Philippa Gregory - The Virgin's Lover

“How would the French like it if we murdered the young Queen Mary?” Sir Robert demanded.

William Cecil exchanged a glance with the other more experienced man, Sir Francis. “We can’t reach her,” he admitted. “I had Throckmorton look at the French court when he was in Paris. It can’t be done without them knowing it was us.”

“And is that your only objection?” Robert bristled.

“Yes,” Cecil said silkily. “I have no objection in theory to assassination as an act of state. It could be a great saver of life and a guarantee of safety for others.”

“I am utterly and completely opposed to it,” Dudley said indignantly. “It is forbidden by God, and it is against the justice of man.”

“Yes, but it’s you they want to kill, so you would think that,” Sir Nicholas said with scant sympathy. “The bullock seldom shares the beliefs of the butcher, and you, you are dead meat, my friend.”

Amy and Lizzie Oddingsell, escorted by Thomas Blount, with men in the Dudley livery riding before and behind them, came in silence to the Hyde house. The children, watching for them as usual, came running down the drive toward them and then hesitated when their aunt had nothing more for them than a wistful smile, and their favorite guest, the pretty Lady Dudley, did not seem to see them at all.

Alice Hyde, hurrying out to greet her sister-in-law and her noble friend, felt for a moment as if a shadow had fallen on their house and gave a little involuntary shiver as if the April sunshine had suddenly turned icy. “Sister! Lady Dudley, you are most welcome.”

Both women turned to her faces that were pale with strain. “Oh, Lizzie!” Alice said, in shock at the weariness on her face, and then went to help her sister-in-law down from the saddle as her husband came out and helped Lady Dudley to dismount.

“May I go to my room?” Amy whispered to William Hyde.

“Of course,” he said kindly. “I will take you myself, and have a fire lit for you. Will you take a glass of brandy to keep out the cold and put some roses in those pretty cheeks again?”

He thought she looked at him as if he addressed her in a foreign language.

“I am not ill,” she said flatly. “Whoever told you that I was ill, is lying.”

“No? I’m glad to hear of it. You look a little wearied by your journey, that’s all,” he said soothingly, leading her into the hall and then up the stairs to the best guest bedroom. “And are we to expect Sir Robert here, this spring?”

Amy paused at the door of her room. “No,” she said very quietly. “I do not expect to see my husband this season. I have no expectations of him at all.”

“Oh,” William Hyde said, quite at sea.

Then she turned and put both her hands out to him. “But he is my husband,” she said, almost pleading. “That will never change.”

At a loss, he chafed her cold hands. “Of course he is,” he soothed her, thinking that she was talking at random, like a madwoman. “And a very good husband too, I am sure.”

Somehow, he had said the right thing. The sweet smile of Amy the beloved girl suddenly illuminated the bleak face of Amy the deserted wife.

“Yes, he is,” she said. “I am so glad that you see that too, dear William. He is a good husband to me and so he must come home to me soon.”

“Good God, what have they done to her?” William Hyde demanded of his sister, Lizzie Oddingsell, when the three of them were seated around the dinner table, the covers cleared and the door safely closed against prying servants. “She looks near to death.”

“It is as you predicted,” Lizzie said shortly. “Just as you said when you were so merry about what would happen if your master were to marry the queen. He has done what you thought he might do. He has thrown her off and is going to marry the queen. He told her to her face.”

A long, low whistle from William Hyde greeted this news. Alice was quite dumbstruck.

“And the queen has proposed this? She thinks she can get such a thing past the Lords and Commons of England?”

Lizzie shrugged. “He speaks as if all that stands in their way is Amy’s consent. He speaks as if he and the queen are quite agreed and are picking out names for their firstborn.”

“He will be consort. She might even call him king,” William Hyde speculated. “And he will not forget the services we have done him and the kindness we have shown him.”

“And what of her?” Lizzie asked fiercely, nodding her head to the chamber above them. “When he is crowned and we are in Westminster Abbey shouting hurrah? Where do you think she is then?”

William Hyde shook his head. “Living quietly in the country? At her father’s old house? At the house she fancied here—old Simpson’s place?”

“It will kill her,” Alice predicted. “She will never survive the loss of him.”

“I think so,” Lizzie said. “And the worst of it is, that I think in his heart, he knows that. And I am sure that the she-devil queen knows that too.”

“Hush!” William said urgently. “Even behind closed doors, Lizzie!”

“All her life Amy has been on a rack of his ambition,” Lizzie hissed. “All her life she has loved and waited for him and prayed long, sleepless nights for his safety. And now, at the moment of his prosperity, he tells her that he will cast her aside, that he loves another woman, and that this other woman has such power that she can throw a true-wedded wife to the dogs.

“What do you think this will do to her? You saw her. Doesn’t she look like a woman walking toward her grave?”

“Is she sick?” asked William Hyde, a practical man. “Does she have this canker in her breast that they all say is killing her?”

“She is sick to death from heartache,” Lizzie said. “That is all the pain in her breast. And he may not understand this, but I warrant the queen does. She knows that if she plays cat and mouse with Amy Dudley for long enough then her health will simply break down and she will take to her bed and die. If she does not kill herself first.”

“Never! A mortal sin!” Alice exclaimed.

“It has become a sinful country,” Lizzie said bleakly. “What is worse? A woman throwing herself headfirst downstairs or a queen taking a married man to her bed and the two of them hounding the true wife to her death?”

Thomas,

Cecil wrote in code to his old friend Thomas Gresham at Antwerp.

1. I have your note about the Spanish troopships, presumably, they are arming to invade Scotland. The great numbers that you have seen must indicate that they plan to invade England as well.

2. They have a plan to invade Scotland on the pretext of imposing peace. I assume that they are now putting this into practice.

3. On receipt of this, please inform your clients, customers, and friends that the Spanish are on the brink of invading Scotland, that this will take them into war with the French, with the Scots and with ourselves, and warn them most emphatically that all the English trade will leave Antwerp for France. The cloth market will leave the Spanish Netherlands forever, and the loss will be incalculable.

4. If you can create utter panic in the commercial and trading quarters with this news I would be much obliged. If the poor people were to take it into their heads that they will starve for lack of English trade, and riot against their Spanish masters, it would be even better. If the Spanish could be brought to think they are facing a national revolt it would be very helpful.

Cecil did not sign the letter nor seal it with his crest. He rarely put his name to anything.

Ten days later Cecil stalked into the queen’s privy chamber like a long-legged, triumphant raven and laid a letter before her on her desk. There were no other papers, her anxiety about Scotland was so great that she did no other work. Only Robert Dudley could distract her from her terrified interrogation of the progress of the war; only he could comfort her.