Philippa Gregory - The Virgin's Lover

It was the moment to reward her for her apology. He crossed the room and kissed her fingers and then her lips. “You are my love,” he said. “You and I are true gold and there will be nothing mixed with that to spoil it. Between us there will always be an absolute honesty and openness. Then I can advise you and help you and you need turn to no other.”

He felt her mouth turn up under his kiss as she smiled. “Oh, Robert, I do,” she said.

Cecil allowed himself the indulgence of one night at home with his wife at Burghley before pressing on with his journey to London. Mildred greeted him with her usual calm affection but her gray eyes took in his lined face and the stoop of his shoulders. “You look tired,” was all the she remarked.

“It was hot and dusty,” he said, saying nothing about the several journeys he had been forced to make between Edinburgh and Newcastle to forge the peace and make it stick.

She nodded and gestured that he should go to his bedchamber, where in the palatial room there was hot water and a change of clothes waiting, a jug of cold ale and a warm fresh-baked loaf of bread. She had his favorite dinner ready for him when he came downstairs again, looking refreshed and wearing a clean dark suit.

“Thank you,” he said warmly, and kissed her on the forehead. “Thank you for all this.”

She smiled and led him to the head of the table where their family and servants waited for the master to say grace. Mildred was a staunch Protestant and her home was run on most godly lines.

Cecil said a few words of prayer and then sat down and applied himself to his dinner. His four-year-old daughter Anna was brought down from the nursery with her baby brother William, received an absentminded blessing, and then the covers were cleared and Mildred and Cecil went to their privy chamber, where a fire was lit and a jug of ale was waiting.

“So it is peace,” she confirmed, knowing that he would never have left Scotland with the task unfinished.

“Yes,” he said shortly.

“You don’t seem very joyous; are you not a blessed peacemaker?”

The look he shot at her was one she had never seen before. He looked hurt, as if he had taken a blow, not to his pride, nor to his ambition; but as if he had been betrayed by a friend.

“I am not,” he said. “It is the greatest peace that we could have hoped for. The French army is to leave, England’s interest in Scotland is acknowledged, and all barely without a shot being fired. This should be the very greatest event of my life, my triumph. To defeat the French would be a glorious victory at any time; to defeat them with a divided country, a bankrupt treasury, an unpaid army led by a woman is almost a miracle.”

“And yet?” she asked, uncomprehending.

“Someone has set the queen against me,” he said simply. “I have had a letter which would make me weep if I did not know that I had done the very best for her that could be done.”

“A letter from her?”

“A letter asking me for the stars and the moon as well as peace in Scotland,” he said. “And my guess is that she will not be pleased when I tell her that all I can give her is peace in Scotland.”

“She is not a fool,” Mildred pointed out. “If you tell her the truth she will hear it. She will know that you have done the best you can, and more than anyone else could have done.”

“She is in love,” he said shortly. “I doubt she can hear anything but the beating of her heart.”

“Dudley?”

“Who else?”

“It goes on then,” she said. “Even here, we hear such scandal that you would not believe.”

“I do believe it,” he said. “Most of it is true.”

“They say that the two are married and that she has his child in hiding.”

“Now that is a lie,” Cecil said. “But I don’t doubt that she would marry him if he were free.”

“And is it him who has poisoned her mind against you?”

He nodded. “I should think so. There can be only one favorite at court. I thought she could enjoy his company and take my advice; but when I have to go away then she has both his company and his advice; and he is a very reckless counselor.”

Mildred rose from her chair and came to stand beside him and put her hand on his shoulder. “What will you do, William?”

“I shall go to court,” he said. “I shall make my report. I am hundreds of pounds out of pocket and I expect no recompense or gratitude now. If she will not take my advice then I will have to leave her, as I once threatened to do before. She could not manage without me then; we shall see if she can manage without me now.”

She was aghast. “William, you cannot leave her to that handsome young traitor. You cannot leave England to be ruled by the two of them. It is to throw our country into the hands of vain children. You cannot leave our church in their hands. They are not to be trusted with it. They are a pair of adulterers. You have to be in her counsel. You have to save her from herself.”

Cecil, the queen’s most senior and respected advisor, was always advised by his wife. “Mildred, to fight a man like Dudley I would have to use ways and means which are most underhand. I would have to treat him as an enemy of the country. I would have to deal with him as a loyal man turned traitor. I would have to deal with him as I would with…” He broke off to think of an example. “Mary of Guise.”

“The queen who died so suddenly?” she asked him, her voice carefully neutral.

“The queen who died so suddenly.”

She understood him at once but she met his gaze without flinching. “William, you have to do your duty for our country, our church, and our queen. It is God’s work that you do, whatever means you have to use.”

He looked back into her level gray eyes. “Even if I had to commit a crime, a great sin?”

“Even so.”

Cecil returned in the last days of July to find the court on a short progress along the southern shores of the Thames, staying at the best private houses that could be found and enjoying the hunting and the summer weather. He was warned not to expect a hero’s welcome, and he did not receive one.

“How could you?” Elizabeth greeted him. “How could you throw away our victory? Were you bribed by the French? Have you gone over to their side? Were you sick? Were you too tired to do your task properly? Too old? How could you just forget your duty to me, and your duty to the country? We have spent a fortune in trying to make Scotland safe, and you just let the French go home without binding them to our will?”

“Your Grace,” he began. He felt himself flush with anger and he looked around to see who was in earshot. Half the court was craning forward to see the confrontation, all of them openly listening. Elizabeth had chosen to meet him in the great hall of her host’s house and there were people standing on the stairs to listen; there were courtiers leaning over the gallery. His scolding was as public as if she had done it at Smithfield market.

“To have the French at our mercy and to let them go without securing Calais!” she exclaimed. “This is worse than the loss of Calais in the first place. That was an act of war; we fought as hard as we could. This is an act of folly; you have thrown Calais away without making the slightest effort to regain it.”

“Your Majesty—”

“And my coat of arms! Has she sworn never to use them again? No? How dare you come back to me with that woman still using my arms?”

There was nothing Cecil could do under this onslaught. He fell silent and let her rage at him.

“Elizabeth.” The quiet voice was so filled with confidence that Cecil looked quickly up the grand staircase, to see who dared to address the queen by name. It was Dudley.