death comes soon and releases us all from this agony,” Amy said in her thin thread of a voice. “Because this is worse than death for me. To know that he has loved me and turned from me, to know that he wants me far away, never to see him again. To know, every morning that I wake, every night that I sleep, that he is with her, that he chooses to be with her rather than to be with me. It eats into me like a canker, Lizzie. I could think myself dying of it. This is grief like death. I would rather have death.”

“You have to reconcile yourself,” Lizzie Oddingsell said, without much faith in the panacea.

“I have reconciled myself to heartbreak,” Amy said. “I have reconciled myself to a life of desolation. No one can ask more of me.”

Lizzie stood up and turned a log on the fire. The chimney smoked and the room was always filled with a light haze that stung the eyes. Lizzie sighed at the discomfort of the farmhouse and of the late Sir John’s determination that what he had established was good enough for anyone else.

“I shall write to my brother-in-law,” she said firmly. “They are always glad to see you. At least we can go to Denchworth.”

Westminster Palace

March 14th 1560

William Cecil to the Commander of the Queen’s Pensioners.

Sir, 1. It has come to my attention that the French have hatched a conspiracy against the life of the queen and of the noble gen tleman Sir Robert Dudley. I am informed that they are determined that one or the other shall be killed, believing that this will give them an advantage in the war in Scotland.2. I hereby advise you of this new threat and commend you to redouble your guard on the queen and to command them to remain alert at all times.

Be alert also for anyone approaching or following the noble gentleman, and for anyone hanging round his apartments or the stables.

God Save the Queen.

Sir Francis Knollys with Sir Nicholas Bacon sought out William Cecil.

“For God’s sake, is there no end to these threats?”

“Apparently not,” Cecil said quietly.

Sir Robert Dudley joined them. “What’s this?”

“More death threats against the queen,” Sir Francis told him. “And against you.”

“Me?”

“From the French, now.”

“Why would the French want to kill me?” Dudley asked, shocked.

“They think the queen would be distressed by your death,” Nicholas Bacon said tactfully, when no one else answered.

Sir Robert took a swift, irritated turn on his heel. “Are we to do nothing while Her Majesty is threatened on all sides? When Frenchmen threaten her, when the Pope himself threatens her? When Englishmen plot against her? Can’t we confront this terror and destroy it?”

“The nature of terror is that you don’t know quite what it is or what it can do,” Cecil observed. “We can protect her, but only up to a point. Short of locking her up in a gated room we cannot preserve her from danger. I have a man tasting everything she eats. I have sentries at every door, under every window. No one comes into court without being vouched for and yet still, every other day, I hear of a new plot, a new murder plan against her.”